#and because of his extremely specific circumstances and opportunities

[aphel1on]

will never stop being funny to me that nmj near the end of his life was extremely paranoid and delusional, but he was correctly identifying jgy as a threat, but, like... for wrong reasons only. you'll see ppl going "nmj was right about jgy all along, it's sad no one listened to him😭" but no. jgy isn't inherently evil, nor is he a power-hungry monster. not everything he ever said or did was part of some conniving ploy. when given the opportunity, he generally does try to return kindnesses and help people! but - oh, yeah, no, he's totally gonna murder you dude. no, yeah, he's gonna be so sneaky about it that it'll take a decade for the truth to come out.

it's like making 2 mistakes on a math quiz that just so happen to cancel each other out and give you the correct answer.

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

Does Izuku Think His Feelings For Katsuki Are Gross? (or, DvK2's Endless Emporium of Nuance)

This is a pretty common sentiment I see repeated, and we all know the source of it: Deku vs. Kacchan 2.

Original Japanese and official English translation.

Crunchyroll subtitles

In one translation, Izuku expresses discomfort over this topic; in the other, he outright declares it to be gross.

That is quite the difference. I gotta say, Crunchyroll’s direct “This is gross” kind of shocks me, because it functionally ignores the key adverb “sasuga ni” and translates the line the same as you would if he hadn’t said it at all. The official manga translator, on the other hand, clearly made a decision about what Izuku meant by that phrase and then dispersed that meaning across the line as a whole.

So I understand why people have this straight-forward interpretation.

I’m here to offer some linguistic nuance, because my main problem with “Izuku thinks his feelings are gross” is not that it is completely wrong. It’s that it isn’t the whole story.

There are two really important phrases to take into account: kimi ni wa ienai and sasuga ni.

To illustrate their meaning, let’s split the line into two sections:

Note: Grammatically, kara belongs in the first section. I’m lumping it into the second section for the sake of isolating the core ideas expressed in the first section and maintaining clarity in the second.

Now we’re going to break the sections down into their constituent parts. This looks like a verbatim nightmare of a translation, because it is, but trust me, it’s a useful exercise.

Kara links the two sections by showing that the first section directly causes the second. Something worth noting is that Izuku does not use past tense here—he uses present tense and indicates a continuous, unchanged state. He has not been able to before and still cannot tell this to Katsuki. I would argue this also suggests he thinks the circumstances will not change for the foreseeable future.

Important Phrase #1: kimi ni wa ienai

Ienai is the negative potential form of “to say,” which means it is not possible for him to say it. Iwanai, on the other hand, is the negative present tense, and if he had used iwanai instead, that might suggest that he has some choice in the matter. Examples in English might be, “That’s why I don’t tell you this,” “That’s why I’m not telling you this,” and “That’s why I haven’t told you this,” which all express intentional withholding despite opportunity. To use a form that specifically denies the possibility serves to center limitation, regardless of desire.

The combination of the two particles ni and wa are used to emphasize, compare, and contrast. This is extremely telling just on its own. Izuku is emphasizing the fact that, compared to everyone he could possibly tell, he cannot tell Katsuki this. He might be able to tell other people, but when it comes to Katsuki, he cannot. Ienai does not specify where the limitation stems from, but ni wa sure implies it.

Now let’s dig into the phrase that does the most heavy-lifting in the first section.

Important Phrase #2: sasuga ni

Sasuga ni is the adverb Izuku attaches to the adjective kimochi warui (gross or creepy). It is typically translated “as expected” because this kind of adverb sounds awkward in English. “This is expectedly gross” is not a sentence people say much. You might also see it translated “as I thought,” “naturally,” “obviously,” or “indeed.”

And there is something interesting here: Izuku uses a second word that means “as expected” on this page.

Yappari, which can also be translated as “in the end,” “sure enough,” or “after all is said and done.”

I researched the nuances of these two phrases, synthesizing definitions and examples from four different Japanese dictionaries/encyclopedias and two forum boards for language tutoring from native speakers. My conclusions as related to their usage here:

Yappari indicates:

an outcome that was expected (example: “I tried, but sure enough, I failed.”)

something that remains unchanged [in the state it was previously or in other circumstances]

a situation where, no matter how you think about it, you end up with the same result (example: “I was really torn over it, but in the end I gave up on going.”)

Sasuga ni indicates:

[you, the speaker] must acknowledge that this is the natural result of the situation up to this point (example: “they grew up in a big family, so naturally they are good with kids.”)

something exceeds the permissible range, or that it may be permissible under certain conditions, but not others (example: “no matter how nice a guy he is, if he was accused of something unfairly, he’s bound to get angry.”)

You can see the meanings overlap, but the sentiments are a bit different. I saw someone learning Japanese say that every time they used one of these phrases, native speakers told them they should have used the other one instead. Another learner responded that, from their observations, the distinction appeared to be that yappari is used when the speaker had personally thought about and expected this outcome, while sasuga ni suggests that everyone would agree with this statement.

I’m not sure this is true across the board; usage always varies, even among native speakers, so generalizations are only useful up to a point, but I have to admit, a bunch of little things I noticed in my research do support this line of thinking.

If yappari tends to be more reflective of the speaker’s personal thoughts and expectations, sasuga ni’s “acknowledgment of a natural result” could indeed imply external validation. This is true of the equivalent English words, at least: naturally and obviously both suggest that any reasonable person would accept it as fact.

In fact, permissible as an idea kind of hinges on social norms—what is reasonable for someone to put up with? What behaviors sit within the realms of welcome, allowable, or excusable based on your relationship?

In my opinion, Izuku feels like he cannot say this to Katsuki because it exceeds the bounds of what is permissible between them. If sasuga ni implies Izuku feels sure that anyone would agree with his assessment, Katsuki is absolutely included in that.

Izuku is not saying, “I alone think this is gross, so I can’t tell you.”

He is saying, “Considering everything that has happened between us up till now, you would obviously see this as gross, so I can’t tell you.” Its grossness is a natural result of the situation—their history, the way their relationship fell apart, the way Katsuki lashes out, how he can barely stand Izuku’s presence, let alone his emotional honesty.

Chapter 10, during Deku vs. Kacchan 1

But remember that this sentence is a fragment: the subject of Izuku’s sentence is revealed in the second half, and it is the fact that he runs his mouth when he wants to win more than he wants to save.

This is what is gross. Izuku acknowledges that the behavior itself is unpleasant, and that any reasonable person would agree with that. His whole identity as a hero is based on saving people, so he feels some real discomfort when he has to recognize that sometimes he just wants to win. In fact, he can want victory so much that it supersedes his desire to help people.

Izuku has intentionally emulated Katsuki’s practical tactics, but this is about instinctive response. He wasn’t standing there facing Muscular, thinking the winning move was definitely to scream, “shut up.” He was furious, so he wanted to win and make that guy shut up.

When the scale tips, he acts out. He talks shit. He screams at people and insults them, because that’s what Katsuki does. These are all unacceptable behaviors, socially-speaking. Katsuki constantly and intentionally acts the exact opposite of how he should to qualify as a Good Japanese Boy. Izuku, on the other hand, plays the part faithfully, at least until it demands he betray his core values.

Deku vs. Kacchan 2 showcases how neither Izuku nor Katsuki had fully accepted the heroism of their counterpart. Katsuki is uncomfortable with Izuku’s innate capacity to help others, to see their need and meet it without question. Izuku is uncomfortable with craving victory, with that indomitable drive to seek glory. They each admired All Might for the value they themselves embody, and they admired each other for the value they lacked, but that doesn’t mean their admiration was uncomplicated.

Katsuki is a loud-mouthed, aggressive jerk, but Izuku ends up acting just like him. He clearly feels conflicted about it. He’s annoyed and hurt that Katsuki pushed him away by being such a jerk in the first place. And, from his perspective, he fails every time he tries to wrangle their relationship into something less miserable. He might even be embarrassed over the simple fact that he has held on to these deep-seated emotions for years over someone who wants nothing to do with him. He wishes things were different. He doesn’t know how they could be, anymore. He wants to connect, but he can’t.

Izuku frames his inability to express this specific thought as natural and reasonable. Obviously, there’s no way I could do this. And honestly, he is probably right. After all, this is a very intimate, revealing thing to tell someone who seems to hate your guts and has for years.

At any other point in the story, Katsuki probably would have curled his lip in disgust and barked out Izuku’s exact words, “Gross.”

But in DvK2, Katsuki bears his heart to Izuku without restraint.

Katsuki confesses something painful and private to Izuku twice, at two separate moments.

Izuku has two confessions, too. Here's the first:

But the second he admits only to himself and the audience.

Maybe if Izuku had said his “image of victory” monologue out loud, Katsuki could have had his own moment of understanding:

Izuku’s reaction after Katsuki’s second confession.

Maybe Katsuki wasn’t ready to hear it, or maybe Izuku was too chicken to believe he was ready. Either way, he needed to voice both confessions, and he didn’t.

So the narrative punishes Izuku for failing to push past his own limitations.

In the battle of revealing their honne—their true feelings, their truest selves—Katsuki risked it all.

Izuku couldn’t do the same, and that’s why he loses.

Don’t forget that underestimating your opponent is one of the easiest ways to lose a fight in MHA.

But I want to reiterate, Izuku feels conflicted about this behavior and his own feelings, not ashamed.

Emotional conflict is borne from two or more simultaneous, contradictory feelings. Izuku admits that any reasonable person would see the way he unconsciously imitates even Katsuki’s bad habits as gross, but he also clearly tells us something else.

Izuku is directly expressing his own thoughts about it, and the most important phrase is nanoni, which according to online encyclopedia Kotobank, “indicates that the following is contradictory to the preceding matter” and specifically, “includes critical feelings about the contradiction between” those two things. The latter point is unique because other words often used for “but” (such as kedo, which he used earlier in the form of dakedo) do not necessarily do this.

In the final line, one little detail here is the orange highlighted nda. This is used to explain and correlate topics of discussion. The most obvious point of explanation is why he acts this way. But the use of nanoni to connect this thought to the previous one tells us that this line is also explaining why Izuku doesn’t hate it.

Katsuki is his image of victory, and that alone is the reason he does not find this part of himself unacceptable. Just like with sasuga ni, Izuku is telling us that he understands the way other people would see this situation, and he knows what he “should” feel, but then he tells us that he does not feel that way.

I know it is very easy to see “This is gross, so I can’t tell you” at the start of this monologue, skip right to “image of victory,” and walk away thinking that Izuku is ashamed of that specifically, but the details show that the opposite is true.

And let’s not forget the nuance of yappari, which implies that Izuku has personally thought about this fact over and over, but it has always been this way.

I have seen people say that Katsuki is the one letting Izuku set the pace of their new relationship and that Izuku holds back, with this presumed shame as the cause. But I don’t think that acknowledges Izuku’s perspective on their dynamic, nor the casual mutualism they build together.

Katsuki initiated DvK2: a unique, closed “event” wherein, for the first time, they each expressed their vulnerabilities as much as they were able. But immediately outside the confines of DvK2, Izuku is the one who reaches out, as a gesture of reciprocation towards Katsuki for having initiated this change.

He is asking Katsuki's opinion, but what this gesture means is, “I don’t want us being honest with each other to end there. I still want you in my life.”

And maybe for the first time in years, Katsuki actually understands what Izuku means, and reaches back.

Look at these fucking nerds.

Notice that Izuku responds to Katsuki twice. At the first response, Katsuki has offered his observations and given him valid criticism on his technique, which is a show of goodwill. But then, Katsuki continues even when the admission reflects a personal weakness, with Izuku's punch having caught him off guard. This is actual honesty, and it means that they didn't just resolve their aggression and reset to neutral peers, but that Katsuki wants to be close, too. And just like during their fight, understanding comes the second time around.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: from Izuku’s point of view, Katsuki’s shitty behavior was the only thing that stood between them, because Izuku’s core feelings for him never changed.

Izuku lets Katsuki decide what is permissible between them, because Katsuki is the one who pushed him away in the first place. He opens the door just enough to say, “Whatever you want to give of yourself, I will accept.”

After that, Katsuki is the one making the big gestures by taking time out of his own life to discuss OFA with Izuku and All Might and help Izuku by training with him, even inserting himself into situations when he isn't asked. At every point, we see Izuku receive Katsuki with warmth and then follow up with smaller gestures of his own.

Chapters 202, 209, 249, and 327.

The reason we see so much of Katsuki’s side of their relationship, especially after DvK2, is because his feelings are the ones that change the most: from dysfunctional to self-aware and accepting. He has struggled for years over Izuku’s place in his life. He didn’t understand Izuku or his own feelings, and he was wrapped up in denial. He tells himself again and again that Izuku is “beneath him,” when we know the truth is he always thought Izuku was better than him.

Comparatively, Izuku resolves his conflicted feelings about his admiration for Katsuki much quicker, because the source of his conflict was primarily external while Katsuki's was primarily internal.

Chapter 257

A little detail I love about the "I'm too blessed" moment is that Izuku thinks of his conversations with Katsuki as "normal(?)" with a literal question mark attached. Is this normal? He doesn't really know. But it's enough. Kacchan is Kacchan, explosive and outrageous and way too much, all the time. Maybe they'll never be what other people think of as "normal," but Izuku is happy just to have Kacchan as he is, and be there however Kacchan will have him.

Katsuki's ideal has always been Izuku; he tried to outrun that fact and failed every time. Meanwhile, Izuku’s image of victory has always been Kacchan, and he has just been waiting for Kacchan to want to hear that from him.

Everyone has been wondering if Izuku will ever tell him. Me, personally, I'm hoping their story will end with a mutual declaration of their shared truth.

"You have always been my hero."

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

Hello again! LOVE op's posts about static moth so so much they are giving me ungodly amounts of serotonin ... It's genuinely been such a joy reading your interpretations of their relationship and what makes them work the way they do. Even with the limited amount of content we have of them I believe you've nailed their respective personalities and behavior patterns spectacularly and every single post has been extremely interesting to go through and to analyze off of!

Regarding the reasons as to why Valentino likes vox as a romantic partner, I also believe part of it has to do with some of Vox's more stalkerish tendencies as well? His (not yet canon but close) Voyeurism, his constant need for control, etc.

This is more of a head canon than anything else, but I do genuinely believe Valentino enjoys the obsessive attention he can get only from Vox as it does wonders to quell his constant sense of emptiness, his subsequent feelings of abandonment, and the anxieties that follow. The fact that he knows Vox enjoys stalking him, (probably) gets off on it and is actively deriving pleasure from simply watching him go about his day may be adding to the thrill and content as well. The thing is, as generally absurd and problematic it is, this behavior seems to bring a sense of security for both Partys involved: Throughout the show during all 4 episodes that feature Valentino's presence, we have yet to see a single scene with him without at least one camera tracking his movements. They are everywhere. They follow him wherever he goes, Vox can follow him wherever he goes whenever he so chooses, even to Vals own personal quarters. They are a massive, glaring red flag and quite frankly would bring a suffocating amount of pressure and sense of captivity to any other person under the same circumstance. But Val never brings this up, so I feel he either doesn't think he's in a favourable condition to complain, or he likes the idea of Vox always having his eyes on him. For me I think it's the latter, and I think for him to act so nonchalant around vox's cameras and his potentially constant, 24/7-hour surveillance, it has to have offered him some form of comfort. It has to have made him feel good, either about himself, about the state of their relationship, or both.

(apologies for the sloppy wording, hope you have a wonderful day!)

Awww, Anon, you are so sweet! Reading your question brought me so much joy <3 I think your perspective is spot on, and I wholeheartedly agree with it. I must admit I initially omitted this aspect of their relationship from my initial response because the question specifically focused on love rather than "sexy and toxic stuff." For me, voyeurism and stalking kink are more closely related to the latter category.

That being said, Val undoubtedly enjoys having Vox's eyes always on him. Being a diva and a performer, he relishes performing for Vox, especially knowing Vox's likes all the deranged shit but desperately tries to hide it underneath his clean façade. So he’s basically like “I’m going to hit this bitch for you, Voxy. As a treat.” recognizing that Vox couldn't do it himself without tarnishing his image. In return, Val receives even more attention and admiration, perpetuating the cycle.

Since you've given me the opportunity to delve into Vox's voyeurism further, I'll add some additional insights (I've been meaning to write a proper post about it for some time now but that rabbit hole is just too deep). It's fundamentally about control, of course, and it's simply a kink. However, kinks are not merely about arousal; they involve complex psychological dynamics. People a lot smarter than me wrote a shit ton of essays about voyeurism, especially since it is a very relevant topic in the visual media era. One sentence about Lacan's interpretation of it grasps really well what I have in mind when I think about Vox:

By appropriating the other as image, the voyeur makes it an object of pleasure*, while remaining uninvolved in the other's intimacy.

It’s a parasitic relationship. A voyeur gets symbolic control over their object and it gives them the sense of being powerful. And they don’t have to offer anything themselves – no effort that is required to gain control in situations with two subjects involved, nor the vulnerability necessary in consensual relationships. They can just freely feed on others without offering anything in exchange.

Without delving too deeply into philosophy, Vox's inability to live authentically stems from his obsession with his image, his guardedness, and his need for control. This sets a lot of limitations about what he can allow himself to personalmy experience. So he derives dopamine from "stealing" others' experiences and emotions, while avoiding the effort and vulnerability required in genuine connections.

*In a broader sense, voyeuristic pleasure isn't necessarily sexual; it can manifest as the thrill some people experience from watching macabre imagery in movies, eavesdropping on neighbors' drama, or even watching overly personal vlogs.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

To expand on a prior post I've made, it is really fun and it makes a lot of sense and it feels ultimately natural that Spahr is here at the end, in this last confrontation with Weepe, because he and Weepe are rivals. They're, almost unexpectedly, foils.

They're arrogant men who allow and enable awful things to happen to others to protect and increase their social standing. They hurt the people they care about most for self-serving reasons—but in the end, only one of them takes responsibility for that. (Trustfall and Ghosts are inverse parallels, and this post discusses a portion that is most relevant here.) Weepe increasingly identifies with the Trust as Spahr is increasingly disillusioned with it, and Weepe rises to power at the same rate that Spahr falls into disgrace. Just as Weepe is convinced that he will always be an awful person and fatalistically believes he cannot ever do better, Spahr has been convinced he has a self-evident righteousness but eventually sees that not only does he not, but he can and must do better.

Beyond that, they're narratively tied together. Weepe is in the Highest Light because Spahr agrees to bring him. Spahr helps Imelda lock Weepe in the Arca, and he does it in part for smug satisfaction because of his personal dislike for Weepe. He wronged Weepe by participating in engineering the circumstances that led to his torture and by failing to intervene against it out of fear for himself, and the fact that he wronged Weepe is something that Spahr is explicitly aware of and is something that weighs heavily on his conscience. It is through the Arca that Spahr traces Weepe's ascension to Tripotentiary as a direct result of his actions; he believes that he failed to stop, or even facilitated, Weepe's rise and everything that results from it.

For much of the narrative, they're racing to the same goal, even sometimes without knowing. Spahr is on Midst specifically to find the Breach centerpoint, and Weepe identifies it as the cabaret and turns it over to the Trust before Spahr has any chance to start looking. Weepe pulls the Fuze-Loxlee investigation out from underneath Spahr when he convinces Sherman to name Fuze's murderer, ultimately succeeding where Spahr fails. He takes the information to the Upper Trust himself after Spahr was removed from the investigation for, simplistically, lack of progress. Sherman chooses to trust Weepe over Spahr, and Weepe wipes his debt before Spahr can.

When Spahr is court-martialed, he is given the opportunity (read: pressured) into donating all Valor accrued during his tenure to his successor — and then that donation apparently goes to Weepe as part of a series of donations to help set him up as Most Valorous. The role of the Prime Consector gets folded under the new position of Tripotentiary, and without a Prime Consector appointed, Weepe is the sole direction that the Company has. Weepe even moves into the residence held by the Prime Consector, as we're often reminded that Spahr lived there before Weepe did. Weepe is Spahr's successor in all but literal title.

Spahr waits until Weepe repeats the order to bring Lark and Phineas to refuse. At the moment where Weepe is at his most elevated and Spahr at his most diminished, when they are such extreme ends in the hierarchy, it is to Weepe that Spahr says, finally, "No."

As Prime Consector, Spahr was ideologically (though not materially) the truest manifestation of Valor. A Consector's job is to hunt, to pursue those who have escaped the Trust and restore them to the Trust. At this point, Weepe is all that is left of the Trust, its only manifestation, and all he does now is hunt Lark and those who aid her, to rebalance and to restore what is felt lost.

As funny as it is that Spahr is here at the end as the only one who isn't a protagonist, it makes so much sense that he is here in the confrontation against Weepe. He has to be. They're foils to one another, one of their many. Their actions have deeply entangled themselves in one another's arc. Over the course of the story, very slowly, there's been a changing of places between Weepe and Spahr.

Of course Spahr is here too. He was a razor's edge from being the one bearing down on that cabin. He was very, terrifyingly close to being on Weepe's side of the door.

[bengiyo]

Last Twilight Ep 12 (Finale) Stray Thoughts

Last week, we learned that Day’s surgery was unsuccessful. We time skipped over his mom figuring out things to see that Mhok is having anxieties about Day and conflating them with Rung. Mhok has become overprotective even as Day has begun using his cane and exercising more independence. Mhok lied about a job opportunity in Hawaii and upset Day. Day reacted in the most extreme and broke up with Mhok.

So…we’re just skipping over the aftermath of that fight? They really just broke up and now it’s years later and Day is graduating? That whole journey ended on one lie? Be serious.

Did they really try to fake me out like Mhok might be the groom for Porjai? Be serious now.

Man, they really want this escalator scene to give It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, but I just don’t think you can earn that in a time skip this abrupt.

Suddenly Aof cameo.

Mixed feelings about Mhok assisting Day like this. At least he revealed himself at the end? It’s giving Revenge of the Nerds (1984) or The Goonies (1985).

Day has had Mhok blocked for three years???

Are we really just gonna start flirting after three years like this? Come on, now. What has changed??

All the meddling is cute, but I’m still at the three years no contact.

Unbelievable. Mhok says he did a bunch of emotional work and then thanked Day for breaking up with him, only for Day to say, ‘I’m glad we can discuss this as adults,’ without saying anything else. “This is real damn ridiculous. This is belemptious.”

Mom, why aren’t saying any of this to Day???

I do appreciate that Day and Night worked out their issues, but everything with the supporting cast feels like it’s all happening between scenes. Like why is the dad here? Are he and the mom going to reconcile? Do we care about this in any way specific to these characters?

Aof seems to like when one of his leads is holding back really hard for some reason, but Day is just not a good execution of that at all. I am not on his side the way I was with Phupha, Jim, or Pran.

If Mhok gives up the work and life he’s built for himself for three years to be with Day, I’m going to be just as annoyed as I was at the end of Enchante with Akk having to work his way to Paris to be with Theo.

So…Day has done no emotional work on his issues with Mhok in three years? I don’t even think Mhok’s issue was about even pitying Day. What the fuck is this?

That car is about to get towed!

I just know Namtam had a good time running around in an airport wearing a wedding dress.

We’re doing this whole reunion scene, so has Mhok just…processed his grief about Rung? We’re just gonna get back together now? Mhok is still talking about his mistake? We’re just gonna take over the aftermath of Night and Porjai’s wedding?

Eye donation? Oh…..this is about to take a turn.

I don’t like timing this to right after the unearned romantic reconciliation. This is a bad look. I had seen some posts earlier, and this is as bad as described.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Day getting his vision back, but putting it in the finale like this and rushing over the other conflicts makes it feel like a reward. It also has them quickly advancing past any other developments in Day’s life as he potentially reapproaches things he had before.

I’m feeling conflicted about them returning to the mountaintop, because there was so much acceptance in that first scene. I don’t know that there’s good mirroring here of any sort for this.

Final Verdict: 5, This Was a Huge Miss. I’m not sorry for this low rating on an Aof show. I cannot in good faith give this a 6 as decent but boring. The imbalanced writing between the romantic leads left me extremely dissatisfied for most of the back half show, and quickly showing your blind character adapting and even thriving in his circumstances just to have him monologue about being normal again at the end was so not the moment. @lurkingshan has already covered what this show messed up as a good starting point, and I want to state plainly that I will no longer be grading Thai BL on the curve of what the show is trying to be. It’s been ten years of Thai BL, and decades of BL and yaoi before it. These shows will be graded for what they are.

Jojo and Aof had big misses in the last year. Tee dropped the ball multiple times. Golf had a weird outing. New Siwaj failed me completely. We cannot worship these creators. They are just trying to make cool stories and help sell the juice. Sometimes they make really cool pieces that we love forever. Sometimes they flop. Aof tried something here and it didn’t reach the heights we expected of him. Directors are not gods. It’s fine for them to flop. There’s enough BL airing that a few shows being letdowns doesn’t leave us with nothing else to watch for weeks.

Still, I will say that I liked the chemistry between Jimmy and Sea, and I thought Mark and Namtam made a decent pair. When this show was good, I liked the moments.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I think the thing that would've made season 3 so interesting, and still makes it so much fun to write and read about Ed and Stede settling into a steady, comfortable, loving relationship, is they have such a great foundation in the show for how they behave when they're upset with each other.

We get two moments of conflict with them in season 2, and they may not be perfect at communicating, but they're really good with each other. Their first argument in s2e4, obviously, is coming out of a very, very high-stress situation and Ed's in an extremely emotionally vulnerable space. Their argument in s2e7, too, is an argument that Ed goes into it absolutely determined to walk away over because he's terrified Stede is going to choose piracy over him.

These are both set in very rough, scary circumstances, but it gives us a good framework here for how they treat each other during arguments.

Ed especially can be a bit catty and petty, and and they will both say things that are a bit harsh, but never overly so. Ed says earlier in s2e4 that he "regretted" shaving his beard, by which he really meant "I shouldn't have trusted you, Stede." Stede calls Ed a coward in s2e7 (which, in his defense, Ed kind of is being a coward in that moment because he's too scared to just ask Stede to stay with him).

Neither of them really raise their voices at all. Ed shouts a bit in s2e4, but quickly brings his voice back down, and for the most part they do a commendable job of talking calmly with each other even when emotions are high.

There is potential for Stede to leave things out and for Ed to phrase things in ways that come across as overly harsh or might lead Stede to miss the point. Stede is entirely unwilling in s2e4 to explain why he left Ed other than "panicking," when elaborating that he was held at gunpoint would probably in fact make Ed feel better about the whole thing because Stede was suddenly put into a situation where thinking rationally was very difficult. Ed, too, told Stede that he thought "last night was a mistake," which could make Stede worry about about the sex they had specifically when Ed was aiming for a more general "everything is moving very fast and I'm scared."

They're both actually really very good at communicating even in arguments. In s2e4 they both clearly tell each other what they're feeling without stooping to personal attacks. In s2e7, Ed is determined for the argument to escalate, but Stede is always trying to meet him calmly and talk it through reasonably even though he doesn't really understand what's going on. When Ed sets a boundary that he's not ready to hear Stede tell him he loves him yet, Stede pivots smoothly and easily.

They very clearly do not want to hurt each other, and they don't believe the other will hurt them. Ed never once reacts to Stede's compliments like he thinks they might be disingenuous, despite the circumstances, and he explicitly doesn't want the argument to escalate to a point where they "say things we can't take back" in s2e7.

Altogether, I think Ed and Stede definitely do have the potential to hurt each other in arguments and say hurtful things that come across differently than they intended, but they have such a strong foundation here for excellent communication. They're never overy harsh with each other, and there are opportunities for miscommunication, but on the whole they're both really good at listening to each other calmly and communicating their feelings even in high-stress situations. Their worst argument is definitely the one in s2e7, and even then it's more of a "stomp out of your boyfriend's house in a huff then apologize the next day" kind of argument.

[lykegenia]

So something has been bugging me for a while now about A and N’s backstories, and while I know not everyone will be as pedantic as me, as someone who loves history and has done a lot of writing, I feel that if you’re going to write a story about vampires and give them a specific time and date of origin, then there should be a certain level of research that goes into making that background authentic. I'm not saying that Mishka didn’t do any research. It just seems that in order to keep the vibe of a happy, mellow fantasy some of the less savoury aspects of A and N’s upbringings have been left out, and it's a shame. To be honest, it feels a bit disingenuous, and it feels like an opportunity got wasted.

Let me explain (long post got long, it's 2am)

Let's take A first, since the problem is simpler here.

A is the child of a Norman lord and an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman, born in the first generation after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. A says that these were turbulent times but that their parents had a happy marriage. Which. While I’m sure a lot of unions in that time period made the best of it, I can’t help but feel this description strips away a lot of the context of what was going on at that point in history - and removes some of the complexity about A’s thoughts on love and relationships.

Basically, after he took control of the throne, William the Conqueror stripped many Anglo-Saxon lords of their lands and titles so he could give them to his Norman buddies instead - with the added bonus that it left the Anglo-Saxons without the means to raise armies against him. The sisters, daughters, and widows of the dispossessed Anglo-Saxons were then forced to marry these new Norman lords to legitimise their power, not infrequently after all of their male relatives had been slaughtered. It’s not as if Anglo-Saxon women weren’t used to being used as political chess pieces, but the years after the conquest were brutal. It’s why William had to build so many castles. The point that I’m trying to make is that even if A’s mother was content enough in her daily life, due to the power imbalance between her and her husband, it's very likely she had little choice in the matter. She may have seen a lot of her family killed for political reasons, with the knowledge that – in an age where women had very little protection outside of their paternal household – she might be next if she made too much of a fuss.

It would be fascinating to see what effect that tension has had on A 900 years later, or even to get an acknowledgement of how much times have changed, but we don’t. We don't see how their early years affected them, how they view relationships formed naturally instead of via political contracts. And I really, really wish we did. There is so much potential there.

But A is not the one keeping me up past 2 in the morning. It’s N, and the utter detachment their backstory seems to have from the period in history they lived in as a human. And it all stems from the fact that they came from the English nobility in the late 1600s.

See, the bulk of the problem is that English inheritance law at the time heavily favoured primogeniture, where a man’s wealth would go to his first-born son. Some dispensation was made for widows and other children, but the estates, assets, and most of the money had a very clear destination.

For one thing, this makes it kinda weird that N’s stepfather would have needed an heir before he could inherit, because except in extreme circumstances everything would have gone to him anyway. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the worst part of the problem, it’s just annoying when there are more plausible reasons for him marrying a woman already pregnant with another man’s child (old family friend wanting to save her from disgrace, needed the dowry to pay off gambling debts, there was a longstanding betrothal between them that would have been tricky to get out of, etc.).

No, the bigger problem with N’s backstory vs primogeniture is firstly that at the time the English aristocracy was racist af (still is tbh) and given his pretty obvious mixed-race heritage, no court would have agreed that Nate was a legitimate son (this is for a very special reason that we will be coming back to). I say Nate specifically here because primogeniture requires the eldest legitimate son. Nat wouldn’t have inherited at all, as women in that period passed from the guardianship of their father (or other male blood relative) into that of their husband after marriage, and only gained any kind of independence with widowhood. If N had been an only child, maybe they would have been treated as a special case, but unfortunately Milton exists: the eldest legitimate son who by law will inherit everything.

Now here’s the thing. Your average aristocrat in the 17th century is very obsessed with lineage and keeping the family line unbroken. He would not, therefore, send his legitimate heir to sea to be shot at or drowned before he can carry on the family name – that joy instead goes to any other sons who need their own profession, because again, they will get very little. Nat would have had a dowry, but would never have been expected to make her own living, so I'm going to focuson Nate for this next bit.

In Book 3, if you unlock his tragic backstory Nate tells you he joined the Royal Navy after Milton went missing so that he could go look for him. And, well. This is where his backstory as Mishka tells it completely falls apart. For two reasons:

1. Even in the modern day, you can’t ‘just’ join the Navy, and you certainly can’t just jump straight to being a lieutenant – it takes years of training and after a certain age they won’t take you because they won’t be able to mould you easily enough into a useful tool. For most of the Navy's history, the process was even more involved. It wasn’t an office job you could just rock up to and then quit if you felt like it, it was a lifetime commitment. Boys destined to be officers would be sent to sea as early as 12 to learn shipboard life, starting at the bottom and moving up the ranks. These were gained by passing exams and by purchasing a commission – which is why you generally had to come from wealth to be an officer at all. Once you get to lieutenant you're responsible for a lot of people, and might be tasked with commanding any captured ships alongside the daily running of yours - it was not an easy job.

2. Even as a lieutenant (one rank below Captain, with varying levels of seniority) it’s not like you can just go where you want. In the 1720s British colonies already existed in India, the Caribbean, and up the entire eastern seaboard of North America and into Canada, and the Navy was tasked with protecting merchant shipping along these seaways (and one trade in particular that we’ll be getting to, don’t worry). Nate could have ended up practically anywhere in the burgeoning empire. He would not have been able to choose whom he served under, and would not have been able to demand his superior officer go against orders from the admirality to chase down one lone vessel because he thinks another one of the admirals might be a bit dodgy. It could not have happened.

Besides these impracticalities, there’s a far easier way for the child of a wealthy man to get to a specific point on the far side of the globe to look for their lost sibling, which is the route I assume Nat took sine she couldn’t have joined the Navy (yes she could have snuck in but she’s specifically in a dress in the B2 mirror scene so). All they'd have to do would be to charter a ship and tell the captain where to go, which is the plot of Treasure Island. It's quicker, less fuss, with less chance of things going wrong. It's even possible in the age of mercantilism that the Sewells had some merchant vessels among their holdings that could be diverted for the task. Why go through the hassle of joining the Navy and potentially ending up on the wrong side of the world when you can just hire a ship directly?

If Nate does have to be in the Navy (and let’s face it, it’s worth it just for the uniform) then it's far more plausible is that, as the illegitimate son who would not inherit because of racism etc, he got sent to the Navy as a boy and rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant. When he got news of Milton’s disappearance not far from where he was stationed, he begged his captain to go investigate in case whatever happened turned out to be the symptom of a bigger problem. Like pirates.

I like this version better not just because it makes more sense, or because it keeps Nate’s situation re: inheritance closer to Nat’s and therefore makes their stories more equal, but also because it adds a delicious amount of guilt to Nate’s need to find his brother. We know his entire crew died looking for answers, because he was selfish – that’s roughly 100-400 lives lost because of him, and we know that sort of thing eats at him.

So that's one side of the story, but if Milton wasn’t in the Navy, what was he doing on the other side of the Atlantic in the first place? Well, this is where we come to the biggest elephant in the room regarding N’s backstory as a member of the 17th century English aristocracy and potentially as a naval officer: the Atlantic Slave Trade. If you are wealthy in 17th century Britain it's more than likely that your wealth comes either from the trade itself, or from the products made with the labour of enslaved people. If you are wealthy, you want to protect your assets from attack by pirates or foreign powers so you don't become less wealthy, and that is what the Navy is for.

Regardless of N’s own views on slavery at the time – and any subsequent changes in opinion – it’s likely their family owned or had shares in slave plantations in the Americas. As distasteful as it is, it makes far more sense that Milton was on a trip to check the family’s holdings when his ship - specifically a merchant vessel - went missing. From a pirate perspective, a merchant ship would make a much better target than a Navy vessel, being slower, more likely to have valuable cargo, and less likely to have marines or a well-trained broadside.

It's not surprising that Mishka left out the subject of the slave trade given her tendency to skirt around darker subjects and general blindspot for racial politics, but it is nuance that, if it was there, would create a more grounded and coherent backstory for N that doesn’t have quite so many holes. Like with A being the child of an invader and his war bride, we could get some deeper thoughts from N about their place in the world - How do they feel to have grown up so privileged when others who looked like them were regarded as literal property? How did they feel being part of the system that made it happen? Did it inform their compassionate nature? Is it still a source of guilt or someithng they've tried to make up for?

I'm not sure where I was going with all of this. It's late, my sleep pattern is fucked. The tl;dr is that giving the vampires' backstories historical context would make them feel more multifaceted and would give opportunities for character growth that are instead missed because of a desire for a more sanitized version of the past.

[thesweetestdevotion]

can you do a jungkook future spouse reading? <3

hi!!!

BTS Jungkook Future Spouse:

Dice: Jupiter, Capricorn, 11th House

Tarot:

Personality: King of Coins, Six of Cups Reversed, Four of Swords Reversed, Two of Wands Reversed, King of Swords

This person is very mature and serious, even if they are relatively young. They are pragmatic and realistic, not the type to daydream or dwell in the past too much. I feel here they have had tough experiences in their past that have held them back and traumatized them, so they like to sort of ignore that time in their life and not sit in those energies. They seem very cold and more inclined to mental and analytical energies. They are also focused on material and intellectual pursuits at the moment. They dont like to take too many risks in their life, but this can cause them to stagnate. I feel they like to stay on the safer paths because of those past experiences but this can hold them back in their growth and career. They tend to over analyze a lot, not very in tune with their intuition. Their childhood could’ve been difficult. This sort of drives them to be better and do better for themselves, and I see they’re slowly healing a lot of those energies. I kinda like them! They have ‘daddy’ energy!!! (not gender specific hehe) super reliable and headstrong.

Career: Eight of Coins Reversed, The Tower Reversed, The Chariot Reversed, The Magician, Ace of Coins Reversed

Okay… I see that they could be in a creative field as well I’m not sure if it’s music or art or something else. I see that they haven’t found that success that they’ve been looking for, which has caused them dissatisfaction especially financially. The Chariot reversed lets me know they feel their career is at a standstill and not moving forward. I think this is kind of on them though, I feel like they put in work into things that won’t bring them success but they only do it because it is traditionally done or because they have seen others find success with them. They have the tools to be extremely creative and unique but they don’t use them out of fear of failure, which in turn causes them more failures. I think they need to tap into their creative and innovative ideas and let go of that fear of ridicule and failure as I genuinely feel they have many wonderful unique gifts that could be shared with the public. They need a confidence boost to be honest, maybe they have too many strict expectations for themselves and need to give themselves some slack.

Their Relationship: The Hierophant, Knight of Coins Reversed, The World Reversed, The Fool Reversed, Knight of Wands

I think they’ve dated before in the past, but this relationship didn’t really work out. They seem like they already know each other with the fool reversed, and the knight of wands tells me this relationship was romantic, the hierophant brings in commitment and seriousness. However i think they broke up or took a very long break, i see that there were some career path changes that got in the way of this relationship progressing. They were really on the way to marriage but it feels stagnant now. They’re obviously gonna make their way to each other at some point but they feel separate for now. I don’t feel it was a bad break up, they were kind of forced to because of the circumstances.

The Next Steps: The Star, Ten of Coins, Ace of Cups Reversed, Death Reversed, Four of Cups, The Sun

How They'd Meet: Page of Wands Reversed, King of Cups, Queen of Swords, The Devil Reversed, Queen of Cups Reversed, Six of Coins, Page of Coins

Since they’ve already met and been in a relationship I’m gonna read for their next steps instead of how they met. I think they’ve had the opportunity to get back together before but never acted upon it. With the king of cups and queen of cups, I’m seeing one energy is still reeling in the break up and has hurt feeling because of this missed chance, while the other energy is more level headed and feels more healed. This could lead to some kind of open heart to heart reconnection that allows them to communicate their emotions and soothe those hurt feelings. This is the opportunity they need to get on the path to reconciliation and reconnection. I think they’ll both be very amenable to building up trust and understanding between them again, they feel like they want to let go of the past and start anew with each other. I’m not sure if this will happen recently or if it is a future energy, but they’re definitely bound to see each other again and eventually make their way to some sort of commitment.

Hope you guys like it!! Their energy had me rooting for them like i was watching my favorite couple in a telenovela hehehe so exciting and engaging, wish them the best!!

[physalian]

Creating Tragic Backstories Through Agency

This is absolutely a biased-as-hell post and not a rule of thumb for what you should do. This is me taking an opportunity to gush about my favorite method of designing backstories, which happen to end up tragic, and they’re something I’d like to see more of in fiction.

The thing that I want to see more of is, well, “tragedy”. Not necessarily the ‘terrible, awful, no good, very bad time’ aspect, but the ‘doom’ of one’s fate being sealed. Tragedy didn’t always mean a bad thing, just like doom didn’t. They meant an outcome that was inevitable, which usually happens to be a bad one.

So when I’m thinking about what TB I want to give a character, my very first thought is this: What single seemingly small choice did this character make that led them to this moment after snowballing out of control?

I like happenstance backstories as much as the next guy—little Orphan Annie an orphan by circumstance and not her own doing—but what I find equally if not more compelling is the character who is tragic because of their own choices. But instead of that choice killing them, it’s the genesis of the character they come to be.

Once again. This is not a rule. It’s just fascinating.

I wrote a character, princely type, and his tragic backstory contained a lot of awful shit. He was my therapy character and I put him through hell to make myself feel better, hence why that sci-fi WIP all over my posts remains unpublished. Half of his tragedy was out of his control: Mother, the queen, died suspiciously in childbirth with her only heir and his dad, queen consort, both never expected to have to do this without her and hates and blames his son for her death.

But the other half all began with a single choice. I had another character kind of like a warped Aladdin. This kid, his age, played on MC’s desperate need for a friend of any kind. Kid shows up, commits a crime against MC punishable by death, and MC breaks protocol (at like, 7 years old) and very publicly denounces the death sentence of another 7 year old. Kid takes this pardon and absolutely runs with it, manipulating what MC thinks is a genuine friendship into an extremely abusive power play all to get the throne, and MC can’t do shit about it.

The point was that it was MC’s humanity and compassion, and how that was taken advantage of, that was the foundation of his tragedy. This one choice, to spare the other kid’s life because it was the right thing to do, completely ruins MC’s life and snowballs into so many other tragedies as he grows up.

I’m all for the dead parent cliche, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something about a hero grappling with the consequences of their life unraveling because of one seemingly small choice, or a choice with seemingly only one good option. There’s something about a hero knowing that they are on this path because of decisions they made, and having to reckon with asking themselves if they would do it all again if given the chance. There’s just something about a hero blaming themselves for their circumstances, focusing on that one small act, when the big picture really can’t possibly all rest on their shoulders.

This is a very specific personality and backstory and is hardly applicable to every story you could tell, there’s just something about the agency of the tragedy that gets to me.

It doesn’t have to be necessarily big, either. Tragic characters like the divorced dad who’s divorced because he’s the one that cheated. The squad leader who made one bad call and got the rookie killed in action.

Choices that these characters would make, because it’s who they are fundamentally, over and over and over again even knowing what future was in store, whether that’s a selfless trait or a selfish one—the dad who still cheats because he’s got weak willpower, the squad leader who would still put the needs of the many first, the mission first.

This tends to work for characters who’ve had time to grow up and truly marinate in the repercussions of their actions. Kids who blame themselves get told by everyone around them trying to cheer them up that it couldn’t possibly have been their fault. An adult who’s had time to reflect and think and brood has cemented the idea that it’s their fault, in some capacity, and nothing is going to change their mind.

Perfect, poster boy example: Zuko.

Now I can’t speak for him and I don’t think the answer ever came in canon, but he fits that balance of “tragedy by circumstance” vs “tragedy by choice” perfectly.

Zuko’s circumstances being that though he’s the elder child, his sister is the ambitious prodigy and his dad is a power-hungry narcissist, whose machinations lead to Zuko’s mom murdering the current firelord so he can get the throne, which leads to her disappearance, which leads to Zuko having very little support systems, which leads to an incredibly fraught childhood.

Zuko’s choice, though, is the one everyone knows: To stand up for those soldiers at the war meeting, and to not fight his father in the Agni Kai. He probably knew at the Agni Kai that refusing to fight would define the rest of his life, however long it lasted, but I bet you he had no idea what would befall him at that meeting. It’s just who he is as a person, and I think he would do it all again, because to not would be a betrayal of his character.

Aang, too, his impulsive choice to run away during the storm wasn’t done knowing that he’d then survive the air nomad genocide (at least in the original). He was just angry and afraid and wanted some alone time that circumstances demanded came at the absolute worst/best moment possible. Aang would be tragic already being the last of his kind but being forced from the fight, like if he was knocked out or ordered to leave, wouldn’t hit the same. That he did it unknowingly just gives him so much more depth.

—

There is absolutely nothing wrong with TBs that are only tragedy by circumstance and you can get depth from other means. Orphan Annie isn’t any less valid because she had no control over her fate. Dead parents aren’t any less debilitating if they die in a house fire via gas leak, freak accident.

I just think one extra layer of depth and agency can propel a character that much higher.

[thewertsearch]

[ there was more to this ask, but some was spoilers 😆 - C ]

Ooh, that is a fun challenge! I might make this a bigger Title post, actually, because it's been a good while since we've had one of those.

...alright, I just finished, and this one kind of got away from me. I hope it's ok that I sort of hijacked your post to talk about Aspects as a whole - but rest assured, I did answer the original question. Let's get into it!

Unfortunately, it might be kind of difficult to make Class guesses. My theory is that they're Sburb's take on RPG party roles - and for obvious reasons, we haven't seen how any of the non-Player characters would fit into a Sburb party. A full analysis of the hypothetical Midnight Crew, Exile and Guardian sessions would be fun, but it's a little out of scope for this question.

Personality certainly seems to be a factor. I don't think it's a coincidence, for example, that the Seers are the most inquisitive members of their respective parties. Dave and Karkat both hide their true emotions behind a persona - but then again, so do Feferi and Jade, two happy-go-lucky Witches with incredibly dark backstories. Dave may be the worst offender, but half the cast is hiding behind some sort of facade.

John, for his part, doesn't seem to have anything in common with Equius - at least, nothing I can see. I might dig a little deeper for human/troll Class parallels once we've seen more of Equius and Feferi, but our sample sizes are so small that it's going to be hard to tell which shared traits are intentional.

Anyway, none of the other classes feature a pair of Players that I could toss into a Venn diagram, so we're at a bit of a dead end.

I suppose I could approach this from another angle, and try to extrapolate a Class from each character's life circumstances - for example, by speculating that Grandpa's inheritance of the Betty Crocker brand makes him a potential Heir - but that's clearly not an accurate method, given that literal heiress Feferi is a Witch.

See, Classes are a tough nut to crack! The main issue here is that the comic has given us very little to work with - it's been tight-lipped on Titles in general, and there's been almost no exposition on Classes specifically.

It might be easier just to try and assign Aspects to each of the non-Players - so that's what I'm going to do. I'll also take the opportunity to put forward my best guess for what each Aspect means.

Without further ado:

Time means time.

This one seems extremely straightforward. Not all the Aspects are quite so literal - Breath, for example, seems more closely related to wind than the body function it's named after - but Time is about engaging directly with its namesake. It may have other meanings as well, but we haven't seen any yet.

If you wield Time, then you're the session's designated time traveler - which is a lot less cool than it sounds, because it means you're on Doomed Timeline cleanup duty. Enjoy the corpse disposal!

Both of the comic's Time Players have fashioned their own personal time machines out of musical instruments. Music seems to have some connection to Time - which makes sense, since it's an art form of pitch, rhythm and beat. Music is time.

We can also talk for a second about Dave's Quest. As we'll see, each Land Quest seems to directly concern the Player's Aspect. Dave's Quest is to...

...um.

Well, one of these is Dave's Quest. The LOHACse is the only one of the two which is directly related to Time, but I've speculated that Dave's sword-in-the-stone quest will involve him rewinding Caledfwlch to an earlier point in its timeline. Plus, the Caledfwlch quest also speaks to Dave's Class as a Knight, so I think it's the real one.

For the sake of completeness, let's also talk about the Time Lands. Each Land always seems to feature one trait which either directly or obliquely references its Player's Aspect. LOHAC is self-explanatory, but Aradia's Land of Quartz and Melody is an interesting case, as its 'Aspect trait' could be either of its two descriptors. Quartz could reference the quartz in a modern clock, and Melody could reference the musical connection I mentioned above.

I can't think of any non-Players with particularly strong ties to Time - aside from the Felt and Lord English, who we know very little about. Let's say they're all Time Players, and English rules over them as a Prince of Time. As a mob boss and destroyer of worlds, he undoubtedly shares some of Eridan's megalomania.

Space... well, we actually don't have much for Space. We haven't seen Jade or Kanaya do anything with their Aspect, nor do we know anything about their Quests.

We do know that both Space Lands contain the Forge, so maybe there's something to that. Presumably it's going to forge something, and I think it's probably where you're supposed to create the universe. If your task is literally to create Space, it makes sense that a Space Player would take point - but that begs the question of what would happen in a session without a Space Player.

Maybe the game prefers a Space Forge, but it can spawn on another Land in lieu of one - or maybe Space is the 'default' Aspect, and it's actually mandatory in every session.

As far as Space's symbolism is concerned, my assumption is that it's as straightforward as Time, but we'll need to see more.

While I'm here, I guess I should dip my toe into this hot mess.

Yes, LOFAF's Space Word does appear to be Frogs. Yes, that does imply that Kanaya's was also Frogs, or something equally mysterious. No, I do not know what this could possibly mean.

These frogs are apparently heralds for their god, Bilious Slick, whose shadow has been looming over the comic for months now. I guess their appearance on the Space Lands implies that Slick is Space themed, which is at least consistent with my theory that he's the final obstacle between the Players and their universe.

Moving on, because I give up.

(Oh, and if anyone's a Space Player, it's Bec. You could also make an argument for Mom Lalonde, since her home was fitted with an observatory, but that's very tenuous. We don't know much about Space, so I don't know how else to tie a character to the Aspect.)

There's a lot going on with Light.

All Quests so far have had ties to the Player's Aspect, so whatever Jaspers thinks he's talking about here should have something to do with Light.

Jaspers... seems to be talking about different ways to represent information, and instructing Rose to find a particular DNA sequence. (I have to assume this isn't the MEOW sequence, because I don't think Sburb wants Rose to fill LOLAR's oceans with First Guardians.) So, it sort of looks like Light is information, doesn't it?

Well... maybe. See, things are are complicated by the fact that Dave's Quest above was also Knight-themed, so this spiel from Jaspers could be partially Seer-themed. How can we tell which is the Seer stuff, and which is the Light?

Recently, Rose said this, seemingly confirming that her Title is about information ('knowing shit'), and also implying that the 'knowing' is a Seer thing.

This allow us to compare her to Terezi, the other Seer. As we'll see below, she specializes in discerning people's personalities and motivations - literally, seeing into their minds - so it sounds like being a Seer is about perceiving or 'seeing' things that relate to your Aspect.

Rose, the Seer of Light, should therefore have an advanced perception of Light - but just what is Light? What can Rose see?

Well, she says she can see 'the big picture'.

I think Rose's powers allow her to zoom out, understand the broad strokes of a situation, and see how it all ties together - and I think that is the essence of Light.

Dave wonders how he's going to navigate the Furthest Ring's twisted-up space, so she scans the overall situation with her Light powers, and vaguely understands that it won't be a problem. Dave will be able to play his part.

However, if he asked why, exactly, it won't be a problem, or how he's going to do it, she'd be stumped. That's not her department.

I think I sort of understand what Light means now, but I can't think of a succinct way to describe it. The zooming-out Aspect, maybe? The everything-is-connected Aspect? The don't-sweat-the-details Aspect?

Guys, I think I'm starting to understand Homestuck!

Ah, shit.

Yeah, I don't know how Vriska or her powers slot into this interpretation. As the Thief of Light, I guess she'd be stealing... the bigger picture... from other people? And that lets her take their luck, somehow?

I guess when you give yourself 'good luck', you are sort of improving your situation in the general sense, rather than the specific. You don't know the details of how your luck will manifest, but you don't really need to - all you need to know is that it'll be good for you.

I don't know. This is getting messy, and more than a little abstract. I'm sure Vriska will be doing a lot of luck-stealing, so we'll hopefully learn more as we go.

At least the Land of Maps and Treasure fits Light-as-the-big-picture. A map is, literally, a big picture.

A flurry of disquieting happenstance is related to the ADORED SOVEREIGN. With no other options, her counsel is all that is left to be sought. Abdication is never ideal. But in the face of inevitable conquest, conceding ground can supply the only remaining advantage.

WQ, then, seems like a good fit for a Light Player. After listening to PM's full report, she seems to understand how the pieces fit together.

The Queen knows that Jack wants her dead, and clearly understands how dangerous a Player item can be, in the wrong hands. She doesn't know what's in the package, or what Jack will do with it - but she doesn't need to. She can see the writing on the wall, so she retreats.

I did a bit of Breath research for this post, and landed on the above quote. I think Breath is about direction and destination.

TT: John? TT: Are you there? -- tentacleTherapist [TT] is now an idle chum! -- EB: hey, yeah i'm here! EB: and not dead i think. TT: I know. TT: I've been watching you scramble through the house like a lunatic. TT: You should have answered me sooner.

John's a meandering kind of guy. He's wandered haphazardly around the session for three thousand pages, but he always seems to reach his goal. Despite not knowing where to go, he always seems to be where he needs to be.

John's Quest as the Heir of Breath has been explained in detail. He needs to unclog the pipes of LOWAS and defeat Typheus, freeing his Land's fireflies from their cloudy prison. In essence, John's Quest is to give these bugs a new direction, allowing them their full axis of movement once again.

There might also be some Heir stuff in this Quest, but its ultimate goal seems to align pretty well with that Breeze quote above, so I'm willing to accept it as Breath evidence.

AG: Have you ever tried to fly? I 8et you haven't! AG: How a8out we take to the skies, Pupa! AG: Hahahaha, oh you like that idea, Pupa? Yes, you do. I can feel it in your simple, mallea8le 8rain. AG: You want to fly so 8ad!

Breath might also have something to do with agency - or at least, the ability to choose your own actions. John's freedom-themed Quest isn't the only example of this - Tavros's entire arc is about how Vriska keeps denying him agency, while pretending she's doing the opposite.

(I'm going to avoid comparing Homestuck to other works, because this post is long enough as it is, so you're just going to have to imagine the twelve paragraphs of Deltarune meta that would otherwise be placed here.)

AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP,

Tavros just wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to ignore the game and float around Prospit, away from everyone's expectations - but he was denied this opportunity, again and again. It's no wonder that he's on a bit of a high right now, after being granted the freedom of his new robo-legs.

As for potential Breath Players - well, CD reminds me of John a little, but he seems a lot more likely to stay on task. I don't know what Aspect he'd be assigned.

Now - we're onto the Aspects we've only seen in trolls. We don't have as much for most of these, since we haven't seen any troll Quests, nor any Aspect powers sans Vriska and Terezi.

Terezi, the Seer of Mind, deals in personality - or maybe, more generally, vibes.

CG: WE'RE NOT EXILING JACK, HE'S COOL. [...] GC: [...] 1 DO NOT G3T 4 GOOD F33L1NG FROM H1M! GC: H3 K1ND OF CG: STINKS? [...] GC: W3LL GC: SORT OF GC: H3 DO3SNT SM3LL B4D 4CTU4LLY GC: H3 SM3LLS R34LLY CL34N 4ND SH1NY 4ND D4RK D4RK D444RK L1K3 4N O1L SL1CK 4ND TH3R3 1S 4 T1NY H1NT OF L1COR1C3 TH3R3 TOO GC: 1TS MOR3 L1K3 GC: TH3 W4Y H3 MOV3S GC: 1 SM3LL H1S SMOOTH MOT1ONS 4ND TH3 W4Y H3 SQU1NTS H1S 3Y3S 4ND 1T G1V3S M3 TH1S R34LLY N3RVOUS F33L1NG

When she smells someone, her Mind-enhanced perception doesn't just tell her what they look like - it also seems to communicate that person's essence. Terezi can see the idea of Jack Noir, here. She's smelling what it feels like to be inside his head.

GC: TH3 D4Y 1T H4PP3N3D W4S TH3 F1RST T1M3 1 3V3R H34RD FROM MY LUSUS GC: SH3 WOK3 M3 UP, 4ND 3V3R S1NC3 H4S B33N T34CH1NG M3 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO S33 GC: 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO P3RC31V3 3V3RYTH1NG 1 GU3SS, NOT JUST 1N 4 S3NSORY W4Y

Terezi is also a naturally perceptive person, so it's sometimes unclear whether her reads are due to Seer clairvoyance or her own deductive abilities. As a general rule, I'll only treat her insight as a Mind power if she explicitly refers to her sense of smell as its source, since that's the avenue for her supernatural perception.

GC: T3LL M3 YOUR R34L N4M3!!! >:[ TG: ok lets say its TG: dave why not GC: D4V3! GC: TH4T SM3LLS L1K3 TRUTH GC: 1 W1LL D3C1D3 TO B3L13V3 1T >:] TG: fuck

Therefore, I'm pretty sure her powers do, in fact, allow her to detect lies. Mind, then, might be related to the concept of truth - as in, your Mind is the truth of who you are, stripped of all illusions.

I was initially going to place Droog here, since he seems to be the only Crew member with his head screwed on, but I no longer think Mind is about being rational or analytical.

Blood is the first Aspect I don't really have a guess for. Maybe it's got something to do with genetics - Karkat is a carcinoGeneticist, after all, and a mutant to boot.

Spades Slick is blood brothers with a Knight of Blood, and he's got a lot in common with Karkat, commanding his party with a moderately annoying leadership style. I'll put him here on the strength of those parallels, and I can revisit it when Blood is explained.

We don't know much about Nepeta, so we don't know much about Heart. Shipping is all about drawing them, though, so maybe Heart is about romance - or, more broadly, relationships and connections.

Nepeta's Land of Little Cubes and Tea is a lolcat joke, so it might not conform to the Aspect Word pattern. I guess, since the cubes are sugar cubes, it might be a pun on 'sweetheart'? Who knows.

I'll put Hearts Boxcars here, and not just because of his name. He's the only member of the Midnight Crew with any interest in shipping.

Feferi revived Sollux with a kiss, so Life is probably healing, as it is in many other element systems.

How her Land of Dew and Glass relates to Life is a mystery. While dew can refer to condensation on any surface, it's often used to describe the water droplets which accrete on grass and other flora. That's kind of a connection to a living thing, but feels like a stretch and a half.

Let's also put Nanna here, since she's the only true healer in the cast. I don't know why the other sprites don't use the healing beam.

Our Void Player is in a Land of Caves and Silence - a hole in the earth, and an absence of sound. Void seems to represent negation, or a lack of something.

Also - this might be a reach, but Scratch describes the gaps in his clairvoyance as 'pockets of void', so perhaps Void also has something to do with uncertainty - aka, a lack of information.

Most of the Guardians could go here, really. Bro seems the best fit, since he's constantly hiding from Dave, and completely vanishes for most of the session.

When a timeline is marked for destruction, we say that it's doomed.

Doom seems to represent death, obliteration and entropy. Sollux Entered into the Land of Brains and Fire, and I think it's pretty clear that Fire is the trait which is tapping his Aspect.

Doom may also be the Aspect of prophecy. After all, Sollux is a prophet of Doom - so maybe he's a prophet because of Doom. It could also be related to his nature as a Mage, but Mages haven't been explained, so I can't speculate.

I originally thought that Sollux might be a Seer - but the Seer Class seems to be about gathering information related to a particular Aspect, rather than directly divining the future. Maybe a Seer of Time could see future events, but it's certainly not a default ability of the class.

Grandpa seems to have some ties to Doom. He prophesized Jade's death to her when he told her about her dead Dream Self - plus, he's a hunter, with a house full of corpses. Also, his entire presence in the session is overshadowed by the spectre of his future death. This is probably the Aspect guess I'm most confident in.

I guess there's also Hope, a brand-new Aspect with no lore. Eridan's 'hope' would seem to be expressed in the fact that he constantly hits on people, hoping in vain for a yes. Thankfully, we're not aware of any non-Players like that....

The mail is the one final hope for resurrecting a dead planet from its ashes, and the letter carriers are the brave soldiers of God in this righteous crusade. They are the defenders of the light of knowledge, free communication, and the exchange of ideas. They are the bold toters of all those little papery conduits of freedom, the white postmarked angels that whisper a message on their deliverance, a promise to the yearning: "There is hope yet."

...but PM is pretty much screaming about hope in her mail monologue, so we'll put her here.

ORDER IN THE COURT. YOU WILL HAVE ORDER IN THIS COURTROOM. IF EVERYONE DOES NOT SETTLE DOWN YOU WILL CLEAR OUT THIS COURTROOM, YOU SWEAR TO GOD.

It's hard to classify the Aimless Renegade. He's all about crime and punishment - which is certainly a Terezi trait, but I don't think it's a Mind trait.

As for Dad, he has a well-established gentlemanly personality, but I don't know what Aspect is the most 'gentlemanly'.

I could try and classify more obscure characters like FedoraFreak, the Pen-pal, Jaspersprite or the Hussie self-insert, but I'll tell you right now I don't have any guesses. Still, that was fun, and it was a good opportunity for me to update my thoughts surrounding the Aspects!

[izzyspussy]

@fanficfanattic you will regret this

okay so. it wouldn't be the revenge specifically because that is its own story and i think the whole general Thing is really dependent on the characters in it (as it should be! most of the time) and the shameless characters really don't mesh well with it (as it also should be! most of the time). HOWEVER. if the characters of shameless were put into a plot/setting framework of a golden age pirate romcom with a defining theme of self actualization especially regarding gender expression and/or trauma recovery...

the milkoviches would be the ranking crew on one ship, with terry as the captain. the gallaghers are also the ranking crew on their ship, and frank is the captain. very early on in "canon" or perhaps pre-"canon" they mutiny and elect fiona as captain instead. kev and vee own a bar at a pirate port. i wouldn't pick nassau because like. that is reserved for real life and black sails. to me. maybe tortuga or maybe port royal. anyway one day the bar was owned by some guy. the next day the bar was owned by kev and vee. nobody knows how that happened. every "episode" the bar features in there is a new version given. none are ever confirmed.

i like the families knowing each other/having close enough experiences that a main relationship conflict with any of them is each not understanding that their circumstances are actually not the same (i.e. how ian can't quite grasp that being gay is a much bigger deal for mickey than it is for him; they live in the same town, they went to the same school, they're in the same tax bracket, they both have a shitty dad who hates them personally and no mom, ian was in the closet too, etc, so there's kind of this disconnect there where i think ian expects mickey's experiences of homophobia to be at least similar enough to his that it shouldn't make that much of a difference - but of course there is actually a huge gulf between a shitty dad who hates you because you were conceived through infidelity and shows it by insulting you but mostly is absent anyway and a shitty dad who is. a fucking neo nazi and organized crime boss who regularly beats you blue. and i think the same is true for other members of each family, like how fiona judged mandy, and i guess in later seasons i didn't watch [insert gallagher] says some kind of something implying gallaghers are better than milkoviches and mickey points out if that's true it's only true by an insignificant margin. not that any of that was ever textually explored because the writers weren't actually interested in exploring anything. who said that).

and also! i always love a character or characters that are famous, or infamous as the case may be, in-universe. EveryoneTM knows who the milkoviches are. EveryoneTM knows who the gallaghers are. and they each have a distinct reputation that comes with their name. and! i also like the knowing Of each other for a long time before getting to Know each other dynamic that the canonical milkovich and gallagher kids have via having gone to school together and buying (or bullying) goods and services from each other. love childhood Ugh This Guy Again to lovers waaaaayy more than childhood friends to lovers. personally. not to mention the capulet and montague vibe.

anyway so i'd want to preserve that as much as possible. so idk maybe frank and terry used to be whalers for the same company or even on the same ship, and the kids lived in an isolated island whalers' families ghetto (which would also preserve frank's and terry's frequent long absences). wait wait yes. okay. here it is i've got it.

they are employed/indebted to the same company but actually work on different ships, and they generally dislike each other because they are both supremely dislikeable, but there are limited socializing opportunities in a whaling community so they are extremely bitter frenemies because it's either that or nothing. and obviously they hate whaling because who doesn't, but terry hates it out of anger toward the company (reasonable) and frank hates it out of laziness (also reasonable tbh). anyway so at some point they start talking about mutinying and going pirate, and frank thinks they're talking shit but terry's serious. and terry's also scary and frank's a coward, so alright looks like he's going to mutiny and go pirate because he said he was going to and terry said yes he sure was.

so terry starts (drunkenly) strategizing, and his strategy is the very peak of violence. and frank is not exactly a paragon of compassion, but violence is pretty high risk and you know once you kill a guy you can never get a loan from him again. and maybe a little tiny itsy bitsy weensy ickle part of frank just doesn't want to do murder because it's murder. so for once in his pathetic little loser life he puts up a fight, kind of, and argues with terry that all that isn't necessary and it's possible to unlawfully secure a ship through other means. and he actually manages to not back down about it until terry gets too annoyed to keep the discussion going, and because he's already piss sloshed and frank is the only man he's spoken to outside of work in like twenty years, terry doesn't kick the shit out of him for being an annoying pansy or whatever and instead makes a bet with him that terry will get a ship his way and frank's way will fail. they obviously don't have any fucking money or literally anything the fuck else because they are fucking whalers, and anyway it's more to their style to bet years of service on the other's ship instead. so if frank fails to take over his ship, he and his family will be indebted to terry instead. and if terry fails to take over his ship (or doesn't have enough survivors left to sail it back), he and his family will be indebted to frank.

unfortunately, they both successfully mutiny and take control of their respective ships, so the wager is void. frank doesn't press the issue for real but he constantly bitches and moans that technically he didn't lose so terry owes him. terry makes it Well Known that if he ever runs into frank off neutral grounds and not on a job he will kill him extremely dead since, you know, technically he didn't lose so frank owes him.

anyway fast forward. the milkoviches and the gallaghers both become Big Name pirates. they make port at the same place and frequent the same bar and do business with each other, but they are ENEMIES. (i think i like port royal for this, because it was not quite as definitively a pirate port for a lot of the age, so it's more believable for the bar to be neutral ground that terry would actually honor since offending the colonials that also hang out there would ruin it for everyone - and most importantly would fuck up his business in addition to putting a black mark on his reputation.)

okay so. positions. terry is the captain. they don't have a quartermaster at all because terry is a tyrant and won't allow it. mickey is the closest they've got, as the only one who is brave, angry, and informed on everything enough to occasionally challenge terry. don't get it twisted, it's definitely not often. the general rule of the ship is that everyone is subservient to terry and nobody looks out for each other in a way that might get in terry's way. but just. every now and then, mickey will make a fuss about something or redirect terry's anger (sometimes he ends up as a whipping boy in the latter case, but never intentionally. yet! ☝️). mandy is also brave and angry enough to challenge terry, and she does sometimes, but she's at an extra disadvantage because she is not informed or (pseudo-)respected like mickey is. yet.

his official position is bosun, but really mickey is a jack of all trades. he does a little bit of everything, and is the understood second in command despite terry not allowing for a real quartermaster or first mate. mickey keeps the inventory, ensures that everyone gets their correct percentage of rations and loot shares, assigns whatever duties terry couldn't be assed to, and carries out discipline for whatever offenses terry doesn't take personally (sometimes obeying terry's orders including the method/severity of the punishment, sometimes punishing someone terry said to but didn't give specifics on how so mickey can decide that for himself, and sometimes completely of his own volition; usually the latter is either for neglecting a duty, endangering one of the milkoviches in some way, or of course something mickey took personally lol). (compare to izzy hands)

iggy is the navigator/pilot, has good control of the boat, can read currents, winds, and stars, but mickey reads the maps. he's happy with this position and is one of only two brothers who never enter into the power struggle. he likes sailing, he likes the frequent semi-solitude, and he likes not having to be involved in on-ship discipline or in making any hard choices. (compare to fang)

in what i watched the other brothers really didn't have much personality so idk about them, but they each have some level of rank/leadership over the non-milkovich crew members. one is in charge of commanding the gunners, one is in charge of commanding raiders, etc. mickey will give them a general "this is what terry wants" guideline and mostly leave them to it unless what terry wants is something particularly (and needlessly) dangerous, in which case he does his best to give them more specific orders that will hopefully lose less crew without them getting pissed off he's stepping on their toes, which would of course make them make the situation worse out of spite/power display.

mandy is the cook/surgeon when terry is around, but she's a strategist and raid leader when mickey's in charge (compare to roach) - which happens because the milkoviches have a fleet, mostly just due to their reputation and the fact less established pirates and sometimes merchants will surrender once the flag goes up and bargain to be annexed into terry's command rather than slaughtered (which works maybe. 30% of the time), and terry is so power hungry and paranoid that he can't stand to let any of the other captains in the fleet actually captain one of his ships for too long at a time. he's always going from ship to ship just to undermine his captains and exert his own power over each crew, leaving mickey to head the flagship.

mickey ends up with all the responsibilities of a captain but not much respect; everyone knows he's not the real dad boss and he has to fight for every single order he gives. the real reason(s) he's the understood second in command is because 1: nobody else wants to be that close to terry (again, compare to izzy hands lol) and 2: none of his brothers are as (realistically) ambitious as he is (they want power but aren't aware of or willing to put in the work to gain/maintain it + they don't jump on opportunities as fast, etc). so nobody ever calls mickey 'captain' or 'sir' or anything else that denotes or implies a higher rank, both to keep him cut down and out of superstition that terry will somehow Know and take offense to anyone except him being given even that much authority.

and of course all of the milkoviches including mandy are general enforcers of the milkovich rule on the flagship. they all participate in mutiny-busting, routine intimidation, etc. and they all give unofficial punishments for insults or just for pissing them off. manny, who i assumed is an uncle and have no interest in being corrected on if i'm wrong, is a fence.

sveta (and yevgeny) would be included Later as a prostitute working at a brothel near port, with the same general Circumstances of Meeting mickey (and ian) as in canon, marrying mickey for financial/social status reasons while he's forced (which i kind of assume is the canonical situation since she seemed genuinely happy on their wedding day), and then the same plotline of mickey having a problem with her madame but instead of the madame turning all the girls out she gets killed by definitely mickey for sure ("i kill, you take credit." "why the fuck would you not want credit?" "don't want precedent you kill boss get promotion when i will be boss." "..." "you should be happy, this give me good reason to not kill you." "...jesus, you fit right in with this fucking family.") and svet buys the brothel property under mickey's name (since she can't legally own it herself) and becomes the new madame while he keeps pirating, so now he (and mandy) has somewhere to go separate from other milkoviches while at port where he can actually fucking relax for once in his fucking life. & ig if you really want sandy to be here she can be a fence too, but tbh if i ever do write anything in this fandom again i have no intention to include her or any other characters introduced past season four :)

on the gallagher ship frank is captain for a while, at least in name. he is usually both drunk and seasick in addition to his natural laziness and inability to work with others, so a lot of the time he doesn't even try to captain and lets fiona handle it without interference. every now and then he gets some kinda fucking bug up his ass and goes banging on about his rightful authority or whatever and sends them on some deeply stupid and pointless farce and/or will say they're doing something and then give orders that absolutely will not accomplish that thing. for a while, the gallaghers follow along with this, then they start just not obeying him/quietly belaying his orders to other crew, then they start telling him directly they're not going to do what he wants, then actively preventing him from giving orders in the first place (usually fiona locks him up, or lip knocks him out, and debbie got to knock him out once too, but if it ends up being left to ian he'll do something more creative and lowkey humiliating like shoving a gun rag into frank's mouth or dunking his head in the pickle barrel), and then finally they officially commit mutiny and kick him off the ship entirely.

the gallagher ship doesn't include any extended family. no aunt ginger, no uncle clayton, no whoever the fuck else was in there. their non-gallagher crew is all the mentioned neighbors and etc that they're friendly with in canon, minus kev and vee.

fiona is captain, lip is quartermaster, ian is navigator and he likes to correct and expand maps and has big dreams of going straight (ha ha) and becoming a chartered cartographer/expedition leader. lip and ian also lead raids. carl is the master gunner. debbie is officially bosun but has a pretty in between job. she assigns shifts and chores and supervises and all that, but she doesn't ever handle discipline, and she also does the more i guess administrative is the best way to put it quartermaster duties that lip is too bored by to do. she also is always on the up with the rumors and can typically be relied on to know who's who and where they are (*mickey mouse meme* this is a tool that will help us later).

liam is the surgeon. several non-gallagher crew members think he's a witch because he is way ahead of his time wrt medicine (simply because he treats based on evidence lol) and because he so very rarely talks. he has no strong opinion on this perception as it usually doesn't interfere with his ability to do his job and often keeps strangers from approaching him uninvited (the boy. is autismal. and also has selective mutism. which really should be called something else by now but i digress).

ian knows all the myths and legends, though he doesn't really believe any of them, and frequently regales the crew with them. lip doesn't really like the stories because he suffers from a whimsy deficiency, but when he has the patience for it he'll back ian up on the lute (Later, mickey will play for ian too, or sometimes for his girls to sing/dance to).

so the milkoviches and the gallaghers both use port royal as their port of call, and they both spend a lot of time in kev and vee's bar. kev and vee are personal friends with the gallaghers, but as said their bar is neutral ground so they keep civil relationships with literally anyone who abides by that neutrality, including the milkoviches, other pirates, merchants, fishers, pirate hunters, naval officers, natives, colonials, anyone as long as they pay their tab and don't cause trouble.

sheila and karen are merchant class but seem like gentry to ex-whalers, especially since actual gentry nearly never deign to go somewhere so close to the docks, and even tho technically after a while being quite successful pirates they are richer in terms of material wealth (but still not in social wealth). karen loves to come to the bar whenever she hears pirates are in town. she loves the thrill of the baddest boy a bad boy can be (and also the thrill of bad girls who are proud about it), and she loves the attention she can get when she dresses up in something classy just to go slum it with a bunch of society-fringe sailors. lip is her favorite, sure, but he gets it in his head that she's his shore wife or whatever and that she'll eventually tearfully beg him to retire and stay on land with her (extremely loud buzzer noise).

jimmysteve is a fence. and a drug runner. and a semi-pro snitch. he (in some ways, much like frank) thinks he is much cleverer than he really is and that he can play multiple sides at whim. he gets himself in trouble with the pirates for breaking neutrality, and gets himself in trouble with more than one royal navy for thinking he could snitch but only when he felt like it lmao. he somehow always manages to weasel his way out of trouble and back into good graces (again, much like frank, except frank gets his hundredth chances through pity or trickery and jimmysteve mostly just uses daddy's name and plantation money).

kash and linda are also merchant class and have a little curio shop and bakery. ian likes to do basically the opposite of karen and 'sneak' away from the lowbrow area of town that caters to sailors to shock and impress all the not-poors with how Just Like Them he is, which is how they meet and start hooking up.

but of course it IS a romcom about self actualization and. you know. comedic romance. so the Main Plot is actually just gallavich and not as much of an ensemble here.

the Plot in question happens because mandy gets sick of shit and decides she wants to just fuck off. she just has to figure out where to fucking go instead. she doesn't want to just run away. she doesn't want to be alone. the gallaghers just kind of seem like the only real choice. she knows them by reputation to be damn good pirates but as kind and generous as pirates can reasonably be. they don't torture, they don't rape, they don't hurt young kids or pregnant people, they don't kill unnecessarily (and yet all of them are still alive, so like. for Real they must be fucking good pirates), etc. she figures if she seduces one of them on the last night of their leave, they'll take her back to their ship to fuck her and then in the morning the chaos of making way will make them forget to make sure she disembarks.

she picks ian because fiona is busy with jimmysteve, lip is busy with karen, and the other three are too young for her. and also. she thinks ian is cute, and she's seen him act like a whole gentleman with her own eyes more than once. she like. actually kind of wants him. and he's sitting alone. so she goes over. at first he seems into it. he's not intimidated by her even though she knows he knows who she is. he listens to her when she talks and has relevant things to say. he's funny. he's charming. he doesn't treat her like a whore. it takes like half an hour before mandy's goal has changed from "seduce him to get onto his ship" to "fuck him so much forever and maybe have an epic romance or something". but of course when she starts really putting the moves on, he just flat out rejects her. he does it gently, but still. just a straight-up full-stop no.

so then. mandy's plan changes to "get mickey pissed off enough at this guy that he ends the stalemate and kills his whole family and then convince him to give the damn ship to her". and well, the best way to do that is to make mickey think ian hurt her (which also will later provide them all an excuse to give terry as to why they blew up his legendary status's structural support rivalry from his backstory - they started it).

so she makes a scene in the bar, and she uses some very skillful body work to make ian look like he's aggressing her - which only works on him despite him also being very skilled in that area and usually very tactically observant because he's unnerved to have been hit on so boldly by a woman.

as it happens, at least two of her brothers (notably NOT mickey himself) are in the bar when she does this, and she kind of thought that would be enough to at least start a fight if not the war she's planning to work them up to. but. they don't really do anything. maybe they cuss at ian or throw something at him or whatever to warn him off or let him know it's time to leave if he knows what's good for him, but like. they don't even get up. so now mandy is humiliated from being rejected by ian AND humiliated to have made a scene, to have publicly positioned herself as a victim, and nobody caring enough to put down their fucking grog.

so now she really doesn't know what to do. she's upset, she's embarrassed, she doesn't want to go back to her own ship almost doubly as much as when she sat down at ian's table. in the end, mandy makes it onto the gallagher ship regardless, by stowing away. she does recognize that it's their ship when she carefully tucks herself away in the farthest corner of the hold, but really... where else could she go? on any other ship she'll be treated even worse than on her own, at least in a day-to-day sense, and that's only if she manages to convince someone else to take a woman crew member in the first place. and if she's caught as a stowaway, which she inevitably will, any other crew would put her to death. when she's caught on the gallagher ship they might whip her and put her in the brig, but they won't hang her or toss her overboard, and she thinks she can probably plead her case to them given enough time. she'll just have to try to stay hidden until they're well out to sea to buy that time in distance back to port.

the only problem with this is that terry is off on another ship just now, and mickey is in charge-ish. and unlike terry, or even like some of the other brothers, mickey 1: notices when mandy doesn't board and 2: cares. he makes them wait for her, getting increasingly pissed off until he seems almost as scary as terry, until finally one of the brothers who was there steps forward to fearfully admit he saw ian gallagher mess with her.

first, mickey punishes that guy. he gives up the other brother who was there pretty easily, so mickey punishes that one too. they are both expecting a terry-level It's Personal punishment - everyone knows mandy is mickey's favorite - but it's not even quiiiiiite on the level of a mickey-level It's Personal punishment. he's not holding back on purpose, and he absolutely is taking this so fucking personally, but. they're family too. he wouldn't torture them unless they tortured him first. or made too credible of a threat that they were going to.

anyway, when that's done mickey immediately assumes ian has kidnapped mandy and is certainly forcing himself on her at this very moment, or else he murdered her for bruising his ego last night and mutilated her body so no one would know to tell mickey someone needed to be return-killed. so uh. well. mickey is officially pissed off enough that he orders the ship off course to hunt down and kill ian's whole family. and for once he's not contested on it, even though it's against terry's preceding orders, because first of all. he is so so evil right now and no one wants to breathe too loudly at him, let alone argue. and also secondly... mandy's family. none of them would want her dead unless she killed them first.

so the milkovich flagship hunts down the gallaghers, and they make no secret of it. terry catches wind, but the teller includes mandy's presumed fate at ian's hands, so he's pissed at being disobeyed and double pissed at mickey for daring to take initiative, but he approves of the reasoning enough that he decides not to catch up with them and crush them back underneath his thumb until after they've razed every last gallagher from the earth. insert atla book one style imminent redemption arc anti-villain misadventures here (perhaps even complete with manny purposely giving mick bad intel to keep him sailing around in circles lmfao).

meanwhile. mandy gets caught as a stowaway. luckily, it's ian who finds her. like in canon, he impulsively confesses that he's gay - or whatever euphemism or obsolete term they were using for that back then - and asks her to pretty please call her brothers off. mandy, having been hiding in the bowels of a ship at sea in the 18th century, had no idea that her brothers were on. whoops! together, she and ian explain a severely abridged version of what happened to fiona and convince her to let the milkovich flagship catch up to them. mandy swears up and down that her brothers won't sink the ship while she's on it, and she can convince mickey to board so she can explain before leaving the gallaghers without her presence's protection. (fiona had never had any personal beef with any of the milkoviches, beyond just thinking poorly of them as people as a whole and having a particular distaste for many of terry's best known atrocities, but now mandy is definitely on her shit list and mickey is on the thinnest of thin ice.)

so the milkoviches catch up to the gallaghers. they do some damage to the ship before they notice mandy on deck, but it's just warning shots anyway. they had every intention of exploding them into a billion pieces, but a warning shot is just the proper thing - even if you've got no plans to accept a surrender or give any time for return fire before you obliterate them into viscera and sawdust. but then it turns out mandy is right, and mickey orders an immediate (slightly panicked) ceasefire, and thoughtlessly boards when mandy asks him to even though that's objectively tactically very stupid.

as privately agreed, mandy tells mickey it was a misunderstanding. that ian hadn't actually menaced her. he'd just been clumsy with his words and actions and she'd taken offense, but he'd apologized and then she perfectly willingly went back to his berth with him where they spent the whole night thoroughly and consensually enjoying each other's company. they simply slept through the morning bells, and by the time they did wake up it would have been such a horrible inconvenience to take mandy back to port, and she'd figured mickey would have left without her by then anyway. she didn't realize it would cause such a hubub, and btw she and ian are courting now.

mickey is pissed obviously - not least because now he's going to have to face biblically apocalyptic wrath from terry - but mandy is really really his favorite, and he's relieved she's okay, and maybe he's a little bit relieved he doesn't actually have to vaporize like twenty people too but that is for absolutely fucking nobody to know up to and including mickey himself fuck you very much. so all she gets is the milkovich pirate captain version of Go To Your Room Right Now Young Lady. she is unconcerned, and offers her hand to ian so he can make a small production of gallantly kissing the back of it before she goes over the gangway.

mickey stays just long enough to give ian the milkovich pirate captain version of a shovel talk, which involves a lot of disturbing kraken imagery (it's kind of homoerotic too, but surely that doesn't mean anything haha. unless...). for some totally unknowable fucking reason, ian seems to be entertained by mickey's uh. way with words, more than he is threatened. at the end of mickey's speech he's even smiling. he offers a reasonably chilling rejoinder, and then fucking bows like he's some kind of bougie rich fuck seeing a guest out of his big bougie fucking house. fucking... dickhead. fuck.

anyway so yeah. it's so over for mickey. cooked! and soon to be stuffed and basted ;)

[freyadragonlord]

Was Chuuya chosen for Project Arahabaki because of N’s personal grudge? A Stormbringer theory

One thing I find very interesting about Stormbringer is that there are a lot of elements in the novel that are left ambiguous, or that are only mentioned briefly, but if you start putting them together you can draw a possibly really interesting picture.

And my favourite interpretation for that picture has to do with the reason why Chuuya, specifically, was chosen for that experiment, and how it is very plausible it wasn’t a random pick.

For this theory, I am going to work on the assumption that Chuuya is the original and not the clone (this is after all heavily implied in the epilogue), but even if he wasn’t, the existence of the original human child that was cloned was also confirmed in the epilogue, so this would be applicable to him instead.

Let’s start with this thought:

Why, in a country where the War has left countless orphans, would the military pick one of the only characters confirmed to have parents in all of BSD?

They could have grabbed any random kid from the streets or an orphanage, after all. We know for a fact that the Director of Atsushi’s orphanage was quite happy to lend kids to random guys who wanted to experiment on them. It would have been easy.

Instead, they picked Chuuya. Wasn’t that risky, especially since we know that both of his parents were quite powerful and influential?

It’s an odd choice.

Let’s look at some possible clues that are explicitly stated in the text:

The picture that the Flags give to Chuuya in the first chapter, the one with him as a child next to N, was found when they were investigating Chuuya’s pre-experiment life. The photo is taken at a beach, near an old farming village that is now abandoned, and in a town nearby Doc found the medical records proving Chuuya’s human existence before he was taken by the government.

In the epilogue, we learn that Chuuya’s father is a now a simple doctor, but he was once in the military, and “not someone who could be taken lightly”.

The first fact is interesting enough on its own. If the photo was taken in the village where Chuuya was born, why is N there? Did he stop to take it on his way out from the kidnapping, as a fun memento? That doesn’t seem very likely.

And if we then consider the fact that Chuuya’s father was a military officer with medical background, just like N, a natural conclusion would be that N and Chuuya’s father were colleagues.

No, more than colleagues.

Would you invite a random colleague to your home and let your 5 years old kid take a picture with him?

They were probably friends.

But how do you end up performing horrible experiments on your friend’s child?

The novel tells us nothing about the circumstances of that kidnapping; we only know that as far as the world knows, the child has passed away. Maybe Chuuya got sick or injured, had to be taken to a hospital where it would be easy for a government agent to snatch him. Maybe he got lost near the sea, and believed to have drowned. Maybe there was an airstrike from a foreign country, there was a war going on…

We will never know the details. But N was not quite sane after all, he claims to be solely dedicated to his science, so it is possible that he just saw the opportunity and took it, no logical reasoning needed.

However, I don’t believe N to be as emotionally detached as he wants to appear.

Insane, sure, you have to be to do the things he did, but he’s also extremely prideful. He lied about his own work to make it look so he created Chuuya’s body and mind, and then he gave Chuuya his own last name, signing his “scientific masterpiece”.

He also waited for the perfect opportunity to take revenge on Verlaine for killing his brother, even though that resulted in his own death.

And this is why my theory is that he chose Chuuya as his lab rat out of some grudge against his friend.

What that grudge would be, we can only speculate. Maybe it was envy for his colleague’s achievements, maybe something else entirely, there’s a lot of room to make up our own headcanons and interpretation.

(There is another possible hypothesis, which is that Chuuya’s parents were equally insane and they willingly gave their own kid to the government to be used as a weapon for the War. There’s however no hint of this madness in the brief scene that we see them, so it’s up to each of us to imagine if this is a plausible interpretation or not)

Anyways, that’s my thoughts on this subject, let me know what you think if you want!

I believe that many things in Stormbringer were left vague on purpose, but that’s why it is fun to try and look at it and come up with our own theories.

[mommyashtoreth]

TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR FIC PRETTYPLEASE (holds bowl out like a starving orphan) 🥺

YAYYYY okay I'm gonna like. dump a whole bunch of stuff that bestie @blackmarketjoy and I have been thinking about and working on and stick it under the cut BUT a little amuse-bouche: I'm currently workshopping a goodomens fan-minisode fic Thing that's set in the 1910s where Crowley is disguised as a live-in maid tempting Some Rich Guy into greed and financial ruin with her demonic wiles and sexy ankles, and Aziraphale is disguised as a war nurse who's been quartered in the same Fancy Rich House with some wounded soldiers under her care because you could just do that sort of thing back then. It's a liiiittle Nanny Ashtoreth/Brother Francis-esque but not quite as pre-planned. Okay that's enough to get you goin here's all the extra nonsense (as Aziraphale and Crowley are both presenting as women in this Thing, she/her pronouns will be used for both throughout):

This whole concept actually originated from a DREAM I had that included Crowley in a vintage nurse's uniform because if I am known for anything it is my ability to be happy, big, and sexually normal. My friend Mifs then was like Oh what if Aziraphale was in a vintage maid uniform lol and that festered in my mind for a while. We ended up switching the roles around because it makes more sense with the timeline (since Az would have her bookshop by this time period and typically isn't wont to leave it for too long unless there's an extenuating circumstance) and is generally more in-character for Aziraphale to have the Helping People role.

As I've said before on this blog, I think it's Easy and therefore boring to reduce Crowley's skill of "temptation" to something purely sexual, especially when she's in girlmode. This isn't to say she's completely nonsexual in this fic thing, it's more fun for me if she isn't, but she's not specifically aiming to, idk, "inspire lust" or whatever. She's merely, idk, convincing this Rich Guy to make extremely bad investments while sitting in his lap or something, AND to reveal how much of an asshole this guy is. I don't know what the hell people invested in in the 1910s but I'm sure she'd pick something absolutely disastrous. Maybe she knew about the upcoming Great Depression

Meanwhile I think Aziraphale is here by complete accident, mostly bc I think it's funny when the universe pushes them together. Also because I'm imagining some sort of "Ugh, you again. What are YOU doing here?" "ME? I'm saving LIVES. I should be asking what YOU'RE doing here, foul serpent" interaction and I love it when women argue because they want to fuck each other

This whole thing is set during the winter because that gives Lots and lots and lots of opportunities for huddling for warmth, hand-holding, dramatic fireplace lighting, etc.

^ Related to huddling for warmth, I think Aziraphale (a little bit too excitedly) offers to room up with Crowley in idk, The Help's Quarters or whatever and they end up sharing a bedroom. Hayden idk if I've told u this but in the book Crowley sleeps despite not needing to (I don't Think this is ever mentioned in the show but like if a book thing isn't directly contrasted by a show thing it's canon to me) while Aziraphale doesn't, so I'm kinda just imagining Az spends all night reading while Crowley sleeps. But since it's cold as fuck Az eventually starts to like. read in bed under the covers while Crowley spoons her "for warmth." Also I know they don't Need light to see but I keep imagining Az summoning some kind of Holy Light to read by (maybe it's just one of the little human preferences they develop over time) and Crowley bitching about how bright it is and kinda pushing her face into Az's neck or shoulder "to cover her eyes." Yuri

Going back to some of the Rich Asshole Guy stuff. I think he's like, creepy and pervy and does a lot of Leering at both Az and Crowley, but is especially bad with Crowley since like "she's leading him on" or whatever. Both the Job minisode and the Edinburgh minisode can pretty easily be described as including some kind of "lesson" (almost always for Aziraphale) and I think it'd be fun to do a version of that where unfairly GOOD things (material wealth) are given to a BAD person, rather than the standard opposite. Ultimately the story would end with Rich Asshole Guy making some kind of unwanted advance and Crowley, having successfully driven him to ruin via his own greed, takes off her glasses and shows her eyes (I imagine he's asked her repeatedly to show her eyes, yknow in a You'd Be Prettier If You Smiled sort of way) and hisses and etc., Putting The Fear Of God in him before she and Az leave. Az could, idk, smite the guy or something too he'd deserve it

I think Az is like veeeery repressed sexually, somehow even moreso in girlmode than she is in guymode, and since Crowley is being Vaguely Sexy it's just the perfect yuri storm. Hayden u already saw the snippet I wrote about this but I'll recount it here anyway: Az pulls some like weird pseudo-victim blamey stuff on Crowley like "I don't know why you're surprised that he tries to look up your skirt, I don't know what you expected, pulling it up that high" bc she's working thru some stuff okay and that's the only way she can process the fact that she notices how much leg Crowley is showing at any given time. She knows better obviously and will admit as much it's just that divinity is a performance, yknow, and she's still trying to pretend to be dedicated to that.

IIIII keep imagining something with like Az smuggling human food and Crowley smuggling human alcohol and they have a little yuri dinner in like the courtyard or something, and Crowley gets to tease Aziraphale for stealing. And then Mifs added onto it this is All their ideas but it's really good so I'm paraphrasing it here: 1) Aziraphale gets sick of eating shitty watery period-accurate Soup For The Poor and decides to finally do something about it 2) since Crowley is a maid she'd have more access to the kitchen and leftover food and etc and since Aziraphale is a nurse she'd have more access to idk wherever rich people put alcohol because it's the 1910s and medicine is fake. So it's like them stealing bits and pieces away for each other yknow... themes

I think Some Rich Guy (who needs a name I'm very open to name ideas for all these side characters) should have kids so Crowley can kinda subtly turn them against him because idk, "honor your father and mother" is a Commandment and all that and therefore not doing so is A Sin even if your dad's a dick (Aziraphale can have a little Moment about this, I love putting her through Moments). I'm imagining this less in like a proactive Nanny Ashtoreth way (Hayden I know u haven't seen the show but Crowley's purpose as Nanny Ashtoreth is to instill as much evil into the child they believe is the antichrist as possible) and more in a "purposefully turning a blind eye and letting kids 'misbehave'" sort of way.

"Why doesn't Aziraphale just miracle her soldiers' wounds better" because she wants to spend as much time with Crowley as possible and she's enjoying the maid/nurse roleplay. Obviously. (When Crowley asks her about this she lies through her teeth, of course)

Another idea from Mifs I'm just gonna stick in here: Az has some kind of crisis because one of her soldiers is getting worse and Crowley has to calm her down about it. Shoulder grabbing, face grabbing, eye contact, hand-holding, etc. Very very psychosexual for them both. Also Crowley ends up doing something to help the dying guy, filling her Niceys quota for the minisode (but she's NOT nice! She's mean and she means it!)

OH working title for this courtesy of Mifs is "Of Lace and Lacerations" which I LOVE. Currently the Google doc I write all my ideas on is called "you like kissing girls don't you"

Idk how explicitly romantic (and possibly even sexual) this Thing is going to be, like the romantic tension is obviously obviously there but idk if there'll be kissing. I need to think on how "canon-compliant" I want this all to be (as romantic tension is very canon-compliant but explicit kissing and etc. is not so much). I've been thinking about a bonus feature at the end that's just nasty woman sex so stay tuned for that

And uhhh I think that's it! This is Way longer than I expected lmao but hopefully u enjoy it Hayden ily <3<3 and hopefully some other people enjoy this too! I'm very excited about how this has been shaping up so far and I really hope to write a real actual long-ish thing. This has been a really good exercise for me in story development, I think having the minisode structure to work within helps my ideas fall into place so much more easily (since I usually have a ton of problems with structure). Goodomens yuri forever I'm giving us the yuri minisode we never fucking got

[thevalleyisjolly]

I think regardless of whether Norman Takamori was a “real” PC or just a set up for Skip to take over, his actual story asks some interesting questions of “Do bad guys deserve to have bad things happen to them” and “Can someone be both perpetrator and victim?”  Because yeah, we all know Norman sucks.  He’s actively complicit in covering up war crimes, he’s a cruel boss to his employees, and he never really shows remorse for his actions.  Does any of that mean that he deserved to be framed and scapegoated by the Brigade for an entirely separate crime?  Does any of that mean that he deserved to have his bodily autonomy violated again and again?

Norman’s story, unpleasant as the character himself is, presents a lot of difficult questions about the meaning of justice and punishment.  Are the two the same thing?  Narratively, it is so very satisfying to see terrible characters get their comeuppance.  Is it comeuppance?  Are the things which happen to Norman punishment for the bad things he did?  If someone “gets away” with one bad thing and later suffers consequences for another bad thing, does the second incident serve as punishment or justice or divine retribution for the first? 

There’s also the element of narrative - fiction is not morality, and in our own enjoyment of the story, we want to see bad people receive the punishment or consequences that we feel they deserve.  That’s not a bad thing, that’s just the basic nature of most stories!  Good deeds render desired outcomes, bad deeds render satisfying consequences, people gets their just deserts.  At the same time, fiction is also a way for us to understand our own perspectives and thinking a little better.  There’s nothing wrong with saying “I’m happy that the fictional war criminal lived a miserable life,” but there is a further opportunity to think, “What is justice to me?  What is the meaning of crime and punishment?  How do I understand the issue of deserts (what people deserve, not the arid water-less biome)?  What values and beliefs are important to me when defining these answers?”

I don’t think the actual answers to whether or not Norman the fictional character deserved all the bad things that happened to him are all that important, nor do people’s personal answers serve as an indicator of moral superiority because this is again a fictional character in a fictional story.  Rather, I’m far more interested in what Norman’s narrative asks us to think about.  What is justice?  What is punishment?  What is consequence?  Are those things one and the same, and if they’re different, how so?  What do people who do bad things deserve, and why do we think that?  How do we understand victimhood?  Again, the answers to any of these are personal and neither an indicator of moral superiority nor degeneracy - what’s valuable is the process of thinking through them.

TL;DR The story of Norman Takamori presents an opportunity to reflect on the way we each think about justice and punishment and crime.  The specific fictional circumstances of the narrative are not meant to be a one-on-one equivalent for our real-life experiences and morality.  They simply provide a starting off point to think about broader concepts of judgment and consequence by presenting them in an extreme, even ridiculous, setting, so that we start to wonder “If this is how something looks in the most outrageous scenario, I wonder what it might look like closer to home.”

[kvothbloodless]

skitter and bitch are a t4t lesbian couple but wildbow is too much of a coward to admit it

This Does sound like something id write bur i actually do think something is lost by making Taylor trans. Not like, anything Major, or that couldnt be elevated by other changes, but as is, I think such an important part of her is that her incredible sense of universal alienation is Without any justification.

Like. Shes so wholy internalized the view of herself that emma and sophia hammered into her, so internalized the fact that No One Will Ever Help Her, and this just like...isnt universally true? The Undersiders take to her right away (Bitch aside), and that was With her having the self-fulfilling belief that theres no point in reaching out because no one will ever like her. The Only reason she has the issues she did with the heroes is that Armsmaster poisoned that well, but it also serves to reinforce this belief, which gets pretty quickly dispelled (somewhat) (to the readers) once she joins the Wards.

But if shes trans, then suddenly there Is an actual reason for her to be mistrustful of strangers, for her to assume that if people really Knew Her, theyd dislike her. Because thats like, an actual valid worry in a world with widespread tranaphobia. It wouldnt in Any way reduce the bite of it, but it Would muddle the themes from stuff like Sophias bullying of her explicitly being overlooked because shes a Ward, beacuse now theres a secondary, separate motive for that. Hell it even somewhat muddles the issue of the bullying itself. Sophia targets her because shes weak and just takes it, not out of any larger beliefs. As it stands, the fact that No One steps in is entirely due to structural/cultural issues. Adding transphobia as a potential motive there sort of muddies that.

To be clear, having taylor be trans Could be amazing. All of the above arent really issues, so much as an opportunity for a new direction for themes that would need to be explored in full in order to keep the story from losing something. And having those themes Would add to the story A Lot. Worm definitely is lesser for having a central theme be the various circumstances that drive people to various moral actions and necessities, and then not exploring how specific forms of bigotry contribute to that on a wide scalw.

But like. Wildbow is too much of a coward to even leave it open to Interpretation whether either of them Might be attracted to women, so its not like id trust him to explore the themes of transness alienating you from a transphobic society, or to tie in his themes of society (and heroes) creating their own villains with that. I think he handled Averys coming out arc (and Veronas realizing who she is arc) in Pale Extremely well, but i still wouldnt trust him to write a story where "living in society while being queer" is a central theme.

That said, Rachel and Taylor would absolutrly have fucked sloppy style if Taylor had been with the undersiders longer, and Wildbow is a coward for disagreeing with this fact.

Hmm. This got away from me a bit. Anyways. Woe, long psot be upon ye

[mingos]

「 h.c. 」 ー the one about rosinante

　　　　hot take(?): doflamingo loved rosinante a lot.

　one of the few people he would have the emotional capacity to and his worldview would allow him to love, actually.

('but he was planning to sacrifice himー' we will get to that. look, it's complicated.)

to explain what i mean (& prevent from being too long) i want to invite anybody who hasn't seen this to give it a look. here, i talk in more detail about what i mean when i say doflamingo 'loves' somebody & what his limitations are as a neurodivergent person with low empathy.

maybe i'll write a separate post about his cognitive empathy (using logic to determine how someone feels) vs. his emotional empathy (the ability to resonate with someone's emotions and feel what they feel) because it's complicated, and nuanced, and all that junkーbut that's a deep dive for another day. right now let's just talk his emotional empathy.

-

　basically, his love functions differently because his empathy (a pretty key component in loving somebody) functions differently. for most people, he 'loves' in the sense he attaches himself to you because you make him feel good & feed his ego, and he wants to keep you around as a result. he recognizes that, in order to do this, he needs to provide you with things in exchange: protection, money, opportunities, etc. but he cannot connect with you on an emotional level, or at least not where it matters: empathizing with you.

　　that's for most people, though; there are some rare exceptions, and even then it's still a bit... off.

he 'empathizes' best with not just people who have experienced the same things as him, but who experienced the same thing with him. ('empathizes' in quotes because, even then, it's more him projecting how the event made him feel onto a person rather than actually knowing how they feel and it just so happens that sometimes those feelings can overlap sometimes but, eh, he's trying his best...).

he lived in garbage dumps with his four executives, he built his pirate crew up from scratch over 25-30 years, and, uh... y'knowーspent two years suffering poverty & unimaginable abuse side-by-side with his little brother. it's a circumstance that allows him to speak in detail, and commiserate, and genuinely come the closet to caring about someone's feelings that his extremely finicky brain will allow.

　but with rosinante specifically, doflamingo's capacity goes even deeper. because he, most likely, was not only the first person he developed a bond with as his brother, but he inherently places a higher social value on him because he's a celestial dragon. so, in a world of humans (people he declares himself as being socially, morally & maybe even genetically superior to) rosinante is the closest person he has to an equal, and that counts for something.

it counts for a lot, actually. it allowed rosinante to get away with a lot:

leaving for 14 years

coming back inexplicably

the frequent accidents

letting him just leave again for another 6 months & also take law

being seen as generally incompetent when doflamingo values people so long as they're useful

we also don't know the extent of how much rosinante masked his caring & compassionate side during his undercover mission before breaking away with law, but i have to assume doflamingo at the very least knew and, despite hating that side of him, overlooked it and allowed him to stay close.

i also genuinely believe vergo when he says doflamingo didn't suspect him and he accepted rosinante back with completely open arms & no strings attached. for my own portrayal of doffy, i've toyed with the idea of him being secretly a little bitter about being 'abandoned' because he's got some issues with that which may or may not have made the decision to sacrifice his brother easierーbut canonically it's probably a bit more cut & dry.

sacrificing him with the op op fruit was never the original plan. he didn't give rosinante the directive to eat it because he wanted to get rid of him for the last 4 yearsーhe wanted to sacrifice him because he was disobedient.

more than that, he wanted to sacrifice him in this specific way because it was a test to reconfirm his loyalty one last time. at the cost of his life, yes (though, all of his 'family' members are held to the same standard) but he gave rosinante something he didn't give his father or anybody else that betrayed him: an option of how he'd like to die.

'you can keep running if you want, prove to me right now you're a traitor, and i'll come & kill you myself. or you can come home & show me you're still my loyal little brother by giving your life to me. i'm giving you a choice.'

rosinante decided to run, and i have to imagine that broke doflamingo's heart a little. or, whatever what was left of it