#It just fascinates me that this is something my brain has decided that it Cannot Do when it finds objectively much more difficult work easy

[myrsinemezzo]

Haladriel Positivity Post #2

Okay my darlings, my dears! Haladriel has changed our brain chemistry, clearly. For the better?? I think so. This post is a shout out to the fandom for changing my very outlook on guilt and morality and art. Because of the creative works from amazing haladriel writers, artists, and editors, I went from “no thank you I will certainly NOT be having a helping of any dove, dead or otherwise. Or kink. Or abo. Or or or…” Seriously, my bookmarks on ao3 were so tame. Because to me, ETL and Haladriel made loads of sense as a brand of ship that had nothing to do with my moral standing.

They were more than the sum of their parts. He wasn’t just evil, she wasn’t just good. They were a mess of squishy complicated emotions and parts. (And none more squishier than you, gooron post-Adar slaying, amirite?)

But I turned my nose up at a whole heap of other things even as I loved these two crazy kids/immortal beings. Then I dove deeper into fandom and discovered that there were whole worlds I had closed off. And those worlds were shockingly good.

Because if I can enjoy “Sauron shoving the ultimate Morgul blade into Galadriel’s chest in an erotically charged manner and then getting very lip wobbly emo about it afterwards”, then I can also read and write and view a passel of things that force me to look (or that tilt my chin up gently with a sword point — potato potato) at things that push my boundaries.

So thank you to all who create literally anything for this fandom but in particular today to those who love to experiment with pushing buttons and boundaries.

Bonus: Some recs! And please if you’re reading this feel free to share your own if so inclined. I love encountering new things and being reminded of things to revisit!

This fic, “the law is reason (free from passion)” by @hazelmaines was I think my first abo fic ever? I would read hazel’s grocery list and find it enthralling so I gave it a shot and to my surprise was fascinated by the world building involved with abo and wowee did it bring the hot sauce when it came to haladriel as a pairing. Lawyers with voracious appetites for each other? Sign me up. I didn’t even burst into a pillar of flame afterwards (or I mean, I did but not like that…)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/50193469

Next up is the BDSM fic series that rewired my brain by @softlighter the one, the only “catharsis”. Reading about a powerful woman learning to accept herself for who she is and maybe even love what she sees in the end(??) is something that makes me weep and broke a lot of barriers for me, including realizing I wasn’t going to turn into a pillar of ash or salt or whatever other biblical metaphor you like from reading it. Whoever recommended this, I want to kiss you right on the mouth.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47895979

Getting into the dead dove side of things, nothing lives rent free in my noggin and made me think about how art can be disturbing and beautiful and incredibly effective at making you look inward at the same time like “the shark in your water” by @bad-surprise. Holy wow. Poeticmemory’s Halbrands always fascinate me but this one is the embodiment of that one shot in that one haladriel scene in that one gif 👇where I absolutely cannot look away and feel every emotion in the book

Treat yourself with care if you decide to try this treat of a fic.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/45286258

I am still absolutely blown away by the two most recent works I’m including in this list. The first is this beautifully disturbing edit by @snezhjeyka set to alt-j’s “breezeblocks”. It is the definition of lyrical and haunting.

The second is the fic it later inspired by @czernyfanclub aka bluececilia on ao3. (That dedication makes me weep, pal 😭) The dove is dead as all get-out and yet the language?? The imagery?? As admirable as old Mairon himself.

Ok. That’s it for now! I’ll try to post again whenever I have another brainwave of what I love about this fandom, because damn do I love what it has done for me personally and for so many others.

Eat, Pray, ETL. Or something.

[shentheauthor]

Fuck it, I’m bored. Nine sols gender/sexuality headcanons.

Kuafu: Gay cis man. I adore him. Look at him. He’s not subtle. He says jiequan, who literally walks around half naked, is “stylish.” I know what you are.

Goumang: She gives trans lesbian vibes. I also adore her. Free my girl, I could fix her

Yanlao: Homophobic /j. Nah fr tho, I think he’s a cis het man, but like, he isn’t gonna be homophobic or transphobic. I don’t think Penglai has that kind of thing. Grandpa is an ally, yay

Jiequan: That is a GAY MAN. Trans maybe? I haven’t decided, but what I do know is he is GAY. Look at how he talks to Yi. He’s gay and down horrendous and needs some therapy PRONTO. “Gay people who cannot be in a healthy relationship because they suck so bad” representation

Lady Ethereal: Bisexual demigirl, she/they! Also I hate that they didn’t let her keep her original name in the EN version. Fu Die is pretty!!! Dammit!!! But yea Lady E gives me strong bisexual vibes. She also had a thing for Yi. EDIT: SHE CANONICALLY HAD A RELATIONSHIP WITH A WOMAN LETS GOOOOO THE BISEXUALS ARE WINNING

Fuxi: Listen. Listen. He and Nuwa are identical twins. ONE of them bitches is trans. To me, it’s Fuxi. Trans man Fuxi is real to me. No clue what’s going on with his sexuality, and frankly, I don’t wanna know

Nuwa: I think she’d fw neopronouns. Her gender is a mess, and she wouldn’t really care to define it. Rotating her around in my brain. As for sexuality, same as Fuxi

Ji: Agender, he/they, and bisexual. The devs wanted him to be agender/nonbinary and I am CLINGING to that. They’re real to me. Also I think they and Jietong had a thing. I won’t elaborate.

Eigong: cis lesbian with every mental illness, banned from all public spaces. She gives old, wise queer energy until you dig deeper into her personality and see oh, she needs to be on some kind of list. Kind of iconic, ngl.

Yi: arospec/aspec, probably agender, but he has a job so he doesn’t care about that shit rn. He/him because that’s generally what people default to. Would not touch jiequan with a ten foot pole. Could have potentially had a thing with Lady Ethereal had everything not gone to absolute shit.

Heng: same as Yi lmao. Genuinely. They’re the AAA siblings

Shennong: Pansexual. Considers himself cis, but there’s definitely something else going on there. He doesn’t want to unpack that. Frankly, he is valid.

Bonus:

Chien: Trans girl

Shanhai 9000: gender is a solarian concept it doesn’t give a flying fuck about (it/its pronouns). Same with sexuality.

Abacus: also doesn’t care about gender or sexuality, but he will accept whatever pronouns. It’s whatever to him.

Shuanshuan: Intersex! Might grow up to be queer, but honestly, he’s just a baby rn. I’m not about to go in depth there

Chiyou: finds the concept of gender fascinating, chose he/him pronouns because he liked how they sounded. So what I’m getting at is: trans Chiyou

[brandyllyn]

Silk from their soul (06)

The Ghoul / Cooper Howard x f!reader [no use of y/n]

Rated: Teen (series will be explicit) Words: 1.2k Summary: Sleepwalkers

Series Masterlist My Masterlist

He can see her ass.

He doesn’t bother trying not to look. There’s just the two of them in the small room, her stretched out on the bed while he sits with his back to the wall across from her. There’s no blanket to speak of and she’s lying on top of the ancient cot facing away from him. He’s still not sure what happened but she shifted a while ago and the skirt of that little sundress had ridden all the way up to her waist.

He was a saint for not touching her.

It was a few hours til morning yet, she’d let him sleep longer than he actually needed. While he was hefting himself off the bed she had yawned, stretching her arms to the ceiling and making parts of her body do some absolutely fascinating things.

No harm in looking.

His hands move as he keeps one eye on her, an ear turned towards the hallway, waiting for the inevitable footsteps. If someone doesn’t try to rob them tonight he’ll eat his hat. Fingers far too used to the work refill his shotgun shells, checking their weights and deciding if the contents are still any good with barely any input from his brain.

And those damn thighs keep calling to him.

They’re edible, is what they are. Two prime pieces of grade-A meat. Of course he’d stare, his mouth was practically watering.

“It ain’t you,” he mumbles to his cock. “You ain’t had a vote in a long fucking time, ya hear?”

It does not. It twitches in interest as she sighs in her sleep, thighs rubbing together. It’d be the work of a moment to cross to her - hell he wouldn’t even have to get off his knees - set his teeth to those perfectly rounded asscheeks and bite. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to turn those little sighs into moans.

Yeah, his cock was definitely looking to cast a vote.

He felt almost light-headed, hormones his body hadn’t made in decades suddenly swimming in his system. With a hacking cough he takes a hit of chem, hoping it might resettle his balance. It does, a little, enough that his fingers stop twitching her direction.

A floorboard creaks.

The Ghoul cracks his neck, setting his hat to the side and resting the end of the shotgun on his knee. Another creak, then the shuffling of boots outside the door. It opens slowly and he clocks three men standing there, two he recognizes.

“Well now, I was beginning to think y’all weren’t ever gonna show. D’you come to party or just watch?”

The man in front stops suddenly, single eye scanning the room. It’s nearly pitch black, barely any light coming from the hallway either. Ever one for the dramatic, the Ghoul scrapes a match across the floor, letting the flame light up his face before he sets it to the end of a cartridge.

“Now, ordinarily, I might let y’all off with a warning seeing as you’ve only made some regretful decisions thus far. But it seems to me a group of fellas like yourself could only have one reason for breaking into a lady’s bedroom in the middle of the night.” He drops the shell into the shotgun, chambering it one fluid motion. “And I cannot abide that kind of man.”

The shell is a special cocktail of his own, a mix of chemicals and tar that burns hotter than acid and sticks to everything it touches. The effect is quick - no need to burn the place down - but aggressive.

The sound of the blast is deafening in the small room, the screams of the two men the shell explodes onto nearly as bad. Next to him he hears a muffled “What?” before he rolls to his feet and places himself between the wakening woman and the door.

“Does anyone else have something they’d like to add to the conversation?”

The screaming continues, even though the fire has burned out. He can see patches of bone where the mixture ate through face, neck, and arms. Smiling to himself he takes a step forward, gently pushing the trio away and closing the door.

“Y’all should go take care of that, and stop that caterwauling.”

“What happened?”

One strap of that dress of hers has fallen and he reaches out to fix it without even thinking. He can almost hear the scrap of his leather gloves on her skin, too much rough against all that softness.

“Just a group of townies looking to make friends. I disabused them of that notion.”

She looks confused, still blinking away sleep. “You shot them?”

“Look here, when it comes to charming the locals you’ve got me beat by a mile - but when a fella needs to be reminded of his manners a bullet has a more lasting impact.”

She groans, burying her face in her hands. “I knew this would happen.”

“You knew they were gonna come up here, and yet you were sleeping there sound as a babe?”

“I knew it was a risk,” she groans again, “kind of comes with the territory.”

“And yet I found you prancing your way through the wasteland alone, looking like that.”

“I’m not alone, I have you.” He barely gets to revel in that statement before she frowns. “And what do you mean, looking like that?”

“Sweetheart, you look like a six course meal in that getup. It’s a wonder no one ain’t gobbled you up already.”

She looks down at herself and purses her lips. “It is a tradeoff.”

“For what?”

Her mouth opens for a moment like she is going to answer then clicks shut. “It’s… thank you. For protecting me.”

For a moment he considers telling her he hadn’t been. That he was just guarding his stuff. Or that it was tit for tat since she had taken the first watch. But it wasn’t true - alive and unharmed included by other people. So instead he simply grumbles, “Don’t say nothing about it.”

Sighing, she lies back on the bed, stuffing her pack under her head with her feet facing the wall. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get back to sleep.”

“Well, if you ain’t gonna use it…” he moves to the cot, shifting her legs so he can stretch out, back propped to the wall.

She snorts, closing her eyes. “Tell me a story.”

“You looking for some once upon a time fairy tale shit?”

“No,” another one of those low laughs, “you’ve been around a while, tell me something that happened… here.”

He considers her for a moment, stretched out next to him. There’s about a dozen better ways to pass the time that he can think of offhand, but quite a few of them require him to be the kind of man he swore never to be. He didn’t have many lines in the sand, but that was one. Faded and brushed over as it was - it weren’t like he had much of a call to use it.

“You ever seen a naked mole rat fuck a Brahmin?”

That laughter would have to be enough.

☢ ☢ ☢

For updates follow and turn on notifications for @brandyllyn-writes

[jayviknation]

I have one person in my life to be feral about arcane with so I’ve decided to take up writing here again! Any comments or tips welcome 🥹

✨ Jayce Talis Headcannon’s✨

- [ ] Favorite Color-

Brown! Not just any brown; a deep sultry chocolate brown with a smooth wooden undertone (if you ask him he’ll say red because he doesn’t wanna defend himself for having the “worst” favorite color)

- [ ] Loner kid -

you cannot convince me this man wasn’t the kid that would let his friends pick on him just so he would have a friend group. (Think Thompson from Gravity Falls) He has forever wanted someone to connect to and cherishes Viktor even more for that reason

- [ ] Mommy’s boy -

This one is more self explanatory - he was just absoltuely running to his mom anytime anything happened to him as a kid

- [ ] Following with the family theme eldest sibling energy -

I couldn’t find anything that pointed to Jayce having siblings or being an only child but he just radiates older brother energy with everything in him (love his and cait’s sibling relationship 🙏🏻)

- [ ] Has a sweet tooth

I love to picture this man at 3 AM deep in equations with Viktor breaking the dead silence and concentration with the crisp snap of a Kit Kat as loud as possible (Viktor acts like he hates this but constantly buys him more)

- [ ] Love type - PHYSICAL AFFECTION

Another self explanatory but with romantic partners or friendships this man is a LOVER. Hugs, hand holds, shoulder taps, waist holds, this man needs his hands anywhere but his own body

- [ ] Loves Spiders - Scared of Bugs

I like to think that Jayce as a kid was terrified of spiders but was teased a lot about it so he started keeping spiders as a kid and helped developed a fascination and appreciation for them, bugs on the other hand? He doesn’t want anything crawling on him with that many legs ever (all his clothing is tight fitting so if something is under his clothes it’s about to be a battle)

- [ ] Diva about fashion

He absolutely dresses himself and Viktor but also owns many magazine catalogs about what’s currently in style for leisure reading (possible catalog names - Piltovers Fresh, Councilor Fancy, and my personal favorite Shimmering Hammer)

- [ ] HAIR

While we’re talking about how Jayce looks I just know this man has a detailed multi product process for his hair, no one’s hair is that shiny and sits that perfect without trying

- [ ] Little spoon

I don’t feel the need to elaborate here, this man is the little spoon - Man or Female

- [ ] Firm Sleep Schedule

Was educated very early on of the importance of sleeping for full brain function and gets at least 7 hours every single night without fail. Constantly lecturing Vik on his lack of a sleeping schedule

- [ ] Divorced Dad Rock

Has a guilty pleasure for divorced dad rock (nickelback, daughtry, buck cherry, creed) but will never admit it, catch him at the lab early in the morning (before 7 AM) and you can catch him in full breakdown mode over Linkin Park

- [ ] Can’t cook BUT can bake

Will burn any type of meat, potato, or veggie you put in front of him but will make you a Flan without a single dent without thinking twice about it

- [ ] Sleeps with stuffed HexTech Plush

Cait or Mel got him this as a joke but he unironically lays on it to relax and then will fall asleep with it in his arms pretty consistently

- [ ] Board Game Nights

Him and Cait have a weekly game night where Caitlyn just destroys him every single time (this makes Jayce very distraught because his parents let him win every time as a kid)

- [ ] Coffee

Has a very detailed intricate coffee order that makes any barista immediately want to quit and gets the same coffee everyday at 7 AM like clockwork. Will also get Viktor his coffee which is just a straight cup of black every morning but not without making a grossed out face every time he hands it to him 🤢

- [ ] Allergies

Has a slight allergy to random stuff like tomatoes or wine but is too nice to decline so he’ll just suffer in silence (the allergy just makes his throat numb)

- [ ] Gets Zoomies

Coming from a background with so much manual labor sitting around all day messing with equations and hex tech absolutely takes a toll on him. He’s constantly pacing, jumping around, or doing some type of parkour off of the furniture in their lab

- [ ] Hates Movies but LOVES documentaries

This man cannot stand long form content that doesn’t have new information he could learn but loves to watch the discovery channel put on a 5 hour documentary about bananas and how they’re going extinct for the second time

- [ ] Bad Driver

I don’t remember a single car in Arcane BUT if Jayce had a car he would absolutely be a shit driver. Curbs? Those shouldn’t be in his way where he can’t see them.

- [ ] Social Meetings

This man loves to act extroverted but is incredibly shy and nervous about every conversation and absolutely goes over every possible topic that could arise in the shower that morning before going out (bonus: he fully acts out scenes of imaginary potential stressful situations in the mirror to always have a good comeback in the moment)

Working on a Pt 2 because I could talk about this man for YEARS but lemme know any other characters you wanna see headcannons for!

[silverhart-makes-art]

I think this week's Bestiary Posting is pretty fascinating. I especially like the animal being described as having 'mercy', as I feel like many people would consider that a distinctly human trait. I kind of assumed this idea of animals being like machines incapable of emotions was an old idea, but this and other bestiary entries really seem to humanize the animals listed in them more then I expected.

Anyway, I think what the Zomargon actually is, is pretty obvious, but the bit that stood out to me the most was: "it strikes fear into bulls, yet fears the mouse", and my mind immediately went to my dog. He likes to put on a lot of bluster when confronted with larger dogs or animals, but show him a bug and he runs behind the couch and cries until someone comes to save him.

So, it had to be a poodle. There's no other animal it could possibly be. Lively intelligence, scared of mice, works with people, if one of them falls over they have to gather around and make a big drama about it - that's a poodle for sure.

So this description lists a lot of different traits, so I'm just gonna go down them all and explain my thoughts.

"His nose is called a trunk because he uses it to put food in his mouth."

At first I went with an elephant shrew-type nose, but that's not so great for grabbing, but you know what would be? A hand. And what has a hand on the end of it's nose? That's right, a star-nosed mole. So combination trunk/star nose situation.

"The Persians and Indians, carried in wooden towers on their backs..."

So we know it's a big critter, to able to carry people on it's back.

"...lively intelligence and a long memory..."

Gave them a bit of a big skull to accommodate those big brains. I can also confirm that poodles never forget and hold onto to grudges for years.

"...she goes out into a pool, until the water comes up to her udders."

For sure a mammal this time, so good to know.

"If the Zomargon finds a snake, it kills it..."

This explains why my dog's favorite toys are the ones made to look like snakes and why they are the first to get torn to shreds.

"if it falls down, it cannot rise."

For this I was thinking about how this happens to sheep quite often, when they're pregnant or their wool is too heavy, so I gave my Zomargon a broad back and thick woolly fur that can grow out into a big poof-ball (as I doodled in the bottom).

"...it has no joints in its knees."

This one was tricky to figure out. The knee is a joint, so how can a joint not be a joint? I had to sketch up a couple of legs off to the side just to try out some ideas. Ended up going with the middle one, and just adding a big fleshy pad on the back of the foot to support it, since there's no mention of hooves. It looks weird, but I guess they make it work?

"They possess the quality of mercy."

If a creature possesses mercy, it of course must have soft, gentle eyes, so I tried to give them a sweet dog-like expression. This is a beastie made for cuddling.

"...they make their way carefully and peaceably lest their tusks kill any animal in their way."

Just throwing in tusks in at the last second, huh? I honestly almost forgot to include them, they seem like such an afterthought in the description. And if Zomargons don't fight each other, the tusks must be used for something else. I decided to give them something like a Thylacosmilus fang situation, where these big saber teeth are supported by this crazy lower jaw. Seems to be some debate about whether these teeth were used for scavenging carcasses or killing prey. The Zomargon also eats fruits according to the description, so maybe these tusks are in fact just for opening coconuts.

[thewaywardkees]

It's been so long since I've interacted with the Harringrove fandom, but I was going over old drafts I have on Google Documents today and found this piece I want to dedicate to my precious @ihni because darling... You have always and will always be my FAVORITE Harringrove writer. Always remember there's Stephen King, there's Taylor Jenkins Reid and then there's you (Baby Steps and Of Cats and Men will always live in my brain). I adore you, darling! ❤️ The only Harringrove Post of my own that I want to post online belongs to you and you only!

—

"I miss you, Billy..." Steve looks away from the stone as tears begin flooding his eyes, his heart thumping loudly against his chest as it finally gives in to the pain he has felt for so long. The pain he kept forcing down in order to be Steve — designated driver, babysitter, dumb friend Steve. His chin wobbles as he says "I miss my best friend…"

He lets the tears fall.

It had been strange how Steve Harrington and Billy Hargrove became best friends but Steve had seen stranger things before. He remembers bits and pieces from how it started and that's why he cannot hate his mother as much as he tries to. She brought Billy to him or her borderline fascination at keeping the garden perfect did. 

"The fuck are you doing in my house?" He spat out as soon as the front door was opened and it revealed Billy. Billy, wearing too thin clothes for Indiana's winter.  Fingerless gloves and open shirt, no beanie, no warm jacket. Steve wondered if the guy wanted to die of frostbite, he decided he didn't care.

"Must've gotten the wrong address, princess. Don't get your knickers in a twist." Billy replied, his brows furrowing slightly as he checked the paper he was holding in his hand and then whatever he thought was on the walls or door. Billy was about to say something when Steve bit out.

"Alright. Fuck off." 

Billy rolled his eyes and saluted him as he said  "Right on, your highness."

"Suck my royal..." 

"Billy… is it you?" His mom was suddenly at the front door. 

The rest is history.

Steve and his countless six packs of beer because "You are old enough to buy beer, Harrington." — "Bold of you to tell me I look 21, asshole". Billy and expensive packs of cigarettes because "I'm not smoking cheap shit, Hargrove. If lung cancer is gonna take me, I'll allow only good shit in my mouth", Billy turning beet red and Steve blurting out innuendos so easily afterwards.

Late nights at the Quarry and Billy talking shit about his dad, bloodshot eyes as he tried to shrink his rage and Steve's light touch to his arm. "Come here" — their first hug... Billy pressing his swollen cheek to Steve's chest, seeking the warmth of his embrace even if it so desperately needed the cold. 

Meet me at the bleachers notes. Movies on saturday? Notes. Okay, don't invite Tommy notes and more notes. Drawings too. Really ugly drawings of stick people, making fun of Mrs. Whoever's mustache, Mr. Whatever's ugly sweater… Any of your sweaters missing, Harrington? Middle fingers draws, mouth sucking said middle fingers draws. Middle fingers becoming dicks draws, Billy cackling so loud the whole class would startle. Steve becoming the Picasso of Dicks… just to make Billy laugh. 

Their coach congratulates them for putting their differences aside and working together as a team. A knowing glint in his eyes and a kind welcoming smile, he knows something Steve doesn't. Steve likes whatever their coach knows, it feels good… safe. Billy is smiling too and patting Steve's back. Months later "We are going to the finals, Harrington!" 

They lose by 3 points and everyone is angry. "If you two weren't sucking each other's dicks all the time, we could have won! WE ARE A TEAM, this isn't just about you two, you faggots" someone from their team lashes out at them and before Steve could say anything, Billy punches first… hard and breaks the guy's nose. 

Billy is forced to quit the basketball team.

He shows up at Steve's door with a split lip that night. 

"Homophobic assholes…" Billy says and Steve agrees. He is passing like a caged lion around Steve's room. Steve wants to reach out, touch his arm again like that night at the Quarry, bring him close and ask him to breathe but he doesn't. He knows Billy needs to get everything out his chest because it helps him relieve some of the pain he is feeling… physical pain — fuck you Neil, emotional pain... All sorts of pain.

"I miss you every day…" 

—

I hope you liked it, love!

And to the rest of the Harringrove fandom... More like the Billy Hargrove fandom. I hope you are doing alright, loves!

Happy 4th of July to my US Harringrove fellows! ❤️ (We all know what it means to this fandom)

[welurklate]

In defence of Ron Weasley - or: why Weasley is our King!

I have noticed that in the last decade so-called Ron-bashing has almost become a sport in the Harry Potter fandom, or at least in certain corners of the fandom. And that makes me quite sad, because in my eyes it is unjustified and a product of circumstances that have nothing to do with the canon character. People depict Ron as a laughing stock, a truly incompetent wizard who is nothing but jealous and petty. Even in fanfics where Ron is an adult he rarely outgrows his teenage character. I believe this has to do with a few thing I will get into here.

First and foremost, we have to take a stance and decide if we believe that redemption is possible or not. If you think that once a fruit shows signs of rot it is better to throw out than to salvage it, stop reading here. If you think there are parts that can be saved and possibly restored, you are probably a Draco fan as well 😉 and you're welcome to read on.

So first of all, everything we see the characters do in the books they do as children and teenagers. Adolesence is a time of great changes, physically and psychologically. The prefrontal lobe of our brain still develops until our mid-twenties. It is a time to experiment and to make decisions, even if they are objectively the wrong ones, and to learn from that and to evolve into well-adjusted, open-minded and self-reflecting adults. So it isn’t even necessary to ‘redeem’ oneself for what you did growing up, it is just imperative to evolve. I have been working with teenagers my whole professional life and I am always amazed by what happens between the ages of 10 and 20/25.

So Ron is a child in the first books and an adolescent in the final parts and we actually see him grow and evolve. Not everyone is as perfect as Hermione and we sometimes forget that people can be flawed in small ways (not only in big ways such as ‘oops, I’ve taken the dark mark and commit war crimes’). I think people tend to hate on Ron because of this. He is so normal in his jealousy and his envy. We see a lot of ourselves in him and that is uncomfortable. We turn to fiction to experience the extraordinary in both good and bad, but we rarely want to see our very common shortcomings reflected in the characters. Because then we could just read self-help books and do something about it. But we don’t. We just want to escape reality and enter into worlds where everything is starker in contrast, emotions are deeper and stakes are higher.

And Ron is not such a character. He is a mild grey. He is not the hero, but he is also not the villain. Ambiguity and nuance have very little place in fantasy. But I think that is exactly what makes Ron such a great character and the books (despite JKR’s bigotism) so fascinating.

So what I see people do in fanfiction is to push his character to the extremes – mostly make him an antagonist. Interestingly, this usually occurs in in Dramione or Harmony fics. In Drarry fics or others where Hermione and Ron stay together, he usually gets to grow up into a reasonable and well-adjusted adult. And I get it. I love Hermione and I get what she sees in Ron (stability, a deep understanding, loyalty, common values, a wise mind that complements her academic one etc.). But in stories where we pair Hermione with other people we need to get Ron out of the way. Because we cannot, for the love of Merlin, make Hermione be the problematic one in the relationship (she is the queen of the books - she cannot be touched). So of course we have to make sure that Ron is the reason why their relationship fails. And to make their breakup believable, we antagonize Ron so that there is no chance for them to get back together. From a storytelling viewpoint this makes absolute sense. But it does not do Ron’s character justice. Canon Ron is a truly amazing character. The movies did him dirty and depicted him as the slightly stupid one with the punch lines and this has often clouded our image of him. Book Ron holds much more power in the trio's friendship. He is the one who introduces Hermione and Harry to all things in the Wizarding World. He is smart – even though he is not as zealous as Hermione, he is a good student and a brilliant wizard’s chess player. He is genuine, kind and loyal. I won’t reiterate all the smart things people have said about his character before. If you are interested you can check some good arguments here:

here, here or here

Everything he is and everything he goes through makes him a hero in his own way. He is the character with the biggest development and the biggest potential. He overcomes his own shortcomings again and again to stay by Harry's side. Especially in the last books he struggles, makes decisions he deeply regrets and faces his insecurities.

I could go on and on about this… but leave it at this for now. I hope this makes you see Ron in a better light! Fight me in the comments or sing along my praise of Ron!

tl;dr: Ron is a truly interesting character but the movies and fanon have skewed his image in a negative way.

[murfpersonalblog]

Murf's AMA: Mayfair Witches

@adamnablelittledevil you sent me such an incredibly lovely & thorough ask that I wanted to address every single point you made. So I'm breaking your PM up into separate AMA-style posts. Thank you SO much!

"And your comments on the stories really help! I don't know if I'll agree with you, but you're able to say something I can completely comprehend without spoilers and give me an idea of how they are, so thank you!"

Any time! Yes, my particular stance on AR's Mayfair books is largely based on my own personal fascination with different IRL conceptions of the afterlife, and how IRL witchcraft/magic/divination/necromancy all fits in wrt communing with the spirits of the dead/undead. So reading The Witching Hour completely rewired my brain--I owe AR a huge debt. Her ghost stories just give me everything I need.

"The way you described Lasher sounds terrifying. 👀 I wonder if it is as bad as Lestat's turning, the story of the twins or the Roman Coven killing the palazzo boys and torturing Armand because those were the darkest moments of TVC for me (I ignore what she pulled on TTOTBT). Is it just as heavy or worse?"

Hrm. It's complicated for me. Like, IMO Armand has hands down THE worst & most sympathetic backstory out of all the TVC characters (except Claudia). Kidnapped & gaslit & brainwashed by a satanic cult, and abandoned by the one person you trusted & loved the most when you failed to meet his ridiculously high standards/expectations.... IMO Armand is the strongest character to have withstood all that for so long and still come out the other side with his soul intact, omg.

As for Lasher, it's the totality of his iron grip over the Mayfairs for 500+ years that makes me personally put his treatment of people on the same/similar level as the Children of Satan.

There's no one Mayfair I feel particularly sadder or better for; it's them as a collective whole. There's things Lasher does to some of the Mayfairs that is just...it's graphic. With Armand it's different, cuz of the heavily romanticized & disjointed way he often tells his story. The gothic horror comes from seeing the ways traumatized people reflect on the bad things that happened to them--Armand's memory is just as spotty as Louis' sometimes; and the way he talks about Marius alllll the way to Blood Communion makes the fandom divided on what we're supposed to do with them.

But with the Mayfairs, there's no sugar-coating the carnage or softening/obfuscating the blows at all--AR describes things viscerally & graphically & explicitly in a way that you CANNOT excuse Lasher for. Even at the end of Lasher, when they "Let the devil speak his story," the prophecy (AR's Word of God) has already decided that his pretty words & excuses & tragic backstory don't effing matter in the end--he WILL be killed. Cuz he is 100% a PREDATOR, NOT a problematic love interest with abusive/grooming tendencies (a la Lestat & Marius).

Like, the vast majority of the TVC/IWTV fandom laughs at incest wrt Lestat & Gabrielle, cuz Lestat romanticizes so much of his trauma that it's hard sometimes to take it seriously. But incest with the Mayfairs is no laughing matter. It's sheer horror that's supposed to make you darn near physically ill reading about how much Lasher's twisted & manipulated everything. He's a MONSTER, eff how much he cries.

Granted, I still think the Mayfairs were awful immoral people, in ways that I don't see Armand. Unlike a brainwashed cult member, the Mayfairs KNEW Lasher was evil and that everything he gave them was tainted by his evil deeds. They call him the Devil. Unlike the Twins, they didn't control spirits ethically, in order to help their community and work towards the betterment of their society--they controlled Lasher selfishly, in order to gain riches & power. They think they can outsmart him, and pay the price.

But because they're women, they're vulnerable by default, as they lived during the Middle Ages & Tudor period & all these other times when women were being systemically persecuted by the Church; and then domestically oppressed at home as their husbands had full legal control over their bodies AND their money. The Mayfair designees completely buck the system; they're entirely matriarchal, but their power STILL comes from a demonic patriarch. So I sympathize with the lengths they felt they needed to go to, to remain at the top of the social pyramid--even if they were slaves to their greedy desires, and slaves to Lasher, as he manipulated them into thinking it was the reverse. They're victims and villains, in the best & worst of ways that always makes AR's characters so dang complex & interesting.

I think what happens to them is beyond effed up, but sometimes certain witches (*cough* Margueritte, Julien, Rowan, etc) I feel kinda deserved it???? But not even, cuz there's so much incest & mental illness in their family too, which makes me go Dang! They're not right in the head, so is it even fair to even blame them for all this? And ofc a ghost is LITERALLY manipulating them. But at what point does personal responsibility & accountability come in, esp. for Rowan?

Like, even Carlotta's evil arse has a lot in common with Coven Master Armand's most extreme(ly bad) actions--someone I absolutely love. So why do I hate her? When really, she was right all along! Her extremist draconian methods SUCKED; but if she got The Witch Carlotta book the way we got TVA, would my opinion of her change? More than likely! (Unless it was more like Blood & Gold, in which case....bye Felicia. 🙄😒)

So yeah, I see the Mayfairs as very similar to the Children of Satan, but flipped--they worship the Devil to get rich; NOT cuz they think they're inherently evil & deserve to suffer (a la Armand & the other vampires).

[definitelynotshouting]

Hello again! My ADHD has decided that the Hunger AU is to be my newest hyperfixation, and as such I have some more questions/interpretations I'd like to push forward, if that's alright. As always, no pressure in responding, and I hope this ask is fun to read :)

First off, I was going through some of your Listener posts for Reasons and I noticed a little tidbit in one of them: Watchers cannot feed off of the emotions of Listeners. If this is still the case, why were Martyn and BigB in the Life Games, if Grian can't feed on them, and were their mindsets still adversely affected? Could Grian (or theoretically, any Watcher) tell something was Off about them this way?

Another thing I noticed was that all Watchers are essentially clones of each other. Passing by the question of ecological diversity (I might think on that a different time), this implies that Grian, or at least, the Watcher-larvae that got implanted in him prior to all the code-copying, is a copy of another Watcher. Am I reading this right? Because if so that has implications and I love it.

And finally the biggest thing that's been on my mind: the Void (or the in-between, I've seen both). The space between servers. This thing has vexed and fascinated me since I read chapter one of your fic months ago. I think I've come to my own interpretations on the space, but I'd love to hear what you have plotted as well. For example, you mentioned that Developer Crystals are sort of hubs for servers - considering how you talked about it, the number of servers they can support must be pretty high. I've come to think of it kind of like a galaxy - and elliptical galaxy to be specific. Is this a correct way to think about it?

You've mentioned that being out in the in-between is dangerous for those not prepared - how much training does it take to be a Voidwalker? How does inter-server travel for regular players work? Are there extra steps that need to be taken when traveling from one Crystal's hub to another?

And on a personal interpretation note, I interpret the Void as looking kind of like space (as you often refer to in your work), but also... not. Specifically, when you talked about Developer Crystrals, I imagined them looking kind of like the Paths from Attack on Titan, just minus the ground (and being a lot bigger).

One final question, since it's been bothering me for ages: how does the ground work in the Void? It's been killing me since chapter 1.

Sorry for the massive ask, but it takes a particular sort of worldbuilding for me to come up with so many questions. I'm really having a fun time working with these rules - so thank you for making them!

Heyo!! I finally got a chance to answer this, which ive been trying to do since you sent it but unfortunately real life had other plans 😂😂😂 but i have the time and brain now, so here are hopefully some satisfying answers to your questions!!! :D

1.) BigB becoming a Listener was relatively recent; he was still a Player when he got pulled into the life games. As for Martyn, i think that because Listeners are so new, he was probably the first one Grian had ever encountered (at the time of 3rd Life at least). So he didn't realize he couldn't feed off of Martyn's emotions-- all he saw, in that half-frantic frenzy of "i need to eat right fucking now," was hey, i know that guy, and he's also in close proximity to BigB, so Grian sorta automatically pulled him in.

Afterwards, I'd say once Grian figured out he couldn't feed from him, he still ended up pulled in the next two times because of the familiarity (and because for as much as Grian can't feed off of him, Martyn still causes a lot of edible emotions in other people). But yeah, any Watcher would be able to tell if someone was a Listener!! And Listeners are able to tell if somebody is a Watcher, although their Player usually won't understand what that means beyond "hey theres something Weird going on with that guy."

2.) Yep!! All watchers are structural-code and utility-code copies of each other; their memory codes and surface codes are the only things that differentiate them from one another. This does indeed have some very fun implications to ruminate on fjsbdkdnd

3.) I'm not sure if i would describe dev crystals as a "hub," if only because that sorta implies that they're habitable-- but they are indeed the center of each server cluster, and i would honestly say the description of an elliptical galaxy is totally spot on :] they can indeed maintain a high amount of servers, but if the count grows too high then they can overload and stop processing the flow of unraveled code as efficiently, which can then cause backups, which then make them blow up, which is. obviously, pretty not good akdnwkdjek

Think of the void between servers as the bottom of the ocean. Absolutely crushing depths, the kind that will kill you in an instant if you don't have the right protective gear. Voidwalkers are basically people who are so good at coding that they can keep their code from getting pulverized and walk right through it like they're taking a casual morning stroll. It takes a ton of effort and energy to do, and is very dangerous-- i would say you have to be EXCEPTIONALLY quick-thinking, an efficient multitasker, and have a lot of practical foresight to achieve it without dissolving. Hence why there aren't many of them, and I'd honestly say Xisuma is probably one of, if not the, best. The fact that he was able to take five people including himself into the in-between, and keep them all alive, is INSANE. Brother outdid himself truly

As for interserver travel, thats something im currently working on lore-wise (and will hopefully be able to post about soon)!!! But the basic gist im working off of right now is that there are servers that act as server hubs, or waystations-- basically servers whose only purpose is to act as an in between point to access other servers. I'm toying with the idea of special portals called launchers, and the concept of zip files/share folders + creating folds in the fabric of the Greater Code to cross vast distances within a short distance. If you've read A Wrinkle In Time, thats the sorta thing im thinking of. But unfortunately right now its all spaghetti in my brain, so im still working on straightening that out until i can explain my thoughts coherently 💀💀💀💀

I can say rn that travel between dev crystals and their server clusters is not possible just yet. The universe is fucking HUGE, and there are countless devs and server clusters within it; the ability to travel between them isnt quite feasible right now, but it'll get there eventually :] not within the scope of the main story, though-- all of that fully takes place in this single corner of the universe

For dev crystals themselves, i picture them looking a lot like giant end crystals!!! the thought is that end crystals are basically like. a mini version of a dev, and that the beams you see healing the ender dragon are bursts of raw code pulled in from the rest of the server. so yeah, end crystals except massive on a scale we can barely comprehend and also ten million times more explosive (and more capable of handling the stability of an entire server cluster so it doesnt collapse in on itself)

4.) LAST BUT NOT LEAST. I. will fully admit when i wrote the walking on the void it was, at the time, a purely aesthetic choice. But i am legitimately thinking now about the implications of that, and toying with a few concepts that i wanna noodle on more before i fully commit to them. Sorry for leaving it a mystery for now!!!! 😂😂😂😂 it'll probably get answered in the post i'll eventually make about launchers and interserver travel

hope these were helpful and continue fueling your brainrot!!! thanks for being patient while i wrangled my brain enough to answer them :]❤️❤️❤️❤️

[empresstheresa-guide]

Theresa and Steve, love story for the ages.. part 3 A.

Part 3: Roads diverged in the Kindle, and that made all the difference. 

Recap: Theresa meets two boys in college. Steve is attractive and seems to have a similar personality, and she’s instantly drawn to him. But she feels obligated to date Jack instead, because Jack came to say hi before Steve did. Now she walks into Jack’s room and there’s another girl by Jack’s side. Shocked and humiliated, she goes upstairs to her room to wait for Jack to come in. 

And this is the part where the cogs in Norman’s brain started turning and never stopped. He keeps rewriting this over and over. I have 5 alternate versions from various editions of the book. There might even be more, for all we know. Norman cannot stop revising this part of the book. Maybe he likes to sit and fantasize about it. 

VERSION 1

I only had this on a Word file, which I lost after my previous computer died. I didn’t memorize the whole thing, so there may be gaps. But I swear by my honor and conscience that this version was in the book. 

To taunt Jack, Theresa decides to don a figure skater’s outfit, which she had bought second hand. This apparently is a thing, but how does Norman know about it? Theresa notes that the outfit had ”nothing in the back and not much in the front”, but it’s OK because ”families sent their sweethearts [out to the world]” in them. So we have a very bad beginning here, where Norman is just flat out sexualizes figure skaters.  

In lieu of a direct quote, here’s a complaint from a reader who actually did figure skating. Because of this, or some other reason, Norman took out the figure skating outfit. 

And here’s a quote about Norman’s original idea for ET… It’s wild how he went from that to this. I’d like to see that draft. It might actually make more sense than what we ended up with. 

Later in the book, Theresa enables having summer and winter olympics at the same time. 

Chapter 28: 

”I can see it now” said Steve.  “Somebody trains a girl to win gold medals in both gymnastics and figure skating the same week.”

“Wow!  I have to see that.”

Norman is oddly fascinated with figure skaters, and it's gross. To his credit, he did omit this part in later editions.  

Back to the scene. Jack and Steve walk in.

Jack says: ”Do you know what we could do here?”

Theresa says: ”Yes, girls read magazines too. By, Jack.”

And Jack just leaves, but Steve stays.

Is.. is Jack suggesting a threesome? I think he is. This is supposed to be a squeaky clean, family friendly book for young girls. It’s really inappropriate, unless there’s some other, more innocent reading I’m missing. Jack just leaves without saying anything else, and the relationship is over. That was fast. At least in this version, Jack did come up to Theresa’s room.. for a moment. 

But WHY would Steve come in? I can only think of one reason: he wants Theresa for himself, and he saw his opportunity here. That doesn’t make him look very good. You can be interested in someone your friend is dating, but to move in so quickly is just rotten. He’s supposed to be a Good Catholic Boy. Jack wouldn’t want him there, and Theresa wouldn’t either. This is between them. But Theresa has to end up with Steve, so there he is.

Apparently in this or some other version I haven’t seen, Theresa actually cuts her dress to make it shorter. In the later editions, she tapes it up. I seem to recall she changes to jeans, so Steve doesn’t have to be too horny. 

If you have this version of the book, please contact me, I want to read it again. 

VERSION 2 

”So!  Two timing Jack was coming up for a last look, was he?  I’d give him something to look at!

      I went to the closet and pulled out my ’little black nothing’.  It was a backless dress made of flimsy, clingy material.  It was something appropriate for a party, but in my room, with no other girls to look at, Jack would find it hard to forget.  He deserved the VIP treatment.”

Why does a good Catholic girl (hereafter GCG) even own such a dress? Don’t they like to dress modestly? And why would she get revenge on a boy by looking extra sexy? This doesn’t go together with her being a GCG.

”     Seven inches above the knee wasn’t a big deal these days, but to make it more interesting I folded back the hemline three more inches inside the skirt and taped it.  Now that was a dress!”

Theresa is only 5’4. That dress would barely cover her crotch.  Either Norman doesn’t understand measurements, or he’s just being really gross, indulging in his waifu fantasy. 

”  I put it on and looked in the full length mirror on the door.  Yup.  This would kill Jack.   He’d promise to throw Ginny out the window if I took him back.  Sorry, Jack.  Too late for that.”

This is immature and vain. The thing is, I could see a 17-year-old girl doing this, if she was a regular teenager. But it’s not fitting for a character who’s supposedly a genius and more mature than others her age. Not to mention humble, modest, and of course a GCG. Theresa doesn't even care at all about Jack.

There’s a knock on the door. 

” Steve Hartley came through the door.

      “Hi, Steve.  What‘s up?”

So instead of your boyfriend, a different dude walks in. A guy you’re not even friends with. And instead of telling him to get out of here, you just say ”Hi, what’s up?”

Why can’t Theresa have a friend or room mate who helps her? They could plot some kind of revenge, and then the following week or month, Steve could ask Theresa for a date. That would have been realistic and made both Theresa and Steve look better.

”  “Ginny is Steve’s old high school girlfriend.  They have an understanding.  She was supposed to drop in next weekend but she showed up early.”

”Understanding” sounds like they’re friends with benefits, or otherwise not too committed. 

    ” So it was all coming to an end anyway!  “She go to another college?”

      “No.  She’s a waitress.”

      Then she could be a cashier in Jack’s father’s store.”

Or maybe she could, you know, run the store together with Jack when he inherits it. This is just Norman’s snobbery. The book is littered with it, despite the fact that he works part time in a grocery store. He was a dentist, but let his license lapse and never renewed it. Imagine Norman being your dentist. He would ignore your pain and talk about ET. But he obviously thinks that being a dentist a long time ago puts him above other people. 

This passage also implies that Steve knew about Ginny. That means he enabled Jack’s deception. Would a good Catholic boy (hereafter GCB) do that? Would a good person, religious or not? He should have told Jack to come clean to Theresa. He doesn’t even seem to condemn Jack. 

”With that, the happy new couple had absolutely nothing to say. ”

Who’s ”the happy new couple”? Is she talking about herself and Steve? Is this sarcastic? I need a Norman-English translator to deal with all this. 

”Steve stood there glancing down at my dress.  He had a lot more to deal with than he’d expected. ”

Steve is having a massive boner. Very family friendly.

”Cat got your tongue, Steve?”    

He apparently thought this was an invitation.   He moved up against me, put his hands around on my bare back, and kissed me on the lips.   I felt a warm rush of blood in my face.  Steve must have felt the same because he didn’t break it off.   How long would this delicious moment last?”

She’s still with Jack and he just up and kisses her passionately. And of course, she doesn’t mind it at all, and it’s all just ”delicious”. She doesn’t feel guilty, just aroused. Jack is old news. 

”     “I feel guilty about what I’m thinking.”

      At least he was honest.

      “I understand.   I’m thinking the same way, but I don’t that that before marriage.”

Good girls don’t that that before marriage. I assume when Steve says he feels guilty, it’s because he’s thinking of filthy premarital sex, not because Theresa is still with Jack. 

”He stepped back and looked sheepish.   He must have thought the dress was a seduction for Jack and he’d be the bounce back boy. ”

Norman manages to combine ”bouncing baby boy” and ”rebound”. There’s apparently a band called Bounce Back Boy. You learn a lot when you Google Norman’s brain farts. 

”This was to make Jack sorry he made me mad.”

      “Did he tell you about Ginny?”

     Boy, could he change the subject fast!”

But .. it’s the same subject? It’s not like he brought up who his favorite captain is, Kirk or Picard. Theresa’s inner dialogue always comes across as so bratty and annoying, especially when she uses exclamation points.  

”  “No.  I guess he had the right to have a girl back home.  We’re not married, after all.  But he didn’t tell me.  If he had, we might have made some kind of platonic arrangement.  I dated a nice boy in high school for three years.  Everybody knew it wouldn’t last but that didn’t matter.  We were convenient for each other.”

But platonic means no sex. So they already had a platonic arrangement, because she won’t that that before marriage. [edit: apparently it can just mean not romantic, but she wasn't romantically interested in Jack either.] If there was no love involved, it was really just a friendship. Would a GCG date some guy just for the sake of dating, if there’s no long term plans, love, or sex? Would anyone? And this isn’t even her first time at the rodeo. I guess Norman wants her to be dating constantly, because she’s so hot everyone wants her. She can’t be single like some ordinary loser. But surely a GCG would wait until she’s truly in love? 

I also don’t understand the concept of having another girl at home, as long as you’re not married. That’s still cheating, if the girls don’t know about each other. Don’t Catholics have opinions on this kind of thing? 

      “So is it you and me now?” I asked.

      “I’d like to go out with you.” 

      “Yeah, well, this room is too awkward for both of us.  How about we go back downstairs and hang out with the guys?”     

      “Sure.”

      “Ginny should love this outfit.”

The last sentenced seems petty and vain again. She should be mad at Jack, Ginny has done nothing wrong. Why do you want to flaunt your body in front of her? 

Theresa has nothing to say to Jack, but wants to tell Ginny something. 

“Just so you’ll know, Jack and I both knew we weren’t going to have anything serious going on.  We just hung around together to have a social life.  We weren’t that compatible.”

This is uncharacteristically compassionate for Theresa. Later on, everyone who contests her can ”drop dead”, and she uses her powers against them. Here she seems to care about Ginny’s feelings a little. However…

     “Thank you” she said. That was all she said.    How would I feel if I had been the poor waitress back home hoping I could keep a college educated man and escape waiting on tables all my life?  It was very sad.”

Oh Norman. Of course being a waitress is a fate worse than death. I know it can be a crummy job and is not most people’s long term plan, but this just sounds condescending and nasty. 

Jack doesn’t say a single word, and there’s no description of his reaction. He just doesn’t matter anymore. 

”     When the boys lingering around in the hallway saw us they whooped and hollered in exaggerated manner.  They were paying tribute to my appearance and Steve’s triumph.

      “Pay no attention to these animals” Steve joked, but he was clearly pleased.”

The boys are immediately OK with Steve dating Theresa. Are they supposed to be GCBs, like Steve? Or are they just regular horn-dogs? Also the word ”pay” twice - maybe think of another phrase instead.

” Jack had always dominated the conversation when we were with the gang and I was mostly silent.  Steve was quieter, so I had the chance to talk with everybody.  It was nice.”

This is actually pretty good, by Norman’s standards at least. We find out something concrete about their relationship. It would have been better to write a scene where Jack talks and talks, and Theresa gets frustrated because she never gets to talk. But at least we get something. 

But none of this matters. It’s not canon anymore. It was all scrapped, and a completely new version was written..and then another version and then another. Steve’s passionate kiss is now history, and Theresa never speaks to Jack or Ginny again. 

This got very long and there's so much more, so I’m going to post this and then post a part B later. Look forward to awkward dialogue, thongs and Theresa’s father’s views on ”The Caine Mutiny”. 

[blackjackkent]

Hector lands on the final platform with a grunt and looks towards Balthazar and the woman caged in front of him.

The woman is pale as a ghost, even to her hair and her eyes. Her face is heavily scarred and her clothes ragged and torn. She glances at Hector with disinterest, but her gaze, and her ire, is primarily reserved for Balthazar, who is standing before her with a look of casual cruelty.

"Balthazar," the woman snaps. "Come to add more bars to my cage. Or perhaps to lead this would-be Justiciar's blade directly to my heart?"

She gestures, indicating Hector, and he flinches away from the assertion. Shadowheart is the one here to become a Justiciar; to be considered the petitioner himself is anathema. (And indeed, out of the corner of his eye, he can see Shadowheart surging forward to claim her rightful reward - but he puts an arm out across her chest, blocking her. They cannot speak yet; there is more to be heard.)

The woman's eyes flash back to Balthazar, and she lunges in his direction against the edge of the sigil holding her - and pale green spectral hands grasp at her, pulling her back, holding her still.

"I invite you," she snarls. "Heap more sins upon your head. My retribution will be all the sweeter for them."

Balthazar smiles coolly, unfazed by her impotent rage. "All this time," he murmurs, "and you still fail to appreciate the gifts I bestowed on you, Aylin. Sad, to see a thing of beauty not recognize its own worth." He circles the edge of the sigil, eyeing her like a particularly fascinating caged beast. "But General Thorm... *he* appreciates you. And he wants you close at hand, so I am here to whisk you back to him."

The Nightsong - Aylin? - struggles against her bonds, and the snarl on her face turns sardonic. "Ketheric. I welcome the sight of him, after these hundred years - he whose immortality I supply with my very soul."

Hector goes very still. His eyes flick sideways to Shadowheart and he sees that she has registered the meaning of these words as well. There is so much more at work here than the Justiciar trial, something that ties to the heart of everything they are struggling against.

This woman cannot be allowed to return to Thorm - at any cost.

Balthazar's smile loses some of its cool humor. "*General* Thorm," he repeats icily. "I'm sure you'll be on your best behavior for him, but just in case, I've taken some precautions."

He turns casually to Hector, seemingly unaware of the monk's distaste for the entire situation. "Keep back. It will take quite some concentration to secure Aylin for her little journey."

Hector draws a slow breath, trying to calm the racing of his mind enough to think, to decide on a plan. "Wait," he says, stalling for time. "The Nightsong is a person?"

Balthazar laughs.

"Person? Please. You insult her. You insult *me*. Aylin is so much more than that. She is an aasimar, bound to a soulcage of my creation and lending her immortal strength to General Thorm. Her power, his will, and my genius - an unsurpassable feat."

Hector feels a chill go through him. An aasimar - one touched by celestial blood, beyond human - trapped in this place for the century that Thorm has been immortal, mocked by this blasphemous cruelty for decades...

"Ramblings most unsane," Aylin sneers, uncowed even after such torment. "Poor Balthazar, for maggots ate his brain long ago."

"Hold your tongue, Aylin," Balthazar snaps coldly. "Or I'll take it away from you again." He turns to look at Hector, and the veneer of calm authority begins to slip in favor of irritation. "And you - no more questions. No more interference."

Hector flicks his eyes to his companions; all of them have shoulders set, eyes narrowed. He knows they all see the truth of the situation as clearly as he does. This can't be allowed to happen. And there is no way Balthazar will be dissuaded from his plans with anything other than violence.

Subtly he shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet, into the steady central stance ready to leap in any direction. Hidden by his crossed arms, his hands clench into fists.

"If she's the reason Ketheric Thorm is invulnerable," he says, voice steady and hard as steel, "you're not taking her. Leave, or you're a dead man."

Balthazar turns slowly towards him, and any pretense of pleasantry vanishes from him. His eyes are black coal flared with embers.

"Dead man," he murmurs. "You haven't been paying attention, have you? Perhaps I'll revive your carcass and add you to my retinue. Then you'll have all the time in the world to think on your mistakes!"

With astonishing speed for his bulk, he darts backwards, flaring with necromantic magic, and all around them, the strewn forms of the dead begin to rise.

Oh boy.

[summ3rhead]

Those were the two points that made me come to terms with the open ending you wrote. And it's glorious and painful both, at once. Your art moved me in a way no other story had done so far, it reached into my psyche and pulled a cord that is still taut and the snap it caused reverberated in me. You and me thinking about how love is always going to be complicated for them, about why an open ending left me in such an emotional place, about god and divinity and my own relationship to those concepts. Which talking about it would be another wall of text, so I'm gonna wrap it up. Thank you, thank you thank you so much sincerely. You gifted me a story that shook me, that has a personal meaning. And made me look at a couple issues about myself that I keep working on, topics of love, god, truth, the alchemy that is being loved by someone special and the possibility that letting go is the end of the road sometimes. But theirs is an open ending, as such I'll have to work hard to make my brain picture what could happen. To find the possibility under that bell curve that makes the most sense to who they are. I'm so sorry for clogging your ask box this way 😭 I could have written this dumb essay on ao3, but for some reason I do feel that reaching out through Tumblr is almost like knocking on the actual door of your house and drop by to say 'hello your art has touched me deeply, thank you' I sincerely hope none of the various parts of this ask are lost by Tumblr's system (it has happened to me sometimes) and lastly, your story moved me in a way that's made decide to try my hand at writing for them. Maybe I'll write my personal end to your story, if only for myself. I'm sure I will be bad at it, but they have taken hold of my brain and won't let go until I puke out whatever they want me to. Thanks for your story and your vision for it, you are insanely talented, this fandom is lucky to have you. If you want to publish all parts of my ask publicly it's ok, and if not that's ok too

This ask is in regards to my Avatrice Wings of desire AU (becasue i'm structuring this ask weirdly)

First off, thank you!! It took me a while to respond to this simply because I was figuring out just how exactly to respond. It'll probably be a bit unorthodox but I'm going to respond to your penultimate ask and paste your other ones in if anybody else wants to read through them and get a little context. 

To be frank, I’m pleased my fic gave you such a visceral reaction. I knew people were going to have mixed feelings over it, but I never intended for the ending to be easy, though I’d like to think it's not such a devastating open ending, but fairly hopeful. It’s so interesting to see people connect with my writing on a personal level (I also had a relationship that ended weirdly. The feelings were there but the circumstances were, quite frankly, dog shit. It didn’t work out, and you're right: those partings are always worse). 

Also, don’t apologise for sending me such a long ask! It was all so fascinating and really made me think. I had to read your comments a few times over to really appreciate the beautiful points you were making :) very interesting stuff.

In regards to this ask (which is long and wouldn't fit into one screen shot):

I’m so so so pleased because it seems like you’ve really grasped and understood the version of Ava and Beatrice I was angling for. This ask specifically… i think you really nailed what i was going for, and nailed Ava and Bea’s characterisations in general. This line particularly:

 “Ava did exactly what she was going to do. Keep trying to outrun her pain, with or without Bea. And Bea would stay behind because she's her own person, the person Ava helped to develop, and thanks to her she has the strength to say I cannot follow this time.”

And to answer this ask! All is not lost, an epilogue is still on the cards!

And in regards to your own endeavours, the first step to writing is just banging something out on a page and pushing through the discomfort of trying something new. I salute you on your journey :)

Thank you so much for such a thought out response to my work. It means so so much to me that I've written something that warrants this kind of response, truly I'm profoundly touched.

I really really appreciate people who not only comment on ao3, but also take the time to send me such thoughtful asks here on tumblr (you're right, it does sort of feel like knocking at my front door hehe)

Thank you, friend <3 I’m honoured that my work has touched you like this :’)

[ladyprocrasinator]

Good Omens FINALE

THE NICE AND ACCURATE PROPHECIES OF AGNES NUTTER, WITCH

Rating ★★★★☆

When I say this book was a rollercoaster I mean it. I was almost completely blind going into this book. The most I knew about it was that Crowley and Aziraphale existed and that they were not yet 'played' by David Tennant and Michael Sheen (who I look forward to seeing in the series). To be honest I was very thrown off guard by the writing style, like I mentioned in my last Good Omens post it felt like a combination of a British Comedy and a philosophical book. Which I'm very sure was purposeful. However this change in style made it harder for me to read. For the first third of the book I was highly considering giving the book three out of five stars, but I persevered. Now I sit here being glad I did so. The book really became interesting to me when the apocalypse really started and we started to learn more about Agnes Nutter Witch. I became fascinated with how Gaiman and Pratchett portrayed Agnes's visions and how all the point of views the reader has seen was coming together. On the other hand I continued to enjoy how the two authors portrayed Adam (He had awesome development as well). Overall I really liked how the book came together in the end and gave the reader (at least me) a sense of contentment. Like if everything does go to hell (no pun intended) it's our friends and willingness to take hold of one's own destiny that makes a difference.

Favorite Character

As promised since this is technically a part of my reading challenge (TO READ OR NOT TO READ) I must pick out a favorite character. Except I'm torn between two. Those two being Adam Young and Agnes Nutter. So I've decided I'll make an argument for both.

Agnes is one of the characters that play a vital role in the book. She is described as a handsome woman (or once was), and with her magic (knowledge of herbs and other things) she was able to heal and help people. I love her because she is such a witty and well thought character. Because of certain things she did in the book I consider her such an icon. One of them being how she prophesizes modern things (although it is also funny how she sees some of her descendant's futures). Unfortunately I cannot say much beyond this without spoiling so just keep an eye out for whenever Agnes is mentioned.

Where do I even begin with Adam? Well he is the son of the devil but he manages to still be a normal kid (There are also so many biblical references that I want to point out around him but won't for the sake of not spoiling). As mentioned in my last good omens post he and his group actually act like kids. They aren't prodigies and they aren't complete idiots either. All of them have a good balance between innocence and being complete rascals. Adam is a charming kid for being the son of the devil and simply wants the best for his friends and dog. Overall I enjoy the simplicity of his child mind.

Almost forgot but dog is an honorable mention and I love him.

Favorite Line/Lines

"Here's to next time," he said, "And ... Aziraphale?"

"Yes."

"Just remember I'll know that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking."

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

What is under the cut

Other things I liked about the book

Funny moments or things I laughed at

Something I found very interesting about the book was it's take on religion. I grew up in a religious household and I'm still torn. My view on it is that I feel that there is a god I'm just not sure if anyone is completely correct. Going back to the book it tickled my brain how they handled religion. Like Armageddon was supposed to come around but because Adam was raised as a human his roots became unimportant and he denied his roots. He saw the value in life where heaven and hell just wanted to defeat one another. It's quite strange seeing heaven and angelic beings represented more as lawful neutral instead of true goodness.

Things I found amusing

"I saw a program. It had David Attenborough, so it's true. (154)"

"What a nice person," said Newt. "You could almost overlook her blowing up an entire village." (talking about Agnes Nutter, 199)

Crowley meeting Leonardo Da Vinci and having the original sketch was cool but 'knowing' he met the artist and Vinci liked the drawing more was hilarious.

All in all there is quite a lot I appreciate when reading Good Omens but that is for another post! Thank you all and I'll be posting my next To Be Read book soon!

[shoot-of-corruption]

🗣 + Seto

☠ ― Send '🗣' + a character to hear the mun's opinion about that character.

OUF... Seto Kaiba has always been a difficult case for me. I realize that most of the YuGiOh cast went through terrible trauma at some point in their life, Seto Kaiba, too, had this doubtful pleasure enforced on him.

I think at some point he lead a nice good life, somewhere with parents that very much loved him and his little brother. But as this things happen they never seem to last and something has robbed from him the people he felt safe around. Firstly that certainly is still inside of him. I am very certain he remembers those times, being happy with a family of four members.

Growing up the older sibling and losing his parents though, wouldn't just cause him grief, it would also cause him to grow especially cunning and resourceful - he had to take care of his brother now of course! Not only was he increasingly cunning about giving Mokuba the best life, he also completely ignored what grief it would cause himself. Being adopted by Gozaburo Kaiba... cannot ever have been easy. It would definitely cause Mokuba to live better, it would also lessen the fear of being separated because some dumb couple simply didn't want to adopt two children - and brothers at that.

While that Damocles sword was swinging over his head, he had to perform things he had never even dealt with. Brain acrobatics, planning every second of his life through, being punished for transgressions and failure. It must have been extremely rough on a person who was no doubt extremely gifted, but had never lived under such strict regiment. I think all was well until Gozabura enforced that he couldn't see Mokuba, if his performance wasn't excellent.

I think that was the moment where Seto Kaiba decided one old geezer had to go. He had given him everything to work with, while thinking he was still in control, because he completely underestimated this child... merely even a teenager. And I can see how through all of this abuse and grooming and terrible cold behaviour towards him, being forced to go through this out of love that was perpetually beaten out of him would cause him to become the person he was in season zero and also that the death of his adoptive father was nothing but a triumph. They could live together now, Mokuba and him, but nothing was really feeling good anymore. He had been made into a shell of a person and the love for his brother just waasn't the same anymore and that in turn caused Mokuba to become colder as well.

While Kaiba went through his mind crush, Mokuba would definitely throw his antagonizing firmly aside to just hope for the survival of his brother and everything going awry after that, Seto Kaiba, who had finally woken up and found that things (especially brothers) hadn't been left where they should be, had [with the help of Yami]broken through the teachings of his father and his emotional and mental abuse.

I am always impressed by how far the lengths are that certain characters go... and while Kaiba seems to be just a complete ASSHOLE on the outside, definitely still following the teachings of Gozaburo when it comes to skill and the job of being a CEO, his goals are simply completely different. Not only does he kick the old man with pleasure, while he rotates in his grave, he just uses his potential to give people joy and earn money with that.

He has built himself a perfect living space already and now everything seems to be in order, but something or another is still ingrained in him. The simple and odd need to win at all costs. He has gone through so much and in his eyes DESERVES the position of being at the top, everybody had thrown rocks in his way, to hurt HIM personally and then along comes some little dwarf, stealing his victory. And that - my friends - he was simply unable to forget and it grew into a new obsession.

On a total he is simply a fascinating character. He has his flaws, but works around them. He is cunning, but refuses to see solutions that lie before his feet. He built a cold surface, but would sell his soul for his brother in an instant. He may be a little emotionally stunted, but I think he is just performing for himself after that mind crush experience. There are things he is very unwilling to budge on... and he does only for Mokuba (and sometimes Yuugi/Yami) because they really NEED to stay around him, so he can have access at all times. X'D

Seto Kaiba may behave like an old cold bastard, but even he needs his support system here ;D

[astramachina]

I'm curious about our current fascination with mimics and what it has to say about our current fears. Like how trends in horror tend to reflect current societal fears (ex. "the virgin lives" during the AIDS crisis, "you're telling me a queer coded this villain" etc.).

The first time I watched Annihilation, I had put it on the TV while I cleaned the tiny studio I was living in. The bear scene unsettled me, sure, but I have a distinct memory of stopping what I was doing the moment The Alien came on screen. I sat on the edge of my coffee table and had to remind myself to breathe during that entire 10-minute-long sequence because I could feel at least five new fears unlocking in real time. The uncanny movements that perfectly mirrored Lena as it slowly morphed to look like her, her inability to break the mimicry until she decided to risk her own life. I quickly went from "I fear just about nothing in horror" to "well this one scene in a sci-fi flick really fucked me up".

Fast-forward a few years and now we have a boom of internet-based indie horror. The Mandela Catalogue is all about something, demonic or alien or both, taking over and mimicking us and the ones we love for some motive we can't even begin to comprehend. In Vita Carnis there's a subspecies called "mimic" that badly shapes itself into human form in order to violently eat people. Now, even FNAF has shifted gears, where the big bad was a very human serial killer and now it's all about an "AI program" (to oversimplify an unnecessarily complicated plot point) called "the mimic" who, you guessed it, mimics in order to lure.

Someone (I cannot for the life of me remember who it was) said that this might relate to the overbearing presence of social media and its effect on people's psyche, and while I partially agree, there's also a part of me that wants to say this is simply continuing the longstanding tradition of "the queer as the evil". A continuation of the panic that the queers are among us, and not only that, but they're completely indistinguishable from "the rest of us".

What's really scratching at my brain here is this: if the aforementioned point is true, what's that say about me, a queer who knows they've been queer since forever, being unsettled by this trope? And does it have anything to do with the fact that, when The Alien first went from a nothing blob to taking on the form of a human woman, happened to coincide with the countdown to my realization I wasn't cis.

[raichukfm]

It's a fascinating question and the answer doesn't speak to it at all. We're talking about swapping perceptions, you know, the hypothetical thing that could answer those "What if my blue is your red?" ponderings. Were that the case and you were to swap, you would start seeing everything red as blue and vice versa, but you would be able to tell this. That's a controversial point, but we aren't proposing a full qualia inversion here; your internal concepts of red and blue haven't changed, just the way that your brain maps sensory stimuli to your qualia has. You can imagine red, and it's red as you have always imagined it, you just look at a red delicious apple and you see it as blue. (Actually a fascinating question whether people would agree with this assessment, and has me wondering about people with aphantasia specifically about if they think their 'red as they have always imagined it' can be separated from the way things with that color look to them. I'm getting off track.)

But this swap is different. Semiotics refers to the meanings that things have; for instance, the way you are looking at these squiggles or hearing these sound waves and taking them as a message. I am intending a meaning now as I type these words out, and you are taking away a meaning as you perceive them, and though it won't quite be the same meaning it is related. There's a question of where exactly the meaning you perceive is; is it in the message itself? Is it just contained in the context around it? Was it put there by me? Is it only there when you read or hear it?

And now specifically we're talking about abstract objects, things which aren't concrete; for instance, words as words, not images or sounds but the thing that those patterns invoke. Things where it is already an interesting philosophical question about how exactly it is that they exist. (For those with the bent to ponder it and not just go 'Uh, they just do, duh' because yeah that's fair.) And that's just one example of an abstract object. It's not all messages. There are numbers. There are complex mathematical objects, like groups and rings and fields. Are things like "peace" abstract objects?

If we do this swap of perceptions, so you perceive the meaning of an abstract thing to be the meaning that I perceive... What are you perceiving, exactly? Is it the thing anymore? Is this even truly a swap of perceptions or is it rather a swap of thoughts? If you took one piece of my mental model of the world and swapped it out with one of yours, how would it fit in? Would it fit in at all? It's fascinating.

The world isn't shrouded in darkness. There's not some blinding fog that has settled over everything. You can observe the world, make sense of parts of it, peer into its mysteries and try to think of answers. Yeah, it's confusing and a lot of pieces of it are out of reach but that's just because the world is so fucking big and complicated and so many parts we simply lack the faculties to possess. This question is that lovely kind of philosophical pondering that is fundamentally unresolvable and by all rights has no practical purpose... But we can still talk about it, and in talking about it, we can share ideas and work through how it is we think of things. If nothing else, we can enjoy ourselves. And that's as practical a purpose as anything else.

Don't see something you can't think of how to answer and decide that it cannot be answered and that now is a time to shrink away to safe thoughts that can be trusted. Ponder whatever bullshit that strikes your fancy, and try to think about what the answers would be. Even if you can fundamentally never find out if you're right or wrong, the thinking itself is a worthwhile exercise. Encourage other people to do it too, though don't try to force it; different people have their own sorts of funtime questioning. I've got things like this, some people have how much prep time Batman would need to defeat Shrek in a fight.

equally confounded and obsessed by this quora question and response that i just stumbled onto