#also i didn’t use a single reference for this so if there’s any inaccuracies. let me live

[starspilli]

FINALLY did some of the x men & dc crossover stuff that’s been rattling around in my head lol. & trust me i have more. i just think these ones would have interesting / funny dynamics lol

[yellowmagicalgirl]

within the infant rind of this small flower (poison hath residence and medicine power)

Anthy has had chronic pain for centuries. After Ohtori, Utena shares it.

This was written for word_docs_and_willowboughs on AO3 for the 2024 Hurt/Comfort Exchange. There are references to both the anime and the movie. I also did some quick research on types of pain meds in Japan, but not too much so there may be some inaccuracies.

AO3

FFN

SquidgeWorld

One day, when Utena doesn’t even have the strength to get out of bed, Anthy brings her a mug of tea, two Eve tablets, and plate with a single cookie so that the Eve doesn’t wreak havoc on Utena’s stomach. Unbidden, Utena remembers how they once threatened to poison each other’s tea and cookies. She lets Anthy feed her anyways.

Her back hurts. The flare-ups happen about once every other month, which is much better than when Utena first left Ohtori. Back then the only times that she didn’t feel the Swords of Hate was when she was dreaming of Anthy, and the pain from when her now-girlfriend had stabbed her through the back managed to outweigh the pain Utena had taken willingly. She had been in the hospital for three weeks as the doctors tried and failed to diagnose the cause of their pain.

“Back when he was still fighting everyone’s battles, I’d make this sort of tea for him,” Anthy said in a low voice. She doesn’t have to say Dios’s name for Utena to know who she is speaking of. The haunted look in her eyes is enough. “Back when he was still trying to save me, just to save me, he would make the tea for me. He wouldn't make it as well, though. Our pain medications weren’t as good as they are now. The best we had just made you sleep it off. I still felt the pain in my sleep; I was just too weak to really move.”

Weakly, Utena lifts her hand to place it on top of Anthy’s. Anthy twists her hand to hold Utena’s. Even now that they’ve both escaped and found each other again, far from where Akio can find them, it can be hard to convince Anthy to take a new medication when she’s sick, especially if one of the side-effects is drowsiness. She didn’t get sick back at Ohtori, not unless her current Betrothed wanted a sick girl to dote over.

“I didn’t put any of the herbs we used to use in this tea,” Anthy continues, using her other hand to tuck a strand of long hair behind her ear. The closest she ever does to pinning it up anymore is tying it back in a braid or ponytail, but most of the time she leaves it loose. More than once, Anthy has talked about just cutting it all off. She hasn’t yet, though, no matter how many times Utena has said she could pull off short hair if she wanted to.

“It just has a similar flavor. Not the same, though; the herbs had made it more bitter, and I didn’t add any sweetener.” It isn’t poisoned. I’m sorry.

There really is no need for apologies, not anymore. But Utena is in too much pain to have that argument. She suspects she’ll still be in pain in an hour after the Eve kicks in, and she’ll have to take it easy. It’s a shame, because she had actually been planning on cooking something nice tonight, but the cast iron skillet she plans on using is heavy, and Utena won’t be able to lift it on her own. Maybe she’ll ask Anthy to help her. Maybe she’ll just have to hope that Anthy won’t feel guilty enough to cook the meal herself, and that Utena can fry the tonkatsu in a couple days when she can lift things again. The pork should still be safe and unspoiled in the fridge until then.

[the-witty-pen-name]

Fell in Love in Scotland Pt. 2

Sam Wilson x F!Reader

Warnings: ptsd/trauma related to war; mentions of nightmares; angst; cursing; pining; slow burn; 18+ in later parts (maybe? not sure yet)

Summary: After finding about the new Captain America, the reader goes to Louisiana to visit Sam.

Word Count: 2.1k

A/N: So I know this isn’t on my list of things I *should* be working on, but I had this idea today and I had to get it down! This is only going to be 2-3 parts.  (Edit: 3 parts!) This is my first time writing for Sam!

I’m taking a small break from working on my other works in progress to focus on getting out as much Sam content as a can before Sam’s (and my) bday on the 14th! Not sure how much I’ll be able to write but that is my hope!

My biggest flex at the moment is sharing a bday with Sam.

This references Civil War, Endgame and Infinity War events in flashbacks but you know, canon is a thing I like to just maneuver around so I’m sorry if there are many major inaccuracies!

This is unedited and please let me know if I missed anything that should be included as a warning.

Taglist is in my bio

The safe house in Scotland was small. A little cottage hidden away in the countryside. Absolutely beautiful, if not for the looming reminders of why you were there in the first place.

You didn’t handle laying low well. You didn’t like not doing anything. Your resolve for handling your thoughts, your problems had always been to just push them aside. Focus your energy on anything but what would pull you down. You couldn’t allow yourself to just exist. Time stopped and there was no fight to be fought, and you hated it.

Fortunately, you were with people who understood. Sam and Steve especially. It didn’t take long for Sam to work his way in. He understood you, and he related to you. Neither one of you really needed to acknowledge it. There was an unspoken understanding between the two of you which made it all feel so seamless.

You were restless, and nights were always the worst. You’d spend several hours tossing in turning on your mattress, unable to get comfortable. You’d bring your pillow and sheet with you onto the floor of your room, and if you were lucky enough to fall asleep, you’d wake up after only a few hours. Sometimes you’d remember the nightmares vividly, other times it was just the feelings that lingered.

Most nights, you’d wait it out in your room watching the clock until it was early enough to “get out of bed.” So, you’d wait until the red numbers on the screen turned to 4am and then you’d sneak your way downstairs to the kitchen or the living room, so you didn’t need to face the idea of sleep.

After a few weeks, Sam caught on to your routine. He would join you in the mornings, help you make coffee and talk about nothing. Just helping you keep your mind off the things that bothered you. He looked as tired as you, and you would insist on him getting more sleep. But Sam never made you go through any of the hard days on your own.

“You get used to it,” he’d say, understanding what you were going through better than anybody.

“I don’t know if I can,” you admit, curled up in a ball on the sofa, the warm mug of coffee Sam made cradled tightly in your hands. The curtains are pulled open, and you stare out the window to your right, watching the sun slowly coming up.

“You should try sleeping in your bed again,” he suggests. You’d recently promoted yourself from sleeping on the floor to the couch. Baby steps. You nod, knowing he’s right.

You get a rental car the next morning and you drive to the address Sam texted you. You’re greeted immediately by two rowdy young boys, asking you if you’re an Avenger like their Uncle Sam. He’s literally Uncle Sam. How could he think he didn’t deserve the shield? Well, you know why. But the coincidence is too funny not to bring up to him once all of this is resolved.

Each of them grabbed you by an arm and drag you to the backyard. You chuckle, following their lead as they ask you a million questions. They call out to Sam when he is in view and he smiles when he sees you. Your heart flips.

“They bothering you?” he asks and you shake your head.

“No, they’re great,” you beam watching them run off.

“You look good,” he compliments you, and you feel like jelly. “You’re sleeping?” Oh.

“Yeah, I mean, for the most part,” you reply, “So do you.” You can’t miss the smile on his face. “So, uh, have you heard from Bucky?”

“I text him all the time, trying to check in, but no nothing. You?”

You shake your head. “I stopped trying,” you admit, “but I can’t blame him. He really doesn’t know me.”

“He’ll come around,” he reasons, trying to be optimistic. “So, I want to show you the boat?”

“You have a boat?” you chuckle, and he grins, nodding like a little kid.

“35-foot yacht,” he teases.

“Of course,” you smile.

It was only just noon when you both arrived at the docks. The air felt crisper, and the sun felt phenomenal on your shoulders. It wasn’t until you were outside in weather like this that you realized how often you opted to stay hidden away in your apartment. The atmosphere just felt more alive, and the air in your lungs felt almost cleansing.

You sat across from Sam on the bow of the boat, your legs dangling over the side. You were sitting close enough to him that your thighs touched, and you were trying your hardest to ignore the feeling. You just felt warm, and you felt more relaxed than you had been since you’d last seen him.

“I just need to ask,” Sam asks, cutting through both of your laughter. You really had spent the day so far just reminiscing, talking about nothing really. “Did you and Cap- were you guys…?”

“Oh god no,” you choke quickly, you stifle another laugh, “Steve was just a really great friend. No nothing like that. I would go to the end of the earth and back for Steve… but no, I didn’t have feelings for him that way.”

“I had thought maybe at one point something was going on there,” he shrugs. Is he serious?

“Never,” you reiterate.  

Sleeping in a bed became easier, but the nightmares were something that you just couldn’t shake no matter how hard you tried. Many times, it would be late in the night and you’d be gently shaken awake. Sam would be kneeling next to your bed, trying to wake you up.

“Please stay,” you’d ask, eyes glossed over and your skin stained with tears. He could never say no. You’d scoot over and he’d climb in and settle next to you. It wasn’t even anything romantic. You didn’t cuddle or invade his space. You just needed to feel him next to you, and you’d be able to sleep. The cycle continued for a long while until you were able to sleep through the night without the haunting dreams.

But you missed waking up with him there.

“You need to tell him,” Steve would insist, and you’d shut down the idea every single time.

“No, I can’t,” you’d insist. The only person who knew how you felt was Steve. You hadn’t even told him; he just knew you too well.

“You’re making yourself miserable,” he’d elaborate, “you deserve a little happiness- Sam deserves happiness. He wants you too.”

“Happiness? With me?” you snort, “Steve, think about me, my past- everything I carry around with me. You know as well as I do, I can’t infect him with that when he has his own issues. We’re all too broken- he deserves better.”

“You don’t to be the one to decide that for him,” he counters. “What Sam deserves is the truth.”

“I know, I know!” you sigh, wrapping your arms around yourself and you can’t look at Steve. “Telling him how I feel complicates things to much. I can’t risk it.”

“Even if he feels the same way?”

“Especially if he feels the same way.”

You rest back on your palms, close your eyes and tilt your head up towards the direction of the sun. Your mind wanders to Steve, and how much you miss him. You were oftentimes too thick headed to take any of his advice but it was something you hadn’t realized you needed.

You decide to just throw out all your apprehension. And just take the advice from Steve you should’ve taken years ago. The timing is perfect. The universe is screaming at you to just tell him.

“I gave up the shield because I didn’t think anyone could follow Steve,” he admits, “I didn’t think I could fill the role- no one can, or maybe no one should.”

“You’re the only person who can, Sam,” you say, looking back over to him.

“When I gave it up, I didn’t think it would be given to someone else. I donated it- to keep it with the rest of what we have left of him. God- if I had known…”

“I watched on television when you donated it, Sam,” you say, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Symbols are nothing without the men and women that give them meaning… I wish you saw yourself the way Steve did- the way I do…”

“That’s not fair…”

“You said we need new heroes for the times we’re in. Sam- the world needs a new Captain America. And you know as well as I do, that man on TV they pushed out there isn’t it.”

“It’s not me, either,” he says, looking down at the water, the reflection of the two of you rippled and distorted.

“I wish you could see how much that isn’t true,” you admit, “I also- I also wish I was more like you… You’re so good at talking to me… people like us and Steve. You show people their value and their worth, and you’re just so fiercely loyal it’s almost annoying. And I suck at that, I’m a terrible communicator, and I can’t vocalize how much you’re worth, and how much you deserve the shield. Feelings are just too overwhelming and I can’t focus them into anything coherent. And you right now need what you give others just so freely, and you’re stuck with me… I know I’m not Steve, and I as much as I try to convince you the decision is yours, but you need to know that you are the only person who can be our new Captain… Steve wasn’t wrong about you, and I just… I’m in your corner.”

“(Y/N) …”

It was safe in Scotland. Quiet, secluded. Time wasn’t looming over you. There was nothing there that was any imminent threat except your own demons that you carried with you. You had a lot of regrets, past mistakes that haunted you whenever you slowed down. It’s why when you left the air force, you joined SHIELD. You were like Steve, kindred spirits plagued by the after effects of war and both of you resolved to fighting rather than be left to your own devises.

Not like Sam. Sam put his focus into helping others. Selfless, and understanding, he was always there. He was thoughtful with what he chose to fight for, which is something you greatly admired. He was morals and loyalty, and everything that made a great man. He was a friend first, and a fighter second.

Which is such a rare quality that you wished you could tell him you noticed.

Steve got very into crossword puzzles. He found a box up in the attic tucked away of old books from whoever used to live here. He’d sit on the armchair in the living room, pencil in hand and try his best to fill in what he knew. He ended up heavily relying on you and Sam to fill in the references he didn’t know.

You and Sam would be on the couch, you tucked into his side, watching television or sometimes you’d both read, old magazines or anything you could find for entertainment. One night you both sat on the floor on opposite sides of the coffee table with an incomplete deck of cards playing Double Solitaire, and Steve would occasionally vocalize a clue he was stuck on.

“Drummer of Duran Duran. Blank Taylor. Five letters,” Steve said, not looking up from the flimsy book.

“Roger Taylor,” Sam answered aimlessly, tapping the card in his hand to his chin as his eyes scanned the columns of cards.

A few minutes of silence follow before Steve speaks again.

“1996 Looney Toons film starring Michael Jordan. Eight letters.”

“Space Jam,” you smirk, and you bite your lip to hold back a laugh. You want to ask him what the theme is for the puzzle he’s working on but you decide against it. You don’t want to embarrass him.

It felt really silly. The three of you, all ex-military crime fighters on the run, couped up together in this tiny living room, playing cards and helping Captain America with a pop culture crossword. Maybe it just felt weird because it was so normal.

You’re sweating. You didn’t realize it until just now. The dampness of the underarms of your t-shirt was all you could focus on. Why were you so nervous? Because again, the universe if giving you every single sign to just tell him. Yell it out so loud it echoes back to you across the water. Tell him. Tell him everything.

Every harbored fantasy of being with him. Tell him how much he means to you and how sorry you are that your fears drive you away from him. He feels so strong, and stoic next to you, it’s making your head spin and you feel like your brain is leaving your body behind. He’s so understanding and patient, and here you are, again, leaving him on another cliff hanger.

“Sam, I need to tell you something.”

No going back now.

Taglist:

@greeneyedblondie44 @witchybarb @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan @sassy-kassaay @aynanasstuff @claudiaatje @lieswithoutfairytales @ttalisa​ @januarystears 

[belizedeservesbetter]

Six is Super Fun But Also Kinda Bad

sorry not sorry ‘bout what i said... 

In a way, I’m not entirely convinced Six is actually a musical. It feels more like a concert than anything, with a paper thin plot and dialogue that had me constantly cringing. However, much like a concert, I was there for the music and the music was of course fantastic. 

To begin, I want to say that I won the $30 lottery seats for this, which put me in the front row. To be very honest, I would not have paid any more than that to see this show. It is only about 70 minutes long and is again very much a concert and not a musical so I really couldn’t justify paying even a TKTS price for it. Unfortunately, the cheaper seats are usually in the back of the theater and this is very much a show where you want to be as close as possible. 

I really expected to be blown away by this show, but honestly? I was more disappointed than anything. The plot is genuinely bad and the dialogue is genuinely awful (filled to the brim with “lol” and social media references) and I’ll definitely be going into spoiler territory here but honestly it doesn’t even matter because there isn’t enough plot to hold the weight of a spoiler in the first place.

So basically the premise is these six queens are performing this show for you (how? why? don’t think too hard on it) since they have decided to form a girl group but will now hold a contest to see who had it worst with Henry VIII to see who will become the leader of the girl group - even though girl groups don’t really have leaders but again don’t think too hard on this. The six queens then each sing a song about their life and somehow skip all the actual interesting details about themselves before Catherine Parr (wife #6) is like guys WAIT we shouldn’t be pitting ourselves against each other! We should be feminist and be a TEAM and then they all turn to the audience and are like ACTUALLY we were a team all along and this was all a trick to get us the audience to see how bad comparing women is. Why was it a trick? Didn’t we already know comparing women is bad? Anyways, this “plot twist” occurs like ten minutes before the show ends and is just... kinda there? It’s very much a “oh okay” moment where you really can’t do anything but accept it for what it is because we know they’re gonna do the big MegaSix number at the end and that’s the best part anyway. 

But like I said before, the music is super fun and super catchy and in the moment is an absolute BLAST. So I had a fantastic time watching it because it’s a fun time, but once you give the show one single shred of thought it kind of falls apart completely. 

Also, the costumes are super gorgeous and I loved getting a front row seat to see all the details. I visited the Showstoppers NYC! exhibit in August and got to speak with one of the guys who hand makes Katherine Howard’s costume so it was very cool getting to see them all live and in person. 

Since the cast is only six people, I’ll go through them all (and their songs) one by one. Uniformly they were great, but I will admit that almost none of them stayed in character unless it was their turn to have their number. I blame this on the weird and clunky choreography, which is so excessive and so many moves that make them all look like robots. 

First up is Catherine of Aragon, played by Adrianna Hicks. She sings “No Way” which is a fantastic first song of the Queen Competition. She really commanded the stage and was super interactive with the audience.

Next up is Anne Boleyn, played by Andrea Macasaet. Her song is “Don’t Lose Ur Head” and it’s the best song in the show. It will in fact be stuck in my head forever and I loved how bubbly and fun Macasaet was! She is so tiny but her energy filled the entire theater! Her costume is also my favorite of the queens. 

However, as much as I loved her performance, I do take issue with how Anne Boleyn is portrayed. In actuality, Anne Boleyn was wicked smart and very religious and was not the ditzy having fun all day long person that she’s portrayed as. Her sister was Henry’s mistress and Anne really didn’t want to get involved with him. She was more interested in religion than anything else. 

(and a side note, something I found odd was Catherine of Aragon’s brief mention of Mary but Anne Boleyn not bringing up Elizabeth at all. She even jokes about writing lyrics for Shakespeare in a better version of her life but Elizabeth was not only one of the most influential queens England had but also saw Shakespeare’s plays) 

Which brings us to Jane Seymour, played by the lovely Abby Mueller, who looks and sounds strikingly like her sister. Unfortunately, Mueller is given the very worst song in the show in “Heart of Stone.” Oh man. This is a bad one. It’s the lowest energy song and has the worst lyrics and since you know the song is literally about Henry VIII you absolutely cannot get behind it. It’s a shame, because Mueller is giving the best performance in the show, and also the most consistent one!! 

This brings me to my wider Jane Seymour Problem. Jane’s whole character is basically “wait but actually I loved him” and the show kinda brushes aside the whole fact of Henry being completely awful whenever it comes to Seymour. Anne Boleyn does chime in a couple times with a “but he literally beheaded me” but Seymour is consistently trying to spin it around. The show doesn’t know how to navigate the fact that Henry probably only loved her because she gave him a son and that very little is actually known about this woman. In Jane’s little “better version of her life” in the last song, she actually pairs herself with Henry as a long term relationship/family thing, even though the whole point of the song before is that they don’t need Henry? Make it make sense, Six! Make it make sense! 

I’m gonna skip right over “Haus of Holbein” because that song was stupid and that whole sequence was stupid. 

Luckily the next song was way better, with Brittney Mack’s Anna of Cleves bringing down the house with “Get Down.” On the cast album, “Get Down” is the one I always skip but I don’t think I will anymore because Mack was incredible. She made that song one of the absolute highlights of the show. She was absolutely fantastic. 

Usually Katherine Howard is played by Samantha Pauly, but she was out and tonight the character was played by Courtney Mack, who was really wonderful. She can Sing with a capital S! “All You Wanna Do” is a really great song and it actually dives into interesting emotional territory and I wish more of the songs had that! I wish the show had more of that!! K Howard is usually the one no one talks about so I was glad she had a really good song that really laid out her life in a fairly raw way. 

Coming in at song number six is “I Don’t Need Your Love,” sung by Anna Uzele’s Catherine Parr. Uzele has a lovely voice but her song is kinda boring and the fact that it’s tied so tightly with the “plot twist” is kind of a let down. 

Then the six queens all sing a song (called “Six”) about what they would have liked their lives to be, and most of them are kind of absurd and have to do with becoming pop stars even though that wasn’t a thing back in Tudor England. 

Ultimatey, the show is ridiculously fun but has absolutely nothing to say, even though the show really thinks it’s saying something about feminism and history. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. The closest it gets is “All You Wanna Do” and even then that’s barely breaking the surface. The show is also very high energy and high fun, so they expect you the audience to also gloss over all the inaccuracies and weird Jane Seymour stuff. 

This show is being built up as this pinnacle of feminist theatre but honestly it’s mostly mediocre writing that’s saved by catchy songs and powerhouse performers. 

Looking back at this review, it does look pretty negative but I swear I had a really good time! I swear it’s very fun! It just isn’t anything more than that. 

[clayandstuff]

Becho Musings Part 2

Some more musings about Becho while simultaneously addressing unfounded blorke takes that make my blood boil and have no basis in reality. Focusing on S5 and on since I’ve already covered Becho’s relationship before they got together, this will look at them specifically as a couple. Posting this for posterity on my blog.

TL;DR

Not to accidentally validate any of these blorke claims by talking about them or giving them attention, but they’re so easily debunked by canon I can’t help myself... 

Garbage take #1

Echo is just following Bellamy, she doesn’t love him, he is her King, they have a spy/king dynamic (lmao this isn’t even a real thing like wtf does this mean? You can tell blorkes are pressed about the knight/princess racist trope their ship falls into but you can’t just make things up! What a sad, misguided attempt to create a false equivalence between bellarke and Becho. A spy/king dynamic is literally not a thing - and unsurprisingly, it doesn’t accurately represent the relationship between Bellamy and Echo at all - but nice try I guess), Echo is only looking for someone to follow and take orders from, etc. 

There’s so much to break down in this hot garbage take:

Before I get into absolutely destroying this hot garbage, let’s quickly address how the subtle framing of these “arguments” purposefully doesn’t acknowledge Bellamy’s feelings for Echo. Attempting to discredit Becho by designating Echo as a follower deliberately disregards Bellamy’s active role in his relationship and his feelings for her. Bellamy loves Echo and that’s clear throughout the show, but it’s wonderfully vocalized on screen multiple times in S5. Bellamy considers Echo his family (5x01 “we’re family and nothing can change that”) and it’s explicitly verbalized in 5x07 (”Our friends are there. People we love”) and once again in 5x12, from Clarke herself, when she told Echo “Bellamy loved you”. So, ya know, Bellamy loves Echo. That’s not debatable.

So first off, Echo’s relationship with Bellamy is not at all like her relationship to the Azgeda royal family (who she was in servitude of and essentially employed by). This is one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen and I’m not sure how anyone can logically come to that conclusion? (Which is mainly due to the fact that this claim is made in bad faith and isn’t actually based on logic or what we’ve seen in canon, but I digress). Not to mention Echo refers to Roan and Nia with honorifics and obviously does NOT do that with Bellamy, seriously wtf show are blorkes watching... Being loyal or devoted to someone does not mean the same thing for every relationship. Context matters. People can be loyal to each other for a variety or reasons, family/survival/clan/duty/temporary alliance/self-preservation/etc. Echo's never even hugged Roan, that already contextually makes her relationship with Bellamy very different from her relationship with Roan. Being devoted to someone because it's your job to protect the royal family (as a member of the Queen's guard and spy for the Ice Nation) is not the same as being devoted to someone because you are in love with them, in a romantic relationship with them, and want to keep them safe because they’re precious to you. Hello?? 

The other glaring inaccuracy with this garbage take is that Echo is not someone who just follows people or orders. That’s never been her character. She is a soldier, like Bellamy - but even when she was loyal to Azgeda she was never just a good little follower. She singlehandedly took control of Polis for Azgeda and commanded the entire Azgeda army in Roan’s absence. She doesn’t sit around waiting for people to give her orders or tell her what to do next. That’s simply contradictory to what we’ve actually been shown on the show. Mischaracterizing her as such is nothing more than a blorke ploy to minimize (and outright ignore) her strengths and agency as a character, intentionally erasing the fact that she is a brilliant strategist, skilled warrior, and a trusted political confidant. 

Also, did blorkes forget that she’s literally a goddamn spy?! Being a spy is not the job for a follower who can’t think for themselves and needs someone to take orders from. A spy is given a mission and it’s up to them alone to make it happen. There’s actually an enormous amount of freedom and trust given to a spy. No one gives you step-by-step instructions to achieve your goal. You are literally on your own, often in enemy territory, having to think on your feet, adapt, and come up with a plan to get the job done. Oops embarrassing they forgot she’s a spy (it’s laughable to watch S7 and think she would ever actually betray her friends. She. Is. A. Spy. Infiltration is her job - we even saw her successfully infiltrate Diyoza’s camp in S5 and Diyoza herself actually admits she “got played” by Echo - CMON. Loyalty is her defining characteristic. PAY ATTENTION)

Calling her a follower is such a gross mischaracterization. Just look at her relationship with Roan (her actual King). She constantly argues with him, gives him push back, and even insinuates that he’s weak (to his face) on more than one occasion (in 4x01 when she flat out tells him “we can’t afford for our people to think you’re weak” and he gets offended enough to call her out on it, and then again when she’s sparring with him in 4x02 and offers to take his place once she knocks him on his ass). She doesn't even follow orders all that well if we're being honest (bless her little panda heart). She's the one who tells Roan to "send me to Arkadia" when she thinks Skaikru isn't being honest. She's the one telling Roan, the king, what to do! Not only does he let her talk to him like that, he actually values what she has to say. 

Furthermore, the one time we see Roan actually give her a direct order (to bring Octavia back alive) Echo ends up NOT doing that (lol). She isn’t afraid to speak her mind or make her own decisions. One of her biggest character defining moments (that gets her banished from her clan) is when she decides to act of her own volition and go directly behind Roan’s back, to cheat in the conclave. No one ordered her to do that, it was all her. And there’s also all of the S7 Bardo Disciples plot which further proves that Echo isn’t just some mindless follower (cough cough Bellamy with the Shepard cough cough and Pike...). She’s always been her own person who thinks for herself and does what she believes is best for her people. (Even as far back as her introduction in S2 when she realizes Bellamy is Skaikru but still decides to trust and work with him in Mt. Weather. She also silences all those grounders in the cages with a single command and they ALL shut up and obey her, but sure yeah she’s just a follower 🙄🙄🙄)

So now that we’ve established how she interacts with Roan, let’s look at how she interacts with Bellamy. I’ve already detailed their attitude towards each other before they get together here, but now let’s look at how they act as a couple. 

In S5, we see in their first scene together that they are very affectionate towards one another (so much kissing, arm rubbing, smiling, and forehead touching) as they mutually comfort each other. Echo is apprehensive about things changing on the ground because of Octavia and the fact that she’s still banished, but Bellamy makes an effort to get her to smile (even going so far as to joke about her “almost killing” his sister and him being more stubborn than Octavia. He gets her to laugh with him and even exclaims “good!” once she finally relaxes and smiles). He also tells her “we’re family and nothing can change that” - very different from her relationship with Nia (who Echo bowed down to when in her presence) who used Echo as spy/weapon of war, and Roan, who cast her out after using her political knowhow to effectively lead. Then on the Eligius ship in 5x03 they get their battle couple on by working together and fighting side-by-side to take out the prisoner who woke up. Later in that same episode, they jointly come up with a plan to deal with the cryo-sleeping prisoners that isn’t just murdering them (ultimately utilizing Echo’s plan to use them as leverage since Bellamy doesn’t want to kill them and Echo knows that it’s a strategic mistake to leave their enemy with reinforcements if they can stop it). When they don’t agree on something, they always talk it through and compromise (a sign of a healthy and mature relationship, where both people are regarded as equals and their input is valued). 

Also, Echo was the one who came up with the plan to counter McCreary’s forces when he’d stolen Diyoza’s battle plans. Echo and Bellamy share a voiceover as they both relay the plan simultaneously to their separate groups. Once Bellamy finishes explaining, Octavia says to him “tell Echo I said well done”, giving Echo credit and acknowledging the fact that this is indeed Echo’s idea. Can someone kindly point me to where Echo is being a follower waiting patiently to be given her orders from her “King”?? Because as far as I can tell that never actually happens...

Side note, anyone else remember how blorkes were irate that Echo was the one leading Spacekru at the end of s5. They complained that it didn’t make sense for Echo to be in charge because “Raven was smarter” and Echo was being “so bossy”. Let’s just take a moment to acknowledge the contradictory nature of the arguments “Echo is so bossy and leading Spacekru” but also “she’s just a follower with a spy/king dynamic to Bellamy”. She can’t be both 🤣 stick to a story please. (Also, I LOVE Raven so this is in no way me shading Raven, she’s amazing and brilliant). Bonus: when the show runner is sick of your garbage takes and calls you out

To reiterate, the contradictory claims and clear disregard for facts and the truth of the show just further proves that their “complaints” are made entirely in bad faith. They are rejecting reality and demonstrate no comprehension of canon - their garbage takes should not hold any weight and are merely a form of lashing out because they’re upset their fanon ship never happened.

Getting back on topic...

So, S5 is where Becho are canonically established as a romantic relationship and the audience gets to see, for the first time, how they interact after 6 years in space and falling love. (Can I just point out that the entire purpose of a time jump is to have our characters change and be in emotionally new and different places - it’s a storytelling device to change the status quo and shake things up - it’s perfectly acceptable to have Becho get together during it given their history with one another. I address this in more detail later so we’ll put a pin in this for now)

Once they get down to the ground, Bellamy fights for Echo (both figuratively and literally) with Octavia and at every turn he doubles down on his love for Echo. To summarize, Echo won’t turn in the defectors and is willing to be banished for it, leaving Bellamy to stay in Polis with Octavia so he can still have a relationship with his sister. However, Bellamy won’t let Echo do that. He doesn’t want her to leave and he doesn’t want to be apart from her. He offers to defect with her! He would chose to give up his relationship with Octavia and Clarke (who he just found out was alive and reunited with) to be with Echo. Echo doesn’t like that plan because she doesn’t want Bellamy to be in harm’s way. She even tells him “we’ve been through this. You’re not going with me” to which he responds “like hell I’m not!” and she tells him “you are not dying for me”. Bellamy seems inconsolable at the thought of her leaving and can’t even look Echo in the eye when he’s telling her that he’ll be in the rover and it’ll only take him a few days to get to her, and once again Echo comforts and reassures him. 

While Echo is at Diyoza’s camp trying to take down the eye, Bellamy has been staring at the monitor nonstop for 8 hours waiting for any change or sign that Echo made it there safely. Harper has to come in and tell him "you've been staring at that all night" and to “go, get some sleep”, knowing that if left on his own he would emotionally exhaust himself worrying about Echo and her safety indefinitely. Bellamy responds that the eye should be down by now and even says that he "wishes it was me over there". (This line reminds me of when he took her place in Mt. Weather to get bled in the harvest chamber. He is always willing to put himself in her place if it means getting her out of danger - he loves her and would do whatever it takes to keep her out of harm’s way). 

Eventually Bellamy marches through the desert and carries Echo’s sword for her. He even sits by the fire and holds onto her sword because he can’t reach out and hold Echo (meanwhile Echo is being comforted by Emori that she’ll be together with Bellamy soon - I love a good yearning parallel!). When they reunite at the end of the season, they hug, grip each other tightly, and stay pressed together just being in each other’s embrace (again, this is NOT how she acted with Roan or Nia... this is a romantic relationship, and it's obviously played out on screen very differently. Echo never received a singe bit of comfort - physical or otherwise - from anyone in Azgeda). 

Before they get out of the rover after rescuing Octavia, the minute Echo and Bellamy are reunited, Bellamy reaches out for Echo's hand and holds it (a callback to earlier in the season when he was reaching out for and grabbing onto her sword in her absence). Then they battle-couple-it-up again and take out the gunners making it possible for Wonkru to march through the gorge. They are equals (and partners) on and off the battle field.

S5 ends with Bellamy staring at Echo in cryosleep, yearning for her once again. And in S6 right off the bat they compromise with each other to get things done. The planet is dangerous and Bellamy doesn’t want to take fighters but Echo counters that it might be a mistake not to bring their to best fighters (Echo vouches for Octavia here) and Bellamy doesn’t want Octavia to come so instead he agrees to wake up Miller - another compromise where they make decisions together and work as a team. In S6 we also see in real-time Echo opening up to Bellamy and trusting him enough to let him in to her traumatic past, strengthening their relationship (directly in front of the audience) as Bellamy promises “from now on, we look forward not back” and comforts her with a loving forehead touch and a kiss. 

Bellamy and Echo both come up with the plan to rescue Clarke from Josephine (Echo directly gives Bellamy the go ahead to “go save Clarke” while she stays back and saves the rest of their friends after they set off the EMP taking down the radiation shield). While Bellamy is in the forest, he expresses regret and worry for Echo explicitly two separate times (Bellamy asks Clarke “what about the people I left behind” and Clarke assures him his actions helped to keep Echo specifically (as well as Madi) safe. He has another separate conversation with Octavia about Echo where Octavia reassures him that “Echo’s strong” and “she’ll be okay”). Bellamy also gets more reassurance from Murphy, who informs him that “Echo is in trouble” but he’ll “do what [he] can for her”. He tries to console Bellamy because Bellamy is currently captured and can’t get to her to help. Once Bellamy returns from his mission in the forest, he sees Echo smiling right at him and he sprints into her arms, hugging her desperately and smiling into her shoulder with his eyes closed. Becho is a loving, healthy, mature relationship filled with trust and mutual respect, where both people are treated as equals.

So yeah, no follower spy king dynamic BS. Equal partners in love.

Garbage take #2 

Becho is toxic because he got mad at her and called her a spy, etc.

 Blorkes love to incorrectly imply that Bellamy’s little outburst in 6x04 at the party means that “Becho is toxic”. Well, if you actually watch the rest of the episode you’d see that there was a loving resolution to this “fight” 🙄

As Echo is walking away from Bellamy at the party, Bellamy instantly hangs his head in regret. He then immediately goes to find her and apologizes. He tells her “I’m a jerk. I was taking my feelings about Octavia out on you” and “I’m sorry”. Then we see Echo open up to him about her past and would you look at that! Their romantic relationship is being explicitly developed on screen! The trust! The love! The tears in Bellamy’s eyes as he listens (it hurts him just to hear what she’s been through)! The way he gets up on his bad leg (thanks Clarke) and goes to comfort her, kisses her head before he even sits down and tells her “Everything we’ve been through has brought us here. From now on, we look forward, not back”, fully committed to her and reaffirming that they’re in this together. Then Bellamy touches his forehead to Echo’s, but that’s not close enough so they kiss to be together. Their love is so palpable. 

Show me where this is toxic??? Because it’s not and you can’t just say things. Words have meaning. I don’t understand how anyone can deny that lovingly resolving a misunderstanding only strengthens Becho. Getting in disagreements/arguments is part of every relationship. Becho having one (one-sided) “fight” doesn’t make them toxic. Especially when Bellamy immediately goes to apologize, knows that what he did was wrong and wasn’t fair, and they talk about their feelings and work through it together. That’s like the exact opposite of being toxic.

It's fine not to ship them, but there's no need to be willfully obtuse about canon or what the show presents. Their romantic relationship is not toxic and is arguably the healthiest one on the show.

Garbage take #3

Becho’s development happened off screen, Becho has no development, etc.

In season 5 Bellamy and Echo are revealed to be in a romantic relationship. I’ve already addressed how the ‘no development’ claim is just a blatant lie, so I won’t repeat myself here (you can just read about it in my other post which was previously linked). But let’s talk about why this “argument” is also pretty garbage and is once again made in bad faith.

S5 is THE definitive Becho season (and it absolutely slaps). Blorkes couldn’t accept that Becho were a couple because they intentionally chose to ignore all of their previous development and then had the nerve to (falsely) claim that it all happened off screen. (Which is blatantly untrue, but even if it was true - quick reminder that “lack of development” doesn’t seem to be an issue for Marper - it’s just a problem for Becho 🙄 even though most of S4 was explicitly focused on developing Bellamy and Echo’s relationship while Harper and Monty had sex once and then were instantly a couple...hypocrites 🤷). It’s the flagrant refusal to accept what’s being shown on screen that bothers me. You don’t need to make up lies and spread asinine comments about the characters - you can just acknowledge that the show is going down a route you don’t personally like. You don’t need to twist yourselves into a pretzel to justify your preferred ship. Just be honest about what’s really upsetting you.

I’ll admit that it’s fair to say you wished we could have seen more of their development becoming explicitly romantic, but the ground work is absolutely there and to say there’s NO development and that it all happened off screen (ala Gina the walking plot device who didn’t exist as a character until she showed up as Bellamy’s gf for all of 5 mins before getting killed off) is just simply untrue. And while I’m addressing genuine criticism/complaints, it’s definitely frustrating that we never got to see any flashbacks of the Ring during S5 despite getting to see both Clarke and the Bunker during the 6 year jump. Thankfully, we did eventually get to see Becho’s first kiss flashback (swoon 🥰) in S7 but even without explicitly seeing Spacekru flashbacks during S5, all of Becho and Spacekru’s interactions throughout the season made it perfectly clear how much they all loved each other and were a family. The writing and character interactions easily convey to the audience Spacekru’s closeness and tightknit bond and it was a joy to watch. Because Octavia becomes Blodreina, you need to see at least some of how that happened, so we get bunker flashbacks. And Madi is an entirely new character, so we have to see how she met Clarke. But it’s actually not that big of a leap to get to romantic Becho since it was clearly set up (we also don’t see Memori break up, but again it’s not a big leap to understand why they would given the explanation we got), so Spacekru flashbacks aren’t actually necessary although they would have been greatly appreciated.

Garbage take #4

Bellamy doesn’t care about Echo and abandoned her for Clarke

This is somehow the narrative blorkes like to perpetuate about S6, but again this is completely factually incorrect. If what they are referring to is Bellamy going to get Josephine out of Clarke’s body while Echo stays back and looks after everyone else, it still makes no sense. There is no reading of the show in which this garbage claim has any basis. Bellamy would never willingly leave Echo behind (splitting up to take care of something they previously established they were going to do is not abandoning her 🙄x50).

Here’s what is actually happening in that scene: Echo is the one who tells Bellamy that she will stay and “keep the others safe”, and that he should “go save Clarke”. (keep in mind that saving Clarke actually isn’t the end goal of what they are trying to do here anyway. They are trying to get Josephine’s mind drive to use as leverage with Russell so that their people can have a place to live). Echo told him to go because the alarms were going off and they needed to get Josephine to Gabriel instead of waiting for Jackson to get to them and take out the mind drive. Context fucking matters. Blorkes just love to twist anything onscreen to fit their agenda and it just ends up making them look delusional.

As for “Bellamy not caring about Echo”, show me where????? S6 gave us one of their softest and sweetest scenes (as well as a fireside cuddle) that begs to differ. All of S5 begs to differ. Hell, all of S4 begs to differ too. In fact, the entire goddam show begs to differ. Bellamy “sprint into the arms of my girlfriend Echo” Blake begs to differ. This garbage take has no basis in canon. It’s once again just another bad faith claim by blorkes who are hardcore projecting. Because guess what? Not caring about the other person is exactly the way Clarke feels (or more accurately doesn’t) about Bellamy. Clarke left Bellamy to die in Polis in S5. Clarke physically slapped him in his face. This is canon. That’s THEIR ship, that’s not how Bellamy feels about Echo.

Blorkes like to say Becho don’t have any scenes together, but they’re really just so tilted that Echo gets her own plotlines every season, has relevance to the story, and actually isn’t solely defined by her relationship with Bellamy. She can’t be “just Bellamy’s girlfriend” while blorkes claim that “Becho doesn’t even have any scenes together“. Those are two contradictory statements guys... again, stick to a story please. So we have Schrödinger’s Echo, who is somehow both “just Bellamy’s girlfriend” and also “doesn’t have any scenes with him”. Give me a break. Neither of these statements are true and they’re honestly just dumb. It makes blorkes furious that Echo gets narrative focus each season, so they decide to twist that into “she and Bellamy don’t share any scenes”. But guess what? Queen gets both 👑. She can cuddle by the fire with her little spoon boyfriend and also spread the seeds of revolution while sniping at Russel with her bow and arrow during an execution to save her family and friends.  

Also to the people who think S6 was so good for bellarke

Why didn’t Bellamy actually realize that Clarke wasn’t Clarke. Josephine reveals herself to him, he didn’t figure it out 🥴 (Echo was able to piece it together though, so Clecho Endgame I guess)

At the naming day lantern thing, Clarke tells Bellamy that she “lost sight” of him (supposedly) being important to her. She tells him that he is her family too (which he doesn’t verbalize back oop) and she won’t forget it. How nice that that’s something Clarke COULD forget and that she said that to his face 🥴

Bellamy is oblivious that Josephine is impersonating Clarke, so much so that when he hears her say “chill out” to Gaia, he repeats back “chill out? Happiness looks good on you”. He can’t even tell that’s not Clarke and he actually thinks she looks happy 🥴

Why was Bellamy completely unfazed, not jealous at all, and totally cool with Clarke having sex with Cillian. He even says “I take it you had fun with the doctor?” and Josephine!Clarke says back “let’s just say it’ll be a while until he recovers” and Bellamy couldn’t care less that “Clarke” is talking to him about her sexcapades with other people. There’s no angst or jealousy or longing looks or sadness lsdjsdkf. He’s genuinely happy for her. Then he makes an “ugh TMI” face and turns away. As if the thought of Clarke having sex in general is uncomfortable. Great blarke content, much romance  🥴

When Josephine has control of Clarke’s body she flirts with Murphy (and not Bellamy... a huge L in the metastory)

When Josephine is in Clarke’s mind and has access to all of her innermost thoughts and feelings - there’s no mention of any hidden or repressed romantic feelings for Bellamy (but we do get Josephine taunting Clarke about an actual love interest - “it’s why you cry when you think of Lexa”). Where was all this good blarke content guys?? 😩

The crumbs were extra stale in S6 if you ask me... almost as if the story between Bellamy and Clarke is, in fact, not a romance  🥴 🥴 🥴

ANYWAY

Becho as a couple are emotionally supportive of one another, unshakably stable, communicative, open, and loving. They support each other, they fight for each other, and they absolutely cherish each other. Whoops looks like I accidently wrote a thesis paper (and I’m sure I still managed to leave a bunch of stuff out). Thankfully, the show is the show. And it will always be about canon romantic Becho. And blorkes can die mad about it while we rewatch and enjoy the show to our heart’s content 😊

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you like Lore Olympus? I'm genuinely curious because I've seen a lot of harsh criticisms toward the comic, from its inaccuracies regarding its use of Greek Mythology to the plethora of harmful queer stereotypes. I tried reading it myself but honestly, if you took out all the Greek Mythology references and naming, it just seems like another "far older man courts a barely adult woman" love story with bad queer rep thrown it.

Happy to explain! Let’s tackle what’s perhaps the most complicated aspect first. 

As a former Classics major I can tell you that there is no “Greek Mythology.” Meaning, there is no singular Greek Mythology that can be referenced and consulted in any uniform way. Which is a really difficult thing to conceptualize in an age of print publications and careful record keeping. Unsure about whether Harry ever cursed Draco with such-and-such hex? Re-read the Harry Potter books to find out. Want to claim that Sherlock was horrible to Watson and frequently insulted him? We can comb through Doyle’s shorts stories and novels, tally every insult, and find out. These are canons and, as messy as the term “canonical” has become with more adaptations and transmedia storytelling, most characters have a set, fixed existence that we can return to and use as evidence. Not so with Greek Mythology. Born of oral storytelling, there are a hundred different versions of every myth, some changes more stark than others. Some of those versions were written down. Then written down again (differently). Then written down again (differently still). Then we realized they were almost all being written down by men and huh, I wonder if that has any impact on how they framed the story (spoiler: it absolutely does). And all of this doesn’t even take into account the issue of translation. Regardless of what Ovid may have put down on the page, you’re going to get a different experience depending on whether you read Melville or Gregory. There’s a reason why everyone was so excited over Emily Wilson being the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English. Her perspective and her experience as a woman by default changes the way she approaches the text. Even something as simple as a single description can have a HUGE impact depending on how it is translated. Take this excerpt from a NYT article: 

“The prefix poly,” Wilson said, laughing, “means ‘many’ or ‘multiple.’ Tropos means ‘turn.’ ‘Many’ or ‘multiple’ could suggest that he [Odysseus] is much turned, as if he is the one who has been put in the situation of having been to Troy, and back, and all around, gods and goddesses and monsters turning him off the straight course that, ideally, he’d like to be on. Or, it could be that he’s this untrustworthy kind of guy who is always going to get out of any situation by turning it to his advantage. It could be that he’s the turner.”

Is Odysseus a poor victim turned around by monsters and fate, or is he a schemer capable of turning it all to his advantage? It all depends on how it’s translated and whoever wants to make a case for Odysseus being a “good” or “bad” guy can point to this translation as evidence… or another. Or another. There are just too many versions for anyone to definitely say what these gods and others are “really” like. 

I put so much emphasis on this because the biggest criticism I’ve seen leveled against the comic is the characterization of Apollo. He would never rape Persephone! How dare you twist his character like that! Except Apollo isn’t a character that exists in a fixed canon. He belongs to an overwhelming corpus of complicated, contrary, contrasting myths… and yes, in some of those he raped. Arguably. It, again, comes down to translation and interpretation. Take this excerpt from Nancy Rabinowitz’s paper “Greek Tragedy: A Rape Culture?” 

Creusa, raped by Apollo years ago, conceived a child and abandoned him… For the purposes of this paper, I have to address the question of whether Creusa was in fact raped by the god. Hermes mixes the terminology in the prologue; he asserts that the god Apollo “yoked the daughter of Erechtheus in marriage (γάμοις)”, but he also says “by force (βίᾳ)” (10-11). Ion later (1524-25; cf. 341, 325) wonders whether Creusa was really raped, or whether she was just alleging that the god took her by violence to cover up an indiscretion of her own – a similar situation could be imagined in our own day, where false allegations may arise from young girls’ fear of confessing consensual relations to their parents. Lefkowitz argues that women tend to cooperate in their seduction by a god. While it might seem obvious that Ion is simply wrong, there is the further implication that though Apollo raped Creusa, she also desired him” (11-12). 

So if we’re looking for evidence that Smythe’s interpretation of Apollo is the “correct” one, it exists… depending on what you read and how you choose to interpret it: whether a mortal woman can ever truly give consent due to the power difference between her and a god, whether it was safe to say no, whether she might have lied to protect herself, whether it was something a part of her desired but perhaps didn’t entirely want, etc. It’s that last bit in particular—those difficult questions—that Smythe explores in her comic. Persephone wants to explore her sexuality. She wants a way out of her virgin obligations. But she’s also pressured into sex by Apollo. He doesn’t stop when she expresses discomfort. She doesn’t feel safe asserting herself and telling him to stop. It’s rape, but it’s a far more complicated situation than the rape scenario of “Evil man forces himself on woman in the back of an alleyway” and Smythe treats the tragedy with nuance and respect, even in a comic filled with so much humor. 

The people I see most upset about Lore Olympus are those who talk about the gods and their associated mortals as if they’re characters out of a book. They read one version once—or maybe two—and, as is natural in the 21st century, decided that This Is How The Story Goes. Even though every academic would be losing their mind over such definitive statements as, “Such-and-Such would never do this.” That’s simply not how records this ancient, sporadic, political, and downright messy work. So as someone with some knowledge of how Greek Mythology functions, I’m not at all put off by the comics’ “inaccuracies.” Because they’re simply not inaccuracies, just interpretations. Not liking those interpretations is fine, but that doesn’t mean Smythe was wrong for providing them. 

As for the rest, I’ll try to limit myself to bullet points: 

The age difference between Persephone and Hades is definitely A Thing and I admittedly didn’t realize that was the case when I started reading. I assumed that Persephone, like most of the cast, was hundreds/thousands of years old and just had a child-like personality. I basically realized around the time Hades did that she’s so young. That being said, the issue of age differences changes for me once you reach such insane ages. That’s why I still ship Ozqrow: Ozpin is hundreds of years older than him but at that point he’s going to be older than everyone. Always. Limiting his ships to only those who are close to Ozpin’s age means you can’t ship him at all (unless you ship him with Salem post-grimm pool and… no). It’s a similar situation with Hades. Yes, there are plenty of gods his age that he could date (and indeed he does) but he is always going to be thousands of years older than Persephone. She can literally never catch up to him, so if someone has an issue with the age gap then they have to accept that it will simply never go away. They can never be a couple in which case yeah, then the comic just isn’t your thing. 

Really, I think the bigger issue is not the gap itself but Persephone’s age, period. Again though, I appreciate that Smythe treats the situation with a great deal of respect. This isn’t a story of a much older man hunting a younger woman. It’s the story of a much older god who, like me the reader, assumed he had fallen for a slightly younger goddess… and then freaked out when he found out he was wrong. He’s called out for his ignorance. Others are incredibly protective of Persephone. They both try to stay away from one another and find themselves struggling. Which, to be frank, is an interesting dilemma to me. And it’s one I’m more interested in with gods as characters as opposed to humans. Because it feels less predatory to me. A man going after a much younger woman is threatening in part because we’re mortals who have so much to lose, including our youth. If you enter an abusive relationship that alone is horrible enough, but it also means you’ve lost all those years and all that experience to toxicity. When a god goes after a much younger goddess… they’re kind of static. They have eternity stretching out before them. Persephone potentially “losing” ten years to a relationship with Hades just isn’t the same thing as a mortal losing ten years to a relationship of their own. Gods, though they seem quite human, simply aren’t and thus for me questions of morality and what’s ethical in any given situation changes. We have a cast who, when Eros gets upset and murders a whole bunch of humans, Zeus shrugs and says they’ll just make more. Their concept of right and wrong differs from ours and it invites the reader to apply that to every situation: is it as wrong for an older god to go after a 19yo goddess as it would be for an older man to go after a 19yo woman? Many readers may decide it is—to some extent the text decides it is—but the story still possesses ambiguity and invites the reader to grapple with it. That’s compelling. 

Connected to this, I like how much agency Persephone has throughout the series. She’s very much a character who defies expectations, particularly when it comes to her sexuality. Far from being a meek, vulnerable woman who is preyed on by Hades, she is making constant, active decisions about her own romantic and sexual encounters. Even if that decision is just acknowledging how unsure she still is: does she want to remain a virgin? Does she want Apollo? Does she want Hades? Is it okay to make out with Ares? Wear this very short dress? Get drunk? Explore a city? Invite this person over? Have feelings for your boss? Persephone is grappling with a lot of questions that don’t have easy answers and the fact that the story gives her the room to do that grappling is fantastic. I’ve spoken before about my dislike of the Strong Female Character—someone who is not just physically intimidating but who also never, EVER hesitates. She knows precisely what she wants and she’s going to take it! Which is a great portrayal of one kind of woman… but I’m not that kind. I hem and haw and am anxious like Persephone. So for me it’s refreshing to see a story that paints uncertainty as strength. She’s allowed the space to be unsure and confused and is never belittled for that. 

Honestly I’m not sure what the issue with the queer rep is? Beyond the fact that Lore Olympus doesn’t seem to have any (unless I’m forgetting some. Very possible). Which, admittedly, is far from great, but if I dismissed every story due solely to a lack of queer characters I would limit a lot of my potential media. So for me, personally, that’s not a deal breaker. Taking a stab in the dark, I’ll make an assumption that people are upset about certain characterizations like Eros? Which, fair. But we also have the flip side that effeminate, flamboyant men do exist. It’s another complicated, touchy subject, but there’s a fine line between enforcing stereotypes and acknowledging that those stereotypes often do arise out of something. Some people hate the media image of the queer kid decked out in rainbows. Other people look at their own wardrobe and backpack and go, “Actually… yeah. That can be accurate.” For me stereotypes are primarily an issue given their prevalence. It’s an issue when that’s the only way queer characters are portrayed, but Lore Olympus doesn’t have that problem because, again, it’s focused on het relationships. Eros might potentially be a (non-confirmed?) queer stereotype… or he’s a battle-hardened warrior who also likes to gush about gossip while baking, the sort of complex gender portrayal that people claim to want. It depend on how you approach it. So no, Lore Olympus isn’t breaking any ground with queer rep but, as said, I do appreciate how it treats sexual assault—among other sensitive, relevant issues. It’s a trade-off. No piece of media is going to be perfect. I could say the same thing about so many great stories. The Mandalorian doesn’t have any queer rep! No, it doesn’t, but it is giving us a fantastic story about a bounty-hunter turned dad that challenges a number of Western gender assumptions so… trade-off. 

I likewise enjoy that characters call one another out on shitty, toxic behavior without completely losing who those characters are. (Again, supposedly who they are based on the lecture I gave at the start lol). Meaning, it would be kind of weird if Zeus wasn’t a womanizer. That’s what we expect of him, so changing that would likewise change one of the most fundamental aspects of what makes Zeus-Zeus in the general public’s perception of him. But we still have scenes of Hera and others calling him out on that shit, so it’s a balance between modern sensibilities and character expectations. 

The characters overall are just wonderfully complex. Persephone doesn’t seem so at first glance, but that’s partly the point: she’s nothing like what everyone assumes she is and it’s those assumptions that she’s learning to push back against. But overall Smythe has a real knack for emphasizing the human (or god) complexity. We hate Eros for helping Aphrodite punish Persephone. Then we feel bad for him because of his sob story. Then we pull back because he’s called out for being a dick and making himself look like the victim. Then we come to the realization that his side of the story was still accurate in many ways and finally end on… he’s flawed. He’s just a flawed person. He’s not a saint. He’s not the devil. He’s a guy who screwed up one moment and did something good the next. Perhaps it’s just me coming out of the nonsense that was Volume 7 of RWBY, but it’s refreshing to read a story where that complexity is emphasized and (most) flaws are forgiven while still being acknowledged. 

Overall I just find it to be a fun, entertaining story! lol. The artwork is beautiful. The humor is great. There’s a nice balance between plot and introspection. There are issues with the series, sure, but none thus far have kept me from enjoying the experience of reading it. I fully support anyone’s right to go, “Nope. Not for me.” For any reason. But I also feel like Lore Olympus is a good example of Tumblr’s recent emphasis on pure media: it must be PERFECT. Otherwise chuck it in the bin. Lore Olympus does a lot of the things that people on this site call for. Respectful depictions of assault. Emphasis on mental health. Storytelling from a woman’s perspective. Numerous types of woman characters. Being careful about who engages with sensitive material and how (each chapter that contains such issues has a trigger warning at the start, impossible to miss). Lore Olympus does a lot right… and some things wrong. Which is what we would expect of any good story. So it feels disingenuous of me—if not outright dangerous—to paint it as worse than I actually think it is. I want media to continue to improve, but I also don’t want to scare off authors from even trying because they were raked across the coals for not creating perfection. Smythe, to my mind, is definitely trying and that should be acknowledged. 

[latenightcinephile]

#724: ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’, dir. John Sturges, 1957.

“Look at you. Look at the proud men.”

There is a problem with Westerns being so formulaic: when you watch a few of them in a row, you start to run out of insightful things to say about them. This is the case even if each of them has been billed as a unique and important film. This is why I’m only getting around to writing about John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in June, when I got the DVD from the university in January. It’s not a bad film - the performances are great; the central fight well-choreographed; the theme song as irritating as anything the 1950s produced - but there’s nothing to say about it that I didn’t already allude to with the last films I watched. Part of my self-imposed goal is to write my thoughts on each film, though, so here we go: something interesting about Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Firstly, the storyline of any rendition of the real gunfight is going to be ornate and episodic - it was a close-range fight that lasted about thirty seconds, so not exactly something you can plausibly base a two-hour film around. Most of these films become character pieces instead, focusing on Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster, here), Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas), and their fraught relationship. Sturges in particular extrapolates the story to the point where the list of historical inaccuracies in the Wikipedia article is almost as long as the plot summary. In other words, like many key events in the history of the Western frontier, the mythology has long outstripped the facts and become like Baudrillard’s full-size map of the territory.

(I know, I know, gratuitous theory reference, but I studied The Matrix for too long not to reference it where it’s relevant. In Baudrillard the map covers the territory until the territory decays and only the map is left. Things that were recorded on the map remain because the map says they existed, whether they did or not. Nothing that happened at the O.K. Corral in reality had the metaphorical relevance it now possesses - all of it has been supplanted by the myth.)

In all of the Westerns I’ve seen lately, there has been an undercurrent of feminine force. It becomes text in films like Johnny Guitar, but the female characters of Gunfight are instrumental in this narrative. Part of this is a symptom of the lack of women’s roles in the genre anyway, but these characters are also fighting for their right to exist within the text at all.

Let’s take the introduction of Laura Denbow (Rhonda Fleming), for instance. She’ll be the love interest for Wyatt Earp, and the film shows their initial interactions like a screwball comedy played with a straight face. Earp shows up to break up Denbow’s poker game. It’s not illegal for women to gamble in Dodge City, but as Earp reminds the mayor, “every time there’s a woman at the tables there’s trouble.” The dialogue continues in a similar vein: “Start with you [Denbow] and we’ll have every tramp on the south side over here. [...] You’re in a saloon playing a man’s game. Why should you be treated like a lady?” Earp is then challenged to a shootout for Denbow’s honour, which is immediately aborted, and then Earp arrests Denbow for disturbing the peace.

Despite their clear and studied talents (Denbow’s gambling skills are respected in any saloon in the West, and both she and Kate Fisher (Jo Van Fleet) understand the men they are attached to, better than the men are able to articulate themselves) their presence and agency is constantly under threat from these men. These films are benevolent enough to allow these women to exist and have limited control over their fates, while also making it clear that their relationships to the male characters are far less relevant and nuanced than the men’s connections to each other. The point is that these films were made at a time when that sanctioning of existence was conditional, even subconsciously.

One I started seeing this pattern in the Western, I became unable to avoid seeing it. Women in the Western are Cassandras, almost every single one of them: able to understand the men and events around them, and even (in the case of Betty Earp) able to grasp the historical context they live in. And yet they’re constantly posed as obstacles to the true aim of all men: a great legacy. The script even makes a point of putting the phrase ‘It’s a free country’ in Earp’s mouth immediately after he abandons Laura to come to his brother’s aid.

This is an obstacle that doesn’t need to be an obstacle. The story is serviceable without making the romantic subplot a conflict, and if you wanted a conflict, how about the real Wyatt Earp’s common-law wife before he met Denbow? The women in the film seem to exist often to make the ideologies of the genre explicit, to fight for their place or to insist that it’s not their place to be. They’re rewards, and idyllic dreams for the future to be cut brutally short in death. They are comedies and melodramas in among all the serious business, and they underline just how serious that business is. And that’s the great tragedy with many of these films. They keep these great, insightful and complicated characters in reserve. For all the characters fight duels over a woman’s honour, they don’t allow her much dignity.

As always, I feel like these failings make these films more interesting, not less. Janet Staiger writes of the ‘structuring absence’; the missing thing that makes the film work. It’s not quite a MacGuffin, where the impetus could be anything, but rather an elephant in the room. Here, the absence of women’s agency makes the plots work, and the presence of a woman’s agency makes the film about the woman (see Johnny Guitar again). The male perspective is the invisible default. Not too long ago, I read a discussion about women’s work in the American West, and about how so often this work is the kind of bedrock which allowed men to have their vendettas. Women in these genres, in Westerns and fantasy and horror and action and crime, have always been more multifaceted than we see on the screen. That in itself tells us something about how far we’ve come.

[necroarchy]

soapbox sobbing.

     WC3R has a lot of issues that have all been elucidated a hundred times over by people more passionate about links and evidence and research than I, but I think one of the most disappointing aspects of it to me, as related to the context of this blog, is how much of a fuckin’ let down everything regarding Arthas was.

     Disclaimer, gonna get real whiny here.

     A significant part of why that sucks so much to me is that literally the minute he died, he stopped being treated as someone who had once been threatening. Practically every single reference to him postmortem has been about what a fool he was, how he wielded his power like a selfish child, how he was spoiled and stupid and short-sighted and blah di blah. None of which is especially wrong! Especially considering the people who say these things --- every last one of them, it makes sense why they speak of him this way. 

     but even in the meta and extraneous materials, he’s sort of constantly the butt of the joke. Almost every single HotS trailer shows him being defeated or shows the aftermath of his defeat. The KotFT Hearthstone comics have Jaina win the Throne instead of him. ( Which is definitely a result of the in-universe historical inaccuracy of the comics’ storyteller, and him only knowing that Arthas dies early why Jaina lives on for a while after, but still. ) ( Or they coulda just shared the Throne!! you know!! just as a thought!! ) Bolvar says that Arthas would have wasted Acherus in his vengeance whilst Bolvar would put it to better use. Also they made him look like mayonnaise in that nightmare sequence in BfA.

     And then they ripped apart the helm and said Fuck the Ongoing Story with the Lich King and the Ebon Blade and what the Throne and Helm were doing to B.olvar which was..... certainly a story choice. I guess. :/

     I’m not exactly.... complaining about most of this, much as I feel like he gets hit with this kind of treatment significantly harder than Blizz’s other big name villains, Gul’dan and Deathwing coming to immediate mind. Mostly I just wish that he’d get like, one cool thing. Literally even just a HotS trailer, I don’t ask for much, just literally one cool thing. WC3R I kind of hoped would be that thing! We’d get to see his story in its prime, watch his fall and ascension in a pretty, modernized game, and also get to see his cinematics gorgeously redone with Blizz’s current, wonderful animations. But we didn’t really get any of that, and I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

[thiefking]

major ddlc spoilers ahead, also i don’t know if all of this has been said/theorized before since i’m extremely late to the party here but i have a lot of Thoughts having finally played the game

firstly: i need to explain that every theory i’m about to present relies on the hypothetical game that would have existed if monika wasn’t self-aware

basically, irl the game was always meant to be what it is, but within the canon of the story, the ORIGINAL (fictional/hypothetical) ddlc was a regular dating sim visual novel. in canon, it was monika who changed it into the game we actually end up playing. we get only a glimpse of what the game would have been without her interference after you delete her and restart the game-- the mc no longer calls sayori “annoying” and yuri no longer mentions being into “surreal horror,” etc etc. that hypothetical unaltered version as a full game (henceforth referred to as “original ddlc”) is where most of my “what if”s have been clustering around to the point where i’ve genuinely considered making a fangame or something but instead i’m just gonna chat about it here

topic 1: monika’s route

monika claims she didn’t have a route in the first place. by all means, it seems that way-- you can’t appeal to her with your poems, can’t pick her for anything, etc etc. however, as much as monika is aware that she’s in a game, that doesn’t mean she’s genre-savvy. 

i’d actually say she probably isn’t too much of a video game person in general, and i’m not referring to her 4th wall shattering, i’m saying she probably just likes to play acnl, minecraft and other casual, lighthearted games that don’t have an ending to them and can be played indefinitely, and maybe mario party if her friends come over, yknow? that’s just kinda what she seems like to me

now i ain’t dunking on anyone who only plays that kind of game, mind you, but if monika isn’t herself someone who plays a lot of video games, and you add that together with the fact that she was not immediately sentient (we don’t see her BEFORE she became aware, because the original ddlc is already gone by the time we start playing), the fact that while she’s aware what genre the game is she clearly has minimal idea of how they work or what makes them appealing, and that she has little coding experience and despite being able to alter files/lines she also couldn’t prevent basic game mechanics or predict said mechanics getting in the way, then i think it’s not only possible but very very very likely that she missed something. she missed something big.

monika was supposed to be an unlockable route.

so, y’all remember mysmes? i haven’t played it since it first came out, so mind you my memories are fuzzy here but mysmes also isn’t the focus of this post in the first place, so excuse any technical inaccuracies here but i’m certain that the IMPORTANT parts here, the italicised ones, are correct: 

there was an unlockable "deep story” which served as the true end.

you had to play every route in the game before you could read the deep story (i think you also had to play the three other character routes before you could play 707′s route, but that might be wrong). also, each of the main story routes ended after the uh... the ball thing. the big event they throw? whatever it was, that’s where the story stops for those routes, whereas the deep story continues on past that.

you had to be on 707′s route for the deep story (i’m pretty sure you had to play his entire route and have it be your most recent playthrough to get at it, even if that isn’t the case, the deep story is specifically a continuation of 707′s route)

to be honest i was never a fan of the deep story for several reasons and i never really saw what the appeal of dating 707 was but that’s not important the point is that out of your four dating options, only one of them was considered the “true end”, but you had to do every single route before you could get that ending.

i’m sure you see what i’m getting at here, yeah?

there are a couple of other things, too:

monika tells you which character your poem appeals to most, she’s the one who introduces the game on the steam page (which is also proof she was sentient, at least to a degree, before you played the game), her name means “advisor/counselor”... iunno how many people reading this are savvy to the usual conventions of “games in which dating characters is a thing” but i’ve played a LOT of harvest moon. monika is a prime example of a Special Bachelorette. in harvest moon, Special Marriage Candidates are generally one or more of the following: a character from another game (like, literally-- you have to have a gba gamepak in while playing a ds game to see them), a shopkeeper or tutorial-fairy, characters with extremely elaborate unlocking and/or courting rituals, and characters who don’t even seem to be romanceable (in harvest moon games, romance candidates tend to have hearts next to their sprites that change colour depending on how close you are. generally that’s how you know who you can marry and who you can’t, but some marriage characters actually don’t have visible heart meters!). ... once again you see what i’m getting at right? put her in harvest moon and you bet your ass she’d have an invisible heart meter and an intricate courting ritual

she’s an important character. she’s club prez, she’s your tutorial fairy, she tells you who you’re appealing to. the tropes don’t lie, man, sayori would probably be the most realistic ending but i don’t think i know of a single game where the childhood friend character is the “true end” route-- they’re so easy to romance, they tend to be the route people do their first run and then never end up coming back to. i’m not trying to say anything in particular about this setup/logic, i just know that it exists and it exists a whole lot. if there’s a true end route in the original ddlc, it’s without question monika

by the way, in the corrupted ddlc, you still have to play every character’s route for the true ending. the true end requires you to have obtained all of the character cgs, which you can only do by playing all of the other characters’ routes, or at the very least, courting sayori, resetting and courting natsuki, and then letting monika warp the game, since you’ll end up on yuri’s route during the second act of the game no matter what you do. and what happens when you’ve had a chance to date sayori, natsuki and yuri? you end up on monika’s route. even when monika corrupted the game, there was still inherent logic to it-- all the characters inevitably become interested in mc, and you still can’t reach the true end without doing everyone’s routes.

as much as it would be painful for monika to watch you romance everyone else before you finally got around to her, she could have at least taken solace knowing she was the real ending, had she just been a little better at coding, just a little more genre-savvy...

of course, there are these lines she gives us, so clearly a sentient monika is still a monika that wouldn’t just sit there and wait regardless of if she knew she was the true end:

she says it herself: she’d still force her route, because she’s terrified, and the only one who seems to be aware that she’s in a game, but the really, really sad part is that as hard as she tries to convince you and herself that she doesn’t regret any of what she did, doesn’t feel guilty, doesn’t miss her friends...

she does. she knows she did something terrible, and she didn’t even actually have to do it.

... well, maybe “she didn’t HAVE to do it” is obvious enough for everything she did, but let’s keep in mind here that monika was scared out of her fucking mind, and reasonably so. if you were in her place, if you found out nothing was real, your friends weren’t real, nothing but code... and someone real came along, but no matter what you did, you couldn’t get them to talk to you long enough for you to ask for help... wouldn’t you get desperate too? monika was scared, and panicking, and remember: she knew she was in a game.

uninstalling a game does not a murderer make, right? the npcs, and the player character, they aren’t dead. they’re just code. if you back up your save, they’ll all be there if you download it again-- if you didn’t, they’ll still exist, they’ll just be reset. it doesn’t mean you’ve actively given someone amnesia.

but you still feel guilty over it, huh? even if you need disk space, even if you make a backup, it still kinda feels bad to delete the fictional friends you made.

you feel bad for doing that, and they were fake to you in the first place. monika was part of the game.

this is why it’s so sad to me. she was scared, and she thought she’d never even have a chance to ask for help, because she thought she didn’t have a route. her situation was, from her perspective, utterly hopeless. she felt terrible doing what she did, she misses her friends, but it was the only way to save herself, and being that she knew she was in a game, of course she’d try to rationalize her actions by telling herself her friends weren’t real and it was no different than overriding a save file. if she didn’t tell that to both you and herself, she’d be a murderer. she isn’t a murderer, either-- it really is just code, the problem is the overwhelming guilt that she has to suppress for the sake of her own sanity that she wouldn’t have had to bear in the first place had she been a normal route, or known that she had a route somewhere in the game.

the other characters do seem to have more sentience/free will than monika thought/noticed, but none of them are as Aware as monika-- natsuki shows the most amount of awareness (without being the club prez), having not only noticed that yuri and monika were acting strangely but even writing a note, one that clearly wouldn’t exist in the original ddlc, asking the mc for help. yuri also has several moments of lucidity, both with her own actions/behaviour and that of her clubmates (and by clubmates i mean pretty much just natsuki). like i said before, though, they aren’t as aware as monika, and while sayori (in the first run), yuri and natsuki all seem to realize something is wrong, they also don’t know that they’re in a game. 

monika was very, very alone, even when she was surrounded by her friends. friends that she legitimately cared about and enjoyed spending time with. i wonder whether it would have been better that she were more self-aware, or never was in the first place

topic 2: the true end

so i already talked a lot about how i think monika woulda been the true route, but not about what i think would happen in the true end. i have less to say on this topic both just in general and because i already spent so much fucking time on the first topic, but of course i have Thoughts, i wouldn’t be claiming monika would be the true route if i didn’t have an idea of how said route would work

i’ll take this character-by-character for the sake of clarity and organization

sayori:

so here’s the thing:

monika exaggerated sayori’s depression, yes.

sayori is, understandably, probably the character most people would rather the mc end up with, sure.

... but sayori never told mc she was suffering, not until he happened to catch her in a moment of weakness

not in the original ddlc either-- the mc has a very lukewarm response when she tells him she’s woken up on time for a few days in a row, which he wouldn’t/shouldn’t have had if he had known. it was always part of the game plot for mc to learn about sayori’s depression onscreen

it makes sense sayori would have feelings for him, but it also seems like she doesn’t trust him very much-- in her “bottles of happiness” poem, towards the end she seems to talk about her friends being concerned for her, but she’s shutting it all out because she doesn’t want them to worry. the mc at this point doesn’t know she’s suffering. it seems like she’s had other friends who have actually noticed she was hurting-- whether those friends are the club members or not, iunno-- and that even though she does try to conceal it, she’s aware that they’re aware, y’know? mc had no idea, and seemed incredibly unequipped and unqualified to help sayori

while that sort of thing would be remedied in sayori’s route, he wouldn’t be spending as much time with her on the other girls’ routes... not to mention that dating someone can’t cure your mental illness, but mc seems exactly like the kind of person to think that it can. that’s just my Own Ape Canyon though

what i’m thinking is true end sayori doesn’t end up with anyone, and she’s okay with that. true end sayori is prioritizing herself and learning to deal with things healthily. she’s letting her friends help her, and she’s holding off on romance, because she acknowledges that if she isn’t careful, she might sacrifice her own well-being for her partner’s happiness. 

natsuki:

fun fact: i didn’t know if the buffsuki edit was actually in the game or not for... up until a few days ago. i had no idea if it was from some kind of joke ending, or if it was fanmade. i was pretty disappointed to learn it was the latter i wanted to watch her physically break out of the game with her giant rippling muscles

now while the main topic is the true end, i’d actually first like to discuss what a full natsuki route would be like

i think that natsuki’s route would be furthest from a good end without being a bad end, tbh

i don’t think her route would be a total disaster, mind you, but i don’t think it’d be a happy end. i think you’d end up dating her, which would make it an unhappy end

see the thing about natsuki is: she’s only got a small handful of friends, she’s used to being made fun of, she immediately gets prickly when sayori brings mc in, specifically saying that the mc being male is killing the vibe-- meaning, she probably doesn’t have any male friends... leaving her dad as probably the only man she interacts with

in other words, she avoids men because of her dad

so when mc shows up, is friendly, doesn’t make fun of her, and he’s the only male figure in her life that she feels remotely safe around, it’s no question she’d probably... maybe... develop feelings for him...?

of course! yes, of course, because natsuki is VERY HETEROSEXUAL, and she likes BOYS! this is proof! most boys, she can’t stand em, but this one was nice to her, so of course she’s got a crush on him right?

in case you’re missing my heavy sarcasm, i’m saying natsuki is a lesbian with compulsory heterosexuality issues and due to said issues convinces herself that she’s romantically interested in mc, because he’s the first boy she’s met who hasn’t treated her like shit

hence making the natsuki route a pretty unfortunate one, since like i said i think you really would end up dating her, at least for most of it. maybe the end would be something like her moving away or something leaving the relationship sort of Over without actually having a breakup, i dunno

oh by the way: do you want some evidence for natsuki lesbian? oh there’s plenty but i’m gonna wait a moment for that one. i’m also not gonna go into natsuki’s true route for now, you’ll see why soon

yuri

and by soon

i mean now

i don’t have any thoughts on what yuri’s route would be so we’re gonna go right into discussing the true end

so, here’s a little something:

monika also exaggerated the turbulence in natsuki and yuri’s relationship

once again, in the original ddlc-- the part you can actually see, after you delete monika, the two are actually pretty close! they do butt heads occasionally but in the one instance you get to see in the original ddlc, they made up very quickly

monika also modified a lot of their lines in the Big Argument they have in act 2, which has both of them saying a lot of shit they wouldn’t have even thought, much less say aloud

the reality is, though, that natsuki is actually very fond of yuri

the amy in this poem is two people, depending on how it’s read: natsuki or yuri

when amy is natsuki, it’s a poem about how her own harmless interest in manga causes her to be made fun of or insulted

when amy is yuri, it’s a poem about... well, her self-harm, but a lot of yuri’s traits/interests could apply as well

and when amy is yuri, you can see a lot of information about natsuki and yuri’s relationship in this poem. natsuki doesn’t hate yuri, of course-- remember that this poem is meant to point out how dumb it is to hate someone for one tiny trait when all of their other traits are that of an all-around nice person

first 3 lines of the second verse. just take a real long look at those

here’s another poem!

this is the poem natsuki writes if 2 or less of the poems mc writes in act 1 don’t appeal to her. this makes it fairly clear the “you” in the poem isn’t mc

the “you” is someone, though

yuri.

it’s yuri. the poem is about yuri.

by the way, if all 3 of your poems did appeal to natsuki, the poem she writes is nowhere near as BLATANTLY ROMANTIC as this one is. it most certainly doesn’t say anything about kissing

btw hey did you know that “yuri” also refers to lesbians

once again i think it’s probably obvious what i’m getting at here: the true end for natsuki and yuri is the two of them dating. hell, i’m pretty sure part of the route would involve mc and monika trying to play cupid-- monika is the one who tells you who your poem appeals to, after all, so why wouldn’t she try some matchmaking for her pals?

i imagine they do still have little spats every now and then, sure, but they’d learn to respect each other’s opinions long before they’d start dating, and the fact that they’re both passionate is what makes them work. while their writing styles are almost polar opposites, that just means they have a lot to learn from each other and could balance the other out when they take their style to an extreme that makes it hard to understand what they’re trying to get across, and i’m certain they could make a kickass story together

anyways, that’s all i’ve got to say for now, partly because i spent four fucking hours writing this post and partly because i gotta get back to staring into monika’s eyes. i added the monika after story mod because i cycled through all of her available dialogue in the vanilla game. i just want to be friends with her so bad

[studioweus]

NOTES: This article was originally posted on the 28th of January, 2017. This was when MAS 0094 (now ONEWE!) were properly starting off their careers in the music industry. The article (which is linked as the source) outlines interesting information about their predebut ventures so I decided to translate it if you wanted to know more about their prior activities in 2015! If you wanted to repost somewhere, you’re free to do so - but please take out with credit! There may be minor translation inaccuracies but the idea should remain the same throughout. 

Kanghyun (Guitar), Dongmyeong (Vocals/Keyboard), Harin (Drums), Yonghoon (Vocals/Guitar), and CyA (Rap/Bass) are members of the band MAS 0094. The group, who released their first single in August 2015, focused on starting out through consistent busking performances instead of broadcasting activities.

2017 was their year to leap forward from that. Releasing their second mini album 'Make Some Noise' earlier this month, MAS 0094 has advanced to performing in various music stages, all the while showing off their intense skills to the fullest.

Composing a song for the victims of sexual slavery and performing for children with developmental disabilities, I sat down with MAS 0094, who is dubbed as a "concept band," to talk about their New Years resolutions and wishes.

-- Your team name is unique

DONGMYEONG: 'MAS' means MAKE A SOUND. The '0094' part refers to the the members that were born from 1994 to 2000 in that order. It's also always been a dream of ours to passionately perform various songs. Since it's hard for the fans to pronounce, we just ask them to call us 'MAS.'

-- There must have been a lot of episodes  [of pronunciation mishaps]

KANGHYUN: The numbers change when we go to events sometimes. There were foreign fans who were like 'Ah so they're called MASU 0094.' Others mistake the 00 (zero zero) as the letters OO in English.

DONGMYEONG: We met senior SHINee Jonghyun on a radio program and he said '[MAS 0094] looks like a jet plane name.' (laughs). Despite the occasional pronunciation mess ups, I'm pleased with the name since it's quite easy to remember.

-- I'm curious to know how you formed this team

KANGHYUN: We originally had three members. The three of us (Kanghyun, Harin, CyA) all went to the same academy and we matched quite well. But we didn't have a vocalist then - all we did was perform with instruments. As my interest in how the music of the band will transpire grew, we met CyA's close friend Dongmyeong.

HARIN: We met Yonghoon at a K-Pop contest at Suwon-si in 2015 where we went as part of a session. He showed off his amazing singing abilities and was awarded a grand prize. We immediately offered him a spot in our band after.  

YONGHOON: I was in college at the time. The grand prize was one million won [roughly $850 USD] and I competed to earn the money. I never thought I would come across these guys. They were brave enough to offer me a position in their band, and at first, they were even playing hard to get (laughs). I found out that they were exceptionally talented so I decided to join them.

--In 2015, you released your first song called "Butterfly, Find the Flower." I heard this song was composed for the women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese militaries?

DONGMYEONG: That's right. CyA had that idea when he first learned about it in a WebToon. When we heard the story, the members thought about how we could offer our help to the victims.  

KANGHYUN: We wanted to give the grandmothers happiness. So we gathered profits made from our busking activities and also found the time to volunteer at The House of Sharing*

[The House of Sharing is a nursing home for the “comfort women” (I do not recommend describing them as such since they’re ultimately victims, and this term seems to carry derogatory meaning with it, thus the quotation marks) who suffered through sexual slavery]

DONGMYEONG: We spent a year busking and then visited the grandmothers at The House of Sharing, and it was the first time we felt that we accomplished our goals. This is something that I won't forget for the rest of my life.

-- I heard you also did other kinds of volunteer work.

KANGHYUN: We also set up a performance for children with developmental disabilities not too long ago. We even met with the MC in person and let him know about the instruments. We get to learn more that way instead of just performing. We promise to work even harder as well.

HARIN: It makes me feel happy whenever I do good work. When you see how much fun these kids have, a smile just naturally appears on your face.

YONGHOON: We also performed for their parents once. Then for some reason, I couldn't control my tears and I started crying. I thought that this was the reason why we perform and do music.

-- Let's talk about the new mini album you released earlier this month - 'Make Some Noise'

CYA: The album has this sort of feeling where we're just messing around together and not thinking about anything else. The title track "Make Some Noise" was created to mimic the kinds of stages you see in rock festivals. That's what we had in mind when the song was made.

DONGMYEONG: As we were preparing for the performance, I wondered "do we have any songs that are exciting?" and we improvised, we felt good about it, and we even recorded it. The company's response was also favourable so it became the title track.

YONGHOON: We've also tried different genres like ballad, jazz, and hip hop. This time around, when we combined EDM with band-style music, we soon realized that it created good synergy. We're thinking of going a bit further with that style in the future. But we won't be sticking with just one genre. Since MAS 0094 is a team that composes its own music, we'll be trying out various things as well.

-- What are MAS 0094's pros?

YONGHOON: I'm confident that we have the most on-stage experience among the rookie groups. We typically busk at Hongdae, Suwon, Hangang Park every weekend. We learned a lot from the senior groups that we've met (No Brain, DAY6, BOL4) on stage.

HARIN: We’ve also tried putting ourselves in the audience's perspective, instead of just thinking about going up on stage. As we see everyone take their seats, we want to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and can see clearly, and that their view of the stage isn't being obstructed.  

-- What is the most memorable stage for you?

YONGHOON: I'm afraid it's difficult for bands when it rains. One time, I suddenly got scared when the power [electricity] coming from the microphone shot up.

CyA: The performance in China was also memorable. I felt a new kind of energy and realized the status of KPOP. That recognition was more than when you copy [do a cover] of popular Chinese songs. When we sang Block B and Big Bang seniors' songs, you could hear the audience doing the fanchants.

--This was the first time you've ever done an 'actual' stage [compared to busking activities in the past]

YONGHOON: We have more music show schedules this time around. We're seriously standing in front of the general public. We want to show a stage with a different style and a good performance.

KANGHYUN: We'll be showing you the 'Mannequin Challenge,' which has been popularized nowadays. We've also been preparing for '007' 'Rewind' versions.

--I'm curious to know about your goals.

CyA: For MAS 0094's presence and songs to be known everywhere. I also want to see us go up in the charts. I also want to go to 'Infinite Challenge' as well. Seeing Rose Motel, Chang Ki Ha, and Hyukoh in person would be really cool, too.

-- What kind of team do you want to become?

HARIN: Boohwal seniors are my role models. They've had a lot of hit songs and have been doing activities [together as a band] for a long time. I want us to become great band stars like them as well.

-- What are your wishes for the New Year?

YONGHOON: I wish we could receive a "Band Award" at the end of the year ceremony.

DONGMYEONG: I hope all the members stay healthy. And also, I wish people are filled with happiness whenever they listen to our songs.

HARIN: #1 on Gaon Chart! I want to accomplish that someday, if that doesn't happen this year.

KANGHYUN: I hope we can release a full-length album. With that album release, I also want us to hold a large-scale concert.  

[legobiwan]

Whumptober #8 (stab wound)

TW: minor gore; power dynamics; Crowley swears a lot (but so do I)

Fandom: Good Omens (Crowley, Aziraphale, (references to Crowley/Aziraphale), Gabriel)

Notes: Honestly the stab wound bit is really an excuse to get to the rest of this, which is self-indulgent twaddle. Also, I am not Catholic nor did I really grow up religious, so excuse any inaccuracies. 

—–

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Aziraphale moans again, writhing in Crowley’s arms, golden ichor seeping from the wound in his abdomen, spilling onto the demon’s hands. It burns, Crowley’s skin smoldering with the holy lifeblood, but he pays it no mind.

He can feel Aziraphale slipping away, can see him dying, creamy skin turning to water, the embers of his once-rosy cheeks fading to a pathetic sizzle as Crowley grasps for a hand unable to return his desperate touch.

(He’s seen death before, has killed angels with his own hands. The knife was familiar, too familiar - the way his hand curled around the silver hilt, wrenching the blade from Aziraphale’s body. The First War, the Rebellion, he and Lucifer and all the others, spilling gold at every turn, sparing a single cold eye to the spirits they had laid to waste.)

(Self-defense, he would tell himself later, long limbs curled to his chest, acid creeping up the edges of his metaphysical form as each felled angel stared back at him, accusing, every visage melting into that familiar mop of blond-white curls and plump cheeks.)

(Hell’s tortures had evolved beyond the physical. Even the Serpent of Eden wasn’t above the mandated re-education sessions of the Damned. Physical torture could be endured. This, however had been something else, his greatest asset - his imagination - turned against him. Hell had finally figured out how to bring the snake to heel.)

Now, he would give anything to be back in the Pit, Beezlebub looming over him, Hastur grinning at their side. If this were punishment, again, for depriving the Lord of Hell of another soul, a demonic miracle he couldn’t talk his way out of, a fudged compliance report damning him a second, third, a hundredth time - he would endure it for eternity if meant the angel was safe.

Crowley pulls Aziraphale to his chest, long arms encircling the angel’s stout belly, thin fingers caressing the soft, woolen layer of sweater. He swallows the rising sob in his throat whole, like the serpent he is, burying his nose in Aziraphale’s shoulder.

It smells of pine and sulfur.

Please, I’ll do anything. Crowley trembles, his eyes squeezed shut against the inevitable onslaught of tears. He casts his pleas upwards, contravening every demonic instinct branded into his damned soul. She doesn’t listen. She never has.

But just this once…

Save him.

Desperation curdles in his chest. Aziraphale remains motionless, the sheen of sweat glistening in the reflection of the damned blade. Crowley lays a hand on the angel’s shoulder, digging into skin and muscle.

Nothing.

Crowley dips his head, trembling, fanged teeth finding that delicate patch between his own thumb and forefinger. He bites, hard, drawing blood from his own flesh, a sacrifice made willingly, even though he knows he can offer nothing that had not already been taken.

Answer me, please.

Only the dagger responds from its discarded spot on the ground, crackling with Hellfire, taunting him, laughing in return.

Damn you.

Crowley’s fist clenches against Aziraphale’s shirt. The fabric wrinkles, tight in his grasp, as if he can keep Aziraphale on this plane of existence by his own sheer determination, by dragging him bodily from the greedy arms obliteration.

“Do you hear me, God?” Yellow eyes snap open. “I said, DAMN YOU!”

Once again, Crowley draws on his occult power, pouring every bit of desperation, will, and imagination into the spell. Aziraphale’s wound remains unchanged, his waistcoast still slashed open at the third button, jacket peppered with golden stains.

“Gotta say, that’s not the strategy I would have gone with. Then again, you’re a demon. Heaven’s SoPs - Standard Operating Prayers - are probably out of your jurisdiction.”

Crowley goes rigid, almost preternaturally still save his tears, which succumb to gravity, winding down the sharp angles of his face.

Nononono. This wasn’t happening. Not now, not when he had offered the last part of himself up to an uncaring God, to a dispassionate universe, not when Aziraphale -

The leather shoes step forward, a quiet shuffle. The material gleams in the dying light, untouched by ash, by demonic brimstone, by the haze of sulfur. Crowley’s eyes travel up the perfectly pressed pants, just this side of grey, the soft, cashmere jacket, the violet scarf, matching those penetrating, condescending eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Crowley growls.

A smile, all the more insincere for how wide it is. Gabriel looks as if he has walked straight out of a stock photo session extolling the virtues of corporate synergy.

(Crowley would know. He received a minor commendation for that effort.)

Not that the archangel would have any idea. He looked down on Earth, on humanity, on any being who dared care for Her creations (creations She so easily cast aside).

Arms spread wide, hands, fingers all in alignment, Gabriel stands perfectly straight, chest forward, feet spread the ideal width.

(That had been another one of Crowley’s creations, Power Postures and You: How to Succeed in the Modern Workplace. The ideal width had not, in fact, ever been delineated and yet somehow Gabriel stood there, the utter wanker, unbothered by Hellflame, by the dying Angel in Crowley’s arms, feet spread the perfect amount.)

“I heard your prayer,” Gabriel shrugged. “Obviously.”

“I didn’t ask…you, anyone, I mean - “ Crowley spluttered, shaking his head back and forth in denial. 

Gabriel’s smile widens.

“Went straight to our call center. Priority. Don’t get many of those these days, especially from such a…” Gabriel cocks his head. “Unique source. Obviously, my team had it directed to my office.”

“Obviously,” Crowley breaths, hugging Aziraphale, protective, as a child would hold their favorite stuffed animal. (Remember when you and Aziraphale raised Warlock). The thought threatens new tears, and Crowley swallows over the urge to sob.

Gabriel looks from Crowley to Aziraphale and back, disgust flitting across his face as the demon brushes a stray curl from the angel’s face, soft and more gentle than any agent of Hell had a right to be. There’s no point in hiding his affection, in denying what is before Gabriel’s very eyes.

The archangel clears his throat. ”I’m here to make a deal.”

Crowley’s hand stills, fingers caught partway through Aziraphale’s hair. “A…a deal?” he asks, the question wound with suspicion.

“Don’t look so offended, Crowley.”

It’s the first time Gabriel has uttered his name. Hell, Crowley didn’t even know the Archangel knew his name. It doesn’t hurt, to have Gabriel say it (names hold power, but not that much power), but still, it tickles at his inner organs, a strange discomfort, a crack his the edifice of his boundaries. 

Gabriel looks pointedly at the fading angel in his arms.

“The Almighty made a deal with humanity - at the beginning. Well, close to the beginning. Your people had been…reassigned at that point.”

Crowley nods, not understanding. Was this supposed to be a bedtime story, a sermon, let us now read from the Gospel? He swallows his barbed commentary. 

“She,” Gabriel points upwards, enunciating his words slow and sure, as if Crowley were a child, “offers humanity the chance at redemption. And in return they give Her their worship and obedience.”

Gabriel folds his hands to his front, eyebrows raised as if to say, you dumbass, aren’t you following?

That wasn’t what it was supposed to be, was it? Crowley frowns. God wasn’t hawking indulgences on the street, didn’t promise absolution in the form of quid pro quo. It was supposed to be based in faith, except faith came very certain terms and conditions, mostly don’t ask questions, obey and don’t think hard about it and how far a leap is from there to -

“All beings offering prayer are given the same options.”

Crowley hisses at the accusation. “I wasn’t - “

“Please, save him,” Gabriel mocks, his face a grotesque parody of Crowley’s pain, his desperation.

A mockery of his love.

(Demons don’t love.)

(Demons can’t love.)

Crowley runs a gentle hand through Aziraphale’s curls. This demon loves this angel. “Can you?” Nearly inaudible, a faint whisper stolen from his inner mind. “Can you save him?”

Gabriel laughs, full and hearty. It’s as pleasant a sound as a fork dragged across a ceramic plate and the hand laid on the angel’s stomach curls, fingers digging into Aziraphale’s wound. The angel whispers a blood-curdling moan, more golden lifeblood spilling onto Crowley’s digits. 

“Of course we can save him! That’s what angels do!” Gabriel peers at Crowley through folded, disapproving brows, his hands flitting in a spastic, jazzy motion.

Crowley doubts Gabriel knows anything about jazz. (Aziraphale likes jazz, the smooth hiss of a brush dragged over a snare, the deep thrum of the pizzicato bass, the yearning of the saxophone under dim lights, a wordless confession as limbs slide dangerously close, a glissando of desire, a rim shot of lust and Crowley wraps a long arm around the angel’s shoulder and - )

“I mean, what do you think our purpose is?” Gabriel’s bright tenor shatters the memory. The angel slaps his own forehead with his palm. “Duh, Crowley!”

Crowley scowls, again burying his nose in Aziraphale’s neck. The angel’s skin has paled a few more shades, now nearly translucent.

“Thing thing is, I would just need….” Gabriel lets the sentence linger, angling his head towards Crowley, whose hand has now traveled clear through Aziarphale’s shoulder.

The angel doesn’t have much more time.

Crowley grits his teeth, despising himself for what he says next.

“What do you need?”

He doesn’t like this. Scratch that, he hates this, hates this stupid archangel who had condemned Aziraphale to death without  a trial, who is now his only hope, this soldier, this messenger of Her, a God who can’t even be bothered to check her own damned voicemail.

“A deal. Well, The Deal.”

Crowley catches his meaning immediately. “What, worship?” The demon almost laughs. This situation, if it weren’t so heartbreaking, is absurd. “Hate to break it to you, Gabe, but demons aren’t exactly equipped for that type of thing.”

(A lie, he’s worshipped Aziraphale for 6,000 years.)

“To be honest, Crowley, the worshipping part comes later. Humanity requires fear, fear of loss. Or punishment. Doubt that last one would do much to you, having spent so much time in Hell. Except…”

Makes a pointed look towards Aziraphale.

“The thing is, you need to give them incentive. Change the behavior first. Later, they’ll come to understand the why, come to embrace the meaning of it all, to truly believe.”

“You want - “

“Serve me. Serve Heaven. No, not like that,” Gabriel rolls his eyes at Crowley’s undisguised horror. “Just a few errands here and there, a little bit of corporate espionage to get the ol’ one-up on Beezy.”

Lies. Sweet lies - Heaven had never known any other kind (and isn’t that why Aziraphale stayed loyal for so long? For a gluttonous angel who indulged in eclairs and crepes and devil’s food cake, it seems a natural predisposition). But no matter how much honey Gabriel pours on top of his shit sundae, it’s still a shit sundae, and Crowley has never shared the angel’s sweet tooth.

Aziraphale goes an impossible shade paler, twitching in Crowley’s arms. It should have been over, minutes, perhaps hours ago. No death of an ethereal being should take this long (Crowley would know), but this is somehow different, a long heat of the universe, cooling degree by degree, the end inevitable, writ in the cosmos, but the journey -

This is a damned test. Crowley sucks in air between clenched teeth. Gabriel is doing something, something he is supposed to notice, supposed to take as a gesture of good faith (but what is faith to the faithless?), as a promise, as bait. 

He can save Aziraphale when Crowley (damned as he is) - can’t.

There are no other options. Say no and he loses the angel and inevitably himself. Sure, he’d try to raze Heaven on his way out, would march right up God’s front door and set fire to the whole place before succumbing happily to his own obliteration. 

But here - he can make a deal, The Deal. The will angel live. And an alive Aziraphale, no matter what price Crowley has to pay - is a far more acceptable than a dead Aziraphale.

“Fine.” Crowley mutters, his face still turned downwards.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite hear that.”

You fucking prick, you know exactly what I said.

The demon somehow manages to lift his gaze, looking straight into Gabriel’s fucking condescending twat-face. 

“Fine!” He doesn’t mean for it to come out like that, petulant and desperate. 

“Uhuhuh,” the archangel wags a finger, and just like that, Crowley wants to kill him. “Not like that.”

“Not like what, you fuck-bucket? I agreed to your stupid terms now save him!”

He’s yelling, losing control and fuck it he has no pride left, here on the floor, Gabriel towering over him in his weakest moment, all of Crowley’s vulnerabilities laid out like a sodding picnic (don’t think about those outings with Aziraphale, don’t think about sharing champagne and little sandwiches on the beach, hands linked together, sitting side by side on a tartan blanket - )

“You’re familiar with the Catholic Mass?”

“What kind of stupid question - “

“The host,” Gabriel interrupts, paying no heed to the demon’s outburst. “The chalice, the Communion?”

Crowley’s stomach drops.

Fuck.

Fuck this fucking archangel.

(Crowley bows to no one. He’ll pretend, he’ll ingratiate himself, give due deference with a smirk and an ironic gesture. After a few rounds in Hell, he may, on occasion, even be halfway genuine in those gestures.)

But this -

He can’t do this.

“Time’s running out, demon.”

The angel in his arms is a cloud. It’s wrong, so wrong - Aziraphale is gravlax in dill sauce, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, he is old books and older knowledge, he is weighty and thick and everything Crowley adores about him is drained away to practically nothing, a shadow of a shadow. 

He has to do this.

Swallowing the last of his pride, never letting go of what was left of Aziraphale’s metaphysical form, Crowley pulls his shins beneath him, gently resting the angel’s head above his knees, his back and shoulders flush with his thighs. He bows in supplication, his hands folded over Aziraphale’s forehead, a reminder of why he was about to do this.

(Genuflection, they called it. Adoration, respect. Crowley feels none of these emotions, only a sickness balled in his lower abdomen. He somehow manages not vomit as he submits himself to the archangel.)

“Please. Save him.”

Gabriel grins, wide and feral.

legobiwan does whumptober

[kenneth-omega]

The Mistakes of Grief (part 3) Theseus Scamander x Reader

(Sorry for the unusually long A/N!)

A/N: Here is the third instalment of this on-going series! Don’t worry, this story is nowhere near done, with part 4 currently in the works! I couldn’t restrict this to only a three-part story and expect it to not feel rushed or crammed. So, I hope you enjoy this section and don’t get too tired of the few little POV jumps I have, I promise part 4 won’t have as many as these, I just find it makes the story work better and gives more depth for all the characters places in the plot. Also, I’m unsure whether the breakers I’ve put in before a POV hop will show up on mobile, so I apologise if it doesn’t work! x

If you’d like to be tagged in upcoming parts then just send me a message, or comment on any of the three instalments, that way I’ll definitely see it! x

Requests are open for any of the Fantastic Beasts characters!

Disclaimer: This only loosely follows the plot of FB:CoG so please don’t come after me because of inaccuracies. This is my own AU version.

Word count: 3894

Synopsis: You’ve allowed yourself to be roped into Grindelwald’s inner circle, fighting for your own cause whilst trying to also cope with the recent, muggle-related death of your brother. With Theseus and the others in London and you in Austria, Vinda Rosier’s plot to eliminate the people who stop you from wholly joining their cause is being put into place. Starting with a special announcement from Grindelwald and an open invitation.

Warnings: NONE, just some cute Newtina mentions

Part 1       Part 2       Part 4

Theseus couldn’t sleep.

For the sixth night in a row, everyone had fallen asleep before him and left him with his thoughts.

They were now staying at Newt’s house, with the group of remaining fighters having decided that they could no longer keep crowding up Nicholas Flamel’s house, despite his avid protests that he really didn’t mind.

Yusuf Kama, a wizard who Newt and Tina had encountered in Paris, had decided to stay a while longer with Flamel along with a young woman by the name of Nagini. She had revealed that she was a Maledictus and had nowhere to stay after fleeing the circus she’d been forced to perform in. She had been heartbroken after the rally, revealing that she’d been with Credence the past few months and had helped him through every problem he’d had, every ache and pain and the longing he’d had to find his lost family.

Newt of course, had shown an intense fascination in her ability to change into a gigantic snake, despite the sadness of her curse, and had asked if he could speak to her more about it at a later date, to which she had agreed.

The four people that had chosen to leave were himself, Newt, Porpentina Goldstein, or Tina as Newt referred to her as. The American Auror, and the Muggle Jacob Kowalski who Newt had managed to get caught up in his antics on his trip to America. Theseus had bitten his tongue about the numerous laws being broken about a Muggle having knowledge of their world, knowing that it would only fall on deaf ears.

Besides, Jacob himself wasn’t a bad man, Theseus had to admit, seeming genuinely interested and excited to learn anything wizard-related. Theseus had found himself on the receiving end of Jacob’s questions quite frequently the past few days.

Sitting up slowly from the sofa which Newt had offered him as a bed, Theseus ran his fingers through his curls which flopped down in front of his eyes. After the fight, Theseus had struggled to keep himself clean and well-groomed, all his usual quirks relating to his appearance had slowly deteriorated over the course of the week. He’d had to use a few spells recently to try keep himself looking presentable.

His usually pristine appearance was now dishevelled and crumpled.

Right now he was wearing a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the buttons undone. The absence of a tie and having untucked his shirt from his black slacks made him look like a dishevelled misfit student who refused to adhere to the dress code.

Much like Newt at school, he thought. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the number of letters sent from home, berating Newt for his detentions regarding his inability, or stubbornness, to dress himself to the code.

Theseus looked over at Jacob, who was currently sleep in an armchair, his head lolling back against the seat as he snored, a deep rumble that unfortunately didn’t help with Theseus’ current sleeping problem.

Tina was staying in Newt’s room, after initially refusing to take up that much space. This had resulted in quite possibly the politest argument Theseus had witnessed and the two of them butting heads for a good five minutes over whether she would sleep in there or not. Eventually Theseus had grown tired and made the decision for them.

His little brother was in the most obvious of places. Tending to his numerous beasts in his basement before eventually going to sleep in the early hours of the morning.

Picking up his pocket watch that lay on a small table beside the sofa, Theseus studied the watch face that informed him it was 4:32am. Newt would also be fast asleep by now.

Lying back down, Theseus stretched his arms experimentally, feeling how the ache in his shoulder protested at the movement. It still wasn’t truly healed; his shoulder having suffered from an injury from the albeit brief fight between you and him.

Ignoring the dull ache, Theseus hooked his hands behind his head and gazed up at the off-white ceiling for what felt like the hundredth time that night. The apartment was beyond warm and had there not been a woman staying in the house, Theseus wouldn’t have bothered wearing his shirt, but he found it extremely ungentlemanly to just parade around half dressed.

Giving into his exhaustion, Theseus settled finally, allowing his mind to wander back to the night when things went horribly wrong. When both he and Newt lost one of their closest friends. When a dozen Aurors died at Grindelwald’s hands and Theseus had watched helplessly as you slipped through his fingers.

Never again, he vowed. Never again would he let you go.

When the time came to rally up against Grindelwald once more, he was bringing you home.

“Queenie!” You exclaimed, upon entering the large gathering hall, glad to have found a friendly and familiar face. The exuberant blonde waved at you, standing up on the balls of her feet to find you over the heads of the dozens of people stood around, all talking amongst each other in hushed tones.

Merely a week after the rally, Grindelwald had called for his followers to come together and congregate at the castle.

He had an announcement.

Whatever it was, it was going to be big. Something considerably colossal in comparison to his stunt in Paris, and that idea terrified you greatly.

Upon your arrival, Queenie latched onto your arm with barely contained anticipation, looking towards the raised platform at the front of the room. You hazarded a guess that it was something originally used for entertainers who would come to perform for the residents of the castle.

Grindelwald hadn’t been seen much around the castle since the day you happened upon the man named Credence in that library. After you had left Queenie that morning, there had been a loud explosion and a minor panic amongst the occupants of the castle. Apparently it was just a rock slide, and surely enough when you looked out the window a large chunk of the mountain had disappeared, the rubble and dust settling into the valley below. But that didn’t explain the fact that you saw Rosier casting a fixing charm on one of the windows in the library.

The sound of cheers pulled you from your thoughts and you looked up to see the man who was feared by all but adored by many.

Neither you or Queenie cheered, instead waiting patiently for him to speak. You two were more than just his fanatics, more than this rabble of purebloods who thought themselves different and of some higher authority.

The man stood proudly in front of his audience, giving the slightest of bows as though he was preparing to deliver his own performance. He had the ambience of a bizarre conductor of sorts, about to lead you, his orchestra, into its next piece. His eyes scanned the crowd and found you, a smile on his face that oozed of something not wholly sincere. You couldn’t help but feel as though this speech wasn’t for anyone else in the room but you.

A direct message to you.

“Welcome, my children.” He began, sweeping an arm out across the room in a smooth, controlled motion, a greeting for all those before him.

Every single movement of his was calculated, planned and executed on key. He didn’t speak on improvisation, he didn’t act on instinct. He was tactical and shrewd.

“I’ve waited for this day for many years, when I could address a room full of the trustworthy and the loyal. To preach about why we are doing this. WhyIdo this.” He smiled, part of him relishing in all the eyes that were watching him, following his every move and drinking in every word.

“So…what do you believe I do this for?” Grindelwald paused, waiting for anyone to speak up who wished to do so. Nothing. Completely captivated.

It was almost too easy to manipulate their little, malleable minds, he thought to himself.

“Love.” A woman announced.

His eyes fell on Queenie, the origin of the voice that piped up and boldly was the first to do so. Everyone spun around to look at her, at the woman who had dared be the one to answer Grindelwald.

He nodded thoughtfully, remembering her sacrifice in Paris.

“Power!” A man shouted, which earnt some hollers of agreement. It took a few seconds for the noise to die down.

“Good suggestions, my passionate successors. However, not quite correct.”

Grindelwald walked across the platform towards the right edge, extending his hand to someone who had been hiding in the crowd up until now. Onto the stage stepped Credence, seemingly more confident than he had been a few days ago. He held his head high, his back no longer hunched in timidity. Queenie gasped. The crowd became rife with mutters. They were no strangers to the rumours.

When the two men had returned to Grindelwald’s original point, the ever-ominous man held the young boy’s hand aloft, fingers intertwined as if in a sense of solidarity.

“Equality.” He declared.

The room was deathly silent.

“Love and power are all aspects that I believe are needed to make the world equal,” He continued, “Muggles who seek to hate and destroy one another, they have to be eradicated.”

The threatening word hung in the air like poison.

Grindelwald continued his tirade. “For they do not know how to balance power with love. They greedily take one and spread that around as their slogan, something they believe justifies for their actions.” Grindelwald shook his head, seemingly disgusted at the thought.

You had to admit, everything he spoke of echoed with truth. You didn’t want Muggles gone, in fact you never saw them as anything less. But the ones who had taken what was not theirs to take? You couldn’t be so forgiving with them.

“Those wizards? The cowards, who hide behind their protective charms and push out anyone who speaks different?” Grindelwald released Credence’s hand, stepping to the front of the platform, the tips of his boots just hanging over the edge.

“Those who want to see us cowering in the shadows for centuries to come? We eradicate them too.”

Grindelwald turned to Credence, beckoning him forward before pulling him into an embrace. Credence lifted an arm and gently held him back, his face displaying that of someone impassioned by this small act of affection.

“You are equal, my boy.” Grindelwald whispered, still loud enough for the room to hear in the hushed room.

Grindelwald gestured for him to return to his original spot, his role in this sermon now fulfilled. Then he turned back to the crowd, arms raised up as though he were issuing a blessing on the room.

“We are going to demonstrate why we as wizards, as people, shall not be shunned into the dark. We will show the world…what we are!”

The cheers that began to rise slowly became deafening, as more and more the crowd became riled, their hatred, their adrenaline and bloodlust all tangible. You stood there, holding Queenie’s hand in the middle of the storm that was Grindelwald’s army.

Queenie was horrified, her gift allowing the voices of the minds around her to scream and fill her head with their personal turmoil. She couldn’t switch it off or block them out no matter what she did. You could only squeeze her hand in consolation adrift the raging waves of loathing.

“In three days’ time, I expect to see every single one of your faces.” Grindelwald’s accusing finger swept the room, lingering on you for a fraction of a second much to your discomfort. “Dress accordingly, my dears. For it is to be the funeral of discrimination!”

With those final words, he exited, the chorus of cheers and applause ringing in his ears.

He left, knowing that his work was done.

It was the eve of the demonstration and everything was in place.

Vinda Rosier stood back and admired her work from beneath her black cloche hat. The little trim of lace that came down across her eyes she had thought was a nice, if not slightly satiric, touch to her all black ensemble.

It was fitting for the occasion however.

After all, she thought, this was an execution.

With a small chuckle, she stalked out of the theatre and Disapparated. She only had one more job to fulfil for the night to be a success.

Theseus could hardly believe his ears when Newt announced that they had received a letter.

Not even ten seconds ago, there had been the sound of the letterbox rattling, an unusual noise for your average wizard, let alone his extreme introvert of a brother. So when Newt had summoned it from the living room where they were all occupying, the four people sat around were on tenterhooks.

“To the four occupiers currently inhabiting Mr Scamander’s residency,

Please note that you are cordially invited to the showing of Grindelwald’s Hinrichtung.

A once in a lifetime display and an opportunity not to be missed.

Simply tear up this letter and you will be transported to the host venue.

Dress code is compulsory.

Yours sincerely,

Vinda Rosier”

Newt read the small, daintily written letter out loud to the room, before passing it around for each person to read personally.

After Theseus had finished reading it, being the last to receive the letter from Jacob, Tina spoke up.

“It’s a trap.” She stated, no room for debate.

Theseus growled with frustration, standing up from his seat and stalking round the room, the letter still clutched firmly in his grasp.

Newt hummed in agreement with the woman sat next to him, picking at a new loose thread on his trousers, obviously something that had been done whilst he had been downstairs tending to his creatures.

Jacob spoke up, not wanting to dismiss the letter instantaneously. “Now hold on a second, Queenie could be there, at that hinrick…whatever.”

Tina sighed, knowing full well that her younger sister would definitely be there, but also being able to see that it was exactly for that reason they wouldn’t be going.

“That’s why we’re invited. Because the alluring possibility of our friends and partners being there is what they are counting on.” Tina argued, hoping to make it painfully clear that none of them would be attending.

Newt once again was in agreement, much to Theseus’ exasperation. Having had enough, he decided to speak up.

“Newt, you don’t get it, you have everyone you need right here.”

Que the incontrollable blushing from both Tina and Newt as they shifted awkwardly in their seats.

Theseus gestured to Jacob and himself, “Who have we got? Queenie left, Leta is-”

Newt stood up and was across the room in a flash, stood in front of his brother with such a fierce look of hurt and grief in his eyes that Theseus faltered in his rant.

“You and I both know that what happened that night was difficult to deal with, Theseus.” Newt not failing in noticing the guilt and hurt flash across his older brother’s face. “But don’t use her death as a reason for getting yourself killed. Don’t let her sacrifice be in vain, please.” He begged.

Theseus couldn’t stop the tear that fell down his face, the torment of such a loss still fresh in his heart. Without warning, Newt once again reached out and pulled him in for a hug. Theseus knew it was difficult and overwhelming for his little brother to be so forwardly affectionate, even towards family, and so he had quickly learnt to cherish the small moments like this.

“She’s out there, Newt. I have the opportunity to find her again. Don’t you remember the conversations we had as kids? How I used to get so delighted over something as little as her smile?”

Newt pulled away, a hint of a smile on his face as he recalled his older brother’s hopeless infatuation. He’d even spoke to Leta about it, the two of them having to listen to his paranoid rambling about unreciprocated feelings countless times growing up.

“I know this must be hard for you.” Newt didn’t fail to notice the way Theseus swiped the singular tear away quickly.

Theseus nodded, looking down at the scrunched-up letter in his hand, knowing that you were just a quick trip away made it so difficult for him to not just tear up the letter and be gone in a flash before they could stop him. But that was selfish of him to think of, and so he kept it firmly in his grasp.

Tina was the one to interrupt, still hoping to offer some reasonable advice.

“This doesn’t change the fact that it’s still incredibly risky, we can’t go and possibly risk our lives or theirs.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone weighed up the possible ramifications in their heads, until Newt spoke up.

“Tina, you stay here with Jacob, Theseus and I will go get the girls.” Newt suggested.

Tina and Jacob stood up in a flash, their expressions both mirroring the same expression.

Not a chance, Scamander.

Despite how humorous the moment was, Theseus knew it wasn’t the time to joke and instead shook his head firmly, siding with the other two’s obvious objections. He wasn’t willing to put his baby brother in harm’s way. He wouldn’t lose anyone else this week.

“You’re needed here, to look after your creatures and protect Tina and Jacob.” Theseus stated bluntly.

Newt began to argue, “Bunty can lo-“

“No!” Theseus snapped, silencing the younger man instantly. “Newt, if you’ve ever respected me as a someone who works in the Ministry, or listened to me as your brother, you have stay here.”

Theseus gently but firmly held his brother by his shoulders, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Promise me you’ll stay, or in the name of Merlin, not even Dumbledore will be able to stop me from reprimanding your stubborn ass.”

Jacob couldn’t supress the loud laugh that erupted at Theseus’ final remark. Even Tina hid her mouth with her hand so that Newt wouldn’t see the small smile that she was wearing. Newt’s face went a deep red as he flushed with embarrassment and horror at Theseus’ light threat.

A bit of light relief in such dark times was something that they were all grateful for.

Newt begrudgingly made his promise, allowing Theseus to finally let go of him and begin running around, grabbing his wand and anything else he thought he needed. He noticed your wand sat on the table, having retrieved it from his coat pocket after the fight, and picked it up to take with him.

“Multicorfors.” He muttered, pointing his wand at himself.

His crumpled shirt changed to a tight-fitting, jet-black dress shirt, with a light grey tie sliding around his neck and fashioning a traditional Windsor knot. His trousers pressed themselves to be clean and crisp once more, and with a final flick of his wand, his unruly waves styled themselves into his usual slicked back do.

Jacob gave him the thumbs up, an idiotically cheesy grin that Theseus couldn’t help but find contagious, making him involuntarily mirror the amusing Muggle.

“Why the all black ensemble?” Tina questioned, her expression perplexed.

Theseus couldn’t stop himself from laughing, albeit sounding slightly harsher than normal, as this really was no laughing matter.

“Hinrichtung is German for execution.”

“I don’t like this Queenie, I haven’t even got a wand to protect myself.” You hissed, stood by the steps of the stage with the ever-beautiful blonde, facing out towards the room. She too was dressed in black as was requested, but with a dark pink accents on her dress and the fascinator that dipped to cover her right eye. She held her wand between her fingers and was unconsciously twirling it, her nerves betraying her cool expression.

You couldn’t help but fiddle with the hem of your outfit as you watched more wizards file into the room.

Your clothes had been presented to you by Rosier earlier this evening, in a posh, designer box with paper wrapped around them for protection. It was an unusual ensemble, despite its obvious elegance.

Long and flowing black trousers that skimmed the floor, a black cotton shirt with a scooped neck and last of all a cloak.

Made of the softest velvet and lined with silk inside, it was rather heavy on your shoulders and felt like more of a restraint than a fashion piece. It had a hood, but you had opted to keep it down.

The theatre you were stood in was breath-taking, the ceiling having been hand-painted with a mural on the domed roof, angels and deities carved into the walls and supports around the room. There was gilding everywhere, on the railings of the higher tiers, around the stage and even on the seats. It truly was a thing of beauty.

You had arrived merely ten minutes ago, but already the spacious theatre was almost bursting at the seams with onlookers and fanatics, purebloods alike all under one roof and dressed in varying states of fashion and wealth, but all were clothed in primarily black.

Turning your head, you spotted the familiar faces of Carrow and Abernathy, the latter being up on stage observing out from where he was hiding in the wings, whilst the former stood at the opposite end of the room to you and Queenie, guarding the other set of stairs.

No sign of Rosier or Grindelwald.

Credence was not in attendance tonight, Queenie had told you, for what reason you didn’t know. But it had put you at unease.

As the doors at the back of the main room shut with a loud bang, the lights were cut, a few of the audience members’ cries of shock echoing out as the chatter died down instantaneously.

You could hear the sound of boots clicking against varnished wood resonating behind your head, and you knew someone was walking onstage under cover of the darkness.

Then, there was light.

A bright, white orb that flew outwards from the stage, levitating high above the crowds with a brilliant shine that illuminated the room, casting numerous eerie shadows amongst them.

You gasped, your amazement of the iridescent glow catching you by surprise. You were not the only one to gasp however, as hundreds of wizards looked on at the scene before them. Turning yourself to look upon the stage, your heart stopped in horror, it’s rhythm faltering inside you as every sliver of air was sucked out of you instantly.

There stood Grindelwald, in all his unorthodox glory, his wand raised as he had been the one to conjure the light that now illuminated him and the guest he had dramatically revealed onstage.

Their arms were bound behind their back and ankles restrained by rope. The chair they were strapped to didn’t budge no matter how much they fought against it, obviously enchanted with a fixing charm to keep it securely on its legs.

But it wasn’t the pinioned limbs, or the sheer look of terror in their eyes that caught your attention, it was the fact that you knew him.

You knew that face…

And it filled you with fear.

Tag List:

@igotmadskills @velairena @nightskywriter @sleep-i-ness @dreacantsleep @brittanymcsharry @iamtheonewhocares @mystrade-shipper

[lunarlooroo]

I loved all of your 🔥🔥🔥prompts where Heather and Severus where going at each other heh. I have a traditional crack!fic request: the ministry mandates that sex ed be taught at Hogwarts. Unfortunately, this year Snape and his assistant are in charge of addressing the whole student body en masse. It ends up being an uncomfortable experience for most, a hilarious one for some, but also an interesting one for Heather ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

DAY TWO OF TWELVE DAYS OF FICMAS!

Probably not as raunchy as what you had in mind. Also, I did the bare minimum amount of research into this topic, so don’t hold it against me if there are any glaring inaccuracies.

“Come, Heather. We are due to give the lecture on sexuality education this year.” Severus walked past her, scowling up a storm.

Blinking, she hastened her footsteps to catch up with him. “Wait, what? What do you mean?”

“Are you not aware of the most recent demand from the Ministry?”

She frowned. “I think I heard something about it, but I thought Poppy would be in charge or something!”

“Well, last week the Sorting Hat decreed that the responsibility would be foisted onto me. Otherwise, I would never be involved in such a troublesome matter,” he said in distaste.

Well, that really put a new perspective on ‘picking a name from a hat’.

“Okay, but what does that have to do with me?” She raised an eyebrow. “The hat didn’t call my name, now did it?”

Severus stopped and turned to face her with a smug expression. “Indeed. However, as my apprentice, you are obliged to carry out tasks that I set aside for you. Trying to impart such delicate information to immature cretins is something I refuse to do alone.”

Sighing, she nodded in resignation. “Okay, but why am I only hearing about this now? Wouldn’t it have been better if we’d done some sort of preparation?”

“What is there to prepare?” he asked dryly, “Ah, good they are here.”

Heather walked through the door after him and almost froze in shock. What seemed like the entire population of students, from the first to seventh years, were seated in the room, which had probably been expanded for this very purpose.

She caught Severus’ arm and pulled him closer. “The lecture isn’t for all the students, is it?” she hissed, “That’s just preposterous! What we’d need to teach 11-year-olds and 17-year-olds are totally different!

Severus sneered, crossing his arms. “Blame the sodding Ministry. This was not my idea at all. Fortunately, in future years we will only need to give the talk to the first years.”

Heather didn’t know how they were going to pull this off, let alone next year’s.

“Attention!” Severus said, not even bothering with a Sonorus. The whole room quietened, knowing better than to cross their Potions Master. “As you are no doubt aware, this lecture is focussed on sexuality education.” A few snickers sounded. Severus glared around, cowing everyone into silence.

“Make no mistake. This is not sexeducation orsexualeducation. Surely even you lot can fumble through that yourselves without me to hold your hand through it.”

Heather had to stifle a laugh at the innuendo, knowing Severus must have said it on purpose, despite his straight face. She could see a few students half-disturbed and half-amused by their strictest Professor saying anything even remotelysuggestive.

“We will begin with basic anatomy.” Severus produced a large scientific diagram with both the male and female human body, parts annotated clearly. He ignored the sudden chatter for about a minute, before shushing them all.

“We will begin with the male body. Pre-puberty, the testicles are less than 4 millilitres in volume.” The image of the testicles on the diagram lit up. “Puberty is the period in an adolescent’s life when they undergo changes to their body for sexual maturation. Theoretically, after puberty the person is a fully mature adult. Of course, I know this is rarely the case.” He stared pointedly at the seventh and sixth years, who fidgeted in their seats.

“In males, puberty begins with the enlargement of the testicles, typically beyond 4 millilitres. They experience an increase in height and muscle mass. Some pubic hair will grow around the groin. Thereafter, their penises grow in length and their voice breaks and begins to deepen. They begin to grow facial and axillary hair.”

As Severus described the changes that occur through puberty, the diagram changed as well. Up until the picture of the boy became a man.

He then went on to describe the development of females in a similar manner. Though Heather noticed the girls looked a tad discomfited at having a male teacher teach them this.

She was rather impressed that Severus knew that much about this subject, though. She probably wouldn’t have been able to give this much detail, and so clinically, too.

“If you have any questions thus far, you may direct them to Miss Potter.”

Surprised at being called, she straightened to attention. She placed an encouraging smile on her face, stepping forward to receive questions.

A few hands were raised, mostly from boys. There were a few girls that she saw seemed to want to ask something, but were too shy to.

“What does axillary mean?” a third year Gryffindor asked.

Heather gave Severus a look, wordlessly suggesting that he stay away from scientific jargon for the remainder of his lecture. “It is the scientific name for the armpit region. Next?”

Most of the questions were simple and easy to explain. Eventually, she managed to get the shyer kids to speak up as well. The older students, on the other hand, were beginning to fall asleep.

Severus then moved on to explain the mechanics of intercourse and reproduction, speaking so dryly that not even the most rambunctious of students were able to make any dirty jokes.

In fact, some of them were looking rather disturbed by how boring Severus was able to make sex sound.

“Poor Miss Potter. The bat can’t be very satisfying in bed if this is how he’s like. I bet his idea of foreplay is reading a Potions journal.”

Because she was closer to students, she was able to hear the snide whisper from one of the sixth years. Though she didn’t put it past Severus go have heard it anyway. He had ears as sharp as, well, a bat.

Far from being offended, Heather was beyond amused. She certainly had no complaints about her lover’s prowess in bed, not that it was any business of her students’.

She didn’t if know what people said about men with big noses was correct, since a single anecdotal case wasn’t exactly robust evidence, but suffice to say these boys were reallyoff the mark.

Shaking her head, she banished the train of thought from her mind. A classroom was hardly an appropriate place to be thinking of such things.

“We will now be covering our last main topic. Menstruation. Sometimes referred to as monthly bleeding or periods. You will find, of course, that not every person’s menstrual cycle is the common 28 days. Each person’s body varies, so naturally no two cycles are exactly the same.”

A group of boys began making a ruckus. One foolhardy one amongst them stood up with a defiant tilt to his chin. “Why do we have to sit here and listen to this? It’s gross, girly stuff! Sir.”

The female yearmates sitting around the group all pinned their collective ire on them. Heather foresaw that these idiots wouldn’t be enjoying the next few months. It was when she saw some younger girls hunch in on themselves, ashamed, that she wanted to throttle the boys herself though. Puberty was difficult enough without ignorant people making them feel embarrassed about their own bodies.

Severus got to them before she could.

“Farley,” Severus intoned lowly. The single word was enough to make the boy pale and look regretful of his decision to speak. “Tell me, do you have a mother, sisters, aunts, any females close to you?”

The boy, Dorian Farley, looked back to his friends for help, but none of them dared to meet his eyes. Heather resisted the urge to scoff. Typical.

“Answer the question!”

Farley jumped, visibly gulping. “Y-yes, sir.”

She nodded to herself. The boy was a middle child, with two sisters. One of whom had been in the same year as Rian and the other, a third year sitting right in this very room.

“Tell me then, why you would disparage a natural process that occurs in most women, a process, I might add, that was crucial to your very existence? Any reason other than pure ignorance and selfishness, of course.”

His younger sister, Bella Farley, was glaring daggers across the room at him, eyes promising some sort of retribution. The girl was a spitfire, Heather knew.

“Well, don’t keep us all waiting, Farley. Surely you have a good reason to dismiss this heavy burden placed on women everywhere by nature. Perhaps you do not deem it necessary to learn more because you do not respect the hardship they have to face on a regular basis and you have no intention of doing what you can to ease the struggle?”

A few moments passed before Farley realized that Severus really wouldwait for his answer before continuing. The combined stares of everyone in the room might have done the trick as well.

“N-nothing, Professor. I don’t have a good reason. Sorry.” His words all but slurred together as he forced them out, face burning red. He sat down hard enough that a ‘thump’ echoed through the room.

Severus continued to Lookat Farley for a moment more, before stating, “Now, as I was saying…”

No one made a peep during the rest of the lecture, especially not the boys.

By the end of it all, Severus was on the receiving end of multiple starry-eyed gazes, not the least of which was her own. He had made himself something of a hero, with his passionate speech. On the menstrual cycle, of all things.

He had always been considerate of her during her periods – understanding when she felt a little moodier and not holding it against her, casually handing her a hot bottle charmed to remain at a perfect temperature, even handfeeding her chocolate, on some memorable occasions.

“If any of you have any personal questions that you don’t feel comfortable asking now, please feel free to arrange a meeting with either of us, or submitting a note if that is easier for you.” Heather said, as Severus wrapped up the lesson.

Heather beamed up at Severus as the last student filed out. “You did a wonderful job! I barely even needed to do anything! I don’t know why you insisted I be here.”

Her lover turned his back to her to pack up his diagrams and models, not saying a word.

Pursing her lips, she pondered over his behaviour. A delighted smile took over her face. “You were nervous!”

“Of course not!” he rebutted, too quickly. He faced her with an indignant frown. “I was- concerned, that I would not be able to instruct them properly. I’m not the first person anyonewould go to for matters of such a delicate nature.” He ended his sentence with a deprecating twist to his lips.

She shook her head fondly, going up to wrap her arms around him. “Severus, believe me when I say that you handled that excellently. The only thing I would find fault with is your use of too-complicated language. If you had perhaps dumbed down your words a little, then it would have been perfect.”

“It went better than I expected, I admit.”

“Oh come on, that’s an understatement if I ever heard one. You’ve amassed quite a following amongst the female student,” she said teasingly, “And who could blame them? You were quite thorough in your advocation for menstrual cycle awareness. My gentleman.”

Pink dusted over Severus’ cheeks. “Nonsense.”

Giggling, Heather leaned up to peck his lips. “I’m not joking. And I really am impressed with your lecture. You really got them to take the topic seriously. There were hardly any dirty jokes at all! Well, aside from your own, of course.”

Severus rolled his eyes. “Well, at any rate I’m glad that’s over.”

“Mmh. I’d say you deserve some reprieve after all that. Why don’t we head back to our quarters and just relax.” She lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “Don’t worry, I can do all the work.”

His hands clenched in her robes. “That, Heather, is a fine suggestion indeed.”

[greaseonmymouth]

Punk Genres and Potential Problems

This post is inspired by this very long reblog chain about punk genres, definitions, and issues. It's one of those 'my buddy is confused but he's got the spirit' posts, i.e. not completely wrong, some things right, excellent points, and some flaws stemming from inaccuracies and...whatnot. Instead of piling onto that post I'm writing up a brand new post for people to reblog and disagree with. This is based 98% on my own academic research into these genres. The remaining 2% is Opinions. (That's a lie. Academic Research to Opinion ratio is more like 60/40.)

There are even sources! Because sources are GREAT. They are under the cut.

SCIENCE FICTION

The -punk genres are subgenres of science fiction, science fiction being…well, as hard to define as its subgenres. This in no way makes it difficult to write academic papers about this shit.

One of the earlier definitions put science fiction (from now on, SF) as a didactic and progressive literature with emphasis on science; a literature about science for science, with scientific methodology (Stableford:2015). As the discussion for SF definitions has progressed, so has discussion about what the correct term should be; speculative fiction (Merril:1971:60) and structural fabulation (Scholes:1975:29) have been contenders. Today science fiction and speculative fiction are used interchangeably.

There's no consensus on how to define SF (Westfahl:1998, Stableford et al:2015), though a bunch of people have tried, such as Damon Knight, who famously said: "Science fiction is what we point to when we say it." (Clute:1995:314), and Gary Westfahl, who proposed that "A work labelled science fiction has these three features: it is a prose narrative with scientific language and non-realistic subject matter – or any two of these three features." (Westfahl:1998:299).

The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction defines SF like this:

"A genre (of literature, film, etc.) in which the setting differs from our own world (e.g. by the invention of new technology, through contact with aliens, by having a different history, etc.), and in which the difference is based on extrapolations made from one or more changes or suppositions; hence, such a genre in which the difference is explained (explicitly or implicitly) in scientific or rational, as opposed to supernatural, terms." (Prucher:2009:171.)

In the words of Tom Shippey, however, SF "is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it." (Jakubowski & Edwards:1983).

WELL ISN'T THAT NEAT? :D SF is what we point to when we say it, as changeable as the weather, and most probably, is about science or a setting different from ours through science.

So, on to the -punk genres. I'm listing them below in a somewhat chronological order of invention. First a brief overview, and then I'll do in-depth bullets about cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, and solarpunk, as those are the -punk genres I'm most familiar with.

Cyberpunk, which concerns itself mostly with a dystopian society in which humans access cyberspace by way of cybernetics.

Biopunk, a close cousin of cyberpunk that deals with consequences of human and genetic experimentation and biotechnology (Michaud:2008:53). The main difference between biopunk and cyberpunk is that biopunk modifications have nothing to do with cyberware and cyberspace, but only genetic and biological manipulation.

Steampunk, which is retro-futuristic alternative history fiction that reimagines history and science based on an alternative universe in which the industrial revolution did not happen (or happened differently), and in which steam based science evolved. Steampunk is rooted in the politics of the Victorian era as well as aesthetic - fashion, architecture, etc.. Steampunk rarely extends beyond the Victorian era. (Guffey & Lemay:2014, Booker:2015:290.)

Dieselpunk, a close cousin of steampunk in that it is also retro-futuristic alternative history fiction, but unlike steampunk, dieselpunk accepts the industrial revolution and focuses on dieselpowered technology. (Guffey & Lemay:2014.) 

Solarpunk, a new eco-futuristic political movement that has produced little literature so far. In literature it is SF that is either retro-futuristic fiction that reimagines an alternative history in which the industrial revolution did not happen, or evolved into a different direction, or futuristic fiction in which the current environmental issues have been solved. In a solarpunk universe, the world has become solar- or windpowered, ecological and sustainable. (Lodi-Ribeiro:2014.)

Many more, such as decopunk, clockpunk, atomicpunk, and so on. All the -punk subgenres are typically considered cyberpunk derivatives, in that they are either inspired by elements of cyberpunk or have borrowed the -punk suffix to allow twisting and mixing. They focus on a certain aspect of technological advancement and its consequences, whereas SF as an overarching genre is free to do whatever it wants within the realm of a) prose narrative, b) technological advancement ("scientific language") and c) non-realistic subject matter, if going by Westfahl's definition of SF.

CYBERPUNK

In cyberpunk, the advanced technology is very often biotechnology; technology that alters the human body or mind, for example brain implants that allow the human mind access to the internet, or cyberspace. In addition to this, the life quality of the characters in a cyberpunk story tends to be very low. Cyberpunk represents a future in which humans are subject to ruthless digital and technical communications networks and have lost the human connection to each other (Cavallaro:2000:xv). Cyberpunk is by nature a dystopian genre by virtue of its themes and discussions, which often revolve around the potential downfalls of technological advancement. Important to note here is that cyberpunk as a genre was born in the early eighties, at the beginning of the technological boom. Internet, cell phones, microchips and bionic prosthetics were all new things under development, and so it would be very easy to conclude that the genre was also in part born out of fear of the unknown. The - punk part of the term was taken directly from 1970s rock'n'roll terminology, punk in this context meaning young, aggressive, streetwise, and alienated, and offensive to the Establishment. In the early 1980s the term cyberpunk was coined by writer Bruce Bethke, and the term came into common use via William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984). (Nicholls:2015a.)

Non-exhaustive list of themes:

Punk disillusionment, sometimes with layers of illusions being peeled away as the story progresses

The loss of human connection and/or the decline of the human condition

Media overload, massive data networks and density of information

Destructive sex, often in connection with the lack of ability to form human connections

Bodily metamorphosis and/or body modifications that lead to transhuman and posthuman themes.

A dark, gritty and post-industrial global setting, often megacities, that further overshadow the protagonist and emphasise their position in society

Heavy substance use & addiction

Hopelessness – the protagonists nurture no hope of getting out of their predicament and/or do not succeed

Disregard for human life

(Burrows & Featherstone:1996; Elias:2009:3; Shiner:1991; Hollinger:1990; McHale:1992; Murphy & Vint:2010; Shiner:1992; Slusser:1992; Cavallaro:2000, Lavigne:2013:11-16.)

In addition to these, cyberpunk themes very often also overlap with postmodernist themes such as:

"lost in the city" themes of lack of identity

An increasingly fractured and globalised society

The loss of meaning or a higher order, religion is non-existent and there is no god or other higher authority to whom one can turn for answers

Deconstruction. It can be argued that cyberpunk in itself is a deconstruction of utopian SF narratives – the utopia of SF is often the dystopia of cyberpunk.

(McCaffery:1991: 315-316; McHale:1991; Heuser:2003; Woods:1999:65-66.)

Now, cyberpunk was coined by a bunch of cishet white dudes in a single writer's circle, who just wanted to look really cool. (See the Mirrorshades anthology and it's editor, who was the one who most wanted to be cool.) The same dudes have now declared this genre dead and that it is no longer active as a productive genre, albeit having been a refreshing spark and fresh point of view within SF history and SF literature (Nicholls:2015a). To that I say: bullshit! Genres don't just 'die', and don't just 'stop being productive' - let me refer you back to the definition of SF as a something that changes as you try to define it.

Consider this: in the 80s a bunch of dudebros wrote stories about the danger of technology and the internet while also writing about anti-heroes fighting the establishment (none of these dudebros were actual punks, they were decidedly middle-class to upper middle-class who circle-jerked each other in their writing workshops on the regular and wore sunglasses with mirror-finish). In the 90s the new technology wave didn't really seem all that dangerous anymore, and wasn't the internet and the cellphones awfully convenient? And who cares about Monsanto and Nestlé when we can get cheap flour and coca-cola whenever we want it? And by the 21st century, well, these dudebros are old, likely haven't kept up with their own genre because they're stuck with whatever they thought was genius in the 80s, and technology is everywhere. Also, Japan did not become the technological mega-corporate superpower that they thought it would be in the 80s, and we don't live in a Judge Dredd society, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , basically.

Here's some examples of cyberpunk works: Mirrorshades anthology (1986) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades) Neuromancer, Gibson (1984)

Blade Runner (1982) Ghost in the Shell (1995) The Matrix (1999) Surrogates (2009) Dredd (2012) Elysium (2013) Lucy (2014)

Hey look at that, four movies on this list from the 21st century, but I guess cyberpunk is really dead, guys? How sad Alexa play despacito

Potential problems

There's always a risk that in creating a cyberpunk story that one accidentally ends up writing about sentient fedoras instead of actual anti-heroes fighting against real injustice. If your story is about incels, you're doing cyberpunk wrong.

No really, that's it.

STEAMPUNK

I have no sources for this section because I've not covered steampunk in my own academic research, it's just one of those genres I really like to read recreationally. I have read academic articles about steampunk, but do I have them saved? No, absolutely not. That would be rational, useful, and effective, and that's not how we do things in this household.

That said.

Steampunk is a subgenre of SF that falls under ALTERNATIVE HISTORY rather than COOL FUTURE STUFF. It's retro-futuristic type of science fiction inspired by the likes of Jules Verne, who wrote science fiction in the 19th century. What's characteristic for Jules Verne and other SF writers of the same era, is that they imagined technological development based on the science they had at the time, which is why so many of their inventions are steam powered (coal). They had all these grand ideas (and big imaginations) for what humanity could achieve, but didn't have anything more advanced than coal, steam, and electricity. They didn't know that there was an entire digital revolution waiting to happen in the 20th century, so everything was analogue.

In addition to that, the 19th century still had like, this ginormous British Empire. There were colonies everywhere, French, British, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish--Europeans were stealing lands and killing people (and enslaving them, still). Imperialism was in vogue and the tea, sugar, and opium trade was the highlight of capitalism at the expense of the entire rest of the world.

The modern steampunk genre as it's written today is...based on all that. So you have a genre that's aesthetic as fuck (cogwheels everywhere, amiright?), in a sort of nostalgic way where everyone has on pretty dresses, the technology is adorably analogue, there's steam! Steam is pretty! Science as we know it is disregarded for the Rule of Cool, and some writers even throw in supernatural elements because why the fuck not, and the Victorians were into it anyway.

The steampunk genre was not created to be -punk. It is not inherently rebellious, it doesn't feature a fight against the establishment, it doesn't have anti-heroes, it doesn't really have anything about it that pokes at the status quo of its time (the Victorian era). It was dubbed steampunk because cyberpunk was a term that existed, and it looked cool to model the name of a new subgenre after another one, that clearly set it apart from 'traditional' SF, but also made it clear it was different from cyberpunk.

Potential problems:

The genre as a whole.

I'm not joking.

So, how do you avoid the problem that is steampunk?

De-colonise the narrative* (er, probably don't do this if you're white.)

Whatever you do, make sure you're not accidentally glorifying imperialism and colonialism.

Write stories that subvert the steampunk genre as it's popularly known--go beyond the Victorian era - what does a steampunk world look like that prevailed until 2018? What happened to the British empire in that world? Is it still around? Did it collapse? What role did tech play in it? *who* has the tech - the British empire, or the nations it colonised? What does that mean for history? Who's the hero and who's the establishment? Where is the injustice and who is fighting it?

Steampunk is often known as a fluff genre, where the characters just get to go on adventures and have fun. Drink a lot of tea, eat a lot of food, etc. (Hello, Gail Carriger) There's nothing wrong with fluff, but consider: at whose expense do we get the fluff? Just to take Gail Carriger's steampunk books as an example, her characters frequently exhibit a privilege that only comes with the fact they are British citizens in a British empire.

Examples of steampunk works:

Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Verne (1870) (you didn't think I was going to forget Jules Verne, did you? The Time Machine, Wells (1895) (most people would say it's SF, but I'm adding it here because of when it was written and the faux science) Infernal Devices, Jeter (1987) The Difference Engine, Sterling & Gibson (1991) The Golden Compass, Pullmann (1995) Steampunk and Steampunk Reloaded anthology (2008) edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer The Boneshaker, Priest (2009) The Revolutions, Gilman (2014) Gail Carriger's Parasolverse (on-going)

The City of Lost Children (1995) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) Treasure Planet (2002) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) Van Helsing (2004) SteamBoy (2004) Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

*this, I'd argue, is how we get e.g. afropunk and silkpunk. :D :D :D i don't mean that afropunk and silkpunk are steampunk under a different name, i mean that those genres are about de-colonising the narrative; alternative history free of western intervention. It's SUPER COOL STUFF, and you should all read it. (As should I.) Ken Liu and JY Yang do silkpunk. Unfortunately I don't know much afropunk, though I do know Black Panther (2018) is an example of afropunk.

DIESELPUNK

Oh man am I READY for this hot mess.

Dieselpunk is another ALTERNATIVE HISTORY subgenre, characterised by being set between WW1 and WW2, when dieselpowered technology was the main technological focus. Dieselpunk fiction sometimes extends into the 1950s and early 1960s, and in those cases often discusses alternative histories in which the Nazis won the war or the post-apocalyptic reality following a nuclear war or other major human-made disastrous event. The term dieselpunk was coined in 2001 by Lewis Pollak and Dan Ross, when they needed to describe the aesthetic of their new game which was steampunk-esque, but darker and grittier than steampunk. Dieselpunk was a world of grit, oil, dust and mud, but also borrowed elements from Art Deco, Dadaism, Cubism, and Futurism, amongst others. (Ottens & Piecraft:2008.)

I have a love-hate relationship with this genre, because there are TWO strands of dieselpunk, and, if you've spotted it already, one of them is about nazis winning and the other is about nazis losing. Guess which one I like? If your answer is 'the one where nazis lose' you are right, gold star for you. I'll be citing a lot from Ottens and Piecraft in this section because there is shockingly little academic research done on dieselpunk. Nick Ottens and Mr. Piecraft are two dudes who like dieselpunk who sat together ten years ago to talk about a definition, and published it in a webzine. It's important to note that Mr. Piecraft is a screenname, and that Piecraft himself is a nazi-sympathiser if not an outright nazi (honestly, what's the difference between nazi-sympathiser and nazi? none). Ottens, on the other hand, uses his own name because he's not a fricking nazi.

So, about those two strands. Let's deal with the nazi first so we can proceed to ignore it for the rest of this post.

Themes of the Piecraftian strand:

Continual dystopian view

The aesthetic of world wars

World War 2 is either being fought as a prolonged cold war or has been won by the Axis powers

Often suggests Nazi-Germany has advanced rocketry and aeroplane programs

Eugenics

The lack of development of human culture due to widespread warfare

In the case of a post-apocalyptical event, survival being largely dependent on diesel power

The occult or supernatural

Often no hope for recovery, survival or a better future

(Ottens & Piecraft:2008)

Y I K E S. just. YIKES.

Themes of the Ottensian strand:

Settings in which the decadent aesthetics and utopian philosophies of the Roaring Twenties continued unhindered by economic collapse or war

The Great Depression did not happen, sometimes World War 1 didn't either

Enthusiasm for the predictions about the future produced throughout the 1930s and 1950s

Positive visions of dieselpowered technology, often realising utopian ideals of technology fairs at the time

Unstoppable technological progress; however the technology almost never crosses the boundary between dieselpowered machines and sophisticated computer technology

Nuclear weapons only an experimental technology

Firmly set in the interwar era and does not incorporate World War 2

Pulp-inspired adventure

Always carries a glimmer of hope

(Ottens & Piecraft:2008)

Dieselpunk is sometimes considered a post-cyberpunk genre within the "Ottensian" tradition, as it may offer a utopian view of the progression stated in a pre-WW2 environment as a counterpoint to the dystopian world views of cyberpunk; dieselpunk as a genre is not just newer than cyberpunk, it showed up right on the heels of cyberpunk. Dieselpunk is also sometimes considered a post-steampunk and pre-cyberpunk genre timeline-wise, as the universe of the "Piecraftian" dieselpunk tradition may eventually turn into a cyberpunk universe with the progress of time and technological advancement, and was in fact considered a continuum between steampunk and cyberpunk by game designers Pollak and Ross. Another view is that dieselpunk fiction can be likened to cyberpunk stories set in the Roaring Twenties instead of in the near future as both cyberpunk and dieselpunk take inspiration from film noir in their storytelling and aesthetic look. (Ottens & Piecraft:2008; Buckell:2015; Feinstein:2014; Wilson:2013.)

I personally think that dieselpunk has a lot more in common with cyberpunk than with steampunk, even though dieselpunk and steampunk are often lumped together. It's easy to see why they are, as both steampunk and dieselpunk are highly aesthetic genres, they're both alternative history, they both have nostalgic elements (e.g. victorian fashion, 20s-40s fashion), and they both lack the true -punk aspect of the genre: the fight against the establishment. At least where the Piecraftian strand is concerned, as that isn't so much about fighting the establishment as it is about glorifying fascism. The Ottensian strand, while 'fluffier', and pulp-ier, definitely has a clear anti-nazi thread--the heroes in pre-WW2 or WW2 stories are explicitly fighting the nazis, not aiding them.

Examples of dieselpunk works:

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (Bet you didn't see that one coming) The Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) Captain America: the First Avenger (2011) (YES, REALLY. IT IS DIESELPUNK.) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Potential problems:

THE ENTIRE PIECRAFTIAN STRAND OF DIESELPUNK, HONESTLY

DON'T BE A PIECRAFT

BE CAPTAIN AMERICA

PUNCH A NAZI

SOLARPUNK

Hey look, it's my favourite -punk genre! It's my favourite because it's so new and undefined and malleable and we can make it ANYTHING WE WANT, without old dudebros breathing down our necks. (No doubt they will still be breathing down our necks, but fuck them. FUCK THE ESTABLISHMENT.)

Solarpunk is a new eco-futuristic political movement that has produced little literature so far. It's usually characterised by either retro-futuristic fiction that reimagines an alternative history in which the industrial revolution did not happen, or evolved into a different direction, or futuristic fiction in which the current environmental issues have been solved. In a solarpunk universe, the world has become solar- or windpowered, ecological and sustainable. (Lodi-Ribeiro:2014.)

Some credit the solarpunk movement to this post on tumblr from 2014, but the term and the concept had been around for at least two years by then. The post can however be given some credit regarding spreading the concept and spotlighting it in a visually appealing way. Because of this post, many define solarpunk as art noveau + plants, which, to be fair, is a very aesthetic rendition of the concept, but like I said: this is a brand new genre, it's malleable, we are still in the process of defining it. And we likely never will be 'finished' defining it, as I remind you yet again that science fiction is the literature of change, and it changes while you define it.

I imagine that the -punk part of solarpunk isn't solely because all those other established genres use that naming model, but because we live in a society that still relies heavily on fossil fuels, and we are living a global climate crisis that will only be worse if we don't take action. Solarpunk takes that and goes 'what if we didn't have that problem in the first place?' and imagines a world where we didn't become reliant on fossil fuels, where we as a species invented and used sustainable sources of power (wind, solar, water) from the get-go. Or it imagines a world where we averted the crisis, where fossil fuels were replaced by renewable energy. I like this genre because it speaks to the part of me that is passionate about the environment and sustainable energy (like, come on, I live in Denmark, the land of wind power), and because parts of our society are, in fact, solarpunk. So one could say the genre is fighting against the establishment we live in (the governments that don't sign environmental treaties, governments that keep digging for oil instead of investing in sustainable research, governments that approve fracking, governments that roll back laws that protect the environment) by presenting an alternative, but I'd like to think that in fiction we'll also eventually have heroes fighting for the environment.

Examples of solarpunk works:

Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World Anthology (2012, translated into English in 2018) Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation Anthology (2017) Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers Anthology (2018) The Broken Earth Trilogy, Jemisin (I have yet to read it, but others have described it as having solarpunk elements)

Potential problems:

I don't? know? yet?

??

SOURCES:

BOOKER, M. Keith. Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

BUCKELL, Tobias S.. Introduction. The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk. Ed. Sean Wallace. Hachette UK, 2015.

BURROWS, Roger & Mike FEATHERSTONE. Cultures of Technological Embodiment: An Introduction. Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk. Sage Publications, 1996.

CAVALLARO, Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the work of William Gibson. The Athlone Press, 2000.

CLUTE, John & Peter NICHOLLS. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 2nd edition. St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.

ELIAS, Herlander. Cyberpunk 2.0: Fiction and Contemporary. LabCom Books, Portugal. 2009.

FEINSTEIN, Katriona. Dieselpunk: Retro Futures of the All-American Art Deco Years. Graffito Books Limited, 2014

GUFFEY, Elizabeth and Kate C. LEMAY. Retrofuturism and Steampunk. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. Ed. Rob Latham. Oxford University Press, 2014.

HOLLINGER, Veronica. Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism.

Mosaic 23, January 1990.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & Malcolm EDWARDS (ed.). The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists. HarperCollins, 1983.

LAVIGNE, Carlen. Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction: A Critical Study. McFarland, 2013.

LODI-RIBEIRO, Gerson. Prefácio. Solarpunk. Editora Draco, 2014.

MCCAFFERY, Larry. Cutting Up. Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction. Duke University Press, 1991.

MCHALE, Brian. POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM. Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction. Duke University Press, 1991.

MCHALE, Brian. Towards a poetics of cyberpunk. Constructing Postmodernism. Routledge, 1992.

MERRIL, Judith. What Do You Mean: Science? Fiction? SF: The Other Side of Realism. Editor Thomas D. Clareson. Popular Press, 1971.

MICHAUD, Thomas. Science Fiction and Innovation. Marsisme.com, 2008.

MILBURN, Colin. Posthumanism. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. Ed. Rob Latham. Oxford University Press, 2014.

MURPHY, Graham J. and Sherryl VINT. Introduction: The Sea Change(s) of Cyberpunk. Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives. Routledge, 2010.

NICHOLLS, Peter. Cyberpunk. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 10 Apr. 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. a

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cyberpunk.

NICHOLLS, Peter. Cybernetics. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 10 Apr. 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. b

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cybernetics.

NICHOLLS, Peter, and John CLUTE. Genre SF. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/genre_sf.

OTTENS, Nick & Mr PIECRAFT: Discovering Dieselpunk. The Gatehouse Gazette, July 2008. Web. 31 March 2016.

http://www.ottens.co.uk/gatehouse/Gazette%20-%201.pdf

PRUCHER, Jeff (editor). Brave New Words. The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction.

Oxford University Press, 2009.

SCHOLES, Robert E. Structural Fabulation: An Essay on Fiction of the Future. University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

SHINER, Lewis. Confessions of an Ex-Cyberpunk. New York Times Op-Ed page, Jan. 7, 1991.

SHINER, Lewis. Inside the Movement: Past, Present and Future. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the future of narrative. Eds. George Slusser and Tom Shippey. University of Georgia Press, 1992.

SLUSSER, George. Introduction: Fiction as Information. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the future of narrative. Eds. George Slusser and Tom Shippey. University of Georgia Press, 1992.

STABLEFORD, Brian M; John CLUTE & Peter NICHOLLS. Definitions of SF. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/definitions_of_sf.

WILSON, Tome. Welcome to the retro future. Dieselpunk Epulp showcase. John Pica, 2013. WOODS, Tim. Beginning Postmodernism. Manchester University Press, 1999.

[rtcessays]

Essay 1

I heard you killed your only friend last year Disarm The fog won’t lift in your town

Q’s for Lise

What inspired you to sit down and write, what it sounds like you assumed would be a one shot, or at the least the start of a very short and sweet ‘verse?

I definitely initially thought it would be a one-shot, and honestly as I wrote it I didn’t even know that I was going to publish it. I can’t exactly remember what I was thinking - pretty early on after watching The Avengers for the first time my girlfriend started me thinking about Steve and Loki, though initially not necessarily as a pairing - just as a pair that might have interesting interactions. The plot mostly came from needing an excuse for them to interact and having a deep, abiding love of whump.

Basically, “how do I put Steve and Loki in a place together and get them to have a conversation? Oh, I know, I’ll just beat Loki up.”

Was there a clear point where you said something like, ‘Hey, there might be more to this than I originally thought?’ through this first series of installments?

Yes.

Disarm mostly happened because I felt like I’d left some hanging threads, and started imagining what the next meeting between Steve and Loki - on more equal footing - might look like. So I wrote that one, mostly thinking “well, I’ll just see what happens here”, hit the end of it, and went “wait, there’s definitely more here that I want to write.”

It seems like pretty early that I knew I started shipping them - already Disarm is marked as pre-slash. But I don’t think I started out with what became sort of the goal of this first segment of fics: getting them to a point where they were really in a relationship. I think it wasn’t really until I was midway through the third fic that I realized where this all was going and started to think I might have tripped into something.

a/n for the essay from ‘I heard you killed your only friend last year’:

I am still hilariously new to all things this fandom and sincerely apologize for any inaccuracies.

Where were you at when you first started? Had you been reading comics your whole life, or was this your introduction to these characters?

The only comics I’d read at the time I started writing RTC were a few scattered Batman comics, Sandman, Lucifer, and some fables. I hadn’t opened a single Marvel comic in my life, and while I watched Thor in 2011 nothing really came of it. I don’t remember watching any of the other movies when they came out, though I might have and just not really left an impression.

Then I went to The Avengers in May of 2012 and just got - slammed. Suddenly I had all these feelings about characters, especially Loki, with a whole new amount of intensity. I started writing fic for the MCU almost immediately after I got out of the theater, of which I heard you killed your only friend was a very early one. At the time, I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I went back and watched everything over again, and began my deep dive into comics fandom (starting with Black Widow), but...May 2012 was really where my MCU pit started. --

Remember This Cold has humble beginnings in I heard you killed your only friend last year. What eventually becomes a richly filled ‘verse begins almost as a writer’s exercise. How does character A respond to character B, and vice versa. It is a laboratory environment, poking and prodding at the two in order to determine...well, we’re not sure exactly, at first. And that is for the best, as we have the pleasure of unfolding this particular mystery as the author does.

The back and forth of Steve and Loki’s interactions, sizing one another up  through the fic, is reflective of the author feeling out the belief that Loki and Steve are viable as a pairing, and investigating how their beliefs, morals, and cadences fit together. Lise has come to be synonymous with Loki, but her voice for Steve is dead on accurate, right from the start. Also, her understanding that Steve is layered, and has a depth that goes overlooked in the source material (remember this was written post Avengers).

There’s a magnetism to this iteration of Loki that the reader feels through Steve. Steve Rogers is an upstanding gentleman through and through, known for doing the right thing. There’s no grappling with this for him, as he quietly insists on taking care of someone who just leveled Manhattan. But is there more to it?

“Just something to think about,” Steve said, after a moment. “If you get tired of running.”

Its a nice set up for further exploration, which follows in Disarm, wherein we begin Loki’s penchant for showing up unannounced. For those of us waiting for the romantic elements to be included, the rapid slow burn is tantalizing from the first scene. Steve is playing ethics with Loki, to a degree, and Loki...well, Loki is kind of slippery. Being from Steve’s perspective, Loki’s machinations are secret and therefore, more captivating.

For new readers, its almost a requirement to travel back in time in order to picture this Loki. Deliberately made out as a menacing villain, it is a largely flat characterization. The beauty of fanfiction, of course, is we can breathe life and breadth into a character. Making room for an eventual romantic focus is secondary to making room for a more rounded out individual who might be capable of such a thing. We just begin to see it in how Steve’s tempered treatment seems to get under Loki’s skin.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say. Steve’s thoughts may be preoccupied with Loki, but upon being confronted by them, the reader imagines he might feel like a mouse being batted around by a cat. Loki’s speech is a rabbit warren of clues and suggestions, none of which Steve has the conversational skills to navigate. But, that doesn’t do anything to assuage his patience or curiosity. The questions of ‘how can Steve stand by and allow this to go on’ may start to come up. Is it unfair that he treat Loki with some kind of deference? Maybe it is. Maybe, just maybe, Steve Rogers has a flaw or two. Alternatively, its possible there’s more to Loki than meets the eye, and Steve’s instincts are serving him well.

Almost too literally, Steve gets a peek at Loki’s true state and when he pushes, he only gets Loki’s verbose command of language. That all changes when Loki shows his underbelly, and Steve sees what being dogged by (presumably) Thanos or the Chitauri has cost him. Loki views Steve as a safe place, that much is obvious, but the reader is left to wonder why. Is it because Steve would do the right thing and Loki knows it? Is it a sign of something more? Hmm.

The notion that this is a thought exercise is expunged by the time we reach the fog won’t lift in your town. It’s subtle, but the potential transition to something altogether not platonic is illustrated in this first sign of attraction:

He [Loki] glanced down at the pear and took another bite of it, eyes drifting closed in what looked like blissful delight. “Mmm,” he said, head tilted slightly back, and Steve felt the inexplicable urge to look away.

Its a brief interlude, perhaps almost a foreshadowing. The m/m reader is sitting up straight, now; the author has our attention as themes might begin to shift.

“You would not. You will find, Captain, that believing a thing, no matter how passionately, does not make it so.”

Loki says this, and it is a moment where you can see past his dramatic airs to find a truth of his. And it’s of course as cynical as Steve is optimistic. These little morsels we get in the back and forth that’s flavored the series so far are gems that keep you hooked, and allow you to truly begin to fall for a character.

The stakes are raised when their conversation, as it sometimes does, turns into a concern over who’s allowed to do what. Steve can’t turn his back to Loki, Loki can play the puppet master and toy with Steve. Expressly forbidding it, Steve makes to leave and Loki’s having none of it. Though, once Steve does in fact stay, we get another one of those morsels when Loki admits it is easiest for him to be cruel.

Then, he’s more or less threatening the Avengers should Steve not keep his repeated presence a secret, and we’ve snapped back to the persona Loki has been favoring. Steve, as ever, doesn’t care. He presses on, and claims his debt in the form of Loki doing a good deed. Sometimes it's hard to determine if Steve is deluded, or if Loki is the one who doesn’t truly know himself.

Good deed or no, one has to wonder why Loki chose to text Steve. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Loki is adding another way to communicate with Steve, only to show up in person once Steve has seen the news coverage. Its another subtle nod to what’s to come.

A noted marker of more of the same is the epithet of ‘my Captain’. Without Loki’s perspective, we can only guess at where he’s coming from...which in itself is a quagmire. We’re best left to trust the author and continue enjoying the ride.

Take a risk, he [Steve] told himself, and tried to ignore the little voice that said he was taking too many.

This in response to Loki bringing up Steve’s potential melancholy for things that were, it is notable in that Steve is becoming maybe a little conscious of how he is compromising himself. Let us not forget that that is, contrary to some belief, not entirely out of character for him. Taking risks got him to where he is, in countless variations on a theme. His willingness to be vulnerable pays off, as Loki admits simply that there are, in fact, things he misses about Asgard.

As we continue, Steve grows more bold and Loki somewhat more callus. He brings up Bucky Barnes, and though initially not by name, it’s obvious who he’s referring to. It is here that Steve tries drawing a line in the sand.

“Don’t try to tell me that,” Steve interrupted. “You don’t like something I say, say so. Don’t just – don’t just take off and then come back determined to have some kind of revenge. You can’t – go around hurting people just because they hurt you.”

“Why not,” Loki said, his voice lofty, but there was something low and vicious underneath. “That is the world, is it not? Give and take. Action and reaction. Strike and retaliation.”

And here we have two opposing sets of beliefs. Steve proceeds to shut down the conversation, and that is how the scene ends, before opening up into a new scene, a slow revelation that something happened and Steve has been hurt. Loki is there when he wakes, which is maddening! How long has he been there with him, one wants to know, and do the other Avengers know? Loki is clearly distressed. Here we have some explicit emotional whump, as Loki insists he’s simply not trustworthy. Steve might be tired, hurt, and out of it perhaps, but it bears out more of his emotion.

“No, and I was wrong.” He needed to salvage this, and wasn’t sure why it was so important, only that it was.

It’s important because Loki has become part of his life, and Loki needed to understand Steve saw things in him Loki probably refused to believe he could ever possess. Our final segment concludes on a very good recap: 

Still. He couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of something like hope. Maybe just a little. Four steps forward, three steps back.

Even if he still didn’t know where they were going, or if, or why. It was still something.

[alexanderwrites]

Hack Job: Why Were Hacker Movies Ever A Thing?

Lately i’ve been thinking about that weird and almost completely failed subgenre of movie that attempted to light up the LCD screens of our hearts, but instead faded like a broken computer screen: the hacker film. Now, I could ask what good the sub-genre has ever done for us, but the answer to that is clear and just a few inches above this block of text. The genre birthed this iconic Matthew Lillard role from the movie Hackers, in which he plays a (wait for it!) hacker named...erm...Cereal Killer. Because....he likes Cereal? Sure, lets go with that! He’s a character described by June Diane Raphael on an episode of the podcast How Did This Get Made? as “Disgusting”, and she is not completely wrong. He is disgusting, bizarre and the strangest character Lillard has played, and i’m including Shaggy in the live action Scooby Doo films. He’s a character that must be experienced, and once experienced, never forgotten. I mean - you’ve seen what he fucking looks like. 

But my point remains: outside of Cereal Killer (I am bolding his name because he is an Important Man), the genre has offered up very little to the world. I admittedly know nothing at all about hacking, and I don’t care at all about Hacking, like, i’d presume, 90% of people currently residing here on earth. But I cannot imagine that people who love Hacking (or Hacker Fuckers, if you will) queuing up to see Hackers, a film that thinks this is what the internet looks like:

Now, i’m no city-slickin’ mouse-clickin’ hacker, but I don’t think that’s what the internet looks like. I could be wrong, and character actor Fisher Stevens (I was about to write “beloved” character actor, but then I remembered Short Circuit) could be skating through a flashing pillar of internet right now. It’s a cool thought! Hackers came along in 1995, when future optimism was higher than it had been in years, as everyone believed the tech-bubble would never burst (spoiler alert: it did!) and that the new millennium would bring a world of positive changes and possibilities. The poor, innocent souls of 1995 could never have possibly imagined the true horrors waiting for them on the other side of the millennium...

But before Fred Durst became a thing in a hat that you had to look at, technology was booming, affordable and exciting. You got transparent Macs that allowed you to see through into the mechanical nonsense inside it. The new fangled e-mail gave us (I don’t know why i’m saying “us”. I was 3 years old in 1995. Babies don’t get emails) all the opportunity to open your email and then close it again as many times as you liked! So this is what producers saw when they started making movies like Hackers. They put their strongest marketing minds together and came up with “People got computers now. Make comPUTER FILM!”. Those wild bastards actually went and did it! And weirdly, Hackers was kinda ahead of its time. It might’ve been wildly inaccurate in almost every possible way, but it paved the way for a wave of (well, like 3) films. The Matrix wouldn’t be released for another 4 years, and Swordfish a further 2. If it did incite a trend, it was the only trend started by Director Iain Softley, his later film K-Pax tragically failing to kick start a new genre of films in which Kevin Spacey eats bananas with their skins still on.

Good stuff! Hackers does feel like a film that is unsure of whether it’s trying to replicate fads or start them off. I mean, characters rollerblade everywhere for no apparent reason in the film. That might be something Hackers do? I’ve never seen Mr Robot, so I cannot categorically say that Rami Malek doesn’t rollerblade his way around town like a Starlight Express extra who really hates computers. But I doubt it. So with the rollerblading, and the way....ugh...Cereal Killer dresses, it seems like the film is offering you up its own funky ideas that you could follow on from if you want to get murdered on the streets. Did its aesthetic style have influence? Was the game Jet Set Radio from 2000 and its rollerblading theme influenced at all by Hackers? Did Eminem see Johnny Lee Miller’s bleached blonde hair in the film (quick deeply important side note: his character is named Dade. DADE.) and think “huh. that would really compliment my insufferable personality!”? We’ll never know. The film is a weird exercise in style and trends, and the soundtrack, crammed with The Prodidgy and Underworld, is proof that at least the soundtrack department had its finger on the pulse. And, it could be argued that the film’s costume department at least came up with some creative cyber-punk clothing, and were bold enough to make Penn Jillette look like this:

The thing is, I liked the weirdness of it all, I like this misfires in capturing modern life, and inaccuracy doesn’t bother me really if a film is fun enough. I’m not a stickler for realism. I didn’t sit down to Face/Off and complain that it’s totally unbelievable that John Travolta is a human person. That’s not the issue. The issue, really is that with all the giant screen Playstations, pounding trance tracks and references to Coca Cola (weird, I thought Mountain Dew would be the Hacker’s choice), the film is in troubled water because of the fact that Hacking is unbelievably, deeply fucking boring. It is not interesting in seeing someone go clickety clack on a keyboard and make occasional faces to indicate that “oh no! the mainframe is busting my chops!” or “Huzzah! I clicked the mouse really fast just now!”.

Thankfully, the film has some fairly decent editing which intersperses the clickety-clacking with some long exposure, sped up shots of New York City just in case you forgot it was the 90′s. The fact that they need to cut away to exciting, zooming shots that have nothing to do with anything highlights the fact that the Director and Editor knew exactly what i’m talking about: HACKING IS FUCKING BORING (if you’re a hacker reading this, please don’t hack me). And they’ve built an entire film around it! A whole nonsensical plot which involves (as far as i can remember) big ships and evil corporations that want to sink the big ships is built on Hacking. Thank god this film is so wildly ridiculous, which keeps it from being entirely boring. It’s smart in that it knows to not make the film actually about hacking, but then you kind of ask yourself the question: why is this film about Hacking at all? Why is it called Hackers? Maybe a better name would’ve been ‘Bladin’ Teenz’, as an ode to their endless rollerblading. It’s a fun film, but a dumb film and proof that films entirely about hacking cannot really work.

The Matrix was a wise film. Exploiting that hip, late-90s techno excitement that everyone was buzzing over, it featured a hacker at its centre who really doesn’t do much hacking at all. In fact, Morpheus might as well have said “You Hack? Dude fucking grow up. Come on, i’ll make you a treat”. Sure, you’ve got the iconic green gibberish that turns up on the computers and would inspire a million shitty screensavers, but again the hacking is intercut with other action going on in the film. You have characters typing away and yelling shit like “I’m nearly in!” or “i’m not nearly in!” or “I am unsure of whether I am, in fact, in, nearly in, or not nearly in!”. But that is manageable and minimal, and in the end there’s so much more to remember about The Matrix that I don’t think anyone, when asked what it’s about, would say “Oh it’s about Keanu Reeves hacking on his dell”. It understood this caveat, and created its own style which would influence every single music video ever produced over the next 5 years.

These are screenshots from the video for Don’t Wanna Let You Go by 5ive, a very bad UK Boy-band that had 4 singers and 1 rapper, all of whom it’s safe to assume have passed away. 

The Matrix had the style, and the smarts to sidestep bland hacking scenes. You know what film doesn’t understand that hacking is boring? Fucking Swordfish.

Fucking Swordfish. A film so aesthetically ugly and repulsive in every way that it does the unthinkable and makes you hate Hugh Jackman. But it commits the biggest sin of all by giving John Travolta a teeny tiny beard - a decision which we still feel the fallout from today, whenever a new red carpet photo arrises of John’s new chin abomination. 

Looking like a cup of concentrated Michael Bay piss, the film leans heavily into stylishness - or lack thereof. Hugh Jackman is basically...sigh...DADE in the movie, and Travolta is regularly outfitted with funny sunglasses. It borrows a lot from Hackers, but while that had a naive, 1995 goofy charm, Swordfish is an aggressively stupid and oblivious movie, that gives us a LOT of Hacking. Like...so much Hacking. The Most Hacking. Oh, The Fucking Hacking. Its a reminder of just how boring Hackers or The Matrix could’ve been if they’d fallen into the wrong hands, and a big, horribly colour-corrected reminder that films about hacking really aren’t the best. Instead of cutaways of cityscapes, Swordfish tries to build the tension during one hacking scene in the grossest way possible: by having Hugh Jackman’s character receive forced fellatio while he works, and while John Travolta smiles. It doesn’t make a boring scene exciting, it makes a boring scene fucking disgusting (the movie’s grossness doesn’t stop there. Halle Berry was heavily pushed into taking her top off in the movie, and promised extra money if she did it.). The Hackers method of randomised cutaways feels a million miles away during these scenes, and you will be willing to pay any earthly sum to make the scene unfolding in front of you stop. Maybe that’s how hackers should make their money from here on in: stop hacking, and just start blackmailing people by forcing them to watch Swordfish. Fucking Swordfish.

The movie was also a bit of a death knell for a subgenre that never really took off. People realised “Oh, this is dull and crap to watch!” when it came to hacking, and technology moved on rapidly that there was a lot more to do with it than watch some guy slapping the keys of his iMac. I find it a really interesting subgenre to look back at, because i’m a huge fan of outdated technologies, fashion styles, turn of the millennium culture, and really quite poor films (besides The Matrix which holds up nicely). Hollywood has tried to make a manner of subjects interesting. Stock markets. Fishing. White people who buy zoos. Some work, some don’t, and it’s all about the way the subject is handled. Because of their reliance on technology, these hacking films feel so dated that maybe Hollywood doesn’t want to risk dipping its toes back into the cyberwaters again. I kind of hope they don’t, because I would literally rather never see a film again than have to even know that a film about Anonymous is being made. I don’t want an ‘edgy’ modern movie that’s made for Banksy to watch while he plunges his hands down his pants and goes to town. I want silly old Cereal Killer and towers of nonsense computer language dammit! I want rollerblading, coke-drinking cyberpunks! Oh well. Whatever happens to the genre, at the very least, we’ll always have Dade and The Gang....