#because it turns out i don't know what ambivalent means it's also the ''I don't care either way'' option

[irishhorse-blog]

I received the usual private messages telling me how delulu I am, how disrespectful I am to Jimin because he clearly said he's single and not looking. Okay. I'm not going to respond to each message individually, so I'll address these things here.

Yes, I heard what he said. I know that there are many ways to interpret his words and the signals and signs that have been shown for lo this past decade. Some will see it at face value; some will see it through hate; some will see it through protective lenses; others will see it in a shipper's light. Do any of us really know what he means, or what his life situation is? No. I and the other Jikook stans could be completely wrong.

When I started shipping, I was ambivalent about the whole process. It's honestly gross to force a romantic narrative onto real people when it's very likely to not only be untrue but also offensive to the people involved. I never got involved in RP shipping before, and if I'm honest, the concept sort of squicked me out.

So why do I write a Jikook blog, you may ask? I believe in what I see. I believe that they're actually a couple and that they're actually in a committed relationship. I'm not shipping them. I'm supporting them. And if it turns out that I'm wrong and I've been an assclown this whole time, so be it. I still love them, and I'm still here for it. My first priority and the only thing I have ever wished for them is that they're happy, no matter what they're doing, no matter who they end up with. I hope they find the lives and the loves that they want, because they deserve it.

I believe that Jikook is real. I also believe that there is subtext to the things that Jimin was saying in the second MiniMoni video. I do listen to what he says, and what JK says, and what the other guys say about them. It's the combination of all these words over all these years that has convinced me.

Whatever the truth is, it may never be something we out here in the wider world get to know. It might be that their lives will always remain private, and that's okay. I swear that I won't have a conniption or throw a hissy fit if it turns out that both JK and Jimin end up marrying women and having families of their own. I think they'd both be wonderful fathers, for what it's worth.

I just don't think they will. And only time will tell.

So, keep slinging accusations at me, and keep accusing me and belittling me if it makes you happy. What you have to say means nothing to me. My opinion is my own, and in the grand scheme of things, in the face of death, destruction, war and grief, it hardly matters whether or not two celebrities I'll never meet in person are busy sevening each other. I'm not going to argue about this. There are more important things in this world that deserve my attention and my energy.

[darkstarofchaos]

Hello! Another person who is incredibly frustrated with redeemed Megatron.

Me and my friends have all voiced the exact same problems and that main being that we don't ever get the before him like at all. Hints here and there but for the most part NO ONE outside of the bad guys has any bad blood towards him.

I understand not every kid show needs to be these deep emotional epics but at the same time it's still weird to me that the Autobots, who have lost countless family and friends thanks specifically to the actions of Megatron and his followers, show no sort of lingering resentment. After all, the amount of time between the war ended and the beginning of the show would be like a few hours for beings that live for millions of years.

Having the Terrans would be a great excuse to have the devil's advocate angle when other Autobots still don't feel comfortable around him. I said the same thing in my own Starscream post too about how sometimes people can't change because those around them refuse to let them.

Megatron should've felt alienated from both sides and by him not falling back into old habits and committing to staying good would've actually proved that his redemption was warranted.

I'm not asking for it to take over the show, but these little background moments. Hell, Bumblebee's attitude would've been a little bit more tolerable if you were it was coming from a place of feeling slighted pissed that the cybertronian who more or less ruined his "childhood" (I've accepted that headcanon that any given Bumblebee is basically a former child soldier) is just walking free side to side with his mentor.

The sad thing is that the first couple episodes kinda show some hints of that? Like when Optimus gives his "Roll out" bit and Megatron tells Dot he's never sure if he means him, or Bumblebee being kinda wary when he tries to call Optimus and gets Megatron (also, Megatron's matter-of-fact recounting of how he kept his soldiers in line). It wasn't enough on its own, but they could have continued the trend to show most bots are wary of him at best, or even implied that the reason some Autobots don't show up much is because they don't want to be around him. It wouldn't have taken many changes to show Megatron as fairly isolated, with maybe one or two relationships that kept him from backsliding into his old ways (his friendship with Dot works better for me because 15 years is a long time for a human, and we know he saved her life at least once).

Honestly, I was ambivalent about his "redemption" in season 1? After Jawbreaker asked him about his altmode and it turned out all he had to do to get Optimus' trust was scan an Earth alt, I pretty much gave up on getting any meaningful backstory for him, so I was resigned to him just being Generic Ex-Decepticon (and then What Dwells Within happened and he finally felt like a Megatron trying to do better to me. Not just in his interactions with Starscream, but when he interacted with Optimus and Croft too: angry, wanting to do things his way, trying to do better but slipping into old habits. If he'd been more like that throughout the show, paired with the Autobots responding appropriately to him, I would have enjoyed his character a lot more).

And then Season 2 happened. And we went the "Starscream is worse than his abuser, actually" route. And now I'm like... This is everything I do not want from a Megatron redemption. The only thing I want from a Megatron redemption is for him to face what he did to the people closest to him. Every single Megatron redemption sees him running off somewhere and leaving the Decepticons to deal with the fallout of his war, and he never has to face the people he personally hurt. And when it comes to Starscream, it's almost treated like a good thing that he hurt him, because when Megatron isn't there to "keep him in check", he's worse than Megatron ever was. And then people roll their eyes and say "Starscream is always power hungry and evil, what do you expect?" while Armada Starscream is right there, and EarthSpark Starscream in Season 1 was a hell of a lot closer to Armada than to Cyberverse.

On his own, EarthSpark Megatron was boring and a waste of potential, but not especially offensive. Paired with Starscream, and specifically Starscream as he appeared in the final episode of the latest batch, he is possibly my least favorite part of EarthSpark right now. Not as a character, but as a concept. I like Megatron, but I have no use for a redeemed Megatron who still has to believe that he's better than Starscream, and be supported in that belief by the narrative. The early scene in S2 when Megatron tells Starscream to let the war end could have been a really good character moment, because we would see that there are still things he doesn't regret, and that he truly sees himself as better than Starscream (who isn't even the one to blame for the war's continuation - I firmly believe that, since the Decepticons were the ones being hunted and locked up, it falls to Megatron and the Autobots to prove that things can be different now. And if the war is continuing, it's almost certainly because Megatron and/or the Autobots fucked up).

But instead we get, "Yeah, Megatron thinks he's a better person than Starscream. And you know what? He's right." I am so done with the abuse apologetics.

[bookshelfdreams]

Hiii I hope this isn't too forward, but your tags re: Ed's evolving reactions to abuse and Izzy as abuse-survivor-wish-fulfillment are incredible and it would lovely as its own post, if you felt comfortable doing so!

Aww thank you! The post in question

Also, tbf, I'm just obsessed with the rule of 3, whenever there's the slightest chance of seeing a pattern like this I'll pound on it with a sledgehammer until it fits.

Anyway. Ed has 3 abusive white men in his life; his father, Hornigold, and Izzy. And all 3 he deals with, to escalating effect.

His father is the one who exerts the most power over him. Ed clearly comes from a violent household, and as a child, he is obviously completely at his fathers non-existent mercy. He beats Ed's mother, throws dishware against the wall, and there was a deleted scene where he yelled at Ed's mother for "turning my son soft" (oh how I wish they'd kept that in. I can understand why they thought this was expendable, but it would have made the connection between Ed's father and Izzy so much more obvious).

Ed cannot protect himself, or his mother, against this violence - up until the moment that he can. The moment he realizes he is no longer weak and helpless, he retaliates in the only way that he has ever seen conflicts be resolved. He knows that he can't intimidate his father into better behaviour, if he wants to end the abuse it has to be permanent. So he just fucking kills the bastard.

This is, of course, Not Ideal. Even 30odd years later, he feels monstrous and unlovable because of this moment. The violence scars him. Not because he was wrong in killing his father, necessarily; the show doesn't judge him for it. But Ed destroyed the life he could have had when he did it, and he wounded himself.

Violent solution? Possible, but he deserved better.

Next up, Hornigold, who is also a mean, abusive bastard. He represents the avoidance solution: Leave and never look back. We do not know what became of Hornigold after Ed left his ship, but 02x03 implies that Ed expects him to still be alive somewhere. Ed clearly suffered horrific abuse at his hands, both physical and emotional, and even though that is years in the past, he clearly never dealt with any of it. Gravybasket!Hornigold tells him "Sorry doesn't rebuild an abdominal wall. You gotta move on.": Don't expect an apology, don't try to make amends, just ignore what happened. Apologies are pointless, you can never expect your abuser to change his behaviour. So just try to get away from him and ignore him.

This also doesn't really work. In the gravy basket, Ed is clearly still desperate for Hornigold's approval - and is refused, as he probably was often when he sailed with him. "You're never good enough" is one of the core mantras of abusers. Hornigold is still living in Ed's head, and heart, and soul; the poison he fed him is still alive and well within him. Ed even tries a violent solution this time, but obviously that can't work.

Still, avoidance is better than violence. Hornigold is left behind, standing on that cliff, while Ed goes back into the light. Ed doesn't have to take him with him. He cannot make Hornigold regret what he did, but he can remove himself from his clutches.

And then there's Izzy. With Izzy, Ed obviously has the most ambivalent relationship. He seems to truly like Izzy, to some extend (why is that would be another post, but as briefly as possible: I think Izzy provides an interpersonal dynamic that is familiar, and therefore, a twisted kind of safe for Ed. Chronic mistreatment will embed in you the idea that there's something wrong with you, and that's something Izzy is all too willing to point out to Ed. Crucially though, Izzy is someone who's approval is actually attainable. Ed keeps around someone who will tear him down, yes, but who it is also possible to impress, and over who he has authority. He's going back to the previous relationships, only now he is in a position of power, and that may feel like he can fix them. Obviously this isn't exactly a healthy dynamic. Izzy, for his part, clearly gets a kick out of the power and status being Blackbeard's first mate gives him, and manipulating Ed into doing what he wants. Just watch how pissed he gets when his control over Ed starts to slip.).

And there's another, crucial difference: Izzy wants to come around. Izzy is the fantasy of the toxic person who realizes how shitty his behaviour is, and who deep down, cares enough to want to fix it. Who recognizes the pain he caused, and who tells Ed the things he most needs to hear: I hurt you, and I'm sorry. You didn't deserve this. I was wrong; you're fine.

And then - and this is also an important part of the wish fullfilment fantasy! - he dies. Ed doesn't have to deal with him anymore. We remove the possibility that he goes back on his apology, or tries to use that as a wedge to carve out a space for himself in Ed's life, or goes back to manipulating Ed. No. The apology has to be the final note this relationship ends on.

And this fixes it. Ed can look back on Izzy fondly.

He was a fucking nightmare. What a guy.

[nyoomerr]

Thoughts on Qijiu (as a ship or just in general?). I feel like when YQY or, rarely, the original Shen Qingqiu show up in your fics, they're treated pretty sympathetically, but I'm curious to know more on how you feel about them.

i've never really made up my mind about qijiu, tbh. toxic doomed yaoi VS tragic brothers VS two people who went through something awful together and since then have changed so much as people that honestly they really would be better off without being anything to each other...

in part my general non-commitment to a particular stance on qijiu is probably just a result of my general ambivalence to the characters themselves ;; i'll put my opinions below the break, so that no one has to see my lukewarm sentiments if they're keen on these characters (especially sj!sqq)😅

i often write yqy in a favorable light since sy!sqq likes yqy, but personally i think he's just... fine. i can tell i'm supposed to feel bad for him, but honestly i don't have a lot of sympathy or understanding for someone who feels so horrible about their own self that they then decide to... let somebody else act and feel horrible? i think he's got nice older brother vibes, but the fact that he knew about sj!sqq's abuse of his disciples and didn't intervene kinda cuts into his image as the 'respectable' one, for me.

for sj!sqq... he's a very complicated character, and an interesting character to me because of it. however, i love binghe VERY much, and in the end i just can't actually like anyone who is cruel to him.

at the start of my time in fandom, my opinion of him was just that: "he's interesting, but i don't really care to think about him very much because he was very awful to the character that i DO want to think about a lot." and because i didn't care to think about him, i also didn't care to tackle how complicated his character is - i honestly very frequently just used him as a convenient plot point for binggeyuan without really caring if it was OOC for sj!sqq.

but over time, i've seen a lot of sj!sqq fans who try to wash him clean in ways that feel very weird... as if there is this need to have him proven innocent of every single one of the crimes he was accused of, just because some of them were proven to be misunderstandings. in particular, i've seen this theory that sj!sqq only dumped tea on lbh because the tea was medicinal (??) and it was how he could treat lbh for his injuries (??) without breaking his character (??)... and i've seen this several times, from multiple different people, and all treated very seriously -- this isn't just one person shouting at the sky with this idea.

i guess, as someone who loves bingge when he's soggy and loves him still when he's insane and violent and awful, beyond just feeling like the fandom often misrepresents sj!sqq for the sake of turning him "likeable," it also just feels a bit cheap and cowardly 😂 like, sure, by all means, love that man! but, please love him while also looking the fact that he abused lbh in the eye.

anyway, so i guess tldr: i think sj!sqq is very complicated, and more often than not i just don't care enough about him to represent that correctly, but sometimes i see a take so Weird that it makes my teeth itch. 'raised by winter winds' was more or less the culmination of all of those moments - me going, "okay, let's just for once give genuine care and attention to how i represent this character, since if i want to complain about other people's misrepresentations than i had damn well better make sure i'm not being so careless with my own characterizations."

u can u up, no can no bb, and all that.

to circle back to your original question with all that context: i'm generally ambivalent to both yqy and sj!sqq, so i'm also generally ambivalent to qijiu or what form it takes. there have been a couple fics where i find moments that i'm really invested in them, because i do think that sj!sqq is a complicated and interesting character, but it isn't something i seek out.

[donnerpartyofone]

This has been a really hard one to talk about. I'm always very ambivalent about mourning celebrities. I try to remember that I don't know these people, that what is really mourned by most of us is the person's ongoing work, which in the best cases has helped us understand ourselves and the world in which we live. Unavoidably, though, you can start to develop the sense that you know these people personally, which isn't true or even appropriate necessarily, I mean you have no idea whether you would even like someone you've only seen on a screen or received an autograph from; but at the same time, I don't know if you can really force yourself not to feel like the deceased celebrity is a dear friend you will never get to talk to again (the last time I tried and failed was the passing of Lux Interior). Maybe this is more forgivable, and also more inevitable, if you feel like you grew up with the person.

Of course this is all about ME now, but my mother (who also died from cancer) was an extremely hip, brilliant, funny individual who for whatever reason refused to form a relationship with me. This was pretty strange, because we liked a lot of the same things--B movies, old comics, all types of camp and kitsch--but when I liked those things, it was in poor taste and punishable by exile, whereas when she liked those things, it was evidence of her cultural genius. Before I make anybody too mad I should say that I'm being a little bit unfairly reductive just so I can get to the point, which is that one of the few things we could share was Pee-Wee's Playhouse. I didn't know anything about the show's more adult origins or the fact that Paul Reubens was sort of a performance artist, but I didn't have to. Pee-Wee's Playhouse was a feast for any child's senses: stylish, hilarious, and on some subliminal level, really sophisticated. I was clued into some of what was going on just because I watched it with my mom, who always laughed at Pee-Wee's winks and nudges to the hep parents in the audience. The show might have been my first encounter with the kind of anthropological humor favored by people like David Byrne and Laurie Anderson, artists who engage subversively with cliches, stereotypes, and other memetic parts of popular culture. In Pee-Wee's Playhouse, with its sharp, edgy cast and crew, kids like me were getting into fine art without even knowing it--which is possibly the best way to learn about art anyway.

In fact, on the other side of our house, I became obsessed with Gary Panter's incredible punk opus Jimbo In Paradise, a Dantesque comic book about an innocent young guy living in a dystopian future, where he is occasionally joined by guest stars such as Nancy and Hedorah. I was about 7 when I started reading Jimbo over and over again even though I could barely understand it, and I had no idea that Gary had pretty much designed Pee-Wee's Playhouse. I'm speaking about him so familiarly because I got to know him a little bit as a grownup. I remember Gary talking about how private Paul Reubens could be. He used to do this thing where he would accept a dinner invitation from anybody who asked, as sort of a stunt, but he had to stop doing it because people became so intrusive and entitled with him. Gary said that they'd be walking around in New York and when they saw an obvious Pee-Wee fan gearing up for an offensive, Paul Reubens would sort of transform into this totally different person, putting out an aura that let you know not to fuck with him. It's crazy-making to think that someone who was so protective of the boundary between his private and public selves had to suffer that ridiculous arrest, but it's heartening that most of society eventually grew the fuck up and forgot about it. It's also helpful to remember when he turned up later on the MTV Music Video Awards and started off by asking the audience, "HEARD ANY GOOD JOKES LATELY??"

I'm glad we got one more Pee-Wee special in the past several years, but I always wished that we would see Paul Reubens in more movies. He was such a cool actor, funny, convincing, and naturally charismatic. While people are cycling through their favorite roles of his, I want to point out that he had a great role on a recent HBO miniseries called Mosaic, an intense, engrossing crime drama that I definitely recommend if you have access. Maybe I'll rewatch it, too. In closing, here's a great story that I grabbed from Facebook that should warm everybody's heart, along with the heartbreaking statement (inappropriately cropped by Instagram of course) released upon the death of the very private Pee-Wee Herman. It makes you wish you could thank him in person, for everything. The best we can do is just remember him.

[raviollies]

Summary time

The gang decided to investigate a Selunite encampment for Eirwen to ask for ways to combat Shar and the influence of the Shadowfell and maybe clues regarding her lost memories. The Selunite outpost was....well rundown. Everything was dirty, tattered and no Selunite symbols. When questioned they literally just said "DO YOU SEE HOW WE LIVE?"

2. I think you guys can tell that it was actually a Sharrian enclave instead. Blythe used Dominate Person and charmed one of them and they gave us a guided tour of the facility. The basement had a bunch of bodies and relics, which we looted of course.

3. The party (Eirwen and Arameia) refused to leave unless we took care of them because they're hurting innocent people. Blythe couldn't possibly give a fuck cause she's not getting paid, and Raha just kind of was ambivalent. Then Blythe had a lightbulb moment and told them to UNALIVE themselves (Yes I know Dominate person doesn't work this way but we found it to be funny enough to just go with it)

5. Afterwards the gang went back to camp and hung out for a bit. Had a long discussion about whether or not it matters if Eirwen regains her memories because at the end of the day, she's still herself. Who cares who she used to be, and if that information hurts her...why not let sleeping dogs lie?

5.5 I FORGOT but at dinner Lorelai decided to be bat form as it's easier for her to get cozy and warm up and she had her blood in a goblet (Yes we all thought batstarion was too adorable). Arameia however thought it was EXTRA adorable and asked her to sit her in lap. She did.

6. Raha made breakfast the next day - Rice Porridge with nutmet and cinnamon with side of plums and nuts...it was an Elven dish from his childhood - unfortunately it had milk in it and Eirwen is lactose intolerant.

6.5 ANOTHER THING I FORGOT - Arameia introduced her tiny little miniature dragon she found in her coinpurse (yes. that's his horde. pocket change) and Blythe went Wild because of the amount of chemical reagents she could acquire from the little guy. The little guy in question was sweating bullets and attempting to flee.

7. We went to an Elven village to restock but turned out that it was ransacked by most likely humans, judging by the weapons left behind. Raha himself was the most despondent out of them all since he had lost his family due to a human raid, his entire village facing a similar fate and nothing remained except some survivors that had to relocate.

8. Arameia asked Raha to translate something she found and it was clear that Raha did not speak Elven naturally, and it is his second language. It was revealed that Raha never learned Elven as a child, due to the proximity of his village to a large human settlement most spoke common instead of Elven to be able to communicate with the humans. Unfortunately this caused a lot of friction with the Elves that took in the refugees. Facing a lot of ostracization and othering, Raha had left this other village as soon as he could, and learned Elven on his own, causing him to be fluent by no means anywhere near a native speaker.

(I shit you not tumblr wouldn't let me post this until i did the border. I don't know what it has against Forlorn Raha)

9. Raha and Arameia had a heart to heart at the fire, as Arameia also lost her parents when her village was wiped out (hers by a pack of werewolves, hence her deep seated hatred towards them). Raha could sympathize, but he doesn't hate humans, due to the hate he faced from other Elves. He believes that it's simply a product of having power, and chooses to remain solitary.

He is thankful for meeting everyone but he can never trust crowds or big populations ever again, preferring to stay clear.

10. Lorelai bullied Raha for getting laid

[moraloreldeservedbetter]

It's been FAR too long since we've last talked, but I recently rewatched the series and I really wanted to talk about Bloberta and Shapey (And Bloc) because those two kids have always been very oddly endearing to me.

We all know that Bloberta is a negligent mother to both Orel and Shapey (and later on, Bloc), but I personally think that while Clay is physically abusive towards Orel, Bloberta is emotionally abusive towards Shapey.  We see in "Help" that she manipulated Clay into marrying her because she just wants someone to help, and I think she does the same thing to Shapey in a way.  She claims that she is "weaning him" but really it looks like she's teaching him to be quiet until she wants to be "helpful."  As in, she feels like she is helping him when she nurses him, so she doesn't wean him, she intentionally makes it so that he's dependent on her BUT only when it's convenient to her.  That's why one minute she happily allows him to nurse with no resistance, and then the next she'd rather do something else and sprays him with a bottle like he's a pet cat and ignores him.  He's just a means to an end for her, and in doing so she emotionally manipulates him, to say nothing of how her ambivalence must affect how developmentally stunted he is already from the constant neglect from his family.  And all this is underlined by Clay- who Shapey probably thought was his dad up until the season 1 finale, if not then he probably still thinks is his dad -openly hates him, and Orel- the one person who cares and tries to help -is constantly told by his parents to "leave Shapey be" (aka perpetuate his neglect) or risk being punished.

(And yeah, Shapey does hug Coach Stopframe and yell "MINE!" but I think realistically he saw his mom and dad "hugging" him and thought "Well, now it's my turn!"  I don't think he knew he was illegitimate at the time, and it's possible he still doesn't know.  I also highly doubt he knows Stopframe is his father.)

Idk what Poppet was doing to Bloc, but when he and Shapey got switched, Bloberta didn't notice the difference.  Bloc must have been through something close enough for Bloberta to continue doing what she was doing without resistance.  I do think it's interesting that Bloberta is so manipulative to Shapey all for her desire to be helpful, but never even noticed when she wasn't even with him anymore.

Had we gotten the episode "Nurture" and Shapey and Bloc gotten their character arc, I wonder if they would have ever explored the idea of them both weaning themselves.  Like, if their friendship made them bolder and they decided to grow up on their own and ended up rejecting Bloberta even despite her apparent manipulating.  I think Bloberta would have had some kind of breakdown.  Maybe she wouldn't lash out at them or double down like Clay does with Orel, but I think she would throw her own kind of fit.

Idk, at the end of the day it's just a theory, but in my mind, Bloberta is destructive towards Shapey and Bloc the way Clay is destructive with Orel (albeit in her own way).  And it really proves how selfish she is, first manipulating Clay into marrying her under the guise of being "helpful," then doing the same towards a son she otherwise wants nothing to do with, AND THEN doing it a THIRD TIME with Bloc.  Like, girl had so many chances to get it right and didn't.

HOLY SHIT

LOOK Y'ALL

ACTUAL ANALYSIS!!

THIS WAS FANTASTIC HUN

[transmasc-wizard]

can u tell me about arthur also

hello hi yes I can you've unlocked my unskippable cutscene.

(@ tumblr mutual Lola abitofafreudmoment if you see this ask: YES this is campaign Arthur NO the lore isn't the same i kidnapped him from dnd for another project so stop readinggggg because some of it is the same/spoilery but also a LOT is different <3)

arthur is a magic user who grows up in a very high control very sketchy very isolated religious community. most important players in his life are his best friend, alexei; his highly manipulative mother, ivana; his father, nero, who hes publicly a strong "father-son duo" with but is in private abused by; alexei's shitass parents; and his peer Penelope, who he courts at the wishes of their parents when he's 19.

from a young age Arthur is seen as the shining star of his community, the most skilled of many of his peers. he is very firmly groomed into believing he's going to take his father's place in their community one day as a leader of task forces that go out on missions for the priestesses of their town. his best friend Alexei, though, is.... not that. Alexei is dogshit at magic and worse at being charismatic. Alexei is also the most important person alive to Arthur.

Alexei dies !

the story Arthur is in revolves around a "before", when they're 16-20, narrated by Alexei. it shows the higher and higher levels of pressure they both face, and Arthur's withstanding it and rising in status while Alexei struggles and grows both bitter and less conditioned to the beliefs held there. there's also an "after" that these chapters are interwoven with. this is narrated by Arthur, who is 21, alone, turned to alcoholism, and very very scared. Alexei is dead in "after". we don't know what actually killed him for a long time, but we know it leads golden boy Arthur to flee the community with the intent to never return.

in the after, Arthur has relentless dreams of Alexei and of a strange rocky coast he's never seen. He travels from town to town in search of this place, and in the process enlists the help of Rosalind, a woman with a lot of practical knowledge who desperately wants to explore and to learn magic due to always feeling like theres something innately wrong with the life shes currently leading, and Orion, a librarian who survived a horrific hazing that left them with the ability to communicate with and sense the dead who *also* dreams of that coast.

while all this is happening, he is being hunted/haunted by alexei's ghost, who is very, very angry. at everything. he maybe can't feel anything *but* anger, Arthur doesn't know. he's also being hunted by his family and by penelope, who's made a deal with their God to find Arthur again in exchange for powers that help her partially control alexei's ghost (and other spirits).

over the story Arthur is forced to confront his grief over and over again, it nearly physically killing him in a lot of situations. he also is forced to confront the fact that he was in love with Alexei, still is, even though that's not a relationship that would've ever been feasible due to how radically different their social positions were. There's a pretty big metaphor in his story for closeted, denied, queerness and internalized homophobia, + masculinity and what it means to be a man. the whole thing is also about like... choices, how we treat others, and how that interplays with the experience of loss and grief.

some various arthur facts: he plays the violin (well, ambivalently) and sings (badly, joyously). he despises being touched and desperately needs a hug. he lies all the time entirely to make things easier for the people around him. he's got a funny streak that gets to thrive when he's away from his community and it surprises him a lot. he's a giant nerd who knows a lot of academic stuff and a lot of things about fighting but very few actual every day life skills (thanks, Ivana!). he wants to be good. he does not believe he is good.

tldr: I likey him :)

[trikis-turntables]

Out of morbid curiosity i went to look at the new story in Dislyte with Sachiko and holy shit. Which fucken hack wrote this? I'm not spoiler tagging this cause really, it's not worth the effort.

I kind of???????Man.

It felt like someone read the original story and wrote a petty rewrite that blatantly shows their biases for and against certain characters.

Like the biggest issue was defo the Gaius plot twist he got actually done dirty?? Idk i feel like its a problem with the isekai/transmigration genre as a whole but you don't innovate by subverting subversions. You just end up going back to stereotypes. OG!Gaius was a subversion of the whole "Stoic Highly Decorated Man in Position of Power that doesn't look like he belongs" and then he proves time and time again that he's approachable and loves and cares for people so deeply that he'd maintain an image of himself (his display of medals--that garners negative comments about his character being prideful, mind you) just on the rare occasion that it could provide some comfort to the people he's helping. He lives eVERYDAY, trying to live up to Hannah's memory. This is a man that misses burnt peach pie because his wife made it for him. In the new storyline..he's just a transcendent obsessed, power hungry bastard. None of the character nuance.

And then Abigail and Alexa. I hate that they're not allowed to just be morally grey characters. New update makes them "acceptably" morally grey which IMO just flattens their characters. "Yes, a female character can be morally grey if they are your allies." Like fuck right off lmao. What's that??? The central intrigue of Abigail's personality is her ruthlessness contrasted with her softness for the few (few) people she actually cares about. It's literally her song. Roses in the snow.

And ugh. I hate the new "human"-ist moral of the Unknown Story. The fun part of the original Dislyte story was that people *dont know* what to think about Esper powers. Like Miracles are Dangerous, that's been established. Miramons are unknown beings that tend to cause mayhem and destruction. But on the espers' side? We run the gamut of characters seeing their powers as a source of good-- that because they gained powers they can better help and protect others (Tang Xuan, Li Ling, Ahmed, Bardon etc); to characters that hate their transformation because it turned them into monsters or changed their appearance in such a way to cause them great discomfort and body dysphoria (Nu Xi, Brewster, Heng Yue) and so many more that are ambivalent or have other things to worry about. And the central interest of their humanity *was* that contrast of perspectives. Shadow Decree was interesting as a unit because their mission statement was "Esper Acceptance" and that can mean both "we should understand how espers works so we should research it" to "live and let live" to "Esper Supremacy". Like remember when the story used to show the dichotomy of the glitz and glam of the Esper Union against the backdrop that many common folk and non powerful espers discriminated against Espers? That's the subversion. To flatten the message to "we must save the humans!!" and "esperification unilaterally corrupts and makes people go power hungry" is a 12 year old's idea of writing and nuance because it /ignores/ that people can have different perspectives over the same thing.

And haaaah. Like if anything that dislyte is good at, its in making characters that at least a few people will care about even if theyre mentioned shortly. That's just how strong the personalities are in this game. But it's kind of telling that I've seen no fanart or writing of Sachiko at all. Berenice, for how much I did not vibe with her or care about her in the story is beloved by even more people than I can count. (Also just petty sidenote: when a 'soft' female character gets 'corrupted' by power, and also the trope of female character having to be "saved" by ...getting mcfucken murdered by the masc main character)

But I think it's just sad that they cared so little for the new story that they couldn't even come up with a name for the Miracle. Unknown Miracle? You didn't even want to know your own story, man.

[trillscienceofficer]

I saw you said in the tags that you don't agree with Seven being about 13 etc, and I could not agree more because it irks me so much when people say how Seven was mentally 6 when they freed her from the Borg, or something to that effect. She was abused by the Borg to the point of not having her own thoughts but she still aged. Maybe she struggled socially after she was freed from that but it didn't take away the years she spent in the collective. It's basically infantilizing and paired with Seven being perceived as autistic by some, or just the fact that she went though the trauma of being Borg, is ableism to me. End of rant.

I apologize for not replying sooner to this ask but I wanted to grab a couple of links before replying because yes, I think you're totally right that saying anything to that effect (that Seven is actually a child, or that 'she doesn't actually know what's best for her') is infantilization of a character who is canonically a physically disabled adult, as well as having a very strong subtext for neurodivergence, and that it plays into ableist stereotypes that contribute to making the lives of real disabled people tangibly worse.

First, I want to make clear that no matter how muddled the metaphors get when it comes to Seven (and oh boy do they, between the cyborg technobabble and the completely absurd way Seven was "dressed" and made up on Voyager, talking about her is always a struggle), she is disabled. She makes use of many prosthetics and she has to regenerate (ie she has to make use of an external device) regularly or there are unpredictable consequences to her health. I realize this is maybe not super clear from the text, which sometimes conveniently forgets about Seven's limitations re: regeneration (see this post) and turns her prosthetics into a sort of superpower; I'm not saying it's an accurate depiction of disability by any means, but it's not something that can be completely ignored when discussing Seven either. In all honesty I've downplayed this aspect of Seven's character in the past and I really regret it because after it was pointed out to me, it's indeed pretty obvious. The trauma of Borg assimilation was disabling, and it's embodied in Seven even more than it is in other xBs, since it happened to her so young. She can never 'get rid' of it and she doesn't exactly want to, either*, even with all her very understandable ambivalence about it ("I am human, but I am also Borg").

(*I think Picard S2 makes this argument more complicated but recent live-action shows have been truly fucking awful at dealing with disability and metaphors thereof so I won't try to make sense of it. What matters is that Seven ultimately couldn't be 'magically cured' there either.)

ETA: I forgot to add, Seven is absolutely an adult. To me there's no question about it; she's played by an adult and none of her storylines, none of her struggles about figuring out how to be an individual in a group, about how to live with the terrible guilt and responsibility about her actions as Borg drone make sense if she isn't an adult. The whole character of Seven of Nine falls apart if she isn't an adult who is struggling with the terrible consequences of trauma.

Second, infantilization is a very real manifestation of ableism. This article defines infantilization as "a nondisabled person having more power than a disabled person and using that power against them to invalidate their thoughts, opinions or experiences. This can show up in numerous ways, such as indirectly speaking to a disabled person or assuming that the individual can't advocate or speak for themselves." In short, treating a disabled person like a child who needs to be directed at all times and who is assumed to not fully understand the ramifications of any independent decisions. It's not a matter of just language, either: the same article points out that 1.3 million disabled adults in the US were under conservatorship in 2018, and that forced sterilization of disabled adults is still legal in at least 31 US states plus Washington D.C. So let me make this super clear: disabled adults having their autonomy revoked, especially their bodily autonomy, is absolutely an issue in our current world. And it all stems from this ableist conceptualization of disabled adults as being like children, incapable of making the right decisions by themselves and for themselves, especially about their own bodies.

Now it's maybe clearer how this relates to Seven's whole deal, both in the show and in fandom. On the show, so many things about her prosthetics and about her looks were decided by the Doctor without consulting her at all, and how ironic it is that the one taking the decisions is a hologram coded with the biases of so many medical professionals, and it's one of those cases when no one, no one challenges the EMH! Sure, the Doctor pretty much saved her by making the reclamation process very smooth, but of course the idea that he can 'shape her' and ultimately 'cure her' of her disabilities (subtextual neurodivergence included) keeps popping up in the show pretty frequently, and she almost never gets a word in edgewise. Seven and the Doctor end up striking up a friendship, and things get a little less eyebrow-raising, but still it's pretty horrifying how the sexism of the production translates into ableism diegetically, though to be fair to Voyager it's definitely not the only Trek show where this happens. It's just that being about Seven, it's a very sustained theme on Voyager, and one I really wish wasn't there.

Off the show, in fandom, I think it would behoove us to at least try to do better than Voyager. Ultimately Seven of Nine is a fictional character that has no real feelings to hurt etc, but again what message does it send to real people when (part of) the fandom insists that Seven is 'mentally a child' or 'doesn't know what's best for her' and can't take her own decisions about her own future, even her own name? Again I'm not saying this to be a scold, and I can recognize that I haven't always been fair in my approach of Seven's disability. There's a lot of work I still need to do, and language is just a very tiny start. But it is a start nonetheless; I'd like it if people could see it as well.

[mangoshorthand]

What do you think of Fiktor?

I'm ambivalent about it. It does nothing for me personally. I generally don't like pseudo-incest and the pairing isn't interesting to me, but I have no ill-feeling towards those who ship it. It's neutral to me.

I do have the headcanon that Five had a small pre-sexual crush on Viktor when they were kids, something that he looks back on as an adult with mild distaste and humour. I also present him in my fics as being very susceptible to Viktor's big brown eyes, largely because they make him feel protective, but this was probably formed during his Viktor crushin' phase.

I mention this in a scene in Alias Number Five, which I'll include under the cut because it's my blog and I'll do what I want dammit.

*** Five could hear Viktor crying through the door, though he was clearly trying to stifle the sound. 

He shifted uncomfortably: he never knew what to do in these situations. Should he go get the robot?

He raised his fist, hesitated, straightened his uniform tie and knocked.

“Vanya?”

“Go away,” came the response.

“Ah, come on,” Five wheedled, “it wasn’t me being a jackass, it was Diego.”

As renewed sobs echoed through the door, Five bit his lip, unsure how to proceed. He cleared his throat and decided on the most direct approach. He blinked inside.

Viktor tossed his hair over his shoulder and looked daggers at Five. 

“I said go away, stupid. You aren’t allowed to blink into my bedroom. Get out or I’ll tell Dad!”

Five, feeling awkward, put his hands into his pockets, “you said you’d play me that Paganni piece you’ve been practicing.”

“I don’t want to!” Viktor said, stomping his foot in a show of temper usually unlike him, “it wasn’t just Diego being a jackass. You were mean, Five.”

Five let out a breath and smirked, affecting confidence even as he visibly deflated.

“Well I’m not going anywhere until you play me a few bars. You promised.”

He blinked again and reappeared sat against Viktor’s headboard, arms and long legs crossed smugly before him.

Viktor’s frown deepened.

“Get OFF my bed.” 

“Nope.”

Viktor’s face crumpled again. Five sighed and capitulated, getting off the bed guiltily and standing in front of him. He was taller than Viktor, though only by an inch or so, but to their eleven year old-selves it felt like an awful lot. From Five’s perspective, he was looking down on his vulnerable little sister as if from a great height. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Viktor sniffed, wiping at his nose with the cuff of one sleeve, “Those guys always say mean stuff, but why did you join in, Five?”

Five chewed his lip again. Honestly, he didn’t know the answer to that…all his siblings had been there and Five had been puffed up with the consciousness of having performed best in today’s training session…when Diego has started picking on Viktor and the others had laughed…he guessed it boiled down to wanting to extend that feeling of dominance: of being number one in the pecking order if not in name.

When Viktor had turned on his heel and hurried away in tears, Five watched him go with regret and followed as soon as he could excuse himself. 

“I’m sorry Vanya,” he said, “I didn’t mean it, honest.”

Viktor took his hand and pulled him down to sit beside him on the bed. Five’s feelings of guilt only intensified as Viktor laid his head on his shoulder.

Even then, before most of his trials, Five usually shied away from physical affection, but Viktor was different. Five allowed him the occasional touch, the odd one-armed hug where he wouldn’t have done so with others. It would occur to him, many years later, that what he felt for his adopted brother, (then sister), might have amounted to his first crush: puppy love flared up and fizzled out within months.

The idea struck him as equally distasteful and nostalgic: what a messed up childhood they’d had. His feelings for Dolores hadn’t exactly been the height of mental health but they had the benefit, at least, of not being technically incestuous. 

Sitting against Five on the bed, Viktor swivelled his head so that he rested on his brother’s upper arm. He looked up at him with chocolate brown eyes, wide, glistening and appealing in a way that tugged at a string tied somewhere in the young Five’s guts.  

“Why don’t we run away?” he whispered.

“What?” said Five, disconcerted. 

“Me and you,” Viktor sounded suddenly excited. “You can blink us out of here and then…and then we’ll get the bus and we’ll go…we’ll go wherever the bus is going. And when we get there, we’ll get another bus and we’ll keep going like that until we’re miles and miles away. No more numbers or training or anything. We can-”

“Vanya.”

“-get away from all this and-”

“Vanya,” Five repeated, “We can’t. Anyway, how are we supposed to live? What about food and money? Where are we supposed to sleep?”

Viktor’s eyes widened even further, desperate excitement taking over.

“I could play my violin. I could earn us money! And if we ever needed any more then you could…you could just steal it,” 

When Five looked even more skeptical, Viktor continued, words tripping over each other as he tried to find the right combination to convince him.

“Or…OR, we could go to a orphanage or something and tell them that we’re lost and we don’t have any mom or dad. We could make up a story! Please Five, we could be anything we wanted. I won’t have to be ordinary and you don’t have to be special: we can just be us!”

“No,” sighed Five with a mixture of distress and exasperation, “I’m not gonna run away. Vanya: I am special. That is who I am.”

“But you always say you hate it here!” Viktor said, tears coming back into his eyes as he pulled at Five's arm with wild intensity “You say Dad’s a…” he lowered his voice and whispered the bad word, “bastard and he won’t even let you use your powers properly. Come with me and you can time travel as much as you want!”

“No…V-”

“WAIT!”

Sudden inspiration seemed to have struck Viktor and he drew in a loud, shrill gasp.

“Let’s run away to the future! You could poof us one hundred years from now! There’d be no Dad, no academy! Just us and we could do whatever we wanted.”

Five put a hand on Viktor’s forearm and squeezed.

“No.” he said, firmly, “I don’t want to run away. We’re part of the Umbrella Academy whether we like it or not.”

“ You’re part of the Umbrella Academy,” said Viktor, turning away as the pooled tears fell, “I’m just…I was just a mistake. I’m just…ordinary.”

Five sighed and touched Viktor’s head with his own.

“It’s okay to be ordinary. Maybe we need some ordinary around here. You are part of the Umbrella Academy, you’re important.” 

Viktor snorted, a cynical sound that no preteen should make, “Thanks Five,” he said, detaching himself from his brother and sitting back against the headboard, “but you’re just saying that.”

“It’s true,” said Five, looking down at his shoes and lowering his voice to a mumble before saying the next part, “you’re important to me…you’re my best friend.”

Viktor smiled, a little flushed with pride at this admission. He knew that Five confided in him more than in any other sibling, but this was the first time he’d verbalized affection overtly. Five continued to inspect his laces, unwilling to meet his eye. Keeping his voice low, he continued:

“I’ll always be here if you need anything.”

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I’d love to read more of your (and Vinelle’s) Twilight fanfics, but I can’t wrap my head around a lot of the lore. I only have vague memories of the books, with the Volturi details being extra vague. Care to give a summary of the Aro/Carlisle situation you tend to write about? The fics seem so interesting but I’m left confused about their characters and history!

Look, @therealvinelle, praise!

And oh dear god.

If it makes you feel better this isn't a ridiculous ask as I'm having a pretty tough time coming up with what I need to summarize here. There's a shocking amount of background about very obscure characters required to 'get' all of our fics.

Well, the easy (if time consuming) answer is to go through the blog. A lot of our Twilight readers have a leg up because they've read all the metas including "what if X happened" and so are quite knowledgeable about what @therealvinelle and I will write in a given story (compared to readers of The Man Who Would Be King, HP where @therealvinelle and I have written comparably less metas, and the readers guesses are all over the place).

This will give you pretty much everything you need to know about everything we write.

Otherwise, I'll have to give a quick and dirty summary here.

The Volturi

The Volturi are the big bad of the Twilight novels if there are any at all. They're the ones who cause much of the conflict in the latter novels (if we ignore Edawrd causing all of the conflict) and are the large threat to Bella after James and Victoria are dealt with.

What's important for our fics is that they're the iron fist of the vampire world. They're not so much rulers, as they don't tell anyone what to do, don't supply any cultural institutions, nor demand tithes or taxes, but enforcers of this one law that they made up thousands of years ago. They have only one law which is "do not get noticed by humans" which has a bunch of caveats to ensure this singular law is followed.

They have such strength in gift ability and such a strong network that they're able to enforce this law across the globe and easily deal with large masses of vampires. (This has given them a terrifying reputation and causes vampires like Jasper to regard them ambivalently as he appreciates things like newborn wars not spiraling out of control but is utterly terrified of them.)

They have done this for at least two-thousand years (Meyer is notoriously terrible with dates so @therealvinelle and I get into a lot of headcanons to make this work. Given the names Aro, Marcus, and Caius and that they are reputedly Mycenean they probably gained significant power/reputation when Rome was the dominant power in the region some 1500 years after each of them was turned, meaning it's been ~2000 years that Volturi law became absolute in the Mediterranean region if not further). And have presumably been settled in Volterra since that time.

Also of note is that the Volturi (primarily Aro) recruits, sometimes heavy handedly, gifted vampires to be members of his guard. This is how he's maintained such control as he uses powerful psychics to obliterate opposition.

The Cullens run afoul of this law (or appear to) multiple times. First when Edward goes to Volterra confessing to having told Bella he was a vampire and then abandoning her while she was still human (the law is she must either be turned or die at that point), the second time hours later when Edward planned to walk into the sunlight and reveal himself to the city of Volterra, and the third time when Irina witnesses what she thinks is an immortal child and reports this to the Volturi.

This last culminates in a very tense confrontation between dozens of vampires as they try to clear up what the fuck Renesmee is and if she's a danger to herself and others.

It concludes peacefully, but tensely, as Aro concludes Renesmee is not a problem and walks away but everyone is unsure if a violent confrontation will happen later.

The Aro and Carlisle Situation

Carlisle canonically spent around 20 years (Edward notes a few decades but never specifies exactly how many) as a guest of the Volturi, specifically as a friend of Aro.

What Edward tells us canonically is that while he enjoyed his time there and was shocked to find that vampires were learned and cultured beings after all, he couldn't convert any of them to his diet and left to find kinship among other vampires (this did not go well until Carlisle turned Edward some 200 years later).

Some of the fics go over this more than others, but @therealvinelle work with the assumption that Carlisle was very young as a vampire when he came across Volterra. He'd met Alistair before that point but no one else. Volterra was then what convinced him that vampires were not inherently damned and could be learned people (something Carlisle would not have associated with demons as a 17th century priest) who have great appreciation for the arts and great knowledge of antiquity.

What @therealvinelle and I tend to presume is that Aro and Carlisle had a romantic relationship during this period (and that Sulpicia and Carlisle did as well for hilarious reasons). However, while there was true romantic affection there, it couldn't resolve the large differences between the pair and ultimately Carlisle had to leave.

Fast forward to the start of canon and Carlisle is very fond of the Volturi. He hangs their painting in his office and Edward initially speaks of them with... distant respect I suppose we'll call it which speaks to Carlisle's respect for them as Edward would get that information from him.

After New Moon Carlisle off screen was likely extremely grateful and relieved that Edward had not been executed despite Edward doing his damndest to get himself executed. That they were all returned home, Bella human even, is a relief beyond measure and Carlisle is likely very grateful for this. He is very aware that Bella must be turned though and gives his vote in New Moon (aided by the fact that the situation has become untenable for all parties involved).

However, Edward is vocally suspicious of the Volturi's intentions and Carlisle trusts Edward's judgement as well as his gift. Edward notes that what Aro really wants is his and Alice's gifts to become omnipotent. Now, this doesn't make much sense as Aro's is Edward's gift but better and if Aro had wanted this then why would he ever have let the three go when he had every excuse and ability to keep them there and bind them to the Volturi with Chelsea, but it does plant seeds of suspicion especially when Aro is notorious for adding to his guard and trying out gifted members to see if they fit. Where Edward's theories start to gain credence is in Eclipse.

Victoria is obviously building a newborn army. The death rate in Seattle skyrockets as Victoria turns ten-twenty vampires in quick succession with humans floundering for an explanation (they at first state gang violence then a serial killer as they try to figure out why this is happening). Ordinarily, the Volturi would swoop in and take care of this as soon as it becomes obvious with absolutely no issue (using either Jane or Alec for the task). The Cullens wait for the Volturi. And wait. Then wait.

It becomes clear that the Volturi aren't coming. The Cullens try to get the Denali involved (this doesn't go well) and without any other option are forced to team up with the wolves where they win the battle with no losses but with great physical injury to some of the wolves (notably Jacob has a rough time of it). Then the Volturi show up at that very moment, making it clear that they'd intentionally waited so the Cullens could be wiped out or at least had their numbers thinned. Then Jane in front of them lights a girl on fire while noting that Bella appears to be very human today, doesn't she?

Carlisle at this point concludes that Edward is correct and Aro is trying to poach Alice or sees the coven as a threat and is trying to underhandedly eliminate them.

On Aro's end, the running theory in our fics is that Caius was in fact behind this without Aro's knowledge or consent. Caius had seen Aro sending Alice, Bella, and Edward home without any restrictions as a debilitating weakness that had to be dealt with/made an example of. Caius saw an opportunity, likely the only one he'd get, and he took it giving the death squad orders to stall and wait for the battle to finish before they cleaned house. Unfortunately for Caius, this went sideways. Unfortunately for Aro, he now knows that Carlisle thinks he tried to murder his entire family in the most underhanded shady way imaginable and that nothing he can say will make it look less bad.

However, all of this is okay to a point, as Bella's being turned shortly and Alice is there to tell the Volturi that it's all going to be over and then they'll have no reason to interfere.

Except Bella gets pregnant with an alien and then Irina reports that alien as an immortal child to the Volturi.

From Carlisle's perspective this is a nightmare, they've given the Volturi a valid excuse to come and wipe them off the map. Their only hope is to gather every witness they possibly can to oversee their trial and confirm that Renesmee is not an immortal child/prevent the Volturi from murdering them all over false charges. Carlisle no longer trusts that the Volturi have good intentions or that this is simply a misunderstanding, he has a very strong suspicion that they will use anything they can to kill them all.

From Aro's this is also a nightmare, as not only is an immortal child reported (something he absolutely has to kill everyone culpable over) but Carlisle starts immediately gathering what seems to be an army. Aro has to gather an army in turn and confront him at the trial where he's witness to the world's weirdest trial where it turns out the immortal child was actually an alien and uh... guess she'll grow up okay.

However, because of how that trial goes down two things happen: Aro loses face and Carlisle's worst fears are confirmed.

Aro tries to use his powerhouses against an increasingly hostile/suspicious opponents, what happens is that Bella blocks all of them. Chelsea, Jane, and Alec are refuted in turn and Bella shows in front of a large amount of witnesses that the Volturi can be thwarted provided they have the right amount of numbers. The worst gifts they have are no longer debilitating so long as Bella is around. Everyone who's ever wanted to sack Volterra now can look over at the Cullens and see Bella Swan, a woman who is now very hostile to the Volturi.

On Carlisle's end, he sees Aro use Chelsea, Jane, and Alec presumably to murder not only his family but all of his friends who had come here only to be witnesses to see that the Volturi behaved as they are supposed to in these situations. It's worse than his every fear confirmed, Aro proves himself to be a power hungry tyrant who will stop at nothing to get what he wants including the murder of children.

Aro walks away wishing he and Carlisle might somehow repair their relationship but knowing that it is likely impossible. He also leaves knowing that a confrontation is likely inevitable and that he will more than likely have to kill Carlisle's family if not Carlisle himself.

Some if not all of this usually comes to play in @therealvinelle and my stories depending if it takes place pre, during, or post series.

Other Tips

Read fics in order they were published.

@therealvinelle and I tend to use shorthand references to things gone over in depth in other fics as we hate writing the same thing twice. Nebuchadnezzar's Dream by @therealvinelle for example goes over a lot of the canon events dealing with Aro and Carlisle and how they reacted to it as well as Carlisle's hypothetical gift that @therealvinelle and I theorize is totally a thing.

A lot of the lore in the fics that doesn't come from canon was sort of uh organically grown within the fics themselves. (Unintentionally, they all kind of take place in a weird shared universe where similar things have often happened or they diverge at a single crucial point).

Otherwise

Uh... you got anything @therealvinelle?

[bestworstcase]

Any thoughts on what the role of the Maidens are in the overarching narrative of RWBY. Because they are developed as characters and not as just keys to get the plot coupons of the relics.

conceptually the maidens represent ozma's dedication to the divine mandate, right. reading between the lines of the fairytale in context with what we know about how ozpin operates, it is pretty obvious that he empowered the maidens intending them to act as his agents in his crusade against salem. in this sense his present-day conspiracy's dehumanizing treatment of the maidens as relic-guardians is not a corruption of their "true purpose" but the extreme logical end result of what ozma made them to be.

with respect to ozma as a character, the obvious symbolic line between his four daughters and the four maidens suggests some things about how ozma might have viewed his own children—particularly if taken into consideration with 1. his abject horror when the eldest turned out magical without the blessings of his god, and 2. all four girls vanishing from the scene as ozma moves to attack salem, which presumably indicates he has no idea what happened to them after that point. we don't actually know why ozma tried to sneak the girls away that night, and the common assumption that he feared salem was a danger to them and went down fighting to protect them from her has some obvious holes (the girls are not shown during the fight, ozma isn't even depicted as fighting defensively at all, and when the smoke clears after the castle falls, salem's a pile of ash).

and then there's this in his commentary on 'the story of the seasons':

However, despite the prevalence of powerful wizards and witches in our fairy tales, the world has never known the levels of magic described here—for which we should be grateful. I fear that if unrestricted magic use were possible, the results would be chaotic and catastrophic. Better to leave such fanciful notions comfortably in the realm of fantasy!

given how ozma reacted to his daughter's magic, and how tightly ozpin controls the maidens, "unrestricted" strikes me as the key word here. the god of light told him that humankind was diminished, a mere fraction of what they once were, without the brothers' presence and ozma understood that to mean "humans can't have magic except by divine fiat" and his ideological view on magic is accordingly uneasy.

i think the narrative purpose of the maidens is to interrogate that discomfort: he created them by imparting his own god-given magic to young women he trusted to faithfully serve his divine mandate… and then he lost control of that power because it developed an inheritance system directly at odds with his intention. (if a maiden dies violently, and her killer is a young woman, the magic will most likely be inherited by her killer; and if she dies without a suitable candidate in her final thoughts, the magic chooses a new vessel in accordance with its own will. ozma cannot use the maidens to attack salem without effectively ceding that power to her. i am inclined to think that's precisely WHY the magic passes itself on in this manner.)

and of course the narrative thread connecting each seasonal arc is that the maidens are all in some way breaking free from ozpin's control: cinder kills him, raven walked away, penny chooses who she wants (winter) instead of making the pragmatic choice (weiss), winter leaves ironwood behind to fall with his city. by virtue of being the literal keys to ozpin's reliquaries the maidens are sort of the locus of his ideological failures; literally human beings reduced to objects.

(<- all of this is one of my reasons for thinking the branwen twins' shapeshifting is the key to whatever additional protections ozpin put in place to conceal the beacon vault.)

salem's side of this is also interesting in that she has always struck a rather ambivalent tone with cinder regarding the maidens: "your newfound strength brings with it a crippling weakness," "remember that it comes with a cost," and so forth. notably, her interest in the maidens is strictly in relation to the vaults, which have only housed the relics since ozpin's tenure as headmaster, and both ozpin and qrow have referenced circumstances in which the identity of the maidens became "unclear" (as opposed to maidens ending up under salem's control). i am unconvinced that salem cared about the maidens in the slightest before ozpin decided to link them to the vaults.

i do think there is probably a thread being developed here in regard to the ozlem girls, if only because the symbolic line is very clear (the original four maidens in the fairytale were sisters and their colors match the ozlem girls); i don't think the maidens are the daughters in any literal sense, whether whole or in part. the implicit similarity between ozma's exploitation of the maidens and his interest in ruby's silver eyes—when silver-eyed bloodlines originated from him—is probably telling. his implicit assumption that salem intended to use their daughters, coupled with his obvious projection of his own suicidal ideation onto her, likewise. we know that he lied to and manipulated salem throughout their marriage because the god of light told him she was irredeemable; to what degree would that perception of her color his relationship with their children?

<- the maidens are inextricable from this question because he made them by sharing his magic between four sisters whom he apparently, if the fairytale colors are any indication, emotionally associated with his daughters. and in the broader sense, the maidens represent the family he sacrificed on the mandate's altar; representations of his daughters that he can use as pawns in his crusade against salem.

there's also a more general purpose the maidens serve in relation to salem's "no victory in strength" thesis in that the point of a character becoming a maiden is not to Be Powerful, and in fact the maidens are all defined by their vulnerability:

amber is introduced in a coma pending extraction of her soul

pyrrha is coerced into becoming a vessel for someone else

cinder loses her eye and her arm as a consequence of becoming the fall maiden

the last spring maiden died under circumstances that have left raven emotionally shattered more than a decade later

fria is subjected to extreme medical neglect in a futile attempt to control her final thoughts

penny is mutilated, infected with a virus to strip her of agency, and ultimately murdered because of the maiden's power

winter receives the magic as a gift but spirals into guilt-stricken despair because she couldn't save her friend or her sister

all underscored by salem's repeated warnings that the power comes with a cost and various illustrations of how "godlike power" not only isn't a trump card but becomes a liability if treated like a trump card (see: amber vs CEM and penny vs ace-ops). so the maidens are an important building block in that theme as well.

[delistravaganza]

I swear I relate to everything you have written about the enemies to lovers trope and lesbians.

it’s not even about lesbian representation, at least in fandom, of course that’s important but it’s not the point here, it’s about having wlw stories that are as...complex? Messed up? Intricated? as straight or even (in more recent years) mlm romantic storylines are allowed to be. I feel like I am constantly hungry of complicate stories with lesbian or bisexuals female characters involved in messy relationship. But almost every popolar ship that I meet on fandom or tv shows either is watered down, made all soft and sweet and not threatening and so not complicate enough to be appealing. (or in the fews that are not like that in the original media they get made in this way by the fandom- it’s so unnerving). it seems to me that’s it is either “tragic dead lesbian” or “soft sapphic story all is sweet uwu”. As someone who love stories with romance only when the romance is very complicated and not necessarily healthy and full of ambivalent feelings (don’t judge me as you said it’s just a matter of preference ashahaha) I sometimes read slash (mlm) fanfiction on ao3 that feature very complicate and not necessarily healthy dynamics and I go damn I wish that there was a fanfiction exactly like this but with two women instead of two men.

I get this 1000%. To be fair, I don't think it's just the wlw couples being UwUified in recent films and shows, this happens to all queer representation because of the pressure to create "good rep". To some extent, it's even happening with straight pairings because people are more aware now of sexism and what it really means to consent, though everyone still seems to be willing to let this knowledge fly off if teh guy iz HOT.

But there seems to be a particular issue with writing f/f interactions that are manipulative, dark or somehow more adult, not necessarily meaning sex but rather a more nuanced portrayal of the relationship. Whereas all the straight toxic romances went to specific (and thriving) genres such as "dark romance" (which at least seems to be more self-conscious as the Reylo fic I mentioned before), and we get glorious epics of m/m fanfiction stories (and books that feel like fanfiction), it sometimes seems like the women characters are treated as little girls.

Even in a dark, creepy, cannibalistic, adult-oriented show such as Yellowjackets, I found myself more interested in the hypothetical Jackie/Shauna pairing because oh boy that was complex! than in the actual lesbian pairings involving Tai, who is a great and somewhat nuanced character except when it comes to her (sanitized) relationships. Is it really just me favoring problematic and unhealthy dynamics or is there some truth to this? (It may be me.) Is Tai a bit tamed down because she's gay AND black?

Also, to be completely fair, I think that I have more expectations when it comes to wlw plots, maybe because I subconsciously think of them as more "me" than the others. I've read a lot about how women use slash to slip away from the narrative and write more freely, and the fact is - I've read a lot of trash when it comes to m/m. And I definitely don't remember it with the resentment I save for f/f media like First Kill ("you fucking set out to be everything I wanted and turned out to be a pile of dog shit!").

I have also read extremely interesting books featuring f/f dynamics on the latest years, which I could post here instead of whining à la Louis de Pointe du Lac, but the fact is that these books already set out to be a work of literary merit and weren't written to dwell on the romance or possible romance itself. I'm not even counting MBF here as I read it a while back for the first time, but it could be an example - I don't know, but it definitely wasn't written with UwUification in mind. I'm still thrilled at how much the marketing DID and DOES UwUify our girls and their relationship. Sometimes the marketing is like: Wouldn't you just love to have such a special friendship like these two? Uhhh what? No, thank you, I had my share of that shit?!?

Oh, and also - I'm not even sure it comes down to self-identification either. I said I identify with Catradora, but the fact is I don't necessarily identify with either Catra or Adora. I just identified with their feelings, and I felt empathy for them, and I worried and I suffered and I felt frustrated and I so, so, so hungered and feared for their fights and God, you should really check this one out because it's really on the edge between UwU and dark, and I think it's this mixture what made it work in today's world. It seemed to appeal to both parts of me - the one who lowkey wants the positive, young-and-healthy-oriented rep she didn't have as a teen, and the more prevalent one who prefers angst and twisted things. And yes, it's a cartoon. A cartoon did what many real, adult-oriented shows and books couldn't do with me.

But Catradora probably also worked because we, the audience, were purposefully kept in the dark about them, so we got to experience their story as it developed and without any clear expectation as what the end would be (compared to: here's your wlw romance of the day! Ship them! Hope they don't die!), something I'm sure you wouldn't be able to achieve now that all the info is out there.

Anyway, I'm rambling now and already taking too much time off work. But I find this topic fascinating. If anyone else wants to join in the conversation or point me somewhere that isn't Buffy/Faith or Catradora or Villanelle or Nicky/Lorna (YES I STILL SHIP THEM AND WILL ALWAYS DO) or our Neapolitan toxic friends, please do. And as always, nice talking to you. <3

---

P.D.: Here's a long video analysis that I really liked that tackles why "good" LGBT representation is boring (not wlw representation exclusively).

[rageprufrock]

am i going to watch a whole show (mysterious lotus casebook) just so i can read your fic about it? yes. Am I also indefinitely suspended in a state of melancholy yearning for your vaguely-promised addition to Whittled Down by Another War? also yes. May sleep continue to elude you.

You know what? Ask and ye shall receive at least some of it, which I have written so far. Happy reading.

The first guy Porsche ever fools around with is a Korean tourist on vacation who shoots his shot in broken Thai. He's all smooth skin and silver-blond hair, wearing skintight jeans and a billowy pearl shirt; Porsche thinks he looks iridescent in the pink light of Hum Bar, between his light hair and light contacts, and he knows, objectively, that the guy is prettier than half the girls in the room tonight.

Because Porsche is sort of an asshole, he doesn't really catch the guy's name—Taemin? Jimin? something like that?—but he does remember thinking that it might be worth figuring out what the big deal was, and holding up his cigarettes, saying, "My break's in 15 minutes." It's a decision he makes out of pure curiosity without any influence from recent social factors, new acquaintances, members of the Bangkok underworld, or their specific tendencies to walk around with their tits hanging out of their designer shirts.

It's nice, because it's almost never not nice when someone is nice enough to put their mouth on your dick, but Porsche thinks—vague with formless disappointment—that it's only nice. Out of good hookup etiquette, Porsche offers and performs what he hopes is an acceptable handjob before giving his partner some alleyway wet wipes and a cigarette. It's a solid 6/10 experience, and he ends up dropping a few Google Maps pins for the kid for good restaurant recommendations and tells him which tourist traps to avoid if at all possible. It is the most ambivalent he has ever felt about a sexual experience, and it leaves him annoyed in a way Porsche decides not to think about.

"Are you serious?" Tem demands, when Porsche comes back from the alley. "It's not enough for you to Bogart all the hot chicks in his bar, you have to start poaching guys?"

"I'm allowed to try new things," Porsche whines.

Tem narrows his eyes. "Is this about your crush on the mafia guy?"

"This is homophobic," Porsche says, feeling a rising sense of dread, because Tem is one of his best friends, and the worst part of intimacy is being known. "And anyway it was—fine. It was extremely okay. It was no big deal. Turns out I'm still just straight."

"You are a complete fucking clown is what you are," Tem says to him, which turns out to be only the third-meanest thing Tem calls him that night.

The second time Porsche hooks up with a guy, he's actually Thai, which allows for improved communication but provides stunningly little benefit otherwise. King is a solid six inches shorter than Porsche, with glossy black hair and beestung lips, wearing a mesh shirt and cut up shorts. He leans over the bar with a flattering interest and the type of confidence that looks sexy on anybody, hooks one finger into the place where Porsche's shirt button is fighting for its life, and asks if he's interested in going somewhere private after his shift.

Porsche means to say, "Oh, no, thank you, but I'm not interested."

What Porsche actually says is, "Okay. Do you have a place?" and feels Tem's glare searing into his organs from a distance of 10 meters.

The situation isn't improved when, as he's begging off closing, Yok glowers at him like a disapproving parent and asks, "What the hell are you doing?"

"I don't know," Porsche says, honest. "I mean—what the hell am I ever doing?"

"Oh my God," Yok mutters. "Just—don't get pregnant."

Porsche doesn't get pregnant, but he does get pushed backward onto the creaky mattress of a dingy little apartment so that King can mouth at his dick until he's all the way hard and roll on a condom. Porsche likes to think he's polite in bed, so he tries to like, help, or whatever, but King seems to take Porsche's attempts to participate as adorable but misguided, even if he does say, "sure, if you want to try," when Porsche asks to help finger him open. It's shockingly different and shockingly the same, dipping his fingers into the hot clutch of someone's body, so weird if you think about it too much, but so immediate and close in the moment. The warm weight of another person, the smell of King's hair, the little huffs and noises he makes—those are all so good—and Porsche likes making people feel good, likes when he does something right and King says, "oh, yes, there, there." It takes him out of his own head and plunges him back into the moment, back into a stranger's apartment and a stranger's bed, back to the moment at hand where King is perched in his lap, notching the head of Porsche's cock into the slick, hot furl of his hole and sliding down, down, down.

It's good, in a way that's nothing like it's been with all the women he's fucked against alley walls, and Porsche feels sparks behind the eyes when King holds him down, takes what he needs. It's rough and a little raw, and King leaves a mean little brand of dull fingernail bruises on Porsche's thigh, from where he leaned back to get the angle how he liked and rode Porsche into the sunset.

"Not bad for your first time," King says after, just wandering around scrubbing between his legs with a towel in a way Porsche is certain no woman would be caught dead doing. "You want anything? Water? I have some watermelon?"

"Uh," Porsche says, still wearing a t-shirt, no pants and the used condom, lying on top of King's sheets like a fucking idiot. "No, I'm good?"

"Great, well, it was great hanging out tonight," King says, all business, hands Porsche his jeans and tosses him out on his freshly fucked ass.

"What the fuck," Porsche hisses, to himself, to the unfeeling universe, into the visor of his motorcycle helmet as he steers himself home, feeling knock-kneed and akimbo, run through with so much weirdness it's like he's 13 all over again.

"Well you can stop worrying, I'm definitely straight," Porsche reports the next day, when Tem traps him in the newly installed walk-in fridge and threatens him with a muddler.

Tem looks like he's in physical pain. "Please explain."

"Well I had actual butt sex with a guy—"

"Holy shit," Tem whispers.

"—and it was, I mean. It was whatever? It was good, I guess?" Porsche says, struggling, because it was good and bad and weird and near what he wanted but so far away he'd been angry showering that night, scrubbing under his pits and around his groin. It's like biting into a strawberry to find it tasteless after he's wondered for decades, saved for years, and now he feels embarrassed and pissed about it, still hungry.

"You guess?" Tem asks, sounding increasingly hysterical.

"It was just okay!" Porsche yells. "Like extremely, totally just okay! Like what is even the big deal if that's all it was? It was fine! He was super pretty and I couldn't even get into it so what's the point?"

Tem puts down the muddler but only so he can cover his face with both hands. It leaves Porsche standing there feeling humiliated and getting colder and colder for a long time before Tem says through his fingers, "Porsche, do you want me to tell you what I think?"

Porsche met Tem back in kindergarten, because when all their classmates had been comparing who had the fewest teeth, he and Tem had tied. When Porsche was too scared to go to the boy's bathroom because Jom started a rumor that it was haunted, Tem had kept watch when Porsche had gone to go take a shit in the bushes behind the gym. Tem helps Porsche sweep up his parents' graves, helps Chay with his homework; he knows where the junk drawer in Porsche's house is, where to find the extra toilet paper, the batteries, all of Porsche's hidden hopes.

Porsche absolutely does not want to know what Tem thinks.

"No, I'm good," Porsche babbles, shoulderchecks Tem out of the way, and flees into the front of house before throwing himself at every ravening group of drunk women available for the rest of the night, terrified Tem's going to reveal some truth of the universe Porsche isn't ready to hear yet.



The problem—well, one of the problems—is that Porsche still wants to talk about it. It keeps bubbling up under his skin like an itch, always on the tip of his tongue, but Tem's moved on from trying to give him tough love to giving Porsche tender looks, like Porsche has a terminal case of being a fucking moron and only six months to live. So the point is Porsche has this weird impulse, this jitter, and he can't talk to Tem about it, which means he can't talk to Jom about it, because Jom will just text Tem and Tem will come after Porsche like a surface to air missile. There are no circumstances under which Porsche could talk to Chay about it. Porsche briefly hallucinates talking to Kinn about it, the next time Kinn comes to the bar in his tailored trousers to drink too many Old Fashioneds, and it feels like someone threw a molotov cocktail into Porsche's stomach, so that's right out. Anyway, the point is, for lots of reasons, most of them bad, Porsche's go-to friend for questions about gay sex ends up being Big.

"Hey, we're friends," Porsche says. "Can I ask you about doing it with guys?"

"We're not friends," Big says with absolute conviction and a look on his face like he just watched Porsche murder a basket of kittens.

"So like—how did you know?" Porsche goes on, ignoring him. "That you were into dudes?"

Big stares over Porsche's shoulder, at the wall of liquor behind him, and appears to be suffering the worst possible torment and extremis.

"I'm just asking because like, sex feels good in general right?" Porsche barrels on, because Big can't ignore him forever. Kinn had banished him to the bar so that he could have what looks like the most classic I Hate Being Your Older Brother phone call of all time in a booth four feet away, so there's nowhere Big can go and nothing he can do. "Like how do you know if it's good because you're into dudes, or just friction?"

"You're how old?" Big snaps, breaking. "How can you not know this? Also—how do you know I'm even into men?"

"I have eyes," Porsche says. "I use them to watch you staring at Kinn."

"I'm a bodyguard," Big says. "It's literally my job to stare at Khun Kinn."

"You better hang onto that bodyguard job, because you're a shit actor," Porsche says. "Come on, seriously. I need help. Like gay help."

Big turns away from the wall of liquor so that he can stare at Kinn some more. "I wish I could drink on the job," he says, like Porsche is slowly killing him, and then before Porsche can argue his point anymore, Kinn ends his call and ambles back over.

"That was my cue," Kinn says, indicating his phone and glancing at Big.

"I'll call for the car immediately," Big says, and fucking disappears, dust clouds in his wake, as far away from Porsche and his unanswered question as possible, the dick.

Even worse, it leaves Porsche in the harrowing position of being unsupervised and subjected to all of Kinn's concentrated attention: those dark eyes huge and hungry and thoughtful, staring and staring. It makes Porsche's heart hurt; it makes him shy; it makes him duck his head, nervous, and to scrub at the spotless counter with a rag and ask, "Do you have time for one more? For the road?" too softly, too—everything.

"Not tonight," Kinn tells him. His smile looks a little glassy, too brittle and polished and polite; this isn't the Kinn that Porsche likes best, where he's wrinkled and bitchy and rude, entirely present. "But thank you."

"Of course," Porsche says, feeling hot, feeling lost. "Have a good night."

Kinn leaves Porsche a 500% tip. "You too, Porsche."

It's a lot later, and only into the forgiving dark of his bedroom, that Porsche curls up on his side and stares out his window and whispers, "Be safe." Worse than any secret Tem knows, worse than anything Big could say, that he has to grit his teeth against the words every time Kinn walks away is the worst, most exposing truth of all.

Porsche figures that now that he's ticked those two homosexual boxes, he's done with this weird little experiment. This assumption holds true until he finds himself in the alleyway behind Hum Bar again, only this time his knees hurt, bone grinding against the wet cement paving through his polyester work pants as he stares up at some guy who'd followed Porsche out during his break. Kinn's been a no-show at the bar for more than a month: there hasn't been anything in the newspapers, there hasn't been anything in the society pages, there hasn't been anything on the police scanners. Porsche blames this radio silence for the series of poor decisions he makes that night, beginning with taking two fortifying shots three-quarters of the way through his shift, and concluding with getting facefucked less than 10 meters away from a bunch of trash cans.

Long after tonight's random gay interlude disappears, Tem finds Porsche sitting on a stack of palettes in the back, letting his cigarette burn down to the filter.

"What the fuck," Tem says. "What happened to you? Are you okay? Are you crying?"

Porsche scrubs at his face. "No," he lies, because he'd definitely been crying earlier, choking on dick, and his mouth feels bruised, swollen. He's afraid to see what he looks like right now, if he would look as obvious as he feels: used up, if just anybody could see him and know immediately how much he likes how his throat hurts, the way he keeps sweeping his tongue over his teeth, chasing the bitter salt taste of cum in his mouth.

Tem's face goes through all five stages of grief before he swings back to anger, shoves at Porsche until there's enough room on the palette to sit on his right, and steals his cigarette.