#I love how it thematically ties so many things together though...

[noirshitsuji]

Pitching in on the O!Ciel name theories a billion years late

(Posted: 26/12/2024, Edited: 27/12/2024)

Greetings, Kuroshitsuji fandom - longtime lurker and fan here.

One of the things I love the most about this fandom is the amount of theories and how rewarding theorising has been (with regards to 2CT specifically). I've been observing people doing it for years on the sidelines, and as I've been getting back into the fandom again over the holidays, I thought I might finally put together a post about my own headcanon about O!Ciel's name. A bit late to the party, I know, but it's dear to my heart and I thought people might find it interesting.

I've had this headcanon for a few years now that's been inspired by some of the existing theories/hunches that fits best with the manga theming around the twins from what I've seen so far. I haven't this HC anywhere else, though please let me know if you have.

Without further ado - my vote for O!Ciel's name is...

...Mond Phantomhive.

Let me explain.

I agree with many people who've said that Sebastian saying in chapter 11 he 'swore to/made a vow by the moon' is significant. While in context it makes sense as a return Romeo and Juliet reference on the one Grelle makes (see this post here), Sebastian is specifically talking about the day he became 'Sebastian' and concluded the contract, i.e. swore his service to O!Ciel. There are any number of ways he could have found out O!Ciel's real name by that point, whether through the magic of the contract, manor records, or simply having interacted with people within the Phantomhive estate who remembered both twins.

In German, Mond means 'moon'. However, it is also only one letter off from monde, which is French for 'world'. This gives us two different connections to the sky (ciel) with thematic meaning. I will touch on both, though the moon one is more important - if I'm correct, though, then there's some very clever thematic wordplay here across two languages, so it makes sense to explore it!

The moon that shines in it only when it is 'night' - i.e. the darkness or death of the sky. While his brother's death was a tragedy within a tragedy, it also meant that O!Ciel could finally 'shine' after growing up feeling that he was just a spare who would never inherit the estate, or be worthy of doing so (flashbacks from chapters 130-140, e.g. the below from 132).

Ciel is another way to say the heavens in French as well - that which we look to in the sky, and also an important fixed contrast to Earth, or le monde (heavens and earth). This contrast can have many meanings, but in our case it can relate to the other-wordly (i.e. the dead/supernatural R!Ciel) and the wordly (O!Ciel, who is still alive and embodying the Phantomhive legacy). People are right to point out the connection with star symbolism - it's all part of the same astronomy-based thematic group, and O!Ciel's name being related to both the Moon and the Earth fills in more elements.

(As a bonus, both Mond and monde are masculine nouns in German and French respectively, just like how ciel is in French, so I think that they would've been a better pick for a boy's name than, say, lune, which is a feminine noun in French. My vote is on Mond because of the moon connection, though I wouldn't be disappointed with Monde. Astre does not appeal to me personally, although - point in favour - it is also masculine.)

Another interesting connection comes from chapter 149. After we see a conversation between Othello and Grelle about the blood types, with the twins tied in both in Othello's explanation and the panel art, the transition of Othello sending a pigeon messenger takes us to R!Ciel looking at a bird flying against the moon. Seeing this, he reaches towards it.

R!Ciel collapses, and tells Undertaker that he wants to go to his brother's side, and then has a vision of O!Ciel standing at the windowsill when they were little. In other words, we're given a direct parallel between reaching for the moon and reaching for O!Ciel, and then a juxtaposition of O!Ciel and the window. In a way, it also functions as a metaphor of him having escaped to the outside (where the moon that R!Ciel can't reach is) and no longer being constrained to the inside of the manor like he was as a kid - if I'm correct about the name, that is.

(Also, in using the symbolism of one twin as death and one as life in the previous panels during Othello and Grelle's conversation, we again have the supernatural/earthly contrast that heavens/earth gives us.)

Well, there you have it. I like this headcanon because a) it gives us a masculine name, b) it gives us extra wordplay across both French and German, c) it incorporates all the relevant symbolism. Also, I like how it sounds, for what preference counts.

Let me know what you think of this/if I've missed anything big.

Bonus:

We know from Vincent (chapter 132) that neither twin has a traditional English name/one common on the country's territory (which is how Pastor Rathbourne phrases it). I've seen at least one person speculate (though I can't find that post now) that giving the other Phantomhive twin a German name to cement the family's strong connection to that part of the world (via Diedrich) would make sense. I know this is isn't really based on evidence, but personally I find that a compelling extra reason as well. Rachel was the one to pick the names, and while I don't think Vincent would have been so overt in showing affection to Diedrich by giving his son a German name, I think she might've.

Bonus Bonus:

Pastor Rathbourne may have provided us with another clue, actually. The following is half-sourced and half from my own general knowledge and love for classics.

Clergymen in the Victorian era (as was the case for a long-time before that) were normally highly educated people, and certainly if they were leading parishes of their own (as Rathbourne was). Virtually all of them would've received their education at Oxford or Cambridge, which may have included some kind of foreign language (most likely: French, which was still the diplomatic language of the period) and definitely included Latin (because: ecclesiastical duty) and also Hebrew/Greek.

It was one of the easy, almost default choices for sons of nobility who wouldn't inherit titles because of the good status and education attached (which all of them would've been receiving anyway). This is why it's one of the first things R!Ciel thinks his brother might do in Chapter 132 (and not just because they happened to be at the church when they were having this conversation).

Now, this is where we enter slightly more into speculation, but bear with me. Any clergyman worth his salt would be able to, at the very least, recognise French vocabulary by virtue of it being a Romance language as well (because they all learned Latin), and be able to differentiate it from vocabulary from a non-Latin language even if they didn't know what it was.

Ciel is a very common word in French, an inheritance from Latin, so the chances Pastor Rathbourne was aware it was derived from French are extremely high. He would've probably been able to recognise any other French (or even Romance language) names as well. Yet, when he's talking about both of the twins' names, he says that they have unusual names for the region of England, not that they have French names. If both of them are French, why use a weaker highest common denominator (foreign names, which includes names derived from other languages), when the most simple and obvious alternative is to say that both names were/seemed to be French? The obvious reason is because the twins don't both have French names, meaning that O!Ciel's name is not French and can only be grouped with his brother's as part of a broader category of non-traditional English names.

A counterargument here would be that Yana was simply trying to hide that O!Ciel's name was also French, but then why engineer this conversation in this way in the first place? It serves no other purpose in this scene than to describe what the twins' names are like (and to set up something ominous with Vincent's reply about a 'new age').

Also, I don't know what the original Japanese dialogue is, but it would seem from the translation that the emphasis is on the foreignness/unusualness of the names relative to England. This leads me to think it's more likely they're both derived from foreign languages, rather than one of them being French and the other one being e.g. a very weird Germanic/Old English name that simply isn't in use anymore.

Either way, though - if I'm right and the subtle implication here is that the twins don't both have French names, then that doesn't just mean that O!Ciel's name is maybe not French, but that it definitely isn't.

(This also discounts the possibility of Monde as a potential name spelling, though not the thematic implication/wordplay).

[curioussubjects]

I might have said this before, but I do think that one of the problems with Veilguard is focus. It feels like it's multiple parts of distinct but similar game concepts cobbled together to make one game good enough to ship. I think a way to solve that problem at least a little bit would be to change the factions both for resource allocation during production and to keep the narrative focused. So here are some thoughts!

The factions should all be important to the pull of the plot and offer comparable immersion for the player. The main plot points are the Evanuris, the veil, and the blight each with their own distinct questions and overlapping interests.

The Evanuris -> elven history, solas's rebellion, old gods (and the venatori), dwarven history, etc. -> Veil Jumpers (not a shortcut for Dalish reactivity!), Shadow Dragons* The Blight -> mechanism of the blight, origins of, blight magic, cures, the song, etc. -> Grey Wardens The Veil -> current state, how was is created, should it exist if it's not the natural state of things?, is it a necessity while the titans remain tranquil, is there a less destructive way to tear it down, spirits, tranquility in general, etc. -> The Mourn Watch

*One key change to the Shadow Dragons, though: I'd change them to be in alliance with the Inquisition (by way of Dorian). Charter and the Viper would be the faction representatives. Rook would be a Shadow Dragon originally. This scenario fits easily with a disbanded Inquisition, but a Chantry Inquisition could be accounted for with the need for discretion since its presence in Tevinter ~officially would ruffle many feathers.

I love the Crows, but I feel their place in the main events of Veilguard to be tangential. I'd keep Lucanis as a romanceable companion by way of Venatori involvement, since Lucanis himself fits into the game events thematically (especially with Spite in the mix). Instead, I'd have quests relating to the Crows appear in a post-game DLC: Rook and co. are trying to stop Antaam from invading the Crossroads (picking up from their goals in Trespasser), and they end up allying with the Crows to drive them off Treviso. Having a DLC like this is a nice nod, too, to the "The Veilguard remains vigilant" end slide in the game.

I'd cut the Lords of Fortune entirely, but I'd keep Rivain as a smaller explorable area (a la the Deep Roads) and tied to Mourn Watch quests. Rowan would be the contact there, and it could be a way to introduce Taash-- I'm thinking maybe Taash wants to explore the world a bit and their mother is less into the idea while Rowan as a cousin/family friend supports it. Admittedly, I found the Dragon King side of Taash's plot a bit lacking, but the quest could remain as is by using a smaller explorable area (again like the Deep Roads). Ideally, though the themes of Taash's story would be the same, but their quests would be changed to be more closely tied to the overarching plot.

Since Lucanis and Taash aren't tied to factions, their quests would feed into Shadow Dragons/Mourn Watch and Wardens/Jumpers respectively.

[wordsandrobots]

Hey there! loved your IBO writeups and I wanted to hear your thoughts on a certain character relationship/dynamic that I have yet to see fully analyzed. What do you think is the significance or thematic meaning behind the Mika, Atra, and Kudelia trio.

Besides the occasional harem joke lol, the most I have yet to muse about their dynamic is that while both Mika and Kudelia are fixated on their self sacrificing roles and ideals, meaning Mika being the Devil of Tekkadan and Kudelia being the Maiden of Revolution, Atra seems to be the glue that binds them together and tie them back down to reality. Which fits considering the ending.

But what are your thoughts tho?

(Also any plans on a Mika and McGillis writeup)

Hi! Glad you've enjoyed the rambling!

First, really, truly sorry it took so long to get around to answering this. A combination of illness and heavy workload has left my brain more scattered than usual.

Second, nothing planned at present regarding Mika and McGillis, although it's definitely something worth exploring. There's a lot of interesting things to be said about the way McGillis misreads their relationship while being so inspired by Mika, and how Mika cuts through a lot of McGillis' bullshit by being tied to the reality the older man is trying to escape.

Now, on to the main topic.

One way to look at it is that Mikazuki, Atra and Kudelia are a marriage of different conceptions of what gives life meaning. You've got Mikazuki dedicating himself to serving another's ambition, Atra finding purpose in everyday tasks, and Kudelia working towards improving the world as a whole. These can also be seen as three different forms of sacrifice, with each of them giving up things they could have had elsewhere (self-direction, safety, status) for the sake of doing what they think is right.

Another approach is to emphasise their similarities, as equally compassionate people. Kudelia is spurred into action by moral indignation at the treatment of her fellow Martians. Mikazuki is automatically protective of those around him, including strangers. And Atra's skill-set is rooted in the practicalities of looking after other people. This shared drive shapes their relationship from the start: not for nothing do group hugs form key moments in its progression.

If I were to take a stab at assigning them a particular thematic meaning as a group, though, it is this: combined, they represent how far out of reach superficially mundane desires can lie for those at the sharp end of society.

Consider Atra. I've seen criticisms of Iron-Blooded Orphans focused on the stereotypical nature of her contentment with the domestic and desire to settle down with the people she loves (including somebody saying the writers 'had never met a woman in their life', which is bleakly funny) and yes, these do reflect gendered expectations to an extent. However, to stop there misses that, in context, 'I want a peaceful existence as a housewife and supportive member of the community' is a wildly aspirational life-goal. Before meeting Mikazuki, Atra was a homeless runaway fleeing a miserable existence as the dogsbody at a brothel. She isn't under any illusion that what she wants is going to follow naturally from simply being a girl, much less so after falling in with a group of suicidally-reckless child soldiers. The desperation that leads her to suggest Kudelia have a child with Mikazuki in order to keep him with them is extremely well-founded.

Likewise, as I've discussed many times before, Mikazuki's stated aim (devotion to Orga aside) is to be a farmer. To grow vegetables. More of a challenge on Mars than on Earth, yet hardly the stuff of a 50-episode mecha anime in its own right. But, again, Mikazuki is not in a social position where this is automatically feasible. Not only does he lack the required education, farming itself is not the stable livelihood it should be. Fighting is a far more certain source of income and while he does not ever stop trying to learn about growing plants – as a recent commenter rightly pointed out – the choices he makes or is forced to make continually place his dream further out of reach.

And for her part, Kudelia wants nothing more than to ensure Atra and Mikazuki can live the lives they want. Their articulation of her intentions reveals its core straightforwardness: she really is working to ensure the happiness of the Martian people. That's the entire point. Settling on Mikazuki's hypothetical farm is an idea she clearly sees as a long way off, even while cherishing the invitation. But she never wavers from wanting that reality for Mikazuki and Atra, and by extension the rest of Tekkadan. High-handed and naïve though her initial attempts to treat them as equals are, she keeps trying and internalises the lessons they teach her, and that only increases her commitment to a world where no child has to get blood on their hands for the sake of survival.

Here, though, we come to the crunch. Because the things in the way of the simple, simply-stated future these three are after do not lie within their actual relationship, which develops naturally over the course of events until they are firmly a romantic trio. Rather, they are grappling with being caught inside an exploitative structure that proceeds from three hundred years of Earth-centric hegemony. Mikazuki and Atra's poverty has roots far outside their control and Kudelia's challenges to those roots are met with violent resistance from the status quo. For them to be happy would require either a dramatic elevation of their position (Orga's solution), or transforming the economic distribution of their society (Kudelia's solution).

All three are ready to make a fight of it, utilising their complementary talents and shared reserve of bravery. They support one another as best they can through the ensuing struggles. Mutual respect and care is a key part of what binds them together, with Kudelia's determination reflecting what she sees in Mikazuki, Atra's acts of protectiveness towards Kudelia belying her noncombatant role, and Mikazuki swearing to fight for Atra's happiness as reciprocation for her declaration of love.

But in the end this is simply not a story where the daring warrior, plucky princess and brave peasant-girl can win the day. The sacrifices necessary to reach for a better future preclude everyone living to see it. Atra's fears that Mikazuki will be lost to them prove accurate. Kudelia's desire to provide those she loves with a safe, stable life is subordinate to the material connections necessary to pursue that very goal. And Mikazuki's drive to act for others leads him to embrace Gundam Barbatos, the silent fourth member of this relationship, carrying him inexorably to his doom.

I talked in my essay on queerness in IBO about how the epilogue is centred on Akatsuki. Mikazuki and Atra's son is the triumph achieved despite the tragedy, a testament to love that mattered in spite of the violence that consumed it. We find him living peacefully on Sakura Farm with Atra, Kudelia acting as his guardian, giving tangible meaning to his father's death and how things have changed since, no matter if Tekkadan are forgotten.

That framing, however, is bittersweet. The final shots, juxtaposing Akatsuki with photographs from before everything fell apart, reinforce the cost of reaching this point and there remain battles to be fought, as Kudelia smiles for the cameras, signing treaties with her enemies to further chip away at long-standing injustices. The better world is still a work-in-progress and far too many people didn't live to see even this much.

Behind the hope, the cruelty of the situation lies laid bare. Again, Mikazuki and Atra were not asking for much. Their happiness, which Atra achieves in part, would have been entirely unobjectionable. The suggestion Mikazuki enjoys killing makes him display – for him – considerable distress. His hands tremble at the idea, despite violence being central to his current existence. Indeed, it is that existence, stretching back to his time on the streets, that taught him to respond violently. Had things been different, he would have been content raising crops and children.

Even Kudelia's suggested changes are relatively mild. Greater economic parity with Earth is hardly an unreasonable request and finds supporters among the political class. At the same time, the outsized response exposes a great deal about how important the inequality is to those at the top, how it is actively chosen and enforced. Trite as it might seem on the surface, a goal of 'making everybody happy' can lead in radical directions, provoking questions like 'why isn't everybody happy?', 'who does their unhappiness benefit?', 'who would its abolition inconvenience?', and 'how does society justify the absence of happiness in the first place?'

Iron-Blooded Orphans spends its run pairing such matters with a sweet, supportive, polyamorous teenage romance. The sharpness of this contrast emphasises the humanity of those involved and the sheer unfairness of their circumstances – and of what is required of them to improve matters, when power is hoarded elsewhere.

-----

At least, that's where my mind went off the back of your question. There's a lot of that contrast in IBO, between the mundane reality of the people involved and their outsized reputation, infamy and actions. Plus, the treatment of sexuality, polyamory and queerness as just ordinary is something I deeply love about it, as a show.

Thank you for the ask! As a bonus note, this is my go-to Atra song.

('Words, you cannot possibly have a Thea Gilmore song for every occasion.' Just you watch me.)

[Index of other writing]

[tharizdun-03]

Whole Cake Island revolves around the complexities of family, the juxtaposition of blood ties versus chosen family, and the struggle for personal freedom amidst oppressive family structures. As with everything One Piece — it's pretty damn great.

It’s not just about Sanji getting dragged back to his abusive family, but about how the concept of family itself is explored from different angles — whether it’s blood relations, chosen family, or the chains that tie people to their past.

He was raised in this nightmare where strength was the only thing that mattered, and anything outside of that — like compassion or kindness — was seen as weakness. And the arc goes out of its way to affirm that it is in his kindness that Sanji's true strength lies.

The idea of found family is a recurring theme in the series. For Sanji, the Straw Hats are his true family, and the bond he shares with them is way stronger than anything he has with the Vinsmokes. And the arc is very explicit about how even though Sanji may not want his abusers to be massacred, and even if they help him a bit by the end, that does not make them family.

We have this lovely moment at the end of the arc where his father spouts insults about how soft and essentially feminine-coded Sanji is, and Sanji says nothing back while Luffy innocently wonders what why Sanji's father is shouting Sanji's best qualities to him which just... it says everything.

Speaking of Sanji, his arc is very much intertwined with Pudding's. Who is set up as this sweet innocent bride-to-be, but we quickly learn she’s just as deceptive as the rest of Big Mom’s crew. She’s been playing everyone, including Sanji, but Sanji being Sanji, still manages to see the good in her. He helps her realize that she doesn’t have to be defined by her family’s expectations or her appearance (one of many thematic parallels in the arc).

Luffy gets great stuff throughout the arc too. His loyalty to his crew, especially his declaration that he won’t eat anything but Sanji’s cooking, hits hard because it’s not just about food — it’s about how much he values Sanji as a person. Luffy knows Sanji is suffering and that he doesn’t really want to leave, so he plants himself in the middle of danger and waits for him. It speaks volumes about the strength of their bond.

In contrast, Big Mom’s version of “family” is twisted. She treats her children like collections, using them for political marriages or to build her empire. Sure, she may talk a big game about wanting a perfect family, but she treats her kids like tools. To Big Mom, family only matters as long as it helps her achieve her goals (of course juxtaposed by how it is the complete opposite of how the Straw Hats do family).

Another major player in the arc is Katakuri, who starts off as this untouchable, perfect figure, but as his fight with Luffy progresses, we see that he’s hiding his true self. He’s built up this image of perfection for his family’s sake, but deep down, he’s just as vulnerable as anyone else. Luffy, being Luffy, drags that out of him, and by the end of their fight, Katakuri learns to embrace who he really is, flaws and all. I think it works pretty well thematically, even if it's a bit of a simple parallel and his reason for wanting to hide himself (people hurt his family in retaliation for how he looked, which is that he had a bit of a weird mouth doesn't do much when he's far from the weirdest looking character in the series, or even the weirdest looking character in his family lol). Nevertheless, it fits and he makes for a great foe to Luffy.

Big Mom herself is a walking contradiction. On the one hand, she wants to create this utopia where everyone — no matter their race or background — can live together in harmony. But on the other hand, she’s a tyrant who uses her children and subordinates to get what she wants. I'm interested where that will go in the future.

I have a couple of drawbacks with the arc, which really aren't fundamental in the sense of "this is bad", but more so as in why it separates this from just being a really great arc as opposed to an exceptional arc that goes beyond that.

I think the fundamental one is just that it's a bit too... simple? Don't get me wrong, there are some emotional and personal themes here. Some of the more personal themes in the series. But Sanji's abuse isn't much more complicated than a quick flashback to him being abused under a horrific but very simple ideology from his father. It's great that it's very family abolitionist and very explicit about cutting abusers out of your life.

But I just think the depiction isn't particularly noteworthy to me when I've read other stuff that handles abuse in more interesting ways. In the same manner that, sure, I like how Katakuri's arc worked thematically, but by itself it's a rather simple character thing and isn't particularly interesting on its own.

Most of the arc is just a long raid, which is great, but when the emotional core is rather simple. Then the plot and conflict is rather simple too it basically makes for an arc that works so strongly because of its execution. Still, there's nothing there to elevate it conceptually beyond "a simple but great arc".

I also feel like many of the all-time One Piece arcs are about structural oppression? Again, I like that we got a more personal arc about oppressive family structures. I just felt like we didn't have much to say about it besides "this is bad" with very straightforward abuse. When One Piece deals with the oppression of an entire nation, how it's intergenerational and intersectional, how it affects different people differently which gives us so many different characters with their emotional stories, how it changes the customs and culture of the nation, and the insane heights of emotional crescendo as the unimagine tyranny is finally eliminated and liberation is at high -- is what the series does best and when it has the most interesting things to say.

Overall, of course, Whole Cake Island is a great arc. At its core, it’s about finding your place in the world — whether it’s breaking free from the family that tries to control you or embracing the found family that accepts you for who you are. Sanji’s journey is one of self-acceptance and it's the best his character has been maybe ever. The Candyland horror aesthetic is some of the best in the series so far. Plus, that Luffy vs Katakuri fight kicked ass.

And while my tiny quibbles, from its more straightforward narrative to its lack of particularly strong pathos to elevate it further, it's still a great arc that I really can't complain about when it's already better than most arcs in any other shonen series. With so much good stuff going on, I'm nothing but happy.

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2023: #02 & #01 (Finale)

02. CZECHIA Vesna - "My sister's crown" 10th place

Decade ranking: 5/116 [Above Daði Freyr, below Käärijä]

Finland over Czechia seems like a no-brainer. Some midcarding bitches vs ~K*Ä*Ä*R*I*J*Ä~ come on, how hard can it be? Who is Czechia even for?!

ME, motherfucker. This entry is for ME, and FOR ME ALONE!!! and since this is MY ranking, that made the decision very difficult. It took me MONTHS to settle who to put at the top.

Vesna are often cited as one of the more overrated acts in the year. Overrated by whom? Who overrates Vesna? Isn't 10th a correct placement? i've met NO ONE who would even consider putting them as high as second? - and I obv don't count since it took me AN ETERITY to out myself as a Vesna stan!!

I'd counter that Czechia are THE MOST UNDERRATED by the fandom (not by placement - that is Slovenia, as always) and absolutely deserved all the good things that happened to them ^_^

So obviously, there are multiple factors at work here. The song is a fantastic earworm. Like, defo one of the best in the year? In terms of sheer replayability, "My Sister's Crown" is on the same level as "Edgar" (studio only :-/) and "Carpe Diem", and you know how much I value those. The song has four languages (including Bulgarian) and none of them clash. The lyrics are quotable and fun. This is a track with ATTITUDE and ZEST, that managed to criticize the war in Ukraine without beating us over the head with it via a poorly hidden, clumsily written political message. The song is SMART, and respects its listeners.

LOVE'S NOT A MONEY BAG BLOOD'S ON YOUR GOD'S HANDS YOU CANNOT STEAL OUR SOULS

However, going into the year, there were issues - Vesna were messy and dissonant, and the six girls often gave the impression of competing against each other for attention. They were not a UNIT. Although "My Sister's Crown" was always one of the best songs, many (including myself!) were sceptical it could come together.

And it did, spectacularly.

See, one of the things about this year is that the good performances and good songs were often mismatched. Albania, Estonia and Poland had great on-stage glam-ups, but they were severely hampered by the songs being what they were. Other countries such as France and Austria had good songs, but required really good acts to tie them together, and failed or, in case of say UK, has good acts that were performed badly.

If you made a Venn Diagram between the best songs and the biggest growers, there wouldn't be much overlap. Except for Czechia.

To quote Matteo Lane's pearl of wisdom; if there's only ONE GAY, everything gets done! Ahmad Malloun was the One Gay and channeled his bossbottom energy to fuss Vesna into shape. Suddenly, the girls were harmonious and disciplined and that made all the difference. Suddenly, Czechia had an act with a clear vision - Six women united visually through their outfits. Vesna had become a UNIT, united through sisterhood.

SESTRO KRASIVA OI TI SILYNA HOROBRA JEDINA KORONA TVOJA

It really doesn't get mentioned nearly often enough how amazing the Czech staging was. Sure, Loreen and Käärijä, both top notch. But this is my personal favourite of the bunch. It's a visually stunning, avant garde act that fits the music, that fits the thematics, that pulls you in and tells a story without overtly complicating matters. They start as a group of angry hexaplets and then burst into joyful sororian rapture at the end. The staging is both aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. They hit the gold standard for acts that everyone should try to strive for!!

There are times where I wonder whether I really should rank Vesna above Käärijä. My Sister's Crown fully morphed into a me-coded entry. And perhaps, if and when I watch 2023 again, I may do exactly that. For now though, I've decided against it. The argument for Finland is less complicated, so I went with that. And now for the winner of this ranking I am sure NOBODY saw coming ever:

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

01. FINLAND Käärijä - "Cha Cha Cha" 2nd place

Decade ranking: 4/116 [Above Vesna, below Chanel]

It's Käärijä, bitch.

I rest my case for ranking Finland first. I don't think anyone argues this as invalid? Good, let's pick it all apart because if there's anything Käärijä deserves, it is being talked about. 😉

So um, where to start? Maybe it's best to start with the song - "Cha Cha Cha" was that rare 1-in-500 entry. I always say that novelty always tends to become stale over time - once in a blue moon however, it endures. "Cha Cha Cha" is a novelty song that is also an excellent song in its own right, and it stil holds up very well. It's a fun song to listen to, even without all the circus and theatrics.

The circus and theatrics though, omg <3 Talk about a DELECTABLE act, once again. This is yet again an example of how staging compliments the song and makes it digestible. Cha Cha Cha is entirely in Finnish with only a few loan words tossed in - difficult to get into on paper. The staging however, brings the plot points home.

The song's about wanting to overcome anxieties to dance? So break from the crates

Confront the inner Dance Demons that harass your psyche

make your way to the dancefloor while dodging decapitation via errant wires.

and then, when you overcome all fears transition to that godly, campy key chance, ride your them, having overcome your inhibitions.

AND I GALLAVANT ON THE FLOOR LIKE A CHA CHA CHA AND MY ANXIETIES HAVE NO GRIP ON ME NO MORE

The act is BRILLIANT. The ballroom dancers with their creepy pearly-whites, the dorkopotamus choreography, the styling, the overwhelming sense of triumph once the key change hits... It's the same deal as Vesna and Loreen, just a handful of visual cues that visualize the song's themes (anxiety, rather than sisterhood or desolation) are easy to understand and don't further complicate matters. THIS is how it's done. This is how you Eurovision.

The magical ingredient that tied it all together was the man, the dad bod, the bolero himself - Käärijä. Talk about a personality so massive everything gravitated towards him. It's hard to put the extent of his likeability into words - he's just so disarmingly himself. The key here is that Käärijä doesn't see himself as anything special. To him, he's just "boy from Vantaa who likes queen Loreen". He's just self-aware enough to realize the effect he has on others, but not self-aware enough to understand what exactly endears him to so many people. So when Käärijä plays up for funsies, he magnifies all aspects of his personality which makes him... even more endearing. 😍

(it's the same magic dust that has people flock to Baby Lasagna this year, really.)

It's rare to have a contestant who managed to completely warp the meta around him to this extent. It's even more rare that the contestant in this position then loses the competition. I remember telling my friend André, who was behind on NF news, that Käärijä had won UMK, and he replied with an innocuous "great, I haven't been this excited for a contestant since Verka!". I think I realize in that moment, that was to be Käärijä's destiny. Verka was the Hot Favourite in their year, the breakout star of 2007 - and Verka placed second to a more competent entry (Molitva <3). It was in that moment that I knew that Käärijä's inevitable fate was to come second to Loreen.

And I feel like, we all knew deep down that was where we were headed. We all wanted Käärijä to win as much as we did, because we knew that he would not. He was blissfully cruising towards a loss, and that was too much of an injustice to accept it and not manifest a reality where he beats Sweden.

It even got to a point where some people are now retroactively trying push the notion Tattoo is better than Euphoria (that statement is more offensive than anything I've ever commited to print or speech, including the one time I called Lesley Roy frumpy on cam <3) and the best entry ever (excuse you?) largely because it beat Cha Cha Cha.

So if Käärijä is this great, then why the doubt? Why only fourth for the decade (for the moment)?

Well, it's same deal as Cornelia for me. The best live of Cha Cha Cha that we received was the first one, at UMK, and every other performance we've had since then was not as good. The one in Eurovision had terrible vocals and slightly less impressive staging compared to UMK. I know right? The ESC staging did MORE and yet accomplished LESS. They got rid of all the wrestling references? Where's the close-up at the end? The arena? THE LIFT?

Sure, these inaccuracies didn't detract from my personal enjoyment of Cha Cha Cha. They however did allow for Käärijä to fall behind far enough behind Loreen in the jury vote so that he could no longer catch up with her in the televote, like a death by a thousand paper cuts.

It was a great live, but it wasn't great enough to win. Eurovision Käärijä was not Käärijä at his best, while Vesna without question gave their best performance in the Grand Final. Hence my doubts.

However, I ultimately went with Käärijä anyway because he did something Vesna could not - he gave a concert in my city, and I attended. HE MADE ME LEAVE THE HOUSE AFTER DARK. And god, if you've not been to a Käârijä gig before, absolutely fucking go if you're able to - IT'S CRAZY IT'S PARTY is the perfect catchphrase for this hyperactive, sexually amorphous, adorkable gremlin.

He was his unadulterated self, slapping his belly only vaguely aware of his sex appeal, swooning over a group of Slovene attendees because they reminded him of The Love Of His Life Bojan Cveticanin, ripping one of his merch t-shirts in half and then wearing it as a jacket, airdiving a wayward balloon that floated its way on the stage. The music was also excellent. Exposed to to the FULL scope of Käärijäness, made all the good memories of the 2023 preshow flow back, how could I not rank him anywhere other than first? Maybe I will change my mind and rank Vesna first in a few years from now, but for now, let's savour him while he's still fresh in our minds.

REMINDER THAT THE 2024 ROSTER IS GREAT LARGELY THANKS TO KÄÄRIJÄ.

REMINDER THAT HE WOULD SO WIN ANY FUTURE EUROVISION IF HE WANTED TO:

(May I just name this as my fave song from the 2024 nf season MAY I????*)

He WAS 2023. He WAS Eurovision.

He may have lost the contest, but he has won life. (and paid his taxes.)

ALL RISE FOR THE BEST ACT OF 2023!

The RANKING (completed)

"Novo, Bolje" was my fave 2024 NF also-ran. Obv.

ADDENDUM: ABOUT ESC2024

Yeah, obviously i'm not going to do a pre-show ranking. With all the poison and controversy going on, it's just not the right time. I delayed this ranking specificially so that I wouldn't be temped to do the 2024 one later. (Unlike a certain broadcasting institution, I possess a modest amount of insight, foresight and self-awareness. 🙂 )

Hopefully, ESC 2024 goes down without too many incidents, and I'll able to start my post-show ranking the week after the Grand Final.

See you there, hopefully, if Eurovision isn't dead and buried by then! 💚

[m--rtyr]

okay so i mentioned my little marvel insanity to @that-one-i-think but i never elaborated, soy:

most of my thoughts are post-endgame, but some are obviously pre-endgame. Like a black-widow trilogy, not having the Jewish-Roma characters join a Nazi organisation, and so forth.

But i'll focus on post-endgame for now.

For one, I don't think it should've been a MULTIVERSE saga. It feels really soon to hop from 'oh yeah magical stones' to 'theres sooo many fucking universes bro what the fuuuuck' without proper set-up. Y'know what was set-up, though?

time. WHICH IS DIFFERENT.

Firstly, Time travel was introduced in Endgame - no better way to set up future projects than to introduce the core of it at the end of the initial run. Especially because Endgame was not even the first occasion of time-fuckery, Antman played with it and it was even brought up in infinity War with Dr Strange saying there is only one way the fight with Thanos will end well. Even if Time Travel was only a subsidiary of the Infinity Saga, time itself is established enough to create a somewhat seamless transition into the next saga.

Not only that, but the concept for the Multiverse Saga is clearly to replace the OG avengers with the Young Avengers, who band together as a team because of time travel, to stop KANG, THE TIME TRAVEL MAN.

My ideas for Sagas are typically to focus, mostly, on either building up storylines/characters for a Big Movie, or introducing characters that are thematically relevant. soooo

Also, ideally, there wouldn't be series back-to-back-to-back. I understand why this was done in the context of Covid, but this is an isolated reality in my mind where real world bullshit doesn't matter. I think having shows more separated would help with preventing any fatigue.

im only gonna focus on P4 for now, just bc there's a lot to say.

Phase 4, I'm vibing with the... Legacy of it all. Not so much introducing the legacy characters themselves, but centring the characters they originated from, or originally emulate in the YA. I also want Grief to be a big thing. Because i can.

I think Wandavision works as a first project. It was kind of a sweet start, and after Endgame it was nice to start off slow, isolated. Wandavision plays around with Sitcoms Through Time, and whilst not directly linked to Time Travel, fits in thematically. Plus, using Fox Quicksilver as a cameo was neat, since he's not only a flash to the past (from a movie trilogy retconning the original trilogy via time travel), but speedsters always toe the line when it comes to their relationship with time.

(Introduces, of course, the twins)

Then, a Hawkeye movie, null Kate. Mostly because of how i want to set up the YA. I think Clint did deserve his own project, dedicated to HIM. A later Hawkeye series following both him and Kate would be cute, but for now... let's just keep it sweet and simple. Perhaps trying to clean up after his mistakes whilst having to face-off against Yelena. Eventually I want these two to come to an understanding, they both lost Nat, and they'll always be tied through her despite their distaste for each other. I think the humour could be fun. Since it would have a street-level, gang-fighting centre, we could also begin to introduce the kingpin/Eleanor stuff as a bit of a sneakpeek. I love street-level stuff ngl.

(ofc, Kate setup)

(i would also put the Gotg christmas special around this time. bc. christmas)

And then we allow ourselves another series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Again, more street-level, more calm. After Endgame I don't wanna dive straight into drama. similar to what i kinda want with Hawkeye, i need there to be actual on-screen consequences for the gaping power vacuum left behind, both crime-wise and politically. Not just 'everyone was fucked over by the blip', but 'now the Avengers are gone people feel like they can do anything - who is gonna stop them?' I would need to rewatch it to state any changes. Maybe keep Bucky's long hair... hm.

(Eli would still feature in Isaiah's scenes. The legacy connection is established that way - Eli is Isaiah's legacy very explicitly in the comics. He does not do what he does to continue from Steve, or Sam, but his grandfather.)

And as much as I wanna not have too many series back-to-back, there are SO many. So, She-Hulk. Except screw all the like weird stuff they retconned as part of the ending. I want it to be a work-place comedy. of course with the set-up to Jen being a hulk and stuff, and superhero stuff on the side. Just have more of an emphasis on the little cameo characters she is a lawyer for, because... Sokovia accords would still be a thing. I hate that they just brushed it aside, if they happen, THEY HAPPEN, until something changes that fact. And i think Jen working to defend the innocence of people like her, and rallying for change in the accords, would be really neat. Especially since she's a Hulk, who are notoriously deemed dangerous for what they are. I think it would just be a little symbolic. This would not be entirely about Jen's grief, but moreso other people's, with the lives theyve lost and are losing due to discriminatory laws against supes.

She IS the Legacy, but i think it would be a nice moment for Teddy later on stating that it's people like Jen who make the world a better place for all superheroes, especially the big green ones. Even if he's not technically a Hulk.

From the fun and camp of She-Hulk, straight into a Super Gay Space film with the Space Lesbian, Carol Danvers. Another Captain Marvel solo (forgor to mention, OG mar-vell is a dude for YA reasons), but i still need to find a comic i would want them to adapt. HOWEVER, I do want her to find out about/mention the Impossible Prophecy, and the affair between Mar-Vell and the Princess Anelle. Because... Actually Setting up Teddy properly. This... I feel like will be kinda dramatic for being a space movie, but I don't want it to be too major. Maybe her vs the Supreme Intelligence, with a sprinkle of her being angry the whole time because her wife (Maria) is dead and she doesn't have healthy coping mechanisms.

Then, the Big Drama movie, Thor Love and Thunder. Because we gotta feature more of Carol's next lover, Valkyrie. I was kinda bummed by this movie. It is already a lot about grief, but I think it skims over Thor's grief for his family and friends rather quickly. More emphasis on Gor, obviously, because somehow this movie managed to have a cool concept and FUMBLE. Throw in some references to Gaia, especially regarding thor, because i liked when that was a thing in comics.

(Thor is who Billy emulates as a young supe, so... still in-legacy theme)

No Cassie, because... Ant-man is important later for my plotting.

We kick it all off with Loki. for obvious reasons. Gotta bracket the phase with saga-relevant content.

not only sets up Kid-Loki, but Kang, and thus Nate.

bc im super smart.

Obviously this cuts out a lot of projects, but the recent Phases are doing so much I think a trim is required.

im also just scared to touch No Way Home because. uh. we can't leave it too long, and it was a really good movie, but... this is about Time Travel broo... idk

[rubberduckyrye]

I'm pretty sure it was the producer on the show who got mad that people were bigger fans of Varian then instead of Cass.

Iirc the dude was actually a part of a tangled discord server n shit. Like it was fucking crazy.

(I don't think that person worked on anything for Disney since)

I found this old reddit post about the whole thing

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

Oh yeah I know all about this, it's part of the reason why I made the post, actually. Like after seeing how this particular writer handled the show and the characters, it's so obvious that he hated Varian fans more than he loved his own creations. Instead of being happy that fans of the show were piecing together the lore and hyping up Varian to be the villain he was always meant to be (a sympathetic one that almost makes you think Rapunzel is the bad guy here, like. Really his story is so upsettingly tragic) he decided that Varian fans weren't Loving Cas Enough so he changed everything.

Made Finn to be the lost moon kingdom prince (even though it doesn't make nearly as much sense as Varian being the prince), made Cas a villain with such piss poor motivations to be the villain that it hurts (honestly I can imagine her running off for a while after learning about her mother, but going so far over it??? Makes no sense) and just like, completely negating the important of Varian's character as a whole.

Like Varian has SO many ties to the moon it's unreal. His name also plays into the fact he was supposed to have "phases" of the moon, like--

You literally have the moon incarnate and you're gonna ditch all of that thematic context you made for the character just to give the female character you made a sexy cat suit???? Really???? That's where you're going now????

Okay buddy...

[ilynpilled]

do you believe jc’s endgame is to die together?

i think i have communicated much of this already, but let’s just say i am more open to the possibility than most jb/jaime ppl, but i am not at all as certain of it happening as most ppl in general fandom seem to be, and i am also not a huge fan of it personally. here is my perspective:

yeah, it is explicitly integrated into their belief system. it faded from jaime’s, as he did abandon her, and already often contradicted it through moments of being ready to recklessly die, or his passive suicidal ideation, but it was always present as a key aspect of their ‘destined lovers’ delusion. the thing with me though is that i dont really think this is how george tends to do foreshadowing? he does love to be unpredictable. and i have seen this argument many times before by other people who doubt this being their trajectory. not to mention the whole idea seems to get deliberately deconstructed over time.

jaime comes to the realization that she was the stranger (and we know he is cersei’s stranger, but she does not think he means death). he starts treating the relationship very differently (george says they are “effectively estranged”), and their fate is no longer entwined in his head. them saying they will die together is telegraphing that is very in your face. i mean the text is telling us what would happen explicitly. is that supposed to be deliberate and meant to be a tragic irony? i can see it working from that perspective maybe. but i think this aspect would still be effective without the double death necessarily, even though i can see how the wording may be deliberate here, i just have certain thematic gripes with it. we know these two are not supposed to be reliable narrators when they say this. their relationship is a twisted attempt at self-love. again, i get that there is a subversion happening with cersei being killed by him for one, but is the belief system supposed to end up “endorsed” by the text from the pov of jaime’s character, even if it is tragically ironic? what i am saying is that ig i would be more certain of it happening if cersei did not keep repeating it explicitly atp while jaime is completely contradicting it simultaneously. if they are supposed to doom each other, what is really the point of that divergence? of the deconstruction of such a narrative in jaime’s head? why not send jaime back and have him not make those kind of key choices? jaime’s arc is supposed to be about choices (“whatever he chose…”), and defining his own fate and identity (like you do not even have to believe it is about exploring redemption to get this out of the text), so i really still cannot help but dislike the idea that this is set in stone despite everything that he keeps doing and the choices that he keeps on making. like there is an essentialist aspect to this belief system that i would prefer to be subverted honestly from the perspective of his character. i want all of these choices to have some kind of result (the letter, oathkeeper, the pit, rejecting her because of certain ultimatums even before the cheating reveal, abandoning the pursuit of the brotherhood for the vow to cat in adwd). + the hand that held her foot could have very well been the one that got chopped, so there is symbolism there. he is not tied to her. and that hand loss and “change” is constantly emphasized when it comes to JC. and i really do not want jaime to die before having some kind of confrontation with bran tbh. and i have talked about the widow’s wail thing before. if jaime is gonna wield it (which i think there is a set up for), then he would have to come out of KL alive with it. the weirwood dream also has them separate. her torch being the ‘only light in the world’ is replaced by brienne’s sword’s fire being the only one still burning in his darkness when the ghosts rush in.

this is another argument that i have seen before, and see validity in. george does write that belief system as something that has an element of ‘sociopathy.’ like of course it isn’t meant to be ‘romantic’. and jaime is also growing out of it. his relationship with a lot of characters now, brienne included, is a testament. i do not at all mind if jaime dies down the line, i just really would prefer it if there is some form of triumph over the self when it comes to his ending. i also atm cannot imagine how it would go, and what would cause jaime’s death, and how they would “leave the world together” logistically with the valonqar prophecy existing. so while i think george might be capable of executing it in a way that i could like, and i see that tragic irony working out, i still am not crazy about it as a concept atm for all the reasons above. we will see.

[boogiewoogieweeb]

for the fic writer ask: 12, 20, 64? 😇

well, well, if it isn't one of my favourite people ever... 😎🥰😘 sure thing, lil! here we go:

12. How does receiving or not receiving feedback/support impact you?

like a great many fic writers, while i write primarily for myself, feedback from my readers plays a crucial part in motivating me to continue writing and improving my craft. good concrit is always welcome (though i often take it through gritted teeth, being the stubborn little shit that i am), and any praise or show of support is massively and genuinely appreciated (even when i struggle to accept it due to my own insecurities). and while getting kudos on your work is gratifying, receiving a heartfelt comment on the effect or impact your writing has had on someone is absolutely mindblowing and wonderfully empowering by comparison.

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

i tend to use plant imagery and symbolism in my work A LOT (specifically, trees and creeping vines). i also often include birds or bird symbolism. both of these are tied rather closely to my own perception of what love feels like (whether filial, platonic, or romantic). another subset of literary symbolism i often include in my writing is that of injury or chronic pain, which is also deeply connected to the id, and my own perceived sense of self.

thematically, a lot of my writing features requited unrequited love or unerring devotion, mainly due to my own persistent issues with being limerent and chronically in love with the idea of being loved and/or desired.

lastly, when writing humour, i like to inflict outbursts of intense embarrassment or deep unease on my focal characters, since that's usually how i feel about interacting with other people around 70% of the time. (but watch out! when i get comfortable with someone...)

64. Something you love to see in smut.

emotional vulnerability and intense passion. look, a good raunchy pwp is great and all, but being that i'm limerent and rather prone to melancholy and introspection, i love seeing characters be overwhelmed by the realization of the depth of their feelings for one another, and allowing that to bleed through into intimate scenes. having characters give themselves over so wholly and completely to one another in both mind and body that at the end of a given sex scene, i, as the reader, almost feel like i'm the one that got lovingly and seductively taken apart and put back together again.

alternatively, lately i've been getting really into breeding kink and possessive tops 👍

thank you very, very much for the ask, lily! 🌹🌹🌹 these were super fun questions to ponder and come up with answers for. ily and i hope you have fun reading these!

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

how do you find or decide what piece of art to use for an edit? what are your sources for finding artworks to use for your edits?

hello my dear!

what a lovely question! my answer is incredibly long, so I apologize in advance for that, but I tried to make it as organized as possible. I'm also going to put it under a cut, since I rambled on for quite a while 😅 but this was such a rich question - so thank you again!! ☺️☺️

if you have other questions lingering after this, please feel free to reach out again! 🥰🥰

how do I decide which artwork to use for an edit?

for the most part, when deciding what artwork to use, I look for some kind of visual or thematic resonance with the lyrics I plan to use

for example, in this edit, I used the lyrics "I don't like that falling feels like flying til the bone crush" with lament for icarus by herbert james draper. there were a number of parallels I wanted to draw here:

visual parallels: those lyrics come from "gold rush" by taylor swift, and the painting itself is suffused in gold tones. I also used a golden glow on some of the words to emphasize this connection

thematic parallels: icarus is famously known for his fall from the sky, and the lyrics I chose literally discuss falling, so that was another resonance I wanted to pull out

random parallels that perhaps exist only in my mind: I wanted to emphasize the ending of a story with both the lyrics and the painting. in the painting, we see icarus after he has fallen, but for those familiar with the myth, his prior flight and fall are implied. the lyrics discuss the metaphorical joy of flight until it turns into a freefall, but what we are actually seeing here is the "bone crush." in this way, I liked that we're looking at the end of a story that in some ways tells the whole story. the lyrics and art both imply the existence of a previous moment of rapturous flight which turned into a tragic fall, even though they only actually show the aftermath of both. idk if that makes any sense so just ignore this one if this is absolutely incompressible 😅

basically, these are the kinds of resonances I like to seek out. sometimes the lyrics come first and I look for a painting that fits well with them, and sometimes it's the other way around. other times I see an artwork and immediately lyrics will pop into my head, or vice versa, where I'll hear lyrics and instantly think of a painting that would fit them so well

not all of my edits have every level of parallels, but I do like to make sure that they at least have some sort of thematic resonance that ties them together!

I hope that explains my process at least a little! ☺️☺️

where do I find artworks for my edits?

there are four big resources/approaches that I use, so I'll go through each one here ☺️

general art history knowledge: since I'm doing an art history phd, I just happen to have a lot of exposure to a lot of different kinds of art. between the hours I spent in class, doing readings, and doing my own research, I just end up absorbing a lot of potential artists and artworks to use. I actually have a page in my notes app devoted to things I see that I may want to use for edits in the future 😅. however, I completely understand that this is not an experience that a lot of people have. but I am more than happy to offer myself as a resource!! if you ever have a question or a vision in mind but don't know where to start looking for art, feel free to reach out and ask! I am by no means in expert in every facet of art history, but I would be absolutely delighted to use what knowledge I do have to help you in any way I can! 🥰🥰

image collections: there are a number of fantastic digital resources available for browsing historical art! museum websites and their digital collections are always a great place to start. many libraries also have extensive digitized collections which often include prints, drawings, photos, and illustrations, even if they don't have paintings or other larger artworks. a couple that I've used in the past are the library of congress and the bibliotheque nationale de france, but there are so many more out there. if you're affiliated with a university, you may have access to resources like artstor, which has a huge repository of images. depending on the databases to which your local library subscribes (which are often a lot!! libraries are so cool and I highly recommend checking out the resources they have!!), you may have access to a number of other databases like artstor. wikimedia commons is also a fantastic resource, since they have categories you can browse like "women with skulls in art" or "red textiles in portrait paintings." obviously not every artwork that fits those parameters are included, but the amount of images they have is incredible. my one caution here is that the search function doesn't allow for a lot of specificity unless you already know the name of a category you're looking for. finally, google arts & culture/google art project tends to have really high quality images of artworks, but is also not the easiest to search unless you already know the name of an artist or artwork that you're looking for. whew okay that's a lot, but please let me know if I can answer any more specific questions about any of these amazing resources!

art accounts: I truly discover so much fantastic art by following other accounts that post art historical content! I follow a number both on here and on instagram, and it's always amazing to see what other people discover 🥰. some are more specific, like posting art just from a specific era/period, or curating different color themes, while others just post anything that they find compelling. I end up finding so many artworks this way, and it's also a fantastic way to connect with other people who like art historical stuff!

following rabbit holes: this is more of an approach than a specific resource, but I highly encourage everyone to explore things they like!! if you see an artwork that really resonates with you, look up the artist and see what other kind of work they've done. find out if they are identified with a particular period or movement and then look up other artists from that movement. see if you like any of the art produced by those artists and then keep going! I have found so much incredible art just by being curious about a single artwork, and it's also a great way to expand your art historical knowledge in general ☺️

yikes okay now that I've written you a whole novel, I hope that at least some of this info was helpful!!

thank you again for the wonderful question! (and thank you so much for reading this all if you got this far! 🥰)

as I said above, I would be genuinely delighted to help with anything that I can! the reason that I want to be a professor is to let people get excited about art, so anything I can do to facilitate that is pretty much my dream 🥰

thank you again dearest anon and I hope you have a lovely, art-filled day!! 💖💕💖💕

[macksmediadiary]

Chuck Tingle - Camp Damascus 6/6

#book #horror #queer fiction #autistic fiction

I sit in my bed finishing this book. My boyfriend is right beside me masturbating. I can't imagine a more "us" scene.

We are an autistic gay couple. I am questioning-gray-ace, and he is as far from the ace spectrum as one gets. There is a lot of danger in this scene; just as his christian upbringing has tied his natural urges to shame, so too is shame tied to my moments of not getting into the mood when my partners do. But we are navigating it well, in our practiced way. When he finishes, I lean over, contented, and kiss his forehead. He smiles up at me, eyes clear and sparkling. We our being ourselves with each other to the fullest, and receiving nothing but love and acceptance back.

My first thought is of Willow holding Rose's hand, tapping out her counts with her. It's almost too perfect an analogy; I can't believe I'm not making this up. Autistic gay love has the power to take physiological facts about us that others' misguided love and imperfect expressions of other emotions have tethered to deep feelings of shame and guilt, and recontextualize them as normal, acceptable, and good. In my relationships, in my wider community, I am accepted, I can take off the mask, I can explore who I really am at the core.

Camp Damascus is a very well-crafted journey through a few connected concepts. Chuck Tingle is not playing coy with any of them. From the language he uses on his blog, I had started to guess that the villains of the story would be demon worshipers, or perhaps devils themselves, wearing the coat of the righteous; a warning that those who claim to be on God's side may be against Him. One of the ways the book surprised me was what it says instead of this. The people who will use demonic methods to achieve their ends believe they are on the side of the righteous, and this makes them all the more dangerous. For the most part, though, the book wears its symbolism on its sleeve, and is not afraid of being very explicit with its messaging. Kingdom of the Pine is not special in its thinking, only its practices.

The craft of this book was also at the level I needed to learn about writing from it. The way it jumps between scenes and expresses the passage of time is very natural, and very focused. I struggle a lot with plotting out my books, worrying a lot about structure and how to get characters from one place to another. My TTRPG background has me focus a lot on journeys, but I can struggle to allow myself to focus in on what matters. Camp Damascus gives you all the logistics that matter, like how Rose achieves her most important successes, and the plot-relevant mechanics of the universe and specific machines. It is also a lesson in having the perfect protagonist for your story. It is very natural that Rose succeeds because of the things that are most core to her, because those things are what the story demands of her, and at the same time the story works around the journey she needs to have as a character. The way these elements work together is something I will consider in my own writing. There are smaller things, too, in the writing that I am thinking about but would take too long to explain

A lot of thematic content in the book is not new to me, and a lot of the religious trauma content does not really connect to my life. However, some of the ideas are making a big impact. In particular, the expression of what love can do and what it is worth is impacting how I think about love in my own life. This book makes me appreciate the love I have with my boyfriend in a slightly new way. It also reminds me that I have a large accepting family that enhances my life in many ways. I will never again be at risk of ending up in a place like Rose at the start of the book. Just as surely as she is free from her nightmare at the end, I know my community has me for life.

At the same time, this is certainly a horror novel. There are scenes in this book so grotesque that they will have me shuddering for weeks. I don't have much to say on the topic, but could not leave out that the fear and discomfort are very real in this book. At the very same time, there's something else that this book very much makes me feel:

Love is real.

[keithsandwich]

Astrology Ramblings - The missing princes

Warnings: 1) These are just ramblings, don't expect many conclusions here. 2) Traditional Astrology is my thing. 3) I'm talking planets and signs as symbols, and a real person is far more complex than a Sun sign.

.

Of course, there's no rule saying there must be at least one prince of each sign. Still, I wanted to imagine how a Cancer and a Sagittarius prince would be like, since we have none of those signs so far and who knows, maybe the new princes will fill this gap.

The Moon Prince of Cancer

A prince tied to traditions/heritage. Cancer is the guardian of memories, someone who looks back at their origins and wants connect it with the future. Someone who wants to honor their ancestors and keep their memories in their descendants.

Sad boy squad. Someone who has defenses up but starts growing vulnerable from inside out and suddenly cries. And Cancer cries a lot. Cancer fills riverbeds with tears. They grow/change from inside out too, so they can start in a way and end up becoming totally different.

Cancer is ruled by the Moon, and the Moon changes sign and phases very quickly. So they would be someone moody, someone with a lot of ups and downs. Days of laughter, days of tears.

Perhaps someone more innocent and naive. Moon is also the youngest of the planets, even though it is the motherly planet (and Cancer is the motherly sign), it is also the infant. A young prince, or a prince who at least looks very young (like IkeSen's Ranmaru, who I literally just found out is a Cancer).

Moon is the mind along with Mercury. It rules practical knowledge, curiosity, emotions and feelings, arts and crafts. An artist prince, or a prince who enjoys art very much and would take you to the opera or art exhibitions.

A Cancer in love is smooth in manners and intense in feelings. They want to envelope you in love and care, and make sure that you are happy, emotionally comfortable and nourished.

For reference, Cancer is a Water sign, together with Scorpio (Chevalier) and Pisces (Jin, Keith). Water signs are the most sensitive of the Zodiac, but both Cancer and Scorpio have a shell that protects them, so you only access their emotions after you pass through this shell. The only one able to attack directly (and deadly) is Scorpio. Both Cancer and Pisces are more defensive or even prone to flee or hide away from problems.

If one of the new princes is a Cancer, I would bet on the Kogyoku one. Achroite looks like a lunar gem, but thematically speaking, I would go with Kogyoku.

.

The Philosopher Prince of Sagittarius

The only thing that ties a Sagittarius is their own beliefs. And they are so very, deeply, in love with their own convictions. The conviction itself can change overtime (since it's a Mutable sign), but their passion towards their truth will never change.

A Sagittarius prince would be avid for knowledge. Deep knowledge, the kind that tries to unveil what lies between Heaven and Earth, and Beyond. Philosophy, Religion/Spirituality, Occultism. A kind of a wizard prince. Or maybe an adventurous one, since traveling the world is also a way of finding out what's beyond. Either way Sagittarius is a perpetual seeker, they are always looking for something.

Still, they would be humorous, their speech would be mostly lightheaded and they would be fun to be around. Sagittarius is also brutally honest, very transparent on what they're doing and thinking. A prince who values freedom and is always breaking limits. Nothing would contain such a prince.

As a Mutable sign, Sagittarius is dual: the most elegant master of a great number of skills, but also a wild, untamed, beastly horse. A prince who would either delight you with the most fascinating conversations or be extremely rude, arrogant, offensive even.

When in love, they're like an artist who found their muse. You become the very truth they were looking for, and they dedicate themselves to you heart and soul, and wants to take you with him to all of his adventures.

Sagittarius is an arrow aiming at Antares, the Heart of the Scorpion. I would expect this prince to be as much of a threat to Chevalier as is Gilbert.

For reference, Sagittarius is a Fire sign, together with Aries (Rio) and Leo (Leon, Silvio). Fire signs are the most active, motivated and impulsive. Aries blindly attacks, Leo pounces on their prey and Sagittarius shoots its arrow with precision. They are all courageous, proud and loyal, but are also the kind that act before thinking and trust way too much on themselves.

I would say thorn dude from the trailer gives off Sagittarius vibes. Random guy appearing out of nowhere to make you predictions? Yeah, he's a centaur.

[sparklyjojos]

KOMATSUKI MAKIKO summary

[Note: this short story centers Jirou from Smoke, Soil and Sacrifices, which I recapped here.]

[tw: gore, sexual content, mental health issues (mostly DID as understood by Maijo), mentioned child abuse, suicide?]

--

The narrator--Komatsuki Makiko--briefly remembers the time when Natsukawa Jirou was called a “man like the eternal return itself” by Salman Rushdie when the two had a chance conversation in a New York cafe in 1998.

Jirou once told Makiko in a quite philosophical conversation that God doesn’t think. Or rather, God “thinks” (ie. has thoughts, brain processes necessary to perceive things and work towards creating the world), but doesn’t really “ponder” (thinks about stuff, philosophizes etc.)--only humans do.

Makiko thinks that by saying this, Jirou is drawing a line between himself and humanity. Jirou certainly seems to just know the answer to anything without pondering it first.

Makiko notices that Jirou’s atmosphere of ‘just knowing’ was deftly put into the main character of Natsukawa Saburou’s book Tsukumojuku (!!!) -- as Jirou’s brother, Saburou would of course know Jirou as well as to capture the vibes he gave off. Although Saburou made Tsukumojuku “ponder” different things from around halfway through that novel, maybe Jirou would be okay with just “thinking”. To force him to “consider” would feel like trying to force God himself to do that.

As he is, Jirou is a genius. He can perfectly remember any image he saw even once and everything he read, and he gets through books so fast it looks like he’s just idly flicking through the pages. He can even memorize a hard scientific text verbatim and only analyze it later in his mind.

Jirou keeps his vast knowledge inside a memory palace--“Natsukawa Dormitory”--not unlike the one that the book character Hannibal Lecter has. But while Hannibal was the only keeper of his palace, Jirou has several.

Jirou claims -- and Makiko isn’t sure whether to believe him or not -- that he experimentally caused his own personality to split and create four additional parts. When Makiko first met Jirou in 1995, those four were as follows: Shi Un, a quiet and wise 14-year-old boy; Daniel, a 36-year-old part-time painter; Sugisaki Yuri, a 17-year-old ghost [who is also described as 性転換した, as in “sexually transitioned”; I think Maijo means just that Yuri’s female?], and Aka Tsuki (or just Akatsuki?), a 21-year-old elderly dog that speaks in a rough tone.

Jirou “raised” those four and eventually “overcame” them, after which he changed their names. Shi Un became “Ichirou”, Daniel - “Jirou” (not the surface Jirou we know), Sugisaki Yuri - “Saburou”, and Aka Tsuki - “Shirou”. Considering that these were also the names of Jirou and his brothers, you’d think that it was a bad idea, but Jirou seemed to be okay with it.

--

But anyway, Makiko first met Jirou in a cafe in Brussels, where she and her friend Toda Erika planned to take some photos (Makiko is a photographer). The instant Jirou saw Makiko, he called her by name and congratulated her on “fulfilling her wishes”. He explained that he once saw a middle school graduation book from Makiko’s school, in which she wrote down her wish of becoming a  photographer.

Ever since that first meeting everything’s been going well, Makiko says. It’s like Jirou is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, Vaisravana. As if he’s the God who fulfills all her wishes and hears even the unspoken ones --  surely nobody except a god would have that power.

If we stretch the concept a bit, the other Natsukawa brothers would seem fit as the other Four Heavenly Kings: Ichirou the politician as Dhrtarastra who upholds the realm, Saburou the writer as Virupaksa who sees everything, and Shirou the successful surgeon as Virudhaka who brings growth.

--

Jirou likes to look through school graduation books, photos and anthologies of kids’ work, and gather them all in Natsukawa Dormitory. From what he says, back when he was 19-20 he used to sneak into schools in Japan just to page through these anthologies. When the two were in Jirou’s house once (which had only a few beds and piles upon piles upon piles of books as internal decor), Makiko asked him why he enjoys these child pictures so much. Instead of giving a straight answer, Jirou drew a picture...

...which Makiko recognized as the work of Ikihara Akira, her classmate from primary school. Jirou explained that after drawing this picture Akira was murdered and eaten by his mother. Apparently the police and everyone else thought the motive could be the mother doing it “out of love”, so that the boy would become her flesh and blood, but Jirou personally thought it was just something she did for her own enjoyment.

Jirou then talked about Hannibal Lecter playing a monster for amusement, and noticed that acting is a basis of human play. Even when people grow up, their tendency to act is still there, just moves from childish play to performing the role of “themselves”.

Akira’s parents lived in separation, but in the picture, he drew himself holding hands with them in harmony and wrote down yokatta (“I’m glad”, “everything went well” etc.). Even if nothing actually went well, Jirou still likes that yokatta, a simple wish of a child. Seeing as time doesn’t flow in this picture, nothing ever changes within it, maybe in a way Akira’s wish really did come true.

Makiko is wondering if you could really say that considering how Akira ended up. Jirou answers to this by flipping the page and drawing another picture that Makiko quickly realizes is how the original one really looked like.

The first thing Jirou showed was fake. Akira’s actual drawing looked like this:

Makiko really had thought the first one was the original until she saw this one. She wonders just how many memories of hers are actually faithful to life, and how many were altered with time. Maybe it’s that frail memory that makes her love capturing time in photos. Maybe Jirou, whose memory was perfect, preferred those emotionally charged pictures made by children.

Jirou said he’d be fine with whatever end awaited him.

But things don’t come to an end, Makiko thought. This is the eternal return. Things start and end and then happen again. If Jirou really was “like an eternal return itself”, then he would never end either… so maybe would never “be fine”.

--

Jirou sometimes killed that other “Jirou” in Natsukawa Dormitory, only to have him be reborn later. Maybe this repeated killing was Jirou’s attempt to reach some sort of an end--to finally “be fine”. A chase in the middle of eternal return.

Makiko wondered if the two ever changed places. Was the original Jirou still succesfully staying on the surface, or had he been pulled inside and exchanged for “Jirou” a long time ago? Was the Jirou she loved even a single person? Certainly she also had a fair share of experiences with those others.

After they returned to Japan and started living in Makiko’s family house in Chofu, she was once woken up by Jirou touching her body (and, er, himself). To her questions he answered awkwardly that “Jirou is asleep”, introduced himself as Shi Un, said he’s sorry, that Makiko and the family are really kind to him, and that he doesn’t really know stuff yet.

(And then Makiko instantly jumped to the occasion to have sex with him right then and there, because Maijo Otaro.)

When Jirou later renamed and “contain” the other four in Natsukawa Dormitory, Makiko commented that he seemed jealous of Shi Un, but Jirou just answered that this accusation didn’t even make sense--they were the same person, after all.

Makiko still isn’t sure whether the existence of the other personalities is real and not just Jirou putting on an elaborate play. Makiko herself remembers acting a lot in previous relationships. It’s different with Jirou, feels more real - instead of overthinking, her head just goes blank whenever she’s with him… though maybe her head going blank is also a sort of a performance, more to convince herself than him that their relationship is true? Then again, maybe every internal emotion is in a way “performed” when shown on the outside. Even assuming her emotions were “fake”, surely they wouldn’t fall that far off from the true ones.

When she was with Jirou, she felt like he’d know the answer to anything, and felt like it was just fine to stop thinking… or at least stop “considering”. There likely wasn’t a point to asking all those “ifs” like whether or not Jirou was actually Jirou.

When she once asked him why he repeatedly kills “Jirou”, he answered: “because I only kill myself.” Did it mean that the one he wanted to kill more than anyone else was himself? Or that if he had to kill, he wouldn’t do that to others, but to himself?

--

Just before they left Belgium, Makiko drove them to Bastogne while unusually serious Jirou recited Miura Tetsuo’s short stories from memory on her request. She wondered how he imagined things from the stories to look like and how close they were to her own imagination. Could imagined, fictional things also remain as memories?

They stopped by a residence that, according to Jirou, belonged to one of the world’s richest men, who out of paranoia hid himself inside a house filled with security. They said nobody was even allowed to see him without stripping completely naked and undergoing a body search.

Jirou left the car and went to the house with the security guards. He returned pretty soon, safe and in higher spirits. Makiko started driving to a restaurant, but Jirou asked her to park on the side of the road for a second. As she watched, he suddenly took off the entirety of his hair - apparently it was a wig hiding bare skin underneath - and then just as casually took off a part of his skull and retrieved from his own head a small knife, still red with the rich man’s blood. He asked Makiko to bring him the surgical tool set from the trunk and proceeded to carefully put his head back together.

When he was done, they went to the restaurant and ordered a meal. Jirou explained that he hadn’t killed the rich man, just roughed him up a little with the knife he’d hidden in his own head. It was the same knife used by the man back when he was a child… well, not the same one, but looking similar enough that the man would imagine it was the original thing.

Even if Jirou did horrible, horrible things to people, he never killed them. He only killed himself.

--

Three days after Jirou “conquered” Daniel and renamed him to “Jirou”, he killed him. About two months later “Jirou” showed up again, this time not as a 36-year-old artist, but as a shy six-year-old.

Jirou would have that child “Jirou” bullied, hit, kicked, and having unspeakable acts done to him. Throughout all that abuse, and being made fun of by “Ichirou”, “Saburou” and “Shirou”, “Jirou” would after some time grow up and become the strongest out of them. At that point Jirou would beat him to death. Later he’d raise him from a weak child to a powerful man again, and kill him again.

Makiko often cried when she thought about it, not sure if she emphatized more with the pain of the killed “Jirou” or the Jirou who killed. If time can flow differently inside one’s mind, then “Jirou” (or maybe even the surface Jirou, if they ever switched) could have endured horrible abuse for hundreds of years. Neverending death and rebirth. Like the eternal return itself.

Jirou didn’t kill others, but maybe the things he did to them were close enough to killing that you couldn’t really make a distinction. So maybe killing “Jirou” was also coming just close enough to death that it really felt like dying while still maintaining life.

Maybe that child that Makiko sometimes spotted in his expression was actually just the same child all this time, and Jirou just acted like he was killing him, an elaborate act of play-pretend for the world, or maybe just for himself.

--

Since ancient times - Jirou said - humanity had a concept of monsters. At first these were god-like beings removed far from humans, but then they started progressively approaching our kind. First as animal shapeshifters, then beings like vampires and Frankenstein’s monster that skirted the line between life and death, and finally as zombies, dead humans who ate others. Then there was Hannibal Lecter, not any undying being of any sort, but just a human gone mad.

Although, as Jirou points out, there was a hypothesis that Lecter wasn’t actually insane. At one point in Red Dragon Lecter says to Will Graham that “we’re just alike”. One could interpret this as Lecter assessing that Graham may end up becoming a criminal too, but in Jirou’s interpretation, Lecter meant that they both simply enjoy acting the role of a serial killer. In Graham’s case, that’d refer to his method of putting himself in the mindset of a criminal to investigate. In Lecter’s case, it’d refer to him being a genius who became so bored with humanity that he murdered and ate people just for the joy of play-pretend.

Makiko can’t help but wonder what exactly is the difference between Hannibal Lecter -- who in Hannibal would mix into society and have a certain woman be with him -- and Jirou.

If Jirou was a monster, then maybe the monster of our times was found inside humans. A monster creeping closer to us than ever before. Hiding inside our friends and families. Inside the people you love.

And--judging from what she could piece together using the few fragments of Jirou’s past he told her about--inside the Natsukawa family.

Every person has their own story inside them. In the stories of the Natsukawas, the rich man from Belgium, and all the people Jirou ever hurt, Jirou was no doubt the monster.

But he wasn’t one in Makiko’s story.

--

Makiko remembers the time Jirou was called “a man like the eternal return itself” by Salman Rushdie, even though the writer couldn’t possibly know about his internal death and rebirth. Rushdie also said that he had a strange feeling like he’s met Jirou somewhere before and had an important conversation with him, but couldn’t place it. Jirou just looked familiar to him. Makiko agreed worldlessly; she had the same feeling whenever she looked at Jirou.

When they were alone later, Jirou expressed the opinion that Rushdie had been sarcastic or speaking nonsense. Eternal return sounds like quite a pessimistic worldview that’d just make people feel that life is pointless, which is maybe why philosophers invented the whole nirvana thing that allows for escape from the cycle of rebirth.

Whether or not Rushdie’s words had a point, maybe Jirou would feel fulfilled in eternal return, Makiko thinks. Maybe the goal, the thing to strive for inside eternal return was keeping one’s will to live.

If eternal return really is a thing, then Makiko is fine with it. After all, she’ll get to meet Jirou again and again and love him again.

No matter who that Jirou actually is.

END

[tea-and-la]

Aang as Zuko’s “Found-Sibling”

so i kind of alluded to it on my previous post but if zuko sees his relationship with any of the gaang as a foil to his sibling relationship with azula, it’s aang. 

in the season 1 finale, zuko compares the two directly:

zuko:  I finally have you, but I can't get you home because of this blizzard. There's always something. Not that you would understand. You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She's a Firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born. I don't need luck, though. I don't want it. I've always had to struggle and fight and that's made me strong. It's made me who I am.

here zuko makes a lot of assumptions. he is implying that because aang is a prodigy like azula, everything must come easy for him. we as the audience know this isn’t true (he doesn’t know aang’s background at this point), but it does speak to his insecurities in terms of his sister (foreshadowing to his season 2 interactions with azula.) 

contrast that quote with what zuko says to katara in the season 1 finale:

zuko: you rise with the moon, i rise with the sun.

he sees katara as evenly skilled as himself. a match, but with opposite bending elements. and that’s even reflected in the way that katara wins their match at night, but zuko wins their fight when it’s day time.

zuko (especially in season 1) sees azula as superior to him, someone who he’ll never catch up to in skill because she’s a prodigy. in contrast, he’s seen katara when she first started to bend and made mistakes (barely able to form a water whip, and the time she accidentally froze sokka). zuko has seen and acknowledged her growth throughout the show and he sees her as someone who has also had to struggle and work hard to get to her current bending capacity.

and like @sokkastyles​ already said: 

Aang is the younger prodigy who he resents for being better than him in the beginning, the one who is imbued with power and authority by birth that he lacks, the “lucky” one.

continuing on, i wanna talk about crossroads of destiny. the zk scene again emphasizes how similar zuko sees katara to himself (not azula.)

he is calm, open, and vulnerable throughout these scene with katara. he almost allows himself to forget they’re on opposite sides because of how much they have in common. but once aang comes in:

there’s that same anger and resentment he has towards azula. 

i’ve seen some people refer to the crossroads of destiny as zuko some hidden meaning of choosing between “sisters,” but i disagree. it’s framed as a decision between azula and aang, and for zuko, it’s supposed to be an impossible choice. 

so we see him go after aang with an uncontrolled intensity that is so different from the brief peace he was able to achieve with iroh in ba sing se. and it’s easy to imagine that this is because he’s taking his frustration that he can’t express towards azula, out on aang, as a substitute. 

we see lingering bits of zuko’s resentment towards aang, even after he joins the gaang. it’s unintentional, but from the firebending masters, we can see how he initially still holds onto that insecurity a bit.

when he initially realizes he lost his firebending he tries the forms over and over, while aang is just chilling:

aang: that one felt kinda hot

zuko: don’t patronize me!

aang: sorry sifu hotman

zuko: and stop calling me that!

even though aang was being genuine, it’s easy to imagine that zuko is connecting this moment back to times with azula growing up. especially because we know how much his ability to fire bend is tied up into his self worth. 

he’s given the chance to “prove” himself by teaching someone who he considers superior in skill to himself (aang, just off virtue of being the avatar), and when he fails, that rears up the resentment again. 

but then, their dynamic shifts after zuko admits he doesn’t want to rely on hate and anger anymore. zuko has several moments where he encourages aang (who he was previously resentful towards) because he sees that aang needs it. he’s able to realize that aang isn’t a prodigy in the sense that he thinks he’s superior to anyone else. and he’s also able to see that aang has his own insecurities as well, as they get to know each other more on their trip. he has phrases like: 

zuko: you can do it. i know you can. you’re a strong kid.

aang: [Turning to Zuko.] We could turn back now. We've already learned more about fire than we'd hoped. [Aang shows Zuko his flame and gives a weak smile.]

zuko: No, we're seeing this through to the end.

and aang’s face as a result: 

so in a sense, zuko is able to be needed as a big brother. and to offer support because aang is unsure about himself. 

also this scene reeks of sibling energy:

but anyways, i think aang/zuko’s found-sibling relationship foils azula/zuko’s sibling relationship because even though they start off with resentment for similar reasons, his dynamic with aang changes.

i see people say that the reason they think katara is zuko’s “surrogate sibling” is because she provides him with care and kindness, unlike azula. the same could be said about aang.

whereas azula has made it clear that she doesn’t respect zuko’s bending, aang values and respects zuko for his skills (even when he was struggling at the beginning of the firebending masters.) aang is able to reciprocally affirm zuko as well:

aang: i don’t care what everyone else says about you. you’re pretty smart!

i also find the last few lines after they meet with the dragons to be significant:

zuko: That's why my firebending was so weak before. Because for so many years, hunting you [Turns toward Aang as screen zooms out to show Aang.] was my drive ... it was my purpose. [Aang turns toward Zuko as well.] So when I joined you, I lost sight of my inner fire. But now, I have a new drive. [Cut to Zuko's face as screen zooms in.] I have to help you defeat my father and restore balance to the world.

i’d like to think that part of losing/letting go of his anger/resentment in part was because of the new relationship he was able to build with aang. in a sense, he’s able to repair a “pseudo-sibling” relationship with a found-sibling who willingly accepts him. 

i love that they’re address their confidence issues regarding firebending together. 

and how, when they rushed to show the rest of the gaang after they returned:

aang: [Cut to Aang and Zuko demonstrating the Dancing Dragon to the rest of Team Avatar and friends.] With this technique the dragons showed us, Zuko and I will be unstoppable.

zuko has gained a found-sibling relationship that isn’t about comparing their firebending to each other, but working as a team. it’s so so meaningful that aang says “zuko and i.” the idea of zuko having a sibling relationship where he’s able to share his love of firebending and not feel insecure about it ...🥺. him having a “sibling” who wants to hang out with him and do things together and gushes about it with the confidence that aang had when he said they would be unstoppable. 

oh! not to mention that i’ve seen people say that zuko/katara have a sibling relationship because she teases him in EIP. but like .. that’s such flimsy logic. and also? aang and zuko have their mutual teasing moments especially in the firebending masters, and it’s just adorable. 

anyways, my main point from all this is that ik people love to say zuko/katara fit surrogate siblings (which i hate btw), but it’s mostly said because of katara/azula’s similar age. it doesnt matter that aang is 12, though, because honestly, he fits the “found-sibling” dynamic a lot better because of how zuko used to see aang in relation to azula. it just works better thematically. especially, because like i’ve said, and as so many people in fandom point out: zuko and katara are similar (some people... antis.. would say “too” similar). and when has zuko ever seen azula as being similar to himself? exactly. 

[gayashouses]

Persephone

Pairing: Loki x reader, Stephen Strange x reader.

Summary: A pretty messed up fic about reader having a less than perfect relationship with Loki. The echoes of that coming back again later and through another relationship with Stephen Strange. An exploration of broken people breaking people. Being unsatisfied - how trauma sits in a person and can cause them to seek it out again.

Warnings: PLEASE READ THIS. TW/ non-con/sexual assault, domestic abuse, alcoholism, cheating - because of the way I tend to write, none of these are explicit or in great detail, but they're definitely there and greatly thematic. Like... That's it. That's the whole thing. Trauma is the whole thing.

Word count: 4.7k

Loki is the handsomest man you’ve ever seen. You distinctly remember that thought long after the event, though in later years you’ll want to deny it. Your heart rises to your throat and your lungs feel flutteringly light. Those clear light eyes see you and you’re caught – so early to be in love.

In raptures though, he ties you tightly around his fingers, around his heart – his deft fingers swirling you like water, playing you like a piano. What a fun game you are to play, how beautiful you are to tease.

It’s a game to sink into, blissfully unaware.

But are you unaware, to sink to such depths? To eat in the underworld – is it a choice?  It would be better to starve. But hunger dulls the mind as love warms the world. All the world is rosy fingered in the sight of love, how can there be fear in these joyous dawn hours?

Loki brings the sweetest of love – candlelit dinners. A recipe he’s learned from scratch, and gods shouldn’t know how to cook, but he wants to – all for you and only for you. He’ll do everything in the world. He brings you books. One time he bought you flowers. And then again. And then not again. He wrote you a poem once, and that was nice – was it?

Silver tongue.

And then you frustrate him – he tells you that you do, as love is wont to do, but it’s those small habits, the ones you really should’ve stopped by now. Why haven’t you stopped doing that?

There were a few things, really – there was that time with your family – and then when you were sick that one time – and then the time you had to work overtime for a week. Such burdening frustrations on your relationship, how could you blame him for being so frustrated? Of course it’s frustrating.

It reaches a boiling point in his anger when he backs you against a wall. He kisses you with his anger, so furious. Why can’t you see it like he can? A god doesn’t have to deal with the same mortal daily problems like you do – the pressure of your family, of work, of sickness. He just wants to spend time with you. So, he kisses you furious against a wall, and grips your hip until you’re sure you’ll bruise. It’s awkward and feverish and he groans with a bite saying that all he wants is - more of you.

Your heart is in your throat again as you promise, soft whispering promises that you’re his, and your time is his, and more of you – all of you – is his.

After that his frustration simmers. Time makes his temper lighter. You breathe a sigh of heated relief.

His kisses are sweet exercises, making you think he wants restraint, that he could drink you lazily through long, dark evenings. He leads you onward and then you lead him – it’s a dance. You’re together. It’s the sweetest of stories, how could anyone else’s compare?

When he touches you though, it’s altogether. The occasion is —odd. You’re not in the mood, you’re not ready, you can’t remember.

You don’t want to remember.

How many occasions were there where you played it off and played him off? Laughed it off? Hundreds. God,hundreds. It was a game. Make it all a game. It’s easier if it’s a game.

When he touches you, he makes you beg — for him to stop. You don’t say stop though, why don’t you say it? Because you want him, because you love him. So you beg for other things. Beg that you shouldn’t, you say that others might see, that you can’t, for whatever reason that you can’t – for him it’s a game that falls on deaf ears. Let others see, he moans, and behold you quivering at his touch.

When you’re asked about it? About him? Oh, he’s a darling. Just the best. Can you not see that you’re editing yourself? Well… no. In retrospect even, it’s difficult. You are your worst confidant, picking and choosing what to remember, what to reshape. It’s not a matter of who Loki is, but who you want him to be. How you want him to be and how you want your relationship to seem.

You love him truly when he talks to you, in the soft breathed moments after he’s had you – willing? wanting? – and you lie in his arms. Then is he tender; then is he open with you. Then do you feel like equals. There’s no powerplay you have to scramble to categorize as something to make it make sense.

Loki a broken man, unloved by a father and torn apart by the love he has for his mother. He longs to be held – he loves you. He tells you that he loves you. He falls apart in your arms.

Darling broken man that breaks you.

He’s in need of love, and you’re in surplus – how can you not give?

You give yourself to him because the thought of letting him go is more unbearable. The more you give, the more the light feeling in your chest starts to feel like a breathlessness of being without air at all. But the more you give, the less you recognise yourself in the mirror, gaunt and drawn, he draws the breath and the life from you – does he even realise? Can he see? With everything he’s taking in the name of love, does he see you?

You realise that the places where you see lines in your relationship are mere whitewash. There are no picket fences or walls, just lines in the sand that he washes away all too easily with the tide. He will draw the lines. He decides where you stop.

When fear strikes you too harshly, you try to tell him. To talk, just to talk it over. You want him to understand, and you want it to be fixed. Fear strikes and he strikes too. A fist to the wall.

It’s not right by you, only near you, and that’s different, right?           No – he means it.

Does he mean it?

But you burst into tears, in shock, as he hits the wall again, and then again.

“Loki!” You cry, fear coming to a head. He looks to you, and all love is gone for rage in his eyes. He is a creature of want, of possession. He has turned against you for fear of losing you, he has turned you into a creature of fear, as he is one already, in his own way. His grip on what he held was so tight, he didn’t know it was slipping so awfully from him.

Slipping? Slipping. You can’t pull away from him. You’re so cleaved to him it’ll be like ripping your own flesh in two. Yet, here you pull.

His clear eyes that held you caught at the first moment, now they hold you as a deer trapped for fear. “I can’t,” you whisper, fear strangling the noise in your throat. “I can’t, I can’t.”

His rageful, angry eyes glisten with tears. “My love?” Tension begins to bleed from him, slow like a river to the sea. He can see what’s happening, what he has done. He cannot stop it now. You cannot take back your tears or confession. Can’t, can’t.

“I can’t.” You close your eyes against his stare. You can’t bear to see his mournful look, losing what he can’t willingly let go of. “I can’t, I can’t do this, this hurts too much, I can’t, Loki.”

He’s silent beside your sobs as you curl in on yourself, no longer reaching for him in your pain from this moment forward. No longer seeking him to comfort you. You sink to the floor.

He comes to you with pain that doesn’t make sense – wasn’t he raging two seconds before? Now, he’s hurt and heavy with dull acceptance. For the first time you’re the one making choices and he doesn’t have a word to say against them. You’re saying ‘no’ – here he is, listening. Accepting.

He crouches beside you and puts a tentative hand to your hair. “What can’t you do, love?” His voice is marble soft.

“I don’t know, I just, I don’t know,” You sob. You try to look at him, but your vision is blurry. You raise your head and he hovers by your side. For the first time there’s distance between the two of you, and he will not cross it. He nods, fresh frown marring his features.

He reaches out slowly – slow enough for you to stop him – and puts a hand on your head. There’s no fear. All storming fear has ceased now. There’s only the pain of loss. How could he hurt you now when you’re hurting him? You’d decided that what you have together must be broken and he’s therefore meeting you with acceptance – but why does he have to make it so easy? Loki leans forward and kisses your forehead. You crane your neck to kiss him fully, properly. If it’s the last time, let it be properly. How can it be the last time?

What a bruised time to be the last. You want to apologise, to take it back, you want him to make it worse again, you wish you could’ve kept your pathetic tears in and seen yourself whole in the mirror again. But you’ve gone. And so has he.

Loki leaves you there, on the floor with your tears. He will not kiss you again.

____

You pass long nights curled in your covers. Morning is gone, rosy fingered dawn has receded from the world. You miss Loki’s laugh and his body beside you as you sleep and his hot mouth on your chest as you gasp into the cool night.

Then comes winter. Then comes rain. Driving behind cars on wet roads, their tyres throwing up a mist of water like translucent dust clouds. The backs of cars breathing like horses in the cold morning. You see things, but in your stupor they’re just things. That was love, you’re sure. Whole, heavy hearted love. Things happen around you, to you – but they don’t happen with Loki. And that’s the main thing. You can’t imagine what he’s doing living through his days.

You ache to see him, just cross paths one day. You hope you won’t.

____

Sometime later you meet a doctor – a healer. He holds you with soft hands, for his are broken. He knows what it is to be made a mess of.

When he makes love to you, and he does, and he asks, you’re happy. The world is bright. It’s bright for a time. This is a spite against Loki – sweet love that’s tender, keening moans and bright love. You want to be ruined for bad love. You want to be healed by this love, a sweet love that fills you up on the inside, one that you deserve because of how you’ve been broken. Whatever is in Stephen, it fills up the cracks in you with molten gold, he whispers thanks to whatever god brought you to him, broken or otherwise. You know exactly which god it was.

Your head is heavy with rage for a god with so much power; power to break so many fucking bones. Gold-sealed bones, now. A golden love to hide the silver scars. Love has become a pressure release valve for a doctor that sets what he can. But the anger builds. The fractures are a part of you when they heal, and they won’t be wiped clean. You see the god when you sleep, you flinch at greens and dark-haired men.

Stephen is a world away from Loki. You hate to compare them, but how can you not? You can’t keep your mind from wandering down the well-trod road of thinking about Loki and all you were together, all he did against you ¾ was it just him, though? What did you do?

What did you do to stop it?

Loki is repetitive, like breathing, like waves. He has hands like an ocean, they row, they push and pull, throwing you away, pulling you back. He’s reoccurring by nature, as his love grows and ebbs in cycles – so much damned emotion in that man. His heights of fervent love, and his irrational sparks and spikes or anger. At you, for you, with you. Back again, forth, to and fro; you’re thrown about like a boat on the waves

Stephen is different. Ever growing, like a tree. He doesn’t wither, doesn’t die back, only grows. He’s consistent. Dependable. Faithful. You don’t know why, but it starts to sting you.

Stephen listens to what you tell him of your old hurts and wounds, he kisses the spot just down behind your ear, he asks permission. It’s overwhelmingly kind and you want to be lost in him, in his sharp-tongued wit that he never uses to cut. All this strength, all these weapons, this scalpel in a ready hand, and he never uses it to harm — a Hippocratic oath to do no harm. To help, to heal. You think he’s fixing broken places you can’t even see.

It’s delicious, it’s domestic. It’s too easy—                Too easy? What’s that about?

But when your burning tongue misses the taste of pomegranates — what is that? Look from your bountiful harvest and your rosy fingered dawn, leave them and acknowledge the underworld. Acknowledge that it calls to you. There’s a part of you that wants that again – how vile it feels to want, how sinful. But a doctor can’t satisfy what’s broken and refuses to be fixed. Why won’t it be fixed?

You want him to be hard against you – to rebreak bones and set them properly. Doctors do it all the time, don’t they? When things are going wrong, they set them to rights. Please would he set you right? Right in the most grotesque, wicked of ways.

How could you admit to yourself that you want some part of it back? That there’s a part of you that had grown accustomed to the horror of… all of that, accustomed to Loki even now? And while you don’t want him back, there’s something addicting in the breaking, the fear, and the adrenaline – you don’t like playing at being happy. Do you not like being happy?

You’ll have to step down of your pedestal of knowing yourself, of doing love spitefully, of looking down at broken Loki and hating how he broke you. You’re just as broken as he is now, down in the mud and muck. If you are broken, if you are like him. You can’t look at him spitefully, you’re just as dirty and weak now.        — Can your doctor not break you, please? You love him so; you can’t lose him to this parasite inside you. The good doctor, the broken woman.

But he took an oath to do no harm, and it bites you now. Chomping at the bit till its bloody and sore. You want him to… satisfy you. Because you aren’t satisfied here, not really. You want him to be able to love you in a way that fills you up – how can you call this wretchedness love? – but there’s the scratch against the back of your brain that isn’t and won’t be satisfied. It refuses to be satisfied unless you’re unhappy – how sadistic, how did this come to be?

Pomegranate seeds, seeds falling from your fingers.

Maybe Stephen could understand in his own way, if you explain it well.

You remember trying to explain things to Loki, how he hit the wall next to you. A horrible memory – surely talking couldn’t draw the same thing out of Stephen, Stephen couldn’t be broken like that. Bile rises in your throat. Horrible acrid memory.

You want, you want – you’ve been reduced to a creature that wants.

Stephen finds you, curled and crying – wanting – in ways that you can’t explain. You won’t talk to him and won’t explain. Won’t break into his bones like this. He carries your miserable, hunched body to bed and holds you while you can’t speak. He murmurs to you that he loves you, but it’s all wrong — so wrong.

You can’t rage at him like Loki raged at you: hit walls by his head and force your anger out on him — though you get it now. You get some part of it. Something in you is broken and wanting and refuses to be healed but wants to be fucked and forceful and you hate it.

— you hate Loki for it. You have compassion for him with it. Loki is better at this than you are. Could he help you maybe? He could soothe you, definitely. Soothe this flame, or burn this sweltering heat up all the more. You feel too far gone, you wish someone would set your sinful, fucked up body on fire.

Short of that though, there’s Loki…

No, no, you can’t ask Loki. Fuck, that’s the worst idea. You haven’t seen him in so long. Your chest is so high and heavy for him, but is it fear or want? Could it be both? You can’t do that to Stephen.

Stephen’s love for you has always bloomed forward and onward, but you can make it into the kind of love you need. Reshape it. With gnashing shears you’ll turn it into what you need. Plants need to be pruned, don’t they? And plants grow back, don’t they too? You could turn it into the kind of love you need, into a love with cycles, that gets cut back and grows again.

You can cut him down and watch his love for you flourish back all the better.

No, no, be good to the good doctor. You’re not a bad person – you’re not – you refuse to be sucked down into the depths of the underworld, to be bad among bad men purely because you want as they want. But how cruel of you to throw Loki down, to call him bad now, you understand him – are you better than him? Really?

Mud. Muck.

You’re just as broken now. Just as hollow. You and he fit grotesquely well together.

You howl with sobs into your pillow when Stephen is at work.

You love him — how can you admit to yourself that he bores you? Why does he bore you? Because he surely isn’t dull. He’s witty and shrewd and intelligent, but he’s soft with you, and you can’t take it. Soft against you, so soft it almost doesn’t feel tangible.

Loki is hard and real. A bright, hard thing to beat yourself against. The ocean is alive when it throws itself against rock. Action is real, pain is real – not this soft and saccharine love that’s as transient and boring as a toothache. It hurts with how boring it is, with how affectionate Stephen is. You want to hurt for real. You want to see blood when you hurt, not imagined slights with soft apologies. You have to see the pain again to know it’s real.

But needing that pain, needing something you don’t want to name aloud – something as broken as you… you can’t turn Stephen away from you, you can’t bear to tell him to leave you. This is golden love. To tell him that you don’t love him? You can’t do that. You can’t bear to turn from love again, so you turn to drink. It’s secretive and messy. You don’t find Loki at the bottom of a bottle; you don’t find Stephen staring at you either.

You’re wondering if you drink hard enough, if you sink deep enough, if you’ll make it all enough for him to leave you. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t see you drinking – you don’t want him to, but you do, and you don’t. You don’t want to lose him, but you can’t live like this. Stuck again in an impossible relationship.

Loki has to help you – if he has done this to you, he can see you for what you are. He is the only one that can understand the fucked-up pair that he’s made you. These days you hate him for how much you want him, but you know that no one’s going to touch you like he will. Not because it’s him, not because he loves you or you have any illusions that he’ll treat you right, but because you know he’ll treat you wrong. You can see these days how wrong he did treat you, how unfairly, how cruel and toxic it was – it’s funny in its own way, because it’s about the only thing you can see clearly.

You’re filled with drenched, wretched want. Mournful for Stephen. Your head won’t stop fucking pounding. You’re bored. You’re unsatisfied. The agony of indecision, ripping at your ribcage. Bones to be rebroken.

Gold, and gold, and back to silver.

It takes a bottle for you to decide. Another. You don’t come up for air, to your senses.

Drowning in thick liquor.

____

And you meet Loki. You do – and it already feels like cheating – why does it feel like cheating? You want help. You’re here to understand. You want him to start cutting already, some slip of the knife, but he’s pleasant.

Seeing him is so different to thinking on him.

He looks at you so softly, treats you so nicely. His eyes are bright, and it makes the feeling rise in your chest again – is it your heart in your throat with love? Is it his eyes keeping you stuck like roadkill? No. It’s anxiety now. Trembling at the forthcoming, panic for the remembered. Can you believe it! You’re the one who’s come to him – seeking – and you have the nerve to panic. Your hands shake when you see him, but you want that fear. How close it is to being alive.

Oh, this is an edge to cut yourself upon. To bleed. A grindstone to come against. To be made sharp. This has you thinking: Loki and I are made for each other. He and I are the same.

His tongue darts out to wet his lips and your breath hitches. Memories of the harsh words and bitter insults – Silver tongue. He sees the effect and his grin is all too quick, all too knowing. He isn’t here to play games, so you’ll have to spin a new one around him.

It’s too easy to fall into his arms, into his bed, another bottle you share between seeking messy mouths, never parted for long. It’s like clockwork, like a rhythm. It always has been with Loki. Again, and again, and again.

You don’t tell Stephen. Stephen? He’s at work. He’s not here. He’s out. Completely out of your mind. Oh, this could hurt him, but it’s hurting you in the best way, you’re being made right again, and that’s good for him too, isn’t it? It’ll help you to help him.

And when Loki pushes inside you all too quickly and you cry for the feeling of it – because you don’t want it, because you do – this time he wipes your tears. You yell at him and snap, your anger rising again, because how could he? How dare he. Loki has made this of you. He’s made you do this, made you do this to Stephen, the one perfect thing –

When you’re riding him, he bites you and slaps you like you ask until you’re far away from Stephen – but at least this way you get to keep him.

Stephen catches you one night – and you’re lucky he does. Not with Loki, but drunk and in the bathtub. You were asleep, you could have drowned. That’s the only lucky part.

You’re not as sly as you thought you’ve been – though you can blame the liquor for that. He knows, he’s seen the bottles, has found them. He hasn’t known how to talk to you about it until now. He hunkers by the bath, holding your lifeless head from slipping underwater, and suggests rehab – he tells you that you’re going. That you have to go, that something has to change.

And it’s the ‘telling’ that gets to you, the demand that heats your belly. You stand up, naked and dripping bathwater over the floor. He steps back.

“Make me,” you say. And you wish he would. You wish he would fight you just so there’d be something to fight, something lively in him to hold onto. Then he could become hard and bright like Loki, then you could hold onto him just the same. Then he could be exciting.

You want him to touch you, to hold your body and kiss your neck and slide his perfect hands between your legs, but he’s so still, and serious. He means this. All of this conversation.

And then you tell him – because he’s not fucking angry enough, not like you. You want him to be like you. You do it just to rip a hole in something good, to feel the good pain of the fight, to make a fight – you tell him about Loki.

And he’s beyond hurt. “Don’t you remember how broken he left you?”

Stephen doesn’t understand that that’s the point. Loki left you broken. The broken part of you seeks out the brokenness again and you don’t know why. You can’t stay happy, you’re not satisfied when you’re happy, you have to stay angry and raging and upset. You have an innate compulsion to repeat the pain and you can’t shut it up. Give me more pomegranates, for I’m never satisfied.

Stephen isn’t making this about himself though, you realise. It’s you. He still cares about you. With that, the fight is taken from you, slipping down the drain with the bathwater, and it’s you that the hole is being torn through.

And then, the things that Loki did to you, he gives them names – cruelly – which you never have. Things without faces are easier to look at. Telling Stephen long ago that you’d slept with Loki but weren’t sure you wanted to, was easy. Hearing the word rip from his mouth now, with heavy consonants and an undeniable meaning is torturous. Your heart is in your ears.

Rape. Persephone didn’t go willingly into the underworld, no matter what people will tell you. Voices chorus in your head, telling you to go willingly. You thought you had. Stephen doesn’t begrudge you for going back to Loki. He doesn’t hate you for it. He mourns.

There’s fear in Stephen’s eyes, but he’s not afraid of you. He’s afraid for you.

This is going to kill him too. Like some sick chain of events, you’ll scar him deeper. You’re not soothing the places in yourself and putting out the fires on your skin with the frost giant, you’re arming yourself with knives. You’re making a weapon of yourself so that Stephen can’t come close without being hurt.

His eyes are fearful and glossy, his hands shake – he’s already wounded. Damned doctor, having sworn an oath, he won’t fight back.

Love isn’t far flung, life isn’t fair. This whole time you’ve been obsessed, a woman possessed. About how life isn’t fair to you, raging mad and seething, killing growing fruitful things angrily like Medea. Righteously. Blindly.

To him. You’re not being fair to him. Because of you, life isn’t fair to him.

And you don’t want to do that. This isn’t a chain you want to continue forward to the next person, making a broken man of Stephen so he can break someone else in turn. ‘Sorry’ is a weak, pathetic word that will never feel like enough, but it’s all you have, a hundred times over. Muttered like a litany, like prayerful longings, could he please forgive you? Please, please, please? Not for what you’ve done but for all that you are?

You’ll do as he says – as he’s telling you – though there surely can’t be any way back now – but his hope is golden (you have to remember that it’s golden) and it can fill you up on the inside. Remember, remember.

A strange, good doctor, hands held out in supplication that you would hurt yourself no longer. Your tongue turned silver like you’ve caught a disease, turned gold from his longing, asking again, please. Sorry. Take this food from me, for I want it no longer.

Pomegranates turned sour in the rosy, disgusting sun.

His hands are soft. They will never be hard against you.

Taglist: @wheredafandomat​ @scandalous-chaos​

A/N: This fic is NOT to romanticise any of the tags, and I don't think it reads like that, but just to clarify again: this was an exercise in exploring... I don't know, trauma sticking around. What trauma does when you've 'dealt with it', but there's this pleasure in pain, this want for duress.

Freud called it the 'compulsion to repeat', and it's a theory of his that reenactments of trauma were attempts to gain control or even mastery of a situation - though we know that we take Freud with a pinch of salt. A large pinch. Reenactments of trauma often just lead to further pain and self-hatred. It only reinforces the fixation. You can't, like... master that stuff. Freud was whack. Anyway. I think you get it.

Sorry for misusing characters and making Loki into... this. He in particular is very out of character here, I've just borrowed him for my own exploration.

[aspoonofsugar]

Penny’s Final Word

Cinder might have had the final word of the volume and that is a meta for another time. Still, there is another character who got to have another important final word:

Penny: Let me choose this one thing.

Penny’s arc has always been about self-actualization and escaping objectification.

She was created to be a weapon and everything was decided for her by basically... everyone:

Both enemies and loved ones alike ended up choosing for her multiple times, so it is fitting that Penny herself is the one who has the last word about herself. She makes the final choice that decides how her life should end and what her legacy should be.

At the same time, Penny’s final choice and sacrifice perfectly tie together all the major themes explored in the Atlas arc.

This analysis will try to explore her arc and to show how it is central to everything the Atlas volumes wanted to convey.

PENNY AND HER FAIRIES

What makes a person a person and not something else?

This is a key question in Penny’s story and it can’t be answered without addressing who her Blue Fairy is.

Is it Fria?

Or Ambrosius?

The answer is neither and both. These two characters are definately references to the Blue Fairy, but they are not the ones who make Penny feel human. The one who does is ironically a red fairy:

You saw my soul Through the nuts and bolts You're the friend I can trust Helped me see I'm not just a machine

It is Ruby’s aknowledgement of Penny’s personhood that makes Penny feel alive.

So, what about Fria and Ambrosius? What is their role?

Fria chooses Penny as the next Winter Maiden. This is a powerful moment thematically because it is an aknowledgement of Penny’s humanity. She has always been a real girl, a Maiden at Heart, hence she can be given the powers and protect them.

Ambrosius removes Penny’s robotic parts and makes the “real” Penny come to the surface:

Ambrosius: Okay, but if I take the robot parts out of her, that would leave...

Blake: Penny. The girl who's always been there underneath it.

Penny’s new body is human because Penny has always been human and has always wanted to feel human.

In short, these two moments are moments of recognition of Penny’s humanity. She becomes a human both in soul (Fria) and body (Ambrosius). In particular, she has always had a human soul and this is why it can be tied to the power of the Maiden. When it comes to her body, she aquires a human one because her new appearance is nothing, but a mirror of her soul.

Still, even if these two moments are both meaningful, they are also moments where Penny receives something passively. They are aknowledgements of Penny’s humanity yes, but Penny wants more. She wants personhood aka to live as her own person.

To truly become a person one must be able to make their own choices. And interestingly, Penny’s free will is linked to both moments with her two blue fairies.

Ambrosius’s magic does not simply give Penny a human body, but it gives her back her freedom. Not only that, but it makes it impossible hacking her ever again.

Fria’s interaction with Penny is more complicated.

First of all, Fria does not impose the power on Penny, but asks her to make a choice:

Fria: Penny. Are you the one?

Penny: I…

And Penny does so in a sense, but it is gray. Penny is given no time to think about this choice, differently from both Winter and Pyrrha. It is something imposed on her by the events:

Penny: But taking the Maiden power was the only way to stop--

Moreover, it is something she very clearly does not want:

Penny: I was the protector of Mantle, but now, I am much more than that, and I wish I was not.

In short, Penny’s interaction with Fria is a recognition of her humanity, but also a duty imposed on her by external occurrences.

It is not what Penny herself wants. To truly be human, instead, Penny should make her own choices and be given the chance to pursue what she wants.

Still, what does she truly wishes for?

PENNY AND HER JIMINY CRICKETS

Penny’s wish is made obvious since her first appearance:

Penny: "You called me 'friend'! Am I really your friend?"

Ruby: "Uuuum... Y-Yeah, sure! Why not?"

My wish came true That day that you appeared And called me friend

She wants friends to the point that Ruby’s awkward aknowledgement of their friendship is enough to make Penny completely loyal to the other girl.

At the same time, there are many Jimini Crickets that go in the way of Penny’s wish for friendship:

Penny: I've never been to another kingdom before. My father asked me not to venture out too far, but... You have to understand, my father loves me very much; he just worries a lot.

(...)

Penny: I... was asked not to talk to you. Or Weiss. Or Blake. Or Yang. Anybody, really.

Ruby: Was your dad that upset?

Penny: No, it wasn't my father...

Both Ironwood’s high expectations and Pietro’s overprotectiveness make so that she is not free to enjoy her own life as she wants.

She arrives to the point that she comes up with a plan to stay at Beacon with her new friends:

Penny: Ruby, there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about. I want to stay at Beacon.

Ruby: Penny, they'll never let you do that.

Penny: I know, but I have a plan.

However, we never discover what this plan is:

This does not happen by chance and Penny’s plan is not a dropped plot-point. It is symbolic of how her agency is completely negated. She is objectified to the point that her story is interrupted before she can take any action. It is a meta-way to comment her character and her major struggle.

Penny’s first death is more than a murder. It is a way to refuse Penny’s personhood and agency:

Ruby:  And Penny… was killed… just to make a statement.

She is used as a symbol of Atlas’s shady research. Penny’s own self is forgotten in the chaos that follows.

The same thing happens in Atlas as well:

Ruby: I don't think Robyn was their target. Salem's goal has always been to divide us. I think Penny was exactly where they wanted her, just like at the Vytal Festival.

This time she is not framed as a victim, but as a perpetrator and used as the symbol of an authoritarian regime.

Her enemies’ objectification of Penny is made clear in many ways:

Cinder: I have come too far to be stopped by some toy!

Cinder: You’re just a tool to be used!

Salem:  Although he remains in captivity, it seems that he has worked with Ironwood to gain some control over the puppet masquerading as the Winter Maiden.

And Watts’s virus is just the culmination of it. It is the embodyment of the Jiminy Cricket trying to overwrite what Penny wants.

At the same time, though, Penny’s enemies are not the only ones who try to control her:

Pietro: I lost you before. Are you asking me to go through that again? No. No. I want the chance to watch you live your life.

Penny: But dad… I am trying to.

Penny’s loved ones have tried to protect her all along. However, this wish of protection ends up going in the way of what she really wants:

I've been combat-ready since The day dad made me Now I'll fight for something more Might sound wholesome, But strangely I've got friends Fighting for

What Penny wants is to fight together and for her friends. She does not want her life to be considered less than others’. Still, she does not even want it to be put before others’:

Cinder: I don’t serve anyone. And you wouldn’t either, if you weren't built that way.

Penny: That is not…I choose to fight for people who care about me.

In short, it is as Maria says:

Maria: Don’t you think Penny has had enough people telling her what to do?

PENNY AND BEING A REAL GIRL

At its root, Penny’s struggle has always been this:

Penny: I feel like I wish I could do both the things I need to do and the things I want to do. Is that normal?

She wants to reconcile her duty and her personal wishes.

It is her duty to accept the power of the Maiden and to protect it.

It is her wish to live with her friends and to protect them.

These two things end up coming into conflict multiple times:

Penny: And after the launch, I’ll return to help you all with the evacuation.

Pietro: About that, Penny. When Amity goes up, I think you should be on it with Maria and I.

Penny: But they need me here. Right?

Ruby: Well, if you stay far out of Salem’s reach, then she can’t open the vault. She can’t get to the relic. So...

Weiss: Maybe it is for the best?

Until the finale where Penny makes a specific choice:

Weiss: Penny, no!

If Penny were to act as the perfect Maiden, she would have just gone to Vacuo with the staff. In this way she could have protected both the relic and the power. Even if Cinder had ended up killing all her friends, Salem would have still lost.

However, Penny decides not to act as a Maiden, but as a friend:

Penny: You wouldn’t know anything about friends.

Even the reason why Cinder manages to mortally wound her is because Penny is worried about Jaune and Weiss and gets distracted for a second:

However, it is specifically in the moment of her death that Penny is able to make a choice to reconcile both who she is and what she has to do.

She chooses to protect the power:

Penny: She can’t get the staff..and the power.

And to save a friend:

Penny: I thought of you. And here we are.

Winter would have died without the Maiden powers and the same can be said about the people stranded in Vacuo. Penny saves all by choosing to be the one in control of her death.

Her choice is extremely powerful thematically and it ties together all the themes explored in these last two volumes.

1) It is a choice about trust:

Penny: Trust me.

Winter: Thank you for trusting me with this.

Penny asks to be trusted and chooses to trust as well. After all, this is what friendship is all about:

Attached but not By strings

It is a choice that uses the motif of “the part of you” in two different ways.

2)  Becoming a part of someone else can be seen as a reference to the process of grieving, which is one of the themes explored in this volume:

Grieving means to come to terms with your loss, to accept your feelings for the people who are gone and also their contradictions:

Robyn: Clover was a lot of things. You respected him, but I gotta tell ya, I think you’re the better Huntsman.

Vine: Then perhaps Clover was wrong too.

The lost ones will be missed regardless:

Harriet: Don't you dare! Clover was... He was...

Vine: ...Important to you.

Still, once you manage to finally grieve, you’ll realize the other person has become a part of you:

It does not matter if Qrow’s semblance has evolved, if it is a part of Clover’s power having stayed attached to the pin, both or if it is Clover looking out for them.

What’s important is that Clover will keep on living inside Qrow because Qrow will never forget him or what Clover has taught him:

Clover: You shouldn't do that, you know.

Qrow: Don't worry, I-I gave that up.

Clover: I meant deflect a compliment. Those kids wouldn't be where they are without you. You've had more of an effect on them than you realize.

Qrow should love himself. Only in this way he can stop being a self-fulfilling curse. Only in this way he can start looking at his own life with hope and wish for good luck.

Similarly, Penny won’t be forgotten and her legacy will live through Winter:

Penny: She's… gone.

Winter: No. She's a part of you now.

Penny: I won’t be gone, I’ll be part of you.

3) Penny becomes a part of Winter because Winter is finally able to do this:

Winter: But yes Penny, we must still acknowledge our personal feelings, wrestle with them. It ensures us that we're on the right path. It's what makes us human.

Winter is the one who taught Penny this, but it is obvious that through volume 7 and 8 she has avoided to face her feelings for both her family and Ironwood. By the end of volume 8, however, she is finally able to accept her emotions. She can finally follow her heart. Penny becoming “a part of her” is symbolic of this. As a matter of fact their dynamic has always been about Winter acting as “the mind” and Penny being “the heart”.

Symbolically they integrate because they both are becoming their own person even if in different ways.

Winter becomes her own person because she rejects this mentality:

Winter: Penny. The general is making hard choices so we don't have to.

Penny becomes her own person because she is finally in control of herself and her destiny. Moreover, she is able to do for Winter what Ruby has done for her:

Winter: No, Penny, you were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just a machine. Just… following orders.

Penny: You’re my friend.

She affirms Winter’s personhood and in this way she affirms her own as well.

In other words, this version of Pinocchio does not end with the protagonist being transformed into a real boy by the Blue Fairy, but with Penny transforming Winter in the Blue Fairy:

So “becoming fully human” in RWBY means to do this:

Qrow:  This last great creation would be given the power to both create and destroy. It would be given the gift of knowledge, so that it could learn about itself and the world around it. And most importantly, it would be given the power to choose, to have free will to take everything it had learned and decide which path to follow - the path of light or the path of darkness. And that is how Humanity came to be.

It is about gaining knowledge, like Penny does about feelings and relationships, loving life and accepting death. Finally, it is about making a choice, even if it is painful.

This is because being human is not always simple. It can be hard:

But I found that humanity It came with sacrifice

Having a human soul means you have a duty to do the right thing out of your own free will, like Fria’s gift showed.

Having a human body means you can experience the warmth of a hug:

But it also means you can be mortally wounded:

This is Ambrosius’s teaching.

Still, it was worth it all for Penny because she got the chance to meet friends and to feel alive:

An answered prayer A chance to Share the world To be a girl Who fin'lly felt alive

This is why her second death can be juxtaposed to her first one. Both times she was killed by Cinder. However, the first time she was used as a pawn in Cinder’s plan. This time instead she is not letting herself be controlled and she negates Cinder what she really wants out of her own free will.

In conclusion, there is this phrase by Jean-Paul Sartre:

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

And I think it sums up Penny’s story perfectly.

Penny does not choose to be born a robot or to be used as a weapon. She is objectified in multiple ways...

Still, she manages to make something amazing out of herself.