#also i like how you put your thoughts on three other characters that are irrelevant to the BOMBSHELL you dropped

[cherry-blossom-qf]

OK I'd imagine that, out of all the possible dream friends, the only one that would have some major beef with Magalor and Oakley would be Taranza.

Susie? She would offer them a 10% off discount for couples and ask if she can run some tests.

Gooey? This man probably doesn't even understand the concept of romance, let alone the complexities of it? Still supportive, but doesn't quite get it.

Daroach (bc we always need more Daroach content in this fanbase)? Probably would just try steal Oakleys apples. Could he ask for some? Sure, but the challenge is half the Fun.

But Taranza, out of everyone, runs closest to Magalor. He lost a lover to an ancient artifact, so why does Magalor get to stay happy when he can't be with Sectonia. I imagine Taranza wouldn't exactly be happy with these thoughts, and would probably just shut himself away until they go away.

... or maybe, just maybe, he can find the shards of that damned mirror to bring her back. Afterall, if the Master Crown can become a new life, then what's to say the mirror can't become an old one...

(It will take him regrettably long to realise the mirror isn't her, and never will be her)

Damn.... Honestly I was originally planning on Taranza being the "sweet and supportive" friend cuz cuz I picture him has a hopeless romantic.

But then YOU barged into my house through the window and said "HEY! HAVE SOME SPIDER ANGST!! GOODNIGHT!!" and then LEFT ME WITH A SHATTERED WINDOW AND SAD SPIDER THOUGHTS!

I... I kinda want to take this idea... It's really good idea.. Good lord...

Like.... damn... that's depressing as shit.. I LOVE IT!!!

[balkanradfem]

Did anyone watch the horror movie 'The Substance'? I've seen it because someone recommended it to me, and I saw one of the three directors was female, but now I just have few thousands words of criticism and upset about it. Click if you want to read it. Tw for themes of women abused in tv industry and the fear of aging out of their jobs.

So, the substance is about a woman aging out of her role in television where she runs a fitness program, and she is distraught to realize she's going to get replaced. Sadly she blames her own aging process about it! She gets in an accident, and then a male nurse gives her an usb showcasing 'the substance', a serum that makes a younger version of you come out of your body.

She takes it, and her body opens up to let out a younger version, a different acctress, come out and look at herself in the mirror. I was already upset by this point about the depiction of a woman losing her job for aging and hating herself, and not the industry and the males in it, but now I was in disbelief. It was funny that they wanted me to believe another woman exited from her back and didn't break her spine in the process, whatever, but now she was in a new body, and immediately went 'yas slay look how hot I am' Excuse me what?

I thought, at least one part of the horror would be feeling off and alien if forced to switch consciousness to another body, a body that is unfamiliar, that you didn't grow with, it would be traumatizing. No matter how much more 'socially likeable' a new body was, I can't imagine looking at my own hands and legs and having them look completely different, and being okay about it. It would cause a crisis in anyone, your identity would be in shambles. You couldn't get used to it, you'd have trouble looking at the mirror at all, and would forget it and constantly be reminded of it when seeing glimpses of your own hands, and it would shock and disturb you every time. How would you talk to your friends and family now? How would you deal with people you loved who couldn't recognize you? It would be mentally scarring.

If she had one single friend to talk about this, the entire premise would fall apart because it would become obvious that this is stupid and shouldn't be done.

Watching on it turned out they cut this woman out from any social context of her life. She had no friends, no family, not even any acquaintances. The only person who ever talked to her was one(1) single ex classmate, and other than that, she seemed to have zero people in her life who even knew she existed. But there's nobody like that. Yes, you can be socially isolated, but hardly to the point where nobody in the world knows you exist. If you go outside people memorize you. She didn't have anyone who knew her. She was supposed to be a popular figure on tv. But she didn't exist. This woman had no past, no existence in anyone's world, no connections to other people whatsoever. It made her less of a believable character to me. Nobody can exist completely out of social context of their life. We didn't get an explanation of why she has no family, or friends or acquaintances, or past loves, or anything like that. It was almost like she was now so irrelevant due to her age that the world just cut her out, which is scary but also ridiculous, she looked young!!

Another glaring flaw in the movie was that... the older woman in the movie was so clearly more attractive than the younger. They tried to shoot her face in harsh lightning and highlight whatever they thought was wrong with her body, but she just looked excellent under any kind of standards. What do you mean this teenager is 'hotter' than the original protagonist. She looks 17, she looks like she shouldn't be allowed outside after dark. The idea of her being filmed by older males gave me nausea, get that child away from them. I had to skip most of the scenes with her because it looked like child pornography. They had her wearing breast prostetics to make her look adult and put her in clothing no woman alive would find appealing or comfortable to wear, it was painful, uncomfortable and horrifying.

The entire existence of the younger woman was dehumanizing. She didn't eat. She didn't watch tv. She didn't do anything human. She was a male idea of a 'hot young girl', who only existed to look like what males think is appealing, dance on stage, and get male approval. That's it, we never see her exhausted, sad, commiserating how difficult it is to be around males who objectify you all day, we never see her complain about sexualizing and so obviously ignored sexual harassment she was put trough – the movie acted like sexual harassment didn't exist. Males around her appeared to only care about how much money she could make them and even though that was disgusting too, I don't believe for a second that a woman in that scenario doesn't get extensively sexually harassed. But the movie skipped over that. Like it just didn't matter. She doesn't have mental health issues because she's an attractive female child on television. She isn't human to them.

The younger woman had to switch bodies with her original counterpart weekly, and at first I found these little moments soothing, because the older woman was clearly showing signs of pain, hunger, exhaustion, irritation, depression. I thought 'oh, there's the humanity I was missing!' and was just happy to see her eat something. But then, to my horror, these little moments of humanity were ... demonized. The fact that she was eating was a flaw and a failure in the movie. She was depicted as addicted to food, jealous, bitter, angry and like giving in to any human urge for entertainment and rest was her 'wasting her life'. I was chilled by this notion, because I realized that's how males see female needs in real life. A waste.

Another thing I found upsetting was the amount of completely naked scenes the acctresses had to go trough, because I can't imagine anyone feeling okay and comfortable with being filmed like that. It felt invasive and uncomfortable for me to see. I knew it was done like this for male satisfaction, it wasn't catered to me. It disturbs me to think they felt comfortable looking at that. Female discomfort is a source of pleasure to them.

The movie progresses in the protagonist taking more and more time being in the younger body, resulting in the older body deterioration. She ends up feeling like she's two people, which is logical at least; you would feel like you're someone else if you're a different body, it at least displayed that little bit of 'you are your body' consequences. The male nurse who gave her the substance starts stalking her, and talking to her in public, and I found this part interesting. The male tried to get her to relate to him, said things like '7 days is long' and 'has she started eating at you already', and to me it became obvious that the male nurse knew exactly what this was going to do to her, and did it anyway. Because he felt lonely and wanted a female companion who also switches bodies. He picked her out and victimized her because he wanted company who also suffered and struggled with the same problem, he spread the misery for his own benefit. I thought we were going to look at that? I thought we would unpack that for a second? Male selfishness and bringing misery into female's life for their selfish purposes? But movie said no and we never see him again.

The younger version seems to forget she ever had any more age, and recklessly parties and does public events not caring that her counterpart is getting destroyed, until at the end, they both end up in some kind of monstrous shape, which okay, the extra teeth were fun, add extra teeth on women yes. But she is ultimately killed when appearing in on a social event looking like that. The ending just shows her dreaming about being famous and cheered on by the crowd, and it looks almost like the movie thinks her endless greed for glory and fame did this to her. Like this is her own fault, she destroyed the body she had in pursuit of eternal approval and gratification of a cheering crowd. I was looking at this like, who was this made for? Nothing about this clicks, is this for people obsessed with their own fame? Is this just a made up idea of what the world looks like for women who are trying to be famous? Because it wasn't clicking with any reality I was aware of.

We've listened to women going trough fame and popularity, and we know what these stories entail. First half of it is being introduced to it too young, forced into it by their parents or guardians, being overworked, missing on childhoods and schooling and family time, not getting enough sleep or rest, being pushed into substance abuse just to get trough the day. And then, endless sexualizing, endless situations where they're in the presence of predators and unprotected. The industry ruthlessly rejecting their personality and forcing them to mold into whatever the public wants, or the producer wants, having their identity crashing with the public opinion of them. Lack of privacy, lack of safety being outside, getting harassed and crowded on the street, not being allowed to live a normal life. Having body issues due to being forced to focus on how you look, because you're under constant scrutiny and now your job depends on how your body looks like, developing mental disorders due to lack of control over your life, and due to control you have to have over your every action. Having your opinions and wants dismissed because your word doesn't count in the industry when you're a woman, being forced to hide what people have done to you in private, often suffering sexual abuse and being forced to keep quiet if you want to keep your job. Breakdowns, suicidal thoughts, both fearing to lose relevancy and wanting out of the industry for your mental health, but it's all you've known and you don't know how to function otherwise. Getting jaded, realizing your own value drops with age, learning to despise everyone who took advantage of you and dropped you the second you weren't making them enough money. Being sick and tired of males talking down to you and dismissing your humanity. Not knowing where to turn for understanding and safety, because the charade has to keep on going in order for the industry to go on.

This is what I would expect a woman in the industry to have learned after being put trough all that, and instead the main character was so void of any backstory, any real experiences, any thoughts or criticism about it, any anger or bitterness about the abuse she'd have suffered in there, and was sorely upset about her lack of job security and that she was no longer looking like a commercial. She would have learned from this, that this is an inherently insecure job industry, it's not worth being in it, but she doesn't seem to learn this. She isn't even angry they hired someone else without telling her. All of her anger was directed towards herself. And the movie was not challenging it. It was saying 'yes, it is your own fault, both for aging, and for wanting not to age. Look what you did.'

And by the end of the movie, she was just the same as the beginning, still just longing for the fame and cheers. She is a character who is not allowed to learn from her experiences, in fact seems to have no experiences, even of the things that happened to her in the movie. She cared for nothing but male validation. She only seemed to care about the younger body for the sake of this validation. Even at the very end when she was killed by the same males who she gave everything to impress for, she wasn't mad at them. She just wanted more validation from them.

And I'm watching this thinking, this must be whats inside of a male brain. He did that because thats how he would act in this situation. Males are incapable of learning from experience, so they assume women are too. Males think that having a body of a young female in their posession would resolve all of their needs and desires, so they think for a woman that would work too, in fact that she would destroy herself to get there. The creepy male fantasy of what a woman would do. It was done to validate their dumb opinions.

One thing I was surprised with was the road not taken in this movie, because it had a lot of potential symbolism! The younger woman exiting the woman's body, was reminiscent of birth. When I noticed it's a different acctress, I thought maybe we were making a parallel of mothers and daughters. Because it's a thing that happens sometimes; women with daughters will look at the daughter and feel she is a prettier, younger version of themselves. It reminds them of their own potential when they were just children, before their lives got decided by marriage and male ownership. And when daughters start receiving male attention, due to the flock of predators always creeping by, mothers will sometimes forget that this is a child bonded and dependant on them, who is now in danger, and instead get jealous, and want that attention for themselves. They'll try to vicariously live trough their daughters, get themselves into the spotlight, or win attention of the males attracted to the child. It's a horrifying event each time, I was reminded by it while watching the movie, seeing how angry the woman was at the younger counterpart for partying, being on tv, being in the spotlight that was now unreachable for her. But the movie ignored this cruel reality as well.

The movie's conclusion is just 'this is somehow the woman's fault', while trying to be a movie about the pressure of the tv industry on women to not age. The pressure is real and experienced by all women, so the movie could have been about analyzing the source of it, showing us the other side of it, how dehumanizing and cruel the males are benefiting from this, how it makes absolutely no sense to cater to them or to care about what they think of female age and appearance. It could have been about male selfishness, greed, pedophilia and predatory nature, it could have pointed us in the horrifying direction of women sacrificing so much of their health and life only for males to have financial benefit and sexual gratification from it. It could have depicted how hard work of women is unappreciated and only rewarded with further abuse.

Instead it focused on pulling women inside out to make horror of their bodies, and depicted teenagers as the ultimate goals for anyone. I think that's where I experienced the most horror, seeing the younger version being dehumanized and depicted as a sexual dream, her every private action looking like a commercial, making her into a reduced non-human robot that only acts the way males think women should. And the woman who actually looked like an adult, was not allowed to learn, criticize, or long for anything except male validation, another fantasy that is as far removed from reality as possible.

[puniyo]

The Quest for the Ring Power in Jack & Joker (points at Jack specifically)

Disclaimer: I haven’t watched episode 10 yet (I’m so dreading it) but this is based on the spoilers and also on the events of the plot so far.

Jack & Joker is definitely one of the best series (whether you want to call it BL is your choice), if not the best one, that came out this year. The production costs must have been really high because the different settings, wardrobe, props, editing, music, all this is a proper package of very high quality. The cast is superb and War should definitely receive an award for his portrayal as Joke. I will not delve into the cast much because this category itself deserves another separate post so today I will focus on:

The Quest for POWER in the series

Disclaimer #2: Power can be defined as the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. I’m using POWER in the broadest sense and not specifically targeted at some aspect. You might link power with being “dominant” and feel free to do so, but I don’t want to put any further labels on power so that I won’t mistakenly describe something I’m not totally familiar with.

Out of all the possible themes related to J&J – family relationships, poverty in society/community, greed (and the importance of money in one’s life), the ambiguous line of what constitutes crime – POWER is one of the ones that is flexed in almost every episode and woven so intricately into the plot that it almost feels masked by everything else.

Taking our golden triangle – Jack, Joke and Boss – these three characters are linked with power in different ways. I dare to say that Jack and Boss are parallel to each other and quite similar in their (challenging) quest for power. Our trump card is Joke, unlike his deck card name Joker, who, on the contrary, relinquishes easily the power that he gets.   

For those who think that Jack and Boss have nothing to do with each other, hear me out. First, both Jack and Boss had their innocent, puppy moments of having their hair down and covering their foreheads – okay, this is irrelevant but it kind of creates a nice “why do you insist on having the same hairstyle as I do?” moment.

Fine, I’ll be serious now. Jack and Boss are in a boss (couldn’t he have chosen another name – although people address him as Alice in some episodes) and subordinate relationship, so there is an automatic power imbalance here. Jack is a debt collector for Boss, who in turn has to obey to the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (I’ll just call them 4H).  They are both under someone’s rule and they both don’t like because (1) they lose their freedom and (2) they lose control (whether total or partial). Somehow, Boss could be an older version of Jack if he (Jack) had lost all his support.

Let’s talk about Boss/Alice. We have no idea about his background except that he had a wife that he loved dearly and left him with a diamond necklace. We are given no idea why she died but I like to think it is because of the 4H, which makes his hatred for them multiply. He has Arun but from their (lack) of interactions, we can assume that Arun never lived up to his expectations and he too never gave himself the chance to truly nurture Arun. So Boss has lost the only ground he could have to keep him sane and sensible. A lot of people online are questioning how one single ring can mean so much to him and it is exactly because that little golden accessory is synonym to power.

People are too used to power being displayed by use of violence or charismatic speeches, but have they thought why we still have monarchies nowadays? How did kings and emperors in the past used to stay in power? From conquering land and improving their vassals’ lives? If so, then what is the point of lineage? What are these chosen people by the heavens? People are inherently superstitious and like to use external entities to justify views of the world which they don’t understand. Being a leader requires exerting power but not everyone knows how to properly exert it. Many don’t even have the courage to do so. Because with power, there comes consequences and responsibilities. A ring, no matter how simple it is, is a symbol of power and grants people this additional belief and bravery that they need to stay in power. It is as if just by wearing the ring, they would imbue power in their veins.

Could Boss have hired Carbon or other people before to do his dirty work? Definitely yes. Could Boss have revolted and gone against the 4H? Also yes. Did he have the courage to do so? No really. Just an aside here that I think the name Alice suits him well. Alice as in Alice in Wonderland, he too is trying to escape the rabbit hole, albeit this time it’s not really a rabbit but four horses.

Now turning to Jack. Jack has enjoyed being in power since episode 1. Jack is a black belt in taekwondo and is seen to be able to defeat other members in his club. Jack is also the breadwinner for his family (our beloved A-ma). Power doesn’t mean being almighty. Power for Jack is the ability to control his decisions and not be subjugated by others. Losing the opportunity to join the national team is a major power cut. Having to lower down his head to Carbon is a major blow to him as well. When he starts working for Boss, regardless of whether he is willing or not, he is a debt collector and that is naturally a job associated with power over others. He has the power to enact violence but he chooses kindness instead – to help others pay their debts. It’s a choice he made. His choice, his power to do so. Even though he lacks higher formal education, Jack is a teacher figure in the community and that is also a job associated with power (though we often call it influence). His interactions with Joke, inside or outside the bedroom, are fully charged with power – taking the initiative, neck grabs, feisty remarks, a few punches and kicks, (empty) threats. Even in the joint heist with Arun and Hope, he’s the one to take the lead when Arun can’t come up with excuses to get the group into the auction. We see Jack out of his element when he loses control – having to please Rose and Boss, being reprimanded by A-ma, or when Joke refuses to give up his share of power (more on this later).

Now (how many times have I said ‘now’ in this post), the major difference between Jack and Boss is that Jack’s support system is very much present in his life. He has A-ma, bless her soul, she is the major anchor for his kindness; then the people in the community. Even as a debt collector, we can see that the people are fond of him and respect him. His “subordinates” too listen to him instead of being scared of him (see Hope as an example). Besides this grounding system, we have Joke, who is the one to feed Jack with power. If A-ma is an anchor for Jack, Joke can be considered a source. That’s why in this last episode, without the community and Joke (he has Joke, but not the idealized, crime-free Joke in his head), Jack is on his way to the descend to madness.

Joke, Joke, Joke. I don’t even know where to start to write my ode to him. He is my favorite character, not just because it’s War portraying him (but let’s be honest, War is having the time of his life with him and his acting really shines through), but because Joke feels very real – decently arrogant, smart and witty, scheming when he needs to, devoted to his found family – Joke can make me adore him even more because you can see how much he cares about others. About Jack. And he does this by relinquishing the power he obtains.

The series starts with him stealing an exam and falsifying an offer letter. Being a thief and con-artist (the persona Joker), Joke holds a lot of power and knows how to manipulate it in order to get what he wants and get people to react the way he wants. However, we also get to know that Joker steals from the rich to give to the poor, a sort of modern Robin Hood. This already indicates that he is willing to give away his power so that others can benefit from it. Later, Joke himself admits that stealing is the only thing he knows to do. Let us rephrase this to “giving my power to others is the only thing I can do”. Let’s see more examples of this: Joke willingly confesses his crimes to police to clear his name; Joke lowers himself to apologize to his parents (that first kowtow, damn, as an Asian myself, that really spoke volumes, and then the chive dumplings); Jokes steals a ring twice (and gives them away twice as well) to free Jack from a fate that eats away his power; Joke allows a glass bottle to be broken on his head so that he can save Tattoo and Hoy; Joke concedes to Jack both times when playing the bottle game; I will not comment on the lovemaking since I haven’t watched it yet but that would be enough for another post.

Joke is given power countless times throughout the series and relinquishes it just as easily. But by doing so, he is not being a sacrificial lamb or a tragic hero. It just makes him all the more likeable because each time he relinquishes power, it leads to a chain of consequences, some beyond his control, that makes us get a glimpse (more of a stare) at his flaws. And a flawed character is the best kind of character. At the end of the day, aren’t we all flawed?

Now that Jack has started descending to madness, this would be an ending that I would love to see (no matter how cliché it is):

There were guns on the promotional posters before so it’s time to recover them.

Jack has too much chaotic power in him and he has no sufficient ground to control it.

Jack will want to kill Boss and Carbon (as we all do).

Joke will not allow Jack to do so, because killing means destroying the last ounce of kindness in Jack and truly break him.

Jack, though, will get his hand on that gun, and aim that the two gentlemen above.

Joke comes on time to defend them from the shot (yes, you heard me, not because he’s working for them or being taken hostage, but because that is the only way to save Jack).

Jack fires (bang!!)

The bullet hits Joke, right on the shoulder where the “J” of hearts is.

(I think I rather write a fic instead of daydreaming)

[confessionsofa-roleplayer]

I'm one of those "weirdos" with a "self autonomous" muses, and as one of those weirdos, I think there's a very distinct difference between people like me, and people who use that as an excuse to force their self-insert fantasies. I've generally identified three main categories of roleplayers. People who write CHARACTERS, people who write SELF-INSERTS and/or WISH-FULFILLMENT, and people who write MUSES (and a 4th "people who make blogs but never actually roleplay" but that's irrelevant here). Yes I know "muse" is basically just another word for "inspiration", but hear me out. People who write CHARACTERS are the ones who go through conscious and deliberate decisions on how to write ("I think the character would think and act like this in this situation"), and are more likely to be pre-plotted heavy while sticking to the plot that was decided on without deviating from whatever was agreed upon. If it does deviate, it usually involves a lot of OOC discussion around it. Then there are your SELF-INSERT-y / WISH FULLFILLMENT writers. They aren't writing characters, nor muses. They're writing their projections of their fantasies of what they WANT characters to be, including bending or breaking character to achieve the desired result (Shippers are especially guilty of this). Such people frequently also try to manipulate OTHER PEOPLES' muses into bending/breaking character or manipulate the muns writing their target characters to, once again, achieve their personal fantasy. They might CLAIM to have a "self-autonomous muse" that "does what they want outside of their control", but this is a lie, and you can usually tell when you're dealing with one of these people instead of a Muse writer because that line will be used to excuse disrespecting OOC boundaries and force interactions / writing that other writers are not okay with, even after you've made those boundaries clear. Coercion is a common theme, but some particularly ballsy wish-fulfillment writers will just straight up force things. And then you have your true-blue ("self autonomous") MUSE writers, with characters who "write themselves" without putting much actual thought into it. And Muses can be fun, but they can also be annoying because they will frequently go off the rails at a moment's notice from what you wanted / decided while giving you the fat middle finger, and trying to force them back where you want them to go is tantamount to inciting writers block mutiny. The difference, to me, between the earlier described Wish-Fulfillment writer that pretends their muse "can't be controlled", and the ACTUAL Muse writer, is the Muse writer may not be able to control or change what their Muse wants to say, think, or do, but if it crosses another roleplayers' boundaries (or the writers' own boundaries ; yes, sometimes our muses trespass on OUR boundaries, even tho we write them. Think of it like an unwelcomed intrusive thought), the writer can still choose to NOT WRITE IT. I've written a LOT of Muses over the years. Some of them villainous or straight up nasty. I have also put a lot of Muses in "Time Out", or even retired some entirely and haven't gone back to writing them, because the Muse wanted to go in a certain direction and either 1) it would've crossed another writers' boundaries, or 2) it was something that I didn't want to write even if the OTHER PERSON was okay with it. If the person claiming they "don't control their muse" is using it to coerce or force an interaction you don't desire or are uncomfortable with, yes, THOSE people are just using characters to veil their own personal fantasies and are best AVOIDED (dealt with and seen plenty of THOSE people myself).

But generally, I find that if the OOC WRITER is willing or even WANTS to hard-stop an undesired interaction/thread/whatever should that situation arise (and isn't claiming they want to just to coerce you into agreeing to undesired themes, very important distinction! If you express discomfort and then reluctantly agree and they're TOO eager to get right back to it without considering your feelings, that's a BIG red flag) then chances are they actually do have a "Muse" separate from their personal desires and fantasies. A genuine "Muse controls themselves" writer will happily stick that Muse in the time-out corner if they refuse to behave themselves.

[eponastory]

Alright, I suppose I'll get this over with since I spent some time thinking about it.

Zuko and Mai

Just look at them.

Honestly, their relationship isn't bad, it's just lacking something.

Oh right...

Communication!

They don't talk to each other. I don't mean striking up a conversation... I mean talking about their feelings to each other. Well, at least on Mai's end. We know Zuko shows his emotions very well because of his frustration. Mai is quiet, aloof, and isn't very good at showing how she feels.

She doesn't even vocalize her feelings. Now, that's fine since 74% of our communication is body language, while the rest is verbal and sensory (I bet you didn't even know that), however I think she struggles with that as well.

Zuko is very good at showing he cares by being attentive (guys, learn from Zuko) he is boyfriend/husband material (I don't want to hear about the colonizer bullshit, it's irrelevant, get an education). He may have made some horrible choices in the past, but he is a good person. So, why do he and Mai keep breaking up and getting back together?

Choices!

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

A bad relationship is set by the choices made individually.

So, you know the whole "I don't keep secrets from my partner" thing? This is it. This is why relationships fail. It's hand in hand with communication, and it's the path to breakups/divorce.

In the graphic novel (I have to go back and look, but I think it's right at the end of The Promise? Correct me if I'm wrong) the reason they broke up is because Zuko made some choices that kinda... well it wasn't great and almost led to a war with the Earth Kingdom. But it really put him in a negative light even though he turned out to be in the end. Mai saw this as Zuko becoming his father, and well, she waited to confront him about it.

Zuko made some decisions on his own and didn't really tell her about it, leading to some misunderstandings. Actually, he did this before in Book Three when he left to join the Gaang. He doesn't sit and talk to Mai about it. He just does it. This is where things go wrong. He may have thought he was doing right by her, but in the end, it was the execution that was bad.

Do I think they will get back together?

Eh... it's debatable. The creators have full control of what the characters do at this point. If they were to get back together, they would definitely have to fix the problems I mentioned above. Maybe that will happen from experience.

What do I like about this relationship?

They obviously care about each other, and I do think they look good together. I'm not a huge fan of it because I see the problems in the relationship. It's not a bad relationship, it's problematic at the worst. At best, they make a cute couple. I'm not sure if Mai is Izumi's mother, but again, we are at the mercy of the creators.

Oh that's it. That's the problems.

So how do you fix these problems?

Well, there is therapy, but there is also just talking to your partner. Talking about the things that make you uncomfortable and what makes you upset about your relationship is going to clear the air. Now, if your partner is not a great communicator, that is where a therapist can help, and I highly recommend that.

What makes a relationship toxic comes down to narcissism and other violent traits. There is bad relationships, and then there is downright toxic and hellish.

NONE of the relationships in the show are toxic except for Ozai's relationship with his wife, children, and everyone else he has a relationship with. He is an egotistical sociopathic narcissist... that is a walking nuclear waste pit right there. Run away. Run away immediately.

Anyway, this is what I think...

Oh, and Zuko is the very opposite of his father, so don't even go there.

Hope you enjoy my little relationship analysis.

[serregon]

so Baldur’s Gate is overall really good, but not without criticism, and I’m kinda pissed about Halsin becoming irrelevant and the portrayal of his trauma.

I’ve seen some players calling Halsin’s story boring and two-dimensional, and I wish I could say I disagree with them, but I honestly can’t, and he deserved better than what we got.

I really liked Halsin in acts 1 and 2, but it feels like he just doesn’t have much going for him in act 3. I get that he isn’t an origin character, so he isn’t going to have the same big arcs that the main six get, but it feels like the writers just didn’t know what to do with him after act 2. act 2 was pretty much the conclusion of his character arc, and act 3 is just him hitching along for the ride. the thing is, he isn’t even playable until you’re almost halfway into act 2. he’s only playable when his story is almost over.

the only quest Halsin gets in act 3 isn’t even exclusively his quest. he’s one of several characters who could be kidnapped by Orin. so odds are it isn’t going to be his story in your playthrough. that’s it for him. couldn’t he have a small sidequest, like maybe making amends with the tiefling refugees? what about a quest with Jaheira to find other druids in the city? or what about actually meeting those hastily tacked-on shadow druids? if he doesn’t have his own quest what’s the point of having him in my party anymore?

one thing we do get from act 3 is a new side of Halsin where he’s really uncomfortable about being in the city. he’s in an unfamiliar and overstimulating environment, and seeing the poor treatment of refugees makes him lose hope in humanity. it gets to the point that he actually starts to think that the shadow druids had a point. the character who’s always putting on a kind and brave face is starting to break. that’s a good set up for an arc! sure hope it goes somewhere.

eventually Halsin’s unease about staying in the city causes him to have a complete meltdown. he loses control over his bear form and injures Scratch. when he turns back into an elf, he’s panicking about how the city is making him both physically and mentally sick. he has lost all hope in this world, and he pulls out a dagger and holds it to his chest. that’s a really shocking and evocative scene! who doesn’t love watching the nice guy go apeshit? I’d love to see where this goes for his character.

except, that last scene wasn’t actually Halsin, that was Orin taking his form to taunt the player. so that scene went nowhere. I can’t help but feel like I was robbed. you thought Halsin would have a deep character moment, but you were wrong! it’s just like an “it was all just a dream” ending. and of course that scene only happens if Orin chooses to kidnap him over someone else so there’s a good chance you won’t even see this non-character development. so yeah my take is that that scene should have played out with the real Halsin.

we do get another piece of Halsin lore in act 3, but the way it’s handled is. Bad. very bad, even. and this is where I have to add a content warning for sexual abuse.

so when you get to the brothel, the player and their partner can sleep with these twin drow sex workers. if you ask Halsin to join you, he just drops “yeah I was raped by two drow before lol. they tied me to a bed for three years haha crazy right.” I can’t fault Halsin for using a somewhat jokey tone when talking about his abuse. I also can’t fault him for saying that he even sorta liked it at times, abuse survivors are allowed to have complex feelings about their abuse. the problem is, the story itself is not taking this seriously. as far as I could find, Halsin’s history of sexual abuse is brought up absolutely nowhere else in the game. it’s literally only brought up when Halsin makes that half joking reference to it. the player can’t even ask Halsin about it like “hey man that’s a pretty traumatic thing are you alright?” this whole side of his character is a missable one-off line. where does this hint of backstory lead? why can’t we confront him about this later? there’s a lot you could do with a character who hides how deeply something affected him, but it literally comes off like being raped for three years straight barely affected Halsin at all. it’s such a heavy topic that feels like it was tacked on at the last minute with little thought.

it’s also weird because the game handles Astarion’s trauma with so much more grace. they know how to write a male sexual abuse survivor with the respect he deserves, so why couldn’t they do the same for Halsin? it doesn’t even need to be a whole arc, just some camp dialogue or literally anything.

semi-related tangent: the brothel is a steaming pile of tired tropes. the incestuous sex workers? of course the sex workers are freaks, how original! and the murdered sex worker shoved in the fridge like she’s nothing? never seen that one before! the madam who doesn’t give a shit about the safety of said murdered employee? you really reinvented the wheel there!

idk man just. everything else about this game is really really good, but act 3’s flaws stick out like a sore thumb. Halsin and sex workers deserve better.

[zalrb]

What’s up with shiv and Tom? Do they love each other? Does Tom live shiv or just that she’s a roy?

I'm going to try to answer this as coherently as possible.

I don't think Shiv was looking for love when she got together with Tom, I think she was looking for safety and security and for someone she thought would never hurt her, which to her, was more important than "love" because Shiv doesn't know what healthy love looks like or feels like. Everything is a power struggle in her world and love is weaponized. Like, she, Kendall and Roman were in a pretty good place and in this episode they easily shunted her to the side for power. As we saw in season 2, Logan is as expressive in his love as he can be when he singles her out as the next potential CEO and he takes it away when she doesn't act the way he wants. Tom was supposed to be the antithesis of all of that and I think she loved him for that but Shiv, as a nuanced and flawed character, warped what safety means because it became less about Tom not being a threat to her and more about using him as an emotional punching bag or neglecting his emotional needs and treating him the way Logan treats people because that's what happens with cycles.

Like, it's interesting talking about Tom's betrayal because I feel like people frame it the way Shiv probably frames it in her mind where Tom just did this to her through no fault of her own and there's no real acknowledgement that Tom got to that place because of how Shiv treated him for the past three seasons, and because she doesn't see her own part in it, we're at this point now where she can't trust him not to betray her and that's the real issue for her, love is irrelevant.

In terms of Tom, I think in the beginning, he did genuinely love her, I also think at the back of his mind, he was probably always thinking "she's a Roy" but that wasn't at the forefront of his mind, but I think the longer he stayed in her world and the longer he was married to her and the more he put up with from her, the more cynical that love became. Like there's this discourse that Tom being in the culture of Waystar turned him to this person or brought this person out in him more and I think that's true but I also think it was being married to a person who doesn't know what healthy love looks or feels like. Sarah Snook said that Shiv sees love as transactional:

I think in her family, she’s grown up to feel that love is transactional and so how do you navigate having an honest conversation with your husband without that lens? It is difficult.

and I think we're at the point where he sees his relationship to Shiv as that way too. I also think if Shiv just said sorry and that she was wrong for the things that she's done, he would forgive her, he would also say sorry, and they could move forward — and she might but it seems unlikely — so basically he's Shiv to her Logan.

[edalynn]

ok an entire year later how do you feel about the owl house season 3........ i rewatched it recently during that one marathon and auhhhhh honestlyyyyy idk it was fineeeee...... the second episode fucking sucks every single time i watch it (other than the luz and camila scene) but i found myself enjoying "watching and dreaming" more than i did the first time. i think the parts that really mattered were fucking amazing, like eda & king & luz reunion, luz's "death" (seriously the music and animation was SO good), the final fight, belos' death. they did the best they could with the extreme time restraint, and i do like how it focused more on just luz and eda and king instead of Those Other Guys (said with love). but i can't believe how bad "for the future" was. it somehow manages to get worse upon every rewatch LOL. what are your thoughts? also hiiiii

HIII!!! I agree entirely, the parts of the episode that mattered were REALLY REALLY good! Everything involving the main story and plot were done insanely well with how much they probably had to cut out with the series being shortened. The final fight still gives me chills and while I wish we got to see more than we did, I'm satisfied with how the main story was wrapped up, and I'm happy that the final episode finally put all the extra side plots going on with the other characters to the side to bring the main three back to the focus like they were at the start of the series. Removing the episode from the rest of the disaster that was the second episode, I actually really enjoy it and like it. That being said, SERIOUSLY. Why was FtF SO FUCKING BAD. Every time I watch it, it makes me find more things to be mad at it for/dislike about it. Easily the worst episode of the entire series, it still feels so out of place and unnecessary. And half the episode feels like it recons certain characters' arcs just to give the episode some "villains". Which is stupid because Belos and the Collector ARE STILL RIGHT FUCKING THERE. Like, there was no reason to make Kiki still power hungry as if Belos telling her to go die in a hole and her helping King because she was just so broken at the end of it all during the Day of Unity never fucking happened. She was always fighting for Belos (and herself by extent, but), so why would she still be trying to rule people? That makes no sense in the context of the story. And Boscha begging Amity to take her back? Also makes no sense. Like, yes, it makes slightly more sense than Kiki, but only for the fact that we don't really see Boscha ever get "better" yet, she mostly just became irrelevant. Although, that' not entirely true either, because we see her being disgusted by Luz and Amity being romantic in the beginning of LR, so actually I take it back. It makes just as little sense as Kiki regressing back to her old ways, now with no purpose behind it. It just reads so much like bad fanfic writing from a 12 year old that just discovered Wattpad lmao.

And obviously, don't even get me started on the Willow bullshit from the episode. I feel like I've repeated myself a million times about how that episode fully put the anchor on the sinking of her character & arc. And the fact that they used Hunter as a way of doing it, which also made Hunter extremely OOC and made half his arc and growth meaningless. Just makes me SO fucking mad.

[jenny-from-the-bau]

okay sorry this is a lot but 1, 5, 12, 19, 24, 25, and 34 for the ask game pls!!

-🐙

1: What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

I only write in Garamond, and I care very much. I write in Garamond pt12 with a 0.5 indentation on the left, single spacing, and 0 before/8 after paragraph spacing. Every time.

5: already answered

12: If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? BTW if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ispum, I don't make the rules

I never mix up tenses

I always know how to end a story

There is always someone around to give me notes

19: Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

Yeah! So, my mom really wanted to be a writer (or at least write for fun), so she took random online writing classes, and I always took them with her. I also wrote random short stories just for fun. In high school, I had an actual book that I was working on and I had SO much detail and planning, but it was all just so cringe lol I wrote a lot of (bad) poetry, too.

I started writing fanfic in high school. It started as Sweeney Todd fanfic where my ideas were WAY too big for my skills lol I completed my first multichap in 2013! it was a grey's anatomy mafia au. It was... fine haha

I was really easily discouraged, and I'd stop writing at like one mean comment. I didn't have a writing community or other writing friends, so I just wrote for me, and it wasn't great. I got some good feedback on a few swan queen oneshots, but my writing really took off when I watched Person of Interest. I was getting my Master's and working in theatre and I just wrote so so so much. I was literally posting once a day. It was a lot of fun to talk about writing with people and exploring fandom.

I ended up watching Criminal Minds on a whim and it really hit me. I had a great writing community, posted like 50 fics in a year, and just really hit my stride. Some life stuff happened and I got VERY mentally ill and it took away my motivation to write. I had stories that were tangled up in people I was no longer friends with, etc. I also lost my writing voice for a while. I was writing for other people, but like... I was writing what they wanted and exactly how they wanted and it just wasn't me. I eventually hit a point where I stopped writing for almost a year.

Now, I feel like I'm in a much better headspace and I have better friends who understand me and who I am and what my voice is. I feel like I'm finally getting into my stride as a writer and finally figuring out what kind of stories I want to be writing.

I'm considering going back to writing original fiction. I have a few ideas. It's just scary and hard and I'm not quite sure how to do it lol We'll get there!

24: How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

So much prep work! I outline almost all my fics, and even if I don't do a full outline, I do at least a couple paragraphs. I had all 26 chapters of Born Into Bad Choices planned before I started. I'm doing like a few chapters ahead for What It Takes, but still. I have so so much outlined. I really like planning because it gives me a sense of direction and that makes me feel less lost. Without a plan, I flounder.

25: What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

Hmm... This one is hard lol Maybe pick a story and I'll tell you!

34: Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go:

Necessary, Mandatory, and Wonderful.

[thelioncourts]

Saw this tweet: https://x.com/vampyreslvt/status/1773072361404666254?s=46&t=ScaegDPoDx52WvOgAyhYNA

Assuming that Loumand do eventually break up, do you think they even know how to live without each other?? 🥺🥺 almost 8 decades!!!! I need the show to explore this if they go there!

the tweet for context [x] loumand, my darlings ❤️❤️❤️ prefacing this with the usual: these are just educated guesses based on knowledge from the books, tv shows, and all sorts of possibilities that could happen as we begin to enter uncharted territory in the next season(s); they're also my opinion so :) if you don't like it, move on with your own I think this in itself is something that can be greatly explored in so many capacities in upcoming season(s) as ways to explore both louis and armand as individual characters and as this unit that I think they inevitably need to be to some extent!

I've said it a couple of times since the RJ trailer dropped, but the show is officially, in so many regards, putting us all in a very similar boat, and by 'us all' I mean book fans and show fans. books fans have had this slight advantage of knowing the storyline of iwtv going into seasons 1 and 2, so even with the changes of the timeline and the expansion of louis' human life, etc. the basis has stayed the same in that it is louis telling daniel the story of becoming a vampire, falling in love, creating claudia, killing lestat, going to paris, and being there to witness and be destroyed by claudia's death. now, there have been since the beginning of s1 things that book fans can't have known as it's not in the book (i.e. most of lestat and louis' love story, everything in dubai, the changes characters from the azalea brought into play, the changes made to the plan to kill lestat, antoinette, etc.) but s2, from the looks of it atm (who knows what this will look like when the season actually airs, I'm very aware this could change) is...drastically changing so much of the story, making things deviate from the books. we see the lestat hallucinations seem to be running rampant, we see claudia on the stage and fully immersed as a coven member, we see a seemingly more longstanding relationship between madeleine and the others, we see this longer courtship between louis and armand, we see this passion and tenderness in louis and armand, we see armand being part of the san fransisco interview, we see current dubai and louis and armand still being together, and I could go on and on....

basically, we are entering uncharted territory and s3 will put us into even more uncharted territory if we are keeping characters like louis, armand, and daniel as main characters as lestat gets to tell his version of the events (and I have a lot of thoughts on the show not doing the above, not continuing with louis, armand, and daniel, and none of those thoughts are good or complimentary and I don't think the show would go there so I'm not going to get into it) the show cannot do tvl as just tvl, just as they haven't and couldn't have done iwtv as just the exact iwtv. and part of that is, if they do, louis and armand will hardly exist within the narrative whatsoever and daniel will be completely irrelevant. so where does that leave us? louis needs a storyline. armand needs a storyline. daniel needs a storyline. and those three are so intertwined. we know louis and armand are going to breakup, probably -- most likely -- this season, given what we do know of the books. however!! I truly do think it would be a disservice to both of them to not explore them trying to live without each other and, frankly, finding it impossible in some capacity. as the tweet above says, louis has spent over half of his life with armand, and armand, for all his years, has spent a significant amount of his long life with louis. and with what we know about armand's past, this is his longest lasting relationship ever as well. the trailer has already had some moments, lines of 'we've been together for 77 years, daniel' and things about them finishing each other's sentences. we know from s1 their relationship is complex; armand's continued watch over louis, the things he says about this being louis' suicide, his determination to protect louis' mind and stress, the things he says in the finale about louis, things he says about 'you've only heard half the story you'll be ashamed when you hear the rest of what you say,' louis introducing armand with this determined 'he's the love of my life,' and I could go on. to just suddenly have them galivanting around without one another and without thinking of the other would be.........shameful............especially because louis and armand's relationship in the books isn't ever quite diminished. sure, louis becomes cold in the years following claudia's death and he and armand are merely companions out of apathy on louis' end, desperation and longing on armand's, but eventually louis softens to armand again, and they have this companionship that is still very much full of love. I was rereading through part of QotD and after the big final event with akasha, when everyone is coming to, armand is holding louis. and armand is always looking out for louis, even if it's sending lestat or helping lestat out in terms of something louis needs, because he wants louis (and lestat, kind of, sometimes, sort of, it's complicated) to be happy, he does. after the events of merrick, louis goes back to armand and they live at trinity gate for 15 (???) years together again, lovers, companions, friends, all the sorts, and when louis goes back to lestat, armand is conflicted, and when louis is taken by roshmandes, armand is livid, absolutely livid, angry at lestat for letting louis down, for not watching him more carefully, etc. that love never quite dies out, something I think we would have more concretely had anne written armand and louis as fully fleshed out characters instead of lestat pov followed by 300 random past vampires that are impossible to keep track of half the time. basically, the books have set up for loumand to be a continuation of sorts, to -- at the very least -- have an unbreakable companionship and to not explore that in the show would be a travesty given all that is set up.

luckily for us, this writing team has proven to be beautifully talented so far, and have turned several things on its head and elaborated on others, and I am hopeful that they will use the talent of jacob and assad to their advantages, will use the beautiful relationship already on our screens to their advantage, will not waste potential of any of this, and that we will see how louis and armand move on from each other and how -- at the end of the day -- they never really do, even if they do.

[astralartefact]

i'm on the homestretch of 13 Sentinels (i know i know i'm years late at this point) and the power of love has me struggling

first off, don't worry, it's a great game, i really enjoyed my time with it, it's as good as everyone says, expect fanart, yada yada yada

but i'm at the point were all i have to do is the last 3 or 4 battles and i keep taking a break from the game instead of just finishing it because oh my god the """romance""" is breaking me, i have never been this tested

there are like two, maybe three couples if i'm generous in this game that work, that are solidly build up during the game, that aren't just shoehorned to happen after a few singular comments as build up without any sort of actual chemistry - and now it's all they fckin talk about, everybody has a partner they love and care about and that they fight for and you have to put them out together a bonus mission - and have you seen their skills, they're in LOVE!

the writing keeps pretending as if this was what was built up, but no! it was not! just because a character has a crush doesn't mean the other one can just fall in love at the end!!! yakushiji was consistently creepy to kurabe!! why are they together now just because of his memories after his whole thing was that he's not any of the other juros?!?!?

the one that annoys me the most is iori x ei though, they have 0 chemistry, ei literally didn't care about her for one second in his story and then suddenly bam! true love! and i'm supposed to care about this??? no. absolutely not, now i will ship sekimiura out of spite and not just because they had one really cute moment

(not that iori x ei couldn't work, falling in love with the guy who assassinated you in your past life is an a+ meetcute, but like. ei and iori did not have a single full conversation before dating)

but no, now that we fight the final battles they keep trying to make this relationship happen as i watch my favorite character devolve into doting boyfriend for no fkin reason, because i guess in the last 10% of the game we forget everything we did this entire time because it's time for compulsory dating! you're alone? you're a loser! we need to get these kids to fuck!!!

btw isn't it fckin crazy how irrelevant iori is despite also being the most important character of the entire game and i say that equally as crazy good bc it fits the theme but also crazy bad bc (seperate from chihiro) iori is basically just in this game to be on the cover, she has literally no stake in the story, all she talks about is how ei is cute and that's literally all she knows about him before they become a couple i'm seething i'm absolutely seething the truth is i'm just jealous i'm jealous of the fictional 2d woman for getting my equally as fictional future husband!!!!!11111

anyways, i will defo write a proper post about my entire thoughts and feelings once i actually pushed through the ending... whenever that will be...

edit: they literally stopped doing that in the next battle why did i complain now i look like an idiot arrrggghhhhh

edit edit: i take it back, i'm at the credits and this is hard to get through

[kaija-rayne-author]

I'll put the edits in a different colour for ease of reading and accountability.

Edit. It's the evening of the day I wrote this. 8:30 pm. I refuse to directly respond to the hate filled ableism the OP and a couple of others have responded with about this. I play games and blog about them because it's fun for me. Being accused of the things those people accused me of is pretty typical for NTs, they often immediately make accusations based on specious BS. An ND likely would have read it, asked for clarification if they didn't like something, and moved on. Or not bothered to engage in the material at all.

Example one:

Just another example of NT ableism, and this fandom has far more than it should. Ableism kills people. Whether they're ND or not is irrelevant to me. I explained that I am, that's literally it. Anything else is their assumption.

Apparently, they couldn't even read far enough to figure out that Patrick Weekes, Solas's and Cole's writer, and lead writer on Dreadwolf, is ND. So they're not just insulting me, a fan of Dragon Age. They're insulting the person who made the character. Fantastic showing! Well done, truly. /s

There's no heat in me about this. That's their assumption. All I feel is world-weary acceptance that this is how NDs are always treated.

My original response > Just in case it was my Solas is neurodivergent article, I'd like to politely ask a question. In the effort to communicate clearly, I legitimately don't care whether you believe he is or isn't. It's a fictional character and the most I want out of this fandom (and rarely get) is polite conversation, basic human decency, to not be hurt by people being jerks, and respect for my thoughts.

Edit... well, they certainly proved my point about rarely getting polite conversation and how often I'm hurt by jerks who don't bother to learn, didn't they?

Original response > A wee bit of background on me; I'm professionally diagnosed as autistic, ADHD, and I'm severely mentally ill. All three make me neurodivergent.

The definition of neurodivergent is 'anyone whose brain works differently than the average'. The term originally meant only autistic people, back in the '90s. It has changed to encompass all of us with different brains.

I'm an autistic/ADHD author with bylines in the NY Observer and Bustle on the topic of autism. All of my fiction has authentic autistic/ADHD rep in my characters.

My kids are both like me.

Edit, I should have put this before, but I have explicit permission from my teenage children to mention that they're ND. I do not have permission to put their names and faces out there, and I don't. This is an ongoing discussion in our home. They can retract permission at any point and they're fully aware of anything I say about them.

Also, this is a pseudonym. I do my best to protect my children from this world because, as OP proved so very neatly, people are absolute dicks to neurodivergent people.

Original response > And I've been an advocate for autism, ADHD, mental illness, and other invisible disabilities for over ten years. I actually do know what I'm talking about. I could write actual dissertations on the knowledge I have on the subjects.

I also have several fancy smanshy degrees under my belt that qualify me as a researcher. An actual one, not an 'I looked it up on google' "researcher".

So here's the question.

Are you neurodivergent? Specifically, are you autistic/ADHD or combo? Your bio says nothing to clearly identify yourself if you are. You may be, and we just legitimately disagree, which is fine. I'm not trying to rip your face off.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what you're thinking when you say Solas isn't ND. Which parts of his character do you feel make him neurotypical? Because I don't see it. I'm not sure if the article you're referencing was mine, but few enough people write about the subject.

If you're not autistic/ADHD/combo, (and no, working with autistic people or having autistic family members doesn't count) you have absolutely zero leg to stand on when it comes to saying whether he is or isn't. That is for autistic/ADHD people to do.

Edit, The equivalent of an NT speaking about neurodivergency over a neurodivergent person is possibly like a non-Jewish person trying to tell a Jewish person that Harry Potter isn't anti-semitic, or telling a First Nations person that they haven't been abused, repressed, and terrorized for hundreds of years. It's talking over a person who lives an experience when you do not. It's bad form, at the very least.

I will never understand how telling someone that they're speaking on a subject they really shouldn't be is somehow 'weaponizing' my neurology. How do you even weaponize an ND brain? Did I miss a memo and not get the laser eyes upgrade? Is there wetware that lets me blast silliots with lightning or something? Damnit. I missed out! I could've had magic blasters coming out of my ears or something!

(I don't like the word idiot because it's ableist. My kids came up with silliot, silly-idiot because it doesn't have quite the same connotation. And sometimes, we're quite silly and make mistakes.)

Original response > It's an ableist act to read an article written by a neurodivergent person about a neurodivergent character and go on to claim they can't possibly be autistic/ADHD. If you're not ND, or even if you're an unhatched or baby ND, you especially don't have the knowledge to label him 'the epitome of neurotypical'. Western culture is steeped in ableism. All of us are ableist until we train ourselves not to be.

People cannot do enough research online or in secondary sources to understand autistics because all the "science" is based on either nazi experimentation or bolluxed 1950s studies involving only middle class white boys from a certain level of financial affluence. And the fictional rep is utterly abhorrent to an exceedingly massive majority of us. Atypical? The Good Doctor? Rainman? Dear gods, they're all wretched.

When it comes to neurodiversity, the experts are the people like me who live it.

Obviously, your blog, post whatever the hell you like, I certainly do, but I get the strong impression that you really don't know what you're talking about.

At the risk of being dogpiled, would you even recognize an actual autistic person if we bit you on the nose? Most people wouldn't. The representation everywhere isn't just incorrect, it's utterly reprehensible. TBH, Solas, Cole, and Sera are all heavily ND coded, and DAI is the first triple AAA game where its had decent to excellent rep on the subject. (They're also the most hated characters.) Bioware in general has shitty disability rep, so the credit goes to the author.

And, y'know, as an autistic/ADHD person, seeing a major character in a AAA RPG game showing strong ND coding is really fucking fantastic. It means a lot to me. It kinda sucks for my feelings when people write things like you've written here. It hurts. Why can't Solas be ND? Why do people have to try to take away one of the very few authentically written ND characters in Dragon Age? Why do people have to make accusations of disrespecting the author and the character because we can see ourselves in Solas? Why is that even remotely okay?

Arguably, there are others, but Solas and Cole are the most obvious. Cole is canonically based on Autistic family members of the author, Patrick Weekes. They confirmed it in an interview. Cole is one flavour of autistic. Solas is on the other side of the spectrum. That's why it's called a spectrum.

Are you aware that Solas's author, Patrick Weekes, is neurodivergent? They posted about which flavour on their Twitter a while back. It was either autistic or ADHD, and up to 80% of ADHDers are also autistic. I can't remember which they were diagnosed with.

As an author, I'll point out that Solas is coded (Cole too) autistic/ADHD/mentally ill simply because their author is ND. I'm grateful they're open about it. It gives weight to my educated opinions.

I've been writing for 36 years. I've never been able to write a NT character simply because I'm ND. We're incredibly different from neurotypicals. Our experience of life, our brain wiring, our body language, our writing voices, our facial expressions are all vastly different.

Very few NTs put in the work to learn our languages, while forcing us to learn theirs to survive. It comes through clearly in our work. I don't pretend to be as good of a writer as Weekes. I hope I can write twists as well as they do someday. But it's fact that no matter who we are or how we're wired, it shows up in our writing.

Edit, and it's fact that the OP and friends attacked me rather than learn anything. Once again proving how awfully ND people are treated. Accusations of child abuse? Seriously?

I can usually tell if someone is autistic or ADHD simply based on how they write in fiction. And the number of people I've coded autistic and told them, who later get it confirmed and tell me about it is utterly ridiculous at this point. I stopped counting at 200. I have stereotypical autistic pattern matching. The FBI and Border Patrol both head hunted me out of uni because of my skills in this arena. I'm very very good at putting seemingly unrelated facts together to get an accurate answer.

Is it because you feel Solas is a genius? Neurodivergent people can be smart, you know. I believe that IQ tests are garbage fires of racism and sexism, but if they matter to you, I have an IQ that rivals many historical inventors. While I don't believe in them, my IQ tests placed me as a super genius in the 4th grade. The school didn't believe it, so they tested me 4 times. The results were always the same.

Solas being incredibly intelligent doesn't make him less likely to be ND, it makes it more likely. And the optics on associating genius with 'can't be autistic/ADHD' is, uh... welp. It's not great.

Especially when Einstein was autistic. It's commonly believed that many people who have changed the world were. Tesla, Da Vinci, and Alan Turing all showed strong autistic traits. The list is enormous.

Is it that he's utterly ruthless? I don't like to talk about it much, because we already have so much bad associated with the word 'autistic', but while we're almost hard wired to want to help people, we can reach a line where we can justify evil actions to ourselves. We're as human as anyone else. Trauma and abuse can make anyone cold, unfeeling, and definitely ruthless.

Is it because he's utterly committed to a goal? You haven't met stubborn until you've encountered an autistic on a mission. We can rarely be diverted from it.

You've actually prooved the point of him being neurodivergent by calling him a genius, utterly ruthless, and extremely committed to a goal.

Those are all incredibly common autistic traits. We aren't usually ruthless with people, (just don't play monopoly with us), but as you noted, Solas doesn't regard anyone as people. Honestly, given the way the world treats us, it should be damned grateful we're not generally wired toward hatred.

Secondly, and I've covered it here, a lie of omission isn't a lie. That is such a BS statement. And factually incorrect as well. I also covered why him giving the orb to Corypheus couldn't be an act of betrayal in that one.

The actual dictionary definition of a lie is: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive (from mirriam-webster)

Intent is important to the concept of a lie. You can crow about withholding information being a lie until you're blue, but it’s not going to make it so.

Is Solas sneaky? Yup. Is he far too good at deflection, not answering things he doesn't want to, and misdirection? Also yup.

Is he a liar? Well, it's really easy to say he is, but I've actually read the entire DAI transcript, and Solas doesn't lie by the dictionary definition even once.

Not telling people about yourself immediately isn't a lie. Where in the world is that idea even coming from? It's not anyone's right to know everything about another person. It's rather entitled to say it is. And like, would anyone have actually believed him?

Nope.

'Oh, yeah, uh, I'm this mythical freedom fighter with a really bad rep but um, I'm not really like that?'

Phhhffft.

Even the fact that he sees others as vague ghosts instead of people would earn him the ND designation. That's an example of disassociation, which is incredibly common in mentally ill people. Even those who have 'just' depression or 'just' anxiety. And there's no way on Thedas that Solas isn't mentally ill. You can develop PTSD from one traumatic incident. You can develop C-PTSD from a shitty childhood. PTSD is classified as a mental illness. The elf has been fighting for thousands of years, no way that trauma hasn't marked him. Even if it were just survivor's guilt, it would still make him ND. He's probably got several others but I try not to armchair diagnose anyone. Suffice it to say that he exhibits traits that are incredibly common in several severe mental illnesses.

Ergo, no matter how you slice it, Solas is absolutely neurodivergent.

He's beautifully complex because he is autistic/ADHD/mentally ill. NTs generally aren't very complex at all. That's not me trying to be mean, it's just to illustrate the difference between a polytropic (NT) mind and a monotropic (autistic/ADHD mind). I'd much rather have dental surgery (I'm phobic) than be stuck in a room of NTs talking about NT stuff. Shudder. Edit to expand why it's a hellish concept for me: It's just absolutely mind-numbing to me to listen to NTs talk about what they talk about. Social small talk is something NTs actually need. It's scientifically proven to cause autistic/ADHD folks actual physical pain. The pain centers in our brains light up like a yule tree under certain 'normal' conditions. Normal for NTs. Not us... Just like it's mind-numbing for an NT to listen to an autistic/ADHD person go on about a special interest. Dragon Age and Solas in particular, are very much special interests for me.

It's stripping all of that beautiful, riveting complexity away and doing a massive disservice to his neurodivergent author to say Solas isn't ND. It's so disrespectful to the person who created Solas.

Making yourself feel better for liking or hating him by calling him neurotypical is rather hurtful, if I'm being completely honest.

Edit: The accusations were hurtful too, and just shitty behavior, if I'm honest. Just outright mean. How much more nuanced can a conversation get than me trying to communicate these facts fairly and calmly?

And frankly? Neurotypical people tend to be pretty boring to NDs. I wouldn't classify Solas as boring. I'd classify him as a lot of things, but boring and running with the herd wouldn't be any of it. A common neurotypical fear is to be seen as different by peers. It's why peer pressure works so well on y'all. It doesn't tend to work for long on us. We're not tied to the desire to do what everyone else is doing.

It's... disturbing to me that you apparently feel people who see themselves in a neurodivergent coded character written by a neurodivergent author are 'woobifying' him. It says rather a lot about how you think about autistic/ADHD people.

We aren't children. Seeing Solas as neurodivergent isn't classifying him as 'uwu innocent wittle baby'. It's incredibly hurtful that your words imply that.

So many people buy into the idea that we aren't fully realized human beings. We're infantilized. We can lose our children without recourse with an autism diagnosis in many places. Most of us (88%) are unemployed or underemployed due to stigma and inaccessible hiring practices. Autistic/ADHD children are murdered every day by NT caretakers, and it's always treated as understandable. We're institutionalized against our will, people advocate using damaging levels of electroshock therapy on us, people justify using ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) on Autistic and ADHD children. If you tried to use ABA on a dog, you'd be guilty of extreme animal abuse. We usually aren't allowed to immigrate either. We're socially excluded and rejected for being weird. We're third class citizens. Second class would be a step up. Oh, and our average age of death is 36 years old. Not because there's anything physically wrong with us, but because of the stress of living in a society where something like you wrote could be considered not only acceptable but reasonable.

Edit, And where the immediate reaction was to accuse me of something resembling child abuse. That just put the cherry on the sundae, let me tell you.

It's assumed that we don't want sex and relationships and jobs and lives because we're autistic or otherwise ND. We're not the sweet innocent awkward kid from Atypical. We're not like Rainman. We're definitely not like The Good Doctor.

And again, his author is neurodivergent. So is Solas. I would politely suggest reading some autistic/ADHD authors or the book Neurotribes by Silberman if you want to actually understand, and more importantly, speak about us.

There's a phrase that runs around the neurodivergent community. 'Nothing about us without us'. It means that if you're not us, you don't talk about us or make movies about us or write books about us or enact policy about us without our input, you don't do anything about us without consulting us at the very minimum.

There's far too much misunderstanding and harm to ND people in this world for me to let your comments slide.

I hold no ill will toward you. I hope you can learn something from my shared information. We're not what you so obviously think we are.

Fin~

Edit. I refuse to directly engage in the negativity aimed at me about this by responding directly to the awful comments. My edits here are the only thing I'm going to say or do. And I'm putting them in as an effort to clarify my stance. I'm not angry or attempting to attack anyone. I wasn’t when I wrote the original post, and I'm not now. I'm sad that my kids have to grow up in a world where these things are considered perfectly okay. This was my attempt to educate someone on why many people feel that Solas is neurodivergent. It was my attempt to provide nuance and educated discussion on the topic. And to maybe make people think a little.

The nasty reactions were pretty typical for NTs. Attack, degrade, accuse, diminish. I've experienced it my whole life. It's really unpleasant, but honestly? At this point in my life? I expect it. And no one should expect people to make those kinds of hurtful comments. Especially over a video game. Where is their humanity? Under the couch? Maybe buried under the fridge with all the gunk that accumulates there?

At least they proved my point about how ND people are treated. I guess that's a thing.

Now, I'm going to go play BG3. I have far better things to do than get involved in a pissing match with someone who would do what OP and friends have done.

yikes i just saw a solas post that was like "yall hate solas bc he's neurodivergent coded!" and said that he didn't lie. firstly, solas is the epitome of neurotypical actually, he's just reclusive bc he's surrounded by, in his eyes, shadows of the ghosts of his people, and by some extention sees himself as not a person anymore. not even a fraction of what they used to be. he doesn't see anyone except an inquisitor that befriends or romances him as real people. cole tells you this much about him. his goal once you meet him again is literally to destroy life as we know it to attempt to bring back HIS people.

secondly, solas lied A Lot. A whole lot. Bc a lie of omission is still in fact, a lie. he lied about everything you asked him about in the beginning by not telling the inquisitor the full story. It was HIS orb that blew up the temple of sacred ashes, and he gave it to corypheus bc he couldn't unlock it himself. All you get from him at ANY point in the game is that the orb is elven in origin. If you befriend/romance him, he'll tell you it was his orb. Thats it. BIG lies of omission there. plus I'm almost positive the elvhen artifacts solas has you activate are actually mini bombs that'll shred the veil when he's ready to tear it down, and not, in fact, artifacts that strengthen it. thirdly. I adore solas. He's my favorite character in the entire dragon age series, but I'm so tired of people either completely villifying him bc they only see things in black and white, or completely woobifying him and making him into a sweet innocent uwu elf boy which he is not.

Solas is a genius, utterly ruthless tactician who will use any means necessary to achieve any goal he sets his mind to. There's not a single doubt in my mind he's going to do some horrible shit in dreadwolf in the name of reviving arlathan, but you also need to remember he's grieving. Poorly mind you, because he's using his self assigned duty to the People as a distraction from his pain and loss and sorrow. He's beautifully complex that way and stripping any of those traits away from him to make yourself feel better about liking or hating him does a huge disservice to the writers and the character himself.

[diaphragmjellyfish]

I Have This... Thing

Not My Gif

So as someone with vaginismus, it’s sometimes frustrating to read fan fiction, specifically smut. Y/N always has sex so easily and with very little foreplay, finishing with no issues. And it’s so great for people who can do that, but it’s not the case for all of us. Some of us can’t have any sort of penetration without pain. Some people can’t finish without toys, or hours of work. Some people will never be able to have penetrative sex. There’s all kinds of people, and there’s all kinds of sex. But not near enough fics featuring Y/N’s with these issues. So I’m going to write some, and feel free to request any issue with any character, and if I don’t know that character, we can collaborate to find a character you like that I do know. 

Paul Lahote x reader smut. 

You had lived in Forks for about 6 months now. You’ve known your new friends here for 5 months. And you’ve been the imprint of Paul Lahote for 3 months. Well, you’ve been his imprint since you guys first locked eyes at La Push when you first hung out with Emily, but he didn’t tell you about the whole werewolf/ imprint thing until 3 months ago. Safe to say it came as a shock. Your friends, the people who had welcomed you so easily, helped you move furniture around, and gave you tours of the new town, were WOLVES. Or engaged to wolves. *cough* Emily *cough*. You had to take a few weeks break from them after they told you. After Sam explained the legends, the lore. After Paul told you that you were basically his soul mate. It’s a lot to take in! 

But you quickly realized that you had grown to love the pack. And now that you knew the big secret, things were easier around them. No more lies about where they had all been. No more avoiding talking about their mysterious injuries that only seemed to last for a couple hours. No more awkwardly dancing around why Paul stared at you constantly and wouldn’t let any other guy get within 6 feet of you without having a rage attack and sprinting into the woods. Things were going good. 

Well… as good as they could be without sex. Yep. You and Paul had been together for 3 months and you have not had sex. You didn’t give each other head. You didn’t take your clothes off around each other. You didn’t even dry hump. And you knew it was your fault. You could tell that Paul was getting nervous about the fact that you wouldn’t let him touch you like that. He would never ask you about it, because he wouldn’t want you to feel pressured or rushed, but you could tell it was on his mind. The little sad smile he would give when you stopped things from going further. The hover of his hands over your ass before landing back on your waist. The way he looked almost guilty after looking at you in a swimsuit or crop top. 

See, vaginismus made relationships difficult. You never had a long term relationship before Paul. You were either too scared to tell partners about it, and just dealt with the excruciating pain, which would lead to resentment and breakups, or you would tell them and they would ghost you. Guys don’t normally go for girls who’s opening line is “Hi! I cannot have sex without crying.” You’d been dilating for almost a year now. It was going okay. Some days hurt more than others. A lot of times, Paul would ask you to hang out when you were in the middle of your physical therapy, and you would have to make up some excuse as to why you couldn't. Too tired. Headache. Stomach bug. He was starting to catch on. 

One day, you guys were hanging out at your apartment watching a movie. You had been making out, but as soon as it started getting slightly heated, you had pulled away and got up to get a drink refill. Paul, having gotten used to the routine, didn’t question you. While you were in the kitchen pouring some more juice, Paul asked “Hey babe? Do you have a charger I can borrow?”

“Yeah it’s in the top drawer of my bedside table,” you haphazardly yelled back. 

You heard him get up and go into your bedroom, rummaging around a little. Then silence. 

“Hey babe?” he said hesitantly. You thought he just couldn’t find the charger, so you began walking towards your room to grab it for him. Once you got to the doorway, you stopped dead in your tracks. Eyes wide. Face bright red. Paul held up the dilator you were currently on, which was about 5 inches long and looked… well let’s be honest. It looked like a dildo. The bottle of lubricant that was also in the drawer didn’t help your case. How the fuck were you supposed to explain yourself? You expected Paul to tease you, make some sex jokes, and maybe try to make out with you again, but he didn’t. He looked absolutely crushed. 

“Do you not want to have sex with me?” He asked, sounding on the verge of tears. 

“What?! Paul, of course I want to have sex with you!”

“Then why this?” he pressed.

“You don’t even know what that’s for. Let me explain,” you pleaded, afraid he was going to lose that infamous temper. You’d never witnessed it before, but you were scared you were about to. 

“I think I have a pretty good guess about what this is for!” He exclaimed, holding it up. “You won’t even let me kiss your neck but you have this that you obviously use when I’m not around. You don’t want to have sex with me. Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Paul! That’s not true at all!” You were starting to get irritated at his assumptions. “It’s for physical therapy.” 

“Oh, is that what we’re calling orgasms now?” He questioned, exasperated. 

“I’m not talking about orgasms! If you gave me two seconds to explain, you would know that that does not bring me an ounce of pleasure. I hate having to use it.” You started to tear up at this, all the memories of your struggles surging back up. At this, Paul stopped. He looked super confused, but also worried about you. God forbid you shed a tear, Paul would rip the world apart to make you happy again. “Come sit down,” you said, resigned, as you moved to sit on the edge of your bed. Paul, still holding the dilator in his hand, sat down next to you. The silence seemed to last an eternity, but you knew that the longer you went without explaining, the more hurt Paul would feel. 

“I wasn’t lying when I said it was for physical therapy,” you whispered. “I have other ones. All different sizes.” You realized you might not have been helping your case with this. 

“I don’t understand. Why do you need them if you don’t use them to get off?” He looked like a kicked puppy. 

“Well… I have this thing. It’s like… a condition? And I need them so maybe one day I can have sex without any pain.” He still looked wildly confused, and you knew you were going to have to elaborate. “When I first started having sex, it hurt. A lot. But I always heard that it was supposed to hurt the first time. So I just kind of put up with it. It was bad though. I always tapped out, couldn’t go for more than a couple minutes. It felt like this really intense stinging. Like a rugburn all inside me. And it didn’t stop, even after I started doing it more. It never went away… I ended up googling it, and it’s actually something that a lot of women struggle with. I made a doctor’s appointment and was lucky enough to get diagnosed the first time. Lots of women are told they’re making it up. My doctor gave me these dilators, told me how to use them, and said that with enough time and physical therapy, I could have painless sex one day.” When you finished, you turned to look at him. He was staring intently at the dilator, thinking. 

“So, you have to like… stretch yourself? Were you just born too small?” He phrased it delicately, but you knew what he meant. 

“Basically, it’s an anxiety disorder with very physical symptoms. My pelvic floor muscles constrict when I try to put anything inside me, which makes it super painful. It’s like an involuntary reflex. Like blinking when something flies near your face. And I have to condition my body to learn that penetration doesn’t hurt, and that it doesn’t have to tighten up like that. The condition is called vaginismus. You can google it yourself if you want.” 

“Oh.” A pause. Paul knew you had some anxiety, but he never guessed it could cause something like this. He knew you were embarrassed. He could tell. And the last thing he wanted was for you to feel like you couldn’t be open and vulnerable with him. Did you think he would leave you? Or get mad? “Why didn’t you tell me?” Was the question that came out. 

“It’s humiliating. I could tell you were getting antsy about us not having sex, and I guess I didn’t have the heart to tell you that it’s not going to happen anytime soon. This physical therapy, it takes a while. I’ve already been doing it for almost a year, and I still have three sizes after this one.” A tear fell. You wiped it away quickly, hoping he Paul wouldn’t notice, but he did. He moved to wrap his arms around you, putting the dilator back on your nightstand. He embraced you, and the reassurance that he wasn’t going anywhere was more than you could handle. You burst into tears as he pulled you onto his lap and rocked you both, rubbing his hand up and down your back. You guys stayed there until you stopped crying, and then he finally spoke. 

“Y/N, I don’t ever want you to feel like there’s something you can’t tell me. I love you. And yeah, I would love to have sex with you one day, but I’m with you because of who you are. I don’t care if we never do it. You are my person, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you the happiest you can be. This? This thing you think is such a problem? It’s irrelevant to me. To my love for you. And I will be here every step of the way, supporting you, cheering you on, until you don’t want me anymore.” He brought your hand up to his mouth and kissed it. 

“I love you, Paul,” was all you could say. You leaned in and shared the sweetest, most loving kiss either of you had ever experienced. His hand cupped the side of your face, thumb rubbing your cheek. When you pulled away, the tension in the room was gone, replaced with you and Paul’s usual light, fun energy. 

“How do you use them?” He smiled as he asked, nodding his head towards your nightstand where the dilator still rested. “Do you like… just ride them? Or..?” 

You laughed, which made his smile broaden. “It’s not a sexual thing. Basically I put a towel down, cover the dilator in lube, and put it in as far as I can without pain. Then, I just sit there and leave it for like 20 minutes. And then I take it out.” 

“So you just like... do homework while you do it?” His concerned face made you laugh again. 

“You have to make your body associate it with pleasure, so no, I don’t do homework. Normally I’ll watch a funny show or eat some candy or FaceTime you.”

He froze at this. “You do this when we FaceTime?” 

This made you blush and look away from his piercing gaze. “Sometimes. I can stop if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s just a nice distraction.” 

“No, no. I don’t want you to stop. It’s just… can I see you do it?” This question shocked you. Not just the question itself, but the fact that you didn’t hate the idea. You loved kissing Paul. What better way to associate therapy with pleasure than by kissing him while you do it? 

“Are you sure? Like I said, it’s not exactly sexual. Or sexy. Like at all. I literally just sit there.” 

“I know, it’s ok. I want to be able to help you, but if you don’t want to we can just go back to the movie.” 

“I mean I do still have to do it today.” You thought for another second, before jumping up and saying “Okay. Let’s do it.” 

Paul looked happy and excited, but also lost. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, or with his eyes. Did you want him to touch you? Or just watch you? Or just sit in the corner of the room and face the wall? You were spreading a towel across the middle of the bed, and went to untie your sweatpants before looking at him. 

“Guess we haven’t really gotten this far, huh?” alluding to being naked in front of each other. It did make you a little nervous, and nerves equal tight muscles, which means pain. 

“Why don’t you put a blanket over yourself? That way there’s less pressure,” he suggested, and you could have kissed him for it. You smiled, nodded, and grabbed a throw blanket from the chair. He turned around to face the wall while you took off your pants and settled under the blanket. 

“Ok, I’m good.” you said. He turned back around, coming to kneel beside you on the bed. 

“Do you want me to just… hold your hand? Or sit here and talk to you?” 

“Would you want to sit behind me?” You suggested nervously, leaning forward slightly. 

“Of course! Yeah, I can do that.” He took this seriously, and you appreciated that. This was a scenario you had thought about many times, and though you knew he wouldn’t be the type to ask you to have sex with him despite the pain, it was always a possibility. The fact that he didn’t take your pain lightly, and let you be in charge so you would be comfortable, meant more to you than he would ever know. Paul gently climbed behind you, putting his legs on either side of you, and hesitantly rubbing your shoulders. You leaned back into him, as if to say I’m okay with this.

“Can you hand me the… “ You nodded your head towards the nightstand, and Paul didn’t need to hear the rest of the sentence before he leaned over and grabbed the dilator and bottle of lube, holding them out in front of you both. You muttered a “thanks” as you took them from his hands, and brought them under the blanket. After slathering the dilator with a good amount of lube, you closed the bottle and tossed it towards the foot of the bed, leaning back and shifting your hips down. Paul clearly didn’t want to overstep his boundaries, so he was slow and careful as he wrapped his arms around your torso, giving you time to say stop. You didn’t, though. He felt your body tense slightly as you dragged the tip of the dilator around your entrance, so he started to rub his hands up and down your sides, kissing your cheek. You turned your head to look at him, and he met you with a sweet kiss. You guys pulled away slightly, before going back in as you began to push the dilator in further. He kissed you with love, tenderness, and care, so as not to hurt you or make you feel uncomfortable. It was clear that you had the reigns, and Paul would stop as soon as you gave the slightest indication that you were uncomfortable. The dilator was about half way in, and you felt a slight stinging sensation, but kissing Paul distracted you. You brought one hand up to cup the side of his face, pulling him back in. 

Paul kept kissing you, waiting for your lips to part so he could brush his tongue against yours. This is normally where you would stop him, but he knew everything now. There was no expectation of more, and damn. Paul was a really good kisser. He sucked lightly at your lower lip, before nibbling it and letting it go, coming back in with his lips. The combination of Paul’s kisses, the slight heat they brought to your body, and the pressure of the tip of the dilator inside you had you shift your hips, and involuntarily let out a small moan. It was barely audible, but Paul and his super senses heard it. You pulled away and slapped a hand over your mouth, your face turning bright red. He chuckled deeply, the sound going straight to your body, and brought his hand up to pull your hand off your mouth. “Don’t you dare hide those sounds from me,” he teasingly whispered into your ear. You shivered, and Paul started to kiss your cheek, down your jaw, and onto your neck. He sucked on the soft skin, hands squeezing your waist and rubbing up and down. You wanted to try something. For the first time, dilating actually didn’t feel so obligatory, so mechanical and stiff. You pushed the dilator deeper in, just about a centimeter, but enough to give you that feeling you had moments ago. You let out a breathy sigh as you tilted your head to give Paul more room on your neck. He felt you shift your hips again, and brought one of his hands to rub circles on your lower stomach. Skin on skin. And it felt good. 

You kept going like this for a few minutes, and Paul could feel your skin grow hotter by the second. Your back was arched, your neck covered in light red marks, and Paul had the intense desire to see you unravel. He brought his lips from your neck up to the side of your face, getting as close to eye contact as he could in this position, and said “Can I touch you?” 

You knew what he meant. The thought of it made you nervous. No one had touched you without it hurting before. It was almost as if he read your mind when he followed with “I can just stay on the outside…” Oh. You could be down with that. You turned your head to him and nodded. 

“Just try not to touch the dilator,” you said softly. You trusted Paul. He was already being so kind and patient with this, and you knew he would die before he would ever hurt you. The hand that had been rubbing circles on your stomach travelled lower. Lower. Lower. Until he could feel the slight stubble of a past shave, and then your soft, wet skin. You gasped as he touched your most sensitive parts, even more so because of how turned on you were. He gently made small, tight circles over your clit, your eyes rolling back in your head as you fell completely slack against him and let out a moan. A real moan, that Paul swore he would never forget. And he made you make that sound. It only spurred him on. He applied slightly more pressure, but not so much as to overwhelm you. And he knew that when girls were feeling good, the secret wasn’t faster or harder, but to keep doing exactly what you were doing. So that’s what he did, and it had you writhing. Your moans kept coming, and your legs had started to shake. However, because it felt so good, your muscles had started to clench around the dilator, and it was beginning to hurt. 

You didn’t want to rain on the parade. It was going so well. But Paul being the attentive lover that he is, noticed you begin to tense up in a new way. He brought his hand back up to your stomach, concern racing through his brain, and asked “Are you okay? Does it hurt?” 

“It’s kind of starting to. Not you, the dilator. I think I might take it out.” You stared down at his hand still touching your stomach. Such beautiful hands. You didn’t want it to end. 

“Do you want to try a smaller one? Or do you want to stop?” He questioned. 

“I really don’t want to stop,” you laughed. He breathed a laugh as well, and waited for your direction. You had a thought. Paul’s index finger was smaller than the dilator. Much smaller. If you just told him what to do and what not to do, that could feel really good. “Would you want to maybe… Nevermind.” You got nervous. 

“Hey, hey. No. Don’t do that. Tell me what you want,” He brought a finger up to your chin and moved your face towards him. “Tell me. Whatever it is, Princess. It’s yours.” Your whole body shuddered at this. He’s never called you that before, and to say it did something to you would be an understatement. 

You let out a breath, gathering courage, and said “Would you want to… use your finger?” 

He stopped at this. “Like, put my finger inside you? That wouldn’t hurt?” 

“I don’t think so. It’s smaller than this,” you said, bringing the dilator out and up. “And as long as I tell you what to do, it could be really good,” you said the last part shyly. 

“Okay, Princess. I can do that. How do you want me to do it?” 

“Try to do more… pressure, and less… friction? Like try not to go in and out so much, but you can move it around inside.” Your face was once again blushing intensely. 

“Anything you want. You just have to promise that you’ll tell me if it even hurts a little.”

“I promise.” You said it confidently enough that Paul brought his hand back down under the blanket. He circled your clit a couple times, making you shiver and release a breathy sigh, before moving his middle finger even lower, circling your entrance. He gathered some of the lube that was there from the dilator, coating his finger, and you brought your hand down to hold it, guiding it inside you at a speed that was comfortable. It was smaller than the dilator, so he was in you in 15 seconds. He stopped, and gave you a minute to adjust. Your hips writhed again because of how turned on you were, so Paul brought his other hand down and began circling your clit again. Your head fell back on his shoulder as you began to moan again, hips moving even more now. Paul took this as his queue to press his middle finger up against your inner wall lightly, causing a loud moan to leave your mouth. You were too far gone to be embarrassed. 

“There you go, baby,” he praised. God, this was the hottest thing he had ever seen. He was barely touching you, barely moving his finger inside you, and you were a mess. He had been rock hard since you guys started, but your ass was rubbing against him as you moved your hips, and he released a small growl at the feeling. This only turned you on more. He kept moving his finger in you the same way. Pressure, not friction. Pressure, not friction. He kept telling himself this. He wanted to finger bang you into oblivion, but the risk of hurting you was too high, so he kept up with rubbing the tip of his finger against that spot on your upper wall, in a “come-hither” motion. Your moans began to get higher in pitch, your body tensing even more.

“Relax your muscles for me, sweetheart,” he encouraged, and you did. Your release was approaching rapidly, and you wanted to grind against his hand, but you didn’t want to risk pain, so you trusted Paul to get you there. You were panting, hips shuddering, face scrunched, as your climax hit you like a wave. Your legs shook as you opened your mouth in a silent scream, and Paul carried you all the way through it. You came down, and lightly grabbed his wrists. He knew that that meant stop. So he slowly withdrew his finger, brought it up to his mouth, and sucked on it. Head still up in the clouds, you watched him, slack-jawed, as he popped his finger out and moaned. “So sweet,” he purred. Watching him suck on his finger like that made you think of something you’d like to suck on, and you looked down at Paul, still rock hard, and turned around in his lap. 

“Let me return the favor,” you said with a smirk.

[exoid-the-locomotive-monarch]

I do often think about your last paragraph, and the message you got out from it. It is both wrong to be yourself, but can there be a limit to what yourself means to others?

Vriska has damaged and ruined almost every Homestuck character either directly or indirectly from her actions, but those events in the narrative are what came from Vriska, are molded from what Vriska was molded into, and no other character could think of doing.

And that is what made Vriska stand out, it was what made her popular in the fandom, what made her recognizable, and her insistence even as she is dead that she do the best course of action “8y 8eing me” made her even more beloved, the refusal to let go of any trait of hers that is negative or positive, and to hold steadfast to her philosophy even into death.

This identity is so prominent that John Egbert and to an extent Homestuck itself manifested the same old Vriska to insult and berate a version of Vriska that rejected her old ways and made peace with her irrelevance.

This begs the question: when does Vriska stop being Vriska? Was (Vriska) a Vriska or a Vriska In Name Only? What changes do you make to Vriska that stop her from being Vriska.

A simple answer would consult Vriska on her superficial traits: Grey skin, barb and pincer orange horns, Blue lips, Grey coat, Jeans, Cerulean Scorpio logo, likes roleplay pirates and doomsday devices. These are the superficial traits of Vriska, both utilized and referenced as markers of the Canon and Fanon Vriska, but that is vague, simple, visual identification.

Hell, Vriska in official Homestuck spinoff media has had qualities if her diverge from her canon introduction, Pesterquest Vriska includes having her Blue Marquise coat on when introduced to MSPA reader (and wearing black pants) while also wearing black lipstick. The biggest change, of course, was the implication that Vriska was a transgender woman, which leads to a long set of questions about troll society and Gender, when in canon Vriska did not explore her gender identity and was assumed to be the human equivalent of cisgender (even though gender roles and customs are never explored in comic, and ARquius explains to Dirk how the distinction between male and female trolls is more identified by sexual dimorphism than social constructs, which I repeat, are assumed to not exist since Hussie never wrote about them)

Can you be a Vriska without being physically identifiable with Vriska? Yes! Tumblr has made an entire theory to what makes a character a Vriska through a set of traits both superficial and textual, which is important as textual qualities are the centerpiece of the Vriskcourse.

Vriska is someone who believes that she is not obliged to sacrifice herself for others because she is the leader, she is the best there is and no chump is taking that away from her, she deserves what she wins, earns, takes, and steals because if she didn’t deserve it, she wouldn’t have succeeded. Vriska puts herself on top and everyone is either her equal, her minion, or her enemy. She learned all this from her lusus and her ancestor and if it gas gotten her this far, it works.

So if we make Vriska kind, less selfish, and more resentful of her misdeeds, is she still canon Vriska, or fanon Vriska. Canon Vriska is capable of all three qualities I have mentioned before, but chooses not to be less selfish, more resentful, or kind, because that’s not her, is it? She dud confess to John her regret of killing Tavros, but she’d do it again, it was his choice to fight her, she was acting in self defense!!!!!!!!

Back on track, these things Vriska did are essential to the Vriskcourse and the textual qualities of her character, so can she still be Vriska if she didn’t do these things? We can assume not, but that assumes Vriska is a character defined by actions and not her thoughts or feelings. We did see a Vriska feel bad for killing and being overly controlling, she was the pre retcon Vriska, but does her name and resemblance make her Vriska? Is the post retcon Vriska still a Vriska? She did all the same things pre-retcon Vriska did, but not reform herself, so is that a trait of Vriska? To not change or to change?

If Vriska has to have done all these things to still be Vriska, is her character naturally evil? Can Vriska still be capable of good after all she has done to the trolls and still be “in character?” When does Vriska stop being Vriska? When and where can we identify the intersection of Vriska’s canon character and our human measure of morality?

It should be a cardinal sin in Vriskcourse to compare Vriska’s childhood with Eridan or any other troll because of how unique and isolated Vriska’s case was creating her into the character she was.

Even Eridan, who believed fully in the Alternian caste system and the superiority of the seadwellers who deserved everything for being perfect and strong used his power to feed Lusi to Feferi’s lusus to stop the vast glub and protect trollkind, even though he says he wants to kill landdwellers and makes doomsday devices with Vriska.

Vriska fed thousands of trolls to save herself from being eaten by her mom, and after listening to her and reading the journals of Mindfang, she took the philosophy of preserving herself by any means necessary to heart, even after the death if her lusus and by independent action she would force drastic harm on anyone who got in her way, even in a game of FLARP she injures Tavros for being on an opposing team.

In response to being haunted by ghosts from Aradia, she kills her to get even, rubbing in the irony of killing someone as revenge for being haunted by those she killed to survive.

The one time Vriska was less awful in her punishment than whoever hurt her was Terezi, who she permanently blinded in response to losing her eye and arm because Terezi tattled on Doc Scratch for Vriska having the magic cue ball from Mindfang, and as revenge for Vriska using Sollux to kill Aradia.

Now to Eridan, who despite having an equally violent and regressive philosophy was on good terms with every landdweller in the Sgrub team except Sollux, mainly because he didn’t want Sollux to “steal” Feferi from him. What Eridan mostly does is push people away either by spite or fear of commitment.

He pushes away landwellers by threatening them with genocide, and because he has a huge crush on a seadweller. He pushed away Feferi by always shutting himself out from talking about his troubles with Feferi and instead asking Karkat about his relationship issues, and in most message chats revolves the conversation around him or something which directly affects him, he really doesn’t talk a out what Feferi or what’s been affecting her.

He duels Sollux as a way to probe to himself he is still capable of the strength he believes he embodies in his caste and bloodline to dualscar, and to try and keep him away from Feferi, but mostly to push someone who challenges his ego and sense of pride away, and not even in a black way, Eridan fucking hates Sollux.

It’s only when Bec noir is made and his immense power ruins the troll’s session and destroy the troll’s dream moons does Eridan lose hope and decides to “team up” with Bec, offering allegiance with the surviving trolls, and battle with those against him. Until the very end he pushed people away and only let them into his fragile and scared ego when he was desperate.

Vriska was a taker, she forced herself onto Tavros to fill a quadrant and her destiny for the summoner to reunite with Mindfang, she used Kanaya to get with Tavros and improve her perception to other by looking more “mindfangy” and used her new power for reward and honor, stealing boondollars hidden in chests on her planet, and dealing the final blow to the black king. This went to her head when she found out about Bec. She decided she will complete the time loop and form Bec on purpose to fight and win, and thus “beat the game” as the best troll ever who deserves everything and everyone thinks is awesome… in her head.

And ultimately, while Vriska had no choice on who she was born to, or how she needed to survive, or what was considered right in Alternian society, when Alternia died and she no longer had a lusus controlling her, she made the choice to continue being Mindfang, and hold the philosophy of Spidermom, taking and forcing her way to the strongest member of the team and the woman of action, only regretting the decision when the effects when nothing was left to take from them.

Eridan only hurt trolls when his back was against the wall, otherwise he collaborated well with the other trolls, leaving his emotional frustrations between him and future Karkat until he gets forced onto the meteor.

The way I explain things, Vriska was uniquely cruel, because her upbringing was uniquely cruel, and given the choice to change, she didn’t, because most people like keeping things the way they are until the status quo damages their way of life, and she doesn’t want to be what other people want her to be, even if the request is to “stop hurting other people”

It is quite interesting that despite all those bad things in her life and her equally bad actions, she would find her way to reward herself as someone that's a hero or be place in a much better situation compared to everyone else. Because in the end of Homestuck, she got to live out of everyone else and the only one to reach godtier. Though in doing so for Post Retcon, Karkat still ignores her, even if she was one of the last living trolls around and the one who subdued GAMZEE. Kanaya seemingly only let Vriska stop Rose from drinking if only to let herself be happy to get with the human at last. Even if we take account of her ghost self, she found her happiness in reuniting with ghost Terezi and the two seemingly become girlfriends despite that they don't matter now that they are both dead. They won't have a bigger role anymore as long as they are finally together. Is Vriska's upbringing and equal bad actions are the reason why she still mostly stays the same as she is and is rewarded for it? Another villain highblood like Gamzee, had a neglectful parent. Sopor slime pie was the only means to keep his violent nature under control and once that was gone, he had become nothing more than a servant for Caliborn to bring up Lord English. By Post Retcon even when he had committed the same actions for Murderstuck, at best he gets mind controlled before being shoved back into Meat. In Epilogues Meat, he is STILL trapped and alive. In Candy timeline, Calliope insists he lets him go free to redeem. However, it didn't seem like much redemption as he still acts the same way as before, if not worse when he and Jane Crocker fucked each other and had a child, making him a pedophile creep towards the young human son. Though John tries to call him out on such behavior, nobody believes him and Gamzee gets passed to continue to do such things. By breakup, the last thing he did was have a quick one sloppy kiss with Vriska after she brutally pummeled him. Just when he was about to text his friend, KARKAT, about what he did, Vriska did something that had been a while since it occurred. She KILLED Gamzee. A clown troll that was mostly unkillable and immortalized because of his role to raise Calliborn and become one of the vessels for Lord English. The closest we got of Gamzee actually dying was in GAME OVER with Kanaya killing him by slicing the guy in half. So then what makes Vriska being able to stand out this much and getting back into the narrative despite how she was raised and what she done herself that she also continues being just herself? Is it the delusion that she would be kept being at a good spot the reason Skaia and Paradox Space allowed her to let her be? So never changing is the only option to stay alive in the timeline? It has been proven via Dream Bubbles of other dead ghosts that change and improvement gets punishment by death and irrelevance. It's a strange message that "be yourself and never change will get you good outcomes" is their message here. If not just applied to trolls, but to the kids as well. They may have all changed in certain ways, but haven't grown in the mature-mental way. And everyone there is content to live with the fact if it means they still stay relevant for everyone to see. That changing for the better or improving is the worst. Nobody wants to see something new or grow for the better. They prefer the status quo. Any changes, whether it is officially from the creator or from fan content, is seen negatively and pushed aside. Anything that doesn't follow a common rule or fan favorite ideal, is unimportant. Maybe that's why Vriska is still herself both in series and fan content. That's why she is still talked about today and still here. It's still probably favoritism, but hey, if it means to still be around for dubious canon sequels, Vriska will find a way to get herself back in and not fall down to irrelevancy.

[agendratum]

ok so

as usual after finishing an arc of mdzs my head is full, many thoughts. so let’s talk about the guanyin temple confrontation.

first thing that i kept paying attention to were actually the changes made in order to turn it into live-action. so in cql they had to make the gray-gray characters, the “there are no good or bad guys, just people and their circumstances” characters (unless you’re jgs, than yeah you’re a bad guy and everyone agrees on that actually) into slightly more black and white characters. by the end of cql we are lured into this fake sense of security, “haha, we know who the bad guy is!” (then a year passes and here you are, now a jgy apologist), by the end of mdzs, you just know that, well, decisions were made, unfortunate decisions, by many different people. 

cql had to make wwx into a bit nicer version of himself. the good protagonist couldn’t lose control and accidentally kill a bunch of people, and then kill another bunch of people fully willingly, cause his sister just died and that was the last connection he had to the idea that something still matters in this world. no, out protagonist should be... like a little bit nicer than that. so they lifted some of that responsibility for atrocities off him, but they couldn’t just evaporate it, could they? they had to put it somewhere. they put it on jgy. after all he’s the big bad in the end of the story, well, the only surviving person from all people that could be considered big bads, he’s the one that “did every terrible deed imaginable”. he could take that responsibility, they had to make his grayness into a slightly darker shade anyway.

i am actually kinda surprised by how different my reaction to jgy was in mdzs. obviously, there is a year difference between me watching cql and me reading this part of mdzs, and over that year i changed my opinion on jgy 5 thousand times and joined the camp “actually meng yao deserves all the best things in the world”, but anyway. when i was watching cql i was like, oh my god, can someone just kill him already, before he does something bad again, before more bullcrap comes out of his mouth, and also stop yelling at this kid about all the “valid” reasons to why you killed his dad. in mdzs my reaction to jgy’s confessions was like, “huh. he has a point”.

now don’t get me wrong there, some shitty things were done, but the thing is, the things he did really made sense from his point of view, from this position and life experience he really had no other way to go. i especially was convinced by his reasoning to why he couldn’t cancel his engagement with qin su. not only he would suffer from this story, because he already went through so much to make this marriage possible, but also qin su’s parents and herself would most likely suffer, their public image would be destroyed, only jgs wouldn’t lose anything. and you could feel the hatred and bitterness he felt towards his father talking about this, and everyone in the temple could agree with that, because he “just forgot he made another child”, he didn’t even notice.

another interesting detail for me was lxc saying, “it’s not that i didn’t know that you did some of these things, it’s that i thought you had a good reason for doing them”. so yeah, a reminder, lxc isn’t blind and he isn’t an idiot. he trusted a person he thought he knew better than anyone else, and he believed in this person. the problem, i think, is that “a good reason” is different for lxc and for jgy. lxc would understand a righteous reason, doing something for the greater good. working for wen ruohan? that was explainable. they all were fighting in a war, fighting for the better, brighter future, and meng yao’s contribution to that future was immeasurable. what if he killed some people there? he had a good reason in lxc’s eyes. but meng yao had other good reasons in his life, some of these reasons lxc never had to deal with in his life. survival, for example, is one of them. meng yao’s early years were very different from lxc’s. not to say that lxc’s life was easy, but it was never truly unstable. meng yao had to learn how to survive in a world where no one wanted him. he lived with one dream, promised to him by his mother, a future where he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, where he wouldn’t have to smile at people he hated, please every one of their desires so they wouldn’t harm him. and then he entered this life promised to him and he still had to survive, but now in a luxurious man-eats-man world of lanling jin.

meng yao’s life really was this unstoppable ball of snow rolling down the mountain, and every decision he made just made the ball bigger and it would just roll faster. there is even a moment where jgy accuses lxc of being naive. lxc isn’t really naive, of course, it was said in the heat of the moment, but it is a fact that lxc was never kicked down a staircase, never had to crawl back up, and the thing is, at the bottom of the staircase, there are other good reasons to do things.

and in a way lxc understood that jgy in his position really didn’t have any other choices, he just couldn’t find peace in this mindset. he kept repeated through that part, “and yet, and yet, you shouldn’t have done that, you should have...” and he never said what exactly jgy should have done. because lxc doesn’t know. jgy doesn’t know. no one knows. what choices were better? how could he fix all that and still survive? in a way, lxc saying that reminded me of wangxian farewell in the burial mounds. when lwj asks, “you really indent to keep going like this?” and wwx, who wished, who longed for another solution, for some way out, asked him, “what else can i do? what method can i choose to resolve this, not use this technique and still protect people i want to protect?” and lwj didn’t have an answer. lxc didn’t have an answer either.

another amazing thing about guanyin temple confrontation, is that it’s very heavily wwx’s pov. most on the novel is his pov of course, but there were a loot of his thoughts in this arc. and he was rather understanding towards jgy. not in a way “i agree with every reasoning behind every decision you made” but in a way “i understand that you had your reasons, but all of them will become irrelevant really soon, they already are, because the crowd will only remember you as a son of a whore who did every terrible deed imaginable, and all the good deeds will be forgotten” 

now his thoughts on nhs, or who he suspected nhs to be, were way less nice. especially compared to live action, nhs didn’t make such an impression on me as he made through wwx’s thought process in the end of guanyin temple arc. of course, wwx is no sect leader yao, he is not the one to jump to conclusions, he just noticed that if you put some facts together, they actually start making a lot of sense, and formed a full picture. but he didn’t have any proof, so he kept it mostly to himself. yet he still thought for a moment about nhs as someone who didn’t care about collateral damage that much, who was ready to sacrifice lives of juniors, sect leaders, anyone, if it would add to jgy’s kill count and make his fall and destruction even more disastrous. not that those are not the things that happened in live action, but you know, when wwx put it all together like that in one paragraph, i really felt it. like, oof, dude it’s ROUGH. and not even jgy’s death was enough, as nhs basically admitted to stealing meng shi’s body and planning to repay jgy for what he did to nmj’s body. yikes

i mean i still support nhs in everything he does, but yikes

also side note, glad that the dead cats situation finally became clear for me. this whole year i was so confused about who left all these dead cats for juniors to find. i thought maybe xue yang did?? to lure wwx?? so apparently it was also nhs. good to know.

another detail, probably the last one my brain can generate for now, that pained me a great deal was my poor child jin ling. i already cried about some things related to him and this arc, but there was another little one in the very end here, after jgy died. jin ling realised, that there were now three people, wwx, wn and jgy, his little uncle, that were responsible for his parents’ death. people he had every right and reason to hate. all three of them. and yet he couldn’t hate any of them. he couldn’t avenge his parents, that died so long ago he couldn’t remember them, because all three people responsible for what happened, had something, some reasons, some circumstances, that made them really not the bad guys in jin ling’s life. and they all cared about him, protected him. how could he hate them? how could he not? and in this way this poor child repeats, unfortunately, his uncle’s curse. to have someone he wants to hate so much but just simply can’t. it warms my heart at least that jin ling has a much better support system than jc had when he had to live through that experience. so there is hope.

[destyni-is-me]

It’s the Thought that Counts Fic FAQ

Hello! This is a list of frequently asked questions for my ongoing zukka soulmate fic series entitled It’s the Thought that Counts! This is going to be a possibly ongoing list of questions I’ve recieved from multiple different people concerning stuff in the fic that I’m sure more poeple would also like an answer to as well as some things that I chose to answer without anyone asking as the questions occur to me. I’ll put a rest under a spoiler because I have a feeling it’s going to get pretty long lol 

How does the soulmate stuff work? 

So the basics of how soulmates work in this AU is that, when someone turns 10, they may or may not get a soulmark. The mark itself is the person’s thought they have when they finally fall in love with their soulmate. You can know your soulmate for years before actually falling in love with them. In that same vein, soulmates don’t always know when the other is in love with them. It relies completely on communicating their own feelings to each other, like all good relationships do.

Obviously this one is going to take awhile.

Is Zuko autistic in this series? 

Yes. I unintentionally coded him that way at first, but after being asked about it a couple times and then decided to do it on purpose. That being said, I’m not going to be adding any tags about it because it’s actually irrelevant to the story itself and isn’t something I’m going to focus on or really do anything with. If you read the series and feel like I’m doing a poor job or getting something wrong, don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll do my best to fix it. 

How long is this series going for? When are Zuko and Sokka going to get together?

It’s going to be a long time, at least another few years I think for me to actually finish writing this, since I’m super slow and I want to do this as well as I can. I am hoping to zip through everything in the Earth Kingdom faster than I did with the Water Tribes, but at this point who really knows. Word count wise... we may be looking somewhere in the 200k range or more for the individual fics and an unclear amount for the third one since it's not written at all yet. 

As for when Zuko and Sokka are getting together... well... that’s also going to take a long time. The first two stories (part 1 being Sokka’s pov and part 2 being Zuko’s) are more like character studies of them and the events that happen in atla in the AU. The first two fics end when they each have their own soulmate thought... and the third one? That’s gonna be the get-together one. 

How should I be reading this series?

Okay, so, yes this is a two soon to be three part series, but you can read the first two parts in whatever order you want. I’m actually trying to work on both at once to get through it a little faster, but that doesn’t mean you have to alternate between reading one chapter of the Sokka one and one chapter of the Zuko one. Where they are right now are completely different storylines, so for right now for sure it doesn’t matter which one you read. That being said, the Sokka fic Live, Laugh, Love just finished up book one of atla and the Zuko fic Look Me in the Eye and Say it to My Face is still precanon but should be getting into canon territory after this next chapter I think. I’m hoping at some point to actually get them intersecting, possibly by Ba Sing Se.  

Will there be any more stories set in this AU about any other soulmate pairs?

Not separately. There are some other couples that, though they are not the main focus, do play a significant role and should have storylines that are able to be followed as the story progresses.