#The only reason there is such a stark difference between my pieces is because I already have all kf the concepts down through traditional

[meowder]

This came straight from Santa's workshop

[mac-tirs]

the not-insignificant differences between the omen twins

so, i saw this picture posted by @amanaci which inspired me to write this rather lengthy piece on the contrasts between morgott and mohg. i decided that, instead of dumping this whole think-piece on their post, i'd make my own separate post and ramble here.

this difference in their height really tracks for how their fighting styles and personalities are like, i feel. i always found it peculiar how different they are despite being twins; i feel like there's a rather stark resemblance between miquella and malenia in their soft-faced features, pale skin, and long flowing hair, and a close resemblance between the carian siblings with their red hair, but morgott and mohg are rather different from each other, only bearing similarities due to their omen nature. i looked a little bit into that and found that there's pretty good reasons behind why.

firstly, morgott is severely malnourished and unhealthy in comparison to mohg. you can see it in his body and how his skin sags, how his ribs and bones show, and how dry it looks. below is a comparison between his hands and mohg's hands.

morgott's hands are dry, almost rubbed red and raw around the knuckles and fingers. it reminds me a little of psoriasis, or some kind of skin discolouration caused by his poor health. it's likely he isn't eating well, or at the very least, he isn't eating as well as mohg. his twin, on the other hand (ha!), has shiny, veiny skin with a healthy colour and gleam to them. it's like he wants to call to attention how well moisturised he is (which, in this case, compared to morgott, he is).

above is a comparison between the twins' horns. the difference is extremely evident to me; morgott's horns are dry, almost seeming brittle, like sun-dried bone that hasn't seen rain or moisture in years. it reminds me of the horns of a very neglected ram, almost, but despite that, the horn growths seem more controlled, less like the wild growths all over the royal omens of the shunning grounds and more controlled as a sort of jutting crown from mainly one side of his head. meanwhile, mohg's horns are shiny, curling wildly to the point of injury, taking his eye in its path of growth. they grew wildly enough to replace his hair altogether, if he ever had any, and give him an even more imposing silhouette with a literal crown of horns (and a beard to boot). beyond this, his horns look healthy, with clearly defined rings to each growth that shine under the light, much like the rest of him. he's oiled leather to morgott's dry hide.

another somewhat interesting detail of morgott is his tail. i know a lot of people see it as soft, and it certainly looks the part, but what i find interesting are two things: the first being that his fur looks quite matted in some lightings and angles but overall looks soft to the touch, and the second being that his tail's horns look much healthier than his own horns on his head. this is in clear contrast to the rest of his body, which looks dry and unassuming with smatterings of coarse white hair up and down his body, and i believe its a matter of the limits to his own self-care. he utilises his tail as another weapon in his arsenal, so he cares for it that it might serve him well in battle, unlike his head of horns, which only serve as a detriment to him with how they must obscure some of his vision, if not most of it. additionally, he likely could bear to look at his tail and care for it, but for an omen that hates his nature more than the average, he probably doesn't enjoy looking at his own face in the mirror enough to properly care for himself.

which brings me back to the sheer differences between these two. morgott, unhealthy and self-loathing, neglects many visual aspects of himself likely because he sees vanity as a luxury not afforded to someone like him. mohg, healthy and self-obsessed, cares and grooms himself to appear very much so like the lord he claims to be, loving himself to a heretical extreme (in the eyes of the golden order). their statures reflect this too; morgott hunches low to the ground, ready to pounce at any given moment but also due to his own shame and humility, while mohg stands tall and proud, though not as tall as he could possibly be due to his upbringing being one of likely having to hunch low to fit beneath the ceilings of the smaller parts of the shunning grounds.

above is a picture of an omen from stormveil, which bears resemblance to all the omen you see in the game. in terms of clothing, one of the big ways people set the omen twins apart, morgott is completely naked save for the ragged cloak of animal hides he wears, signifying he is not fit to even dress himself in a shirt or trousers as befits a king, much like the omen pictured. he wears even less than that, actually, since he lacks even the slightest adornment save for the rope that clasps his cloak together. on the other hand, mohg is entirely adorned in finery, wearing a beautifully embroidered, fashionable priest's robe with matching vestments, and beneath that (as seen in the first image) some underclothes, a plain black button up and some pants. mohg's entire silhouette changes with the removal of his robe, while morgott's barely makes an impact once you realise he has only taken off the one article of clothing he had.

then, of course, there are their fighting styles. there's this fantastic video on youtube that i recommend watching of the twins fighting every major boss in the game, and you can clearly tell them apart from their fighting styles alone. morgott is fast, his size making him look deceptively slow only for him to dart out and do sick flips and somersaults and pirouettes that rival even the most flexible dancers, and he fights with speed and almost animalistic ferocity, save for when he conjures his weapon incantations. mohg is slow but strong, capable of swinging that large trident around like it weighs nothing while hitting with the force to knock down most enemies in a few hits, and most tarnished in just one, but he fights with a steady gracefulness in his every move, walking slowly and carefully while casting spells that hurt a lot.

even their phase 2 transitions are markedly different, with morgott's being one where he drops to his knees, vomits, and releases his cursed blood(?) all over the battlefield, causing his weapon to become alight with his curse and for him to fight with more in-your-face aggression, and with mohg's being one where he simply ignores your attacks and begins stabbing his spear into the formless mother for power at your expense, gaining a majestic set of wings that put distance between you and him so he can cast more of his spells at safer distances. where morgott is pushed to his limit and forced to confront his nature, mohg has long since embraced it and enjoys the fruits of his bloody labour with the mother of truth's blessing.

speaking of the mother of truth, even their patron orders are at odds with each other. the golden order was built upon the foundation of a very carefully-guarded lie: that marika is the one true god, which she can't be, with the existence of radagon (as per goldmask, perhaps the number 1 fundamentalist we meet in game). the formless mother is known also as the mother of truth, existing in direct opposition of the golden order's lies and craving the honesty of one of the purest expressions of life: blood. these two ideals would war against each other, with one being dedicated to the upholding of a beautiful, corrupt lie and the other being dedicated to the instillation of a dynasty of raw, pure truths. as such, even morgott and mohg's own great runes reflect these contrasts in faith, though, remarkably, these two great runes are ones that fit perfectly over each other, with mohg's slightly elevated (seen below, taken from the fextralife wiki).

so, where does this leave us? i don't know, exactly. i wasn't really writing this with any sort of ultimate conclusion. i just found it really interesting how different they were, and i wanted to talk about all the noticeable, significant differences between them here. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[starry-eyer]

i think one mistake people make when analyzing the lyanna/rhaegar and sansa/baelish connection is trying to view it as a close parallel when it is not.

the parallel stems from the bael the bard/winter rose archetype—asoiaf’s version of the hades and persephone myth—the “kidnapping” of a stark maiden to an underworld like location.

we learn about the tale of bael the bard and the stark maiden in a jon chapter from ygritte, meaning this is, first and foremost, something that foreshadows important information about jon. every other connection to bael and the winter rose besides jon’s is secondary.

and it does reveal important information about jon! it’s (imo) the most important piece of foreshadowing regarding the truth of rhaegar and lyanna’s relationship and of jon’s birth.

there are other ways the bael/stark maiden archetype is used, and we see this in, as i brought up before, the petyr baelish/sansa stark plot. however, there is one major difference between this storyline and the rhaegar/lyanna and bael/stark maiden ones, and that is the lack of the winter rose symbol.

and i must say: the winter rose is not found in sansa’s chapters for a reason.

petyr baelish is only bael-ISH, not a true iteration of the archetype, because sansa was never his winter rose. sansa won’t love petyr like the stark maiden from the song loved bael or like lyanna loved rhaegar, and sansa certainly will not be “deflowered” by petyr, nor will she have his child (thank god). i bring this up because, at the end of the day, that is the purpose of this symbol—to represent the child the stark maiden bore for bael after he picked her flower (grrm enjoys his poetic language :/) because she loved him. and like i said before: the winter rose is not in sansa’s story for a reason! you cannot co-opt it, because then it loses its meaning.

digressing for a sec: this can also be taken as further proof that sansa will also help bring the spring as the persephone allusion is there for a reason ;)

anyways… my point is that you can’t analyze the lyanna/rhaegar and sansa/baelish parallel without first understanding how both vastly differ. once you realize that, you see how surface level this connection really is.

and bc i’m a snowstorm shipper, i gotta mention that the vision of the blue rose dany has in the hotu is very obviously foreshadowing of a romantic relationship between dany and jon

[tevanbegins]

My beloved Bucktommies, hear me out for I have rambled about some important stuff ahead related to Tommy's comeback situation for S8:

Let's not forget that the Access Hollywood interview with Lou Ferrigno Jr. and Oliver Stark would never have been arranged if Buck and Tommy's love story wasn't meant to be long-term, or continue developing further into the next season. It was a small but still a very crucial piece of press.

Why? Because it's not like it was done right after 7x04 when the hype around bi-Buck was at its peak. Instead, it was done during the second-half of the season, that too when the Bobby-focused episodes were airing. Plus, it was a major TV network interview, not some random podcast/youtube interview!

Also, they could have only had Oliver out there if the showrunner or PR team thought Lou as Tommy was inconsequential to this storyline. They evidently wanted to create buzz not only around Buck's bisexual arc but around his romance with Tommy as well, with this press. Why do all of that if the character was going to disappear shortly?

I am not clear about how it all works but I am sure Tim and his team must have discussed Tommy's future when they decided to extend Lou's contract beyond the pre-decided 4 episode appearances last season. Because why even bother showing that tiny dinner scene with Tevan in the finale if they didn't want to show us where the relationship stood?

And don't let the naysayers get into your head and compare this with the happy Buck-Natalia scene from the season 6 finale and how she was written off after that. Remember that the writers supposedly wrote that episode as a possible series finale given the uncertainty around the show's future after Fox cancelled it. But then ABC picked it up and the writers had to resume the storylines from where they had left them off.

The actress playing Natalia refused to come back, probably because I am assuming she thought her part was done and the show was supposed to end and so she took up other work. Plus there was the whole strike thing too in between. She was just a supporting character and her contract extension may not have been under consideration while they were filming season 6, because they didn't know for sure at the time if another network would renew them for a new season. And because of her refusal they had to scrap that storyline later.

The situation is quite different with Lou. The season 8 renewal announcement came early when the first-half of season 7 was on air. Therefore, Tim and the writers have had the luxury to put some plans in place for the upcoming season in advance because the renewal was official. And this must include whether or not they wanted to keep Tommy around post season 7!

And if Lou agreed to do 2 more episodes last season, I believe he must have agreed to be there for season 8 too — because if the last two episodes of S7 have served any purpose, it has been to tell us that Buck and Tommy are going strong and even the firefam approves of their relationship, deliberately cementing their relationship status as they move forward into the upcoming season.

So this can't have been all for nothing. The only reason Tommy wouldn't be in S8 is if Lou himself declined or if the filming dates were clashing with his other projects, none of which seems to be likely given the points I have discussed above. Besides, we all know how deeply invested Lou is in playing Tommy and passionate about his storyline with Buck. He wouldn't quit a role that's clearly so important and dear to him just because of the BoBs' stupid vendetta against him; he has big dreams for his career to let this childish hate towards him get in the way of a good opportunity. And he knows and sees how much we as his fans love, support, and appreciate him!

So to conclude, I have faith Tommy will be back! He has to be!!! 💫

___

[nerdranttheories]

Okay I’m going to geek out about Toshinori’s costume designs because I’m an English major and analyzing tiny details in text is what we do and also I love??? The designs! And each one tells us so much about All Might and his focus during each costume.

Costume 1 (Young Might):

So first off, despite young All Might’s longtime dream of being a hero, his suit is mostly black. A stark difference from comics books and his later self which tend to be bright primary colors. The few dashes of primary colors he has are desaturated, even in the second instance where we see this costume. This would have likely been the only costume Toshinori designed himself, as David became his designer in college.

Obviously, others have pointed out the similarities to Nana’s suit, just like how Izuku copied AM’s, so I don’t think it will be necessary for me to point that out. But this suit is also very practical. Something the flashy All Might isn’t really known for, but let me point the details out. He has boots, gauntlets, as well as what appears to be protection for his upper torso, and even for his neck. A decent balance between more protection and more weight, which would slow a hero down. Also, unlike Nana’s suit, his extends completely down the arms. The only skin surface available is that of his hands, something that stays the same through all of his costumes and as such, must be something he personally insists on. In media, gloves often represent someone with secrets, or a guarded personality. All Might not wearing gloves shows how open he is, not just with his friends but strangers too. And it’s humble, too. It’s not an unfeeling, covered hand extending to you when you’re in danger, it’s the bare-handed reach of a friend, and I fully believe that’s why Toshi goes without gloves. Also it’s possibly a sensory thing for him as well, which goes with my canon-supported theory that this man has ADHD, but that’s a nerd rant for another time.

The colors are important because while obviously they mimic Nana, you can practically see through the color choice that Toshinori is not in his right mindset here. While later the oversaturation of colors serves to show how his own heroism has made him into something Else, and outside of his own head, leaving the man inside to shrivel away, these muted colors show that Toshinori has not yet blossomed. Also in the brief scenes we see of him when he is younger, Toshinori is very solemn. The one scene we get of him smiling when he’s young is when Izuku is comparing them at the same age, and even then, it’s more of a smirk as opposed to the signature All Might grin we all know and love. Black also is just a reasonable color for something like crime-fighting. Black shows the least grime/dirt, so he could reasonably spend more hours out in this costume without having to come home and wash it/trade it out. (Which is something that I love that this series includes, by the way!)

Costume 2-ish:

Toshinori adds some shoulder pads for the fight with AFO, probably expecting to stand side-by-side with his mentor. I could give a more full-body image but this is really the only difference I could pick out.

Costume 3 (College Might):

This is the first costume of All Might’s that is designed by David Shield.

First off, props to David. He’s an awesome designer. He not only made a new design, but incorporated several choices from AM’s previous suit, and definitely conferred a lot with Toshi on how he wanted his suit to look while still ensuring its functionality.

Black is traded for a dark, unsaturated blue, giving AM a more peaceful look, as navy blue is considered to be a calming color. (Even Endeavor wears it! But maybe copying AM and not wearing it for the same purposes?) All Might’s cape is also changed from red to blue, taking away the dark look and making it the color of the sky, again adding to that Symbol of Peace idea that is Toshinori’s dream. The gauntlets and boots remain, but the chest-piece has been removed, offering up more mobility. The yellow of his belt has been brightened, and added in place of the blues on his gauntlets and boots, giving him an overall more friendly look as opposed to the more subdued one he had before with the blue accents. The red has been removed as well, and by moving it to his body, it gives the impression of veins and the blood that is pumping away through the heart of this hero, which is fantastic for someone who cares as much as Toshinori does. White was also added vertically on the sides of the suit, thinning out the very intimidating form of Toshi and making him more approachable, while adding a more pure look to his overall form. This appears to be in part, a stylistic choice on David’s end that follows through to the other suits, though it’s hard to know if it remains on the Bronze Age Suit as well.

Overall the brighter colors telegraph that Toshinori is doing much better mentally at this point. He now has A Friend, and for the time being, is safer from the troubles at home, until he has to return.

Costume 4 (Bronze Age):

We don’t even get a full look at this suit, indicating that its time in use was likely short-lived. As I’ve seen others suggest, it seems very likely that when All Might returned to Japan, he went straight down to business and began doing vigilante work as he tried to track down AFO. However, possibly due to a combination of not finding him and All Might’s rising popularity, he seems to abandon this track and move on to a different form of heroism, which his suit symbolizes. I’ll briefly point out that Toshinori returns to the primarily black suit he had as a teenager, as well as the shadows of his face that add to the idea that as soon as he got back to Japan, he reverted to the mindset he had when he left.

Costume 5 (Silver Age):

This suit indicates to me that this period was All Might’s prime, despite his later suit being considered the Golden Age of All Might. (And even though it’s my least-favorite design.) He has the typical cape of a hero, and the bright colors are now fully of typical comic book style. The circular design on his chest indicates a target, but with being cast in white and surrounded in red, gives the impression that he himself is not the target, but the villainy around him is. Or at least, that is likely the thought process for this design. Other than the dashes of white here and there, the colors are very solid, possibly indicating a more stable, but single-minded train of thought, something AM is notorious for. No offense to Dr. Shield, but I would have mixed the colors better in here, and the cape connection is too bulky for someone who’s as jacked in the shoulders as Toshinori is. Alas, I am not the designer. We shall move on.

Costume 6 (Golden Age):

I love this suit. Plenty of analysis has been done on it already, but I think it’s a fantastic representation of how Toshinori’s been crushed under the very image he had originally wanted to create. His shadows are darkest and most severe here, reminiscent of how body-builders dehydrate themselves to get the best appearance of their musculature. His posing is also more inward, as opposed to the silver age, with the angles of his elbows being less directly out and more in, and instead of appearing confident, it’s more of how a cat puffs out its hair to make itself appear larger when it’s scared. I had a long bit to go with this but it was eaten by the Tumblr gremlins. Basically I believe this suit was made post AFO-battle. All Might is declaring he’s not finished yet, all while knowing his time is running out. This suit has several callbacks to the original suit David designed for him, with the navy, though more saturated base and the red lines running throughout the form, though the gauntlets and boots from before have been integrated into the suit itself. This could reflect David’s mindset as well, as he reminisces about the days when Toshinori was healthy and happy, when now Toshinori’s health is rapidly fading.

Anyway, here’s my costume analysis! I think it adds a little more insight to Toshinori’s mental state and situations in the years outside of the show as well as in them, and I hope you enjoyed this read! I’d love to hear other ideas too, if anyone has them!

[whhomecooked]

The Growing Separation between AFPE[Away From Prying Eyes] & The WHRP[Welcome Home Restoration Project]

Major Spoilers for the Welcome Home Spring Update, both on the WHRP Site & Away From Prying Eyes.

Why the AFPE[Away From Prying Eyes] & WHRP[Welcome Home Restoration Project] websites have conflicting information, and the future of the two sites.

+ A Tangent on why W is an unreliable Narrator

[Thoughts appreciated, i'm still developing ideas around these theories :D]

Why the AFPE [Away From Prying Eyes] & WHRP

[Welcome Home Restoration Project] websites have

conflicting information

I find it very interesting how we're starting to see splitting paths between W w/the AFPE site, and the WHRP.

The most glaring example I can give on this is the wildly different conversations around the Joy! soda.

The WHRP has no idea that there was a physical bottle of the Joy included with the swathes of packages W received. They claim they "wish we could get our hands on one". [See Provided Image]

I have two theories about the last line.

A. The WHRP genuinely don't know there is a bottle of Joy at W's house

W did not tell them about the bottle of Joy!, and is hiding it from the rest of the team out of self interest and a desire to keep all of the 'interesting' Welcome Home merchandising for themselves.

B. The WHRP knows there is a bottle of Joy! at W's house, and are being passive-aggressive about it

Someone on the WHRP knows W enough to have visited them.. in whatever state W is in.. and knows there is a bottle of Joy! at their house. They, for whatever reason, either that W drank it, or W did not want to give it to them, do not have the bottle to put on display on the site.

In either case, this is [im assuming] the first case where we've seen there be conflict outside of the website bugs/drawings. We're seeing conflict between the upper rankings of the WHRP.

In contrast to the hopeful tone of the advertisement description, W is more than elated at the arrival of a physical piece of merchandise, an edible one, no less. [I will dog on them for drinking that for the rest of my days]

So we can confirm there is a physical bottle, there is just some reason why this information was not shared with the WHRP & the wider audience.

[For a bit I had the idea that they might be hallucinating the soda, but as of writing this im inclined to say that W in this moment, is sane enough to know the difference.]

The Future of the WHRP [Welcome Home Restoration

Project] as it relates to W

I think this stark difference in information can imply two different paths their story is taking. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future:

A. W is removed from the project, shutting them off from the website and its development.

If this does happen, it also bodes the question of how exactly the WHRP will continue to get information, and so for that reason im expecting B.

B. W becomes the sole contributor to the WHRP

W kicks everyone else off of the program because they're "The only one that understands what's at risk" or something along those lines, when they become completely consumed by whatever infection has gripped them.

C. The WHRP shuts down

When I say "WHRP shuts down" I mean the site becomes inactive because they have no more information, because W is hoarding it all. Kind of a mix between A & B. AFPE becomes the sole source of information, but in that W becomes an unreliable narrator.

Unreliable Narrator Tangent

I do find it necessary to mention that W is an unreliable narrator. Whether due to obsession, sickness, influence from an outside party, etc., W is completely consumed by Welcome Home and the restoration of the media. They have, by hiding the Joy! pop from the WHRP, established themselves as a possible wrench in the future development of the WHRP & its website, should they continue to put their own wants above the needs of the very project they started.

That being said I dont think we're going to see this in its final form until a while down the road, when their sickness/devotion gets worse and they lose touch with reality.

[silverhypnos]

Random Shizuku Headcanon

I don't think this is canon, but I always liked the idea that Shizuku suffers from a less severe case of anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia as something permanent is pretty rare, but narratively, I find it intriguing. Usually when a character has the inability or struggle to retain memory, they usually get characterized as stupid or for comedy. I know that within the fandom, most people remember her as the one who gets fanservice treatment, which sucks because there's a lot of moments where she's shown to be emotionally intelligent and strategically smart. Don't get me wrong, I agree that Shizuku's struggle to retain memories is more likely a plot device to excuse smaller things like...

Why she didn't recognize Gon and Killua

Why she couldn't recognize Leorio at the Hotel

Why she didn't know the difference between a manipulator and a conjurer despite being a conjurer. (The information was for the readers)

The main reason why I like the idea other than it could be an interesting character trait to dissect, but that it opens doors to other interesting headcanons. Depending on my mood, sometimes I like the idea that Shizuku was born in Meteor City but at some point in her life (Likely before learning Nen) she went through a traumatic brain injury, causing a permanent but less severe case of anterograde amnesia. Or, alternatively, perhaps she was a toddler that was dumped in Meteor City because there was some kind of traumatic brain injury, and she developed a strong inability to retain most memories. Perhaps her parents felt like their child was broken in an ableistic kind of way, and threw her away like trash. Perhaps being thrown away like trash was something that struck a chord with her, an ironic thing she didn't forget. Perhaps her Nen ability to send things to an unknown void has strong personal meaning behind it. Obviously, her Nen ability was for plot convenience but I like the idea of everyone's Nen having a unique meaning to oneself. And, I love the idea that Shizuku in a way, represents the present, a stark contrast to Chrollo who is constantly trying to be a few steps ahead when planning for the future or stuck in the past. Obviously, it's not just Shizuku, the other spides often do think about the now rather than the later. But Shizuku is the only one who is depicted with that struggle to retain memories. Or at least, once she forgets about something, she never remembers it. This isn't intended to be another one of those "Silver yaps think piece" or anything like that. Just simple headcanon rambles.

[t00thpasteface]

i very deeply respect your mashposting and even though im not as enthusiastic about hawkahy as you are i think the content you make for them us delightful and some of the best mashposting on this godforsaken website. that being said, i wanted to know ur takes on the hawkeye & trapper dynamic, and the hawkeye & bj dynamic. Not in a shippy way, just in the World of Hawkahy what role do trapper and bj play in their relationships with hawkeye :3 this because i love that one comic u did where hawkeye is spunchbop and bj is Patrick its one of my fave pieces of mash fanart lol

(⁠๑˘❥⁠⁠ ˘๑⁠) first off, THANK YOU!! i'm soooo crazy about hawkahy and i really enjoy contributing to my fellow shippers, but i'm glad my art can also still appeal to people who are less interested the ship itself.

second, VERY fun question!! i wish i had definitive answers for yall, but you know me... i love to go "well idk it could go either way" ^_^;; really, it depends on what kind of tone and theme i'm looking for. i don't really write heavier stuff (because i have so much fun writing funny fic) so that kind of narrows my options, but there's a lot of potential i'd love to explore— or see someone else explore, if they're so inclined!

TRAP:

generally the trapper reading i typically default to is that he and hawkeye have a pretty casual FWB thing going on. trapper considers hawkeye a very close friend and hooks up with him at an intersection of bicuriosity and deep platonic affection, but hawkeye catches baddddd feelings and ends up genuinely heartbroken to find out their thing was lopsided. in this case, hawkahy would happen only after trapper leaves— mulcahy has a tough time trying to get noticed before that point :( but at the same time, i don't think mulcahy would pounce at the first opportunity, because i don't think an immediate rebound would be good for hawkeye nor mulcahy... but it could happen for dramaaaaa...

another version of the hawkeye-trapper rapport that i love playing with in my fics is trapper being generally very supportive but nonetheless slightly grossed out. i think there's a lotttt of comedy potential with hawkeye thinking it's okay to fuck a priest but NOT a married woman, and meanwhile trapper is pro-infidelity but anti-priestfucking (for whatever reason), and they squabble and tease each other about it the whole time.

it's also funny to think about is trapper trying to figure out whether mulcahy now gets the "one of the bros" back-slapping beer-chugging dude treatment, or if instead he's now slotted into the "go easy on 'em trap" category that protects hawkeye's ladyfriends from hearing trapper's bawdiest jokes and comments when hawkeye brings them along as a plus-one to the swamp.

trapper seems like he's pretty likely to sniff out that hawkeye and mulcahy are seeing each other even if they try their damnedest to keep it secret. i like to think hawkeye trusts trapper enough that he would go ahead and divulge it it up front pretty soon after it's official. trapper could probably even pick up hawkeye's crush beforehand... maybe even before hawkeye knows about it!

i don't see trapper as being too jealous of hawkeye spending a lot of time with mulcahy, even if it means hawkeye is now exclusive and not sleeping with trapper anymore. if anything i think he'd be pretty stoked that he's got one less guy to compete with for the nurses' attention. pretty sweet deal as far as he's concerned.

i do think there'd be some tricky navigating between how hawkeye acts with trapper and the STARK difference with how he acts around mulcahy, which you can see clear as day in the s1 finale, where hawkeye gets soooo soft and careful while talking to mulcahy. i don't think either one is disingenuous; i think hawkeye contains multitudes. hawkeye's not the type to fake sincerity. and to that end, i really don't think hawkahy should hinge on hawkeye totally giving up all the cruder parts of his personality (especially since mulcahy is really no saint either), so it could be pretty interesting to see that manifest in whether/how he's still maintaining a close friendship with trapper now that he's been seeing mulcahy regularly and trying to make a good impression.

BEEJ:

the direction bj goes in depends on whether hawkahy are already an item before he gets there. he does form that almost instantaneous trauma-bond with hawkeye on his first day, but i think if hawkeye admitted "yeah by the way the chaplain is my boyfriend" as soon it seemed safe, bj would be able to take it in stride as another weird little quirk of the mash he has to get used to. he's too hung up on dealing with all the gore to worry about who's banging who.

by contrast, i think he could potentially get pretty upset/jealous if hawkeye and mulcahy paired up a little while later. i can see him feeling really betrayed, like, "what do you normally do when i'm gone?" "wait for you to get back!!"

if bj still doesn't feel like he's really enmeshed himself into the unit— which i think on some level, he never wants to, because he's banking on dropping everything like a hot potato the second he can— then i can totally picture him just feeling completely lost and isolated when hawkeye is suddenly forgoing their boys-nite boozathons in favor of getting some priest pipe. like, at least trapper could always go find his own cuddle buddy to pass the time and had nurses lining up to volunteer; bj has basically nobody and doesn't seem inclined nor equipped to fix that. hawkeye is his liason to the rest of the camp, and bj isn't so great with people without having hawkeye there to help as both teleprompter and safety net.

basically i think bj wants to keep hawkeye within a very specific arm's-length radius— not too close, but not too far either, and hawkeye having so much private time with someone else could really get under his skin.

you could also have bj think the priestfucking is gross/bad on sheer principle like trapper did, even without the jealousy angle, and it'd probably hold a little more water coming from bj than trapper. however, it'd be funny if he's insisting it's definitely not a jealousy thing and he's being fully objective about it, but you can totally tell he's just jealous. x)

i admit i kinda love seeing bj get tormented, because he's got such obvious buttons to press and yet sternly insists that they don't even exist, similar to houlihan and frank. like, you can't just set that up and not expect me to rub my hands together and SLAM those buttons as hard as i can. ergo, bj getting jealous about hawkahy is supremely funny to me. i'm not too proud to admit that!

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

My re-reading project has gone reasonably well, my ADHD is still untreated so I often have a lot of trouble actually starting (Who is Real consistently created this roadblock in my mind for whatever reason), but it was re-reading Under Tides that has had me sitting down and digesting it for some time.

Under Tides has a dramatically different tone from pretty much every single other event that I've read so far. It's a very moody work, dramatically more so than previous events (and, definitely in comparison to Stultifera Navis), both in story direction and in art direction. The residents of Sal Viento are drawn in a way I find really compelling for the nature of the story: they look like they've had the life and energy sucked out of them, and share the same muted palettes with the Inquisitors. It really makes the Abyssal Hunters standout in comparison to the rest of the world, in Skadi's vivid reds, Gladiia's blues, and Specter's monochrome colors.

This piece, on top of just being absolutely breathtaking honestly, is a really good example. Sal Viento sits, tilted in ruins into the sea, but at this angle it feels impossible to tell where the land begins and where the ocean meets the city. It makes Sal Viento feel very isolated from the world, and it is in many ways, and I in particular like the way the support structures at the right, now broken and falling apart, make Sal Viento feel skeletal. How much has been destroyed, taken by the sea? It's great.

But Skadi is the only splash of color. Skadi's red stand out amongst the very muted blues, the blues that feel barely distinguishable from the dismal grays of rain clouds and brackish water, and the sterile colors of Sal Viento. Skadi and the Hunters are the only splash of life in this landscape; even the Inquisitors cannot be said to do this, because much if not all of what the Inquisitors leave in their wake is death.

But it's also a much darker story than usually, and that's a bit surprising considering how much fare Arknights up to this point has had with the ideas of corporate corruption, discrimination, and cleansing. It's a lot to do with how the characters are positioned to each other: the people of Sal Viento are almost zombie-like, being slowly eaten away from ingestion of Seaborn flesh, and are intensely paranoid and disapproving of outsiders. Only Anita stands out amongst them, a beacon of innocence and curiosity that hasn't been stamped out yet by the constant erosion of the tides. Skadi and Gladiia are both oppositional to each other and oppositional to everyone else in the story. There's no real sense of cooperation or camaraderie between any of the characters outside of Anita, which creates a really rather oppressive atmosphere. The dark parts of Talulah's story in Chapter 8 stand in contrast to the warmer parts of her relationship to Alina, Frostnova, and Patriot, and it stands in contrast with Amiya and Ch'en. Maria Nearl's attempted assassination at the hands of the KGCC stands stark against Marcus and Zofia's support of her and her naive ideals.

There's no contrast in Under Tides, it's a constant gloomy, dark feeling, it's being in a cave that's constantly damp, dripping, and moist. That works really well for the type of story it wants to be, especially for its climax moment, where the first time character's connect with each other, it is portrayed in the form of a mental breakdown.

"She is a monster. She murders her own kind. She for her own kind murders her own kind. She by her own kind murders her own kind. The eyes of the people in the streets are filled with warmth. They don't know anything. The eyes from the research institutes and in the tents are filled with ice. When the hunters sleep, there are patrollers guarding. No. Those aren't guards. That night patrol doesn't serve the hunters. The patrollers are waiting for the hunters to become monsters."

Aside from her, anyone and everyone probably knew. Sea monster. And–she has already committed the gravest sin...

I killed it. I killed her. I killed Him.

There's some questionable writing decisions made in this chapter, especially with the way that Anita and Irene have a habit of narrating action scenes in dialogue, but this will not be what I criticize. This is the climax of the story: where the truth of the matter, where Skadi understanding the bizarre idiosyncrasies of her biology and what they mean, causes her identity to collapse, leaving Skadi to try and grab at anything she can.

And she grabs onto being a monster.

Becoming a Seaborn is in some ways both an invasion and a form of acceptance. Your biology changes, but the outcome is not a guarantee. Skadi only avoids her fate here because Gladiia deliberately took a massive injury as a trap. If that hadn't been intentional, if Gladiia truly took a mortal wound, Skadi would have fallen right there.

"Your neural cells are rapidly metabolizing. Remember, you are a hunter. They can't do anything to you."

It's truth and its untruth. The extent to which Skadi's condition can be directly tied to her biology is questionable: we've already seen this questioned in Skadi's own monologue. But as long as Skadi remembers that she is a hunter, that she has a purpose and can resist, she'll be fine.

It's good, it's a fantastic climax that leads to the rather nice and cathartic reunion amongst the Abyssal Hunters. Really liked this event.

[thenameswinterfics]

GET TO KNOW…CREGAN STARK

Word Count: 1763

Cover magazine by @foxyanon Dividers by @zaldritzosrose

The following writing is a companion piece to "The Lives of Friends", a SMAU collaboration made by me, @legitalicat , @zaldritzosrose and @foxyanon.

Interview under the cut!

Interviewer: Welcome back to our readers. This is Cayn Karstark for Northern Wilds, and our weekly appointment is focused on the well-known Winter Wolves Sanctuary. But before we focus on the conservation work being done, it is important to remember that there has been a recent "changing of the guard" at the sanctuary, and now it is being run by none other than Rickon Stark's eldest son, Cregan, who is here with us today. Welcome, Cregan, and thank you for accepting our invitation.

Cregan Stark: Thank you, Cayn. It’s good to be here. 

CK: Before we start our interview, we would like to know if your father is okay.

CS: Of course, he's much more than fine, sometimes even better than me! (laughs) But it was not the health issues that convinced him to take a step back, but rather the desire to retire and focus more on his private life.

CK: We are heartened to know that health was not the reason for Rickon Stark’s retirement, but we must know this: how did you feel at the realisation that you had inherited your father’s “little empire” at such a young age?

CS: Oh well… I was intimidated at first, I won't hide it. Not all young men my age have a father who leaves you with a family business that has stood for generations. It was a huge leap of faith at first, but I overcame my fears and embraced my family's philosophy about the sanctuary, and it warms my heart to see it thriving despite this change.

CK: It was indeed a surprise to us! When the news broke, some of us were sure that your Uncle Bennard would step in for you.

CS: There was a private discussion in our family about who should replace the figure of my father. My uncle's name came up several times in internal meetings, with many for and just as many against. But Rickon Stark has always been a man of family tradition: he inherited the Sanctuary from his father, who inherited it from his father, so it was inevitable that his choice would one day fall on me.

CK: How did your uncle take your father’s choice?

CS: Knowing that old man, he would probably feel left out by his own brother, who chose his own son over him. The Sanctuary had always been a source of tension between them, with my grandfather placing the responsibility on my father's shoulders and thus neglecting his other son. Fortunately, the bad feeling was quickly dispelled and relations relaxed. He's building his own business in Winterfell, near the Wall, hoping to create a small legacy to pass on to his own sons.

CK: It's good to say that everything ended in the best possible way. But we will come back to your private life later, if you allow us, of course, and focus more on your recent activities at the Sanctuary.

CS: Of course, I’m glad to answer all your questions. 

CK: Let's get straight to the point, then. What impressed us the most about your work at the Sanctuary is there’s a continuous work philosophy between your leadership and that of your father. What convinced you not to detach yourself from him completely?

CS: Perhaps the fact that I flanked my father before he handed over control of the Sanctuary to me was the reason I did not change our working philosophy. He was an endless source of inspiration, and he was very serious and meticulous about his work: I still remember him scolding me when I mixed up the resting places of different animals, or when I made trivial mistakes at work! (chuckles, shaking his head) But he only did this because he loved his work and felt the need to preserve the family tradition through me, passing on a passion that I immediately shared with him. He was my shadow during my first days as an official owner, and it was only after he made sure that I had learned all the necessary skills that he completely disappeared from the scene. I feel like I owe something to him, and a total disassociation from our shared vision of the work would have been a misuse of the mission and vision of our work.

CK: One of the first things we noticed in your early leadership is how conservation has become a focus of your own work. Could you please explain your view on this subject?

CS: Well, the thing is, Westeros has areas of great beauty, with a cultural diversity not to be underestimated. The local fauna is highly concentrated there, and it's not surprising to see herds of wild animals roaming undisturbed in the wilderness. What worries me most is how our planet has changed significantly in recent years due to our impact on it, and how this has affected the home of most species. This is how the Winter Wolves Sanctuary works: we emphasise the importance of preserving the fragile wildlife of Westeros, providing them with a safe environment and allowing them to recover from threats such as habitat destruction. Our efforts are focused on the recovery and immediate care of animals in distress until they are deemed healthy enough to be released back into the wild. 

CK: Why is it important for you to rehabilitate animals in the sanctuary? 

CS: I think the importance of rehabilitating animals in sanctuaries is critical to preventing the possible extinction of certain species. As I said, our main goal is to protect the animals' welfare by providing them with all the food and medical care they need until we are sure we have increased their chances of survival in the wild. Every day we receive various calls about animal hoarders throughout Westeros, and we are all increasingly surprised by the number of animals we collect at the Sanctuary: large and small, puppies and adults... Every kind of animal is welcome at the Winter Wolf Sanctuary.

CK: You said before that every kind of animal is welcomed in the sanctuary. But it’s an animal species that you most frequently receive during your retirements? 

CS: Funny enough, wolves are the animals we usually take in, especially since many of the calls come from the wild areas of Winterfell. Generally young pups that lost their mother, but it happened that in the past we welcomed young adults or elder wolves as well. Sadly enough, when we have to take care of our puppies, many are too young to be released alone into their natural habitat, and so they stay with us in the sanctuary. It is the case of Fenrir, the wolf cub a person and I decided to officially adopt.

Cregan leans forward and extends his arms gently towards Fenrir, who occasionally approaches his owner. The wolf cub allows Cregan to pick him up, and he rests quietly in his arms

CS: You can pet him, it doesn’t bite! 

CK: This is surely one of the reasons why you are known as the “Wolf of Winterfell”, then! 

The atmosphere is playful, and the room is filled with the laughter of those present. A couple minutes after, everyone become serious again, and the interview goes on

CK: Thank you for sharing with us your knowledge of the animal world and the philosophy you've adopted for the sanctuary, Cregan. But I would like to reopen a small parenthesis about your family. In all the interviews we have done in the past, your father Rickon has always emphasised how close your family is. Has that changed or remained the same?

CS: Oh, luckily not! Our strong bond is what characterises us as a family. I would like to use a phrase that my father used in all his interviews: "family is like a pack of wolves: we are all united in front of the leader of the pack and no one is ever left behind." This is essentially what happened when my father decided to step in and welcome Sihtric Kjartansson into our family. He and my mother gave him food and shelter and treated him as if he were their second son, and that kind of love continues to this day. We're not blood brothers, but we've always had each other's backs and loved and respected each other as if we were. Sometimes he shows up at the doors of the Sanctuary, tired and still covered in bruises and cuts from his previous fights, but no matter how much I shout at him to go home and rest, he'll just be there waiting for a call for help, and even if I don't show it much, I'm glad for his generosity.

CK: I suppose the same relationship exists with your sisters.

CS: Right. I have two amazing sisters who have supported me from the beginning of this journey. Alisanne is my twin sister and a force of nature, she has a huge heart and supports you with everything she has. Lyanna too, as both myself and Alisanne have been her rock in her first steps into the fashion world, and in return she has supported us by helping out with the bakery and the sanctuary as much as she can. Our greatest weakness is that we are hard workers: we barely manage to find any free time, and now that Fenrir has joined the family, all attention is focused on him. Perhaps Sihtric is the only one saved from this workaholism, since his wife Rhaenerys knows how to discipline him properly. (laughs)

CK: So, outside your family, have you not yet had the chance to make new acquaintances?

CS: As I said, the sanctuary takes up most of my time, so it is difficult for me to get out and meet new people. It's also why the few relationships I've had in the past haven't lasted more than two months. But when I joined a dating app for fun, I found a connection with a girl I've been seeing recently. She's a kind soul with a lot of creativity, and being with her makes me forget all the stress and commitments I have at work. We're in a sort of 'long distance' relationship, but...

Suddenly, Cregan’s phone rings. The interviewer sees him talking a bit about something important related to work, and a few minutes after the call ends.

CS: I have to go, I've just had a call about a new hoarder coming to the sanctuary. Thank you for your time Cayn.

CK: Thank you for your time Cregan Stark and good luck with running the sanctuary.

If you've come this far, thank you so much for reading this! Hope you enjoyed it!

[agentrouka-blog]

The Pact of Ice and Fire is some really damning evidence when it comes to Jonsa. I got into an argument with someone on a forum about it because she disputed that it could just as easily be fulfilled by Jon (a Stark) and D/aenerys (a Targ). Except Jon is the Targ fostered at Winterfell... which seems much more damning to me evidence-wise; we learn about the pact, but more meaningfully it's already been partly fulfilled (leaving the open question of how it might be further developed) and in addition to that acts as foreshadowing for Jon's parentage. It's actually very elegant.

But you know what's most damning to me about it? Why would GRRM invoke 'ice and fire' in this pact - his series namesake, the prophecy for which R/haegar felt called to? It's special, and it might not be saving-the-world special (not GRRM's style - this was what my friendly rival invoked, that it could only be J/D because they'll save the world, i.e. the heroic song of ice and fire), but it's so special it foreshadows two major revelations in the story. About love and the human heart in conflict with itself and unfulfilled political promises. I mean, you could even make the argument that this foreshadows a bit of the dragon dispute - if the Starks have already made alliance with one 'dragon' (Jon) and the rest of Westeros with another (Aegon), what's left for D/aenerys?

Interesting, interesting, all very interesting; a fascinating piece of evidence to be sure. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the J/D take, though not to formulate my argument for me - this argument is both long past and also the one thing I used to hate in anon asks from people was being used to make their arguments (I would literally be contacted mid-Discord debate hahahah) - mostly just curious as to what you think about all those conflicting Snow/Stark/Targ elements - perhaps J/D itself if you feel like it - and the Pact. Love to hear your thoughts.

Something that is often overlooked is that Rhaegar dedicates the "Song of Ice and Fire" to his son Aegon. The son by Elia. The sun's son. His intended heir.

Because to Rhaegar the prophecy was about some kind of epic confrontation between a fire-coded hero and a presumably ice-coded enemy. The imagery and wording of Azor Ahai and his more explicit fire-ice/light-dark/good-evil dichotomies is so similar that we can reasonably assume that this Promised Prince is supposed to be Fire and the Song is supposed to be an epic fight with Ice.

We can't be sure what the motivation of Cregan and Jace would have been in naming their Pact in this way, though it's likely to be different and more representative of their respective elemental symbolism. Emphasizing a union and alliance between contrasting forces for a greater political good. (In their eyes.)

The structure of ice and fire as two opposing but equally destructive magical threats with mirroring arcs and magical conduits (Bran and Dany, actually) that is faced by all of humanity fuses both takes on the name. It's not fire good and ice bad, it's two extreme expressions of blood magic, with humanity banding together in the middle trying to survive.

Jon, as the product of ice and fire Houses, can't represent ice in a union with someone else's fire to create an alliance. He himself is already a mix of both, and his most significant political effect in the narrative has been to faciliate a crucial alliance between two former enemies. We can expect more along those lines. He is the fulfillment of the Pact, in a sense, (No thanks to Rhaegar, all thanks to the love of his mother, uncle and siblings) with only the minor political detail of that marriage to a Stark cousin still in question.

Dany, on the other hand, is fully identified with fire. She can't separate herself from that role to suddenly occupy a space separate from that elemental threat. She represents the threat. Or rather, if she separated from that power (like Bran will) she would cease to represent fire entirely.

If she is to be part of "ice and fire" it can only be in the role of an enemy to be defeated. If she ceases to be fire, she has no place in that equation, and she would be missing an icy counterpart. If GRRM had intended for Jon and Dany to represent ice and fire together, he would have never needed to bother with RLJ. Jon could be Ned's bastard "ice" son to Dany's "fire". But a significant aspect of his story is, specifically, the revelation that Jon is not, in fact, Ned's son. He is the son of a Stark maiden and a Targaryen prince, "hiding in the snow".

Jon and Dany occupy two very different spots in the "ice and fire metaphor continuum".

[voyaging-too]

March books and such

Recs Bolded.

Books

William Gibson: Count Zero (Sprawl Trilogy 2). Sequel to Neuromancer. The plot is somehow too simple and too complicated at the same time, but I don’t really mind because the characters (one elite mercenary, one disgraced art dealer, one suburban kid in way over his head) are just as lost as I am, wandering around a complex lived-in world full of wonderful subplots and supporting cast. Top-notch classic cyberpunk with corporate espionage and simulated virtual realities and weird AI gods.

William Gibson: Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl Trilogy 3). Concludes the trilogy with yet more cyberpunk shenanigans and yet more hapless humans (world-famous influencer, yakuza heiress, traumatised reclusive artist, penniless teenage addict), caught up in the inscrutable machinations of all-powerful international corporations and rogue AI. Probably my favourite in the trilogy, because of the drop-dead gorgeous writing, the humour, the massive amounts of idiosyncratic weirdies populating the plot, and the return of an older, wiser Molly Millions. Gibson is not great at writing women, but here he made a concerted effort, and as a result, we have three very distinct female POV characters, all of whom I love but especially Mona herself.

Doris Lessing: Shikasta (Canopus in Argos 1) I’ve seen this book brought up as an example of what happens when a literary author decides to write sci-fi without a solid grounding in the genre’s conventions and possibilities. And that’s kind of true, but it’s only a small part of why this book is so weird. Lessing was already weird, her literary books were already doing weird things to pacing and structure. This novel is like… a novella about the fall of a prehistorical civilisation, then a few tales reinterpreting the events of the Old Testament, then a long compilation of very short stories, most of them brief fictionalised biographies of individual people in 20th century Britain, then a first-person novella about three siblings in a dystopian near-future, then an epistolary novelette about some teenagers doing a mock trial against the whole of Europe, which runs into another epistolary story about preparing for nuclear annihilation, these disparate pieces glued together by a framing device that involves aliens who observe and try to influence human history. Weird inconsistent book, but the good parts are extremely good. Some of the best short stories I’ve read in my life pretending to be a novel.

Andrea Dworkin: Right Wing Women. This is a feminist nonfiction classic for a reason. Easy to read, hard to forget. Yes, a fair bit of it is hastily written analyses of specific 1970s questions and conflicts, but the rest of it is painfully applicable even today. It’s a stark statement about how much of our society is built on facilitating marital rape, and how many women make the rational choice to accept and shore up that system in order to avoid even worse violence.

JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit. (German practice reread.) Everybody knows what the Hobbit is, it’s still good on reread although very much an episodic children’s book that swerves into a tragic war story at the very last minute. It sure has a lot of vocabulary that I didn't have before, most of it related to trees.

Jo Walton: Among Others. I loved the premise, loved the semi-autobiographical perspective of a teenage Welsh SFF-fan in the 1970s, I absolutely loved the low-key and hard-to-interpret fairy magic. But the book itself didn’t work for me, the writing didn’t work for me, too much of it felt like inert padding between the few fragile pieces of plot, and the constant name-dropping of 1970ies SFF titles didn’t give me a real connection to the character or a real sense of the historical fandom, instead I felt like I was reading a version of Ready Player One for people who actually read.

Star War

Revenge of the Sith. A double tragedy. A tragedy because if the characters made slightly different choices they could have had a happy ending, and a meta-tragedy because if the filmmakers made slightly different choices they could have made a good tragedy, as opposed to a frustrating muddle. Key parts of the plot are cribbed from Dune: Messiah and applied without context. Padme is written so atrociously badly it loops around and becomes a bold feminist statement on how a relationship can turn you into a shell of your former self.

Clone Wars Season 1. The dialogue and the moral lessons are written for eight-year-olds, the setting and the war story plots are written for fifty-year-old dads, it is dumb and doesn’t mesh well. There are some flashes of something almost interesting, and I’m told that that there’s more of that in later seasons.

A More Civilized Age Podcast, Season 1. Four people with varying levels of knowledge about Star War watch and discuss a star war. It’s funny, it’s smart, sometimes they yell at the show for being dumb and bad, sometimes they give it incredible amounts of grace and basically invent the secret good version of it, it’s fun.

Theatre

Ariane Mnouchkine & Théatre du Soleil: Ici sont les dragons. A play about 1917: I expected either the bloody yet justified glory of the revolution, or the justified yet bloody execution of the tsar. Instead I mostly got endless political discussions between various revolutionary factions in various rooms. This play said: the original sin of the Russian Revolution wasn’t killing the tsar, and it wasn’t even killing the tsar’s children, all that hardly matters now: the original sin of the Russian Revolution was killing the emperor and then choosing to remain an Empire. Suppressing non-bolshevik revolutionary parties, even fellow socialists, and deciding not to let Ukraine go, Lenin let the Russian Empire survive, and it survived Socialism and the fall of Socialism and survives today. A dark bitter weird play in five languages with subtitles, metafictional digressions, long quotes from memoirs and history books, and historical figures portrayed by actors in rubber face masks of Lenin, Stalin and so on, yes really, it was a hard watch, except for a gorgeous five-minute farce about Lenin in his pyjamas.

Exhibitions (I got to go to Paris last month)

Louvre: Revoir Cimabue. Religious art from the 13th century, when some people had already started painting interesting, differentiated faces, but everyone was still indicating holiness by drowning the painting in golf leaf. Strange arched features, hooded eyes and green-tinged skin in a sea of gold, altarpieces just shining with divinity. Works by Cimabue and also all of his contemporaries and precursors and students because not even the Louvre has enough Cimabues to fill a small room.

Pompidou: Suzanne Valadon. May be my new favourite artist. She started modelling for painters as a teenager, she features in works by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec and a dozen other great Parisian painters at the turn of the century. She learned painting from being painted, and started making her own work, first drawings, then eventually oil paintings. Her work is idiosyncratic and meanly realistic but also warm. Her portraits and her nudes are all wonderfully mundane. She was one of the first women to paint not only female but also male nudes, from life. (But the Salon of Independents made her add a strategic leaf or they wouldn’t exhibit it. No! Let her paint cock!) My absolute favourite painting from her was also centred at the exhibition, because look at it, The Blue Room is just perfect, she doesn’t give a shit, she’s in her pyjamas.

But I also loved Lady with Little Dog, partly because of the little dog, partly because of the colours of the drape, partly because the androgyny of the model.

[fizzigigsimmer]

Saw a gif set of gator and honestly. I need more gator in my life… so… do you have any caligator ideas/headcanons you could share with us? 🥺

You know nonny, same. I was thinking the other day (ages back) about interesting ways these two characters might meet. One of my favorites is the idea that Roy runs one of those "Scared Straight" programs for teens, that promises to put your little trouble maker onto the right path and spit them out a god fearing little angel - with nary a gay thought of course. The Stark County Redemption Center. Whose official motto is "The road to redemption is pathed in suffering" or some other ridiculous conservo-nazi gibberish. Anyway. Neil sends Billy off to Stark County to work on the ranch and learn good values or whatever, and after a few botched escape attempts Billy makes it his mission to seduce Gator because he can't think of a bigger fuck you to everyone than rising to the top of the pecking order and making daddy's boy call him daddy. Roy's unhinged enough he might just kill Billy for it, but he's okay with going out in style just so long as he gets out of this hell.

Only when he was plotting out this glorious revenge fantasy he forgot to factor in how much he'd like it. He's never been the center of someone's world the way he feels like he is with Gator, begging for whatever Billy wants to give him. No one's ever really loved Billy enough before to want to stay or be anything like a real friend to him, so there's no way he could have accounted for how Gator awkwardly trying to be more than just his booty call would would make him feel either.

He doesn't give up easy, no matter how many times Billy reminds him he's just a piece of ass, and shuts him down for trying to bond over stupid shit like sports and guns! It's like Gator can't quit. There's something in him that can't separate the fucking and the claiming from the idea that if Billy wants him that way, then it must mean that Gator is worthy. The way he never can be for Roy. It's witnessing Roy punishing Gator for something more Billy's fault than his that finally cracks his shell. It gets to Billy, watching Roy abuse Gator, more so even then the fucked up abuse he dishes out to everyone else; because that's less personal. Billy and the other teens aren't looking for love from that douchebag the way that Gator is.

Billy tries to be kinder to him after that. Not so mean or so rough. Even though Gator truly doesn't seem to mind that, he thinks they both deserve to try something different from the poison they've been fed their entire lives - a gentler touch. Music and then cars is the first mutual ground they find, safe ground to shoot the breeze over between chores and school with the other guys, and then comes more risky conversations about runaway mothers and cruel fathers. Hushed confessions about what they'd do with half a mind, and pipe dreams about the life they'd make for themselves if they had a chance.

It's messed up and codependent as fuck, but Billy thinks he might love Gator and those big dumb bambi eyes of his, more than he's ever loved anything before. And that's how suicidal revenge plans start morphing into escape plans. Additionally, I think it would be fantastic if Gator, along with Billy, Nadine (Dot) and the other Stranger Things Teens were all students at the center for various reasons, and the gang comes together to form some sort of rejects club and together they cook up a plan to get the hell out of there and expose the center for being the toxic hell hole that it is.

[tired-gae]

Prompt #27: "That's not the point"

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen (for cursing)

No warnings as of now!! (If there is something that should be put here, let me know!)

(No ships either)

Premise: Post-revival (Died in Infinity War, ambiguously is Alive at present time, between Infinity War and Endgame) Loki and Clint have a conversation.

---

Loki had been in the Avengers Compound for nearly a week. It had been a few days since the revelation that the Invasion of New York was not done voluntarily on Loki’s part (and since he’d last seen Barton.) Thanos was a topic of heavy discussion, of course, given the whole ‘Snap’ business. Loki’s almost glad he was dead at the time, if only because he didn’t have to witness that event. 

He and Barton hadn’t made eye contact since he’d returned. This did not come as a surprise, and Loki expected this pattern to continue.

So imagine his shock when, as Loki is sitting against a wall in an unused training room in an attempt to think uninterrupted, Barton walks into the room and sits down mere feet from him. Loki glances over but chooses not to react. Whatever Barton is trying to accomplish, he’s sure it will make itself clear soon.  

He observes the agent quietly. Barton looks tired. He’s staring, eyes half-lidded, at the floor, and appears older than Loki remembers. (Though, he supposed, it had been a good number of years since New York. Mortals aged quickly, did they not?) He takes note of Barton’s lack of weapons. (Visible ones, anyway. He is a spy.) A display of benevolence, perhaps? He can’t imagine it’s a display of trust, considering it all.  

Loki looks away once again. It continues to be silent.  

The silence is expected. Loki can hear the gentle whine of Barton's hearing aids. (An old pair, presumably worn for comfort reasons. Stark had bought (made?) him a pair recently, after deciding the technology around Clint's ears was subpar at best, and that the archer could do better. Loki had yet to see him wear them.)  

The silence is also fragile. Barton is the first one to break it.  

"You too, huh?" 

Loki hums quietly. "In a different way, but... yes." 

Barton picks at the skin around his fingernails. "I had a feeling." 

Loki's head snaps toward him, stunned. He struggles to find words for a moment, mouth opening and closing stupidly. He settles on, "Pardon?" 

Barton's eyes finally flicker over to Loki's, his eyes still half-lidded, tired. "You do realize I remember a good amount of my time under the mind-control crap, right? I mean, it wasn't that hard to figure out." He looked away again. "I don't actually have pigeon shit for brains."

Loki takes a moment to form his response, choosing only to respond to the last part of the statement. "I'm aware. You were the brains behind the stunt in Germany, and subsequently the entire plan, after all. I could hardly think you were stupid." 'A distraction and an eyeball,' if Loki remembered correctly. 

Barton's face twists into a grimace briefly before he shakes it off. "Anyway—the point was, I remember a lot of those few days. I remember you going into a trance-like thing a few times, and coming back from it all shaky and shit. ...Not that you weren't really shaky the whole time. You were weirdly weak, and despite telling us not to overwork ourselves, you didn't really seem to sleep at any point..." He shrugged. "I dunno. After I more-or-less got over it all, it wasn't exactly a difficult conclusion to come to that there was something fishy going on, that you weren't really the big bad." 

Loki stared at the wall opposite them, fingers digging into the flesh of his arms where he was crossing them. It was silent again for only a moment. 

"Oh, and SHIELD's known since forever." Barton added like an afterthought. "I mean, they combed through basically every piece of footage from the invasion, I've seen the clips. They analyzed the shit out of the footage from the collapsed PEGASUS facility, they couldn't really ignore all the signs that you weren't quite... at your best when you showed up." Understatement of the millennium, Loki thought with very little mirth. Barton looked over lazily again, though this time Loki was the one avoiding eye contact. 

"Anywho." Barton continued, quieter. "This isn't forgiveness or any crap like that." 

"I wouldn't expect it to be," Loki agreed. 

"It is... I dunno. An olive branch I guess." He shrugged, crossing his arms in a mirror to Loki to stop himself from picking more at the skin on his hands. "Part of me still wants to put an arrow through your skull, but, y'know, it's a small part." 

Loki frowned. "You would be completely entitled to do so, if you wished. I would not stop you from taking that revenge." It likely wouldn't even kill him, he mused. Nothing seems to be able to do that these days. 

Barton groaned, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Loki can't help but wonder what he'd said wrong. "See, you say shit like that, and it makes that part even smaller. I mean, dude. I'm not actually gonna fucking shoot you." 

Loki can't say he understands why not, but he can't say he understands much about Barton. (Despite quite literally being in his mind at one point.) None of these mortals make much sense. 

Barton sighed, letting his hand drop again. “Anyways. That’s not the point. The gist is... we’re OK, all things considered. If you catch me using a printed out picture of your face on a dummy during target practice, mind your business. That’s just how my brain works.” He shifts, standing back up from their position of sitting against the wall. “I’ll see you around, terrorist. Don’t die on us again. Still needja for the whole killing Thanos thing.” 

Loki rolled his eyes at the ‘terrorist’ nickname. “Never losing that epithet, am I?” 

“Not a chance.” 

[mowritesstuff]

Irondad and Spider-son

Something that I think is super interesting yet isn’t talked about enough (in my opinion) is the idea of “Irondad/Spiderson” and the subsequent infantilization of Spider-Man. Regardless of if you enjoy the trope or not, it is incredibly interesting to look at the way that Irondad is made to be perceived in modern day media. If you go on Ao3, Tumblr, or Fanfic.Net, you can find story after story that all essentially have the same format: something happens to Peter and Tony is the only one who can make it better.

It isn’t surprising that this is the way that this trope has developed, seeing as that’s exactly how marvel/the MCU showcased their relationship.

In order for there to be a father-son relationship between Peter and Tony, they need to make Peter Parker fundamentally different from his cannon comic book roots. Not only do they need to erase the role that both Uncle Ben and Aunt May play on his development into adulthood, but they also need to shift around more subtle, impactful factors in Peter’s life; like his financial situation.

The only way that Irondad as a concept can work is if Peter is raised by a young single parent/guardian who can work enough to support both her and Peter. This allows Peter to have the luxuries that come with growing up financially stable: recklessness with clothing and school supplies, immaturity and gullibility, and a lack of responsibility.

Spider-man’s story arc is meant to showcase the struggles of a young boy forced to become a man. Peter Parker got powers and his uncle was killed. Hes essentially on his own, and has to become the type of man that his uncle would be proud of. He has to take the mantle as “man of the house” and take on responsibilities of someone much older than him. That’s the brilliance of it. If even a small piece of the story is changed, then it differs how the character develops.

If Ben doesn’t die, there’s no need for him to become Spider-man. Subsequently, there is no one for peter to base his own self/his identity of when comparing his actions and reactions.

If May isn’t frail/unable to work, then there is no need for Peter to become aware of his financials. There is no need for him to struggle to make sacrifices in order to make sure the bills are paid. (A prime example of this is Peter selling his photographs to the Bugle. Why would he sell his photos to a magazine that continuously drags his name through the mud? Why else if not because he has bills that need to be paid?)

If Peter is in a financially stable situation, then there is no need for him to look at corporations/rich people with a critical lens. There is a difference between knowing that someone is richer than you are and being made aware of their wealth in everything that they do. If Peter was raised poor, do you really think he would have been comfortable around Tony Stark or Avengers tower? You think he wouldn’t on some subconscious level, resent the fact that Tony Stark can damn near literally throw money around, while he has to scrape to pay the bills? Do you really think he would have been anything less than hyper aware that Tony Stark has the privilege of being able to buy literal buildings at the last second, just to toss the Hulk through them?

If none of these factors play a role in Peter Parker’s development, then he becomes a different person. A character who has the privileges of being gullible, reckless, and less mature than his original counterpart. There’s a reason why in every other iteration, Spiderman is more mature/has more emotional struggles.

And unlike Tony Stark, Peter doesn’t have the privileges that he (TS) has. Tony has money, power, and influence in order to make sure that the consequences given to him are less severe.

In my opinion, what it boils down to, is that Irondad/Spiderson can only work is Spider-man isn’t Spider-man. He doesn’t have to worry about bills or politics. He doesn’t have to worry about food, or his aunt, or filling the shoes that Ben Parker left for him. He doesn’t have to worry about the consequences of his identity being exposed or stress over repairing his spider-suit again and again when he goes out to keep New York City safe. He has no responsibilities.

All that’s left is a kid with a whole bunch of powers, but very little responsibilities. And that’s not Spider-man.

[pineywitch]

idk not like anyone's getting these confused except MAYBE newbies and a few select people, but the mere insinuation makes me so pissed i decided to write about it,

obv not on my sideblog (if u know what it is, u know what it is) because 1) no one is actually doing this, kind of?, and 2) this is waaaaay unhinged for no reason other than the desire for it to be and my pure fury

anyway. cosmic, eldritch, and void are extremely interlinked, but the suggestion that eldritch is cosmic is void automatically/by virtue of it being space-based is so ass-backwards it makes me, a person who literally never gets angry, so upset my face gets hot

to clarify, i am not saying that "x (void/celestial/umbra/etc.) can be eldritch" is inaccurate, i would concur 100%, but rather the insinuation that "eldritch is void/cosmic/umbra inherently" is where i start to have major fucking issues

in case you're wondering, the only dissenting opinion i'd be willing to even consider is that of another eldritch person, i'm really sorry. as a researcher who is eldritch, versus a person who is not eldritch and just does research? there's a stark difference between the two, which is that as an eldritch person you're probably going to have to do a fuckton of research (and experimentation to get anywhere with this shit.

if you're just researching it and are not eldritch, you have no skin in the game, and unless you've met a God or intimately interacted with eldritch and had it inside of you, you have no space in my cranium.

anyway, to me there's a fundamental different between "x can be eldritch" and "eldritch is x", because yes, there is a fuckton of overlap. as we very well know, eldritch can interface and "merge" with nearly anything incredibly well, because of its origins and because it had to has to and has to be adaptive.

it's like saying fae, wind spirits, and humans are all the same because they require air. it's like saying the stream, its dirt, and the trees are all the same just because they contain water.

tldr; upon any kind of scrutiny it makes no fucking sense. just because eldritch is *mixed with, even very well with, something else, doesn't make said thing eldritch, it just is "bonded" to it. imo, it doesn't make the thing inherently something else.*

if you say "eldritch is x", i feel that is distilling it down to something that it's not, and this is disingenuous to eldritch and somewhat to other energy types, considering eldritch is something very distinctly different from what it can be mixed with.

eldritch in its purest form is nearly nothing like void, and certainly not like cosmic. they literally are all branch-offs of it. hell, from what i've heard, and from eldritch's generative qualities + what we know about Azathoth, technically the eldritch is the "parent" of everything else.

for example, earth can be rock, but rock is technically not earth, it's like a branch off of it. the earth (as an element) kind of bred everything else

a godshard is not a God without Ascension/Apotheosis, but they are pieces and parts and the child of a deity. i feel the above two examples honestly make more sense.

tldr;

imo, saying eldritch is anything but eldritch distills it into what it is not, and basically adds a label of "spicy cosmic/void/umbra" to it, which it is not.

anyway TedxTalk over, Azathoth and Cthulhu bless if you actually read all of this tirade.