#I should probably just make a blog for my version of the story

[justice-for-jacob-marley]

[Marley helps a limping Scrooge into the counting house] Cratchit: What happened? Scrooge: I tried to let go of anger and threw a rock into my foot. Marley: [with a tissue hanging out of his nose] Then he got more angry and kicked the rock with his other foot. Cratchit: And what happened to you? Marley: Oh, I laughed so hard I burst a blood vessel in my nose. It's fine.

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

Bnha makes me so mad because it could’ve been good. It had a lot of good aspects. But in the end none of them were satisfyingly resolved so it just feels bad.

[mewtwoandme]

I was hoping this would all blow over, but since it's continuing to happen, now with people attacking other artists of the commewnity. I'm putting out my two fucking cents! Cause this whole art/character theft and pointing fingers, who stole what from who bullshit it driving me up the fucking wall!!

Long story short, it started with me and one other blog whose name I won't mention publicly. Despite the horrible light they tried to paint me in, I don't want anyone going to this person and ganging up on them. This person had some serious bitterness towards more "popular" artists and claimed that I've made characters similar to theirs and once used a pose they apparently used before (which was a very common pose, considering it was a reference from the game version of mega Y). Since then, they had desperately tried to conjure up evidence, narrowing down to the most miniscule detail how I've been stealing from them when I hadn't even known their blog existed until I was forcefully thrown into that unnecessary drama with the unhinged call-out posts they've made. With this being said, I'd like to point out that they never came to me or addressed this concern with me in the first place. They had every opportunity to privately DM me if they had suspected I was "stealing," but no, simply because they already made up their mind that I was a thief, that was a good enough reason to lack common fucking sense and decency, making what should have been a private issue public, going on to villainize and dehumanize me. And apparently, it hasn't stopped with me either, cause recently I've been seeing other artists in the community having to deal with this where people are being white knights on high horses, pointing fingers on how one artist's mewtwo looks "the same" if not "totally identical" as another artist's mewtwo. I refuse to believe it's a coincidence. But what makes me disgusted is that since TC's post, apparently it's had the opposite effect on some people and they're hopping on this blame bandwagon like it's some damn media trend!!!

This is NOT okay! Nothing about this kind of behavior is funny! It's upsetting to all of us. We dont need you causing problems where there isn't any, thinking you're doing us a favor! The majority of us are adults for gods sake! We are old enough where we don't need other people coming to us being tattle tails saying this person did this and that. That's what little children do! If you suspect any form of theft, I think I speak for ALL creators in this commewnity that we'd prefer you DM us privately saying something like "Hey, I think this person is copying you, might wanna look into it." And if possible, provide a link to the art in question, for which we would kindly thank you for making us aware and we'll handle it ourselves from there. Just a brief, yet SIMPLE interaction...that's all we ask!!! Don't even come at me with "Well, it's scary attempting to talk to an artist that's well known." Or dare I say ~pOpUlAr~ If you claim that taking the first step to send me a quick DM makes you nervous, yet you have no problem making public call outs in posts or asks, belittling and degrading what could actually be innocent artists doing nothing wrong, literally leaving yourself open to all kinds of comments and opinions from all kinds of people....I'm sorry but your anxiety isn't as bad as you say it is then, if being rude and ignorant in a public post/ask is easier for you. If you come to us, shaming someone else who 9/10 probably isn't doing anything wrong, thinking you'll be in our good graces for doing so, sorry, you're not going to be told, "Good job!" with a pat on the back and given a lollipop! You're just being an asshole.

Quick reality check for everyone who's made it this far before I end this train wreck of a rant:

People can have similar ideas that coincide with one another! There's only so much you can do when a whole community is focused around drawing the same character! We mainly draw mewtwos and mews, you're bound to find a plethora of similar colors, patterns, and designs because of it! Creativity only goes so far when trying to stay true to a character and not stray too far. It's not a crime to take inspiration from other artists' characters, we actually encourage this! It makes us feel good that you liked something we've done and you want to incorporate it into your own designs! It makes us happy that we inspired you! The line is crossed when someone does a literal copy/paste of a character down to the exact detail, and they call it their own original creation. That my friends is what stealing actually is!

[lime-bloods]

I honestly didn't ever expect that I'd be in the position where I'd be using this blog not just to analyse what has come before in Homestuck, but to look toward the comic's future and do some real old-fashioned theorycrafting. but the time has come. so here goes; lime-bloods' Beyond Canon theories as of the July 6th 2024 update:

Vriska's Going to Hell

were all gonna help you! / whether you like it or not

a select few eagle-eyed readers already noticed that the sound used in last month's (Vriska: Figure shit out yourself.) is called "hell_tierwav". while it was easy to dismiss this as irrelevant composer shenanigans at the time, it's now become clear exactly what this was foreshadowing. whether it would be more apt to call this "Hell" or "Purrgatory" is probably up for debate - but whatever you call it, Vriska's been placed in a dimension seemingly tailored specifically for her personal torment.

while Vriska characteristically interprets the recreation of her childhood home as a symbol of how badass she was, the ghosts of her past - both literal, as the shades of the trolls she killed as Mindfang, and figurative, in the form of sprites wearing the faces of her dead friends - show us in no uncertain terms that Vriska's childhood home is the stage where traumas play out.

Erisolsprite puts it succinctly with his welcome to hell, but pay close attention to what exactly we're being welcomed to: this update ends on page 665. so as of this next update, we'll be starting on page 666.

Does Homestuck Have Hell?

the exact bubble of reality Vriska's currently found herself in seems to be an entirely new construction of the likes we've not yet seen in Homestuck - but that doesn't mean this kind of cosmic torment is without precedent. because while 666 is a number with Satanic connotations in the broader cultural context, it also has a very particular meaning of its own within the world of Homestuck. indeed, the latter half of the comic almost revolves around it, culminating in a climax in Act 6 Act 6 Act 6.

specifically, this repetition of a single digit is emblematic of recursive storytelling. to summarise what you can already read about in detail in my essay The World / The Wheel: when Caliborn is 'gifted' the Act 6 Act 6 supercartridge, which he is told is an "expansion" of Homestuck, it's a trick. there is no "expansion"; he's going to be trapped in a story that never ends because it keeps dividing into smaller and smaller versions of itself forever. the only way to truly beat the devil who trapped the heroes within a story is to trap him in his own story.

that's what Caliborn's "Hell" is, and that's also exactly what the Alternate Calliope achieved in Act 7 by creating the black hole which Vriska knocked Lord English into, ending Homestuck's story - something that Calliope even hints at in this very update, when she refers to the black hole as "containment"; not an accident, but a deliberately crafted prison. black holes are a symbol of recursion and regression; being sucked into one means being forced to live out your whole life over and over again, forever. so really, this is all we ever could have expected to happen when Vriska stepped into a black hole within a black hole! the presentation of the narrative even subtly hints at this; events in Beyond Canon that take place in the black hole are enclosed (in brackets), and now events that take place in a black hole-within-a-black-hole are contained within {curly brackets}, because you should always use a different kind of brackets to differentiate nested parenthesis from each other!

it is absolutely no coincidence that when Caliborn closes the curtains on his appearances in Homestuck, thinking he's won when really he's been condemned to a hell of his own making forever more, it's with a tribute to this exact same Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff strip.

IF YOU REMEMBER JUST ONE THING I SAY, OF SO MANY GREAT THINGS SAID BY ME, THEN PLEASE REMEMBER THIS. I WANTED TO PLAY A GAME.

So What Does That Mean?

one of Beyond Canon's central missions is expanding upon Homestuck's exploration of the relationships between author, text, and audience. as discussed above, a large part of Homestuck's thesis is the evil of forcing characters to live the same lives and the same stories over and over without the chance to grow or move on, and Beyond Canon picks up on this by placing Dirk in the position of trying to keep Homestuck going forever purely to appease its fans, while the Alternate Calliope continues to oppose this ideology. and while the alpha Calliope outwardly seems not to have taken a hard position on where she stands in this cosmic battle, the question posed by her device seems to be an entirely new one: can it actually be a good thing to regress, to return to ground that the story has already covered? can this path lead to something new, rather than merely stagnation?

it's so relevant that Vriska is being confronted with the crimes of her past, not only in the form of all the trolls she was personally responsible for killing but also in the form of the exact same punishment she condemned Lord English to with her heroism - complete with the herd of horses that are always present at Caliborn's demise! but where being condemned to an eternal cycle was fitting punishment for Caliborn, someone who refuses to break free of cycles of abuse and instead chooses to enact that same abuse on the world around him... if Vriska is someone who can break free of these cycles, who can change and become a better person despite what happened to her, will this punishment have the same effect? or, as Davepeta seems to believe, is forcing Vriska to reckon with her own past and traumas exactly what will allow her to break free of that cycle?

DAVE: [...] ill just be over here in the hyper gravity chamber training to beat lord english KARKAT: WE HAVE A HYPER GRAVITY CHAMBER???

it's hard not to be struck by the parallels in design and purpose between the Plot Point and Dragon Ball's Hyperbolic Time Chamber, and not just because of the Dragon Ball enthusiasts present on Beyond Canon's writing and art teams: albeit in typically Strider-bastardised form, the Time Chamber got a shoutout in Andrew Hussie's own Homestuck (see quote above), in a reference that was even picked up on by prolific theorist bladekindeyewear at the time. for the uninitiated: the Hyperbolic Time Chamber allowed its users to train for extended stretches of time, sometimes even spanning years, while a significantly smaller time period passed in the world outside - something that is actually true of real-life black holes! and with the Plot Point's own emphasis on time, represented by the hourglass included among its mechanisms, it seems to me that an essential part of making the 16-year-old Vriska ready for the trials ahead will be giving her the time to undergo the same growth her adult friends have experienced.

considering that Beyond Canon is already playing in the Ultimate Self space, where there are levels of power beyond merely the "god tiers", it also doesn't seem too farfetched to speculate that Vriska, forced to reckon with the fact that becoming a powerful Thief of Light isn't the be-all and end-all of personal growth, will take another leaf out of Dragon Ball's book here and ascend "beyond Super Saiyan". perhaps this is even the "hell tier" so cheekily alluded to in the Plot Point flash? certainly this kind of evolution would be the perfect way to challenge Dirk's belief that the Ultimate Self is the only logical final step for a character's development.

whatever the case, I believe we can take Davepeta at their word here. I don't think it's just a joke that by the end of this ordeal Vriska Serket is going to be fucking RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPED!

[milaswriting]

Update. — 3rd October 2024

Well, helloo. If you're following me and reading this then...you must really hate me for my lack of activity on this blog. I apologise for that. Doing a masters degree really kicks my ass, and leaves me with no time to write. But Golden has never been dead or abandoned, it's very much always at the forefront of my mind.

And, for that pure reason, I know it's a story I haven't been 1,000% happy with so the story is going through some major changes. Probably, the first is that it's being rewritten. A (somewhat) new plot written with whole new software—we're making the move to Twine.

My reasoning; I've spent over a year learning the coding which makes me want to rip my hair out. I get to have a lot more ownership over my work, the customisation options are stellar, and you guys will get to read it for free.

The reasons for rewriting has been because I want to fix the cringey writing from when the story's first demo was released. It's mostly from the earlier chapters, but then the thought of plot changes came to me and I wanted to implement those. Realistically, the majority of what's being rewritten is what I had planned for book two—so I'm just bringing that forward. I'll update the synopsis closer to the release of this rewrite.

The changes (which can be subject to change): I'm getting rid of the university idea (though you can still choose careers that are related to those degrees from the options that'll be given) (e.g., if you liked the nursing student option, then your MC can work as a nurse). I'm thinking that the MC will already know about the supernatural world to some extent—there'll still be a lot of suspense and mystery and things to unravel, that was always going to remain. And, in this rewrite, my thought is that the MC and the gang will be working at a multi-agency organisation — called The Everbrook — where the aim is to bridge the gap between humans and supernaturals. To make the world run smoothly, so to speak.

The ROs are the exact same! No changes to that—the only change is that them and the mc will somewhat know of each other already. The genre is the same. MC is still as they are, a Lehsian socialite with a pretty (yet peculiar) birthmark. The parents will have much, much less of a role, but they'll still be mentioned here and there.

This seems like a load of word vomit, but I feel like these changes will improve the story. I'm hoping that it'll make MC less of a spare part in the story, allowing them to have more autonomy in the supernatural universe, especially with their enhanced skillset.

I've done the customisation in terms of the UI layout for Twine already, and it should be mobile friendly too. With that done, I've started writing and I'm a few thousand words in. A lot of what I've written in the ChoiceScript version can still be used, but also getting back into writing a story from scratch is something I'm looking forward to.

I feel like this is a bittersweet thing because yay to a new and better story, but also the time it's going to take to get it out. I'll debate whether to release the whole ten chapters, or do a few chapters at a time, like splitting it up into chunks (releasing three chapters now, and three chapters later on).

Another reason as to why I've taken so long to mention this, other than learning code and the rewrite, is just the whole process of this being a little nerve-wracking. The whole thought of a rewrite of something I've put so much effort into is scary, but it'll be worth it.

I'll accept any questions you've got, and I'll create an FAQ regarding all of this too. But, most importantly, you're in the loop of how this is progressing. I really appreciate everyone's kind words about this story: loving the ros, re-reading it, still sticking by my writing—it means a lot. So, thank you and I hope the future of this story is what you want and more.

PLANS.

Finish introductory scenes.

Finish chapter one.

WORD COUNT.

2.2k (rewrite)

[yuujispinkhair]

Wildest Dreams

You're supposed to write an article about a charity event at The Shrine, the casino of the Itadori family, but soon get swept away by the Yakuza Prince himself. It's probably a bad idea to get close to a dangerous man like him, but he's so tall and handsome as hell. Why not allow yourself to live your wildest dream, at least for one night? -> This is part of my Blog Anniversary Event (closed). @cometcoffee103 requested the song Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift for Yakuza!Yuuji.

Pairing: Yakuza Prince!Yuuji x Reader (female) Genre: fluff + smut, Yakuza AU Word Count: 2k Warnings: 18+, a bit of smut (not very explicit), taking pictures during sex, mentions of alcohol, mentions of organized crime. This story is set in the same universe as my Yakuza AU, but you don't have to read that to understand this story. All you need to know is that Yuuji is the younger brother of the Yakuza King Sukuna, and this version of Yuuji is a bit of a playboy, but in a very sweet and charming way ;) All characters are of age. This story is 18+. Minors don't interact.

The casino is bustling with people, all of them dressed to the nines, including you. But you feel out of place here, despite the nice dress you are wearing and the red lipstick you put on. Everyone around you is someone important, someone insanely rich or influential, politicians, actors, businessmen. And Yakuza.

You gulp hard. Your hand trembles a little as you bring your wine glass to your lips to take a small sip. You shouldn't even be here. You usually only write short lifestyle articles for your magazine. It was your boss' job to attend the charity event in The Shrine, the biggest casino in the whole city, the casino of the Itadori family, one of the most powerful Yakuza clans in the country.

But two hours ago, you received that fateful message: "Put on your nicest dress and hurry to The Shrine. I'm at the hospital and can't make it. I need you to write the article about the charity event. And try to add something personal about the Itadori brothers! That will get our readers hooked."

And so you are standing here, clutching your wine glass while trying to blend in with the millionaires around you, feeling the hairs on your arms stand up as you wonder how many of them are criminals.

You don't even see him coming until he is right in front of you, moving gracefully like a tiger. A broad smile lifts his lips, and golden eyes meet yours.

"Hey, don't you like the wine? Should I get you another drink?"

You take in a sharp breath. You know the man in front of you. Of course you do. 

Itadori Yuuji, with his pink hair and golden eyes. Tall and muscular in his tailored black suit with a pink dress shirt and black tie. Looking just as rich as he truly is with the diamonds sparkling in his ears and the gold rings on every finger. But the scars on his handsome face also tell a story about the other life he is living. His life in Tokyo's underworld.

He is one of the people you got sent here for. The Young Tiger. The Yakuza Prince.

Your heart flutters nervously. But you force yourself to get a grip and be professional. And so you clear your throat before smiling politely at him and shaking your head,

"No, thank you. The wine is perfect, Mr Itadori."

He blinks and then throws his head back and laughs heartily.

"Ahh, please don't call me that! I am Yuuji for someone as cute as you."

Oh?

For a moment, you are caught off guard by his directness and the shameless flirting. But the Itadori charm is well-known. Both Itadori brothers are infamous for being big flirts and playboys who collect women just like they collect fast cars and expensive jewelry.

He points at the press card dangling on a chain around your neck,

"You're here to write about the charity event? How lucky that you ran into me! I can tell you everything you want to know. Come with me!"

You hastily follow him, not daring to waste this chance to get the article your boss demanded from you. And also not daring to turn down the Yakuza Prince's offer.

You spend the next fifteen minutes in a fancy VIP booth while Yuuji answers your questions for your article. Though half of the time, he is blatantly flirting with you. He isn't shy about it. Clearly, a man used to always getting what he wants. The spoiled Prince of Tokyo's underworld.

But you have to admit that his boyish charm works on you. Somehow, his loud laugh and broad sunshine smile make him seem less intimidating than his name suggests. If you didn't know who he was, you wouldn't even be nervous around him. He is so sweet somehow, making you laugh and feel more at ease at this event where you feel so out of place.

And his good looks certainly work their charm on you, too. He looks dashing in his suit, which accentuates all his firm muscles. The undercut and the pink hair on top look sexy on him. You realize that you have unconsciously scooted closer to him.

His golden eyes look thoughtfully at you, making your heart jump. 

"You don't look like you enjoy this event very much. I hate these things, too. All those boring people who try to talk business with me, and no one dares say something funny. I don't know how Sukuna is able to endure this all the time."

He sighs and rolls his pretty eyes. The eyes that then land on the low neckline of your dress. His smile grows bigger, and your breath quickens. Yuuji's large, warm hand lands on yours, giving it a squeeze.

"Hey, cutie, let's leave this boring party, ok? Let's drive out of the city, away from the crowds. We can have some fun, and you can get an exclusive interview with the Yakuza Prince! Not just boring facts about this event, but more personal things. How does that sound?"

Everything in you screams to say no. It's insane to leave with the Yakuza Prince. He might not be as dangerous as his big brother Sukuna, but he is still a powerful Yakuza who can easily kill someone, as the scars on his pretty face prove. It's crazy to imagine getting in his car and driving to an unknown place with him. It's wild to imagine being alone with him.

But somehow, you find yourself biting your lip and nodding as you lift your head to look up at his handsome face. Somehow, your heart is beating so fast that you feel dizzy. Somehow, your skin tingles with excitement. You know you want to go with him. Even though you know there is a high chance this is going to take you down, you can't bring yourself to say no.

And so the words leave your mouth,

"Ok, let's go. Let's sneak away."

Yuuji smiles his bright sunshine smile at you, just as dazzling as the diamonds sparkling in his ears and the various gold rings on his fingers. There's a cheeky glint in his golden eyes,

"I'm very good at sneaking away."

He grabs your hand and pulls you with him, striding with fast steps through his casino, and starts running when you're halfway out the door, laughing loudly, as if he is relieved too to finally leave this fancy event behind. As if he is finally free.

He leads you to his car, a red Porsche, his favorite one, as he lets you know while he holds open the door for you, so charming that you can't help but feel light-headed from all the butterflies in your stomach.

Yuuji drives like someone who knows this city belongs to him. A bit too fast, the music a bit too loud, but it's perfect the way it is. It makes your pulse flutter and your body fill with a giddiness you can't remember ever feeling before.

You leave the city behind you, making an excited tingle start under your skin and spreading through your whole body. It feels like an adventure. Exciting, bubbly. As if your wildest dreams are coming true.

Yuuji parks his car on top of a cliff, turns off the engine, and turns to you with his big sunshine smile.

"So, what are your questions for me, princess?"

You laugh softly,

"Well, my boss said I should try to add something personal about you or your brother. Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself? Not about the Yakuza Prince. Tell me about Yuuji."

He smiles and leans closer to you, his large hand cupping your cheek while his golden eyes travel slowly over your face. His thumb caresses your cheek, the gold ring on it gliding smoothly over your skin. Yuuji's voice is low, and you can hear the smile in it,

"Then let me tell you a secret. I hate all those stiff, formal events. I rather want to go clubbing or play video games with my friends. I enjoy spending time at my pachinkos and making my best friend Megumi play the arcade games against me, even though I know I suck at those games. And I like to hang out at my pizza delivery service. I don't care that it's only for ... tax-saving purposes. I love pizza! I want to adjust the recipes and make the best pizza in the whole city! That is my new passion!"

His eyes glitter excitedly while his voice drops to a softer tone, low and almost seductive,

"And I like this here. What we are doing right now. Drive out of the city and look at the sunset. I know I can see it from my penthouse, too, but it's not the same."

His words could sound arrogant, the words of someone who grew up rich and has no idea how normal life works. But he doesn't sound like that. There's an almost melancholic tone to his low voice. As if this evening with you, where he ran from his obligations and the glittering fancy party, is his wildest dream, too.

A soft smile lifts your lips, and you catch yourself leaning into his large, warm hand as you look deeply into those gorgeous golden eyes,

"Then let's stop this stupid interview and just enjoy your free evening."

His answer is a broad, boyish grin that makes your stomach flutter. You chuckle when Yuuji leaves the car and comes over to your side, opening the door for you like a gentleman and offering his hand to lead you to the fence at the end of the cliff, where you have a majestic view over the ocean and the beginning of a beautiful sunset.

But your gaze strays to the man next to you. The Yakuza Prince. Or out here, just Yuuji.

You look at him, at his side profile, hit once again by how good he looks. So tall and handsome as hell in his tailored black suit with the light pink dress shirt and black tie. More stunning than any sunset could ever be.

Yuuji turns his head, catching you staring at him, and laughs happily as he reaches out to wrap a strong arm around you and pull you in front of him, making your pulse flutter with how easily he can manhandle you.

He stands behind you, so tall and strong, his muscular arms wrapped around you, holding you safely, his body pressed against your back, warm and buff. You can feel his firm muscles and smell his sexy and expensive perfume.

Your breath hitches in your throat when you feel his kisses on your neck.

You tilt your head back to rest against Yuuji's shoulder as you look up at him and are met with a smile even more beautiful than the sunset.

A warm, large hand cups your chin, and then soft lips capture yours in a slow, sexy kiss that makes your knees weak. Who would have thought that the Yakuza Prince would be so gentle when he kisses you for the first time?

You have no idea how long you kiss him. You get lost in the feeling of his warm lips on yours and his tongue caressing yours with those deep, sexy flicks. Your hand is tangled in his pink hair as if you don't ever want to let him go again.

The two of you only pull apart to watch the rest of the sunset, with Yuuji's arm around you as you lean against his strong body, unable to stop smiling while your pulse races and your heart hammers in your chest, your skin tingling all over from the sheer craziness and excitement of it all.

+++

"Do you want to spend the rest of the night with me?"

Your heart misses a beat at Yuuji's question. You feel dizzy when you turn around in his arms to look up at his handsome face.

The deep scars across his nose and on the side of his lips tell you about the dangerous life he leads. His title tells you about how dangerous he himself is. You know he is bad, so so bad. But you cannot bring yourself to turn him down when he smiles that big smile at you. You cannot say no to him when every fiber of you craves him, if only for one night.

And so you nod and place a hand on his broad chest, playing with his black tie as you breathe softly,

"Yes, I can't think of anything else I would rather do."

And he smiles that attractive boyish smile at you and leans down to kiss the corner of your lips,

"I will always remember this evening. The pretty sunset, with an even prettier girl. You in that dress, with your red lipstick and the sweet kisses. Please tell me you'll always remember it, too."

You nod happily before cupping his cheeks with your hands and getting on your tiptoes to kiss him again, breathless and passionate, before whispering against his lips,

"Say you'll see me again after tonight, Yuuji."

And his arms tighten around you, strong and muscular, and he nods,

"Of course I will."

You don't hesitate when he leads you back to his car and holds the door open for you. You smile when his large hand lands on your thigh on the drive back to the city, slipping under your dress to caress your inner thigh, dangerously close to your already-soaked panties, making your heart beat wildly as you grab the leather seat. 

You giggle breathlessly when he leans over and kisses you at a red light, making your head spin with the sexy flicks of his tongue before he pulls away again.

You eagerly say yes when he asks if he can accompany you to your apartment. Your dress is already halfway off by the time you manage to unlock your door in between passionate kisses.

You moan when Yuuji's large hands knead your ass and his warm lips suck on your neck. You palm the hard bulge in the Yakuza Prince's fine suit pants all too happily, gasping at how big and hot he feels. You leave a trail of clothes on your floor, leading to your bed, where you spend the best night of your life.

Ruffled sheets, the rhythmic beating of your heart in synch with the headboard banging against the wall. Yuuji's heavy body on top of you, pressing you down so deliciously into your sheets. Loud laughter, even louder moans, and dirty whispers in your ear. Kisses and lipstick marks all over his tan skin. His clothes on your bedroom floor, your hands in his pink hair. Every inch of you brimming with pleasure while you're tangled up with Yuuji's strong body all night, finding utter bliss on his sweet mouth and his gorgeous cock. Smiling when he asks you to please let him take a picture of you while you ride him.

Tomorrow morning, he will leave, get in his sportscar, drive back to his fancy penthouse, and continue to live his fast life as the Prince of Tokyo's underworld. You don't know if this will only be one night and you'll never stand before him in person again after this. But you know you both will always remember this night.

And you will see him again, even if it's just in your wildest dreams.

AAAHHHHH thank you so much for this prompt, babe!!! I was so happy to write for Yakuza Prince Yuuji again aaaahhh!! I am crushing so much on him all over again omgggg 💗💗💗 I NEED HIM BAD!!!

I hope you liked staring at the sunset and staring at sexy Yuuji ;) Please let me know what you think!

Comments and reblogs would be very sweet.

[antianakin]

hey, just wanted to say that i appreciate you creating this space to discuss more uh....unpopular takes on star wars. obviously fandom is a hobby and i don't want to ruin anyone's fun! but i also want a space to push back against fanon interpretations without treading on anyone's toes, you know?

like the whole obi-wan catholic guilt trope, jedi repression trope at large...i'm being dramatic but as an asian person, sometimes it sucks that this is such a prevalent idea about a heroic group that was influenced by buddhism and is very asian-coded. i'm not wording this well but just like how stories about european knights often reflect *the very best* of western values like chivalry, honor, gentility, i could really see a lot of the best of asian culture (a huge over-simplification) in the jedi.

but all that being reduced to "oh actually it's totally catholic guilt" or a inadvertently a regurgitation of prevalent asian stereotypes (the jedi as a group suppress individuality, they don't express emotions, they are too harsh, too unforgiving, lack compassion) is...frustrating to see, even though it's everyone's right to interpret & relate to things as they see fit.

especially when focused on obi-wan! even if we assume that obi-wan is repressed, secretly attached to an unhealthy degree but hiding it, or whatnot - the man quite literally airs the dirty laundry in front of mace and yoda, perhaps the "highest" members of the jedi. he says that he thinks anakin is arrogant, isn't listening to him. i dunno but a repressed person who hates confrontation and vulnerability probably wouldn't do that. he should've gone "haha nope anakin and i are totally fine masters, totally fine" instead of looking for advice & airing out his frustrations.

people getting angry at obi-wan for putting the jedi order over anakin is still annoying, but at least accurate. like yes! obi-wan does put the good of his culture and the galaxy at large over his old padawan! good for him!

but honestly all popular fanon obi-wan tropes go round on a roulette wheel waiting for me to pick one to be petty about lmao.

I definitely get what you mean about wanting a space to push back on common fanon interpretations without stepping on anyone's toes. That's obviously exactly why I made this blog in the first place. It's why I named the blog "antianakin" at all, it's supposed to be a giant neon warning sign to people that I'm not going to feel ashamed of some of my more negative opinions. It's why I use anti and critical tags as much as possible, and don't use the more general tags most of the time (aside from just... "star wars"). This is my space to put my feelings out there, positive AND negative, and I work really hard to make sure I'm not invading spaces that are meant for being positive.

I also often don't reblog people's posts that I completely disagree with JUST to talk about why I don't like their take. I won't invade someone's Jedi critical post in order to tell them that they're wrong about Star Wars. People have tried to tag me into posts like that, but I'm not interested in doing that kind of thing. If I DO want to say something about what I've seen, I make my own post about the issue.

It's interesting that you mention that stories about European knights often reflect what's viewed as the best of Western values, because so often when I see people talk about what would make the Jedi BETTER (or Legends versions of the Jedi that they think were done better), it's usually pretty clear that the Jedi are being turned INTO your more typical European knight to reflect those exact values. They're often wandering on their own, doing what they personally believe to be right whenever and wherever they want, defending the helpless wherever they find them by just riding in on a white horse and slaying an enemy or a monster. And of course some of those values they uphold are about what love and relationships should look like, too, so they all end up in committed monogamous relationships (even if it's with more than one person, it's still usually monogamous). This is one of the reasons I started getting frustrated with the High Republic novels by the third one because it started having that vibe that the "good" Jedi who stuck to more "traditional" ways of doing things and "traditional" values were so much more like your typical European knight, while the Jedi character doing something more modern and more political was losing his way and struggling with a desire for things he was repressing.

It's a feeling we've seen come up time and time again and it keeps getting tossed out in more recent shows, too, the idea that the Jedi "lost their way" from what they should've been, that they once used to represent something worthwhile and losing those traditional values is what caused their destruction and the only way to keep it from happening again is to go back to that. It's not hard to see where that storyline feels compelling, obviously, but it IS sad to see the values that the Jedi DO have in the Prequels in particular getting tossed aside as unworthy and to see their defeat being rewritten as THEIR failure instead of everyone else's.

I've had people tell me that this story feels like it has more nuance to it than the Jedi simply being the heroic victims and the Sith being pure villains. And I get why people think that, I just think that there's a lot of nuance they're MISSING in the story being told, and that that nuance exists EVEN WITH the Jedi still being the heroic victims and the Sith being clear villains. I am more than happy to help critique some of the WAYS that that story got told in the Prequels, the issues in the structure of the Prequels and how it maybe muddied some of the messages that the story was trying to get across, but I also think that that critique is SEPARATE from my feelings on the intended narrative itself. I don't think that the narrative itself is bad or lacking in nuance simply because it may not have been told perfectly. And, personally, I think that some of the more "nuanced" Jedi critical takes often seem INCREDIBLY simplistic themselves.

As for Obi-Wan, fandom will do what fandom does to its darlings. I've certainly done my fair share of simplifying my faves down to shadows of themselves because I happened to enjoy the shadow sometimes in its own right. But I do think that there's plenty of evidence to contradict a lot of people's more popular interpretation of Obi-Wan as a repressed, damaged, traumatized waif. I don't mind a LITTLE of that sometimes, usually when I read fics set in the early years of his apprenticeship with Qui-Gon following some of the events of Jedi Apprentice, but it comes with the context that Obi-Wan is still VERY YOUNG at the time and is dealing with some fairly specific things that have just happened to him and is still learning how to do that in a healthy way.

By the time you hit The Phantom Menace and ESPECIALLY the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan should no longer be a repressed, traumatized waif of a person. That's when it stops being believable to me because the character we see on screen in that time period never fits that description. Like you said, he's ACTIVELY confrontational to his superiors. He does do it with Mace and Yoda (and he does it in ROTS as well as in AOTC) and he does it with Qui-Gon during his apprenticeship, too.

The one other time I was willing to accept some of this characterization was in the Kenobi show where we do see him being more repressed and traumatized and less willing to stand up for himself when faced with confrontation with people like Owen. But one of the reasons this worked for me is because, much like with those JA fics, it comes with a VERY SPECIFIC CONTEXT, and it's done with the intentional purpose of giving Obi-Wan somewhere to develop. He also doesn't stay particularly submissive or waif-like for long, we see him gain back a LOT of his willingness to stand up for himself and confront people by the second episode. The message wasn't that Obi-Wan had ALWAYS been damaged and traumatized or that he was always "meant" for sadness or whatever, but that he had the capacity to find happiness IF HE CHOOSES TO ACT LIKE THE JEDI HE ONE WAS. The only reason he's struggling is because he ISN'T acting like a Jedi anymore. He's not finally figuring out how to handle his traumas, he's GOING BACK to being the person who can handle his traumas.

Anyway, yeah, I feel you, I have definitely experienced the roulette wheel of petty frustration at fandom interpretations of Obi-Wan lol. I can barely handle the "he drops his lightsaber all the time" joke because I feel like it often makes him come across as childishly incompetent.

[xxtc-96xx]

just to let folks know...

I've seen some people around who I guess really don't like me, probably hate me honestly, over my story telling or headcanons, and I don't want this to sound like a "pity me" post, rather I think I should reiterate:

I don't want every ask blog to feel like they have to follow my story's rules or headcanons, they are only ideas I follow because I like to, be either flower babies or the mewtwos behaving like cats or whatever else I've said before, those are just for my own versions of the characters. If blogs do want to use them, that's their call of course. I mainly made the flower baby thing as an excuse because being aroace, sex simply makes me uncomfortable to write about...also I'm bad at it

making mewtwo catlike is just something that helped me connect with them, when I see characters like mewtwo I like to find ways to show more sides of them besides badass angry legendary pokemon who rarely smiles

I don't own mewtwo or newtwo, I don't make all the rules for them and I know there are people out there who have deep attachments to mewtwo and do not like what I'm doing with them. Please understand these are just my own iterations, I don't want to come across like I'm ruling the mewtwo blogs with an iron fist, I'm just making stories that I wanted to see with my favourite pokemon ever since having my pokemon spark reignited from childhood

[alphajocklover]

I want to start by saying that I’m not speaking as my character right now, but as myself. For once I’m not going to be telling a story as a fictional version of myself, or as some sort of omniscient being. I’m just going to tell this story as me. Because it’s not really a tf story, it’s just a story about me.

It was around eight months ago when I made my first post on this blog. I had been reading jock transformations and muscle growth stories for a long time — longer than I probably should have to be honest — and had been inspired to finally join the community as a creator after @newchangestf answered an ask for my main account @hornyjockalt . I had always loved writing, but had never really had the confidence to show any of my work outside of school, and erotic writing seemed like a good way to start coming out of my shell, explore my sexuality and express my creative side, all while staying (mostly) anonymous and protected form the anxiety that usually stopped me from sharing my ideas.

Over the last eight months I’ve found this to be an amazing community, full of kind and accepting people. I’ve made connections and even friends. Which is why I wanna give a special shout-out to some people.

@musclejedi-tameem is one of my biggest fans and I’m one of theirs. They’re a great friend and they’re absolutely awesome. They’ve helped me a lot and I can’t thank them enough.

@warping-realities is one of my biggest inspirations. I won’t claim to know them very well, or at all, but I love their work and from the little we’ve interacted they’re awesome

@sanzaibian is one of my earliest fans and one of the first people to tell me one of my stories really struck a cord with them. Also an amazing tf writer in their own right, I highly recommend their work.

And finally @romangolden68 is the first person I ever did a commission for, a great friend and an all around amazing person. They’ve always been super supportive and I’m super happy to have them in my corner.

To any of my friends I didn’t list, know it’s either because I didn’t know if you’d be comfortable being named or because there’s a lot of you and if I listed you all I’d break tumblr. You’re all the best and I’m so glad I get to be a part of this group. I hope I get to make another hundred stories, and a hundred after that.

Sorry this got kind of mushy. Thanks for reading

Sincerely, AlphaJockLover

[andreafmn]

Truth | Embry Call

Word Count: 5.4K Paring: Embry Call x Female!Reader Requested: Yes [@come-on-darling-honey | @treatiseofselena | @pinkdragonfandream-blog] Story Description: Embry and (Y/N) getting together was inevitable, and it seemed that the universe concurred. A/N: The requests didn't have any details so I grouped them together (hope that's okay.) I've never gravitated toward Embry so at first I had no idea what or how to write this.But I hope I did him justice with this fluffy friend-to-lovers. Now, I will definitely post more about him because I fell in love with my version of him 🤭🤭 Also, I'm trying to organize myself and my writing to upload more consistently, but chronic illnesses, family, and life always get in the way. Thank you to all of you who have bear with me for so long 🤍🤍 My content will always be free, but if you’re feeling particularly generous, you can leave a tip on any of my posts to support me and my love of writing or buy me a coffee TikTok • Instagram • Business | MASTERLIST If you’d like to be tagged in any other story: click here Make sure you have my notifications on so you know every time I post!

Truth | Embry Call Oneshot

For the longest time, it had always been Jake, Quil, Embry, and (Y/N). The four of them had been friends since their childhood and had quickly become inseparable. If one was in sight, the probability that the other three were close behind was high. The group was simply thick as thieves. 

But there were two in particular that grew closer than the others. 

(Y/N) and Embry seemed to gravitate toward each other. Even when the four friends were together, the duo would be standing side-by-side. They understood each other in a way that Jake and Quil did not. Even without words, they could speak a language that no one else could understand. 

“You guys should just get together already,” Jacob had teased one day. “I mean, we all know it’s gonna happen sooner or later. Any day now you’ll tell us you’re a couple.”

“Oh please, Jake,” Quil laughed. “These two would be single their whole lives before they admit they like each other.” 

(Y/N) had thrown pieces of popcorn at them, chuckling dryly at their statements. “We’re just friends, guys,” she retorted. “With that logic, you and Quil should get together too.” 

“It’s just a joke, (Y/N). There’s no need to get so pissed.” 

“I’m not,” she quickly defended. “It’s just annoying that you guys bother us so much about it.” 

At that moment, Embry walked into the living room. He was quiet, as always, but vigilant. His eyes fell quickly onto (Y/N)’s. He could tell in an instant that something —more like someone— had made her feel embarrassed. 

“Guys, leave her alone already,” he quickly defended. “Can we not go one night without you guys bothering her?” 

“You don’t even know what happened!” Jake whined. “You always take her side.” 

“Well, 99% of the time you guys did actually do something to her,” Embry responded. “And I would bet everything I have that it’s not a 1% kind of occasion.” 

Quick and Jake slouched into the sofa, crossing their arms over their chests in defeat. Even though they were all similar in age, there was a sense of maturity in Embry that was unparalleled. At the end of the day, he was the voice of reason within the group. 

“There we go again. Her knight in shining armor,” Jake grumbled. “And they say they don’t have a thing for each other.” 

After the movies were done, Quil had long gone, and Jake mumbled something about going to bed, Embry offered to walk (Y/N) home. It was something he had accustomed to doing but it still made her stomach do a turn on itself. 

“So, what were those idiots talking about?” 

“The usual,” she sighed. Her hand was inches away from his. A simple stumble and she could have intertwined them. “How one day you and I will become a couple because of how well we get on.” 

“Oh,” he said coyly. 

“I know I should be used to it by now, but it can get pretty annoying, pretty fast.” 

Embry’s heart started to race as he listened to her words. He knew just how infuriating their friends could be, especially when it came to bothering people. But it only upset him because he did like her. 

At some point in time, his best friend had turned into the girl that he loved. She had become the protagonist of all of his fantasies, the reason for having a smile on his face, what he looked forward to every day. Somehow, she had become his center.  

“Why do you find it annoying?” Embry managed to croak out, suddenly finding his hands more interesting than the road ahead. “Like would it be that terrible?” 

“No,” she answered quickly. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was repulsed by him. Because all she wanted was him. 

Much like Embry, she didn’t know when that shift had happened. He was her best friend, her closest confidant, the only person that knew her better than she knew herself. But somewhere along the line, her heart would flutter at his nearness, a smile painted on her face at the mention of his name, her eyes trailed to his in every room they were in. 

“I don’t, uh. I don’t think it would be terrible,” she spoke meekly. “Do you?”

They stopped in their tracks, finally facing each other. 

“I could never find being with you terrible,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. With a surge of bravery, his hand lifted to her face, tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “It would honestly be a dream come true.” 

(Y/N) gasped quietly at the sudden touch. Her breath hitched in her throat and her hand flew to grasp at his forearm. “Embry, w-what… what’re you saying?” 

“I like you, (Y/N), and I have for a long time,” he told her. His brown eyes stared intensely into hers, looking for any sign that he was losing her. “I’m not sure when it happened but one day you slipped into my head and you have not left it since. That’s why it doesn’t bother me. Because deep down I’ve always hoped that day would come.” 

“Embry, I…” She stammered searching for her words, but nothing came out. 

“I understand if you don’t feel the same way,” he said sadly. “But I had to tell you already. It’s been eating me up inside for a long time and I had to confess before it consumed me completely.”

“No, Embry, I do,” she choked on her words, feeling the knot in her throat tightening as she spoke. Even if he was saying exactly what she had wanted to hear, emotions overwhelmed her. “God, I like you too. For a while now. I just never had the courage to say anything because I didn’t want to lose your friendship. You mean a lot to me.” 

“So we’ve been tip-toeing around each other for no reason then?” Embry laughed. “Are we seriously that oblivious to feelings?” 

“It appears so,” she responded with a chuckle. “What does this mean for us, Em? Where do we go from here?” 

“Well, first, I was thinking I could kiss you,” he smiled. “Can I?”

“I would die if you didn’t.” 

His hands cradled her face softly, his thumbs caressing over the apex of her cheekbones. He nuzzled his nose against hers, teasing her lips with his. He ghosted over the pink of her skin, wishing to the gods that he wasn’t in another one of his dreams. 

When he finally gave in, his lips crashed into hers and he could swear he felt the earth around him stop. There was no gravity, no air, no cold or warmth, it was simply him and (Y/N), and that was all that existed on Earth. 

“What’re we gonna tell the guys?” (Y/N) said as soon as they parted for air. “They’ll never let us live this down. And, honestly, I don’t think I could stand their pestering once they know they were right.” 

“We don’t have to tell them,” he responded, intertwining his hand with hers comfortingly as they continued their walk to her home. “We can have this just for ourselves for the time being. It will be our little secret.” 

“As much as I would love to shout it from the rooftops,” she smiled brightly. “But I like this too. Having something that is just for us. Something they can’t ruin.” 

“That does sound great, actually.” 

“Good. Because I don’t want anyone to ruin this. Especially not those two.” 

And for a couple of months, it was perfect. To their friends, it was business as usual. They were as friendly as ever, always by each other’s side, and taking Quil and Jake’s teasing with a grain of salt. No one could have known just how true their jokes had become. 

They got around with stolen glances, hidden corners, and nights. And how they loved their nights. They would spend hours curled up in each other’s arms after Embry would sneak into her room. They would talk about nothing and everything, they would sleep, and they would kiss. 

It was an easy routine to follow and they fell into it quickly and perfectly. In the morning, they were the best of friends. At night, they were falling more and more in love. 

At least, that’s what (Y/N) had thought.

She had fallen for him. Deeply. He meant everything to her and she thought the feeling was mutual. But when the first week of the second semester of their junior year came to a start and Embry had disappeared, she knew something was wrong. 

Not only had he missed school, but he also had completely iced out Jake, Quil, and, most importantly, (Y/N). He wouldn’t answer her calls, he stopped coming over, and he was nowhere to be found. Even his mother had told her that he wasn’t acting like himself and she was very surprised at his behavior. 

What none of them knew —what she didn’t know— was that Embry was going through the most surreal of transformations. He wanted to tell his friends, he wanted to tell her everything. 

Yet, bringing them into a world where the stories the elders told around the bonfire were real was something he could not do. Even if it meant that they never talked again, he would make sure to keep them safe from the dangers they did not know were real. 

He did everything he could to avoid (Y/N) specifically. He would never say it, or even think it now, but he was scared he’d do to her what Sam had accidentally done to Emily. Love wouldn’t protect her from what he was and what he could do to her. Avoiding her hurt, but not as much as it would if he did anything to her. 

But that Friday, after he had missed a whole week of school and he’d expertly avoided his group of friends for the past four days, everything had changed. As Embry walked the halls, careful not to run into any of his three friends, his eyes caught hers. 

That’s when it happened. The moment that changed his entire world. It hadn’t been meeting his friends, it hadn’t been his first kiss with (Y/N), and it hadn’t been his first phase as a shapeshifter. It was the universe telling him that it was her, and it would always be her. 

And it scared him. 

As she tried to move through the sea of students to get to him, all he could do was run away. Though deep down he hoped it was her once he knew what imprinting was, his fears of repeating history had grown. 

“Embry!” He heard her call out. “ Embry, wait!” 

But he was already out the doors and running to the only place he could think of. His brain was going a million miles a minute and his heart was tugging at his chest, begging to be with the piece that was missing from it. 

He opened the door to the small house, hoping anyone was inside. His breathing was staggered and his chest was hammering. He was panicking and had no idea how to make it stop. 

“Woah, Embry,” Sam called out. “I’m gonna need you to calm down, okay? You’ve gotta breathe, Call. Breathe.” 

“She’s… and I didn’t… I don’t,” he tried to speak. 

“Slow down, Embry.” 

“I can’t… I can’t do this to her,” the boy managed to croak out. “Not her.” 

“Is this about you imprinting today?”

“How did you…?” 

“Mind link, Embry,” the alpha reminded him. “I know everything that happens to you. Who is she?”

Embry sighed deeply, taking a seat at the dining table. “She’s my best friend,” he said. “And these past few months she became so much more.”

“She’s your girlfriend then?” 

“Well, we never labeled it as much,” he responded. “But kind of. Yeah.”

“Then why are you so worried? This is the best-case scenario.” 

“I don’t want to put her in danger. And her knowing the truth would put her right in the middle of it.” 

“And you don’t want what happened to Emily to happen to her,” Sam said softly. Embry’s eyes went wide as he realized what the man had said, quickly struggling to find a redeeming answer. “Don’t worry, Call. I wouldn’t want that to happen to anyone, for that matter. And as scary as it is to tell her the truth, you have to. As the days go by, you will both find it harder and harder to keep away from each other. It will be physically painful to stay apart.” 

“I can’t do that to her. She deserves to be safe,” he silently sobbed. “The further away she is from me, the better it will be for her. I can’t hurt her if I’m not with her.” 

Sam couldn’t help but feel pity for the boy. He had been in that very position not too long ago, running from the people he loved, fearing the hurt he could cause them. But he also knew how he could cause just as much pain by staying away. 

“Look, Embry, I won’t tell you what you have to do,” he said. “But speaking from experience, running away does more harm than good. Whether you like it or not, she is now a part of this world and the best way to protect her is by telling her the truth. Unlike with your mom, the secret of our tribe has to be shared with our imprints. She’s gonna need to understand why it hurts so much to stay away from you.” 

“What if things go bad?” Embry asked dolefully. “What if telling her pushes her away regardless?” 

“That is just something you’ll have to leave to chance,” Sam sighed. “But if you need any backup if you choose to tell her, you know Emily and I are here and happy to help.” 

“Thanks, Sam,” the boy responded. “But I think this is something I have to do by myself. I’m gonna tell her tonight and hope for the best.” 

“Well, I’ll be doing patrol tonight. So, if at my point you need me, just call out.”

---

“Wait, you actually saw him here?” Jake asked that afternoon as the three friends left the school. “I heard he was back but I have not seen him the whole week.” 

“He was standing in the middle of the hallway this morning and I tried to get to him,” (Y/N) explained. “But he ran away and literally disappeared. What the hell is going on with him?” 

“Apparently he’s been sneaking out of his house for a while now,” Quil added, making (Y/N)’s heart wrench in her chest. “And his mom says he wasn’t home that week he skipped school.” 

“I heard he’s been hanging out with Sam Uley’s gang,” Jake whispered. “That could explain why he’s acting so weird. He got involved with some shady shit.”

“Guys, this is Embry we’re talking about,” the girl defended, holding onto any hope that he was still the boy she loved. “Do you really think he would do something like that?” 

“You keep trying to defend your little boyfriend but it’s clear he wants nothing to do with any of us,” Jake spat. 

“He’s our friend, Jake,” (Y/N) seethed. “Sorry for actually believing there might be something else happening other than he might have joined a dangerous gang and has left us for dead.” 

“(Y/N)…”

“Whatever, guys. I’ll see you on Monday.”

She left both boys dumbfounded and disappeared into her home. Once inside she crashed against her front door and allowed the tears that were stinging her eyes to flow free. 

(Y/N) couldn’t accept that she had truly lost Embry. She couldn’t admit that she had fallen for someone that could act like she meant nothing to them, that could forget every moment they spent together, that could ignore everything they had admitted to her. She had trusted him with her heart and he had decided to shatter it without another thought. 

Somehow she had made her way to her bedroom and had crashed on her bed. When her eyes fluttered open again the sun had completely set and the moon was shining brightly in the sky. In the darkness, she searched for her phone, feeling the need to apologize to Quil and Jake for snapping at them. 

Yet, her screen lit up with Embry’s caller ID, showing her that it was the fifth call in the last twenty minutes. She debated answering the phone, wanting to make him feel just like she had the last two weeks. 

But her resolution was too weak.

“What?” (Y/N) spat. 

“Come to your window.” 

She walked to her window, her gaze falling on his figure on the road. Tears were quick to form in the corners of her eyes, her emotions close to their bursting point. “What do you want, Embry?” she asked through the phone, careful to keep her voice from cracking. “It’s late.” 

“I know, but I really need to talk to you, (Y/N).”

“So, you show up after two weeks of dead silence. Your hair is all chopped up, you’ve got a tattoo, and apparently, you’ve been hanging with Sam Uley’s gang. And you just come here and tell me now you wanna talk,” she scoffed. “Give me one reason why I should give you the time of day after all that?” 

“I know I don’t deserve another chance and you have every right to turn me away right now,” he told her. “But I promise if you give me a couple of minutes I can explain everything to you. After that, you can decide what you want to do. Please, (Y/N).” 

She kept quiet for a second, knowing that she didn’t have much to think about. Her heart knew exactly what she would answer before she could say it out loud. “Fine,�� she said. “You’ve got ten minutes.” 

“Alright,” he smiled. “Come down.”

She couldn’t help the eagerness that overtook her as she wrapped a jacket around her and silently slipped out the door. And once she was face to face with him, it took everything in her not to run and wrap her arms around Embry. 

“Hey,” he smiled softly at her. “Been a while.” 

“Not really in the mood for jokes, Embry,” she responded. “I came out here to hear you explain. So explain.” 

“Okay, but I’m gonna need us to move into the woods.” 

“I’m not going into the woods with you, Em. Just tell me already.”

“Look, I know this is weird but I need you to trust me, okay?” he asked giving her those puppy dog eyes that she had missed so much. The same eyes he’d give her when he begged for a kiss or when he pleaded for a couple of more minutes away from their friends. “Please.” 

“Fine,” she sighed. “But your time is down to eight minutes.” 

“Alright. Just, come on.” 

Without thinking, he took hold of her hand, leading her to the darkness of the woods, searching for a place where no passersby could accidentally see him. 

(Y/N) found herself allowing him to drag her, remembering just how comforting his warmth was. Especially on such a cold night in January, it surprised her just how high his temperature felt. 

Once they were deep enough and Embry had halted them to a stop, she forced herself to drop his hand. She didn’t want him to forget the anger that still rushed through her veins, the disappointment that had found a home in her heart, and the hurt that she felt in every inch of her body. 

“Go ahead,” she told him, crossing her arms across her chest to keep them from reaching toward him. 

“Alright, first of all, I want to apologize for disappearing like that. It wasn’t fair to you or the guys. But you need to understand that I couldn’t tell you at the beginning,” he started. “(Y/N), what I’m about to tell you is gonna sound like the biggest lie you have heard, and you might even think that I’ve lost my mind. Still, everything I say is the honest truth.”

“Em, you’re scaring me,” she responded. “What’re you talking about?” 

Embry took a deep breath, finding every ounce of strength to be able to finally tell her the truth, to wrap her in the web of the supernatural and hope he was strong enough to keep her from the dangers of it. “Okay, I’m gonna need you to think back to all the stories our parents and the elders would tell us around the bonfire,” he said. “How our Quileute ancestors were shapeshifters and how it was their job to protect our land. When we were kids we thought that those were only stories, myths to keep us children entertained. But it’s real, (Y/N). Those stories weren’t just fantasies, they are our history. 

“The reason I disappeared was because I am now one of those shapeshifters. It happened the Saturday before starting school, at the back-to-school bonfire, when that guy was hitting on you when I walked away for a second,” he continued. His eyes never left hers, hoping —begging— that she believed him. “It happened so suddenly and I thought I was dying. I could feel anger taking over my entire body, filling me with this overheating rush that burned deep inside. 

“It was Jared Cameron that found me. He pulled me into the woods and I was so angry that I couldn’t even process what was happening. He kept telling me to give in to the change to listen to my body and allow it to do what it needed to. Suddenly, my clothes were ripped to shreds and I was this huge wolf. 

“After, Sam Uley and Paul Lahote joined him and walked me through shifting back, telling me to focus on my human form. It felt like everything around me was shaking, reacting to the way my body was transforming. And somehow, at just the right moment, I changed back into my human self. 

“I spent that week learning to control my emotions so I wouldn’t trigger a phase in front of everyone, learning about our history and our role in the rez. It turns out, those guys aren’t a gang, they’re actually a pack and our job is to protect the reservation from anything, supernatural or not, that threatens our land. No one can know about our existence other than the elders and current pack members.” 

“Wait, I don’t get it,” she stammered, her head spinning with all the information she was given. “This whole talk about wolves and supernatural beings… it’s crazy, Embry! A completely convoluted way of telling me it’s over.” 

“I can show you,” he added. “Just don’t move even an inch from where you are right now.” 

“What’re you…? Embry.” 

He put some distance between them, making sure he was safely away from her. He removed his shirt and unbuttoned his pants, ensuring his clothes were close enough when he phased back. He knew just how impossible everything he had said sounded. If he hadn’t phased that night, there was no way he would have believed it. 

But he needed her to believe him. 

One second he was standing before her in human form, and the next, a tall gray wolf with black spots was staring her down. She stumbled back as her eyes met the animal’s, a slight rush of fear flowing through her veins. 

Yet, she knew those brown eyes too well to be afraid for long. They were unmistakably Embry’s and they replaced her anxiety with a calming stream.  Something about him was calling to her, beckoning her to come closer. There was no danger, there was no panic, there was only calm. 

(Y/N) made her way closer to the creature, every step filling her with courage. The wolf didn’t move, his eyes simply followed her, waiting. Because he was the tactable answer to all of her questions. 

Her shaking hand raised and landed on the soft fur of the wolf’s head. As soon as she made contact, Embry nudged it, giving her the confirmation she was looking for. It was him and it was all true.

“You’re a wolf,” she softly chuckled. “You’re in front of me right now and you’re a giant wolf.” 

Embry let out a confirming growl that sounded almost like a laugh and nuzzled his nose against her. The small force knocked her back softly, siphoning from her the laugh he had missed hearing. 

“But if no one is supposed to know about you guys, why are you telling me all this?” (Y/N) asked before realizing he could not answer in his form. “Change back already. I have so many questions.” 

In the blink of an eye, Embry stood before her, scrambling to get dressed. “This is the most awkward part of phasing back,” he chuckled dryly. “It’s worse when you’re surrounded by guys you barely know.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” she sympathized. “Now, why me? Why am I the only one that you’re telling this to? Jake and Quil truly believe you’ve joined a gang and left us in the dust.” 

“Well, as with most things, there is an exception to the rules. One person that is allowed to know everything, even if they’re not members of the pack,” he explained slowly. “There’s something that happens after your shift that involves that person. It’s called imprinting. I’m the most basic definition: it's a soulmate. You are unconditionally bound to this person for the rest of your life, becoming whatever it is that they need from you —a sibling, a friend, a partner. Anything. 

“Your whole world changes,” he continued, his hands taking hers. “They become your gravity, your very reason for living. Even being apart feels physically painful. Everything falls secondary to them, and all it takes is one look.”

“This morning,” she breathed. (Y/N) had felt something change when they had locked eyes in the hall. His absence had become a harrowing pit in her stomach. “But I…”

“The bond affects the imprint as well,” Embry answered before she could ask. “But nothing happens without them wanting it. You are only what the imprint wants.”

“So it’s me,” she said, trying to hold back tears, her eyes falling to where their hands were clasped. “Is that why you ran away this morning? Because you imprinted on me? Was it… did you not want it to be me?” 

“No! I mean yes! I wanted it to be you,” he rapidly scrambled for his response. “But I was afraid of what the implications of you being my imprint would be.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“First of all, I could never forgive myself if I was the reason you were ever in danger,” Embry started, his hand cradling her cheek to lift her gaze to his, wiping away the strand that had fallen. “But what I was most afraid of was that it would make you feel things that you might not have felt had it not been for this supernatural intervention.”

“I’m not following, Em.” 

“Look, (Y/N), I love you —I’m in love with you. And I have been for a long time,” he confessed. “And even though I know you like me and we spent all this time together, I was afraid that if you felt more for me it would be because of the imprint bond and not really how you would have felt without it.” 

Finally, it was her turn to comfort him. “Em, I think I’ve loved you since the moment we met,” she grinned. “I don’t need a supernatural link to tell me how I have felt about you for the majority of my life. And I understand why you had to keep all of this from us. As much as I would love for Jake and Quil to know how much of an amazing badass my boyfriend is, we know how well I can keep a secret.”

Embry’s eyes opened wide at the word, loving how it sounded coming from her lips. “Boyfriend? You called me your boyfriend!” 

“Is that not what you are?” 

“Yes. Yes! And you’re my girlfriend!” he exclaimed as he hugged her waist tightly, twirling her in a hug. “God, being without you has made this the worst two weeks of my life.”

“I can tell,” she teased. “I mean you lost my favorite thing about you. I’m really gonna miss your hair.” 

“Unless you braid the wolf’s hair, I’m afraid we’re stuck with the short hair for a while.” 

“I can work with that as long as you don’t ever disappear like that again.” 

“I promise I will never willingly do that,” he responded. “I can assure you these past two weeks have been hell.” 

“Well, we won’t have that time back. But we can make sure we don’t lose any more.”

“I like the sound of that,” he grinned.

He placed both hands on either side of (Y/N)’s face, nuzzling his nose to hers as he had done the first time they kissed. He breathed in her scent. He listened to the patter of her heart, to the sound of her breath. He took her in completely at the moment, memorizing how she looked when they told each other they loved one another. 

“Are you gonna make me wait?” she let out a strangled breath. “Or are you gonna kiss me already?” 

“You waited two weeks already,” he teased. 

“So I’ve waited long enough,” she bit back. “Now kiss me, you dork.” 

Finally, he crashed his lips onto hers and everything felt like it had fallen where it was supposed to. There had never been secrets between them, and, now, there never had to be any more. The universe had simply confirmed what they already felt. 

---

“Well, Quil, looks like you’re gonna have to pay up, my man,” Jake joked a couple of months after that fateful night. All discord between the friends had died the second the boys that were kept in the dark phases as well. “I told you these two had been together for a while.” 

“No, you owe me,” he retorted. “They got together closer to the timeline I had set.” 

“Actually,” Embry interjected, his arm draped over (Y/N)’s shoulders. “If you look at the board of bets, you’ll see that I had put down the actual date and time that we got together.” 

“But that’s not fair! When we made that bet board we had no idea you two were actually together,” Quil whined. “There’s no way that should be an admissible bet.” 

“Not knowing the facts doesn’t exempt you from it,” (Y/N) chuckled. “A bet that falls under the set rules for that pile will remain intact, even if it’s under a loophole.”

“Of course you’ll say that, (Y/N),” Jake scoffed. “He’s your boyfriend after all.” 

“Don’t forget imprintee,” she grinned. “Now, both of you, cough up those twenty bucks.” 

Later that afternoon and forty bucks richer, (Y/N) and Embry sat in the Uley’s backyard, watching the other boys playing football farther away from the bonfire Sam had started. They had curled up together under a blanket, enjoying the fact that they were together, and the world seemed to grant them a day of peace. 

“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” Embry whispered into her ear, pressing her tighter to him. “Because I do. So much.” 

“Hm,” she smiled, melting into his touch. “You’ve told me once or twice. But I’ll never get tired of hearing it. Because I love you too.”

“And I’ll never get tired of saying it.” 

“Good,” she beamed. “Because you’re stuck with me until the end.” 

“Couldn’t think of a better life than that.” 

Twilight Taglist: @winter-soldier-101 @zheezs14 @a-sifu-hotman @sunflowerleii @dyslexicatterpillar @blackbluerose666 @slutforsainz @kortniec696 @xcastawayherosx @minhaimaginacao @bluebirbnamedjay @sirenheadenby @andreiaafaria @bluetreecloud20 @sunshine2894 @valejewel @mushroomelephant @locokoca @esposadomd @this-is-a-bad-idea @nocturnalherb16 @rosalie-whitlock @nyctophilia710 @blueshoelaces @ems-alexandra @then-worship-at-my-altar @six-call @witchofhawkins @lovel-blog @sugajar @goodpeoplegotohellanyway @yuki254 @616wilsons @nyenye @lunaOoO @avis15 @captainrogers-19 @honeylovemoon @wonieeee @baebeepeach @skyesthebomb @krazyk99 @catgirlpwr @klf1999 @sl-ut @adaydreamaway08 @cinffy23 @toomanythoughts33 @sugasthreedollarkookie @fandomonetwo @fruitylilfuck

@a-slut-for-loki-bucky @honeywxter @haroldpotterson @kaita11 @gangstalicious06 @uwunuggetchan @elijahssuit @multifandomreader73 @ellabellabus07 @your local gay @blackloveangel13 @mar

[chronically-ghosted]

i totally agree that it’s ridiculous for people to write fics for films that haven’t been released yet, but the problem isn’t the smut itself. people have every right to write porn if that scratches the itch.

i think your main point is the most important: it’s impossible to write a thoughtful, inspired fic when we don’t even know the story it’s based on. no one knows who this character is or what he’s like.

at this point, everyone should just call a spade a spade and write pedro rpf. all they care about is seeing his face in different situations.

so my earlier post was not so much a statement on Pedro Pascal Character fanfiction/porn, but the commercialization of art and I interpreted the thoughts and opinions of others through the lens of the medium I most often express myself with, which is fanfiction.

let me be clear: i have no problem with smut - pwp or otherwise. people are allowed to write whatever they want, about whoever they want, with whatever tropes make them happy.

my overall focus (and granted it was probably very muddled by the end of those - what, like three reblogs?) was an interrogation of fanfiction as art, and the state of art in this modern era. and after doing some more thinking and listening to more people much smarter than me (thank you to everyone who dm-ed me directly to talk further about this), my opinion is thus: the creation of content (not art) is more ubiquitous today is not because we are getting more stupid as a society, not because of our failing attention spans, not because we are on the brink of moral collapse but because we physically do not have the mental strength to be intellectually curious as a direct result of constant, distracting, emotionally-draining stimuli.

i can explain what i mean below the cut with two primary examples, specifically regarding the shift in fanfiction cult, and yes, the prominence of smutty oneshots in the pedro pascal character fandom of which this blog is a part of.

I have been in various fandoms for almost twenty years. I have been writing fanfiction for almost that same amount of time. In recent years, I've noticed two trends that initially discouraged me, but that I now believe is a symptom of our adjustment to a modern, constantly online era.

A severe lack of engagement within the artistic artifacts of a fandom

The quality of the fanfiction itself (because yes I do consider fanfiction to be an artform) has gone down hill - mostly.

Lack of engagement:

Art is inherently created to be shared. This is especially true for fandom because the community lives or dies by how many people are interacting with each other and sharing ideas (news, theories, fanart, fanfic, etc). If you say a fandom is dead, it means there haven't been any new posts or fic about it in years. So I don't wanna hear it when people say, "oh write for yourself, you shouldn't be chasing engagement" because that is antithetical to the very concept of fanfiction.

In recent years, I have seen and experienced myself engagement in my work only so far as a like or kudo. This is not how it used to be. Message boards (yes I am that old) and niche fandom sites were constantly abuzz with media sharing and excitement, and everyone enjoyed some version of praise (unless you got hit by the antis but they're never fun anyway). Initially I blamed this drop in engagement on laziness: people just want the next thing, they can't be bothered to appreciate the hard work writers put in and they just see content and art as the same thing - stuff to consume.

But I myself am GUILTY of minimal reblogs and comments and I LOVE what I'm writing - the impact certain works leave me with is long, long lasting but for some goddamn reason, I can't sit down and praise the author's works. Am I lazy? Possibly, but this is also not an isolated behavior and it's on the rise: people do not have time to engage with fandom/fanfic like they used to. Most people I know have worked at least two or three jobs at some point in their lives to just to make rent. This gen z is the first generation in DECADES to be worse off economically than their parents. With an interest rate at 8%, who the fuck can afford the security of a home anymore? We work ourselves to the bone for scraps and the realization that The Dream has officially died. And so what do we want to do in the free time we do have? Engage with the very bare minimum. We want to read things that we can at best skim, things we don't have to think about or engage with in any meaningful way. We want a way to turn off the noise of the next apocalypse and sometimes the best we can do is the tap of a thumb.

Which brings me to my next point: what the fuck happened to thoughtful fanfiction?

But this question is inextricably linked to the points above: oneshots are easier to write, faster to write, and if you write fic that is basically "Mad libs porn" (without ever engaging in the actual medium because it is literally not released yet), you are doing the most minimal work for the most amount of engagement. But I can't fault ANYONE for doing that. It feels good to be told your smut is "so hot" or "this exploded my panties" and in this era where the time available to create is so fucking small and minimized of course you're going to write for the most popular character, whether or not you're interested in the source material because we want our art to matter to someone. Intellectual pundits loooove to lambast our "shorter attention spans" but fuck, when are we allowed the time to think - in between this "100 year storm" that's happened twice in the past five years, or the global pandemic that turned millions of deaths into a political punching bag, or the next video of a white woman crying wolf to the police over an innocent black man, or - or - or - or

In a day where reality and the world as we know seems to be holding onto a thread, we turn to comfort: comforting tropes (dbf to rape/kidnap fantasies), comforting fanfic (pwp), and comforting ways to engage with fandom. There is nothing wrong with wanting your art to be appreciated and there's nothing wrong with inherently wrong with pwp - but I do believe its symptomatic of a MUCH larger and more sinister movement within ALL art right now.

I come from the generation who banished fanfic authors for scrubbing off the filing numbers to their fics and publishing it as original content because, in our communities, they were selling out. Fanfiction is inherently an act of rebellion. Every time you write fanfiction you break canon, an established structure with its own rules and boundaries. So by trying to appeal to the masses, to curb your own writing to fit whatever is mainstream, you are doing a disservice to yourself AND to the art of fanfiction. If something you write becomes popular, wonderful, great, you are very lucky and there is nothing wrong with that either. But do not sell out your 13 beloved fans who WILL take the time to leave a comment, who WILL take the time to reblog because your weird little fic spoke to them on a fundamental level and now is with them for the rest of their lives - in favor of a 100 thumb taps.

If you've made it here, thank you very much for reading. I've added some links to some additional references to see how this concept of "populist" art is having a serious negative down turn in the quality of art, but is also not any one individuals personal failings:

Why the world is addicted to background tv by Kayleigh Day

How Modern Audience are failing cinema by Like Stories of Old

Rupi Kaur episode of Rehash podcast

I'm always here to talk fic and art and what makes you excited about your writing. Much love and please rest. We need you here.

[aziraphales-library]

Factory Settings - fic rec

Factory Settings by Anonymous (T)

Crowley gets reinstated as an angel.

An insane 100k word ride that is a long, alternate version of S3 in my heart. The characterizations, writing and everything is so on point that it literally feels official in every way except formatting.

This was written in 19 days, but it's so masterfully crafted that I genuinely find it to be one of my favorite NOVELS of all time. The only fic I've ever actually downloaded just in case it gets lost for whatever reason. SO. MUCH. HAPPENS. IN THIS FIC. AND IT'S ALL FANTASTIC.

Nothing I could say could properly describe how incredible and wild the plot is. Trust me. It'll cure all your S2 aches and give you one of the best fanfics, nay, stories of all time. Just. In general. Butt clenching moments, laughs, tears, excitement- it's a rollercoaster.

No slog, fantastic pacing, so many twists and turns that still always make sense and are so fun and compelling... I read this in less than a day and am already re-reading it and will occasionally do so for the rest of my life. This doesn't only build off of Good Omens with love and care, in some places, I'd say it transcends the source material.

This fic is already blowing up for good reasons, but I think it deserves as much love as possible, so I'm submitting it to your wonderful blog and hoping more people can discover this brilliant gem.

LOVE YOU AND YOUR WORK WITH THIS BLOG, KEEP IT UP, MODS!! <3

((Definitely needs the #good omens s2 tag, but idk how to make it happen in the submission. Sorry if I did something wrong, you probably should delete this part when/if you post my submission btw))

[watching-sam-and-dean-again]

Watching a reactor on YouTube who just got to Season 4: Lazarus Rising, and I’m so annoyed by the amount of comments with people saying things like, "this is when the series REALLY starts" and "Seasons 1-3 were the prologue, now The Story begins" and "I’ve been waiting for you to meet my favorite character!"

First, I will never be able to understand Castiel being someone's legitimate favorite character. I just don’t get it. He starts off as a massive dick, becomes an ally, uses and betrays both brothers a number of times, rarely takes full responsibility for his actions, and ends up as a totally different and neutered version of himself. But this guy is your favorite!? The only reason I think a large number of fans who love him do is because he comes in the gate treating Sam like crap and he becomes a simp for Dean (or they are shippers). Also, if someone is a more casual fan, I can see enjoying Cass because he’s quirky and he mostly stands up for the Winchesters, but if someone is a big fan of the brothers, Cass makes their lives harder a lot of the time. Also, I’m coming to really hate the fact that the dude is always in a trench coat. How am I supposed to take a character seriously who is essentially like an unchanging cartoon character come to life? Anyway, despite how it might sound from my ranting, I actually do think people are allowed to love whatever character they want, but it just doesn’t compute for me personally that it’s Cass as he is on screen (not in someone’s head).

Next, the idea of people calling the first three seasons "The Prologue" to supernatural is offensive to me personally (well, not offensive but it’s dumb as hell). A prologue is used to give some important background that should be known for you to better understand the main story, but it happened before, or doesn’t quite fit into, the main narrative. I’m sorry, but the first three seasons of Supernatural are the foundation that everything builds off of, and maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but it’s not just the set up to the Real Story. The Real Story of Supernatural has always been and will always be "the epic love story of Sam and Dean," not the angel crap. Calling the basis of the whole show the prologue has an implied message that it’s not as important as, or connected to the rest of the story. Again, people are allowed to have their own opinions about what they enjoy in media, but this idea that what came before Season 4 wasn’t as important as the rest of the show is actually bad media literacy, especially when you consider how much retconning and inconsistency later seasons have (*cough* John Winchester, for exapmle). The early seasons are Supernatural at its most pure, and if you don’t like or care about Sam and Dean's story, what are you doing here?

I was going to go on by listing all of the important things that we learn about Sam and Dean's characters and relationship in the first three seasons, but honesty, I’m tired. If you’re reading my post, I’m sure you already know. True fans of the show, even if seasons 1 to 3 aren’t their favorite, know how important these seasons are. Frankly, if someone claims that they don’t matter as much as the later season, then I’m going to assume that they are probably a heller (and I’m probably right), thus their opinions on the show don’t matter.

Speaking of Hellers, they are the Jehovah’s Witnesses of fandom. They descend on your doorstep (YouTube video, blog post, etc), uninvited and unwelcome, to make you uncomfortable by forcing their literature (head-canons and subtext) on you in a vain attempt to make you convert to their twisted version of a cult religion (Destiel). Some get indoctrinated into their cult, others consider them a joke, and yet others are driven to madness by the constant hounding of the hellers. I wish they would just stay in their lane and let people come to their own conclusions about the show and the characters, but they try to gatekeep the fandom experience by jumping on anyone new and telling them how they are the "most popular ship" and that supernatural queerbaits, but Dean and Cass are still totes husbands, and there is some other guy there, too but Sam is just some jerk who isn’t as important as Wuwu Dean and their Little Meow Meow Cass. If somone actually sees and enjoys Destiel on their own, great, good for them; they’ll find the blogs and groups who love it too. Hellers don’t need to try actively recruiting people. It’s all just a numbers gone to them. We have the most fanfic (um, yes, because the show doesn’t deliver what you want), we are the most popular ship (sure, because the other main ship is brothers which squicks some people out, and because you crucify anyone who admits to being a Wincest shipper), and they tell the stupidest lies (the show shifts away from being about the brothers, and focusses more on Dean and Cass' "relationship," and Sam isn’t as important to the story later). I wish they would just stay in their own sandbox and not come pee in everyone else's. Cult like behavior in action.

Okay, deep breaths. I’m grad I got that one off of my chest, but my blog is getting very ranty. I’m going to try make sure my next post is a positive one.

Happy weekend everyone!

[calypsolemon]

I wanna hear about your favorite au you've made, I'm curious!

ack that's really hard to say any particular one is my favorite, though I have ones that I like over others.

Obviously, I've had transcendent au for the longest and probably have the most fondness and nostalgia for it. In short (and it should be said VERY short as this is a long and complicated au), it's an au where the ninja attempt to defy the destiny that has beaten them down for so long, but in the course of doing so they rise to meet it, destroying the world and becoming the gods of a new world in the process. I cannot call this au purely mine alone as it was a collaborative effort between members of my lego server. It's also probably the most messy, containing a lot of immature and underdeveloped thoughts on ninjago as a series, as well as just my emotional state at the time which was "angry abuse victim who just moved out of their childhood home." Over time my thoughts on the events of the au have evolved drastically and thusly the meaning of it has too, which isn't a bad thing. But it does mean its not really as streamlined or coherent as something I'd create now that I'm a bit older.

Oldman Lloyd au is also one of my favorites, and it sort of exists as a response to aspects of transcendent au I find myself now disagreeing with. Essentially, its just my imaging of what Lloyd's life will look like in the far future, where he has been doing the green ninja/ master lloyd/ conduit thing for enough ages that it has all become routine. This one is nowhere near as developed, existing mostly as a set of loosely connected vignettes in my mind. Still, what drives me to it is just the idea of following Lloyd thousands of years into the future, and seeing that he still has a life filled with meaning and friends he cares about even if they aren't the same set of friends he started with, something that I think the fandom is often hesitant to dwell upon.

Splinter-hearted, my adaptation of the classic fairytale "The Snow Queen," was at one time a ninjago au, which you might know if you've been around long enough. It was pretty straightforward, just a version of the Snow Queen where the characters were replaced with ninjago characters, having Nya as Gerda, Kai as Kay and Zane as the titular Snow Queen. However it isn't anymore as I quickly realized the characters were just too different from their ninjago counterparts, and the story wasn't benefiting much from continuing to keep them connected to ninjago. Still, I feel grateful to that early version for giving me the spark that would eventually lead to a more original story.

Finally, and most recently, I've been obsessed with my siren Jay/ With Your Voice au. Since it's the most recent it's not as developed, but I think I've seen very few au's of its nature in the fandom, so I've latched onto it. Essentially, it is an au about Nya struggling to cope with the loss of Jay (who is dead in this version of things), and her spiral into obsessive and self-destructive behavior as she chases a dangerous mythological creature that takes on Jay's likeness (the siren). It's kind of my first attempts at something of a horror story in one of my au's! I'm really excited to keep hashing it out in my mind.

This might just sound like I copped out because I listed so many au's in one post but tbh I actually have come up with many MANY au's for ninjago over the years. Most of them simply haven't been posted about on this blog because they just weren't focused on that long by me, weren't that interesting in the long run, didn't have much going on that would make good art pieces, etc. I still find many of them precious to me but I think these four are the ones I'm holding closest to my heart at this moment. Thank you for asking!

[sparklyshakespeare]

the case for hyper-femme hotspur

this is my tumblr blog and this is like kind of just what we do heresies

OK so basically okay so

first of all i think anytime there is a character who is so strongly associated with an extreme form of gender expression in our collective zeitgeist (i.e hotspur and hyper-masculinity) there’s something not only extremely fun to play with but incredibly valuable about analyzing the story from the opposite end of the gender performance specturm. also canonically there are like 3 female characters in 1h4 and that sucks. also also don’t you want to see hotspur in pink glitter? i know i do and this tumblr is not a democracy!!

in this hypothetical dream sparkly version of the play, both hotspur and worcester would be women. not played by women, i mean textually explicitly women. this is important!! 

worcester should be very nancy pelosi hillary clinton-esque in the way that this is a middle-aged woman who has been taught that to be successful in her field (politics) she will have to strip herself of most of her femininity and perform a certain level of masculinity in order to be taken seriously. this creates a whole other layer to the hotspur/worcester dynamic when all of a sudden this young, hyper-feminine woman is being taken more seriously and being given more praise than someone who has worked and fought through the bullshit and done it all “right”. she hasn’t earned her place, she hasn’t had to struggle - and worcester resents her for that. (there’s like a whole dissertation to be written about how much of 1h4 changes when only worcester is genderbent, i love you queen worcester you are everything not in this version here you kind of suck lowkey)

henry iv is just a misogynist he just kinda sucks but like this is something we all knew screw that guy

ok now we can talk about hal because i know hes like the one all you little gay people care about. 

to me, it’s never made sense why the Henriad is framed as hal’s hero’s journey. maybe it’s because i’m queer (i’m like actually positive that’s why), but leaving home and finding acceptance and family from a group of outsiders who society has deemed as worthless is the path i’ve watched so many friends walk. having to leave that and return to your shitty dad because “duty calls!” and THEN leaving behind and disavowing the same community that opened its arms to you? i don’t see that as an awesome coming-of-age about learning how to handle responsibility, that’s deeply, deeply tragic. and far farrrrr too true a reality for most members of our LGBTQ+ community here (Bible Belt). SO guess where this version of 1h4 is set!!!!!! anyways, its the Medieval Revival of the ‘70s in the Bible Belt south, the Boar’s Head is a gay bar, and hal is trans. 

hal is trans-masc in some way and this needs to be incredibly explicit (like pronouns pin with trans flag on costume explicit). and then when the news breaks, when “I’ll to the court in the morning.” (we’re cutting the text so this is where that scene ends. cool? cool. cool!), hal takes the pin off. it needs to be like A Moment. it should make me cry, and i cry really easily so that’ll probably be pretty easy to do, but this is a gut punch. 

oh and lady percy is still a woman, they’re gay, because i said so. blah blah blah because look hotspur and hal really were so alike all along and look hotspur is fighting so voraciously because she’s hungry for a world where she can openly and unabashedly be with the person she loves but ultimately because i love lady percy and i love lesbians and this play doesn’t need another man. but also because look hotspur is fighting so voraciously because she’s hungry for a world where she can openly and unabashedly be with the person she loves. worcester and vernon should also both be women and have the blossoming of a relationship but be a lot more discreet about it (worcester should be extremely hesitant). now we get a cool split between younger and older generations of activists in both the feminist and the gay rights movement oooo themes oooo motifs oooo lady gagita 

as far as hal/hotspur parallels go, it’s probably pretty obvious at this point. your dad constantly praising someone who represents, at least in his mind, the ideal concept of a woman, disappointed you can’t be more like her, all the while you’re coming to terms with the fact that you’re not a woman, but he’ll never see that, so what the fuck are you supposed to do?!? it’s a LOT! but i think there’s also something to be said about the less obvious parallel. which is that hyper-femininity is NOT an attempt at ideal polite womanhood or self-Stepfordization, hyper-femininity is in fact the extreme performance of womanhood in rejection of that. hyper-femininity is queer in nature (also hotspur quite literally has a wife but i guess hal wouldn’t be able to tell that just by looking at her) there’s something to be said about the moment hal and hotspur see each other, and then the moment hal and hotspur seeeeeee each other. and go hey, you’re just like me. this person who you’ve been constantly compared to and made out to be lesser than  because you dare to be deeply wildly madly truly you is in fact exactly the same. we’re the same. and oh my god, in another world wouldn’t it have been lovely to just like go dancing together? sucks it’s not another world now we’re going to gay fight each other i guess

[insane-thoughts-oftheday]

A (not) so small philosophical interpretation of Odysseus in epic

Disclaimer: I'm doing this analysis for fun, please don't take everything I write as truth, because this text is based on my interpretation and, even though it took some academic research to do it. It's worth remembering that I don't have a degree in philosophy yet, so I can still make mistakes on some points. Another point I want to highlight is that I wrote this text in a language other than English, and there may be some translation errors by Google, so I apologize if anything is confusing or if you have any questions about something, feel free to comment or send an ask, I'll do my best to explain.

(Notice that's basically me as far as you decide to read this blog)

EPIC:the musical is a work that is very present in my life and in the lives of many other people who are reading this little fan outburst; And if you've just stumbled upon this craze and are hearing about it for the first time, a brief summary is that it's a musical, more addictive than drugs, that tells the story of Odysseus, that guy from Greek mythology who spent 20 years trying to get home after the Trojan War, also known as Simp by his wife Penelope. We have moments of joy, sadness, introspection and many fan outbursts caused by the owner of it all, Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who is not only the creator but also the lead singer of this masterpiece, playing Odysseus and a few others.

But let's get back to the analysis here because I could talk about this for hours without stopping.

A few months ago, when the Underworld saga was released, I remembered the phrase:

"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

This phrase was written by Nietzsche in the book Beyond Good and Evil, and it reminds me a lot of the Odysseus we see in EPIC, although the phrase is incomplete in the previous quote, even though it is the most common one we see being spread around. The original is:

“Whoever fights monsters should take care that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

And I also remember thinking about that phrase by Heraclitus, which I think everyone has heard, probably incompletely, at some point in school:

“No one can step into the same river twice, for when he steps into it again, the waters are not the same, and the being itself has already changed. Thus, everything is governed by dialectics, the tension and the alternation of opposites. Therefore, reality is always the result of change, that is, of the struggle between opposites.”

In my opinion, I think that both phrases fit well with the version of the character that we see starring in the entire musical, since most ancient myths and poems have different versions and translations and of course Jorge took some artistic liberties; Odysseus is a Greek hero who fights against many monsters, both mythical and internal, taking into account his ethics as a person while trying to survive and return home.

I think it's interesting to point out that from here on I'll use some different terms, but I'll do my best to explain them.

We can see that throughout all the sagas Odysseus is describing the line of what it is to be human and how one can easily slip off it; this line is located between the definition of gods and monsters/animals and is known as Metron, which gave rise to the word measure, and here we will use it as a synonym for limit for something. It's also good to say that metron has nothing to do with a person's morals/character, because it's a question of ethics.

Morals are the set of rules that concern good and evil, right and wrong. These standards refer to values ​​that are passed down from generation to generation and guide the conduct of individuals in their daily lives. (personal)

Ethics is a field of philosophy whose object of study is the principles that guide morality. In this sense, ethics is a philosophical reflection on morality, approaching the universal principles that govern the common good and coexistence between human beings in general. (common sense)

In my opinion about the musical, the issue of gods and monsters is not so different. For me, in that context, monsters and gods are the same thing, since they are outside the ideal of humanity, but this point may be mentioned later.

Metron is not a knowledge, it is, above all, the limit between impossibility and weakness.

We can see in several Greek myths that human beings like to cross this line, most stories end in tragedy because of this, human beings can also be called “Hybris” which is an excess, it is being hybrid, having two natures, acting in two ways, it is being in the Metron and trying to be something that one is not, because thinking that we can be more than men is arrogance, and arrogance is a human emotion, another story that exemplifies this well is the myth of Oedipus who tries to overcome his destiny given by the gods and ends up fulfilling it anyway.

Hybris is a Greek concept that can be translated as "everything that goes beyond the measure; "immoderation" and which currently alludes to excessive confidence, exaggerated pride, presumption, arrogance or insolence (originally against the gods), which often ends up being punished.

It is worth noting that hybris would in no way be a sin, in the concept of the word and the ideal current translation for it would be "Hamartia", which by chance is also no longer used in its original meaning because of the Catholic Church.

Now going to the interesting part because I was just giving context of terms.

In The Horse and the Infant, we 'meet' our beloved version of Odysseus, where during the Trojan War he states that everything he is doing is for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, using this as a way to inspire his men to carry out the massacre that he himself did not want to participate in, I think because of his moral nature, the proof is so much that in Homer's original Odyssey, he pretends to be crazy so as not to show up when called, unfortunately he is unmasked and forced to go.

We also see here that up until now Odysseus is still a very moral character, he has his reasons for being there, he, like the other warriors, has a family and his deepest desire is to return to them. So with this we can conclude that he is still just a man, he is human.

In the same song we see how far his morality goes, as he receives the divine mission to kill the young Trojan prince, Astyanax, who is just a baby, due to the threat that one day he will want revenge on him and his kingdom.

All of this creates doubts in Odysseus, about the morality of gods and men. Here we see him crossing the line and this whole text begins to be about ethics, as it is common sense that killing a child is a monstrous act, but for him not to kill means that his family will die in a more horrendous way later and he cannot let that happen.

Then we have the monologue in Just a Man, the best song, where we can really see the doubts mentioned earlier. And one detail that I find very interesting and that will be important for this text is that in Gigi's animatic, we can see Odysseus' "monster" being 'born' and its source is the baby and his doubts about whether he would really be a monster just for that, even though at that moment the baby is still just a human, the mission to kill him little by little makes him a monster due to the possibility that one day he himself will commit several atrocities.

It's fun for me to think that representing 'the monster' as a tree could be an allusion to the fact that trees take as long to grow as a monster takes to be formed by man.

I think you now understand part of Nietzsche's quote. Odysseus looking at his own reflection and not recognizing himself, seeing the monster he will become if he crosses the metronome is very well treated in several animatics, but the most visible is in Gigi's where he is not only referenced but shown as a completely different being both in attitudes and thoughts.

I'll just pause to say that I love how Gigi did the work of showing the tree growing in the shape of a skull, which could be the deaths that the monster will bring or that it is a macabre thing to do, I don't know, I just love this detail for some reason.

And also how I think that makes a point of showing that the real problem is not the baby but rather Odysseus' unethical thoughts developing because of his doubts.

Ok, end of the pause and start of a mini explanation.

I didn't think this analysis would be so long and in my original thought I was only going to end up mentioning a few songs and focusing more on "No Longer You" and "Monster" but it ended up getting out of control and listening to the musical again it seems like I can make a lot of connections that I hadn't thought of before but now I can't express them properly, so from now on there will be a gigantic gap in content that I might fill later in another post or by editing this one, but at the moment thinking too much about it is giving me a headache and I really wanted to be able to post this now along with the Wisdom Saga because it's something I did for fun from fan to fan and I know that now the fandom is busier. One day I swear I'll do a complete analysis relating song by song, but not today for the sake of my mental health.

End of explanation, subject change.

Going through his entire journey, Ody goes to the underworld after Tiresias who reveals that he will never return home, which makes him indignant, I think any human would be, how much he suffered to get there for nothing. Here we can see how Heraclitus fits into the prophet, and as much as I hate cutting philosophical phrases in half, I don't think I need to use the whole thing to make sense of it here, because the most well-known part of it is enough to get to the point discussed here, since it really won't be him who returns to Ithaca, but rather another man, a man haunted by his own past and by the ethics of his people.

There is no way a man who spent 20 years away from home, suffering for the divine and for his own mind, can be the same, because this is a human characteristic, humans are hybrid beings, which implies that we can change our own nature while gods and monsters will always follow the same line of thought, since they are perfect they do not need drastic changes to live as they are.

That's it. So finally we have the mental breakdown where Ody begins to accept that it doesn't matter if he is a monster to everyone, he did what was necessary. He looked into the abyss and was looked back. He becomes the monster, even if he compares himself to the other divine creatures, which I think he never really learned to differentiate from humans, because Ody my friend there is no way you can really reach the level of a cyclops or a god with a wounded ego, or a traumatized nymph, time makes things very trivial for them and let's face it you will not live even half as long as they do because you are just a mortal.

And I don't know how to make gifs so here are some prints to illustrate the last paragraph. But before that I wanted to thank you if you read this far, I know the ending was kind of bad but I'm emotionally tired, I hope I at least conveyed the idea that was in my head. Thank you and stream the new saga!!!!

(All arts belong to gigi!! go check out this amazing work!!!)