#I just have come to my senses and realized that soapboxing about it to an echo chamber of people who already agree with me

[willowcrowned]

I have so many reasons to be thankful for the ridiculous size of lotr but chief among them is the fact that any time I start getting angry and puristy about the books it takes me so long to source citations for my argument that I realize I’m being ridiculous and calm down

[planet-crait]

Episode 12!

I’m surprised Hazel reads romance novels given how young she is but the OG show also had romance so I guess it’s inline their (still not a fan of romance for such young kids but whatever) and it seems fishboy from the intro will finally show up!!

Aww they have a book club that’s cute. Lolz oh Hazel i understand the intense need to talk about your favorite things but let your friends be surprised come on!

Wait kids have dances so young? My first dance wasn’t until like middle school. Oh I get why that wouldn’t be fun for Hazel, being the only single person with all your friends being on dates sucks. Most dances me and my friends threw “anti” dances so we just hung out and watched Disney movies lolz. It was great. I am surprised though they didn’t tell Hazel they planned on going it just seemed I don’t know nice to let her know they had dates? Oh poor Kev, what did he do to be rejected so hard. And why would he be Hazels only option?

Oh huh not quite what I expected but makes sense lolz. Oh yeah okay for once they acknowledge Cosmo and Wanda should be hiding but actually have a good explanation for why they don’t. And it makes sense honestly but Hazel don’t tell him he’s a fictional character that might break him.

Uh Cosmo did you eat the bowl? Okay uh moving on. I think it’s cute Kennueth doesn’t understand coming slang it makes sense and is a funny moment. Wait why did he have to go to Fairy world to get an outfit? If they’re just magicing clothes on him. But awww he’s so sweet helping her dance.

Oh no poor Dev. He’s mean but no one deserves to be physically attacked. He’s a kid he says mean things but I wouldn’t want to see him like physically hurt. But why does he think Dev is duck worth? I don’t see the resemblance at all.

Oh that’s kind of cute Devs a fan of the same series Hazel is. Too bad he’s so mean and in denial but maybe this could help start them being kinder to each other? It’s clear Dev wants to be closer with Hazel with how obsessed he can get with her but doesn’t have the tools to like know how to go about befriending someone. Undoubtedly it’s a side affect of how his dad raised him. I know we don’t know yet he treats Dev so poorly but I know so it’s definitely affecting how I’m viewing him.

Lolz even the principle reads it? Not surprising she enjoys the villain most. Theirs nothing wrong with that of course people can freely enjoy the characters they like but this seems like a shorthand to further show how “bad” the principle is because “look she likes the bad guy so that makes her bad”. Liking a character doesn’t mean you condone their actions, their are lots of reasons people like “evil” characters weather it’s you enjoy seeing a person be unapologetically evil or like their backstory or how they got to where they are or think they work as a good foil for the main character. There isn’t a right or wrong way to enjoy a story as long as you aren’t being a jerk to people with what they like about the story.

Uh sorry I’ll get off of my soapbox lolz. Oh Hazel that was kind of mean. I get why she feels the way she does but like your friends wanted to go the the dance and you’re not being a good friend either.

Lolz oh Hazel I feel the pain of a prequel not being made in a language you can’t read lolz. Aww Dev getting all emotional with being forgiven and thinking duckworth would like it oh. (Does this play at all into maybe Dev not feeling loved or cared about by his dad?) oh dang it I want more Dev stuff lolz. I am so impatient.

Awww I like that they all apologized and all realized they made mistakes. It’s good to see when a more complex situation allows everyone to be wrong and not just one person. Wait are they just leaving him there? He literally didn’t do anything wrong.

Oh uh. Huh I thought they were going with the love of friends is just as strong as romantic love but uh I guess not. Poor guy. Oh. Uh. Oh. Well RIP I guess. That got dark fast.

Wait Hazel TODAY was weird but not the day your hair became SENTIENT?? This is too weird for you?? THIS? Like overall given the other episodes this is not nearly as weird as other stuff lolz.

Overall I really enjoyed this episode and didn’t have anything that stuck out to me. The wish and how it came about made sense, the episode was cute. And maybe Hazel and Dev can find common ground? Maybe? Probably not but I can wish lolz.

WAIT WAIT WAIT DO DUCKWORTH AND KENNUETH DATE? THEY SAID TRUE LOVE DO WE HAVE SOME REAL GAY REP HERE?? Okay the wiki doesn’t clear up anything but ima pretend they do lolz.

Onto the next one!!

[honkbird]

daily post about tabletops, I think this is my gimmick now, and a soapbox to talk about why I'm (and everyone else who's ever made the same post) isn't a fan of how 5e's mechanics make sure all action is in opposition to another party.

When it comes to "rules building the story", the only way players can influence the plot (besides actions, even then its up to the dm) by using existing rules is Inspiration points. Where you can,, reroll a bad check,, and get them very rarely,,

Infact I've seen less inspiration points handed out than I have fingers and thumbs (10, fyi), just because they're such nothing bonuses that people forget the exist. Atleast pathfinder lets you start with a hero point every session, but thats about as much of a leg up as it has.

It was such a learning curve when I started playing stuff like Powered by the Apocalypse systems because my initial reaction was "But how?? Isn't there something preventing you from doing X?" And ever since that moment, it's been a clear realization that in 5e or pf2e, its a very game-ified system. Sometimes, the things your character is really good at from their backstory, make more sense to be an integral part rather than proficiency in a skill.

Maybe tomorrow I'll make a big long unasked for post about how dnd has and is more a board game than a roleplaying game, and the only reason people rp is less of the rules outlining how it builds a story and more how people just Want to roleplay.

I guess what really bothers me about holding “story over rules” as a guiding principle in tabletop RPGs is that it’s misidentifying the actual problem.

In tabletop RPGs, rules produce stories. That’s kind of the medium’s whole thing. Any given set of rules is going to encode certain assumptions about how the game ought to be played, and obviously the kind of stories the rules want to produce and the kind of stories you want to tell are never going to be in perfect agreement unless you designed the whole system from scratch (and generally not even then!), but if you find yourself disagreeing with the story the rules want to produce often enough and severely enough that it makes sense to adopt “story over rules” as a guiding principle, what that means is that you’re using the wrong set of rules for the kind of game that you want to play.

Any time I see somebody talking like telling a story and playing a game are intrinsically opposing priorities and it’s the GM’s job to negotiate that fundamental opposition, what that tells me is that this person has spent their whole life running and playing systems that are just wildly unsuited for their preferred mode of play

[nerdby]

This is a response @incorrectquotesmcu original post (shown in the screenshot). I forgot the completely stupid rule that some Tumblr users seem to have about people not commenting on their posts despite the fact that this is social media. The entire point of which is to socialize.

I will also that I have been writing and posting fanfiction online since 2004. I think that being a nerd is a learning curve, and if someone says my work is out-of-character or corrects me on something I just Google to see if they are right, say thank you, and move on. I use the new knowledge to create better fics and memes in the future.

Not knowing everything about all of the all of the characters is not something to be embarrassed or insecure about.

None of us know everything. Not even me. I only recently found out that, for example, that's an X-Men arc where Logan is in a throuple with Scott and Jean. Like I said, it's a learning experience.

I will not, however, tolerate being accused of being a homophobe. Especially not since recently I have been fucking terrified that me running my giant queer mouth might get me sent to an internment camp since I live in the US.

Anyway, just so OP doesn't try to slander me here is what I wrote in response to this--

I don't know if you realize this but I am queer myself -- bisexual and nonbinary and have spent years on this platform calling out queerphobia in the Marvel and MCU fandom. I am autistic and comic books, especially Marvel Comics are a lifelong special interest in mind. If you check my blog literally one of the first things you see when on my About are images of Stan Lee's Stan Soapbox from the vintage Marvel Comics, calling out eugenics and explaining why it is important that comics tell stories with a deeper, political meaning behind them. These are them--

I commented on your post because sometimes I get impulsive and overshare. I can be a bit of a know-it-all at times, but I thought it would be a fun fact that would also help keep people from getting confused because Deadpool is trending and it's fairly well-known in the wider Marvel [Comics] fandom that Death married him and also was courted by Thanos, and that we might see those topics come up here on Tumblr soon.

However, I in no way implied that there is anything wrong with being simply gay or lesbian. I meant that it would not make sense for Death as a character because all beings die regardless of their gender. It would be a bad metaphor in any case. And I do not appreciate you twisting my words to make it appear otherwise.

I will say, though, that up until tonight I had enjoyed OP's posts and I am very disappointed by their biphobia.

[gisellelx]

Was Isle Esme a lie?

Okay okay but hear me out. I've been completely grooving on @panlight's meta about the Cullens as NPCs. Which is so true and is basically why I finally started writing fanfic to begin with--I read these books and just had this sense of "This writer left so much on the table" that I had never had when reading a series before. Everything about this story was built to support E/B, and when you think about it, many of the parts don't hold up on their own.

But the last section of this meta is honestly something I had absolutely taken as canon and now am suddenly realizing that another explanation makes a ton more sense. Basically, I've never seen a fic/fanficcer/fandom member--including me!--not take as gospel truth that Carlisle bought Isle Esme for Esme on whatever anniversary yadda yadda yadda. And yet, as pan points out, this really is contrived for the sake of E/B and it's not even ever about C/Es. It's like "oh it would be convenient for the Cullens to own an island!" and so boom, they do.

And I buy into this wholly because, y'all islands are actually quite cheap in the grand scheme of things. A private island can be had for the low six figures, depending on where it is. Add a modest house at the cost of construction and you're in the mid six-figures. I realize that when you're twelve, as many big Twifans were when they read the series for the first time, $400,000 seems like a lot of money, but I assure you, it is not. (stepping on my personal finance soapbox for a second: if you intend to retire well, younger twifans, $400,000 needs to be a number that is real to you and is in your investment accounts at around age 45. Trust me on this...) So if you are a decabillionaire, which I think we all can agree Carlisle is, and you also have an intense need for privacy, the odds that you drop $1-2M every now and then on a nice vacation spot are pretty high. It makes every sense in the world for Carlisle to have bought Esme an island. I always assume they own several.

However. When you consider that Isle Esme comes completely out of the blue, and isn't at all about Carlisle and Esme, and that in fact, Esme supposedly chooses to decorate the cottage as though it is like her supposedly private island that Carlisle bought her as some grand romantic gesture, which is kind of a weird thing for a mom to do, you know?...

...and you add that to the degree to which we know for a fact that Edward tries very unsuccessfully to honor Bella's desire for non-lavish gifts, and the degree to which we know, from the "crystal" heart he already gave her, that he is absolutely willing to lie to make Bella okay with an extravagant gift...

I am now suddenly thinking he lied about Isle Esme. He bought it, for Bella, for the purpose of this honeymoon. Esme decorated the house on the island, and then also decorated the cabin just like it, because she expected they would have wonderful memories of this place that is just theirs. Edward presents the idea that Carlisle bought it for Esme because he is still somewhat careful to help Bella to not lose her mind that he bought a freaking island (because it seems really extravagant, even if for ultra rich people, it is not, see above) and at some point in time, this is all going to come to a head in some giant Cullen foofaraw that involves Carlisle frowning disappointedly about Edward lying yet again and Bella forgiving him inside the space of three seconds as she is wont to do.

So, reversing ten years of headcanon...I think Isle Esme is really Isle Bella and Edward, as usual, lied through his skinny seventeen-year-old teeth about it. He bought it. Not Carlisle. It's for Bella. Not Esme. And oh, to be a fly on the wall when Bella found out.

[luna-rainbow]

i just realized florence pugh is credited on hawkeye's imdb page as appearing in four episodes and i'm so upset at this knowledge. like i knew because of black widow's credit scene they were gonna send her after clint 🙄 eventually, but i thought we'd at least have some breathing room before they shoved yelena into the villain role 😔. is no character that's been brainwashed/programmed/mind-controlled against their will allowed to rest in the mcu? maybe i need to write a yelena/bucky/loki/clint coffee shop au for my own peace of mind lol, bc marvel just refuses to let them heal and be happy for any amount of time and it's just not fun anymore ugh. yelena should be *bonding* with clint over the loss of natasha, not some stupid revenge thing that makes no sense if it's common knowledge natasha chose to push herself off the side of the cliff. i want to hope that it will come to that, that clint explains what happened bc yelena somehow didn't get the memo, and she's like "oh okay, let's stop fighting, wanna take our dogs on a doggy play date?" or something less silly but plausible, but i just don't trust the mcu at all anymore and they want all the traumatized characters to be villains/have even more trauma forced on them so like. sigh. do you think there's a chance it could go like that or that yelena is definitely being set up to be in thunderbolts/a villain?

Sorry! I was meaning to answer this about a week ago but now Hawkeye's out (and I haven't watched it) I'm not sure if this is still applicable.

A subtle point of difference is that I have no issue with victims having an arc where they might be someone else's antagonist, or even do the wrong thing. I've said many times before, I would have loved Bucky to have an arc where he went on a killing rampage against Hydra. I find it far more interesting narratively to explore how their trauma has broken their world view, and I love watching a character struggle with appeasing their rage versus holding onto their sense of morality.

The thing that gets me on the soapbox is a) when their traumatic experience as a victim is intentionally framed to make them complicit and align them with their abusers; and b) they have a sudden characterisation change that isn't backed up in the writing.

Personally, I love the idea of Yelena confronting Clint. I think it's in character - this is a girl who had just come out of 20 years of mind-control, and then lost the sister who was the closest thing to a family. Nat had spoken highly of Clint and worn an arrow around her neck. There's only Clint's version of the story available - who knows what really happened on that planet? Yelena, trained as a spy, is not going to trust anyone, and caught in her anger and grief, might rightfully suspect or blame Clint for it. I'd love for her to fight Clint, for her to gradually recognise the shared grief and loss, to forgive - not Clint, but herself for not spending more time with Nat, because that's where the real anger is coming from - and then to acknowledge Clint as a friend. I mean, it's the perfect enemies to coworkers trope.

Antagonist doesn't automatically equate to villain. Unfortunately this is something MCU writers mess up constantly. My understanding of villainy is that there needs to be broader aiming malice, and not targeted animosity.

The thing with the Thunderbolts is that TFATWS had gone out of its way to make Walker and Zemo sympathetic, so Yelena being there might not be a bad thing, because Black Widow also went out of its way to hype up her character.

Side rant: the more I think about the "everyone likes Walker" quote the more upset I get. Rhodey knew about Sam being offered the mantle, so Steve passing it to Sam is not secret knowledge, yet Walker had the audacity to call Sam Cap's Wingman and then scream at Sam "I am Captain America", then for Skogland to follow that up with "everyone likes Walker"...like wtf?

[therenlover]

Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk (A Young Revolutionary!Zemo x Non-Binary Reader Oneshot)

(a/n: so, in honor of barricade day, have this young revolutionary!Zemo fic, which is basically just canon Enjoltaire dynamics but with a Zemo/reader twist on it, because that dynamic is literally my whole heart. Consider this a weird twisted Les Mis au if you want to, but you don’t need to know the book or musical to enjoy this, if it can be enjoyed...) 

Synopsis: Helmut recalls the story of how he came to be the ruthless man he is and, more specifically, how he came into possession of his strange purple mask. 

Tags: Canon Compliant, Angst, Young!Zemo, Non-Binary!Reader, Death, Enemies to Friends With Benefits to Lovers????, Implied Sexual Content, Friendship, Pining, Revolution, Speedrunning A Slow Burn

Rating: M (+16) 

Warnings: Major Character Death, Implied Sexual Content, Gun Violence, Drinking, Minor Homophobia/Transphobia (it’s one sentence near the end and it’s very vague coming from Heinrich), Swearing, Survivor’s Guilt, Really Just Death Everywhere

Word Count: 10,200~

“What’s with the mask?” 

The question was innocent enough.

Sam posed it while lounging on the expensive couch of Zemo’s Riga apartment, head tilted back and eyes closed in silent contemplation. 

Bucky remained silent as Zemo glanced over from his place at the counter. Outside, the sun was long gone, giving way to a stunning moonrise over the city that poured through the stained glass windows and lit up the night with its glow. It was quiet, much quieter than things usually were between the trio. Still, things being quiet didn’t mean they weren’t tense.

Clenching his teeth, he took in a long breath through his nose. “I am unsure what you mean by that, Sam,” 

“The mask,” Sam pushed, “you know, the one you wore during the fight in Madripoor. What’s the deal with that?” 

“Ah yes. That mask,” As if on cue, Zemo took a long swig from his glass. It burned all the way down. He didn’t speak again, though, instead choosing to let his gaze fall on the elaborate tilework above his countertops, tracing the patterns with his eyes. Anything to divert himself from the thoughts that rushed back into his mind at the thought of the knit piece of cloth that sat firmly in his inner coat pocket. 

Unfortunately for him, Sam wasn’t satisfied with letting the topic fizzle out. “Come on man,” he griped, rubbing a hand over his face, “we got you out of prison, so you owe us one. In fact, you owe us a lot. So, spill. What the hell is the deal with it? Were you Sokovian batman or something?”

That urged a dry laugh from the baron’s lips as he set his crystal glass on the counter with a little more force than was necessary. “Are you always so interested in your captives’ personal lives?” 

“Usually,” Bucky chimed in dryly. 

“I suppose I’m outnumbered,” Zemo sighed. The bile rising in his throat was easy enough to force down as he turned himself out on his stool to face the room. It wasn’t the right time for true weakness, not yet, but he couldn’t deny that painting himself in a desirable light and offering the pair honesty might give him the upper hand. So, he folded. 

Slowly he retrieved the purple mask from his coat and turned it over in his hands. It still fit after all the years it had sat gathering dust in his storage unit which was a blessing in its own right. It still served its original purpose too. That mask had seen horrors beyond imagination, had been washed clean of blood more times than could be counted. Did it hold the memories of the things it had seen within its fabrics as Zemo did in his mind? Or was it as naive as he had been at the time of its creation? He let out a bitter laugh. That was a question they would have asked him. 

As he exchanged his literal mask for one entirely emotional, Zemo leaned back on his stool and managed a smile. “How educated are you on Sokovian politics?” 

Sam shut his eyes again, letting his head lol back once more. “I went to public school, so I don’t think I even knew Sokovia existed until it didn’t,” 

“I know enough,” Bucky added. From his place leaning against the way, ever vigilant and ready to jump into an imagined battle, he turned to face Zemo and crossed his arms. “Hydra had fingers in the government there, more so than other places. There was a big power struggle in the ’90s when the king died, right? Because people wanted democracy, and they didn’t want the little shithead prince to take over,”

“Yes,” Zemo nodded, “My cousin Emil. I’m glad you’re familiar,”

 A spluttered laugh escaped Sam’s lips as he shot up. “I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this stuff anymore, but damn,” 

“He and I weren’t close,” Zemo waved his hand dismissively, and yet there was a strange sadness in his eyes. It wasn’t for his cousin, though. Not in the least. “But James was correct, there were riots in the streets when the king died. They were shut down quickly by the National Guard, though, who had more than a little help from Hydra’s favorite supersoldiers once they realized just how much power the citizens held. What street were you assigned to, James?” 

Bucky sucked in his cheeks, eyes falling to the floor, but before Sam could butt in and defend him he had muttered an answer. “I cleared the barricade at 18th Avenue, the second largest. Those kids fought valiantly,” 

Zemo hummed lowly. “And so they did,” 

“Okay, what does any of this have to do with your stupid purple mask?” Sam exclaimed.

He was sitting up fully now, face turned to where Zemo had stood from his stool and begun to round the bar. His mask still sat in a small ball on the marble. It seemed to be a member of the conversation all its own, silent and sure, drawing all three men together as it weaved a story from the past into the present with its very presence. 

“That mask served me well and hid my identity when I stood against the very men that were serving my family,” Zemo muttered, letting his fingers brush the fabric gently. The names of the lost sat heavy on his very soul even if they would never pass from his lips. 

Hans, Andrei, Ivan, Vladimir, Anton, Lazlo, Nicholas, little Sebastian… 

Y/N. 

“I was young then, too young for my own good,” he said softly, “naive and hopeful and convinced that the world was able to change for the better if I simply willed it to be… so when I discovered the connection between my family and Hydra I packed up my things, emptied my bank account, and moved into a tiny apartment with another like-minded friend, Hans Perlitch,” a soft laugh escaped him, genuine and youthful and all too honest, “We preached to the hungry masses of a world free from the thumb of the elite and all the while we would return home to a heated apartment and a stocked pantry. Still, we were well-liked and gathered a bit of a following. That was when everything changed, the early fall of 1997…” 

------------

“You know, for someone who claims to be as smart as you say you are, you’re quite a fool,” 

The voice came from the back of the room, smoke still hanging thick in the air from the cigarettes shared by the masses of students that had packed the tiny repurposed stockroom of the bar while Helmut had given his speech for the week.

He didn’t give the interloper the dignity of his full attention as he gathered a few of his scattered notes from the table that served as his soapbox. Still, he was in a generally good mood. Almost double the usual students had shown up for the meeting and a few had even chimed in to ask questions, so he took a deep breath and resigned himself to the fact that rooting out one ignorant opposer now would mean less work in the long run. “I’ve never claimed to be smart, so I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to,” 

A scoff came from the back of the room, but the person made no effort to come closer. “You can change your last name and present yourself as a member of the public all you want, but someday someone is gonna recognize that pretty face of yours, and your whole revolution is going to come crumbling to the ground,” 

Now that was enough to make him pause.

“How did you-”

“How could I not?”

It was sardonic, biting and harsh in the worst of ways. Everything about the tone made Helmut’s blood boil beneath his skin. He was not one who enjoyed being threatened or outdone. Still, the play was out of his hands now, should this strange intruder choose to ruin him. 

Biting his tongue, he finally turned to face them. “You have my attention, now what do you want?”

Across the room, the stranger remained unphased. They were relatively unremarkable, a bottle of cheap beer held firmly in their grip as they toasted to nothing and drank down the remaining dregs. With a smile and a chuckle, they propped their feet up on the small, round table before them. Something about that sight lit a fire in Helmut’s chest. He didn’t know who they were, or why he was there, but he was certain that he despised them already. 

“I don’t want anything,” They replied, and with a certain grandness reserved for a gamin mocking the bourgeoisie, they flourished with their hands, letting their booted feet drop to the ground as they stood and bowed. “I’m just saying that if you’re trying to convince people that you’re not the missing baron while you’re pretending to be all impoverished and rallying us commoners, you might want to change more than your last name and your fashion sense,”

Helmut gritted his teeth. “So what? Did you come here just to rub my face in it, or are you going to help me make a change?” 

That elicited a small snort from the stranger, but they did take the opportunity to traipse up to meet him at his table, leaning on the edge as they gazed up at him with a strange look in their eyes that he couldn’t quite identify. Their face was soft upon closer examination, alive and bright with a merriment that only came from intoxication. It made Helmut sneer involuntarily. 

Licking their lips, they murmured, “Make a change? Is that what you think you’re doing?” and as they let a giggle escape their parted lips Helmut lost it. 

He gasped them firmly by the front of their baggy sweater and dragged them in close. “At least I’m trying! What are you doing about it? Extorting the only person who might be able to actually make a change in this shithole of a country? That’s so much more helpful!” 

Their faces were inches apart as Helmut spat his words like venom and yet the stranger never stopped smiling. It was almost dopey, the grin that made its way across their lips. Helmut couldn’t stand it. 

“You know, baron,” they purred, setting down their empty bottle on the table beside them, “I like you. I might just stick around here for a little while, see what else about your little plan I can pick apart,” 

Never in his life had Helmut been less thrilled for someone to join his cause. 

“Why are you here anyway,” he groaned, releasing their shirt, “don’t you have something better to do with your Friday night than bother me?” and, as an extra jab, he added, “besides drinking yourself to death, of course,” 

The jab didn’t land, though. 

Taking it all in stride, the stranger simply grinned as if they too knew how badly they stank of cheap alcohol and was thrilled that someone had noticed. “Anton invited me. He said I should get out more, make some friends. It’s just a coincidence that I happened to recognize you while writing down an itemized list of all the things you got wrong while you grandstanded,” There was a pride in their words, a giddy energy burbling just beneath the surface of their skin, and suddenly it all made sense. 

Anton was newer to their group, a poet and a free thinker, something hard to find in the slums of Novi Grad. Still, he lightened the impromptu meetings up with his smile and would often spend the hour scrawling away fervently in his notebook as he immortalized each and every word that was said ���for posterity”. Helmut was sure that only someone as accepting as Anton would ever choose to spend their time with someone quite as insufferable as the person before him. Suddenly, and uncomfortably, he became aware that he didn’t even know their name. 

Swallowing down a nasty barb, Helmut sighed and offered up his hand, which the stranger took after a moment of pause. “And you are?” 

“Y/N,” They replied.

“Well, Y/N,” he spat their name from his mouth like a cherry pit, “I suppose I’ll have to get used to having a man like you-”

“Don’t call me that,” 

Helmut cocked his head to the side. “Pardon?”

“Don’t call me a man,” Y/N replied, “and before you ask I don’t want to be called a woman either. I’m just… I’m just Y/N, at least for now I am, it’s not like I’d give a rich brat like you my legal name while we’re mixed up in all this illegal, halfway-treasonous nonsense you insist on spouting. Maybe next week I’ll be something completely different and new. Until I tell you otherwise, though, I’m just Y/N, your highness,” 

“Do I dare dream that that means you might learn to respect my ideas?” Helmut sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face and choosing to ignore the sarcastic address in the hopes of letting such things fizzle and die without encouragement. Unfortunately, the goofy grin he got in return told him that was wishful thinking. 

Suddenly, the door opened and Helmut jumped away from his newest tentative ally (if you could call them that) to find Hans standing in the doorway. At his side was Andrei, the third in command of their little posse and final member of the leading triumvirate. They seemed shocked at his lateness and he was quick to try to gather himself up lest they see him as undone as he had found himself while facing the smallest taste of Y/N’s antagonistic nature. 

What had he even been doing when they interrupted him? It took him a moment to even gather himself together enough to remember. Scanning the room, his eyes fell on the papers 

Oh yes, he had been gathering up his notes…

He was quick to finish the task as Y/N sauntered away towards the door, preparing to push past the two men who stood beyond it. 

“You’re Anton’s friend, right?” Hans asked, back stiff. When Y/N nodded he did little more than give a noncommittal noise from the back of his throat. He had always been good with making things impersonal as he crunched the numbers and calculated probabilities. That was why Helmut liked him so much. 

Andrei, on the other hand, provided a needed warmth to their leadership in his outreach. 

He smiled warmly at Y/N and clapped a hand on their shoulder. “I hope we’ll be seeing more of you around,” 

Y/N was quick to offer one of their signature grins before winking back at Helmut in a way that made his stomach turn. “Oh, you’ll be seeing plenty of me from now on,” 

“We’re glad to have you,” Andrei replied as they passed. 

Before they fully left, though, they turned one last time to shoot Helmut a final smile. “Till next Friday, fearless leader,” 

Then, Y/N was gone, lost in the crowd of revelers beyond the small, smokey storeroom and, more importantly, beyond where Helmut’s eyes could follow. Somehow, despite everything, he missed having them there. He quickly chalked the feeling up to wanting to keep a close eye on people with the ability to thwart his best-laid plans and left it at that. Besides, he had no room in his heart for anything besides the betterment of Sokovia. 

Attachments meant the possibility of other priorities, and other priorities got people killed. He couldn’t have that happening on his watch. 

Thankfully, Hans snapped him out of his melancholy quickly. “Do you have everything sorted?” 

Helmut gave a short nod before tapping the pile of papers against the table and setting out towards the door, abandoning his thoughts and feelings about his interaction with Y/N at the table as he exited the room and gathered himself once more into the man his friends needed him to be. 

He could only hope that as long as he ignored Y/N’s jabs, they would soon grow tired and be gone within the month once they realized he was anything but afraid of their little games. 

------------

Much to Helmut’s abject disappointment, Y/N did not, in fact, stop showing up. 

They did quite the opposite. 

Instead of leaving him well enough alone, they showed up to Helmut’s meetings every single Wednesday and Friday for months, always piss drunk and happy to jeer at him from the corner, shouting their unwanted opinions and throwing off every meeting with their nonsense.

It was as if they did it just to get on his nerves, and get on his nerves they did.

As the seasons changed, from spring, to winter, to fall, and, finally, to the very beginnings of summer, so did the types of jabs Y/N decided to throw. 

In the beginning it was all business, comments on the idiocy of his plans for a protest based on common police routes or mocking jokes about his unending optimism when it came to fighting the national guard on a large scale, but as things began to get more and more serious on the path towards a full-fledged revolt, they seemed to aim more and more of their vitriol towards Helmut personally.

Sometimes it was a comment on his face or voice. “Ease up pretty boy,” they’d jeer, “keep talking like that and a guardsman might just do more than knock out a few of your perfect teeth,” Other times, which Helmut found infinitely worse, they’d throw a jab at his ability to lead them to victory. “The only thing that waits for us at the end of this is a painful death, especially if you’re not joking about those fucking super soldiers they supposedly have on ice,” 

The worst part was that half the time, Y/N was right. 

Helmut hated to admit it but it was true. More than once he had to go back and edit his plans to take into account a valid point thrown in by Y/N that he had never even considered. Hell, if it had been anyone else picking him to nothing he would have been grateful, but it wasn’t a well-meaning contributor trying to make the world a better place, it was a drunk who seemed to have one solitary life goal: making his life as miserable as possible. Perhaps that’s why they had devolved to frantic angry fucks behind crates of wine and massive cans of chocolate spread after the worst of their arguments…

Not that Helmut cared for them. 

No, he didn’t do attachments. Neither did Y/N. They hated each other, after all. 

It was just a way to release their tensions at the end of stressful meetings and nothing more. They were dealing with matters of life and death after all. It was only normal to seek comfort in the warmth of a companion, if he could even call Y/N a companion.

Whether he liked it or not, though, they were they to stay, even if they rarely made themself useful to the cause.

By early June, the drunkard had become close friends with all of the remaining students that still gathered at Helmut’s location for meetings instead of ending up at the offshoots that began to form once the group got too big to pile into the storeroom. Helmut loathed thinking about it, but Y/N was probably invited to more birthdays and Saturday night get-togethers than he ever was. There was something about their smile that drew people in. It made them feel wanted, welcome. Helmut hated that he never got those smiles from Y/N, only ever the mocking, blithe kind that they handed out freely to friends and enemies alike. 

He didn’t have time to think about that, though. Not with so much fast approaching as the first pears began to hang from branches down in the royal orchards, soft and ripe and ready to be harvested. Their growth marked King Hugo’s daily weakening. His death could come any day, and when it did, Helmut knew he would need to strike quickly if he truly hoped to overturn the system before the coronation of his cousin. That meant every meeting, now more frequently held throughout the week, was filled to the brim with preparations and planning. 

Well, preparations and planning and a healthy dose of Y/N and Helmut yelling at each other about nonsense across the room until Anton or Laszlo stepped in to pull Y/N down into their chair once more so the meeting could resume and they could all go home before things got too late and they were questioned in the street on why they were possibly out and about at such an hour.

Things were no different on that Friday meeting on June 4th. 

“Is there anyone here who isn’t already passing out pamphlets in the dorms at NVU tonight?” Helmut asked the room, scanning for a hand that didn’t belong to his least favorite member of the group. Unfortunately, none came up. “Come one now, at least one of you has to be free,”

Y/N groaned. “It’s like you don’t even see my hand waving up here, oh great one,” There they went again with the ridiculous terms of address that made Helmut’s blood sizzle in his veins. He remained composed, though. At least, as composed as he could be given the situation.

“I’m ignoring you because I remember the last time I asked your drunk ass to pass out pamphlets. What round of dominos were you on by the time I showed up to check on you, five or six?” 

The scalding remark was enough to get Y/N to sheepishly lower their hand, eyes downcast. It was getting easier and easier for Helmut to manage to shut them up the more frantic meetings got, and he couldn’t say he was displeased by that fact no matter why it was the way that it was. A quiet Y/N meant less chance for mistakes which meant fewer future casualties. Fewer casualties were good, it was what he strived for. 

Thankfully for Helmut, a new hand came up. 

It belonged to Vladimir, the oldest of the group by a year rounding out at an even 26 years old. He was dependable, definitely the kind who could be trusted to run an errand as important as the one Helmut needed to have done. The thought that Vladimir would be the one to pick up the shipment of smuggled guns was a relief. He made as much evident while explaining their next moves. 

Throughout the remainder of the meeting, though, Helmut couldn’t help but feel watched. It didn’t last long, half an hour at most. Still, there was the creeping itch on the back of his neck that told him there were eyes on him that he wasn’t aware of. Only when the group was dismissed and the feeling didn’t go away did he realize exactly who was staring at him so intently.

“I hope you know I really did intend to hand out those pamphlets,” Y/N said once they were the last one remaining, the rest of the group having trickled out to get food and drinks before heading home for the night. It wasn’t unusual for Helmut and Y/N to be the last two remaining at the end of a meeting. That didn’t mean he was happy about it though. 

So, instead of offering up an acknowledgment, he busied himself with plotting out a few potential spots to barricade the roads and hunker down when things got messy in highlighter on the large, laminated map of Novi Grad that had found its home on the big front table.

Y/N didn’t let up, though. They never did. “I know you don’t believe me, why would you, but I did. I just wanted to loosen them up before I started talking about overthrowing the damn government, which is a terrible plan, by the way. Have I told you that lately?”

“Only every time you see me,” Helmut sighed. 

Somehow, that made Y/N smile, soft and sarcastic and all too honest. Helmut didn’t know how they managed it. Secretly, he envied their neverending veracity. He’d never say that though. No, not while they crossed the floor and offered up a large bottle of whiskey. 

“A drink, dear leader?” 

“Absolutely not” He griped, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How many times do I need to remind you I don’t drink?” 

“Too many,” 

“For once, I agree with you,” 

A laugh passed through Y/N’s plush lips and, regrettably, Helmut couldn’t help but look up at them and relish in the sight. Their hair was a bit longer than they usually grew it out, a particularly unruly piece tucked behind their ear. Helmut hated that he noticed little details like that, despised the way he had come to know the soft dip of their cupid’s bow and the warmth of their palm. It was still Y/N, after all, for better or worse. He couldn’t help but allow himself those small recognitions though. It made him feel human, or something close to it. 

Still, all good things must come to an end, and they did when Y/N decided to speak again. “You know, the longer I show up for these stupid meetings, the more I think you’re actually gonna try to go up against those bastards,” 

Helmut should have known the barb was coming, but perhaps his better nature, if it truly existed, prevented that. Nevertheless, he sighed into his hands as he dropped his highlighter. “If I didn’t intend to actually try to change things, why would I have spent the last year of my life living in a shitty apartment and putting up with you?”

“You’d be surprised the things people do and never finish. Not everyone is as driven as you are,” Y/N huffed. They were quick to seat themself on the table once Helmut wasn’t actively working over it, smearing the highlighter away on their corduroy pants. “Nobody would blame you if you did tap out, you know. There are plenty of ways to make a change that don’t involve trying to take down the entire local Sokovian military force until they decide to give you what you want,”

“The changes we could make without a revolt wouldn’t really be changes, they’d just be the illusion of changes. You know that as well as I do,” Helmut replied with a groan. 

Two of the fingers from Y/N’s free hand, the one that wasn’t gripping their bottle like a lifeline, pointed towards the closed door behind them. “Is living under our current system and knowing they have fingers in a few less-than-savory organizations really worse than leading all of your friends to their deaths?” 

That struck a nerve in Helmut’s chest.

“And who says that has to be true?” 

“Come on, oh benevolent and giving baron,” Y/N’s voice was light yet pointed, like a million minuscule particles of glass flying through the air, “Do you really think we’re all gonna make it out of a fight with the big guys? And even if all of us do, can you say the same for the poor kids fighting where we aren’t?”

“I never said there would be no casualties-”

“What about Sebastian? The kid is barely 12 and I know you’re going to say that if he tries to show up, you’re gonna send him home, but I think you underestimate how many people will want even someone as young as him dead if they catch him in the street. Are you really going to let him risk his life for this? A half-assed plan for you to get revenge on your asshole relatives for making your childhood shitty?” 

“You know that’s not what this is about,” 

“Do I?” Y/N asked, and for just a second, no, a millisecond, Helmut wasn’t sure anymore. It was only a brief moment though, nothing more. The fact that they could make him doubt himself do deeply though… it was a problem. Calling it that was an understatement, but there was no other way to put it that truly worked. 

Helmut growled lowly and nodded, pushing the doubt from his mind. He was right. He had to be right. What would he be if he was wrong? A spoiled rich boy who was leading his friends to their dooms for nothing? 

No.

He had to be right, so he was. It was as simple as that.

“Is there anything else you need to critique, or can you leave me to work now?” Helmut asked. His patience had long since worn thin. That didn’t matter much to Y/N, though. They liked to wear him down thin, see just how far they could push without breaking his resolve. It was a game they were both intimately acquainted with. 

They played their hand expertly. “In fact,” Y/N smiled while they spoke, another mocking little grin that made Helmut’s stomach turn in the best and worst of ways, “there is one last thing I needed to ask about,” 

“I shudder to think what it might be,”

“How are you going to hide your face?” 

The question caught Helmut off-guard as he leaned back on his heels, letting his forearms brace against the edge of the table, his face scrunching up in thought. “What?” 

Y/N gestured absently towards his face before bringing their bottle to their lips. “I’m betting that your family will expect you to be out there whenever we actually stage our attack. If I’m right, that means the soldiers will be looking for you as their top priority, and if they find you, they’ll kill everybody around you just to get a chance to drag you back to mommy and daddy. Even if they don’t kill us on sight we’ll be charged for harboring you without turning you in to the proper authorities. So, how are you going to hide your face?” 

Once again, Helmut found himself thinking that, despite their drunken stupor, Y/N might just be right, and he hated it. He hated that he hadn’t thought of it first, hated that it was a valid point, hated that he had no satisfying way to answer the question they had posed. He hated it all. 

“I’ll just throw on a bandana,” He managed to grumble, and that was that. 

Or, that should have been that, but Y/N scoffed at the idea, setting down their bottle and leaning in close to Helmut’s face. After a moment of contemplation, they brought their hand up to his face and let their thumb come to rest on one of his largest beauty marks, the mole that rested high on the left side of his nose. “I’m afraid that a bandana isn’t going to cover up your absolutely blinding radiance, fearless leader,” There was a softness to their voice, a gentility Helmut was unused to. It made his chest hurt. He hated that too. 

“Are you going to offer a solution or are you just going to sit there telling me I’m stupid,” His words were a low groan. 

Much to his surprise, though, Y/N reached into their back pocket only to pass him a crumpled purple ball. It was obviously fabric, though the outside seemed to be coated in some sort of weatherproofing, and upon closer inspection, once unraveled, two distinct eyeholes became visible. 

“Is this-”

“A mask?” Y/N finished his sentence for him, “Yeah. I figured you wouldn’t think about it, so I whipped something up with some old polyester-based yarn and then I coated it so it wouldn’t be a problem if it got wet. It should still be breathable, though,” 

For the first time since he’d known them, Helmut looked up at Y/N and thought that they were incredibly valuable. He still hated them, of course he did. Y/N was Y/N and he was himself and they hated each other because they were, at their basest, entirely incompatible. 

At his silence, Y/N looked away, almost nervous. “I hope it’s alright,” 

“It’s more than alright,” Helmut said as kindly as he could possibly manage, “I hate to say this, but owe you one,” 

“Could I collect on that debt now?” Minutely, Y/N leaned closer, eyes falling to Helmut’s lips. 

He swallowed thickly. “You’re drunk, Y/N,” 

“I know I am. Isn’t that wonderful?” 

“Why would that be wonderful?” 

“Because that means I won’t remember this,” And, with that, they closed the gap between the two of them and captured Helmut’s lips in his own. 

Kissing Y/N wasn’t a new thing. They had kissed plenty of times during their frenzied hookups; soft kisses and hard kisses and long kisses and short kisses. Still, Helmut would never get used to the thrill of it. That was yet another thing he hated about Y/N. He could never quite get used to them. Every single interaction always felt as fresh and raw as their first. 

With a fervor only he could muster, Helmut kissed back and pushed at Y/N’s hips, pressing them harder into the table below, and just as quickly as he had gained a physical mask, he had lost his emotional one. 

------------

In the end, that was the last time Helmut had slept with Y/N.

They had fallen together, two sweaty half-dressed bodies laid out over the laminated map of Novi Grad, and then Y/N had gathered themself up and left with little more than one last kiss pressed to Helmut’s temple. By the time he himself had gotten home to Hans, the news of King Hugo’s death was almost an hour old.

After a few phone calls to lay the final plans and keep every sect of their band of revolutionaries on the same schedules, things rolled into motion like a finely tuned machine. 

On the morning of June 5th, the barricades rose and Helmut wore his mask proudly as his people fought for freedom in the streets he had walked since childhood. Y/N was beside him. 

By the early hours of June 6th, they were the only barricade that remained. 

Helmut should have known that once things got too challenging that the super soldiers would be released, he should have anticipated that they’d be waiting for the backlash once king Hugo passed, and yet he hadn’t. He had blindly walked into the disaster with his eyes wide open. There was no one to blame but himself. 

Little Sebastian, just one month shy of 13 years old, was dead, shot at long distance when he had attempted to grab a fallen box of bullets that had toppled over the peak of the jumble of hoarded furniture and scrap metal. Anton was dead too, taken at gunpoint while he stood guard at a side street and executed with his eyes bound and a sonnet on his lips. Even Ivan, stoic and strong Ivan who bound his knuckles in boxer’s tape and sparred with Helmut when he needed to clear his head, had been caught in the initial fire and bled out over the course of the day, dying with a smile on his face as he leaned on a discarded chair.

I never said there’d be no casualties.

His own words rang in his ears, taunted him with every bullet he shot and every breath he dragged into his aching lungs. How had he ever been so naive to believe that even one life could be expendable?  

The real lowest point came at almost midnight when Helmut picked up a call from a student on another barricade only to met with screaming. “Winter is coming!” They had wailed, “Winter is coming!” and then they had died, right there over speakerphone. Helmut had the good sense to hang up once it got to the worst of it, the strangled gurgled growing to be too much for the group. 

As things truly settled, in those hours so early that the world still considered them night, Helmut still stood vigilant. That’s when Y/N finally approached. 

They wore no smile, not like usual. Instead, their face was stoic as they came to stand beside Helmut and waited silently for a moment. He took the chance to beat them to the punch. 

“You don’t have to tell me you were right. I know you were,” I hate you for it.

Y/N offered a gentle, humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t rub it in at a time like this, but yeah, I was,” I know you do. I hate myself for it too. 

Slowly, Helmut brought a hand to his face, scrubbing the exhaustion away from his eyes. How had it all come to this? 

“How much time do you think we have,” Y/N was speaking before he had a chance to say anything more, saving him from having to elaborate on his admission. He was grateful. Grateful to not be alone, grateful to be spared more shame, grateful to see Y/N’s gentle smile one more time. He’d never show it though. No, he was to be the fearless leader till the end. 

So, he sucked in a deep breath and stared out into the starry sky. “A few hours at most. I’m surprised they haven’t made another advance after the last big push in the evening when we lost…” he swallowed thickly, “when we lost Anton,” 

Licking their lips and pushing back their hair, Y/N sighed. “For what it’s worth, for a minute there I really believed you could do it,” 

It was a bigger compliment than it seemed and they both knew it, but neither acknowledged it. Instead, Helmut gestured absently towards the half-full bottle of wine in Y/N’s hand. “You mind if I have a drink of that?” 

A grin spread across their lips, but it was as far from mocking as was possible as they passed the bottle over. 

“I never thought I’d see the day,”

Lifting the bottom of his mask to take a swig, Helmut groaned at the deep, bitter burn of it. “Don’t get used to it,” He replaced the fabric quickly before passing the bottle back. 

“I’ll try not to,” 

“Happy 20th, by the way,” Y/N added, “this is a hell of a way to celebrate, but it’s very you,” 

Helmut froze as the realization sunk in that it was, in fact, the 6th of June, even if it had only been that way for a couple hours. 

There had been a party planned. It was just an intimate thing, cake and a few card games in the afternoon with his closest friends, but that was long behind them now, forgotten in favor of the larger cause. To Y/N, though, there was never a larger cause than Helmut himself. He was realizing that slowly. In a bitter moment of realization, he laughed. 

“What?” 

“You weren’t invited,” 

They quirked up an eyebrow. “Huh?” 

“To the birthday party. I didn’t invite you,” 

“Well, I’m here now, and this is a pretty good party if I do say so myself. You and me and the revolution all jam-packed together in the middle of a street. Wouldn’t it be cool if the new democracy was born on the same day you were?” 

He smiled softly. “It was meant to be,” 

“I got you something, you know, even though I knew I wasn’t invited to the party,” Y/N added breathlessly. “It was stupid, just some dumb sweater with a whole bunch of random ass quotes from Machiavelli all over the back, but Anton and I saw it when we visited the better side of town to hang up those fliers for the march a few weeks ago and we knew you had to have it. It’s sitting all wrapped up on my front table,” 

“It’s a shame I won’t get to open it today,”

They nodded distantly. “Yeah, a real shame…”  

Then, they were quiet again, staring up at the stars mere feet away from each other and yet miles apart, farther than they’d ever been. 

Y/N cut through the soundless night first, but not before several silent minutes had passed, filled with only the distant chatter of their surviving friends and the gentle whistling of the breeze over the rooftops above. “When everything goes to shit… with the universe, I mean, not now. Everything’s already gone to shit now. But that notwithstanding, when the world goes kaput and the sun explodes, we’re all gonna be starstuff together, right? You and I and Sebastian and Andrei and Anton and… all of us. We’re gonna be nothing but matter and dust out there in space,” 

“Is there a point to this or are you just having an existential crisis?” Helmut muttered, but there was no bite to it. 

They just chuckled as their eyes scanned the sky. 

“I was just thinking, if all of us are gonna be nothing more than matter and dust and star stuff, it only makes sense that someday, even if it’s a billion years from now, a little part of each of us will be together again as part of some supernova in the sky to be seen by somebody else, and, when that day comes, I think I’m gonna know, and everything is gonna be alright,” 

He hummed thoughtfully, running a hand absently over the thick purple knit of his mask, relishing in the gummy softness of the coating on his bare fingertips in the cooling air. “That makes no sense,” 

“Do you think I don’t know that?” 

“Still, it’s a pretty thought. Anton would have liked it,” 

“Yeah, he would have…”  

Helmut let his eyes fall from the sky to his companion. They looked so fragile, so broken, that he could barely stand himself, because, if he hadn’t made the stupid choices to lead them here, they never would have felt that way. They’d be curled up in bed somewhere, asleep and safe, far from the cold darkness of the night at his side. It made him sick. 

How could he possibly put that to words? How could he apologize for denying every nudge, every chance to turn around? He couldn’t, and it made him as bitter as the wine that Y/N sipped from absently before turning to face him once again. 

“Hey, Helmut,” they whispered, and his breath caught in his throat because how dare his voice sound so sweet on their lips? How dare they keep that joy, the joy of hearing his name whispered with reverence on the early morning breeze, real and caring and perfect, away from him for so long? “Do you think I could take a chair from the barricade?” 

Just as soon as it had come, the joy was gone. “Why would you need a chair?” 

Y/N shrugged. “I want to go sleep,” 

“Why can’t you sleep out here?”

“I don’t want to be woken up,”

“We wouldn’t wake you until the fighting was starting back up again-” 

“Oh, my darling fearless leader,” their voice was empty, tinny and cold, “I don’t ever want to be woken up,” 

Their words pierced Helmut straight through the heart he didn’t know he had. It made him feel so much, so many emotions he had simply not allowed himself out of a misplaced sense of self-preservation. “But we’ll need every able body ready to fight when they send in the super soldiers if we even want a chance at making it out of this,” 

The smile that crossed Y/N’s lips didn’t come from a place of joy, nor did it mock Helmut for his blind and dying faith. It was simply there because they did not know how to do anything else. “There’s no making it out of this. Not for me, at least. For you, though… you still have a chance,” 

Denial and anger went hand in hand as Helmut sucked his teeth, grinding his molars and letting his hand ghost over his pistol hanging at his hip. 

“So you’d really rather die like a coward than take a stand against the evils in the world?” he spat, harsh and cold as the air around them. “Pathetic,” 

“Don’t do this now, Helmut, not after we were finally getting somewhere. I don’t want to die with things like that,” 

“I’m not the one who’s giving up,” he snapped.

He just needed… something. A reaction. A reason to keep fighting when the war was already lost. Anything. Why couldn’t Y/N light the same fire in him that they’d kindled for months? The fire that had driven him to spend sleepless nights poring over maps and plans and speeches and guns. If he just pushed a little harder, just hit the right button, they’d light it again, he just knew it. 

“Please,” the word fell fragile from Y/N’s lips. Not a beg, just a soft plea. 

It fell on deaf ears. 

“You know what? You can take your chair!” Helmut was shouting then, loud enough that the remaining students on the barricade could hear every word. “Take your chair and leave us to fight while you die in your sleep. If we make it through the day I’ll put the bullet between your eyes myself. Now get out of here! I don’t want to see you again,” There was a cruelty to it, an edge that he thought might just push them off the edge. Still, it wasn’t cruel without reason. Helmut thought that maybe, if he was lucky enough, Y/N would simply leave. 

They had no stakes in the results of the revolt, no serious lasting ties that would get them hunted down in the weeks to come if things came to a gruesome end. If he bid them to leave, to disappear from his sight, there was a chance, however small, that they would disappear into the shadows with a chance to live. 

Against all odds, though, Y/N smiled one of those empty smiles again and drank down the very last of their wine.

“As your baronship commands,” they whispered, before departing to gather up a chair and disappearing into the restaurant where they had met so many times before. 

Then, they were gone, and Helmut was free to sink to the ground as his heart broke and mended and broke again. 

------------

As expected, the super soldiers arrived only a couple of hours past Y/N’s departure.

Their arrival was silent, only marked by the slow thud of retreating national guardsmen in the distance. They weren’t needed there anymore, and the less they saw the better. 

Helmut watched his friends fall one by one in the panic, the barricade falling to ruin as the soldiers- if they could even be considered that, soldier seemed a far too human term for the monstrous creatures before him- pulled it apart with their bare hands. From there it was just a game of who was caught first in the insanity that ensued. 

Nicholas; caught a bullet through the neck. 

Vladimir; thrown against a solid stone wall at a speed near impossible.

Lazlo; impaled on a bit of broken wood as the wood exploded. 

Andrei; shot 3 times point-blank in the chest as he held the door closed to buy Hans and Helmut a little more time with a love confession for his closest companion falling from his mouth. 

Hans…

Helmut didn’t know how Hans died. 

He had never asked. All he knew that the shots had come as he wailed Andrei’s name, and then there was a deathly silence in the golden light of the morning sun as Helmut stood alone at the back of the storeroom, taking in the 4 walls that had held the best year of his life. 

What remained now? 

A failed dream? A pile of bodies? A single survivor waiting for his death?

Helmut didn’t know. He couldn’t fathom it. 

The two soldiers sent to finish the job were nameless and nondescript as they slipped through the door, armed with long, silent rifles and hidden by masks not too dissimilar from Helmut’s own. They did not speak, not a word. Instead, they simply raised their guns and took aim at Helmut as he closed his eyes and thought of-

“Wait!”

The word rang out heavy and made the two executioners snap to the side.

“I’m with him! I’m with the revolution! Down with King Emil! Down with the monarchy!”  

There, hidden among the crates and shelves of canned goods and glass bottles, was Y/N. 

They looked objectively awful, eyes rimmed red and hair mussed up and coated with oil. Still, it was the most beautiful sight Helmut had ever seen. 

It was only right that they go together. 

Slowly, Y/N made their way across the room to take their place at Helmut’s side. “I know you said you never wanted to see me again, but I assume you’ll make an exception for the circumstances,”

“I never meant it,” he whispered back, and Y/N smiled, “You have to know, I never meant it,” 

“Even if you did, I never would have listened-”

Suddenly, one of the soldiers spoke, taking aim straight for Helmut down the barrel of their gun. 

“Quiet,” 

Y/N only paused for a moment before pressing their hand into his. “Kiss me, Helmut?”

Who was he to deny them? 

Pulling off his mask, he pressed his lips to theirs and clasped their hand like it was the last thing he would ever do. When he pulled away, they were smiling one of their old, mocking, joyous smiles. 

“Oh, fearless leader… I win,” 

The words were a whisper of air against his lips. Before he could fathom the true meaning of them the pair was peppered in a spray of gunfire as Helmut closed his eyes to the world for what should have been the final time. 

When he opened them, Y/N was struck dead at his feet. 

------------

It was their final winning move, he later realized, the checkmate to a game of chess he never believed would end. 

In the end, Y/N had been as correct as they always were.

All the same, he hated them for it. 

Some nights, in the darkness of his room back at the summer estate where his father has imprisoned him until further notice, he wondered if Y/N had kissed him because they wanted to or if they had done it to get him to remove his mask long enough that the soldiers would recognize him and spare him. It wouldn’t surprise him. Y/N did have a tendency to be right about things like that. 

Ghosts haunted him often.

Not full specters, he would wish for something so merciful. Instead, he saw flashes in the periphery of his vision. Outside his window, he’d hear a child’s laugher and be so sure it was Sebastian until he looked out to find that it was simply a group of the staff’s children playing ball. Or, when the assigned guardsman brought him his dinner, he would glance down the hall and be so sure that a man at the other end was Lazlo, preparing to face a board of proctors as he delivered a thesis he would never write. It never was, though. It never would be. 

Worst of all, when he laid awake in his bed as the clock struck twelve, he would feel them beside him. 

They had never slept together in the literal sense. Whatever they had shared (love, Helmut would come to realize after many, many years with Heike, painfully hollow without the same kind of flame. He had loved them and simply never known how to show it) was purely physical and contained within that bloody, bloody storeroom that he was sure would be torn down someday soon as they glossed over the casualties and stamped out the evidence. Still, he could feel Y/N beside him in the darkness despite the fact that they had never been there. 

Their head on his chest, their body pressed flush to his side, their hot breath fanning over the fabric of his nightshirt, creating a patch of damp warmth in its wake…

It was maddening, an eternal punishment he was doomed to endure for his stupidity. Nevertheless, if he let his brain wander to a better place, a different lifetime, it was almost comforting to feel their ghost wrapped tightly to his side. 

When he woke, though, the loss of the dream was more maddening than living through it. 

Almost a month after the failed revolution, in the hot and heady days of early July when the wasps buzzed loud at the window and the skies were filled with thunderclouds most of the time, his father finally came to speak to him.  

“I trust you spent your birthday how you wished to,” Heinrich said plainly. There was no question to it, just an empty sentiment. 

Mockery wasn’t nearly as pleasant when delivered by his father and not his lover, Helmut thought distantly. 

“On the contrary, I spent my birthday watching everyone I cared about die,” he snapped back. 

Heinrich didn’t offer any sort of commiseration. He simply shrugged and continued on with what he was there to say, not that his son minded much. The less time he spent there the more time Helmut would have to himself, which was preferable to listening to his father’s droning. 

“You’re lucky to be alive. The family is on thin ice thanks to that stunt you pulled, but with time we’re all sure that you’ll become an asset if you simply learn to use that fire for something more… productive,” 

Who the ‘we’ was went unspoken. It didn’t need to be.

Helmut sighed and looked out the window at the rain falling on the garden. Nicholas would have loved the gardens at this home. He would have pressed every flower at least once in the little book he kept beside him filled with the pieces of the world that he collected as he passed through it. Where would he be kept and collected now that he was dead? 

“I’ve called in a favor and enrolled you for military service. You’ll be tested to find your strengths, sent where you’re best suited, and trained from the ground up. Once we know you can be trusted, you might even lead your own squadron and make some friends more of your caliber,” 

It took all Helmut’s strength to clench his teeth and hold back the rage he felt in his chest. “When do I leave?”

“As soon as you’re married,” 

Married. 

The word struck a bolt through the rage and dissolved it, giving way to pure shock. “What the hell do you mean?” 

Crossing his arms, Heinrich took to pacing a 2-foot line back and forth in front of the door. “We’ve found a suitable match from a good standing Sokovian family, and they’re willing to look past your little misstep as long as their daughter becomes a baroness and is adequately involved in society. She’ll be here in three days time and you’ll have a week to get acquainted before the wedding,” 

“I never said I was going to get married,” Helmut growled, “You can’t make me get married,” 

His father stared down at him from above like he was a little boy again. “I can make you do whatever I want. Don’t think I didn’t hear about what happened with that freak they shot down at your side! No son of mine is ending up with someone like-”

In an instant, Helmut had rushed across the room and punched his father square in the jaw. As blood poured down the man’s face, a hiss escaped his son’s lips. 

“Never talk about Y/N like that again,”

“So it had a name!”

That earned him another punch, but Heinrich escaped Helmut’s grip quickly, cupping a hand beneath his nose to catch the redness that poured from his face. As he retreated out the door, he turned to deliver his final verdict. “You have three days to get your act together, and maybe, just maybe, if you don’t fuck this up, I’ll let you know where they dumped all your little friends to rot,” And with that, he shut the door behind him and left Helmut to pick up the pieces of his soul.

------------

The tale Zemo wove was a sad one (sans most of the details about Y/N. That was a story whose finer details he would take to his grave) and as he came to a close, the purple fabric between his fingers was a tether to reality. The coating was a bit old, thinner in places than it should have been, but it had remained steady and strong for over 20 years and he didn’t know the first place to start repairing it. 

Y/N would have known, they’d been the one to do it in the first place after all, but they were long gone, not even a ghost anymore. Just a name and a face forgotten to time as all the other impoverished students were, buried in an unmarked grave in a place he never learned. It was all that remained of them. The only thing that proved they were ever there at all. 

“You know the rest of the story,” he added firmly. “I married Heike, climbed the ranks of the military, had my son… and they were simply lost, an unwritten page in the history of a country that no longer exists,” 

Suddenly, though, a deep voice cut in through the heavy air between them. 

“Ciczheni,”

“Pardon?” Zemo asked softly, pouring himself a final tumbler of whiskey and stuffing the mask back in his pocket. 

“We buried them in Ciczheni,” 

He nearly dropped the bottle in his hand. 

Bucky was quick to continue, voice low and eyes clouded with memory in a way that only the two of them would ever truly understand. “It’s a tiny town along the border to the Czech Republic. There’s a big open field there, or at least there was, marked with a flat grave marking it as a burial site. I don’t remember the name on it, some random pseudonym, but they’re all there, all 57 dead and buried in the ground under that rock,” 

Helmut gave a stiff nod. “I see,” Then, in one long gulp, he downed the whole two fingers of whiskey straight and relished in the way it burned down his throat. When the glass was empty and set down safely on the counter again he was quick to school his expression as he turned away. “I’m afraid all that excitement has exhausted me for the day. Goodnight, gentlemen,”

He was gone down the hallway into his bedroom before the pair had a chance to say another word. 

Ciczheni. 

As he undressed, he smiled softly, letting a few errant tears drip down his cheeks. 

They had been born and raised in that tiny farming town. Sometimes, when he had let himself listen in on their conversations with some of the other members of their small, tight group, they would talk about how much they wanted to return someday, once they’d made enough money to live on for a while if they supported themself by growing a small garden and maybe keeping some chickens. The thought, even then, had always made him smile. Just Y/N and a cottage and a chicken or two. 

Sometimes, if he was especially indulgent, he would imagine himself there with them. Sharing a home. 

Making a family. 

His biological family, the one he had created with marriage and his own flesh and blood, was something different entirely. He had loved them. God, how he’d loved them. Still, it was never the same. He was never at peace. He was never home. There would always be a bitterness there, as bitter as the dark summer wine he’d drunk the night he’d turned 20, a resentment that came with the obligation of creating a place in his heart for them when there never should have been. 

For Y/N, though... 

He sighed, wrapping himself in his robe and slipping on a pair of fleece pajama pants before crawling between the sheets and laying flat on his back, eyes to the ceiling. 

Things wouldn’t have been happy all the time. Hell, they probably wouldn’t have been happy even most of the time. Still, they would have been where they belonged, seated firmly at his side for the rest of their long, wonderful lives. 

Ciczheni, he repeated in his mind, then the memorial for Novi Grad. It was a minor detour, adding barely 2 hours more to the whole trip when he had plenty more to spare. 

Ciczheni, then Novi Grad, and then, finally, peace. 

Beside him, he could feel the phantom limbs wrap around his body, resting their weight firmly on his chest where the guilt and shame and terror built by the day, and for the first time in almost a decade they were not Heike’s. Perhaps, if all went according to plan, they wouldn’t be phantom much longer. 

Or, if not, he would wait. He would wait a billion years to disintegrate into stardust and spread across the cosmos in search of them. 

Either way, when they were together again, he’d know. 

They both would. 

--------

a/n: I’m not crying, you’re crying. 

TAGLIST: @tatestripedsweater​ , @elaineygrace​ , @multiyfandomgirl40 ,  @lovelymischief , @rami-malek-trash , @avgravy​ , @wh0re-4-techno​ , @forcebros​ , @sugarsweetkiss​ , @grandmuffinsharkbailiff​ , @killsandthrills​ , @novasstudy​ , @thnksfr-ptrkstmp​ , @inmate-marmalade​ , @alanathedeer​ , @your-pixels-are-showing​ , @shit-post-things​ , @bbarton​ , @sux-ubus​ , @halefirewarrior​ , @janelongxox​ , @rax-writes​ , @wondermia69​ , @booklover2929​ , @lol-im-done​ , @rorodendra​ , @spookycereal-s​ , @viviace​ , @wxrmh0le​ , @whatawildone​ , @mush-room-princess​ , @aliyahsfantasticlife​ ,  @gredvb​ , @chipster-21​ , @whatawildone​ , @cloud-of-roses​ , @bry-97​ , @mossybank​ , @simsiddy​ , @xxspqcebunsxx​ , @be-cautious-around-bri​ , @metaphorical-love-for-a-car​ , @frothonthedaydreams​

[a-dragons-journal]

tbh the only thing about my dnf that i actually enforce is no minors but that's because i'm an erotica artist and sex worker and sometimes talk about it. Even tagged I don't want the chilluns seeing it. I can't stop a transphobic racist from following me if they really want to but I can block and put a big beacon that their nonsense won't be tolerated for the sake of making the people it affects feel safer.

Yeah that's entirely fair tbh - I'm never against the "hey we talk about sex stuff sometimes" warning/18+ bar.

To be perfectly honest, if I may soapbox for a moment: the "it's not actually to keep transphobes/racists/etc. out, it's to let the people affected by that know I'm safe" argument has rubbed me wrong since I first heard it, and I finally put words to why today - there's two reasons, really.

First, I don't like the Internet's recent trend toward performative activism, and I feel like DNIs are a part of that - I've seen enough people actually saying "if you don't have a DNI I don't trust you/you're creepy" to be skeeved out by it. I don't like people demanding/expecting me to announce all my political opinions right out the gate. It should be my decision whether or not I want to share sensitive information about myself (and if you're scoffing at the idea of a political opinion being "sensitive information" - if it can get you harassed and attacked by a complete stranger, it's sensitive information).

(And, oh by the way, this is going to be an unpopular statement, but the only way to change a (mildly-to-moderately) bigoted person's mind is by interacting with them, and I don't mean in a debate (usually). The easiest way to get someone to realize their bigoted worldview is wrong is to accidentally befriend them without either of you realizing that your opinions clash there, so that they learn you're a person (and a good person that they actually like) before they learn you're part of a minority group they think they hate - because then when they do learn that, they have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of those two things clashing, and frequently "maybe I was wrong" comes out on top and they change for the better because of it. I'm not saying people of minorities are obligated to expose themself to bigotry for the sake of that possibility - absolutely not - but I've seen in person how effective it can be and stripping away even the possibility of it by expecting everyone to abide by this judge-based-on-a-five-word-DNI thing is not something I'm a fan of, honestly.)

Second, and probably more importantly, unfortunately all "it's to let the people affected by [bigotry] know I'm safe" means is that the bigot in question only has to put up a DNI to make the people they're planning to target lower their guard. And I've seen that happen multiple times, and I've seen posts by, for instance, TERFs laughing about how all they have to do is put a "transphobes DNI!!1!" at the bottom of their cryptoTERF rhetoric posts, and suddenly a bunch of "trans-supporting" people are reblogging it because they lose all sense of reading comprehension, because the DNI made them feel safe. Suddenly all they have to do when the dogwhistles are pointed out is point at their DNI and say "but I can't be transphobic/racist/etc., see?? it says "transphobes/racists/etc. DNI" right there!! you're just reading too far into it!"

People seem to forget that people can, will, and do lie on their DNIs and bios. Predators will lie about being "under 18" in order to make minors they're interacting with feel safe and let their guard down. TERFs will lie about "transphobes DNI!" to ensure their crypto rhetoric spreads and gets a foot in the door of trans-supporting people's thought processes. There is nothing guaranteeing that someone actually believes what their DNI implies they believe. It's an illusion of safety that just doesn't - and, really, can't - exist on the internet, by the internet's nature. And people thinking they're safer than they really are is what gets people hurt because they stopped being careful. I'm not saying people need to (or should) live in fear, but relying on DNIs is not a sustainable solution, imho.

But that's just my opinion, of course - take what you like, leave what you don't.

[minkydinks]

I will say upfront that while I'm gonna argue my piece about Deathbringer here, it should be said that I'm not here to shit-sling or convince anon that they're wrong. You are entitled to your feelings about DB and I'm not going to sit here and say that you're evil or anything for not liking him. Nobody is invalid for thinking he's shitty.

Although I think a point should be made that literacy is very important and I think anon missed a key part of Glory & DB's relationship from start to end. So,

In defense of Deathbringer:

The thing with DB is that he's sort of almost the WoF fandom's Judy Hopps & Nick Wilde. He's a sly fox trying to survive and she's a person trying desperately to prove to the whole world that she's capable of, and worth more, than they think she is.

The issue with them, is that a LOT of their dynamic is heavily implied and not directly spoken in narration or dialogue. It's implied incredibly early-on in their meeting that Glory finds him attractive in some form, and this feeling is mutual between them; whether Glory appears as a RainWing or not, being disguised as an IceWing. Their banter isn't genuine animosity, and this is obvious to most people who understand their character archetypes. Glory is just as cunning as DB, if not more so. She is more than capable of accurately determining whether or not another dragon is a genuine threat to herself or her friends & family, and she had been on the fence when she realized that his original order from the queen was to kill her and a handful of the other dragonets.

She would have been perfectly content to file him away under "dragons that are undoubtedly going to ruthlessly chase down and attempt to kill us", but Glory in all her intelligence and curiosity watched and waited to see what he would do, and saw that he really didn't care for doing that.

I believe that while he ultimately contributed to the attempted genocide of the RainWings, he himself admitted that he was never one for the idea, and thought the NightWings could have placed their limited energy into much more valuable things. As soon as he felt confident & free in doing so, he helped Glory whilst barely knowing her as a person, freeing her and helping her free other RainWings. To the NightWing kingdom, that kind of treason comes with a hefty price if caught, and he still put his life on the line for a cause he thought made more sense to him. We have to also understand that the dragon world is much different than ours, and we would react differently than our soapbox morals would want, if we were in that situation ourselves.

DB says himself, speaking to Flame in the NW dungeon, that to be a successful assassin, you have to be able to kill dragons and not care, and that involves doing it for what you believe is an incredibly good reason. You have to believe in that reason 100%, or you'll care about the dragon whose life you planned on taking, and then you won't be capable of going through with it. Deathbringer finding every excuse to get around killing any of the dragonets is proof that he did NOT believe in the cause the NightWings had put upon him.

Glory is more than capable of dictating her personal space. She has full control over her bubble, and who's allowed in it or not. That's been noted several times throughout the series since the very beginning. The fact that DB is still alive & allowed to enter that bubble consequence-free, is implication enough that she doesn't actually feel like her boundaries are being crossed.

It speaks volumes especially because even the dragons she grew up with under the mountain, whom she loves very much, are not tolerated in her personal space for very long. DB understands personal space, implied by him clearly not invading the personal space of anyone else. His "invading" Glory's space is purely out of mutual enjoyment for each other's company, and if she really didn't want him there, he wouldn't be. Her mock-annoyance is just that; playful and unserious knockdowns that DB himself enjoys just as much as she does. He doesn't infantilize her, quite literally the polar opposite. He treats her like the royalty she is, revering her actions and words; but he treats her the way he's accustomed to treating royalty. Protecting and serving, offering council, and looking out for her when he thinks she might make a decision against her best interests (which is something Glory is KNOWN for doing, and something that she knows she needs to work on).

It never helps that these types of dynamics aren't explicitly written, because these are things that the average reader (especially young readers) will miss. A lot of readers will look at Glory and DB's relationship and think it came out of nowhere, and that Glory is out of her mind for not killing him for the way he treats her. But all of that is missing the whole... everything. There's an unbelievable amount of subtext to their interactions, which is heavily eluded to in the narration (and for some reason a lot in Sunny's internal dialogue during book 5?), but more than that, there's SO much subtext to the entire series. It's easy to miss a lot. I've read the series so many times over, it's almost second nature to think of the subtext, but I can see why readers who may have only read the books once before moving on to fandom content might not fully register all of it.

More than anything I wish people would realize that these character archetypes are real. There are real people in real relationships similar to this, and they aren't abusive just because you don't think you could be in the same position and be happy; we all have different needs. They're fine. Not everything has to be super uncomplicated. Its okay for relationship dynamics to be a little unexpected and a tad bit hard to understand for some people. That's just how life is sometimes.

Sorry for going on for fucking EVER but I don't see this talked about with much nuance very often. Again, not trying to press OP anon to change their mind, they're fine and I'm not trying to start any fights. I appreciate the prompt honestly! Fun to talk about

Deathbringer is an annoying piece of dragon dung who CONSTANTLY infantilizes Glory and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of personal space. At all. He thinks he’s charming and magnificent but really he’s just another crappy NightWing who supported genocide against RainWings and him falling in love with one doesn’t make him get off the line scot-free. I want Glory to just venom spit his face one day.

.

[blankd]

Thoughts on The Mitchells vs the Machines

I watched it a while ago and kept forgetting to post my thoughts on it, but some posts here on tumblr recently reminded me.

I disagree with the majority takeaways I see but is that not the spice of life?

As a standalone movie its inoffensive and the writing of it will likely exit my brain in a few months.  However I can appreciate that the visual style was different from the typical fare and the mixture of 2d elements for visual embellishments were mostly enjoyable and well-suited for Katie as the POV character.

It's a bit "hyper" for my liking, but that's fine, it's likely intended for an audience that's accustomed to the flood that is the current norm of the internet.  It was probably made with GIFable moments in mind and that is the most frequent content that is shared about it, so it certainly succeeded in that regard.

My more critical take is that jokes are delivered at the expense of what could be more authentic themes.  Quips are made that draw attention to character flaws or undercut questions the movie should try to answer, but inevitably they are ignored to move onto the next joke or story beat.

The rest would fall more into spoiler territory, so read more for that.

--"They Were Both In the Wrong"

I personally disagree heavily with the thrust of how "both sides" were wrong when the degrees are disproportionate.

I've seen claims that Katie was "as in the wrong" as her father, but she's incredibly patient to the man who does her material harm.

I've yet to have seen someone say specifically what Katie did *wrong* to her father that is at all on par with the *years* he at best hasn't been able to interact with her or worse, actively refused to engage with her interests.

I would generously venture that her flaw was that she was more willing to communicate her feelings to strangers, but she easily talks to her mother and brother- her brother even helps her with her movies and she happily engages him with his own interests, which pivots the point back to how her father is physically/emotionally unavailable and led to the erosion and distance between the two of them.

Due to this, MvM comes across more as Kaite having to do so much more to guide her father rather than a more mutual learning experience for the both of them.

--"Technology that [Dis]Connects"

It's probably beyond the scope and intent of the film, but I was surprised there was no examination about why technology can be more alluring than interacting with physically present people.

For better or worse, the internet can be used as a means of supplementing the validation and acceptance of family.  It can also lead to no longer connecting to people around them because of the validation high of appealing to a constantly 'awake' sea of strangers- the spotlight is warmer than the cold reality that they are not the internet image they have cultivated.

For example, the rival 'perfect' family was never revealed to be a carefully constructed highlight reel that Mrs. Mitchell envies, they really were actually that perfect- because that provides an easier punchline than an examination or acknowledgement of how the internet can create unhealthy expectations.

I also can't expect MvM to acknowledge the reality that LGBTA+ people who are rejected by their family resort to seeking a new one through the internet because it would be much harder to redeem/rehabilitate a man defined by being tethered to "old values" if he was homophobic instead of "overprotective" and apprehensive at his daughter's departure from home and her dubious art career.

But hey we got that quick line at the end that Katie likes a girl, so that's a diversity win or something.

(To be clear I'm not expecting a whole parade or even an A or B-plot dedicated to it, but I think it should be acknowledged that this kind of "surprise inclusion" is very easily erased with a change of audio and would be completely unsurprised if this were the case for countries that are homophobic.  People can be happy about it, but it is dishonest to pretend that this is a bolder statement than it is.)

In that sense, I do and don't hold MvM to taking a "safer" route about how family always has your back, but this still feels like an important omission considering the focus on technology and its dynamic with the Mitchells.

I will also say that it was also bizarre, to me at least, that the obvious route that her father sees the value of home videos didn't become an active point between him and Katie.  Or that Mr. Mitchell's carpentry never really amounts to anything despite having a sentimental wooden moose.

Lastly, I think it's an unintentional, but it's interesting that Katie going to college to pursue her passion is viewed as a Terrible Thing by her father even though if he had his way, he'd be ostensibly living in the woods away from everyone else except his wife.

This isn't a problem, people are a collection of contradictions, but It's fascinating to see what the *narrative* treats as a difficult sacrifice while simultaneously pulling at heartstrings when PAL cites how children ignore their mothers.  There's an unexamined comedy that Mr. Mitchell's losing out on his 'passion' to live in the woods away from people is treated as tragic despite the movie's insistence on staying connected with your blood family.

--"The Inconsistent Personhood of AI"

PAL is rightfully angry at being discarded for something new; it's provided as a glimpse of what Katie will do when she finds 'her people' at college.

This in of itself is a good hook, because there is no one universal answer to when a flawed relationship should be mended with compromise or if it's better off being broken for the wellbeing of the ones involved.  Family and relationships are not programming, it's a choice and a gamble for whatever it brings but is nonetheless something that must be mutually worked upon.

Initially I thought that PAL was being set up as an exaggerated parallel to Mr. Mitchell.  PAL and Mr. Mitchell did their best to provide for their family.  PAL and Mr. Mitchell are in different stages of being 'discarded' by their family.  PAL and Mr. Mitchell both retaliate at their lack of power in the scenario by using the power granted by their roles to infringe on the autonomy of others for selfish reasons.

PAL even gives a 'chance' for her plan to be halted with, I had assumed this was being set up as the thesis of the movie, about humanity and the value of family, relationships, etc. being used to help someone who is already hurting.

But despite Katie looking at the camera and explaining herself, it is never actually directly resolved or challenged because a punchline was deemed more desirable for this narrative climax.

This begs the question of why PAL bothered with the pretense that she could be reasoned with, especially since this is not some question leveled at all of humanity, just two people.

I'm curious how the writers came to the conclusion that this was the best execution of the scene or if Katie's speech was considered immune to any challenge from PAL.  Would anyone have accepted this outcome if PAL were not an AI but instead a person?

It's not necessarily bad writing they went this route, but I doubt anyone would consider this good writing either.

By the end of the movie, PAL is no longer a 'person' who was betrayed and is lashing out, she is an object to be destroyed because the movie has to wrap up.  No compassion or chances are spared to this AI that did literally everything asked of her except take being discarded quietly.

Did PAL deserve a redemption arc? For this length of movie, probably not.  But it could have concluded with a commitment to doing no further harm.  Instead it is an accidental glimpse at how easily the pretense of compassion can be quickly discarded and mostly unexamined with the right framing.

A likely unintentional example is the conditional humanity given to Eric and Deborahbot who are adopted as "family" while the rest of the robots are mowed down without another thought.  Some are even beaten and broken while begging for mercy, because again, it is a funnier punchline.

Far be it for me to advocate that the murderbots needed 'a second chance uvu' but for a movie whose conceit rests on 'sticking by family' and 'giving chances', the writers certainly made a choice in deciding which AI get honorary humanity and spared violent death- perhaps PAL had a point about humanity's callousness after all.  Bad robots are discarded, good robots get to live.

Even the CEO who realizes he enabled this mess (easily the most unrealistic part of the movie, honestly) is given another chance and he manages to take away a completely wrong lesson.

Speaking of-

--"Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Used Tech Like This"

There's a particular image/gif set posted about MvM with the CEO apologizing for the machine uprising, attributing it to unchecked technology and monopolies.  I've always seen it accompanied by people congratulating the scene as if any of this is at all relevant to the movie.

Charitably, these are people who haven't watched the movie and don't know that PAL is a phone AI single-handedly doing this, but most take the stance that this scene is proof the movie is not saying technology is bad, only corporations are.

The speech isn't technically wrong but it is so utterly divorced from what happens in the movie that it's surreal to see people congratulate it as anything but a moment of soapboxing.

None of the datagrabbing was used at all as part of the takeover.  It's all magical kid-friendly terminators with no relevance to what anyone's browsing history is.  If the company was one that produced robot assistants instead of a being a super tech monopoly, there would be no narrative difference.

The closest to a predatory tactic that is used in MvM is the offer of free wifi which is used to lure most people into their cells which they happily comply with. Curiously this... commentary of people’s mindless addiction to technology is not acknowledged by the Tumblr Court with the same intensity as the CEO’s speech.

But more constructively, I do feel it’s a missed opportunity that Katie who's supposed to be an extremely online person apparently never said any bad things about her family or made any petty vent films for PAL to weaponize.  Instead an in-media audio at one of the outskirt locations was used to accomplish its Traitor Revealed moment.

IN CONCLUSION

MvM is a movie that involves topics that ought to be touched on and explored properly in media and chickens out on all of it due to possible concerns with age-appropriate handling or because it was more committed to its comedy than whatever it has to say about family, change and how technology affects people.

It also reminded me that I hope media will finally graduate from the trope that if you spec into any ‘outdoorsy’ hobby you are incurably afraid of technology.

[im-the-punk-who]

@portraitofemmy​

extremely useful guitar reference! man, now I'm even more confused by the choice to have made michael have his own guitar that he's apparently had for a while in season 4. internal consistency whomst?

*gently steps onto a soapbox*

Okay so I CAN actually say there is a reason, following the music is metaphor/rebirth of relationships line of the earlier seasons. I’m not saying it’s what the writers were thinking, because music is all but gone from the latter two seasons and a lot of the nuance from the first seasons just straight up goes away, BUT. Michael having a ‘new’ guitar makes sense in that Alex’s guitar has meant repeated patterns, past traumas and hurts.

The guitar Alex gives to Michael in 1x06 represents a future that was never meant to be. An impossible dream. It is only seen in a world which immediately gets destroyed when Jesse Manes finds them, and when Noah kills Rosa.

The guitar Michael has in the photo and that Rosa has in Max’s flashback represents nostalgia - it is only ever seen through rose-colored glasses. Again, it is a dream rather than a reality.

The guitars we see in Alex’s house in S2 might represent his personal journey - the first one we see is in 2x05 right before everything changes for him after being confronted with ‘I used to, too’. Alex does a *lot* of processing and letting go and realization in episodes 2x05 and 2x06, and I can’t help but think this guitar that is once again, only seen once, is a symbol of that. It’s a change in the wind that he isn’t still using his same guitar from when he was a teenager. That he has finally started giving up the old patterns. And then in 2x11 we see another new guitar - another evolution as Michael and Jesse search his house - when we know he’s already been working on Would You Come Home. Two forces competing for Alex’s future framed against a backdrop of ever evolving communication patterns.

And into all of this, we have Michael’s guitar way later in s4. Michael and Alex have gotten back together, started fixing and working on their problems. They stand together as a unit; they are no longer lost to miscommunications and past trauma and nostalgia and a life that couldn’t ever be, nor are they fumbling their way through declarations of someday. Michael specifically says “she helped me find my way in life”. We get that he’s had the guitar for ‘quite some time’ but we don’t ever get  a specific timeframe...it could be a year, it could be ten. Michael’s own journey of letting go of his past traumas starts a in late season 1/early season 2, and he could have even gotten it then. But either way, the significance of it *appearing* now, I think, is that it represents a new step in their journey, of which music has always been a part. I’ve harped on and on about how their whole arc in seasons 1-3 was about needing to let go, and in this, we’re subtly told they have. That they are ready and trying to make a new kind of music in which Michael is not dependent on Alex’s things, Alex’s whims. He can make his own rhythms independently, and he can work alongside Alex’s own music, as a partner and a harmony, rather than just taking whatever Alex is able to give him. 

(Edited to add: for those of you playing along at home Michael's guitar shares a similarity with every other guitar he and Alex have shared.

1) similar sound hole pattern to Alex's Läg w two rings.

2) dark edging and very rich finish like the 1x02 guitar.

3) black fret and headstock like the guitar that Alex gave him in 1x06.)

‘Tiny’ meta on the guitars in Roswell New Mexico

Because I hate this show and it’s dumb.

So recently I was trying to figure out what kind of guitars Alex has, for fic reasons, and I had the brilliant idea to look at both of the guitars in 1x06 and the guitar Michael plays in the Wild Pony at the end of 1x13.

Unfortunately for me, you, and everyone, what I discovered is that the guitar Michael steals from Alex when they initially meet is the same guitar that he plays in the bar. (A Läg guitar, if you are interested, likely an occitania model of some sort. Interesting historical footnote: Neil Diamond also play(s/ed) this brand.)

For those interested, there are a total of five guitars show in the series so far: Alex’s Läg, the guitar Michael has in the photograph from 1x02(likely the same guitar Rosa is playing in the pilot), the guitar Alex gives to Michael in the toolshed in 1x06, and the two in Alex’s house in season 2(2x05+2x11).

So my meta/headcanon here is that when Alex leaves for Iraq, he gives Maria the guitar for safekeeping - since it’s likely he would know it wasn’t safe at his house. She keeps it, sometimes using it at the Pony for performances and as a backup guitar for impromtpu jam sessions. The only time we see it at the Pony there is also a drum kit set up.

During 1x13, Michael tells Isobel that he’s had the realization that his relationship with Alex isn’t healthy, that lately it ‘just hurts’ and ‘feels like a crash landing’; to which Isobel gives him the advice ‘Maybe Max is right. Maybe it’s time we stop looking back and start looking forward.’

For me this is a big reason why he goes to the Wild Pony later, rather than meeting Alex and talking about their entangled past together. Michael is trying to move forward.

And just like Alex will in Season 2, the best way for him to start to do that is through music. (Which…tfw your coping strategies and healing rituals are the same….COSMIC.)

Now that his hand is healed (however non-consensual the act itself) Michael actually has that chance to try and heal himself. It isn’t the magic remedy Max hoped his healing powers would be. (’To heal this, you’ll have to reopen the wound in your mind. All the pain you’ve hidden there.)

To really heal from grief, one of the key components is that you have to let go of the expectations and hopes that you wanted from whatever isn’t possible anymore. And Season 1 has a really interesting progression showing Michael starting on that journey. And in this moment in the finale he has the same chance Alex will get in Season 2: to say goodbye to the person he was and the relationship that could have been and all the hurt that he’s held onto because of that, and start trying to move forward.

So, Michael goes to Maria at the Wild Pony, and sees The Guitar. The same guitar that he ‘borrowed’ from Alex eleven years ago that started them on the path to where they are now.

He wants to be with Maria, he agrees with Maria that they need to talk. But first, he has to say goodbye to what he’s been holding onto with Alex.

By playing the same guitar that brought them together.

(The way he looks at the guitar in this moment reads so much more tender to me than just him being able to play music again. Yes, this is something he’s been hindered from doing for ten years, but Maria doesn’t seem overly surprised to hear Michael playing. She is only surprised when she notices his hand is healed. Moreso, I think that - especially since in the in-between scene is Liz talking to Rosa’s grave, wishing for all the things Rosa never got to experience - that this is Michael connecting with his grief in a way he hasn’t been able to, and reckoning with his own hopes for the past.)

Like he’s momentarily transported somewhere else.

And I don’t think this is coincidence. There are multiple guitars and to use *this one* - the one that started it all - feels significant.

It feels like a signifier that Alex still is and always will be an important part of Michael’s life. Even if he’s playing this guitar in Maria’s presence, even if he in this moment is choosing Maria, Alex is always, *always* going to be a part of him. (And we could do a whole *other* meta on how music is the language through which Michael and Alex - oh wait I already did that. But, regardless, music is a large part not just of how Michael finds peace, but how he connects to himself. And Alex is always going to be a part of that.)

(You could, if you chose, also see this as yet more foreshadowing of the three of them having a role in each other’s lives and healing journey, or you could not, but the fact that it is *Alex’s* guitar that Michael plays I think is undeniabley significant.)

Even if the relationship that he has with Alex right now hurts, Michael isn’t throwing the whole thing away. He might be forming a new relationship with it, but what he has with Alex is…well…you know.

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

I'm gettin up on my weird lil soapbox and I swear it's relevant: does everyone remember why we hated Kankri but loved Karkat? like, yeah, they both talk a lot, but that doesn't mean they're similar. they're foils. and the things they say actually matter.

Karkat is definitely the more vulgar of the two... the more blatantly offensive. but he also admits when he's wrong, he tries hard not to hurt anyone (even if it doesn't always work), he apologizes (even if he self flagellates a bit too much for comfort), and even if he hasn't solved his issues, the struggle to manage them is visible. sometimes it's hard to watch because it's so vulnerable... sometimes homestuck's characters make you cringe cuz you feel vulnerable right along with them.

none of us are perfect or infallible... not a single one of us. it is more comforting to talk to someone who has shown that they could forgive you. someone who might need to be forgiven too, and they know that. someone who knows that we deserve the opportunity to change. we are all different people at the ends of the arcs we go through, than we were at the beginning. I am not who I was when I was 13. in some ways, that's a good thing. with maturity, we can look back at who we were, and pick the parts of ourselves that we still want to be. that's growth.

Kankri was irritating because it felt like he was constantly sidestepping any admission that he'd ever done anything wrong in his life. and in an effort to defend himself from criticism, he'd find things to criticize about others instead. he'd deflect the spotlight onto anyone else, and his only mode was combative. in saying this, I am kind of thinking about the recent developments within the homestuck fandom, though I won't ascribe this observation to any specific person. tbh, it's not a perfect comparison... I'm literally not accusing anyone of thinking they're perfect. but I think we're kind of in an era where admitting faults and flaws is a very high stakes game, and I wish it wasn't so much.

I think post canon itself suffers from failing to recognize how much charisma can come out of watching someone try their hardest, make mistakes in the process, realize that something is wrong, and apologize/ask for forgiveness from another person, because that person is important, and they don't deserve to remain upset. watching people make themselves vulnerable to criticism in order to fix things is powerful. it's exactly what a person needs in order to grow and mature. homestuck's characters resonated, in part, because you didn't feel the need to be a paragon when held next to them. they were gentle, kind reminders of where we've developed from, and reminders that we all have someplace to develop to. and even if we're making mistakes, we have a future. we have friends, and they can be our reason to become a better person. we can become the kind of person they deserve to have as a friend. they aren't perfect either, but they're still inspiring like that. it provides hope for us.

I would like to be like Karkat... just in the sense that I want to grow, and admit when I still have more growing yet to do. I love homestuck.

(thank you for this Kankri relevancy, I love the dancestors. Fifth paragraph is also really good and thoughtful)

(also I never knew people hated Kankri???)

[duchesschameleon]

codependent idiots

an ajf playlist for @winterscaptain

hello tali! and everyone else reading this.

music is something incredibly important to me, as a musician and as someone who hates existing in silence. I always need something in the background. so, what better way to celebrate 100 ajf fics than with a playlist? tali, I am so incredibly proud of you for 100 ajf fics and so honored to have been part of the journey. and to be your friend. seeing the hard work that goes into this universe and how much you love it is just incredible. I cannot wait for what comes next and to see you continue to create and grow this universe that I love so, so much. you are amazing and wonderful and I love you to bits and pieces darling.

so without further ado, here’s the playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0RpXkdEbsdMqX6l5daBdaL?si=bae62e4556674c84

These songs make me think of ajf or just fit the universe - it’s not about one specific moment or one specific relationship, it’s ajf as whole. So I’ve included a little explanation for each song, considering there isn’t a cohesive sound.

paper rings - taylor swift

this one is pretty self explanatory. it’s a song about loving someone so much you don’t care how, when, or why you marry them. considering meraki, I think we can all agree this fits.

I will follow you into the dark - death cab for cutie

this is a song that screams going to the end of the line for someone. and we’ve seen time and time again (and I’ve referenced it in many a commentary) that aaron & mom lean on each other for everything. they are so reliant on each other for everything and I feel like this song captures it. 

be my baby - the ronettes 

another classic love song. and just the right amount of sweetness for aaron & mom I think. their love, to me, is a deep and everlasting love that endures and as we’ve seen in the fic, is filled with sweet moments between each other. and there’s a lot in this song about knowing you love someone from the start.

can’t keep on loving you from a distance - elliot yamin

this fits into berry hill/mean it ajf I think. it’s the yearning guys. it’s the not being able to love someone from afar anymore and wanting to do something about it. yeah I threw in a little angst, but this is one of my favorite songs. it’s good and it fits. it’s a crossroads.

die a happy man - thomas rhett

pretty self explanatory, listen to the lyrics. it's all about needing just the love of the person you love the most in this world. that is aaron and mom to a t. 

unforgettable - thomas rhett

okay an upbeat song! this one is not forgetting any detail from when you met the person you love. again, aaron and mom. also it’s one of my favorite thomas rhett songs. it’s about inevitability, knowing that you’ve found your person, and not forgetting a single thing about them. 

this will be (an everlasting love) - natalie cole

aaron always gives me classic song vibes, he likes the oldies and what he was raised on. this song is...it is happiness personified. it is happiness and joy in a song and you cannot convince me it wasn’t played at the wedding. 

make a life, not a living - brett kissel

okay so first off: brett kissel is an amazing canadian country artist whom I love dearly. this is his newest song and it was released just in time for this. this ENCAPSULATES ajf for me - this aaron that allows himself to live and love again, to have this happiness and joy. it’s all about making a life, and making a good one. this is ajf for me. 

between you and me - brett kissel

and this one is for all the 18+/nsfw moments. listen to the song and it's pretty self-explanatory. 

at last - etta james

it took them like 6 years (? I think) to get together and another 2.5 to get married. someone played this at the wedding and you cannot convince me otherwise. again, it goes to inevitability and how everyone was waiting for this to happen. we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of when. so when it does happen, everyone’s screaming “AT LAST!”

kiss me - ed sheeran

okay this album came out in 2011, mean it happened in 2011...it fits. and this song screams mean it to me. that’s really all I have to say

give me love - ed sheeran

same reasoning as kiss me. I just couldn’t decide which one fit more. but they both work.

growin’ up - bruce springsteen

this song is less mom & aaron and more ajf in general. it’s rebellion and doing what you want - hello bau - and it’s just a great song about learning and growing up and doing things your way. also it’s me, there had to be springsteen on here somewhere

mary’s place - bruce springsteen

run with me on this one: you’re driving in the car with your family, people you love, and this song comes on. you can’t help but smile and sing along and it is happiness personified. this one is all about the vibes, not the lyrics or meaning of the song. this to me is a bit of a party starter and something that could play at every bau party. familiar faces, laughter, gathering people together….this is all about having a good time with people you love. 

we take care of our own - bruce springsteen

last springsteen song I promise. this one is similar to above, it’s all about a family and being there for one another. looking out for your own, looking out for each other. 

some day one day - queen

this is a great soft, sweet song talking about hope for mom & aaron. much like this is early in queen’s discography, it fits into the early years of ajf. 

you’re my best friend - queen

self explanatory. they are codependent, they rely on each other so much, they are best friends and lovers. it fits so well. and this song will always put a smile on my face.

another one bites the dust - queen

another unsub bites the dust because the bau is great at their jobs. and, this screams hotchner’s dancing around the kitchen or the living room. they seem like the kind of family to dance around and film each other for….no ulterior motive whatsoever (/sarcasm)

my wish - rascal flatts 

so this fits for the wedding vows BUT ALSO - during enough when aaron is thinking about how he’ll fit into reader’s life. he just wants them to have a good life, to find happiness. that is his wish for them. 

danger zone - kenny loggins

we all know the hotchner’s love top gun. they absolutely, unabashedly love this song and blast it for a dance party. 

landslide - fleetwood mac

maybe it’s because we sang this at my camp as a last night campfire song, but I can see this being a song sung to the littles to get them to settle down. the lyrics might not make total sense but it’s a bit of a vibe. 

this is it - scotty mccreery

it’s a great love song and I love it. it gives me ajf vibes for many reasons and many moments in the series

not alone - mcfly

OH ITS TIME FOR MY MCFLY SOAPBOX. mcfly is a band that yes, I mostly know because of the close geography of the internet and early 2010s british youtubers. they are a big band in the uk and they were in an early 2000s movie called just my luck with chris pine and lindsay lohan. I love the movie, I love mcfly. seriously, they are one of my favorite bands ever. not alone is a great song and one I think can be the background for many ajf scenes. and yes this is about to start a few mcfly songs on the playlist

I wanna hold you - mcfly

it’s just about being close and wanting to hold the person you love. how many times during ajf do we see mom & aaron with a hand on each other and reaching for one another? 

it’s all about you - mcfly

I tend to find this is the most well known mcfly song. it was written for one of the band members’ wife and it’s so good. and yes, again, it encapsulates the love aaron and mom have.

being alive - company

I kinda had the realization that this song screams aaron to me. that for so long he fought against his feelings and was almost content with being alone, with not having anyone. he sort of holds himself at arms length, like bobby does throughout company. and then at some point, there’s a switch. and he realizes that being alone is not the same as being alive and he wants to have someone to hold and someone to be alive with. and that’s what this song is about. 

louder than words - tick, tick, boom

there are so many times where aaron and mom just look at each other. they use their actions, their body language, and their eyes to communicate and forgo words. they don’t need words. and it’s not just with one another. it’s with jack and the littles and the whole team. actions truly do speak louder than words in this universe. 

always will - bright star 

it’s a mean it & mistletoe song. “we’re supposed to be/together it’s true/I’ve had my doubts/but not about you.” these lyrics SCREAM ajf and this is one of my favorite songs from bright star - WHICH IS AN UNDERRATED MUSICAL.

dirty little secret - all american rejects

okay so it’s never a dirty secret, but this fits in during the mean it arc. they’re so secretive and sneaking around. we needed one unhinged song here okay???

the power of love - huey lewis & the news

this is a song that fits the relationship, but is also something that could play in the hotchner house and get everyone singing and jamming. or could be played at dinner at uncle dave’s house to get everyone up and dancing on the flagstones.

sharp dressed man - zz top

it’s aaron hotchner. also, this is a song I can see aaron making his kids listen to (yes my dad made me listen to this a lot growing up)

I want to hold your hand - the beatles

yes we need a beatles song on here and yes this is one that always makes me think of ajf. there’s always some way people are touching - linking pinkies, holding hands, a finger through a belt loop, hands on the top of someone’s chair - touch and contact are important here so yes this is the requisite beatles song.

the heart never lies - mcfly

one more mcfly song. just listen to the lyrics and you’ll know why it’s one of my favorites. for as long as these two fought their feelings and denied them, the heart never lies. and their eyes can give it away.

[breadthief]

been thinking a little and making observations and so on and so forth and i will say, i do think it’s interesting how reflective the whole DNI stuff is of the whole online zeitgeist

like, i saw a post about conformity and parroting opinions and how people are obsessed with having The Right Opinion without critically examining and thinking about if their opinions actually. you know. makes sense and that’s not exactly what i’m thinking about but it’s absolutely true and a necessary precursor to what i’m about to say:

seeing all this aesthetic stuff and like, pastel icons or positivity posts with a giant banner that says “read my DNI before interacting!” are just, so weird to me as someone who’s witnessed online culture change, because it’s so counterintuitive to all the socialization i’ve received growing up and how... like... social media is built and how the world works?

like sure sure nazis and terfs dni (ignoring the fact that almost no one would a. actively label themselves as such and b. go WHOOPS i’m a nazi i can’t like this post of an anime character in front of a rainbow flag!) but then it gets, like, increasingly more bizarre and esoteric the more you go down, like dni if you have a different stance on this inane discourse that will not ever have a material affect on the real world, or if you support these people i’ve literally never heard of, or watch this anime or support this webcomic that i think are objectively bad and irredeemable because i’ve picked out those few as the Ones With Flaws out of all the flawed things that exist

and like, first off, i’m gonna be real with you: i’m lazy, as are the majority of internet users. like, not actively lazy or malicious, but i don’t care enough to check literally every single blog that produces content to make sure they hold all the exact same opinions on every nuance of social existence ever before liking their post and continuing to scroll

second of all it’s kind of batshit to be like “everyone who disagrees with me, do NOT interact with my posts”. like you are in public and it’s going to happen. this is where the parallel to what i mentioned above comes in, where people are so obsessed with having the Singular Correct Opinion and parroting each other and eschewing critical analysis that you can check boxes off your list of views not to support

and it’s exactly what leads to all these Community Leaders you see every so often where some leftist gets mega popular and is seen as generally intelligent and correct about many things and then is outed as like, a closet racist or terf or antisemite, because they started leaking their real views and people who never learned to analyze new opinions and just go “hmm that sounds correct i guess” start parroting like, ecofash or radfem rhetoric without realizing it, until someone actually goes “hey wait” and the curtain falls on the person saying these things

btw -- if you think any of this is like, suspicious or in bad faith, that i must be a Closet Freak or have something to hide, you are exactly the kind of person this post is about & i think you should examine Why you feel this way because i don’t think You are coming from good faith and i think you are uncomfortable that your lack of comprehensive community guidelines & social intelligence being called out is making you uncomfortable, perhaps

but you know the coolest thing about this post and everything i just soapboxed about? like most things people gripe about on this website, everyone will just keep doing whatever they want and it literally does not matter at all

[puelluna]

I think I realized this the other day when a friend and I were talking and I brought up the idea of Arya not wielding a scythe in her other verses, and he went "I've never imagined Arya as anything other than death." And it was like...yeah. Huh. Interesting.

I don't usually talk about this kind of thing because most of the time it feels pretentious and silly to talk about her this way, but one of the primary things I've come to understand while writing her is that Death is representative not just of the process of dying, but of change, of the end of something old and the beginning of something new.

I tried to represent that through her history; if you pay close attention, you'll notice she's the one goddess of her pantheon who wants to change things. Wants mortals to exist, wants to change nature for the better, wants to change her siblings and mortals for the better. To this day, I try to write her as embodying change for the better, as being a goddess of death beyond just being a psychopomp or a reaper.

I think any version of death kind of has to be a person more than a god. A god is static, unchanging, unmoving, more dead than alive.

But you're not making something already dead, you're making an incarnation of death, an incarnation of a process. And people undergo processes all the time; they change every single day, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Doesn't it make more sense, therefore, to have your god of death be more humane than any other god?

Furthermore, as a psychopomp, Death would interact with people more than any other god. So, death should be human, at least in spirit if not in physiology.

I'll get off my pretentious soapbox now, but...yeah. I like thinking about this stuff.

It's funny how even in Arya's mortal verses she strongly represents change and the death of the old way of things. Even as a mortal, she cannot escape her nature as death incarnate.

[yelpfic]

2020 Writing (Year in Review)

In 2019, I posted 3K words on AO3.

In 2020, I posted 214K words on AO3.

I have probably written more fic this year than I have in my entire life... and I didn't even start until April.

Since I feel like I'm new to writing all over again (the last time I wrote regularly was probably about a decade ago), this has been a year of experimentation. One obvious change is that I'm writing from this "alt" account, where I've been posting whatever the hell iddy, gratuitous, self-indulgent stories happened to fall out of my brain. (Perhaps as a consequence, I noticed that the ratio of public bookmarks across all my fics clocked in at around 50%. In other words, half the people who bookmarked my works chose to do so privately!)

I also experimented with:

participating in fic exchanges and prompt memes

writing for a variety of fandoms: big and small, new and dead

varying up my writing style: using present and past tenses, ranging from super florid descriptions to conversational prose

self-promotion on Tumblr, which meant attempting to learn how to use it. I'm sure I still don't have all the etiquette down, but no one's complained yet I guess.

My main project this year has been Once a Runner, the fic that got me started writing again, so I owe quite a lot to it. It's also sucked me deep into Eyeshield 21, a fandom that was active 10-15 years ago but still somehow has a few loyal fans. I am deeply grateful to these folks for... well... existing! In addition to OAR, I've written four other ES21 fics this year, each with a different pairing. In all but one fic, I managed to use a different obscure character tag that has never been used before!

This year, I've done a decent job (mostly) working on one big project at a time. I'm starting to get used to the feeling of always having an active writing project again, letting it churn away in my brain in a background process. Sometimes I'm rewarded with a scene or a plot idea that comes out of nowhere, like a plant that produces mysterious fruit - both delightful and worrying at the same time.

I wrap up this year embarking on a new project, Solid as Stone, which, as currently planned, is going to take me even further out of my comfort zone.

AO3 stats and meme responses below the cut.

My AO3 stats at the end of the year:

Meme questions:

Best title: Cloak and Dagger, Cape and Cowl

Worst title: Lightbringer Mine

Longest title: Their offers should not charm us (their evil gifts would harm us) (65 characters)

Shortest title: Talisman (8 characters)

Best first line: "Don't," the witcher's arm shot out, barring his companion mid-step, "touch."

Worst first line: Yeah, in hindsight, Sena shouldn't have answered that doorbell.

Best last line: "It will be done," he agrees, and presses the lilies into her hands. "My promise is solid as stone."

Worst last line: "I can't win or lose until you bring your strain to market. All I ask is that you hurry up and regrow, so we can really compete."

Conclusion: I need to work on endings.

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? I wrote more than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? Everything. I wasn't into any of these fandoms last year.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. OAR, for sure. It got me back into writing, and I devoted an enormous amount of mental energy to it. Runners up (pun intended) were any ES21 rarepair fics where I lamented the lack of content for a pairing I loved, tried to explain everything I loved about them in fic form, and basically turned into my ship manifesto/soapbox. In fic form.

Okay, NOW your most popular story. Solid as Stone. OAR comes close by sole virtue of being a long, multichaptered work posted over 8 months, but with a single chapter of under 3K words, and having been up for under two weeks, SAS is already beating OAR in some statistics. I never realized Genshin Impact was such a hot fandom, even for a rarepair like this.

Story most underappreciated by the universe? All my stories got quite a bit more attention than I expected (thank you, everyone, sincerely), but I'd say Cloak and Dagger, Cape and Cowl. It's original, it was written in an exchange, and it has a decent plot (if I do say so myself) and even a bit of smut. Perhaps F/F work is not so popular?

Story that could have been better? I could probably list multiple things I'd want to improve about each story, but let me just limit myself to one. Lightbringer Mine had more story in it that I didn't get around to telling, and the ending felt a little abrupt. I feel a little awkward extending it now, though, as it was a gift fic.

Saddest story? Hmm, I think just about every story I wrote had a happy-ish ending. I suppose I'll go with C&D,C&C.

Most fun? TBH, the same? There are several lighthearted moments and a heist scene. 

Most fucked-up story? Stars and Stripes Forever (lack of link intentional)

Hardest story to write? Once a Runner

Easiest/most fun story to write? Always Knew I'd Fall. I went skeet shooting once, and as soon as I had the idea that Kid and Hiruma might be good at it, the story basically wrote itself. I also thought the song from the title was too perfect of a Kid song to pass up.

Top five scenes you would like to see illustrated: I would die happy to see any scene from OAR illustrated. Off the top of my head, the Hiruma and Sena bathtub scene, haircutting scene, or Hiruma taunting Monta in the car when we first meet Monta. From other fics, Kid walking around the course with Hiruma and making him carrying his gun properly in "Always Thought I'd Fall", and Sara Spectacular blocking the shadow bolts in "Cloak and Dagger, Cape and Cowl".

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I experimented with posting explicit works, and as it turns out, sex sells. I also really put my kinks out there (sexual and otherwise) and was surprised and gratified to find others who appreciated it. Conclusion: it's okay to write the fic that you've always wanted to write. Even if it's embarrassing, or if some will judge you for it, writing for likeminded souls makes more sense than writing to avoid critics.

What are your fic writing goals for next year? I have a lot more ideas for SAS, so I'd like to make that my next big project. I'm also signed up for Five Figure Fic Exchange, so that means I have a 10k fic due by the end of the month that I need to... start... Beyond that, I'd like to write more original works, perhaps something that I can even publish under my real name?? Is that crazy, brain??

Some specific things I've struggled with this year that I'd like to improve: titles and character names, physical descriptions, making my endings less abrupt