#about to impulse make a video talking about the magic system

[simple-persica]

Working out the lore for my OCs…the glacier is moving

[pommierrot]

ARCANE 2 SPOILERS who's the best arcane character and why it's jayce talis (may be a bit biased. and my head is a mess rn so some of my wording may not make a sense)

cw there's a load siren sound in the video

arcane focuses on humans' flaws. like half of shit happened bc someone couldn't talk it out. and that's part of human nature too. things that seem rather logical to one may be impossible for another bc of the way they feel and see this world. and all characters in arcane have their own strong beliefs.

even jayce who seems to be easily manipulated. jayce is in fact one if not the most alive, humane character of them all.

firstly. what is the core of his character? it's his desire to help people with the use of magic. bc it once saved him and his mother and he fell in love with it so hard he made trying to bend it to his will the point of his life. he was misunderstood and alone in this desire but he did not give a fuck as long as his dream lived.

and then he failed. he didn't actually bc yk explosion at his lab is not his fault but everyone even his mother looked down on him at that trial bc of his dream. and they took it away. took away his point of life. so he was almost ready to end it (he was about to jump but hesitated a bit. that's in humans' nature too: many suicide attempts fail bc ppl are naturally afraid of what comes after it. and it's something completely impulsive and irrational). but that's where viktor came up and he saved his life. not by stopping him from that jump but by sparkling some hope in him saying that he has a desire too. and jayce is finally understood and not alone. and they completed each other.

later jayce became the poster boy. it's not what he wanted. but he's in fact way less experienced with social interactions and is not that good at reading people as viktor (viktor is good with social interactions. i believe he's even more confident than jayce to give a speech. yk viktor's ambitious enough to be heimer's personal assistant and even tho he didn't give that much credit i think not everyone can pull off being councilor's personal assistant like you have to present him. and with jayce viktor could be like "nah go give those speeches yourself idgaf" bc he could finally focus on what he wants to do) so he's manipulated into becoming a symbol. piltover's talisman. and mel said to him that it can be used as an instrument. and that made him realize he finally had enough power to say "fuck you" to those who looked down upon him.

so he did. but he's a scientist not a politician so his attitude worked against him. he decided to fight corruption being a part of corrupted system. ofc that led to no good. he had tried council's ways too with mel's help but when he realized that it created distance between him and his desire and viktor. and he stated several times that he's not cut for this politician shit. he only did it because he believed he could make things better. that he could help viktor that way. bc viktor became part of his desire that lies in his core. and he did everything out of this desire. he can be easily manipulated but you can't change it, only use it to farther manipulate him. change his view on some ways but not change his core.

and in s2 jayce has not changed. his character is exactly the same as he was in season 1. like he even does the same things: agreeing with viktor that they should not weaponize hextech but then doing so under pressure (manipulated again using his desire to make things better). he did it in s1, and he did it again in s2. and he said that he never wanted to be part of politics to mel in s1 and said it again to viktor in s2. and jayce cared for viktor in s1 as much as he did in s2. it's just that yk of course you would be much more stressed and caring if your friend's HALF-DEAD not just dying slowly where therapy could help like you hold the body of someone who's close to you and there was actually no way of saving viktor like legally and ethically. ofc jayce looked more worried but it's still in his character. he actually acted pretty the same when viktor was at the hospital in s1 but we didn't get much screentime of it and in s2 it's shown more.

and by saving viktor with hexcore he fulfills his main desire. by destroying him he does so too. and these are two things he did without any pressure or manipulations. these things are jayce's own decisions from tip to toe, from inside out. he saved viktor with hexcore out of his desire to help ppl by bending magic to humans' will. and he killed viktor out of his desire to help him (god knows how much willpower i have not to put "love" instead of "his desire to help him"). he kept saying "i won't fail" not only bc he probably time and space travelled and tried to kill viktor many times but because he failed viktor several times trying to fulfill his desires.

so overall jayce is trapped in cycle of trying to fulfill his desire and failing miserably in doing so and then trying to fix things out of this desire again and again. bc that's his core. and it's incredibly humane. (and he needs viktor to ground him as much as viktor needs him). everyone in arcane is fucked up. while some embrace it jayce tries to fight. showing duality of humans' nature. but of course no one gives a fuck to understand him. as did council in s1 act1..)

[rhythmantics]

So first of all, I did not know you had a tumblr??? Second It Will Not Obey You SLAPS. And third my question: How in god's name did you do so much research for your fic??? What is your secret. How do you go about organizing or even knowing where to start for that matter. I struggle with research cause I never know where to start or stop and often I'm really uncertain if the info I'm gathering is even needed or if it's extraneous. I am both stupid and a perfectionist HELP ME

Hi Anon, thank you so much! I always appreciate viewer support and I hope you're enjoying all the art on this blog that isn't in the fic. In any case, I don't know if this method will work for you, or if it's how other authors do research, but here's my process. It's pretty long, so I'll put it under a cut for you:

First, I start with a story. When I say story, I don't really mean a beginning-middle-end, this happens and then that happens; it's a little more vague than that. For me, a story is more like a feeling, some truth or impulse, and all the writing or plot structure or everything else is built around it. I don't generally bother with things like plot structures (which I think should be descriptive and not prescriptive anyway), and I do make outlines, but you'd be surprised by how barren they are. Here's the original from 2016, with some spoilers blacked out:

And as you can see, I threw about half of it away during the writing process, haha. A surprising amount remains, though!

Something that comes about from approaching the story as a single entity is that oftentimes, things just fall into place. A big fight taking place in the congo where most of the cryptids from the Kur flash-forwards get called up, or the gang getting shot down over the Amazon like in the first two episodes of the show - little coincidences like this happen all the time. I think it's because, while writing, my brain starts making connections that I'm not consciously aware of - I often go by what "feels correct," and I've rewritten whole chapters multiple times before to chase that feeling of "correct."

How that ties into research is twofold: first, I'm a naturally curious person, and I'm constantly reading about stuff like mythology or ancient history or science etc. on my own. I like to have an approximate knowledge of many things - that way, there's more for my brain to make connections to. For example, I already knew about the chinese five-element system (wuxing), and remembered mystic hotspots from the show, and Excalibur, and video games, so when I decided on a plot device to keep Zak and Francis together during the main story, it was fairly easy to land on the idea of a quest to power up a special weapon only Francis can wield by hitting up mystical hotspots, each one themed after one of the wuxing.

The second part of the process is this: I have the general vibe or concept of the story in my head, and now I've settled on something concrete plot-wise - the magic weapon wuxing powerup quest. That makes it really easy to start researching specific details. I know I need a magic weapon, and I know this magic weapon has to be tied to Sumerian mythology, so I start digging around in Sumerian mythology for magic weapons, and find Sharur, the talking mace wielded by the Sumerian god Ninurta. Then I do some more research into the wuxing and see that each element is attached to a color, so those are the colors Sharur changes into. Now, a big part of the original show was its globetrotting nature, so obviously, I need to make each of these hotspots a different part of the globe. (And incidentally, "mythic hotspot" doesn't really roll off the tongue, so I rooted around myths for power spots etc. and found the Quechuan word "huaca," which has a meaning very similar to what I'm trying to make each huaca out to be).

So I scatter the huacas out so they're all roughly equidistant to each other, and none are too similar in geography or concept, and we go back to existing connections: I want to have one in China, because 1) I'm Chinese, 2) there's plot reasons (Sharur uses the wuxing because it was enchanted by a Chinese guy), 3) China has a long history comparable to India, the latter of which already featured extensively in the show. So I root around for the "secret science" parts of Chinese history and stumble across this semi-mythical Xia dynasty with its emperor who may or may not exist. That feels very Secret Saturdays to me, so Yu the Great and his tomb are now the second huaca. Now, we know so little about Yu the Great that there's not too much to draw from for how his tomb looks, but I already know about the tomb of Qin Shi Huang - his tomb's excavation was put on pause because ancient records spoke of him having a scale mercury replica of China complete with flowing mercury rivers, and while these claims were initially considered massive exaggerations if not outright lies, they DID find a TON of mercury in the tomb, making them go "unless..."

Mercury obviously fits right in with this huaca being "metal"-themed, so it's a perfect reference. The idea of a scale replica of China was blown up into the idea of a magically-powered VR simulation of ancient China. Now I need a cryptid for this arc, and hey, howdy, turns out Yu the Great has a serpent-slaying myth, Xiangliu! And what's this? Xiangliu's blood was so virulently poisonous that after it was slain, when the floodwaters came, the land became barren! There is such a strong pro-environement and pro-taking care of animals even when they seem monstrous vibe in TSS that if this story is seen through the lens of TSS, it looks a lot like a cautionary tale for why you don't just murder rampaging animals - they're natural parts of their natural environments, and there are repercussions for messing too much with the food chain.

And hey, doesn't that sound like a lesson Francis should learn? The last huaca, we got as far as Francis going from "I don't want to be here" to "I guess I'm stuck here." This huaca, we need to highlight how different he and Zak are, and how shortsighted - and human - Francis's ideals are, where he repeats Yu the Great's mistake, and humanity's mistakes as a whole.

Again, a lot of these connections aren't necessarily being made consciously. In the moment, they just sort of "feel right," which I know is unhelpful, but I can't really explain it any other way.

For an arc that had more secondary research than already knowing things ahead of time, the arc in the Congo took the longest to write (there was a two-year hiatus between it and the previous arc), in large part because I had so little to go off of. Myths from the Congo area are fairly sparse on the ground (for many reasons), and the ones I did find didn't really feel very TSS or IWNOY. I knew that this was the arc where everything went to shit - that we'd been building to that for a while - but I didn't have in my notes exactly how things went to shit, or even what the huaca was going to be. I knew it would be wood-themed, but this being the Congo Rainforest, pretty much anything I did would count. I knew I wanted to do something with the origin of humanity and/or the lemurians, because Africa was where humans first evolved.

So, actually, I wound up doing research into pretty much everything - all the cryptids from the area, all the myths from the area I could find. Previously, in my research on lemurians when working out what their Deal would be, I found out that a lot of writings on lemurians came from occultists in the 1900s, who also had many (racist and misogynistic) writings about where THEY think the first humans come from, about mystical ancient societies that were hyper advanced, etc. etc., which fit with the way that the lemurians seemed to have a veritable magical paradise in Shangri-La before the nagas massacred them. I could at least use the names from these hippies, because I couldn't find comparable mythology from the actual area, but I stripped out the... less savory parts.

I wanted to use the eloko/biloko when I found them, because their myths give them magic bells that compel people who hear it to do what they want - much like how the lemurian's charisma was set up (this being one of those interesting little coincidences that happen when the story "feels right.") Doubly so when I found out that eloko/biloko sleep in trees, which - wood-themed huaca. But I still wasn't really... piecing anything together.

So I switched tracks and started looking into Gilgamesh, the man, the myth, the legend, at the center of this all. Read the Epic of Gilgamesh (or, re-read, rather), and found the myth regarding Utnapishtim and Gilgamesh's quest for eternal life. An old man gifted by immortality from the gods? Given that I already had in my notes that the lemurians struck a deal with the devil with Kur and became what they are, and the eloko/biloko were a failure as a result of the lemurians going "wait, not like this" halfway through, Utnapishtim sounded like he could fit in as a lemurian from this original hullabaloo. And in the original Gilgamesh myth, the plant Utnapishtim points Gilgamesh to, which would grant him all his youth and vitality back, gets stolen from him by a serpent. Hey, nagas!

Okay, so now I had the origin of the lemurians, Utnapishtim's character being involved, even a hook for the nagas, and thus Argost, but it still wasn't coming together. SO...

... I gave up and started looking at biblical stuff. I'm a sellout hack. BUT, at least you can argue that biblical stuff is always potentially relevant, because the Saturday line has biblical names (Zakariya/Zechariah, Solomon, Elijah, Samuel) and Zak is set up with a minor Jesus reference (sacrifices himself for the good of mankind, is dead for 3 (minutes) and is resurrected). Specifically, I started looking into the "secret science" part of biblical stuff - apocrypha, or non-canonical texts. There's tons of interesting stuff in there, but it turned out to be mostly useless, aside from the chapter titles, but it did help to form this idea of making deals and regretting them - and I'm realizing now as I'm writing this that this was another one of those unconscious connections - ch12 is literally named after the part in Goethe's Faust where Faust makes his deal with Mephistopheles ("Die Wette biet ich" - "the bet I offer").

So now that I'd been freed to do biblical stuff (which, hey, also fits in with the wood theme, because Garden of Eden, get it?), I had access to the imagery of the snake tempting eve with fruit. And suddenly, everything started to come together. Themes of trying to defy what you are by nature, the nagas as betrayers, Kur and its entourage as demons, getting what you wished for but at what cost, a fall into darkness as the major players fail to defy their natures (and the consequences that result) - once I started, I couldn't stop.

So it's a bit hard to answer your question because it's all so intuitive, but I guess if I really had to say, the real answer to where to start and where to end is to just pick a topic you like so much that you wouldn't mind doing tons of research on it, even if most of it winds up being unusable. I LOVE ancient history and mythology, so even if nothing I read is useful, I don't mind reading. And not minding the reading means I have so much already floating around in my head for when I need to write something new. If you forced me to write, say, a crime drama or sci-fi story - two fields I have much less interest and much less knowledge on - I would also be pretty lost! At that point, I'd have two options - either I write something by the numbers just to get it done, or I do enough reading on the topic that I find something about it to love and care about, and then write based on that.

I think more is always better. Anything you don't immediately use becomes a potential connection for something else down the line. I'd say a good 30% of weird little factoids featured in IWNOY are things I knew before I did research for it, and now, for other projects I'm doing, the stuff I learned for IWNOY sometimes becomes relevant.

And I would always try not to worry too much about overstuffing or making your first draft bad. The secret is, most of the actually good writing happens in the editing. Your first draft exists for the purpose of existing. It's fine if it's riddled with holes, if the dialogue sucks, if there's way too much exposition and "essay-style writing" (what I like to call it when you randomly infodump all the research you've done - I've done this sooooo many times), or if it's so bad you have to delete the whole thing and start over (this is a regular part of my writing process!). The point of draft 1 is to throw the damn spaghetti against the damn wall. Edits and revisions are where you tastefully arrange it so that it's good and an art piece, haha.

[kings-court-jester]

Welcome to the Kings Court!

We're a system with 15 alters (that we know of). We've known about the existence of our system for a year and some change now and haven't had much of a chance to interact with other systems, so hopefully making this blog will change that!

Our introductions!

Cain

The One Who Handles Things

Protector / 'Gatekeeper'

He/Him

Late 20's

When asked for a quote, he replied: "James, stop changing things on our Tumblr."

Haphephobia (I'm working on it.)

Likes: Weird YouTube horror series', Obscure History, dark metal rap horror-core type music, serial killers

Lex

The Bad Bitch

Prefer Not To Answer

She/Her/Hers

Early 20's

Unhinged hyperactivity 87% of the time

Obsessed with doll remodeling and fantasy magic

I'm probably the reason we have so many cavities, I only eats candy and cake /hj

James

-Player 1 has disconnected-

Host (and no one knows why)

He/Him

Like late teens/early 20's/idk fam

'Trap metal trash punk-bitch' is the only way to describe my style

Very social (within the system and outside of it)

I smoke a lot of weed, ngl

My Interests: true crime, video games and video game related information, weird random pseudo horror (Monument Mythos style)

Ross

The Sycophant To The Stars

Memory Holder / Caretaker

He/They

Ageless

Was a star at some point and now has a human form

Holds a majority of the systems spiritual ideas

Frequently reminds everyone to practice mindfulness (and will take front to force us to breathe and relax)

Enjoys drinking wine, listening to Hozier and looking at the stars

Rj

The Monster from The Forest

Trauma Holder

It/its

Child-like, but not a child

Can and will have a meltdown about anything

It just wants to be warm and surrounded by food in a small space at all times

Child alter

Miles

The Small One

He/him

Not allowed on socials but wants to be included in this post

Child Alter / Memory Holder

Oliver

The Tired Child

He/him

Also not allowed on socials but wanted to be included

The Court

Toby Rogers

The Arsonist

He/him

Fictional Introject (fictive) / Memory Holder

(source: creepypasta)

17

Impulsive and easily excitable

Holds both memories from his source and our trauma

Likes 2012 emocore and true horror stories

Komaeda Nagito

The Servant

Introject (fictive) / Memory Holder

(source: Danganronpa 2)

He/him

20

Strongly held negative feelings towards himself/the body

Very strong mental walls, doesn't really want to front so

Doesn't front often

Will Graham

The Therapist

Introject (fictive) / Gatekeeper / Internal Therapist

(source: Hannibal)

He/him

Likes psychology and dogs

38

"No Comment."

Cryptid-core

Eddie Munson

The Brave One

Introject (fictive) / Protector

(source: stranger things)

He/him

20

Confident and agressive

Looks out for the younger alters, protective

Likes DIO, LOtR and Tabasco sauce

Nico Di Angelo

The Dark Shadow

Introject (fictive) / Memory Holder

(source: Percy Jackson)

He/him

15

He is scared 98% of the time he is in co-con and will not talk to the rest of us.

[d0urifz]

Introductory Post!

Updated to include a DNI, and links to important posts to this blog! Please read the entire post to see this account's DNI terms, and see other things that are important to introducing the owners of this account.

Basic Information

⛥ ... Hello, and welcome to my blog! I'm not entirely sure why I've not done this yet, but today I'll finally be making a post introducing myself formally.

⛥ ... I am Alister / Graves / Mortis, (he/it 🏳️‍⚧️) the host of a diagnosed dissociative disorder system. This means we have alters (seperate identities that exist within one body) and I am simply one of many here, although I am the main person who will be posting here. Our bodily age is 20!

If you have any questions feel free to ask them either by DMing me, or communicating with this post in some other way, but here is a link I've found to be very helpful explaining what alters are, and a bit about how our disorder works:

~~~

More About Me

⛥ ... I am autistic, and Brad Dourif quickly became one of my special interests as he looks and sounds extremely similar to one of the main members of our system! My interest started with human Charles Lee Ray in Child's Play, but not long after watching that, I started binging most of the movies, shows, and other various media that Brad has starred in.

⛥ ... Aside from my interest in Brad Dourif, I enjoy things in the horror genre in general, goth and horror punk music, dark cabaret, and I spend my time writing, drawing, and playing video games. I practice some forms of magic / spiritual practices and am very passionate about it!

I also very much enjoy clowns (I collect porcelain clown dolls) and taking walks in nature, especially in wooded areas.

⛥ ... I enjoy making friends, and having conversations about my special interests, so if you're also into Brad Dourif or horror in general I'd love to talk to you, just send this account a message!

Have a wonderful day!

-Alister

~~~

DO NOT INTERACT IF:

You're allowed to like or reblog our posts (save for content that's about ourselves) but please do not message us if you're somewhere on this list! Thank you :)

• You won't view our members as real people, even if they are formed off of fictional characters. We are all real people with identities, memories, and feelings! Please be respectful of us, we are just as much of people as you are.

• You refuse to be patient and respectful of our health conditions and trauma.

• You are bigoted in any shape or form. (Racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, etc.)

• You are anti-xenogenders or anti-neopronouns.

• You fakeclaim others.

• You participate in cringe culture.

• Discourse blogs. (LGBTQIA+ discourse, system discourse, etc.)

• You participate in DDLG/B/variants.

• You are a paraphile / or you excuse, romanticize, or support paraphilias. (MAP/pedo/zoo/etc)

• You think that intrusive thoughts are the same as impulsive thoughts; intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts that the afflicted cannot control, and are often extremely distressing.

~~~

Other Important Posts

Links will be added here as needed as Tumblr only lets you pin one post to your profile! This is for easier navigation for us.

Each original post we make will include tags that tell you who made the post!

[epic-sorcerer]

Merlin on the adhd spectrum!

(Annotations in future post, check reblogs. Also, I still have more info I couldn’t figure out how to fit in here)

Emotional dysregulation:

emotional to the point where even the people who know what he’s going through are exasperated.

Arthur uses a specific way of comforting that is mostly seen with Merlin because he’s very emotionaly frail and Arthur knows this. Arthur can’t be all rough with him or else merlin will just feel worse. We only see Arthur like this with anyone else one to each morgana and some women in the 4th season.

Poor self esteem and thinks his only worth is his magic.

Bubbily one minute, depressed the next.

Sensitivity to things most find normal. I. E. Being punched in the arm. Arthur ment it to be a friendly gesture, but Merlin took it literally and as an insult. He looked genuinely offended. (rejection sensitivity dysphoria).

Impulsivity:

saying rude things to people without thinking, gets into fights by accident

Generally blurting weird things out at any given time

Throws himself in risky situations without thinking

Tries to meddle with destiny and always finds he has bit off much more than he can chew

Merlin was once shown a eating a bowl with way too many berries. This can happen because we get too excited with food and fall to realize we can’t eat that much.

Inattentivness:

listening to Arthur talk? Nah, how about staring at his lips like they are the most distracting thing in the world.

being in the middle of a conversation and fucking booking it out the door bc he just thought of something.

Time blindness, he’s late to everything. Hence this joke

Speaking of time blindness, Merlin seams to feel like he’s in a more nebulous version of time. Think quarantine mood but no quarantine in the first place. You can see this in how weird the time system is in the show. It’s messy and nondescript.

Forgetfulness:

sticks to like 3 good spells and forgets some really useful ones that could be used in his adventures.

Forgets to do some of his chores.

Grieves weirdly because he seams to forget his loss even happened because the person is out of his life and only sometimes remembers them(Poor object prominence).

Hyperactivity:

stims in a way that poeple who only do neurotypical stims call it out or think it’s weird. Usually comes out when Merlin is experiencing a lot of emotions at once.

Main Stims seam to be pacing and drumming his fingers

You can see the best examples of this scene and the one in the lady of lake where Merlin is pacing and humming. (1)I couldn’t find a video or gif set or anything for that. If y’all have one let me know

Developmental delays:

Explicitly shows to be more sensitive to smells and tastes. wears high quality clothing—we can tell bc of the expensively bright colors. All of this despite him growing up in a poor village. Merlin even ARRIVED in Camelot with these clothes(sensory processing disorder)

We can especially see Merlin’s sensitivity to bad smells in a scene in Lancelot and Gwenevere(2)

his sensitivity to tastes is explicit in The Coming of Arthur. Arthur is said to eat really anything, even things merlin would never even try to. Merlin is a poor peasant, but Arthur is a prince in a rich kingdom. (3, need help finding this one)

Trouble socializing and reading the room(think; making bad puns at the worst time possible).

Makes either creepily strong eye contact or none at all.

Very clumsy

Shown to struggle with basic volume control in his voice, especially whispering. He cannot whisper at all.

Inflexibility:

Has some trouble understanding the big picture and others motivations sometimes. It may be too overwhelming for him

Merlin will learn something(mordred posibly killing arthur) and never let go. He grew to hate mordred even like 10 years later because Merlin was unwilling to budge.

Even after Arthur died, Merlin clung to him coming back for 1500+ years because he had become so used to serving him he could not move on. Merlin lived in the same place, waiting for the same person for a century and a half. He became inflexible to living any other way

[randompasserbyer]

For the D.I.D meme, 1, 6, 16 and 17

sytfuygihnoi #1 is a big one so I’ll answer the other 3 in another ask lmao

1.  Introduce your headmates/alters. How many are there? What are they all like?

So, there’s 26 of us, give or take 2, so I’ll try to give brief descriptions of everyone in order of when they split. Thank you for asking uwu

Blue is our host. He's the one we all refer to as the owner of the body. His form in the headspace shifts depending on his kinshift, but he’s usually presenting as an Underswap Sans fictive. He uses he/him pronouns a lot but he’s genderfluid and often doesn’t consider himself a man and appreciates being called a woman despite using he/him pronouns. Gender is confusing tyfugihop

Sam is the main protector/gatekeeper of our system. She’s been around the longest, she was the first that Blue was aware of when he noticed the system, and we all kind of look up to her. She’s a “take no shit” type of person and we’re all very grateful for her. She looks like a ghost and I don’t know how else to describe her iohguyfutd

Quadi is our main trauma holder. She rarely fronts and I have zero clue how to describe what she looks like. Nobody ever interacts with her in the headspace because she’s always in her room. If she fronts,, just send her love and support.

Shnep is.. well, I don’t actually know her role, to tell you the truth oiugfyt She looks like Walmart-brand Flame Atronach from Skyrim. She only gets to front if Sam lets her front and it’s a controlled environment. Loves to play videogames tho. Murder Mystery is her favorite cause she gets to let loose.

Watcher is our persecutor. He’s only gotten front, like, twice in the last year but he causes plenty of harm in the headspace. He can shapeshift and the only way we can tell it’s him is that his eyes will stay black. He’s been around just as long as Sam, but you can never find him unless he wants you to. Our protectors are good at keeping everyone safe.

Zane is our sexual protector/trauma holder. He stays in his room as well but we’re free to come visit him at any time. I don’t,, really know?? how to describe him?? He’s another shapeshifter but I personally haven’t interacted with him since I formed so I can’t tell you much ftuhiojn

Viper is a giant skeleton lamia and while I personally quake in fear, he’s a genuine sweetheart and he loves talking to people. He knows broken English but he doesn’t let that stop him. He actually went dormant shortly after forming and nobody knew he even formed until he woke up a year and a half later and everyone went “Huh?????”

Nightshade is an Error Sans fictive. He’s another one of our protectors and he’s really good at his job. To be more specific, he’s an avenger, he helps us deal with our abusers. He’s gotten over his haphephobia for the most part since splitting, though it flares up around strangers and honestly I don’t blame him.

Template is a Template Sans fictive lmao. creative nickname I know XD He’s a middle and Nightshade is fiercely protective of him. He loves to play videogames and draw. Ask him about Spyro or Pokemon ;) He keeps going in and out of dormancy so,, idk when he’ll front again but he always seems to have a good time when he does.

404 is a Blueberror fictive. He’s fairly impulsive and.. yknow, I want to say he’s impulsive, but the guy has so many amnesia barriers about his entire being that I can’t say it for certain. He’s a cryptid. You’ll never see him in the headspace unless you see one of his soft triggers and he has so few of those lmao (Our partner says he’s like Ghostbur but hyper, so take that as you will)

Gold is a Birdtale Sans fictive. He doesn’t like to talk unless you’ve gained his complete trust, or he’s alone. He’s very much a “body language is a universal language and it’s the only language in the universe I know” kind of guy. He tells great puns tho. He’s pretty chill. Apparently he formed like.. years ago?? And Sam had just been blocking him from the main area of our headspace for a really long time??

Squid is our Ink Sans fictive (are you seeing a pattern here? Hyperfixation go brrrr). He’s chaos but he can be pretty down to earth if he wants to be. He’s stuck in a state of constantly missing his old life, though. He loves to draw and leave long supportive chaotic comments on other people’s art. If he can’t draw, he gets anxious.

WDG is our Handplates Gaster fictive. His lab takes up the entire basement of the headspace mansion and half of it is just an entrance to the Void, which only he and Shard can access. He’s very analytical and emotionally and physically distant, but he’s really good at making sure the body is taken care of. He likes to document everything he does and when so it’s pretty easy to see what he did when he fronted. Terrified of his curiosity though, that skeleton loves science way too much.

Shard and Sunshine are a subsystem Shattered!Dream fictive. Sunshine is really sweet but very paranoid and sensitive. Shard is actually both a persecutor and a protector. Kind of a.. “Nobody gets to hurt this system except me” kind of vibe, yknow? He’s been working hard to reform though because he hurt our partner once and felt really bad. He’s come a long way ^^

Viola is an Underswap Sans fictive, but she split from a fanfiction called By the Angel (it’s nsfw if you look it up, but it’s got a great plot lol). She’s actually transgender since her fic has her as he/him and we’re very supportive of her <3 She’s.. I don’t know how to describe her other than she’s got an old soul and a old-fashioned way of speaking. She loves to listen to kulning videos. Swedish culture really vibes with her.

Drake is a fictive from a really old Minecraft roleplay called The Haunted. He’s half Enderman and he can do magic. He’s kind of timid and his anxiety is always through the roof. He gets hella dysphoric when he fronts and often has headaches and we’re?? not sure?? if he’s a subsystem or not??? with Herobrine??????? He won’t tell anyone if he is or not, he just dodges the question.

*inhale* Pinky is a vampire Ink Sans fictive. He’s what would happen if you gave a vampiric opossum a bigger body lmao. He’s incredibly mischievous (and a tad selfish, if you ask me) and likes to cause pranks at the worst times. He adores our partner though.

TB is a Technoblade fictive/factive. Both?? It’s hard to tell with him. He looks like a twunk piglin and behaves like one too. He’s taken on the role of protector recently, though, and he monitors any new splits until we’re sure they’re not going to hurt the body or any relationships with other folks. He likes to talk about piglin culture a lot. (he kins Billiam and it’s entertaining to watch him call everyone peasants and poor when we too are in fact poor)

Phil is our Philza fictive. He’s the dad friend of the system, the caretaker. He takes a very neutral stance on things and will often refuse to step into a fight, but he will try to calm folks down. I can’t tell you how much of a comfort he is. He loves to talk about his past life and his little family, though he gets sad about it sometimes.

Ghost is our Ghostbur fictive. He loves pranks and he’s very sweet. He has so much blue, you would not believe. He’s such a softy and loves to make people smile. He either hangs around TB, Phil, or Theo and he doesn’t usually front alone. He does have Alivebur shifts but he essentially just gets really edgy and depressed in a sort of self destructive way, but he’s still soft. He just tells really wild jokes and he’s a lot more impulsive.

SNL/Space Heater (he doesn’t have a good nickname yet) is our Sapnap factive/fictive. He really enjoys front but he doesn’t really get much done when he fronts tfuygiuhoip He just reads fanfiction lmao. He loves Dadboyhalo and Dreamnap content. He’s a pretty chill guy, doesn’t get into a lot of fights. He just wants to have fun.

Theo is our protege!Tommy fictive. He actually split from the popular fic Rewind and he’s just been.. vibing? He gets along well with Sapnap most of the time but he’s had a lot of trouble warming up to TB, Phil, and Ghost. I think he enjoys front?? He fronts often enough. I don’t know how to describe him except that he’s very Tommy-like lmao

Fakier is our newest split. He’s an ARG Wilbur fictive. He doesn’t like to talk too much about himself but he loves to infodump about codes and cryptic stuff like that. He’s actually done a lot with taking care of the body and taking long walks outside and just, enjoying life. He did leave the windows open on a really cold day tho and our apartment hasn’t been warm since :\ He seems cool, I’m just annoyed that my fingers and toes are freezing off lmao /hyperbole

We’ve had a few integrate over the past two years so it’s hard to keep track of how many there are for sure, but that should be everyone. Sorry for the wall of text dytufibonk Hope you liked the answer tho ^^ I’ll answer the other 3 answers tomorrow in a post together and @ you so you don’t miss them uwu

[houseofsannae]

A Fistful of Munny - Extended End Notes

Notes for A Fistful of Munny that don’t fit within the character limit under the cut!

Please, read the fic before reading this post

           All right! Welcome to the extended notes, in which I go into excruciating detail over a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter, because I like the sound of my own voice!

           Let’s start with some more broad stuff that didn’t make the exclusive end notes space. To do the Fistful of Dollars homage, I needed a place where I could have two villainous factions intersecting for Strelitzia to play against one another. After some brainstorming and asking for help from other people working on the Entwined in Trine Sorikai zine (and ultimately ignoring all their very good suggestions (Sorry, guys!)), I eventually realized that the Wasteland from Epic Mickey was a perfect place for this story, both in the sense of having mooks to destroy without Strels committing actual murder, and in the thematic sense of forgotten characters. There was just one issue.

           I hadn’t played Epic Mickey.

           And that is how I spent my summer, playing both Epic Mickey games. Both, because I was looking for a good location to set the story in in-world. Since the Wasteland is based on the Disney theme parks, I was hoping to find one based on Frontierland, their Western section. Such a location did exist – Disney Gulch – but only in the second game. Which meant I had to play Epic Mickey 2, as well. (The first one is a better game, but that’s not really the fault of the developers; they were not given the time they needed to make it as good as the first one. Here’s a video with trivia about the series that goes a little into the development.) I also needed to learn the Mad Doctor’s ultimate fate, since I wanted his Beetleworx/Blotworx to be one of the two villainous factions. In the game, depending on whether you chose the Paint (Paragon) or Thinner (Renegade) path, the Doc is either redeemed… or dead. Neither of which was helpful, so I had to invent.

           But let’s talk about characters and why I picked them in order. The short version for why these choices, at least on the Final Fantasy side, is set-up for later. Obviously I can’t go into detail why. Before that, let’s talk about the Beanie Baby.

           Chi is, as I hope you were able to guess, Strelitzia’s Chirithy. I’ve brought it up several times, but I personally do not like mascot characters. There are a few exceptions, but Chirithies are not one of them. Like I said, KHUx isn’t what happened in this AU, so you’ll have to wait for in-universe answers on why it’s a cat now. Out-of-universe reason is this was the only way I could make it palatable for myself. I arbitrarily decided on a gender for it because as a real cat, it would have a sex. Canonically Chirithies appear to be genderless, and in Japanese refer to themselves with the gender-neutral (but masculine-leaning) boku. I would’ve left Chi that way, save for the fact that he’s a completely normal cat now. (And before you ask, no, not every real cat that appears in KHΨ from this point on is a Chirithy.)

           As for Strelitzia herself, it’s hard for me to pick up a character’s voice when they’re… not voiced. Intonation and cadence do a lot for me mimicking the way a character talks, so it’s a bit more difficult when they don’t technically speak. I tried for a mix between Sora and Kairi, while still keeping her defining character traits of being shy, but also impulsive.

           You may notice that while she’s started remembering faces, if not names, the Player’s name and face still eludes her, despite her (canonical. Deal with it.) crush on them. There is a story reason for this, and will become clear once Luxu takes centre stage.

           The name “Jane” was chosen with more consideration than just “Jane Doe” being the standard name in (at least my corner of) the English-speaking world for a woman of unknown identity. See, the Man With No Name actually has three names. In A Fistful of Dollars, he is referred to (by one character in one scene, once) as “Joe”. “Joan” might have been a more clear homage, but I figure Jane makes sense. And as you might guess, in the next fic, Strels will be going by a different name, still not her own. She’ll remember her name… eventually.

           One might think I could’ve picked any old Cid, and one would be wrong for reasons I can’t explain yet. In fact, I can’t explain much of anything surrounding him yet. What I can say is no, Cidney Aurum is not dead, she’s just not related to Cid Sophiar in this fic verse. An unfortunate consequence of where I wanted to put each of them in the narrative; making them not be related was the only way it made any sense, geographically speaking.

           Hyperion on the other hand, I can talk about. He’s one of the Gremlins in Epic Mickey, and… wait, first things first. Gremlins are from an abandoned Disney film based on a Roald Dahl book, itself based on the cryptids that supposedly haunted airplanes and caused them to malfunction, the earliest known written-down mention of the concept being from the 1920s. The film never got made, but the designs Disney would have used were adapted into a second printing of Dahl’s book, and they were later used in Epic Mickey. Hyperion is, like the publishing imprint that Disney owns, named after a street that Walt Disney used to live on. In-game, Hyperion is in Bog Easy (based on the Haunted Mansion), not Disney Gulch, but his name stuck out to me as being particularly fun, so I picked him instead of trying to figure out what Gremlins actually are in the Gulch (they have names in the files of Epic Mickey 2, but not in the actual game, so it would have been a hunt).

           Regardless of where the setting ended up, for the second villainous faction, I was always going to plop down the good old Don. More things I can’t talk about. For everything FF7, know that I’m always going to be pulling from a mix of the original game, Remake, and Machinabridged. Hence, Corneo’s outfit is a mix of his original and Remake designs (which basically just means he’s wearing blue jeans instead of brown). I didn’t think bringing in his three lieutenants from Remake was necessary, especially since this was supposed to be a kind-of small operation.

           Leslie is picked up and dropped from Remake pretty much unchanged. I needed someone to do the murders Strels couldn’t, and even if he’s not a complete asshole, he’s still mostly an asshole. Have we ever seen small, Materia-like balls used to cast magic before…?

           Onto the fun bits, which is the Disney characters. We’ll start with Percy, who is from a Goofy short called “How to Ride a Horse”, from 1950. And that’s about it. The conceit in Wasteland is that all of the Toons there were basically actors, and they wound up in Wasteland if they were forgotten (that’s not exactly correct, but I’m generalizing). This is interesting, since two of the Toons in Epic Mickey are Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, both of whom… are residents of Disney Town in Kingdom Hearts, having shown up in Birth by Sleep. So that’s an interesting continuity snarl that I’m going to just ignore.

           Persephone and Pluto, on the other hand, are from an earlier short called “The Goddess of Spring”, from 1934. It was one of the projects Disney tried as practice for Snow White. If you’re about to protest that his name should be Hades, not Pluto, then you’re going to need a time machine so you can tell them back in the 30s. The Goddess of Spring is a musical, in the sense that every single line is sung. Watch it for yourself. There’s a video with better quality floating around YouTube, but for some reason it’s the French dub. And that’s why both of them sing most of their lines. I tried matching the meter of their actual parts, but Persephone’s doesn’t actually follow a syllabic pattern that I could make out. I eventually gave up and just gave her the meter from the start of the short. Pluto’s was easier to manage (and more consistent).

           The skeletons are Disney veterans, presumably the same ones from “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), but more specifically they’re mimicking what they did in “The Mad Doctor” (1933), the first appearance of our other villain. They’re fun.

           The original Mad Doctor was supposedly named “Dr. XXX”, according to the name on his door. This was before the modern film rating system was put in place; it was a different time. In the original short, the Mad Doctor kidnaps Pluto (the dog) with the intent of cutting him in half and putting his front half on a chicken For Science!, and Mickey follows him to his castle to rescue the purloined pooch. The short wasn’t a musical in the same vein as “The Goddess of Spring”, but… the Mad Doctor’s only spoken lines were a song (aside from evil cackling). While I had already decided to do the “Toons that sang in their short can only communicate through song” with Persephone and Pluto before starting on Epic Mickey 2, I hilariously discovered that the game developers had done the exact same gag with the Mad Doctor, most of his lines in the game being sung. (In Epic Mickey there were no fully voiced lines, so he speaks as normally as anyone else does). Which made it easier to write his songs here, since I could just rewrite his songs from the game. I used to write alternate lyrics for songs back in high school, so this was an interesting trip back in time for me. They were stuck in my head for weeks afterwards, but it was worth it.

           I believe that’s everything for the characters. Let’s talk about Keyblades.

           It irks me that three people in KHUx have the same Keyblade. Ephemer, Skuld, and Strelitzia all have variations of Starlight. Now, in KHΨ, there is only one Starlight, and it belongs to Luxu, so I’m going to have to decide on different Keyblades for each of them. (Ephemer’s has already been decided, and I haven’t started brainstorming for Skuld yet. No I do not need suggestions, thank you). Pixie Petal bears a noted (by KHWiki) resemblance to one of Marluxia’s alternate scythes, so that tangential connection was enough for me. Both siblings have flower-themed Keyblades – it makes sense to me.

           You might notice a few disparities in the magic. These are on purpose, and will eventually make sense. And that’s all I can say on that at the moment. ;)

           Oh, yes, one important thing I probably should have said on the main notes: I’m not going for a realistic depiction of amnesia here. Anything I got right was entirely accidental, and I’m fairly certain there’s not much. There might be a story reason for why it works the way it does… and it might be the same reason why other people from KHUx have or had amnesia in the present day…

           You know what’s funny? Although Orcuses look more impressive than Invisibles, their stats in Days are actually worse. I’m fairly sure that this is because the only time we see an Orcus, it’s actually an illusion cast over Xion so that Roxas will fight her to the death. There are no other stats for them (according to KHWiki), since they’ve never been used elsewhere.

           A friendly reminder that Apprentice Xehanort invented the term “Heartless”, which was why Aqua didn’t know what to call them until Mickey told her. Thus, nobody from the era of the Keyblade War should know the term “Heartless” without being told by someone in present day. “Darkling” was the term they used instead. I’m fairly certain KHUx ignores the continuity on this (so why should we trust its continuity for anything else, hmm?)

           I think that covers everything! Or at least everything I’m willing to share at this point. If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate your dedication! ^_^

[thelittleredheadedmusician]

Rats!

Rating: G 1,701 words Gen AO3

For @radioactivepigeons who loves Babs being Oracle, Dick Grayson, and rats, written as celebration for her paper! I hope you like it!

Babs glared at her screen. The motion detectors were going crazy in the West Wing, second floor of the Gotham Natural History Museum. The hall where the collection of precious stones and gems was on display behind thick panes of pelxiglas with thick locks and liberal alarms. The problem was the security cameras showed no one there. The footage wasn’t looped or old, she’d already checked, and yet nothing. But the motion detectors going off? In only the West Wing on the second floor? It was almost an annoyance more than anything.

No alarms had been tripped. There was a possibility of malfunction. Except Babs had already piggy-backed into the system and looked for anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing. The motion detectors were genuinely going off, registering actual movement. Except, it made no sense the pattern that they were flashing. She couldn’t trace any path or direction; they were just alerting at random.

Oracle had notified Gotham’s resident vigilantes of the oddity happening at the museum. Since no alarms were tripped, the police hadn’t been called. Babs didn’t think they’d be much use anyway.

Nightwing was the one who answered her request to check it out, slipping into the museum unnoticed except on her screens. “Oracle?” his voice came through her speakers. “I’m here but it looks like all the gems are in their places and the only break-in tonight is mine.”

“Thank you, Detective Wonder, I couldn’t see that myself,” she let a note of dry teasing slip into her voice.

Dick turned to smile at the closest security camera, “Happy to help!”

Smartass. At least it was a good one.

“You’re my hands and feet, Nightwing. So, get to gumshoeing before I boot you for one of my Batgirls.” It was only half a threat and they both knew it.

“Point taken,” Dick laughed. He began a slow trek through the space, looking for anything out of the ordinary and more importantly, anything missing. As he walked, Babs watched the screen showing the motion detectors. If anything, this little exercise was making it all more confusing instead of clearing it up. The sensors registered Dick’s steady and methodical progress and yet still were blinking seemingly at random. So, they were definitely registering movement. But of what?

“Nightwing, is there anything to your left right now? Anywhere to your left, low high?” Babs frowned at the steady blinking of the sensor right next to Dick’s current position and the video feed that showed empty air.

“No. Should there be?”

“According to the security system? Yes,” she sighed. Babs was good at puzzles, genuinely enjoyed them too. Twisting the information this way and that until a pattern appeared. Organizing and sorting until she had exactly what she needed. Taking something apart to see if she could determine how it worked and then put it back together once more. Looking at angles and theories and data. Taking it all in and making something new.

But this? This was chaos. Chaos that was giving her a bit of a headache with the insistent flashing. Not to mention the frustration that was building somewhere between her throat and her chest. In her jaw and her hands.

“O?” Dick said, spinning in a slow circle. “I know this is gonna sound crazy but, do you think this might be something… paranormal? Supernatural?”

Dropping her head into her hands knocked Babs’s glasses askew. “It does sound crazy,” she grumbled. “Except,” she sighed and sat up, “this is Gotham and our line of work so…”

Her fingers darted back to her keyboard, ready to pull up Zatanna or Raven’s contacts. Failing that – and god forbid – she was owed favors from Jason Blood and John Constantine so one of them could figure it out and Babs could wipe her hands of it. Just, she’d probably make Dick stick around to keep an eye on the gems if that was the case.

The call to Zatanna just began ringing through when a flash of white darted across the screen by Dick’s feet. Babs hung up on the mistress of magic and switched back to Dick’s comm. “Nightwing, what was that?”

“Not sure,” and he sure sounded it as he got down on his hands and knees. Dick reached into the shadows and Babs lost sight of what was happening. “Aha!” came his exclamation a few seconds later.

Dick stood again with something clutched between his hands. It was white and grey and wiggling slightly. “Is that… a rat?”

“A rat I know!” Dick sounded downright pleased. Babs hoped that meant he would hurry up and get to the explanation. “Oracle, say hi to Impulse!” he held the rat up to the camera.

“Unless something happened that no one told me about – and that is highly unlikely – that is not Impulse. Impulse is either a five-foot three teenaged ball of hyperactivity or a chaotic eight-year-old. Not a rat.”

Dick was petting the rat and making kissy faces at it. Normally Babs liked his kissy faces but her patience was just about gone. “The rat was named for the former. By the Flash. My Flash. This is his roommate’s rat.”

“Well, Zookeeper Wonder, I’m going to take your word for it but if I call the Pied Piper and you turn out to be wrong, I am sending the recording of this conversation to everyone in my contacts.” Babs trusted Dick; she wouldn’t have been that extreme if she didn’t. Also, it wasn’t really going to be everyone. Just a few key members of the family, Justice League, Birds, and Titans. They would take care of spreading it to everyone else.

The call to one Hartley Rathaway’s personal cell connected and Babs switched on her voice modulator. It wasn’t worth it when running comms, they all knew who she was anyway, but the Pied Piper was a little outside her normal sphere of influence.

“Hello?” was the hesitant voice on the other end.

“Hello Piper, this is Oracle,” Babs said smoothly, watching Dick play with the rat and making her smile.

There was an audible gulp. “How can I help you?”

“You wouldn’t by chance own a rat named Impulse who is currently running around the second floor, West Wing, of the Gotham Natural History Museum?”

A pause. Babs waited.

“Uh, yeah actually? How’d you know?”

“Nightwing is currently giving it scritches.”

The soft sounds of cursing made her smile. Sometimes her job was just fun and even with the headaches she had to admit that. “That would explain a lot. Uh, I am not trying to rob the place if that makes you feel better? I got wind of some of the Rogues going out of town for a heist and thought I could stop them. Think of the rats as my field troops?”

“Ah, so you are the reason the motion detectors have been going nuts.”

“Sorry?”

“No worries. Just, for future reference, a courtesy call would be lovely and the local rodents and birds would certainly be happy to assist in such matters.” Babs smirked at her own joke.

“Right. Of course. Sorry,” there was a distinct wince in his tone.

She almost felt bad, but her scary reputation was more helpful than not. “I’m assuming you’re still in the area and the Rogues have yet to make a move?”

There was a pause, as though he was trying to figure out how to answer in a manner that wouldn’t incur her wrath. Or Batman’s. Ha, as though Babs was going to tell him any of this. No, what Bruce didn’t know didn’t hurt him and if he asked, she’d tell him she and Nightwing sorted it out and instruct Dick to do the same. And for her, he would. Granted, Mr. Rathaway on the other end of the line was unaware of all this.

“Piper?” she prompted. There were other things Babs had to do tonight and while her annoyance had waned and changed into amusement, she still wanted to wrap this up soon.

“Right. Sorry. I’m in Gotham? Fire escape on the building on the other side of the back alley to be exact.”

“Excellent. Do you have a shortwave comm?”

There was a breath of a laugh. Babs smiled; she’d known it was a dumb question too. Wally had a tendency to forget things here and there, which Babs had managed to get her hands on. She knew Piper’s tech and knew it was good. “Yeah. I do.”

“Switch to local channel eight, I’ll have Nightwing do the same and send him out to you. Not that I don’t trust you or your methods, but he is on the scene.”

“No it’s fine, I get it. And I appreciate it.”

Babs grinned. As they talked she had taken the liberty of hacking into one of the cameras on the museum’s rear and used it to locate Piper. Crouched on the lowest platform of the fire escape, a glint of silver that must be his flute in his lap. She could see his face from this angle, the hand he used to hold his phone to his ear pushing the dark green hood back just enough.

“Excellent. Thank you so much, your cooperation is appreciated and let me know if there’s anything I can assist you with tonight. I’m on channel one.”

“No problem. And, uh, thank you.” He seemed a little dumbfounded, eyes going wide on her screen.

“Oh, one more favor,” Babs said before she hung up and switched back to Dick. He didn’t seem to mind being left hanging this long so far anyway, combination of being used to it and distracted by Piper’s rats. “If you could call off your, ah, foot soldiers? I have nothing against rats, but I was this close to calling an exorcist. They’re doing murder on the motion sensors.”

He chuckled softly, just a hint of embarrassed. “Consider them gone.”

Without further ado, Babs hung up and sent Dick to meet him. Thank god it wasn’t a ghost. Magic users just mucked up the security systems for weeks after and she didn’t have the mental energy for all the footage that would need erasing.

[dykemelon]

Can’t sleep. Time to ramble into the void

I started writing an outline for a video game I would like to make in the form of a mod for Celeste adding a new campaign with a story based on my specific struggles with mental health, I.e. DID, PTSD, psychosis. As much as I love Celeste that game’s attempt at talking about anxiety and depression does not speak to me at least in the way it’s “supposed to” be interpreted. In my story, the protagonist (me) would find herself separated into her constituent personalities (Z and Dalia) through ~magic~, who have to learn to work together to fight hell brain, which manifests through initial appearances as a third personality but is not really a person so much as a collection of fears and traumas given a voice. The conclusion would be the stripping away of hell brain’s apocalyptic psychotic power, leaving a sad apparition of a girl trapped in her own head muttering fears to herself.

I’m hoping to gain some form of catharsis out of doing this. Already, it’s helping me in the form that whenever I experience trauma symptoms I have this thought process that kicks in and says “how can I represent this in my art, how can I explain how it feels to go through this to someone else” which is on the face of it a shitty way to process your own experiences but on the other hand since my delusions are about being fundamentally alone ontologically the idea of how to communicate with others is grounding.

The draft resolution to my story is in some ways wish fulfillment - on some level I simply do not believe that the world is real and I have to perform enormous feats of mental lifting in order to convince myself that my stimuli are not part of some cosmic conspiracy to torture me forever. But I wish to contextualize that fear as a traumatic impulse, not a constituative part of my self. I also really wish to have access again to my system - it is a really good sign for my mental health if I don’t have to dissociate so hard that I can’t tell what I’m thinking and why (i.e. who is thinking it and what their motivations are distinct from me as a whole) to protect myself from intrusive thoughts and delusions. I can get whiffs sometimes of who is most present and tune my actions to better support that half’s desires, but it’s a big dissociative step from being able to understand myself as that person within and made of that part of my brain.

I feel optimistic about the future. The fiction project is maybe a bit big in scope but I have confidence that this special interest will stick around long enough for me to be able to put together a prototype version of it at least.

[leahxx129]

Misbehavior (Tony Stark x Reader)

This is my entry for the stunning @lancsnerd ‘s 1K Challenge. Congrats girl once more! My prompt can be found in bold in the text.

As for the fic, this is not how I intended it to play out at all but once I started writing one thing followed the other and voilà - it was born. I hope you enjoy & also please forgive me for the sucky smut part. I need to work on my smut writing skills, I know.

Summary: A mission goes sideways because of Tony Stark’s impulsive decision and this angers you to the point of punishing him in a very special way. Unbeknownst to you, an entire audience witnesses it.

Warnings: swearing, smut

Word count: 2.060-ish

Gif is not mine.

You are walking through the glass suspension bridge in the Stark Tower; Natasha, Steve, Tony, Clint, Bruce and Thor follow closely in your heels. The course of an outstandingly important mission deviated from schedule, and Fury commanded you to gather in the conference room for a video discussion, right after the Quinjet’s landed.

No matter how hard you try you can’t remember a single time when you’ve been angrier than now. In fact, the word ‘angry’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Mad? No. Furious? Close but not quite. If it wasn’t for Natasha you’d feel much better now. Stark would have a broken nose and you would have your peace of mind... but no, she had to intervene and restrain you.

“I’m just saying that my brilliance may not be evident but that is what brought the mission to success today, not Little Miss Goodie Two-Shoes over there!” Tony provokes you and you’d be damned if you missed the opportunity to rip him a new one.

You turn around and duck from Nat in one quick motion, but Steve steps in front of the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, shielding him.

“I appreciate the gesture, Rogers, but I don’t need protection from Y/N.” Tony objects.

“You’re not in your suit and she could strangle you to death with her thighs exclusively, so you might wanna reconsider, Stark.”

“I mean, wouldn’t be the worst way to die I guess…”

“Come on people, move!” Thor yells at all of you out of the blue, earning your undivided attention. “I must get back to Asgard as soon as possible and your childish banter just puts off the end of this gathering we are about have.”

“Childish banter?” you repeat, pulling a face. “We almost failed because of Stark’s eccentricity! Heck, one of us could’ve died!”

“Little dove, you do realize I’m a god, right? I cannot die, so it couldn’t have been me.” he states with a wink, leaning to the side of the bridge.

“Actually, I did some research and that’s not entirely true.” Bruce chips in, making Thor’s head snap in his direction.

“What are you talking about, Banner?”

“Technically, you are not immortal.”

“Lie. I am.”

“But you’re not.”

“But I am.”

“Okay people, I think we’re gonna find out who’s immortal and who’s not if we will be any later to Fury’s meeting!” Clint puts an end to their disagreement and urges you all to proceed.

You push the double-winged door open and take a seat at the far end of the oval glass table. When Tony is only a few chairs away from you, Steve pulls on his shoulder, forcing him to sit down right next him. The others make themselves comfortable as well and a hologram of Fury appears in the middle of the table almost immediately after.

“I’ve been waiting for quite some time now, Avengers.” he proclaims. “I figured maybe you had difficulties grasping what ‘right after landing’ meant and you went to take a shower or something, but you still look like crap, so…explain.”

“We’re sorry for the delay, Fury. It’s just Y/N and Tony had a moment of not seeing eye to eye.” Nat replies.

“And why is that?”

“Oh, I don’t know… maybe because Stark’s an egoistic prick and his reckless behavior endangered all of us?!” you answer him this time.

“Not all of us.” Thor interjects “He didn’t endanger me.”

Everybody brushes his comment off with a sigh, even Fury chooses to ignore it.

“Can I just say that I do not agree with Y/N ’s ascertainment?” Tony inquires as innocently as possible, but you are not fooled by his pretenses. You’ve grown to know all his little games and tricks by now.

“You can but nobody cares, Stark.” you voice your opinion before Fury even gets the chance to open his mouth. “What the hell were you thinking?! I know your magical armor is almost invincible but the rest of us aren’t and exposing us to the enemy did not aid the cause of the mission!”

“See, that’s where you are wrong, Y/N. Our arrival was highly anticipated and by doing something unexpected – in this case exposing ourselves and pretending to surrender – we managed to catch them off-guard and consequently we were able to defeat them. I call this smart leadership and if this is your peculiar way of thanking me, you’re welcome!”

“Un-believable! Smart leadership?! Stark, it’s obvious you winged it just like everything else in your life! Gosh, do you even hear yourself when you talk?”

“Okay, now that’s getting a bit personal-“ but Tony’s not able to finish his sentence.

“ENOUGH!” Fury thunders. “This isn’t kindergarten. You know what? Get out. Both of you.”

“I beg your pardon?” you can’t believe your ears.

“I said leave the conference room. Both of you. You got ten minutes to cool down then you may rejoin the discussion.”

Tony rolls his eyes and slowly takes his leave. You wait a couple of seconds, hoping Fury would change his mind and let you stay but nothing happens. You let out a loud scoff and storm out. The heavy door closes behind you with  a thud and you head to the bridge, but before you could set a foot on it, you hear a violent ‘psssssst’ coming from a door cracked open about ten feet away. You approach it with caution but as you get near it, a hand reaches out and pulls you in.

“Tony?!” you blurt out.

“Ssshhh! No need to scream just yet, darling.” he scolds you then flashes a smile that would make the majority of earth’s female population drop their panties in an instant.

“Is this… is this a janitor’s closet??” you ask incredulously as you take in your surroundings.

“Yeah, but hey, you know the drill about desperate times and desperate measures... I want you. Now.”

Not waiting for a reaction, he grabs your hips and kisses you forcefully. You can taste the whiskey he drank prior the battle mixed with blood from your busted lip on his tongue. A second later you push him away and he looks utterly at loss.

“You risked the success of our mission earlier today! Do you honestly expect me to just let that slip? You were a bad boy, Tony. And you know what bad boys deserve?”

“Punishment.”

You take a step closer and press yourself flush against his body while standing on your tiptoes.

“Indeed. And I think I may have to be the one to deliver the punishment in the form of what the French call La Petite Mort.” you whisper in his ear, and you can feel his hard-on twitching in his expensive Hugo Boss pants.

He loses control almost immediately and pins you against the wall.

“That’s my favorite kind of death, darling!” he says in between kisses.

It takes a few seconds to peel each other’s redundant clothing off, but you succeed. He flips you so you’d face the wall and enters you from behind. A moan escapes your mouth. One of his hands is on your hip and the other one he uses to reach to the front and massage you.  

“You know, you couldn’t have come up with a better punishment, even if you tried…” he pants, his lips brushing against your neck.

“Thanks... but lately I feel like… I’ve been dealing out… more chastisement than ever…” you breathe out as pleasure slowly begins building inside you.

“Busted…you see what you do to me, Y/N? I aim to misbehave… just so you would get angry… and you’d punish me…”

He picks up the pace and soon you have to bite down on your lower arm to prevent yourself from screaming out. His fast motions morph into slow, sloppy ones and a deep groan lets you know he’s reached his bliss as well. You stand there for a minute all tangled up in each other, trying to normalize your breath.

“I so hate sneaking around…” you complain in a thin voice as you pull the zipper up on your skin-tight suit.

“I know, sweetheart, me too. But we’ll go official when the time is right.” he pecks you on the lips “Now let’s rejoin that ridiculous meeting.”

You enter the room but halfway to your seat you come to a halt. The atmosphere has clearly changed. Steve is staring into the void while Nat’s face is buried into her hands. Bruce appears to be thinking hard while Clint can’t tear his gaze from you.

“Where’s Thor? And Fury? Is the meeting over?” you ask.

“Thor left for Asgard and Fury is probably poking his other eye out. Or deafening himself. At least that’s what I’m contemplating right now.” Clint offers an explanation completely deadpan.

Before you can threaten him to kick his ass if he didn’t quit messing, Tony comes in and stops behind you.

“What happened to you all?” he draws his eyebrows together “It appears as if you- nooooo…“

His eyes widen and you look at him in confusion.

“The body camera in your suit.” he whispers to you through gritted teeth.

“Bingo, Mr. I aim to misbehave!” Nat’s voice is muffled but still audible.

When your heartrate increases or decreases to an unusual level, the camera starts projecting the image to the closest device capable of receiving its signal. This way you can get help if you’re in trouble or hurt. Apparently, the gadget cannot differentiate between an increase due to danger and an increase due to excitement, so the projection started in the conference room... As a result, the company present saw and heard everything. Everything. All the blood drains from your face.

“Next time please do us a favor and turn the damn thing off, would you?” Bruce suggests.

“Banner, you know how this works, too, why didn’t you stop the projection?!” Tony snaps at him.

“I tried but Thor got uncomfortable and smashed the control panel with his hammer! He damaged the system enough to log Fury out, but the video kept going and going… So, he summoned the Bifrost on the balcony and left. We, on the other hand, are still waiting for Fury’s return so we had to endure the whole show you put on...”

“Gosh, this is embarrassing… but hey, at least it was educational for Rogers, wasn’t it?

“Tony!” you smack his shoulder, feeling the heat rise to your cheeks.

“Yes, darling?” he snakes an arm around your waist.

Suddenly, Fury’s hologram pops back in.

“You…” he drags the word, staring daggers at the two of you. “You almost made me carve out my good eye…”

Clint claps his hands together then points at Fury, mouthing an ‘I told you’. Fury glances at him but carries on without reacting.

“If you didn’t happen to be two of earth’s mightiest heroes, I’d fire you in a heartbeat!”

“We are very well aware, and we are incredibly sorry for the inconvenience we caused!” you almost stutter the sentence. “It won’t happen again.”

“Hey!” Tony protests.

“I mean, in public.”

“Ah, okay.”

“Anyway…” Fury continues “Unfortunately, we all learned the true reason why today’s mission went sideways, but that’s not what’s gonna get documented. We will go with Stark’s smart leadership crap. If there are no further questions, the meeting is over, and you can disassemble.”

The others vanish in a blink of an eye, only Tony and you are left in the conference room. He pulls you closer and you wrap your arms around his neck.

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag now, huh?” he murmurs.

“Yup. Though this definitely wasn’t the way I wanted to let them know we’re together.”

You stand there for a couple of minutes, just swaying in each other’s embrace. You lean your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat.

“Listen, I know you said public places were off-limits, but here’s this huge glass table and everyone’s gone!” Tony whispers, totally ruining the moment.

You roll your eyes and smack his shoulder yet again as a response, then head off.

“I assume that’s a no then?” he shouts after you.

A small smile spreads across his face. He is not a believer, but he believes in you and in what you two have. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him and he knows it.

[tinycrowned]

The Science Behind a Psychic Scream; via my brain knowledge and some crash course videos compiled into a document that hopefully makes sense

Psychic Scream

Hypothesis: If the Psychic Scream can force a fight or flight response for a short, controlled amount of time, then the way in which it triggers the chemical response can be classified as a physical effect on both the caster and the victim as well as the environment around them. 

It’s Physical:

Fun Fact: The name of the spell, ‘Psychic Scream’, can be called an oxymoron because of the two words’ official definitions. Psychic, relating to something not physical [adjective;“relating to or denoting faculties or phenomena that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, especially involving telepathy or clairvoyance.|relating to the soul or mind.|noun;a person considered or claiming to have psychic powers; a medium.”] and Scream, something physical [verb;“give a long, loud, piercing cry or cries expressing excitement, great emotion, or pain.|noun;a long, loud, piercing cry expressing extreme emotion or pain.”].

Now, to project and permeate a scream far enough into someone’s mind seems a bit… outlandish and ridiculous, if you ask me. But, I think I can manage to explain it using aspects of physics, vibrations, and frequencies. 

To scream would mean a sound, a real sound that is carried by soundwaves and vibrations- so right off the bat, the word ‘scream’ has to be classified as physical because it’s something you can hear and react to. Reacting and sensing are physical. The initial action is physical- in game, the caster projects a shout, using their magic to trigger a fight or flight response within his enemies as an area of effect. 

And by shout I mean a literal shout. You’re not the dragonborn, calm down. Parthurnax isn’t about to bestow some wisdom of The Voice into your brain- that’s not how it works here.

Now we know that the Psychic Scream has to project a physical sound with a mental side effect because of the way it triggers the fight or flight response so easily. You can imagine a scream in your head, but would it really scare you that much? [bear with me, ‘fight or flight’ comes up a lot here because that’s exactly what we’re trying to tie the physicality into.]

Soundwaves are physical vibrational frequencies that are created by particles moving back and forth in the air so fast it creates a directional wave. For our case and for the regular shape and range for the spell, the Psychic Scream would be a Spherical Wave with intense oscillation (vibration) with its starting point being the caster themselves. From there the waves would fan outward- but there’s one problem.

Soundwaves usually get weaker as they travel outward and even slow when they pass through things- this could be a potential reason the Psychic Scream’s effects only last eight seconds. But at the same time, it has a max range of eight yards. So the scream would have to be super powerful and super loud to output the intended effect- make your enemy flee. 

So how can this sound from, for example, a normal human, be amplified to such a drastic effect? 

Magic. Obviously. 

I won’t get into the science of Azerothian magic, I don’t think I’m equipped enough to handle that right now- but what I can explain is the Doppler Effect and how it works in our favor here. 

The Doppler Effect is the difference between pitches by distance. [This can also be used for light and measuring the distance of stars, but we’re not talking about that right now.] For example; the town crier is yelling about something stupid going on in Stormwind’s cheese industry. The farther she is away from you the quieter the sound will be because the soundwaves aren’t as strong as opposed to her being directly in front of you, yelling in your face while her minty, breathy sound waves bounce off of your physical form and vibrate your eardrums so our brains can actually process the sound and hear what she’s saying at a pitch loud enough to irritate the hell us. 

So how does this tie in with the Psychic Scream? You ask, desperately wanting to be untied from the chair I’ve put you in so I have someone to ramble to about the science of a video game. 

Well, lucky stranger! It has to do with the pitch of the Psychic Scream being loud enough to trigger a neural response in your amygdala, the ‘fear circuit’ of your brain. The amygdala is triggered when a sound that scares you vibrates through your eardrum and your brain processes the sound as BadTM, which then triggers a neurological response.

You see, humans can comfortably hear things from one picowatt [one million millionth of a watt] per square meter to one watt [the SI unit of power, equivalent to one joule per second, corresponding to the power in an electric circuit in which the potential difference is one volt and the current one ampere.] per square meter. To use real life examples, this range of pico-to-watt is the equivalent of a rock concert. What’s very unsafe for humans to be subjected to is one-hundred watts per square meter, which is the sound of being thirty meters away from a jet plane. 

((You know, there’s a reason alarms wake us up. They’re loud enough [standard alarm clock is eighty decibels] to scare our body awake, but not loud enough to hurt us or trigger an active fear response such as… well… running away, like Psychic Screams do.))

So again- we know that Azerothian magic in priests and such can use minor wonders from their DND sets to amplify their voice as well as summon unspeakable horrors to the void, and maybe even pull screams from the Twisting Nether just to screw with you- but that won’t change the fact that the initial scream from the caster is a physical thing that happens in game to begin the process of the chain reaction that is the Psychic Scream spell. 

Let’s break down the physical process- 

We’ll use my priest man Anden.

For one, when you activate the spell Anden will shout, bend backwards a little and point his face upward. Up. The given point for the spherical sound wave to travel will start above his head and move outward to cover the maximum range of eight yards. This ensnares the victims in the sound and causes them to run away. Saying it again- I tell you, triggering the fight or flight response. 

From his hands there will be a little burst of shadow magic, which confirms our potential ‘amplification’ spell to enhance the original, physical shout/scream. 

That’s where we end our physical journey.

TLDR: Soundwaves exist in all noises- especially a scream where it involves physical vibration to even process a sound. And for a scream to affect a person enough to scare them and make them run it would have to be a spell-amplified scream above the normal yelling level to have victims be properly affected by the scream itself. 

Bill Nye Neurological Process Guy

So, now that we have the physics down, we can move onto how the scream actually affects the brain and why it makes the victims run. 

Imagine this- Anden has just released the Psychic Scream and you can somehow see the soundwaves heading right for you. The sound travels into your ears and vibrates super hard, because it is super loud, right against your eardrum- and you’re suddenly struck with heart-palpitating dread as well as the intense feeling to RUN. So you do that. But why? How can fight or flight be triggered by a scream, even if it is amplified? 

I’m a battle-hardened warrior, Tiny, you say very annoyed at me, screams don’t bother me. 

Well friend, this isn’t a normal scream. As evident from the spell, using the void alongside the scream can somehow push a neurological response onto you, forcing you to run away for the amount of time it takes for the full soundwave to pass through you. Eight yards, eight seconds. Once you’re out of the range, the spell should wear off even if the caster isn’t wailing anymore. 

Have I tacked on that Psychic Scream is also a defensive spell? Why are you attacking a priest anyways? Stress can kill, you know! 

So, anyways, back to the forced response. We all know what screams sound like- in movies and such, in real life. Our brain helps us distinguish between the screams of pure, agonizing horror or pain- or the shrieks and screams of playing children. A sudden noise, like a scream, is so surprising to hear and causes more shock than paralyzing fear because of the sudden increase in volume. A scream can go from soft to loud 150 times per second. Wild, innit? 

But if you hear this really loud scream coming at you and it suddenly triggers an immense amount of bad stress to be released from your amygdala- what I mentioned earlier- and not eustress, the type of stress that makes your nervous system go haywire and cut off blood from certain parts of your body to provide blood to others to get you out of some sort of life threatening situation even if it’s not life threatening. 

… stress can kill, kids.

[The Super Sciency Version That I Managed to Pull From Old Textbooks and Notes And Some Crash Course Videos]

To make you move on your own like this your brain has to send action potentials[the change in electrical potential associated with the passage of an impulse along the membrane of a muscle cell or nerve cell.] down your spinal cord and into the preganglionic neuronal axons. [at its most basic form, preganglionic fibers are fibers from your central nervous system.] The signals firing go all the way to their ganglia, which is a structure containing nerve cells linked by synapses. Once they reach their destination they release neurotransmitters called acetylcholine or ACh. Acetylcholine is a standard neurotransmitter used throughout your entire sympathetic nervous system. If enough ACh manages to send enough signals to stimulate action potentials in several neurons on the postganglionic fibers, the other end of the preganglionic fibers. 

The postganglionic neurons then carry the action potentials down to the appropriate muscles, in our case- your hip and leg muscles. The postganglionic releases another neurotransmitter called norepinephrine, which is always the one transmitter released from postganglionic fibers in your sympathetic nervous system. Norepinephrine is always the one to activate the certain muscles you need to move and open up blood vessels to- again, hip and leg muscles. 

Norepinephrine is the neurotransmitter that can open up blood flow for muscles like your hollow organs(stomach,bladder,liver) and limbs and the Norepinephrine hormone can halt the blood flow to smooth muscles like your hollow organs.

I know, this is a lot of science jargon. Trust me, I never used to understand it either. 

So basically, the priest throwing this Psychic Scream at you is forcing your Central and Sympathetic Nervous System to react to a threat that it created to scare your body enough to turn around and run.

The one good thing about running away is that you’ll be out of the Psychic Scream’s range, which means even if they keep screaming and you’re like, ten yards away from them, it’ll be loud- probably a bit of a concussive blast depending on the power of the amplification spell- but you won’t be forced to run. 

Now For The Big Question

Can a Psychic Scream affect the environment around you? 

Or more specifically, (the one I’m trying to answer here)

Can a Psychic Scream shatter glass? 

Let’s go back to the physics of a soundwave- and then talk about resonance frequencies including glass. 

Pitches can change depending on distance. Vibrations can get faster the closer you are to something. So hypothetically, physically, Yes! You can shatter windows with a Psychic Scream loud enough, powerful enough, and close enough to windows for even the slightest potential. 

If you flick a wine glass, for example, there will be a certain resonance/pitch that humans can actually match, and if you hover your mouth next to the glass and mirror that pitch for a while with your voice, the glass will break! 

The thing about Psychic Scream being able to break windows is one) it’s a spherical sound wave which travels outward- but needed to do so will include a concussive blast that fractures and vibrates against the glass, applying more and more pressure as soundwaves do. But to do this, the caster would need to emit a blast and pitch that’s ultrasonic, which humans can't hear, and hold that pitch and force until the window breaks. 

So that’s pretty much the only downside. You’ll have to be fighting some giant monster to produce a Scream that is damaging. You can’t really do it normally. Which brings me to the final question!

Can There Be A Physical Limitation? 

For our priest’s poor vocal cords, using an amplification to the scream could cause damage if used for more than a few seconds. Psychic Scream is a scream that can force a fight or flight response- and that in itself needs to be incredibly loud. Screaming or yelling in general isn’t good for your vocal cords, so we can assume that this poor priest’s voice is going to be hoarse no matter how long he uses it. 

Whilst using Psychic Scream, holding the noise for an extended amount of time could drain up your oxygen, and light-headedness to fainting is possible. Ten seconds max, people! Breathing is important!

Well… we don’t need to talk about the physical limitations of using the void for too long, I think that’s pretty evident. 

I don’t really like people whispering in my ears for a few hours just ‘cause I wanted to scream at someone for a few minutes. 

[dracimexidae]

@lives-ruined-and-bloodshed replied to your post “@lives-ruined-and-bloodshed mentioned you on a post “You wanna try and...”

Yeah, I think May would definitely win in a real fight but I think they have so much fun just sparring, they know each other so well and probably sparred plenty of times so they know most of each other's moves and well, it's just really hot to imagine them going at it lol of course AoS couldn't give us that. We even saw Coulson fighting but ofc not with May, that would be giving too much to the shippers.

OF COURSE RIGHT, GOD FORBID THEY GIVE US EVEN JUST A FLICKER OF CONTENTMENT LMAO, WHO CARES ABOUT THE FANS ANYWAY... Sorry for the capslock, but I couldn’t express this any other way than shouting it because I’ll always be annoyed by this! Yeah, they don’t owe us anything, they should be able to tell the story they want without feeling obliged to indulge in the fan-service, bla bla bla, don’t care, I’ll stay pissed off, I’m sure the writers won’t mind, and at this point it’s the level of resigned annoyance that doesn’t ruin my day, so I can stay “fueled” without feeling miserable about it like I was some time ago, when I was more invested (not that I’m not invested in the ship now, but I made peace with the fact that I won’t get the satisfaction - and there is no “compliance” involved here :p - I need from the show so I’m looking for it elsewhere)!

I am convinced it would have been so amazing seeing Phil and Melinda spar because I found adorable (ok, maybe it’s not the best term to describe sparring sessions, but I have big family feels about it because Philindaisy obviously so for me that adjective stands) the sparring scenes Daisy had with both Phil and Melinda so yeah, it was a huge waste of potential, but what’s new when we talk about Philinda’s treatment in the show...

I do see their relationship as a bit unbalanced. There are so many times we saw May showing in words and actions what Coulson means to her, even her freaking robot was out there declaring her love and willing to die for him and the team. I think you're right that Coulson being the director is one of teh reasons for that difference but I think who they are is another.

For Coulson there is Humanity, SHIELD, Daisy and ofc May cares about that too but I mostly see her putting him ahead of pretty much everything, she's so ridiculously loyal to him, even Garret knew that about her, it wasn't follow SHIELD to the grave but Coulson. Watching gifsets of S1B was actually making me ship them less lol, he believed she was Hydra up until she was about to be killed too and then he was a raging dick, to hurt her, and not even an apology after.

Nothing much to add here, I agree with you, let me just underline the awful treatment Phil reserved to Melinda when he thought she was Hydra... All right, I get it, he must have felt overwhelmed discovering such huge betrayal from people in his organization to the point he felt he couldn’t be able to trust anyone, when he was raised in SHIELD with the “trust the system” drill in his head, valid for him until he died and was brought back, at least, not to mention the fact that he was kept in the shadows about this goddamn GH-325 secret by his closest (at least that’s what he thought she was) friend and ally, but just because he seemed to rely on Melinda so much that he decided to choose her as his “right-hand” for the task he accepted, I was flabbergasted that, after the first (comprehensible) moment of shock, he didn’t give her just a glimmer of benefit of the doubt, straight up assumed that she betrayed him and all... So was there nothing at all to be saved from their relationship until that moment that he could just pause just a second and consider that that was Melinda May he was crucifying, and I’m aware that it all happened so fast that there wasn’t a moment to breathe, let alone the chance of having a proper, lenghty conversation with her, but it took him too long, in my humble opinion, to realize that he couldn’t just throw whatever they had out of the window so rashly... Anyway, after the “epiphanic” Audrey episode the writers OBVIOUSLY never addressed the situation again, making us believe that between them it was all good again just by magic... mumble mumble... Thankfully there is fanfiction to fill in the gaps, because there is not a chance in the world I’ll be convinced that that evening, after Melinda brought Phil the infamous pendrive with the video about the TAHITI project, didn’t end up with them spending the night discussing everything and both apologizing AT LENGTH (in my universe there would have been also moments gradually and steadily reaching the R rating, but I would have been perfectly fine watching a scene with just them talking and making a real effort to clear things up and it would have actually made more sense considering canon, but they gave us nothing so whatever, I consider myself free to imagine whatever it pleases me :p )

I remember watching all of that some months ago and thinking he's going to to redeem himself by showing she the same kind of loyalty but then S2 and May was again with that massive devotion of hers, with the alien illness and the "real" SHIELD but what I got was Coulson lying to her repeatedly for no good reason. 3A was weird, I don't mind they had LIs, I actually really liked Andrew but they barely felt like friends imo. When Andrew/Lash was happening *Mack* was the only one who thought that maybe she could use a friend, that was bizarre. 

WHEN HE ASKED HER TO KILL HIM IF THINGS GOT OUT OF CONTROL (and just that, my god, I understand that he trusts only her with everything at this point, not only SHIELD but even his life, but it’s rather a terrible thing to ask anyway), AND SHE INSTEAD HAD ALREADY PLANNED TO SPEND THE REST OF THEIR LIFE IN A GODDAMN CABIN IN A PLACE SHE KNEW HE WANTED TO VISIT, DECIDING TO STAND BY HIS SIDE AND SUPPORT AND HELP HIM UNTIL THE VERY END... AND BY S5 SHE HELD UP TO HER WORD AND DID IT, EVEN IF IN A DIFFERENT PLACE... 

“NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, I’LL TAKE CARE OF YOU, THAT’S MY PLAN”  

EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO DIG MYSELF A HOLE IN THE GARDEN AND CURL UP IN THERE FOR THE NEXT DECADE IF THAT ISN’T LOVE I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS??!?!!!!! That sentence and her actions show her love for him more powerfully than any “I love you” voiced out, but ok, let’s carry on...

I could even let the fact that he didn’t tell her about Theta Protocol slide because of all that classified crap and such, even if she called him out brilliantly about him not having the right to know that as well him not being Director anymore (HA, sorry Coulson but take that!) - I’m not really sure it was that a valid reason the fact that he should have told her because Andrew was involved, I mean, idk, they were not even married anymore, I don’t think that officially it should have been her business to know, but surely, as his best friend, Phil maybe should have felt more of a moral obligation to inform her, also because I can’t really recall if Phil started seeing Andrew before he confessed Melinda about his writing impulses, but at some point she knew, so what was the harm on letting her know? Where was the logic in keeping at least that hidden from her? I’ll be damned if I know! 

Anyway, what I seriously would have kicked Phil’s ass for is the fact that he, TWICE (as far as I remember at least) affirmed that he didn’t want to go to Melinda after the whole Andrew/Lash debacle because “she wouldn’t want me to go after her right now” “she’ll talk when she’s ready”... Phil... pal.... buddy... what the fuck???!!! I mean, ok, Melinda would have assured you that she was fine, especially if you approached her in public, but... you know... we know... THE WHOLE WORLD knows she wasn’t, how could she???!!! One fucking sentence, one “you know I’m here if you want to talk or anything” like she said to him, more than once, would have killed the writers to insert it?????!?!?!?! But no, not only he doesn’t reach to her (at least, we don’t see it and it isn’t even implied in the show)but in the meantime he proceedes to go out and have drinks and slEEP WITH ROSALIND AND START A RELATIONSHIP WITH HER WHAT THE HELL KINDA BEHAVIOUR IS THAT?????! His best friend is anguished, tormented and in pain, he should have at least stood by her bunk’s door all night just to reassure her he was there for whatever she needed, or at least stay at base, work, go to sleep, idk, with what spirit you go out and go on a date and everything???!! Why is that, to distract yourself?? Oh yeah, but he’s also working an angle here, yeah all work and duty and no play, eh, Coulson?! MELINDA NEEDED YOUR SUPPORT AND FRIENDSHIP FFS!!!!!!! Damn it, at least find time to show a scene in which he makes an effort to reach for her, then she is free to do anything she wants with his support and if she asks he’ll be considerate enough to leave her alone, but show us he tries, because that’s something I think Coulson would do!!!! Instead he apparently just straight up assumes that she doesn’t want anyone close in that moment so he doesn’t even bother to assure her that if she needs it, he’s there for her... I get it, we all know she closed off after Bahrain and all and she’s the kind of person who tends to keep things for herself, but it doesn’t hurt to at least let her know he’s available if she needs help, especially because she’d hate to bother him knowing well that he has a lot more to think about than just her? Listen, Coulson in certain instances could be a little dense, but I think he’d make such a reasoning, idk? Or am I assuming too much about him? But, as you said, even Mack voices his concerns about leaving her alone, someone who is not particularly close to her, but not Phil 

3B was better but still too little. It's funny but two of my favorites scenes of the show were the one about the boundaries, SO much to unpack there and when called him on it when he said she was too quick to the trigger and Daisy wasn't Andrew, the murder vest was bad enough but damn he still went the extra mile, but if he's going to be a bastard, at least have May fight back because I don't think I could take more of him being a dick and May just taking and getting no apologies like in 2B. 

Oh my god, OH MY GOD yes, that was the peak of the idiocy!! “You’re always so quick to the trigger” JESUS CHRIST PHIL HOW COULD YOU EVEN CONCEIVE TO SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO HER, TO MELINDA, HOW THE FUCK DOES YOUR BRAIN WORK????!!?!?!!? I seriously tend to erase all this stupidity in s3, I know it’s not fair to the show but I’m sorry, I really can’t stand that Phil could say shit like that to Melinda, I can barely recognize it as canon... Maybe it’s me who has created this version of Phil in my head that actually got things wrong about his character, maybe I’m misreading him and don’t really understand him fully (not that I have ever claimed that I do, anyway), because no matter how stressful this moment is for him and no matter how much pressure he is under, I can’t for the life of me accept that he would say those things and behave like that... S1 behaviour I understand even if it still pisses me off a bit but it’s definitely more comprehensible, but these aspects no, just no, no way... The writers kinda saved it with May taking no shit from him (thank god for that, at least) and him apologizing, even if that was still pretty mild according to me, but oh well, better than nothing at all I guess? Let’s try to convince ourselves of that...

S4 was kinda funny to me because they just turned it up to eleven but I appreciate we actually saw him showing love/devotion/loyalty, without S4 I don't think I could ship them as much and since S5 was also disappointing in my I need to believe Coulson loves her as much as she loves him thing there was little Philinda, but still we had May showing in actions and words her love for him and Coulson, well, I believe he loves her and I guess he kissed her, said he didn't want to leave her and invited her to spend a few days together before he died in front of her. Her SL in S6 was about how much she loved him but I knew that already lol and then emotional torture and death. 

Definitely, I seriously don’t know what happened during s4 writing that convinced the writers to suddenly push on the accelerator with their relationship, but I’m actually grateful (see? I can also say good things about them lol ), even if in terms of continuity for their dynamic I’m not sure how much sense it makes unless you take for granted that interactions must have happened in between the seasons, things we obviously weren’t witnesses of... As you pointed out, otherwise it would have been pretty hard to root for them to get closer, because May deserves the world!

It’s kind of ironic in a way to see, despite her being not openly vocal and expressive in her affections, how much more Melinda has said and done to and for Phil compared to him for her - again, as it has been said, he had far more things to worry about than her, whose mission was mainly Phil from the very beginning, so he obviously was more preoccupied to allow himself the luxury of devoting himself to just one person, but still...

S6? What is that? I really have no idea what you’re talking about here... :p

And that's why I appreciate so much how the fics do the work on Couson's part because I don't think I would love the ship as much without it either. And I just find confusing why AoS decided to go for the ship if they didn't care much about committing to their relationship on screen.

Yes! And ah, at this point, especially after S6, I’m so deflated about some choices that were made that I hardly care about trying to understand what goes through the writers’ heads, so again, I’ll just take what I want and run away quickly before they catch me and throw me in the pit of misery again (lol, look how confident I seem, as if I firmly believe that I won’t be affected at all by S7... Mh mh, yeah, sure, stay tuned to find out how much I’ll fail despite me training myself not to get involved with the show like I used to be...)

[cannotgiveafuck]

Billy Batson & Captain Marvel identity analysis (long post ahead)

Alrighty then! So I contemplated posting this bc it's so closely tied to the wip fic, buuuut here it is. Ive never been really satisfied with how some media portray this character bc they either lean too far towards childish or angry, or divide the identities too much. And whilst writing the fic I thought about how I wanted to portray him and what that entailed. A long semi comprehensive ramble of headcanons and character analysis based on the individual and combined identities of Billy and Marvel!

First, we have Billy. This kid who's parents died on a work trip, was left in the care of a greedy/selfish old man that did not care for him at all, has bounced through foster homes for a plethora of reasons (some of which are behavioral or abusive), and ultimately decided trying to make it on the streets was his best option (before being picked up by Dudley).

Now, backstory wise, it's all very obvious that Billy would have trust issues, especially towards adults (and double towards adults who try to control him). His learned attitude towards those that set their eyes on him (both before and especially after becoming Marvel) is guarded and aggressively defensive, he's snarky and sarcastic, ready to flee at a moments notice, and scared of being once again used, abused, and tossed aside if he were to trust someone. But at his soft core he desperately wants to be cared for, he wants affection and love and family, he wants a safe and secure home, he wants to believe in good.

All of this bleeds into his attitude towards his peers, too. Before becoming Marvel, he's a bit jaded and lost - his wrecked home life creating the chasm that keeps him from opening up and relating to others, from making real friends (the few exceptions being friends he considers family, and whom he is very loyal and protective of). After Marvel, Billy doesn't even try to associate with kids his own age. He stops going to school and is so focused on trying to be a good hero, he has distanced himself even more. But also, all the situations that he is exposed to really matures him. He still enjoys video games and sports, but he's also worrying about keeping Fawcett City and the world safe and working with JL - he doesn't have time nor patience for naive and clueless kids. But since he still is a kid and wants to have fun, those he let's in he holds onto and divulges everything to.

However, despite his hard outer shell, I do believe Billy is good and tries to be good and wants to see the good in those around him. A prominent and reoccurring memory of his parents is them telling him to be a good kid. That very much shapes Billy's views and ideologies. He wants to be a good person, which means he needs to help others (however he sees fit, from stopping bullies to carrying an old ladys groceries), but also realize that there is good all around him in everyone else, too. He has kind neighbors, and a community that helps each other, he knows everyone has their own struggles and they may direct negative emotions outward but may just need a helping hand in return. Billy knows suffering and cruelty and does not want to cause that, he wants to end it. So, theres this conflict inside him that he views as being smart vs being good. His true sunshine and trusting demeanor is boosted when he is chosen by Shazam, because now he has this divine and worldly responsibility to do and be good. And while he does not hold value in himself (abandoned and abused orphan does not hold a high confidence or self esteem level), he also wants to prove that he is worthy of inheriting this power, that there is good in this world and in him.

Now, second we have Captain Marvel. This is where identities become...complicated. The way I see it, Marvel is a mesh of 'Billy Batson', 'The Potential Adult Billy Could Be', and 'The Vessel of The Greek Gods Powers'. Since I've gone over Billy's identity, it transfers onto Marvel pretty seamlessly. So as The Adult Billy, he is still Billy Batson, but the grown up version, comfortable in his skin and in social standings with others, he is without the limiting physiological responses and capabilities of being a child. Despite all his experiences, Billy is still a kid - a bit awkward in his growing body, he's impulsive with his emotional responses, he jumps to conclusions and is very one track minded, has a hard time putting words to thoughts or instincts and understanding certain things and intentions (situations being very black and white). But as Adult Billy who is Marvel, he still sees through the same eyes, but he can filter distractions and pause to think through reflexive emotions, and he has a better understanding on just how morally grey the world can be, a gained clarity on other intentions and livelihoods, and he can empathize and read other's emotions in more detail than just the basic happy/mad/sad. Basically, Billy's brain has physically grown to that of an adult.

On the other hand, there is also what I like to believe is a...sort of third will in what makes Captain Marvel. He is, for all intents and purposes, a vessel or an avatar of sorts. He is a Chosen Champion by the Wizard Shazam to wield the powers of the Greek Gods (specifically the Greek gods, bc...well, that's a whole other post to ramble on), hes the mortal connection between them and the human world, their gift to the humans as a protector, as the guiding light of good. He is a symbol and title beyond one person. It is much like the mantle of Batman being passed on, except instead of all the gadgets and tech and databases...it's experiences and memories and wisdom gained by the previous Marvels, and available when properly called upon. Captain Marvel is like a reincarnation every time there is a new chosen champion. Billy is himself, but there were also others before him, other Marvels that existed and lived that can be remembered.

There is, however, a weird side effect to this being that the more in touch and immersed with these previous Marvel's he becomes, the more he slips away from himself - less Billy and human, more ancient and disconnected. He loses Billy's mannerisms and speech pattern and warm empathy, he still follows the ideology of good, but the charisma is gone, he's distant and cold.

All of this makes for a very interesting and fun way of writing Marvel and Billy - in how they each think through situations, how they each interact with the same people, how they each react to everything. And that's including how the same people react and treat each of them differently. Someone may see and treat Billy as a kid, but with Marvel they interact with and see an adult, a peer. When someone knows who Marvel really is, they need to consciously remind themselves that Marvel is Billy is a kid, because literally everything about Marvel screams at their senses that he's an adult (sunshine naivety aside). He still walks and talks and looks and is capable of thinking like an adult. It's not a situation of a couple of kids standing on top of each other in a trenchcoat or a kid dressing and doing their makeup like an adult. Magic has made him an adult, sort of.

At the core of it, the one experiencing and remembering and feeling everything is a child. There is no separating that, he is a different face of the same coin. So while Marvel can handle the emotional and mental exhaustion and stress of the situations he is put in, Billy Batson is going to suffer through the replays when everything is done. Because superheroing is not all saving lives and being praised, it's seeing people be hurt and bleed, interacting with the worst of humanity and others, witnessing tragedies and death in small intimate encounters and in large numbers. He is the one that will have nightmares and trouble sleeping, he is the one that will bear the brunt of the trauma and remorse, navigating detailed memories of violence and how it felt to hurt, wondering why there are phantom pains and aches when his body is not damaged, all with no trusted support system to turn to (because if he does, will the JL just see him as a child who cannot handle being a hero? will they turn him away?). Billy is the one having his childhood and innocence ripped away from him for the sake of the world. There are consequences of being the chosen champion, and while Billy is willing to accept them, will continue to fight and uphold his divine duties, will put others before himself every time, it wont make be easy.

The potential of how complicated Billy and Marvel can be, and how other heroes cannot fully comprehend it without a trusted in depth discussion (only Black Adam can understand and lemme tell you, that's a hot mess) - that's what makes him and his situation so interesting and fun to write.

[lightyourowntunnel]

It’s show and tell time!

This spiel is courtesy of @thewriteblrarchives and their NaNoWriMo Support Group. Let’s talk my process and my NaNo project for this November. It’s really long, so I’ve put it under the tab; enjoy!

Questions for you:

How long have you been writing? 

I’ve been writing for as I can remember, honestly. I used to write little stories and poems long before I entered kindergarten. By the time I was in late elementary school, I was consistently planning more coherent stories. I never finished one of them, though.

When you start a project, how do you start? With character, setting, plot, aesthetic, something else? 

So inspiration usually hits me like trucks hitting anime protagonists. Sometimes the foundations of a character I find interesting will inspire me, other times it’s a setting. There’s been at least one time that I’ve seen a trope I really liked an off-shoot of that I wanted a full story about (i.e. found family where they’re actually friends and don’t act like they secretly hate each other).

What’s your favourite part of the writing process?

World building is hands down my favorite part of the writing process. I have way more worlds than I have stories for. Normally, I’ll only have vague concepts for characters and a plot until I have a solid world I can play around in, so world building is also one of the longest parts of my process, too.

What genres do you write?

I write a lot of fantasy. Like a lot, a lot of fantasy. Realistically, it’s usually leaning more into science fantasy, but it’s still always very definitively a fantasy world. Everything I write usually has some LGBT+ , aspects of adventure, and potential romantic subplots.

Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever written?

I think it’s personally stranger when I write in a normal place like a cafe, library, or on a desk. I tend to write on the go -- in cars and buses -- and I was scribbling stories throughout my classes and college prep program.

Questions for NaNo:

Have you participated in NaNo or camp NaNo before?

I almost participated in NaNo eons ago, but I chickened out on October 31st. Ever since then I’ve always considered it and just never went through with NaNo or any Camp NaNos.

What made you decide to join up?

So I’m kinda always thinking about joining NaNo and chicken out at the last minute.I’m an expert at making excuses for myself where creative writing is involved! But a little before I finally decided to join I saw this Preptober video by Alexa Donne on YouTube. I had been watching writing tips for a few days because I was distressed about how little I’d been writing recently. Seeing that really just made me decide that there’s no time like the present; even if it’s horrible, I love writing and I just gotta do it.

What are you most excited about/looking forward to?

I’m really, really excited about where this story’s going (in part because even I don’t really know yet). I’ve fallen in love with these characters and there are so many routes their arcs could go. I’m still nailing down an embodiment of an antagonistic force, though, so that’s something I’m looking forward to coming together.

Anything you’re a bit nervous about?

Writing in general, haha! I’ve never successfully written a full-length manuscript before and I’m trying to just go in order for NaNo so I get the experience of it. I just finished the first chapter and cried because I felt so relieved. My favorite part of the novel to write is the middle, but I need a lot of improvement and motivation for the beginning and ending; I’m glad to have the first chapter weight finally off my shoulders.

Have you done a lot of preparation? Or none whatsoever?

I’ve done some prep for my novel. Key word is some. I started prep work on October 16th with a brand new idea, so I was bound to be pretty behind on planning in general. But I’m also a total pantser, so I was trying planner for a change. In the end, I had established my protagonists, the world, and a vague sense of the plot. I also nearly created a language as a part of the PoV character’s culture.

Do you have a workspace, schedule, or daily goal?

In theory, I have a daily goal of 1,667-2,000 words. Because I’m writing a fantasy, I want to get as close to the average word count of my genre as possible. In general, I tend to write at night after work and on my way to work, but I’m trying to wake up earlier so I can write in the morning and not have to transcribe it from a notebook later. I usually write at home, typically isolated in a bedroom.

Questions for your wip:

What’s your NaNo wip titled (if it has one)?

If We’re to Carry Stars

Tell us a bit about your NaNo wip! For example the plot, genre, themes…

If We’re to Carry Stars (IWCS) is a fantasy adventure novel set in the world of Eondes. Thousands of years before the beginning of the story, Eondes chose the Yuvel as its protectors.The Yuvel were merely a race of healers with a high magical aptitude; their styled after nymphs, elves and fairies, with pointed ears and features meant to mimic the planet itself (fiery eyes, green hair, blue blood, etc.). In exchange for protection, Eondes granted the Yuvel access to its magical core, which they were tasked with keeping clean. It gave them elemental magic and strengthened their healing magic. Over the years, the Yuvel had managed to eliminate all known illnesses and dutifully served Eondes.

However, their protection came at a price. Not only has accurate records of old cures and ailments fallen from folklore and records, but no one’s immune systems were prepared to battle any future threats. Faith in Yuvellen magic had made these things unnecessary.

Until now.

A magic-resistant illness has begun to spread through Eondes’ other races. Meanwhile, Eondes’ magical core has begun to pollute, thus weakening the Yuvel with an illness of their own. Many Yuvel have begun leaving their home on Yuvellse in search of answers and a cure, while other races have followed in suit. Faith in the Yuvel has plummeted and tensions between races rise as unlikely alliances strive for Eondes’ hope.

In the midst of such dread, a Yuvel named Eiríńé finds herself wrapped up in one of these quests as she searches for happiness in a dismal life.

Themes: I want to play with the concept of love and selfishness. Is it more selfish to remain where you’re unhappy or is it more selfish to leave in search of happiness? How do you communicate love? How do you communicate your needs when it comes to love, such as styles of affection? I would also like to play around with some other things, but they’re not as concrete yet.

What is your protagonist like?

So I’m playing with the 5 Man Band trope, and therefore have 5 protagonists with one as focal PoV character

Eiríńé in the focal character and the PoV character (as much as she can be in a third person limited perspective). She’s quite a soft-spoken and hesitant Yuvel. Because she frequently second guesses herself, she ends up taking forever to make a decision. She’s rather kind and strives to be a people pleaser. But she’s also horrendously cynical and deeply discontent with her own life. At the beginning of the story, Eiríńé is engaged and has a good, supportive network of friends and family, none of whom seem to realize how deeply unhappy she is with her life. She makes the decision to leave her life behind and join the others on their quest once Mirunise prompts her to make a brash decision and said impulsiveness lights her heart unlike anything before.

Mirunise is the party leader. She’s a Capescu, a shape-shifting race that can shift into any animal they can imagine; they have heightened sense in their default form. Mirunise is a bubbly paragon with a hurricane for a personality. She’s bombastic and aggressively friendly, to the point Ayondi is frequently trying to calm her down. Her cheer and smile is considered infectious. When confronted with negativity, her optimism usually takes the competitive form of refusing to let the source of said negativity win. Because she’s such a dominating force of personality, she can come off as insensitive and/or rude to some; whenever this is pointed out, she quiets and displays an aggressively compassionate side that’s surprisingly a great listener. Mirunise comes across Ayondi and V'haǵir on her way to see her father. Upon learning of V'haǵir’s condition and ambitions, Mirunise quickly joins their group and spearheads them forward.

Ayondi is V'haǵir’s childhood friend. She’s a Darunshin, a human-like species with bird wings that grow and shrink on command, they have an almost supernatural strength. Ayondi is calm and reserved with a deep motherly streak. She cares deeply for other people, but has a habit of expressing it through nitpicking. She is both the most intelligent and has the most common sense in the part; her strategies tend to fall on deaf ears, though. She’s a realist, but a pessimistic side grows after V'haǵir falls ill; everyone who’s contracted the illness thus far as died, and she fears her days with him are numbered. So she picks up V'haǵir‘s quest and decides that she’d rather save others from the grief of loss than just wallow in her own.

V'haǵir is Ayondi’s childhood friend; his illness is the catalyst for his initial quest with Ayondi to search for a cure. He’s a Wevri, an aquatic race with webbed ears and control over existing water. V'haǵir is boisterous and optimistic, a typical paragon like Mirunise. He’s excitable and generally cheerful. He’s the least thrilled about combat in the party, too. In life, he wants to make everyone happier than he’s ever been (and seeing as he’s almost always been generally happy, that’s a lofty ambition). When he first exhibits symptoms of the illness, V'haǵir laments his poor luck and feels discouraged by the lack of a cure. However, he quickly decides that he doesn’t want to idly wait for death and sets out on a quest for a cure, even if he may never live to use it for himself.

Somayn is the last person to join the party before Eiríńé. He’s a Zuifeel, an elf-like race with pointed, drooping ears and a magical connection to nature. Somayn is quiet, but friendly. He’s very worldly and often acts as a sort of folklore guide for the rest of the party. Despite being generally intelligent, he doesn’t really have a great deal of common sense. He’s realistic, calm and collected, and emotionally open with his allies; he sees no point in lying or hiding one’s feelings. On their travels, Mirunise, Ayondi, and V'haǵir find him in the middle of battle (more specifically on the losing side) against a group of bandits. Somayn decides to join their quest after he’s been healed of his injures, citing a need to scour Eondes’ libraries for potential cures.

Have you been planning it for a while? Conversely, do you know anything about it yet?

I wish I could say that I’ve been planning IWCS for a while. But I started planning this story October 16th of this year and started writing it on November 1st. I have a solid handle on the main characters and the world of Eondes, but it’s still up in the air where it’ll all go.

[scifrey]

In February of 2017 I had the great pleasure of addressing the Grant MacEwan University English Department with a keynote speech titled “Your Voice is Valid.”

This speech was all about Mary Sues, fandom, and marginalized voices, and is a direct response to the negative reactions that media texts receive when they announce a protagonist that is deemed to be a "Mary Sue".

In the intervening years I think the message of my talk has become even more vital to creators, so I thought I’d record a  new video of the speech to share with a wider audience.

 If you liked this video, you can find more of my writing advice on my website.

Read the full speech on Wattpad, or below:

(Text may not match the video exactly as I did alter some of the phrasing.)

*

My friends, I have a declaration to make. A promise. A vow, if you will. And it is this:

If I hear one more basement-dwelling troll call the lead female protagonist of a genre film a ‘Mary Sue’ one more time, I’m going to scream.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this all before. A major science fiction, fantasy, video game, novel, or comic franchise or publisher announces a new title. Said new title features a lead protagonist who is female, or a person of color, or is not able-bodied, or is non-neurotypical, or is LGBTQA+.

It might be the new Iron Man or Spider-man, who are both young black teenagers in the comics now, or the Lt. Michael Burnham of Star Trek: Discovery, or the new Ms. Marvel, a Muslim girl. It could be Jyn Erso, the female lead of the latest Star Wars film or Chirrut, her blind companion. It could be the deaf FBI Director Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks or Clint Barton from Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye graphic novel series. It could be Sara, of Dragon Age fame or Samantha Traynor from Mass Effect, both lesbians, or Dorian also from Dragon Age, who is both a person of color and flamboyantly queer. Maybe it’s Lt. Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber, played by Anthony Rapp of (best known for his time as Mark in Rent) and Wilson Cruz, both open out gay men playing openly out gay men in a romantic relationship in Star Trek Discovery. It could be Captain Christopher Pike, from both the original Star Trek series and the reboot film, who uses a wheelchair and assistive devices to communicate. Or maybe it’s Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, fights with a prosthetic arm in the comics, or Iron Man, whose suit serves as Tony Stark’s ego-tastic pacemaker.

And generally, the audience cheers at this announcement. Yay for diversity! Yay for representation! Yay for working to make the worlds we consume look more like the world we live in! Yay!

But there’s a certain segment of the fan population that does not celebrate.

I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.

This certain brand of fan-person gets all up in arms on social media. They whine. They complain. They say that it’s not appropriate to change the gender, race, orientation, or physical abilities of a fictional creation, or just protest their inclusion to begin with. They decry the erosion of creativity in service of neo-liberalism, overreaching political-correctness, and femi-nazis. (Sorry, sorry – the femi-“alt-right”).

It’s not realistic. “Women can’t survive in space,” they say, “It’s just a fact.” (That is a direct quote, by the way.) “Superheroes can’t be black,” they say. “Video game characters shouldn’t have a sexual orientation,” unless – it seems - that sexual orientation is straight and the game serves to support a male gaze ogling at half-dressed pixilated prostitutes.

“And strong female characters have to wear boob armor. It’s just natural,” they say.

These fan persons predict the end of civilization because things are no longer being done the way they’ve always been done. “There’s nothing wrong with the system,” they say. “So don’t you dare change it.”

And to enforce this opinion, to ensure that it’s really, really clear just how much contempt this certain segment of the fan population holds for any lead protagonist that isn’t a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, cismale, they do everything they can to tear down them down.

They do this by calling that character a ‘Mary Sue.’

When fan fiction author Paula Smith first used the term ‘Mary Sue’ in her 1973 story A Trekkie’s Tale, she was making a commentary on the frequent appearance of original characters in Star Trek fan fiction. Now, I’m going to hazard that most of these characters existed as a masturbatory avatar – wanna bone Spock? (And, um, you know, let’s face it who didn’t?) They you write a story where a character representing you gets to bone Spock.

And if they weren’t a sexual fantasy, then they were an adventure fantasy. Wanna be an officer on the Enterprise? Well, it’s the flagship of the Starfleet, so you better be good enough to get there. Chekov was the youngest navigator in Starfleet history, Uhura is the most tonally sensitive officer in linguistics, and Jim Kirk’s genius burned like a magnesium flare – your self-representative character would have to keep up to earn thier place on that bridge. This led to a slew of hyper sexualized, physically idealized, and unrealistically competent author-based characters populating the fan fiction of the time.

But inserting a trumped-up version of yourself into a narrative wasn’t invented in the 1970s. Aeneas was totally Virgil’s Mary Sue in his Iliad knock off. Dante was such a fanboy of the The Bible that he wrote himself into an adventure exploring it. Robin Hood’s merry men and King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table kept growing in number and characteristics with each retelling. Even painters have inserted themselves into commissioned pictures for centuries.

This isn’t new. This is not a recent human impulse.

But what Paula Smith and the Mary Sue-writing fan ficcers didn’t know at the time was that they were crystallizing what it means to be an engaged consumer of media texts, instead of just a passive one. They had isolated and labelled what it means to be so affected by a story, to love it so much that this same love bubbles up out of you and you have to do something about it, either in play, or in art. For example: in pretending to be a ninja turtle on the play ground, or in trying to recreate the perfect version of a star fleet uniform to wear, or in creating art and making comics depicting your favorite moments or further adventures of the characters you love, or writing stories that encompass missing moments from the narratives.

‘Mary Sues’ are, at their center, a celebration of putting oneself and one’s own heart, and one’s own enjoyment of a media text, first.

Before I talk about why this certain segment of the fan population deploys the term ‘Mary Sue’ the way it does, let’s take a closer look at this impulse for participatory play.

Here’s the sixty four thousand dollar question: where do ‘Mary Sues’ come from?

I’d like you take a moment to think back at the sorts of games you enjoyed when you were about seven years old. Think back. Picture yourself outside, playing with your siblings, or the neighbour’s kids or you cousins. What are you doing? Playing ball games, chase games, and probably something with a narrative? Are you Power Rangers? Are you flying to Neverland with Peter Pan? Are you fighting Dementors and Death Eaters at Hogwarts? Are you the newest members of One Direction, are you Jem and the Holograms or the Misfits? Are you running around collecting Pokémon back before running around and collecting Pokémon IRL was a thing?

That, guys, gals and non-binary pals, is where Mary Sues come from. That’s it. It’s as easy as that.

As a child you didn’t know that modern literary tradition pooh-poohs self-analogous characters, or that realism was required for depth of character. All you knew was that you wanted to be a part of that story, right.  If you wanted to be a train with Thomas and Friends, then you were a train. If you wanted to be a magic pony from Equestria, you were a pony. Or, you know, if you were trying to appease two friends at once, then you were a pony-train.

Self-insert in childhood games teach kids the concept of elastic play, and this essential ability to imagine oneself in skins that are not one’s own, and to stretch and reshape narratives is what breeds creativity and storytelling. It shapes compassion.

Now, think of your early stories. As a child we all told and wrote stories about doing what, to us, were mundane everyday things - like getting ice cream with the fictional characters we know and love.

My friend’s three year old tells his father bed time stories about going on walks through Home Hardware with his friends, the anthropomorphized versions of the local taco food truck and the commuter train his dad takes to work every morning. He doesn’t recognize the difference between real and fictional people (or for him, in this case, the stand-ins that are the figures that loom large in his life right now as a three year old obsessed with massive machines). When you ask him to tell you a story, he talks about these fictions as if they’re real. And he does not hesitate to insert himself into the tale. “I did this. I did that. We went there and then had this for lunch.” He is present in all his own stories because, at this age, he understands the world only from his limited personal POV.

As we grow up, we do learn to differentiate between fantasy and reality. But, I posit that we never truly loose that “me too!” mentality. We see something amazing happening on the screen, or on the page, or on a playing field, and we want to be there, a part of it.

So we sort ourselves into Hogwarts Houses. We choose hockey teams to love, and we wear their jerseys.  We buy ball caps from our favorite breweries. We line up for hours to be the first to watch a new release or to buy a certain smartphone. We collect stamps and baseball cards and first editions of Jane Austen and Dan Brown. We want to be a part of it. Our capitalist, consumer society tells us to prove our love with our dollars, and we do it.

And for fan creators, we want to be a part of it so badly that we’re willing to make more of it. Not for profit, but for sheer love. And for the early writers, the newbies, the blossoming beginners, Mary Sues are where they generally start. Because those are the sorts of stories they’ve been telling yourselves for years already.

But as we get older, as we consume more media texts and find more things to adore, we begin to notice a dearth of representation – you’re not pony trains in our minds any more. We have a better idea of what we look like. And we don’t see it. The glorious fantasy diversity of our childhoods is stripped away, narratives are codified by the mainstream media texts we consume, and people stop looking like us.

I’m reminded of a story I read on Tumblr, of a young black author living in Africa – whose name, I’m afraid, I wasn’t able to find when I went back to look for it, so my apologies to her. The story is about the first time she tried to write a fairytale in elementary school. She made her protagonist a little white girl, and when she was asked why she hadn’t chosen to make the protagonist back, this author realized that it hadn’t even occurred to her that she was allowed make her lead black. Even though she was surrounded by people of color, the adventures, and romance, and magic in everything she consumed only happened to the white folks. She did not know she was allowed to make people like her the heroes because she had never seen it.

This is not natural. This is nurture, not nature. This is learned behavior. And this is hegemony.

No child grows up believing they don’t have place in the story. This is something were are taught. And this is something that we are taught by the media texts we consume.

I do want to pause and make a point here. There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with writing a narrative from the heterosexual, able bodied, neurotypical, white cismale POV in and of itself. I think we all have stories that we know and love that feature that particular flavor of protagonist. And people from that community deserve to tell their stories as much as folks from any other community.

The problem comes from a reality where when it’s the only narrative. The default narrative. The factory setting. When people who don’t see themselves reflected in the narrative nonetheless feel obligated to write such stories, instead of their own. When they are told and taught that it is the only story worth telling. ‎

There’s this really great essay by Ika Willis, and it’s called “. And I think it’s the one – one of the most important pieces of writing not only on Mary Sues, but on the dire need for representation in general.

In the essay, Willis talks about Mary Sues – beyond being masturbatory adventure avatars for young people just coming into their own sexuality, or avatars to go on adventures with – but as voice avatars. Mary Sues, when wielded with self-awareness, deliberateness, and precision, can force a wedge into the narrative, crack it open, and provide a space for marginalized identities and voices in a media-text that otherwise silences and ignores them.

This is done one of two ways. First: by jamming in a diverse Mary Sue, and making the characters and the world acknowledge and work with that diversity. Or, second: by co-opting a pre-existing character and overlaying a new identity on them while retaining their essential characterization. For example, by writing a story where Bilbo Baggins is non-binary, but still thinking that adventures are messy, dirty things. Or making Sherlock Holmes deaf, but still perfectly capable of solving all the crimes. Or making James Potter Indian, so that the Dursleys prejudiced against Harry not only for his magic, but also for his skin color. Or making Ariel the mermaid wrestle with severe body dysphoria, or Commander Sheppard suffer from severe PTSD.

I like to call this voice avatar Mary Sue a ‘Meta-Sue’, because when authors have evolved enough in their storytelling abilities to consciously deploy Mary Sues as a deliberate trope, they’re doing so on a self-aware, meta-textual level.

So that is where Mary Sues comes from.

But what is a Mary Sue? How can you point at a character and say, “Yes, that is – definitively – a Mary Sue”.

Mary Sues can generally be characterized as:

-Too perfect, or unrealistically skilled. They shouldn’t be able to do all the things they do, or know all the things they know, as easily as they do or know them. For reasons of the plot expedience, they learn too fast, and are able to perform feats that other characters in their world who have studied or trained longer and harder find difficult. For example, Neo in The Matrix.

-They are the black hole of every plot – every major quest or goal of the pre-existing characters warps to include or be about them; every character wants to befriend them, or romance them, or sleep with them, and every villain wants to possess them, or kill them, or sleep with them. This makes sense, as why write a character into the world if you’re not going to have something very important happen to them? So, for example, like Neo in The Matrix.

-A Mary Sue, because it’s usually written by a neophyte author who’s been taught that characters need flaws, has some sort of melodramatic, angsty tragic back-story that, while on the surface seems to motivate them into action, because of lack of experience in creating a follow-through of emotional motivation, doesn’t actually affect their mental health or ability to trust or be happy or in love. For example, like the emotional arc of Neo in The Matrix.

– A Mary Sue saves the day. This goes back to that impulse to be the center of the story. Like Neo in The Matrix.

-And lastly, Mary Sues come from outside the group. They’re from the ‘real world’, like you and I, or have somehow discovered the hero’s secret identity and must be folded into the team, or are a new recruit, or are a sort of previously undiscovered stand-alone Chosen One. Like, for example, Neo in The Matrix.

Now, as I’ve said, there’s actually nothing inherently wrong with writing a Mary Sue. Neo is a Mary Sue, but The Matrix is still a really engaging and well written film. And simply by virtue of the fact that an individual with ingrained cultural foundations is writing a story, that story is inherently rooted in that writer’s lived life and experiences. As much as a writer may try to either highlight or downplay it, each character and story they create has some of themselves in it. The first impulse of storytelling is to talk about oneself. We write about ourselves, only the more we write, the more skilled we become at disguising the sliver of us-ness in a character, folding it into something different and unique. We, as storytellers, as humans, empathize with protagonists and fictional characters constantly – we love putting our feet into other people’s shoes. It’s how we understand and engage with the world.

And we as writers tap into our own emotions in order to describe them on the page. We take slices of our lives – our experiences, our memories, our friend’s verbal tics or hand gestures, aunt Brenda’s way of making tea, Uncle Rudy’s way having a pipe after dinner, that time Grannie got lost at the zoo – and we weave them together into a golem that we call a character, which comes to life with a bit of literary magic. I mean, allow me to be sparklingly reductionist for a second, but in the most basic sense, every character is a Mary Sue.

It’s just a matter of whether the writer has evolved to the point  in their craft that they’ve learned to animate that golem with the sliver of self-ness hidden deep enough that it is unrecognizable as self-ness, but still recognizable as human-ness.

For years, mainstream western media has featured characters that were primarily heterosexual, able bodied, neurotypical, white cismales. And, regrettably, because of that, this flavor of human is now assumed to be the default for a character. When people from other communities speak up requesting other flavours, for characters for whom the imbedded sliver of humanity remains just as poignant and relatable, but the outer shell is of a different variety, this is when that certain segment of the fan population looses their cool.

That certain segment of the fan population has been telling us for years that if we don’t like what we see on TV or in video games, or in books, or comics, or on the stage, that we should just go make our own stuff. And now we are.

“Make your own stuff,” they say, and then follow it up with: “What’s with all this political correctness gone wild? Uhg. This stuff is all just Mary Sue garbage.”

Well, yes. Of course it is. That’s the point.

But why are they saying it like that?

Because they mean it in a derogatory sense.

They don’t mean it in the way that Paula Smith meant it – a little bit belittling but mostly fun; a bemused celebration of why we love putting ourselves into the stories and worlds we enjoy. They don’t mean it the way that Willis means it – a deliberate and knowing way to shove the previously marginalized into the center. They don’t even mean it the way that I mean it in my own work - as a tool for carefully deconstructing and discussing character and narrative with a character and from within a narrative.

When a certain segment of the fan population talks about ‘Mary Sue’, they mean to weaponize it. To make it a stand-in for the worse thing that a character can be: bland, predictable, and too-perfect. Which, granted, many Mary Sues are. But not all of them. And a character doesn’t have to be a Mary Sue to be done badly, either.

When this certain segment of the fan population says ‘Mary Sue’, they’re trying to shame the creators for deviating from the norm - the white, the heterosexual, the able bodied, the neurotypical, the straight cismale.

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I don’t believe people like this are interesting enough to be the lead character in a story.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I don’t think there’s any need to listen to that voice. They’re not interesting enough.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “This character is not what I am used to a.k.a. not like me, and I’m gonna whine about it.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “Even though kids from all over the world, from many different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds have had to grow up learning to identify with characters who don’t look or think like them, identifying with characters who don’t look or think like me is hard and I don’t wanna.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: ”Even though I’ve grown up in a position of privilege and power, and even though publishing and producing diverse stories with diverse casts doesn’t actually cut into the proportionate representation that I receive, and never will, I am nonetheless scared that I’ll never see people like me in media texts ever again.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “Considering my fellow human beings as fellow human beings worthy of having stories about them and their own experiences, in their own voices, is hard and I don’t wanna do it.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I only want stories about me.”

They call leads ‘Mary Sues’ so people will stop writing them and instead write… well, their version of a ‘Mary Sue.’ The character that is representative of their lived experiences, their power and masturbatory fantasies, their physical appearance, their sexual awakenings, their cultural identity, their voice, their kind of narratives.

Missing, of course, that the point of revisionist and inclusive narratives aren’t to shove out previous incarnations, but to coexist alongside them. It’s not taking away one entrée and offering only another – it’s building a buffet.

Okay, so who actually cares if these trolls call these diverse characters Mary Sues?

Well, unfortunately, because this certain segment of the population have traditionally been the group most listened-to by the mainstream media creators and the big money, their opinions have power. (Never mind that they’re not actually the biggest group of consumers anymore, nor no longer the most vocal.)

So, this is where you come in.

You have the power to take the Mary Sue from the edge of the narrative and into the centre. And you do can do this by normalizing it. Think back to that author who didn’t think little black girls were allowed to be the heroes of fairy tales. Now imagine how much different her inner world, her imagination might have been at the stage when she was first learning to understand her own self-worth, if she had seen faces like hers on the television, in comics, in games, and on the written page every day of her life.

And not just one or two heroes, but a broad spectrum of characters that run the gamut from hero to villain, from fragile to powerful, from straight to gay, and every other kind of intersectional identity.

You have the power to give children the ability to see themselves.

Multi-faceted representation normalizes the marginalized.

And if you have the privilege to be part of the passing member of the mainstream, then weaponize your privilege. Refuse to work with publishers, or websites, or conventions that don’t also support diverse creators. Put diverse characters in your work, and do so thoughtfully and with the input of the people from the community you are portraying. And if you’re given the opportunity to submit or speak at an event, offer to share the microphone.

The first thing I did when actor Burn Gorman got a Twitter account was to Tweet him  my thanks for saving the world in Pacific Rim while on a cane. As someone who isn’t as mobile as the heroes I see in action films - who knows for a fact that when the zombie apocalypse comes I will not be a-able to outrun the monsters – it meant so much to me that his character was not only an integral and vital member of the team who cancelled the apocalypse, but also that not once in the film did someone call him a cripple, or tell him he couldn’t participate because of his disability, or leave him behind.

Diversity matters.

Not because it’s a trendy hashtag, or a way to sell media texts to a locked-down niche market, but because every single human being deserves to be told that they have a voice worth listening to; a life worth celebrating and showcasing in a narrative; a reality worth acknowledging and accepting and protecting; emotions that are worth exploring and validating; intelligence that is worth investing in and listening to; and a capacity to love that is worth adoring.

White, heterosexual, neurotypical, able-bodied cismales are not the only people on the planet who are human.

And you have a right to tell your story your way.

Calling something a ‘Mary Sue’ in order to dismiss it out of hand, as an excuse to hate something before even seeing it, is how the trolls bury your Narrative and your Identity.  We are storytellers, all of us. Every person in this room. Whether your wheel house is in fiction, or academia, or narrative non-fiction, we impart knowledge and offer experience through the written word, through the telling of tales, through leading a reader from one thought to another.

And we none of deserve to be shouted down, talked over, or dismissed. No one can tell you that your story isn’t worth telling. Of course it is. It’s yours.

And don’t let anyone call your characters, or your work, or you a ’Mary Sue’ in the derogatory sense ever again. Or I am going to scream.