#I tend to focus on backstory stuff but I tried to also explain a lot of his personality too

[kira-the-whump-enthusiast]

Tell me about an oc that is on your mind! Who are they, what do they do, what's their deepest secret?

Thank you!! So much for the ask!! I was so happy when I saw this in my inbox :D

So there’s this OC that’s pretty much constantly living in the back of my head. He’s one of my favorite blorbos you know lol :D and his name is Zack! Just Zack, no surnames or anything.

Before I get into the rant: content warnings for attempted suicide, a lot of torture, serial murder, general bad times with very little comfort, cannibalism, and there might be more that I’m missing.

I do not have a decent visual ref of Zack yet so!! Here’s a brief description: he’s Chinese-American, has pale skin, silver upturned eyes, black hair that’s a little wavy, and he’s pretty much average height. He has a penchant for men’s suits straight from the cities of 1920′s America, with hat and all. Zack also wears a lot of silvery, snake themed accessories.

And he does have a pet snake too! It’s of a fantasy species, because I wanna have the snake be wrapped around some part of Zack’s body at (mostly) all times and I’m pretty sure you can’t do that with like. Real snakes. The snake’s name is Jörmungandr :D she’s an albino snake and also very long. And very cute ofc <2

Anyways! Zack is an AU of. My OC Zach. Yeah. Sorry about that. I’m not changing it tho. Pretty much I just took Zach and I was like “okay but what if he was immortal and everything was worse?”

Zack has never really had a good life. He grew up in 1950s American style suburbia as a transgender kid, in a household with manipulative and distant parents. It really really sucked, as one might guess. He didn’t have any friends, and he coped by developing an ego. It wasn’t enough to sustain any sort of peace of mind, though. Zack was isolated and trapped in this town, in his body, and in his painfully monotonous life. And one day, he couldn’t take it anymore, so he tried to kill himself.

He probably should have died from his attempt, but he woke up afterwards, and he was completely fine. No injuries or scars or anything. Shortly after, he realized that it was because he was some sort of immortal.

And yeah! It pretty much works by like, if he dies, he will come back to life after an hour! His body will also reset to the state it was in an hour before his death. He also doesn’t age. 

After Zack realized he was immortal, he decided to skip town. No point living in a place that made him want to die.

Zack probably could have had a decent life at this point. Found some friends and people who cared about and respected him, and pursued his own passions. But the thing about Zack is that any sort of intimacy is completely off the table for him. He is terrified of it, because he doesn’t know it, and also because it leaves him too vulnerable. In his childhood, he learned that if you got close to someone, or trusted them, then they would use it against you or break it the moment it was convenient to them. So he actively avoids making any friends, or getting even a little bit close to literally anybody. 

He has this manner of speaking where he often minimizes really serious things, but he also has a penchant of being really melodramatic over tiny misfortunes like getting a paper cut (it’s over-exaggerated for the humor lol).

Zack is also a really callous person. He doesn’t really see other people as like, people. Mostly because he believes that’s he’s above them, as an immortal. He’s going to live forever, and that is infinitely longer than any human lifespan. It doesn’t matter what he does to a person, because they’ll be dead in a century at most! No one will care, eventually.

And he also has a complex about being remembered. He doesn’t want to be a guy in the background forever! He deserves something better. He wants people to remember him more than anything. But he won’t make any lasting relationships with people, he’s too callous to try doing good for the world, and he has no desire or passion for the sciences or the arts.

So all these traits converge to lead Zack to find his preferred method of making his mark on the world: serial killing.

The way he sees it, people have such a fascination with serial killers, especially ones that killed their victims brutally, that if he captures someone’s fascination enough, he’ll always be remembered. And he can repeat that for as long as he lives.

And the worst thing was that he was right about it, in a way. A lot of people have discussed and speculated over his murders. In detective offices, in podcasts and blog articles, in daily conversation. And Zack has done some honestly horrible things to people. He convinces himself that it’s okay, though, because they die at the end. They don’t have to live with the pain for the rest of their lives.

(Although, sometimes he leaves people alive at the end and lets them go. Just in the hopes that they’ll remember this and him. For the rest of their lives.)

All the serial killing has absolutely gotten him in some hot water before, though. He’s let himself die numerous times to escape the authorities or a prison. Sometimes he chooses his victims wrong, and then he ends up with vengeful person after him, because he killed someone close to them.

He ended up tortured because of that, once. Zack murdered a woman’s only friends, and she hunted him down. She was just going to kill him, but then she realized he wouldn’t stay dead. So she decided to make him suffer :)

No one came to help him, afterwards. He had to patch himself up.

And sometimes, the person he’s trying to kill is a lot more dangerous than he realizes. Case in point: once, he chose a victim at random, and broke into the victim’s house. That victim ended up killing him, and he woke up in the guy’s basement.

He targeted a cannibalistic serial killer without knowing it. Yeah. Anyways, the cannibal cut off Zack’s left arm, cooked it, and forced him to eat part of it, just because he wanted to. Zack eventually died from the blood loss, but not quickly enough. He woke up with his arm still gone, since it was cut off over an hour before his death.

Eventually he did escape, though, and he got a prosthetic. I’d actually say that the origin of his prosthetic is one of his deeper secrets. Whenever someone asks, he just makes up a new story. He will never tell anyone the real story.

Another one of his deep secrets is definitely. All the serial killing he’s done. He’s not very inclined to tell anyone, since he doesn’t want to rot in a jail for the rest of eternity, and also, part of what makes his serial murders so memorable to people is that they don’t know who committed it. He won’t ruin that for himself!

Deepest secret though? That he needs a friend. Or just someone close to him. He honestly needs people. But the thing is, he doesn’t want people. They’ve hurt him too greatly. He doesn’t deserve it. So he very much denies his need for intimacy. This is a secret so deep that it’s secret even to Zack himself.

Zack is one of my favorite characters, and honestly it’s just because he’s so miserable all the time, but honestly a lot of it is his own doing but he won’t change anything he’s doing because he’s too scared of the alternatives :D

[loldragoon-ffxiv]

Obligatory Long Dawntrail Post

I wanted to wait a while to say anything and let my hype die down first, but I think it's finally time. Overall, I really liked it! Especially how it relates to my WoL, which is more what I want to focus on because the internet has had enough hot takes about Wuk Lamat. More rambling under the cut:

To get the big picture stuff out of the way, I have always felt that this game is at its best when it's leaning into its politics. I'll admit it's risky to do from a commercial standpoint in this very polarized world, and sometimes I think it misses, especially when they try to touch on something that Japan has a huge blind spot towards culturally. But many of its best story beats, in my opinion, are the political ones. I'll always remember playing patch 2.55 for the first time, and that moment of realization I had watching Nanamo and Alphinaud both face consequences for their well-intentioned idealism, that we may not solve all the worlds' problems through the power of friendship and being really good at fighting alone. Obviously, the power of friendship is a big part of the game's central ethos, but it isn't enough. It was a hint at the underlying pragmatism of the game's politics that I really wasn't expecting from an MMO, especially one that has as many cheesy hopeful feel-good moments as this one tends to. I am also a big Stormblood liker overall, as much as I acknowledge it had serious problems with the pacing and character writing. I think the comparisons to Dawntrail are fair, but I like the same things about both of them. They're both best interpreted through the lens of actual world history and current events, and I think seem more shallow on the surface than they really are if you're not paying attention to the smaller moments with minor NPCs during the "exploring the new zones" bits of MSQ. I'd argue that Dawntrail did an even better job with its political commentary than Stormblood did, and I had a feeling it would when they mentioned they were hiring sensitivity readers. I think they did a great job of addressing a lot of the things that made people uncomfy about Stormblood by having the Scions take the backseat and letting the Turali people have their own agency in the story. I have a lot more opinions on the politics in Dawntrail overall, but I think other people have mostly said everything I want to say about that already. More interestingly, I think this expansion really surprised me with how well a lot of my character decisions with Zoisite, my WoL, ended up paying off. Because I hadn't really thought of Zoisite as an OC until early Heavensward, I tried to think about her backstory through the lens of what would make her the most interesting protagonist for the themes and plotlines I thought the game was trying to set up. I decided to make her half Doman, with a foreign adventurer father, and with an older half-sister that spent most of Zoisite's life fighting against Garlemald. During the events of 1.0, while her sister was busy with the XIVth legion and Project Meteor, Zoisite ended up more of an adventurer instead, and entangled with Minfilia and the Path of the Twelve because of the Echo, which was unique to Zoisite. I wanted her to have a personal connection to the Garlemald plotline so that it felt deserved for her to be the one to "resolve" it, but explain why she was willing to go along with these other diversions during ARR and HW that weren't related to it, too. Obviously, the game itself had a similar idea with Lyse, but I thought the parallel was actually kinda nice and it was a big part of why I ate SB up as much as I did. As much as SE and the writers have no real control over this, these accidental predictions and coincidences have honestly been a big part of why I have enjoyed FFXIV as much as I have. My favorite moments in the game are when I'm wondering if the writers are reading my google docs for ideas. It makes me feel like I'm doing a good job picking up on subtext.

But aside from her backstory, I let MSQ itself determine most of Zoisite's arc, and I very rarely find myself "retconning" MSQ vs the other way around. She is just trailer WoL/Meteor in most ways, with the big exception being Feldspar's existence from the late HW patches on. Because Feldspar is my RP character and I'm mostly writing 20ish years post-MSQ, Zoisite's primary role as a character has always been Feldspar's estranged birth mother first, and MSQ WoL second. When I'm experiencing the game through Zoisite's perspective, however, I constantly have to reconcile these two roles, and it has honestly been very difficult to do that during ShB and EW. It's hard to justify the tedious fetch quests when the stakes (for her, at least) are so high. It made it very hard for her to care much about the ancients, or the people on the First, or Zenos's weird one-sided obsession with her, even when the game was trying to force her to. As much as possible, I've tried to rationalize away these character inconsistencies as an intentional distraction on her part, and that the excuse of saving the world and helping people has been keeping some of that fear and guilt about "abandoning" her son at bay for a while now.

And then Dawntrail really just came out and addressed it for me, in a way I was not expecting. It presented itself from the outset as a "vacation" from the high stakes, where Zoisite was just kinda standing in the background most of the time, along with a VERY HEAVY THEME of parental abandonment to force her to reckon with her issues. She spent all of Dawntrail wondering if Feldspar would feel the same way about her that Krile and Wuk Lamat feel about their parents, and see it as a noble sacrifice for his best interest, or if he would resent her for abandoning him without explanation like Gulool Ja and Koana do. Most importantly, it was much harder for Zoisite to pretend that she had no other choice than to give Feldspar up when she was constantly facing the reality that she could step down at this point and the world would probably keep turning without her protecting it. Unfortunately, it's too late for her to change her mind about Feldspar, both because Feldspar's narrative demands it, and also because years have passed and she can't just casually ask for him back even if she wanted to. Zoisite had no choice but to mourn and let it go, and I think watching Cahciua and Erenville's interactions in Living Memory also helped with that, because she kinda got a glimpse of the type of mother she most likely would have ended up as, and saw that motherhood might not have worked out as perfectly as she'd started fantasizing about in retrospect. Like Cahciua, she cares the most about seeing the world and helping people, and doing what's "right," and she would always struggle with putting anyone else (including her own son) ahead of that, if it came down to it. Without another parent in the picture to help, there was no route that wouldn't end with Feldspar feeling abandoned by Zoisite in some way. All-in-all, I liked how this gave me a satisfying conclusion to that arc for her, and a nice refresh for future expansions. I'd rank it on par with SB and ShB for how much I enjoyed them, with my overall ranking being something like HW > SB-ShB-DT > ARR > EW. There's also that minor detail about the Alexandrians having rock names, and Zoisite's existing backstory that her name is a family naming convention from her father's side, and that she doesn't really know where he's from. I have yet to figure out how to make that connection, but man. The possibilities.

[devondespresso]

1, 25, 81, 94 for the fanfic ask game! <3

KOKO HELLOOOOOOO ad thank you so much for the ask 💕💗💖💞💝 i went a little wild and had to reign it back in a bit and its still pretty long so apologies in advance

(ask game we're talking about is here but i also have questions next to the answers)

1. do you know how you want the story to end when you start, or are you just stumbling through the figurative wilderness hoping to find a road?

for the vast majorty of my fics i think i have a pretty good idea of where its going to go, i think because i get the ideas of these cool scenes usually set in act 2 or 3 or i at least the vibe i want from the start and The Point is usually clear the second i put thought into it. currently the only exceptions are 1) this super secret (woooo~~~) ficlet im working on that came from a prompt so i had to spend like 3 or 4 days writing it to properly understand the direction i wanted to take it, and 2) the steve henderson au, which is fucking massive already and it's even bigger in my head stnzgns. that one you obviously know how it ends y'know, it aint the steve henderson au if steve doesnt become a Henderson, but for all the arcs i have along the way it took a while to properly figure out what i doing and how to do that and im just now figuring out what that looks like for the first major arc.

so tldr: usually i know, sometimes i gotta figure it out, but i do need to have it figured out before it can really take shape

25. what’s your revision or rewriting process like?

oof ok so i tried writing this and good fucking god explaining everything i do in editing took up so much space. so this is the short answer for convenience but if anyone wants a long answer im foaming at the mouth to talk about writing stjsnystn (the rest under the cut)

the majority of my process is editing and sometimes first drafts are literally unrecognizable from the final. a lot of how i edit line by line is intuitive/vibes based, and whole scenes/arcs/pacing/flow/theme etc etc is based on a really deconstructed thought process for storytelling, to put it as briefly as i can (because this is one of the parts that got really long) its about The Why of everything going into the story. Picking details or making decisions not based rigidly on formula or trends but instead whats best for the kind of story you want to tell (and then making sure to implement it in a way that actually does that in the story).

for small works i prefer to just change shit as i see it and not worry about doing focused passes through the work, but in the steve Henderson au i literally cannot its too fucking big smhdmyxyn so in that case i do passes that span like whole writing sessions just hyperfocused on this one thing. one of my favorite passes is in-character passes where i pick one person (often dustin bc hes a main character), rewatch them a ton to get in their headspace, and go back and make sure everything they say or do fits them as if they were the sole focus if the story. I'll also do passes to focus just on medical accuracy, passes for a specific character duos to keep their story progressing and consistent, passes for ideas that stay between the lines making sure they stay consistent and understanding how much information im conveying, character's specific mindsets that their arc is about and making sure they dont have any unintentional exceptions, literally if its a thing in the text i probably need to do a pass for it so i know its consistent

also more lighthearted stuff tends to need wayyyy less editing time and its a more balanced half solo half beta process. the easiest was the claudia henderson drabble because it was really just a backstory with an active scene or two all rooted in her outside persective.

also sometimes i just start from scratch halfway through, like mr crayola henderson has one previous half-complete version in my doc fhdlas tho i guess thats how drafts are supposed to work

and this is the tldr im sorry i dont want to cut it down any more just read this one its my favourite fdhaskl

81. if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of writing advice specific to you, what would it be?

honestly i wouldn't have much to tell them. i didn't start writing fanfic until july of last year?? something like that and i started with the steve henderson au. maybe don't write that one about the triggering thing lol.

actually wait no. id tell them its okay to abandon projects (and maybe tell them not to make some purchases dgnxngsyn) but ye i spent a while mourning projects because they felt like they ceased to exist, but i had several screenplay outlines that probably helped me a ton. in my writing and those experiences never leave me so their existence still had a purpose and value

tldr: dont write your very recent triggers silly goose, dont cry over abandoned art

94. do you prefer dialogue or description?

i definitely prefer dialogue, and with it action descriptions because i still think in movie-medium (tho i am getting better at understanding how the FUCK prose works and especially prose pacing oh my god why can't i just hold on an actors face for several seconds of silence gAAH!!). i like saying things without saying them, i like subtly building towards something body language until a snap, i looooove making blocking relevant in a medium where you're not even seeing the movement with your eyes, and i love getting into a characters head so far that each person has a different way to word something or a different detail they focus on or a certain tick that tells the other character whats in their head.

but i struggle with internal monologue sooooooo hard, its a practiced skill im actively working on to write a characters internal logic about something but still keeping it from being too on the nose about whats really going on. like i can do it but i struggle to fill page time with it because exploring ideas at least for me usually leads to the source and thats decidedly not where the characters going! its a tuesday afternoon! they're not unpacking shit they're trying to have a third coffee!! i also struggle finding the best words for the reader to feel the text, like idk man maybe im using the onelook dictionary wrong but it just does not get me what im looking for in under three looks zgnshnsyn

tldr: dialogue and blocking, good description is witchcraft

_

but yee thank you again for the ask dude!! this was so much fucking fun i fucking love talking about writing and the logic process behind everything. thanks anyone seeing this for actually reading this far 💕

[joshisurcrush]

'The Host' by Stephanie Meyer

🌑

Dawg I'm gonna be really honest, I hated the novel for the first 200 pages. It was so edgy for no reason, the author was so mysterious and cryptic with it, but not in an appealing way; more in an edgy 13-year-old's angst fanfiction. I read this book because it was literally the only English book left in the school library that I hadn't read yet, and I didn't want to sit around bored at break. I'm gonna cover a lot of stuff in the book, that isn't mentioned on the cover or in most reviews, so here's a fat spoiler warning, since I'll be discussing things even more thoroughly than I would in other reviews.

First off, I wanna make it very clear to fellow aromantic individuals that this book is going to be either a) very funny, b) a case study, or c) hard to read. For me it was all three of those things. See, Stephenie Meyer, author of The Host, also wrote "Twilight" which y'all may have heard of. I saw "written by Stephenie Meyer, author of the *twilight saga*" on the cover of the book and gagged. Well, she's good at what she does, I'm gonna say, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I like it. Some parts of the book just had me frowning at the words on the page, the parts where one of the two main characters makes out with her partner (Melanie and Jared), for example. That part had me sitting in my chair thinking "Are people actually like this?" and "What the fu(dge), this is so cheesy." Right? But then there were other parts, (Wanda and Ian), where I found the romantic moments cute/funny. I think it’s mainly because the Wanda-Ian bond is more of the lighthearted cutesy friends-to-lovers bond, and not the “rah hot sexy ownership mmm sex” bond the way that Melanie and Jarend’s is written.

I digress, well, I think I should get to explaining. I'm not going to explain exactly why everything happens, but I'm going to list facts that you just have to believe me. Wanda is an alien parasite in Melanie's body, who controls Melanie's body entirely, but they're friends and can hear each other's thoughts. Jared is in love with Melanie, Jeb is Melanie's uncle and owns a secret underground base where most of the story takes place, and Jamie is Melanie's little (teenage) brother. Then there's super-sexy Ian who's in love with Wanda (the parasite) and somewhat-sexy Kyle, twin brother of Ian, who happens to be really violent and tried to kill Wanda (in Melanie's body) twice. Oh, and there's Doc, the kind surgeon. There's other characters but I don't think they'll be all that relevant to my review. 

Well, I like Wanda, the main character. Ironically, it's in her parasite species' nature to attempt to please everyone, be nice and always keep everyone's best interest in mind, even at her own expense. Also, unrelated, but this is one of the stories with female characters that I thoroughly enjoy. As a guy I prefer stories with strong male leads, it's just my personal preference, and stories with female leads tend to feel flat and weak, or "forced-strong", or stereotypical in some way. Mosquitoland had a good female lead, along with Falling Into Place, and The Host. These are some good female leads/characters that I can thoroughly enjoy because there's inner conflict, backstory dimension and history, more than just a single objective or focus (a lot of love-stories tend to make the female character into this caricature of what a girl is, and I hate it because women have vivid internal lives and a boiled-down simplification simply doesn’t do it justice imo). Back to Wanda, though. 

She becomes more and more human throughout the book (which is supposed to be like, a big thing. I bet Meyer was proud of that one.) It's underlined as the story goes on; Wanda compares herself and her emotions to the human ones and talks about how Earth is so unique and different from the other planets she's lived on, etc. You definitely feel an interesting but slight shift in her narration as the novel progresses, evolving with the number of connections she makes with the people around her. 

Also, I like how Stephenie Meyer managed to separate Mel and Wanda from each other so distinctly. You get a feeling for how different the two of them are from each other, and how they each have their own principles and ideas, and they're like night and day, even though their actions are the same throughout the story. Talking about characters also, I like the way that all characters a) serve a purpose/role, and b) they're fleshed out well enough for me and c) they're not all written the same way, which is a fat pet peeve of mine. I hate when a story has three sarcastic characters, four strong men, and three quirky girls. They're all characterized differently, which makes Stephanie Meyer better at writing than whoever was behind the new arrangement of Marvel movies. Do not crucify me in the notes for having said that, I’ll get very sad. 

LMAO Imagine being a Marvel superfan and trying to read a normal thriller or something, I feel like a Marvel superfan would gasp and flail on the floor like a fish on land if the murderer doesn’t go “erm.. Well that just happened 🤓” after brutally snuffing the lives out of his victim(s).

Plus, the story had the first good love triangle (tm) consisting of one body shared by Mel and Wanda, Jared and Ian. And the thing that makes it interesting to me is the fact that it's two couples (Wanda + Ian, and Jared + Melanie) who sort of have to work around the fact that both of the girls share the same body, which leads to jealousy between the two guys and Melanie and things like that. I found it interesting, it's so much better than the usual, and wildly annoying trope of "who will they pick! woo! two choices!" type of love triangle that I couldn't give two sharts about. 

The one thing, though, that bumps this story up to its rating, from a six, is the ending. The ending is genuinely the happiest ending I've ever read. Nobody dies. Everyone wins. Everyone is happy and complete; nobody is left alone or heartbroken, and it ends on a good note (since this book doesn't and will not have a sequel.) It just wraps everything up really nicely, it actually had me grinning and screaming "Good for them!" internally. It's the best ending to a book I've gotten to read in a really, really long time.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Can we take a moment to talk about what a tragic character Minerva is? Y’all know that for the longest time I haven’t been the biggest fan of her, and honestly I’m still not? but I think I might’ve had a breakthrough on why that is. 

Whenever I’ve asked around to see why people find her so appealing or why they consider her their favorite, I’ll get answers like, “she’s such a complex character and she deserved a redemption arc!” or “she should’ve come back to the school with us! Let Minnie be happy, you cowards! Telltale did her dirty! I could write paragraph after paragraph about her!” all sorts of things along those lines… but like, no one seems to want to actually talk about her. I find that interesting? Since when I do follow up with a “care to explain further?” I get nothing. Radio static. Like…. no, talk to me please, I just wanna understand-

Minerva within the context of TFS is such a tragedy. She grew up in a school for troubled youth where all the adults left them for death at the start of the breakout, they had walkers trying to eat the living all around them, and I’m sure she saw her fair share of traumatic violence and despair… but on the bright side, she always had her twin sister, Sophie, and little brother, Tenn. She had her friend and eventual girlfriend, Violet. She had music, and a dorm full of pretty paintings done by Sophie. She and Louis composed a song together to make everyone feel better. There are worse places to live than the school. 

Then one day she got traded away to a bunch of raiders against her will, having no idea what the hell these people were gonna do to her and Sophie. They were made to be soldiers to fight in a war that had nothing to do with them. The delta fucking broke her. If we’re to believe Lilly’s story about the twins, they started their brainwashing process early on when Sophie was still alive, and it seems like Minerva was easier to control as Sophie was still planning a way out and causing trouble. Then, when Sophie convinced her to steal a boat and get the hell out, they got caught and the delta forced her to murder her own twin sister. 

Like…. I’m sorry, not only did Minerva kill her own sister, but she was made to believe that was the right thing to do? That line she says about how she had to prove her loyalty to the place she calls home? That shit’s ingrained in her brain, you can tell that isn’t the first time she’s heard or said that very thing. That is what made her family to the delta. Delta is her home now, her family. Sophie was just a thing that needed to be dealt with. You keep your head down, do as you’re told, and you survive.  You survive and you get to go home, eat a hot meal, take a shower, and be with your delta family.  If not, you end up like Sophie.

What’s also fucked is that Minerva actually cares about these people now. Think about that. After everything they did to her and made her do, she’s been trained to see them as her family and obey. When you save Louis and he kills Dorian, Minerva actually cries out and is visibly hurt by her death. When she’s with the other raiders on land, she's screaming at walkers to get away from them. She cares about the people who made her kill Sophie… and no one ever talks about that??

She fucking hates Clementine. Clementine is just another thing in Minnie’s way. I know the part of the fandom likes to ship these two together and they think it’s hot when they fight and shit, but within the canon text, Minerva wants Clementine gone. Dead. She is the thing stopping her from having her old family merge with her new family. If Clementine hadn’t made them fight, they all would’ve been captured and they’d all be a delta family now. She would’ve had Tenn back. 

Clementine is the problem, she made everyone fight back and that’s why people are dead. Minerva hates her for it… it’s not a “I hate you but like the sexual tension, y’know?” that I see people pretend it is, it’s “you are ruining everything and if I have to, I will kill you myself and I won’t give a second thought about it when they toss your body overboard.”

Like….. seriously, think about how fucked up all of this is. Minerva is a husk of who she was before she was taken away. Sure, you do have to keep in mind that when Tenn and Violet are describing her, their sights are a bit clouded, y’know? But I do believe that she was someone who was kind and cared about people, she wanted to make people feel safe and comforted. 

Now she’s a brainwashed soldier who won’t help the people she used to call friends when they’re about to get limbs cut off. She won’t hesitate to knock someone unconscious or threaten a child.  She’s willing to trick them into being captured with no regard for what’s going to happen to them. … all she knows is this was the mission, and now they all get to be together again back at the delta. 

Then when she finds out there’s a bomb on the boat, she ditches Violet to blow up with it in order to make it to land herself. She loses her shit seeing everyone die and gets her face chewed off by a walker… and then she tries to blow Clementine and AJ up with a grenade. 

Oh, and who can forget the fact that she tracks the group down with plans of murdering Tenn so that they can go to a better place together? And she’ll take down anyone who gets in her way?

Like….. jesus christ, Minerva’s waaaaay too far gone. It’s awful. 

I think that’s what stumps me about why she’s so loved in the way that she is. It’s not that I don’t understand why she’s complex and well-written, I get that perfectly fine. She’s a compelling character study when you comb over all her scenes and take different factors into account.

What I don’t understand is why we tend to just throw everything interesting about her away? For what? 

These days, I never see anyone talking about any of this unless they’re insisting she deserved a redemption arc which…. Eh, I’ll touch on this later. What I mostly see here and mostly other platforms is how great it would be if she and Clementine made out, or hey what if she and Violet got back together if she did come back to the school? Or they just….the best term I have for this is “uwu-ify.” As in she’s reduced to a caricature of a tall, pretty, mean, white lesbian who has “good damage.” 

People insist that Telltale are cowards or bastards because their predictions of her turning on the delta to save Clem and crew didn’t happen. Instead, Minerva ends up being the final baddie you gotta get away from, and she ends up taking someone down with her. But did you really expect to just do a 180 and suddenly decide being brainwashed for over a year was lame and Clementine and friends are cool? Gonna help them out and be with Tenn again? Sure, there’s some left over trauma but love conquers and fixes everything, right?

Uh…. no? That’s not how people work? Honestly, if we entertain the idea that Minerva wasn’t bit and somehow didn’t murder Clementine when they all got back to the school…. romance is the last thing she is ever gonna think of??

I think that’s what bothers me most when reading these au’s and rants about redemption and the entire idea of clemerva as a whole. It’s the same thing that I see happen with Violet- Minerva only has value to fans if she’s in a wlw relationship. By herself, she doesn’t matter. They don’t care about her canon story, they don’t care about Sophie, they don’t care about discussing what could’ve happened if she and Tenn reunited under better circumstances or had a healing recovery together. But why?

Throwing a girlfriend at her isn’t some band aid that’s gonna cover up all the bad she went through?? Having an enemies to lovers romance with Clementine isn’t going to fix a years worth of brainwashing, trauma or the fact that she murdered her own sister and the delta told her she's proved her worth to them?? 

Having the support of those around her is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. The idea of the Ericson crew as a whole trying to help her out and do the best they can to accommodate her is bittersweet since there’s only so much they can do. They’re not trained therapists, which is what Minerva would need and plenty of years ahead of her to work through and come to terms with everything that happened as well as taking steps forward. I’m not saying that she shouldn’t have friends or that she couldn’t have a healthy romantic relationship someday... but that isn’t the solution, y’know? 

I don’t know how else to explain this, but it makes me feel weird that all of this stuff is flat out overlooked or doesn’t appear to matter to fans of her. 

Look, I get it. We all want these characters to be happy. AU’s are a thing, after all. Sometimes we want to forget about the bad things and focus on the good that bring us comfort. You wanna gush about the idea of an AU where the twins never got traded, the raiders didn’t exist, and Clementine got to meet them the way they were before? I feel that, AU’s are super comforting and fun to explore, and my point isn’t to try and shame anyone who has an AU you like this. 

Hell, you think I don’t have days where I pretend mute Louis isn’t a thing because the whole concept of Louis having his tongue cut out of his mouth breaks my fucking heart? No, lot’s of days I just want to forget everything about that route, I want to set aside all the bad and just intake as much clouis fluff as I can get…. But that doesn’t mean I always ignore or refuse to acknowledge the bad just because I don’t like it. I fucking hate the fact that Louis loses his tongue when you don’t save him, but guess what? That’s a canon route you can play, just like any other route, and the possibilities that come with a mute Louis are vast and compelling. 

This is how it is for me… my favorite characters are my favorite for a reason, and I take all the bad with the good. Louis isn’t perfect, and I don’t want him to be. I was to dive into his backstory about why did that to his parents, I like to talk about what he went through with Marlon’s murder and his feelings about AJ and Clementine at the point, I like to view his love of music as bittersweet. He can stand on his own, and while he is a love interest for Clementine, that isn’t his only purpose. 

I know everyone’s different, they express their love for characters in their own ways, but I do have a genuine question: do you guys actually like Minerva?

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to step on toes or make everyone feel defensive which I know is how people will react to this. “You’re just saying all of this to make us feel bad for shipping clemerva! You don’t even like Minnie so you don’t get to say shit!” yeah yeah, I hear you and look, it’s true that she’s not my favorite character. I know I’ve said I hate her in the past but upon reflection and throwing out fandom interpretations.... I don’t hate her. I get it now. She’s a great character study to dissect and analyze and I think she deserves more than what the writers and the fandom have given her. 

And yeah, what I do hate is clemerva, and I’ve explained why. It’s not for me, it makes me uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, who cares? Me not liking it doesn’t mean anything to those who create AU’s for them. They have their reasons, they can do as they please as long as they’re not hurting anyone. I’m just here pointing out things I see and things that bother me in hopes of starting a discussion.

There’s my ramble about Minerva. I’m gonna go make some tea now. 

[scripturiends]

law school episode 9 musings

warning: very very long post ahead. i have a lot of thoughts.

hey folks — how we feeling about episode 9?

given that there are so many plotlines in the show, i’m afraid i won’t be able to extend my analysis of the episode as far as i would like, but there are three characters who stood out to me the most last night that i’d like to talk about for now:

kang dan

there’s a lot that we got to uncover about her thanks to professor yang’s trial. if i’m piecing it all together right, the basic summary of what led to her disappearance goes like this:

she was a volunteer for assemblyman ko’s campaign, but upon discovering that he was spreading fake news about his opposition, dan reported him to the authorities (i’m guessing not just the police but also the media) and became a whistleblower. assemblyman ko tried to buy her off with money, but she refused, so he attacked her where she’s most vulnerable instead — by using her family.

i’m not completely sure about this (please feel free to correct me!) but it’s either byeol is (1) the twins’ half-sister, or (2) their stepsister? it’s so hard to tell, especially since korean terms can get lost in translation in the process (i watch on netflix, if that helps). but anyway, sol and dan’s mom married someone who was abusing her, and in exchange for dan’s silence (and her fleeing), the husband signs a contract that he would stop hurting his wife.

so that’s the backbone of dan’s story. however, this still doesn’t answer a lot of things, like where seo byungju or lee manho fits into the equation, the whereabouts of their mom’s ex-husband, or why dan was sent into boston in the first place.

i usually don’t like theorizing, but i do have one: there is an ivy league school located just outside of boston — harvard. (it’s technically in cambridge but you know, i’m taking liberties here.) professor yang said in passing one episode that he thought he saw dan when he went to the school for a seminar or a talk or something. could it be that assemblyman ko offered her an education at a top school in exchange for her silence? it could explain why she gave it up all so easily. what if she took that topnotch education as a chance to prepare, so that when she came back, she had much stronger leverage to take assemblyman ko down, given the knowledge and network of connections she’ll have earned in that school?

the theory’s plausible but i might be overestimating assemblyman ko’s kindness — unless he’s insanely desperate, he might not give a damn about dan’s education. it actually benefits him more if she stayed uninformed, but still. let me know what you think about it.

yoo seungjae

in this episode, we learned a little bit more about how yoo seungjae was able to hack into the professors’ laptops, and they also confirmed some of our previous speculations about him: that his wife yujeong was an ob gyn, and so was he, and that they were trying for a baby. unfortunately, i find it all to be a bit lacking in substance. i was hoping we could get down to the nitty-gritty of why he did what he did.

i say this for one important reason: i don’t know about you guys, but i would never make such a stupid mistake in undergrad, let alone in law school. seungjae has gone to med school, so we know that he knows the repercussions of his actions. why would he go to such lengths? sure, he found an opening, he was tempted, and he took it. but he didn’t just do it once, he did it multiple times, and those offenses add up (hacking, stealing exam papers, and cheating). surely he must know that something like this can ruin careers even before they even start, and not only would he get kicked out of the school, he would also get blacklisted from the industry once he implicates himself. so we understand why he’s so hesitant to testify (especially now that his wife is pregnant).

but why did he do that in the first place? we could say he’s insecure about his skills, but he’s survived med school. how much harder could law school be for him? i just don’t think that the payoff is worth the risk. what must be so important for yoo seungjae to do all of this for? what does he get in return if he successfully pulls it off and gets straight As during his entire time in law school? who is he doing for?

i hope it runs deeper than just wanting a ‘good future’ for him and his wife and their baby or something — because he could just as easily do that as a doctor. there must be another reason he went into law.

still, though, and this is just a personal opinion, even if i did find out his entire backstory, there’s no way i could ever defend him. we see in the show how his guilt builds up (from observing how kang sol A studies so well, to his conversation with jeon yeseul in the hospital), but at this point there is no more excusing what he did. not that i ever condoned it in the first place.

we’re still in the dark about a lot of things regarding yoo seungjae. hopefully by the next episode, we get something. but until then, he is still a shady, shady man to me.

kang sol B

her screen time in this episode was short, but i still wanted to highlight her because she is pretty much a ticking time bomb.

she’s in a tight spot right now because even if she testifies about having seen the sugar packet, the prosecutor will just twist the argument by saying she colluded with a murderer just to cover up her plagiarism.

and now, seo jiho needs her help, probably for something related to his case with prosecutor jin. in exchange, she puts pressure on him to ‘confirm’ that she didn’t plagiarize in middle school, since they were schoolmates and rivals.

there may be more to this plagiarism issue than meets the eye. who knows, we might find out later on that she actually didn’t plagiarize? but given what i know now, i have no reason to believe that she didn’t. i don’t blame her specifically for that, seeing as she has to pay for the consequences for something that her awful mom forced her to do. but now that the mess has been made, i want to see how she cleans it up.

kang sol B is a very elusive character to me. the scary thing about her is that she’s on no one’s side but her own. and that’s why i think she’s a ticking time bomb.

~

bonus: han joonhwi

so that’s all i have for the serious stuff. as a bonus, i’d like to talk about han joonhwi and his four (4) children jeon yeseul, seo jiho, kang byeol, and min bokgi.

one of my friends brought up how it’s so funny how he’s somehow just at the right place at the right time all the time. this happened when he ran into kang sol A when she was looking for yeseul (i still think they were on the phone with each other beforehand but this is just my shipper self talking — truthfully, if the focus was shifted towards that phone call without divulging who it was, i have a feeling it might be more important later on), and when seo jiho confronted prosecutor jin. adding his elevator conversation with kang sol B, i think it just solidified what we already know: han joonhwi is a very compassionate person. but he doesn’t sacrifice his own personality just to appease them — he recognizes that these individuals have agency, and he’s just giving them the little push they need to make them realize what they need to do.

i also felt the need to bring up kang byeol. the show does such a good job of ensuring that all the solhwi scenes that we get, no matter how indulgent and “fanservice-y” they might seem, actually have a deeper purpose. again, i could go on and on about what each solhwi scene has actually contributed to the development of the plot, which is exactly why i love them so much! because all of their scenes are so meaningful. but anyway, it’s nice to see han joonhwi care so much for his, ehem, future sister-in-law.

and for min bokgi — this scene was so short, but i absolutely loved it so much (i tend to pay attention to the throwaway scenes): min bokgi is going off about how yoo seungjae is acting weird, and he says to joonhwi, “hyung, you should call him.” and joonhwi responds with, “sure. eat your food.” it’s such a fatherly thing to do and it’s such a great contrast to bokgi’s dynamic with sol A, with whom he’s so loud and vibrant, moods that both match their personalities, but with joonhwi, who is more subdued, he’s like a little kid in need of rescue from an older brother, or even a dad. ah, i love it so much. min bokgi is such an underrated character. i wish he had more screen time. (if he doesn’t get a central ep, well, you guys know where i’m going with this, right? it means i’ll give it to him myself.)

~

so that’s it for now! i’m sorry i went on rambling again, but if there’s anything noteworthy in this post that you think is worth discussing, please do tell! if there’s anything that you found thought-provoking in the episode that i didn’t get to touch up on, let me know as well!

i personally don’t make any theories about the overarching plot myself, seeing as by the time the new episode comes out, we get fed information that renders the theory useless. still, that doesn’t mean we should stop coming up with our own ideas. sometimes, the theories are more interesting than the canon itself.

[mybg3notebook]

Astarion and Power - Part 2

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were made up to the game version v4.1.101.4425. As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information.

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in (post)

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

Astarion: abuser / victim

Disclaimer about interpretation victim/abuser: I’m not a fan of bringing the allegory to the plain explicit comparison with serious stuff from real life, but the fandom seems to focus a lot on this aspect and therefore I would like to share my opinion on it. This topic may be sensitive for some people. Be aware of it. 

If we are going to engage into the comparison abuser/victim, from the section (Backstory: Mortal Astarion) we can assume that mortal Astarion was developed as an abuser so far the facts we got from the game/interviews. There is little doubt about it with the bits of information we have in EA. Maybe the full game or a retcon of his past may change this in the future. 

As a vampire spawn, Astarion presents a duality abuser-victim that comes from the archetype of the “bad behaved victim”. 

(Squeezing him in the shoulder. You try to connect, to let him know he's not alone- but he twists like a snake.) “No, I don't need your pity. I don't need anything from you. Go back to your wet dreams and leave me be.''

As a slave under Cazador’s power, humiliated and physically and psychologically tortured, he becomes a victim. He displays many of the most common behaviours of traumatised survivors: dismissal of the actions he suffered (humiliation and cruelty), sensitivity or violent rejection of gestures of pity, paranoia (for the abuser to appear at any moment), reiterative dreams focused on the abuser or their tortures, pride that may reach into arrogance of having survived tough situations. Considering that survival mode is his default, he can turn any of these aspects into tools to manipulate any potential benefactor (he may care little about). As long as he has a protector, he would do anything at his disposal to keep pleasant and agreeable to that benefactor (this characteristic is a permanent, constant, and obvious trait in his character).

But he is not a mere victim, he is also an abuser. And this aspect has been studied in psychology and sociology: it’s not a surprise that a good amount of abusers were victims before. There is a psychological process that can make victims prone to harness as much power as they can in order to avoid the abuse, and in doing so they become abusers. The fact that they can inflict similar or the same trauma on someone else, shifts the power imbalance they had always perceived in their life: the ex victim—now abuser—finds psychological relief. They find a way to perceive themselves as not powerless anymore, and this process can cross limits, making them enjoy when causing the same torture they suffered before. This is the (extremely brief and simplified) process known as the transformation of victim to victimiser (in a general violence-related way, not necessarily focused on sexual abuse), which tends to affect, so far the statistics show, a group of victims. 

With this brief introduction of the topic from the real life (this is why I dislike so much these comparisons, serious stuff brought into a fantasy world always feels like dismissing the real life issue) we can understand that Astarion has acquired a twisted taste to enjoy the same torments he suffered on himself, but applied on creatures he considers lesser: animals and weak creatures [3,4,6,7,11]. There is pride in his survival [14]: he follows the philosophy: “if I could survive it, you could do it too, otherwise, you must perish”.

He enjoys humiliation [6,10], despite being one of the most sensitive aspects that could trigger a violent reaction in him when Tav tries to humiliate him (dialogue about the Bedchamber Master). He enjoys the power he can have over others, over their wills [11], and aspires to have the control of the tadpole, at first to be free of Cazador’s influence, but as long as the game progresses, his intentions become clearer: he wants to control the tadpole to become powerful: the most powerful vampire of Faerun and bend everyone’s will [12]. This aspect is also ironic and hypocritical since Astarion displays violent reactions against mind control or against any intervention of his mind, so it’s something that triggers him in particular (video here).

He also has a taste to enjoy cruelty on animals [4], maybe because of all the resentment he has against them for having been the only means to sustain himself (he is directing his cruelty and hatred to the wrong group of living creatures though). And he also finds entertainment in murder and bloodshed [2,3,13], just because of it, most probably because all these abuses are proofs that he is now “more powerful” than those suffering it. However, part of this could be explained due to the Dark Desires element of the vampirism, to be fair. But considering Astarion’s backstory, I would say that vampirism only deepens his already evil traits.

Also, as a comment aside, I like to highlight how all this characterisation defies the romantisation of the archetype of the “good victim”. A good victim is—explaining it briefly and oversimplified—the one who encourages to spread goodness, self-sacrifice; their pain is hidden and/or used to improve, tends to be a highly empathetic person in front of similar abuses they suffered. It’s the antipode of the “bad behaved victim.” Which is basically all what we see in Astarion: selfish, violent, whimsical, cruel, psychopath.

In conclusion, we can see Astarion as a vampire spawn who embodies the duality of Victim-Abuser. 

However I would like to note that this is not a char where we can see how the victim becomes an abuser exclusively. In Astarion’s case, it is even more twisted because in his past he was a victimiser. His character lies on a Schrodinger duality: he was an abuser when he was mortal, he is an abuser and a victim at the same time as a vampire spawn (his torments can be understood as poetic justice since Astarion embodied the—corrupt—Justice himself), and he aspires to retake his abuser position in the future (so far EA allowed us to see it or the description of his characters in Larian’s web page), enjoying all the potential that the power of the tadpole can give him to “bend the will of others''. 

Astarion’s story represents topics that should allow us to think about how abusers are created, how they could also be victims, and how victims are not always free of evilness. Astarion also embodies the concept of how far punishment makes sense, how you can punish the abuse if there is no justice, how to punish evilness when it’s placed to have control of the Justice itself. How could we understand the punishment of evil creatures when there is no repent but a deepening of their evil nature? And finally… Would any victim not desire for their abuser to have a punishment like Astarion’s? 

I like to think that Cazador also represents the “modern prison system”, where criminals are gathered in panoptic structures (in this case, Astarion’s mind), tortured in many ways, while society expects them to recover. There is also the concept of how and when recovery is not possible anymore, because let’s be honest, saving people from dark paths is not always possible. Real life psychopath, serial rapists, and a broad amount of creatures who revel in torture and murder are beyond salvation. If we consider Cazador and Astarion as mirrored figures, it makes us think about how much of all of his story is about the eternal cycle of violence and about evilness without salvation. Also, this reflection of one on the other makes us believe that if there is no salvation for Cazador, there shouldn't be salvation for Astarion either; if Astarion can be saved… Cazador should too (after all, we don’t know anything about Cazador’s story). So many things to think about.

All these aspects and topics to think about are what make Cazador-Astarion dynamics worth understanding with a realistic and dark perspective of evilness, without woobifying Astarion as sadly a big part of his fandom does. 

As a note of colour to finish this section, it’s interesting to re-read the paragraph I had written in the first part (Astarion and Power - Part 1) where I briefly described Cazador. If we replace Cazador by the word Astarion we will obtain a curious result:

>>>Astarion has a particular pleasure for control, especially the one related to people’s will (we can see this pleasure progresses over time, increasing it. His need for freedom turns slowly into wanting to have control on everyone, because with power he can do everything he wants to). He enjoys cruelty, humiliation, and torture (read the analysis post done (here), there are dozens of facts showing it). He enjoys playing psychologically with his victims. He also likes to give false hope, making his victims believe that there is hope, removing it right in front of them (the Arabella’s approvals about making her parents believe she is alive when she is not, Mayrina’s hope of reviving her husband).

There are so many questions left in the air: has Cazador imparted Justice? Is 200 years too long for a punishment? I don’t believe there is an easy answer here. First, because we are mixing serious real-life dynamics in a fantasy setup, with the twisted componen of vampirism (a fantasy element always considered an allegory of abuse, power, and rape) and second, despite the analogy is there, and the comparison can be done lightly, Astarion has a particular backstory, with a particular amount of meta-knowledge that makes those answers even more complicated. 

Astarion’s Pain and Shallowness

Back scars scene (full Datamining info)

A pair of videos that pjenn has posted about Astarion’s scars on his back (1) (2) shows that he needs help to read it since he can’t see it in reflective surfaces due to his vampire nature. We get from the narrator: 

* He might be sneering, but you can see pain in his eyes. He needs help, but doesn’t know how to ask. *

What we can infer from this is that Astarion, whether mortal or spawn, never asked for help, and if this is true, I’m confused. If he truly doesn’t know how to ask for help… what had been happening with all the previous interactions he had with Tav? Implicitly asking for help against Cazador? The only answer I have to explain why 25 hours of game with Astarion asking for help against Cazador are suddenly erased and now “he doesn’t know how to ask to”, is that all those 25 hrs are about manipulation. Not a true, honest, clean asking for help. There is not much to say about this scene since it’s entirely under work so far. 

Mirror scene (full Datamining info)

This scene is mostly about vanity and, again, manipulation. 

He doesn't remember the colour of his eyes, and he barely remembers his face. As a vampire, he can‘t see his projection nor cast shadows. He explicitly says that he misses vanity, and even though it may be an honest loss he feels, he doesn’t miss the opportunity to use this moment as another hook to throw at Tav to keep them under his control as well as testing how deep his charm has reached Tav (If Tav shows appreciation, Astarion knows he keeps them under his thumb).

This scene basically shows that, even though evil characters/abusers also suffer (maybe the game would make us reflect eventually about Cazador’s pain?), and Astarion is stating his pain for losing things he appreciated: petty vanity (he can’t see himself in a mirror) and his memories (he has no memory of the colour of his eyes and his face is vague), he is still using all these moments to keep on working on his survival manipulation:

“(Vanity) is an indulgence, I’ll grant you that, but a weakness? A well-presented face can open a lot of doors.”

He has a personal drama, as he stated it at first, and the focus of all his conversation is always about how what he lost was a means for an end too. 

If Tav is the one engaging into being his Mirror, Astarion engages to appraise the reach of his presence in Tav. If Tav simply states it’s a decent face, Astarion will push the engagement for that appraisal. If you mock him about his age and skin, he won’t be offended (after all the moment is not meaningful for him, it’s shallow), and he would insist on a proper praise, because he is trying to taste the ground. 

The moment was meant to be used, and Astarion did it. It was not special to him:

"Mirrors are not much use, but being reflected in someone's else's eyes? I could do much worse.

If we do not derail the conversation in the funny moments where you can mock his beauty, age and skin, we keep gathering more information about what Astarion values the most:

Tav: “Is it all what you want? shallow praise?” Astarion: "Hardly, there is also gold, sex, revenge, quite the list, really. But failing any of those, I will always settle for shallow praise."

There is another option in this scene where Tav says that vanity is a reasonable price for vampire powers, but for once, Astarion is not so eager about this power, because it comes with Cazador. He knows that the price is way much bigger. 

Tav: “Vanity is a small price to pay to have vampire powers”. Astarion: "To you. To me it's just another thing that Cazador took from me".

The only moment when you can get a more emotional reaction is when you mock him about age/beauty/skin. That is how shallow this scene is. If you are a githyanki and your compliments are a list of raw facts about his persona, even if they are good or bad, Astarion can’t appraise Tav with that, and gets frustrated. 

Personally I think this scene has little value per se beyond the comedy, and even less value in terms of lore when you have Disguise spell available for so many characters. Anyone can disguise themselves as Astarion and he would finally see what he looks like… so… more reasons to show how cheap and shallow this scene is. Maybe that was the intention. Maybe it needs more work since, after all, it’s datamining info. There is not much to say about this scene since it’s entirely under work so far. 

The concept of Redemption/endings 

Among the (Datamined information) we have a set of gems under the name of Drunk bear (1) (2) (3) scenes, which speak more about Astarion and his relationship with Cazador and Power.

Tav: “You can start over. You can be better than what he made you.”

Ast: “Exactly. I can be better than him. Stronger, more powerful, more- oh, you meant “be kinder”? Pet bunnies, that sort of thing? I’ve no objection to being nice, of course. Once I have the power to bend others to my will.

T: “You think power lets you do anything free from consequences?”

A: “Well… yes. You can’t look at the world and tell me I’m wrong.”

T: “The strong have a duty to protect the weak”

A: “They’re doing a piss poor job, then. The strong had two centuries to pluck me from torture, but no one came. No, it was the mind flayers that rescued me. They gave me a gift: the strength to take my own freedom. I’m embracing this power- you should too.”

T: “You are free now. That’s what matters.”

A: “Is it? What good is freedom if I'm always watching in the shadows? No. I will be safe when I'm powerful enough to grind cazador into the dust. Powerful enough to do whatever the hell I want.”

T: “Power corrupts. You’d do well to remember that.”

A: “Oh I hope so. A little corruption sounds fun. I spent centuries as the victim of a corrupt man. It was the mind flayers that plucked me away from that.”

So far we see in this scene, Astarion reinforces his evilness, his desire for power, not just enough to save himself from Cazador’s claws, but to control other people, even though mind control is a triggering effect when it affects his own will. I believe in this interaction we see the contrast of the story that Astarion narrates mainly: the abuser who found a more powerful abuser. We shouldn’t forget he comes from a past where he was a corrupt magistrate. These words have almost a hypocrite meaning here. Astarion was a magistrate, by definition, someone who held power and should have helped those in despair, but he was corrupt and did not care. When he became a spawn, he ended up on the other side of the imbalanced power. He was the one asking for a powerful entity to help him, and none came, suffering a similar fate of despair than those who sought in him the concept of Justice and Power Used For Fairness. Like Astarion’s victims found freedom when a twisted creature like Cazador was incorporated into this situation, Astarion was free when the Mind flayers saved him from Cazador. 

I will not repeat this again: Astarion, so far in Early Access, looks like the story that could explain why Cazador is who he is. These scenes bring once more, another of the many proofs along the game where we see that Astarion has not learnt anything from his torment, he has not improved, he has turned into a more twisted and evil man than he was when he was a mortal magistrate, and there is no intentions to become a little more sympathetic. 

This brings me to think that, at least in EA, glimpses of future paths for Astarion may all be related to different degrees of evilness. 

First of all, we need to remember that Astarion is an evil character, and if we assume that what Sven said in several interviews doesn’t change, Larian is going to break the style this worked in bg1 and bg2, not making big shifting of the alignment in companions. For this reason I think these endings would entitle variations of evilness.

Astarion keeps repeating over and over his opinion about power as the only means to have access to his freedom. And as long the game evolves, he began to reinforce the importance of having power to “do whatever he wants”. Considering his tastes (how much he enjoys cruelty and bloodshed) we can agree that Astarion “doing whatever he wants” is not a good thing for Faerûn. He finds murdering a fine show, an entertainment. Certainly Astarion is a child of Bhaal in his fullest. 

He even mocks Tav when they comment about looking for self-improvement. “I can be better than him. Stronger, more powerful, more- oh, you meant “be kinder”? (...) Once I have the power to bend others to my will.” This is Cazador speaking. 

So, considering these details, I would suggest (predict is a too strong a word for this) that we have chances to three different kinds of endings and their variations:

The first one, screaming in all what Astarion does: Astarion becomes a full vampire and ends up as the next Cazador. If his approval is high (or some hidden requirement is met) he can turn his lover into another full vampire. If these requirements are not met, in a spawn, repeating the cycle that Astarion suffered but now, on Tav. 

The second one could be with Astarion killing Cazador remaining as a spawn and an agent of chaos and bloodshed. Maybe his relationship with Tav may help to have certain control on him (since we had seen that Astarion so far has been asking permission to kill npcs when the situation arises, so the MC could be turning into a master of choice.)

The third one, finding the cure of Vampirism, and letting Astarion continue with his life of evil corrupted magister. 

Some people ask about the possibility of a Redemption arc. I hardly see it (especially if I keep in mind how bg1 and bg2 worked, they never offered a “real” redemption arc, just small shifts here and there.)

Redemption could be acquired, according to these fans, using two mechanics. 

Astarion feels compassion out of the blue. He starts to have guilt for his past sins and develops empathy, despising cruelty. How? Who knows, so far in EA it has not been seen even once a hint, a scene, a bit of meta-knowledge in that direction. Honestly, so far we’ve seen, this option seems impossible to me, because Astarion has tons of chances to use the meta-knowledge of his approvals and disapprovals to show regret and empathy, and never happened. His character was always focused on himself, his vanity, his pain, his entertainment (which implies constant approval of cruel actions and torments and humiliation to others, especially the weak ones), his survival. If there is a character more far away from empathy right now in EA, it is Astarion. How do you start a redemption arc without the character showing compassion? No way.

Cure Vampirism. Vampirism is a curse, and therefore in the Forgotten Realm can be cured. But this, under no circumstances, can be considered a redemption arc. There is no redemption at all. The curse is lifted, and Astarion can return to be the same cruel magister he was before. No arc about remorse and empathy. 

His character is the story of an abuser who found a greater abuser and became a victim of the latter, seeking to return to his previous power position but stronger. Despite suffering this abuse, that could be understood as poetic justice (more like accidental justice) at certain point, he never developed empathy for those sharing his conditions. In fact, he cares little to inflict on others what he has exactly suffered. I hardly believe there is something else going on “in layers” in him at the moment, since the meta-knowledge provided by the approval/disapproval shows otherwise. My point is, I see little material here showing change. But again, this is EA.

We can see how this exact detail is managed with Shadowheart, from her we know even less than with Astarion because her memory was erased, but so far, we know she has some soft spots that were never shown explicitly, so Tav is oblivious to this information while the player knows it. 

This post was written on April 2021.  → For more Astarion: Analysis Series Index

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Michelle Kiefer

Michelle has 55 stories at Gossamer. If you haven’t read them, what are you waiting for?! She has great takes on Mulder and Scully. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her fics here before, including Christmas in California, Making Other Plans, and Six Inch Valley. Big thanks to Michelle for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I’m not sure anyone is still reading my stories.  I haven’t migrated my X-Files ones to AO3. I don’t think Gossamer provides any viewing statistics. I’d be very happy to hear that people still like my work.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

My X-Files fandom experience was amazing.  I remember that sense of excitement and immediacy.  It was thrilling to write stories (and read those of other authors, of course) in an active fandom for a show that was on the air.  It was truly my first experience in an online world--a parallel world to my real life existence.  I learned how to keep a foot in each world.  As I recall, it was very hard to keep my focus in my “meat” world, when the online one was so fast moving and thrilling.  But I did get some balance in my life as time went on.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Message boards and mailing lists were my experience.  They were primitive compared to the pretty screens now.  I forged some amazing friendships, some of them with people I discovered lived relatively near me.  All I wanted to do was discuss episodes and fic.  The flame wars were a little intimidating, but also amusing if you didn’t get swept up.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I was very passionate about the fandom--as I said, there were times when my online life seemed to overpower my real life experiences.  I learned to manage that, and think I’m all the better for that.  And I found some amazing friendships that are active and thriving today.  I learned a lot about writing with XF fanfic.  The level of quality was stunning.  A decent percentage of fic were as good or better than traditional published fiction.  But there were so many writers!  I wanted to make an impact on the fanfiction world, but that meant taking my writing very seriously and learning to develop a story, pace that story, make it compelling and believable.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had a couple of coworkers that talked about the show all the time.  I was curious, so I watched an episode.  I believe it was the cannibal town one.  I thought David Duchovny was odd looking and wasn’t terribly impressed.  But I tried another episode - Wetwired, which blew me away with the morgue scene when Mulder thinks he’s going to identify Scully’s body.  Ah...I thought, now, I see what everyone is talking about!  And from then I was hooked.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

As I watched, I wanted more.  I was fairly new to the internet (frankly, the internet was new to almost everyone)  I found episode reviews, and some of them were fantastic.  Some mentioned fanfiction.  I was unaware of such a thing, though to be honest, since childhood, I’d been spinning stories in my head about characters on TV shows.  I found some fanfic. The first couple of stories were not great (at least one was horrible) but then I found some that were very good.  Probably a bit soap-operaish, but still readable.  And then I became voracious as I plowed through the mass of stories looking for the good stuff.  And boy was there good stuff.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I’m not estranged from it, but I don’t spend much time with it after all these years.  I’ve found fanfic in some other shows that I like and only occasionally read old XF stories.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I’ve not been as involved with any other fandoms, i.e. following commentary on the show.  I tend to dive into TV shows well after their heyday, so I’m always late to the party. I do read fanfic from other shows, and have actually written fanfic for other shows, but I need a really good idea to write.  None of the other fandoms for my other shows are as busy and active as XF, even ones currently in production.  And none of them have as much fanfic and certainly not the level of brilliance that we had in XF.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I tend to go for interesting partnerships, very much in the XF fashion.  And a flawed hero is always a plus!  The partnerships don’t necessarily have to be romantic---in fact I find I prefer those that are not.  Really, Mulder and Scully were the only ones I felt deeply as a pairing, probably due to the chemistry between the actors. But the partnerships have to be well-balanced and realistic.  I loved the characters on Sleepy Hollow.  The two main characters were very much in the mold of Mulder/Scully.

My newest passion is British detective shows and I’ve completely fallen for the “Morse-verse” shows, Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis and Endeavour.  Less of an XF feel, but compelling characters with interesting backstories.  Other favorite partnerships in the British detective genre are on Inspector Lynley and Broadchurch.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

A bit less now, though I’m still involved with a wonderful group of ladies who love the X-Files.  When we get together for a yearly weekend, we binge episodes and eat impressive amounts of junk food.  XF isn’t on network TV these days, but if it was, I’d probably watch it.

A couple of years ago, I listened to Kumail Nanjiani’s XF podcast on my long commute.  I loved the commentary and interviews so much that I did watch some old episodes.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don’t read much XF fic.  I’m currently reading in some other fandoms, but it’s harder to find good stories--the ones I follow aren’t very active these days and the quality just isn’t what XF was.  We were so lucky.  We had maybe 20 incredible top authors at any one time, then maybe another tier of 50 to 100  good to maybe great writers.  And with new episodes, there was so much inspiration. We were so spoiled.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Everything from Syntax6, MaybeAmanda, Kel.  A special story for me was “Strangers and the Strange Dead” by Kipler because I remember reading that very early in the morning in my unheated basement in the winter because that was the only time I could use our single computer without others in the family complaining.  I remember actually gasping at the big reveal in the story.  I can even remember the story’s opening line!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I was just learning how to write fiction when I was involved in XF, so I’m not sure my best work is there, though the bulk of my stories are there.  I liked some of the work I did with others.  I wrote Bone of Contention and Out of the Everywhere with Kel and I think that those stories got the best aspects of both of our styles.  For stories I wrote myself, I think they’re not bad, but they are rather short and it’s always easier to maintain a theme and style for a short story.  I liked Black Cherry Velvet.  I’m writing some Inspector Lewis stories that I think are pretty good--they benefit from the years of experience that I was gaining through XF.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

Never say never, but I probably won’t write more XF.  I used to burn with it, but I think that got burned out a bit.  Still, I have such wonderful memories of the whole period.  It might be worth looking at again.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

As I mentioned, I am currently playing in the Inspector Lewis world.  It’s sad--it’s a very small and not terribly active fandom.  Sad that my best work is in an inactive fandom where I’m lucky if 20 or 30 people are reading them.  It doesn’t help that I don’t write the most popular pairing.  

But I’m really enjoying it.  I occasionally write for Man From Uncle, which really shows my age, as that was a childhood obsession.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

With XF, it was always a take on an episode--did I get a tiny idea that I wanted to develop, or was I not thrilled with the way something went on the show.  Now,  it’s usually a “what if” kind of thing where I get inspired by a possible event and explore how that would play out, i.e.  “What if this character had a one night stand resulting in an unplanned pregnancy?”  What would happen?  How would he handle the consequences of this?  How would it change his life?

What's the story behind your pen name?

It’s literally my own name.  I SOOOO wish I’d used a pen name.  But I was naive and fandom was so new to me that it never occurred to me that a pen name would be better.  I always told myself that my real name sounded like something made up, like a TV newscaster name, and I hoped people assumed it was a pen name.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My husband and my kids were the only ones who knew about it for many years. Then I went to a fandom/fic gathering for three days and had to explain to a few other family members and my work mates why I was going to Chicago on my own. It’s still mostly a need to know thing and they don’t really need to know.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I’m on AO3 as msk.  And everything I wrote for XF is on Gossamer.

(Posted by Lilydale on February 2, 2021)

[writing-with-olive]

A starting place for self-editing your novel

I wrote this in a reblog to one of @boy-who-can-fly​‘s posts, but as I couldn’t add any tags to that that would make it findable to more than just my followers, I figured I’d make the same content in an original post because YAY TAGS!

Without further ado...

1) Take a break.

Some authors have suggested taking a break for six or so weeks, but I find anything longer than three makes me too distanced from my story, and I have to work a lot harder to get back into my protagonist’s head. During this break, don’t so much as look at your story. Instead, focus on something else. Maybe growing your author platform, planning or developing another wip, or researching the publishing industry if publishing is the end goal for your book (this goes for both traditional and self pub). The point of this is that without some distance, it���s going to be a lot harder to see larger developmental flaws.

(this is a very long post, so the rest of the steps are below the break)

2) The first read-through.

After your break has ended, and you’ve got to be a little stern with yourself not to extend it farther than what you set, or else you’ll never return to it, do a readthrough. This means either just reading it off you’re computer or kindle, or going to somewhere like staples and getting it printed and spiral bound (this costs money, but I found it helpful down the line). Two rules: 1) no editing. 2) look at the first rule. This read-through is going to help give you a general sense of what is and isn’t working in your book; the problems you notice here are likely going to be the biggest ones. (if you want, you can combine this step with step three, but I found it more helpful to keep them seperate)

3) Outline.

It doesn’t matter whether you outlined before, or whether you decided to pants it. By the time you get to editing, you need to have an outline that’s reflective of what you actually put on the page. Go through your story, chapter by chapter, and for each new scene write down

what is your character’s goal in this scene

what is standing in their way

what is the outcome of the scene.

This list should not go into depth; one short sentece per point, MAX. That being said, make sure to keep things specific, so “MC wants to convice X to go with them to Y.” is going to be a lot more useful to you later on than “MC tries to convince them to go.” This outline is going to help you objectively look at your story structure, as you can see a lot more of what’s happening at once, without being quite so overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the words you wrote. Yes, this step can be a bit tedious, but it is so, so worth it.

4) Sort out what you need to fix, aka start making a game plan for your edits.

Now that you’ve read through your wip at least once through, and probably twice, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you need to fix. The key here is that right now, you want to be fixing on the global edits - the things that span beyond just a single scene or chapter. The reason why is that you don’t want to be spending hours perfecting a scene that you’re just going to need to cut later because it doesn’t advance the plot.

In a new document or spreadsheet (whatever you think will work better for you, I liked using a google doc), write issues you see with:

Each of your main cast (regarding character development, motivations voice, etc)

Setting/s (consistancy, realism for your world)

General worldbuilding (consistancy, things poorly explained/set up)

Main plot (following a given plot structure, building tension, etc)

Each subplot (how it intertwines with the main plot, plot structure, building tension, etc)

Other major things you noticed during your readthroughs

These things tend to be larger scope, and generally are worth addressing first.

5) Picking your edit.

Look at the list of edits, and see which one is going to cause the most ripples through your story. This is going to be the first thing you look at to fix. If there are more than one edits that will all have major impacts on the story, think about which edit would make the other ones easier.

For example, in my wip, Project Toxin, my plot was, well, a trainwreck and a dumpster fire’s love child. But my characterization for my MC was also a wreck. Still, getting the overall plot more in order would make it easier for me to edit my MC, so I chose plot first.

6) Make a game plan for your edit.

Before diving in and ripping through your first draft, come up with a game plan. Brainstorm possible solutions to the edit you’ve chosen, and look at what ripples it would cause. You want to make sure that what route you take isn’t going to upset something major or crucial to your story. Most likely whatever solution you choose will cause some other upsets, so just make sure to think through what makes most sense for your story.

For example, when working on my story, I was fixing plot first. Figuring out my game plan meant looking at my scene list and moving things around/adding/cutting content until I had a plot that was much more satisfactory, and that was, in my mind, not a wreck.

Possible game plans for different types of edits:

1. Plot:

Look at your scene list. What helps to advance the plot? What is dragging the pacing. Are there any elements that you are adding or cutting in your overall story that need to be accounted for? With this in mind, cross out scenes that you want to cut, move scenes around that need to come in a different order, add scenes that need to be added, and mark scenes that need to be combined into one.

2. Characters:

For each of your characters, look at their character development. It’s going to be hard to make them come to life better on the page unless you’ve got a grasp of who they are, even if you didn’t plan them out originally. If you have not, consider listing in a spreadsheet or google doc what their backstory is, what their goals are, why they want those goals, and what a few of their strengths and weaknesses are. Also think about their voice: what words do they use more often? Sentence structures? What do they sound like when they’re talking? Stuff like that. If your character is inconsistant, pick one version of them that you want to follow (knowing that they will likely change over the course of the story), and look at what parts of them you will need to change to accomodate that.

3. Setting/Worldbuilding:

I’ve put these together here as they’re somewhat similar. For poorly explained aspects of worldbuilding, look at where you might add in little details so you can better set that foundation (this is not usually a global edit). If things are inconsistant, look at what makes the most sense for your story, and like what we talked about with characters, alter the rest to accomodate that.

7) Making edits.

This is where you really get to dig in and really move things around. Using the edit you’ve picked and the game plan you’ve developed, go through scene by scene and make the changes. I strongly recommend having a seperate doc from your rough draft to store your second draft in. Currently, my process is to have both open at the same time, and if a scene is already fine, I’ll just copy/paste it over. At least for me, however, it’s usually not, and I’ll either make tweaks to fix it up, or, more often at this early stage, I’ll rewrite it. As an added bonus, I also find that rewriting it makes my prose a lot stronger, since I’ve grown so much as a writer since I originally wrote the scene.

Since you know your story better, you may find other elements that you want to change are improving as you edit. If not though, don’t worry - they’ll get their own editing pass.

8) Repeat steps 5-7

You made a list of edits you needed to make back in step four. Now, follow steps 5-7 to make all of those edits and changes.

9) Repeat steps 2-8

Two steps telling you to repeat in a row? Yes. The deal now is that you want to make sure you’ve cleaned up any global edits before moving on to anything smaller. If you’ve been thourough thus far, this will be a very fast step. If not, think of this step as a safety net. There may have been ripples that you didn’t notice earlier on, and it’s a good thing you’re catching them now.

10) Chapter edits

At this point, we’ve cleaned up all the big edits. Now we’re going to look at each chapter. Within each chapter, there needs to be a mini-arc. A beginning, middle, and end. This is the time to really focus on that. Also focus on things like tightening up prose, combining or compressing paragraphs, making sure you’ve adequately set the scene, etc. If you’re over the word count limit regarding your genre, also focus on cutting a certain number of words from each chapter to put your story back within those limits.

11) The little things

This is about combing through your wip to find all of the little errors that have made their way through edits. Typos, weird or incorrect grammar, useless adverbs, things like that. At this point, everything is on a more superficial level.

Beta Readers

Given that this has gotten quite long, I’m not going to go in depth about beta readers here, but around step 10/11, you’re going to start recruiting beta readers (you’re going to want to try and have multiple rounds of somewhere around 10 betas each, which is why having a good author platform is useful: recruiting is easier). Between each round, you’re going to look at their feedback and make the necessary edits. After several rounds of beta readers, you’re going to look it over a few more times, and then if you’re going the traditional publishing route, you’re going to query agents. If you’re going the self-pub route you’re going to look to hire a professional editor. If you’re not looking to publish, this may be the end of the line.

Good luck editing!

[little-green-forest]

Which comic should I focus on doing?

1: Wolf, fox, cat.

A comic series introducing the world, rules and beliefs of all of my OCs. The main character in this story is Gray M. Fox and she is learning everything about her new home (Landtribe) after a tragic incident involving the death of her parents. Her friend and adopted brother, Orange C. Stripe teaches her everything she (and the reader) need to know about this world. This would probably be the best original story to go with cuz’ it explains a lot of stuff better than I could teach you guys with any other original story.

2: Fur, Feather, and Stone

This is the story of Geode, Pine, and Azalea and they run all around there world chasing Pepper, Pine and Azalea’s evil father. Although the story is from Geode’s point of view it has plenty of flash-backs from all three of them, explaining a lot of spoiler-y backstory.

3: Possessed AU

Oh god another evil Steven AU. This Steven Universe AU starts after fragments and when Jasper reforms Steven lets her follow him and even threatens to shatter her again if she disobeys him. After the events of homeworld bound the gems and connie are all worried about him and crowd around him like that scene in everything’s fine but instead of having a breakdown and “corrupting” he instead poffs the gems and slaps connie (jez kevin) then runs away out of beach city. After a little the B team (Peridot, Lapis, and Bismuth) show up and are like WTF HAPPENED?!? And after Connie explains and the gems reform they all go out and chase Steven around and the rest (aka the best parts and major differences from the original series) is spoiler territory.

4: Rejuvenated AU/Theory

I have a lot of AUs but this one is also loosely a theory on Jasper’s full character story. This AU is based on an idea I had that Jasper was once on the rebellion's side but then the diamonds captured the strongest member (other than the leader, “Rose Quartz”) then rejuvenated her to get her on their side. I’d also like to sprinkle in a lot of stories about the war (Jasper and Rose fighting each other) and the diamonds just brainwashing Jasper into absolutely despising Rose and many other things.

5: Camp Camp x Steven Universe AU

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Just think of the chaos

6: When darkness resembles good

Angelsdarkness’s backstory.. to much going on to sum it up fast, but I made a lot of projects with him on my old Scratch account if you wanna dig around there.

7: Edgy SU AU

This one is pretty brutal. You see, I this AU Greg died while Rose was still pregnant with Steven and since she still wanted Steven to have tabs on his human side so she put Vidalia in charge of being Steven's new "dad" but the rest of the gems (other than Amethyst but G and P don't listen to her) didn't know or trust her so Steven was raised a lot differently. Steven stayed with Vidalia for the first 5 years of his life before he was given to the gems, who after getting Steven, NEVER let him near any other human and since they didn't have Greg to teach them about what humans need, they tend to starve him and never let him sleep. There teaching methods are even more fucked up as they beat the crap out of him while trying to make him use powers. The only reason I'm not calling this the “Abused AU” is because I think that’s the name of Jøzlyn Moon’s (on yt)  AU so I felt I needed to change it, and I thought, ya, the physical and mental abuse could just, turn edgy.

8: Corruptied Time Trap SU AU

Oh, god- Steven used the time warp (or whatever it was called- I have forgotten the real name of it but it was the thing from the pilot and Steven and the Stevens) just before he corruptied and when he got to the time of Era 2 near the beginning of the original series and then ends up in Homeworld and gets trapped by the diamonds and tested on because as stated in Legs From Here to Homeworld the diamonds don't know what corruptied gems are. 

9: Fallen Jasper AU

After unfuseing with Lapis after weeks of being trapped with her, Jasper found herself falling into the underground of earth, just before the cluster was about to emerge. This is much less of an AU and more of theories on what happened to Jasper after all the chaos of “Super Watermelon Island” and oh boy, does it make you fell really bad for Jasper

10: Ashstar AU

Finally, an AU that isn’t SU. This AU revolves around the idea that Firestar dies when Hawkfrost wanted him to. This happens because Ashfur notices when Brambleclaw is about to kill his bro, and saves Hawk’s ass. When Hawkfrost realized his brother was going to kill him he turns the tables and both the Thunderclan leader, and deputy are dead. After Thunderclan finds out about this, Ashfur tells a lie, saying he saw Brambleclaw attack Firestar and he had tried to protect Firestar by killing Brambleclaw but he was to late to save Firestar. Everyone believes this and decided to make Ashfur the new leader scents he at least tried to save Fire. Also this AU is very Ash/Hawk because I love my gay babies.

I will do all of these at some point but you guys will need to tell me which one to do first cuz I can't do them all at once.

[toomanyhobbiesandthisisoneofthem]

Captain Levi Packs a Punch

So, uh.. This is a fanfiction oneshot... It’s inspired by that moment during the celebration/feast episode, where Levi punches Eren and Jean when they get into a row. I’ve never written a fanfic before, ever, and idk if I’m gonna make this a thing or not... but I had a fic idea today, and while I’ve had fic ideas before, I never really wanted to write them badly enough to actually go for it. But for whatever reason, this one hit me out of nowhere and said, “Write me!!!!! Please, please, please, please, please!!!” So... here I am. :P

Although I’ve never actually written anything for it, I’ve had this particular fanfiction universe running through my head for YEARS, so I need (yes, need) to give a little bit of a backstory on my AU before I jump into writing the actual fic. There’s a bunch of stuff in my AU that leads up to the point I’m going to write about in this story, and some things will make more sense if you understand those things.

If you don’t care about the backstory part and you just want to get on with the fic, here’s a TL;DR: Self-insert OC is an X-men-style mutant who travels through various fictional universes. Her mutant abilities involve redirection/manipulation of energy, whether it’s kinetic forces, electrical charges, heat/combustion energy, etc. Feel free to go straight to the fic. Just scroll down until you reach the end of the italics and hit the disclaimer.

I might upload another post at some point detailing a more extensive version of this backstory summary, but for now I just want to give you the gist of it.

Backstory Bullet Points:

1. This is a self-insert OC, though I’ll probably rename the character herself. I know these tend to have a bad reputation, but I’ll do my level best to make it not-dumb. There are still some self-insert OC cliches and whatnot,(she’s definitely a bit OP; I’m attempting to counteract that) but I’m trying to make the story focus more on the characters and how they interact, rather than being like, “OMG DIS GURL HAS DA POWER AN’ SHE’S GONNA SAVE DA DAY AND GET DA MAIN CHARACTER FOR A BOYFRIEND TOO!” sorts of things.

2. When OC was 21 or so, she was ported from her own world into a universe in which the Marvel Avengers, the X-Men, and all the Rick Riordan Universe books happen to be all mixed together.      By the way, Percy Jackson is a mutant himself along with being a demigod, and he has a major AU backstory of his own, which will be explained if I ever write a full AU-background explanation. This is not relevant to the current story, but it is a part of this AU.

3.  OC discovers that one of her ancestors was a carrier of the X-gene who was ported to OC’s home universe like a hundred years ago or so, but because OC was born in a variation of Earth-1218, her powers didn’t activate until she switched universes      -(Earth-1218 is Marvel’s version of/explanation for the “normal/real world”-- OC’s home universe is similar to Earth-1218, but it’s not actually the same one, because inter-universe transportation is possible with this universe, and the genetics for superpowers are still transferred from parent to child.     -OC’s home universe dampens people’s superpowers while they’re in that universe, unless the person with powers happened to be born there, are transferred to a universe where their powers activate, and then switched back to their home universe.)

4. OC’s mutant powers include but are not quite limited to: --Absorbing and/or redirecting energy within and through herself. She can’t directly manipulate energy which has no direct contact with her, so for instance she can’t turn on a lightbulb from across the room, and she can’t use telekinesis or anything along those lines. --She is able to sense everything around her, and feels the energy within it. Because of this, she has pretty strong empathic abilities along with a sort of touch-telepathy as a side-effect. --She is able to release a kinetic/thermal “pulse” of sorts, and if any sort of energy is directed at her, she can:      a) absorb it and release it later (for instance, if she’s walking through a fire, she can absorb the heat energy and then later use the heat she stored in order to, say, melt snow),      b) allow it to pass directly through her and into whatever is behind her, (if someone tried to punch her and she happened to be standing against a wall, the force of the punch would pass through her and hit the wall)-- this aspect of her mutation also allows her to fly.      c) “catch” it and redirect it in a different direction (if Cyclops shoots her with his laser eyes, she could catch the laser and shoot it right back at him, or off the the side, or straight up, or whatever she happened to need to do at the time.)

There’s more to her mutation than this, but that’s the basic idea. For the sake of understanding this particular fic, keep in mind this would also apply to the force behind a Titan’s bite, meaning she’s practically invulnerable to most of the deadly AOT situations.

5. Due to Backstory Stuff, she ends up being practically forced by the Fates to travel to various fictional universes every few years. However, she is never able to go to the original version of that fictional universe-- there will always be at least one thing that’s different from what she knows as canon for that universe.    Sometimes the difference is simply a minor plot point, for instance when she goes to the FMA:B universe, it’s basically just an “Ed still has automail and alchemy, and he stays in the military!” AU-- which is kind of big as far as post-canon stuff goes, but it doesn’t really change any of the actual events of the majority of the anime itself.     Other universes will have, or eventually have, huuuuge differences. The first universe she travels to, the Mixed Marvel/Riordan universe, is just one example of this.   Sometimes these differences may incorporate things I’ve seen in other fanfics; I’ll try to source them when this is the case. It’s not my intention to steal from other people’s works, y’know?

6. Due to More Backstory Stuff, although OC is always placed into fictional universes which she is very familiar with, the Fates place a voice-block on her in regards to the events of those universes, in order to prevent her trying to explain future events to the characters if she happens to land into the middle of the story/plot. She may be able to give some information, and she may be able to hint at things, and if she really fights against the voice-block-thing, she may be able to give them basic info on stuff that will happen soon, but she can’t, like, write out a timeline and have them follow events and try to prevent them, or anything like that.

There’s a lot more I could probably tell you about this, but I don’t think any of it is particularly relevant to this story, so I’m not gonna worry about it.

Disclaimer: I do not own, and have never owned, and do not ever intend to own Attack on Titan or the X-men/Marvel Cinematic Universe. The only character, scenario, universe, etc. in this work of fiction that belongs to me is my own OC, Allise Hart.

TW: There is punching in this fic. If the title didn’t give that away, lol! It is not meant as a hostile violent interaction, but it is still a punch. So I guess... minor violence warning?

Sorry if anyone’s OOC... Again, I’ve never written a fic before, so...

Okay, last explanation thing, I promise.... :P This fic takes place a couple weeks into the two-month break period between the first and second arcs of season three. It seemed to be the most reasonable point in which Allise could arrive, have time to explain who she was and how she got there, gain at least some semblance of the characters’ trust, and make bonds of burgeoning potential friendship with some of the characters. Plus, the second arc of season three is probably where she could help the most, if she were to help prevent any deaths in canon at all. Everywhere else is either too busy, or the deaths that happen in those arcs are too important in character/plot development for me to be comfortable preventing them while still remaining consistent with the main plot. Also, for ease of communication purposes, the characters of AOT speak English in this story.

I hope you enjoy. :)

Levi Packs A Punch

     The Survey Corps initial strategy meeting for the retaking of Wall Maria was to be held in fifteen minutes. Hange and Erwin stood in the center of the room, speaking in hushed tones, and several members of Levi’s team hung around off to the side. A current of nervous anticipation ran through the recruits. So much had happened these last few months-- so many victories, hard-won though they were. 

     What would come of this daring venture? Would their winning streak hold out? Was it possible they could actually be... gaining ground against the Titans? For the first time in a long time, it seemed there could be hope in this endless struggle for humanity’s survival. 

     Even their leaders were not unaffected. There was an extra spring in Hange’s step as they worked on their experiments. There was a strange fire burning in Erwin’s eyes. There was a steadiness to Levi that wasn’t there before, a sense of gentle calm taking the place of repressed chaos, and he seems less apt to speak out against the optimism present in the recruits.

     It was this atmosphere into which Allise entered as she opened the door and made her way to Commander Erwin. Hange was animatedly describing a new weapon they were designing with Eren, and as she drew closer, Allise was nearly hit on the nose by a flailing hand. Hange startled, and both commanders turned to face her.

     She technically wasn’t supposed to be here. Not that she cared.

     The silence continued for a moment before Commander Erwin cleared his throat and asked, “Can we help you with something, Miss Hart?”

     Allise shifted back and pressed her lips together. She glanced from the commander, to the wall, to the floor, and back again. Her face went through several different expressions, moving from pensive to fearful to determined. Finally, she took a deep breath opened her mouth.

     “Commander Erwin, sir. I... have a request. I want you to let me help you fight the Titans and retake Wall Maria.”

     Hange raised an eyebrow. Erwin blinked. “You what?”

     “I want to help you with this mission.”

     Erwin frowned. “Absolutely not.”

      Allise lifted her chin in a challenge. “Why not? You need all the people you can get. I’m sure I can help you. You-- I-- if I help, maybe I can... prevent--” her voice cut off. She coughed harshly, grimacing at the sudden burn in her throat.

     Hange studied her for a moment. “You know something.”

     Allise nodded, coughing again.

     Erwin cocked his head. “You know something important about this assignment in particular.”

     “Yes.”

     He nodded slowly, looking thoughtful, then he straightened. “I still can’t let you go. You have no experience. You have no training. You wouldn’t last two seconds against a 5-meter, let alone a fifteen or twenty. I cannot in good conscience allow an untrained civilian to fight Titans. It would be futile, and a waste of a good life.”

     Allise swallowed. “It’s true that I have no experience. I don’t know what I’d be walking into-- not really. All I know of Titans is what I saw on the show. However... You recall when I first arrived, I explained why my ears are pointed? As you know, I am not entirely human. I have special abilities. I believe that these abilities will protect me from the Titans.”

     Hange perked up. “What sort of special abilities? Can you run at superhuman speeds? Are you a shapeshifter? Are you able to fly? Do you have to--mmph!”

     Erwin placed a hand over Hange’s mouth. “What makes you believe your ability will prevent you from getting eaten? Prove that you truly have such an ability, and I will reconsider your request.”

     Allise grinned. “Thank you, sir. That’s all I ask.” She turned to Hange. 

     “To answer your questions, since you asked first... My abilities are energy-related. I can occasionally run at superhuman speeds, though the factors are extremely circumstantial. I suppose you could call me a shapeshifter, since I have two different forms; however, my base abilities remain the same in each form, so it mainly just affects my appearance. And yes, I am actually able to fly.”      “As for proving that I can effectively protect myself against a Titan...”

     Allise closed her eyes and pressed her hands together. She considered what, exactly, she needed to show them. How could she explain this in a way that made sense, without going to the trouble of finding a Titan to demonstrate with? She pondered her options for a while, nothing definitive coming to mind, until suddenly... Her eyes snapped open, and she fixed her gaze on Levi. Of course! A grin spread over her face. This. This was perfect.

     She straightened, then cleared her throat and asked, “Is there anyone here who’d be willing to get punched for the sake of a scientific demonstration?”

     Her sudden question was met with startled stares. Several of the recruits backed away from her warily. Then Eren and Jean started nudging back and forth, trying to push each other into volunteering; this eventually devolved into a shoving match, with Mikasa and Armin trying to pull them apart. 

     The situation had grown to the point where it seemed the boys might start actually fighting, when all of a sudden both of them were shoved aside, as Captain Levi stepped forward.

     “I’ll do it.”

     Allise blinked. “You’ll do it?”

     “Yes.”

     “You sure?”

     “Yes.”

     “I... well... alright, then. Uh. Don’t... don’t get mad at me if this hurts more than you’re expecting, though.”

     Levi gave her a level look. “It’s fine. I can take a punch.”

     Allise gulped. “Right. So... Come stand over here, in front of me.”

     Levi moved into the center of the room and faced her.

     Allise smiled slightly. “Good. Now, ah... where would you prefer to be punched? I’d rather not the face, if you don’t mind.”

     “The stomach is fine.”

     Allise nodded. She stepped forward, close enough to reach out, curl her fingers into a fist, and rest it against his stomach. Levi gave her a confused look. “Was that supposed to do something?”

     She glanced up at him, then, and smirked. “Not yet. First, I want you to punch me.”

     “I thought I was the one getting punched?”

     “Oh you are, but I need you to punch me first. As hard as you can. Doesn’t matter where.”

     Levi was thoroughly baffled now-- Allise could feel the confusion radiating off of him-- but he shrugged it off, lifted a fist, drove it into her side... and stumbled backward barely half a second later, falling to the floor, as she allowed the force of his blow to flow through her body and out through the fist she had placed against his stomach.

     Everyone stared. None of them had ever seen Levi laid out like that-- not even Erwin or Hange. He was legendary among the soldiers of the Survey Corps for his ability to take a punch-- and throw one. And now there he was, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling in stunned surprise with the wind knocked out of him.

     Levi coughed and gasped, catching his breath, then sat up and looked back at Allise. “What was that? You didn’t even move. How did you do that?”

     “I redirected your punch,” Allise explained. “That’s my ability-- any force that someone uses against me, I can just let it go straight through me, or I can throw it right back at them.”

     Levi blinked. Blinked again. Tilted his head as he parsed through what that meant. “...So. What you’re saying is...”

     “...I punched myself?”

     She smirked at him. “Yep.”

     A strange expression crossed his face. He glanced at Allise, then at his hand, and back to Allise. His lips twitched. He turned back to his hand, and then...

     His shoulders started shaking. His hand trembled a bit, and he pressed it to his mouth. Erwin grew concerned. This was not normal. “Levi..?”

     A sound escaped Levi’s lips, a sort of soft wheezing. Everyone was worried. What was going on? Was something wrong with him? Had he injured himself with that punch?

     Then, the sound began to register properly. It grew in volume, as if Levi could keep it contained no longer, and suddenly burst out of him resolving itself as deep, throaty chuckles, which in turn shifted fully into...

     Laughter. He was laughing. Captain Levi was laughing.

     Erwin stared. “Is... Is he alright?” Hange was just as baffled. “I... believe so? Unless he hurt his head, but... he was hit in the stomach, so it shouldn’t have affected his brain.”

     Levi’s team was similarly shocked. They had never seen him laugh... ever. They weren’t even sure he could laugh-- Historia had been lucky to get even a small huff of a laugh, after her coronation. To see him like this, it was...

     Exhilarating. Relieving even, to see that he, too, could be affected like this.

     It was contagious. Conny snickered. Armin started giggling too. Mikasa’s expression softened, and even Eren let a smile grow on his face.

     After a minute or two, Levi managed to calm himself and pick himself up off the floor. His face smoothed back to its usual expression, though his cheeks were a bit pink as he turned to Erwin. “I--” he cleared his throat. “I believe Allise has made her point. Her ability to--” his lips twitched, and he cleared his throat again. “Her ability to manipulate forces should allow her to safely escape any Titan that crosses her path. If she really wants to go, I think she’ll be all right.”

     Erwin shook himself out of his stunned stupor and turned to Allise. “I agree. You’ve clearly demonstrated that you are capable of... impossible things. I hereby grant you official permission to attend this meeting, and accept your offer of assistance in retaking Wall Maria.--       “--don’t make me regret this permission.”

     Allise stood to attention, placing her fists fore and aft in the official military salute. “Sir!”

     Later, when the meeting was adjourned and everyone was heading out the door, Hange turned to Levi, and said, “I look forward to seeing what exactly Allise is capable of against Titans. If she can do to them what she did to you...” Hange smirked. “They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

     The last thing Erwin heard as he made his way to his desk, was a fresh burst of laughter from Levi echoing down the hall.

[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoldretired]

alrighty! im gonna talk about my two new dr!ocs and some updates on sheon’s whole thing. remember they don’t have names yet adkaljasdkfa

SURVIVOR: the ultimate jazz singer. 

as mentioned, she’s the ultimate jazz singer. pretty subdued personality, but she’s the type of jazz singer who would just. scream into a microphone a la screamin jay hawkins. she is pretty neutral/friendly but disconnected in the prologue/first chapter/second chapter. she gets more jittery as the interactions go on. but once you get to the post-fte section of chapter two, that night she actually tries to kill the protag. at this point its revealed her big Angsty Backstory is she got involved with drugs through the music scene and is currently suffering withdrawal symptoms and is Super desperate (something ive seen a lot with my co-musicians and its not good) big breakdown, really delirious, will eventually be talked off the ledge and calmed down. kind of like if sayaka was actually calmed down in thh chap 1

just so happens that during the night whoopsy someone else was killed. so you two have an alibi but to reveal it means you tell everyone about her issues. either there might be a lying feature like in drv3 to cover, or you tell the truth and end up isolating her. for chapter three and most of four she will keep her distance from the protag bc she’s uncomfortable but will eventually reach out to be friends again after chap 4 execution. 

is generally pretty useful during trials, tends to be a person who tries to help calm down more emotional students and look at things logically. is good at trying to calm down the blackened once the protag catches their bluff bc she understands what its like to be desperate. she does, however, cry during/after every punishment. tells others not to speak poorly of their executed classmates. 

she compulsively chews gum, and one of her favorite gifts would be gum. jokes about having an oral fixation. during school mode she might joke about singing love songs but being so awkward about it in real life. really likes dogs, has a dog plushie in her room. 

a first two fte will focus on her health/wellbeing. the third she’ll ask to not talk about that anymore and the next three are just about general stuff. the final one she’ll basically go a little further into detail but the moral of her story is like, she’s not a bad person for doing what she did, no one is. she’s just a person. and it cn happen to anymore.

dresses in clothes more inspired by late mod/early 70s fashion. hoestly im seeing like a turtleneck/pantsuit combo. short curly hair. big heavy under eyelashes. 

MASTERMIND: the ultimate drag racer (ultimate cruiser)

ok but I LOVE him. personality wise he’s the story’s anxious character, think closer in personality to chap 1 shuichi. quiet, skittish, easily flustered, sometimes cracks jokes that fall flat. he’s framed for the chap 1 murder (someone died in a go kart accident, its assumed he sabotaged the other car, his argument is why would he kill someone in a race in front of all his classmates?) the protag obviously works hard to prove he’s innocent. after the execution he makes a promise to the protag that he owes him one big time, and while it seems innocent at the time, the wording should have like. a slight suspicious undertone. 

he’ll investigate weirder areas of the school instead of practical (sometimes he has clues sometimes not) and if there’s ever a mechanical question for a trial, you’ll generally ask him for clarification. he’s not very trusting of others and is often the one to accuse others/bring the information learned in trials back into the real world and make a big deal out of it. for example, he’ll make a big deal about the attempted murder in chap 2, and he’s the one who’s constantly accusing sheon of being a traitor

at first he seems like he’s just anxious, but obviously, he’s the mastermind, and he’s trying to tear the group apart. 

his fte he’s awkward the first few times but he opens up slowly, showing actual comfort/joy around the protag. wants to be close friends. offers to take protag go karting. while their personality is pretty awkward most of the time, there are flashes of an adrenaline junky every now and then especially when talking about cars, where he seems so full of life and drive it’s almost scary. very competitive during these times, his determination almost taking a sadistic glee when talking about beating others. of course he explains it as his cutthroat sport, but ya know...mastermind. instead of saying we’re going to survive he says we’re going to win. friendly towards the others but doesn’t really care about them focused on protag. is consciously trying to seperate protag from sheon.

for a mastermind he’s actually quite the empath and grows attached to his classmates, which he actually takes pleasure in the amount of despair he feels after each of their executions. reason behind the game is the adrenaline rush he feels, never has felt more alive than on despair. he discovered the rush the first time he got in a car accident, and the moments before his crash where like pure bliss. he wanted to let everyone else feel his feverish joy, and talks about how everyone has enjoyed this, deep down. they’re all getting their sick kicks. breaks the fourth wall and alludes to the fact that the protag (through the player) is having the most fun of all. 

final trial where it’s revealed, he’s still v attached to the protag in like an almost yandere way and wants to follow up on the favor he owes from chap 1. he offers a deal to the protag where if they’re welcome to be their accomplice in all this and get out of the game. protag should push to bargain that everyone can give up their morals, sacrifice themselves to despair, and live as the mastermind’s accomplice in exchange for ending the killing game. 

eventually, he’ll agree, but only if the group decides one life among them to sacrifice for no other reason than to kill an innocent friend. the way to get to the correct ending is to choose yourself which will like invalidate the deal. protag ends up dying and everyone else lives. leaves the mastermind in a despair, but for the first time, he does not derive any pleasure. 

takes a LOT OF GLEE in admitting he convinced everyone else sheon was the traitor when she was not, everyone else is horrified.

anyways. his school mode/love mode events show his more likeable side, he can actually be a really cute partner if it weren’t for the part he’s evil but uh. soft sometimes. 

really likes energy drinks. talks about sponsorships. color scheme is like. a black racing suit but his jacket is tied around his waist and he’s wearing a wife beater. tons of accents of neon all over his outfit from like patches and brand deals. backwards hat. blushes easily. has a mullet. i love him. 

“TRAITOR” : SHEON FUKUDA (the ultimate film maker) 

ok so. still antagonistic. but more in the way of pushing your buttons and pointing out your flaws in a trial. like somewhere between antagonist and kirigiri. super chill personality, cracks a lot of jokes, is hardcore struggling with the games and will be open about her mental illness. her fatal flaw is still her martyr complex

is first framed after chap 2 bc of accused of having the ability to direct and oversee a production like this, and from that moment forward no one can trust her and she’s SUPER alienated. she’s still awkwardly trying to be friends/friendly but people act like she’s going to betray them all. tries to prove innocence multiple times going as far as to beginning of chap 3 announce to the group if they need to kill anyone, let it be her so no one else gets hurt and is super transparent about who she is. but this transparency makes people more suspicious. as she goes on she gets more desperate/gallows humor. last convo bfore chap 5 begins she has a vague conversation about with protag about if they fear death. chap 5 would end up being either a suicide or double murder (they killed each other one in attack the other while being defended against) so there’s no execution but monokuma still wants something. its also in this trial that the ultimate drag racer plants evidence taht makes it look like she’s the traitor and is addressed head on. 

a common motif for her is ‘playing the role assigned’ and knowing who she is and who she isn’t. she’s pretty comfortable knowing who she is but expresses unhappiness about being painted a villain. maybe like, three times through the story to this point it’s established as a motif/quirk of fitting a role she’s assigned bc if the protag asks her a question about herself/past/the overall story, she asks the protag a question like well, what do you want 1) 2) and you choose and she’s like. ok. then its _______. same thing here. as she’s finally excused she stares at the protag and is like do you really believe im the traitor? (yes) stares long and hard, somethng sad and defeated in her eyes. ok then. i am.

the trial doesn’t have a punishment originally planned bc the blackened are not alive. but she chooses not to vote and willingly chooses to be punished because everyone else has decided she’s the traitor and she chooses to play along so they can get closure. her last conversation should be about choosing the act of resistance, no matter how convoluted it can be. she doesn’t fear death. the pain sure, but not death. this was her choice to be punished, not the masterminds, and she hopes they lose any glee they take in her suffering because its a sacrifice for hope instead of a death in despair. last request is that she asks for the protag to make sure the manuscripts she wrote during her time are published, the last great work of sheon fukuda.

EXECUTION: CULTURE SHOCK so she wakes up on a soundstage to blinding light. she’s attached with electrodes. monokuma is sitting on a director’s chair with a director’s hat. basically the premise is as the ultimate film maker, she has to recreate different iconic movie scenes and every time she makes a mistake she gets shocked. she keeps on getting thrown into new scenes into the middle of old ones, throwing her off. after a sequence of costume changes/farces she finally collapses in the soundstage. 

beat. she looks up. above the soundstage is a sign that says “congratulations” or something. everyone gasps. she believes she beat it. a single light comes on in center stage prompting her to take a bow. she stumbles over, stands up, and looks into the shadows in the general direction of her classmates. a teleprompter prompts her classmates to clap. she takes glee, soaking in her win, and bows. as she comes up she smiles for a second before a short rings out. she’s shot through the heart. culture shock!

fte are mostly talking about directors/film references and what its like to be a film maker. real dry humor, sometimes talks about deeper stuff. her backstory is that her dad was working for an american embassy so she grew up in america going to art shool, and she feels out of place, despite being a japanese student with the same basic culture as everyone else. sometimes talks about slimeball directors, sometimes talks about missing certain food, loves takling about movies. as a filmmaker she specializes in dark comedy/farce which makes her suspicious of how someone can enjoy writing somethng so twisted

views are very intersectional, a little new agey, but still well put together. clearly a free spirit, very quirky from working in cinema, super dry sense of humor. likes philosophy

really likes blueberry jam. favorite item is somthing blueberry.

after chap 1 trial she expresses to the protag how she can never be the blackened, not just because of murdering one student, but to get away with it, everyone else would be punished instead, and she can’t deal with the blood on her hands. 

is open about her struggles with mental illness and how she was getting help and showing improvement bfore coming here but now she feels herself spiraling and hates it.

values everyone here as good friends, and while she tries to play it off she hates how they’re painting her as a villain. takes every death very personally. 

color scheme is very pastel, and she wears sweat pants and a collared shirt with a light blue robe. you can’t tell if those are pajamas or an outfit. wears rose-colored glasses. all about the aesthetic, just lean so far into film culture with her. personality/feelings towards style are very influenced by the fact she went to an american arts school instead of a japanese school like her peers so every part of her is slightly off/quirky/out-of-touch

she’ll mostly wear the glasses over her eyes, sometimes pushing them down on her nose for emphasis to make eye contact. only her anger sprite (point) shows her taking them off. 

during her execution she pushes them onto her forehead before taking her bow, almost to meet eye to eye. after she’s shot the last frame is them landing on the ground, cracking. 

i love sheon so much

[ra-lek]

Hi! I know you’ve touched on the topic briefly before, but if you don’t mind I’d love to hear any more in-depth thoughts you have on autistic Elliot. It’s one of my favorite headcanons and it’s always fascinating to see other people’s thoughts on it! (Also I just wanted to say that you have a really interesting way of analyzing the show and you seem like a such a genuinely chill, kind person, thank you for being awesome)

heya, i don’t mind at all!! this headcanon is great and there’s a lot of material to work with and analyze so i’m absolutely on board with elaborating more; 

but first i gotta establish a few things:

i am not a professional and can’t talk about autism the same way i’ve talked about body language or dissociative identity disorder. mainly because i’ve done essays on the latter and am more educated on the subject, unlike with this specific disorder.

but yo that doesn’t mean i don’t know anything cause psychology is my sHit- i just felt it was necessary for you to know that i’m not as confident in my analysis as i usually am; so feel free to correct me!!

next, in canon, elliot is diagnosed with clinical depression and social anxiety disorder. with a couple of ’delusional’ mentions thrown here and there. however, we most certainly know he suffers from DID as well- and the fact it’s his MAJOR problem and hasn’t been properly acknowledged by the show leaves us with room to speculate.

and finally- i’ve been diagnosed with and am being treated for clinical depression and anxiety disorder. so i will point things out from my perspective here as well, since people with anxiety have similar symptoms to people on the spectrum and/or people with ADHD/ADD. (sometimes even OCD)

alright now that that’s all clear we can finally start looking at his behavior!!

first and foremost, autism & ad(h)d are developmental disorders because the symptoms for them can generally be noticed in early childhood; as opposed to anxiety which is a mental illness. so it’s entirely possible to have a cocktail of disorders in your head.

i’m bringing ADD up a lot because i’ve been speculated to have it & am supposed to take some tests- but am not officially diagnosed yet. now that we’ve got my entire family history, blood type & credit card number laid out, we’re ready to go.

anyway, these are the symptoms:

1. difficulty with communication & interaction with others

this is probably where anxiety, add and autism collide the most. though in very different ways- and they’re not exclusive to people with one of these diagnosis only. 

for example, eye contact. i’m terrible at it. people with autism & anxiety are also pretty darn bad at it, and elliot might seem that way at times; he hides a lot- but not as often as he tends to hold an intense eye contact, instead? which can also be seen as an ‘odd’ thing to do in social communication. as in, not noticing if someone’s uncomfortable under such gaze, let’s say.

that brings me to the next topic which is uh, coincidentally, communication.

he is quite blunt when it comes to it, has a distinctive ‘flat’ #elliotvoice tone. @mototwinkclub pointed out a few instances last time this topic was brought up, such as saying “i’m okay with it being awkward between us” to matpat ollie or “not at all, actually.” with gideon- and he doesn’t do it to be rude. doesn’t really realize it’s ‘bad’ to say it like that, either.

i mean i know he said he’s trying to work on his social anxiety but that’s not quite how you’d go about it? i firmly believe he suffers from generalized anxiety. obviously, that includes social anxiety as well; but this way you could explain why he’s way more concerned with…everything else. and is pretty straightforward in conversation.

since i referenced the pilot, one of the first lines he says about himself is “i don’t know how to talk to people. the only person person i could talk to was my dad- but he died.” which brings us back to the developmental aspect of this disorder. since he’s indicating he didn’t know how to talk to people even when he was a kid. which is true, in every flashback we see he either doesn’t talk at all or talks very little.

what’s interesting though- although he’s bad at reading 'conversation’- he’s extremely good at reading people. and the fact he 'looks for the worst in them’ contradicts the usual aspect that’s brought up when it comes to an autistic thought process, which is made out to be like “if i wouldn’t do this, then why would anyone else?” and it’s not the way he thinks at all.

instead, he feels empathy on a moral level if that makes sense? people on the spectrum are said to either be too empathic or not at all. and it’s hard to pinpoint elliot? because, clearly, he cares for people as much as he doesn’t trust them. use an example the reason he leaked ray’s information. he literally said “but then i keep thinking about those people.” but we haven’t seen him empathize with, for instance, vera- even when he gave a pretty tragic backstory. he can tell who the bad guy is. 

when it comes to spacing out, he does it all the time. people on the spectrum do it all the time, i certainly do it all the time. but we have to focus on what he is thinking about when he does it- because that is our indicator. 

we usually see his thoughts filled with paranoia, over-thinking, analyzing, etc,.. which i associate with anxiety disorder mostly? but, we have to take into account something he suffers from the most and it’s dissociative identity disorder. so not only does he space out, but he tends to dissociate, as well. perfect example for this is when he mutes the world around him. or just doesn’t listen.

once again, from the pilot, when angela tells him “stop thinking about something else while i’m talking to you!!” he isn’t actually daydreaming or spacing out in the usual sense- he’s recalling the night (mostly for the viewer than for himself let’s be honest) she’s talking about and we see that he was too anxious to go in. he doesn’t tell her that.

now let’s talk about his no-touch policy for a second. that’s something a lot of people on the spectrum have in common. i think it’s, once again, one of those cases where one could be either completely touch-starved or aversive. though we can’t ignore the fact he’d been abused when he was young. 

as i was going through the pilot for most of my evidence here (as you can notice) there’s a very small detail at the beginning when ron leans in to ask “are you blackmailing me!?” and we can see elliot flinch in genuine fear. this is not the only instance where he seems afraid to get hit. breaKs my goddamn heart.

but he’s also the one to initiate contact sometimes- and he often misunderstands the situation. shayla told him not to ask, he kissed darlene, tried kissing angela on the train that time when she denied him- he does it cause that’s what he thinks he should do. 

2. restrictive or repetitve behaviors

he’s absolutely all about those routines- he doesn’t want anything destructing his ’perfectly constructed loop’ anytime he has one. (season 1 starbucks, season 2 jailtime, season 3 ecorp) but it’s important to point out that in all of these scenarios, he’s been to one to break the loop himself. by realizing they weren’t making anything better.

there are a couple of nervous ticks he has, general fidgeting with his hands/hair/hoodie- all of these apply to every disorder we’ve mentioned here.

comfort item/food is a very good one!! since we’ve only ever seen him eat fries, he has a “crying corner” in his room, he’s constantly 'hiding’ under the hoodie. probably the main comfort item.

he’s also insanely hyperfocused on technology and numbers and hacking, obviously- he has a clear routine every time. burn the disc, delete the folder, write a song over one of the cds, shove them under the table. same goes for when he thinks he’s fucked up- throw stuff in the microwave, destroy it, you get the image.

speaking of those cds though, if he can remember exactly which song he wrote for each person he’s got data on; that could be a damn good indicator of it!!

all of this could be a combination of whys and becauses which is super fun if you ask me. elliot is complex and, although i share 2.5 disorders with him, i can’t relate to his actions/coping/thoughs completely all the time.

it just tells you how different everyone’s brains are, you can’t restrict a disorder to a specific pattern and only consider that when diagnosing somebody.

so, in conclusion, elliot could very possibly be autistic!!

[margridarnauds]

6, 12, 23, and 45 please!

Thank you!

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

So, I have no idea what we’re talking about as far as levels of involvement, but here are the ones I read fanfic RELIGIOUSLY for back in the day. So, behold my shame. 

Cats (oh, my sweet, innocent 12 year old self) - Mistoffelees/Victoria. 

Phantom of the Opera - Raoul/Christine/Erik, tbh. I started off E/C, then shifted to R/C when I realized E was a trashfire, then went to R/C/E when I realized that I loved garbage after all. 

Van Helsing - Anna/Dracula. Which is impressive given I’ve never. Actually. Watched it. Sue me. 

Carmilla - Carmilla/Laura.

The Pirate Queen - Graínne/Donal, one of the first fics I ever wrote. (And then never published.) Yes, he is a garbage fire in the musical, but in my very specific rewrite of it, he wasn’t. Though these days, I kind of lean towards Tiernan/Donal or Tiernan/Gráinne/Donal. Garbage pirate OT3 is garbage. 

Dracula - The Countess (from Makt Myrkanna)/Lucy Westenra. The first explicit femslash I ever wrote, and it might very well never see the light of day because I do not forever want to be known as The One With The Blood And The Lesbians. Though, who knows? It might cleanse me of Printing Press. 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Yes. Really.): Twilight/Princess Luna. I keep telling myself that my AO3 profile’s eventually going to be nothing but period dramas, my (1) Terra Nova fic, and…a My Little Pony fic, along with various Barbie Movie fics. For old time’s sake. 

Terra Nova - Wash/Mira, due to @janetcarter‘s influence. 

The Flash - Barrison. Specifically, Eobard/Barry. In many ways, it was my prep for 1789 with the whole “I murdered your parent” thing.  

The Avengers - Loki/Tony Stark.  

Les Miserables - Valjean/Javert 

The Golden Compass - Mrs. Coulter/Lord Asriel 

Arthuriana - Galahad/Mordred

Star Wars - Reylo or Finnlo. I don’t particularly have a preference, just let Kylo screw one of his various archnemeses straight to the side of the Light.

Star Wars: Rebels - Kallus/Zeb. Oh. Another enemies to lovers ship. Who would have guessed? 

1789 - Peyrol/Ronan (Was there any doubt? If there was, I need to write more.) 

Revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre - Madame Roland/Marie-Anne. In progress, but A Ship for me. Mainly because I’m a contrarian little shit who writes things when people tell me I can’t and then gets attached to the result.

Brennus, Enemy of Rome - Ahmet/Nissia. Which…I still need to. Write. My fanfic for that one. So that fanfic for it exists.  

Lord of the Rings - Boromir/Aragorn

Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie - Countess Orzelska/Wilhelmine and Fritz/Katte. Pretty much equally, though Orzelskine (?) Wilhelska (?) is starting to edge out Fratte. 

La Legende du Roi Arthur - Leia/Guinevere in the French and Morgane/Guin in the Takarazuka. 

Irish Mythology - Bres/Sreng. I will defend this one to the death and I will do it with citations and footnotes. 

Scarecrow of Romney Marsh - General Pugh/Dr Syn. Yet another one I. Need to write the fic for. 

Star Trek: …….. 

………You know, my favorite thing about Star Trek is that, regardless of shipping preferences, we can all find something to enjoy. Kor/Kirk. While I can’t speak for DS9 Quark/Brunt, my current favorite from Discovery has to be Michael/Tilly, which might very well be the single most wholesome thing I’ve shipped in a very long time. 

Ace Attorney: Phoenix/Edgeworth. 

12. Who is your current OT3?

Chauvelin/Percy/Marguerite from The Scarlet Pimpernel. I do not accept constructive criticism on this one. Because Percy/Marguerite are sickeningly sweet on their own, Marguerite/Chauvelin has That Sexual Tension in Where’s the Girl and The Riddle, and Percy/Chauvelin fulfill all my requirements as far as enemies to lovers ships are concerned.

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

I’ve talked a lot about Forgiveness being one of the very few things I’ve written that I’ve ever liked and the ONE thing that I feel…gets my idea of how L/R WORK together and probably shows off my style best, along with Fowl Play (WHICH HAS FANART NOW. WHICH I’M STILL NOT OVER BECAUSE MY BABY HAS FANART.) So, instead, I’m going to shift to Pour la Peine, which…is my messy, messy child in many regards, not the least because it’s so much longer + still isn’t finished. 

(Warning for various and assorted personal, squishy feelings, as well as cancer mentions)

When I first got the prompt from @fallenidol-453, it was January of 2018. Two months before, I’d received the news that my uncle had Stage Four Esophageal Cancer and my mother had moved from our house to his house to care for him, leaving me without her help for the first time in my life, which I deliberately kept as low-key about on here as I could be, given that, to be honest, dealing with the endless “I’m so sorry to hear that”s gets very exhausting after awhile and I was a college student with a schedule to keep. And he and I had a very…contentious relationship, despite the two of us being alike in many ways. Possibly because we were alike in many ways. And, by May of that year, he was dead. And I would learn shortly afterwards that my paternal grandfather had died in January, but no one on my father’s side had bothered to tell me. I spent a lot of time trying to deal with the stress of that time, juggling that with my schoolwork and my fanfic, which I tried to work on from the time I received the prompt onwards. (Tbh, I’d had the opening scene in my mind for awhile before, but I hadn’t had a larger plot + ending until the prompt.)

At first, I thought that I would publish it like I’d later publish Forgiveness, in one straight chapter, but as time went on and on and there became less and less of a shot of having it done any time soon, I ended up just publishing the first chapter and deciding to update it from there. And that chapter got a lot of ribbing from friends. “Her brother is dead” really came off as a very melodramatic first line, but I also decided, very early on, that I didn’t care about what the objective quality of it was; all I cared about was creating a snapshot of a time in my life, just like when I go through the stuff that I made when I was twelve and I laugh about the various and assorted OCs and questionable phrases but love them all the same because they’re my twelve year old self’s. And, where I was at that point in my life, writing Solène mourning a family member who she had a difficult relationship with while I mourned a family member who I had a difficult relationship with, it was the only line that felt right to me.  

There’s a lot of things with this one that I’m still not sure about. There’s a plot twist that I’ve tried to be quiet about for all this time (that I’ve probably been really terrible about keeping, tbh) and that is either going to be the Jumping the Shark moment or the defining moment of it, and I’m obviously not sure how that’s going to be received though I want to believe I’ve foreshadowed it enough to not make it too much of a swerve, I’m not sure how I feel about the ending, there’s a lot there that’s murky and probably more reflective of my writing a year ago than not, and I’m not sure about how I’ve handled the character dynamics given what we’ve got in canon or the dynamic I’ve put them into, or whether the choices they’ll make reflect THEM or what I WANTED them to do. Hell, with a few things, I’m not sure how I’m even going to GET to the ending. 

But, I’m really proud of how much I’ve had the chance to work with Solène and Olympe, I’m really happy with a lot of the work I put into sequences like the two chapters long March to Versailles, which involved looking into a LOT of personal accounts as well as secondary sources analyzing it, and I liked trying to flesh out Solène’s world. But, more importantly, of everything I’ve written, it and Le Cri are probably the most directly personal to me, and even though a part of me still says Her brother is dead is a hell of a melodramatic opening line, it fulfilled its purpose. And, tbh, sometimes that’s all a fic needs. 

45. What is your all time favourite fanfic? 

This is so hard for me, because there are so many fics that have left a huge impression on me throughout the various fandoms I’ve been in. In 1789 alone, I was thinking of at least two different fics at a given point, which is both fantastic and minorly stressful given how small this fandom is (one of which, incidentally, was Little Dove Heart, since that really gave me a huge push as far as Laz and his backstory and his characterization and his relationship to Artois, even if I tend to keep the latter more in the background). And there have been so many fics I’ve read that I’ll remember and go back to periodically, and that really helped me as far as looking at how character voices could be developed and how description would work and how to work a time period and a setting into a story. 

Overall though, I think I’m going to have to give it to Vae Victis, which is a work by @sineala‘s. I’ve never been quiet about my undying love for the Gauls and for Brennus in particular. Brennus is one of my historical favs, and I felt like this fic did a really, really fantastic job of bringing that much-neglected period of time to life and developing the characters on their own, without me having any background in the source material. With fanfic, especially with a more active fandom, there’s kind of an expectation that everyone knows the characters involved, so to be able to work in a different time and to get the reader fully invested in the characters and their relationship in their own right is a really fantastic accomplishment, and to be able to show the Gauls and Brennus (in what little time he gets, because my boi’s not the focus and I accept that) as three dimensional figures rather than a rampaging horde is always much appreciated. And it has a WORKS CITED page at the end, AKA the eternal key to my heart. 

[icharchivist]

Yeah same. My indifference to Chaoji has nothing to do with his dislike of Allen. But is he really the character representing the everyman? After you explain it then I could see it. I always saw him representing the black/white mentality sheep who see the world one way and don't acknowledge any other despite any evidence otherwise (ex, The majority of the Order so quick to condemn Allen as a traitor noah despite all the evidence contrary. Central says he's the devil so he is. Bias is bias). -

2 If anyone represents the everyman I always saw it as Johnny. Hoshino called Johnny vital since he was the normal human everyman trying to suceed in a supernatural/dangerous war. He also came into this more or less innocent to the horrors until the Order invasion and the Alma arc. He has no powers. No prophecy. No enemy interested in him. He's just there as a weak insignificant normal human trying to save his friend. They both could be everyman but as this point Johnny fills the role better. -

3 (and again started getting character focus post exorcist Chaoji. Unlike Chaoji Hoshino seems to be really fond of Johnny since she never planned on his character being as plot important as he is now. But she always found time to develop Johnny of all characters before he became important. Which is great because I love what Johnny's character has become).

You know that Chaoji talk got me thinking how he's usually labelled as the everyman type by fandom. But is he really? Chaoji's whole family was killed by akuma when he was a baby. He was taken in by Anita's crew (who worked w/the Order) and then they were also killed by akuma. He was so distraught he was the only survivor who tried to die alongside the crew. Chaoji never had a normal life. His life was always haunted by the Akuma. He might act full of smiles but he's capable of a pretty -

2 creepy temper (that nightmare face he made after Allen saved his life from Tyki. Yikes). He keeps it under control most of the time but boy if you even feel differently about something he hates. It's over. He's not going to forgive you no matter how good a person you are. Chaoji is a damaged soul. Even before the Order the Akuma took any chances away of him having a normal. Therefore I propose a new label: the angryman! Because he's probably perpetually angry (maybe why he likes Kanda? Lol).

Ahah oh my god okay so that’s all together.

And.. yeah you have a point i may have lurped it a bit more together to make my point. (the angryman kjdhfdkjf u are RIGHT. Oh boy that reminds me that back in the days there were theories Chaoji would awaken the Noah of Anger (since Skinn died) due to his anger issues. I don’t think there is anything that really make sense in this theory but it’s here xD)

I still think Chaoji is more “normal” than everyone else? 

(also i can assure you no one else than me in the fandom called him the everyman i think. I kiiinda spoke too quickly and most people who discuss Chaoji tends more to say that he’s the every-ass)

I do think you’re right tho for the black/white mentality, and..... oh man it says a lot about how i see humanity if i said “that’s what being the everyman is”..... 

But I think it’s also this the thing is that there’s not only one sort of “Everyman”, and Johnny represents the best ouf of the “Everyman” to me. Of really the one who would want to help in any shape of form and has no real angst reasons to do it except that it is what’s best.  So yeah I completely agree on the Johnny’s reasoning.

And yeah the more i re-read your reasoning the more i’m inclined to say you’re right and i spoke too quickly. Chaoji doesn’t really fit the everyman category, and more so the whole “black and white” mentality. I think it’s then more... The guy who was involved in the war but was powerless about it, had the time to form strong opinions about it, very black and white, and who against all odds, managed to get a “bigger part” of a soldier in it, late enough to not feel any of the Order’s bad side, all of that.

TI think i was thinking everyman because of how he tries to kill Allen during the Tyki incident actually, but i meant it more as the “normal guy” and the sharp parallelism between how, when given the possibility to act, Johnny would walk in for good stuff, to restore, to heal, to understand, while Chaoji leaned toward destruction, harsh and quick actions, letting his judgement cloud him. And it makes for a neat parallelism of “Two Normal People Without Power who knows enough about the war to be prepared about it, reacting differently at the Hero’s compassion - one to help, the other to destroy”. and I was thinking about it specifically since now we have a full arc of Johnny helping allen while Chaoji is hunting them down. 

But you’re right that the backstory doesn’t match the idea of the everyman all that well. It’s just the “powerless viewer who suddenly gets too special and decide to act on what he was powerless about before without having put in question how he felt so again” kind of way? I mean. People who are not involved in the wars can easily see it in a Black and White fashion, it’s kindof a way to cope: since you’re not supposed to ever be in a situation where you can act up about it. And Chaoji developped himself that way. When he found himself in a situation where he could act about it, he never reexamined his bias.

When you compare him to the others exorcists we know: Timothy, Miranda and Krory at least had never heard of the War before, of Akuma, of Innocence ect... so they’re creating their judgement as they go. Kanda and Lenalee has a past with the Akuma and Innocence but it was so shaped then by the Order and how it hurt them that it left them different ways to apprehend the war, both in more self-motivated goals than the war in itself. Not touching Lavi and Bookman bc.... yeah. Them. And we don’t know enough about the backstory of anyone else in the Exorcist Sides.

Meanwhile Chaoji has a set past of suffering and acting against the Akuma, but in a passive way. Like someone who read the news everyday and starts to get angry without being able to take it out. And Suddenly, he can. So instead of trying to discover and figure out how the war works, he just gets content with his previous ideology.

.. i don’t know if that makes sense.

but.... that does make it closer to the angry-man :”D so yeah i’m all with you there. Spoke too quickly previously ahah :3

[thesunsetshope]

That Catfe Kinda Love

For @maztri ♥

Read on Ao3.

Alec cooed at the white kitten in his arms, stroking its back gently. “The next cat we bring in, I’ll allow you the honors of giving the name.”

Magnus clapped his hands in excitement. “Purr-fect! I already have a name in mind.” Alec let out a small groan at Magnus’s pun, prompting about the name.

“Furddie Purrcury,” Magnus said, biting the insides of his cheek to hide his grin.

Magnus Bane always sought out the history behind a life - a story. The reason of course was that the history built the foundation of that life. While it is true that a person’s backstory does not always define who they are, at least one part of their history, one small detail, took them on the path that led them to be who they are today. History is what makes the future. It is what can make a person judge another without much thought.

Often times, Magnus feels like the same could be said, in a sense, for cats. Within a group, one would likely find that at least half the group prefer dogs over cats. Why? The answer always seems to be the same: because cats are arrogant creatures. Cats are not loyal or loving. They’re just too difficult to understand. It is what history has shown, according to society.  

And quite honestly, it was disappointing.

Understandably, people will have their preferences. Not everyone likes oreos, so why does everyone have to like cats? And, well, Magnus himself couldn’t deny that there were a few cats he’d come across in his lifetime that definitely left behind a scar or two. But he understood them. He understood the mysterious creatures everyone couldn’t.

So when he heard about a position at Brooklyn’s Cat Cafe that was available, Magnus jumped at the opportunity. Brooklyn’s Cat Cafe was one of the most popular attractions in New York, owned and managed by the Lightwood family. Maryse Lightwood was the founder of Brooklyn’s Cat Cafe, famous for her work as an animal rights lawyer. Her husband, Luke Garroway - who worked in humane law enforcement - helped oversee the operations of the cafe along with her children, Alec and Isabelle Lightwood.

It was surprising, really, about the Lightwood family. Maryse had been married to Robert Lightwood, a New York judge who was one of the cruelest people Magnus had ever heard of. The things the man had allowed as a judge sickened Magnus. And when it had been discovered the man was cheating on his wife among other things...well, it’s a story not worth repeating. It had been five years since the story broke out, so Magnus was just glad that Maryse and her children were able to turn it all around.

And now here Magnus was, standing in front of the cafe. It was his first day and a mix of nerves and excitement filled him. He could see the cafe was already flowing with people bonding with the cats, smiling and giggling as some of the cats chased after toys. The scene before him was enlightening, making his heart leap with joy.

Inhaling a deep breath, Magnus opened the door and stepped inside. A gray and white tabby was lying on a cat tree a few feet from the door, meowing at Magnus. Magnus read the name tag that hung around its neck and chuckled to himself at the name: Chairman Meow. Chairman Meow purred as Magnus scratched under his chin, closing his eyes in content.

“Wow, he seems to like you,” a voice said from behind Magnus.

“Hm, of course he does. All cats love me,” Magnus commented, turning to face the stranger. The stranger was a beautiful man with dark, messy hair and hazel eyes that made Magnus weak in the knees.

“Yeah, well, you’re the first person that Chairman Meow has allowed near him,” the stranger noted.

“Am I now?” Magnus raised an eyebrow, turning to face Chairman Meow again. “It looks like you and I are going to be best friends.”

The stranger let out an amused laugh, moving to stand beside Magnus. “Are you looking to adopt?”

“Actually, I’m here to work. I’m Magnus Bane.”

“O-oh, I’m so sorry,” the stranger stuttered out, extending out a hand to shake. “I’m Alec Lightwood. I’m, uh, supposed to help you out today.”

“You’re Alec Lightwood?” Magnus asked, shaking Alec’s hands. “Huh. I’ve always wondered how you looked like and I have to say, I am definitely not disappointed.”

Alec let out a jittery laugh, releasing Magnus’s hands. “T-thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” Magnus said, eyeing Alec up and down just for extra measure. Alec’s confident demeanor seemed to have changed to a more nervous one at Magnus’s attention, and Magnus couldn’t help but to smirk a little to himself.

“Right. Let’s get you set up. Follow me.”

Magnus followed Alec to the backroom of the cafe which Magnus presumed was an area reserved mainly for the cats. Everything for cat care was set up around the room, from litter boxes to food bowls. In one corner of the room was a crate containing a small group of kittens.

“How many weeks old are they?” Magnus asked Alec, pointing towards the kittens.

“Close to six weeks. They’re actually from the Brooklyn shelter a few blocks from us, but the shelter asked us to take them in for a few days since they’re setting up a new area for kittens,” Alec explained. “We usually do not have kittens otherwise.”

“Oh? Why not?” Magnus inquired.

“A variety of reasons, but one is the issue of diseases. Since they’re younger and smaller, it can just be harder to manage diseases and treat them. We want them grow strong and healthy, so we work with the shelter when it comes to kittens.”

“Hm, makes sense.”

Alec gave a small smile, grabbing a shirt from one of the cupboards. It was the same one Alec was wearing - a black t-shirt with the cafe’s logo on it. “This is the shirt we all wear. Don’t worry, you can do layers if you want and you don’t have to wear it every day. It’s mainly for when we have big events and all that stuff.”

Magnus nodded, grabbing the shirt. Alec gave him the tour of the room, explaining how the cafe ran. For now, Magnus would handle serving the customers and help maintain the cat room. He could also bond with the cats during break or after closing if he wanted to.

“Hey, Alec,” a young curly, brown-haired woman greeted, walking into the room. “Who is this?”

“Maia!” Alec beamed. “This is Magnus. Magnus, this is Maia. She pretty much manages the ‘cafe’ part here, so she’s the one to go to if you need any help.”

“Ah, I’ve heard a lot about you,” Maia revealed. “You seemed to have impressed Alec over here.”

Magnus raised an eyebrow, looking over to Alec who was glaring at Maia. “I’m intrigued. How exactly have I impressed you when we just met minutes ago with you thinking I was a customer.”

Maia snorted, walking over towards Magnus. “He read the letter you sent in along with your application. I’ve honestly never seen him so engrossed with something before. He wanted to hire you on the spot.”

“I see,” Magnus said, smirking at Alec. “I was wondering why I received a call back so soon and why the interview took place over the phone. It’s you I have to thank, hm?”

“Seriously Maia?” Alec groaned, obviously flustered. Maia winked at Alec, flashing a smile. “I was impressed by your letter. I mean, you only had to write one page but you wrote five, front-and-back. And the whole idea with the history compared to humans and cats...it was amazing.”

“Thank you. I had worried that I’d gone overboard, but I guess not,” Magnus said, smiling softly at Alec.

“You’re welcome,” Alec said, smiling back.

Maia let out a small chuckle, gathering a few items. “I need to hurry back to Leonardo DaPussy. I promised him a treat and I can’t leave him hanging any longer or he’s going to hate me.”

“Leonardo DaPussy?” Magnus asked, amusement in his voice.

“Yup. He’s the black and white cat that always has the mock-up Oscar toy we made,” Maia said. “He never lets that thing go.”

Alec hums in agreement, muttering something along the lines of ‘he loves that thing too much’. Maia leaves the room, calling out the cat’s name. Magnus snorts to himself, imagining the faces of visiting customers. Magnus returned his focus on Alec, who had made his way over to the kittens.

“Maia is the one who named Leonardo. Each of us here have given names to some of the cats, most of them a pun of a celebrity name,” Alec told, picking up a small, white kitten from the crate.

“And which cat had the fortune to be named by you?” Magnus inquired.

“Catsanova, a Sphynx cat that we had up until a few weeks ago,” Alec said with a grin. Magnus let out a loud laugh, shaking his head in amusement.

“Oh, my god. What was your inspiration, might I ask?”

“The movie. Catsanova was a sly one, just like Casanova from the movie. Seriously, he wooed all the ladies.”

“Hm, I would’ve loved to have seen that.”

Alec cooed at the white kitten in his arms, stroking its back gently. “The next cat we bring in, I’ll allow you the honors of giving the name.”

Magnus clapped his hands in excitement. “Purr-fect! I already have a name in mind.” Alec let out a small groan at Magnus’s pun, prompting about the name.

“Furddie Purrcury,” Magnus said, biting the insides of his cheek to hide his grin.

Alec stared at him for a moment before bursting into laughter, shaking his head at Magnus. Alec carefully returned the white kitten to the crate, his laughter still bright and loud. “T-that’s hor-horrible.”

“No it’s not!”

“Magnus...please. You know damn well it is.”

Magnus tried to hold back his laughter but soon gave in, agreeing with Alec that the name was indeed horrible. The two of them laughed for a good few minutes, clutching their stomachs. After the laughter calmed down and they caught their breath, Magnus couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear. Alec was grinning too, his cheeks a bright pink.

The front door of the cafe let out a loud ding, a reminder that there were customers to tend to.

“Come on, we can’t waste your first day laughing about your terrible cat pun,” Alec said, urging Magnus to follow him as he exited the room.

Magnus felt warm inside, a feeling of content settling in. He was going to love it here.

--

It had been a month since Magnus started working at Brooklyn’s Cat Cafe and honestly, it had been the best month in his life. He befriended Maia easily as they were often working the same shifts. Maia never failed to cheer Magnus up, always helping him out when he struggled with remembering the orders correctly. He also befriended Isabelle, whom he met a few days after starting at the cafe, and her boyfriend, Simon. Magnus enjoyed it when Isabelle would tell him stories about Alec, especially the stories of Alec when he was younger. Alec would sometime jump in to deny certain parts of a story, but usually he’d watch in silence with a small smile on his face.

Then there was Chairman Meow whom Magnus had developed a close bond with. Magnus would take the time to cuddle with Chairman during his breaks, whispering secrets that he knew would be safe in Chairman’s paws. Chairman was as much of a great listener as he was a great cuddle buddy.

Of course, there had been miserable days in which there were customers who did not understand the common decency of being nice and the college life would get to the best of Magnus. However, rarely did he go home at night without a smile. Alec always said or did something that left Magnus in a state of overwhelming joy.

The door of the cafe dinged, snapping Magnus out of his daze. Alec came rushing through with his backpack nearly falling off his back, customers looking at him with bewilderment as he stumbled, muttering apologies.

“Sorry I’m late,” Alec breathed out, dropping his backpack on the floor. “I hope you weren’t on your own for too long.”

“Oh, it’s quite alright. Everyone’s been too endeared with Luke Skywhisker to really pay me any notice,” Magnus explained. Luke Skywhisker was a gray Siberian that Simon had rescued from an alleyway a week ago. Simon had already named the cat when he brought it in, obviously endeared with him too.

“Good, good,” Alec said, looking over towards where the customers were gathered. “Has he been doing his one trick?”

“Yup. I’m honestly amazed that cat even knows how to do that,” Magnus commented.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Hm. So, did you get held up again by Professor Assface?”

“I did. He’s so infuriating, I swear to god. When will he realize that I’m not going to introduce him to my mother?”

Magnus chuckled, shaking his head. Alec was studying Animal Welfare, wanting to expand his horizons some more. Most of his professors adore Maryse, asking Alec about her on a daily basis. Honestly, Magnus didn’t understand how Alec was dealing with it. The professors should be enlightened with the fact that they have Alec in their classes. He was a genius, as far as Magnus was concerned.

“What about you? Any professors annoy you lately?” Alec asked.

“Other than shoving fifty exams in one day? No,” Magnus said. Honestly, being a history major could be a pain in the ass sometimes. There was too much history to cover.

The rest of their shift went smoothly, Magnus and Alec making small talk whenever possible. A few of the cats found their forever home, news that Magnus never tired of hearing. Magnus made his way over to Chairman Meow, sitting down next to him. Chairman perked up at Magnus’s presence, letting out a purr as he rubbed his head against Magnus’s thigh.

“Have you thought about it some more?”

Magnus looked up to find Alec staring at him with a soft gaze. Looking down at Chairman, Magnus smiled. Alec had once mentioned to Magnus if he ever thought about adopting the tabby and Magnus had. There were times where Magnus felt lonely, sometimes avoiding his empty loft. Often times, he’d end up staying at the cafe long after his shift ended; either hanging around with the cats or Alec.

Alec had a cat of his own, something he didn’t know until recently. As it turns out, Alec had adopted a Persian he rescued in an abandoned church about a year ago. The cat was named Church, of course. Alec explained that Church wasn’t exactly fond of people and usually liked to be left alone, similar to Chairman Meow. Though, Alec mentioned that Church seemed to sense when Alec had a long day, letting Alec pet him until Alec fell asleep. Magnus wanted something like that.

“You know, I have. And I think I’d love it if the Chairman moved in with me,” Magnus said, picking up Chairman and cradling the tabby in his arms.

“That’s great!” Alec beamed. “You two are a perfect fit for one another. I know Chairman will be happy with you.”

“Hm, I hope so. You know, maybe the Chairman and Church can have a playdate. They could be grouch buddies and meow about how annoying humans are while you and I have our own playdate,” Magnus suggested with a wink.

Alec stared at him with his mouth agape for a few seconds before quickly clearing his throat, nodding his head. “Y-yeah. I think we could arrange something like that.”

“Perfect! Now, let’s signs some adoption papers, hm?”

--

The past week had been one of the craziest and busiest weeks Magnus experienced. Firstly, there was the new addition to his household, Chairman Meow. Moving to Magnus’s loft was not a smooth ride for the poor thing, obviously not used to having such a huge space all to himself. The tabby found many places to hide, places that left Magnus wondering how the hell he even fit in such a small space. On top of that, Chairman had an obsession with Magnus’s socks, taking pairs with him to these hiding spots. Magnus had spent an entire morning looking for a pair of his favorite socks and ended up late for his civilization class in which he had a presentation.  

Then there was the cafe. Maryse decided to organize a huge adoption day event, leaving everyone scrambling to get the word out. Magnus was assigned the task of the promoter, and while he had no trouble promoting, it was tiring. Despite the cafe and its connection with the Lightwoods, there were many people that wanted nothing to do with cats. One person had asked Magnus if there were going to be puppies at the event and really, Magnus had to fight the urge to smack the person.

Magnus sighed with relief as he served the last customer, waving goodbye to David Meowie, the cat the customer just adopted. He plopped down onto a chair, letting out an exaggerated moan. Everything hurt. His back, his legs, his feet. It was absurd at how long he had been standing during the entirety of the day.

“Well, that was a success, wasn’t it?” Maia asked, plopping down next to Magnus.

“Indeed,” Magnus said, closing his eyes.

“You guys were amazing,” Isabelle praised. She wasn’t at the cafe often, usually working behind the scenes. Though with how big the event was, she came in to help.

“Yeah, seriously. The way you two moved, it was like lightning fast,” Simon commented.

“Thank you. You guys were amazing too. Though, I can’t say Simon singing was a great idea..” Maia said, referencing to Simon deciding to break out into a song, jamming his guitar. Simon had a good voice, but the cats were not fond of the guitar.

“Right, yeah, that was horrible,” Simon agreed. Isabelle let out a laugh, pointing out at how the cats collectively let out a hiss at the same time. They were like hyenas.

“Alexander did wonderful,” Magnus joined in. “I thought you were going to lose your shit when that lady’s child picked up the cat by its tail. Instead, you handled it with such grace and professionalism.”

Alec groaned at the memory, shaking his head. “Children need to be taught to handle animals carefully. They’re stronger than they look.”

Magnus has had way too many unfortunate encounters with children to know just how true that was. Their hands may be small, but their strength can be deadly. At least children make up for it by being adorable cute.

“Do you think you have it from here, Alec? Mom’s making me handle some papers so I need to get a head start,” Isabelle asked.

“And I have to study for my Biology exam tomorrow,” Maia said.

“Yeah, I should be fine,” Alec said, looking around the room. “Cleanup doesn’t look so bad.”

“I can stay and help,” Magnus offered. He had an hour or two to spare, and even though his feet are burning, he didn’t want to leave Alec alone.

“Really? Thanks.”

Isabelle clapped her hands in satisfaction, turning to grab Simon’s hand. “Okay. And don’t forget to let me know who you’ll be bringing, Alec. It’s very important!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alec mumbled, waving as Isabelle and Simon left. Maia soon followed behind, Magnus wishing her luck on her exam in the morning.

Both Magnus and Alec got to work right away, sweeping the floor and cleaning the tables. They ushered the cats that hadn’t been available for adoption yet back into the cat room, giving them food and water. They also checked inventory, marking what needed to be refilled and such. Alec let out a yawn, leaning against the counter.

“I can’t wait to go home and crawl into my bed. I’m so tired,” Alec said.

“Me too. I just want to make a nice cup of hot chocolate and snuggle into my bed next to Chairman,” Magnus said with a yearning.

“Hot chocolate sounds amazing.”

“I know. Though now that I think about, do I really want to be the one who makes it? I’ve been making and serving drinks all day and really, I just don’t even want to think about it.”

Alec chuckled, humming in agreement.

“So, what was Isabelle talking about? About informing her of who you will be bringing?” Magnus prompted with curiosity.

“Oh, that,” Alec huffed. “It’s nothing, really. She just wants me to bring a date to Simon’s gig this Friday.”

“Ah, I see. Have you thought of anyone?”

“There is someone...but I don’t know. I’m not sure he’s interested anyway.”

“Please, that’s absurd. I’m sure he’s very interested.”

Alec looked at Magnus with a pointed look, mumbling a ‘yeah, right’. Magnus rolled his eyes, walking over towards Alec. Seriously, who wouldn’t be interested in Alec?

“Look, even if he doesn’t end up interested, it never hurts to ask, does it?” Magnus pointed out. “Ask him out right now. Text him or call him, whatever. If he says no, which I doubt, then I will gladly take his place.”

Alec sputtered, a strangled laugh escaping his mouth. “There’s just one problem with that: the guy I want to ask out, is standing right in front of me.”

Magnus stared at Alec, shock settling in. Oh. Honestly, how dim was Alec? Did he really think Magnus wouldn’t be interested? For heaven’s sake, Magnus had plainly asked him out last week, though it seems as if Alec didn’t take that seriously. It would explain why he never took up on the offer.

“Alexander,” Magnus finally managed to choke out, “of course I’d love to go out with you. I was serious about that whole playdate thing, you know?”

“Seriously?” Alec asked with wide eyes. “I thought you were just joking.”

“No, never. Maybe I should’ve been clearer, but my offer was very real,” Magnus said, brushing his thumb across Alec’s jawline.

Alec swallowed thickly, his eyes flicking down to Magnus’s lips before returning back to Magnus’s gaze. “M-maybe I can take you up on that offer right now? I think Church would enjoy it very much. And well, I could make us some hot chocolate.”

Magnus smiled, biting his lips. “That sounds lovely.”

And it was indeed lovely. Chairman Meow and Church hit it off great, immediately running off and hiding somewhere. Magnus and Alec ended up falling asleep on the couch, arms entangled, spent from their heavy makeout session. Magnus couldn’t help but to smile to himself as he imagined the future, him and Alec with their two children and fifty cats. They’d be the crazy cat family.

--

Thank you to @icymalec for looking this over ~