#<- adding this in way later because i want to refer back to this post

[oceanwithouthermoon]

it bothers me a little when people are like "ugh toritsuka deserved to be written better, he was done wrong" like no, not really, you just didnt get the point... hes literally there to be a foil to saiki, who uses his powers relatively selflessly despite claiming over and over that he only uses them for self gain, and then toritsuka is there to show us what an actual selfish character looks like...

same thing when people are like "i feel so bad for him, saikis so mean to him! he needs better friends.. he doesnt deserve how they treat him!" bro. yes he does. the entire point of his existence is to show the audience that saiki isnt the selfish powerhouse he claims to be, and that there are people out there actually using esp for bad things and there are much worse people that saikis powers couldve been given to...

toritsuka also has some good qualities obviously, the cat tank arc is SO important for him cuz it shows both the worst and best parts of his character but a lot of people like to focus solely on one and erase the other and its ajajkskqksms frustrating for me

[gothteddiesdotcom]

I know this is a porn blog and all but it's so hard to like. explain to people what Dave Mirra meant to the BMX community

[kozachenko]

[Click for better quality]

Ok yay I'm back from my vacation yipeeeeeee. I started this drawing of Keiki before I left and I was half considering just giving up on it.... until I did a short study of facial planes and then got motivated to work on this again! I'm glad I didn't give up on it though, as I'm actually really happy with this one!

Artist's Notes;

So as I mentioned in my last post about Touhou 17, I wanted to finish this by the game's five year anniversary but with how progress was going I didn't want to rush this so I decided to take a long break from it. Mainly because of the face. For a while now I was kind of feeling like I was stagnating with my drawings, not really in the clothing but in the bodies. There was something about the way I was rendering them that I just wasn't happy with, and after talking with someone else about this issue, I realized that the reason I felt this way was because the faces were too flat and didn't match the rest of the drawing and that I needed to find a way to make the rendering of the face feel consistent with everything else. So after doing a short study of the plains of the face (I used this 3D head model from art station as a reference for my short study, please go give this person some love as they are a lifesaver) I went back into this drawing and applied what I learned here. It was only after that that I finally became motivated to finish the piece, and while it started off as just a simple character sketch like Saki and Yachie's were, the moment I added in Keiki's little fire dragon I knew I had gotten in too deep and now here we are with a full on background. OK it's not super crazy or anything, but it gets the job done and it's better than there just being an empty void behind her. It's rare moments like this when I use brushes other than the Clip Studio Default Charcoal Brush and use the Clip Studio Default Paint Brushes as well (god bless the oil paint and dry gouache clip studio brushes, they were amazing). I don't know why but painting fire has always been really fun for me, there's something oddly satisfying about it y'know? I do think that another reason for this problem was because I was drawing faces like I would in my more sketchy style that didn't mesh well with my lineless style, so I'm glad I've started remedying that.

After adding in the fire dragon I had an idea to kinda make it feel like splash art in the way the composition works... probably because I have been playing Reverse 1999 again and it has taken over my brain. I do feel like Keiki's tools get a little lost in the composition, and I didn't fully render the metal parts of them mainly because I didn't feel like they needed it, but that's just something for me to improve on later down the line.

If you guys are wondering where I went for my vacation, I went to New York and got to go to the MET and the Museum of Natural History. In both places I found Kofun period stuff and I was so happy to see it you have no idea. I remember one of the Haniwa I saw had some neat face paint under the eyes that I tried to replicate with the makeup under Keiki's eyes in my drawing, though I think I'll gave to figure out how to draw makeup on characters because this reads more like blush to me than anything. While drawing this I also looked up some references of Kofun period jewelry and really liked the stuff I found, which also meant that now she has proper Kofun earrings instead of earrings shaped like Kofun tombs. I put some of the things I referenced with a closeup of Keiki's face as well down below. I made her outfit more reminiscent of the outfit I gave her at the beginning of the year with the buttons and all, though I do want to try and draw her in some more period accurate clothing like the Haniwa I took a picture of at the Museum of Natural History. I wish I could find a way to make her handercheif look better though as I wish I made it a little bit bigger, though I think I'm saying this because I've looked at this drawing for too long lmao. Once again something to work on for when I next draw her. Also want to get better at rendering hair, as some details (like the little strands in front of her ears) kinda got unreadable due to the similarities in colour lol.

Now you may have also noticed the little cracks I added onto Keiki's face, and that's because I have fallen in love with the idea of Keiki's body being made from ceramic and that she crafted her body herself. While they aren't very visible I also tried to add some doll joints to her body, which is an idea I played around with in the past but never went to far with. I also want to get better at rendering cracks in ceramic, porcelain, etc, as I'm not sure how those read in the drawing. I also have a headcanon where the cracks in Keiki's face show up because of heightened emotions, and while Keiki is aware of this and does her best to make sure her face doesn't break off.... she will still end up with at least a few cracks during any given day, and she can often forget to repair her own body quite frequently so Mayumi has to remind her quite a lot. Mayumi even taught herself some basic sculpting techniques to help repair parts of her body that are so badly damaged to the point where Keiki can't repair them herself, i.e. if both her arms broke off, Mayumi would put them back together for her so Keiki can at least have something to repair herself with rather than nothing. I also like to imagine that if Keiki created her own body, if you took a look at Keiki from the beginning of her life she would look completely different compared to now.

BTW If you guys are wondering what a very very angry Keiki looks like....ok in order for this to make sense have any of you read volume 11 of Land of The Lustrous? Am I bringing back some memories for those of you that have? Ok good, glad we all got that mental image brewing in our minds, I'll probably draw a version of Keiki that is somewhat inspired by that one day as it's an idea I've had for a little while now. And to those who haven't gotten to that volume yet and are confused.... don't worry about it, just keep reading :)

[lesbianralzarek]

tumblr in reddit terms

blogs: personal subreddits where the theme/topic is 99% of the time just “me and whatever the hell i feel like at the moment”. for reference, the most common other theme rn is “wizard roleplay that never breaks character”

reblogs: crossposts. these are crucial to maintaining tumblr’s ecosystem. due to blogs generally having fewer followers than subreddits have subscribers, this is the way that posts get seen and passed around. the vast majority of posts on a person’s blog tend to be reblogs, so if the people you follow dont reblog a whole lot, your dashboard is gonna be a ghost town. post limit (combined total of reblogs and original posts per day) is 250, so feel free to go hog wild

tags: this one is complicated. theyre a combination of flairs and Comments But Low-key. you can use them for organization and to avoid seeing content you dont want to (go to your blog, settings, account settings, content you see, and then add tags you want tumblr to warn you about before seeing it). if op tags the post #reddit (in the tags, not the body of the post), itll show up in the #reddit tag when anyone searches that tag. tags are also used for comments that dont really add anything to the post. you know how a jpeg gets kinda gross when its been through a million screenshots and has ifunny watermarks and shit? thats what adding “lmao same” as a comment does to a post. comments stay on reblogs, while tags show up in 4 places: op’s notifications, the notifs of whoever you reblogged it from, when someone clicks on the “notes” button of a post and actively looks for the tags left on it, and when people view your specific reblog of the post (like a follower would on their dashboard)

likes: upvotes but weaker. almost everyone turns off all the algorithms (settings, account settings, dashboard preferences, toggle off the first 3 options. also, make sure your dashboard is on "following" and not "for you". this is highly recommended), so leaving a like doesnt boost the post in any way. they still matter to some people. you can also use them to bookmark a post and go back to your likes later

enthusiastic and/or hyperbolic tags: reddit gold. you wanna let op know you like their art? leave something like ”#printing this out and stapling it to my forehead #op you wanna get married?” in the tags

pornbots: both reddit and tumblr have an issue with them. we block and report them on sight. they usually have hot women as their icons, no posts or reblogs, and a description like “22, brazil, nurse <3″. try to not look like that if you dont wanna get blocked by everyone you follow

blocking: you have this as well, but it seems like a bigger deal on reddit. the reason we are not twitter is because we block bitches who annoy us and move on with our day. do not feed the trolls

things we dont have:

karma: clout-chasing is The Most embarrassing thing you can possibly do on this site. we are all in this circus together and the clown who gets the most laughs is still a clown. popular users will literally deactivate sometimes because clout is a burden. no one here makes money

[spider-jaysart]

Hii I find your apocalypse AU pretty interesting. Was wondering if I could do some fanart? :3

@jonathankentstuff

Omggg!!! Yesss, I would totally be okay with you making some!! I would love to see that!✨

Sorry this took a bit to answer btw, but here are some reference sheets for the boys designs in this au that will probably be helpful for you to use!!

(Click for better quality)

This is also probably a good moment to finally expand more on what the au is about (which is why I added in Mar'i and Jake's there too) since I'm showing them now and also because I've been taking a long while already to make the post about it lol😅

(It's a no capes au btw, meaning everyone's just a normal human here and weren't superheroes in the past)

After tragically losing both Talia and Bruce, Damian is mainly surviving with Dick and Kory, plus the kiddos Mar'i and Jake.

After a very long while of doing just fine, they one day get completely seperated from eachother after getting attacked by a random group of greedy bandits. Damian got stuck with Mar'i and Jake on his side while Dick and Kory were only left with eachother, plus Alfred the cat who they carry around all the time in their backpack.

After seeing that there's no way to really get around and go back to eachother and also noticing that they have to continue running from the large group of bandits who are still after them, Dick quickly hands Damian a map and tells him to travel to the place that's marked on it, telling him that they'll all meet up there and reunite with eachother again. Damian promises to do just that and becomes Mar'i and Jake's new guardian while the three of them are on their own, protecting them both from any kind of danger that's thrown their way no matter what, while staying determined to return to Dick and Kory once again.

After three months later of already moving forward to get to their far destination, Damian, Mar'i, and Jake were resting at a small cabin in the woods for a night until the morning. During that night, Jon later happened to be walking around near their hide out all alone since he was lost. Damian spotted him and wasn't planning on taking any risks by just letting him wander around, in case he was actually someone who was just looking to attack and steal stuff if he found him and his little Nephew and Niece, so he sneakily knocked Jon out and tied him up in the cabin.

Once Jon woke up, Damian and Mar'i both pretended to be cannibals to scare him so that they could get their needed answers out of him to see if he was really just another bad person as expected. Because of this, Jon was terrified and just told them whatever they wanted to know, promising that he wasn't there for any trouble. With this, they saw that he was just a harmless kid just trying to survive like them, so they finally dropped the act and let him know that they were just actually faking it. Jon immediately became even more upsetted by all of this after being told that.

While Damian and Mar'i were distracted talking to eachother about what they were gonna do with him, Jon sneakily got loose from his ties and quickly surprised punched Damian in the gut in anger. Jon quickly stopped though once Mar'i immediately got in the middle of the fight and shoved him away from Damian, yelling "No!" In fear, making him feel a little bad for getting rough in front of the 8 year old girl. Then he soon started to hear Jake crying loudly too and began to feel even more bad for not realizing that there was a baby in the room as well.

That was when Jon got (an angry) explanation from Damian about why they did what they did to him, which was only for their safety. He began to start understanding the reasons behind it after that, but still felt pretty upset about the way it was done.

After some calming down, and for Jake too after being rudely awakened, Jon explains to Damian and Mar'i that he had gotten separated from his group earlier after getting chased down by some herd filled with the undead and is just trying to find his way back to his camp now, but is completely lost.

Damian, remembering he has a map on him and thinking back on how Mar'i and him haven't had much food to eat for days, decides to make a deal with Jon. He tells him that if they help him out, he has to give them some food to take back with them in the end in return. Jon, desperate to get back home and feeling delighted at being offered some help, promises them plenty to eat, so they make a deal. This was the start of their adventure together. (Damian didn't let Jon know about the map though and instead lied to him that he's an expert on traveling in the area, so that he wouldn't reject the deal and also so that he wouldn't think of taking the map from them and just run off with it either)

Along the way, the boys begin to later become good friends (with growing crushes on eachother and later become boyfriends too) and a found family type of thing also starts to grow between Mar'i and Jake with Jon over time too (he becomes like a new Uncle to them).

And after finally getting Jon back home in the end like promised, Jon wants to return the favor by helping Damian out in his own big goal too, just like how he helped him out so much during their little journey together. So the four of them venture out later to look for Dick and Kory like a team.

Phew! Glad that's finally done lol. I really can't wait to see what kind of stuff you decide to draw for the au and am very excited to see them whenever they're ready!!!✨:D (I also have way more stuff about the au, like what happens much later on and also how things started too, but that would just make the post too long lmao)

[livwritesstuff]

inspired by a reply @gregre369 left on yesterday’s post. this is why i love this site so much bc i had this idea floating aimlessly around my brain for such a long time and then someone says something that just connects all the dots for me so - much thanks <3

tw: brief reference to domestic violence

One of parenthood’s biggest surprises (in Eddie’s opinion, anyway) was how easy talking to his and Steve’s daughters about why his parents aren’t in his life was.

He’d figured it’d be hard to figure out exactly how to explain that his mother's death was the end result of domestic violence caused by his father, who had died in prison twenty years later – but…that about covers it, honestly. Sure, the exact rendition of the story the girls hear varies as they get older, but…it’s pretty straightforward, actually.

Explaining Steve’s situation turned out to be way more complicated for…well, for a lot of reasons, and the fact that his parents are still alive and breathing and choosing to not be around didn't help things at all.

It also didn't help that the girls totally saw Jim and Joyce as Steve’s parents, but it did lead to a conversation that Eddie doesn't think he'll ever forget:

It happened when he was passing through the kitchen to see that Steve was cooking with Moe.

"What're we up to in here?" he asked.

At four years old (she’s actually almost five), Moe has yet to outgrow a phase of picky eating that had started out right around her second birthday. Steve is trying out a new method where he involves Moe in the cooking process in the hopes that she then actually wants to eat the product of her hard work when it’s done. He's seeing varying levels of success.

“We're making burgers,” Moe said, “Poppy’s recipe.”

Eddie looked at Steve skeptically, “Poppy Jim or Poppy Joyce?”

Steve rolled his eyes, “I’m telling Joyce you said that.”

And then he added, “Jim.”

Satisfied, Eddie continued on his way.

“How come you call your dad Jim?” Moe asked.

And that had Eddie pausing in the hallway just out of their line of sight.

“Well, Poppy’s not my dad, sweet pea,” Steve replied.

“Did you not have a dad?”

“I did have a dad – I do. He lives in Indiana with my mom. We don't really talk to each other anymore though."

"Why?"

"When I was younger, I decided that they didn’t take care of me like I needed them too, and Jim and Joyce stepped in to be like my parents instead."

It's not completely accurate, Eddie knows (and he doesn't love the way Steve is shifting culpability away from his parents because that shit was fully on them, but whatever; it's his story and he can tell it however he wants), but just like how their daughters don't have a completely accurate picture of what happened to Eddie's mom either, they know what they need to know for now and they'll hear more down the line.

“But what did your mom and dad do?” Moe asked.

"Well, you know how Daddy and I read to you and play with you and put you to bed and make food for you – it was a little different because I was older and I needed different stuff than that, but…”

Eddie watched Steve look back at their oldest daughter, watched him see the look of confusion in her big brown eyes.

“They didn’t do that?” Moe asked, sounding perplexed.

Steve shook his head, and Moe continued to look at him as if he might suddenly tell her he was joking.

“That’s crazy,” Moe finally said, and Steve let out a laugh.

“It is kinda crazy, isn’t it?” he agreed, “That’s why I love being your dad so much, because it’s actually so easy to want to take care of you. Even though you sometimes like to make it hard on purpose, right?”

“Yeah,” she grinned proudly, “Like when I make you snuggle me more at bedtime and you fall asleep by accident and then the kitchen is messy in the morning."

"Uh-huh," Steve said, poking her in the side so she giggled, "Exactly like that."

"You're a good dad," Moe told him.

"You think?" Steve asked as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"The best dad."

“The best?” he repeated, “Can’t let Daddy hear that.”

“He can hear it.”

[sebscore]

Came from ur fem!driver HCs and now I have ideas:

- The origin story of George’s ‘Russy Bussy’ nickname🤣

- Y/N hazing Oscar, Nyck and Logan in Abu Dhabi because as Valterri says, ✨traditions✨

- Y/N and Pierre gossiping abt Piastrigate w/ Yuki, Zhou and Charles (cuz oh my lordy-ord THE DRAMAFEST that was the summer break and Seb’s retirement😭)

THE ORIGIN OF RUSSY BUSSY

pairing: george russell x driver!reader / alex albon x driver!reader / lando norris x driver!reader

warnings: the word “bussy” 😭

author's note: i mean everything you need to know is in the title :) yes, this is a reference to that one eric name tweet from 2019! tysm to the anon for the requests!!

• • • • • • •

''Did you see what George tweeted earlier?'' Alex asked her while they waited for the rest of the grid to arrive at the driver's briefing.

Y/N shook her head. ''No, why?''

Alex simply chuckled and pulled out his phone, opening the Twitter app and typing in George's username. He laughed once again, before showing the tweet in question to her.

GeorgeRussell63: New race week! Let's get busssy everyone!

Y/N's jaw dropped, in shock that the Brit actually had posted that on his official and very public Twitter account. ''You know for a guy that likes to correct my grammar, he sure does make a lot of spelling mistakes.''

''I don't think he's realized yet what it means.'' The Williams driver told her, putting his phone back in his pocket.

''Hey, guys.'' Lando took the seat next to his female friend, sighing as he sat down. ''What are you two talking about?''

''George's bussy.''

The three bursted out laughing, gathering some confused looks from the other drivers in the room. Lando seemed to immediately understand what they were referring to.

''I thought I was the only one that noticed.'' He said, trying to calm himself down.

''I was gonna tweet something back at him, but I didn't want people to make fun of the fact that I know what it means.'' Alex explained.

Lando and Y/N nodded at his words, understanding that fans can remember these things for years to come. ''I wanna see his face the moment he finds out what it means.'' She said, rubbing her hands together like a villain would when creating their masterplan.

''Me too, it's gonna be hilarious, our Russell George.''

''Should we let him figure it out on his own or do we tell him?'' Alex asked, debating if they should explain the meaning to him.

Y/N shook her head. ''He should figure it out on his own, maybe with a bit of our help though.'' The mischief in her eyes didn't go unnoticed by Lando and Alex, the two already started to grin.

As if on queue, George and Lewis walked into the room, and briefly greeted everyone. George was about to sit down next to Sebastian, but he was quickly interrupted from doing that.

''Hey, Russy Bussy! Come sit with us!'' Y/N called him over, a teasing smirk present on her face.

The nickname caused some stifled laughter in the room, particularly from Pierre, Daniel, Lando and Alex. Meanwhile George awkwardly looked around as he made his way over to them.

''Hi, guys.'' He sat down next to Alex, a puzzled look on his face.

Lando briefly took a glimpse at Y/N before speaking. ''You guys are later than usual, you had a bussy morning?'' He asked, trying his best to not start cackling.

''Yeah, we had to film something with the team…'' George hesitantly answered, totally unaware what they were laughing about. ''Why are you saying busy like that?'' He asked the younger guy, putting his hand on his waist.

''Oh, isn't that how you say it?'' Alex said, feigning innocence. ''Yeah, or tweet it.'' Y/N added, having too much fun teasing the Mercedes driver.

''I can't follow, guys.'' George was visibly running out of patience with the teasing.

''Oh, crikey! He doesn't know what we are talking about.'' Y/N mimicked George's speech, continuing the mocking.

Alex was the one to cave in first. ''We're talking about your latest tweet, Russell.''

''What about it?'' He obviously still hadn't realized what had been so wrong with his spelling of the word 'busy'.

''You still don't know?'' Lando said wide-eyed, surprised George still hadn't been made aware of the entire thing.

''Know what?''

Lando and Alex turned to Y/N, pleading with their eyes that she explains it to him. She rolled her eyes, but succumbed.

''In your tweet it sounded like you said 'bussy' instead of 'busy', and let's say the two words have completely different meanings.'' She clarified.

George nodded, understanding the fault he made. ''Okay… then what does it mean?''

''With 'bussy' you're referring to a man's, uh, anus.''

They could see the gears turning in George's head, starting to comprehend why he received the reactions he did to what he assumed was a normal tweet. He had given the internet another reason to clown him for an entire season.

''Oh, good heavens!''

''But hey! Look at it from the bright side, your gay fans must be very happy right now!''

[aringofsalt]

diy ao3 wrapped: how to get your data!

so i figured out how to do this last year, and spotify wrapped season got me thinking about it again. a couple people in discord asked how to do it so i figured i'd write up a little guide! i'm not quite done with mine for this year yet because i wanted to do some graphics, but this is the post i made last year, for reference!

this got long! i tried to go into as much detail as possible to make it as easy as possible, but i am a web developer, so if there's anything i didn't explain enough (or if you have any other questions) don't hesitate to send me an ask!!

references

i used two reddit posts as references for this:

basic instructions (explains the browser extension; code gets title, word count, and author)

expanded instructions (code gets title, word count, and author, as well as category, date posted, last visited, warnings, rating, fandom, relationship, summary, and completion status, and includes instructions for how to include tags and switch fandoms/relationships to multiple—i will include notes on that later)

both use the extension webscraper.io which is available for both firefox and chrome (and maybe others, but i only use firefox/chrome personally so i didn't check any others, sorry. firefox is better anyway)

scraping your basic/expanded data

first, install the webscraper plugin/extension.

once it's installed, press ctrl+shift+i on pc or cmd+option+i on mac to open your browser's dev tools and navigate to the Web Scraper tab

from there, click "Create New Site Map" > "Import Sitemap"

it will open a screen with a field to input json code and a field for name—you don't need to manually input the name, it will fill in automatically based on the json you paste in. if you want to change it after, changing one will change the other.

i've put the codes i used on pastebin here: basic // expanded

once you've pasted in your code, you will want to update the USERNAME (highlighted in yellow) to your ao3 username, and the LASTPAGE (highlighted in pink) to the last page you want to scrape. to find this, go to your history page on ao3, and click back until you find your first fic of 2024! make sure you go by the "last visited" date instead of the post date.

if you do want to change the id, you can update the value (highlighted in blue) and it will automatically update the sitemap name field, or vice versa. everything else can be left as is.

once you're done, click import, and it'll show you the sitemap. on the top bar, click the middle tab, "Sitemap [id of sitemap]" and choose Scrape. you'll see a couple of options—the defaults worked fine for me, but you can mess with them if you need to. as far as i understand it, it just sets how much time it takes to scrape each page so ao3 doesn't think it's getting attacked by a bot. now click "start scraping"!

once you've done that, it will pop up with a new window which will load your history. let it do its thing. it will start on the last page and work its way back to the first, so depending on how many pages you have, it could take a while. i have 134 pages and it took about 10-12 minutes to get through them all.

once the scrape is done, the new window will close and you should be back at your dev tools window. you can click on the "Sitemap [id of sitemap]" tab again and choose Export data.

i downloaded the data as .xlsx and uploaded to my google drive. and now you can close your dev tools window!

from here on out my instructions are for google sheets; i'm sure most of the queries and calculations will be similar in other programs, but i don't really know excel or numbers, sorry!

setting up your spreadsheet

once it's opened, the first thing i do is sort the "viewed" column A -> Z and get rid of the rows for any deleted works. they don't have any data so no need to keep them. next, i select the columns for "web-scraper-order" and "web-scraper-start-url" (highlighted in pink) and delete them; they're just default data added by the scraper and we don't need them, so it tidies it up a little.

this should leave you with category, posted, viewed, warning, rating, fandom, relationship, title, author, wordcount, and completion status if you used the expanded code. if there are any of these you don't want, you can go ahead and delete those columns also!

next, i add blank columns to the right of the data i want to focus on. this just makes it easier to do my counts later. in my case these will be rating, fandom, relationship, author, and completion status.

one additional thing you should do, is checking the "viewed" column. you'll notice that it looks like this:

you can't really sort by this since it's text, not formatted as a date, so it'll go alphabetically by month rather than sorting by date. but, you'll want to be able to get rid of any entries that were viewed in 2023 (there could be none, but likely there are some because the scraper got everything on your last page even if it was viewed in 2023). what i did here was use the "find" dialog to search the "viewed" column for 2023, and deleted those rows manually.

ctrl/cmd+f, click the 3 dots for "more options". you want to choose "Specific range", then "C2:C#". replace C with the letter of your viewed column (remember i deleted a bunch, so yours may be different) and replace # with the number of the last row of your spreadsheet. then find 2023, select the rows containing it, right click > delete rows.

it isn't super necessary to do this, it will only add at most 19 fics to your count, but the option is there!

alright, with all that done, your sheet should look something like this:

exposing myself for having read stardew valley fic i guess

now for the fun part!!!

the math

yes, the math is the fun part.

scroll all the way down to the bottom of your sheet. i usually add 100 blank rows at the bottom just so i have some space to play with.

most of these will basically be the same query, just updating for the relevant column. i've put it in a pastebin here, but here's a screenshot so i can walk you through it:

you'll want to use lines 3-10, select the cell you want to put your data into, and paste the query into the formula bar (highlighted in green)

so, we're starting with rating, which is column E for me. if yours is a different letter you'll need to replace all the E's with the relevant letter.

what this does is it goes through the entire column, starting with row 2 (highlighted in yellow) and ending with your final row (highlighted in blue, you'll want to change this number to reflect how many rows you have). note that row 2 is your first actual data row, because of the header row.

it checks each row that has a value (line 5), groups by unique value (row 6), and arranges in descending order (row 7) by how many there are of each value (row 8). finally, row 10 determines how many rows of results you'll have; for rating, i put 5 because that's how many ratings there are, but you can increase the number of results (highlighted in pink) for other columns depending on how many you want. this is why i added the 100 extra rows!

next to make the actual number visible, go to the cell one column over. this is why we added the empty columns! next to your first result, add the second query from the pastebin:

your first and second cell numbers (highlighted in yellow and blue) should match the numbers from your query above, and the third number (highlighted in pink) should be the number of the cell with your first value. what this does is go through your column and count how many times the value occurs.

repeat this for the rest of the rows and you should end up with something like this! don't judge me and my reading habits please

now you can go ahead and repeat for the rest of your columns! as i mentioned above, you can increase the amount of result rows you get; i set it to 25 for fandom, relationship, and author, just because i was curious, and only two for completion status because it's either complete or not complete.

you should end up with something like this!

you may end up with some multiples (not sure why this happens, tagging issues maybe?) and up to you if you want to manually fix them! i just ended up doing a find and replace for the two that i didn't want and replaced with the correct tag.

now for the total wordcount! this one is pretty simple, it just adds together your entire column. first i selected the column (N for me) and went to Format > Number > 0 so it stripped commas etc. then at the bottom of the column, add the third query from the pastebin. as usual, your first number is the first data row, and the second is the last data row.

and just because i was curious, i wanted the average wordcount also, so in another cell i did this (fourth query from the pastebin), where the first number is the cell where your total is, and the second number is the total number of fics (total # of data rows minus 1 for the header row).

which gives me this:

tadaaaa!

getting multiple values

so, as i mentioned above, by default the scraper will only get the first value for relationships and fandoms. "but sarah," you may say, "what if i want an accurate breakdown of ALL the fandoms and relationships if there's multiples?"

here's the problem with that: if you want to be able to query and count them properly, each fandom or relationship needs to be its own row, which would skew all the other data. for me personally, it didn't bother me too much; i don't read a lot of crossovers, and typically if i'm reading a fic it's for the primary pairing, so i think the counts (for me) are pretty accurate. if you want to get multiples, i would suggest doing a secondary scrape to get those values separately.

if you want to edit the scrape to get multiples, navigate to one of your history pages (preferably one that has at least one work with multiple fandoms and/or relationships so you can preview) then hit ctrl+shift+i/cmd+option+i, open web scraper, and open your sitemap. expand the row and you should see all your values. find the one you want to edit and hit the "edit" button (highlighted in pink)

on the next screen, you should be good to just check the "Multiple" checkbox (highlighted in pink):

you can then hit "data preview" (highlighted in blue) to get a preview which should show you all the relationships on the page (which is why i said to find a page that has the multiples you are looking for, so you can confirm).

voila! now you can go back to the sitemap and scrape as before.

getting tag data

now, on the vein of multiples, i also wanted to get my most-read tags.

as i mentioned above, if you want to get ALL the tags, it'll skew the regular count data, so i did the tags in a completely separate query, which only grabs the viewed date and the tags. that code is here. you just want to repeat the scraping steps using that as a sitemap. save and open that spreadsheet.

the first thing you'll notice is that this one is a LOT bigger. for context i had 2649 fics in the first spreadsheet; the tags spreadsheet had 31,874 rows.

you can go ahead and repeat a couple of the same steps from before: remove the extra scraper data columns, and then we included the "viewed" column for the same reason as before, to remove any entries from 2023.

then you're just using the same basic query again!

replace the E with whatever your column letter is, and then change your limit to however many tags you want to see. i changed the limit to 50, again just for curiosity.

if you made it this far, congratulations! now that you have all that info, you can do whatever you want with it!

and again, if you have any questions please reach out!

[boozenboze]

Hiii!! Hope you’re doing great! Love your writing btw!

Just had a request. It’s been stuck in my mind like a post it for a while.

So what would be the task force 141 + Alejandro, Rudy and König’s reaction to a reader that’s known for being sweet and caring. (Code name Angel)

They’re a field medic but haven’t been on the field in a while, somehow they have to protect the sweet boys and they find out reader is in fact ruthless when fighting and v deadly. (Maybe they gotta change the code name to Archangel lol)

Anyways have a good day/night. No worries if you can’t write it!

Árchangel In Battle

Task Force 141 +Los Vaqueros+Konig x Medic!Male reader

Summary:Angel is the code name M/n aquired because of his gentle nature though it’s always changed when he’s on the field.

You will be referred to as Angel in most parts

Females She/Her and She/They DNI

If the other soilders had to choose the nicest member out of the 141 all answers would be the same.You,aka M/n was a total sweetheart to everyone.Always giving a gentle smile when walking around the base which naturally made everybody fond of your presence.

When you first met the Los Vaqueros they were immediately delighted by your presence.Alejandro was the first one to call him Angel and sooner than later it became his official unofficial code name.Rudy can remember the way M/n smiled at them when they first met.A smile in which he believed only a Angel could have.

When König had first arrived he was quite nervous.Sure he’s 6’10 and was the tallest guy but he seemed awfully shy and nervous to speak.After a few days of him being at the base,one day during training he had grazed his arm.So of course he’d went to go see a medic.Angel being the specific medic he was going to see.König enjoyed the males prescesnce especially since he was so caring and gentle,it seemed unrealistic for a guy.

“Hey Angel~!”König said happily as he walked towards the medic who already had a smile on his voice before the Austrian walked in.

“guten Abend Schatz what brings you here?M/n spoke with a little german added on which made König giddy.

“One of the seargents accidently made me scrape my arm I was wondering if you could take a look at it.”König g said while sitting on one of the beds.

“Ok let me have a look.”M/n stood from where he was seated and approached the taller male.M/n grabbed the arm König was talking about and slightly grimaced by the torn skin.

“Well this is one hell of a scrape if I do say so myself.Well,no matter I can make you feel better Liebe.”M/n spoke out while grabbing the needed supplies from a tray.König was blushing M/n kept speaking to him normally at one moment and the other he started speaking to him in German.M/n continued talking to König ig till he completed his given task and König was in a trance.M/n’s voice practically had him in a trance and his feather like touches were the only thing getting his attention.

“Alright big guy your good to go!”M/n chirped in enthusiasm as König g sulked under his mask.He wanted to stay in the room and keep the Medic company but he knew he had other things to do.

“Okay..., bis gleich Liebes!”König yelled out while exiting the room.M/n smiled as he cleaned up the small mess left by the adhesives and bandaids.

Angel was called back into the field.It had everybody on edge since the Medic hadn’t been on the field in a couple years.Price was skeptical about letting Angel come since he didn’t want want the male to get hurt but with the mission they were going on he was needed,many soilders were bound to get hurt and Angel was a quick man on his feet.On the following days M/n was training just to make sure he was still cabable if doing what he was best at.The male was good with snipers and he could’ve been a sniper if he really wanted but he’d rather stick with his current position.

Today was the day of the mission and everyone besides Angel came up to an agreement.They were all gonna do their best to protect the h/c haired male even though they had new clue what the man was still capable of.Now exiting the vehicle M/n was paired up with Gaz to take down the guards blocking the front of the building.When Price was giving orders M/n didn’t wanna waste time so he quickly sniped both of the in the head.

“Geez doc,ya didn’t even let Price finish?”Gaz exasperated as Angel huffed.

“Well we gotta get this down as soon as possible.Can’t afford to do anything last minute ey?”Angel asked as Gaz shrugged his shoulders as they made their way to the buildings entrance and walked inside.

“Angel,Gaz How copy?”König’s voice could be heard on the other end of the radio.

“All is well on our end,what about you and the others?”Angel spoke out as Gaz listened into the conversation as he shot down a few spotted enemies.

“Start headin towards the fifth floor we’ll meet up there.”Ghost spoke out in his usual rough tone of voice.Gaz and M/n began making there way up the stairs having to take down a few enemy soilders down.

“They should be up here.”Gaz murmured as Angel held his gun up prepared to shoot.

Gaz slowly opened the door just to be lucky enough to see the rest of 141 and the Los Vaqueros.

“Angel I’m glad to see you hermano-!”Alejandro was cut off by the click of several guns.They all turned around and they were surrounded

“Don’t fucking move!”One of them spoke out as König grabbed Angel’s arm in attempts of pulling him back to which Angel yanked his arm back.

“Angel du musst zurückbleiben!”König whispered yelled into Angels ear to which he responded.

“I can handle myself König.”Angel spoke out while slowly dispersing himself away from the huddle.

“Hand us the files and we’ll let you go.”A deep voice spoke out while aiming his gun at Rudy’s chest.

“Nae pumpin' happening assholes!”Soap yelled out defensively as one of them began moving closer and putting a gun to Alejandro’s skull.

“You’re going to regret doing this estúpido!”Alejandro yelled out as the man pressed his gun into Alejandro’s head harder which made him grunt.The leader was about to speak again until a muffled scream was heard gaining everyone’s attention.Price looked around and noticed that Angel was nowhere to be seen.

“Wait where’d Angel go?!”Price yelled out which made the rest realize the h/c haired male wasn’t with them.Suddenly a thud was heard and one of the enemies saw his teammates head rolling towards him.

“What the fuc-“The man was cut off by a knife lodging in to his skull.

“Stand your ground stay alert!”The leader yelled out only for another soilder to get shot in the skull.

“What the hell?”Gaz whispered as he saw something run across the room.He noticed the figure put two fingers up which Gaz remembered was a signal that Angel had taught him.Peace sign meant get ready in Angels code of silence,so Gaz grabbed his gun.At that moment M/n shot another soilder in the head and Gaz did the same.Angel rushed at another guy and slit his throat and used his now limp body as a shield.Ghost punched another one,knocking him to the ground and Soap tackled another one of the others to the ground and began punching him senseless.

König broke one of the men’s spins over his leg killing him instantly before throwing his knife in another’s skull.Alejandro was punching the guy who held the gun to his skull while Rudy stabbed one of them repeatedly.Gaz was about to turn around but the leader grabbed him and held a knife to his throat.

“STOP NOW!”He yelled out gaining everyone’s attention.“Drop your damn weapons.”He spoke out while pressing his knife onto Gaz’s throat making the Brit groan.They all lower their weapons now worrying for Gaz’s wellbeing.

“Just give me the damn files and I’ll let him go!”He yelled out as Price glared heavily at him.Nobody said anything and it seemed to have made the leader angrier.

“Ok..,y’all asked for th-AHH!��The male yelled out as Angel appeared from behind him biting into his neck.The man cried out as he pulled a chunk of skin off the males throat while also ripping out his vocal cords.The look the e/c eyed male gave him was nothing but cold as he ripped the mand vocal cords out his throat.Angel got down and began strangling the male with his vocal cords and the others could only watch as the man’s body went limp against his own appendage.141 and Los Vaqueros watched the male stand up before looking them all in the eye.

“What?I couldn’t just stand there he was gonna kill Gaz.”Angel spoke out as König jumped happily in place.

“No no it’s just the uh-we ain’t expect that out of ya considering you haven’t been on the field in a while.”Price spoke out as everybody made noises of agreement.

“Seems that the Angel has turned to the Archangel.”Soap spoke out jokingly as Angel chuckled.

“Yeah I think that’d have to be my new name on the field.”Angel spoke out as they began to exit the building.

It was decided Angel off the field and Archangel upon it

[thefrogdalorian]

The Best of Both Worlds

Din Djarin x Female Reader Modern!AU

Summary: When a new Star Wars TV show called The Mandalorian premiered, you found yourself completely enamoured with the titular character. Enjoyment of watching the lone bounty hunter travel through the galaxy quickly turned to obsession. There was just something about the show that captured your imagination. Now, you spend much of your free time — when you're not working a fast-paced, minimum wage and incredibly stressful job at a prestigious London Museum— speaking to your online friends about your love for the show. There's just one thing... Despite how much you love The Mandalorian, no one knows the identity of the man behind the helmet... either in the show, or in real life. You only know him as Mando. No one has ever seen his face, no one knows his name.  Even after the countless hours of speculation from fans online, which even you have occasionally participated in, no one is any the wiser to the identity of the mysterious man who wears the shiny armour.  Surely, given the depth of your love for the show, you'd recognise if the man who you spend so much time obsessing over online was to ever cross paths with you. Right?

Content Warnings: Reader is AFAB, uses she/her pronouns and in her mid 20s. Age gap between her and Din is noted but not really central to the story. Grogu is human, hints of past trauma/child abuse before Din adopted him are mentioned but not described in detail. Some mature scenes later on in the fic but not explicit smut... because I just cannot write x reader smut! Author's Note: SO very excited to finally share this fic! Thank you to the lovely @suresnips for being my beta. I really appreciate you ♡ This baby was originally my NaNoWriMo 2023 project and was inspired by this post from @toxic-seduction that I saw one evening and couldn't stop thinking about! POVs will alternate chapter to chapter from Din to reader. It was fun to write that way! Set in London for a few reasons: partly because I love the movie Notting Hill and it has some of those vibes (if you squint), also, the village where Din lives is based on Elstree Studios just outside London, where the OT was filmed and ultimately because NO WAY was I writing a modern!AU set in the states, it would've been painfully obvious a Brit wrote it. While there are lots of references to places in London, I don't live there so it might not be truly accurate (Londoners don't come for me). Also, to be political for a sec, reader works at the British Museum and I hate that institution. This was actually the line of work I was interested in when I was at Uni but for many different reasons I did not pursue it. However, it works for the plot of this story and as you'll see, she doesn't exactly love it either and goes on a few rants. Just wanted to make that clear that her job there is not an endorsement of it or anything. I can't stand them or their historical apologist bs and I wish we would give back all the things we stole (including the Parthenon Marbles)! Finally, it was incredibly important to me that the actor behind Mando in this fic clearly be the fictional character of Din Djarin rather than the real person Pedro Pascal, because rpf is not my jam! I hope I did that pretty well but just wanted to warn that if you're expecting me to use Din as some kind of way to write a Pedro fic, this won't be for you! Okay, I'll shut up now! This fic is fully written, just needs editing so hopefully I'll get a couple of chapters up each week, but life happens. I'm very proud of this one and I really hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Also if you would like to be added to my taglist for this fic, please let me know! Happy reading ♡

❁ My Masterlist ❁ Read on AO3 ❁

Why Does It Always Rain On Me? [Reader POV]: After a dreadful day which saw you drenched by a rainstorm after leaving a hectic day at work, you reflect on your love for Mando and upcoming excitement for the sci-fi convention you will soon be attending with your internet best friend.

He Is My Only Priority [Din's Pov]: The character of The Mandalorian is known and loved by millions. But there is another, much softer side to the man who portrays him that Din Djarin is determined to keep hidden from the world, despite the challenges that presents for him and his beloved son, Grogu.

This Is Why (I Don't Leave The House) [Reader's POV]: Your internet bestie arrives in preparation for the Star Wars convention you will attend together. Everything is set for the greatest weekend of your life! Until you arrive at the con and find yourself overwhelmed by all the crowds and noise. At least you have numerous incredibly realistic Mando cosplays to distract you from how stressed you feel, and there's one in particular which is uncannily accurate...

Curiosity Killed The Cat [Din's POV]: Despite his reservations and against his better instincts, Din heads to a Star Wars convention that he was invited to. Although he fears that his cover will be blown, curiosity gets the best of Din and he can't resist attending a panel. But Din doesn't exactly find the answers he was looking for. Instead, he finds something far more precious. Something that he would never have expected...

He's So Tall (And Handsome As Hell) [Reader's POV]: Being back in the real world and returning to work after an incredible weekend at the convention where you had so many fun experiences is taking its toll on you. The thought of collapsing on your couch in front of The Mandalorian is the only thing keeping you going. However, the universe has other plans for you. News of an out-of-hours tour for a private client that you are asked to lead almost sends you over the edge, but when you finally meet the man, he is the opposite of what you were expecting. Weirdly, he seems familiar...

With A Little Help From My Friends [Din's POV]: Din returns to the set of The Mandalorian to begin filming a new season. Despite his experience and capability, he finds that he struggles to focus as his thoughts remain firmly fixed on a certain someone...

You're The Sunflower [Reader's POV]: Despite feeling certain that you'll never see the ridiculously handsome man you gave a tour of the museum to, a special delivery is about to change everything...

Your Face Hung Up High In The Gallery [Din's POV]: After a difficult few days of filming The Mandalorian, Din is excited to spend time with you as he finally takes you on your first proper date...

Have I Known You Twenty Seconds or Twenty Years? - (Reader's POV):  Despite a messy evening which led to you waking up in an opulent hotel which you have no memory of falling asleep in, memories of kind brown eyes and breathless kisses soon come flooding back to soothe your soul. Your relationship deepens as the two of you spending time together whenever your busy schedules allow. But one night, a turn of events causes you - despite Din's reassurances - to wonder if everything you have been working so hard to build together has just come crashing down around you...

There's A War Inside Of Me - [Din's POV]: The realities of the secret he is keeping from you begin to weigh heavily on Din's mind and he seeks advice from a certain curly haired co-star on what his next move should be. Things don't go exactly according to plan, not least because of the typically awful English weather...

It Could Be Love, We Could Be The Way Forward - [Reader's POV]: With your respective busy jobs keeping you and Din apart, a mystery date after a hectic day at work is exactly what you needed.

The Calm - [Din's POV]: When filming overruns and conspires to keep Din from the fun weekend he planned for you, he agonises over his decision. Fortunately, he manages to salvage the weekend, even after a calamity involving a rowboat...

The Storm - [Reader's POV]: The happiness you feel in response to a question Din posed to you is somewhat clouded by lingering doubts. Yet your affection for each other helps you to push those emotions down, until a weekend spent at his cottage changes everything...

P.S. - I tried to be inclusive for all body types and skin tones in this fic, but if I missed something, I do apologise. If you do spot something that takes you out of the fic, I am more than happy for constructive criticism as I wouldn't want anyone to be excluded on those grounds. I am always trying to do better and would love to know where I went wrong so I can improve and be more aware of these things going forward, so I would appreciate it if you could let me know if you do spot anything. Thank you so much! ♡

[sgt-tombstone]

idk if I’ve posted about it before but I had an idea that’s been bouncing around for a couple of months for an au that combines both modern warfare timelines into one, and it goes something like this:

(for reference, this starts with ‘09 canon and moves into ‘19 canon! In this, these characters are not distinct, with the exception of Gaz)

————

Soap passes SAS selection, youngest candidate ever, and gets put on Price’s team. Together with Gaz and a small SAS team, the fight against Ultranationalists, gaining allies in Nikolai, loyalists, and USMCs. The death of Victor and Imran Zakhaev leads to the creation of the 141, which includes Soap, Price, Gaz, and Roach, under the command of General Shepherd. Ghost is added after he escapes and kills Roba.

The 141 is sent after Makarov, where Soap gets injured and Price gets captured, presumably killed. Soap gets promoted to captain and becomes field commander of the 141 (Ghost was asked, but rejected the promotion; Soap was always a better leader than him anyway). Soap and Ghost get close, or as close as they’ll let themselves get for being a captain and a lieutenant. They dance around it, the unspoken tension, and never act on it, convinced that they can’t. Three years later, Soap, Roach, and Ghost infiltrate the Russian gulag to rescue an unknown prisoner, who turns out to be Price. Together, the two captains hunt down Makarov while Roach and Ghost are betrayed by Shepherd, who shoots and burns them. Soap and Price are declared war criminals by Shepherd, Makarov goes into hiding, and Soap and Price kill Shepherd. In their hunt for Makarov, Soap is killed, and Price is forced to give up because he never finds any shred of evidence leading him to Makarov’s hiding place.

Instead, he finds Ghost, who is clinging to life in a black site hospital, almost 80% of his body burned, and mourning the loss of Roach. Instead, he finds Soap, who managed to escape in the chaos following the botched assassination attempt of Makarov and go into hiding. Instead, he finds Shepherd, who wasn’t nearly as dead as Price thought he’d been, who’s slowly been working his way back up the political ladder, buying pardons and new staff and blind eyes until he’s right back where he was without anyone being any the wiser.

Soap is rattled by the whole experience. He’s an SAS soldier, sure, but he’s never been betrayed like that, never had to fight and run for his life like that before. His years of being a captain have taken a toll on him, and all he wants to do is restart. Do it all over again. So Price lets him. Demotes him back down to sergeant, makes him do the SAS selection process over again. His scores are just as impressive the second time, and the reduced responsibility lifts a weight off of his shoulders, letting him become a little freer, a little more talkative, a little more… well, Price doesn’t want to say immature, but… It’s a good look on him, in any case. The kid deserves a break; no one was ever meant to shoulder the burden he had to as young as he did. He doesn’t rejoin the 141 for a while, too busy recuperating from his near-death, getting back into shape for the selection process, and actually going through selection, which takes months on its own.

As for Ghost… he’s done this before. He knows this song and dance, knows the weight of betrayal. He’s weathered this storm before and is perfectly fine going back to his regular position. Still a lieutenant, still the Ghost. Except he’s quieter now. More reserved. He only trusts Price, and even that’s a tenuous thing on the best of days. He makes a hard shell mask instead of just wearing a balaclava, and Price can’t blame him. Roach’s death hit hard, the betrayal hit hard, and while he hadn’t been there to see it, learning about Soap’s short death had been hard too. So he lets Ghost do his thing. Watches as his lieutenant spends more time in the gym than is really medically advisable, watches his lieutenant retreat further and further into himself, watches his lieutenant hide from the world and become a perfect soldier again, albeit a far more unstable one. He starts wearing colored contacts that darken his irises to a honey-brown, and he’d never admit it but Price knows it’s because he can’t stand to look in the mirror and see Soap’s eyes staring back. Or maybe he can’t stand to see himself staring back, blue eyes a constant reminder of his own failures. He gets better on the sniper, more practiced at protecting his team, preferring to work alone but always ready to use his scope and trigger to show his loyalty.

The three briefly reunite in Verdansk, which throws all of them for a loop initially, because it’s the first time they’ve all been in the same room in years, but they have more important things to worry about, like keeping Soap from killing Makarov. It’s a close thing, the trauma fresh on all of their minds, but they’re not allowed to kill him; he needs to face justice from the law, not from the wrong end of Soap’s gun.

When Piccadilly Circus gets attacked, Price finds Garrick and adopts him, and the hunt for the Al-Qatala terrorists begins. They head to Urzikstan to find Sulaman, where his capture and subsequent escape lead Alex Keller, Farah, and Hadir to be recognized as terrorists themselves. Eventually, Price and Kyle meet up with Alex and Farah to hunt down Hadir after his betrayal.

They find him and hand him over to the Russians, then launch an attack on Barkov’s chemical factory, leading to Barkov’s death. Alex, too, seems to die in the resulting explosion.

After that, Task Force 141 is cleared and reinstated and given permission to continue operations. Their goal isn’t Makarov anymore; he’s gone to ground, likely never to be found again unless he starts stirring up trouble. Instead, the Zakhaev family has started reviving old family traditions. Price has to focus on that, not the twinge of familiarity and grief when he hears that Kyle goes by Gaz, not the tendrils of apprehension at the notion of bringing Ghost and Soap back together and with such a different dynamic than before, and definitely not the thought that he might be getting too old for this shit. He focuses on what he knows, and there’s little he knows better than the Zakhaev family.

It takes a year, but they eventually hunt him down and kill him, with the help of Alex, Farah, and the Shadow Company.

And then Ghorbrani is killed in Al Mazrah by the Shadow Company, under the command of Shepherd and Laswell, who knows nothing about Shepherd’s past. Ghorbrani’s death incites Hassan, which spurs the 141 to find him. Shepherd isn’t the one giving the orders, though; he knows better than that. Instead, he pawns the mission control off on Laswell, who directs them to Al Mazrah. It’s the first time Ghost and Soap are working together since both of their apparent deaths, and it’s… okay. Ghost obviously isn’t used to this new version of Soap, this chatterbox who seems so full of life, so different from his gruff previous commanding officer. And Soap obviously isn’t used to this new version of Ghost, who is far more reserved, less open. There’s a learning curve for both of them, but they deal with it well enough. They’re both soldiers, after all, and damn good ones at that. They fall into a rhythm of sorts, or at least a tentative understanding. Price thinks that it has to be good enough; he’s too busy working with their newest member, the only one who isn’t aware of the shared past between the other three operatives. It’s almost refreshing, the clean slate that Gaz, this Gaz, brings to the table.

Ghost and Soap travel to Las Almas to hunt for Hassan along with Alejandro and Rodolfo, and the change of location and new allies loosens them both up a little. Not a lot, but enough to start trusting each other again. Not that they never did, but still. There’s a lot of history there, and a completely new dynamic to get a handle on. Eventually, they catch Hassan but have to release him shortly after.

And then Soap volunteers to infiltrate the mansion to find El Sin Nombre. It’s the first time Ghost has seen him take on any sort of leading role, anything voluntarily putting himself in unnecessary danger since his demotion, and it shifts something in his mind, a fundamental piece of his psyche that had been holding him back from truly seeing Soap as his sergeant instead of his ex-captain. By the time El Sin Nombre is captured, Ghost has truly stepped into the role of Soap’s lieutenant and Soap has settled comfortably in the role of Ghost’s sergeant. It’s still not perfect, Ghost sometimes pushes too hard and Soap can’t help but push back, but it’s better now.

And then they get betrayed again. They realize Shepherd is alive and back in power. They realize the Shadow Company was never on their side. They realize they were played for fools. Again.

It’s infinitely traumatic in a split second. Soap gets shot and Ghost doesn’t see red in anger, he sees red in fear. He hadn’t seen Soap’s previous non-death, but he can’t bring himself to even entertain the thought of losing him now. Not when they’ve finally found a semi-solid footing either each other again. So he yells at him to run, to get out of there, and he does what he does best: he finds a good vantage point and he protects his team. He protects Soap.

He can’t help but to fall back on old habits, little joking asides that he thought he’d never utter again, but it seems to calm Soap down. The walls between them break down in those rainy streets across their comms; they take several steps back towards who they used to be, or maybe that’s just Ghost. Maybe Soap’s newfound lightness brings out the long-buried traces of optimism in him (optimism isn’t the right word, he knows; he’s never been optimistic, but there’s definitely… something… he’s a little scared to put any other name to it). He tells Soap that he likes him alive, and it almost sounds like a confession, a truth and hidden fear that neither of them had been willing to voice after their reunion. They share details about themselves, things that they hadn’t even shared as captain and lieutenant, and when Ghost calls Soap “Johnny” and Johnny doesn’t stop him… Maybe they can finally have what they’ve always denied themselves. Maybe this is their sign, their second chance, their universe-granted green light. Or maybe Ghost is just getting delirious with fear and pain and anger.

They make it out of Las Almas alive, and the drive to the safe house is spent in silence, as if neither of them is willing to broach the subject. Again, maybe that’s just Ghost. Soap seems to be busy trying not to bleed out in the passenger seat.

Laswell has to swear up and down that she didn’t know about Shepherd’s intentions or past before they trust her again, but her help in rescuing Alejandro and the rest of Los Vaqueros goes a long way. Soap kill Graves in Las Almas and Ghost kills Hassan in Chicago, and they can’t go after Shepherd, so they shift their focus to the next biggest fish: the Konni Group, who have rescued Makarov from prison.

————

The rest of MWII and MWIII proceed as normal. (Unless you want to ignore canon, which is very valid, in which case you can make up your own ending about how Makarov snd Shepherd die and Soap and Ghost’s happily ever after. Go crazy.)

I know a lot of people are very passionate about these two timelines staying separate , and with good reason, but I wanted to do this as a sort of thought exercise for myself. I’ve never played the original games, so any mistakes are entirely my fault as I relied heavily on the CoD wiki pages and timeline. If I missed any loose ends between the original and reboot timelines, no I didn’t (it’s very likely lmao, tying up so many mismatched plot points was pretty difficult but I think I took a decent enough stab at it)

[bbygirl-aemond]

Can you tell where it's made clear that rhaenyra is going in that religious direction?

(This ask is in reference to my earlier post about Rhaenyra's growing religious fanaticism.)

Sure! First, we have the idea of the dragons as gods: In season 2 episode 5, we hear a member of the smallfolk say “I thought the dragons was gods,” and in season 2 episode 6, we heard Steffon Darklyn declare that “the dragons are gods.”

Then we have the idea of proximity to dragons being a sign of divine favor: In season 2 episode 6, Rhaenyra says “perhaps the gods will favor us” of Steffon potentially claiming Vermithor; this shows that she sees claiming a dragon as a sign of divine favor. In season 2 episode 7, the dragon keepers declare that the outcome of someone trying to claim a dragon is seen as “judgment” delivered from the gods, whether that be positive or negative. Finally, in season 1 episode 1, Rhaenyra tells Viserys that the belief that “Targaryens are closer to gods than to men” is “because of our dragons.” She repeats this idea to Lucerys in season 1 episode 10, adding that “the Iron Throne puts us a touch closer” than even just being dragon riders.

Then we have the idea of Rhaenyra being the chosen ruler and that she believes this imbues her with a greater, divine purpose. We have the scene of Rhaenyra with the white hart in season 1 episode 3, right after we heard a man tell Viserys that “the white hart was a symbol of royalty” and would appear “if the gods did wish to show their favor.” We also see Rhaenyra realize that Viserys believed in her as his heir in a way he never believed in anyone else in season 1 episode 10 when she realizes Viserys never told Daemon about Aegon the Conqueror’s dream. This is reinforced in season 2 episode 3 when she gets confirmation from Alicent that Viserys never changed his mind about her, not even on his deathbed, and that Alicent only heard him speaking of the prophecy. So not only does Rhaenyra believe that the Iron Throne itself puts her closer to the divine, on top of being a dragon rider; she believes that she has this greater purpose due to the prophecy.

This all culminates in season 2 episode 7. Addam tells Rhaenyra that “this dragon came to me, not I to him” and tells her “the gods call me to greater things,” framing his claiming of Seasmoke as something that the gods arranged. This, combined with the fact that claiming a dragon is seen as a sign of divine favor, and the fact that Addam immediately swears fealty to Rhaenyra, makes Rhaenyra think that the gods are specifically sending her loyal dragon riders. This is why later when Jace confronts her, she tells him “I cannot gainsay that which the gods have laid before me,” and why she tells the dragon keepers that “the gods have set them before us.” She is convinced that everything happening, even the things happening by her own hand, are really just the gods acting to support her.

Then we have Rhaenyra’s speech to the dragonseeds. The way she slowly stalks among them and stares at them in this almost predatory way is a nice mirror to the way she stalked around and stared at Mysaria in season 2 episode 2. If you go back and rewatch the scenes, the physicality of her expressions and movements are almost identical. In the Inside the Episode clip from YouTube, Ryan Condal says that Emma D’Arcy wanted “Rhaenyra to go and walk amongst the seeds as though a pastor amongst her flock in the terms of a religious cult.”

Rhaenyra speaks to the dragonseeds in these grand, sweeping statements, about survival and transformation. She also manipulates them to think that dying for her is their best option, telling them that “you may welcome the prospect of change, even death, given the alternatives: privation, starvation, war.” And she keeps coming back to this idea of the gods shaping the events that are to come, saying things like “gods willing” and “gods bless you.” She doesn’t look horrified when she watches the dragonseeds being burned and eaten; she looks enraptured, drunk on power.

Ryan Condal continues in the Inside the Episode clip to say that this scene is a “ritual sacrifice” and that Rhaenyra feels as though “she was right in the end.” This continues in the closing scene where Rhaenyra’s finally assembled her dragon army; she is triumphant, feeling completely vindicated, as if the gods have come in to personally assure her ascendancy to the Iron Throne.

This is way too long already, but I'm drafting another post with quotes from two Emma D'Arcy interviews that have just come out which confirm everything I've been saying. Hope this helps and come back in a bit for that post if you want to hear it from Emma's point of view!

[clare-with-no-i]

theogony part 1 behind the scenes

**SPOILERS ahead for theogony and mild spoilers for Outlander!**

this is just going to be a long infodump of all of the things I pondered while writing theog (specifically part 1, part 2 will come later) but never talked about! I'll try to go chapter by chapter, and maybe I'll end up adding more later on, but for now I just think it'd be fun to chitchat and reminisce on some of my favorite tidbits. this story is really my baby idk :")

Prologue - Alalá

one thing that I wanted to establish in the prologue, other than the obvious James-Sirius dynamic, is the presence of otherworldly or spiritual premonitions in this universe. it was always important to me that the first person who actually made any sort of prophetic declaration was James.

so much of the story relies on Lily's status as an oracle, but this little tidbit here helped build the world for me so much; we can't be sure if James's various dreams and premonitions are wishful thinking, or really the Gods speaking to him, or something else entirely. of course, this story deals with time travel, so there's an inherent supernatural element. but Lily and James's conflicting – and sometimes competing – conceptions of God felt like such a necessary tension for me to explore. it was such an incredible shorthand for the tension between modern and ancient sensibilities. and we never get a definitive answer to those looming questions, which I knew I wanted to do from the outset. did the Gods bring Lily back to the past? did James? did she do it herself? does God/the Gods even exist?

also: there are probably moments where I failed to do this, but I tried to capitalize Gods in all of the James chapters but not in Lily's, unless she was referring to the Abrahamic Capital G God. that is, until the last chapter, which I'll elaborate upon later :)

also: i wrote the prologue first, then the epilogue, and then i posted the prologue pretty immediately after. I had the entire story roughly outlined but I absolutely jumped the gun when it came to posting the prologue LMAO I didn't even really announce the story, I just joked about writing it and then posted the prologue, which you can see from the beginning note. i remember Suze was about to go to sleep and she started messaging me like wtf Clare what do you MEAN?

and the rest was history (pun completely intended)!

Chapter One: Ouroboros

the narrative brushes past the other statues in this section pretty quickly, but I always imagined that the first bust is Philoctetes, James's father. I think the consensus on this one tends to oscillate between Philoctetes and Aristides, which is another great interpretation.

The reason I wrote it this way and imagined it to be Philoctetes is because I thought it would have been nice to let Lily 'meet' James's father (in a sense), even before she 'meets' him. when I read this chapter back after I first finished the story, I had a very soft moment where I close-read my own fic (lol) and thought that maybe it was Philoctetes who sent Lily back to the past. maybe he sensed something about her and knew she'd be right for James and for antiquity.

sooo many people forgot about this! which i was hoping for!!!!! I was hoping everyone would forget about James's statue holding something until the Big Reveal. fun fact is I wrote the reveal right after this. I liked the idea that, no, he was never going to actually be holding anything. he'd be reaching for Lily. the choice to accept his hand was always going to be hers.

a fun fact about this chapter is that I had to pull from a bit more Outlander lore than I originally thought. and no I don't mean the 'Jesus H Roosevelt Christ' part lol. It was always hilarious to me how Outlander set up Claire to be the objectively perfect person to go back in time. she was a combat nurse who happened to develop an interest in medicinal botany and Scottish-English history. she also happened to spend her formative years with her adventurous archaeologist uncle after her only living relatives died. like girl. lol.

so I had to really toss up which traits I thought it would be appropriate for Lily to have as she traveled back in time. the biggest one, obviously, is her field of study, which was necessary given the language barrier and the completely foreign nature of social norms in Classical Athens. I toyed around with the idea of making her mum a nurse so as to give her some base medical knowledge, but that felt a) unnecessary given the circumstances of the story, and b) far-fetched that she would have gleaned enough transferable skills to apply in 479 BCE.

it was also fun to give her more reason to go back to the future; she has a sister who, while they aren't in contact, is a significant emotional attachment; she has academic goals; she has a best friend (however toxic we know him to be). it added a layer of conflict that I enjoyed playing up, even if I definitely could have explored her modern life more fully.

Chapter Two: Kinesis

soooo much exposition and worldbuilding in this chapter. oml. it was so much fun to play around with the reasons why James would be in Tatoi in the first place; I can't remember quite how I landed on the Persian auxiliary soldier thing, it might have been from my initial (admittedly extensive) research on the months leading up to Plataea; it may have just been the fact that I KID YOU NOT this story used to take up all of my fucking brainspace. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd be doing work for my research fellowship and just daydream about theogony. the initial idea came to me AS A JOKE!!!!! when i was idly pondering before going to sleep (as one does), and then it just wouldn't leave me alone. i kept imagining what it might look like. I thought about how the time travel might work. I thought about James's Greek equivalent. I ranted to my sister and her dog (he did not care) about what the statue might look like and mean (sorry bestie love u).

one narrative decision that has given me a bit of strife was the Dimitrios-James name change. I've had a number of people ask me if I'd ever try to pubilsh theog – and this is one of the (many) reasons why that would be pretty categorically impossible. using James's English name in his internal narration, instead of the name I give him as a Greek man, is something that only translates to fic. it makes pretty much no sense at all if you consider these original characters lol.

honestly putting the word 'practicum' in here caused me SO much pain. in James's chapters I tried really hard to use words which had Greek roots and not Latin roots, even if they're in modern English today. in most of his chapters, I'd try and find synonyms for big/complex words so I could use ones that came from Greek. it just helped me stick to his narrative voice a bit more.

I forgot how much STUFF went on in this chapter. oh my god SO much happens?? we get the lack of the Parthenon as the time marker (felt very clever doing that), Lily processing the fact that she's time traveled (lazy writing on my part to not have this happen in a Lily POV chapter but I'll take that on the chin), the Plataea reveal. OML. tired just thinking about it. lily sweetie i am so sorry

guys, the amount of time I spent wondering if I should Greek-ify Sirius's name is insane. For so long I thought about making him Seirios, which is the original Greek version of Sirius. But I felt like I had already messed with their names too much, and so I left it. but honestly I'm still torn. looking back, maybe it would have been the right move to make him Seirios and have Lily give him the name Sirius, but I guess we'll never know!

one of my favorite Sirius moments, and something that, essentially, sets up the rest of the story. but I wanted there to be a little ambiguity throughout the story about how much of this Sirius actually believes.

we know that James has just confessed to Sirius and Pétros that he was hoping they'd desert the Athenian army. we know that he thinks he's going to die, and he's adopted this sort of fatalist view of his future. and then here you have Sirius, who could never abide such a thing, pretty much leaning into the idea that Lily can tell the future – which would allow him to challenge James's prediction. I always wanted to leave it up to interpretation, and I know it comes up in later chapters (at the komos especially), Sirius's skepticism about Lily's origins. but it's such a fun question to ask: does he really believe that she's the Oracle that James prayed for, or does he just need that to be true so he can try and influence the future himself?

Chapter Three: Peribolos

omg. lol. the chapter three opening academic argument scene. this is a favorite of mine, and something I had so much fun writing. it's actually based on an argument/"spirited discussion" I had with my dad a few years ago about moral absolutism versus moral relativism which forced me to interrogate and expand my knowledge on the subject. I thought it was such a fun way to get into Lily's politics and her character without doing crazy exposition in the ancient world.

it also touches upon one of the touchstone themes of the story: that to study something is, in a way, to detach yourself from it. academia is routintely completely disconnected from its subject matter, and it creates this weird disdain for lived experience versus book knowledge. Lily has spent upwards of ten years studying (in some capacity) the ancient world, but she is so utterly out of her depth when she experiences it herself. as such, she espouses these very revolutionary politics when examining historical conflicts, but she has a blindness to what the real-world realities may have been for the people living in those conditions at the time.

alsooooo, The Return of Martin Guerre is one of my favorite books I read in college, and the easter egg here is that it's about a person of dubious origin entering a community and the politics of how the community might accept or reject them. ha ha!

^^based on something I said in an argument with a Poli Sci major in college and I have to say one of my better moments. was an absolute haymaker. this was very 'author gives main character a zinger' of me and I will not be ashamed of it

this! ladies and gentlemen! this was basically a declaration of love!!!! to be loved is to be remembered!!!

in a very romantic way, the study of history can be such an act of love to those who lived before us. i just adore the idea that, even before Lily developed real romantic feelings for James, she had this itching sort of feeling; AKA, when someone has made such an impression on you, and you know (or in her case, you think) that you'll be leaving them at some point, and you just want to be interesting enough, be impressive enough, that they remember you, that they think of you randomly as time goes on. that is such a giddy hallmark feeling of having a crush, in my book. I liken it to making eye contact with someone or having a brief conversation on a night out, maybe at 3am on your way back from a bar when things are sleepy and dizzy, and you just have this sense that you're being seen in that moment as anyone you want to be. i love this moment so much I feel like I could give it its own meta LMAO

Chapter Four: Hamartia

this chapter really put the pedal to to the metal lol. at the time of writing the story, I generally didn't (and still don't) love fake dating that much as a trope; I don't typically love plotlines predicated on (even harmless) deceptions, it's just a sensitivity of mine that I don't expect anyone to relate to or share. but when I was considering how to structure theog, it just made so much sense for James and Lily's arcs to have them get 'married.' there was no way that Lily was going to be able to navigate Classical Athens as an unsupervised woman alone, and even with the Oracle title offering her some protection, there was nothing really tying her to James. much like Outlander, it really did feel like the last possible resort, which softened me to the idea of using the trope.

fun fact, i got a snarky comment a few months ago complaining that i was trying to pass the story off as historically accurate (lol to the fifteen disclaimers I embedded throughout which addressed that) and one thing they took issue with was that lily wouldn't have been able to own property and the only thing that would have kept her from being a slave would have been marriage.

which! yknow! none of which contradict the story! but anyway I digress.

I was initially nervous about how early on the fake marriage happens; we don't really know the characters that well yet, we're not sure who James is as a potential partner to Lily, or how Lily's feelings for him are starting to bump up against her very rightful and justified desire to get the hell out of dodge. but – we only really see James in canon as a husband and as the father to the main character, so it felt pretty true to the source material to throw him into being a husband pretty early.

I loved writing this scene with Aristides. I've always been partial to his appearances throughout the story, and this one is just so special to me. I think of him as a driving force in humanizing the ancient world in theog, sometimes even more so than the main cast of characters. to elaborate a bit on that: with the Marauders and Lily and the other transplanted HP characters, I think there's this inherent sense that they are already fleshed out people (to some degree) even before they hit the page of the story, because they appear in canon and across Marauder fic verses. no matter how much I make James into Dimitrios and Peter into Pétros and Fleamont into Philoctetes, people know them and love them outside of theogony verse. but not Aristides. he doesn't have a one-to-one HP character. there is some version of him that really existed in 479 BCE (my complex and largely negative feelings on RPF are setting off alarms at this but we proceed) and that's it.

it would have been easy to just give him this very gruff and surly character, to make him a military general who didn't care about anything other than the war. I think that's how we conceptualize historical people sometimes, often without meaning to. but he was a person, and he had likes and dislikes, he probably had a family and maybe he'd fallen in love, and it was such an honor to give him such dimension. not to say that I'm putting that personality upon the actual historical person; but just to really take my time with a character outside of the Marauder canon. in this scene he has this human moment where he reminds James that, yes, love is a worthy pursuit, even to those in positions of incredible power. even when the discussion isn't about romantic love but about James's love for his closest friends. it's this permission that James didn't even know he was seeking but ultimately that changes the course of his and Lily's lives. Aristides is who James might become, in many ways. in the actual Plataea chapter this becomes more and more prevalent. (more on this later!)

overall, I am forever hoping that people come out of reading this story with an appreciation for the humanity of those that came before us. I did a poor job with other characters in this story, and I own that, but I'm proud of how I wrote Aristides.

oh my godddddd I fucking love this part. i am so fucking proud of it. LMAO. achieving wordplay in an ancient language that i have never studied should be on my fucking CV I swear. like this was just perfect I'm sorry I am BUZZING that I pulled this off.

also, a cute way to introduce a phrase to the narrative which will become very important: se filo!

I remember that I wrote this passage, which many people commented on and which I loved writing, in a coffee shop on a sunny day when my cousin was visiting me to introduce me to his girlfriend. there wasn't any wifi in the coffee shop so I was blessedly devoid of distractions and could only focus on the doc, and i was LOCKED IN let me tell you.

when my cousin and his girlfriend arrived I told them I was sending an important email and edited the last sentence of that paragraph about four different times while they sat in silence and waited for me to finish LMAOOO

Chapter Five: Ascesis

a profoundly insane moment in my personal history was reading excerpts from Eudemian Ethics, Nichomachean Ethics, and Memorabilia just to passively mention them in a flashback in a fic. relied heavily on Foucault for this, I will be so honest. why did i do that tho. like girl take a breath...

but in all seriousness this was just a joy to write. i miss being a history student and having these discussions – law school is great, but history classes will forever hold my heart ngl! also, this passage is in some ways an homage to my grandfather, who is one of my favorite people ever. he taught himself Classical Greek and Latin when he was in his 20s, before he went to medical school (and get his pilot's license for fun, he's seriously the most interesting guy alive). he gifted me his leatherbound Great Books printings of Aristotle's works and of the Iliad and the Odyssey shortly after I started theogony, and I cherish them so much. he spurred my interest in ancient greece when i was young. so this is for him :)

one of the hardest things for me to articulate (and maybe something I could have done better) was the war and the balance between James's inherent goodness and his growing feelings for Lily. i wanted her to have plausible reason to think that he doesn't at all feel romantically towards her, even as she's growing to admire him more and more. I hoped, as I wrote the story, that these little interactions where the reader clues into his feelings (this protective 'peninsula' moment being one of them) still walked that line. as in, i wanted lily to reasonably believe that he's just that good of a guy that he would take issue with anyone being taken advantage of, not just her. she's so destabilized in this moment as well, I think that worked to my advantage. or I hoped it did LOL.

from what I remember of writing this chapter, it just came really quickly and naturally. much more than the later ones. this early period of writing was just an outpouring of the ABSOLUTE BRAINROT I was going through after conjuring up the idea for the story. it just flew. the ending scene where they have their little almost-moment was probably about an hour's worth of writing. it's like I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. not sure i've experienced that since!

also, the now, here, alive line reappears in the last chapter, which is one of my favorite callbacks:

:) :) :)

Chapter Six: Kleos

one thing I used to worry about CONSTANTLY is that I was losing the classic (and necessary!) Marauder goofiness to the more somber setting. so it was a jaunt and a boon to write scenes like the opening one here, where it honestly could be copy-pasted into the Gryffindor Common Room and it'd look a lot like my canon stories.

he's just a dude being hungover and embarrassed about the previous night with his bros!

the first time we get a hint of Pétros disappearing to dubious locations!

this chapter was one of the most research-heavy. it was a new setting, filled with new characters, and predicated entirely upon planning the Greek front at Plataea. so if I couldn't nail that down (at least to some degree), I was going to have trouble. of course I took liberties, but I spent a lot longer combing through sources for this chapter than some other ones, I'll tell you that for free. it took ages to find any treatises on ancient athenian sword combat, sigh.

yeah I mean i remember thinking that the subtitle for this chapter could have been 'I am going to create an environment that is so toxically masculine' because that's pretty much the whole vibe. James is not immune to that, either, and that was intentional. he feeds off of the violence and the anger of the men surrounding him, and he exhibits some behaviors in this chapter (rushing off to kill Anaxagoras after he grabs Lily's arm, for instance) which are not ideal! but I do think that there's meaningful conversation to be had about Lily's cultural assimilation into an ancient, misogynistic society, and how there was absolutely no way I was going to get out of this story without giving James some sort of period-typical attitude. now again, I took the liberties I deem necessary, because I have no desire to make my main romantic lead into an asshole. that's not my James Potter. not that that's news [gets taken out by a sniper]

i got CLOWNEDDD for referring to this dude as Dion son of Dion but idk what to tell you!! that's how the old documents referred to him!!! i didn't make that shit up I swear to god!!!!

also - that's the actual text of the Oath of Plataea, except (as Lily points out) it should read Athena Areia. is it likey that she'd remember this off the dome? no. is it possible that she just recognized the missing descriptor from context clues? yes. did i care enough to explain this either way? no, no i did not.

the Big Ticket Item of this chapter, though, is the oh.

and it wasn't just an oh, it was an oh followed by this innocuous conclusion that isn't even about Lily. i made myself laugh so hard with that. he's just like 'oh god my friend is going to wave this over my head FOREVER' and you know what? he's right!

as for the previous paragraph in that passage, I pulled a bit of a bait and switch, but not as badly as you might think! it was a risk to even bring up the idea that James could leave Athens, because I know it spurred some people into thinking that he'd go to the future with Lily (sorry babies that was not on the table). but what I intended for this passage (however successful it may or may not have been) was to just…allow him a moment of real, visceral empathy for the sensation of displacement that Lily's experiencing, and as well, introduce the idea that he might leave the life he's cultivated in Athens. his entire upbringing has been himself, the consummate Athenian man, surrounding himself with people from outside of Athens and drawing from their experiences, but never venturing outside of his little realm. in so many ways, the story questions what Lily's relationship with 'home' is (especially later on), but it always felt necessary to me to reckon with how 'home' may change for James as well.

finally:

yeah honestly i just remember the exact moment i thought of this passage. i had been reading the secret history (shoutout Donna Tartt i idolize and fear you) and i was lying down in my local park in the summer. I just thought about the Greek myths I knew, and the kind of cosmic horror that it is to really admit you're falling in love with someone, that they have this power over you that you didn't anticipate. and that closing line of the scene really struck me out of nowhere – I wrote it down in my notebook and just stared at it for a good few minutes. it's still one of my favs of the story :)

ok! if you made it this far, you are just amazing. this has to be a few thousand words at least. TYSM!!!!

see you all later for the part 2 BTS ❤️

[mossyivy]

To whoever brought up breeding kink Chris…I love you. [NSFW warning!]

He’d definitely keep it on the low at first, but as you two got married and stuff, that’s when it really came out. That man would go FERAL. He wouldn’t let you leave until he practically made your mind all mush, mumbling and crying out random things.

Oh, but once you got pregnant and your belly got all full? The two of you would turn into rabbits. He just loved seeing your belly all big, and he especially loved seeing those perky tits of yours bounce up and down when you’d try to ride his dick. All swollen and full of milk. It was especially cute when you’d have to take little 5 seconds breaks once in a while, being pregnant and having sex was tiring, okay?

Let’s be honest—You’d be a pillow princess all your pregnancy, there were days your hormones would go crazy and you’d be soooooo horny, but you were just too tired and pregnancy to move around. This eventually led to Chris accommodating to your princess needs, fucking you as you laid on your side and let out little whimpers and moans. Prompting his hand to cover your mouth, trying to shush you to not wake up Ollie, he was asleep just right down the hall. Oh my goodness. How he’d grunt into your ear, and mumble ‘Fuck…’ under his breath…Butterflies in my tummy!!!

He’d also like fucking you while you laid on your back, that man would love seeing your face as he fucked you. Especially because he loved watching you slowly turn into a mess, begging him to stop because it just felt too good! Tears streaming down your face from all the pleasure and overstimulation, rambling on about how it felt so good, how you couldn’t take it anymore, but he knew you could. As soon as he filled you up and the two of you were satisfied, he’d pull out and watch his cum drip from your hole. How you’d try and catch your breath as he slowly pushed some dripping liquid back inside, not wanting to waste a single drop.

Of course he’d make sure you were okay. Asking you if he went too far, or if he hurt you in any way. But you’d just shake your head and snuggle up against him. Your breathing slowing down as he peppered you with love and kisses, like a good man does. He’d just look down to see you fast asleep against his chest, he’d smile, then doze off himself.

- Anon! 🎀

(I just finished cross posting a fic on a03 and come back to this!? I'M BLESSED!! Def adding onto this.)

CW: Praise Kink, dumbification, and daddy kink

(Everyday I stray further from God's light...)

Chris had no idea he had a daddy kink. Not until he started getting referred to as daddy. You'd obviously calling him that when talking to Ollie or to the baby but on occasion you'd slip up and call him daddy. Correcting yourself seconds later before he could even respond.

But dear Lord does it make his chest tight and brain/stomach do somersaults every time you say it.

But during sex at the moments you get tired and it's clear you're frustrated with yourself. You get tired so quickly from the baby but Daddy Chris comes to the rescue. Rubbing your hips gently as he sits up and pulls you closer to him. Usually he'd pull your back up to his chest and hold you in a full nelson. But with your bump that's not really feasible.

But now he lifts you up, shushing you gently as you start asking what he's doing. He'll simply answer with, "Let daddy take care of you," in a tone that makes your pussy throb and brain to mush.

Putting you on your side, making sure he has a firm grip on your thigh as he slides into you from behind. His hand snaking around your shoulders and holding your chin so he can whisper sweet praises into your ear about how good you're doing and how well you take his cock.

That's when your ramblings start.

"It's too much."

"Gonna break."

"Can't take it anymore."

But he just teases you after groaning a soft "fuck" in your ear, feeling your pussy clench around him as his warm breath hits your ear.

"You want me to stop? Sure feels like you don't want daddy to stop." You shake your head no. Not knowing left from right or yes from no at this point. His hand slides from your thigh to your clit. Circling it tightly as hand glides over your mouth to cover your desperate cries. His teeth gently sink into your shoulder as you milk him, buried deep, cumming inside you as you gush on his cock with a muffled cry. Eyes teary and body drenched in sweat.

He pants with a smirk, huffing out a chuckle as he kisses your shoulder and neck, moving his hand off your mouth.

[nadas-dirthalen]

A Veilguard Achievement Icon Opened My Eyes on 15 Years of Lore... but Was I Right?

PART ONE: Rambling First Impressions & Overview

[ 2 ]

Hello again, friends and travellers. Now that I've beaten Dragon Age: the Veilguard, I wanted to go through all those 30,000 words of predictions that I wrote in the ~11 days leading up to its release. I'd seen an achievement icon that pieced together a lot of Dragon Age lore for me.

But, I hadn't played Veilguard. All I had was the footage from September 19, the achievement list, and anything else BioWare had released.

So... was I right? And if so, how much was I right about?

This is your warning: This post will contain spoilers for the entirety of Dragon Age: the Veilguard, and all Dragon Age content made before Veilguard.

(no, this screenshot isn't a spoiler, I just like it.)

Welcome Back for Round Two. >:)

Stating right off the bat: I have only played Dragon Age: the Veilguard 1.5 times and so this collection is very, very incomplete. There's no way for me to learn every codex before they're even all on the wiki. If I've missed something, let me know!!

I don't know how many parts this is going to have. This has been a very fun, but very sleep-deprived week. Expect no sensible organization here; we're letting the ADHD reign!

That said, here's what I'm going to attempt to do:

A Recap of My Grand Theory: Solas was the Blight's Beginning, and Mythal was Responsible

How I Made My Predictions: A Study in Context and Pattern Recognition

What Did I Actually Get Right? (An Overview, Anyway)

Early Signs Veilguard Added to My Theories

A Recap of My Grand Theory: Solas was the Blight's Beginning, and Mythal was Responsible

I really don't have space to go in depth on what amounted to 30,000 words of theorycrafting (which still boggles my mind, how did I do that and still find time to sleep). Instead, I'll link every post and make a bullet point list of what big guesses I made in each.

Part One: Solas was created from spirit and lyrium, crafted in one of Mythal's lyrium coffins that we see both in the Temple of Solasan and Trespasser. That means that some part of him was part of a Titan, once. There were hints about this across all three preceding games, and these hints re-contextualize those games and their place in the Dragon Age narrative. The Titans are likely the Forgotten Ones, because Fen'Harel walked among both the Forgotten Ones and the Evanuris in his legends.

Part Two: The Mythal lullaby in Trespasser is the story of Solas' creation, specifically. Da'durgen'lin refers to 'little stone boy.' Solas' twice-used phrase Ar dirthan'as ir elgara, ma sula e'var vhenan is him speaking to lyrium itself, which he does both with Sera (ancient elvhen? andruil memory? people go into more depth on this than I ever do) and the Eye of Kethisca. Elven phrases and pieces of writing/song from everywhere point to Solas' backstory and are all possibly written/sung by Solas. The codices in the Temple of Solasan are also referencing his backstory. There is a larger narrative at work happening in the random elven literature we find, and it suggests a lot of things about the world.

Part Three: The Titans are definitely the Forgotten Ones—at least, part of them (more on that later). They have all been sundered. One part remains in the Abyss; the other in the Fade. The Fade, in fact, is every Titan's consciousness, all sundered by Fen'Harel. This is the "leg" that the wolf chewed off to "escape the trap": Solas' connection to ir sa tel'nal, isatunoll. This is why he loves the Fade: he's reconnecting with the consciousness he broke himself apart from. This is also why he has Titan/Stone magic. This is also why lyrium grows both in the Abyss and in the Fade.

• Oh, and spirits seem like they might be the thoughts of Titans.

Part Four: The Chant of Light tells the story of the Evanuris, from their manifestation as spirits to their mining of lyrium and war with the Titans to the Makers' creation of "everyone else." The archdemons and Magisters Sidereal are also explained in its verses. The Chant also suggests the Maker is a Titan whose mind and body are sundered, and that Andraste's hearing the "voice of the Maker" is her hearing the Titan's song.

Part Five: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 1/3: Mythal is known to have mined people from lyrium. Elgar'nan probably sundered spirits, notably Dirthamen and Falon'Din. Falon'Din seems to have wanted to attack Titans that "belonged" to other Evanuris to gain more "worshippers" (lyrium people; slaves) for himself.

Part Six: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 2/3: Sylaise probably made the Scaled Ones. June probably is responsible for not just lots of inventions, but the invention of the geas. Dirthamen's "secrets" are "thoughts" (spirits) forced into the bodies of his worshippers... and animals... and trees (AKA, he made a lot of abominations).

Part Seven: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 3/3: the blight seems to be the Titans' defence against repeated attacks. Crucially, all of the Evanuris made the Titans this way... but Mythal made them that way first. The reason the Titans are "forgotten" now is because Mythal tried to erase all memory of them so that none would find the blight again. (She failed. Thanks, Andruil and Ghilan'nain).

Part Eight: The story of Solas, part 1/3: Solas came from an un-sundered world where both "mage magic" and "Stone magic" were the same thing. He was created in the Temple of Solasan, where "icy terror" became the first blighted Titan. Solas' existence was significant to the Evanuris because it suggested that one can survive the blight, and his moniker (the Dread Wolf) comes from the fact that he was a wolf (elven general) that came from the terror Titan (dread).

Part Nine: Since Solas' origin story is the start of the blight, then all of Solas' story from that point is not the story of just him, but the story of the blight. This signifies his place in Dragon Age's entire narrative, and also spells out what the overarching Point™ of the series is. Backed into a proverbial corner where none of the Evanuris would stop the things that angered the Titans, Solas' only choice was to sunder the Titans from their consciousness. He misses the Stone, also.

• He also imprisoned the Evanuris in Stone, something called "gangue" in Hissing Wastes codices.

• His ultimate goal is to return consciousness to the Titans, fixing the "wound" he made when the Veil went up.

Part Ten: The Inquisitor is special because their spirit is from the same Titan as Solas. The Breach is a threat because if the Veil comes down too soon, all the Titans will come back blighted and angry. The Veil disintegrating means all the Titans are waking anyway, little by little. The Dread Wolf shape is actually an aspect of Terror that can kill people with fear. The Evanuris who've been killed before have potentially had their spirits "recycled" and might be reincarnating into mortal people now. Oh, and a bunch of predictions on the companions, Solas/Mythal, etc, that I'll go over again down below.

How I Made My Predictions: A Study in Context and Pattern Recognition

I've had a lot of people ask how I... y'know. Did that. How one person could write 30,000 words of guesses in the week and a half before Veilguard, citing so many sources, and... not be that far off, probably.

Honestly the short version of this is, "I read the Chant of Light as it appears in World of Thedas, not with the canticles out of order like they are on the wiki, has anyone else done that?"

The longer version of this sounds even shorter, at first: I started playing Dragon Age games in March 2024, and I have ADHD.

Oh, and I'm a writer who's always been interested in game development, with dreams of maybe one day working in games or on video game IP. That helps shape my understanding of what games might need to accomplish, narratively, and the mechanisms they might use to accomplish those goals.

I was able to play all three games this summer. In fact, I finished Inquisition for the first time after Veilguard's first trailers this year, on June 26. What that means is that my first real experiences learning the finer lore of Dragon Age were all this year, and had the context of Veilguard's trailers. We knew we were getting a narrative followup to Trespasser, and so where did I center my focus? Trespasser. Everything I learned about Thedas, I tried to make sense in the context of Trespasser. Every piece of lore had to fit with Trespasser. Not just the environment of the Crossroads or the companions' banter, but what Trespasser was trying to teach us.

And most of its codices are about the Evanuris warring with the Titans. The Titans, who we'd just seen in Descent. The storytelling point of Trespasser was to make us question the nature and morality of Fen'Harel by giving us context about the Evanuris and their own history, then letting us ask for Solas' perspective on it.

That's the thing about Dragon Age. Very little of it is there pointlessly. Every level, every DLC, every codex, is there to teach you something. Even the smaller codices, which don't seem to mean anything tremendous, are there to teach you how to parse the voice of all the other codices. So even beyond the games, I asked myself: what is Tevinter Nights trying to teach me about how Thedas works? What is The Masked Empire teaching me? Is it the same? And what about World of Thedas, volumes 1 and 2, written from the perspective of Thedosian historians, deliberately written to misdirect the reader with the historians' biases?

Whatever I found had to work with what was promised in Veilguard: a controversial Solas. New understanding of the Evanuris. Harding's new magic. Regions of Thedas we never explored, and why those places would all matter.

Knowing the three act structure, as a writer, and knowing that ensemble casts all need to bring a puzzle piece of the grander theme into the main plot through their own personal quests, I had a vague skeleton of what I would need to find. The shape of the information I found would have to fit the world and the relationship dynamics advertised in the Veilguard. Origins would have to matter to the Veilguard; same with DA2; same with Inquisition. Despite the series being disconnected by featuring different leads, the worldbuilding is very much connected between instalments, and so Veilguard would have to be one logical step past everything that developed in Inquisition. (Nevermind a whole host of other criteria that honestly deserves its own post).

It's very hard to describe how the pattern recognition in some ADHD brains works. What I will say is... I noticed something. Every mistranslated elven codex where it deliberately says it has been mistranslated is an invitation for you, the player, to try and figure out what is correct. Everywhere that World of Thedas says that something must be preposterous to the historian narrating it is an invitation to ask yourself: could this be possible? How would that work?

Things like the linguistic overlaps between the elves and the dwarves are intentional. Words that are phonetically similar are far more often intentional than simple oversight. Every scrap of lore holds some significance.

Because in Thedas, every perspective is right, to some degree. Including the Chant of Light. Including ancient elvhenan. If you try and make them all reconcile with each other, and you've also done so in the context of the Veilguard, and you've also got ADHD and a near-photographic memory that is strongest with emotional memories and rules/systems? Well... You get me. You get 30,000 words of "one single picture of lyrium-spirit Solas cracked all of Thedas for me in the span of one mind-blown week while I power-read World of Thedas to check all my facts and essentially lived inside the Dragon Age wiki."

(AKA, you get Bellara in human form. Sorry, Bellara. It's rough out here. But now you, reader, know the reason that this blog was renamed nadas-dirthalen in late September—and why I, when I embraced my nonbinary identity, chose the name Lore for myself.)

And what was promised in Inquisition, as well as in Veilguard's marketing? The Evanuris, Titans, and the blight. They would all have to tie together—and they did.

What Did I Actually Get Right? (An Overview, Anyway)

I'm going to try and categorize this. Oh god. These are going to be such disorganized posts, but I want them done before much information comes out, so bear with me.

What I Got Right:

Solas and Mythal: Yep. He caused the blight; she made him do it. He created the Veil and wounded himself. They weren't romantic; they were trauma-bonded. She wasn't a paragon of good. They both tried to stop the blight anyway.

Sundered Spirits: The sweet, sweet vindication of learning that Dirthamen and Falon'Din were sundered all along. Thank you, BioWare. We also learned that this happened to the Titans (more on broader implications in the last category in this section).

Titan Stories In Elven: Bellara sang "Ir sa tel'nal Mythal las ma theneras" and my heart soared. :) My ego swelled. :) That's all the confirmation I need right now that I hit the nail on the head with the elven lullabies and Solas' backstory.

The Chant of Light Told the Story of the Evanuris: The demons that would be gods. We know now that all the Evanuris manifested physically from their original spirit forms. The Chant called it.

Mythal, Andruil, and Ghilan'nain's Roles in the Blight: Mythal created it, but wanted it sealed away; Andruil found it again; Ghilan'nain made it grow and grow.

Taash, a little? I hypothesized that fire-breathers might come from the Scaled Ones or otherwise have been engineered by an Evanuris. I know they were engineered for the purpose of war, but not by whom (I... think. Needs a replay to confirm).

Davrin: Yes! Davrin was the one who connected that Solas feels responsible for specifically the blight and conveyed that to the rest of the team. He questioned the nature of the Grey Wardens and helped to choose a path forward without any archdemons left.

Harding: Yup. Titan connection. Yup, our narrative path to finding out about angered Titans.

"Do We Win?/Do We Stop the Blight?" Well, in Solas' good ending, we do get what I thought we would: the Evanuris all gone, the Titans on a path to restoration.

What I Definitely Did Not Get Right:

VARRIC?!?! When I said, "If you know, you know. Lyrium dagger, dwarf. If you don't know, close your eyes and pretend you read nothing" — GUYS I THOUGHT VARRIC WOULD GET MAGIC HE REALLY HATED AND I CRIED LIKE A BABY WHEN I SAW WHAT HAPPENED :(

Lucanis: I really thought Spite would be a Forgotten One. However, it's stated a few times that Spite is not a run-of-the-mill demon, and Lucanis is not your average abomination. I wonder if there's banter I'm missing, or if something will happen with that in DA5. Poisoned fruit, and all that.

Emmrich: I really thought Emmrich would do world-changing "give all the spirits back to the Titans" stuff. I think my error with most of the companions is that I forgot how much information actually can feasibly fit into a game without it being 300 hours long or melting the brains of its players.

Neve: Nothin' happened with gangue mentions, or Archon mentions! I was way, way off with Neve.

The Eclipse: It did not have anything to do with the Bird Boy Evanuris™ :( But Elgar'nan moving the sun and moon was badass as hell, and I honestly loved Elgar'nan far more than even my highest expectations.

What I Haven't Gotten Right... YET:

Bellara….?????? Guys I thought there was a Dirthamen connection and they put a codex in the game that says specifically that Dirthamen held a fondness for frogs, same as Bellara. And then they gave her a brother who... ya know... was... presumed... dead... AKA, on the other side of the Veil... for a while... And then they gave that brother a sundered piece of Bellara's own vallaslin. John Epler, where are you going with this please I wanna KNOW, the Bird Boys™ occupy my mind at all hours. (But also? Surprise Forgotten One mention with Bellara, and surprise Anaris mention specifically, and I'm going to pat myself on the back for being so oddly focused on Anaris in my predictions.)

Chant of Light Confirmations: I actually have yet to see a single Chant of Light verse in Veilguard. I think they're saving that one for later, keeping it up their sleeves for the next games. The needle didn't move with confirming/denying anything in the Chant except for the Evanuris as spirits that manifested into physical shape and then sought to conquer the Titans.

Titans-as-Forgotten-Ones: For a time, I thought they disproved me on this, showing Anaris as a spirit, the "eighth" while the "sixth and seventh" roamed free. Showing Anaris craving a body to wreak his evil (?) machinations upon the world. But then I got to thinking, and I realized: they never said the Forgotten Ones are spirits, they just showed one being a spirit. What did they say about spirits in general, or the Titans' relation to the Fade in general?

Titans-and-Fade Connection: I theorized that the Titans' consciousness is the Fade, and the Veil is what keeps them all sundered. I theorized that spirits are thoughts, either floating around in the Fade or held in lyrium. For a long time in Veilguard, I thought I was being disproven. Solas' memories don't say that the Veil sundered all Titans, and they don't say that Titans' consciousness is the Fade, either. But, as I went through Veilguard, I realized... they also didn't not say it. And that's when I knew.

I have to go digging again. And after 8.5 days, here's what I think I've got. It's a start, but a promising one.

Early Signs Veilguard Has Added to My Theories

Remember how I said that there are very few in things in Thedas that are there for no reason? Well, Veilguard has given us plenty of tie-ins to previous material already, just with the stuff I remember off-hand from the past week, no wiki entries to go by yet.

(Please bear in mind that I have had this game for 8 days and this is just barely scratching the surface of its content!)

Let me re-examine some of the things I mentioned above:

Titans-as-Forgotten-Ones

The Nadas Dirthalen's very first word is Sulahn'nehn. Remember how I said many things in Thedas are there intentionally, and that World of Thedas is a book made up of invitations to solve puzzles? This is no exception. World of Thedas states that, translated literally, this common word for "rejoice" actually means "sing again."

That word might be a rallying cry for the spirits of Titans who'd, I don't know... lost their song. A promise of plot to come, made a decade ago. Why else would they include that word, instead of anything more frequently used by characters/the fandom?

I also noticed: the Nadas Dirthalen looks to be contained in a lyrium crystal, specifically. We already know that lyrium is used to store memories! It may be that the Nadas Dirthalen, the inevitability of knowledge, was Anaris storing his knowledge and memories in an attempt to pre-empt the creation of the Veil. Nadas Dirthalen might be a promise: a promise that the Forgotten Ones will return to sing again, and that their knowledge and memories will guide them to victory.

But if I was going to hazard a guess that this is the case, I couldn't base my theory on just this line of dialogue.

Titans-and-Fade-Connection

First and foremost: Neve and a couple codices say that Solas' ritual to create the Veil went wrong. We all heard Solas cry out in pain at the moment of its creation!

Second: defeating one of the revenants, whose name is something like "The Slaughtered Pillars," made my ears perk up. I noticed in the combat with the Betrayal of Felassan that the dialogue lines are supposed to be Solas' regrets, given voice.

You wanna know what it says when you fight the Slaughtered Pillars?

"Light and song, stolen."

You wanna know what the Chant of Light refers to the Fade as? Three guesses. C'mon. :)))

That's right! Light! But why would the slaughtered pillars of the earth complain about their light AND song being stolen? Well—I'm guessing that their Light is the Fade; their consciousness. And without their consciousness, their dreams, all concept of isatunoll was lost to them.

When I heard this line, I threw out what I thought I had been told about the Forgotten Ones being spirits, not Titans. Now, I have a new idea (one that still needs verifying and much codex-reading): the Forgotten Ones are those sundered spirits that Solas severed from the Titans. The entire Fade being cut off from Thedas was an unintended consequence that hurt him as badly as it did the Titans he meant to put to sleep.

(We don't even know that he was in uthenera by choice, with how often he talks about being weakened.)

Suddenly, "Sing again," makes total sense as a rallying cry for Anaris and the Titans, both. I very much look forward to digging through the minutiae of every codex to see if I can find anything else that backs this up!

Terror/Horror Mentions

I need to really examine this one, ideally with the help of a wiki that doesn't quite exist yet for this game, to get all the exact lines. But I swear that fear is mentioned almost constantly in Solas' memories, and also a lot in conjunction with Anaris and with Harding's Titan.

I'm not letting go of my "Solas was crafted from Terror/Dread" theory. Not yet. Not yet.

Bellara and the Bird Boys™

I think BioWare's favourite game, at this point, is teasing us with sneaky little mentions of Dirthamen and Falon'Din. In Veilguard, we went to Zazikel's skeleton in the Cauldron. In Arlathan, owls were just... glowing. Everywhere. Why? I don't know! Rook also doesn't seem to know! But they mention it many times over, and that is always a cue for us to pay attention and ascertain why.

I don't know what Bellara's sneaky little connection to Dirthamen and Falon'Din could mean for the two sundered Evanuris. I don't know if it means that I'm right, and that Dirthamen escaped Fade Jail when Corypheus and the Magisters Sidereal entered the Black City. I don't know if it means that, when Dirthamen and Falon'Din died, their spirits fused back together (because... Mythal's didn't?).

I just know that this has worsened how I constantly search for the Bird Boys™ in everything. Something is happening here, I just need to figure out what.

What Do I Think This Means?

I think this means that BioWare are about to make good on their promise shown in the Poisoned Fruit post-credits scene. Dragon Age 5: Something Something Something Forgotten Ones, ooohhhh, spooky, Terror Terror Malice Fear Nightmare Time, Featuring Solas (reluctantly or gladly) Helping Heal the Titans. And did we mention that the Forgotten and the Forbidden Ones have always been more closely linked than most of the fanbase thought?

But I can only guess at that for now, and I've got some serious reading to do before I say anything more specific than that.

-----

As always, if you read this far, you're one of the real ones. This has been a jumbled mess of midnight thoughts, but I promise you this: I'm only just digging into Veilguard's finer workings. I'm only just starting to put its many pieces together.

And like every Dragon Age game, I can tell that there is something big lurking between the lines of every one. I just need to read something like 135 mementos and [redacted] codices from everywhere else several times over in order to figure out what it is.

But this is just Part One. I promise: the second it clicks for me, I'll write it all in a rambling frenzy for you, too.

It's still super up in the air, but I think for the next one, I might try and tackle What Dragon Age: the Veilguard Did Narratively—and What DA5's Story Will Likely Do to Follow. We'll see what happens to me 50, 100, or 200 codices from now. :)

[eilinelsghost]

I've not posted much when it comes to my feelings/critique of Rings of Power (because the discourse there is a toxic hellscape that I have not wanted to touch with a 10 foot pole), but I've come away from the final episode so frustrated that I can't help saying one thing.

In trying to be clever with their "references," what the showrunners have ended up doing instead is taking the narrative power away from several of LoTR's key moments so that when those instances show up in the "later" trilogy, they are shorn of their meaning and arrive instead as hollow echoes of what RoP is putting forward as their original instances.

This is most clearly seen in Season 1 when Galadriel's pivotal moment in Fellowship of the Ring is taken from her, placed in a man's mouth first, and consequently shifts the entirety of her narrative arc/test to be about her relationship/temptation by this specific person instead of being the full fruition of what brought her to Middle-earth in the First Age. Her test (as noted in the Shibboleth of Fëanor, found in HoME volume 12: The Peoples of Middle-earth) is the rejection of "all that she had desired in her youth," which is specifically tied to her involvement in the rebellion of the Noldor and subsequent rejection of the Valar's pardon.

If Galadriel's test is thus reframed to be primarily about refusing the power Sauron offers, then she does that here in the Second Age (per their depiction) and this scene thereby makes her choice at the Mirror irrelevant because it turns it into a test she had already passed. (The irony here is that so many bad faith critiques were that the show made Galadriel too independent & fighter-y when in fact they took all of her independence and cut the knees right out from under it by making her entire story about Sauron instead of its own complicated arc. But I digress.)

In Season 2, we receive an additional host of these attempted referential echoes, but I will focus on one in particular because it operates in exactly the same way that Galadriel's Season 1 scene does. It is once again the final episode, once again a character whose journey we have followed through the whole season (throughout both seasons, in fact), and once again it is taking a key moment in the LoTR narrative and shifting it to be instead something that has already happened in the Second Age - specifically, the scene with the Stranger (now disappointingly officially identified as Gandalf) and "the Dark Wizard". This effectively lifts Gandalf's refusal of Saruman's offer in FoTR and places that exact temptation (join me and together we can weild the power that Sauron has) centuries earlier so that when he is faced with it at Isengard in the Third Age, Gandalf is merely repeating his earlier decision and facing nothing but an echo of a temptation he has already mastered.

These characters are now caught in a Groundhog's Day of their defining moments, repeated ad nauseam till it is reflex and not conviction.

In attempting to construct resonance and connection between the two narratives, what RoP has done instead is shore up a hall of empty mirrors, each reflecting back upon itself to the point where the origin becomes meaningless and the beauty of its narrative power is lost.