#adults. and also i feel like it’s just a common thing in Every fandom that m+f duos get shoved into the ‘sibling coded’ box so that-

[bizlybebo]

not a mockingjay shipper but i support their beliefs cause everyone is so weird about them

[messiahzzz]

You’re one of the most annoying people on this site. And that really says A LOT because WOW! Shut the Fuck up about Gale wanting to be a father or not. He never says that he doesn’t want to be one. You projecting things onto him doesn’t make it Canon.

on a serious note: i’m certainly not the one that continuously brings up this topic unprompted. i personally really don’t understand the entire controversy around the topic or why fandom feels the need to rehash this conversation almost weekly. i truly believe that there’s nothing more of value to learn from it, to address, or add to it… yet fandom won’t let it rest.

to once again clarify: what i mean by “gale wanting to be a father isn’t canon” is that there is no evidence/neither hints anywhere in any of the dialogue that support the contrary. characters like h*lsin, w*ll and la*’zel have entire adoption subplots. all of them mention their children explicitly during the epilogue:

narrator: *your soul warms thinking of lily aurora ravengard, your adopted daughter. a treasure of a girl, found at the entrance of the open hand temple - one grey eye, one brown.* w*ll: ah, the girl could melt the staunchest heart. she might even have brought a smile to old withers' face! w*ll: but tonight is for us - and lily's only four months of age, besides. i promise, the temple will keep her in good care.

player: and our little hatchling? is he safe? la*'zel: of course. i have complete trust in our newest allies. xan is in fine hands tonight. la*'zel: what a wonder he is. he will be a fine warrior, if he chooses. or a poet, or an explorer, or a scholar.

h*lsin: being away from it... i cannot help but worry how they will fare in our absence. player: we'll be back before they know it. h*lsin: i hope so. the children shall miss their bedtime tale tonight - though perhaps i can glean a few new stories from our friends here, to make up for it.

even shad*wh*art has a line where she briefly mentions that children might be a possibility for her in the future.

shad*wh*art: and i get to see my parents almost every day - i need to make every moment with them count, after so much was stolen from us. but they're doing well, [...] shad*wh*art: who knows? perhaps they'll have grandchildren before long.

gale in comparison? he has none of that. he remains childfree during the entirety of the game + epilogue. in fact, his line in the epilogue that addresses the topic of grandkids is this one:

tara: this is why mrs. dekarios and i will be waiting an eternity more for grandchildren. nodecontext: self-pitying gale: psst! shoo, tara. nodecontext: shooing away tara like one would a naughty cat.

i already wrote a post about this entire discourse here [x] but to repeat myself once more: all of the dialogue that vaguely addresses the topic of children in any way in regards to gale are these snippets

player: gale… how would you feel about having another person in our relationship? gale: what, like a child? i’m not quite sure i’d consider myself father material, plus our current lifestyle isn’t exactly what i’d call settled…

gale, upon spotting oliver during their game of hide and seek: ah, i have you! just a shame i don’t want you.

gale treating the children the group comes across with respect isn’t an indicator either. this is a courtesy gale extends to everyone he meets. he’s a character that approves of a protagonist who systematically commits good deeds. whether it’s sparing animals, helping without compensation in mind, or aiding children. wanting children to be cared for… and you know… for them not to die is common etiquette that every adult should extend to a child in need. those are not “dad goals!!!” it’s quite literally just basic human decency. gale is genuinely kind and caring to everyone he meets, there is no reason why this also wouldn’t apply to children.

i often see fandom mention his encounter with mol at last light and how excited he is to talk to her. which i think greatly misinterprets the context of the scenario since he didn’t have much of a reaction to mol before either — gale is ecstatic about lanceboard. again evident by his reaction to the party finding the life-sized board during the wyrmway trials, and how he immediately offers to give tav pointers. explaining different approaches to them in enthusiastic detail if they allow him to. the man just really likes lanceboard… as well as being the smartest person in the room.

gale: ah, lanceboard! why, this might just be the highlight of our misadventures to date.

gale: lanceboard happens to be a game with which i have more than a passing familiarity. might i offer a suggestion? nodecontext: gale's a badass lanceboard player, anticipating showing off

if you want to headcanon your tav and gale raising a big family together that is more than fine and no one is stopping you. whatever you want to happen to these two after the storyline of the game is up to your respective fantasies. no one is policing you on what you should do with your own character. go wild and create whatever fan content you wish, no justification required.

yet once again, as there is no mention in canon anywhere — neither in the main game nor the epilogue — that this is something gale would ever want (whether that may mean immediately or somewhere down the line) gale wanting to be a father remains a headcanon. while gale being childfree is explicitly shown in the game, in strict comparison to other companions that either have children by the end of the game or voice the desire to (eventually) have them.

my personal preferences are of no relevance here whatsoever. i care about accurate and correct characterization and will point out inconsistencies/false information no matter the topic. i, for one, want to appreciate these characters in the way they're written, not how i ideally want them to be.

[lisbeth-kk]

Sherlock fandom.

When Words Aren’t Enough

“There are no such things as stupid questions, only stupid answers,” Sherlock tells Rosie.

“Since when?” John wants to know. “That’s not what you usually say.”

“Well, I obviously meant from our daughter, John. Do keep up!”

The great detective winks at nine-year-old Rosie Watson-Holmes, who’s seated by the kitchen table at Sherlock’s parents.

“Ok. Names and flowers,” the little girl starts. “I have a flower name, just like Granny and my teacher, Lily. I know that boys also can have them, but that’s not common, right? Why?”

She looks expectantly at her Papa, who ponders the questions. Sherlock takes everything Rosie says seriously, and John is still astonished by how patient he is with her.

“That is correct, bumble. It probably has to do with something absurd, like that a flower related name isn’t masculine enough. And most of such names are more related to plants, herbs, and trees than actual flowers. The infamous Narcissus is the only one with a flower name that springs to mind at the moment.”

“I have another question related to flowers too,” Rosie says, having evidently binned the thought of male and female names for now.

“Let’s hear it,” Sherlock coaxes when his parents enter the kitchen from different directions.

Sherlock’s mother comes through the door from the living room, while Sherlock’s father enters from the garden. The latter is cradling a bouquet of violets in his hand, which he hands over to his wife. Violet Holmes looks at her husband with starry eyes and kisses him briefly on the lips.

“Thank you, my love,” she whispers and turns to find a vase to arrange the flowers.

Walter just turns and walks towards the garden door again, and is gone the next second. Before Violet places the vase on the table, she buries her nose in the flowers and inhales deeply.

“He still does that,” Sherlock murmurs, sounding a bit bewildered.

Violet hums in agreement.

“You know he’s not as good with words as you and me, Sherlock. So, when words aren’t enough, or fail him, this is his way of communicating his feelings. It’s quite wonderful,” she says dreamily and starts to make tea.

“That was what I wanted to ask about,” Rosie whispers.

She seems a bit taken aback by the loving encounter. Not that she’s unused to affection between adults. It’s been years since Sherlock and John were embarrassed to kiss in front of Rosie, but her grandparents doing the same thing, seems to have put her off kilter.

“What was?” John prompts when Rosie isn’t forthcoming with her question.

“Oh…um…flowers. I mean, there’s something called the language of flowers, yes?”

“Indeed!” Sherlock beams. “Let’s investigate that. It might come in handy in my work as well.

John shakes his head when the two curly heads lean over John’s laptop to read about roses, violets, daisies, tulips, gardenias, carnations, and zinnias.

***

Some weeks later, John comes home from work and finds an absurdly grand bouquet of flowers on the kitchen table. Rosie and Sherlock are in the park, so John has the flat to himself for a while. He looks for a card and finds one stuck between two green carnations.

My dearest, John

Words can’t describe what I feel for you, so I have turned to nature for guidance. A thousand kisses if you can decipher the meaning behind every flower.

Yours forever. Sherlock

The card quivers minutely in John’s hand and his eyes fill with tears. He indulges in the sentimentality that fills his body for a few minutes before he hastily retrieves his laptop from the coffee table. There’s no way of knowing how long it’ll be before Sherlock and Rosie return, and John is rather keen on getting the promised number of kisses from his husband.

It doesn’t take as long as he thought to gather the evidence and what John finds make his heart ache with longing and love for the remarkable man that has chosen him as a life companion.

He doesn’t even have to check what the green carnations mean. They are a symbol of homosexuality, closely associated with Oscar Wilde.

Then there are:

Honeysuckle – Bonds of love

Yellow lily – Happy

Myrtle – Love in a marriage

Sunflower(dwarf) – Adoration

Red tulip – Passion

Daisy – Loyal love

White camelia – You’re adorable

Red rose – I love you

Blue salvia – I think of you

Violet – Faithfulness

To John’s glee, Rosie stops at Mrs Hudson when they come home, and John gets to enjoy his prize, willingly delivered by his soppy romantic of a husband.

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This is also my entry to this month's Sherlock Challenge and the prompt language.

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[ruukina]

WOLFISH

FANDOM: final fantasy xvi PAIRING: clive rosfield x reader ( gender neutral, afab ) RATING: explicit / 18+. minors dni. SUMMARY: After an exhausting week of running around Valisthea, you return home with your heart full and missing a certain outlaw. What you find upon your return is different... but not unwelcomed. WARNINGS: slightly rough sex, dirty talking, breeding kink, implied heat cycle. WORD COUNT: 7.7k

A/N: yeah i'm fairly down bad for this man. i normally don't write reader fics but i'm trying to expand my horizons so. here we are. gotta feed myself in this economy right?? expect more ffxvi stuff, whether its reader insert or other shit because the brainworms are very bad.

read on ao3!

It’s a silent ride back to Hideaway, as it always is on these solo missions of yours.

It’s not a common thing, but every so often you find yourself having to run around all of Valisthea with the job of making payments and collecting orders from the many kind souls that have been helping the cause that even keeps your personal home afloat. In fact, you could even say as Cid’s personal advisor, this was your main job; Otto was busy running the Hideaway and keeping it in check, so the job fell to you when you weren’t tailing after the man you worked under.

You also didn’t mind it, because it meant you had some time to yourself. You had the wind at your back, the smell of sea water to keep you company, and you could be in your thoughts alone.

Usually you didn’t mind it, at the very least. 

It’s not a long task to do or even a hard one, in fact you’d argue that most of your time spent there is arguing with the likes of Martha and Isabelle and even L’ubor to accept the gil that Cid himself has offered to give them, but this month’s mission of yours was different. It seemed like a certain boss of yours had racked up a few requests and the people he graciously helped either wanted to give him a reward or send a letter to ask for more help. And since you were unfortunately playing messenger, it meant that you were basically running around and doing his job… in the sense of gathering the requests and gifts, of course.

So, you were being a little delayed in returning. You made sure to send a Stolas, to let everyone know you weren’t dead - just incredibly busy.

But now you finally found yourself on the ferry back home and you were impatient to get back. Excited to get back to everyone, excited to finally be returning after about a week of having to travel by Chocobo to get to everywhere.

Excited to return back to him.

“Hey, Obolus, are we almost there yet?” You peer over to the ferryman, the wind wilding through your hair.

Obolus didn’t even look back at you, as he ‘tsks’ in response. “We’ll get there when we get there. Asking every five seconds won’t make the boat go any faster.”

You scrunch your nose at him, but he did unfortunately have a point. The trip usually never feels so long, but after being away for what seems like months, you were just anxious to get back and rest your feet. The silence of the ride passes, with only the sound of waves pressing against the exterior of the boat. 

You lean against the side and take the chance to reflect on all that’s happened. All that you’ve experienced. 

All that you’ve done.

You don’t really remember when you became Cid’s advisor. It’s had to have been years at this point, you remember only barely being what one would call an adult. You were a bearer without a brand, hiding your magic behind crystals. It’s what your father had taught you, to protect you from the cruel world you were born in. You were cursed, your mother refused to even acknowledge your existence - even more so after the death of your father. You only lived the way that you did because your mother loved your father more than she loved you, and made your father take care of you.

Your father never gave up on you. An idealist in a world of realists, he really thought you could be the one to change the world. 

He set himself up for failure, you bitterly had thought when news of his death arrived at your doorstep. He died for a cause he believed in, sure, but now he expected you to carry on that torch for him. And maybe there was a part of you that wanted to fight for a better world than the one you were handed, for those like you. You weren’t really sure what your true feelings were at that time.

There was one thing you did know, however; you knew you weren’t safe in your mother’s care, so you ran the day after your father’s passing and never looked back. You’re not even sure if your mother is even still alive or if she even misses you. Did she start anew, start all over with someone else and have a child she could be proud of?

As the years went on, you found that you didn’t even care. You can’t remember her face anymore.

You were crafty, a trickster, because that’s what kept you alive. Somehow, your paths with Cidolfus Telamon crossed. Not just once or twice, but five times. Four times, you rejected his appraisal and invitation to join him.

On the fifth path crossed, and the day he saved you from death, you finally joined him. You didn’t really expect to stay long in Hideaway, only thinking you would spend a few weeks or even a month before you jumped ship. You never stayed in one place for long, because it was always too dangerous for you to attach yourself to people. But everyone was so kind, so nice to you, and welcomed you with open arms. 

Especially Cidolfus.

You clung to him a lot, maybe because despite only meeting him five times he was the only person you really knew, and somehow you managed to become his advisor with your skills and your ability to pull him back to the ground. Otto was against it at first, not because he didn’t like you, but you were barely an adult. Yet, Cid had smiled and patted you on the shoulder, telling Otto that there was more to you than meets the eye.

It’s much more than what your mother gave you. Worthless, unneeded, dirty, sinful - that’s all that she had called you. Your own father would try and raise your spirits, but her words were sharp as a knife and they cut wounds in your wrists. Weeks turned into months, months turned into years, and you stayed. You stayed with the people who would become your family.

One day, Cid left with Goetz and the wolf he ( or rather, charon ) cared for, because of rumors of Shiva’s Dominant finally rising in a place where he can finally catch her, to give her the freedom she needed. He came back with Goetz carrying a girl on his back, and a branded man with the wolf practically attached to his hip.

Clive Rosfield.

You didn’t realize it at the time, but the man before you would change your life completely.

Cid introduced you to him, asking you to watch over him and help him adjust to the Hideaway. It’s almost funny to think about, because despite Clive’s grumblings about ‘not staying long’ ( words that echoed in your head as familiar, because you had said the same thing ), when you finally got track of him again, he was out helping the people of Hideaway. 

You made a joke about that and he quickly looked away, some colour on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. It was a cute sight, unsightly for a rugged man like him. Despite his appearances, he was kind and soft, albeit a bit cynical from the hardships he faced in his life. Then you ended up helping him help people, because there wasn’t much to do at that time and you needed to stretch your legs, and that’s how Cid decided on his great idea to make Clive your personal assistant.

Clive then realized when Cid told him you ran him ragged, he meant it, because once Cid assigned Clive to you, it didn’t take you long to get him working because as long as someone could move, they could work. But of course, you joined Clive on his journey to help him out. Some days you had to stay at Hideaway but for the most part, you were at his side alongside Cid. 

You and Clive bonded together. Quick whips with one another, long nights together trying to figure out your next course of action with the Mothercrystals and how to save Valisthea, and slowly he became someone you… well, liked, essentially. You don’t exactly make friends with people, because you’ve never really had the chance to do so, but somehow Clive stabbed his way into your life and heart. 

He became softer with you, and you did too. You found it was easy to smile with him, to laugh with him, to love him. It scared you, because Clive was a Dominant - the second, mysterious Eikon of Fire, and yet something so much more than that. It was basically a target on your back, even more so than the relationship you had with Cid.

But you found that you couldn’t stop loving him, that you would endure the burning world for him. Maybe that scared you more.

He held you when you sobbed and broke down over Cid - the first time your mask of being strong ever cracked. You hated it, you hated being weak, because Cid didn’t need weak people helping him. Cid needed someone who could put themselves back together, but this time you couldn’t. The pieces of you were scattered all over the floor like glass and every time you picked one up, you cut your hand and let the blood drip from your wound.

Yet, Clive held you. He held you close, he didn’t judge you, because he was crying alongside you. Cid meant so much to everyone, including him. You sat in his arms, and he didn’t leave until he knew he could leave you alone without worrying over you. His gentleness contrasted his roughened up look, he looked at you so softly and filled with fondness towards you. He was not afraid to help pick up the pieces, even if it meant cutting his hands in the process. 

He put you back together, and he didn’t complain about it. Not even once.

Your relationship with him bloomed. Your friendship with him became something new, something else. It was a dangerous love, because of who Clive Rosfield is - what he is. Yet, you never swayed. You never faltered.

No matter what, he’s Clive to you.

But in public, he is Cid and you are Cid’s advisor - like you always were. You two were professional on the outside, only sneaking away to shed those titles when you had enough time to. You didn’t get those chances a lot, but when you did he made sure to treat you like you were a deity. You’ve had lovers in the past, but they never made you feel like Clive made you feel. He made you feel loved, appreciated, cared for. You took care of him, but he always took care of you in return. He never simply just took, he always gave back.

No wonder you were anxious to get back to him; you’ve missed him dearly.

“We’re approaching the Hideaway!”

The ferryman’s voice pulls you from your thoughts. You open your eyes, quickly looking towards the horizons. Even in the blackest of nights, with the moon being your only light, you could see the shape of the broken down airship that you and everyone else called home. You could feel the smile creeping on your face.

“I’m home,” you whisper.

To who exactly? Not yourself, but to the man who was waiting for you.

You thank Obolus for the ride home as you step off of the boat, quickly rushing up the stairs. Most people had turned in for the night so there were only a few souls still haunting the Hideaway, and they offered their greetings to you and a cheery ‘welcome back, advisor!’, to which you returned with a smile.

You feel a little silly rushing through the halls, like an eager child, but you were happy to be home. 

You were happy about seeing him again.

You skid to a stop when you reached your destination. The Tub and Crown was a bit of a ghost town around this time, but you knew there were still a few people aside from Maeve haunting the area.

And you weren’t wrong. There sat Gav and Jill, with Torgal laying at Jill’s side. The hound lifts his head up at the sound of your footsteps, and once he lays his eyes on you he quickly stands up and rushes over towards you with a happy sounding bark. Since becoming Clive’s partner, Torgal never really left your side either. If he wasn’t with his owner or Jill, he was shuffling at your hip and following you around.

“Torgal!” You greet happily, kneeling on the ground to pet him and spoil him with some treats you carried on hand once you got close enough to where the two sat.

The two break from their conversation to see what Torgal was barking at, both of them greeting you with a smile on their faces.

“Well, if it ain’t our favorite advisor!” Gav slams his drink down. He looks you over, peering at the basket of gifts and requests at your side - all for a certain someone. “Talk about bein’ fashionably late. You weren’t kiddin’ when you said almost everyone in Valisthea was keepin’ you away.”

Jill nods her head in agreement, cupping her own chin to look over the heavy basket. “It sounds like you’ve had quite the adventure yourself.”

“Oh, it was the same ol’ stuff I deal with everyday. Just this time everyone in Valisthea caught wind that Cid’s advisor was in town and decided to make it their problem.” You rub Torgal’s belly, to which the hound accepts with happy pants. 

Speaking of the aforementioned man… You look to the side of Gav. No handsome brooding man there. 

You look to the side of Jill. No handsome brooding man there, either.

“Where is Clive?” You stop petting Torgal for a moment. “I figured he would be hanging out with you.”

Gav rolls his eyes a little, both good naturedly but also in some slight annoyance. “Went right to his chambers to work on things when we got back. He’s been in a bloody mood all week.” The scout holds up a finger. “Scowlin’ more than usual, more antsy than usual, tappin’ his foot while he waits at the door.” Every reason is met with a finger going up. “Not like everyone is afraid of him here, but it felt like we had to walk on eggshells around him. Even Charon was tryin’ not to rib him so hard.”

You blink a little, a brow raised. “Has the missions been going poorly or something?”

“Fuck no,” Gav shakes his head in response. “Everything’s been going smoothly. He’s just been actin’ like a shite.”

“He hasn’t been that bad,” counters Jill. Though, there’s a slight pause of hesitation from her. “But Gav isn’t wrong, he has been in a bit of a mood. More than likely, he was just worried about you.”

Worried about you? It’s not like you can’t handle yourself, and you’ve definitely been on missions longer than a week without him. You can’t help but scrunch your nose in thought - as always, when you’re thinking hard. Something was up with him, clearly.

Jill reads you like a book, with a smile on her face. “He’s still up, last time I checked. He’s burying his nose in reports as to distract himself. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the visit from you.” She stands up from her seat, as Torgal also rolls over and trots back to her side. “I’ve got some work to do with Tarja, but it was nice seeing you tonight.”

You nod your head, standing up and dusting yourself off. “Tarja, huh? Try not to stay up too late with her, alright?” You laugh a little when Shiva’s dominant huffs softly at your teasing, giving you just a gentle nudge in return. The two of you have gotten quite close over the years, and she was supportive of you and Clive. You felt like you could sigh in relief at that, that you didn’t have to worry about Clive’s childhood friend coming after you.

Gav finishes his drink, standing up as well. “I’m turnin’ in for the night.” He pats your shoulder with a grin on his face. “Make sure you give our leader a nice, warm welcome!”

He only grins harder seeing your cheeks turn red like a tomato at the implication of his words, and Jill’s soft laughter only makes you turn ever redder. Ah, there was your punishment for teasing Jill. The three of them make their way out of the alehouse, your eyes following them as you think about your conversation.

He’s in a mood.

What could he be in a mood about? You’ll have to do some digging, which isn’t hard - if there’s one thing Clive is with you that not even a sour mood could change, it’s that he was honest with you. It’s one of his best traits, really, that he’s open with his feelings and doesn’t usually shy away from speaking his mind about certain things. It’s not always easy, because there are some things he keeps to his chest, but for the most part communication is always important between you two. You pick up the basket of gifts and quickly make it to the end of the hall, where Clive’s chambers were.

And well, they were technically your chambers too, you think with the heat growing at your cheeks once more.

Shifting the basket a little, you use your free hand to knock on his chamber doors - once, twice and thrice.

“The door’s unlocked.” Clive’s low voice fills your ears. He already has you sighing and letting out a quivering breath. Founder, you’ve missed him.

You open the door with a smile on your face. You take in the sights before you - his room is as you left it, with the man himself seated at the desk. He seems to be burying himself in his usual reports and paperwork, just as Jill said. He didn’t even lift his head upon you entering.

“Guess who.” You smile, as you close the door behind you.

The sound of your voice has Clive immediately lift his head from his work. Cerulean eyes widened, the quill he was using drops from between his fingers and clattering on the desk.

“You’re back.” He sounds almost breathless. His chest raises a little as he breathes in and out, those cerulean eyes of him looking a lot more puppy-dog than usual.

This was different, indeed.

You walk towards him, placing the basket on the edge of the desk not covered in scattered papers. “Just got back. Gifts for you by the way, I was hunted down by weary souls who wanted to give their thanks to the so-called Cid the Outlaw.” You peer at him with a gentle, loving smile on your face.

He laughs a little in response, a rare smile forming on his own features. “No wonder you’re late. Sorry about that. I’ll be sure to pen my thanks to them soon.”

You shake your head at him. “Oh, don’t even start with the apologies. It’s my job to aid you, it’s kind of in the title.” A pause, shifting your feet a little as you hold your hands behind your back, shyly. “And… you know I’ll do anything for you, Clive.”

The words you whisper made him smile a little more. “You have perfect timing. I’m actually finishing up and I could use your advice.” He nudges his chair back a little, gently patting his thigh. 

For a moment, you stare with a tilted head, until you realize the implications. Your cheeks turn red.

Oh, he’s inviting you to sit there.

Oh, this was different, indeed.

But you don’t hesitate or falter at all. You take a seat on his thigh, leaning against him. One of his strong arms wraps themselves around your waist, pulling your body flushed against his. The position is a little embarrassing, you have to admit to yourself, but it feels warm, comforting - loving. It doesn’t take long for you to fall back into place, flipping through the letters and offering your advice and help to him.

It also doesn’t take long for Clive to stop paying attention. He nuzzles his face in the crook of your neck, breathing in your scent. His hot breath tickles your skin, a shiver running down your spine, as his fingers draw circles in your hip. His lips ghosts around your skin, pressing the gentlest of kisses to your neck as though he was whispering forbidden words in your skin. The quill from his fingers once again falls onto the desk, the reports forgotten about as his attention shifts to you. It’s hard to focus when he’s like this, so you decide to also forget about the many papers that littered his desktop.

“Jill and Gav told me you were in a mood.” You finally shift the conversation to what was really on your mind.

Clive only offers a grunt at first. “I’m not really in a mood.”

“Are you? You’re acting a little differently tonight.” Your fingers run through his hair, out of his eyes. “What’s on your mind, Clive? You know you can tell me.”

For a moment, he hesitates, but he knows he doesn’t like keeping secrets from you. You know he doesn’t like keeping secrets from you. He pulls you close to him, finally lifting his head to look you in the eye.

“I was fine when you left, but after a day, it felt like there was a pit in my stomach.” Clive runs his fingers up and down your hip. “Hunger, I suppose, is the best way to describe it.”

“Hunger?”

“I felt like I couldn’t focus with you gone. It was worse when I was here alone. Your scent was so much stronger than it usually was…” Clive recounts, averting his gaze for a moment from slight embarrassment, but he quickly focuses back on you. “The more days you were away, the more the hunger grew.”

“And the grouchier you got?” You tease him, though your tease was cut short and replaced with a slight yelp when he pinches your thigh with a huff.

“I wasn’t grouchy.” He counters, but his tone of voice sounds like he’s not exactly fighting the accusation.

You think about what he’s said, though. A hunger he felt for you. It started happening when you first left. He found that your scent was stronger than normal, even when you weren’t there. The symptoms sounded fairly familiar to you, and you hummed a little in thought as you ran your fingers through his hair. He groaned in delight at that, leaning into your touch and burying his face in the crook of your neck once more.

“Maybe you’re going through a rut?”

Clive lifts his head up. “A rut? I’m not a dog, love.”

“I mean, you travel with a dog, you constantly have a permanent puppy-dog eyes look on you and you turn into a dog-lizard thing. You’re kind of dog-adjacent.” You shrug cheekily, with an equally cheeky smile on your face. “But I’m serious about the last thing. We don’t know a whole lot about Ifrit. Maybe it’s going through some kind of rut or something and it’s affecting you. It is springtime, you know. Maybe nature is just setting course for Ifrit, too.”

It’s a pretty plausible theory. Clive stops to think about it for a brief moment, his breath tickling your neck once more as you sigh. Still, he says nothing at first and pauses his movements, until he looks right back up at you, his gaze meeting yours.

“You do realize the implications of your theory, right?” His pupils are blown out, more than usual. His strong, calloused hands grip your hips, shifting you a little so your lower half is flushed right against his.

Oh, there’s something pressing against you. Your body warms up, a heat and ache pooling right in your core. 

You didn’t realize how much you miss his body pressing against yours in such a sinful manner, until he rolls his hips against yours in want and need.

“I meant what I said,” you begin to say, your hands gripping to his shoulders as you slowly grind against the bulge in his pants, meeting his hips’ movements. You couldn’t help but grin a little when he moaned lowly, a sound just for you. “You know I’ll do anything for you, Clive.”

That’s all you’re able to get out at that point, because once you give him permission to do what he needs to do, Clive’s lips press against yours. It was only a sweet, soft kiss for a for seconds at best, because it quickly turned into something fierce, hungry. His tongue prods against your lips, wanting access into your warm mouth, and you gladly part your lips for him, because you need him as much as he needs you. Your tongue presses and swirls against his - it’s a small battle for dominance you never win, but you know he likes a small challenge. His own tongue presses and pins yours, until you ease away to let him completely take the reins.

The kiss is hot, wet, truly sinful. His hands grope everywhere he could, mostly squeezing at your thighs and hips with his fingers digging into your soft, plump flesh until they found their way to your rear. Squeezing and grabbing, groping in such a way that would make you flustered had you not been needy with your own arousal, he lifts you up as though you’re made of nothing but feathers, and truly you’re a little limp in his grasp. Clive’s strength always managed to make you feel dizzy, in a good way, and that doesn’t change here. He pushes his chair back, leaving the desk and the many reports he still has to do in the dust and makes his way towards his bed - your shared bed.

He only breaks the kiss to place you down on the mattress, gentle pants leaving both of your lips as a string of saliva connects the two of you. It breaks as he pulls away a little more, only to dive back in and press fluttering, wet kisses to your neck. Just like the kiss from before, it turns into something a little more hot and brutal; his lips suck at your skin to give it a bruising mark, teeth sinking into your flesh to draw just a little bit of blood from you. You groan hotly, your fingers gripping at his dark locks as your hips jolt upwards. Clive licks and kisses at the bruise and bite mark he left, panting gently against your flesh.

“You still taste so, so good.” Clive whispers into your skin, as his hands tug right at your shirt. He tries his best not to rip it, but unbuttoning your shirt during these kinds of acts was never exactly a cleanful tact, because you can already see a few buttons pop off just from him ripping it open. You chuckle a little; some things really don’t change.

Your chest is bared to him, and Clive wastes no time in pressing gentle kisses on naked skin. Trailing down, he kisses, licks and sucks on any skin he could latch himself onto and sinks teeth into your sink that leaves behind a delicious sting of pain, until finally reaching your left breast. Your breath hitches a little as his tongue swirls around the nub of your nipple, the hitched breath morphing into a needy moan once his lips latch around it to give it a gentle suck. His fingers tease and play with the unattended one, his attacks on you relentless and cruel - cruel in the sense he never slowed down.

“Clive.” you whine with a high-pitched voice, trying your best to roll your hips against his. But he doesn’t let you, pinning you down with just his pelvis. He lifts his head up, a smirk on his face.

“Just lay there and let me make you feel good,” whispers Clive. The way his low voice sounded so commanding, you can’t help but obey him. He was always like this, though; he was always chasing for your pleasure and never his own. He loved you, he wanted to make you feel good. It was never really fair! But at the same time, it truly was nice. He was so different from lovers you had in the past, who only cared about their own needs.

He attends to your other breast, giving it the same treatment - a lick here, a suck there, leaving a trail of bruises and bite marks in his wake. Once he’s satisfied, his lips start to trail downwards. He worships you like this, with his lips and his tongue, making sure there’s a patch of skin with his mark on it. His hands make work of your bottoms, pulling off the offending fabric until you were just left in your undergarments. You expect to feel his fingers on your skin so he can pull them down, but instead when you look down, you see Clive is using his teeth to pull them down.

Oh, this is different. Normally he takes his time with you; press himself against you, kiss you all over. Even as someone who prefers to please his partners more than please himself, it seems like tonight he’s impatient.

“Seems like someone’s been wanting this,” chuckles Clive as he spreads your lower lips a little to inspect you. “You’re already so soaked. All I did was tease you a little. Founder, you’re as depraved as I am.” His hot breath hits your wetness as he speaks, never once pressing his lips against you. You jolt a little at the feeling, a soft huff escaping your lips.

“You started this mess,” You tell him, your fingers already gripping in his hair. “You finish it.”

Another chuckle leaves his lips. Clive is impatient, though, and he wastes no time in pressing his lips right against your dripping entrance. His tongue is relentless here just as it was on your skin; it wastes no time in slipping inside of you, as he starts to drink your essence and fuck you with his tongue alone. It’s almost unbearable to you, in a good way - he drinks like a man starved.

Clive is so good to you, but he knows how to be so cruel, because he knows you enjoy it. He knows how easily you melt on his tongue, and he enjoys every single moment of it.

His fingers slip in as well, two of them pumping in and out as he moves upwards a little, finding your clit. The tip of his tongue flicks at it and you feel the smirk against your entrance as soon as you squeak and moan from his actions. He licks, sucks, his movements becoming faster with each second that passes. You’re trying so hard to swallow back your moans, but the moment his lips wrap around your clit and give it a hard suck, you can’t control your volume anymore. It echoes off of the walls, embarrassingly so, but your mind is so fogged that you don’t seem to care like you usually would.

The knot in your lower stomach painfully tightens, you can feel yourself reaching your peak as Clive continues to tease your clit and thrust his fingers in and out of you. Just as you’re about to find your release, though, he abruptly stops. He pulls himself off of you, his fingers are coated with your essence.

“Clive–” You begin to whine, almost in pain. You stop yourself short when you watch him lick his fingers clean - slowly, like he’s putting on a show for you. Once they’re clean, he looks at you as though he’s a predator who has caught prey in his trap. The slight darkness of the room makes his cerulean eyes have a glow to them. The knot in your stomach returns.

He intends to devour you, his way. He’s going to drag this out, until you’re begging and crying for release.

Clive crawls back onto the bed, his hands moving to undo all of the leathers and fabric of his clothing, until he’s as bare as you are. His cloak and shirt go first, dropping onto the ground until his chest is revealed to you. Greagor, you could probably write several missives about Clive’s chest and muscles, but despite what your lover may say, you’re not that depraved. You keep all of those thoughts to yourself, like a good advisor should. Your eyes drift down with his hands, watching as they fumble a little with his belt, stifling a laugh from how needy and excited he is.

You stop laughing once he finally does undo his belt and pull his pants down, revealing his hard cock to you. You’ve seen it before, it’s been inside of you multiple times now, but you still hitch your breath when you see it. The gods certainly graced Clive with something to brag about, for certain. 

If you ever do meet Ultima maybe you should thank him for giving his vessel something that would make you cross your eyes and forget your own name, but something tells you a narcissistic god obsessed with the purity of his vessel may not appreciate the sonnets a mere mortal would write about said vessel’s cock.

Pre-cum dribbles at the tip, his fingers coated in a mix of his saliva and your juices as he uses it to his advantage to stroke himself a little, to really give you a show now. You hear yourself panting, your chest heaving up and down as you watch the sinful sight before you.

“Enjoying yourself?” Clive smirks, smugness in his voice.

You huff a little in response. “I’ll only enjoy myself when you actually fuck me instead of showing off, Rosfield.”

He laughs a little, leaning down to kiss your forehead sweetly. “As my faithful advisor commands.”

You have no time to respond, as he quickly flips you so you’re on your stomach, face slightly pressed against the pillow beneath you. He presses his front against your back, the tip of his cock pressing against your wet folds teasingly. Your needy whine and rear thrusting back to try and get him inside of you earns a laugh from him, but thankfully he’s not intensely cruel tonight. He presses inside of you, though it’s not as slow as he normally is. Normally he takes his time with you, but in just seconds he’s got his entire length inside of you. You feel the way his body shudders against your back, your soaked walls clenching around him. A sigh passes your lips, morphing into a moan. 

You’ve missed this. You’ve missed him.

His thrusts are slow at first, but it doesn’t take him long for him to pick up his speed. His hips meet your backside, a wonderful symphony of skin slapping against each other fills the room, loud enough to make your ears burn with embarrassment. You bury your face in the pillow to muffle your moans. A hand wraps itself around the back of your neck, though, to pull you up towards its owner. Clive’s heavy breath is in your ear now, worsening your arousal.

“Don’t hide your voice from me,” pants Clive, sharp teeth nibbling at your earlobe. “I want to hear you.”

And you find that you can’t deny him. Your moans are loud, needy, your knuckles turning white from how roughly you’re gripping the sheets to the point where they might tear. His other hand snakes down your stomach, reaching your lower half, and his fingers make work on your clit. It’s a slow rub, his thrusts contrasting the gentleness of his fingers. You can feel yourself reaching your peak, you can feel the knot in your stomach tightening and tightening until–

Until he pulls right out of you.

You whine, loudly, at the loss. Your walls clench at nothing, and you try to thrust yourself back towards him, but Clive doesn’t let you do that. Instead, he flips you both again - him on his back and you sitting on his lap. He looks up at you with a smile, his hand running up and down your stomach once more.

“I know exactly what you like.” The outlaw says, pulling you forward so his cock rests right against your stomach. You feel how hot it is, how hard it is, and how it throbs and pulsates against your skin. “Show me how much you want to cum.”

Oh, he’s definitely dragging this out as long as he can. You can’t exactly blame him, you don’t want this to end either. 

But you also really need to reach your peak, otherwise you may burn the whole Hideaway down.

Your wobbly legs manage to hold yourself up, slowly moving down on him. Your whole body shudders as his cock fills you up again, the tip pressing against the deepest parts of your inside. You move up and down on his length, moans and pants spilling from your lips as you decide to not hide your voice any longer - because he wants to hear you. And you can’t deny him, because you don’t want to deny him.

“Founder, your voice alone drives me mad.” Clive growls, his hand squeezing your thigh as he thrusts upwards to meet your own movements. “Tried to focus on my work, tried to put you out of my head for days, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I needed you blissed out on my cock–”

He’s rambling, his voice low and rough, and you love every second of it. Clive’s not much of a talker, but when he is, he makes you feel so depraved for him. Your legs were starting to shake and feel weak already, but you push yourself - you push yourself because you want this. Because you need this from him, just as much as he needed this from you.

“Clive,” you chant his name like a prayer, over and over again. You must sound delirious.

But Clive clearly doesn’t seem to mind, the way his back arches a little just from the sound of your sweet voice. It’s a powerful feeling, you realize, having such a powerful man like him weak at you - a mere mortal, a bearer but not a Dominant. Yet, it’s a good reminder that beneath everything, Clive is a mortal man as well.

“Can you feel me, sweetheart?” He places his hand on your lower stomach, feeling the way it bulges a little from the sheer size of him. You look down, shuddering at the sight as he continues to thrust upwards, your eyes following how the bulge disappears then reappears. “You take me so fucking well. It’s like you were made for me, the way you shake your hips like a woman at the Veil.”

You can’t respond, any time you try to all that fumbles from your lips are moans and whines of pure pleasure.

“I can get so deep into you like this,” groans Clive, his other hand grasping at your hip. “All the way into you. Fuck, I could breed you right here. I could make you swell with my child.”

Oh, that’s different.

And it’s clearly a good different, the way your body responds. Your walls clench around him, as if your body had a mind of its own, as if your body was begging for the man to breed you. He notices too, and he licks his lips and smirks once he realizes you may enjoy the idea as he did.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Another thrust upwards. His thrusts are getting sloppier and rougher, but Greagor does it feel so good. “I wouldn’t be able to control myself, seeing you like that. I’d fuck you every single day–”

You moan, so lecherously. “Clive, fuck, I’m going to cum!”

Both hands grab at your hips, fingers digging and sinking into your skin so hard you know there’s going to be some bruising there in the morning. But you don’t care. All you care about is the man underneath you, and chasing after your own release. Clive makes you move faster onto him, a growl rumbling from his throat.

“Go on, let yourself go.”

You were already so overstimulated from the foreplay from before, and the way his cock brushes against your sweet spots and bashes against the entrance to your womb, you can’t help it. Your walls tighten around him, and you let yourself go.

Another growl rumbles from his throat, this time he pulls you right down onto him, hard. It doesn’t take him long to follow you into a blissful climax, his hot seed pouring into you and flooding your insides. It’s a lot, more than usual, to the point where it floods out from your entrance and onto him.

You collapse onto him, and he instantly takes you in his arms. Slowly, he flips your positions again, just so he can press himself deeper into you. Thank the Founder, because your legs were about to give out.

A moment passes, until he finally pulls himself out from you. His blown out pupils watch as his seed overflows from you, dripping onto the sheets beneath you. He shudders at the sight, and you can’t help but shudder as well.

You’re fading in and out of existence, but when you mostly come to, Clive has wiped you and him down, cleaning you up and gently pressing kisses against any marks he’s left on you. The sheets will unfortunately have to wait until tomorrow. Frankly, you could give less of a shit about that.

The outlaw slumps himself against you, pulling you into his arms. You both lay there in a comfortable silence, as he buries his face in the crook of your neck.

“Thank you.” His voice trembles, a little embarrassed - that’s the Clive you know. “I’ll, uh, make sure Tarja prepares a herbal tea for you tomorrow, so that you don’t…” He trails off, hiding his face against your neck even more now.

You chuckle, feeling the hotness of his cheeks against your skin. “Feeling better?”

“Yes,” answers the male as he lifts his head up with a smile. “Much better. You always seem to know how to cure my worries and needs.”

“What can I say? I know my boss pretty well.”

He laughs, and your heart feels so warm, so in love with the man before you. Clive leans in, pressing his lips against yours to share a sweet, innocent kiss that contrasts the sinful act you both just partook in. And you kiss him back, wrapping your arms around him. You only stop when you feel something hard rub against your thigh, pulling back to see he was still pretty aroused. He’s a little sheepish at that, but he looks at you in want, in need - and love, as always.

“I don’t think one time is going to be enough for you, big guy.”

A sheepish laugh falls from his lips. “I don’t think so either. I might need a few more rounds. That is, if my faithful advisor is up to it.” 

He’s challenging you, clearly. The smirk on his face tells you all you need to know. You smirk back, bucking your hips against his to accept.

“Only if you do most of the work.” You tell him, a leg going in to wrap itself around his waist. “You made me weak in my knees, Lord Rosfield. A gentleman should take some responsibility for his actions.”

His low chuckle reaches your ears, as he leans in to press his forehead against yours. It’s a tender action, one that definitely makes you feel weak in the knees - if you hadn’t already. It doesn’t take him long to reenter you, and you can’t hide the shudder of your slightly overstimulated body. 

But you want everything he has to offer, the good and the bad of Clive Rosfield, and he’ll give it to you. 

Because he wants everything you have to offer, the good and the bad of his faithful advisor, in return.

“As you wish, my love.”

He claims your lips. The night goes on.

“Somethin’ seems to be on your mind.”

Jill looks towards the source of the voice. Gav stands next to her, arms crossed as he meets her gaze with a raised brow. The Dominant says nothing to him, only slowly returning her gaze to where she once was looking. Gav’s line of sight follows hers, landing right on the scene that was unfolding before them.

“Clive, I’m trying to do work!”

Hideaway’s poor advisor was currently trying to shake an overgrown Cid the Outlaw off of them, who has currently draped himself over you. It had been a single day since you had returned from your trip and needless to say, Clive was acting as though you had been gone for years. Arms wrapped around your waist, pulling your body flush against yours.

“Nothing is stopping you from doing your work,” is all Clive remarks with, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

“Except for a fucking overgrown dog!”

Gav whistles at the sight before him. “Someone seems to be in a good mood.”

“Indeed,” nods Jill, her gaze never leaving the both of you. Right now you were trying to walk away, which resulted in you basically having to drag the second Eikon of fire around because he refused to let himself off of you. “But, I can’t help but wonder if this is worse than the mood he was in before.”

The scout shrugs his shoulders. “Our advisor has dealt with worse from him. And we don’t have to deal with him slobberin’ all over us, so I’d say a good mood is better than nothin’.”

The woman says nothing. She knows it’s going to be a few days before Clive will return to his normal self, if your theory about why he’s been moody all week rings true. Such things don’t end with a simple, pleasurable night. You’ll be fine, she knows that, so she’s not too worried that you won’t be able to handle Clive Rosfield.

It’s in your job description, after all.

( she’ll still pray to metia for you, at the very least, and hope you come out unscathed. )

[wonderfull-star]

Is it just me or do people just overestimate Peri in some aspects?

Especially people on reddit. I haven't watched the entire cartoon yet, but damn. Some people SERIOUSLY think Peri is a super caring perfect godparent and a really kind character. Like, the best version of Cosmo. Are you serious?? It feels like some people who think that haven't watched the original series. Because people there clearly overestimate Peri and underestimate Cosmo. Yes, Cosmo is far from a genius, but he's definitely not a complete idiot either. And he definitely has a lot more experience than his son. He's already thousands of years old, while his son is only in his 20s…

I feel sorry for Cosmo and Dev 😭

Well, yes, Dev is a spoiled kid. Yes, he used magic for bad purposes. However, he is still just a child who, despite everything, tries to become better. Even if he does such thoughtless and bad things. Well, what else can you expect if no one in particular was involved in his upbringing, and his father himself does not pay enough attention to him.

I am also sure that when Peri first met Dev, he was more worried about his job at first. Which is understandable. After all, it was his first time and he was afraid of making even the slightest mistake. Because of all these rules and his peculiarity of magic, he developed severe anxiety.

I think the idea of ​​creating Poof as an adult is to show through his character the real difficulties that people go through at this age and the pressure of society. And you know, it suits him so well. In the original series, he was always in the spotlight and everyone always had high expectations for him. It is clear that at an older age, this will not affect him in the best way.

Still, sometimes Peri didn't behave in the best way. He had just gotten his job at the first time. Even with all the education he had gone through, it wouldn't make him a good godparent right away, that's for sure. After all, what's important in this job is not the training but the experience itself, which he clearly doesn't have yet. People also forget that Peri initially wanted to be a tooth fairy not a fairy godparent. So I wonder: wasn't it primarily the influence of his parents and the fact that THEY wanted to see him in this job and not Peri himself? In real life, unfortunately, this often happens and all this later ends in a not very good way.

So even if Peri had Hazel as his godchild, it still wouldn't have solved the problem. And not because he's bad as a godparent, but because this job is simply not right for him. In some moments, he acted pretty disinterested even when Dev wasn't acting like an egoist. Yes, now people will throw various excuses at me about this, but still. However, it's even clear that Peri clearly doesn't enjoy this job. Seriously, if you remember Cosmo and Wanda from the original cartoon, they mostly enjoyed what they do (although they've been doing this for thousands of years). The thing is that they just get along well with children and find a common language with them. Perhaps I think the creators wanted to show the problem in choosing your profession and what you really like to do in life. And what difficulties you have to go through to find what you really like to do.

But some people just don't care about it, considering Peri the best in literally everything. In fact, they consider him as tumblr "star"man and Dev as a simple spoiled child. Crazy fans forget that almost every character has their own shortcomings and bad sides. Well, and also the opposite of all this. I consider Peri more as a neutral character with his good qualities and flaws. Still, it is impossible to deny that in some moments he really did not act in the best way.

Peri’s simps detected 📸(don’t take it seriously lol)

And this is a very common situation in fandoms…

[musicalmoritz]

The common misconception that Akane has no personality outside of Aoi is a sign of immaturity among many fans, in my opinion. This isn’t really their fault, seeing as the majority of the tbhk fandom is on the younger side, but it’s still something that should be noted

When people say this, they are talking about his hobbies. It’s true that every hobby Akane has is something he started to impress Aoi. I’m of the firm belief that he stayed on the Student Council because he enjoys it but that’s slightly up to interpretation (it could also be a way for Teru to keep an eye on him). However, in general, Akane doesn’t seem to have much going on outside of Aoi. His favorite food is something he imagines her baking for him, he joins clubs based on what type of guys she shows interest in, the books he reads all have a character that shares her name, and when she asks him what he enjoys, his response is “I like you, Aoi.” He’s even shown to zone out of conversations when Aoi isn’t mentioned. This is clearly unhealthy, though he does eventually learn to give her some distance which is beneficial to the both of them. But he still doesn’t seem to actively engage in hobbies that have nothing to do with Aoi

This is a consistent character flaw, but it does not mean Akane has no personality or character outside of Aoi. This is where the immaturity bit comes in, kids want to describe themselves entirely based on their interests. With the rise of fan culture and the internet, many adults do the same. It’s not just a young people problem, it’s an issue of how we identify ourselves. We like to put people into categories, understanding them based on their hobbies and careers. These are very important elements of identity, but they aren’t everything. A person with no job and no hobbies is still a person. They might struggle due to having no outlet for their creativity, but they are a person nonetheless

Fandoms notoriously love to understand characters based on their niche interests. Aoi is a gardener, Hanako loves the moon, Nene plays idol games, Teru has a very sad life. These are absolutely elements of their characters, but there’s more to them than their hobbies. They have personalities too, goals and passions outside of what they do in their free time

Akane puts his all into helping others, he takes his Student Council duties very seriously and keeps his hands full during every school event. He is a very empathetic character, able to understand characters like Aoi, Teru, and Nene without them having to tell him what they need. He’s competitive, as seen in his friendship with Teru. He’s romantic, as is the driving force of his character (and romance is a perfectly acceptable goal, marriage is one of the most common things for a person to strive towards in life). He’s violent and overprotective, striking down any man who makes Aoi uncomfortable. He’s emotional, prone to fits of joy, anger, and tears. He’s easily annoyed and carries a chip on his shoulder, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to help people. He hates supernaturals because of how they hurt others, and despite his stance as a School Mystery, he is so painstakingly human. He can be aggressive, especially when someone he loves is trying to do something self-destructive. He cares so deeply for people, wearing his heart on his sleeve. He’d stay up all night playing video games if it made the girl he loves happy, but he won’t attack Teru for having genuine feelings for her. He’s incredibly loyal. He’s also casually bisexual so there’s that

Idk there’s just so much more to Akane’s character than people give him credit for, I didn’t even cover everything. Remember when you’re analyzing a character, it’s important to look deeper than “they enjoy this” or “this is their job.” Akane may devote so much of his life to Aoi, but he is still his own person, whether he realizes that or not

I am begging ya’ll to stop throwing the “no character outside of Aoi” allegations at this man

[parentsday]

Hiii! Since you asked about headcanons/analysis stuff:

There's a common interpretation on the fandom about Max's treatment of David in the early episodes coming, at least partially, from trust issues regarding adults/authority figures. And I've seen push back against it, too. People who say it's just because David is annoyingly positive. Nothing else.

And sure, I can see that. But Nikki also acts in a cheerful manner and mostly enjoys camp, and Max doesn't treat her with the level of rudeness he treated David in season one. This could be due to her being his little partner in crime, but idk. I always interpreted it as him thinking that David is some fake nice adult who will just let him down if he allows it.

And, while I was thinking about this, I realized how this interpretation of Max's behaviour towards David adds another heartbreaking layer to Parents day.

Max's perception of David started changing after Order of the sparrow, specifically after the "Somebody fucking has to" moment. For just a moment, the annoying, overly positive persona drops, and Max is able to see a nuanced human being. And it's clear that he starts understanding David a little more, because in Cult camp (literally the next episode), he allows himself to be brainwashed and trusts that David will save the camp (btw, we as a fandom don’t talk about this aspect of this episode enough).

So yeah, his perception of David changes for the better.

But then, parents day happens.

And David spends most of the episode being an absolute jerk, even if he doesn't realize it.

He pushes SO HARD to try and make the day perfect, basically ignores Max when he states that his parents aren't coming, gets way too serious about playing the role of Max's dad for the day, forces Max into the activities and then, at the end of a day that was already shitty for Max, he yells at him.

I think the context of Max's opinion on David finnaly becoming more positive makes this episode so much sadder.

Because it ceases to be just about Max's neglectful parents.

Now it's also about the closest thing he has to a trustworthy adult making him uncomfortable, ignoring his feelings and then yelling at him and telling him that he "has a bad attitude" and "brings everyone else down instead of trying just a little bit to have fun".

(Which are things he must have heard from adults before, if he behaves the way he does at camp in school and other places)

Remember in Friends like these when he said "Life's just one dissapointment after another. I can't belive I let myself forget it"? I think he might have had the same train of thought here: "I can't believe I let myself forget David is an asshole that only cares about impressing Campbell and making this stupid camp look good". Or: "I can't believe I let myself forget that every single adult thinks I'm a bad kid and a lost cause."

And I know it gets fixed quickly, with David apologizing shortly after, but still. I think the idea of Max being dissapointed at David in Parents day, even if it was just for some moments, is so good.

I also think this is the episode that comfirms to Max that David is genuinely a good person trying his best. He spent the entire day having to think about the fact that his parents suck, and then there's David, who is kind, apologizes for upsetting him and takes him to eat pizza and have a little heartfelt talk.

When was the last time his parents apologized to him, or cared about what he wanted/needed, or talked to him so gently?

The contrast between his parents and David is so big, and I think that's what makes Max finnaly go "Yeah, this guy isn't actually that bad."

(Sorry for rambling, omg.)

hi first of all thank u for an ask and such insightful one at it too !! this was an incredibly pleasant read and a lot of the stuff you say i personally find very good analysis of the show and agree with, however i do have some stuff to say abt it soo here we go ^-^ (this will be a long one so sorry about this in advance)

as i said in some previous reply, max is an incredibly peculiar guy when it comes to the way this show treats his trauma and the way he himself behaves as a result of it, and that’s by design! a lot of the thing he says and does in the first two seasons when it comes to david are there for reasons of narrative set up, and are later masterfully recontextualized by parents day later, leaving very little room for interpretation when it comes to how and why he operates. im gonna go out on a limb and say that i don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that most of his actions towards david in the early show stem from the childish born-from-trauma need for attention and also from his need for societal reinforcement of his own ego’s right to exist. when it comes to the first one i see most people agree (bc it’s a basic child psychology fact), but turn their noses in reference to the second one.

contrary to popular belief, max being in need of constant affirmation that he, as a person with little self value, deserves to exist next to other people is something that we see examples of constantly and is not a terrible part of his character that needs to be ignored. max is a neglect victim who from our knowledge is given very little attention by his parents, as a result of it he is a pessimistic asshole kid whose ego suffers from the very thing that made it this way. its in his strained relationship with nikki and neil, its in him arguing with david to put himself in the position of an adult, its him putting himself above others when it’s not needed and its in him putting his own egos safety first when time comes to accept that things are moving forward (two final episodes from both s3 and s4 are good examples of this). its not an inherently positive trait, but it is one okay for him to have by the virtue of being a young abused child with no support system, and denying it will leave him devoid of this characterization. in freudian (ugh) terms, we cannot separate his character’s superego from his id in a way that won’t harm the way he was intentionally written. Id, ego and superego are all influenced by our relationship with our parents, the amount of nurturing of a child's emotional and psychological needs parents does will result in the child’s psychological state forming a certain way, max as a character who is heavily reliant of his lackluster relationship with his parents is not devoid of this and it affects his relationship with david too. and the reason i’m saying all of this is exactly due to this.

david, when put in most simple terms, is a character who’s an adult figure present and mature enough in max’s current social position that it allows him to treat max as a child, something max is not used to. not used to to such an extent that it puts a strain on his ego in the process. david feeds his need for any form of attention, positive or not, just as much as he clips away at max’s need to be seen as socially important and in a position of an adult. it’s arguable if both of these are good or not but the main thing they are in relation to is obvious: max feels that being an adult who meets both of his psychological needs in ways that are unfamiliar to him makes david an untrustworthy person, thats exactly where you interpretation comes in clutch.

max and his behavior towards david cannot be separated from david being an adult, that is made clear with the way he treats nikki as an equal just because she is a person his age, despite her sharing a lot of david’s traits. going through the episodes you mentioned, order of the sparrow episode lets max see david perspective for the very first time. max is allowed to peek into the reason why david acts the way he does, however it alone doesn’t make him see david in a good light, if anything it makes him appear genuine in his actions. it also lets max have something for david that he didn’t have before: trust. it ends up being used in cult camp as a confirmation of it being something david can live up to (you are absolutely right, we really don’t talk abt this episode and it’s narrative weight enough). all of this has been adding onto the way max himself perceives david, parents day, however, lets both of them internalize the sentiment of mutual understanding towards each other together. parents day does this by lampshading max and david parallelism, making this whole episode consist of max seeing his parents in david just as much as david sees himself in max through the whole show and putting them in each others shoes by the end of it. the episode ends with david choosing max as a priority, he is still acting selfishly (once again david is an asshole) but choosing to do so towards max because the situation allows him to understand max the way s1 finale let max understand him. and with the final turning point in their dynamic, max understands that both his ego and need for attention can exist without them being reinforced by an adult treating him like he is an adult too. max was chosen as a priority for the very first time and that alone made him feel of more value than the treatment he initially yearned for would have. above all else parents day makes max see david as someone he can look up to as a person in emotional way, not only in a life or death situations, the shot of david from his perspective in the end making sure that we don’t miss it.

most of this is not me disagreeing with you, on the opposite i think a lot of the arguments you make are nice and are mindful interaction with the media. gold star for enjoying meta analysis to both of us i guess ⭐️. my main problem is, however, the fact that using all of this to basically say ‘maxs parents suck so he has a distain for david because of it’ is a heavy oversimplification that you somehow go against in your initial statement too and that i, personally, just don’t enjoy. this alone does not make your interpretation wrong though, if anything just reinforces your general idea into a more concrete argument rather than a collection of bits and pieces of evidence pointing to it. hope all of this made sense

tldr; man idk no summing up this one as to not take away from the overall statement im making with this. read the post 🫶

[girls-are-weird]

YR fanfic pet peeves (and corrections): latin america edition

so. i was originally going to post this in january as a kind of "new year, new opportunity to learn about simon's hispanic heritage" kind of a thing, but life got busy, and then my computer died and i lost my original list, so i've had to reconstruct this from memory as best as i could. there may be some stuff missing, so perhaps i'll just keep adding to this post as missing/new points come to mind.

disclaimer 1: if you've included any of the points made here on any fanfic of yours, please don't take this as a call-out. this isn't intended to shame anyone, but rather as an educational opportunity. it's very rare that a latin american nationality that is not mexican or colombian or puerto rican is showcased in an international show, especially outside of the US, and it's given me such joy to have all of you lovely folks make the effort to be open to and research and understand the idiosyncrasies of simon's (and omar's) heritage because the rest of latin america tends to go overlooked in most other fandoms. so i don't intend to scold anyone with this. we can't all know everything about every other culture-- lord knows i don't know everything about sweden, but i want to be respectful to the country and its people and that is why i heavily research anything i don't know and ask people who do know when my research doesn't quite cover it and am open to corrections when even that falls short. i expect most of you come to write about simon's family background in good faith and also want to be respectful to his family's culture, and so i thought i might make things a bit easier for you all by putting the most common errors/misunderstandings i've seen in one handy post. but once again, it's not a call-out, i don't get offended by these things, and i'm in no way implying, if you've done any of these things in fic or in life, that you are a bad person. i understand people make mistakes when they don't know things.

disclaimer 2: i am not venezuelan myself. i was born and raised in the same general region of latin america, though, and i have venezuelan friends and have worked with venezuelan people and have visited venezuela. generally speaking, i feel their culture is very similar to mine (though our spanish is much closer to spanglish than theirs is, haha xD) and feel a deep kinship with them. but of course, i'm no native, and if you're venezuelan and catch anything here that you feel is incorrect, feel free to point it out and i'll add a correction in your name.

warning: this is very long. christ almighty. DX if you can't make it to the end, tl;dr-- feel free to ask if you have any questions or if anything isn't clear. my ask box/messages are always open.

1- "mijo." this is the only one that legit has caused me to click out of several fics/chapters, at least in the beginning, but i've learned to grin and bear it by now. it's not so much that it's wrong, per se, but rather it's more of a location issue. "mijo" is, to my ears, very much a mexican (or, if you stretch it, northern triangle) slang. it IS used sparingly in other countries, but rarely used unironically. instead, if you hear the term used in the caribbean region of latin america (which my country is part of, as is a large part of venezuela), it's almost always used… let's say sarcastically. for example, if your grown-ass adult friend is being a dumbass and doing something reckless, you might call out "oiga, mijo, se va a romper el cuello" ("hey, mijo, you're going to break your neck"). basically, it's a way of calling someone immature like a child. it doesn't have to be ENTIRELY unaffectionate (kinda like the way someone might call their significant other "idiot" or "dummy" but mean it endearingly. in fact, in colombia it's way more common for spouses to call each other "mijo/a" than it is for them to call their children that), but you can also use it with complete strangers-- like if someone cuts sharply into your lane while you're driving, you might yell at them "oiga, mijo, a donde le enseñaron a manejar, en un potrero?!" ("hey, mijo, where did you learn how to drive, in a horse paddock?!"). but even in these sarcastic/neggy cases, it's rare. and EVEN RARER to hear a mother call her children "mijo" or "mija" in this region. it's just not a thing. so when i read it in fanfic, it immediately takes me out of the story because it's so weird to me that linda would sound mexican-- it's a very distinctive accent, which carmen gloria 1000000% does not have. (plus, "mijo" in spanish is a type of birdseed. so it gave me a chuckle the first few times i read it in a fic because i always have that brief second of confusion where i go "why is linda calling simon birdseed?" before it clicks. xD i'm a dork.) it's much more likely that linda would just say "hijo" or "mi hijo," instead.

1b- the way you decide on whether to use "hijo" or "mi hijo" is important because "mi hijo" can sound overly formal in the modern context especially, much like it would in english. in fact, you can use the english version of it, "son" vs "my son" to guide you on which of the two to use. like for example, if linda were to say directly to simon "i love you, my son," she would sound oddly old-timey and anachronistic, so you would just use "son" ("hijo") in that case. whereas if she's talking about simon with someone else, for example saying "i told my son to be here on time," you'd be perfectly okay to use "mi hijo" in that sentence in spanish. it's very transferable in that case.

2- speaking of non-transferable, though, you can't use "cariño" in all instances you would use "sweetheart" or "sweetie." it really depends on the grammatical construction, and it can be tricky to get it right, but it depends on whether you're using it as a direct address or as an object. for example, if you're using it in place of someone's name-- say, a mother telling her child "te quiero, cariño" ("i love you, sweetheart/sweetie") is perfectly fine, because in that case, she could also say "te quiero, hijo" ("i love you, son") or "te quiero, simon" ("i love you, simon"). but if, say, simon says to wille "you're my sweetheart," you would not use "cariño" there; you'd go instead with some syrupy way to say "boyfriend," like "eres mi novio" or "eres mi enamorado" or even "eres mi amor," and if sara tells felice "you're a sweetheart," that would also not involve "cariño" at all. in addition, "cariño" is also very rarely used in plural; if linda is using a term of endearment for both her kids, or for a group of teens her kids' age, she would use a different term of endearment altogether: "hola, mis amores" ("hi, my loves"), "hola, bebés" ("hi, babies") or "hola, mis tesoros" ("hi, my treasures") among some examples. one exception is when you say "cariños míos" ("my sweethearts"), but very rarely the plural by itself. in fact, "cariño" is often slang for gift or present, especially in the diminutive-- for example, if you go to someone's celebratory party for some occassion (birthdays, graduations, baby showers, heck even christmas), you might hand them a small gift and go "te traje un cariñito" ("i brought you a small present"), and if it's more than one gift, or you're bringing gifts for several people, then you'd say "unos cariños" or "unos cariñitos" in the plural.

3- simon's skin is tan, not tanned. this… doesn't personally bug me as much because it's more of an english grammar issue, but i know people who might actually feel very offended if you get this one wrong with respect to them. "tan" is a color; a light shade of brown. "tanned" implies the original color of your skin has darkened with the sun. now, i'm sure simon can tan (lucky goat, says she whose skin burns even while indoors), but about 95% of the time "tanned" is used in YR fanfiction, it's used as a descriptor of the color of simon's skin as we see it on the show. that would imply his skin used to be lighter at some indeterminate before-time and has been darkened by the sun. this is incorrect; that is the natural color of simon's skin. so stick to "tan skin" instead (not tan PERSON, mind you. his SKIN is tan, he is not). and i would gently suggest that if you take away any single thing from this post, make it ESPECIALLY this point, as someone more sensitive than me might interpret this error as some kind of retroactive whitewashing. and i don't want anyone here to get in trouble for simply not knowing.

4- pabellón criollo is one dish, yes, but it's four different FOODS. it's not something a newbie would be able to make off of a recipe (i don't know how to make it and i've been eating it all my life), and it's not something that's likely to be taught in just one day. also, if you're bringing it to a dinner or a potluck, you're bringing four separate food containers, not just one.

4b- also, venezuelan food, for the most part, is not particularly spicy. you CAN make it spicy if you want, but traditionally, it is not. it's flavorful, maybe even saucy depending on the dish, but rarely spicy. i know the joke of white people being unable to handle spice is funny, but there's also plenty of us hispanic people who are equally terrible at it, because there's different levels of spice in the food from different regions of latin america. besides, as a friend of mine perfectly put: we are living in the 21st century now. if you can eat mild mexican food, you should be able to handle traditional venezuelan food just fine. and i'm pretty sure there's mexican food in sweden. plus, wille would probably be more used to international food-- not only does he have the means, but having traditional meals in foreign countries is kind of part of the job.

5- while i'm at it: simon is definitely half venezuelan. this is canon as of S2. there is no other place in the world where that dish is called pabellón. please keep that in mind when you're writing and researching.

5b- this, along with several of the points above, is important because it's a bit of diaspora trauma that whenever we venture outside of latin america and people learn we're latino, they immediately assume we're mexican, or that our culture and traditions are the same as those of mexican people. it happens often, and it's incredibly annoying. not that there's anything wrong with mexico or mexican people-- they're lovely, and their traditions and culture and food are fantastic-- but we are not them, and treating us like we are is reductive. the rest of latin america can be very different and incredibly diverse, and it can be dispiriting when people treat us like we're all the same. so that is why it is important when writing about simon, his family or his venezuelan roots, that you take care to actually research things as they are in venezuela, and not just pick the low-hanging fruit of latino facts you might've learned through pop cultural osmosis, which eight times out of ten will be mexican-only because most hispanic people in the US are mexican and the US exports its media all over the world. i've learned to just roll my eyes at it by now, but some people might actually feel offended or hurt, and i'm sure nobody here intends for that to happen.

6- although simon speaks spanish, neither he nor sara nor his mother nor any aspect of his mother's culture is spanish. "spanish" is what people from spain call themselves. people from spanish-speaking latin american countries are not spanish; we are hispanic, or latino/a/e. "latinx" is… let's call it controversial, at least outside of the US. most people born and raised in latin america don't like it; i personally don't get offended if people use it, but i don't use the term myself. also, you can say "latin food" or "latin music," but we usually don't refer to PEOPLE as latin, but rather latino/a/e. if in doubt, just use latin american or hispanic. they're also conveniently gender neutral.

EDIT: @andthatisnotfake also brought up a very important point: "if you spell it latinx, it makes it harder for screen readers to read (or so I've been told) and some people depend on those, so there's another reason to avoid it." (the unpronounceability of that term is at least part of the reason why hispanic people who live in latin america don't like it.)

6b- never use "the latino/a" on its own to refer to people. "latino/a/e" is an adjective, not a noun, so you would say "the latino boy" or "the latino man" but never just "the latino." kinda like it would be weird to point out the one japanese man in a room as "the japanese." there are some nationality/ethnic terms that just don't work as nouns in english.

7- spanish is not simon's one native language-- or at least not any more than swedish is. he grew up in a mixed-race household, speaking two different languages. it's pointless to call spanish his native language when comparing it to swedish. both are his native languages. also, while we're at this, wille is probably at least bilingual (i'm assuming he can speak at least english), although he only has one native language. it's hardly a competition between the two boys as to who's more of a polyglot.

7b- simon wouldn't take classes on the spanish language-- like to learn how to SPEAK the language-- since spanish is one of his native languages. he wouldn't take them at hillerska, nor in university, nor elsewhere. he wouldn't be allowed. you're literally not allowed to take classes on your native language, nor get credit for said classes. trust me, those would've been an easy extra 24 credits for me in college if that was a thing.

EDIT: have been made aware (thanks, @rightsogetthis and @plantbasedfish!) that at least in sweden and in finland one IS allowed to take classes of your non-swedish/finnish native language, in certain circumstances. i have to say, i'd be pissed if i were taking my french classes alongside a french native speaker, but hey, the system's the system, i guess. ;) so i've struck this one out.

8- dear god please don't use google translate for your spanish translations. listen, i'm not judging-- i do it with other languages, too, when i'm in a pinch. but google translate is literally The Worst (tm) so i always try to either check with someone, or stick to the stuff i already know is correct. seriously, you don't want to know the kinds of crazy stuff GT can spit out that people actually put out in the real world; some of them are quite hilarious. if you're unsure, my ask box/messages are always open and i looooove helping people with this kind of thing, hispanic language and cultural stuff. i know it seems like i'm hardly around, but i do check my messages. don't be shy, even if it's something really small.

PS: while i'm talking pet peeves, malin is wille's bodyguard, not his butler. she's nice enough to attend to him at hillerska because there's no other palace staff around and she's literally stationed outside his door, but she wouldn't do that in the actual palace. there's other staff for that. she wouldn't even guard him at the palace, i don't think, because the royal palaces in sweden are guarded by the royal guard, not SÄPO. if anything, malin might spend the time while wille is in the palace grounds at a gatehouse (like in YR 2x03 and onwards) or at some kind of security office in the palace, and then get called whenever wille needs to go anywhere. she wouldn't be giving wille messages from the queen or walking guests to wille's room or anything like that. that's not her job. (sorry, i had to get that off my chest, lol.)

[solsays]

okay guys hello hi so a (more serious) post before we’re back to the sillies but like I’ve seen a bit of this in the QSMP community recently and I feel like it needs to be addressed

you’re free to dislike a creator/cc’s fanbase, but don’t lump them all together. Every fanbase has its different parts, and that means that not everybody is the same. I’ve seen this most with Wilbur and Phil mains, how people are like “oh you’re oblivious and don’t care to watch other streamers” or whatever it is, and often they get accused of summing characters/creators up to all they know them as through Phil or Wilbur or their relationships with other characters. This isn’t to say that doesn’t happen, but it’s not nearly as common as many seem to think!

This is coming from someone who has been watching Phil for going on four years now; we know more than you think, and often there are actual reasons for why we don’t watch other ccs. For me, it’s because I can rarely tune in when people are actually live thanks to school and work and such, so I take to watching vods and clips to keep caught up on the events. I am also not fully bilingual (English, and I speak partial Spanish but fast Spanish still confuses me sometimes) which makes it hard to watch people like the Brazilian or French players (I don’t speak either language) outside of clips where they’re playing with the English or Spanish speakers! As a result, my knowledge of many of them (Mike, Bagi, Antoine, etc) is pretty limited. I try my best to keep up with everyone on character stuff, but it can be hard if we’re busy. Another thing is that a large part of (especially) Phil’s fanbase are adults, who have families or college or work and they can’t always keep up with every minute detail or trait of characters, and I know this is true for many other cc’s fanbases as well.

of course, everybody is allowed to have their own opinions, and it’s okay if you aren’t a fan of a cc or their fans! All I’m asking is that we don’t hate on those creators or their fans, especially if it’s because you’ve had not great experiences with some of their fans. Often I think the former DSMP members fans are seen as stupid little kids who are toxic and childish, while in reality most of us are over 16 or even adults. Phil, Foolish, Slime, Quackity, etc were never really the problematic part of the dsmp fanbase, which was kind of split into Techno’s friends and their fans (who were always pretty chill for the most part) and then dream’s friends and their fans (who were and still are pretty problematic a lot of the time). I never was a huge dsmp enjoyer, so I never really watched the lore and preferred to watch their other stuff, but I always disliked the dream team and their little group, they always rubbed me the wrong way.

I only truly watch Phil’s streams, but I’ve taken up watching Cellbit and Fit as well, even if I can’t understand Cellbit sometimes, so remember that we won’t know everything niche about characters because of the language barriers! Don’t be a dick or rude to people who are unaware of certain parts of lore and such because they don’t watch multiple creators, we want to keep the QSMP fandom a chill safe place where people don’t feel hated or excluded just because of which creator(s) they watch, so in summary just be nice to everyone and don’t hate on people just because they don’t do things the same way as you. This community was created with the purpose of bringing people together and breaking barriers, so let’s try and keep that moral in mind while interacting with other fans!

TLDR: you’re free to dislike creators or their fans, just don’t lump them all together and say they’re all clueless or don’t care about any other characters! Let’s keep the point of the QSMP fandom what Quackity intended—breaking language barriers and bringing people together/lifting them up instead of putting them down :)

[aingeal98]

Hi, so I was reading some of your Stephanie Brown meta & kudos, serious props yours is excellent. I also noticed you seem to be among those who picked up on the worrying undercurrent of Stephanie's relationships with older men. So double kudos for that.

Especially as its one of those things that tends to get glossed over in fandom & I am unsure at times if some writers even grasped what they were doing. Though that may say more about how girls tend to be treated/viewed as adults rather than children, teenagers or victims, save when its convenient to judge them as such.

Sorry not sure where I am going with this, but I think your stance it from that "Five ships that won't happen" section of the Steph ask as well thought out and covered a lot, so third kudos just for tackling that heavy topic so deftly and efficiently.

Ah thank you! Stephanie's relationship with men is so fascinating to me because she's been hurt so many times and the dissonance between her canon and fanon versions are pretty grim yet interesting. Like in early canon she was the Faith to Ariana's Buffy, the Veronica to the Bettys that were Tim's other love interests at the time. And various writers had various ideas about why she was the way she was, a common theme being that she had difficult relationships with the men in her life and had been hurt in the past. Be it a villain, a friend of her fathers, Cluemaster himself, or a shitty clearly too old guy named Dean. I don't think it was meant to be a pattern, more likely just individual ideas about trauma Steph suffered in her past that ended up turning into a consistent trait.

So you've got an abusive father, at least two cases of SA that I can remember (her babysitter and Black Mask), a pregnancy with clear subtext that the father was older than her, and the general way Batman treats her.

Not to mention she was a minor when all this happened. Like Steph has so many issues that she deserves the chance to unpack but instead they've just kind of... softened her down. Like her Batgirl run was the first chance she'd gotten to be the actual hero instead of The Girl in a story written by sexists, and she deserved every second of that. There had been too much injustice done to her character and her Batgirl run did a good job at setting the baseline for giving her a decent narrative. But afterwards, the New 52 could have delved more into her psyche instead of leaning into her waffles and sparkles fanon characterization. But because the New 52 is the worst, it didn't. And now here we are.

It's one of the reasons I'd really love to write a story about Steph realising she's bisexual, because I think in some ways her view of men are due to feeling trapped by heterosexuality and the patriarchal society. It's hard to explain fully without going into a whole other meta but the way she reacts to Tim showing her bare minimum decency is heartbreaking. Like yes men are awful and have been awful to her but she still likes them, she's going to settle down and marry one eventually right? She just has to find the right one, and Tim didn't treat her like complete garbage so he might be it for her!

And then for her to realise that no, she doesn't. She can marry a man if she wants to but if she wants romance there's also women... I really think bi Steph could be so much more than a simple "Oh hey I like girls now cool lol." Like it would shake a significant amount of the misogyny she's internalised and directed towards herself, it could alter the view she's taken of the world, and it would allow her to see her past trauma through a different lens, maybe with less subconscious self hatred.

Sorry this turned into a giant ramble haha, but thank you for the ask!

[twistedwonderlandsimps]

Thoughts on Sibling!Yuu AU

The main reason I made the Sibling!Yuu AU was because I wanted to see Yuu being the older one for once. In most fandoms, it’s pretty common to see a younger sibling reader fic so I wanted to flip that trope for once. It’s also quite rare for the reader to be older than a teen or an adult. The second reason was the massive angst potential it held. That’s right, Yuu overblot was imminent from the very start in this one because honestly the probability of the overblot boys overblotting much earlier because of Yuu is very high and is extremely likely. Them blaming Yuu for some of the things happening in their life is also very likely.

Sibling!Yuu has everything the overblot boys want to have and those with their inferiority complex would just make it worse.

For example with Riddle. Would he blame Yuu for running away from their mother, which in turn made their mother stricter with Riddle so that he wouldn’t end up like Yuu? Would he resent this fact? He’d likely have a negative initial impression of them because they ran from their own mother and Riddle at an early time still thinks that their mother is always right and that means what Yuu did was wrong. Anything or anyone that opposes their mother is wrong. Anyone who opposes the things their mother taught him was wrong. Anyone who opposes him is always wrong. Though, a deep part of him is envious that Yuu got to be free. Whether Riddle blames Yuu or not, Yuu will think that it’s their fault.

Even if he doesn’t say it out loud, Leona would feel irritated every time he sees Yuu telling him what to do and what not to do so he doesn’t end up like them. Their constant presence keeps reminding him that the only reason he couldn’t become king was because he wasn’t born earlier and Yuu got a taste of that crown, even if they did get kicked out of the family in the end.

Yuu’s constant interference with dealing with Azul’s bullies when they were younger only made the bullies bolder and meaner the moment Yuu went away so there’s that possibility of some kind of blaming in that one, just like in Riddle’s situation.

As for Jamil's situation, although not Jamil's sibling, Yuu's still part of the Asim family and Jamil technically has a resentment for them because of, well, everything. He was forced to downplay his abilities and be responsible for Kalim, and he has no choice but to serve the Asim family. Kalim himself might not have a problem with Yuu, but Jamil sure does because there’s another person from the Asim family. Another person he has to be responsible for because they seem to be just as careless and reckless as Kalim, even if Yuu is technically older. (Someone stop me, please, I am becoming feral. I can’t stop thinking of Jamil getting a huge crush on this Yuu for some reason and I am internally screaming. He really gonna do the enemies to lovers arc after his overblot, or even before that, and I just can’t. He really said: ‘If I can’t get out of this family, I’m just gonna have to marry into it.’)

Then we have Vil. Yuu would definitely be a big contender for the most beautiful one of all and Vil is not happy. Now that he’s realized that he actually had a sibling, he has to compete with them to be the most beautiful. And he just can’t understand why he’s losing to a sudden sibling he hasn’t even met until now! What was so different between the two of them? Yuu wasn’t even that active in social media before but now that they were staying in NRC for some reason (for plot reasons), people were now beginning to constantly compare the two of them and it’s driving Vil insane.

As for Idia, after seeing the reason why Ortho got diagnosed with the dead, there’s also some blaming there. Yuu’s supposed to be one running the S.T.Y.X organization but both Idia and Ortho (the og) got inside and managed to hack the system. This’ll definitely raise the question of why the two were allowed entry easily when there were dangerous things locked inside the place and why Yuu wasn’t keeping a closer eye to them when they were in the facility that led to the accident. 

I might also have to retcon the previous Idia!Yuu's background to fit with Shroud brother’s story. So now the idea that I have is that Yuu was present for the brother’s childhood growing up (kind of) but they didn’t have a close relationship and it was very distant. The Shroud brothers probably don’t remember Yuu, either. They probably thought Yuu was just an employee in S.T.Y.X. and not their sibling. Still, Yuu cared for them so much that when the incident happened, they were overwhelmed with grief and willingly locked themselves away because they fully blamed themselves for what had happened.  The only reason they broke out of their self-imposed prison and landed themself in NRC was because they heard Grim talking about Ortho as if he was alive and wanted to see what was up with that. Yuu doesn’t want to show their face to their younger brothers because they’re ashamed and feel like they don’t deserve it.

Then we have Malleus. I don’t know if he’s the jealous type or not, but seeing your older sibling be more sociable than you (somehow, even when they act like a kuudere) and getting more friends than you despite the fact that they’re the older Draconia sibling while Malleus himself was avoided and have had people fear him would be kinda frustrating. It’s another case of ‘what do you have that I don’t?’ thing. Or maybe the others are taking Yuu’s time away and they barely hang out with Malleus and he finds this unfair because Yuu’s their sibling so why is everyone taking them away? Why isn’t Yuu hanging out with them?

Additionally, we can’t forget the fact that Yuu literally go against the boys. There’s bound to be some feelings of betrayal there. Kinda like a. “We’re family and you’re taking their side?! Why are you abandoning me for them?!”

–

[Bonus]

Yuu Rosehearts: “I wish I had been strong like you….”

Yuu Kingscholar: “Don’t make the same mistakes as I did and be better than me.”

Yuu Ashengrotto: “Was all of this… my fault…?”

Yuu Schoenheit: “Because to me… you’re always my number one!”

Yuu Shroud: “All I ever wanted in my life was to protect you...”

Yuu Draconia: “I had to leave you to keep you safe!” 

Yuu (Al-)Asim: “…”

Yuu (Al-)Asim: “I have no idea what I’m doing here but I think they need therapy.”

[autism-alley]

augh found my old post abt pjo and disability from before the show came out but it was on ye olde blog so i’m literally just gonna copy and paste, 3, 2, 1—

ok now that i’ve got it on the brain, i want to talk about disability in pjo and specifically how calling percy jackson dumb or treating him as such is not only a mischaracterization, but ableism. as a quick note, i’m keeping this to just percy to avoid having this already long post be even longer, but there are other disabled characters in pjo worthy of discussion, though i hit many of the same points in this post. i bring up percy specifically because he is mostly the character i have seen people treat as stupid.

percy is a dyslexic teen with ADHD who comes from a low-income family, raised by a single mother, and deals with an abusive step-father. i cannot stress enough how much of his character is shaped by that experience, but as hard as it is to single out any one part, i am going to focus on his ADHD and dyslexia. this kid has nightmares of being forced to take tests in a straightjacket as teachers ask him if he’s stupid and withhold him from recess with his peers. he is constantly labelled as “troubled” and blamed for things he didn’t do or aren’t his fault. he is told, over and over again, even from trusted adults, that he is “not normal” (othering him). he bounces between schools. he struggles to make friends. he deals with bullying. he has difficulty studying and reading, even when invested. teachers struggle to connect with him and tend to just give up on him. these are real disabled experiences, and rick does a good job at presenting them in the pjo books. sometimes, it feels like everything is a struggle. you are living inside a system that not only is restricting, but actively works against and punishes you.

in contrast, CHB is a great example of how when environments meet the needs of disabled people, it hugely changes how disabled we are in that environment. demigod brains are hard-wired for ancient greek, not english, and they’re born impulsive, with high energy levels that help them survive battle—but aren’t very good for a classroom setting. but by having them read books in ancient greek, regularly do lots of training/physical activities, and have genuine opportunities to express themselves...they function pretty damn well. percy discovers that while he struggles academically, he is brilliant in combat and capable of saving the world numerous times—he is a hero. do you know how important that message is for disabled children? disabled adults, too? that we can be heroes?

it is here, in camp half-blood, that percy finds a place he belongs, that shows him his worth—finally, somewhere is built to not only include him, but to nurture and genuinely prepare him for the world outside its boarders. however, i think people forget that just because percy functions in the world of CHB and the gods, that does not mean he doesn’t face ableism in the mortal world—and that there is an entire group of people who see ourselves reflected in his character.

i could talk on for hours about how much being disabled shapes percy’s identity and how he interacts with the world—like how percy’s humor revolves around coping with his environment and actually displays a very low self esteem after being looked down upon his entire life. this kid doesn’t even have to say anything and he screams i had a neurodivergent childhood. but about 5-6 years ago, when i was more regularly tuned into the fandom, every time i saw someone call percy jackson dumb or an idiot, even jokingly, i raised an eyebrow, and now that the series is getting fresh coverage from disney+, i have wanted to make this post. so much of this kid’s life and personality comes from being treated like he’s dumb or incapable, so it’s troubling to watch part of the fanbase reflect the harmful parts of this character’s upbringing. i truly hope it does not become common again. it’s also one thing coming from a neurodivergent/disabled person with similar experiences (and even then i personally find it a little uncomfortable), it’s another to be said by a neurotypical/able bodied person.

percy jackson’s experiences make for very important representation, and for people to characterize him as just a goofy, unintelligent guy is not only an insult to his character as a kid who is intelligent, but previously lacked the environment to show it, but also ableist. so in the dawn of the new tv series era, i ask that we cut that shit out. rick riordan did not create rep for neurodivergent and disabled kids for them to be called stupid by the fanbase. even jokingly.

[according2thelore]

Hi I love your writing so much! Your late seasons/early seasons verse is one of the most interesting things to come out of this fandom, and I’m always impressed with you well you understand the characters. I was wondering, Do you think the earlier seasons boys would find any parts of later seasons Sam and Dean to be similar to John? You don’t have to answer, if you’re too busy with other asks. Have a great day!

oh shit?? holy shit??

anon?? kissing u with passion rn, anon. this compliment just made the rest of my week + an extra bonus week! i don't even know what to say! BUT THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

and YES! I DO! we talked about this in my post on tuesday, but what specific parts of each LS!Sam&Dean remind them of john?? oh worm? let's discuss!

For ES!Sam:

again, i think LS!Sam reminds him the most of john, for a couple of reasons. for sam, he experienced john's parenting as mostly arguing and being unwilling to discuss/hear sam out. it's his way or the highway, and that's something sam really resents about his father (we're not breaking new ground here, lol.) he also hates not being treated like an equal/adult, and resents john for hiding things from him, and keeping him at a distance. sounds familiar? sam getting mad at john for being stubborn is real kettle-pot behaviour, but i digress. LS!Sam absolutely makes the ban on telling-them-the-future conversations. he has a very set idea of how things are supposed to go, and how they are supposed to act. he gets easily frustrated with ES!Sam because ES!Sam presses and presses and presses and wants to Be A Part Of Every Conversation All The Time. ES!Sam resents LS!Sam for "babying" him/not treating him like an equal. ES!Sam felt very patronized by john, and feels very patronized by LS!Sam--the holier-than-thou, i-know-better-than-you-end-of-discussion rubs him WRONG.

as for LS!Dean, i think he would appreciate the softness of him. john had quiet moments. again, if we're going with S!2, sam has softened towards his father in retrospect, so he's primed with john's better moments while he's mourning. LS!Dean is protective. he says simple facts, and it feels like more than the words do (you're my brother. and of course i look out for you. and yes, i am happy. and come here for a second. and are you okay?) he can of course see some of john's anger, but i think it would bother him a little less, because LS!Dean makes such a concentrated effort to make him feel included, and a part of this future. he invites sam out to the garage and cooks him breakfast and they bond over common things, like movies pre-2006. the most negative thing he can say about LS!Dean and john is his control. while LS!Sam is more stubborn, LS!Dean is more controlling. he's a little smothering with his mothering.

For ES!Dean:

with all the fawning he does, he sees mostly john's good qualities in LS!Sam. specifically, i think he sees a lot of the "doting" aspects of john's personality. sam keeps knick-knacks and photographs and takes charge like nobody's business. he's in charge because things work well that way. he's decisive, and true to himself, and knows exactly what he wants when he wants it. he has a truly encyclopedic knowledge of monsters, and is intensely protective of those in his life. the most negative thing he can say about LS!Sam and john is that LS!Sam tends to give orders. which ES!Dean follows, because while he wasn't always sure about dad, sammy has his best intentions at heart. unlike dad, sammy will never ask the impossible of him. sammy knows best.

however, he sees a lot of negative traits in LS!Dean. dad was absent, and emotionally manipulative, and drunk. he had a lot of anger that he kept beneath the surface, and you could be joking with him the one minute and being scolded in the other. you felt like the most important person in his world (high burden of emotional needs) and then he'd disappear for two months and leave you to fend for yourself. very up/down. he never remembers your birthday, but while elbow-deep into a fifth of whisky, he tells you that you and sammy are the only reason he still cares to be alive. he sees LS!Dean's short fuse, and it makes him angry. and it makes him sad. he sees the bottles and bottles and bottles of liquor that they have in the sammy-mandated recycling bin. he sees the hard set of his jaw and the crease between his brows, and the short, sharp replies. then he sees LS!Dean's soft looks with ES!Sam, his quiet devotion to LS!Sam, the far-away stare at nothing. he sees his father, haunted by ghosts and on a mission that LS!Dean seems hyper-focused on, but unsure what it is. so he tries to hyper-control everyone around him, and is so up/down about it that it gives dean whiplash.

i think overall, they will be a lot more critical of themselves than they will be of each other (bc this show loves to capitalize on some self-hating man pain, which...y'know. slay. that's why we're here.) so i think a lot of their perception of "john" qualities will be skewed. especially since we see S!2 boys, but especially dean, be more critical of their relationship with john.

if you had an angry man in your house, you will always have an angry man in your house, etc. etc.

again, i have NO IDEA if these john takes are hot takes because charlotte and i just go "i agree!" "i agree!" back and forth in an endless loop whenever we discuss the man in question. but i hope this was fun!

anyway, i hope YOU have a great day, anon! i hope i answered this in a time when you'll see it! i always worry about anons not being able to see these when i reply bc y'all don't get notified.

but know that this meant so much to me! and i hope you're doing well this fine thursday! i always have time for you, blessed nonnie!

mwah!

-lizzy <3

[laundrybiscuits]

I've recently been tagged in a few WIP/"last thing you've written" type games, and…to be completely candid, I haven't been writing any kind of fic lately because I've become a little bit obsessed with analyzing the Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along.

Not for any particular purpose, I just saw it at the Hudson a little while back and have a lot of feelings about it! In my tiny scraps of spare time, I've been working on an essay about Merrily and inevitability that will probably end up rotting in my google docs*, because that's how I approach writing as a hobby.

There's just so much there, holy shit. I'm focusing particularly on "Franklin Shepard, Inc." because Radcliffe's Charley brings a frenetic, desperate vulnerability to the performance that reads so, so differently from earlier productions. Throughout the show, I was consistently blown away by the heavy lifting Radcliffe, Mendez, and Groff do in shifting the core tension from "art vs commerce" (fine but basic, and difficult to keep modern) to "how people prioritize different types of relationships in their lives."

In an effort to make this slightly less wildly off-topic for this blog: this has gotten me thinking about the way that platonic relationships are treated in narratives, particularly but not exclusively in fandom.

"Found family" is and has always been a popular trope, but I do think its current incarnation trades a lot on the underlying fantasy of relationship permanence. When we recategorize friendships as familial relationships, we're making a claim—whether or not it's justified—about the indelibility of those relationships.

That's not inherently bad (or, god forbid, problematic). I think it's very very natural, especially for those who don't necessarily have a lot of experience with the way adult friendships change over time. Why wouldn't you want something as precious and unique and amazing as a good friendship to stay with you forever?

Certain people can feel like pillars of your world, and it's fucking terrifying to think about that being yanked out from under you—or even worse, to think about your lives slowly shifting like geologic plates until suddenly you realize it's been weeks, then months, then years since you last really talked.

CHARLEY: We're not that kind of close any more, the way we used to be. And a friendship's like a garden. You have to water it and tend it and care about it. And you know what? I want it back.

It's a peculiar, particular kind of grief when it happens, because even though it's a fairly common human experience, it doesn't get socially acknowledged in the same way as e.g. a romantic breakup.

So yeah, it makes a lot of sense that found family is a popular trope in all kinds of media, not just fandom.

However...at this point, I've developed a knee-jerk wariness to the phrase "found family," because I've found it often correlates with a really flat, simplistic depiction of human relationships. In extreme cases, it simply recontextualizes a relationship within the socially acknowledged/acceptable framework of a stereotypical family unit.

This does a disservice to familial and nonfamilial relationships alike. Every family is different, so why do so many found families in media look the same?

(I was monologuing about this to my very patient girlfriend, and she pointed out that this also sets up a success/failure binary condition in relationships, where permanence is the arbiter of success in both romantic and nonromantic contexts. She is of course both beautiful and correct!)

I have friends with whom I can sometimes share a glance and know exactly what they're thinking. I even have a running joke with one friend about the sheer number of times we've said the same thing in unison over the last 15 years. I still need to be intentional about building those relationships, extending empathy when we differ, and carving out time to reconnect. Truly intimate long-term relationships of any kind involve disagreements, conflicting priorities, and negotiating and renegotiating boundaries.

Being "basically the same person" or "sharing a braincell" actually sounds super fucking lonely to me, personally, and it handily elides the difficult, essential process of keeping people in your life.

FRANK: Old friends let you go your own way. CHARLEY: Help you find your own way. MARY: Let you off when you're wrong. F: If you're wrong. C: When you're wrong. M: Right or wrong, the point is, old friends shouldn't care if you're wrong. F: Should, but not for too long. C: What's too long?

That's a more complicated and much more mature narrative to tell than "friendship will save the day!" Because it's not that common and there's not a deep bank of references to draw from, it takes a lot of effort and skill to depict well, and I don't blame creators for not wanting to let it suck up all the air in the room. However, I think it's important to acknowledge that platonic relationships can also be flanderised and flattened.

In the context of fandom, which has always traded heavily in Romance genre conventions, I would really like to see more thoughtful explorations of complicated nonromantic relationships. I'm not even talking about genfic here! I've actually been thinking about Stobin specifically because that relationship (rightly & understandably) tends to show up in any Steve-centric fic, including the vast ocean of Steddie fics, so it makes the issue slightly more visible than I've seen in other fandoms.

I'm not saying I want to see them fight, or not be friends, or not love each other fiercely and near-obsessively in the way that lonely teenagers can. I'm just saying I want them to be distinct individuals who view the world in very different ways, and choose each other anyway. They already have a complicated past; I know from personal experience that it's possible as a lesbian to be best friends with a guy who once made a little speech about how into you he was, but that little layer of history never quite goes away.

I don't want frictionless relationships in my life. I want people who will challenge me and whom I can challenge, in the context of love and trust. I want people in my life whom I have to work to understand, because my life is richer when I do. And sometimes, I want narratives that will reflect the grief of friendships that are no longer part of my life, despite the best efforts of everyone involved.

In Merrily, Charley sings, "Friendship's something you don't really lose—" but Radcliffe's thready, pleading delivery makes it all too clear: Charley already knows he's lying. The audience just needs to catch up.

*Other essays in that particular graveyard: understanding the cast of Peanuts through the lens of anomie, humor and subversive linguistic nationalism in 00s Singaporean TV, how to fix Miss Saigon. WHY am I this way.

[itsjustpoopeh]

3, 8, 19

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

"Keeley is a maternal figure for Jamie." my sibling in christ. what are you and your mama up to. those two FUCK and they LIKE IT. also Jamie already has a mummy. he never took her poster off his wank wall for fuck's sake she ain't a maternal figure for him (now she might be mommy buuuuut i ain't getting into alla THAT)

"Jamie and Georgie's interactions were borderline incestuous in Mom City." y'all can't talk about dismantling the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and turn around and call it "developmentally inappropriate" for a grown man to cuddle his mummy when he's upset and depressed. especially because i know, i KNOW y'all wouldn't have said that if Georgie was Dottie Lasso shaped. y'all didn't say that when Sam was cuddling with Ola. y'all said it because you turned that woman into a sexual object. unpack that shit

edited i forgot the cut lmao

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Jamie is a secretly self-loathing insecure mess. Did you watch the show? not once, not ONCE has Jamie demonstrated self-loathing or a lack of self-confidence. He had to learn how to not treat other people like shit, not how to hate himself.

Roy is a perfect uwu bean who has never been mean in his life ever ever. again. have you watched this show? in season one he was a whole 38 year old grown ass adult legend in his own time beefing with a fucking 23 year old whose best insult was calling him granddad. be for fucking real. and he didn't even try to captain that team until Ted jedi mind gamed him into it because he was wallowing in self-pity. i love him, but season one Roy was absolutely as unbearable as season one Jamie, the narrative just emotionally manipulated us about it differently. that's what makes him interesting. perfect soft uwu bean boy is BORING stop trying to convince me Roy is boring

Ted is depressed and suicidal and sacrificing his happiness in kansas. Shut the entire fuck up. That man was yelling about how homesick he was for kansas every chance he had for the entire run of the show. Also related is the "ted gave up his entire richmond family and support system to go back to kansas" hmm did he though? Realistically, did he really develop a close knit community and support system in richmond? other than the diamond dogs, whom he routinely ignored? all of his interactions with the wider richmond community (the pub, the shopkeepers, etc) were superficial. he never even learned to drive there. he never put down roots there and he didn't want to, because he wanted to go home to Henry, and he wanted to go home to KANSAS. don't even talk to me about the rebecca soulmates thing you can still be friends with people even if you don't live in the same country

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified that you actually kind of like…

Nate/Jade. look, my feelings about nate are complicated because they dropped the ball on showing instead of telling, which is bullshit because nick mohammed woulda ATE. i subscribe to the theory that they had a much more expansive storyline planned for Nate and rethought it after being surprised by how vitriolic and racist the hate was after season 2. unFORTUNATELY, that meant they didn't close the loop on what they already did, and tried to fill the gap with a girlfriend, which is a trope i loathe. on the other hand, Jade is fucking awesome and i can't help liking them and the way she affectionately trolls him mercilessly. i'm not even getting into the idiots on this hellsite trying to insist that Jade's behavior towards him was racist. she's a customer service employee who's seen a million insecure men trying to play games in her face and she treated him accordingly until he quit it with his nonsense, and then she gave him a chance because Nate is actually lovely when he's squashing his tendency to be a vicious cruel jerk

[dirtyoldmanhole]

in defense of revelation

most of y'all know me as a pre-tumblr tellius fan who recently got suckered into fates/(especially revelation) in the past year and how often i've repeatedly stated how very fucking glad i was not around for peak fates fan/hatedom. even living afar from the field in other fandoms for that brief 2015-2021 time period, fates discourse was... special, to say the least.

me being me, i do want to take a step back and consider in good faith... why?

why the outsized hatedom for rev especially?

every FE game has its warts with its strengths. and i feel like i'm in a unique position of seeing from a more macro/neutral standpoint having abruptly fallen in love with fates/rev when it's left in the dust for shinier games, and whose viewpoint was never really colored either which way while also living the historical context of the series. (shoot at one point i was a by-default fates hater/"pre-DS fe" snob; I freely admit to eating my own words).

the odd bit of it all is that revelation is by far my favorite of the routes. yes, gunter's outsized impact on the plot is a large part of it, but I actually think I would still like it over conquest/(certinally over birthright and a good 90% of FE games) even if another character had taken that role, as long as it was handled in a similarly complex way (anankos' cosmic horror shtick was fuckin' rad).

let's start with the common criticisms (a few picked from this halfway reasonable reddit thread that attempts something similar) and others gleaned elsewhere from the interwebs over the year.

the unit balancing

IMO this is the fairest criticism of the list; i can see why a bunch of underleveled units handed out slowly before the cast rolls into valla would be a legitimate annoyance to old hats and newcomers alike.

that said: something about gameplay with Fates that i think was brilliant is there's a massive intentional difference between royals and every other character. royals get special weapons, they're a class unto themselves literally and also in being able to solo entire swaths of levels. (birthright being a literal name of one of the routes, for pete's sake.) i've attempted both a rev run with royals and a rev run without royals (using gunter too lol) back to back and honestly the sheer difficulty spike is genuinely fascinating from a story perspective.

you feel how utterly powerless non-royals feel.

(also given people mostly emotionally got attached to the royals.... in the other two routes they were probably willing to wait a little longer for their blorbo to appear and assuaged by many cutscenes of them.)

also tangent, but gameplay wise: i also kind of want to push back at the redditor in the thread above who mentioned rev as a sandbox experience of Fates; I can see why they would say that as it's perceived as the neutral route, when personally it's better framed as the valla-specific route with a very tight cast focus (ie the characters that actually impact the plot); having almost the whole cast being playable was just a type of newgame+ bonus. like i wouldn't expect a nohrian character to get much limelight in birthright in favor of the hoshidans, so too would I not expect a non valla-related character to get as much focus and decent treatment in rev.

very petty add on: if i can make mister zero stats grandpa OHKO ryoma in rev on my second run, git gud shrub

the story

so here's the thing.

i'm objectively biased by being head over heels for gunter as a character and his outsized impact on lategame rev - but i don't think i'm wrong with saying that people were looking for the wrong thematic beats regarding revelation's story with how it was framed beyond itself.

if you focus on the adults - mikoto, arete, gunter, garon, and the unaffiliated characters that didn't get a chance to shine in the other two nation-specific routes (azura, lilith, anankos, corrin's backstory in the northern fortress) - revelation will blow your socks off with how nuanced and interwoven between the characters mentioned above the story is.

you just need to give it a fair chance.

gimmick maps

this is honestly where i laugh a little and simply gesture to three houses' objectively terrible same-y maps. TH had other strengths; its maps are not one of them. i'd rather take a memorable gimmick in a heartbeat than 4/5ths of a game i straight up do not remember the levels (a criticism that could also go for FE11/12/most of the series pre FE7).

the snow shoveling map in particular draws the most ire (fair lol), but let's take that map out, and.... honestly none of the others feel egregarious? FE's done 'only three characters deployed" before (the cave chapter which is pretty short and not too unbalanced). the moving platforms have been done in FE7. the traps in anankos' lair were honestly pretty fun for instilling more of the horror/claustrophobic vibe and didn't have total buzzkills like powerful ranged magic bosses to ruin your day (FE6/7/16 lookin' at you).

of fates' routes, conquest's maps age a little bit better by being generally emotionally married to the story beats more, but personally i find they're a little overtuned at times. honestly the worst i can say is that conquest's maps overshine the other two routes when the other two routes had pretty decent-to-good map design that age well by their own right.

the babyrealms

sure, and.............? honestly i feel like every FE game has its completely anime whack-ass mechanic from space.

the best part is the children mechanic in fates is completely optional and segregated from the story - if you hate it that much it doesn't even have to exist. god knows i wish the My Unit/time travel of Awakening onwards didn't exist, or the kids of FE13 didn't exist, or the whole "secret space technology" of FE16 didn't exist, or the toothpaste hair of Engage, or the fucking gameplay of FE4/6, and frankly the laguz can be a bit tough to swallow as an idea if you didn't grow up with the anime tropes of cat girls or shapeshifters at the time (and the anvilicious anti-racism themes) -- all of which are way more plot relevant to their respective games.

'just fighting zombies for the latter half'

ironically i'm usually the first person to absolutely despise the 'fighting non-characters/nameless zombies' trope. so i do sympathize.

one: honestly that critique isn't that much different than the FE-bog-standard 'fight twenty maps packed with samey soldiers of the Bad Evil Country' (FE9 with daein alas) - if anything, like FE8, zombies are a nice change of pace and rev even one-ups sacred stones by giving the possessed vallites an extra bit of fridge horror if you give one temporary shit about the vallites.

a better defense though, is much like how i think viewing Final Fantasy 7 as anything but a massive homage to sci-fi horror would be a miss to its story, visual, and emotional beats - i also think it'd be a miss to not recognize that revelation is the cosmic horror of fire emblem.

the slowly-revealed possession of someone very precious to corrin. the needless deaths of named cast members. anankos' entire freaking design. the last four-five chapters of fighting your own parents/parental figures who both plead with you to kill them while also trying to convince you to let them kill you, holy fuck. peak psychological horror here too, and i feel like fates is in a uniquely better position with its focus on incestual family dynamics to drive home the emotional impact to the player (if you've married some specific characters like azura and gunter) as well as pull from classic gothic horror - especially brilliant with the nohrian's constant linkage to vampires, another staple of gothic horror.

oh gunter, gunter gunter.

I can't get around this point since I have heard him specifically mentioned (lol) as a failing of revelation. oh zero stats granpda. what are we going to do with you.

(keep in mind i'm not going to be able to tackle all of these sub-points since this would literally be a 20k essay by itself which this blog kinda frankly covers in various degrees; this is a summary).

but let's start with the more objective bits.

ultimately, i ... think a lot of people were really skeeved the fuck out by gunter's possession plotline in the sense it was a huge bet that the series had never done. there were a handful of gunter fans from conquest who would normally be all over his expanded spotlight that fall into this bucket, in addition to the folks that just did not jive with his type of arc/character and who were never gonna like rev. (that's fine, y'all got two whole other games to play in).

giving its jeigan character actual teeth, actual cold-blooded motivations and hatreds and a betrayal that worked entirely at odds with the royal-simping game (and series) didn't help. he never apologized for it either.

giving its jeigan a spotlight role when youth is valorized, and old age demonized to a questionable degree didn't help. (ya notice the ages of all the heroes and villains? the really squicky visual character consistency of beauty equals goodness in anime / that FE is no better at?) his story almost lowkey requires a little maturity to get, higher than the average age of a fates player.

giving its jeigan a nuanced personality that could be caring and protective as much as deeply manipulative (even and especially to corrin) didn't help. locking behind half of their relationship to CQ supports and half his backstory/chats with the rest of the cast being unlocalized likewise didn't help.

giving its jeigan actual sexual menace didn't help. ( in an already sexually-charged game, there are a few very specific lategame possession scenes where that also bleeds over to his role, nevermind his CQ S-support. and crucially, when that slipping mask jarred directly against the father role that people project on him with corrin).

.... and all of those points is exactly why i think his arc is some of the most brilliant writing in the series.

Fates was especially good with taking tired tropes and twisting them just enough in a fucky/power-tilt-y way that it left the player off kilter while giving the games, ultimately, a bittersweet resolution.

some folks don't like that feeling; but i think it was an injection of real charisma and balls in a series that always draws from its specific time-period in history.

thank you for reading ~