#I'm not even like. God I'm all for trying to understand why people engage in destructive behaviors for the purpose of preventing them!

[theoreticalli]

I put 30 tags on that dear evan hansen post. for the love of god don't click to expand the tags I'm so fucking sorry I just hate that awful fucking show so fucking much. oh fuck I've done it again in the tags here oh god

[tgcg]

bad mouther, hole master

TG: kissing with tongue is gross as hell

CG: COME THE FUCK OFF IT.

TG: what

CG: I'M SAYING SHUT UP.

TG: oh

CG: IT'S NOT THAT WEIRD. IT'S LIKE THE NATURAL PROGRESSION OF REGULAR KISSING TO EVENTUALLY INCLUDE THAT. IF YOU HAD ANY SEMBLANCE OF ROMANCE GHOSTING THROUGH THE DEVOLVING REMNANTS OF YOUR THINKPAN YOU'D APPRECIATE WHAT IT BRINGS TO THE NUTRITION PLATFORM OF ANY CONSENTING CONCUPISCENT RELATIONSHIP!

TG: youre talking about it like its a goddamn military weapon or some shit

TG: some kinda scientific fuckin method to fondle a dudes mouth with your own mouth thats

TG: thats gross

TG: this isnt supposed to be a debate before fuckin congress on the pros and cons of getting your mack on

TG: its i would say a reasonably personal thing to react about and thats just my reaction man you dont gotta arbitrate it

TG: and like why the hell do they have to linger on it so long in these movies do they really want me to immerse myself in people necking each other that much

TG: roll the sounds around in my earholes like im swilling a fine fuckin wine

TG: well my professional opinion is that shit tastes and sounds mad gross and tbh i havent seen a single movie where it was close to being any kind of necessary

TG: its just a cringy waste of everyones time

CG: YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, AND I DISAGREE WITH EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF YOUR IGNORANCE GASH, YOU LUMP OF TIGHT-LIPPED CLUELESSNESS.

TG: did you just homestar me

CG: FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, SINCE YOU'RE APPARENTLY DESPERATE TO START SHIT WITH ME RIGHT NOW: HAVE YOU EVER EVEN DONE IT?

TG: hell no

CG: THANK YOU FOR PROVING MY POINT.

TG: proving your point--

TG: bro have uh

TG: have YOU???

CG: EXCUSE ME? HAVE I WHAT?

TG: come on

TG: i walked into this stupid conversation with a fucking shovel and by god am i digging myself a damn hole big and wide enough for every dave across time to squeeze in so i might as well get cosy in this shit before we all start collectively shoving dirt in our mouths

TG: bet your ass im taking you down with me though

TG: grab your spade and get digging man

CG: GRAB MY WHAT????????

TG: just tell me

CG: ???????!!!!!!!!

TG: karkat

CG: NO!

TG: f-

CG: WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!!!!! WHAT PART OF "SHUT UP" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND????

TG: wait no

TG: oh my god dude

TG: you can spin that shit all you want but you can do it the hell away from me

TG: i do not need to be hip to your weirdo foursquare fantasies

TG: patently not my business

CG: STOP RIGHT THERE. JUST SHUT IT. I AM PUTTING US OUT OF OUR MISERY RIGHT NOW. I AM CONDUCTING AN ACT OF MERCY ON THIS INSANE FUCKING CONVERSATION AND YOU ARE GOING TO ZIP YOUR LIPS AND TAKE IT.

CG: HERE IT IS: YOUR SINGLE OPPORTUNITY TO PRETEND YOU NEVER SAID THAT TO ME. I AM GOING TO FORGET YOU MADE A COMPLETE MOCKERY OF ME AND MY CULTURE THIS ONE TIME. AND LET YOU CONTINUE TO DIG YOUR STUPID, SHITTY HOLE.

CG: AND DAVE, I AM BEGGING YOU NOT TO WASTE IT.

CG: TO ANSWER YOUR SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE QUESTION, NO I HAVE NOT DONE IT.

CG: WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK.

CG: HAPPY?

TG: ……..

TG: way to defuse the situation solid work

TG: real gold star effort grabbin that lit wick and blowing on it

TG: ok first of all you asked me first so dont act like im the one being a weirdo about this

TG: second of all i didnt mean it like that and you know it

TG: THIRD of all what the hell was the point of engaging the knightly theatrics then if you cant even verify that shit

CG: WELL FUCK, SORRY DAVE! I GUESS I'M JUST A FUCKING ROMANCE ENTHUSIAST! I GUESS I GIVE A MAJOR SHIT ABOUT THE THING YOU'RE OPENLY MOCKING TO MY FACE! IS THAT SO IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO WRAP YOUR THOUGHT SPONGE AROUND?

CG: AND IT WAS COMPLETELY REASONABLE FOR ME TO ASK YOU THAT, YOU CONGEALED FETID NOOKSTAIN! MY STATUS ON THE MATTER HAS LITERALLY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE POINT EITHER OF US IS TRYING TO MAKE.

CG: TRY TO KEEP YOUR NUGBONE FROM CAVING IN ON ITSELF WHEN I DROP THIS BOMBSHELL: I'M ALLOWED TO HAVE OPINIONS ON THINGS I ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT, EVEN IF I HAVEN'T DONE THEM! I DON'T JUST GO TROUNCING THE FUCK ABOUT LOBBING MY UNFOUNDED OPINIONS AT PEOPLE LIKE I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING. UNLIKE SOMEONE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE INVOLVED IN THIS CONVERSATION WE'RE HAVING RIGHT NOW!

TG: youre

CG: I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU BY THE WAY. THE SOMEONE IS YOU.

TG: oh gimme a break

TG: bro youre going apeshit over something you havent even done

TG: you know what that sounds like to me it sounds like an overcompensating fake fan who doesnt get any

TG: you heard of troll napoleon complex

CG: AT LEAST I ACTUALLY FORMED MY OPINION BASED ON CAREFUL CONSIDERATION --

TG: -- oh yeah i bet huh

CG: -- INSTEAD OF JUST BANKING ON NUBJERK --

TG: -- not a real thing you just said

CG: -- REACTIONS AND WRINKLING MY SNIFF NUB AT ANY SIGNS OF GENUINE PHYSICAL INTIMACY!

TG: stop saying nub

CG: YOU EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED BULGEWAD

TG: not too much worse than being a perpetual fountain of emotional diarrhea

CG: DON'T YOU DARE.

CG: DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO USE THAT AS A "GOTCHA", YOU--… YOU! FUCK!

TG: dude did you actually run out of insults

TG: okay this is getting concerning

TG: youre the international dude of verbal dunks

TG: that can not be happening

CG: AAGHRJRGHJRGRHJAGHRJGRHJAGRHJRGRHJRGRHRJR

TG: you cant run out of em youre like the ultimate peddler of hate

CG: YOU DON'T THINK I'M CRITICALLY AWARE OF THE HOOFBEASTSHIT I'M SPEWING NIGH FUCKING CONSTANTLY?! I AM PAINFULLY COGNIZANT OF HOW MORONIC EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS!!!!

TG: feel like ive done some damage here

CG: ESPECIALLY MYSELF!

TG: alright bud time to calm down

CG: YOU CALM DOWN!!!!

TG: okay whatever!

CG: WHATEVER!!!!!!!!

TG: jeez

…

TG: here

…

CG: UGH.

TG: yeah

TG: really glad stuff like this happens in private

CG: YEAH. SAME HERE.

CG: JEGUS, CAN WE GO BACK TO BEFORE WE HAD THIS CONVERSATION? I DON'T ASK YOU MANY FAVORS, SO SURELY YOUR SLURRY OF ILL-DEFINED TIME POWERS CAN ALLOW YOU TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

CG: JUST LIKE, WIPE THAT WHOLE THING OFF THE SLATE.

CG: LET'S START OVER. SAY, FIVE MINUTES AGO. HOW DOES THAT SOUND?

TG: what conversation?

CG: OKAY, GOTCHA.

[jessicalprice]

I think the thing that most Christian atheists who are rebelling against authoritarian Christian backgrounds don't get is why Jews remain Jewish.

Like, I get it, you engaged in your practices because you were told that God would punish you if you didn't, because you're told you're supposed to fear God.

(Incidentally, we don't even use the same language about this. The term that gets translated in most English bibles as "fear" is, like many classical Hebrew words, a lot more multivalent than the English term, and has more of a connotation of "awe." (See, for example, the Gilgamesh dream sequence: "Why am I trembling? No god passed this way." A god is something in whose wake one trembles.) It's what one feels when one is faced with something bigger than oneself, something overwhelming. For some people that may be fear of being harmed. For others it may be wonder or even ecstasy, standing outside oneself.)

But in 2023, Jews have the option (and, indeed, still the cultural pressure) to completely abandon Judaism. Very easily. We can, in fact, do it quite passively. If we're not actively trying to engage with it, it will very much drift away from us.

And it's not fear of divine punishment keeping most of us engaged.

The thing is, if you proved to me tomorrow that God doesn't exist, I'm not sure anything about my life or my practice would change. (I'm already agnostic, so *shrug*. I don't believe in a God-person. Sometimes I believe in a unity to reality, a life and a direction to it. Sometimes I don't. I just don't have the arrogance to think I understand definitively the way the universe does or doesn't work.) I still would celebrate Shabbat, I still wouldn't eat pork, I still would have a mezuzah on my doorway.

I do all that stuff because I'm Jewish, not because I think God will get mad if I don't. I do all that stuff because it's part of a cultural system that I see as wise and life-giving and therapeutic and worth maintaining.

And the thing is, the cultural system that Christian antitheists want us to assimilate into, under the guise of "getting rid of religion", is very much a white Protestant culture. It's not culturally neutral. It has practices, and it has a particular worldview, and it has cultural norms that are just as irrational as any other culture's.

It's also very telling that Christian antitheists purport to be harmed by Jews continuing to be Jewish. Why? We don't impose our norms on anyone else, and we overwhelmingly vote (and organize, and engage in activism) against the imposition of Christian "religious" norms, such as the curtailing of reproductive freedom, blue laws, etc.

So you're only "harmed" by our continued existence in the same way Christians purport to be harmed by it: by claiming that the very existence of a group that doesn't share your worldview and practices is somehow an act of oppression against you.

Which is, you know, white supremacist logic.

You're still upholding the logic of Jesus's genocidal, colonial Great Commission even though you supposedly don't believe in the god that ordered it anymore.

That's gotta be one of the saddest things I encounter among my fellow humans.

You took down all the crosses in the church of your mind and chucked them out the window, but you still refuse to step foot outside the church building, contenting yourself with claiming it's not a church, and firing out the windows at the synagogue and mosque down the road, the same way you used to.

[xoxoavenger]

The Devil You Forgot

pairing: Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

summary: Y/N gets captured by a group of demons with a strange pattern.

word count: 2506

warnings: canon typical injuries, low-grade torture (like punching and non-graphic knife stuff)

a new player has entered the ring. welcome to the party, Dean Winchester

masterlist

"It's almost like you don't think I can handle myself."

"You know that's not true."

"Okay, then let me go."

"Y/N,"

"Dean," Y/N took a deep breath, hoping she wouldn't hurt her boyfriend in the next couple seconds. "Babe, it's just food. I think I can pull it off." Dean breathed through his nose and pulled his lips in, and she knew this wasn't the last of their argument.

"You don't understand. These are-"

"Demons?" She cuts him off, wanting to slap him. "You mean the same creatures I've killed multiple of? By myself? Or is there a new breed that I'm unaware of?" She steps forward, and Dean takes a step back. He's been slapped by her before, he knows when he's crossed a line.

"I just want you to be safe, that's all." He says with his hands up. She rolls her eyes, grabs her Glock loaded with the demon-trap bullets she carved herself, and walks out.

"Oh man, you really handled that well." Sam says from his spot on his bed, computer in his lap. Dean lifts his head up and looked at the ceiling, wondering why his girlfriend was so hellbent on going to the diner alone. She doesn't need to, they could use this as some alone time, but no, God forbid Dean ever gets any alone time with her.

"These demons are just smart, is all. Smarter than the ones we usually fight. It'd be better to go in pairs." Dean tells his brother, who just shakes his head as he goes back to tapping away on his computer. They were trying to figure out why the demons would be here, in the middle of nowhere, Texas. So far, Sam didn't have any leads at all, but it wasn't like Dean was helping.

"She'll be fine, you know her. She's great at this stuff." Sam offhandedly said. Dean knows he's right, and that's what makes him upset.

"I know, but why would she not want me to come with?" Dean asks, shucking off his jacket and sitting on his bed. He puts his head in his hands, not sure what to do alone.

"Holy shit," Sam says, causing Dean to look over. His brother is staring at the laptop, concern etched on his face.

"What? What did you find?" Dean moves over, wanting to see the action.

"I'm comparing all the victims," Sam starts, grabbing some papers of the missing and murdered people. "I mean, we knew they were all women, but I just found this article about Fatima, and apparently her boyfriend had just asked her dad for permission."

"Permission for what?" Dean asked, and Sam almost hit him for the stupid question.

"To marry her, dumbass." Sam said, and Dean just blinks. "And when we went to the Kapnen's house, Loreli's sister said that her boyfriend was planning on proposing. Had the ring and everything."

"Fuck," Dean mutters, getting off the bed. He's in a daze as he begins to grab his jacket.

"But why are the demons taking women who are about to be engaged? How would they even know?" Sam is still looking through the town's papers online, trying to see if there was anything about the third missing woman.

"We have to find Y/N." Dean growls, emotion threatening to crawl up his throat. He's pulling it back, making sure to bottle that shit up for another time; this is something he's usually great at, but right now he's having trouble forcing the emotion down.

"What? Why? I just told you that the demons are going after women who are about to be engaged." Now Sam's the one who's about to be slapped, and he feels sick as he realizes what Dean is about to say just before he says it. His eyes go wide, even before his brother turns around. 

"Sam, Y/N is about to be engaged." Dean holds up a box he's been carrying around for approximately half a year, on the inside pocket of his jacket so Y/N couldn't feel it.

"Shit."

~

Y/N's not quite sure how the demons got the up on her, but she's now in some dingy warehouse basement with a bag over her head. She owes Dean a big apology and probably some sort of makeup-food-sex that she's been denying him for about a year.

They take the bag off and it scratches her face. Her hands are tied behind her back, her legs tied to the legs of the chair. Her mouth has also been bound, and she thinks the demons expected her to have been crying. But she stares at them angrily, blinking as they all furrow their eyebrows.

One of them slaps her, hard, and she keeps her head turned that way so they don't see the tears brimming. She will not cry in front of these demons, even if the moisture in her eyes is soley from the shock of nerves on her face.

"Feisty one, she is." One of them growls, and she smirks through the mouth binding as she turns back to them.

"Let's see if that mouth has the same attitude?" Another demon says, and she accidentally winces as they roughly rip the gag from her jaw. She cocks her head as she rights herself, wishing she could brush the hair out of her face.

"Why so quiet, honey?" Another demon smirks, grabbing her face. She looks around and realizes they're all men, which is a little weird for demons. They usually come in different genders, but she doesn't have time to think about why. She goes back to staring at the man holding her, maintaining eye contact. "What, you don't have anything to say?"

"You haven't asked me anything, dumbass." She grunts out, ripping her face from him. He just leans back as his friends seem to think that was at least a little funny, if the smiles on their faces are anything to go by.

"We don't need to ask anything, sweetheart." A demon said, and she just frowned sarcastically.

"Right, okay." She nods, laughing just to piss them all off. "Then what am I here for? Is it because you want him to come here? Because believe me, this little trap wouldn't have fooled him even when he was a teenager. So I'm gonna give you the chance to untie me and maybe he'll let you live. But even then, I honestly don't know that he will." They all stare at her, before one starts laughing and sets them all into a bought of laughter. She just blinks, not sure what they're laughing at. Is this not a trap? They have to know who Dean is, what he'll do to them.

"You stupid bitch." One of them laughs, and then he flicks a knife open. She lets her eyes widen a little bit, but besides that she doesn't move, not wanting to give anything away. She can't help the whimper that escapes when he snatches her jaw, squeezing too hard and pulling her head to the side so that her neck is exposed. The horrible thought creeps in that they're going to slit her throat, and she can't even wiggle out of these stupid cords around her wrists because her legs are still tied to metal and she would just be dead before she could take a step.

The blade slices across her collarbone, and she grits her teeth. She will not scream, she refuses to, but she lets out a grunt of pain. Her breathing is more like a wheeze through her teeth, and she doesn't even notice that they've finished slicing into her until the demon lets her head go. She lets it drop and then picks it up immediately, taking in a deep breath and looking at the other demons, forcing herself to smile.

"What're you smilin' about, darlin'?" Another one asks, and she doesn't let herself falter even as the cut burns her skin and the blood drips down her chest.

"You either want something from me, or you like playing with your food." She says. She's just stalling until Dean gets there, which should be soon knowing her boyfriend. "Which is fine, I'm not kink shaming you. But come on, it's like you don't know who I am." This earns her a hard punch to the face, one that leaves her seeing stars. She's pretty sure she blacks out for a moment, neck stretching and causing her cut to pull open more. She hisses, keeping everything else inside. She doesn't breathe until she can feel her face again, pain radiating through her eye socket and cheek bone.

"How's that for playing with food?" A demon asks, but this time before she can respond she's being hit again by another demon.

"Got a leftie. Helpful, don't ya think?" He says, and Y/N can feel the blood on her cheek as she hits the cut on her chest with her chin. She yelps, but tries to laugh it off.

Dean will be here soon. He's gotta be close.

"What's so goddamn funny?" One of them asks, and she just shakes her head as much as she can.

"He's gonna kill you." She tries to take pleasure through the pain, but someone with a bunch of fucking rings decides to hit her and she whimpers in pain. She can't scream, can't let them have it.

"Who is?" One of them chuckles - the one with the knife. She looks at the knife for only a moment before she looks back at the monster's face. "Your fiancé?" They all laugh, and she would crinkle her eyes in confusion if one weren't swollen shut.

"He isn't my fiancé," She says first, not sure why she feels the need to tell the demons of all creatures. She's about to tell them just who she's dating when they all start laughing like she said the funniest joke ever.

"Not yet, isn't that right?" One yells to the others, who continue their laughter. He turns to her, sighing and wiping his tears away. He leans against the back of Y/N's chair, knife pressing into her left cheek. She breathes in through her teeth as she tenses, feeling the knife break the skin. "You boyfriend hasn't popped the question. But he's had that damn thing for - how long did you say it was, Kaleb?" He turns back, and a demon on the side has a face red with laughter.

"Seven months!" He screams, and Y/N forgets about the pain for a moment. She looks at them all, not sure if they're telling the truth or not. She would have noticed, right? With the amount of hotels they're in and out of and the fact that they have shared a bed for years now. She would have noticed at the bunker, because they share a room, and she's sure there's not a hiding place she doesn't know of. She doesn't remember what it's like to sleep on her own, and Dean doesn't sleep in sweatpants. So where was he keeping it? If, of course, he actually had it. Because demons lie.

And it's not like she was expecting Dean to ask. She knows he wants it - the whole American Dream, Nuclear Family shit - but he hasn't talked about it, so she assumed he wasn't ready. She knew he didn't want a family while he was hunting, which may mean never, but she also knows that Dean wants to be with her forever. So yeah, she thought about it, but she didn't want to push him.

"You're lying." She chuckled, face hurting as it scrunched. "You must have the wrong man. His name is Dean Winchester, may have heard of him?" Where is he?

"Wait," The demon in front of her pauses, and she's a little confused why they're not laughing anymore. Did they actually have the wrong man? The demon turns to one other demon in particular, who looks like he's about to piss his pants. "The man you've been watching is Dean fucking Winchester?" He screams, and Y/N blinks in surprise; they actually didn't know it was Dean.

"I only knew his name, not what he looked like! How was I supposed to know that idiot was him?" The demon hissed, and they looked actually scared.

"We're dead." One of others said, a hand going to cover his mouth. "He's gonna kill us all. He's probably already here-" The demon cuts himself off as blood starts to pour from his chest, light exploding from the space. He falls to the ground, and there Dean is, looking like the righteous hand of God. Blood is splattered over his face, but he's not hurt at all.

"He said it, darlin'," Y/N laughs, even though it hurts. "You're dead."

Dean uses the knife, and just the knife, to go through each demon. Y/N can feel her skull pounding, and by the time Dean gets over to her she has her head bowed.

"I'm here, baby, I'm here." He mutters to her, immediately cutting her bindings. He sees the leg bindings and knows that they did it so she couldn't slip out. He cuts those first, then moves up.

"Dean," She whispers, still not lifting her head. When he cuts her wrists she falls forward, and he grabs her.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. Get up, baby, come on." He holds her, one hand moving to her face to lift it up. "Oh, I'm gonna summon those sons of bitches to kill them again." He mutters as he takes in her wounds. He killed them with the demon knife, so he couldn't anyway, but it's a nice sentiment.

"Do you have a ring?" She asks, hoping he understands through the mottled words she was able to gargle out around the pain.

"What?" He heard her, but he's hoping her didn't actually hear her. "Come on, let's go, sweetheart. I gotcha." He kisses her forehead and begins to help her up, and she never breaks eye contact with him.

"Dean," She grabs onto his jacket with one hand, breathing heavily. He pauses, holding her as he surveys her injuries. She's got a couple cuts, bruises across her face, and he wants to stick the knife into himself for letting her go alone. "What's this?" She smiles crookedly, holding up the box that she had snagged from his pocket. He can't help but let his jaw drop slightly, shocked she slipped one by on him.

"You should give that back so I don't have to do this in a goddamn demon lair," He tries to smirk, but his heart is racing. He can tell his hand is shaking when she hands the box back, and he puts it in his pocket quickly before he starts helping her walk out of there.

"You're not even gonna let me see it?" She whines, and he just laughs into the cool air as they walk out the door.

"Not until we have a case on the coast." He tells her, helping her into the car.

"Fuck!" She yells, half a laugh behind it. "I'm never getting married!"

//

tags: @avada-kedavra-bitch-187  @one-sweet-gubler

[ask-the-rag-dolly]

okay . while i was writing the essay , i was going on a big spiel about how fandoms often reduce characters to familiar archetypes . then when i finished writing i realized i actually don't know what the Fuck i was yapping about because it all doesn't really apply to the tadc fandom post-ep 2 ? like Cool !! ragatha's an absolute loser of a woman , i think everyone has known that at this point .

basically ragatha's not the Best model for when i want to talk about nice characters being mischaracterized in fandom because i stopped seeing people making her put-together anyway . i can think of other characters that'll fit the thesis better .

i'm only deciding to post what i had down because i think i did say some stuff of note and because people were interested for . some reason ! . just keep in mind that it kind of became a nothingburger .

i'm in the middle of rewriting it to be less about the fandom though and my god it's already around 1118 words what am i doing with my life

also apologies in advance for the walls of text

——— this is not an essay to get you to like ragatha if you’re feeling meh towards her , or even dislike her . opinions are opinions , you have characters that appeal to you and i have mine ! this is just a ramblefest on why i love her , how people characterized her , and commentary on fandom culture as a whole

this is also not meant to bash any headcanons ! like good for you if you see her as the mother figure in the circus found family . the term ‘ mom friend ‘ here is used to describe how people often reduced her and similar characters down to a caretaker role for other characters while ignoring the Depth they have

as i think is clear in this blog by now , my favorite character in a piece of fiction has always been a mentally ill woman . the more complicated the brain , the better . i don’t have a type , but i know more often than not i would gravitate towards characters that are either misunderstood or disliked by most of the fandom

can you guess which category ragatha falls under —

don’t get me wrong , i am NOT generalizing tadc fans here ! the idea of her being a well-put together person lessened around episode 2 which is GREAT because i got to read very cool fics — and i’m not saying you have to know every part of ragatha’s thought processes to talk about her ( though at this point i think i’ve heard enough takes that makes me want to say that — )

‘ nice characters ‘ ( especially female ones ! ) in fandom never have the most pleasant development in my experience . either they will be pushed aside because they’re seen as boring compared to the more brasher characters or they’ll be disliked for the few times they did something seen as ‘ not so nice ‘ . and in the few times where they Are being paid attention , they’ll be put in an arbitrary box that waters down their traits .

in other words , fandoms put characters in boxes . terms like ‘ mom friend ‘ and ‘ cinnamon roll ‘ are those boxes . they're common tropes in media that fandoms typically like . it’s why people were so disappointed to find out that jax is actually an unlikable asshole instead of a ' jerk with a heart of gold ' — these boxes make the characters easy to consume and understand .

as you can tell , i don’t agree with putting characters in boxes ! first of all , how are they supposed to breathe in there ?

secondly , it’s just restricting yourself from genuinely engaging with a piece of media , especially for a character-driven story like tadc . i would be More forgiving of this problem if tadc was a plot-heavy show where the lore’s the main focus , but The Characters Are The Focus , Johnathan . trying to understand the characters personally to extract any potential moral lessons from them Is The Point of those types of stories

thirdly , i call those boxes arbitrary for a reason ; they often don't describe the characters at all , and in some cases , even goes against their characterization . my biggest problem with mom friend ragatha is that it Takes away the things that makes her interesting as a character .

do you know what's so compelling about ragatha ? it's that , believe it or not , she is Not the most reliable . one of the most fascinating things with ragatha in episode two is how it shows her approaching emotions Vs. Pomni approaching emotions .

even though it's unintentional , ragatha can be seen as Dismissive and Overbearing . the way she tried to reassure pomni of not feeling hurt by being left behind can seem Passive-Aggressive . her conversation with kinger shows that she Assumes what the other person thinks without hearing them out . this contrasts against pomni who lets gummigoo speak out his feelings and actually had viable things to say than ' don't worry about it haha '

this contrast is interesting to note because it shows the world of difference between ragatha and pomni's emotional maturity .

you can tell that ragatha can be simple-minded . not in a ' she's a dumbass ' way , but in that she's Reluctant to approach uncomfortable emotions without beaming it with a ray of positivity . like you can tell she thinks that Repressing her emotions to the point she can't feel them is the same as ' processing ' them . all of these are stuff that don't fit the Mature Mom Friend archetype .

and that's Fine !! because she was never meant to be in the role anyway !! there's a common theme of Community and Support in tadc , and that Everyone Has Each Other . ragatha was never meant to be the Glue holding everyone together , she's meant to be a part of the Unit that is the circus .

there's also a conversation to be had about how older female characters — or at least characters that are seen as having stereotypically ' feminine ' traits of being kind and caring — are often being pushed to a reductive , supportive familial role that reinforces gender roles , but you didn't hear it from me !

anyways uh in conclusion ragatha's awesomesauce ok i'm going back to drawing

[necrotic-nephilim]

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.

and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.

so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.

beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.

because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.

and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.

and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.

and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.

people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.

it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.

[rhemaji]

Lil rant abt Caine

Caine is just a lil guy, despite it all. From a design standpoint I thought I was gonna absolutely fucking hate looking at him because those chattering teeth toys make my skin crawl- but the art direction really helps make him look more appealing and whimsical than a disembodied pair of talking dentures sounds on paper.

The thing with Caine is I didn't initially like him that much after the pilot. While his interactions with Bubble were quite funny, that one episode left me feeling like he'd just end up being kinda one note or at the very least one note in a way that'd get on my nerves. Then everything changed when Pomni Wake Up Time to Go On an Adventure! attacked

The comedic timing throughout that announcement video was so fucking funny and thanks to his line deliveries and animation/model [?] upgrades- CAINE LOOKED AND SOUNDED SO ADORABLE!!

Legit it wasn't until this came out that I realized I actually could be on board with Caine as a character and it's been uphill from there. Episode 2 was better than the pilot not only comedically and visually but also in terms of showcasing just how actually unsettling Caine can be as an antagonist. Not because he's vengeful or malicious, but because he's so oblivious to how people work. His mind's always buzzing with terrible ideas and he's so so eager about these adventures, but at the end of the day he really really doesn't get the circus crew. Try as he might to include them, keep them engaged [ZOOBLE WAIT!], or even give them what they want [Exit doors] he doesn't realize how traumatic and distressing their current situation can be. The very nature of being trapped in a digital world is bad enough but it's especially rough here bc not only does its god have limited capabilities, you also are very well acquainted with him, and he can't fully understand your pain nor can he truly save you from it. He won't mourn your abstraction. He will not attend your funeral. He will not understand the distress of your arrival, nor the weight of your departure.

This isn't just sad from the pov of the circus gang, it's also very sad for Caine- not because i think he'll ever feel sad about it himself necessarily, but instead because the situation is sad. New members appear over and over, you craft adventures and games and distractions like [i'm assuming] they'd asked you to, but over and over, one by one, they abstract. They stop laughing at your jokes. They don't like you. They want you to leave them alone. It's confusing and maybe even inconvenient.

Where I'm hoping the series takes Caine is that this dissonance between Caine's intentions and the distress of the circus gang gets worse and worse and worse until something's got to give. I'm hoping that maybe at some point a character will try to sit down and talk with him and for it to either sorta get through to him but completely backfire in some form because he misinterprets what the others want from him OR i'd also be down for him to listen, but not understand any of it and proceed as tho nothing happened. I don't want Caine to come around really, it'd be interesting to see how Goose would go about having him come around to being a better host that empathizes more with humans, but personally I do prefer him to keep on keepin' on being this oblivious and eager antagonist.

My favorite Caine lines/line deliveries so far:

"You, my friend, stumbled into an incredible world of wonders, where anything can happen!…e-except for swearing."

"And here we have THE GROUNDS! Drown yourself in the digital lake, or engage in ridery at the digital carnival!"

"What do you think of XDDCC? You're right, terrible, LET'S TRY THAT AGAIN!"

"Kaufmo abstracted? Why didn't anybody tell me?"

"Bubble you can't say that"

"-ZOOBLE WAIT!"

"Why are you all just standing there?! The- The Canyon- C-Candy Canyon Kingdom needs you now!" [according to his VA, this was an actual line flub but hoo boy am i glad they use it bc it's hilarious]

"I know you guys love your NPCs, but if I start losing track of who's a human and who's an NPC, who knows...what. could. happen..."

That last line there specifically surprised me the most because up until he said that I was under the impression Caine was linked to every single NPC. I even thought he could see through their eyes if he so chose thanks to his "hundreds of all seeing eyes" line in the pilot. Him saying this here implies lots of things. Has Caine forgotten before? Is someone in the circus secretly an NPC ooooooooh~

"Who knows what could happen..."

Honestly, when Caine first said this I did immediately theorize Jax as being an NPC but now that it's been *checks calendar* three months since I watched episode 2, I don't think this is the case anymore. Jax being an NPC would be...something. Jax not knowing he's an NPC would be interesting [i like it when ppl's realities get shattered], but honestly I think this line was a way to telegraph to the audience that no Caine isn't actually all knowing. He didn't know Gummigoo was coming through that portal until he saw him with his own two eyes. My theory is that Caine is only able to teleport, create, censor, transform, and destroy the world around him, but isn't able to see all of it at once unless he tries to. I think Caine's default state is one where he only knows what he sees directly in front of him/what he himself has left waiting for someone else. And rather than implying someone in the gang is an NPC, I think that line in episode 2 was mainly implying Caine can be tricked, that it's possible to hide something from him, to surprise him even. Though I'm not opposed to an NPC we haven't met trying to join under the guise of being human, it'd potentially create some fun tension assuming the audience was given enough reason to care about them.

Jax is actually my favorite character in tadc, but i couldn't fill an entire post with things to say abt him. Caine seems to be- at least as of right now- the easiest of all the characters to try and wrap my head around. I'll probably have a lot more to say about Jax as he exists in canon as the episodes come out [EPISODE 6 MY BELOVED]

but uhhhh yeah, that's all the things i had to say abt Caine. Pls go watch/listen to the fansong Digital Land bye!

[koolades-world]

I absolutely LOVE your headcanons esp the Indian ones they make me feel quite seen even if I'm from a country that have super similar cultures (Mauritius) 💗🫶

But now I have to ask, I'm the eldest cousin so whenever there's a family gathering I'm usually the one stuck looking after all of my little cousins so if I brought one of the brothers with me they would all be wondering who he is to me and would interview him just being like, "Are you his boyfriend?!?!?!"

Any chance I could get any headcanons for the brothers for this? Completely okay if you can't!

hello! yes of course :)

this request was send in more recently but I just got back from a family gathering (as of 5/25 this is very prewritten haha) and got a fresh taste of this because im the eldest cousin too! i understand your pain haha. all of my cousins are little. chasing after kids you sometimes barely know the name of in a sari, lehenga, or salwar kameez is no fun

god this will be so fun to write!! (there’s still a whole bunch of random aunties, uncles and little kids at the house so I’m hiding since I don’t get to leave until tomorrow) like yesterday, most of this was written on mobile since I’m traveling so excuse autocorrect please :)

enjoy <3

Mc who babysits their younger cousins at a family gathering w/ the brothers

Lucifer

he’s getting war flashbacks /j haha and it’s written all over his face

he left home to get away from his brothers and basically entered an environment that’s exactly the same but with easily one hundred times the people

he’s almost impressed on their ability to never shut up and now knows why you’re so good at handling his family

however, he is dadcifer™️ so he’s great with the kids, and will try his best to answer their questions, even ones regarding your relationship status

Mammon

nothing gets past kids, and they can sense his weakness when he’s talking about you. they are ruthless

before they can break him, you have to step in and tell them to pick one question each to ask. he’s not sure how you’re corralled them so well, or how you can even tell some of them apart to the point of reprimanding them for tricking him. no wonder you can keep his family in line

once he realizes your job isn’t over until the night ends and their parents come to get their kids, he tries to sneak off a few times, but he always ends up with a couple shadows and has to come back

eventually he’s resigned to his fate, and finds he much prefers the cute little babies since they’re more than happy to mess with his jewelry, and he gets to pinch their cute little chubby cheeks <3

Levi

as much as he hates it, the kids love him and whatever device he brought along to play with

after promising to replace anything they break, he sits down and plays games with them and finds out he actually enjoys it

the older ones actually engage in the game with him and ask him game related questions, which he's more than happy to answer, and the younger ones can be handed a disconnected controller and still be kept happy

this is to the point where the kids actually forget to question him about who he is, and only ask if he'll be at the next event. who is he to say no?

Satan

you’re prepared, and he thinks he is too until he gets there haha. but, he keeps it together and adapts well

you’ve thought of just about everything, from wearing extra, cheaper bangles to hand to them to keep them happy to man knowing every trick in the book to get them to finish their dinner and he can only hope to reach that level someday

he's very collected though, he tries his best to deflect their questions and keep them off that topic

however, part of him knows that's impossible and eventually he caves and just answers the questions to the best of his ability, hoping you aren't listening. never have you seen him so out of his element

Asmo

if it’s a dry event and for some reason isn’t on the dance floor, or there wasn’t one to begin with, he’s so in love with the job you hate so much haha

he’s so attentive with the kids and adores them. he’s got lots of tricks up his sleeve to keep them entertained

of course, he owns it when one kid asks if he’s your boyfriend and proudly tells them yes, he is, (even if he’s not) and answers any other questions they have even if you’re embarrassed

now, the kids look forward to seeing him and expect him everytime

Beel

he’s very chill and almost finds it enjoyable, mostly there to keep you from losing your mind

when the kids eventually decide the food they picked out wasn’t what they wanted, and instead whatever he’s eating, he’s more than happy to share with them. after, they’re you’re flesh and blood, so they’re his family too

of course he’s their jungle gym and he takes turns tossing them in the air, and giving piggy back rides

he’s not quite sure how to respond to all of their questions, but as long as you’re alright with it, he’ll answer honestly

Belphie

as a youngest himself, he’s overwhelmed. is this what he’s like?

the kids won’t let him sneak away to nap, because they’re hyper aware of everything and will catch him

honestly, he’s more annoyed than anything, but he might take a liking to a few and spend all his time with them. he feels like he’s being attacked by all the questions

he’s a lot nicer to you after that, since he realized that’s your life, and he only got a small taste of it

[pearlaquaoceans]

Maybe I'm having a total brain fart and can't recall the moment, but.. Dorian hasn't actually told anyone his brother was murdered by a Lolth right? He only said his brother was dead, his friends were now champions of two of the gods, and he's seen evil in the world. If he did actually say 'Lolth, a god, killed my brother' or the like, please, for the love of the gods, send me a timestamp to shut me up. I saw that last chunk of 93 when it was discussed most prominently, as Dorian took every opportunity to not talk about it because he couldn't handle saying it out loud.

I'm seeing so many takes that Orym is heartless, selfish, or terrible for shutting Dorian down in the conversation and yes it is not okay to do that to someone, but like.. has Dorian communicated any of that fight to Orym? Robbie has said Dorian is the ultimate compartmentalizer, so why would he talk about it when he could just ignore it? So how would Orym know?

Yes, it's dick move, but also how many people have done a 'maybe we hear Ludinus out' even when knowing Orym's story? That's gonna wear anyone down. Seeing the man you love be on the opposite side of the conversation must hurt. I do not believe Orym would say that same rebuttel if he had full context. Same with swordgate. Laudna did not say anything but did try to steal it and ended up causing harm to him and escalating the situation at breakneck speed. As soon as he had even a slightly better understanding of the situation, he put the sword down and said he chose her over the sword.

If Dorian isn't going to communicate his pain and his experience to give Orym a new understanding of the situation, how is Orym supposed to know? Orym often asks for people to spell it out for him, and subtle context clues are not his Forte, but fans seem to expect him to know all the things he hasn't been told. Again. Shooting Dorian down was wrong (I believe Liam knew exactly what he was doing because he wanted that tension because its juicy and he is the king of it), but I'm genuinely confused by the takes saying Orym is horrible for the things he said like he said them knowingly. If Dorian cannot communicate what has caused his pains, how is Orym supposed to save him from that pain or to understand his view?

This is, of course, me viewing 103 through my own lens of my experiences and how I understand and connect to the characters. I am also someone who struggles to pick up context clues. If I'm not told anything but people expect me to know the rules of the engagement regardless, I'm gonna fail. People are allowed to have their own views. I know I don't have charitable views of certain characters. I'm just confused why Orym is called an asshole for his words, more than once, when the conversations being had aren't exactly even playing fields. Again, if there's a timestamp, please let me know so I can recontextualize my own understanding of the conversation.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

why do so many people keep calling ed izzy's abuser? I thought it was kind of funny how wrong they were at first because I love being right but at this point I feel like, if you really believe that why do you even like this show? where the main love interest is a violently abusive indigenous man? that sounds boring as shit. what would possess the writers of the show for them to make such an awful decision?

but then I think, if this many people believe it does that mean I'm the one who's wrong? or is it that the creators fumbled that storyline when they should have been clearer about it? or maybe it's just that most people on here have had their reading comprehension scorched away by Sherlock Holmes conspiracy theories and Steven Universe discourse. I can't tell. sometimes I think the internet may have been a mistake.

No they're wrong here's what's going on. People all read this shitty fic called Hell or High Water where Ed was everything the Izzy stans say he was and then instead of realizing that Ed is sad everyone regressed into thinking that the Kraken Era TM was going to be incredibly violent, like serial killing blond men because they look like Stede levels of violence. Even if you didn't read HoHW you saw art or read fic from people who had engaged with this fic and succumbed to it's premise. So there's been this background radiation of misunderstanding what the Kraken is on the fandom for several months. So inevitably when Ed did some mild violence and then attempted suicide by threatening murder until the crew took matters into their own hands, which is not abuse or torture by any stretch, btw, it's a murder-suicide at worst (I say at worst because I consider it fuckery-suicide I don't think Ed was trying to kill people I think he was trying to force them into a situation where they thought it was kill or be killed so that they would choose to kill him, but that is my interpretation and you are free to think it's a botched murder-suicide I have no problem with that), which, murder is something the show has never condemned and if it did it would be horribly inconsistent. So anyway, Ed's whole Kraken Era was categorized in the show by him being sad and doing so many drugs and begging someone please god anyone to kill him and trying to break Ned Low's record out of the evil boredom, but because it had a murder-suicide element to it and Izzy's toes were getting removed and he waved a gun around at everyone once (in a way that felt to me like he was trying and failing to work up the nerve to blow his own brains out but I digress) people who liked HoHW and were mad that people had called it out were like "see hes being violent HoHW author vindicated" as if anything Ed did rose to the level of that fic

And you want to know how I know this read is bullshit? Because when I watch the show with people who don't read fic or interact with the fandom and then I gauge their reactions without showing my hand they all implicitly understand that Ed is reacting to Izzy in a way appropriate to how pirate captains react to threats from subordinates. The spectrum of reactions has been from "hey isn't it weird how Ed was the Kraken because his dad was abusive and now he's the kraken because of Izzy? Maybe there's something there but idk" to "I don't think you can apply the logic of domestic abuse to a pirate captain and first mate but also Izzy had it coming" to "I cannot feel bad for Izzy after last season, I'm sorry." To "lmao Izcel" and I've showed this show to roughly everyone I know. The only thing I can conclude from the fact that people who don't engage with OFMD fic almost unilaterally thinking that Izzy is in the wrong and then coming online to see people thinking the opposite is that Izzy as victim and Ed as abuser is pure fanon, like how Stede is a cinnamon roll who talks like Azeriphael.

But anyway yeah you're completely right about the fact that this would be a bad show if they decided to make Ed into a domestic abuser. I don't want to watch a rom com about a domestic abuser falling in love and I don't want a show that decided to make it's indigenous lead abusive when the stereotype of indigenous men as abusers is still to this day used as an excuse to separate indigenous children from their families and put them with white Christians in order to erase their culture. Good thing OFMD didn't make Ed abusive, so I still like the show.

[liquidorcard]

Okay, to the anon who sent me the breakdown of what happened to Liquid Lily:

Thank you for the write up. I do appreciate you filling me in. But I'm going to use this as a chance to address the ground rules of how we address Courtney going forwards on this blog.

Let me be perfectly clear here:

Courtney's behavior as of late has been very upsetting. To me, to many of you, yes. I have very much privately expressed my own thoughts, feelings and frustrations on the matter in more private settings. There's no sneaky shade here, everything I've said I'd be more than willing to say to her face. I'll send her screenshots myself of everything I've said if she so requests it. I'm not here to gossip and bitch and not stand by it when confronted.

And Courtney on the off chance you're reading this, on the off chance you give a shit what I think of you and want to hash it out, my DMs are still as open to you as they have ever been. I'm not going to be brow-beaten because you don't agree with my perspective on things, I'm not interested in a pointless back and forth, but any concern you have with my presence in this cursed space I am always willing to hear you out on. The offer will always be there if you want me to signal boost something you want out there, of what little I can. It doesn't have to be a whole thing.

I'm also not going to wag my finger and tisk tisk on anyone else sharing their thoughts on Courtney's behavior. Nor do I want anyone to think I'm implying Courtney deserves to be coddled and babied because she's too fragile to handle people criticizing her.

With all that said. . .

Courtney will remain a no-poop-touching subject here on this blog. Obviously, she exists, bring her up when relevant, but we are going to refrain from name-calling and casting judgment. We are not making jokes now at Courtney's expense. We are not psychoanalizing her, speculating, making a circus side show. I will bring her up or respond to asks aboit her if I feel it's appropriate, relevant, or necessary.

Here's the thing gents:

Courtney and I have had some very similar life experiences. I'm not going to pretend to know her whole truth or suggest I'm an authority on her because of that, but. I know for me, having gone through what I did didn't help me become the most pleasant person on God's green earth either.

I never intended to hurt anyone, but I did. I have. I am very aware I have the capacity to do so again if I don't keep myself in check. I take full responsibility for the ways I have absolutely set bonds with friends, family and lovers on fire before. I hate it, I feel the full weight of that guilt to this day, but it's better to accept it and do what I have to to be better than pretend I'm a Saint. I've been told by people in flesh space and online how much they appreciate how "level-headed" I am. There isn't any kind of trickery afoot, I learned the hard way one too many times the cost of me not managing myself appropriately. I've put in the work to learn, and even then it's not like there's zero chance I won't eat shit and have a public meltdown caught in 4k. I hope that doesn't happen, lord knows I'm doing what I can to mitigate that risk-- but if it does all I can do is take the L and try to do what I can to fix it. I'm always hopeful the people in my life will forgive me-- and I'm thankful most do. But some don't, and I understand why. Some do, but it's better for both of us if we give each other a wide birth. Being a big boy do be like that sometimes.

And to be frank, if my abuser became an internet lolcow you couldn't fucking pay me to engage or come forwards. All of Lily's known victims are much braver than me. There's always going to be this extremely isolating disconnect when it comes to passive observers engaging with your abusers shitty behavior and you. The deep, crippling, profound panic and imminent sense of heightened danger is never going to feel the same. You might as well be on a different fucking planet, no matter how empathetic or accommodating they are. I can all but 100% garentee the histrionic way I'd be acting wouldn't paint me in a flattering light either.

I've heard some concerning information on some of the things that might be going on in Courtney's life right now. I trust the source it came from but have no way to verify if it's true. If Courtney publically confirms it I'll consider adding my two cents, having had lots of experience with what may be going on. Not that it justifies her actions, again, just very much contextualizes it.

I will say, I do think the sentiment of Courtney's frustration is more than valid-- I just think she made a lot of very poor decisions in who she directed those feelings at, then escalated things far beyond reason. I also empathize with her frustration over everyone and their mom telling her to log off because she's having an episode. I can tell you from my experience I would not respond well to anyone but a very close, trusted person in my life telling me that regardless of whether or not it was true. I've also seen plenty of OTHER dickweeds call Courtney "damaged goods" and the like all over the internet so I really don't blame her for shadowboxing ghosts now over it. You know who you are.

Being a victim doesn't make you incapable of harm or absolve you of personal responsibility. Lily's the fucking poster child for that.

The thing is, within reason, I believe in giving people a healthy amount of space to be messy bitches. Glass houses. It's one thing for me to comment on Courtney somewhere where there's little to no chance people will see it without context, it's totally different for me to put it out there in a space anyone can see it without knowing what went down.

Anon, I'm not scolding you, but I'm going to ask you be careful where and how you describe Courtney in the future publically. The last thing she needs is for more people to treat her like her trauma isn't relevant-- and unfortunately people routinely do expect victims to be perfect little angels. I'm not going to risk putting Courtney in the line of fire for that kind of behavior.

Thank you for your understanding.

[burr-ell]

So I was, bless my heart, engaged in a discussion about Critical Role's pantheon on the bird app, prompted by my frustration with the way people have talked about the Raven Queen in recent months. In that discussion, the other party repeatedly compared the Raven Queen to a doctor or an employer, and, when told that these comparisons are flawed, claimed that it's necessary to use interpretive proxies to relate the gods to our material world to better understand them. I found this enlightening in the worst way.

What this person is saying is that the only way to understand things you don't immediately connect with and recognize in a story is to make them become familiar to you. Now I understand the root of this idea; part of the point of fiction and art is being able to relate to the particulars of a narrative to better understand someone else. There are many elements of different stories that do map well onto the real world. But therein lies the issue—past a certain point, fictional narratives will not ever be completely relatable to you, because they are never going to be exact 1:1 representations of your life. Even a real person's experience that is similar to yours will not match yours beat for beat because that is still a fundamentally different human being.

The question is, what do you do with that? How will you engage with this new concept or experience that the story is presenting? You can immediately try to make it comfortable and recognizable, or you can let go of yourself and accept that there are things here you may not know, and you get to know them through their voices alone.

At the end of the day, art is a form of communication where the communicator imparts some kind of message upon you, whether the message is something about death and grief and the value of life or that it's really funny to watch people get hit with heavy objects, and while it's up to you how you respond, your response may not ever be heard. A key part of communication is listening to others and treating them as fully autonomous human beings, and effective communication recognizes that some of those human beings' lived experiences are nowhere close to resembling yours and are not obligated to be. The only way to respect that is to meet people and their stories on their terms—giving up control and giving up that which you understand. You have to be willing, if only for a moment, to deny that your experiences should have any bearing on what another person is trying to say at all.

I can only speak for myself here, but if I'm not willing to do that, then what I'll end up putting back into the world in response will be nothing but reflections of myself. And I like myself a lot—which is why I know that sounds sad.

[lesbianherald]

hello! i want to start off with thanking you for sharing coming home (but not to you) with us!

i was hesitant to read it at first, just because it’s not finished yet, but ofc i ended up giving in. best decision i’ve made :’))

aaaaaaaaaaa im in love with how you wrote them. gosh, the angst hits amazingly, i immediately ran to my friend to share it and told them to read this now!!! i’m a sucker for professors au (we’re lacking in it /sobs), slow-burn, angst, yearning, friends to rivals to friends to lovers again and your fic matches all those! and to top it off, your writing is amazing!

LOVER BOY JAYCE, MY FAVOURITE FLAVOUR OF HIM!!! fawk i just want to give him a hug and a pat on the back /becomes ximena for a bit to just do that/ lmao

and viktor huhuhu holy fuck how do i even describe what i feel for him? i think the best way to express it is /takes off mask/ i am jayce—jk dbdbdjd but yeah i love viktor a lot and i feel so much for him idk how to form the words😭 he’s my favourite and i love love love the way you write him! i love how you were able to balance his confidence and insecurities so well i just want to squish him dhdhdhd i think at some point i was praying he stops being stubborn and let jayce apologize, but honestly it’s hard and i understand why he was very firm. gods the tender moments between him and jayce huhuhu i want to bawl my eyes—i love jayvik so much.

the highlights for me were the catnapping (love this scene), viktor’s mentorship with jinx (my two faves😭🩷), the sisters’ reunion, ximena (omg i love her so much, i want to be her child and get smothered by her love), and ofc, the apology scene😭🩷🩷🩷

this was supposed to be just a small thank you and then get to my questions, but i ended up gushing a bit ^^; i should have probably taken this to ao3 comments instead dbdhdhd

so moving on to my questions, please know you don’t have to answer them if you’re not comfortable! i’m just interested in knowing some of the process authors’ go through when writing fics! and the way they choose to interpret the characters and their relationships.

- what made you watch arcane and fall for jayvik?

- were there any troublesome scenes/parts to write?

- which dynamics were you excited to write and explore in cmbnty?

- were there scenes that you wanted to incorporate, but didn’t end up adding?

- and lastly, other than arcane and jayvik, what are some of your interests?

that’s all!! and once again, please free to ignore the questions if you’d like!

p.s i laughed so hard on your author’s note about jayce not driving a cybertruck😭

thank you so much again for sharing cmbnty!

<3

HOLY MOLY THIS IS SO SWEET AND THOUGHTFUL!!!! I LOVE QUESTIONS!! I'm going to take some time to answer this one so here. Also, I do get into the current chapter a little (no spoilers, obviously, but maybe some lil hints/teasers, so I hope that's cool)

thank you so much for your thoughts on my viktor and jayce! I've worked so hard on trying to make them just the right amount of difficult and flawed so I love it when people see that and says it hits <3

the catnapping scene was so fun to write - and I adore jinx - so I'm glad those two things also hit fo you <3

i first watched arcane when it came out in 2021 because I saw gifs of it on tumblr and was so thrown by how beautiful the animation was. (I wont lie, controversially, I almost gave up on it because the music was so..... choice to me). i loved jayvik at the time. i was really hoping caitvi was going to hit harder (another reason I got into it is I heard lesbians) but I didn't really connect with the enforcer elements of caitlyn's story (I love her but yeah I found it all a bit questionable and I'm very very sick of lesbian cops in media)

i was obsessed. but not 'its time to engage with the fandom' obsessed. for some reason the first season just didn't hit as hard then as it did on my re-watch.

fast forward to 2024 and sorry this is so personal - but I'm between hyperfixations and am very depressed (lethal combo DKSLFJHSD) and it was the perfect storm for me to get re-immersed in arcane after I saw the first trailer on my twitter feed.

jayvik itself hits a lot of buttons for me I just adore. they're both genuinely kind characters who are flawed but want to do good. they have a natural chemistry and I just love stories about people who hold certain gifts that may be isolating and then they find each other and it means that they become the only people who can really understand each other?

I'm also OBSESSED with scientist characters. something about the beauty of discovery. the passion. the way its so easy to create something with good intentions that winds up causing harm. i have close family in stem and did a lot of stem stuff in undergrad and idk. i just really love scientists. my ideal woman is some hot woman in stem DKFLJSHf.

viktor being disabled (which i also am) also added a layer to this for sure. and just. the immediate stakes of saving someone's life. connecting over a dream - that Jayce is just so graciously and immediately willing to share after like. a few hours alone together lmao. it all feels so intense and loving.

2. troublesome scenes to write

so many dfkljh.

the flashback in chapter 3 came kind of out of nowhere for me. i did not expect it to get so emotionally charged- and to feel so much when I was writing it. i left this note in chapter four - but I was sitting on the chapter for days and afraid to publish because I was so surprised by it. it wasn't so much troublesome to write as it was troublesome to edit/reflect on. i got really in my head. i was like this is fanfiction about league of legends characters. why did I write this? DLKFJSHD.

the flashback of their big fight in chapter 5

this one, I'm so glad I wrote this before getting eyes because I fear I would have been very tempted to sanitize it and make it less mean. even now I've gotten a few comments being like. :( jayce would never do that :(

in my opinion... he would lol and I stand by it. everybody is capable of being really ugly and horrible when pushed into the right corner/circumstances. and jayce very much did manufacture weapons on the show despite viktor's wishes - so its something I was really wanting to explore in a modern context.

its just something i had to think a lot about. how far did I want it to go? how could I make it get really nasty while keeping some sort of empathy alive for both sides, especially jayce. how to I make sure viktor doesn't become this innocent victim in it all? how do I make sure that mel, despite being a catalyst, isn't portrayed as like a villain who ruined everything and instead as someone with her own unique motivations and concerns that happened to deliver crucial information? i hope I did all of it well. I'm personally as happy with the scene as I'll get with anything.

out of all the scenes I wrote, this is the one that gets the most pushback, specifically relating to jayce. i knew that would happen going into it, because I think the fandom has an over-romanticized view of jayce's arc and actions in season 1. but oddly I'm almost happy with that? I'm glad that it challenges people. one of the things I find most compelling and beautiful about jayce is redemption. and redemption can't happen unless you do something that requires it - so I hate that people ignore how much fucked up shit he does in season 1 lmao.

mel and viktor's slay-off on the balcony

the end of chapter 11 where mel and viktor talk I just knew was going to be incredibly important. it was one of those moments I was leading up to the whole time, because I knew it would be very relevant in future chapters (wink wink) and because its such a culmination of everything that's happened so far.

on my first write of it, i think because I was afraid of it, I focused way more on the logistics of what was happening with noxus and the board etc etc. it took me a while to find a balance between plot and emotion I was comfortable with.

for some reason the entire time i knew they were going to wind up laughing together. that was very emotionally important to me. but getting there was uhh... hard. again. I'm not saying I did this (or the above scenes) perfectly like good god. but yeah this one was a hard journey.

very important/high-stakes scene in chapter 13

there is a very big scene that I've had planned the whole time that, after season 2, I found important to take in a slightly darker and more dramatic direction. a lot of reasons I was torn on this - 1 - allowing season 2 to influence my writing is something I'm hesitant about. but also this is FANFIC so I decided that's kind of the point.

but its very much been a very delicate balance of a few things - 1. how do I not get preachy and let my anger at the particular storyline in season 2 affect how I write this? 2. this deals with jayce and viktor being witnesses to other characters struggles vs being at the center of it themselves? so I have to deal with how much they can actually be present. (this was also a struggle I had when Vi and Jinx reunited) how much they would logically witness before it feels like they're only present so I can continue telling the story. 3. because its such a dramatic scene, how do I make the dialogue feel real? how do I not let a particular character speak their feelings too much while also giving people a good window into their psyche? 4. how high the stakes should be. (this I will elaborate on once its out)

i am incredibly nervous for this scene. more so than anything else I've written in this fic. I'm still working on my first draft of the chapter and am going to spend so so much time in the next drafts on it. it's going to be really hard to land this one - and I really wanna do it right.

the final scene :)

i still dont have my final scene. i know where its happening, what thematically I want of it, how we get there, and I know I'm writing it today.

there was a moment where I almost went in a direction I think people would like- but have decided against ultimately. it felt too... cliche and a bit unearned.

additionally, with characters like viktor, who really struggle with saying what's on their mind, I have to play a very careful game of giving him bits of dialogue that land and feel like growth, without feeling unearned or unnatural.

3. which dynamics were you excited to write and explore in cmbnty?

aside from the obvious, jinx and viktor (honestly after season 2, i wish i explored jayce and ekko more), mel and viktor, cait and jayce.

4. were there scenes that you wanted to incorporate, but didn’t end up adding?

there's nothing huge that jumps out at me. honestly, I think there are probably some things I could have condensed more looking at the word count. i think the only thing is I had an idea for a flashback last chapter that dealt with jayce in the aftermath of viktor leaving, but I couldn't find a way to make it relevant, and it ultimately felt very overindulgent and melodramatic in the outline in a way I really didn't fuck with.

and lastly, other than arcane and jayvik, what are some of your interests?

:) i'm really into film. i'm a bit of a film bro lmao. i like video games (huge bg3 fan). true to my ao3 name i love cats and animals in general. I'm fascinated with outer space, physics, astrobiology. I'm also a huge history nerd, especially "weird" and unheard of history.

my whole life is writing really. in a way that's probably not super healthy lmao but it is what it is.

I am so sorry for the insane yap session I just went on. hopefully it doesn't come off overindulgent or like self involved. i just love chit chatting haha and happen to be fully on a break from work for a few weeks so I have a ton of time on my hands dfklasjdf

[dice-wizard]

Hello everyone looking for a new fantasy tabletop game!

You can buy Exalted Essence now.

What's Exalted you ask?

Exalted is an epic fantasy TTRPG where players play the titular Exalted - humans elevated to superhuman/demigod status - in a wild and unique setting that draws inspiration from the ancient world rather than medieval Europe. Creation (the setting) draws key inspirations from the entire world. If you're used to having to make yourself visible on your own in other fantasy, there's probably some representation in Exalted.

It has explicit queer and trans themes about finding your people, creating your own identity, and having the power to punch back at the people who hate you. This isn't incidental. The writing staff is queer as hell. You can hear me break this down more here.

Curious to learn all you can? Well you can get a detailed overview of the entire game on the podcast Systematic Understanding of Everything hosted by myself, @presidentofbirds and @phillycuriosity

If I'm used to D&D 5e why should I pick this up?

Well, I presume if you're reading this post you're already interested in trying something new, so:

The entire game in one book. Exalted: Essence is self contained, character types, equipment, enemies and all!

An exciting style of fantasy that's different than classic D&D but like, textually gay, and very easy to have scenes like ballroom fights, epic galas, and touching homoerotic healing scenes - no house rules required.

But also, tactical depth and combat you can really sink your teeth into if fighting monsters and villains is your bag.

An excuse to use all your d10s at once

Character building and advancement mechanics designed to be familiar to a 5e audience. Characters "level up" based on story beats, and have Advantages, which are functionally similar to class and race features.

A world welcoming to most heroic archetypes, so it's easy to convert your favorite OC.

Extremely kissable dragons, demons, gods, elementals, ghosts, faeries, and unnamed ancient horrors

I'm a fan of a previous edition, what's Essence got for me?

Design focused on alleviating some of the previous versions' missteps

Virtues are back, baby

2e fans will find it an improvement from second edition's mechanical strengths - it's pretty easy to convert all your favorite 2e Charms to XS.

Streamlined versions of familiar rules to make it painless to introduce new friends to the game we love.

The Cliff's notes on Ex3's new Exalt types.

Did I mention it's all of Exalted in one book?

How does it play?

d10 dice pool looking for 7,8,9 as successes. 10s count as two successes, which can lead to explosive, heroic outcomes

Combat system designed to keep all players engaged the entire time - even characters who aren't focused on fighting at all.

Combat also narrows the gap between experienced and new players and players who want to win at RPGs and players who just wanna vibe so GMs aren't tearing their hair out trying to balance encounters.

Social system designed to resolve in a single roll so you can be immersed in role play and not interrupt it with constant rolling - without sacrificing a variety of social approaches

"Ventures" system for characters working on long term projects from traveling across the world to crafting magical wonders to building communities without forcing this to be "downtime" activity

Characters have access to Charms - exception-based special powers that make them extremely good at whatever they focus on.

It's easily my favorite game (and the project I developed that I'm the proudest of), so I'm excited for everyone to try it out.

[cruyuu]

265 is an insane chapter. i can't move on from it. yuji and sukuna being twins, fishing, shooting arrows... yuji's sad eyes after sukuna's "i feel nothing"... like am i insane for thinking that yuji really wanted to get sukuna to open up there??? there's no other explanation for that chapter otherwise. god these two 😭😭

Sorry for a late answer anon!

I already ranted a bit about that chapter and tried to make sense of it. You are right, anon. There is absolutely no need for Yuuji to go that far for someone like Sukuna and then say... "I loathe you." as an explanation because it makes zero sense. He could've ripped him away from Megumi like 20 times already, and he claims he can kill him, but (just like Sukuna), I guess he has to hate on him (in a very fond way) first at least because priorities lol.

Because spending time together and trying to change that person's mind, talking with him constantly as if just wishing he would join in and say something about himself is the definition of loathing an individual, right? Silly me for thinking that was interest. For thinking that was care. For thinking that Yuuji wants to hear his thoughts and see how he thinks. Wants to try and understand him. Learn more about him. Otherwise, exactly like you asked, why? What's the point? There's no purpose to 265 and it could've easily been replaced by 266 wholly. He could've said all of that to a particular individual who needs it (and who Yuuji misses), and funnily enough, it would fit the shoe more so than it would with Sukuna. Why does Yuuji still care about the person who ruined his life enough to perform his very first Domain Expansion and spend nearly an entire day with him, hanging out? Really weird.

Like 266 just confirmed that. The sheer contrast between the chapters is just insane. I have a post about that which is half-written because I can't even put everything into words properly but I'll try my best to finish it when I'm not that busy to show you exactly what I mean.

Also the fact that Sukuna looks exactly like Yuuji, not in his true form but dressed like him, totally like his twin. That Yuuji is taking him everywhere, commenting on everything, from food, down to animals, seemingly as if to try and find a way to engage him in conversation yet Sukuna keeps his mouth shut. He even chooses to shoot arrows with him, something which is more Sukuna's thing than Yuuji's, just to get him to show anything at all. Yuuji's an open book here, and he tells him even that he considers these little things important (his speech about roles and life), but Sukuna brushes him off.

And Yuuji looks sad? Disappointed? because Sukuna remains closed off. His behavior towards Yuuji is unexplainable, and even his hatred is... just that. Nothing. Even if Sukuna keeps contradicting himself at every turn when it comes to Yuuji, treating everyone the same but not him, there's still no explanation about why he does that.

And this is why Yuuji talked about meaning in life. He was practically explaining his newfound viewpoint to Sukuna, because he was expecting an answer regarding his hate. Something like "Okay but there must be a reason for your uncontrollable hatred when it comes to me. Can you tell me what it is?" because to Yuuji, everything means something. It's not just that– some pointless, meaningless thing.

Sukuna's response is "I understand, but I do not care." yet he got pissed off when he recognized Yuuji's crestfallen expression as pity. Like why is he even mad about that? I thought he only lived for himself and didn't care about anything. I thought he felt nothing. I thought he didn't live to understand others, yet he cannot understand Yuuji and his expression makes him mad.

265 seems to expose Sukuna as a feeler in denial, who clearly has a problem with Yuuji's way of looking at him, but also generally has a problem with understanding Yuuji (still). Even though these two understand other people, with similar viewpoints, they're stuck when it comes to each other. Sukuna loathes weak people and yet he compliments everyone who is weaker than him. He calls them strong. Everyone except Yuuji.

One of my friends thinks Sukuna's anger towards Yuuji is because Yuuji cannot seem to hate Sukuna like he hated Mahito, which is a very interesting observation, ngl. It feels like no matter what Sukuna does, Yuuji will still find a way of pardoning it, while with Mahito he never did such a thing. He showed pure coldness. The scene of Mahito losing showcases Yuuji appearing cold-blooded, further exemplified by the prey/predator imagery and winter. Truly no notion of kindness. With Sukuna, that doesn't seem to be the case considering... well.. the entirety of 265. Sukuna had even done worse than Mahito and continually promises to Yuuji to do worse, only to ignite hate, but is spared of real, genuine, absolute hatred. He still gets a chance. He still gets, "Come back to me." He gets "pitied".

And that's the very thing I tried hard to figure out– the whole "pity" thing– because Yuuji doesn't appear to be pitying Sukuna. It's something else. It's something way more closer and kinder than that. It may appear cold and like "pity" to Sukuna, while to us, it is presented differently. This is because paneling is extremely important!

When Yuuji states "if this is what all that anger had amounted to" we, the readers, see him be sad, but Sukuna doesn't see that expression. He's looking ahead and is just listening to him. By his voice alone, he comes to a conclusion and asks if Yuuji is pitying him and when he turns to look at him, Yuuji's face is shrouded in darkness until the panel where we are met with the coldest way of pitying someone known to mankind, where Yuuji confirms his thoughts, yet still offers him a chance to still be spared.

That is Sukuna's explanation regarding what Yuuji feels, not what Yuuji truly feels and it doesn't entirely make sense because to pity someone is to feel sadness or sympathy for someone's unhappiness or bad situation. How can it be pity when Yuuji doesn't even know his situation? When Sukuna isn't unhappy nor in a bad situation? Plus he doesn't even know anything about him? If anything it feels like Yuuji is mourning the fact he has to kill him (that that is his "bad situation" in this case) and cannot reach him, that they cannot co-exist and that yes, this is what he's feeling sad about.

You could, also, argue differently. That it is precisely that– because he has no explanation for anything and keeps him in the dark about himself, and continually just keeps pushing him away. That he cannot care for him. Hell, even Yuuji's mindset which clashes heavily with Sukuna's is enough of a reason why.

We (the readers) see Yuuji be sad while Sukuna doesn't and Yuuji confirms his thoughts instead of offering a more fitting explanation because what is the point? Sukuna had already stated "He doesn't feel anything" so he won't get nor understand what Yuuji feels.

The pure misunderstanding is in focus between these two in that chapter. The whole "pity" which is, in fact, not that, because otherwise Yuuji wouldn't be offering Sukuna to come back to him, but would instead just try to kill him, not just keep giving him chances and allowing him to live and cause more mayhem than he already did.

But still, the whole insanity of this chapter comes from Yuuji's behavior towards Sukuna. Like why think of changing perspectives, of spending time trying to understand and offering that very same person (who had taken the very person you claim to care about) life and yet, when it comes to that other person, you're saying "it's okay if you choose to die even though I would be lonely without you"? It's so fucking absurd. You want someone you hate to live more so than you want someone you care about to? You're telling your entire life story to a person who never gave a shit about you to... change his perspective on life? Yet you're doing nothing to change the mind of someone who you'll be lonely without? Insanity.

So yeah, anon. You can see how crazy it all is when you really think about it. I would really love it if we can finally see these two being honest with each other because that seems to be this big, big issue here, where everyone is talking for them (even the story), instead of you know, them.

[catboybiologist]

Sappy emo time? Sappy emo time. Or idk, sappy beauty time. I'm a bit burnt out of graduate studies atm and reminding myself a little of why I love science in the first place.

I very explicitly consider myself Atheist, not really even agnostic. But a huge part of that is because I think there's something a bit more beautiful and even a little holy in the way the universe exists on its own. Without something making it "tick".

There's no creator that carved those valleys, but the eons of the river running through it have left their mark in every pebble, every rock, and every living thing that takes refuge by them. Maybe there's something divine in that without a god.

There’s nothing that designed the animals around me and the environments they live in, but I still see how everything from the invertebrates in the mud to the megafauna around them lives in a weird, discordant harmony, an amalgamation of every erratic piece of behavior that any of them ever exhibited. Maybe there’s something a little holy in that without a congregation.

I've felt the skin of the ones I love, and the pleasure in the erotic, expressing themselves as an array of action potentials from sensory neurons so dazzlingly complex and chaotic that even studying every detail of them doesn't come close to bringing the human mind to understanding its own existence. Maybe there's something spiritual in that without a soul.

I've seen more that is sacred in a bustling street, with every person walking at a particular tempo, with their own hopes, dreams, and fears, than I ever have in the few religious ceremonies that I've participated in. Maybe there's something religious in that without a religion.

None of it is coordinated. You see chaos everywhere. You see pain everywhere. It's all an unoptimized, barely functioning mess. But its a mess of a million components, and by peeling back that veil one layer at a time

Science, particularly biology, lets me parse it out. Lets me engage in it. Let me pick apart each and every aspect of the living things around me and see them, witness them, even worship them in ways that I wouldn’t be capable of without it.

Is that a religion? Is that what religious people feel? I wouldn't know. I've never been religious, I was raised atheist. But maybe its something that keeps me on my feet and sparks my curiosity.

I'd also ask that you don't try to classify this as anything but what it is. I’m still atheist. The core of it is still empiricism and the lack of a god. It's just a kinder look at it, and maybe just a bit more of an attempt to see the beauty in the world after years of pessimism. The universe, at its core, is an incredible, gorgeous mess. Every negative emotion in my life has been a result of being blocked from seeing it like it really is.

Idk what I’m trying to do with this. Sorry if this sounds too much like the shitty cringe poetry book I wrote when I was 15.