#and if she has anything interesting to say from a semi outsiders perspective i will report back

[txttletale]

What's worm? I can't exactly google it bcs of the name but I'm intrigued

worm (2011-2013) is a web novel about superheroes by a canadian author who goes by wildbow. it was published serially over the course of two years and in that time managed to get well over a million words long. i think it's very good for a couple reasons:

it takes an approach to 'deconstructing the superhero genre' that i don't think i've ever actually seen--instead of something like the boys or watchmen it doesn't extrapolate forwards from 'what would superheroes be like if they were real', but instead extrapolates backwards from 'what real-life conditions would have to exist to lead to superheroes acting like they do in comics'. the world of worm is believable, well-drawn, and interesting to inhabit

it has incredible character writing. this might not be one of the first things most people associate with it but wildbow has an amazing capacity for giving characters, even side characters that appear for half a chapter, extremely intriguing personal and internal conflicts. sometimes wildbow will write a chapter from the perspective of a side character you never see again and it will leave you wishing they had their own novel series. also despite a lot of problems wildbow has with Some Demographics, most of these well-developed characters are the female ones, who get to dominate the emotional landscape and the plot in a way that's refreshing to see tbh

the protagonist is great. a lot of attention is paid by some fans to the fact that she's a smart problem-solver, and that is true--her power is 'controlling bugs' in a world where other people can fly and shoot lasers, so she has to get smart with it. but i like her mostly because she's an extremely traumatised freak making horrible decisions and justifying them to herself post-hoc constantly. it's fun and interesting to be in her head

worm gets away from a lot of the more reactionary undertones that the superhero genre often fails to escape by making powers an in-universe result of (and, on a narrative level, a pretty clear metaphor) trauma. they are essentially coping mechanisms exaggerated to the point of superpower--because of this it neatly avoids two genre pitfalls because 1. there is no 'some people are better and stronger from birth' angle and 2. it mostly takes a social view of crime--supervillains in worm aren't cartoonish forces of evil (mostly), they are people who are marginalized and desperate.

the powers are cool. this is lower down on my personal list of reasons i like worm than many people's but it's undeniable true. each character has a strictly defined powerset with certain inbuilt limitations that both work to say volumes about their personality but also make fight scenes fun and interesting to read because wildbow puts a lot of thought into how they interact

this is not intentional and worm is at times downright homophobic but i would be lying if i said this didn't play a part in how i and most people i know think about worm: a queer reading of the main character is very easy to make, and the intense and at times tempestuous relationship she has to the girls around her is damn compelling. don't go into it expecting 'representation' or anything, wildbow has insisted at length that the main character is straight. but fr shes gay af

now all this said: there's a lot of nasty stuff that happens in worm. there is a lot of body horror and a lot of insect horror. there are so many instances of bugs being forced into human orifices in this book i could have filled out this list with that instead. so if that turns you off give this one a miss. child abuse and violence against children in general is also something that comes up semi-regularly.

and to expand on something i said in the post that i assumed prompted this question--when these topics come up, worm does a very very poor job of handling race and a better but still not great job with gender and sexuality. the world outside north america is sketched with a looseness and a lack of research that borders on caricature (i can think of like five organizations/characters that were very clearly named through google translate). the pacing takes a huge hit after a certain event in the back half of the story, and it can be a little exhausting to read because it is both thematically and literally about constant crisis and escalation.

still, if none of that is a dealbreaker for you, i'd recommend it 100%. i'm definitely glad i've read it. it's a powerful story about trauma and authority and control that does reward the outrageous time commitment it demands. there's also a fanmade audiobook if that sweetens the deal for you. i haven't listened to it but i've heard that it's pretty decent for a volunteer effort.

[numericalbridge]

You are so right about the Wittebane fandom. I’ve noticed that if someone likes the Wittebanes, they’re ALL the blog will talk about. Sometimes they’ll add in Hunter or those literally copy-pasted white boys, and maybe Evelyn but she only exists to be Caleb’s girlboss wife. Sometimes they’ll add in Luz and Willow, but they only care about those girls of color because of their relationship to their white guys, otherwise they don’t care about Luz or Willow as their own individual characters with other relationships outside of the white guys.

I think it’s telling the Wittebane fandom saw this entire show and its setting and found it more interesting to talk about the two white brothers in their racist all-white colony. I find it telling that people will use ‘parallels’ as an excuse to take everything interesting about other characters and give it to their white guys, and then appreciate these traits exclusively through their white guys. The Wittebane fandom is honestly racist and misogynistic.

And the way they talk about those brothers is faux-deep, in that ‘Dark Academia’ kind of way. They treat the dark things as inherently deeper but it isn’t, it’s just dark and that’s cool to see because not a lot of kids shows go there. But fans don’t want to talk about what Belos actually represents, like the Christian colonialism, the misogyny and white supremacy, the evangelical cop attitudes. Instead they’re committed to divorcing Belos from these things or outright denying them, and instead focusing on how he has Catholic (he’s Protestant) guilt and codependency issues.

But these aren’t what the show is focusing on, it’s all those other things the fans ignore. And it’s because things like ‘religious trauma’ or codependency, they can romanticize. But these fans recognize on some level that the white supremacy and Christian colonialism is gross, so they ignore it. It’s like how people who claim to love Dark Fic will implode if they’re made to read about critical race theory.

Unironically, an episode like O Titan where art thou is deeper than all those fics about Belos thinking he’s Cain because those fics don’t really say anything, whereas OTWAT is about King and Steve questioning the perspective and loneliness of God and if he has any desires outside of being God. Covention is about how the coven system is just our capitalist system with its illusion of choice. The first day is about the after effects of No Child Left Behind and how well-meaning schools betray their kids because of it. These are all so much more topical and interesting than idk cannibalism as a metaphor for love.

yeah, i admit i didn't look too deep, but i've never seen Evelyn have any personality other than one of the girlboss/girlfailure/fandom version of a manic pixie dream girl-types of 'acceptable' personalities. I still saw some semi-popular artist claim how she is so important for the narrative while at the same time saying rather meanspirited things about Willow and Gus and their fans.

tbh it seems that fandoms often takes specific trendy tropes and start to apply them to everything, not even to fanworks, but to the canon material and meta, so when the 'oh, messy fucked up relationships!' are trendy in some parts of fandoms it becomes applied to everything without any thought. Which would have been annoying but whatever, but then the fandoms are also racist and misogynistic so the result is what it is.

[theyarebothgunshot]

i'm sorry if you've already closed this topic of discussion but in my ~professional opinion~ (aka i've taken a number of voice and speech/dialect classes and know the general shape certain types of letters take) jackles absolutely says babe gahsdjk. his lips come back together at the end of the word, which wouldn't happen with 'man' or 'bye'. ANYWAY we're all just vibing and having a good time here either way but that's my two cents lmao

bless you rachel, i definitely agree!!

okay here we go, welcome to: people cannot stop talking about the babe discourse in my inbox

to be very honest, i wasn't completely sold on it being "babe" till i saw it was literally cut from the gish recap. because that is... that is really very sus. absolutely no reason to cut it unless...

yeah that part really threw me off because either they couldn't make out what jensen said (which.... wouldn't it have made sense to at least write down the 'okay' part then?) or they realised it was an error on jensen's part so they left it out completely. i mean...

I hear babe for sure!!!

high five, me too

i can't not hear babe i tried and tried to convince myself he said man but no way sorry

same

Man, I personally can’t believe people are still debating over the ‘babe’ thing. I mean you do you, we’re all entitled to our own opinions. But I just can’t hear anything but babe. Like I DIDN’T wanna believe it. Jackles is messy but not THAT messy.(which sounds ridiculous now that I think about it, he did pop a boner cause of Misha after all). What I’m trying to say is, I tried NOT to hear babe,but I just couldn’t skjssjjs.

-poker face anon

P.S. so...how long do you think it’ll take till we convert that non shipper nonnie of yours?(for legal purposes this is a joke, you are valid non shipper anon <3)

no but honestly though!!! also sjdfhsjh i am hoping that non shipper nonnie will see the light some day...... but if not thats okay too lmao

it’s “hey, sweetheart” (“omg he said sweetheart!” “nah, i heard dude.” etc) all over again. time is a flat circle full of audibly questionable terms of endearment lmao — 💖 anon

fhsjfhshf we would always end up here

Jensen sounds like he would call his own mother brother I don't know babe - tea anon

i meannnn he apparantly calls dee 'man' in that AD vid so sjfhdsj

WHERE CAN I FIND THE JENMISH VID??? Please ❤🧡💛💚💙💜 Found it! It's on YT, sorry BABE 😉

no worries babe (im loving this already we're gonna be using babe a lot aren't we)

I just wanted to add that I definitely see where non shipper anon is coming from though. He could’ve just made a simple mistake. We’ve all made those little mix ups, like how I used to call some of my elementary school teachers ‘mom’ on accident, but for me, when I put that ‘babe’ next to everything else, it just paints a clear picture in my mind.

-poker face anon

oh yeah of course! everybody slips up from time to time. but like. you know.

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

My Top Ten Overlooked Movies With Female Leads In No Particular Order

Note: When you see this emoji (⚠️) I will be talking about things people may find triggering, which are spoilery more often then not. I mention things that I think may count as triggers so that people with them will be aware before going in to watch any of these.

Edited: 3/16/21

Hanna (2011)

So, before I get into why you should watch this movie, I just want to take a moment to say why it's near and dear to my heart. Growing up as a queer kid in the early 2000s, seeing portrayals of people like or similar to myself on anything was rare at best. It was mostly in more "adult" movies or shows that my parents would occasionally let me watch with them that I'd see any lgbtq+ rep at all. Often times they were either walking stereotypes, designed to be buried, evil, or all three.

Then here comes this PG-13 action thriller with a wonderfully written main female lead who, at the time, was close to my age, and who got to kiss another girl (her very first friend, Sophie) on screen in an extremely tender and heartwarming scene. To say the least, it was a life changing moment for me personally.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Hanna is a suspenseful movie about a child super-soldier named, you guessed it, Hanna (played by Saoirse Ronan) and her adoptive (?) father Erik Heller (played by Eric Bana) exiting the snowy and isolated wilderness of their home and taking on the shadowy CIA operative, Marissa Wiegler (played by Cate Blanchette) who wants Erik dead and Hanna for herself for mysterious reasons.

It also has an amazing soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers, great action scenes, and it has an over arching fairytale motif, which I'm always a sucker for.

⚠️ Mild blood effects, some painful looking strikes, various character deaths, and child endangerment all feature in this film. However, given its PG-13 rating, a majority of viewers are presumably able to handle this one. Still, be aware of these going in.

Sidenote: It's recently gotten a TV adaptation on Amazon TV, although I have not watched it, and do not know if Hanna and Sophie's romantic/semi-romantic relationship has transferred over.

A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor is a "black-comedy mystery thriller" centered entirely around the relationship between two mothers, the reclusive, rich, mysterious, and regal Emily (played by Blake Lively), and the local recently widowed but plucky mommy blogger, Stephanie (played by Anna Kendrick). When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to find out what happened to her new best friend.

It's a fantastic and entertaining movie throughout, with fun, flawed and interesting characters. The relationship between the two female leads is also implied to be at least somewhat romantic in nature, and they even share a kiss.

⚠️ The only major warnings I can think of is that the movie contains an instance of incest and one of the main plotlines revolves around child abuse, although both of these potentially triggering topics are not connected to each other, so there is thankfully no csa going on.

Edit: I legitimately forgot there was drug use in this movie until now. So, yeah, if that's a trigger, be careful of that.

I Am Mother

I became mildly obsessed with this movie when it came out. I Am Mother is a sci-fi film that centers entirely around a cast of two woman, and a female-adjacent robot who is brought to life on screen with absolutely amazing practical effects.

The plot is such, after an extinction-level event, a lone robot known only as Mother tasks herself with replenishing the human race via artifical means. She begins with the film's main protagonist, Daughter. Years go by as Mother raises her human child and the two prepare for Daughter's first sibling (a brother) to be born. However, on Daughter's 16th birthday, the arrival of an outsider known only as Woman shakes Daughter's entire world view. She begins to question Mother's very nature, as well as what's really going on outside the bunker she and her caretaker call home.

⚠️ This movie features child endangerment and reference to child death.

Lilo and Stitch

When I decided to add a single Disney film to this list I initially thought it was going to be hard but almost immediately my brain went to Lilo and Stitch, and specifically about the relationship between Lilo and Nani.

On the surface, this film is about a lonely little girl accidentally adopting a fugitive alien creature as a "dog," but underneath that the story is also about two orphaned sisters and the older sister's attempts to not let social services tear them apart by stepping up as the younger sister's primary guardian. Despite its seemingly goofy premise, Lilo and Stitch has a very emotional and thoughtful center. It's little wonder how this movie managed to spawn an entire franchise.

Despite the franchise it spawned (or possibly because of it), I often find that Lilo and Stitch is overlooked and many people only remember it for the "little girl adopts an alien as a pet" portion of its plot, and I very rarely see it on people's top 10 Disney lists.

⚠️ This movie could be potentially triggering to people who were separated from their siblings or other family members due to social service intervention. There's also a bit of child endangerment, including a scene where Lilo and Stitch both almost drown.

Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind

Unlike the above entry, I did struggle a little bit with picking a single Studio Ghibli film. Most media of the Ghibli catalogue have strong, well-written, unique, and interesting female leads so selecting just one seemed like quite the task.

However, I eventually settled on this particular film. In recent months, Princess Nausicaä has become my absolute favorite Ghibli protagonist and I'm absolutely enchanted by the world she lives in.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world overun by giant insects and under threat of a toxic forest and its poisoness spores, Nausicaä must try to protect the Valley of the Wind from invaders as she also tries to understand the science behind the toxic forest and attempts to bridge the gap between the insects and the humans.

For those who have never seen the film, I think Nausicaä's personality can best be described as being similar to OT Luke Skywalker. Both are caring, compassionate, and gentle souls who are able to see the best in nearly anyone or anything. She's an absolutely enthralling protagonist and after rewatching the film again for the first time in well over a decade she has easily become one of my all time favorite protagonists.

Whenever I see people talk about Ghibli films, they rarely mention this one, and when they do mention it, it's often in passing. In my opinion it's a must watch.

⚠️ This movie contains some blood, and the folks who either don't like insects or who have entomophobia may not appreciate the giant bugs running about throughout the movie. (Although most insects do not directly relate to real life bugs, and are fantasy creatures).

A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice is an animated movie adaptation of a manga of the same name. While I've never had the pleasure to read the manga, the movie is phenomenal. It covers topics such a bullying, living in the world with a disability, the desire for atonement, social anxiety, and depression in a well thought out manner that ties itself together through the progression of the relationship between its two leads, Shoya and Shouko. It's also beautifully animated. Although very popular among anime viewers, I've noticed that it's often overlooked by people who watch little to no anime. So I suppose this is me urging non-anime viewers to give this film a chance.

⚠️ As mentioned above, the movie deals with bullying, anxiety, and depression (with this last one including suicidal thoughts and behaviour). If discussion of those topics are triggering to you, than you may want to proceed with caution or skip this movie all together.

In This Corner of The World

Another manga adaptation, this one taking place during WWII-era Japan. In This Corner of The World follows the life of a civilian Japanese woman, Suzu Urano, as she navigates simply living and her new marriage as the wartime invades nearly all aspects of everyday life. I think this movie is a good representation of what it must be like to be living as civilian in a country at war where the fight is sometimes fought on one's own soil. It was also an interesting look into pre-50s Japanese culture in my opinion. It's also beautifully animated featuring an art style I don't see often.

Despite it being well known among anime fans, I never really see it be brought up, even among said anime fans themselves.

Side note: I've seen many WWII dramas centering around civilians but they've almost always been about American or UK civilians. This was the first movie I'd seen that features the perspective of a Japanese civilain.

⚠️ Features the death of a child and limb loss. There's also a disturbing scene featuring a victim of one of the atomic bombs near the end.

Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki

This film follows Hana, a Japan-native woman who fell in love with a magical shape-shifting wolf-man, and her trials with raising their children, who can also magically shape-shift into wolves, on her own. It's a very heartfelt movie about a mother's love and the struggles of doing right by your children when you have limited resources to actively guide and care for them. All the characters feel unique and alive in my opinion. Also, the animation is so good that my sister and I initially mistook it for a Ghibli film.

Again, like the previous two anime entries, I don't see it ever brought up outside of anime circles.

⚠️ There's some child endangerment present in the film, although none of it is the fault of Hana as far as I can remember.

Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday is about the fictional Princess Ann (played by Audrey Hepburn), who while on a whirlwind tour of Europe, finally reaches her breaking point over having her entire life be one big schedule and all her words and actions being rehearsed. In the spur of the moment, she runs away in hopes of experiencing what life is like for other women. Unfortunately, she was previously given a sedative, meaning she doesn't get too far before it takes effect. Fortunately, she is found by the kind reporter Joe Bradley (played by Gregory Peck). Believing her to be drunk and unable to get an address from her (because she has none) he ends up taking her home for safety's sake and allows her to sleep off her suppose drunken stupor. The next day, he realizes who she is, and decides to take her on a fun sight seeing trip across Rome in hopes of getting the big scoop. Along the way, they begin to fall for each other.

This is my favorite black and white, old romance film. I think the relationship between the main characters is absolutely beautiful and I have a lot of fun watching it.

⚠️ I'm not entirely sure what kind of warning this film would need. However, it was released in 1953, so values dissonance will probably be at play for many viewers to at least some extent. For example, early in the film Ann is given sedation drugs by her doctor for her behavior, something that is very unlikely to happen today. Also, Mr Bradley deciding to take Ann home to keep her safe rather than call the police or an ambulance is a very pre-90s decision in my opinion.

[rawliverandcigarettes]

Our discussion on turians made me wonder: how do you imagine the culture of the Salarian Union? (I'm sorry, you probably talked about this elsewhere, but I was too lazy to look for that, if so feel free to refer me to that post.) I find that there are surprisingly little elements about it in canon, though there are a few hints, like the fact that the planets in the Pranas system all have modern names, the previous names having been discarded, presumably, because they evoke "bygone superstition"?

Hello! Sorry I took some time. I actually rarely packaged my thoughts on salarian culture in a digestible way, so you gave me a great opportunity to give it a recap! I will go more indepth in the future for sure, but I might do a lil' overarching presentation of my general thoughts.

First, I have written an exploration/explanation of some of my headcanons regarding salarian reproduction, and it can be found here on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18872515

It is sliightly out of date and I need to do a pass to adjust some of my thoughts, but I still go by the general idea.

I also agree that there is very little things in the OT canon. I think there might be slightly more in Andromeda maybe, but I still haven't played the game so who knows!

I even believe the games kind of give up on salarian culture past ME1, where they are arguably given the most importance; we get more depth to it in ME2 through the sole and lonely perspective of Mordin; and in ME3 they are barely worth more than somewhat cheap antagonism and a couple of questionable jokes. Even right now during the promo of MELE, I felt like salarians keep being characterized as weird-cute-gross, and more like the butt of a joke than people. Even the promo for Director Tann in MEA had this "haha you get a role for a mass effect character and you thought you'd be sexy and cool TOO BAD" vibe to it, which makes me think part of the devteam (or at least the marketing side of it) don't think too highly of their very own space frogs :'(((

But to get on my actual thoughts (under the cut and the nice gif, because it won't be as long as it could be, but it's still somewhat long):

So first off, I'm trying to keep in mind how indescribably huge the Salarian Union is: we're talking about a conglomerate of planet-sized communities, moons, artificial stations, plus appendages in every large-scaled, cosmopolitan communities in Council space and possibly beyond. Just like it would be hard to talk about any united "human culture", I think the same could be true for any Mass Effect species --even though, for the sake of both narrative convenience and the tendency for globalization once communities get connected and break down communication barriers, shortcuts have to be made (and that helps make Points, and I like stories to have Points so yee).

For this reason, I have identified organizational tendencies within these communities, based both on baseline of natural grouping emerging off salarian biology (clan-based structures with matriarchal figures) and where I speculated breakdowns would happen in the modern, multicultural setting of the ME universe. To brutally over-simplify: there would be the "traditional" political organization of Sur'kesh (that I will briefly cover later), the "colonial" style (a derivation of the Sur'kesh style with more centralization), and the growing influence of ultraliberalism creeping from Council space back unto these communities, creating a myriad of variations depending on how much the communities are willing to adapt to production being controlled by corporations.

I headcanon the culture, however, to be at once: very collectivist yet an oligarchy (because dalatrasses have a right to power by virtue of existence basically), extremely eugenist to the point of having created literal, biological races that are genetically distinct from each other and cultivated to remain as such by some clans (and therefore can be very cruel towards the disabled/the imperfect at birth too), misandrist (I believe being a male salarian from a shitty clan/baronny is one of the lower forms of political existence that can be in this universe, hence why their lives in the working force are so goddamn disposable), but also designed to protect its members and have the community take care of their basic needs (so homelessness is almost not a thing, or at least used to not be a thing). I also believe the culture to be consistently young and vibrant, with lots of energy (for better and for worse). And during the time of ME, to be under economical and social duress (even gender duress!) as it sits at a crossroad regarding its future, and everyone has a lots of ideas on what this future should look like, including people gawking the outside with economical or political interests in the outcome (this basically the plot of The Empire of Preys, which is technically a prequel to Halfway Home but will be written after HH because I love chronologies that make sense and are easy to understand :) :) ).

So concerning the OG, Sur'kesh style: I have contorted a weird economical/diplomatic/land planning system into quasi-existence, that is based around a unit called the "symposium". This is a *relatively* young system in their history (still milleniums old, it really solidified in the middle of the Rachni Wars as a reaction/adaptation after several waves of imperialism that didn't really look like ours but had the same effect of flattening local cultures into a more aggressive semi-ethnostate), but central into dividing resources, workers, affect. I will not go into too much details because this is quite complicated, but these are basically commitees that will take democratic decisions among its members, based on how many clan members are appointed in both this symposium and and adjacent symposiums that might be helpful to this one --it's a system explicitely based on bribes and social influence, and getting the partial control of key symposiums is absolutely essential for Dalatrasses to maintain the influence and relevance of their respective clans. It's also a system that has, traditionally, very little use for money (it exists, but as a token of exchange that doesn't carry inherent value --if you have only access to money as a clan, you are basically worthless and won't get access to good matches or good symposium seats, or at least you used to until capitalism knocked at the doooooor and that kinda fucked things uppppppp and the society is not recovering and the gaps are getting extreeeeeme this is the plot of TEOP basically).

Oh and on the subject of the transition to more capitalist values and the decay of clans that cannot keep up, I wrote The Leftovers a couple of years ago, which talks about a young dalatrass-to-be discovering she might be sterile, right here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15854244

I have a ton more things to say on the subject (and salarian culture as a whole), buuut this is getting quite long already haha.

And in regards to your question: I headcanon that salarians from one specific continent -that then became the "cultural norm" over imperialism and complications- were confronted, in a continental way, to a huge hurricane that led to incredible floods and then stagnant water and diseases, which really soured their relationship to water that was previously quite holy. This led to a very bitter enlightenment; their "Renaissance" came out of spite against nature rather than anything else, and a lot of previous ideas were abandoned for a time -then reclaimed, then abandoned again, then warped... It's complicated. :D

[sheepfulsheepyardinspace]

Do you have any Star Wars fanfic recommendations, or have a link to someone else's list? I really wanna veg out.

oh my god, DO I. this may have been the best ask in the world. i’m not really sure what u want a feel for, so i threw together some of my favorite longfics for maximum veg time from the ot/pt and links for swr and swtcw recs. they’re pretty much all luke-anakin/vader centric, since that’s kinda my bread and butter.

let’s start with frodogenic, who wrote the first longfic i ever read in sw and might be one of the funniest authors ever. they once reviewed my fanfic & i nearly cried from joy. anyway. 

The Father, 284k+, complete. “Ten years after ROTS, tormenting nightmares of his unborn child drive Darth Vader to extraordinary measures with unexpectedly drastic consequences. Clearly, experience has taught Darth Vader nothing...” 

this is my og star wars fic and boy oh boy is it amazing. i will never get over this. i don’t want to spoil anything but when i say the final chapters are great? i mean they’re legendary. sometimes i still think about them & wish upon a star that i could be such a great writer. vader’s amazing, han is spectacular, and the ocs are fantastic.

Far More Than Rubies, 70k+, complete. “Nine years after AOTC, tragedy revisits the Lars Homestead. Little Luke Skywalker is suddenly plunged into chaos as the rebel movements discover a secret military project that may make a crucial difference in the war with the Empire.”

the spiritual twin of The Father, FMTR takes a look at padmé’s character and relationship with both luke and anakin/vader that’s hard to beat. it’s darker and heavier than The Father, but it hits those same sweet, sweet emotional beats while raising the age-old question: if padmé had lived, what would she have done?

The Family Tree, 12k, complete. “In which Luke Skywalker is stranded in a tree waiting for a flash flood to recede. Too bad he's got company...”

okay, i admit, this isn’t a longfic, but it is a longshot, and it’s amazing. the imagery and description always blow me away, and the interaction (canon-compliant) between luke and vader just [chef’s kiss] get me. vader’s in full, glorious form, and it makes it all the harder when luke wrestles with the knowledge that vader is his father.

Sibling Revelry, 25k, complete. “After Bespin and before Endor, Darth Vader is shocked to discover that Luke and Leia are twins. He's even more shocked when Imperial Intelligence reports that Organa and Skywalker are, erm, a tad closer than previously suspected.”

this is complete crack and humor in the best way possible. it’s crack treated entirely seriously, and you will be in stitches, i promise. no matter how many times i’ve read this i break down.

KittandChips (@kittandchips) writes what i can only describe as food for the soul. the luke-vader interaction is insanely amazing, the world building of daily imperial life and imperial governance is amazing, and vader just has a special je ne sais quoi that u must read to understand––tragic, funny, and so, so fatherly. they’re currently rewriting the Force Bond Series to fit in with newer canon, so i will joyously binge reread the entire again (including the new Force Bond: Mustafar Weekend).

Force Bond 1: Orphan, 47k, complete. “After Owen and Beru are killed by a mysterious stranger, young Luke ends up as an orphan on Coruscant. It's a race against time as Obi-Wan struggles to find Luke before Vader realizes the boy is his son.”

Orphan kicks off the series, which tracks vader and luke’s relationship through the perils of luke’s teenagerhood while growing up under the eye of the emperor and imperial court. it’s filled with slow growth, struggle and misunderstandings as darth vader tries to single parent, and pay off in every installment. the entire series clocks in around 777k+ and is the most joyful, fulfilling reading you’ll ever have. promise.

darth-nickels (@darth--nickels) writes darker, twistier, and terribly, terribly heartwrenching aus. they’ve got a whole host, but let me introduce to my two favorites. also, check out their faux-academia on vader. it’s amazing and i love it, but i admit i am an academia hoe.

Dooku Captured, Pt 2, 16k, complete. “Dooku is taken alive onboard the Invisible Hand, and Sidious' web is torn. The Sith Lord wonders if death might have been preferable to clumsy interrogation by Anakin Skywalker.”

Dooku Captured is a longshot au told from Dooku’s pov which takes the beginning of ROTS and throws it on its head. it’s a fascinating outside perspective of anakin and obi-wan’s relationship and such and interesting examination of dooku’s psyche and especially his complex relationship with the jedi order, qui-gon, yoda, and palpatine. i cannot rec this one enough.

Black Mirror, 90k, incomplete. “The Ghost crew returns to the Lothal when they hear the Empire is investigating the Jedi Temple there. They learn Vader is alone and decide to take him out-- but what they find could change the course of Galactic history.”

Black Mirror diverges into swr territory, but make no mistake: this is entirely an examination of vader and, later, obi-wan as well as ahsoka. luke makes his appearance later in the game, and boy oh boy will you love luke’s portrayal is a microcosm of luke and vader’s relationship within canon. heed the tags, though.

jerseydevious ( @jerseydevious ) is, first and foremost, one of my favorite people on earth. secondly, though, she’s an amazing writer with a deep understanding of vader’s character and psyche, a flair for beautiful depictions, and the true ability to wring every emotion out of your body.

Two and a Half Men (with a baby), 13k, incomplete. “After a long day of bargaining with Hutts and attempting to ignore his past, Darth Vader is nearing the end of his rope. When he discovers his two-year-old son, it's the straw that breaks the semi-rational Sith Lord's back; in a rash act worthy of the Skywalker name, he scoops his son into his arms, steals a shuttle from his own fleet, and punches in random hyperspace coordinates to a destination on the other side of the galaxy. Unfortunately, father and son are not the only ones on the ship.”

Two and a Half Men will stick with you, dude. like no other. i promise. it’s a whirlwind ride with obi-wan, vader, and piett and as funny as it is heartbreaking. it touches on some heavy issues and doesn’t shy away from looking at the damage done to vader––again, heed the tags.

Helioseismology, 4k, complete. “Luke gets shot down on a supply run and caught in an ice storm. It's extremely lucky that his father followed him there.“

i’ll admit. im completely biased about this one because it was a birthday gift to me and i am sucker for litcherally anything when jd puts pen to paper, but believe me when i say you will be awed by the depth and tangled relationships between these luke and vader that jersey can illustrate in a stroke of the paintbrush. im love. always.

izzythehutt ( @izzythehutt ) i am blown away by the intricate dialogue and characterization, always. and the latin puns? im sold. im also a sucker for latin puns, but that’s a story for a different time.

In Loco Pirates, 34k, complete. “A down-on-his-luck Hondo Ohnaka manages to capture the unicorn of all bounties--Luke Skywalker, which sends Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, on a painfully familiar trip to the planet Florrum to collect his prize. The failed negotiations leave Vader in the awkward position of being stuck in a besieged pirate bunker, trying to balance keeping his wayward child safe (and in his custody) with controlling the tongue of a loose-lipped pirate who--to the surprise of no one--has a bad habit of telling 'amusing' anecdotes from the Clone Wars.”

hondo, aka the best character of swtcw, is brought to life just as vividly on paper as on screen. his entire personality brings luke and vader’s difficulties in a sort of incredulous light, which makes it as funny as it is vulnerable and tragic. the sequel, Palpatine Ad Portas, brings piett into the spotlight, and oh man do his interactions with palpatine and vader bring u all the uncomfortable vibes. relish in it.

sparklight ( @littlesparklight ) man. lemme introduce u to an amazing prolific and detailed writer. i will never get over the series they’ve written & neither will u.

Where Our Intrepid Hero Doesn’t Get Away, 122k, incomplete. “One-shots surrounding either AU situations of canon/legends works where Luke would normally have gotten away (or Vader is simply inserted into the action to come pick his child up) but in these instances doesn't, or completely new scenarios of the same. There are no deep ruminations on consequences of the situations here, just our awful Sith dad picking his son up when he'd rather not be.”

exactly what it says on the tin. u know those glorious moments of fanfic where luke’s gotten captured and ur on pins and needles, waiting for vader to show up in a moment of dark glory? here’s the moment. here’s all the moments.

Space Race, 122k, incomplete. “Owen gives in to Luke's wish to attend the Imperial Academy and Obi-Wan is too late to avert it, though he's not too late to make sure Luke leaves Arkanis before Vader can gets his hands on him. Luke spends over a month running around the galaxy before his father gets him, and from there...”

this story relishes in chase and boy is it fun. it will keep you on the edge of your seat and it’s an amazing ride.

The Suns of Tatooine, 85k, complete. “Luke ends up on a moon swamped in dark side energy after a mission goes wrong, then his father appears... and then they go on a bit of a learning experience. This could've been the only thing that would come of getting through a Sith complex with his father, but thanks to going to free Han earlier than the gang did otherwise, more revelations are had. Will that change anything?”

this series is a thoughtful, contemplative piece examining the nature of the force and the relationship the skywalkers have with tatooine. the descriptions are beautiful, the inventiveness is amazing, and you’ll be thinking about it for long afterwards.

an additional few…

Between Flight and Longing; 34k, complete. “Luke Skywalker and Han Solo journey to the planet Balen'ar on a desperate mission and find more than they'd bargained for.”

a classic and it is for a reason. the interaction between han, luke, and vader is so spectacular and the slow trudge of going through the forest with your greatest enemy and best friend is something hilarious. the end is bittersweet and fantastic.

The Sith Who Brought Life Day, 13k, complete. “An Imperial officer loses a bet and has to get Darth Vader a present for Life Day.”

somewhere between terrifying and dull, this fic presents a canon-compliant look at the hunt for luke and the grinding wheels of the empire. the oc is amazing and it echoes in true star wars spirit: sometimes it’s just some dude who can change the galaxy.

Quintessence, 5k, complete. ‘“Well, Master, I think I’ve found the one positive aspect of this situation.” “Which is?” “The Temple won’t have to pay the costs for our funeral pyres.”’

pure hilarity and shenanigans abound in pre-aotc obi-wan and anakin hijink goodness. lemme tell u––u will deeply sympathize with mace windu afterwards. additionally, check out the rest of the author’s oneshots! they’re deeply thoughtful and the interactions the author writes between obi-wan and anakin are always gold.

some extras & shameless self-promotion

here’s a full list of recommendations for star wars rebels fanfic in case this is what you’re looking for (remember when this used to be a swr blog, lmao)

i’ve also written sw fanfic, both swr and luke-vader centric. drop by and tell me if it’s any good!

[infinites-chaser]

val’s mementos

(or: a working masterlist of my mlqc fics created mostly for my own sanity)

everything on this list has also been posted to my ao3!

currently accepting prompts from this prompt meme~

(while i will do my very best to fill every prompt with writing that i’m proud of pls keep in mind that some may take longer than others for any amount of reasons!)

Lucien

dark night fireworks- my first (published) mlqc fic <333 2nd person and entirely too pretentious (rumor has it even the author doesn’t really know what she was trying to convey except. n e u r o s c i e n c e and MEMORY is cool). slight spoilers for ch.16

watch the universe expand- a long, rambly attempt to explore lucien’s character and also evolutionary biology and evols told through excessive metaphor and bedtime stories. spoilers for lucien’s childhood and ch.13. im proud of this one ^^ though there is a lot of projection involved. also lucien is an enneagram five.

to dwell on- c: lucien and homes and him and mc being soft together that’s it <3 or in more coherent language some bittersweet fluff for lucien’s bday based on moments from his mini-house and his most recent bday karma + date. in hindsight i’ve realized i didn’t use his or MC’s name at all outside of dialogue LOL

king lear and other tragedies- a prompt for the librarian ask meme linked above! im p sure anon prompted me a month before i got around to actually writing an answer hndkslgj but. here we are. shakespeare and tragedies and parallels between characters and a lot of pretentious dialogue, meant to be an extension of/missing scene after lucien’s theater date. this only rly exists bc of a single line in the date mentioning the production being put on was king lear and i took that and ran for all it was worth

Gavin

just a summer thing- a short little scenario that manifested in my head one warm summer night when i should’ve been sleeping and my first foray into domestic!gavin territory <333 i’d say it’s probably one of my lightest fics, if not the lightest ahfksldg (also heavily inspired by the way @belovedstill writes gavin/mc pst basia’s fics are to die for)

under a golden sun- high school era gavin, MC and minor! originally intended for gavin’s bday except (1) i didn’t finish on time LOL and (2) the fic never mentions his bday oops. also in 2nd person though if you asked why i couldn’t tell you it just felt more right. ft. basketball and memories and a bit of bittersweet nostalgia. simultaneously has some of what i think is my weakest writing (in terms of pacing/consistent tone imo) and some of my favorite lines i’ve ever written for a gavin fic and i’ve come to appreciate it more over time bc of that c:

today, this is the whole universe (and that’s okay)- gavin, MC, and domestic, sleepy sundays. and a long ao3 title that’s it that’s the fic (narrator: and then, she never wrote anything purely fluffy ever again). heavily inspired by gavin’s sleepy morning asmr and that one clip of his cn voice actor playing/humming his theme (aka soft soft SOFTEST) also just. i said it already but all of my domestic!gavin is inspired by and exists thanks to the breathtaking writing of @belovedstill <333

in the wind- a semi(?)exploration of gavin’s wind but also just him loving mc bc that’s what he and his evol are all about. short and bittersweet <3 (if anyone’s keeping track i think this is where my writing starts to lean more on the uhhh descriptive side and becomes less dialogue-based? or i feel there’s a diff from this writing style compared to the earlier gavin fics (besides parts of under a golden sun) which is just interesting for me to think about but not relevant to the fic itself ahfklsdf) 

winter’s end- winter world!gavin and mc and a softer, more bittersweet reunion. m a j o r spoilers for ch.22 and what comes before. also gavin’s past. it hurt to write and apparently hurts to read b u t there’s a happy ending. i promise c:

sunrise to noon- a secret santa fic that ended up being less holiday related than I originally intended but like all things domestic and Gavin I think it works well as it is <3 just tender winter mornings and domesticity and the return of my fluff writing

Kiro

falling down the stairs of your smile- this was a prompt for the librarian prompt meme and doesn’t have an official title on the ask but here’s the title in all its long all-lowercase ao3 glory. basically the first few chapters from kiro’s perspective with slight spoilers from his past! kiro is such a joy to write and i love this a lot and im super glad i got the opportunity to write this (the waY i banged this out in one night when i got the ask askfsdkfksl)

[deleted by Key]- i have an idea and i’m s u p e r excited about it but no spoilers except this quote: ‘But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart— by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.’- If We Were Villains, M.L. Rio.

Victor

Of Corgis and Christmas- a secret santa present for a victor stan that conjured some fluffy victor writing from my victor-less heart,,, a christmas miracle aND im lowkey proud of how it turned out but the highlights of the fic are Goldman and Cindy T-T they deserve more screentime and someday. i will write the subplot that got cut where Goldman sends Cindy embarrassing Victor stories to try to impress her and MC helps :>

spend my whole life searching- i combined 2 victor librarian asks from the librarian prompt meme above would u believe he's the only suitor I got twice 😔 this man is so popular and for what (only kidding ahdjdjs we just have a relationship of mutual disapproval dont mind me dragging him just a little i need to compensate for the appreciation I developed for him while writing this :>) this is similar to the kiro librarian fic in that it kinda gives vic's perspective on victor/MC's first in-game meeting with a healthy dose of and they were soulmates and angsty longing™ and also. victor is an enneagram one

Shaw

i started a few things a long time ago for him maybe someday i’ll finish them :’)

[catty-words]

Why Not Just Anyone Will Get Their Own Narration

Or, the narration meta no one asked for.

Never Have I Ever shifting the POV to Ben Gross for an episode was a pleasant surprise for most viewers—certainly was for me!—and, as a result, I’ve seen/heard the other cast members get asked who would narrate their own POV episode. And as much as I love the speculation, I’ve noticed a pattern in the narration that makes me a) think not just anyone will get a breakout POV and b) appreciate the way Ben getting his own is, not forecasted, exactly, but highlights an internal consistency in the universe that I really enjoy.

To start, let’s take a look at how McEnroe discusses Kamala—the best example of what I mean from the first episode.

Intro: That’s Devi’s cousin Kamala. She moved in after Mohan’s passing to complete her PhD at CalTech. Devi is not a fan.

Later in the Ep: Kamala was expected to have an arranged marriage after she finished her studies abroad, but she felt less than enthusiastic about that idea.

The intro is similar to what most characters get in the first episode—a brief rundown of why they’re in Devi’s orbit and a hint at their main personality traits. And, in addition to this intro being framed in how Kamala relates back to Devi, we get the bit of insight that Devi doesn’t like her. It’s all very much grounded in Devi’s head.

McEnroe popping in during the Vishwakumar family dinner, on the other hand, deviates from Devi’s perspective. Even though Kamala is clearly sarcastic about finding the potential-husband news exciting, it’s also clear that Devi is too self-involved to pick up on this. Instead of frowning sympathetically at Kamala’s clear frustration, Devi excuses herself from the table because Kamala “[doing] nothing and [getting] a full husband in the mail” niggles at her insecurity about being undesirable.

Contrast that with the Ben-centric narration from the episode.

This disgusted reaction, belongs to Ben Gross, Devi’s nemesis. … Ben Gross’s father, Howard, whom he idolized, was a top entertainment attorney in Beverly Hills. This allowed Ben Gross to dine out for years on the fact that Blake Griffin was at his Bar Mitzvah. And he and Devi have been vying for the number one spot in the class every year since first grade.

We learn of his relationship with Devi, but we don’t actually get additional insight to his thoughts and feelings. The fact that his dad’s a lawyer and that Blake Griffin was at his Bar Mitzvah are both bits of common knowledge around the school. If anything, the slightly mocking tone in which this information is delivered makes this bit of narration even more grounded in Devi’s POV rather than Ben’s.

Kamala goes on to get a couple more moments of character-building in the narration that go beyond what Devi notices about her cousin. 1.04 is a prime example (As the aunties praised her, Kamala had a sinking feeling. She didn’t want to get married, but she put on a happy face, like I did at the trophy ceremony when I lost the French Open to Ivan Lendl in 1984).

McEnroe also gives us insight to Fabiola’s inner life—insights that Devi couldn’t be said to know because, even though she concedes that it makes a lot of sense in 1.07, Devi’s clearly finds Fabiola’s coming out to be a revelation.

1.03: As a scientist, Fabiola was used to a clear-cut, data-driven life. Which is why she was struggling with these new, complicated emotions.

1.05: We’re gonna jump ship and check in on Fabiola, who has much more interesting things going on. Fabiola had told no one she was gay, except her robot, Gears Brosnan. She knew the next logical step was to come out to some humans, specifically her family.

McEnroe even makes it explicit that we’re leaving focus on Devi to tune into Fabiola’s life in the episode-five narration.

The narration over scenes involving Ben in these episodes, on the other hand, goes like this.

1.03: What made Devi most sad wasn’t seeing Paxton all over the hottest girl in her grade. It was that she let herself believe she actually had a shot with him. … Drunk and rude, Devi was indulging in what I would call self-destructive behavior.

1.05: Years ago, Devi and Ben split all extracurriculars down the middle, except for sports, which required too much locker room nudity for either of them. // Devi was panicking. How did Ben find out about her lie? Simple. Her friends told him.

In 1.03, even though Ben is present, the narration over the scene is all about Devi. If anything, Ben interjects into/interrupts the discussion of Devi’s mental state, and she promptly ignores him in favor of being “self-destructive.”

And even though we get the insight that Ben isn’t comfortable with locker room nudity, it’s—again—something Devi obviously knows/intuited because of the pact.

The second bit of narration I included from 1.05 tells us something Devi doesn’t know—that it was her friends who told Ben about her lie—but rather than being a special insight to Ben’s POV, it’s simply expository. An in-case-you-forgot bit of narration.

The only other bit of narration involving Ben after 1.06 comes in the final episode of the season, where McEnroe sets up another in-case-you-forgot exposition flashback, which makes me curious to know how McEnroe-provided narration involving Ben might evolve for season two.

Eleanor and Nalini land somewhere in an ambiguous middle in terms of McEnroe knowing their inner thoughts and feelings.

For Eleanor, the only bit we have to go off of comes in the second episode.

Devi strode off, confident her friends had believed this bullshit story. Fabiola and Eleanor were confident their friend had become completely unhinged.

This line obviously steps outside Devi’s POV, but it’s also not solely Eleanor’s moment. Everything else that would be—involving her mother—is the same expository, facts-Devi-would-know style of narration. Therefore, I think Eleanor’s still totally in the running for her own POV episode.

As for Nalini, we get these moments in 1.04.

Nalini was a little on edge. This was the first puja they had gone to since Mohan’s untimely death and Devi’s paralysis.

The day had been a long one for Nalini, and she needed a win, even if it was a small one.

They’re grounded in the isolation Nalini feels and one of the major conflicts of the season is that Devi doesn’t have access to the fact that Nalini’s struggling as much as she is. So, we can probably call this a step outside Devi’s POV. It’s simply not as dramatic a break as for Kamala or Fabiola.

Of course, for episode ten to have the emotional impact it does, it makes sense we wouldn’t spend the season discussing Nalini’s heartbreak. It has to be more subtly communicated to the audience via Poorna Jagannathan’s acting and the flashbacks we’re given. Therefore, I think it’s unlikely that Nalini would get her own episode, but definitely not out of the question.

And, finally, there’s Paxton. As the object of Devi’s desire, so much of the narration revolves around Paxton—far too much for me to compile here or discuss individually, since I’m looking to wrap up this meta in, like, a hundred words.

So, here are the bits I’ve pulled out.

1.02: Whoa, Paxton speaks Japanese? Guess his last name makes more sense now.

1.09: Even though Nalini was talking out her frustration more than anything else, Paxton was stung by these little digs at his intelligence.

In 1.02, our narrator is actively surprised by new information, which makes a pretty solid case for the fact that McEnroe doesn’t have access to Paxton’s inner-life. And that makes sense because, when I call him the object of Devi’s desire, I’m putting a lot of emphasis on object. Devi doesn’t fully let herself acknowledge that Paxton’s more than a fantasy, so of course McEnroe—the voice inside her head—wouldn’t be super concerned with his personhood, either.

The line from 1.09 seems to throw a bit of a wrench into the works, since Paxton being insecure about his intelligence has every appearance of being a special insight. And I’m not going to go all the way and say that’s not the case, but I will bring up Devi’s line from 1.05: “Paxton’s not dumb, okay? He’s just…consistently bad at school!”

Obviously, Devi’s at least semi-aware that intelligence is Something to Paxton. On the other hand, she’s saying the line to fend off criticism from Ben, so it could just as easily be posturing as protectiveness over Paxton’s insecurity rather than actual knowledge the insecurity exists.

In summation, I still think Paxton’s the most likely candidate for a breakout POV episode in season two—boy desperately needs some interiority, so this is certainly high on my s2 wish list—with Eleanor a close second and Nalini a potential third. I think it’s unlikely that the show will (or would even consider) writing one for every character, though.

[nightwingmyboi]

I find Roy and Dick both having commitment issues so interesting because they seem to go about them differently. Dick tries to tie people to him (getting engaged when relationships get rough), and if that fails, then he runs, finds a new group of friends, and starts over. Roy doesn't let himself get tied down (prior to Lian) ever as a way to avoid commitment. It's just such a cool way to see similar issues regarding abandonment and commitment be approached in such different ways.

You bring up interesting ideas—comparing Dick and Roy’s attitudes in this way is very intriguing and something I hadn’t thought of before. But, to be honest, I kind of don’t agree with the idea that Dick and Roy have commitment issues? I’ve seen people say that before, but it doesn’t really click for me. 

I know I may be in the minority here but I’ve always thought that Dick’s problem is quite the opposite—that he commits himself to too many things way too fully. He gives 100% to working with Batman, and to the Bludhaven police force, and to the Titans, and to whatever other obligations he has at the time, so much so that he over extends himself to the point of exhaustion and collapse. 

New Teen Titans #28

Titans Secret Files #1

Really, I just don’t get how Dick could possibly have commitment issues when he has devoted himself to so many teams: the JLA, the Titans, the Outsiders, even the Birds of Prey to an extent. Dick was known as the linchpin of the DCU; he had relationships with practically everyone. He doesn’t shy away from forming connections. There are so many examples I could give, but a good place to look at in particular would be Tim and Dick’s relationship. Dick specifically reached out to Tim to form a relationship even though he didn’t have to. He treated Tim like a brother, and he made himself available whenever Tim was struggling and needed him (like when Tim was struggling with Stephanie’s pregnancy, with the temptation to bring back his dead loved ones, with suicidal thoughts, etc.) Dick put a lot of work into forming and maintaining their relationship. 

JLA (1997) #121

And just look at his relationship with Batman as well...even when things are rocky between them, whenever Bruce asks for Nightwing’s help, Nightwing will bend over backwards in order to deliver. He is extremely loyal to Bruce, most of the time at great personal cost. 

Batman #416

And let's be real here; Batman is emotionally distant the majority of the time, and if Nightwing didn’t reach out to Batman the two of them would not even really have a relationship! They would not talk lmao. Nightwing is the one who is committed to their relationship; he does all of the emotional labor so Bruce doesn’t have to. Nightwing gives a lot for very little in return, but he still keeps giving. 

And this is not just with the Batfam...he is very consistently there for the Titans. When Donna needs help discovering who she is and where she came from before Wonder Woman entered her life, Dick is the one to help her investigate. When Roy is desperate and needs help retrieving Lian from Cheshire, Dick is the one to beat Cheshire and reunite Roy with Lian. And Dick and Starfire were a couple for years, through lots of ups and downs, and very nearly married. These are not the actions of someone who is afraid to commit, lmao. Dick goes above and beyond for his relationships. 

I think that maybe Dick has a reputation for “running away” as you say because of the fact that he moves around quite a bit: he goes to California with the Titans, and then he’s a vigilante in New York, and then Chicago, and then Bludhaven, and so on. It can make him seem flighty. But @bigskydreaming has has a post about that here, and I very much agree with what he has to say. Dick’s tendency to move around doesn’t strike me as avoidance, but rather a holdover from his life at the circus. Growing up at Haly’s, Dick would constantly have been traveling. A circus is a business, so whenever things would get bad in a particular location for whatever reason, the circus would just move onward and forward. Halys wasn’t abandoning anything with this move, or running away, it was simply moving on in hopes that elsewhere things will be better. It is not at all surprising that Dick would have that same mindset in his own life. When tragedy strikes, instead of getting bogged down by all the bad, Dick tends to try and move forward. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about him, one of the things that distinguishes him from Batman. And one of the best ways to move on is to change things up: 

And a good way to mix things up is to relocate. It’s not like location should matter that much to Dick. Even when he moves he can and does always go back to doing the exact same thing he’s committed his entire life to doing—fighting crime. His family has the resources of a billionaire, his friends are superheroes who can fly and run faster than the speed of light, and it's not like he throws away his phone/communicator...he is not even slightly out of reach so he’s not really running away from his friends/family...and oftentimes he ends up confronting the problems he was supposedly running away from regardless of his physical location. And the JLA has a teleporter. He can be anywhere he needs to be in an instant, so why does he need to stay in one spot? I don’t really see him living on the move as him running away.

And I don’t read as much about Roy I admit, so I won’t be able to give as many specific examples, but it seems to be a similar thing with him too. After Roy’s father died, he was raised by Brave Bow. And then Brave Bow died, and he was raised by Ollie. It seems to me that his early life had little stability; he was passed from one person to the next and was always having to adjust to drastically different ways of life. In addition, a lot of his formative years were spent with the Navajo—a semi nomadic people. Roy’s Navajo upbringing very much influenced his outlook on life, so it would not be a surprise that he picked up their mindset of living somewhat on the move as well. And after spending his youth in flux, it really doesn’t surprise me at all that Roy isn’t tied down to places or jobs. Roy just wasn’t raised with a way of life that prioritizes settling down in one location, and for the most part he didn’t really have a choice but to move from one life to the next. But I don’t think any of that is representative of having commitment issues. Roy is very committed to Lian, as you mentioned, but even before that he was pretty much willing to do anything for the Titans. He has a really close relationship with Canary. And even in instances where I feel like Roy would be justified in “running away” or taking a step back, Roy usually attempts to preserve and repair his relationships, like with Ollie and Jade. Even after Ollie responded poorly upon discovering his addiction, Roy still eventually reconciled with him, and Roy tries to have a relationship with Jade despite all the difficulties that come with that: 

I know that characters sometimes accuse Dick and Roy as having issues with commitment, and I can see where you are coming from anon, but I just don’t really think that they do when you look at the majority of the actions they take lmao. You mention issues with abandonment? I can see that more, considering that Bruce has fired Dick twice before for making mistakes (once with Two Face and the other time with Joker) and Ollie has canonically neglected his relationship Roy in the past, instead focusing on his love life. Really, I think the greater underlying issue for both of these characters is the fact that they both have pretty low self-esteem and don’t want to be a burden to those they love. But that is really a whole other post, this one is already too long! 

To summarize, in my opinion, Dick is someone who lives for connection, and someone who is incredibly dedicated and loyal to his friends and family. He has known that he wanted to be a hero since he was a kid, and he has remained committed to that goal for basically the entirety of his life. Similarly, Roy is very dedicated to his family and friends, and is willing to go to incredible lengths for the people important to him. He values his relationships enough to forgive almost anything. Neither of these characters strike me as people who have troubles committing to things; they strike me as characters who commit to causes and people with everything they’ve got. 

Thanks for telling me your perspective anon! You gave me a lot to think about.

EDIT: thanks @milfzatannazatara for the clarification about Roy! Ollie technically didn’t kick Roy out of the house, since he was an adult and had already moved out. 

[a-written-dream]

Attack on Titan ch.139 spoilers

Okay, so I know a lot of people are going to be talking about what they didn’t like with the final chapter, and how disappointed they are and yada yada, and I get that, because following a series and having it end usually results in some level of disappointment (it’s fricking hard to write a good ending, isn’t it? And trying to tie everything up in a way that is both satisfactory to the author and everyone else even more so) but

I wanted to write down a few things I liked with this final chapter, because while I’m not entirely sure yet about my own satisfaction with the end, there are still things in there that I really enjoyed and that made me feel happy with the chapter. These aren’t meant to be facts in any shape or form, just things I picked up from the chapter that I enjoyed or which brought me satisfaction or happiness (as painful as it was)

(This was meant to be a short bullet list of a few things and turned into 3k of semi-analysis oops my bad)

The one thing I knew I wanted out of this chapter was to see things from Eren’s perspective, to get an understanding of why in the world he’d gone and decided that not only was destroying the world a good idea, but also pushing away his friends and telling them (pretty obvious) lies. There were so many things still left unanswered that I felt required an explanation from Eren’s side, and I really think this chapter delivered in doing that. There are still a few things I’m a little confused about, but I think I’ll need to do a proper read through of the whole manga to truly get it.

I really liked that we got to see Eren sharing his perspective together with Armin, that Armin was the last character we get to see together with Eren when he is alive. I haven’t read most of the manga, but from what I’ve heard their friendship is given even more depth than in the anime, and I really enjoyed the way the anime portrayed it. As a person who prefers platonic relationships in (canon) media, it means a lot to me that it wasn’t the love interest who got the last meaningful interaction with Eren. It shows just how important Eren and Armin’s relationship is and is a nice nod towards the fact that Armin was the one who sparked the flame in Eren that lead him to feel caged and crave freedom in the first place (I’m sure you could do an entire analysis on this but I haven’t spent near enough time analysing the manga or their relationship to be able to write one); I suppose I just think it fits very neatly in with the story and the importance of Eren’s different relationships.

I loved how dark AoT was – genuinely and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that that terrible and horrifying things happened, and this extends to the fact that Eren turns into the villain. But, despite this, I’m still quite happy that what he does isn’t entirely his own doing. Or, rather, that he does what he does to rid the world of Titans (which, additionally, was his one purpose and promise all along, wasn’t it?). He sees the future, a future without Titans, and he does what he needs to do to get there, even becoming a mass murderer (80% of humanity, though? Jeez Eren, little overboard maybe). We see previously how much it hurts him (e.g. when he’s in Liberio and cries about the young boy he meets), and then again in this chapter – and rather than being a monster, he becomes a martyr (I am a sucker for martyrs and guilt-ridden characters, so the fact that my love for Eren has only grown with this chapter makes total sense). But, I do want to point out also that while we see that he’s doing it for reasons that aren’t entirely selfish (though they are by no means selfless), we are still told that he thinks if he didn’t know the others would stop him, he would have flattened the earth anyway. I really like this small, one-panel detail because it makes the rest of it seem more likely. Isayama doesn’t twist Eren’s personality to fit the narrative and happy (”happy”) ending he wants; Eren has always had an anger in him, a selfishness, a misplaced belief that the world should be his. He is by no means a truly good person, never has been, but he can’t easily be placed into the ‘bad person’ camp, either. I think, in some senses, that this chapter really caught those contrasting parts of his personality, his grey morality. He is selfish and full of hate, but he’s also so many other things. He cares about his friends, so so much, cares about the people of Paradis, and at the end of the day, doesn’t that make him a little less selfish, if he’s willing to throw away his own humanity to save his friends (and isn’t that a theme that runs through the series? Remember Armin saying both that to ‘defeat a monster you must throw away your humanity’ and ‘someone who cannot throw away everything, cannot achieve anything’). While I definitely think it would have been cool to see Eren full of hatred to the point where there is none of the good in him left, I’m happy that we got to see him feel love. In some ways, it feels like we got to see him the way we used to know him, back before the time-skip, back before the weight of his own consciousness and guilt made him turn his back on that hope that still lived in him somewhere.

This isn’t something that I noticed/thought about myself when I read the chapter, but I saw someone point it out on here and it really struck me. Eren keeps his promise, to see the world with Armin. While they are talking, they get to explore together (the volcano and the lava, walking through the snow and seeing the northern lights above a snow-covered mountain range, finally getting to the sea) and it’s such a sweet, sweet thing that I barely know what to do with myself. I think, once again this really nicely fits in with what made Eren.. well, Eren, in the first place. That wonder and want in Armin’s eyes to see the outside world. And for Eren to uphold that promise, to the extent he can, is just so sweet, and really says something about Eren’s personality (he cares, he’s always cared, maybe he even cares too much).

I’ve seen some people complain about Ymir being in love with Karl Fritz, and I think it’s a valid thing, but I have to say I personally didn’t mind it. People fall in love with people who are bad to them, it happens, and as an explanation to why Ymir has obeyed his (and his ancestors’) command for 2,000 years, I think it works out. But, what I liked the most about it, is the fact that Mikasa is the one to show her that you can love someone and still let them go, you can love someone and go against them. I was happy already in the last chapter when it became clear that Mikasa would be the one to kill Eren, because to me it was her way of becoming her own person, in a way. Because while it’s clear after this chapter that Eren did, at least to some extent, want them to stop him, none of the others technically know this. So Mikasa isn’t stopping him for him, she’s stopping him for the world, and she’s stopping him for her. It’s her way of, after years of living and fighting and doing things for him, becoming her own person and doing something that isn’t for him. I thought it was a nice end(-ish, it’s not the last we see of her, but regardless) to her character development and her and Eren’s relationship. I also like how it furthers Mikasa’s importance to the story. I don’t think she’s been one of those female characters that exist only to be the main character’s love interest, and while her ending the age of Titans is directly linked to her love for Eren, it feels like it’s so much more than that.

Now, I know this is by no means healthy, but. I actually really liked the way Eren reacted to Armin talking (teasing him?) about Mikasa finding someone else to love with ease. Sure, that possessiveness is unhealthy and toxic, but it also feels so much like Eren. He wants the whole world for himself, so why wouldn’t he want Mikasa to himself too? And the fact that he tells Armin not to tell Mikasa because he does want her to be happy, at the end of the day, even if it isn’t with him, once again falls in line with his deep care for those that matter the most to him. I really think Eren’s character is incredibly interesting (in case I hadn’t made that clear by the endless amount of words above) and I really like how this chapter portrayed that. Is he a good person doing bad things? A bad person doing good things? Or simply a person doing what he thinks he needs to in order to get where he wants and to protect those he cares about? Another thing that I really like about his outburst is the fact that he does it in front of Armin. He dares to (essentially) throw a tantrum in front of him, saying something – that Armin even goes to say is ‘pathetic’ – for only Armin to hear because there’s a trust there that runs deeper than anything they share with anyone else.

As a person who is very supportive of platonic physical affection (I think there’s a huge lack of it in media and I think it’s a shame that physical affection should be limited to romantic and/or sexual partners), the fact that Armin and Eren hold hands (both in this chapter and in the rest of the series) makes me very, very happy to see. I am entirely on board with people who would have seen them end up together as something other than friends (I definitely see the chemistry there and kind of ship it myself), but I also love the fact that they are two friends (best friends) who are physically affectionate with each other every step of the way, including at the end (this goes for the hug too). It’s refreshing and nice to see and I think it speaks volumes about how much they care for each other (regardless of what way that may be, but I’m happy that it is platonically in canon because in my humble opinion there are too few platonic-but-still-affectionate relationships out there).

We know that Eren sees how it ends, with the others killing him and stopping him from eradicating humanity, so we know he can essentially see the future (memories from the future – I really love that), but what we also know is that he can only see his own future memories. He sees his own future memories through his father, but because there is no Attack Titan to follow him, no next Attack Titan whose memories he can see, it’s safe to assume that he can’t see anything past his own death. This makes him saying that the one who’s going to save humanity is Armin, just that much better. Because Eren isn’t saying it because he’s seen it, but rather because his belief and trust in Armin is so large and runs so deep that he simply knows that Armin is going to save them, believes it with his whole being.

The bird. I don't even know if there's any need to elaborate on this; I'm a sucker for reincarnation (and meeting in death, which is why I've loved the reoccurring visits from the fallen Survey Corps) and both Armin and Mikasa getting something from the bird (Armin getting a feather, maybe something of a nod to the seashell; Mikasa getting the scarf wrapped around her again) was very sweet. Another thing I literally just realised is that Eren becoming a bird is absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful, because birds are a symbol of freedom, are they not? (This realisation literally hit me in the face with pain, don't mind me) I think this can be viewed in two ways: either, it is only in death that Eren finds freedom (which is rather sad), or Eren is granted freedom, like he's always wanted, even if he couldn't have it while he was alive (not sure I'm making the distinction clear, but to me there's a large difference and I'd like to believe it's the second one: Eren deserves the freedom he finally receives).

Levi saluting. I can't be entirely sure, but if I remember correctly, this is the first time we've seen him salute? He did 'salute for' Hange in some ways, but it's not quite the same. I don't know all that much about Levi's backstory and his relation to the Survey Corps (besides obviously having a lot of comrades and friends he cares deeply about), but to me him saluting at the end is a sort of acknowledgement to everyone's sacrifice, a sort of 'We did it. It wasn't in vain. You are all the reason we made it this far and I am proud to have stood beside you'.

When I drafted this I wrote down 'the seashell' but right now I can't remember exactly why I liked that, but looking at the panels it clearly has some significance. I can't explain why I liked the fact that Armin gave it to Eren, but I do. It felt important.

While we get to see why Eren is doing what he's doing, given a bit of an insight into what made him do what he did, his actions – in my opinion – aren't excused. There's no 'oh it's okay you killed 80% of humanity but it's entirely reasonable because you did it for your friends'. Yes, Armin thanks him, but he does explicitly call Eren a mass murderer, not letting us or Eren forget what Eren has actually done, regardless of why he's done it. There's no excusing killing that many innocent people, regardless of why, and Eren and Armin know this too; Eren knows that there is no forgiving what he's done, that there is nothing left for him but to die because there is nothing he or anyone else can say or do that will warrant him another shot at life after what he's done.

I'm a sucker for angst and character death (don't ask me why, I honestly couldn't tell you. It simply tickles my fancy) and the fact that Eren dies at the end is right up my alley. Not only does it make my angst-loving heart go 'woo', but it also wouldn't have made any sense to keep him alive, in many ways. So while watching Eren die broke my heart, it also felt like an fate true to the story and to Eren's character and his decisions.

As viewers/readers I think most of us have known the potential that Armin holds since the first season, and it wasn't too surprising when Levi chose Armin over Erwin, but in this chapter we really get to see that it was a good decision on Levi's part. Because just as Eren says, Armin is the one to save humanity (or at least the one smart and compassionate enough to get close). Armin is the first to know what to say to ensure the Eldians' safety after the Titans are gone, is the one who comes up with a plan to stop Eren (I think? My memory might be failing me here), is one of those who are going to bring peace back from Paradis. I don't necessarily think there was any need to 'prove' that Armin was the one who deserved to live, but this chapter really shows that regardless of who 'deserved to live', Armin is a strong and capable character, fit as the 15th Commander of the Survey Corps, that has fulfilled his potential. It just really drives the point that Armin wasn't a bad choice, that maybe he was even the right choice.

And finally, I like the fact that it is left open ended. There has been a lot of resolutions, a lot of things finally resolved, and I think it's all been tied up pretty nicely. But I also enjoy the fact that peace isn't certain, nor is survival (because, is it ever?). Isayama doesn't give us everything, doesn't tell us exactly how things pan out, how life and the world after Titans might look. Rather, he allows us to build our own interpretation of how the world might rebuild itself and which routes the characters choose to take. In some way, it's so much more satisfying to have an open end like this, because it both allows the readers to explore their own interpretations of how the story might continue, but also because life in itself is open ended and the end of one struggle doesn't mean the end of all struggle. That's not to say that I think the series ended on a pessimistic or dark tone, because I really didn't. It's a good ending, a happy one, but it doesn't stray too far away from the darkness of the rest of the manga (though I must admit I was expecting a little darker ending, but I'm not necessarily disappointed). It's a hopeful ending, but not a naïve one, and I really like that.

Oooh boy this became a lot more than I expected it to oops. This was not meant to become analysis, but here we are. Might do a tl;dr later lmao

But yeah I just wanted to spread some positivity in these trying times, and I know that endings can be disappointing, so I thought sharing my own positive reactions to certain bits of the chapter might help someone else enjoy it a little more!

(Also ngl I just wanted to write stuff down because I wanted to remind myself why I liked it, and once I started writing I couldn't stop, so there's that).

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Intro to Balancing Your Life || Morgan & Sasha

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @sasha-r-blog & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Sasha drops in on a new class on campus; Morgan is only too happy to offer encouragements.

“…And who is it that determines the definition of humanity? What kind of definitions do we see offered by Victor, or Henry Cleveral, or the Creature?” Morgan asked the class. The students, while not thrilled with some of Mary Shelley’s ‘big words’ had enough preparation to offer semi thoughtful ideas. Obviously, Victor thought he could define what human means. One of her try-hard students, eager to please every adult in sight, posited that while Victor’s definition of humanity is the one that dominates the narrative, the intrusion of the creature’s perspective halfway through the book is meant to compel the reader into questioning its validity. “Yes!” Morgan tossed the kid a candy from her bowl. “The midpoint crisis here upends our expectations through thought, rather than action. It is, structurally, the center, the heart of the story, changing what we believe to be true. But, are we convinced by the Creature’s definition of his humanity? Why or why no–”

Morgan’s timer, the theme song of The X-Files, went off.

“Shit. Alright, that’s time everybody! Do your homework, do your reading, and get ready for Fan-Fiction Friday! And you–” She pointed to the newcomer sandwiched at the corner of the seminar table. “Come see me for a minute. The rest of you: glad you love each other, but please get out.” As the room cleared out she began to gather up her things. “I’ll level with you, I haven’t checked my roster, so I’m not sure if you’re a late add or just checking things out. But either way, I might be able to answer any questions you have better one-on-one instead of just looking at you across the room.”

Sasha watched the other students mingle and leave, a second of nervousness keeping her in her seat before the professor called out to her. It was hard to parse the tone in Professor Beck’s voice when Sasha’s immediate assumption at a teacher saying to “see me” was that she had fuck up somehow. But either way, Sasha walked towards the desk, dodging any curious looks from her exiting classmates.

“Um, hi. Sorry I didn’t mean to cause any trouble by sitting in.” She shifted the straps of her backpack, tugging them against her shoulders, as if the weight would somehow shield her from the awkwardness. “I’m Sasha Rodriguez. You gave me your office hours awhile ago. I uh, didn’t get a chance to visit but I saw your name on the winter session course list  and thought I’d check it out. I’m trying to branch out I guess.”

It took Morgan a few minutes to place the girl. She didn’t give out her school contact information to everyone, but it happened often enough that she had more than one name floating around her head. But the more she looked at her, the nervousness, the eagerness, the closer Morgan got to a hunch. “Oh, you’re the girl trying to figure everything out in college. I’m glad you decided to come by. If you’ve got some spare time, we can go somewhere and talk? I’d love to have you join in the spring, if you like what you’ve seen so far.” She dumped her books and laptop into her bag, and shouldered the load, handling the bulk with ease thanks to her strength. “Come on. Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re branching out from and what you thought about class today.”

“Oh, yeah, okay.” Sasha said as she moved to follow the professor. She still wasn’t used to how casual some professors could be. In high school they made it sound like professors were all strict, no nonsense, and unforgiving. And Sasha had certainly had professors like that during her first semester. But here was a professor throwing candy to students and cursing in class and talking about fan fiction. It was cool, but weird to process.

“I’m in computer science and I’ve only really taken courses in that department and math stuff. Oh, and also English 101, for the gen ed.” Those classes had been a lot different from what Sasha had just sat in on. Even the one English class she took didn’t really match up, that one having been run by an exhausted looking graduate teaching assistant who didn’t seem all that interested in teaching.

“The class was cool, though I feel like a lot of the stuff you were saying went over my head.” Sasha had a moment of internal panic, worried that came off as implying Professor Beck was bad at teaching. “I’ve just never been good at looking into books, but the class was interesting. I was surprised you mentioned fanfiction at the end. I didn’t think most professors even knew what that was.” Oh no, did that sound rude too? Sasha closed her mouth before she could say something dumb. Besides her advisor, if you could even count their meetings as conversation, and Ben, Sasha hadn’t really spoken one on one with a professor before. It still felt a bit surreal.

“Oh, that’s just because you’re coming in at the tail end of the course. I don’t throw my students into the deep end before I’m certain they can at least, you know, doggie paddle.” Morgan smiled good naturedly and lead them up to the main sitting area in the English building, setting her bag down carefully and making herself comfortable. “I can tell you that looking into books isn’t so different from the way you look into the stories in other media. Movies, TV, video games, comic books--our relationship to the stories we engage with say so much about what we envision for ourselves and the world. The more we understand and invest that relationship, the more empowered we feel to take control of our fate.” Morgan stopped herself from saying anything more and laughed, low and self deprecating. “Oh, jeez, don’t tell the other professors I said that. But, anyways, yes, the aforementioned reasons are what fan-fiction and other forms of counter-storytelling are so important. But more important than that is doing something that’s going to challenge you in positive, enjoyable ways. And making time for a little fun.” Morgan held her fingers up, like this much. “Can I ask how the rest of college is going for you, Sasha?”

Sasha followed her and sat in the unfamiliar sitting room. She gave a small smile as Professor Beck talked about stories and how people related to them, finding that she had been nodding along without realizing. She stopped once she did, somehow worried that it came off as over eager, as if a professor would ever get mad at someone being interested in what they were saying. If only the professor knew how close that hit to home for her. All those stories of kids getting superpowers, it was real. As if it had jumped straight off the page. As if Sasha had willed it into being. In the back of her mind Sasha wondered how she would have reacted to suddenly growing calls if she hadn’t grown up on comics and superhero movies. It felt like the blueprint to everything now.

Lost in her own thoughts she was a bit startled when the professor’s tone shifted. “No, no I agree, I think. I think all that stuff is important. Storytelling. I mean, I’m not much of a reader but comics and games and movies have been really important to me.” She wished there was a major in that stuff. Or crime fighting. She’d be on the dean’s list if her nightly patrols counted for credits.

“It’s been going okay. I mean, I don’t really do much outside of classes. I’ve been trying to do more but I mostly keep to myself.” It was the same thing she had told her advisor and Professor Campbell, but more and more Sasha felt silly for saying it. It wasn’t like she did nothing, just nothing related to college life. But it wasn’t like she could tell her professors she was protecting White Crest. Or at least trying to.

Morgan noticed Sasha’s interest and perked up at once. “You know, we do cover films in my class,” she said, grinning slyly. “And books. But still. It’s the same kind of thought process as with books, so it might as well be given its time and place. There’s plenty of other courses like that in this department, even a film and media studies minor. You should do what makes you happy, because undergrad coursework doesn’t matter half as much as you think it does. It’s all internships and jobs and connections and recommendations that help you get anywhere. And this place, college, has a lot of flaws and problems, but one of the best ways to make it worth it is leave knowing as much as you can about the things that matter to you most.” But that was about all the pitching she was willing to do on behalf of her class. Besides, being a student at UMWC came second to being a kid in White Crest. Morgan couldn’t help but look at the girl and wonder what this place would do to her. Morgan pushed the thought away, she couldn’t let herself focus on a big, bad future like it was some kind of unstoppable force.

“This might sound silly, coming from a professor who just tried to recruit you to their class, but I hope you do find other things besides school studies. There’s a much bigger world out there, and you should have something else in your life. At least friends and playing video games or going to Al’s at one in the morning or whatever kids your age do now. Life is for doing stuff, you know? Whatever it is you’re thinking about doing or joining, you should go for it!”

“I never really thought about taking a minor. I didn’t know they had one about film.” Honestly, more and more Sasha felt like she hadn’t planned much of anything when it came to school. Or life in general. But she supposed she could change that. If anything this talk had made her actually interested in looking into classes, something she had mostly breezed through doing in the past, simply checking off the boxes of what she needed for her degree. But if the professor was right and it didn’t matter that much... “Maybe I’ll try looking into classes for film and english and stuff like that. They seem fun. At least the stuff you were talking about seems fun.”

Maybe it would make school more interesting, instead of something Sasha went through the motions of to get to her real job. “Real job,” as being a superhero paid. As if she wouldn’t one day need a day job. College was a convenient way to pass the time and something she was told she had to do, but it would be nice to actually care about it, to feel like she was actually doing something.

“I do have hobbies...” Just none she could tell Professor Beck about. “But yeah, I should probably try to do more. I wanted to check out the library. I was supposed to help out with the comic collection there as a volunteer thing. So that’s a start I guess.” It had almost slipped her mind, but that was something she had been genuinely excited for. It was just hard to remember stuff like that during the day when she was normally up all night. Her nightly patrols had turned her days sluggish and uneventful, filled with quick naps between class and maybe some video games alone in her dorm before she put on her costume and went out again. And she loved doing it, of course she loved going out at night to keep White Crest safe. But at the same time...

“Do you ever just get really focused on one thing?” Sasha asked the question before she was thought about it, but decided to keep going, even if it was dumb. “Like, you have something you like or is important and you just focus on that and everything else just kinda blurs into the background?”  Sasha rubbed nervously at the back of her neck. “I don’t know if that makes sense. I guess sometimes I feel like that. But I don’t know if I want to change it.”

“The library is a great start!” Morgan said. “You’re going to learn so much, and probably find people who have similar interests to you when they come to check out materials. But I hope you do other stuff, not for credit, just for you. You’re only going to be young once--” Hopefully.

She couldn’t help but smile at Sasha’s notion, that hyper-focus was something rare or embarrassing. “Oh, all the time. I have some art projects that I do on the side, and I can get so lost in my carving that hours can pass by so easily. Same with baking, or cooking something really involved. It’s almost like you’re connecting to something else, outside of or beyond you. There’s you, the thing you’re doing, and this energy it gives you, right?” Morgan watched the girl’s expression to see if she was getting it right. “Even if it’s just kind of like that, I don’t think you should change it. Whatever that thing is, it sounds to me like the universe is giving you the green light to keep going.”

Sasha nodded, giving a small smile. She was happy that Professor Beck seemed to get it and not think it was weird. Sure, Sasha's focus wasn’t on crafts or cooking, but it was the thought that counted. Her mind lingered on what she said about being given a green light. Really, what was a bigger green light than getting her powers? But she knew there was more to it than that. There had to be a reason it was her. She had to be able to do something with her powers, something to really help people. It was comforting to have the professor say she was right, that the universe wanted her to do what she was already doing, but there was a pang of melancholy knowing Sasha couldn’t tell her, or anyone, the truth. How much did advice and validation matter when the person saying it didn’t know the full truth?

She shook the thought from her head. “Thanks. Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask you a bunch of weird questions when I came to sit in. I think it would be cool to try out one of your classes though if you still have room for students.” Sasha chased away the worry of struggling in a class she wasn’t used to. If worst came to worst she could always drop that class. At least it would be something new, something she might actually end up liking.

Beaming and unawares, Morgan took out a post-it from her bag and scribbled out the class information before handing it to Sasha. “Don’t be embarrassed about questions,” she said. “Questions are how we learn. You’re never going to find anything interesting if you always leave well enough alone.” She stood up, getting the vibe that Sasha had opened up all she felt like so far. “I hope to see a lot more of you this coming semester,” she said. “Hoping even more that you do something just for you, but.” She put a finger to her lips. That’ll just be our secret.

“Thanks. I’ll try to keep asking them.” Well that was one social interaction that didn’t go horribly. Wasn’t great that Sasha considered that a victory for herself but she was going to take the feeling of accomplishment anyways. “And I’ll try to do stuff for myself too.” That was going to take more work than just registering for a class, but maybe it wouldn’t be the worst. She couldn’t promise herself she would put in the effort though. Tucking the post-it note into her backpack she smiled and said goodbye to Professor Beck. Maybe a few new classes would be enough to make her college life, and her daily life, seem a bit more exciting and a bit less like time to just get through. But her patrolling White Crest at night was still more important. Professor Beck didn’t have to know that part though.

[cblgblog]

For the get to know you author ask: 25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of?

Oh my god, someone actually responded. I am pleasantly thrilled, thank you, anon <3

So I’m gonna go with something from the third chapter of the current Soulmates fic (which desperately needs an update I know but it hasn’t been abandoned it’s just over 20k words at the moment nobody hates me over that wait time like I hate me for that wait time).

Ahem. So, chapter 3, May, December, and Some Romance.

Therese was still clicking away when the burst of fireworks split the daytime sky.

It was not the loudness of the sound that truly caught Therese’s attention, nor the brief flare of color that came with it. She was used to working around all the unexpected distractions of New York. It was Angie’s curse word that threw her off. Angie getting up so fast from their shared chair that she knocked into Therese. Some of her beer sloshed over and hit Therese’s arm, her camera, the rest of it spilling into the sand at their feet.

The sudden cold on her skin made Therese gasp, lower the viewfinder. Her reflexive horror at anything unwanted touching her camera was quickly overtaken by the intensity of the scene in front of her. Peggy, playing happily with Jake the moment before, was now stiff as a board, her body curled around his. She had an arm around his belly, another around his chest, covering him, holding him in her lap. Jake was fussing, but it was just as likely due to being pulled from his game as it was to the way he’d been pulled.

Therese wondered why Angie wasn’t there with them, until she saw what was happening further down the beach. Unlike Peggy, Steve wasn’t even partway sitting up. He was in the sand fully, the abandoned beach ball nearby. It took Therese another second to find the girls, to realize they were hidden under Steve’s bigger frame. The muscles in his bare back stood out, even at this distance. His wet hair almost touched the sand, he was curled that tightly over the girls. Therese might not have known they were there at all if not for glimpses of Rindy’s bright yellow swimsuit.

Therese reacted without thinking. Putting the camera down with none of the necessary care, she stood, ran after Angie, who was halfway to Steve already.

“Therese,” Carol said, somewhere behind her.

Therese ignored her, some base instinct of concern for Rindy overriding anything else. She ran to catch up, noting that, bizarrely, Angie slowed down as she got closer. By the time she was within touching distance, she’d gone to almost a walk, which made it easier for Therese to close the gap. She was close enough to hear Angie say something indistinct, presumably to Steve, who was still doing whatever the hell he was doing.

Therese hadn’t processed any of it. She didn’t know what she was looking at, what she was even thinking, except that something was very wrong here. What she would’ve done about it became a question unanswered because suddenly there was an arm around her middle, causing her to stumble in the sand.

“Don’t,” Carol said, pulling her closer than was probably wise, no matter how spread out the beachgoers were.

“Rindy,” said Therese, impatient as she went to get out of Carol’s hold.

“I said don’t!”

The sharpness in her voice brought Therese up short. If that hadn’t done it, Carol’s nails pressed into her stomach, over her bathing suit would have. Not enough to hurt, but Therese felt them, felt a warning. The shock of it held Therese still as much as Carol’s arm, still in place and promising to tighten if necessary.

Was that way too long and self indulgent for that question? Probably. Anyway, some of you around these parts know that I’m a whore for PTSD, the ghosts one brings back from war, trauma, etc. Or maybe everyone knows because I have no chill in my writing. Regardless, this was a scene that was sitting in my head quite awhile before I wrote it, or even decided on a place to write it. I just knew I wanted to do it, for a long time. I was going for a kind of slow motion car crash vibe, which I think comes through in the finished scene. A lot of the Stegginelli scenes in Soulmate (say that 5 times fast) end up written from Carol or Therese’s perspective. Part of that is because I like seeing them through civilian eyes. Like, Belivaird are friends with them, they have things in common with them, they’re family, but they’re also people who both lived through all the Cap propaganda, saw it from the perspective of the average person. And they’re people who, despite being family, are still on the outside in certain respects. There’s plenty of stuff they’re not a part of, whether it’s officially classified by the government or not. Which is an interesting place to write from, and why I really wanted to do this scene in particular. Almost all of what Carol and Therese have been privy to when it comes to Stegginelli has very much come from Stegginelli.  They’re given only as much access as Stegginelli want them to have, and they know this. Except here, where they’re witness to a very private, personal moment...that just happens to be happening in broad daylight on a semi-crowded beach.

And that, that explanation was so very self indulgent, Jesus, this is why no one asks you things you dope.

[jasonrae117]

Night at the Wayne Casino

PART 6

Here we are, Part 6! Sorry this doesn't have much in the damirae department, but there will be more! I also wanted to see if anyone would be interested in a sort of behind the scenes chapter of the more mature stuff (what happened in Damian's suite) etc. that happens throughout. I'd post it on my ao3 account for those that want to read something ~saucy~ like that. Let me know! 💙💜💚

Damian had dressed himself and wanted to drown himself in his work. His mind was pulled in every direction and he was utterly conflicted. He had stared blankly out the window for an hour trying to process everything that had happened since the party and where it had all gone so wrong. Of course he knew it was his fault that his plan backfired. He had slipped and slept with the demon he was trying to expose. 

It was strange, he felt less motivated to bring her down, and the thoughts that occupied his mind when he recalled their… encounter, were about how badly he wanted to fix things, not about figuring out her next move as it should have been. 

He had forgone his morning workout, seeing as though he and Raven took care of that some hours before and he had slept in late. He figured he may as well head in early to work because he desperately wanted the distraction.

He was almost in the clear to the security office when a large figure accompanied by a smiling face intercepted him.

“Jon, now is not the time.” Damian tried to brush past him, but Jon was quick and kept his pace and swung an arm around his shoulders. 

“There’s always time for your best friend, especially when you need to tell him all the details from last night.” He waggled his eyebrows in a suggestive manner and Damian scoffed at him. 

“Grow up Kent. I don’t have to tell you anything. It wasn’t official business, therefore I have no need to brief you on what happened. Not that anything did.” He was quick to throw in the last part to avoid any misunderstandings of his words. 

“Aw, c’mon Dami, this isn’t work. I wanna know as one of the guys, as your best friend. That’s got to give me some clearance to what’s going on in there.” Jon used the arm around his shoulders to pull him down and ruffle his hair. 

Damian grunted and forced himself out of Jon’s grip. He straightened his collar and ran a hand through his now unkempt hair. “Being an asshole won’t get you anything. Besides there’s nothing to tell. I observed her and besides countless men hitting on her, there unfortunately wasn’t anything suspicious. Now would you leave me alone.”

“And how exactly would you know that I’m lying?” Damian had stopped his movements and his voice was low. almost threateningly so. 

“Damian,” he whined. “You can trust me. I know when you’re lying… well sorta, but the point is I know you’re not telling the truth.” He crossed his arm over his chest and looked down at him. 

A nervous laughter escaped Jon and he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Well...you see I kinda sorta was monitoring people coming and going from the elevator on that floor. It was a slow night and Dick had everything under control.”

“What exactly do you think you saw?”

“I saw you show up and a few hours later I spotted Raven. Then I saw you both enter the elevator together and uh...get close. Then you both left pretty excitedly, and well...one can only assume.” He trailed off.

“Well your assumption is incorrect.” Damian growled out. Internally Damian was panicking, he didn’t want to lie to Jon, but it was his only chance to get out of this mess unscathed.

“Damian,” Jon almost sounded disappointed, “I tried to give you the chance to tell me on your own but you’ve given me no choice.”

“What are you-”

“Raven told me everything. Well everything from her perspective. And I gotta admit bud, you don’t look too good.” Jon shrugged dismissively and began to walk away. Damian, however, was stunned. She had gone to his best friend to get her story in first so it would be harder to prove ill intentions, that sneaky witch. 

“Whatever she said is probably a lie. Some fantastical story she made up to make me look bad.”

“As much as I want to believe you, and truly I do...I can’t help but feel that her story sounded fairly accurate. Given how well I know you.”

“What the hell does that mean? Tell me what she told you!” 

“I have no obligation to brief you on what she said, best friend or not.” Great Jon was being cheeky. What the hell was with people finding a way to use his own words against him?

“Jon, you tell me now or so help me.” Damian snatched his by the front of his shirt, not caring that it would leave it a wrinkly mess. 

“Fine, fine, relax. We’ll talk in the security office.” Jon frowned at his wrinkled shirt but reluctantly followed Damian to their shared office.

This one was slightly different from the room Tim used. It had two desks each with a state of the art computer that also had access to the security camera feed. Behind each desk were large cabinets of files from all cases they’ve had throughout the years. Tim’s had more of the recent and ongoing hardcopies, but they were shared electronically, this office was more of an archive section. It also doubled as a semi-interrogation room. 

Damian took his seat behind the desk and folded his hands together as if preparing to listen to a business report. Jon on the other hand was pacing until he settled for leaning against his own desk. Damian looked at him expectantly and stayed silent waiting for Jon to begin.

“So..uh, Raven said that she showed up to the party late because she was trying to get ready but was interrupted by her boss. When she got there, all sorts of guys were approaching her which was starting to get on her nerves until you popped up.” Damian leaned forward gaining interest. “She was surprised to see you there and not on duty. She mentioned that you were handsome and charming by the way.” A heat rose to his ears. “Then she said after a drink and some flirting you invited her back to your suite. She was pretty excited when she was telling me this. She told me that she thought you were hot when she ran into you that first night...so uh there’s that. Now where was I?”

“Raven was excited that I invited her to my suite.” Saying it outloud made it too real and his blush deepened as he cleared his throat. He held a hand up gesturing for Jon to continue. 

“Get on with it Kent.” This was absolutely humiliating, having their night together thrown back in his face by his friend. 

“Oh right, well then she said you made the first move, kissing her and adamantly trying to remove her clothes. Apparently you ripped her dress?” Damian glanced away and tugged at his collar. He remembered being so impatient with the material, he wasn’t sure how to properly take it off, he just knew it needed to come off. “So that’s a yes. Anyway, then after hours of screwing her, of which I must commend you, she said you were quite formidable and were very attentive, you both were tuckered out and fell asleep. She said she asked if you wanted her to go, but you ignored her and cuddled...Who knew Damian Wayne cuddled?”

“Geez alright. Well then she gets up in the morning to take a shower and clean up and when she comes out you are right outside the door completely shocked. At first she thought you had been drunk and forgot what had happened but it turns out that you were aware and had completely dismissed what had happened between you two.”

“I wouldn’t say I dismissed it-”

“You said it was a misstep.”

“I-”

“Did you not?”

“I mean I did, but I was being honest!” Damian rose to his feet.

“You weren’t being honest, you were being an asshole. Then you get mad at her for using your computer! Like what the actual hell?”

“She wasn’t supposed to use it, and now she had access to the security footage and who knows what she did with that access.” His eyes went wide as he took in Jon’s face. Jon’s eyebrows were furrowed and his head tilted while he was processing what Damian had just revealed. I guess she didn’t tell him why I was pissed that she used my computer. He had just told Jon on his own. 

“Why do you have the feed transmitting to your personal computer?” Jon pushed off against the desk and was now standing, only a desk separating the two.

“I like to know what’s going on around the casino.” He shrugged.

“Damian, this is serious. That is totally not acceptable. It certainly isn’t protocol, and it breaks at least a dozen policies. Do you think I can’t do my job well enough without you?”

“Jon, it isn't about that. I just like doing my job. My computer software is encrypted so nobody can access it or see it unless I want them to.”

“Nobody except Raven.”

“That was an accident. I didn’t lock the program. It won’t happen again.”

“Damian, it shouldn’t have happened at all! You’re supposed to be the leader. You sure as hell have given the rest of us enough lectures about what’s acceptable and what’s not. And then you have been doing this the whole time? Do I even want to know what other shit you might be doing off the clock?”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“You need help Damian, that or a stable relationship.”

“Would you stop!”

“You need to make this right.”

“I can’t get rid of the software Jon. You’ll never know how helpful it has been in keeping this casino safe.”

“Yeah, but it’s not right. Think about if it got out! Huh? We could be in so much trouble and in lawsuits up to our eyeballs.”

Damian hadn’t thought too much on the matter, he always assumed he would never be caught. The failures kept piling on. 

“And that’s not the only thing I’m talking about fixing.” Jon sighed. Damian just shot him a quizzical look. “I’m talking about Raven. It’s clear you’re attracted to her and she is to you. You’re letting your stupid overanalytical brain mess up something potentially good for you.”

“She’s not ‘good’ for me, I hardly know her.”

“You seem to have gotten to know her fairly well last night.” Damian glared at him. “In any case, you can’t leave it like this. You were wrong about her and treated her like an ass. You need to apologize.”

“She’ll be gone in two days, what do I care how she feels about me or if she’s upset? This is her first time and probably last time in Vegas. I’ll never see her again.” The prospect of that statement made something inside twinge strangely. 

“You could try to see her again. You know, long distance relationships. Who knows she may live somewhere close.”

“She lives in Seattle.” Jon looked at him surprised. “What? She was a suspect and I needed more background on her.”

“Hmm...funny, you said she was a suspect. Are you finally relinquishing that crazy theory?” He now smiled broadly, seeing that Damian was finally coming around. 

“I suppose she has shown no more clear signs of being a threat.”

“Great! So will you go apologize to her now?” The peppy and energetic Jon had returned much to his dismay.

“I’m not using company time for personal matters.” He spoke flatly.

“Well then, I guess it’s a good thing that you’re not on the clock for another hour and a half. Now go, before I force you, and that will just be more embarrassing for you.”

“Please Kent, you can’t force me to do anything. But I suppose that I can’t leave an unhappy guest if it’s my doing.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Whatever gets you to do it.”

Damian dragged his hand over his face and groaned. He hated apologizing, he hadn’t had much experience since he rarely found times that he was wrong and the situation actually called for it. He moved to the door to begin his quest.

“Oh, and we’ll have a discussion about the use of company software on personal devices later.” Jon had called after him. 

The door shut behind his and his shoulder slumped. He could feel a headache coming on. Well, I better get this over with so I can get on with my life and get to work. He guessed that she would still be in her room avoiding the risk of running into him so soon after their fight. He stopped by the cafe and picked up an order of tea and a chocolate croissant as a peace offering and then made his way to her room. 

Suddenly he was right in front of her door and he realized that he hadn’t even thought about what he was going to say. His throat felt dry and he seemed to be too warm. This is a bad idea, she doesn't want to see me. She probably doesn't even care. What if she isn’t even in her room? He paced outside for a few minutes before he heard a muffled voice coming from the inside of her room. He felt only slightly creepy as he pressed his ear to the door to listen to what was being said. It was definitely her voice and an indistinct voice on the phone.

“Yes, I’ve gotten quite a bit of research done, but it’s not quite going the way I wanted.” The other person sounded irritated by the inflection of the muffled sounds. “The participants gave me some information, but none of it is really useful for us. Perhaps we should look elsewhere….I don’t know maybe another casino? Look, it’s your job to find someplace we can actually work with. It’s my job to survey and collect data and tell you if it's worth the investment or not.” The voice grew louder and he heard a loud exhale from the woman. “I’m telling you that I don’t see a good outcome of working at this casino, and that’s my professional opinion. Have I ever let you down?” She was clearly agitated. “Great, I’ll be coming home Tuesday and I’ll wrap up my report by the weekend.”

The creak of the bed signaled that she was done with the conversation and had sat on the bed most likely out of annoyance and irritation. Was it really the best time now? Now or never he supposed. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

A moment passed before the door finally swung open revealing a tired looking Raven. Her hair was thrown up into a messy bun and there was a small smudge of mascara under her eyes. Most intriguing to him, however, was the navy silk robe she was wearing. You’re not here for that. She cocked her hip and raised her eyebrow in question.

“Damian.” She said curtly.

“Miss Roth. I came to..uh..apologize.” He held out the now barely warm tea and croissant. Her face lit up with surprise taking the items into her own hands. She still eyed him skeptically, but took a step back gesturing with her hand that held the croissant for him to enter.

“Sorry for the mess, I’m between packing up for my return trip and figuring out what to wear tonight.”

“I’m sorry for my intrusion to your plans, maybe I should come back-”

“No.” She commanded. “You came here for a reason, and so you should see that through. I’m intrigued.” She took a sip of the tea and scrunched her nose a bit before hastily putting it down onto the nightstand. She proceeded to sit on the bed criss crossing her legs, allowing the robe to split open revealing lacy underwear. Damian quickly averted his eyes to her smirking face and his throat suddenly felt tight and his face felt hot.

He cleared his throat and began pacing, keeping his attention away from her alluring body.

"The way I proceeded with our engagement earlier was unjustified and I regret that I upset you. As a guest of our resort, it is my priority to make sure you are happy and content with your stay here." He chanced a glance at her face and was surprised to see it held astonishment and something close to disgust.

"You've got to be fucking joking." Damian blinked dumbly at her not understanding. "You're not...wow. Ok, try doing this," she spun her finger around indicating his speech, "again, but this time be a fucking man and talk to me like Damian. Not the head of security or son of the CEO. Otherwise get the fuck out." 

Her face turned red with fury and she stood. Her arm shot out pointing to the door. "Get the fuck out now!"

Damian swallowed, he hated this. He hated that Jon convinced him to do this. "Fine, I'm sorry that I fucked you." The words had left his mouth in a rush and he even shocked himself at how it came out. He spun to her hoping he didn't just royaly fuck up this apology. Jon is going to kill me.

"Wait no. Raven, listen."

"You're not listening. I said get out, or do I have to call your friend to get you out. How dare you come here and say that to me."

"Would you stop. That's not how I meant it. I don't regret doing it, I regret how it came about."

She looked bewildered. "What do you mean how it came about?"

Shit, this is why he meant to come prepared. Well no use in hiding it now. "I wished it had happened naturally, like you and Tim." The words were bitter in his mouth and she licked her lips looking off to the side. "I...I was following a lead that you were a suspect in conning our casino." 

Raven's head snapped to look at him, mouth open slightly. She shook her head and rubbed at her temples. "You're telling me that all of our encounters haven't been accidental and you've been stalking me because you think I was going to pull a fast one over your casino?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Who was in on this?"

"Tim actually logged it first when you had been winning probably more times than usual. But he quickly dismissed you, particularly when he found out you were single. The others in security knew about you because they were doing their jobs, but they didn't believe it to be true. And the girls at the spa knew after when I discussed it with them. Admittedly I was the last one unconvinced." He cast his stare at the floor finally feeling guilty at his stubbornness. Saying it out loud, he could hear how foolish he had been. 

She released a humorless laugh. "Wow. I...I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. I am sorry for how I behaved. I see the errors of my ways. I convinced myself you were still a suspect so that I had an excuse to learn more about you and get closer to you."

"If I wasn't so pissed off right now I'd say that's kinda romantic in a stalkerish kind of way." A ghost of a smile graced her lips. 

"I know you're scheduled to leave Tuesday, but would you consider accepting a free four night stay? We'd even reimburse your plane ticket. Though we may have to upgrade your room if there's a reservation on it."

"Excuse me?"

"We'll the girls want you to join them for their plans on Friday. And it's the least we can to make up for the time you wasted being bothered by all of us. Namely me." He didn't know what made him offer her these things. He had never done such a thing for any other guest and it was actually a rather expensive apology. 

Raven pursed her lips trying to weigh her options. "I suppose it would be foolish not to accept. But is your father alright with comping this?"

"I rarely care what my father is alright with. I'll see to it myself that it is all taken care of." He shuffled around a bit before nodding in her direction and making his way toward the door. 

"Damian wait!" He stopped and watched her jog a few steps, closing their distance. 

She fiddled with her hands as if trying to decide whether to use them or not. Damian quirked an eyebrow at this and just watched with anticipation. "I accept your apology." Her eyes were still on the floor.

"Thank you, I suppose I should leave you alone now." Raven's hands on his chest halted his exit.

He looked down into her mesmerizing indigo eyes and saw how they gleamed with mischief. She bit her lower lip and turned her gaze to her hands running smoothly over the plane of his chest sending a trickle of electricity through his body.

"What if I don't want you to leave me alone? I can think of another way you can make sure I hear your apology." Her eyes looked up at him through her dark lashes with a coy smile on her lips.

Damian smirked in response and pulled her in, relishing the way her body feels against his. He leaned in keeping a fraction of space between their lips. He could feel her chest rise and fall with heavy and excited breaths.

"Where do I begin?"

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #403

“ashes to ashes, watch me disappear”

If given the opportunity, would you like to star in a musical? Definitely not. I don't like musicals. Name one person you’d take a bullet for: There's honestly a lot, but Mom immediately came to mind. Any posters of a band on your bedroom wall? Yeah: Metallica and Marilyn Manson currently. I want lots more, especially an Ozzy one. Do you think you’ve already met your soulmate? I don't believe in soulmates. Do you share your bedroom with anyone? No, unless you include my cat and snake. Is your favorite color yellow? No, it's actually one of my least favorites. Were you born in a hospital? I was. Do you know the name of the person that delivered you? No, but Mom does. I think he delivered me and my two sisters, and I know Mom has seen him since for other reasons. Was your birth recorded? God no. Good call, Mom. Did you eat a peach this week? Would you believe me if I told you I had a small bit of peach pie for my sister's birthday? For some reason, I just really wanted to try some. It was okay, but the aftertaste sucked. Are you leaving the house tomorrow? Yes, for TMS therapy. Every weekday. Do you enjoy romantic movies, even when they’re cliche? I honestly do. If you could get free vocal lessons would you take them? Probably not. I don't like singing in front of anyone, and it's not like I wanna get anywhere with my singing, so. Is your mother diabetic? She is. Are you? No. Ever sang someone to sleep? No. Who do you stalk the most through Facebook? Nobody. Have you ever deleted your Facebook, then brought it back? No. What is your main responsibility each day? Be sure to take my medications. Do you feel like you fulfill those responsibilities? Yeah. There are rare mornings where I forget, but I almost always remember. I don't fw skipping out on meds that keep my mental health stable. When was the last time you used spray paint? Good question. Do you know the middle name of the last person you kissed? Yep. Who is the friendliest person you know? My mom, probably. Something that annoys you about summer: THE HEAT. THE HUMIDITY. UGH. Something that annoys you about winter: Hm. That's hard to say, given I love winter. I guess the fact it doesn't snow enough here. Are the doors of your fridge side by side or on top of one another? Side-by-side. If you’ve moved out of the house you were born in, do you know the people who live in that house now? Nope. Have you ever cried in a movie theater? Not sobbed or anything, but I've definitely teared up and gotten the sniffles because of multiple movies. Do you read comic books? No. Do you force your way into conversations in which you are not involved? No. Have you ever seriously pretended to be clinically insane? I didn't need to pretend; I'm pretty damn sure I was for a while. Might I add that it's EXTREMELY inconsiderate to pretend you're insane, btw. Insanity is not "cool." It's not "funny." It's not "edgy." It's a serious, confusing, heart-wrenching issue that can ruin lives. Do you know anyone with a stutter? Yes, myself included when I'm even mildly nervous. And sometimes just randomly. With a lisp? I don't believe so. What was the last board game you played? The Disney version of "Pretty Pretty Princess" w/ my niece and even my nephew, even though his sexist-ass dad didn't want him to. Like let your kid have some fun with his sister and aunt, goddamn. They had a blast. It was Aubree's birthday present from me, so I am SO glad she loved it. Did you win? Ha ha, no, I always let Aubree or Ryder win. I came super close once, but I let the kids bend the rules a bit. They don't like losing, and even though they definitely need to understand that just happens and is totally fine for it to, I wasn't about to be the one to make them sad about it. When was the last time you tried to speak with an accent? OH MY LAAAAAWWWWWWD. Also at Aubree's b-day party, at one point, I spoke in a snobbish British accent while I was winning at the aforementioned game. Ryder asked, "Why are you speaking Spanish?", and I fuckin DIED. Have you ever made up a word before? Yeah, I know at least a few instances for fantasy animals in writing. When was the last time you went to a museum? A couple summers ago when my brother and his son visited, we went to a science museum. My nephew was sooooo into it. Do you have a nice yard? If so, do you spend a lot of time outside in it? If not, where do you go when you want to relax outdoors on nice days? Our front and back yards are both small and honestly very boring. The grass is a pretty green, but that's the only nice thing about it. I don't go to sit outside here on any day. Do your parents enjoy any of the things that you enjoy? Do you bond over these things? My parents and I have very similar music tastes, so there's that. I also didn't know for the longest time that Mom likes to write, which I sure as hell do, too! She doesn't really write anymore though, and she's self-conscious of it anyway, like I am. She and I also love a lot of the same shows. What is the movie that you have waited the longest for/which film do you remember anticipating the most/are still anticipating? I think The Incredibles 2. I aaaalways wanted to know what happened after the end of the first film. Do you have any ideas for a story or movie you’re planning to write or you’d write if you had the time/had the talent? Please share a synopsis! I genuinely think some RP I've written is series-worthy, but I don't feel like re-writing the YEARS of RP into a book format, and I sincerely worry that the ridiculously dark parts could inspire people like serial killers and cause A LOT of controversy, crime-blaming, and just general hate. I don't want to be involved in that. What is something that an interested guy/girl could comment about you, that would make you instantly open to them (e.g., “That book you’re reading is from my favorite author”)? Compliment my Markiplier tattoo, obviously knowing it's a tribute to him, and we're essentially besties. Is there a person in your life (maybe barely) that you feel in constant competition with (even just in your imagination)? Maybe you feel they are consistently outshining you? Ugh... there's a local photographer that's much more successful than I am that I admittedly am very envious of. I swear to whatever god you may believe in that I mean it from a modest perspective, I really, really do, but I genuinely think my skills surpasses hers, and she's only more prevalent because photography REALLY is about who you know. She's talented, yes, but like... come on. If you are single, even if you are normally happily single, are there certain specific things you witness that make you wish you were in a relationship (e.g., people getting engaged)? I mean yeah. I miss cuddling, holding hands, kissing, just being cute together, and especially people getting engaged or having kids. It's such a trigger to me. Once upon a time, that's all I wanted with Jason. I wanted to be that beautiful couple that got married and had two or three loved-beyond-words children, but then he left so abruptly, and I feel like it was so brutally robbed from me. I don't want kids anymore like at all, but the point still stands that I felt like my dreams were just ripped away. Out of all your usernames for websites, which one is your favorite? Do you use it for more than one site? I use "Ozzkat" just about everywhere. Have you ever spent the whole day (or multiple days) just looking up one thing on the internet (e.g., videos of your favorite band, how-to videos, quizzes, etc.)? OHHHHHHHHHH YEAH. There have been a couple days or so where I was totally glued to looking up various tattoo designs, bingeing let's plays or conspiracy theory videos, etc. etc. If you ever think about getting married, what are some aspects of the wedding that you would like to see in a non-traditional manner (e.g., a different color dress or “partners” over “husband” and “wife”)? I WILL NOT get married in a church, first of all. I'm also not having the traditional vows, and I probably won't wear a white dress, but instead black. Salt & vinegar, barbecue, sour cream & onion, or cheddar? Ohhhh, I like all those options but barbecue. I think I've gotta go with sour cream & onion, though. Bow ties on guys, dorky or adorable? A D O R A B L E ! ! ! I think they're ordinarily geeky, but I mean, geeky is cute in my world. :^) Do you believe in demonic possession? How about ghosts? Angels? Angels, no. Spirits/ghosts, 100%. I don't exactly believe in demons, per se, but I do question if evil spirits can possess someone. What is one romantic movie that you enjoy enough to watch more than once? I've seen The Notebook numerous times. Name three countries you want to visit; why those three? South Africa to interact with meerkats at the KMP, somewhere up in Canada to see the Northern Lights, and Germany just because, really. I took German for four semesters, and the culture and all just interests me. Do you have a good luck charm? No, considering I don't believe they do jack. Do you use Skype to talk to your friends? Only Sara. Now that I have Discord semi-figured out now though, we'll probably use that for voice chatting. Are you allergic to any animals? I might be allergic to dogs. Do you usually spend your weekends out, or at home? I'm like... always at home. Do you think it’s wrong for people to say "retard/retarded" as an insult? Absofuckinglutely. Don't pull that shit when I'm around. Have you ever had to go to the police department? No. Have you ever lived through a hurricane? Plenty. Have you ever had a home-grown tomato? Yes, from my old friend's garden. We'd have delicious tomato, mayo, and bacon sandwiches. The only instance where I've enjoyed tomatoes. Have you ever held a real gun? The former friend I mentioned just before, her husband always carried a gun, and he just needed me to hold it for a sec for some reason I don't recall. I hated the feeling. Would you rather wear Converse or Vans? I like both, but I think I prefer Converse. Have you ever been called bipolar? Yes, because I clinically am. Have you ever made fun of a handicapped person? FUCK no. And like the "retarded" thing, don't you fucking DARE to do this in front of me. I WILL deck the shit out of you. Do you think it’s okay to have sex before marriage? Sure, as long as you're being safe and are very thorough in communication. Do you like to watch old sitcoms? I don't really watch TV as I say in like every survey it seems, but I do enjoy some old sitcoms I grew up watching with my mom, like The Nanny, The Golden Girls, The Munsters, etc. If asked, could you run a mile nonstop right now? Being completely serious, I don't even know if I CAN physically run right now. My legs are so incredibly weak, and I'm humiliatingly close to what my heaviest weight was back in 2016, so I can almost guarantee my knees would crumple if I tried. Do you wear those rubber wristbands? I used to. I don't really like bracelets nowadays. If a necklace/ring gives you green marks, do you still wear it? Nope. Have you ever driven an electric car? No. When was the last time you saw someone you went to high school with? Uhhhh idk. What breed was the last dog you saw? A fucking GOLIATH of a lab. I shit you not when I say my sister's roommate's dog Hudson is the size of a goddamn bear. How long have your parents been together (or how long were they together, if they no longer are): I wanna say they were together at the very least 20 years. What has been your most epic cooking failure? I once accidentally put something (I don't remember what) in the microwave for around 45 minutes I believe, and I walked away and completely forgot about it. I remembered a long while later, and safe to say, it wasn't edible, whatever it was, lmao. Have you ever been to Mexico? No. Have you ever had a parrot sit on your shoulder? No, but that'd be cool. Has anyone in your life ever treated you abusively? No. How long has it been since your last breakup? Somewhere around two years ago? My memory is so garbage nowadays. Can you concentrate well while listening to music, or do you find it distracting? It's distracting, usually. What’s something you’ve been struggling with lately? I've been pretty bad about drinking too much soda lately. :/

[missroserose]

Wednesday Reading Meme: Atmospheria Edition

Hello, tumblr!  I used to post these over on Dreamwidth, but for the past two and a half years, I’ve been reading almost exclusively fanfiction, with only occasional forays into book-land.  I’ve thought occasionally about writing about the fic I was reading, but frankly, most of it was short-ish works intended for easy gratification.  (Not that I'm knocking easy gratification!  But a 3500-word story about a captive Dean Winchester watching an evil version of himself and Castiel have sex is...entertaining, certainly, just maybe not in a way that lends itself to a lot of deeper analysis.) (Well, other than perhaps a judicious use of the "this better not awaken anything in me" meme.  Ahem.) That said! I've read a lot of fanfiction over the past few years, and plan to continue.  So I think I'm going to add a Fanfiction Spotlight slot to the Wednesday Reading Meme format.  Chances are there'll have been something I've read in any given week that feels like it deserves attention.  And in the meantime, I’ve been reading Actual Paper Books lately, largely as a way to wean myself of the doomscrolling habit...and since I’m low-key boycotting Goodreads these days, I figure I’ll try writing about them here.

So without further ado...

What I've recently finished reading The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern.  I'd previously read The Night Circus on a long-ass plane flight, and it turned out to be almost the perfect book for it—pure escapism so heavily drenched in dreamy poetic atmosphere that I could sink into it like a hot bath, and forget for much of the six-hour flight time that I was crammed into a tiny coach seat.  Sea is definitely in that same vein, but this time around I found the thinness and uncertainty of the plot to be rather more frustrating, in a way that overpowered the richness of the atmosphere.   There was still plenty there to enjoy, including a portal fantasy to any bibliophile's world of pure wish-fulfillment, and some meditations on love and change, and one quote in particular on the nature of love that's stuck with me...but I don't think the whole thing hangs together as well as it promised, at the start.  And while (as a fellow author) I completely understand that things change as you write them, when you reach a point in a story where it feels like the author has as little idea as you do what happens next, I find it a little demoralizing. Morpho Eugenia, by A.S. Byatt.  Now that I think about it, this novella makes for an interesting comparison to Sea, because it's similarly atmospheric, albeit less in the dreamy-imaginative-lovers-and-poets vein than the neo-Victorian highly-organized-and-tightly-laced-household-full-of-dark-undercurrents style.  It also does absolutely nothing surprising, plot-wise; it's 180 pages long and I think I'd identified most of the major themes and guessed the major arcs/big plot reveal by page fifteen.  That's not necessarily a fault in and of itself—there's something comforting about a story that does exactly what you expect, and it does a good job threading the needle of ladling on the foreshadowing without (quite) hitting you over the head with what's going on.  But frankly, the narrative stumbles somewhat in its slavish devotion to form.   As an example:  our protagonist is an entolomologist and atheist, penniless in the wake of a shipwreck that robbed him of his specimens and research, who finds himself living on the largesse of a wealthy family whose patriarch has an interest in natural philosophy.  So there are, of course, extensive passages on the nature and habits of various insects (meant to be excerpts from his work), on the potential space for the existence of God in natural selection (meant to be arguments from the patriarch), and even an extensive semi-allegorical insectoid fairy tale (written by another character entirely), which...certainly is all in keeping with the Victorian style, but none of which really feels particularly necessary to the story, here in this age where encyclopedias are a thing and anyone reading a neo-Victorian novella probably has at least a passing familiarity with the Deist arguments being held in the wake of Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species.  Some cynical part of me wonders if Byatt was trying to write a whole novel, only to discover that the main thrust of her story was nowhere near substantial enough to support one, and even with all the padding she only managed to reach novella length. What I'm currently reading Technically I haven't started it, but The Conjugial Angel is the other Byatt novella in the collection I picked up, so I'm probably going to power through that just so I won't feel guilty about tossing the book on the "to be donated" pile.  If it's anything like Morpho Eugenia, I expect to feel thoroughly "meh" about it, but hey!  Maybe I'll be surprised! What I plan to read next I have two specific recommended-by-friends books in my queue.  The first is Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I'm rather looking forward to despite my somewhat uneven relationship with Russian literature.  It was recommended to me by @coffeeandchemicals, and the bits and pieces of Solzhenitsyn I've encountered in the wild make me suspect I'll find his perspective interesting.  And even if I end up hating it, well...it's short. The second is Margo Lanagan's book Tender Morsels, which I know very little about other than it's a dark fairy tale.  But it was sent by @introvertia, who's become quite dear to me, and the theme of it (the jacket cover promises an Edenic tale of three women turned out of their personal Heaven and having to deal with the harsh realities of the outside world) certainly feels appropriate to 2020. Fanfiction Spotlight I was particularly taken with the premise of @zoemathemata's Supernatural/Supernatural RPF story "Folie a Deux".  Sam and Dean Winchester are held captive in Lofty Pines Mental Institution for unknown reasons, slowly being brainwashed into thinking that they're two run-of-the-mill dudes named Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki...or are Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki two men suffering from the delusion that they're supernatural-creature hunter brothers named Sam and Dean Winchester?  And if they're brothers, how do they square that with the fact that they can't seem to keep their hands off each other...? It's a clever idea, with the sort of meta-analytical flavor that's very in keeping with the show itself, and zoemathemata makes full use of the opportunity to break down the many inconsistencies and flaws that any long-running serialized story accumulates but that we, the audience, overlook for the sake of the Plot of the Week.  My one personal complaint about it is that it ends too soon—the most immediate plot threads are resolved but there's a distinct sense that this is the beginning rather than the ending.  The author says in the comments that they didn't continue it in part because they couldn't decide which was the reality—and I totally get not wanting to spend months or years writing a novel-length fic out of what's supposed to be a quick bit of fun—but there's just so much you could do with this idea.  Even without picking sides, it could be a Total Recall-style ambiguously-themed case fic, or a "Frame of Mind"-esque dark psychological thriller, or any number of other options...

What can I say?  I have a weakness for unreliable narrators.

[dontasktheradiodemon]

❌ So yesterday night Alastor invited over a guest to cook dinner for.

❌ I could tell the second she arrived because I could hear frigging "Be Our Guest" start up in the lobby.

❌ I tried to avoid that whole scene, but from down a hall I definitely spotted a shadow-thing juggling dishes.

❌ He rewrote the lyrics. I didn't catch all of them, but I did hear "Can they sing? Who can tell! After all, doll, this is Hell!"

❌ If you're on the fence about checking into the hotel and you're a musical theater fan: if you come, there's basically a 100% chance that the Radio Demon will do a musical number for you.

((So @autokrates came over for dinner last night, and we decided not to roleplay it out, but we DID write a long semi-pseudo-roleplay summary of how that meeting would have gone, so for any parties who are interested, HERE'S THAT CHAT LOG))

Valera

So! Largely, I believe. Val showing up, a musical number happens, and then ingredient delivery

Alastor

Sounds right.

Then Alastor preps dinner, spends too much time fussing with this Newfangled Modern Machine With Settings And Dials, and they sit staring at a slow cooker for a while.

Valera

Ah yes, nothing like sitting in dead silence waiting for things with someone you don't know! She should have asked Pentious for-- OH YEAH. Slide a pamphlet over. He can busy himself with memorizing that for a little while

Alastor

He absolutely will. And he will politely play showtunes in the background for the benefit of his guest as he reads.

Valera

Ah, just the thing for her to occupy herself with. Quietly stimming by wiggling her fingers and tail to the music

Alastor

He'd probably say thanks for the info but uh why give it to him? (Not that he doesn't WANT it but like, it seems pretty private, he's surprised that Valera—and Sir Pent?—think he's worthy of being let in on where Sir Pentious is this week)

Alastor three days after falling asleep on the floor all tangled up with Sir Pent: haha yeah but it's not like we're CLOSE is it?

Valera

Dumb old men being dumb!!!

Alastor

HE JUST. ASSUMES HE'S WAY MORE INTO THIS THAN SIR PENT...

Valera

Pentious asked her to elaborate to Alastor what was happening, since she's still got a level head and experience with shedding. Which is convenient, because she'd fully intended to anyway. Pentious may want company, and Alastor needs to be prepared.

Alastor

OuO oh so he trusts Alastor that much huh. He will... file that fact away... somewhere in his heart

Valera

Aside from herself, he's the person Pentious trusts most. Casually sips materialized tea.

Alastor

Immediately tries to play it off like HAHA MUST BE A SHORT LIST. ... Which would probably be funnier if not for the fact that, like, it IS a short list.

Valera

She will... Refrain from commenting on the list being Two People long. But she will raise a very deliberate eyebrow at the way he avoids any signs of emotional attachment

Which actually reminds her! She owes him an apology.

Maybe multiple? Whatever.

Alastor

(He might be verbally avoiding signs of emotional attachment but outside of that, like, it's gonna be hard for her not to notice that his attention on the conversation goes from like 75% to 110% the moment Sir Pent comes into it and he drops everything to focus on the Info Pamphlet That Might Be Helpful For Sir Pent)

Genuinely :)? at that, apology for what

Valera

Well, a few things! Pentious shared Alastor's letters with her, which, yes he was asking for input, but it was a bit invasive.

Alastor

Goes from :)? to :]

Valera

And then for, what was it, outing him? The post was taken down, but if Pentious had mixed feelings about it, well. She can't assume how Alastor felt even if she did say it was an Opinion Piece.

Shrug!!

Alastor

Oh THAT? Sure Alastor thinks he saw that go by now that Val mentions it. It's exactly what she said: an opinion piece!!! Why, he's an infamous celebrity! Everyone has an opinion on him and most of them are wrong! He doesn't put much stock in them~

Valera

Regardless! Her bluntness charms some, but it can also be quite inappropriate. She hopes it didn't distress him too much, it was never her intention.

She is a POLITICIAN.

Alastor

Why, he hardly even noticed it.

Valera

Good! Looping back around to her beau, did Alastor have any other questions?

Alastor

... Anything he can send to help out?

(NOW he's all self-conscious, offering to do something NICE. gotta try to be all aloof about it)

Valera

(Wow he really IS like Pentious but Even Worse.. She is amazed.) Send? Oh, no dear fellow. Asking for food today was largely a cover to visit without having Vaggie relay all this information thirdhand. Though he did do quite a fine job of making the food, Pentious will love it.

(assuming, but the Smell)

Alastor

✨💖 Oh will he? That's good. 💖✨

Valera

Yes. Alastor cut the vegetables and meat into the perfect sizes to avoid a texture issue, couldn't have done it better herself. Prr prr

Alastor

(He's like Texture Issue???? but like. He's not gonna ask.)

Valera

She will GLOSS PAST THAT, THEN. Beyond the food, which was a lovely bonus, hmm... No, she's already providing the lotions and voice recordings for Pentious. Unless he's willing to be an in house cheer squad when the snake gets bored and blind, there isn't much he could do.

Alastor

Well, he'd be glad to come over for a visit if it'd lift his spirits—if Sir Pentious would want the visit?

Valera

She expects he will! He's.. Distressed.

Uncomfortable shift. SHE DOESN'T LIKE BEING SO VAGUE.

Alastor

Well now she's got 150% of Alastor's attention.

Valera

Twitchy Tail Time!!! Yes. Well, the pamphlet makes it very dry, but a shed is nothing short of agony. Itchy, painful, it leaves you blind and helpless. If you've already got... experiences with such things. It makes it worse. Pentious is barely into it and he's already ready to attack anything that moves.

Alastor

... Well! Let Alastor know when he can come by.

(He's got trouble wrapping his head around the idea of WANTING company while pained and helpless, but if Valera says he does, then Alastor is going by that)

(... and if Sir Pent gets pissed Alastor came over he's 100% pointing a finger at Val and going "well she said you'd like it")

Valera

(LMAO)

(Val would explain it as wanting a strong person present so you can feel protected and finally relax)

(She's appealed to Pentious' ego with that!!)

Hah! Yes, of course. Though he may need to go to Valera's home, fair warning. She's trying to coax Pentious into laying in her tub to get through this. She's got more equipment to deal with the symptoms, and a larger bathroom by far.

Alastor

Having a near stranger over sounds like something that should worry Valera more than Alastor! For him, it's a bonus.

Valera

OH MAKE NO MISTAKE. VAL'S NOT SURE ABOUT IT

BUT. she's confident Alastor isn't going to do anything dumb in her house

bc Pentious would FLIP SHIT

Alastor

She's already decided that Alastor won't behave himself out of basic decency as a guest or even out of a desire to maybe get invited back but he WILL behave himself solely because Sir Pent is there and he's feeling kind of called out. Called out in his own kitchen, in front of his own crock pot,

Valera

Raises an eyebrow

She's grinning but she shouldn't be when she's acting like a little shit

Alastor

BUT WHAT HE ACTUALLY SAYS IS of course he'll be on his best behavior :) :) :)

WHY IT'S NOT EVERY DAY HE MEETS SOMEONE WITH SUCH FINE TASTE IN THE PERFORMING ARTS, he'd be a fool to be a poor guest

Valera

Glad to hear it! He's been nothing but a perfect gentleman so far, but with the way Pentious rants about other demons, an abundance of caution seems wise. Nothing personal, dear fellow.

Demon culture is very much a mystery to her, and a confusing one at that.

Alastor

COMPLETELY reasonable. After all, everyone is down here for a reason.

Valera

She would agree, if the concept of sin wasn't such an odd one! It comes down to survival of the fittest, at the end. But just because some pompous sky man says he loves you if you follow his contradictory rules, humans are doomed to eternal torment? It's bizarre.

Ah, but excuse her. Her viewpoint is, literally, alien.

Alastor

You make the world, you make the rules. What is the guy powerful enough to give the orders and see that they're obeyed if not "the fittest"? Who has the power to argue if he prints a list of criteria for who he does and doesn't want joining him in his gated community in the sky?

He's told someone tried to argue with him once. And that's how THIS little neighborhood got started.

Valera

Oh, it's not so bad. Heaven is a pretty dull place! All sorts of goody two shoes drinking tea and baking pies in the perfect idyllic weather. Forever.

Alastor

You know, for a time, Alastor used to think that all the "punishment" narratives around Hell were just talk. He had this theory that, actually, humans were sent to the afterlife they were better suited for. The people sent to Heaven are the kind of people who'd LIKE being in Heaven, the people sent to Hell are the kind of people who would be bored stiff in Heaven and just make it miserable for the people who want to be there.

But he was wrong. It really, truly is rotten down here. Not just because of the wilted vegetables and awful weather. Hell grinds at you on a spiritual level. It really is a punishment.

Valera

Well that's.. A lot at once. Vaguely concerned frown.. That she is going to cover with her tea turning to a Nice Dark Coffee. SSSssssssSSSIP.

Alastor

Just thought she might benefit from an insider perspective! She can rest assured: the pie-baking tea-drinkers really are better off.

:) :) :)

Valera

Interesting! She's never spent much time in Hell out of arms reach of Pentious, but that's something to keep in mind for the future.

Alastor

Happy to help~!

Valera

[[ val voice: haha yeah whenever I'm in hell I'm getting doted on but I'll keep an eye out for emotional wear and tear!

Alastor

(It's different for visitors who only come to chat with the convicts)

Valera

(Of course. More for Pentious than herself, she doesn't know a lot of his backstory yet BUT SHE KNOWS ITS SAD)

Now, moving to happier topics! She loves what hes done with the hair. Though it makes him rather fresh faced

Alastor

WHY, THANK YOU!! It was all the rage a hundred years ago! But they do say fashion trends come back around!!

Sir Pentious wasn't as impressed by it, but, hey, can't win them all, can you?

Valera

Ah, don't worry about it. He just takes a bit to come around to change!

... Usually.

Alastor

Well, doesn't matter, he probably won't be keeping it long.

"Usually"?

Valera

She grins!!! Yes, usually. He's remarkably easy to get on board with just about anything if you can relate to something else he likes.

Alastor

Well, naturally! Who isn't?

Valera

The LOOK on her face is like she SUCKED A LEMON.

You'd be surprised.

Alastor

... Apparently so!

he's gone from :) to 8) like what did he just step in

Valera

NOTHING SHE'S GETTING INTO! Now, tell her dear man. What kind of musicals do you like?

Alastor

............... All of them???

Valera

Oh? Everything from Les Mis to Cats?

Anything Goes?

Alastor

Are those the two extremes? Then apparently so! What about you?!

Valera

She has preferences when she's PERFORMING in them, but from an enjoyment perspective, she can appreciate any production.

Alastor

A fan after his own dead heart!

Valera

She can do a MEAN patter song, but she likes being able to dance around while she's belting lines out. Acrobatics are where she can really show off!

Alastor

Well, then he hopes he'll have a chance to see her dancing sooner rather than later! Alastor never received much in the way in formal training in dance, and he's sure it shows, but he likes to think he makes up for it with personality.

Valera

Oh pish posh. Dance is at least fifty percent attitude, he'd be phenomenal on or off the stage. And she can always give pointers, if he's looking for them.

Alastor

He really only does it for his own entertainment—AND for the entertainment of honored guests, of course—but if he ever decides to get back into theater for whatever reason, he'll keep her generous offer in mind.

Valera

Of course! Not like she's going to do a lot of dancing with Pentious here. Her love is many things, but a dancer is not one of them. Snrk snrk.

Alastor

Really. Huh.

So how DID they meet, anyway?? Alastor's been wondering! Hard for sinners to meet many people outside of Hell.

Valera

Oh! Haha, funny story, that. But how much detail does he REALLY want?

Alastor

Well, far be it from him to pry into anything she doesn't think she ought to share, of course. But he wouldn't have asked if he didn't wonder.

Valera

Fair! Alright, well. They met on tumblr, obviously. Pentious was flailing about being combative and intentionally aggressive. You know. Pentious.

Alastor

Naturally.

Valera

She decided to approach him without the immediate hostility so many of her peers were demonstrating. Doesn't everyone deserve a chance to explain themselves, after all? He seemed like he was lashing out, not truly malicious. Nobody had bothered explaining to him that what he did was wrong, or why.

And, you know. If you attack someone, you can't be surprised if they attack you right back. Obviously.

Alastor

Obviously.

Valera

So! Yes. She approached him, asked questions. Asked for his side of things. And they got along just fine! So she invited him over for tea, arguably. But mostly he invited himself over because she made too much tea.

Alastor

So just a chance encounter while adrift among the Internet's airwaves! How serendipitous.

Valera

More or less! Though really, she'd spoken to Alastor more at that point. Other Alastor. He'd been inviting her over to his hell, so she'd likely have met Pentious under very different circumstances if she hadn't approached him then.

But! He came over, and they talked. And they talked a LOT. About their passions, and about how ridiculous people can be these days.

And gods, can they. Then they decided to watch The Mikado! Has he heard of it?

Alastor

Has he heard of it?! One of Gilbert & Sullivan's most renown shows?! Madam! Of course he had!

Valera

Oh good, good good! He continues to impress! So lovely to know there are other people with taste around here. So yes! They watched The Mikado, and it went.. Almost alarmingly well. At the start they were on opposite ends of the couch, and by the end he was sprawled across her lap like he lived there.

Alastor

...... Well!

He warms up to people fast.

Valera

Haha! Perhaps he was simply overly pleased to connect with someone again, and let his guard down? They wound up making out on the couch like a pair of horny teens, so.

Alastor

...... Well!

Valera

Sssssips drink.

Alastor

............ Congratulations! (he has No Idea what you're supposed to say to that)

Valera

Thanks! (She doesn't either) Want to know an incredibly adorable fact about Penny?

Alastor

Sure!!

(he is retaining a Remarkable poker face through all this)

Valera

He likes it when you scratch his hood. Makes him melt in to a happy little pile of scales.

(someone please... Help Alastor....)

Alastor

Ha! Well, isn't that darling.

(The only one who can help Alastor is Alastor himself and he's like "why should I help, what's that bitch ever done for me")

Valera

Very. Should he ever deign to let you try it, the results are best from juuust the very joint of his neck and hood.

(ALASTOR PRACTICE SELF CARE)

Alastor

(FOR THE LAST HALF CENTURY HIS SELF CARE HAS BEEN AVOIDING SEEING/THINKING ABOUT SIR PENT EVER AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. He still needs to figure out how to do a self-care that's the opposite of that!)

Duly noted! Alastor's sure it'll never happen, but even so.

Valera

Oh, she isn't so sure! Penny speaks fondly of him.

Alastor

... Hm.

Well, there are different sorts of fondness, aren't there!

Valera

Well, yes of course? She's fond of many people, but she isn't exactly engaged to the vast majority of them. What is his point?

Alastor

That THAT'S the sort of intimacy one usually reserves for someone closer to the "engaged" end of the fondness scale—hold on, engaged??

Valera

Oh? Yes, engaged. Anyway, is it? This must be one of those human things again. There's nothing sexual about enjoying platonic physical contact, there's no reason for it to be relegated to a relationship.

Alastor

Well, what does Alastor know, he's never been a very touchy person. SO, how long have you two been...? Well, probably since before Alastor met either of you, silly question! He just must not have heard.

Valera

Oh, no it's.. Arguably recent? Certainly after he and Pentious started talking. Though don't get too fussed, dear. Pentious has a ring he hasn't lobbed at her yet. They've just agreed to get married, Pentious refers to her as his fiancé. No dates set or anything.

Alastor

Oh, good, so he didn't miss some big announcement. That WOULD have been embarrassing

Valera

He did not! And really, with how he and Pentious get along he might wind up getting asked for advice if a proposal ever actually occurs.

Alastor

... He doesn't know what kind of advice he could offer! He's not known for his expertise in romance, ha.

((suddenly got a flashing glimpse of a possible future where Alastor is the best man, standing like five feet away from Sir Pent trying to hold it together))

Valera

[[ JFDHFKDSHJFKDS HONESTLY.... IT'S LIKELY

Valera

You know, she doesn't think any of them are! Marriage isn't something Veci usually do with aliens, but Pentious insisted he wanted a proper marriage, and kids, and she's not opposed to either if that makes him happy. Though seeing him with the dolls is incredibly endearing.

Alastor

((And I will be FILLED TO THE BRIM with sadistic glee))

The dolls??

Valera

[[ Alastor crying ASMR

Alastor

(("Al are you okay—" "YEAH I'M FINE IT'S JUST. IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL. ISN'T IT. SO MOVING."))

Valera

Yes! Would you like to hear that story?

Alastor

SURE!!

Valera

Super! So! She doesn't know ALASTOR'S stance on calling women things like sluts and whores, but she herself is.. Not terribly fond of those words. Something about having them screamed at her, just doesn't sit well.

Alastor

One rarely is fond of the words one's been on the receiving end of.

Valera

Indeed. Pentious on the other hand, used them quite freely against any woman he wasn't pleased with.

But! Pentious wants kids someday, and kids are of course, quite perceptive little creatures. And no child of hers is going to grow up internalizing that kind of nonsense, either as a measure of their worth or as something a proper young man calls any lady.

So! She made a few dolls, to demonstrate her point. Pentious wants kids, so she made him some dolls that resemble what his offspring would.

And then hurled abuse at them quite freely!

He didn't take kindly to hearing what random men would call his own daughter, funnily enough.

Alastor

Alastor's like lmao. (IT SEEMS KINDA MEAN AND MEAN THINGS AMUSE HIM... he's half powered by schadenfreude)

Valera

(It WAS mean)

Alastor

And he takes it that worked.

Valera

Pentious can often be found curled up with his little doll family, and he hasn't used a slur since, so! Yes.

Alastor

No surprise there! He is, at his heart, a family man in hibernation, isn't he?

Valera

Not even in hibernation! He's incredibly eager to start a family.

Alastor

Of course. Now that he has the chance. Probably the only man in Hell who does.

Formerly in hibernation, then.

Valera

Can sinners not reproduce?

Alastor

No! Sterile, one and all. The dead do not breed. There are the few rare exceptions who have been supernaturally promoted out of the pool of the damned and made nobility of the same rank as the native Infernal-born or Heaven-fallen demons—Queen Lilith, for instance—but that's not just a thing that HAPPENS. A sinner must be CHOSEN, typically by Lucifer himself. Alastor wouldn't be surprised if it happens less than twice a millennium.

And even at that, to his knowledge these ascendant damned have never bred with each other—only with the Infernal nobility.

Valera

Huh! Fascinating. She really should learn more about the going ons of hell... But good to know! That explains the way Pentious.. Basically went feral as soon as he found out it was possible to have a family.

She's still not sure about the whole "eyes going red" thing, but he's explained it as any peak of emotion.

Alastor

It happens!

... Did you account for the possibility of him being sterile when you promised him a family? Or did you make the promise on the assumption that he's as fertile as any living man?

Valera

Oh, she can reproduce with anyone who has a soul. Pentious IS a damned soul. Ergo...

Alastor

Getting around the usual rules, then! Good. Alastor would so hate to hear if he'd gotten his hopes raised just for them to be dashed again.

Valera

Oh, she was careful to check! Many demons are soulless beings, and she hates to be made a liar of. Though she wasn't even sure poor Pentious even had genitals at the time!

Alastor

Well. Surprise.

Valera

She is Looking Away

Yes... Surprise indeed.

Alastor

He is the picture of :) neutrality

Valera

Val is trying very hard to keep the conversation from going to DARK PLACES. So!!! Subject change time.

Did you and he have fun at your last visit? He tends to give her a summary, but it's nice to hear the other perspective

Alastor

OH. YES. SURE. DELIGHTFUL TIME.

Valera

Oh? Delightful?

Alastor

Yeah, sure! ... Why, did he not think so?

Valera

Oh! He.. Got very drunk. His memories get fuzzy.

Alastor

... Well, that was half of what made it delightful!

Valera

She wouldn't know, but she's very glad to hear it!

Alastor

You abstain? Or not biologically capable?

Valera

Oh, neither. Rarely have the chance to actually relax anymore, too many attempts to murder her over the years. Regicide is very in, you know.

Alastor

Heavy is the head!

Valera

Hah! He can say that again. It's a thankless job. But somebody's got to do it.

Alastor

((I'M RUNNIN OUT OF STEAM... and they chatted about a lot more than I expected, this was productive!! Anywhere else you think we oughta steer the conversation or d'you think it's safe to go And Then They Chatted More, The End))

Valera

[[ NAH I THINK ITS BEEN ESTABLISHED WELL ENOUGH. STEER BACK TO MUSICALS, THEY TALK SHOP, AND THEN WHAM FOOD