#Obligatory fan child ofc

[smoozed12]

I don’t know what I’m doing

[juniperhillpatient]

ok I’m like… back to this. I do love that the coffin of andy & leyley is so brutally bluntly HORROR as in not pg 13 blumhouse ghost horror movies that shy away from anything too taboo but horror that’s meant to offend & upset. I like the way it sees shit you’re not “supposed” to talk about & goes as hard as it can like - I don’t think at this point it’s a secret to literally anyone who follows me or has ever discussed fiction with me ever that the controversial or daring are obvious draws for me in any genre but particularly my favorite genre of horror.

like an anon suggested this to me, I saw the words “cannibalism” “incest” & “botched satanic ritual” as soon as I googled & was ready to check it out BUT I think it’s worth noting that it’s not the dark concepts themselves that got this game its well earned hype or that ensure that it lives rent free in my head & the heads of other fans.

I think the writers have created really compelling & complex multilayered characters & a fascinating storyline with a lot of questions left unanswered about the nature of these demons & of human souls & the world these characters inhabit & I’m being so sincere here I also think it’s a really thought provoking critique or at least exploration of the american nuclear family.

I already said this but I would’ve stopped caring pretty fast if andrew & ashley were not more than their archetypes which SURE are fun we love a quirky evil girlboss & her simp boyfriend brother but the fun archetypes are not enough on their own to keep me hooked. luckily, these are some of the least 1 dimensional characters I’ve ever seen. this got carried away talking about how good I think the game is & giving an obligatory disclaimer that yeah, I totally got into it initially for shallow & edgy reasons lol but I actually wanted to talk about the themes because I genuinely think it’s an incredibly well crafted story. anyway -

I think it’s really interesting that ashley is the one that is originally shown believing / hoping their mom hasn’t truly abandoned them. andrew discourages her from having hope in their mom or considering trying to find her until it’s about finding sacrifices for the demon & getting money. yet this initial dynamic is totally forgotten once they’re home. ashley just wants to kill these motherfuckers while andrew is busy playing mind games & - one might argue- playing house / pretending be a happy family. it’s andrew who is offered the olive branch. who we see considering sparing his parents or at least feeling conflicted about killing them. in the flashbacks we see that “andy” was forced to take care of “leyley” & she uses it against him “mom says you have to play with me.”

ashley is so depressingly achingly desperate for any hint of affection & it’s so obvious the reason she’s latched into andrew is that he’s the only one who’s ever chosen her. that’s why she’s so obsessed with calling andrew “andy” despite the conflict it constantly creates. andy helped her hide a body. a possibly hot take but I don’t think leyley was going “yay murder” in her child brain - I don’t think she cared that the girl died don’t get me wrong - but I do believe it was an accident. this is a happy memory though because it’s the only time in ashley’s entire life that someone has chosen her with that level of commitment. yet for andrew it’s horrific & traumatic & he wants to get away from it - or so he tells himself. maybe his parents were decent to him or at least not actively hateful how they were to ashley but it’s abundantly clear based on the fact the story’s premise relies on them leaving him to fucking starve to death that they do not give a fuck about him.

when mrs. graves tells andrew that there’s still hope for him & that she always cared about him the compliments she chooses are telling - they thought he was easy, quiet, a good kid - they thought they could have another (& hand her off to him to take care of). and ofc it’s worth noting mrs. graves only says all this to save her own skin & would never freely talk about caring about andrew.

so andy is living this cold not abusive but certainly empty & devoid of nurturing life & along comes leyley. she’s annoying & needy but she loves him with such reckless abandon. adult ashley’s words say it all. “If only you could love me with half the heart I love you with.” but he DOES he just doesn’t know how to show it the way she does. so he chooses her again & again & tries to make her happy with violence & bending to her will & showing her he’d do anything for her with everything he can except the one thing she wants which is simple affection.

as things get more & more dire ashley gets more abusive, controlling & manipulative embodying the worst aspects of her mother - a cold heartless bitch who never cared about anyone but herself - & andrew gets more & more apathetic just like his worthless father who’s barely even a person in his wife’s shadow.

it’s a really tragic story & I love this idea of characters on the run but they’re really running from themselves & that’s something you can never escape. how telling is it that the one thing ashley doesn’t want is to be buried in the same grave as her parents? but this story is about a grave it’s always been about a coffin in one way or another, they thought they escaped when they got out of the apartment but they’re still in it because they’ll always still be in it, you can’t escape from who you are at your core & there’s a reason ashley having tarred soul is such a glaring theme & episode 2 (in some versions) ends with andrew gaining a mark on his hand from the demon. they’re marked & there’s no escape. I’m sorry it’s just REALLY good horror. ok I’m done for now

[transactinides]

A B C D aaaand U? :3

A - ships that you currently like a lot

ackkk theres a lot tbh... rinniki and tatsukana are my biggest favourites and ofc. obligatory madashutatsu mention. yuushino my silliest forever too, but while im here mayoshino can be rly cute too :3 i really really love michinana too isnt it crazy how nothing wrong or sad ever happened to them :'). also i have an extremely specific vision of arospec kamil/silver/idia which i rotate in my head a lot :3c aaand i promise its the last thing here. tsukasa/umika from lupats you have my heart....

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

there's this one artist i like (@/oya-oya-okay) whom i originally followed for one of her aus, but she really got me into azurido :3c

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

i need everyone to get real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly ^-^ skk, kavetham, cynonari, quanyin,,,, i know why ppl ship those pairings but. so not for me personallyyy and all of these at least somewhat popular in their respective fandoms TwT

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

i need everyone to get real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly ^-^ [2] im sorry to all tatsumayo fans I really wish i could get behind this ship and, again, i logically understand why people ship them its just. not for me at all TwT

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Niki Shiina from enstars - can i just say this is self explanatory? 👉👈 i love his backstory, love his personality, love how he looks, i really relate to him to an absurd degree.... and hes a chef no less

Don Quixote from limbus company - MY SILLY MY SHINING HERO MY BELOVED MEEPIE. She is so interesting to me,,, u see her in-game for the first time and shes an absolute riot and a very loveable even if extremely troublemaking weirdo but there IS more to her too... give me don quixote backstory i begg.

c!Tubbo from dsmp - made me who i am today.......... ctubbo you will always be famous. hes a child soldier hes a spy hes a president hes a nuclear scientist hes a widowed father. suffered more than jesus. hold on give me a second i thought about ctubbo for more than a minute and now i need to sit down. HBQLWIF

[luvingsolace]

Will Solace hcs cause he SOLOS!!!! Stay mad haters

(Both in the demigods world and in a mortal!au)

Hes a bisexual icon

He was short as a child. And i mean. Shorter than the common child. I mean short SHORT. He wasnt known as Will Solace he was known as The Blond Smurf. Shortest in the class type of beat. Everyone thought that he was going to be like 5'7" MAX as an adult.

Got a massive grown spurt when he was like 14 and now hes like 6'1" (people didnt reconize him anymore. Someone started a rumor that some big ass giant took him and pulled him from his head and his feets and that was why he had become so tall. Everyone was terrified.)

He uses guns as his weapon of choice against monsters!! He sucks with close combat and finds the bow somehow boring. Plus! His granddad taught him how to shot when he was younger (Naomi wasnt that happy to see her 10yo with a gun) so he had a sort of emotial bond to that type of weapon.

He specifically asked the Hephaestus cabin to build him a pair of semi automatics and hes this 🤏🏻 close to give them a name and tug their bedsheets for nighttime

He has plague powers. STOP BEING COWARDS YOU ALL KNOW HE DOES!!

He never uses them tho because hes really ashamed of them

Hes a dog dad. By which i mean that he has not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4 but 5 dogs ☺️ One Golden Retriever (named Shiro) that was the Solaces family dog, one light weiner (Burrito) that was gifted to Will by a friend, two pitbulls (Mila and Bee) adopted from the dog shelter and lastly one mutt (sandy) personally saved by Will from an abusive home.

He loves dogs guys he truly does

Hes actually very good as sports! Hes especially great at Volleyball and Basketball, and in his High School hes part of the basketball team.

Hes very close with Leo & Clarisse they are literally bffs

Nico taught him italian swears and hes able to say "testa di cazzo" and "pezzo di merda" as fluently as a native speaker

When he was young he always dressed up as young Anakin

Once he got older he dressed up as Luke, Han and older Anakin

Hes like. VERY protective with people he loves. Not in an oppressive way tho

Hes one FINE mf and i mean it that man Is ANGELIC

He doesnt really see it tho

He decided he wanted to be a doctor when in 5th grade the school organized an obligatory first aid course for the kids. It was very basic but Will instantly fell in love.

He eats. A lot. Like he can eat 2 large pizzas alone and still ask for a dessert. His friends use him as a sort of trashcan because of this. "Oh you cant finish whats in your plate? Just give it to Will! He'll eat everything"

Han Solo was his bi awakening

He likes to bake! Not as much as he loves to eat tho

He surfs (ofc....) and try to make Nico learn it (spoiler: he sucks)

He has tattoos. People lets accept the truth. He does. Hes FULL of them. Big ones, little ones, dumb things, phrases, animals... Everything. He loves them.

He has a... Weird fashion sense. By this i mean its horrible. Yes i know. Its an ugly truth, but its the truth. He couldnt be that level of flawless...

Drew tries to help, she really does, but Will just cant seem to comprehend whats wrong with his fashion sense. Sandals with socks, different prints together, 9374928392 colors together seems all reasonable to him

His average body temperature Is around 37°/38° C. Didnt have much fun during covid times. (Gonna post about this specific hc in the future hehe)

He loves tangled. He LOVES tangled.

Nico forces him to dress up as Rapunzel while he dresses up as Flynn Rider.

Hes also a big fan of Shrek. Watched those movies a ton of times

OK IM DONE IM DONE

[absynthe--minded]

please may I hear about The Wife... no judgement at all I just love hearing what everyone thinks

Okay. So.

(obligatory disclaimer: all headcanons are valid, and all fanworks are valid, and my opinions are my own and based on what I see in fandom around me, which is not the full breadth and depth of Tolkien fandom and is only a tiny piece of the greater puzzle. this is salty, and somewhat bitter, and very frustrated, but it’s not aimed at any specific person and it’s not just my negative feelings due to being a Russingon shipper. I’d actually really like to continue conversation about this, with people on all sides of The Wife Debate - I enjoy talking with people!)

the tl;dr is that I really cannot stand how the fandom treats the potentially-existing character of Fingon’s wife.

first off, it’s basically up in the air as to whether or not she exists - we have reference in the published Silmarillion to Gil-galad as Fingon’s son with Christopher Tolkien saying later that he was acting in error in confirming GIl’s parentage that way, and we have a line from The Mariner’s Wife that’s the beginning of a letter sent to Tar-Meneldur (Ereinion Gil-galad son of Fingon to Tar-Meneldur of the line of Eärendil, greeting: the Valar keep you and may no shadow fall upon the Isle of Kings.) in which Fingon’s parentage is claimed by the then-High King, but we also have writing from The Shibboleth of Fëanor that Fingon had no wife upon departure from Valinor and no biological children at that time.

For a long time it was assumed that Fingon’s wife was a Sindarin woman named Meril, but ‘Meril’ is the name of Finrod’s wife as recorded in The War of the Jewels and in this draft Gil-galad is Arafinwëan. The confusion there is easy to understand, as Gil-galad’s departure to the Falas and early life spent with Círdan is present in both the published Silmarillion and the unpublished footnotes of WotJ, but ultimately the canon holds two things to be more or less plausible: first, Gil-galad is Fingon’s son; second, he has no stated wife.

of course the absence of a recorded wife doesn’t mean there was no wife - we only need look at Orodreth’s child/children, or Elros’s, or Isildur’s, to see that Tolkien has a habit of giving men biological offspring without recording the names of the women in their lives who must have birthed and helped raise those offspring - but this actually brings me to the first issue I have with how fandom treats this particular quasi-character (let’s call her Nís, for this little ramble - it’s easier than dancing around the fact that she has no name of her own): she’s assumed to be necessary for the existence of Gil-galad the Nolofinwëan.

Fingon adopting a child, or taking an heir for legal purposes, or fostering someone else’s son, are perspectives on family life that are more or less entirely gone from the fan conversation surrounding this interpretation of Ereinion’s parentage, as is the idea that Fingon might have wanted or had a child without the help of a woman. (and like - not to bring prejudices into this, because I don’t think they’re entirely the motivating factor here, but... sex-repulsed people exist? ace and aro people who don’t want conventional romantic relationships exist? I’m 100% on the “Fingon is grey-ace and 100% gay and only wants Maedhros” train but aspec/arospec, single Fingon is also a valid headcanon and assuming he had to have a wife for the sake of having a child uh. bothers me because of its implications?) and all of this comes down to my larger point of frustration which -

Nobody really cares about this character in her own right. Nobody looks at Nís, or the gap left by her in the text, and becomes invested in her and in what happens to her without some external factor making her a necessity. She’s Gil-galad’s mother so she has to be there, or she’s Fingon’s wife and therefore something that isn’t Russingon so she has to be there. She’s not a personality that anybody gives a damn about outside of what she can do for the men in the narrative, and that pisses me off like nothing else and is the main reason why she’s basically the only woman in the Legendarium I can’t stand. I love Tolkien’s women! I think they’re all great! I’m a lesbian and I’d love to see more ladies hanging around! But she doesn’t matter, in my experience, outside of propping up really narrow-minded ideas of family and giving weight to homophobia.

I would at least be able to grudgingly tolerate and understand and even respect her presence in the fandom if people liked her and respected her and treated her like her own person with weight and import! But she’s not in any of the textual ghost fanworks, she’s never given a shoutout in fanart, she barely registers on anyone’s radar. There are twenty fanfics on AO3 tagged with her relationship to Fingon in them, and eleven of those left when you filter out fics that also include Russingon in some capacity. “Fingon/OFC” yields ten stories total. Out of over sixteen thousand. Nobody - and I mean that seriously - treats her like she matters, even people who believe she exists. She’s not a fundamental part of serious headcanons - I’ve seen more love given to OC wives for Maedhros than this woman who a large subset of the fandom seems to think must have been real in some capacity!

(Just for fun: we have 40 works tagged for Orodreth’s wife, 40 works for Caranthir’s wife, 18 works for Elros’s wife, and 112 works for Maglor’s wife. Branching out into ‘named but with very little known about them’ we have 35 for Eldalótë, 135 for Amarië, and 199 for Elenwë. Everyone else in this story matters more than Nís does. It’s a little absurd.)

basically I’m done taking claims of loving this character or caring about her seriously. I’ve had to fight people using her like a bludgeon for so long that I cannot stomach her; my personal opinion is “I don’t want to see content made for this character who Tolkien himself said didn’t exist” but I’m a firm believer in ship and let ship and in the idea that all fanworks have a place and a purpose so like. people interested, y’all can do what you want if you stop resenting the hell out of Russingon shippers for no reason and keep things cordial? but in the meantime stop pretending you care about Nís for literally any other reason but ulterior motives, you clearly don’t! she’s a convenient person-shaped battering ram and literally nothing else.

(Also, I want to know what exactly Russingon shippers have done that makes us so worthy of everyone who doesn’t ship it hating our guts, you know? Homophobia is obviously part of it in some circles but what the hell happened that makes non-homophobes so damn resentful of us? please do give thoughts on that if you have them I want to know and that is even more salt.)