#and down back into this rabbithole i fall

[chebepowder]

Okay Alexander the Great, calm down, you got me

[fumifooms]

Falin who cares too much and too little - analysis

Been stewing on Falin thoughts for a while, I know I have an interpetation on her that differs from many but I’m jumping into the fray. I think there’s a lot to be said about what we do see of Falin. This shorter Falin analysis I made is heavily encouraged prior reading. This analysis mainly explores her complex relationship with caring and so it’s sort of structured in two halves, with Faligon at the crux of it all.

Falin cares too little :

A lot of people assign Falin a people pleasing mindset and I… Don’t agree. We never see her care at all about people in her town or at the academy not liking her.

We do see her worrying about what people think of her… ONCE. And Laios comforted her, told her they didn’t matter and she should be proud of herself. She latched onto that hard. That’s why this scene was so important to be included during the dragon fight, relationship-defining; it’s always been them against the world. She grew to not care what others thought, to only focus on her close loved ones. No one else matters.

Laios’ words were her world. Her older brother who taught her how to feel comfortable with herself, who told her, you’re great, others are the ones in the wrong to not see that, I’ll always be with you, always be there for you. Older brother who always made great plans, who always knew more, who was better at wrestling to name the dogs, who she has always idolized. Laios who always spoke of traveling the world, to which she always said she wanted to follow. And she would, she’d follow him even if it meant leaving the academy and all she knew behind, she’d follow him to the ends of the world, and that’s what she did.

She didn’t care about showing to her classes or keeping up such appearances, she doesn’t even think of toning down her jumping into bushes when Marcille recoils, etc. She acts like an obedient pawn often, to her parent’s directives and then following Laios around no matter what he decides to do, but I don’t think the motivation is people pleasing, rather it’s being with & caring for her loved ones, and her go-with-the-flow attitude enhances the impression. Not that it’s as simple as that, mind you, but let’s talk about this for now.

Falin is perceived as selfless because we, the audience, have our perspectives revolving around the main people in her life (Laios, Marcille). They’re the ones she’s devoted to and people who care about her back a lot too, but to people like her classmates or the towspeople she probably must have seemed like someone who didn’t care about the people around her or her surroundings a lot, who just went on alone and did her own thing.

What matters to Falin? From what place does her kindness come from? Is a part of her keeping up appearances? And I think that’s the point, the horror of Faligon as well, that we can’t tell just how in control Falin the person is as the chimera (because we are shown that she’s in there, we just don’t know at what degree), that we don’t know her enough to be able to tell when she’s at her most genuine, her most raw. That even if you do settle on none of her being present as Faligon, we have to at least consider it, consider that she may be able to do something like this and have a part in it, brutal and uncaring. That even the lenses we see her through, the people who love her, may be unreliable.

And this is what’s very interesting about her too, she truly is so idealized by people around her as a saint. She’s so good and kind and caring to everyone etc etc etc. Laios, Toshiro and Marcille all see her as the paragon of goodness in the world. More cynical characters like Namari and Chilchuck have more layered opinions on her, the latter finding her somewhat unnerving because he can’t read her well. But then with that one flashback scene we see that… Her priorities are intensely focused on Laios and Marcille, she doesn’t care all that deeply about anyone other than them (+ maybe her parents). The rest of the party is in the same danger here but only Laios and Marcille who she’s speaking to get the special ,ention, and if they don’t cross her mind then of course she’d be ready to sacrifice strangers through a risky teleportation. That doesn’t make her not kind or caring!! Just that greater good isn’t exactly her priority. Any means is alright if the end result is her loved ones safe, it usually takes the form of healing and caring, but we see she’s ready to fight and make dangerous calls too. To me there’s this aspect to her that she isn’t as pure and magnanimous as everyone thinks she is, both in-world and interestingly enough meta wise as well, and there’s something interesting to that.

People pleasing implies a need to be liked, needs for the motivation to be that. A yes-man, etc. But if we analyze Falin, her general kind, smiling demeanor is more a matter of passivity I yhonk. Conflict avoidance is easier, so she’s friendly and hopefully things’ll be smooth sailing. It’s easy to be kind to classmates even if they act wary and rude if you don’t care about what they think either way. Of course she prefers good things happening to people over bad things, she is genuinely kind, but I think people tend to assign her a very grand altruistic way of life when to her the motivation is pretty self-centered. She doesn’t do what she does because she loves them, but because she loves them.

One situation that’s interesting to dig into for her way of thinking, and what I’m trying to get at, is Shuro’s proposal to her. I’ve seen people saying she hesitated because she didn’t feel comfortable saying no even though she wanted to, "I can’t say no, I don’t want to hurt him", something that sounds sensible and familiar, but it’s actually canon in the Adventurer’s Bible that the reverse was the case, that she didn’t feel comfortable saying yes. Because the offer was tempting, but it’d have been a loveless agreement on her end. And it makes sense she’d want to say yes too, like we see with the Toudens, marriage is very much a political strategical economical thing in their village, there’s even a bit on it on Laios’ Adventurer’s Bible profile about dowries, and both siblings were engaged very early. They lived poorly for a long time, it’s an enticing idea to marry rich, to have not only yours but your brother’s needs met forevermore easily, which at one point in their careers was their main worry and goal. Why shouldn’t she accept a life of leisure and wealth handed to her by a lovely friend?

So her hesitance was "yeah that’s convenient for me, but where it’s everything to him and heartfelt I’m able to be detached because I don’t care about it that much… Can I do that? I’m not reciprocating, not saying yes in the way that matters. Can I do that to him?" Very caring even though it’s not what you’d expect, isn’t it?

And central to my analysis, where I’m going with this is, I feel like that’s the thing with her character, that she doesn’t feel as strongly as she "should" sometimes, or feels a different way than she "should", or at least that she feels that way and others say she does. She didn’t mind suddenly leaving the academy, leaving Marcille behind and not seeing her for 4 years. She acted like it was no big deal that she sacrificed herself after getting resurrected after the red dragon fight. And in both those cases it upset the people around her greatly that she didn’t seem to get why it was such a big deal, didn’t seem to care about how they’d experienced her choices.

So it’s a tendency… And it’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s just that the way she measures what’s good for the ones she loves isn’t the same as what they themselves think it is (like Laios and Marcille not wanting to be apart from her). It’s an overt but quiet kind of care, it’s doing things like following them around and making sure they bathe and have a meal, even if that means she has to be dragged into misery too.

So yes she probably would know "not caring enough/the right way" is one of her perceived flaws, and that informs how she tries to handle her response to Shuro’s proposal. Her not wanting to accept like her first gut instinct, is because she’s thinking about reciprocity, about if it’d be right to go into this knowing that they have different priorities and she might not be able to keep up with the type and amount of emotions he wants/expects from her. And that’s a big part of her character isn’t it, having expectations pushed onto her. Her trying her best, but in her own way that may seem odd or even unfeeling. Not unlike when she exorcised the ghost as a kid too, unblinking and matter-of-factly, and not seeming to understand why people stared the way they did.

Even though she answered his proposal only post-canon, she’d been pondering it for a while even pre-canon and the Adventurer’s Bible explanation was released midstory, so I’m hesitant to assign her much growth about her hesitation and what I went on above, since she still didn’t react "right" with Laios after the red dragon fight (even if she apparently doesn’t remember sacrificing herself) and put herself in that situation in the first place. She hasn’t finished her arc on that flaw of hers is what I’m saying, she for sure still has it, but I certainly think her thoughts on Shuro’s proposal shows awareness, both of herself and social.

And awareness is a big analysis key word with Falin, especially here it can be hard not to conflate not caring with not knowing. How socially aware is she? It’s rather layered, because canonically she wasn’t aware of her ostracization in her hometown at all, and we’re not sure if she knew Shuro was interested in her before he proposed, but she generally seems more socially aware than Laios. She tags along on his caravan job to make sure he isn’t being mistreated (though doesn’t ask he get a salary), she catches social faux-pas more easily like in the genderbend magic mirror omake with Shuro, and interestingly enough she’s very good at empathizing with her parents and understanding their perspective. We see when she’s worried about Marcille coming that she does know about propriety and how appearances shape impressions. Being a chief’s daughter must at least have taught her a thing or two on that front.

She never stands up for herself, but when it comes to defending others she worries, strategizes and explains.

And this sort of understanding is part of why I think she’d notice the expectations pushed onto her like I was saying earlier, notice how she makes people feel when she’s careless. But if she changes anything about herself in response to noticing is for her to choose, and generally I think it’s a sort of inbetween of yes and no: that she becomes more complacent but also more reserved, complying but by hiding more of herself passively. She’s not sure wether to accept or reject Shuro’s proposal, doesn’t want to lead him on? She’ll just be taking a while to silently consider it, try to keep things as they are for the time being. The third, less conflicting option. She doesn’t feel heard by Marcille who keeps infantilizing her? Just bear with it. Retract yourself emotionally. Settle for it.

We see that when she was young she had a tendency to not read a room, and I think that’s here too. She doesn’t get why her nonchalance upset others but that doesn’t change that she doesn’t want them upset or hurt, so she tries, albeit in maybe a roundabout way. She always had a hard time deeply connecting with people, often keeping herself some amount of emotionally distant: erasing herself from the equation, from the two-way trade that relationships are and making it a onesided thing instead, where all their needs and emotions are directed towards her but she only lets out a bit of her own show. She takes everything upon her and deals with it and tries not to give others this same burden, though not on a conscious level, it’s just that she’s learned growing up that she doesn’t have much agency.

Like I went into with my analysis linked at the beginning, I think Falin is used to just taking what she can get and not asking for more, when it comes to social bonds. She’ll take spending time with her mother no matter what it is they do, she’ll follow Laios to the graveyards and stick by him even when he’s pushing her away (because he doesn’t want her borrowing his book or "No copying!" or such). Her father was always distant, cold and uncommunicative, her mother was considered sick from anxiety and the exorcism attempts were the main way they spent time together, at dinner tables there were only her and Laios. The dogs picked on her too even if she loved them— And so did the townspeople, maybe that being normal to her at home is why she didn’t notice the ostracization she suffered.

She’s always been the last to be asked about decisions or what she wants, never asked to play with at recess, neither her father or Laios asked before sending her to the academy or leaving the village. At home, in the hierarchy she was considered to be below the dogs by the dogs themselves, as someone they can disrespect. Dogs learn from example and behavior, so this means Falin must have been pushed around a lot, and that the family didn’t try hard to rectify the dogs’ misconception, likely worsened by Laios regularly wrestling with her as a competition.

So for example when Falin showed Marcille food, it was her way to implicitly ask to have lunch with her without voicing that question, without daring to take up space. Someone’s presence isn’t something you ask for, it’s something that’s bestowed upon you, you can follow them around but you can’t ask them to stay or to come with.

She’s used to her needs and wants not being listened to, so she’s learned to have less wants. Caring less about herself, caring less about other people beyond her safe zone, was a defense mechanism in part. She has a sense of learned helplessness too, like how when Marcille came to take her away from Laios, even though she didn’t want to leave with Marcille it felt so determined and unshakable to her that whatever Marcille decided Falin would have to comply with.

And still, it’s the "marrying you would be awfully convenient if it wasn’t that I’d feel guilty for not loving you back, the way you wanted me to when you proposed to me" and the "I don’t regret leaving the academy and leaving you behind without goodbyes but I’m sorry that you’re so much more upset about it than me". It’s the guilt of not loving people back the way they want to be, with the same intensity or fervor.

It’s the autism it’s the aroace of it all, it’s the emotional stunting and confusion but the pit in your stomach telling you you did something wrong again. The no object permanence even for people you love even for 4 years, it’s the feeling like you’re somehow at fault for someone having fallen for you and not knowing what to do with any of it. I’m not joking btw it isn’t uncommon for autistic people to not see their close friends for a long while, not having missed them all that much and for that to be really hurtful for the other if they notice/ask about it. "Hiii bestie! Oh umm you’re uh more emotional about this than I expected, hopefully you won’t feel alienated by me not feeling as intensely about it…"

So… Yeah. I think she thinks of things and relationships in a different way than most people, and beyond "good things happening to people is good" I don’t think she actually cares about people all that much. I’d argue that Laios shows more desire to connect with others and make relationships. And just like with Laios and his own issues with humans, that doesn’t mean her kindness is a lie or ungenuine or worthless! It just means that like, well it’s pretty straightforward really, she’s not all that social and doesn’t see casual bonds as meaning all that much and whatnot. She does want to see people happy, but it’s not as much like… A conviction or goal. She’s too laser focused on a select few people. "It’s not that they’re bad people, they just aren’t interested in humans."

And sometimes it feels like people get defensive about Falin in a meta way too, like if you ever so much as imply Marcille isn’t her whole world or that she isn’t the kindest soul out there then you’re saying she doesn’t care at all or she’s evil. And that’s actualy exactly the sort of vibe I wanted to get through with my analysis above here actually haha, that she does care and she is kind but it’s not in a way that’s quantified or understood in a way that makes people feel comfortable. In a way, that makes people feel insecure because they don’t have the same logic as her, don’t show love the same. And I think this is another stellar depiction of autism, of parts of it that feels unpalatable to many, if I’m making sense. The fandom idealizes her as well, which isn’t uncommon or surprising for the character embodying the trope of the perfect beloved to rescue.

And disclaimer, as I said in the tags I feel like the details of Falin are pretty vibe based when it comes to analysis, there’s absolutely a valid angle where she does super care about everyone always, feel free to disagree with me on the overarching angle of my analysis. There’s enough supporting evidence to tip the balance either way I think, and the reason I’ve chosen this angle is I feel it’s more compelling for the themes in Dunmeshi of idealization and being different, of desires vs wants, and because I think it neatly ties up Falin’s character arc as I’ll go over throughout the next section…

So.

Not feeling as much as she should. And……. Is this not Faligon pushed to the max?

You can’t tie down a dragon. As the chimera, she gets to just not care about everyone else and be on her merry way.

Part of it I think is finding comfort and freedom in the mindlessness, in not having the burden of feelings and connections and a consciousness (despite still ending up seeking those in a stranger, Thistle). Like when she’s dead in the purgatory as well, she gets to just… Hang around and do whatever. Similarly to when she played in the forest instead of going to class in her academy days. That’s what freedom and peace of mind looks like to her. Why she decides to roam post-canon, if only now with the goal to find herself instead, with her mind in tow and somewhere to go back home to.

There’s excellent analytic framing out there about how of course, Dungeon Meshi has a big theme of grief and letting go, and… Falin was always a symbol narratively, idealized by characters and often underconsidered by them despite their love. It was Falin’s choice to sacrifice herself for Laios, she thought it was worth it, knowing that it would be her end. Her resurrection and the process of it intertwining her soul with a dragon’s wasn’t done with her consent, and the subsequent opening it gave her to become a chimera puppet. She’s stripped of her agency consistently, and so… It’s very noteworthy that the final choice, of wether to go back to life or to stay dead, in that purgatory scene, was up to her. And she chooses life, but I do think about her in those fields and how at home she seemed there. Peaceful, by herself in a vast calm expanse she could explore, free.

Personally, I think freedom is Falin’s own subconscious selfish desire. And though to us becoming the chimera is obviously a shackle, I think it felt like freedom to her somewhat, too.

And if you think I’m going wildly off the rails here I want to talk about Laios’ wish of becoming a monster. And to be clear before getting into it, being mentally a monster is absolutely a big part of the appeal for Laios, it’s something that’s consistently referred to, something especially pointed out in the werewolf monster tidbit with Lycion. Right panel is from that, but left panel is from the extra with Izutsumi where Lycion talks about suppressing souls in a beastkin body, the human or the beast soul.

Finding comfort and freedom in being mindless, less sentient, less aware? While being unaware in her hometown might have saved Falin a lot of heartache although perhaps stunted her emotional growth, it’s always been Laios’ curse.

Actively, through his choices, he seeks to grow closer to people, to form deeper bonds, to understand and be undertood, but… On a deep seated level, what he desires is to leave humanity and civilization behind. He has an irrational hatred for humans, born from the trauma of ostracization, being different, being beaten up and rejected consistently through his life. Running away from problems is easier. He wants to be free from being a social animal from a social species who has deemed him the black sheep, he thinks it’d be simpler to just leave it all behind, people and his own humanity. At its core, to Laios becoming a monster is a power fantasy, a coping daydream of "if only I could be strong enough to never be hurt again, the power to destroy anything I want, the power to go somewhere better, if only it was possible for me to never feel hurt again. If only I could be someone, something, that can never be hurt". "If there’s someone you don’t like, you can gobble ‘em up in one bite. If you could fly, you’d be able to leave this village right now." It’s a childhood fantasy, from a deep sense of being misplaced and a desire to be able to stand fearless, thinly covering up resentment that Laios represses.

But you’ll notice, when the Winged Lion is enticing him in the last page, even now with his lifelong wish of becoming a monster on a silver plate, he still cares about his friends. He still has that sense of responsibility to his friends, doesn’t want to leave knowing they’ll be in danger and alone. The offer that his friends may be left unharmed is already good, but Laios also visibly flinches when the Winged Lion offers to specifically care after Marcille and rid her of her biggest fear. Laios’ care runs that deep. Not unlike with the succubus, he resists temptation until he gets reassured that everyone will be okay. But see, what he desires isn’t to stand alongside Marcille until her last days, it isn’t to stay and see how well his friends will live, it’s to go. It’s to leave. It’s to fly away, a monster both in body and mind. He wants to be free from caring here, wants to not have to worry about his friends, wants to just go do his own thing, but for that he needs to feel safe in the belief that said friends will be safe even without him being there to see it, because despite everything else he cares, he does. It’s again that dichotomy about caring and wishing you didn’t, or not caring and wishing you did.

In the end, it’s Falin who achieves that wish. Both by becoming a chimera during canon, and by going traveling post-canon. In the latter, being both free of human relationships as something chaining you while still being uplifted by them, by the knowledge that there are people out there you love and that love you. It’s a theme that can also be connected with Marcille, because she gets anxious over people she loves getting out of her sight, worrying they’ll get themselves killed, that time is passing while they’re away from her. But before she can get to the point where she can both have her freedom and being uplifted by her social bonds, regaining both her individuality and her connections, she has to get a taste of just one at a time. Before they can find balance in her life, she has to see what it’s like to have what she’s never had on its own. Unapologetic freedom, and power.

No one can blame you for not caring enough or caring right if you’re a fricking dragon!!!! You make the rules when you’re a beast and you can just… Fly away. From anywhere, from anything. And if a dog bites you you can just crush it. Instead of being pushed around by the dogs because you’re at the bottom of the hierarchy, you’re now at the top, the one with the power to be heard and do what you want without consequences.

I think she’s on autopilot. I think she’s on autopilot a lot of the time, even before being a chimera, and it’s partly why her will is so weak compared to regular dragons. (Again, read my shorter analysis.) It’s familiar to slip back into the role of following someone around unquestioningly. And that’s what is weaponized when she’s a chimera, that instinct she’s been nursing all her life to unconditionally support, defend and follow someone. Only now, that someone doesn’t matter in itself, only the symbol of it. She doesn’t mind, either way is fine. Her will is weak after all, because she’s trained it to take as little place as it could.

Falin cares too much

She spends all her time caring for Laios and Marcille alternating that none of her care and emotional energy is left for others, including herself. So she had to get relieved of all of that for a bit, becoming the chimera so she could reset and recenter and remember that she, too, indeed, is there and an important part of her own life.

So you’re probably seeing the duality I’m talking about here, Falin is very self-sacrificial but for specific people in ways that they often don’t recognize or appreciate. She cares but selectively, both in people, putting all her eggs in the same baskets, and in the ways she cares after them. She doesn’t care a lot, but when she does she cares a lot. Falin doesn't have a lot of earthly attachments, but when she does, they're her world.

In canon her arc, especially post-canon, is to grow beyond Marcille and Laios. Her caring for her close loved ones held her back from looking after her own self-fulfillment needs. And this is what I mean when I say she cares too much; she could gain from caring more about the world besides Laios and Marcille, both lands wise and people wise. She cares too little, but her arc centers her flaw around caring too much instead. Her pitfalls that Kui highlight over the course of the story, while of course her selflessness is appreciated for how she saved Laios and everyone, on a personal level is shown to be self-effacing and damaging. She’s undermined by Marcille, without the courage to voice her thoughts and wants, she would dedicate her whole life to Laios. And I mean, it’s text, in the response to Shuro’s proposal extra no less. And she’s so laser focused on her most loved people that she’s fine with being callous and risking others’ lives, even.

Post-canon, she needs to leave to find herself, away from them.

Herself. What if she wants to just be with herself for a while.

And this is me reaching but I feel like, not unlike Izutsumi who learns to feel this sense of never being alone, always having someone on your side what with having two souls, the dragon in her would make her consider herself more. She finds it easier to care after other people after all, and in the purgatory fields sequence she takes care to bring the bit of dragon left with her… Not unlike with Izutsumi, having two souls forces you to think about your identity and figure yourself out. Besides being this sort of duo now, where if she wants to care after herself she can channel it to that other side of her too… In meta dragons are symbols of greed, and I think the bit of dragon would push her to want more and listen more to her desires, primal and self-serving as they might be. The dragon soul which warped her human body with feathers and draconic features, her image of perfection marred, her weirdness externalized in a way that’s not palatable. But she doesn’t care, about if her appearance is palatable for most people, she hasn’t for a while now, and that’s great.

Notes & nuance

I’m struggling with the structure of this post, making my points organized, concise and strong at once. It’s difficult to make any statement without going "things are generally like this, but there’s this time that this contradicting thing happened too" or "it’s ambiguous enough that you should just follow my interpretation for the time of this analysis" haha, so this is the pit where I put all the stuff that wouldn’t fit well in other places but are interesting for Falin’s character. This section is pretty separate from the main thesis of the post, it’s just more Falin observations. The post has reached the 30 pics limit so I can’t just pull it up whenever it’s relevant but I really encourage scrolling up to read the stuff I highlighted in her Adventurer’s Bible profile if you haven’t already.

I think with the shy-looking loner type autistic kid archetype, and knowing she didn’t seem to mind others ostracizing her, it’s easy to lose sight of how she was by no means an unemotional child. In all the bits we see of her as a kid she’s bursting with energy and emotions. Canon confirms Laios leaving the village did affect her and make her lonely and she cried a lot, too. She may not be social in the traditional sense, but she was clingy with her brother, and she also never was all that shy about who she was, wearing her heart on her sleeve.And okay. Okay okay okay. Speaking of appearances. About what I said of her not caring about what people think of her, even seeming defiant with the caravan leader… There’s one istanxe of her caring actually, and it’s about how her face blushes easily. I remembered it as being because Laios’ said it and as I rambled Laios’ words are her world, but actually it’s ambiguous. It’s only Marcille imagining up this scenario where Laios says Falin looks weird because of it, there’s no evidence Laios said or thought that at any point. And on the other hand…

Her Adventurer’s Bible says: "5, Lovely Skin. She isn't particularly careful with it, but Falin's skin is fair and beautiful. Possibly as a result, her cheeks seem to flush easily. Marcille's always saying she's cute, and she secretly has a sizable complex about it." The phrasing makes me think the complex she has over her blushing might have developed because of Marcille more than Laios. "Marcille's always saying she's cute, and she secretly has a sizable complex about it." It could be related to how Marcille gets swept away and infantilizes her, calling her cute wanting her to wear cute feminine outfits etc. Again this feels like it relates to Falin’s struggle to be seen for who she is and what she wants to be seen as, her struggle to be recognized, having ideals and perspectives pushed onto her. Here Falin is insecure over her blushing implicitly because she doesn’t like being called cute over it, but that’s not how she wants people to see her. She doesn’t want Marcille to always see her as her 10 years old adorable friend. Like if your friend said you had puppy energy, it can be flattering, but it can also make you insecure.

Here’s a link to what I mentioned about her being uncomfortable wearing feminine outfits. It does seem to be more about comfort than the aesthetic perse, to me. Interestingly the shirt & shorts don’t seem like they show much more skin than her beach outfit, so maybe it’s more about the shirt and shorts being tight-fitting. Like the skirts and heels they feel stifling. Again a bit with themes of freedom and not wanting an aesthetic pushed onto her. So yes just to reiterate, I think this is more about self-affirmation and how her identity and self-image gets shown to others, rather than wishing to hide parts of her body like her blushing etc for people pleasing reasons. Makeup was a way for her to appear how she wants to and feel more confident. It was a way to take control over her own image. She didn’t keep doing it, the narrator stating the process to be ‘troublesome’. Ultimately she still prioritizes her comfort, and it was a lot of recurring efforts to go through.

And on the topic of appearances… A friend once asked me: "Does she really hide herself or not? I keep thinking about "falin is herself first and foremost" (in her Adventurer’s Bible profile) it’s just so. Hmmmmmmmm... I just keep seeing people say she hides her real self from people when I feel like the issue is more about her charitable traits straying too far into becoming flaws but people around her dont realize that..."

Imo the thing is, I don’t think she hides her identity, but I do think she suppresses her individuality for others’ sakes if that makes sense. In the way that only post-canon does she allows herself to go see what the world is like, but that’s not personality wise it’s needs and wants wise. And I do feel like that’s the closest interpretation of canon, she says it herself she doesn’t know what she wants because everything she’s done was always about Laios or Marcille, but she doesn’t change her demeanor or personality for others. But she *will*, like, not ask for things she wants directly, like sharing lunches with Marcille at the academy, she suppresses her wants, doesn’t ask things from people and doesn’t hope for more, hope for better. I don’t think we ever see her actively repress her personality, except like what, being more laidback than enthusiastic but I do feel like unlike Laios with her it’s less ‘appearing stoic to fit in more’ and more ‘yeah i’ll just chill until I’m needed or something activates my enthusiasm’. To which said friend quoted: "to feel like you belong you need to be useful. when you can’t be useful the next best thing is being convenient."

And speaking of passivity… I want to speculate about Shuro’s proposal some more. Shuro and her got along well though we don’t know how much, or how often they hung out, she even saved him from a nightmare. Why did she take so long answering Shuro’s proposal? Was it an effort to preserve or was she really just that conflicted? Procrastination probably yes, but what is the core motivation of itl Considering she ended up saying no to travel the world instead, I don’t think it was as simple as ‘she wanted to say yes for convenience’. Logically it’s what would have been best, but it’s not what she wanted for herself, but it was and still is hard for her to even know what she wants. Probably, since like she states it was a great offer and she doesn’t think she’ll get proposed to again, it’s that self-effacing tendency that yes it’d be convenient and logical, and that makes her want to say yes even if her spirit isn’t in it, because if it’s convenient then that’s more important than her feelings on the matter. Man also… Obviously Marcille is very vocal about how she shouldn’t get with Shuro, but imagine how Falin’s whole perspective on marriage must have felt when her only friend ever is a Romantic with a capital R who gushes about idealized romances and grand gestures and True Love and doing things with fully pure feelings all the time.

AND speaking of passivity!!! How much Falin is "there" as the chimera, just how much she’s master of her actions, is left ambiguous and intentionally so imo, but she’s for sure there & influencing the dragon’s action to some degree. Having a dragon’s foot on her in purgatory that keeps her from moving for sure visualizes how it must have been like, but there’s Falin calling out to her brother Laios, there’s the kind attentions towards Thistle that are so Falin-like, and most explicitly there’s the Adventurer’s Bible stating "Even after becoming a chimera, she has a soul that's as kind as ever", which I honestly dislike, a fantranslation puts it as "Even as the chimera, her caring nature remains" and either way to me it feels like confirmation that it’s her giving those berries to Thistle. Now, wether or not she has the mental capacity of a chicken or something closer to human Falin, no clue, there has to at least be some kind of mind bond between monsters and the dungeon lord, compelling or forcing them to go along with orders, or calling her to him in distress like with the fight on the first floor. But yes, it’s interesting to wonder what it is that a Falin, with her kind soul but without her human mind, would willingly do. On her profile, she’s described as Thistle’s guardian and servant. The power dynamic between the two are very interesting, I already went into how it might have felt like freedom to her while being fake so I’ll reign myself in and just mention it again. She’s still at the heel of someone, only now it’s someone who doesn’t care about her back. Going from being cared for so strongly that it’s suffocating and they would defy death and the world for you, to being devoted to someone who has not one feeling about you besides your utility as a paw . She has all this care to give and to focus onto others and he has none to send back to her and I think that’s part of it. In a way, being left with only her own feelings and a void, without expectations or feelings or ideals pushed onto her, it might have been soothing in itself, and eye opening. But yes the way I think of it, her care for Thistle isn’t unlike the care she gives the ghosts.

Interestingly, the care she extends for the ghosts is sending their soul to a peaceful death, freeing them, of life and any earthly attachment. Take that as you will with the themes of freedom and burden of life and mind, immortality and becoming a warped version of who you were, and such and such.

But going back on the topic of connections and bonds for a bit, I think academy days Falin & Marcille is super interesting bc we’ve never really see Falin form a connection besides with Marcille and even that is kept pretty ambiguous. When was the point that Falin started seeing Marcille as a friend and seeking her out? When was the "I’ll lay down my life for you" point? I’m so fascinated by how she wanted to share lunches with Marcille but never truly asked, only made little "hey want this? I found it isn’t it cool?" gestures of showing things to her… It’s the only way she knows to ask, or maybe it’s the only way she feels comfortable to. In all the scenes of young Falin and Marcille Falin seems comfortable in her friendship with Marcille, but at the same time… I think we see Falin at her most insecure around Marcille, because she really does care about Marcille and what she thinks of her so much, and while Marcille is a bit of an unstoppable force tornado style (affectionate) Falin is something of a doormat. I’d usually say showing her berries was her earnest way to connect and be like "Hey bestie look at this! :]" , but there’s a real possibility that she was self-conscious and holding herself back.

Friendship and Marcille! Involving Laios into this too but, again with the autism thing of not showing you care in ways that others understand, Marcille being very overtly affectionate and clingy was so so soo important… Marcille keeping on hanging out with Falin and caring after her, and being undeterred/unbothered by Falin not always seeming like she cares all that much back in the conventional way, as in Falin acts nonchalant and a bit like she didn’t mind wether she was there with her or not during her outings to the cave dungeon. Caring and being clingy and so affectionate despite that in such a classic Marcille way is soo needed, because so often people will get discouraged by say, their friend not keeping in contact regularly/well, seeming disaffected or as happy-go-lucky as ever even if you haven’t seen each other in a while or when they’re alone, and yes there’s potential for a strong friendship there but someone like Falin won’t be committed enough to reciprocating attention the same way… I hope I’m making sense but yes this angle in particular strongly correlates to autism. And the way Marcille always initiates physical affection, both Toudens being awkward about initiating touch because they don’t know if that’s allowed, if they’re going about the social interaction the right way, if they’re allowed to ask that out of someone…

Another fun observation to make is about the 4 years Falin and Marcille spent apart. Marcille despite being of a long-lived race treated these 4 years of separation with more gravity than Falin did. Falin brushed it off very dismissively to say the least. But then you remember that the amount of time Falin and Laios didn’t see each other after he left the village was 8 years. Double the years, double the time. And that reminder makes Falin’s actions so starkingly understandable. Of course she wouldn’t see 4 years of separation as a long time if 8 years of separation with her beloved brother is her point of comparison. Of course she’d see it as worth it to leave Marcille for 4 years if it meant ending those 8 years instead, especially if she was worried about him (the reason why she followed him into his caravan job).

A friend always says that while Falin is the center of Marcille’s world, Laios’ is at the center of Falin’s, and I tend to agree.

It’s fun to think of how her career dreams had always been shaped by Laios, even when they were kids. Of course there’s how traveling the world began as a dream they talked about and shared, but there’s how he reassures her by listing cool jobs she could do like traveling exorcist, etc. And then of course, she gave up on her magic academy and career path to follow him and do odd jobs, etc etc.

I should go into the violence of Faligon more tbh, because I think there’s an interesting parallel to how she has no problem wacking things with a mace, wether a ghost when she was a kid or a walking mushroom as an adult. Something that often surprises fans when they remember, I don’t really want to get into the whole " Falin hates violence and hates seeing people in pain to an intense degree. ‘If you die do it somewhere where I can’t see’ style’ interpretation, it has some weight but on the whole I don’t vibe with the theory she has a particular aversion to violence, she seems to be fine resorting to it as much as any other adventurer as long as it isn’t needlessly against ghosts. And Falin’s sudden mace hits are fun to me too because it’s not her becoming a berserker when the need arises as much as her becoming active because something she cares about is threatened, and that brings her out of her passivity from 99% of the rest of the time. Thistle included. Falin always could be violent, she just dislikes senseless carnage. The Shuro party vs chimera fight is a bit ambiguous on it, because you can argue she only attached after being provoked, presumably offscreen as well while the ninjas went off to fight the harpies. Falin becomes the most active when she needs to protect someone, she has no qualms doing whatever’s needed for that, wether it be leaving the academy & Marcille without notice no matter the consequences or what her parents think, or teleporting the party, etc.

I’m working on a post specifically pointing out all the differences between Falin and Laios, but yes I think both of them selfishly desire freedom in different yet similar ways. Falin’s dark secret is "Ethics and risks are optional if it means I can protect those I love" like the teleportation, and Laios’ is "Ethics and risks are optional if I can be free of all this bullshit" aka humanity aka his wish with the winged lion.

Conclusion

Flighted birds have hollow bones. With freedom and wings there comes risks and sacrifices.

Tldr: Falin doesn’t care all that much, she’s very go with the flow. For example if someone hates her she doesn’t really care because that’d require her caring about what they think of her in the first place, and she only cares about her loved ones. She smiles, but it’s more a state of being rather than out of active goodness: she’s canonically very genuinely kind, but it’s more out of a general want for pleasantness than active care itself. She’s passive, and softspoken because that’s just how she seems, but she has no problem hopping into bushes or getting heated if something calls to her enthusiasm or calls for action and a hit of the ol’ mace. Her loved ones needing tending or protective is what makes her go from passive to active. That familiar autopilot mode of making someone the center of her world and following their every move is what made her so easy to be controlled as the chimera, even ferociously defending him with her life. Faligon is most interesting to me with the theme of freedom. She’s shackled to Thistle and out of her mind, but there’s also a sense of empowerment and freedom from expectations and society. She spends all her time caring for Laios and Marcille alternating that none of her care and emotional energy is left for others, including herself. So she had to get relieved of all of that for a bit, becoming the chimera so she could reset and recenter and remember that she, too, indeed, is there and an important part of her own life. There’s a way of caring after others that can be selfish, not unlike Marcille being overly coddling and not listening to Falin. In Falin’s case, I think it was so selfless that it ended up looping back around to erasing her sense of self. In losing sight of herself, that devotion becoming neither quite selfish or selfless but a fact of life and a state of nature, muddled by its lack of direction.

She’s sooo used to never being able to ask things out of others, you get the crumbs of affection and approval that others offer to you unprompted and that’s it don’t hope for more don’t ask for more. (Also reflected in how she follows her loved ones around without complain or personal opinions and how she’s not willing to rock the boat and affirm herself in her relationships like with Marcille during canon)

Falin cares so much, so much and so laser focused on her few loved ones that it blinds her and she loses sight of everything else, she ends up neglecting herself and the rest of the world. As Kui puts it, Falin is herself first and foremost. She just had to remember the importance of that.

-

I see her as an enneagram 9, which can be surprisingly accurate and fun to research through the lense of Falin. Excerpt below from this book, but like my god, good way to put it

That’s it, ty for reading. Even if it’s a bit of a mess, hopefully you’ll have gained a thing or two from it. Falin is a character hard to pin down, but it is very gratifying when you find the way that the puzzle pieces fit together right for your own understanding of the story. Fantranslation of the shuro proposal comic by @/thatsmimi here.

Here’s my spotify playlist for her if you’d like

Sometimes love is about letting go, a lesson a lot of the cast needed to learn. Self-love’s important too, and just like with diets we need a healthy balance.

[cptnghoulowl]

It was in this moment Reki knew... he was very gay for one Langa Hassgawa

(fr I wish this had happened Fuck you Adam)

The end of ep 11 except Joe doesn’t stop Adam and Langa is.. less polite

∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

[alongtidesoflight]

.

[whimsicalcotton]

help i've gotten invested in another mspfa comic

[wis-art]

The worst period of my life was when I was a self hating teenager in denial about being transgender. I grew up in a deeply abusive household and my father expected me to be his manly son and I tried to conform despite it driving me insane, I fell down many nasty rabbitholes because of my insecurities rooted in deep hatred of my body and deep hatred of what I should be, I have always felt uneasy looking at men in cartoons and movies thinking to myself how much I don't want to become that, always envying the girls and always dreaming about waking up as a girl. This all lead me online because I felt so isolated from the world and I couldn't relate to anybody. Of course an unmedicated self hating teenager, with grand delusions about being god's little special soldier, seeking ANY validation is bound to fall into some horrible places, i am one of the victims of the alt right pipeline, and it did drive me into suicidal spirals many times over how much I hated myself for being transgender. Eventually I snapped out of it and grew out of it but the taste in my mouth of ever associating myself with that kind of community is really disgusting and never seems to wash off from my tongue, which I suppose is good since I never want to be back there mentally. I despise the right wingers, seeing and experiencing their beliefs first hand, it's all just driven by hate and insecurity, the only reason why it's so popular is because these people prey on lack of knowledge and insecurity of any kind, offering easy solutions and quick fixes, putting an easy target to direct your hate towards just to deflect the hate away from yourself. It is not a valid or real solution or even political ideology, it's a grift and a worldview sold to people who know their future is uncertain, it's harnessing the societal instability and crisis for political and financial gain, and I was a sucker for it in my teenage years for which I apologize. Nowadays I am unapologetically a leftist, with flaws and gaps in knowledge, like any other human on this earth but fundamentally different and changed from when I was a kid, and I am proud of myself and I am proud to be the bad transgender bitch that I am. It took so much effort, medicine, therapy, help from my family, help from my friends for me to realize that I was wrong and that I need to change. I did not do it alone. And I'm glad I did it, and I'm happy to ve fortunate enough to receive help and support despite being a toxic unpleasant person to be around. All so I can just be Wis in peace a weird transgender woman on the internet, drawing trans women who despise the fascists and nazis. It's also why I so deeply believe in people changing and why I am so adamantly against harassing people for their mistakes for years, it just doesn't help, all it does is makes one ashamed and all shame does is drive one further into the abyss of self hatred. As corny as it sounds love has saved me and it is love and patience that helps people change

[deadtired-highkeyenergetic]

Nightmares

The start of my Astarion rabbithole begins here...

Summary: You can't sleep without Astarion. Even still, nightmares continue to haunt you but Astarion vows to do all he can to ease your pain.

“Yes darling?” Astarion asks the moment he feels your face collide with his back, lifting his gaze from his book. Your arms wrap around his waist, pressing his body against yours and Astarion will never tell you how much he loves that feeling. No matter what you bribe him with.

You incoherently mumble something in return, burying your face into the back of his shirt.

“I can’t quite make out what you just said, dearest. You’ll have to speak up a bit more,” he bites back a laugh at how you give an angry grumble in response and closes the book, gently prying you off him.

Turning around to face you, he presses a kiss to the top of your head before tilting your chin up so that he can press another kiss to your lips, his cold slender fingers gliding over your warm skin. The tip of his index finger traces along your jawline as he hungrily kisses you deeper, his other hand tangled in your hair.

You kiss him back with equal fervour, eyes closed. His fangs graze your bottom lip, drawing a hint of blood which he immediately licks up, letting out a soft moan at the sweetness that floods his tongue.

“You still have not told me what it is you desire, my sweet,” he nuzzles into your hair, arms wrapped tightly around you. His book lies on the ground long forgotten, all that he can think about is how nice you feel in his embrace, as though you were made for it.

“Cuddle,” you yawn, rubbing your eyes. “Can’t sleep without you.”

“You miss me that much, dearest?” He teases. “Come along then, you need your sleep.” He pretends as though your words haven’t set his ears on fire, that the sudden rush of warmth in his chest wasn’t caused by your proclamation of how much you wanted his presence and gently guides you back to your tent, barely remembering to pick his book up.

Once he’s tucked you into your bedroll, pushing hair out of your face before you start sneezing from the tickles, he removes his tunic and gets comfortable by your side. The moment he lies down, you snuggle up to him, burying your face in his chest. Your body curls up, fitting against his like a puzzle piece.

“Good night, Astarion,” you murmur drowsily.

“Good night, my sweet,” he runs his fingers through your hair, the motion lulling you to sleep like it always does. He relishes in the way your hair smoothly parts for his fingers, the softness of the strands brushing against his skin. Ever since he introduced his hair routine to you, your hair condition had been improving and he was pleased with how much you loved to show it off to him.

It doesn’t take long for you to drift off, lips parting slightly as your chest gently rises and falls with each breath. Astarion enjoys this part of your nightly cuddles the most, it reminds him of why he fights so hard each and every day. If he had to withstand the exhausting hikes, fights and idiocy of the rest of the party just to see the small smile of contentment on your face when you slept, he would do it for an eternity without hesitation. All that mattered to him was that you were happy, safe. Free.

He gently hums a tune he remembers you humming before, resisting the urge to kiss you over and over again, knowing that it would wake you up. His fingers dance along your back, tracing the scars that mar it. He’s long memorised each and every single one of them, whether it be from the passionate nightly activities or simply cuddling, just like tonight. Even though you find them disgusting, he finds them beautiful. They are signs of what has failed to kill you, of what you’ve pulled through. They told those who saw that that you were strong, that you were a survivor.

He finds himself tracing over the thin scar lines along your arm that wrap around like vines. You’ve never told them where you got them from, each time he tries to breach the topic you shy away, changing the subject with a laugh. He knows glimpses of your past from the nights the two of you have sat together under the moonlight, talking about whatever came to mind at the moment, but he never quite got the full picture. You purposely avoided talking about certain things and he never once probed further out of respect for your privacy, but moments like this make him wonder what someone as cheerful and bright as you had been through to become a completely different person when such topics were discussed.

Still, he won’t push you further than you’re comfortable with. You’ve never done it to him, even if it clearly frustrated you how little he was willing to divulge and he respected you for that. You would tell him about the scars on your arm when you were comfortable with it, he knew, and he could wait. He was a vampire spawn, he had the time to wait.

You shift in your sleep, eyebrows furrowed and fingernails digging into the bedroll beneath. A nightmare .

Astarion gently rubs your back, whispering sweet assurances into your ear and pressing his forehead against yours, hoping it will calm you down. The whimper that escapes your lips breaks his undead heart and he wishes he could enter dreams, just so that he could fight off whatever nightmare was plaguing you tonight.

“It’s alright, love. It’s just a nightmare,” he whispers, despising how powerless he is. “I’m always right here, right by your side.”

“Star,” you whimper, eyes cracking open. “Help. Hurts.”

He desperately presses more kisses to the top of your head, holding you tightly. “I’m right here, I’m right here.”

He repeats the three words over and over again like a mantra, cradling you as you cry into his chest, sobs wracking your body. His hand rests on the back of your head, his body curled around yours to shield you from the world.

“Let it all out. No one else is here,” he murmurs. You cry even harder at his words, gasping between each sob until you have no tears left to give. He ignores how your fingernails have dug into his shoulders so much that you’ve drawn blood, far more concerned about how you are feeling.

“I’m sorry,” the words feel thick in your throat. You wipe your eyes, looking up at him with such pain in your eyes and sniffle.

“Don’t be, love. We all need a little space to cry.” He presses his lips to your warm, tear-stained skin, willing all your pain away.

Wrapped in his comforting embrace, you slowly drift back to sleep with the feeling of his hand rubbing circles on your back. Once he’s sure you’ve properly fallen asleep, he lets himself slip into a meditative half-trance, but always keeps an ear out for you just in case. He won’t ever leave you to face your demons alone. You’d do the same for him anyways, he’s just repaying the favour, right?

You reach out towards him in your slumber, throwing an arm around him so that you can pull him closer. Your breath tickles his skin and something within his chest squeezes, taking his breath away.

I love you, his lips form the words but no sound comes out. Watching your now peacefully slumbering form, his undead heart comes back to life but words still fail him. For now, he’ll resign himself to practising the words so that when the moment comes, he will be able to say them, and know you will say them back.

[gainerboy302]

Ate some dinner, just decided to do it three times in a row. Can somebody come over here already and feed this belly with me 😩. I just love how my urges keep spiraling out of controll, untill i just start stuffing myself on a daily basis. No matter how many times i choose to stop. Every time i get back here and i start to eat again and again like i cant stop. Even when i think im being healthy i just end up having gained weight instead of losing it. Deep down inside me there is an urge, this primal feeling of gluttony. It makes me want to eat and eat and eat, untill my belly starts to hurt. Every day, again and again i just keep eating. Even past the point of it hurting. The rewarding feeling of eating untill you cant fit another bite and falling asleep right after, there is just nothing like it. Im hopelessly addicted to it. Once i managed to quit and lose weight. I was free of it. For months i was doing good, losing weight. Untill i felt skinny again. I even quit looking at gainer content. But then one day, after i ate dinner while watching a show. I didnt realize how much i was eating untill i was so full that it hurt. It was this nostalgic feeling of pure gluttony. I told myself, just this one time you get to look at gainer content again. And once again it was like going down the rabbithole of gaining content. Just like old times i gave in to my cravings. I started liking it again, and again. Day after day i just kept looking and enjoying it. And the enabling from all the people willing to look at my growing body. There is just nothing like it, the feeling of people who want to see me grow. I will never stop gaining. Not as long as there are people to enable me, so hit me up. If you dare 😉

[ms-demeanor]

sorry if you've answered this before, and i hope you don't mind me asking, how do you know so much about computers and what seems to me like everything in the world? how did you become so knowledgeable? it's amazing

i just know a little about a lot of things and I probably have a fair number of things that I've dug into more than most people and less than people who actually focus on that stuff! It's kind of an illusion!

I do know a lot about computers and that's because I've worked at a computer company for 12 years and have been deep into a computery subculture for about 20 years - I do genuinely know a lot about consumer computers. That I'll own and that's experience.

I know a fair amount about literature because I've got a degree in it!

I know a fair amount about journalism because I've got most of a degree in it and I worked with journalists for a long time!

I know a fair amount about nutrition because I've got most of a degree in it and because I've been focused on reading a lot about nutrition for more than a decade because of my own food issues!

But mostly I'm just someone who falls down rabbitholes and has a decent ability to recall what I find when I run down them.

Also I get curious about things and will just go. Experience them.

Like at some point i came across a site for people who own and use RealDolls and I got interested in learning more. The site required an application because they didn't want people just trolling so I applied and I ended up reading through the whole site and reading the magazines they sent out for years after because it was just interesting. The way these guys bought clothes or compared repair techniques and cleaning techniques, the way they constructed identities for their dolls - it was all interesting! So now I know about the proper way to store a RealDoll and how their skeletons are put together and the best way to prevent rips or clean inserts.

Now imagine that with everything.

I got interested in quack medicine so I ended up reading the entire back catalogs of quackwatch and science-based medicine.

I got interested in the history of aspartame as a scare-word and I ended up reading a couple of books, SEVERAL entire blogs with decades-long runs, purchasing a military magazine from the 90s, and submitting a FOIA request.

But, like. I don't own a RealDoll or work in that industry. I am not a medical professional. I am not a chemist who works with aspartame. So I get these weird little collections of information where I know what *seems* like a lot to someone who hasn't looked into it but I know a lot less than someone who has taken the time to actually dedicate themselves to that topic.

And sometimes it's a years-long dive and sometimes it's a months-long dive and sometimes it's a few hours of me digging online until I feel satisfied with what I've learned and I never come back to it, but I've got three more talking points than your average joe at a party would.

(Also though I've attended various colleges at various levels for ten-ish years now and I've taken probably more college-level classes on a lot of subjects than most people have because I've now spent several years just kind of kicking around at community colleges and deciding that a cartooning class sounds fun or that a mesoamerican art class fills certain transfer requirements or that I might as well brush up on spanish, french, and german. Access to low-cost college classes in california is a big part of this, and having the time and money to take classes while i'm working is something that I've been very lucky with)

I've also worked pretty much continuously since I was 18, sometimes holding multiple jobs at once, and I know a lot of interesting people who do a lot of interesting things and I ask them about their interesting experiences and if they offer me a chance to go do cool shit with them, like launch a high altitude balloon or blow up some dynamite that's about to expire or join a band, I do it!

I was also one of those kids who had no friends and spent too much time at the library so I'd do things like read through medical textbooks or pull a book of home chemical formulas out of the trash and read it or take it into my head that I was going to read all of Shakespeare before I got to high school so I was a really annoying twelve-year-old and that kind of thing never really let up.

I don't know! I don't think it's that unusual and I think most people do this kind of thing I just happen to have less focus than a lot of people and talk a lot more.

[libraryspectre]

Allow me to ramble on the internet about my grandma again

I got much of my diy spirit from my maternal grandmother, who spent most of her time (that wasn't cooking, fishing, gardening, community service, or hunting) doing Art. This could be painting murals on any available surface, hot glueing old jewelry and seashells on things, making elaborate holiday decorations by painting plywood cutouts (cut by my grandfather), glueing ribbons and patches and rhinestones on denim jackets, and, once, making her entire front walkway into a genuinely gorgeous mosaic of broken tile.

The thing is, she didn't have many developed skills. She wasn't a particularly talented painter. But what she lacked in skill she made up for in sheer audacity and an eye for aesthetics, and most of the things she made ended up looking cool and fun/pretty, even if it wasn't my taste (she was VERY maximalist when it came to clothing especially, but I loved most of her painting and a lot of the decor.) She didn't have a lot of money and her materials were cheap - acrylic paint, plywood, garage sale trinkets and goodwill clothing. Tons and tons of hot glue. The corner of the garage where she worked was a wonderland to me, even though it was mostly things like costume jewelry and aquarium beads in old cottage cheese containers.

She was always enlisting me for help - I'd get excited when she told me to wear old clothes, because that meant we were painting. Her attitude was really good for me as a creative kid who struggled with perfectionism. She'd always tell me that if you mess up, you can just paint back over it! "Paint is cheap" was one of her favorite sayings. But the biggest lesson I took away from crafting with her was to customize, to stamp your identity on your surroundings, to take it into your hands to change anything in your environment you weren't happy with. Approach any art project with enough gumption and it will probably be AT LEAST fine - and you can almost always improve upon it in the future. In the meantime, at least it will be yours. And NEVER let yourself be bored when you could be creating.

I've gone down a lot of crafting avenues she never touched - she wasn't one for fiber arts, and I keep falling deeper into that rabbithole. But I've held on to that spirit of customization. I think of her often as I learn new ways to alter my clothes, stumbling blindly into embroidery and rudimentary sewing, bleach dying and fabric paint. I hate the landlord white of my apartment walls and dream of the day I can just paint on them anytime I want. I need to do at least a few seabirds in her honor.

[moongothic]

Re-analyzing Crocodile in Marineford

So when I started falling down the Crocodad rabbithole, I did start by rereading Marineford to doublecheck the claims about whether or not Crocodile's behaviour truly was odd during the arc. And I did go into it with a good amount of scepticism, trying to find holes in the theory after having just learned about it. Well, it's been like a year now. I do feel like I've formed a strong idea of the Crocodad theory in my head, what we need to assume for it to be a viable theory, what supports it and where its weaknesses lie.

The thing about storytelling though is that you can read into things in truly wild ways if you want to find a way to support a theory, while also failing to understand/forgetting the pre-existing lore and what we know about certain characters.

So I want to reread Marineford again, but this time, having an understanding of the theory, I want to rethink how the Crocodad theory actually applies to this arc, and compare it to a more neutral reading, based on what we know about The Man of the Hour and what Oda actually (probably) wanted us to take away from the events of the story. So we're re-analyzing Crocodile in Marineford, but from two angles. The Normie Neutral Angle and the Crocodad Propaganda Angle.

Is this partially because I want to just prove to myself that I am actually delusional about Crocodad and been reading into things in the completely wrong way? So that when Oda finally debunks the theory I will be emotionally ready for it because otherwise the disappoinment will shatter my heart into a million pieces? Yes. Yes, that is why this post exists. But also I have wanted to do this for a while now because I did think it would be fun to return to this arc now that I'm MORE than familiar with the theory. Point is, I'm not here trying to ruin the fun for my Fellow Crocodad Truthers. I'm here to lower my own expectations and give myself a reality check.

So immidiately after arriving in Marineford in Chapter 558 Crocodile makes his way to Moby Dick to kill Whitebeard. Luffy forces him to back off for a second so the two can have a chat before he storms off to get to Ace. At this point, Sengoku gives everyone orders to kill Luffy because he is Dragon's son, making sure everyone on the battlefield knows too

Propaganda: The lack of Crocodile's reaction here is incredibly suspicious. So much so I wrote a whole metapost about that subject on its own.

The lack of Crocodile's reaction however could be just chalked up as his reaction not being important in this moment. Crocodile doesn't care about Luffy, he's only here to get Whitebeard's head and thus has more important things to worry about in this moment than that rubbery idiot.

Next time we see Crocodile is in Chapter 560. He's been blown away and off the Moby Dick. And while he is trying to get back on the ship so he can fight Whitebeard, he is failing miserably at it (being hindranced by mere goons) and is clearly fucking annoyed about it

Propaganda: His gloomy expression and hidden eyes are suspicious, considdering this is soon after hearing Sengoku's announcement. If Crocodile just learned Luffy is his son, then in the past few minutes we haven't seen him he has gone from learning that truth, to realizing he nearly killed his own son with his own hand (three times), to knowing Luffy has ran off straight into the lion's den and most likely certain doom, and understanding that even if he wanted to help Luffy, Luffy fucking hates his guts and wouldn't want his help anyway (+Luffy wouldn't know about their blood relation, now would not be the time to break the news, if ever). Luffy does have help in the form of the rest of the WB Pirates, Jinbei and Ivankov, so it may be for the best to Crocodile to try to focus on what he came to Marineford to begin with; getting his petty revenge and taking WB's head. But still, that shocking revelation could be getting under his skin, he might be having a bad time digesting everything.

Croc's petty revenge gets distracted by Jozu blasting Crocodile off and Doflamingo joining the fun by annoying Crocodile even more, until Crocodile sends the pink bastard flying out of his sight. He seems to continue trying to reach Whitebeard without any progress until WB gets stabbed by Squard, which causes Crocodile to burst out with a shocking amount of emotion

We know Crocodile has trust issues. We don't know what caused them, though a likely assumption might be that he may have been betrayed by someone (if not multiple people) in the past. Although impossible to confirm, if that is the case then watching Whitebeard get betrayed by one of his own could be a bad reminder of what may have happened to him in the past, not helped by Whitebeard immidiately choosing to forgive his son, something Crocodile might not be able to accept as easily.

Additionally, we know that Crocodile lost to Whitebeard when WB was in his prime. In this moment Croc would realize and have to face the fact that Whitebeard is an old man, he's not the same as the Primebeard who crushed Croc so long ago. Meaning, whatever catharsis Crocodile may have yearned for, he would not be able to actually get. There is no satisfaction to killing a weak, dying man.

Propaganda: This moment may have forced Crocodile to reflect on his weird relationship with his extranged son. Whitebeard forgave his foolish son for stabbing him, and while Crocodile may have no lingering grudge against Luffy for thwarting his plans in Alabasta... would Luffy ever forgive him for all the things he did? Could Luffy forgive him?

Crocodile then proceeds to stop Ace's premature execution attempt, and when confronted about it by Doflamingo, Crocodile confirms he has not taken Whitebeard's side.

This reinforces our understanding that Crocodile loathes the World Goverment so much he'd rather spare one of Whitebeard's own than let the WG get what they want. This is not a pro-WB move, this is just an anti-WG move

Propaganda: For one, Croc's hate of the WG could support to the idea he may have been involved with the Rev Army at some point, even if just temporarily. But most importantly, indeed, he did NOT spare Ace for Whitebeard's sake, which leaves us with only two other options; he did it for his own sake (=spite against the WG), or for Luffy's sake. He has seen the desperation and the efforts Luffy will go to for his loved ones, so Crocodile could only imagine the heart break Luffy would go through if he lost someone dear to him. So, even if his son hates him, he can't just sit by and watch Luffy get shattered right in front of him

As he is rushing to reach Ace, Luffy uses his Conqueror's Haki by accident to stop another execution attempt, which leads Whitebeard to order all his men to back up Luffy. As he runs, Luffy is almost cut down by Mihawk, only slowed down by Daz Bones and then finally stopped by Crocodile

Considdering Mihawk's earlier comments about Luffy's terrifying power of bringing people together to follow him, this is meant to be just a call back to that; not even Sir Crocodile is immune to Luffy's draw, much to Croc's own annoyance. Which isn't great, considdering he's already in a horrendous mood over Whitebeard, who had just now given his approval and acknowledge'd Luffy's value on the battlefield (after having ignored Crocodile nearly this entire time)

Propaganda: If Luffy is Croc's son then of course he would not let Mihawk kill him right in front of his face. Crocodile's foul mood and solemn expression is also explained by the realizations that hit him after Sengoku's announcement (as I explained earlier)

The war continues, Ace is freed and then killed by Akainu, causing Luffy's brain to shut down out of shock. Crocodile seems to watch Whitebeard's final stand though where he is and what he's doing exactly is vague during this time.

Jimbei however announces he has chosen protect Luffy with his life and is on the run with Luffy in his arms, while Akainu pursues them, eventually catching them and wounding both, severely.

Crocodile jumps in at last second, cutting Akainu in half and blasting Jimbei+Luffy out of his reach, allowing the two to finally escape.

Crocodile's comments here are calling back to two things. The latter is about his hatred of the World Government and not wanting them to have what they want, especially after WB finally kicked the bucket and they took Ace's life. Not wanting the WG to get the third bird with the same stone, Croc is making it his personal duty to be the biggest thorn in the WG's side right now. But the former, "if you want do protect something, do it right" calls back to Alabasta. Crocodile made it clear then and there that weakness is a sin, and only the strong can afford to have idealistic views (like Vivi wanting to save her people and her country). Crocodile berating Jimbei here is a lecture; if Jimbei claims he's going to protect Luffy with his own life, then actually put your money where your mouth is and do it. Jimbei, a (former) Warlord just like Crocodile, should be able to do better than this.

Propaganda: Crocodile''s comments at Jimbei are a confession; he has someone he wants to protect no matter what (and that's his son). Also, the phrase "love is always a hurricane" has been repeated over this Saga numerous times, and while it has been in reference to romantic love... What did Crocodile save Luffy's life with if not a sand twister, a hurricane?

The war ends and we see Crocodile looking solemn over everything that has transpired.

Maybe he is quietly paying his respects to Whitebeard and taking it all in.

Propaganda: The last Crocodile saw of Luffy was the unconcious, wounded boy being taken into a submarine that vanished into the waves, followed by Kizaru and Aokiji's attempts to sink the ship. Crocodile has no idea if the ship survived the attacks or has already sunken, but even if they managed to escape, between the grave wounds Luffy had recieved and the trauma of Ace dying, the boy's survival was not quaranteed. The war could break Luffy, forever. And there'd be nothing Crocodile could do about it. It was out of his hands now.

After taking some time to recover, Luffy, together with Jimbei and Rayleigh go have some fun in Marineford and pay their respects to Whitebeard, ending up on the news that even Crocodile gets to read about.

(Sidenote but Viz's official translation here is a bit off, "The cheeky rascal" isn't about Luffy but is directed at Daz, so it should be "You cheeky rascal")

He has recovered from his wounds and the frustrating disappointment of Whitebeard dying (and not by his hand), but is ready to set out into the New World, Luffy's infectious energy seemingly having inspired him once again to see what the seas have to offer.

Propaganda: Daz's comment here is strange, as he makes it sound like Crocodile had been like... what, moping? Sulking? For the past few weeks after the war? Crocodile's reaction to Daz's comment ("Are you sassing me you little shit") doesn't help either. It certainly makes it sound like Croc had been in the dumps, but considdering he would've had no idea what fate fell upon his son until now, yeah, him being worried and depressed would make sense. As would the way he immidiately perks up after finding out the idiot son is just fine

And that's it, that wraps up Summit War.

It's kind of sad, really, how when you get down to it Crocodad does make perfect sense in all of these scenes (maybe some more than others). But the Crocodile acts during this arc isn't weird when you get down to it, his behaviour is completely reasonable considdering everything else that is going down around him and the little we do know about his view of the world. And that fact makes Crocodad so easy to just brush aside as looking too deep into things when it's not meant to be that deep

But also, Oda is insane, and you can never fucking know when something WAS meant to be that deep from the begining until he gives out the full truth and spills the beans

Did I come here trying to debunk Crocodad for myself? Yes. Did I succeed at doing that? Not really. Did I have fun regardless? Yeah, and I hope this was at least vaguely interesting to some of you

[milehighmegs]

On the Subject of Nightingales

Soooo... since I've dived straight and gleefully down the rabbithole of Good Omens fan theories, I found something of a gem that gives me hope for season 3.

[Note: I am aware that, at this time, production has been paused pending the involvement of Neil Gaiman, so no need to bring that up. It'll unfold in due time.]

I watched a fan analysis by YouTuber Sendarya, who, via tumblr user @daria-meoi, made a fascinating connection between the song we've come to know as their song and the end credits of S2 E6 (links to both vids posted below). Take a moment to watch them both and come back...

This is Sendarya's full analysis (above)...

... and this is the juxtaposition of Tori's version over the end credits. It's just... well. You'll see.

... so, all caught up? Good. Right to it then.

Inspired by a comment in one of these videos (sorry, can't remember exactly which one or else I'd find the commentor's name and give allllll the credit), it seems as though that final smile from Zira implies that the wheels in his head are churning. He's coming up with a plan. Will it work? Maybe. Will he do everything in his power to make it work? You bet your tartan-bowtie-wearing ass he will.

This particular string of thought was kicked off by the aforementioned comment, which led me to the exchange between Zira and Nina during the demon attack:

"Why don't you stand up for yourself, make your own plan?" (or something to that effect)

"Oh I am, but rescuing me makes him so happy."

HMMMMMM....

Since we're already pretty sure the major plot line of S3 is going to be the Second Coming- yet another end-of-the-world attempt by H&H- it stands to reason that Zira, as Supreme Archangel, is gonna go full-blown Lawful-but-Chaotic Good™ and attempt to thwart the Second Coming in such a way that Hell will have to step in. Kinda like they did in S1, which is, in a roundabout way, how Gabriel & Beez got together in the first place.

Whoever's in charge of hell now could tap Crowley to make sure things go "as planned," even if he is half the reason Armageddon didn't happen. Why? Because they likely know that he & Zira aren't on good terms, and- in their narrow understanding of love- believe Crowley'd be perfectly happy to bring down his ex-boyfriend Supreme Archangel Aziraphale. Knowing Zira better than anyone, and "hating" him now, Hell thinks Crowley will know just what to do to get Zira to either stand down or fall in the trying.

I do admit this is a bit of a stretch, seeing as how Crowley is not only retired but well and totally fed up with Hell's shit. But Zira was retired too, and now he's the Archangel-fucking-Aziraphale. And since we, the audience, know about the pain & heartbreak Crowley's going through, he may just accept such an offer as an excuse to see Zira again. Or, depending on what's happening, if Crowley thinks Zira's in trouble, he'll come for him. Broken heart, bitterness, & soul-deep pain aside, he'll come for him. How that particular exchange would go... oh ho HO, I have plehhhhnty of ideas. Not all of them end well. But some of them do.

Zira's not stupid. Naive, yes, maybe even a bit gullible thanks to all that Heaven-induced trauma, but not out-and-out stupid. He's got schemes, and he'll carry them out to the best of his angelic ability. After all, he's just someone who goes along with Heaven... as far as he can.

[fbfh]

curiosity is a wonderful thing - ch. 3

wc: 3.1k

pairing: slow burn childhood best friends to lovers ben x reader, audrey x reader

warnings: ben is stressed, audrey is a bad gf, mild claustrophobia/dark spaces/being under ground warning (description of falling down the rabbithole into twonderland but it's fun and you love it so it's not scary lol), mild exposition dumping

summary: ben prepares for the arrival of the Isle kids, and gives audrey the benefit of the doubt a little too much. you have time to sneak away to your favorite place in the world, and the only thing that's missing is ben.

song recs: in a world of my own - kathryn beaumont, welcome to wonderland - scarlett rose, wish you still felt this way - sophie meiers x 90sflav

a/n: i love this fic. i love this series. this started as a comfort daydream and now it's a thing and I hope yall are ready for the next chapter cause it's gonna be good. I hope this brings yall the comfort it brings me <33

tags @yesv01 @magcon7280 @hopefullhearts @thatawkwardlittlefangirl  @sunshineangel-reads @strawberry-cake1 @dustyinkpages @kiara7777

After about a week of constant meetings, arrangements, and press conferences, a week of even less sleep and even more coffee than usual - something Ben didn’t know was possible to achieve - it’s finally the day he’s been working tirelessly toward. It’s the day the kids from the Isle are finally on their way to Auradon. He rushes back to Auradon Prep with you at his side after a very stressful, successful press conference. Even though he seems totally composed on the surface, you can tell he’s a bundle of nerves. You walk quickly beside him as he goes over the agenda for their arrival. 

“Their rooms are all set up, Fairy Godmother said Jane can help them get settled into their classes - god, what am I forgetting?” Ben rambles, fumbling through all the papers in his bag. His eyes land on his copy of his press conference note cards, and that jogs his memory. 

“Right,” He continues as you look up at him, and he knows he has all your attention. “I don’t think I’m going to have time to write a new speech for their arrival…”

He pauses for a moment, seeing if there’s some little pocket of time he can find to make this date extra special for them. 

“Ben, you’re more jam packed than a tea cake. You can’t overwork yourself and run into the ground, not when you’re this close.”

Ben considers for a moment, realizing you're right. 

"You have a point…" he agrees with a reluctant chuckle. "I'll use the same speech I used for the press conference." He decides. You’re silent for a moment.

“...Alright.” 

“What?” Ben asks, able to read your expression like a book. 

“Nothing, just-” You hesitate, then give him an earnest look, like you don’t want to hurt his feelings. He chuckles and braces himself, knowing whatever you’re about to say will be a necessary - albeit, hard - truth. 

“You don’t think it’s a bit much?” You ask gently. “Too formal, given the circumstances?” 

He considers for a moment. He thought it did great at the press conference, but maybe there are a few parts he can revise for the arrival of the Isle kids. 

“Uh… yeah. I- I can cast eyes over it, we still have a little over an hour. That should be enough to make any tweaks.” He finishes. 

You nod as you follow him into the conference room that he’s turned into a makeshift headquarters for all of his first proclamation business. He sets down his bag and pulls out all his paperwork and his planner. He hears you set your stuff down a few seats away from him and looks up. You’ve been working so hard and helping him out so much with all of this. He couldn’t possibly have accomplished a fraction as much without you. He walks over to you, gathering up your stuff. 

“Look bunny, why don’t you, uh,” he starts, leaning over slightly to make sure no one’s about to walk through the doorway. “Why don’t you head down for a while. You have enough time if you go now.”

Your eyes light up at his words. You’ve been keeping your Wonderland visits to a minimum to help Ben and support him as much as you can, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Really?” You ask softly. 

“Yeah, I’ll cover for you.” Ben lets out a soft grunt as you tackle him with a hug. He chuckles lightly, giving your back and shoulders a gentle pat before you pull away a moment later. 

“I’ll run my speech by you when you get back-” He begins, then cuts himself off, remembering something. “We got your watch fixed, right?”

You’re glad he remembered, and you fish around in your tea pot bag for a moment before pulling out the weathered bronzy pocket watch. Time works differently in Wonderland, and it’s hard to keep track of. You've tried everything you can think of, and your pocket watch is the only thing that seems to keep you from constantly being late. Granted, you're still late or nearly late a lot, but it’s much better than it used to be. 

“Yes,” you nod, showing him the little ticking hands, currently resting at the words ‘on time’. A fresh bubble of excitement pops inside you and you let out an excited giggle, hugging Ben tightly one more time. 

“Thank you!” you exclaim in a soft whisper before he sends you off. You run over to the corner of the room to summon a rabbit hole. Ben watches in fascination as the tile floor begins to crumble in front of you, giving way to grassy dirt before continuing to crumble, going down, down, down. It’s a large, vaguely irregular circle about half as wide as your wingspan. You look back at Ben with another silent thank you, before jumping straight down into the hole. As soon as the last of you is out of sight, the tiles rebuild themselves without leaving a trace of you. Ben stares at the spot where you disappeared, feeling vaguely melancholic, but mostly happy that you’re getting to spend time doing what you love. That you’re happy. 

“There you are, Bennyboo,” Ben whips his head around at the sound of Audrey’s voice, and he’s relieved she hadn’t shown up sooner. It’s not that sneaking off to Wonderland is a bad thing, but most people tend to discourage you from visiting too often. Wonderland is a timeless domain, like Neverland, and it and all of its inhabitants are much different from those from Auradon - usually referred to as Overland or the Main Land by people from Wonderland and Neverland. 

Wonderland runs on pure, neutral chaos and nonsense, which is a very hard concept for people from Overland to grasp. Overland runs on a fundamental structure of good vs. evil, so it’s easy for people to perceive things from Wonderland as good or bad  when they’re really just made up of madness. The reason people try to keep Wonderland contained is because you can’t fight nonsense with sense, you can’t fight chaos with logic. If something powerful from Wonderland got into Overland, like the Jabberwocky, or any number of powerful plants, animals, or magic, Auradon would be practically defenseless. That’s one of the reasons that Belle and Adam decided to reach out to your mother, and continue to form such a strong bond with her. If Wonderland nonsense managed to get out into Auradon, it would be uncontrollable chaos, and the only person who could stop it would be your mother - and now, you. 

It took Ben a while to understand Wonderland, to understand you. You and your mother are very special cases; Alice was from Overland, but adapted to be part of Wonderland, and Wonderland became a part of her. You, however, were born in Wonderland and raised in Overland. You’ve adapted as well as you can, but you always do much, much better when you can sneak away for regular little trips. Ben has asked to join you before, but it’s too dangerous. People from Overland rarely adapt to Wonderland nonsense and usually end up going mad, which is why your mother is such an asset to the Auradon government - she’s actually able to serve as a liaison between Wonderland and Auradon, and keep an eye on things.  

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of stigmas surrounding Wonderlandians, stigmas Ben has grown to resent more and more over the years, but most of it boils down to Wonderlandians being weird, crazy, dumb, and volatile. The more Ben has come to understand you, the more he hates the small comments and little stares directed toward you. Luckily Ben has been able to protect you from a lot of it. People very quickly found out that if they said anything bad about you or Wonderland, it wouldn’t end well for them. He can’t get rid of the stigmas, but he can protect you from them as much as possible. 

Audrey flounces over, sitting next to him.

"You are never going to believe what Arabella just told me at cheer practice."

“Uh-”

“She said-”

“Um, Audrey.” Ben finally manages to interrupt. She looks confused about why she’s not the one talking right now. 

“I want to hear all about this, I really do,” Ben says, “but we’re going to be greeting the kids transferring from the Isle soon-” Audrey huffs, already disinterested.

“And I wanted your feedback on my speech.” He finishes, handing her the papers. 

“Oh, sure. There’s that…” Audrey says, pretending to read it over for a moment. Before she finishes, she sets the papers down on the table, and gives Ben a chipper look.

“I’m sure it’s fine, Bennyboo. You never disappoint.”

She sits on the table in front of him, continuing to tell him all about what Arabella said Herkie did. Ben tries his best to listen, he really does. He just can’t keep his mind off his speech, and he can feel himself beginning to spiral and overthink. He has so much riding on this, he can’t afford for his speech to be fine, he can’t afford for anything about this whole ordeal to be fine. Her words keep echoing in his mind, you never disappoint, Bennyboo. He knows she meant it to be supportive, but he feels like all the pressure he’s been convincing himself he can handle is just reinforced. He was hoping to get some real feedback from Audrey, maybe a little encouragement, but- 

He stops himself before the thought can go any further. Audrey is his girlfriend, and Ben should be able to trust her word. You would never lie to him about something this important, so he chooses to trust that Audrey wouldn’t either. He tries to shut up the worries clouding his mind and tries to pay attention to what Audrey is saying. She’s probably just trying to distract him from worrying, give him something else to think about for a while. You can always tell when he’s overthinking, so Audrey is probably trying to show him that she cares, that there’s nothing to worry about. That if she’s talking about something like cheer team gossip at a time like this, when Ben is getting ready for one of the most important days of his life, then everything must be under control. Besides, if he needs to he can look his speech over by himself after Audrey leaves. He might have time to. It will all be fine. 

The moment you let yourself fall into the dark rabbit hole, your stomach flips as you begin free falling through the darkness. A little dirt sprinkles down on your head from where it closes up above you, and you narrowly manage to avoid some roots snagging in your hair. After a few moments, your descent slows. You spin slowly as you glide down, and in the pitch black darkness, you can feel your internal gyroscope going crazy. You breathe in the heavy, earthy air, and for a few moments, you don't know which way is up or down. You have absolutely no sense of direction for those few beautiful moments, and you don't want to. Soon, your descent speeds up again, and you find yourself tumbling through tree branches, eventually landing on a rough surface in the dark. 

“It should be here somewhere…” you mutter, feeling around for a doorknob. After a moment you feel it, cool aged metal in your hand. You twist it, revealing a beam of light through a doorway. It’s going to be a close call, but you think you’ll just be able to fit. You manage to squeeze through the entrance, exiting out of the door - which is situated in a large tree trunk, and into Wonderland. You crawl forward, taking it all in. You take in a deep breath of the still, earthy, floral air. It’s heavy in your lungs, like a deep dream. You fully exit, and the door slowly closes behind you.

The world is quiet. 

There’s an almost suffocating stillness in the atmosphere of Wonderland, one that would be uncanny and unnerving to you if it weren’t already so deeply comforting. It’s the same grounding sense of peace and stillness you get when you’re young and walk carefully through your dark house at night in search of a cold glass of water. There’s that feeling in Wonderland, everyone is asleep except for me. I ought to be asleep too, I best not wake them. The world around you is still, still, still. It’s as still as a stone, or a lake made of glass. You soak up the familiar surroundings, and you feel like you’re finally visiting an old friend. 

In spite of the pitch black sky, which is barely visible through the treetops, you can see what’s around you just fine. But if you look too far, there’s a darkness off the beaten path, one that stays just at the edges of your sight no matter where you go. It always looks to you like those hazy dark shadows around the edges of old photographs. You look down at the beaten path - this one being made of black and white irregularly shaped checkerboard tiles nestled right into the dirt. They twist and turn, splitting out and reconverging haphazardly into the darkness. They’re a bit worn and dirty, but you suppose any outdoor tiles would get that way eventually. 

You follow it back the way you came, spinning around as you do, and notice the way it splinters into little shards, cracking and fragmenting into a mosaic of sorts before petering out at the base of the tree, with grass and dirt poking up in between. You feel yourself begin to settle, at home with the lack of time flowing around you, and you take in another breath. Your nose and lungs are kissed gently with the smell of damp, freshly turned earth, plant life, and that unmoving sort of smell that shows up after it rains, but still before any birds and animals come out from their hiding. The type of smell when flowers are wet, and have not yet opened themselves back up. 

Reaching into your trusty teapot bag, you fish around in there until you find your camera. It’s old, very old, and completely obsolete ever since the boom of technology that appeared around the time you and Ben were born, but you love it nonetheless. A year or two before you and Ben - and most of the other kids your age - were born, Auradon successfully made an alliance with Atlantis. They traded their protection of Atlantis and a promise to leave them alone, in exchange for a little bit of their technology and power sources. Adam also promised to make sure Rourke never saw the light of day again, a promise Queen Kida was happy to accept. The trade led to light speed innovations based in Atlantean tech; smart phones, computers, video games, and countless other innovations that brought Auradon into its new age. Flash forward to now, Atlantis is the tech capital of the world, and magic is obsolete. Your camera can’t give directions or tell time or backup to cloud storage, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. 

You snap some pictures of the tiles before you begin exploring. You never know what entrance to Wonderland you’ll fall through, and you love documenting each one. You walk carefully through the forest of dense trees, looking at flocks of haughty looking dodo birds and peonies that gossip to each other, whispering with a laugh as you pass them by. Soon you stumble into something very interesting. You thought it was a cluster of blue bushes, but were surprised to find out they’re really birds. The bird bushes (or maybe bush birds) startle at your presence, squawking and leaving feathers (leaves?) in their wake before they fly off. 

You manage to get a few pictures of them too, and you’re excited to show Ben. You’ve tried taking pictures with your phone before, but Wonderland makes technology… unreliable at best. Plus, there’s no service down here anyway. That’s why you took to journaling, drawing pictures and taking photos and writing down everything you see. This way you can share it with Ben, this way it’s almost like he’s here in your favorite place with you. 

You follow the blue speckled bush birds - as you’d dubbed them - until you lose track of them. It’s no matter though, since you soon hear some lovely singing coming from under a sparkling berry bush growing fruit shaped like bells. You crouch down, lifting up the leaves, and find a choir of inchworms practicing their harmonies. The leader looks up at you in a huff. 

“I’m terribly sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt.” You say. He huffs, and turns back to his choir, conducting with a little twig. You decide to sit and listen for a while as they rehearse under the coverage of glistening pink leaves. You find some oversized, brightly colored mushrooms growing nearby, and sit down on a comfortable one. You pull a teacup out of your bag, trying to decide which tea to drink while you watch the inchworms and listen to their masterpiece slowly come together. 

You zip the lid closed, and pour the spout to the cup, settling on some raspberry tea. With honey, you think, and lemon. You smile as a lemon wedge falls from the spout, plopping gently into your cup. You take a sip, and it’s perfectly brewed as ever. You go through several cups of tea, growing more and more invested in the drama between the inchworms. One is insisting on taking the high harmony, even though it’s obviously out of his range. You’re half way through… one of your cups of tea, you lost count rather quickly. By now the inchworms have perfected their harmonies for the chorus, and the first verse. Your attention is ripped away from the inchworms when your bag starts ringing. You open it up, digging out your pocket watch. The bronze hands have spun all the way past most of the little notches, and you nearly drop your tea when you see where they are. Your eyes follow the hands, which are nearly pointing to the word Late! in fancy script. 

“Shit!” 

[jonquilandlace]

something something "every so often I fall down a Chronicles of Narnia rabbithole for a week or two, specifically the Pevensie era, and I can feel it creeping up on me again" and also something something "I was in Oxford last year I just got my masters from the same place Narnia was written" and also something something "Edmund being my favorite since I was a kid, Edmund being the one I related to, Edmund being the one who fell out of favor and was simultaneously handed forgiveness without needing to work for it but also continuously given the opportunity to earn it and feeling like he could recover because he did so but yet also still being the outlier, the one it's easiest to project queerness onto, and also the one who doubted the most and still wound up among the strongest in faith because of it and also not having to defer to blind faith trusting in it when it was necessary but also always finding evidence and thinking and being the logical sibling, the clever one, the negotiator, the politician" and something something "i went to christian schools since I was born until college and my relationship with the church is kinda antagonistic because I disagree with a lot of the social decisions of the church as a body but my relationship with faith itself being very academic and as i'm slowly trying to figure out my personal beliefs and spiritualism I'm finding my way back to it but it involves a lot of religious trauma unpacking around being queer and disabled and neurodivergent and having interests that weren't 'acceptable' like loving the symbolism of tarot cards and studying folklore and enjoying ghost hunting and cryptids and faeries and me just plain being weird" and something something "when I think of Narnia I think of Aslan and Lucy sure but I hear Edmund Pevensie"

does that make any sense

[littlestzrdoll]

Izuku Midoriya agere head cannons! ^_^

recently i've been getting back into mha sooo,,,, here are some little izuku headcannons!! (i will be doing cg izu in another post but for now, have the little guy hehe) . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

ᯓ★ he is both an age regressor and caregiver! Possibly a little lean but it depends how he's doin mentally ᯓ★ when he's small, his headspace ranges from about 2 to 6 but usually falls between 4-5 ᯓ★ his main reasons for regressing are all the problems caused by all the bullying when he was growing up and finding out he was quirkless, crushing his dreams at such a young age. And the constant fighting in wars with villans and such, when in UA. Sometimes he just regresses to get the weight of the world off his shoulders for a couple hours. ᯓ★ found about his regression in the first year of being in UA from mumblings of coping mechanism during therapy. but he didn't really understand or think about it until kaminari was being pretty open about being a regressor himself one eday, so, Izuku being Izuku went down a rabbithole of researching and found it to be a great coping mechanism for himself! ᯓ★ when he's regressed, he prefers to be called "Izu" or "Zuzu" by his close friends who aren't his cg but still know he regresses! ᯓ★ speaking of cg's, he has a couple. Because I like katsudeku, I think that Katsuki is his main cg!! His other main ones are Todoroki and possibly Aizawa ᯓ★ when little, he calls Katuski either "Kacchan" or if he's really small sometimes he'll slip out a "dada". He likes to call Todoroki either "Todo", "Roro" or "Roki". As for Aizawa, usually just a little "Zawa" ᯓ★ Besides his main cg's, most of class 1A likes to care for Izu when he's small and absolutely love it since he's just such a little sweetheart! but kirishima, ochaco, momo, sero and Iida spend the most time with small izu ᯓ★ his love for All Might only grows when small! He just loves to watch All might documentaries, movies, little youtube clips. Dont even get me started on the amount of all might little space gear he would have hehe! paci's, decorated bottles and sippies, onesies, plushies, teethers, absolutely everything! ᯓ★ he's an absolute angel for the most part! especially when around the ages of 3-6 loves to cuddle, always smiley and giggly, just a joy to be around!! howeverrr, when he slips tinier than around 3, he can be a little sleepy, leading him to be fussy ᯓ★ loves to play hero games with his friends and cg's, "saving" them, usually pretending to be all might. ᯓ★ because i headcannon izuku to be autistic, i think he stims a lot more when hes regressed!! he loves to rock side to side and back and forth the most! ᯓ★ he also tends to babble nonsense, just complete babababa and all his cg's can do is just sit there and nod while he has a full conversation with them in baby ᯓ★ his favourite pet/nicknames (and the ones only katuski and shoto are allowed to call him) are baby, sweetie, honey/hun, sweet boy, bunny, bubba, cutie, dear, dearest, little love and munchkin! but everyone else can use little one, buddy, kiddo, things like that hehe thats it for now!! i will definitely be making more little izu posts bc hes just so cute!! i will also be posting little izu stories on my ao3 if anyone is interested :33 bye bye lovelies, hope you have a wonderful day or night!! 💗

[1mnobodywhoareyou]

rewrite the pain

JatP | G | 2217 words | alive, aged-up AU

Is a special gift for @narcissusbrokenmirror - hope you like it! It'll get posted to ao3 sometime after I wake up :D

Bobby’s been running behind all day. Almost entirely of his own doing, of course: he’d stayed in bed longer than he should have, let himself get lost in nothing instead of getting ready, forgot to eat until it was almost too late. And it’s not even early. There’s no reason he couldn’t have been ready to be somewhere for 10am. Other than the way his brain just won’t LET him get things done.

He shakes his head to clear his mind, not letting himself fall down the self-hate rabbithole. He’s learning to not beat himself up about this kind of thing any more but, well, old habits die hard. 

Bobby looks up at the house shrouded by more greenery than Bobby’s ever seen on a residential lot before. He doesn’t even want to think about how much time, energy, and money it takes to maintain this yard. So he doesn’t. Or tries not to, anyway.

He double checks the address and makes his way up the walk. He rings the doorbell and waits. When there’s no answer, he knocks a few times. He backs down the walk when he’s met with nothing and triple checks the address. He confirms that he is indeed in the right place and looks around, trying to find signs of life or clues to where everyone could be. 

Bobby notices a sidewalk that crosses the front of the house and makes his way down it, peering around the side of the house as he reaches the corner. He can hear voices coming from the backyard and decides to brave the rest of the journey. 

He attempts a futile knock on the gate, knowing that nobody will hear it anyway, before pushing it open. He lets out a sigh of relief when he notices people he recognizes. 

Luke immediately catches sight of him. “Bobby!” he exclaims, running up to him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Glad you could make it. Bex will be so happy to see you!”

Bobby huffs out a light laugh, “Thanks.” He holds out the gift that he’d had tucked under his arm. “Where do you want me to put this?”

“Oh, I’ll take it. Let’s introduce you to everyone!”

Bobby hands Luke the gift as he agrees to the offer. He trails behind Luke as they make their way around the yard to meet Bex’s… family, he guesses. Who knew that one child could have so many adults who wanted to show up for her? He smiles in amusement to himself as he notices a distinct lack of other children in attendance.  

“So you’re Bex’s… babysitter?” one of the older men asks when Luke introduces them. 

“Yes, sir.”

“Huh. How does a man your age wind up babysitting toddlers?”

Bobby gapes at him. It’s not like it’s a question he hasn’t faced before. Or asked himself, quite frankly. But it’s not often that people are so up front about it. 

The more he sees about the inner workings of Bex’s family, the more confused he winds up about his answers to the question. How did he, a man in his early 30s, wind up babysitting Bex, a toddler with more than enough grown ups around to ensure she never gets a moment alone for the rest of her life? Granted, a LOT has happened in the last several months. Very, very quickly, even. But Bobby’s still not entirely sure how HE got here.

“Could ask how a man your age winds up at a toddler he’s not related to’s third birthday party, no?” a familiar feminine voice says from behind Bobby. 

Bobby turns to greet Carrie with a smile. “Hey, Care.”

“Hey, loser. Don’t mind Caleb. He’s just…” she narrows her eyes at Caleb, “like that.”

Bobby looks back at Caleb who’s mid-eye roll. 

“I’m here for the same reason the rest of us are. She asked,” Caleb rebuts. 

“Yeah, lucky us,” Carrie mutters under her breath. She turns her attention back to Bobby, “Did you and Luke finish the rounds?”

Bobby looks around the backyard, noticing that Luke had disappeared at some point, and confirms that he had met everybody new. Most of whom were Julie’s family. 

Carrie grabs him by the elbow and steers him toward the refreshment table. 

“Luke should have at least gotten you a drink before subjecting you to the chaos,” she says as she shoves a plastic cup full of punch into his hand. 

Bobby lets out a light chuckle. “It wasn’t that bad. Everyone seems nice and it’s only like four new people. They can’t be any worse than what I’m used to.” 

Just as he’s about to take a sip, he’s shoved backward by tiny arms wrapping around his legs. 

Bobby steadies himself and his drink, being careful not to spill it on Bex’s head. He looks down with a smile. “Hey Bex!” he greets, stopping himself from ruffling her hair when he notices that she’s sporting neat pigtails. He can’t help but wonder how many people it took to actually get her hair done. He laughs lightly to himself as he imagines a few possible scenarios.

Bobby crouches down to meet Bex properly. “Happy birthday, kiddo! You having lots of fun?”

Bex nods vigorously. In typical Bex fashion, she starts to rattle off all the things she’d been doing before he got there. Far too quickly for Bobby to follow. 

When she finishes, she stares at him expectantly. 

Bobby laughs. “Why don’t you just show me?” he offers. 

She reaches up for his free hand and pulls him away from Carrie. 

Bobby holds his cup up to Carrie in apology. She waves him off with a fond smile of her own. 

Bex leads Bobby around the backyard, showing him all her favourite things (and people). He waves and nods in acknowledgement to everyone Bex (re)introduces him to. He can’t help but laugh every time she pulls him away before he can get more than two words out in any given conversation she butts them into. 

Bex eventually bores of Bobby and is successfully lured away by games and treats and family. Specifically by Carlos deciding that he wanted to experiment with what kinds of things he could convince Bex to do. Bribery with candy included. 

Bobby shakes his head in amusement as he watches them walk away. He looks around the backyard again, taking in the mishmash of ongoing conversations. He notices that every single adult somehow manages to keep half an eye on Bex at all times. It’s not something he sees often from families of his other babysitting clients, not that he gets to see them engage with their kids directly very often. 

He tops up his cup of punch and climbs the handful of stairs to the porch. He leans over the railing as he takes in the chaos. While he has no issue being a part of the action when he’s wanted, he does still have a general preference for watching from the sidelines. Bex and Carlos are taking turns chasing each other around the yard, occasionally tagging in someone new who plays for a round or two before resuming whatever they’d been engaged in before. 

The creak of the porch stairs redirects his attention. He turns to see Alex climbing up the steps, wiping at his eyes. As observant as Bobby is, he’d somehow manage to miss whatever it was that had loosened Alex’s emotions. 

“Oh, shit. I didn’t think anyone would be up here,” Alex says when he notices Bobby, a slight wobble in his voice. 

“It’s okay, man. There’s room for two,” Bobby moves over to sell the point. “Y’alright?”

Alex sniffs before directing a grateful look Bobby’s way. He settles in against the porch railing in the open space beside Bobby. “‘S just a lot, you know?”

Bobby coughs out a dry laugh, “Which part?” 

Alex turns to look at Bobby, brows furrowed.  “All of it.” 

They both redirect their attention to the party below them.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.” 

“Okay. Well, if you change your mind…”

“I won’t. But thanks.”

Bobby hums in acknowledgement but doesn’t say anything further. While he doesn’t get it, he gets it. It’s weird coming from a life like his and seeing kids be loved so deeply. It’s beautiful but hurts in a way that he can’t quite put words to. He can only imagine how much more complicated those feelings are as a parent.

They stand together in silence for several long minutes. Bobby takes a sip of his punch. “This is how it should be, you know?” he finally says, breaking their not-quite-but-almost-comfortable silence.

“What d’you mean?”

“This,” Bobby repeats, gesturing out at the backyard. “A group of adults showing up for their kid. Loving their kid.”

Alex nods slowly. “Yeah. We try.”

Bobby huffs out another light laugh. “I’m not just talking about you, you know. Look at all these people who love Bex. It’s incredible. You built the most beautiful family. Every kid deserves this.”

“Yeah,” Alex agrees softly, “they really do.”

They fall into another comfortable, contemplative silence. 

This time, Alex breaks it. “Do you want your own one day?”

“Kid? God no. I’d only fuck them up. I love kids, obviously. But the best part of what I do is that I get to give them back. And any trauma I cause is probably pretty easily fixable, on the grand scale of things.”

Alex coughs out a dry laugh. “Yeah. That’s fair. Reggie had that fear for a long time. But I know some people never really get over it.”

Both of their gazes track over the backyard, landing on Luke who has Bex perched on his shoulders. She’s pulling on his hair and ears to steer him around. Alex and Bobby share a chuckle at their antics. 

“No, I guess not,” Bobby agrees with a fond smile. “I’d guess it’s probably pretty common for people who come from fucked up families. They either want to save anyone else from experiencing what they did. Or they overcorrect hard in the other direction and want to do it all different. Prove it’s possible.”

Alex hums thoughtfully. “Yeah, maybe,” he agrees before letting a grin take over his face. “That’s a lot of words for a Bobby,” Alex teases. 

“Yeah. Just been thinking.”

“Careful. I’ve heard that kind of thing’s contagious. And can hurt.”

Bobby lets out a dry laugh. 

 “I think that might be one of the hardest parts about parenting?” Alex says after a moment. “Imagining what could have been different. Questioning why things weren’t. For us, I mean.”

Bobby hums in acknowledgement, encouraging Alex to continue.

“I don’t know. I mean, I know we’re gonna fuck up. We have fucked up. But it’s not that hard to just… love your kid?”

“So then you keep asking why you weren’t deserving of that love?”

“Exactly. Shit hurts.”

“Do you and the guys talk about it often?”

Alex shakes his head. “No, not really. I mean, we don’t really need to. We all get it. We’ve been all each other’s had for pretty much our entire lives.”

“And now look at you. Giving Bex everything you never got and then some.”

Alex laughs bitterly. “Who knew there were families overflowing with so much love that they’d so readily adopt 4 wayward rockstar slash artist adults and their toddler.”

“The Molinas seem as great as you’ve all been saying.”

“And more,” Alex sighs. “We’re so lucky to have them. But it also shows how… I guess, unfair it all is? We should have had more. Bex should have had more. Like, yeah, gratitude for what we have, blah blah blah, but that doesn’t change what could have been, you know?”

Bobby offers Alex a wry smile, “I think Reggie or Julie would call that grief or something.”

Alex laughs. “Yeah, probably.”

“Well, they don’t deserve you.”

“That’s what Willie and Reggie try to remind me of. ‘If they can’t love all of you, they don’t deserve access to any of you,’” Alex says, mocking their voices. “And they don’t deserve the joy that is Bex either. And she deserves better than them.”

“Exactly. Enter the Molinas.”

“Enter the Molinas,” Alex firmly agrees,  “The family none of us could have ever dreamed of.”

Bobby lets out a self-deprecating laugh, “Can you imagine what it would have been like being raised by someone like Ray? An adult who cares about where you are. What you’re doing. How you are? More than just some trophy to show off? Or inconvenience to hide away…”

“Loves and encourages you in your full self.”

“What would Luke even write about without shitty parents?”

Alex laughs. “Would we even have the band? This family? I guess that’s a silver lining or some shit.”

“Or some shit,” Bobby agrees with a grin.

“It’s cake time!” Reggie yells from the kitchen, just inside the porch doors. He must have snuck past them at some point. Bobby and Alex exchange a fond smile. 

“Time to give this kid and her… everyone even more of a sugar rush,” Alex says through a grin. 

Bobby offers Alex his fist and Alex immediately knocks their knuckles together. “Right behind ya,” Bobby agrees as he follows Alex into the house.