#brothers in every universe imo......

[sotogalmo]

7:56

Had to make another Spotify account to make these playlists......

~16 hours and 18 minutes long / Title is a lyric taken from Panic by Caravan Palace / art doesn't belong to me - combo playlist, this is my pov of Eddy and Sebastian

Sebastian belongs to me

Eddy belongs to lookatmysillies

[puck-luck]

between the tiles | jack hughes

warnings: unprotected p in v, creampie (& mention of how unsafe that is bc PREGNANCY??? me when i’m scared. on the bright side, the mention is ambiguous, so it’s not revealed if jack gets reader pregnant by creampieing her <3), drinking, frat aesthetics, semi-public sex, praise mixed with degradation (sooo true), spanking, frat behavior (the brothers being gross and invasive about their brothers’ sex lives…) pairing: frat!jack hughes x fem!reader summary: based on the prompt “frat!jack fucking you in the bathroom at a party my god”, IMO based in the same universe as ‘frat fever’ but later in the timeline. wc: 3120

“Here you go, pretty girl.” Jack delivers a red solo cup of liquid to you. He holds his own cup of beer, the backwards hat on his head falling askew. He reaches up to fix it when he notices your gaze and you sneak a peek at his messy brown locks before Jack hides them again.

“Thanks, J,” you say with a smile. 

Jack stands close to you, his arm wrapped around your waist easily. He talks quietly with the brothers that pass him by, keeping you close but never paying close attention to you. You’re content with it, sipping on your drink as you watch the mayhem around you.

Jack had invited you to the party in class the other day. He loves to bother you in class. He flirts, he invites you to parties, he asks for help with his homework, he begs you to read his essays before he submits them, and he flashes those big blue eyes at you to get you to agree every time. 

You had denied his other invitations, not wanting to get involved in the frat life. You had joined a sorority your first year, but dropped less than a year in because your exec board was toxic and you felt like you didn’t belong. 

You learned that you and Jack had rushed the same year, but he had stuck it out longer than you had. Years later, he’s at the top of the social hierarchy.

Jack is the president of his frat and he loves it. Whenever you walk with him in the halls before and after your class, he seems to know everyone on campus. People are constantly saying hello and dapping him up or waving and batting their eyes. You like Jack– he’s definitely class crush material– but you don’t see how he’s completely charmed all of these people.

He’s Jack– he’s dry and his laugh is always half-hearted at best. He talks with a smirk on his face like he knows more than you, but it’s hard to ignore how well he holds eye contact through his hooded eyelids. Maybe the charm is how dry he is– how little he seems to care must make people want to impress him even more.

It’s dark in the frat house. The wooden floor is creaky and a little sticky. Music is emanating from the living room, vibrating through the whole house. The LED lights in the living room burn your eyes when you look over there, so you’ve been avoiding that room. It’s where you found Jack at first, leaning against the wall near the speakers talking with the brother that’s DJing. He looked handsome in the green and red lights, his face growing scratchy from his commitment to No Shave November that he told you about in class last week.

Tucked into Jack’s side, looking up at his facial hair and the freckles that are faded along his cheeks, you start to really see the appeal.

The drink he brought you is strong and was clearly made by a pledge. You wouldn’t be surprised if the drink was mixed and retrieved from a massive cooler that is branded with Gatorade. You decide in a moment that you want to see if your suspicion is true, but you don’t know the way around the house. 

You turn to face Jack, putting a hand on his bicep to get his attention. He pauses his conversation immediately, turning to look down at you with a little grin on his face. 

“What’s up?” Jack asks.

“Wanna give me a tour?” You say. You feel like you have to shout to make him hear you, so you stand up on your tiptoes to speak directly into his ear. 

“Sure,” Jack agrees, putting his hand on your lower back and guiding you down the hallway. You started in the room where the boys were playing pong, then Jack leads you to the kitchen. He introduces you to the pledge who is serving drinks, who blushes when you thank him. He introduces you to brothers in every room, shows you the composites hanging in the halls and points out his friends who have graduated. He’s surprised when you say you know Nico, the last president of the frat. 

Eventually, you ask Jack to show you to the bathroom. You’ve finished your drink and you’re feeling a little tipsy, but mostly bloated. There’s a long line at the bathroom in the main hall, which you wait in with Jack until you’re squirming and no closer to the door than before. You whine a bit about how long it’s taking, receiving some nasty looks and side-eyes from the girls around you in line. It doesn’t take them long to notice that you’re with Jack and the looks turn more interested than annoyed.

Jack is frowning about how long the bathroom line is taking. You can see him growing more frustrated, the frown on his face and furrow of his eyebrows deepening.

“Come here,” Jack says, taking your hand and pulling you to the front of the line. He shoulders past drunk people who are equally as annoyed as you and Jack, but now they’re growing frustrated with the blatant show of self-importance that Jack puts on as he drags you along. You hear a number of grumbled “excuse you”s and scoffs, and your face burns red slightly from embarrassment. 

Jack doesn’t care that he’s pissing people off. He simply starts to bang on the door of the bathroom with a pounding fist. 

“Get the fuck out of the bathroom!” Jack commands, shouting through the wooden door. You can hear shuffling on the other side and a few minutes later, a clown car of girls leave the bathroom, looking down in shame. One of them is leaning on her friend, covering her mouth. You wouldn’t be surprised if she had been vomiting.

Jack stops the next people in line and pushes you forward. He closes the door behind you and leaves you to do your business, which you do quickly. It’s less than three minutes before you’re washing your hands, which Jack can apparently hear through the door, because he lets himself in as you do so.

You look at him through the mirror, making eye contact. He walks toward you after turning the lock on the door. You don’t miss the tension in the room. Jack touches your back, then plasters himself against you. He brings his arms around your shoulders, hugging you tightly and pressing a kiss to your cheek.

“Y’look really pretty,” Jack murmurs. “Did y’know that I’ve been flirting with you since sylly week?”

“I had a feeling,” you reply, leaning into his touch. You’re wearing a low-cut going-out top, something different than what Jack normally sees you in, and you’ve noticed his glances throughout the evening. Your chest was the first place his eyes went when you greeted him in the music room.

“I was hoping you’d come tonight,” Jack says. His touch loosens and his fingers trail lower, tracing the stitching on the neckline of your shirt. Half an inch over and he’d be touching your skin– you feel like he is already. You can feel the goosebumps rising beneath his warm touch, even though it’s more absent-minded than sexy.

“Oh yeah?” You ask, unable to find any other words. 

Jack meets your eyes in the mirror. “Oh, yeah,” he replies like it’s obvious. “I’ve been wanting to get you to one of my parties for weeks.”

“Why’s that?” You ask, laughing slightly.

Jack moves your hair off the back of your neck and kisses the side of your throat, near your pulse-point. “Because you’re so uptight and I thought you could use a little fun.”

“Oh,” you scoff, laughing for real this time. “You just want me to loosen up and you thought you’d help me out?”

“Yeah,” Jack says.

“No ulterior motive?” You check with a knowing smile, reaching a hand up to thread your fingers through the hair that peeks out from under Jack’s baseball cap. You scratch his scalp, earning a purr from the boy and another kiss to your neck. 

Jack hums instead of replying directly to your question. He keeps his lips planted against your skin, but you can see that he’s smiling against you. There’s your answer. Of course he had an ulterior motive– it’s why he came into the bathroom at all. It’s why you’ve been attached to his side since you showed up today.

You don’t mind. You’ve suspected all along. It’s part of the reason why you showed up tonight at all– you finally decided that there was no harm in seeing Jack outside of class, specifically in his bed.

You continue to scratch Jack’s scalp, rolling your head to rest against his body so that your neck lengthens and Jack has access to more skin. He’s behind you still, leaning down to kiss all over your skin, and you can feel him starting to grow hard when you press your ass back into his shorts.

You grind against his bulge, sighing with Jack at the feeling. His is a groan of relief as your body alleviates the pressure of being untouched, whereas yours is a sigh of contentment as a fire lights in the pit of your stomach.

“Wanna fuck you,” Jack says quietly before biting your earlobe. 

“Yeah?” You ask, breathless.

“Yeah,” Jack continues. He brings his hand down your front, bypassing your chest to touch the button of your jeans. “Been thinking about touching you for ages.”

“Then let’s go,” You say. You make a move to get out of his grasp, but Jack holds you in place.

“No, here,” He whispers. “Where everyone can hear you.”

Your breath hitches when his fingers pop the button and drag your zipper down. You’re dripping in your panties and Jack is inches away from discovering it. You can feel yourself nodding wordlessly as Jack’s fingers dance around your mound and abdomen, sending sparks up your spine.

“Is that okay?” Jack asks, checking another time before he touches you.

“Fuck me,” You breathe out, arching into him. Your lips are tingling with the need to connect with Jack’s, but his nibbling along your neck is much too enticing to halt.

Like whiplash, Jack bends you over the sink and tugs your jeans down to your knees. He takes your panties with them, leaving your lower half bare. It registers briefly that you’ll be taking longer in this grimey bathroom than those other girls. Regardless, you spread your legs as best you can with the fabric still constricting your knees. 

“Good girl,” Jack praises preemptively. His voice is gravelly and his words make you shiver. You can feel yourself clenching on nothing, seeking something that is far, far away. Jack swats the skin of your thighs, making you jump and squeal slightly. “Look at how easy you are for me.”

Your head immediately lifts, finding yourself in the mirror. You look at yourself for only a second. Under the harsh light of the fluorescent bulb, you look washed out. At the same time, you look bright red because of your attraction to Jack. Your attention turns to Jack, who looks nothing short of holy under the brightness. He looks like he’s closing in on everything he’s ever wanted.

You watch as he digs his fingers into his waistband, pushing his shorts down. He pulls his cock out of his pants, pumping his shaft until he, too, is leaking precum. Your mouth hangs open at the sight of it, dropping even further when Jack lifts the bottom of his shirt and bites it, keeping the fabric out of the way and revealing his toned abdomen.

“Jack,” you drawl. It’s not quite a moan or a plead. It’s an indignant little while for more mixed with an acknowledgement of how good-looking he is. 

“I’m coming, baby,” Jack tells you, touching the skin on your waist with one hand and lining himself up with the other. “Keep saying my name.”

He slams forward once the head of his cock slides into your pussy, unable to resist the feeling of your warm and damp heat. He’s pounding into you from the get-go, grunting as he thrusts into you. His noises just add to the lewd squelching filling the room, as well as the slapping of skin as he pulls your hips back to meet his. 

You follow his direction, repeating his name over and over mindlessly. You fall to the pleasure, letting your head droop and eyes close. 

Jack slaps your ass hard without ever pulling out. He regains your attention, flashing you a warning look and a muffled snarl since he’s still biting his t-shirt. You moan out his name even louder, eyes rolling. You shuffle your hips back further, hoping to entice Jack to slap you again. 

He does so, eventually, with an evil smirk on his face.

“You like that?” Jack asks around his t-shirt. “Like it when I spank you? Dirty, dirty girl.”

“J,” You whine, pleading with him in the reflection of the mirror.

It’s so good. It is. 

But you need more.

“Okay, baby,” Jack says soothingly. He pulls out, tapping your hips so you turn to face him. Your ass presses against the cool tile of the sink. Jack reaches under your thigh and lifts your leg, eventually sliding his hand down to grasp your knee. “Let’s see how bendy you are, hm?”

He places your ankle over his shoulder, creating a stretch in your hamstring that has you arching into Jack for some relief. He misreads your movement, but fills your hole again in an even better outcome than you had expected. Now, he’s facing you. Now, Jack’s able to kiss you.

His tongue fills your mouth when he seals his lips over yours. The kiss is messy, just like the union of your lower halves, and you can taste the beer that Jack drank earlier in the night. Still, even though you hate the taste of beer, the kiss is perfect. It’s exactly what you wanted from him earlier and the touch of your lips to his is equally as thrilling as a touch to your clit would be.

“You sound so pretty,” Jack praises against your lips, his hips still bucking into yours. You can feel his balls slapping against your skin as he moves. “Fuck, baby, aren’t you just so perfect for me…”

“Jack,” you gasp, feeling his tip nudge your spot. “Oh, fuck. Don’t stop.”

“Won’t,” Jack promises through gritted teeth, pushing your hamstring to the limit as he hunches over you to get a better grip on the wall behind you and the sink beneath you. His muscles are bulging, his abs flexing and mesmerizing you in a way that has you nearly screaming.

You chant his name in a high-pitched, desperate voice along with a series of curses. Jack becomes smug as his dick turns you into a mess beneath him, coating his cock in wet slick. Not only does your pussy leak all over Jack’s length, but your slick drips from your hole onto the floor of the bathroom, dirtying the room even further.

In the coming weeks, unbeknownst to you, Jack’s frat brothers will chirp him for taking you in the house’s most public bathroom. They’ll chirp him for making you scream and whine louder than the music and for the way that an audience gathered around the door, speculating about who was in there. It didn’t take long for word to spread that it was Jack Hughes, frat president, bagging some girl from his classes rather than the typical sorority presidents that he was used to sleeping with.

Jack, in return, will claim that this fuck was better than any of those had ever been.

His statement will be motivated by the memory of how your walls squeezed him and milked him through a paralyzing orgasm. You’re clenching down on him now and he’s so, so close. Sweat is beading at his hairline. His hemline fell from his teeth when his jaw dropped at the depth of the new position and he let out a choked moan when you took it between your own teeth, quieting yourself. 

You’ve got a hand in his hair and a hand on his love handles, feeling him move his hips as he fills you. You’ve got his shirt between your teeth and your ankle over his shoulder. 

Your body seizes up shortly after Jack turns his head and kisses your ankle, a place that no one in your life has ever touched, to your memory. The intimacy of that action and the persistent bump of his leaking cockhead against your cervix sends waves of pleasure over you, whiting out your vision and sending your eyes to the back of your head. 

You can’t even hear yourself as Jack’s name shrilly leaves your mouth. You don’t hear the curse that falls from his lips as you clench down, sucking him into your cunt. You don’t feel his body shudder as he loses his rhythm and buries himself into you, shallowly thrusting as his cock spills its seed inside of you. 

He meant to pull out, he did, but your cunt was too warm and too appealing. He feels much more drunk than he actually is, warm and overwhelmed by the envelopment of pussy around his cock, and Jack can’t remove himself from your entrance until he’s milked completely dry. Even then, he kisses over your neck as he thrusts slowly through your aftershocks, fucking his come deeper into you. 

The danger of the situation doesn’t register to either of you– not how public this is, not how unsafe it is to be doing this without protection, not how cramped and stiff you both feel from fucking each other in a tiny bathroom rather than Jack’s big bed.

No, you both breathe in pure bliss as you come down. You touch his cheek and hair until Jack presses his lips against yours. 

He’s the one who moves your ankle from his shoulder, kissing up your ankle to your knee before he does so. It’s romantic and sweet and you can feel your heart clutching. After fixing your clothes, Jack kisses you on the mouth once more before you both leave the bathroom. 

In class the following days, Jack acts like nothing happened at the party. He’s no different, and it leaves you wondering if it meant anything at all to the boy. Little do you know– it didn’t change anything, but it meant everything. Jack’s already organizing another party, just so that he can invite you.

notes: dear frat!jack, one chance. please. one. fuck me in the dirty bathroom NEOWWWW.

[vinelark]

I've been going through ur fic recs and after binging through "A Meditation On Railroading" and "The Long Way Home", I'm now obsessed with Jason and Tim. Something about hating each other but not really, all the bad blood and hurt and still becoming brothers bc how couldn't they

I wanted to ask if you know any other fics that are about them?

Thanks! :)

i had to make a real effort to keep this (relatively) short or it would just be hundreds of fics long. here is a very incomplete list of old favs and recent reads! i've definitely rec'd some of them already, but i think others are new to my fic rec tag.   you already mentioned a meditation on railroading and the long way home; i’m linking them again here for anyone else who wants them, because they are two of my favs and would kick off this list if you hadn’t already read them.   robin!jason era   Brother Wanted by Vamillepudding one of the most impressive things a story can do, imo, is pull off a really believable kid/teen pov—this does it twice, for both tim and jason, and it’s one of my fav rereads.

Like a Hinge, Like a Wing by @bonesbuckleup i’ll always be reccing this one; it’s one of my favorite slow-burn hurt/comfort fics, and the tim & jason relationship in this context is very sweet + compelling as they deal with some rough edges unique to this story.

1-800-ROBIN by spqr jason volunteers for a mental health hotline, and this leads to bonding with tim. this has some incredibly tender moments and a great robin!jason pov.   red hood!jason era

cake is a four letter word by @sonosvegliato jason just wants to make a loaf of bread. then tim shows up. i love when a writer nails tim in peak Annoying Mode (❤️).

geolocation by @envysparkler i love a good forced-to-work-together oneshot, and this one gets bonus points for the sheer amount of “actions speak louder than words” going on with every single thing jason does.

Tim in a Bottle by @coyote-nebula (wip) angst and humor galore; tim and jason and their giant pile of unresolved issues all get locked in a walk-in freezer together. need i go on?

the trolley problem by @silk-scarlet-ribbons this is—i say with full appreciation—an absolute pangfest. jason is taken by an enemy, and that enemy has kidnapped a "random civilian" (you guessed it: tim) for leverage to get jason to do what they want. (also check out requiem for the forsaken by the same author, which is the fic that finally got my best friend to start caring about robins with me.)

Short-Term Memory Loss (Leads to Long-Term Sibling) by Vamillepudding a bittersweet + hopeful story in which red hood!jason gets temporarily whammed back to robin!jason, and bonds with tim.

Say Uncle by @megaerakles an incredibly fun twist on tim’s fake uncle with layers upon layers of identity shenanigans.

of crime lords and literature by @adelfie a wonderfully angsty, plotty fic in which tim ends up in danger as himself, and—after a very rocky start—jason is somehow the one who rescues him.

unequipped by Valkirin there’s a lot of jason saving tim on this list, and this story is a delightful reversal of that trope. red hood’s in trouble, and tim shows up to bail him out.

For All The Just Alike Birds by @sunflowersandink tim breaks his arm, and jason makes it his problem. featuring some excellent begrudgingly worried jason pov!

alternate universe

clean it like you mean it by @wynterstars (wip) i adore this jason-joins-the-family late AU; the central robin!tim & sort-of-civilian!jason dynamic is so compelling. marked as a wip, but currently leaves off in a very satisfying place!

[best-aroace-parent]

Best aroace parent; FINAL ROUND 🔥

Propaganda for Darius Deamonne 💛; The first time we see him interact with Hunter, the kid he'll later adopt, he's rather rude with him, but after reconsidering his opinion of him, we get all of these little moments and hints about how much their relationship has improved and how much he cares, until they actually become a family in the finale.

As for his orientation, a lot of people like to hc him as gay because of his pettiness towards an old friend from his childhood, but aside from one blush, he doesn't actually seem to pursue any kind of romantic relationship with him nor anybody else, rather forming a family with Hunter and Eberwolf, who's been said to be like a brother to him.

As a bonus, his color palette is full of purples and greens just like the aro and ace flags, which is rather fun

Propaganda for Cale Henituse 💛; He mainly parents 3 children (Raon, On, Hong) but also takes care of multiple other children. He is oblivious to other people's affection for him and thinks of beauty objectively and calls others beautiful often without any underlying feelings.

Propaganda for Della Duck 💛; She’s literally the best mom ever (eventually) and this does not once take away her ability to be a character in her own right. She gets trapped on the moon for 10/12 years (sources vary) while her brother looks after her sons and she spends every single day of those years trying desperately to get back to them. Mid season 2 she finally gets back to her kids and tries her best to become the mother she missed out on being while her kids grew up. She learns that she doesn’t need to be the “perfect” mother, it’s just important that she’s there now. She bonds with her kids and is just overall an incredibly supportive and encouraging mother.

As for her being aroace, the father of her kids is never addressed and never even a question asked in universe. Imo she just had kids cause she wanted to have kids, all ready to be a single parent. She also really just doesn’t show attraction to anyone throughout the series so it’s fairly common to hc her as aroace.

[sorrowfulmuse]

honey, could you write headcanons of tomas (smoke) in love with mileena and kitana's little sister? If you can and want to, of course.

♡:: tomas vrbada (smoke) x fem!reader hcs!

> i will be yelling my man my man my man!!! until the day i die!! 😩 i am so obsessed with this man you don’t understand!! i am so glad they brought him back for this timeline i missed him so 😞

> update (10/07/23) i am sorry for taking forever with requests! just been busy with life!! i will update all the requests today and tonight pls look forward to it!

thank you for requesting love!! i hope you enjoy! pls don’t forget to like & reblog! ☺️

are your requests open?: of course! read this before requesting!

♡:: mentions/warnings: none!

tomas is the DEFINITION of love! oh man oh man oh man, when i say he’s in love, HE'S IN LOVE!

he would adore you until the end of time if you would let him, he would worship you as if you’re the only girl in the world

this trope is like how he fell first and you fell harder! or for tomas, its both.. he craved to be in your presence and savor it every time he got to be with you

you were the sun, your eyes held the universe within them.. he looked at you as if you hung the stars and the moon.

it is no lie that tomas is a kind soul, he is genuine and very caring with everything he does with you. he cherishes the time he gets to spend with you and gets sad when he has to return to his clan while you are off to your royal duties.

or also.. his favorite times with you would be walking along the rivers of edenia, talking about your day and what’s been new since your sister became empress..

though talks wouldn’t last long since he would stare at you for so long that he would forget what you’re taking about which would end with scolding from you and makeup cheek kisses from him

he would openly show his fondness for you! seriously no amount of teasing from the guys would stop him from doing so.

though mileena and kitana aren't exactly fond with your relationship with tomas, you're an outworlder while he was an earthrealmer so the relationship was doomed from the beginning they said.

you both never saw it that way despite your sisters doubts, "it's just a small obstacle, nothing more." he would whisper to you.

tomas is VERY protective of you, he lost his family and a brother.. there is no way he ever wants to lose you and dreads the day if it were to come.

visiting earth realm? expect him to be your side 24/7!! he is YOUR bodyguard wether your sisters like it or not, he doesn't trust anyone else to protect you expect him and his brothers clan

he LOVES cuddles and no, you never will leave his arms per his request (not that you wanted to anyways)

he loves to traces his fingers along your arms and sides to help you relax after a long day

or he would help bathe you, gently scrubbing your head and massaging your shoulders as you rant about anything on your mind.

imo marriage doesn't really cross his mind until kuai lang's was announced and THEN he would have a field day imaging you walking down the isle and living the married life with you

he wouldn't bring it up at first until you do tbh, he's scared of your sisters disapproval if he were to purpose the idea to you or them

although he would go look for rings, you did deserve the best of course so finding the right one was pressuring enough

tomas would def daydream about your future together

little mini yous and hims running around your home, teaching your children how to read, write and especially how to fight in order to protect themselves

he would do very romantic things for you, leaving earth realm flowers for you on your bed.. love letters and drawings of you from the last time he saw you

he does idolize johnny cage so he would try to get some advice on how to wow you on your next date together (johnny would give him ideas from old rom-con movies which he appreciated v much)

tomas would vow to himself to make sure you that you know in every possible way that he loves you and only you, nothing can cut the string of fate between you both

darling, tomas wants nothing but you, give him some love and reassurance in return and he's yours until the end.

[gristlegrinder]

part of what makes IBS so fascinating to me is its position both within the world of Tyria and the story it was trying to tell, and the larger metatextual circumstances surrounding its development. because, like, The Icebrood Saga is a story that's, IMO, largely about placing individual actions in complex systems of power, and what happens when those systems begin to unravel.

-> Can you help us deal with Bangar? Aurene: He's a part of a larger web. Strands connecting to strands. Cut one out and nothing changes, not really. Aurene: It's hard to explain. But seeing how those strands connect... Taking one life won't solve your problems. (x)

so, like, you have Ryland, who talks about "playing his cards right" but has really been dealt a bad hand from the start and can only keep playing bad cards - the one decent play he gets in Turnabout to try and get out of the game gets interrupted by an arrogant bastard killing Cinder, and it's downhill from there. it's not necessarily that it was always going to end the way it did with him, but you're fighting an uphill battle against his upbringing, against his relationship with Bangar, against all cultural context. he insists that Jormag didn't coerce him into anything, and that's true; he ends up as Jormag's champion because, at least from Ryland's perspective, there's really no other option by the time he has the bow in his paws.

likewise, you have Braham, wrestling with being the norn of prophecy, slowly (slower if Champions didn't have to be rushed out of the door, I imagine) coming to terms with what exactly that means. he knows from the beginning that either Jormag dies, or he dies. he knows this, and knows that it's always going to end one way or the other. the prophecy unfurls, and Jormag awakens, and it becomes more and more obvious how it's supposed to go. He bonds with Primordus, because there's really no other option by the time Jormag is threatening to freeze the world ten times over to ice their brother out of existence. and sure, it might still destroy him even if Jormag doesn't kill him, but he doesn't get the luxury of thinking about that.

and then you have the Commander, who should be in control of the narrative, because in-universe they're the Commander and out-of-universe they're the player character, but there are multiple points where that agency is taken away from you - Smodur bombs the bunker and interrupts your negotiation, Ryland puts a bullet through Smodur's skull. you're always going to try and save the farm, but not every problem has an easy solution. the Legions are built on centuries of war and violence and hypervigilance against external threats; Bangar is not an isolated bad actor but a product of that system, and the gears of the war machine churn on both sides of Drizzlewood. you (and Aurene) are largely an audience to the family tragedy - tragedies, plural, both the relationships between Rytlock/Crecia/Ryland and Jormag/Primordus - as they break down.

"The Balance" isn't sustainable in its current state, but there isn't really a good alternative at this point. you can't back down when you're three dragons in (we tried that after Mordremoth, and Balthazar wouldn't have it and Kralkatorrik couldn't stomach it), and Jormag and Primordus (mostly Jormag) are threatening to escalate as the encroaching void eats away at them both. there's this real sense that they just have to make the best of a bad situation, and hope that the damage is minimal. the universe itself is on a cresting wave and it's about to crash, heading into End of Dragons.

so you have all of that, and it's also the chapter of GW2 where the developers are hit with major studio-disrupting internal problems and a fucking global lockdown. your story gets interrupted, there's not much you can do about it, but you have to keep going and make the best of it, even when the fate of arenanet itself seems uncertain.

what happens in the aftermath, after the dragonstorm clears?

[queenwendy]

My favorite thing with Relativity Falls is trying to wrangle Dipper and Mabel’s gender with the identity theft. Are one of them trans? If so, which one? If they don’t have any siblings, that means one of them is Stan and Ford’s grandparent. Is the remaining twin pretending to be the other or are they honest about being a different one? There’s a lot of fun combinations:

I flip flop on which twin works better as the author, but I really love Grauntie Mabel so if I ever made Relatively Falls fanfic I’d probably have Dipper be the Author with Mabel running the shack. I also really like the secret identity angle so I fully support Mabel impersonating her brother. To solve the gender issue you can either go the trans route or the crossdressing for 30 years route. The most “natural” feeling one, at least fanon wise imo, is that Dipper is transmac but fell into the portal before transitioning. But the dipper as transmac headcanon bugs me for reasons not relevant here, and I like Grauntie Mabel too much to make her crossdress as a man for 30 years; so I actually prefer transfemme dipper who fell into the portal after transitioning (I am also definitely not impartial, I am a trans woman lol). That also ties into Dipper feeling like a weird outcast who would study cryptids a la Ford, as opposed to him just being a mystery loving nerd with a constellation birthmark (of course, that’s if you make Dipper study the same things as Ford, which lots of people don’t).

Of course, that line of reasoning leads to all sorts of interesting questions as a result: who is the McGucket analogue? I usually see Candy or Pacifica, but if you wanted to mirror the show (and lean into the queer angle/a relatively falls fiddauthor), Wendy works pretty well. That also helps put Fiddleford in the shack so he can go on adventures with Stan and Ford. And Shermie? Oh god, Shermie.

Shermie is his own can of worms. If he’s Stan and Ford’s brother, is he older or younger? Is he there with them over the summer or is he back with Filbrick and Caryn? Maybe he’s still the unseen grandpa, making him Dipper and Mabel’s brother and sidestepping which one of them is the grandparent. Imo, Shermie works best as Stan and Ford’s older brother adventuring with them. Maybe even as a Soos analogue.

As for who the grandparent is, I dunno! Maybe Soos is, making him Dipper and Mabel’s brother. Maybe Mabel was, making the fact she faked her death and impersonated Dipper all the more tragic and gut punch-y (and very different from Stan, who Alex Hirsch thought never would do that). Maybe Dipper was, and so Mabel is pretending to be a grandparent. If it was Mabel or Dipper, who’s the spouse?

I like swapping Soos and Aubelita too much to make Soos Stan and Ford’s grandpa (though it’s a fun idea I don’t see anyone do). So then one of the mystery twins has to be the grandparent. I don’t think Mabel would abandon her family, so Dipper as the real grandparent has to happen via process of elimination (meaning until Not What (S)he Seems, Mabel goes by “grandma mabel”). Who the other parent is up in the air; Wendy or Pacifica are already popular ships with Dipper, and also potential McGucket analogues. If you wanna get really weird with it, Bill is, imo, a valid choice given the implied romance between him and Ford.

And that snowballs into dealing with Bill. Does he get swapped? If so, with who? Gideon kinda makes sense, especially if you want to keep the Hand that Rocks the Mabel(Ford? Stan?) plotline (as opposed to Stan x Bud which… okay that’s actually funnier). But Dream Demon Gideon sounds kinda stupid to me, even if it fits oddly well (I actually think that works better if Mabel is the author). Do you swap Bill with Euclid and Scalene? Then there’s two dream demons and baby bill running around, but Bill’s parents are kinda nothing burgers of characters. Why do they want a portal? You can also just keep Bill as Bill. I mean, the Book of Bill indicated that there’s a Bill for every universe. I dunno where I stand there, but I lean towards keeping Bill as himself. But swapping any obsessive ex tendencies of his from Ford to Dipper for obvious reasons.

I dunno if I’ll ever write anything, and that’s obviously not all the questions this AU raises (if Pacifica is swapped with Preston, how does Double Dipper play out? Does Boyish Dan work at the shack or is he the estranged son? Who do Candy and Grenda swap with? Are they the Rico and Jorge of Mabel’s backstory? How different is Mabel and Dipper’s backstory to a Tale of Two Stans?) but this AU is probably my favorite and every time I reblog art or an idea about it I get more and more drawn in. It’s really thought provoking.

[eyesteeth]

imo every water metaphor people throw at faulkner gets better when you remember he can't swim. “stories are currents, and he plunges headlong into those rushing waters, time and time again" yeah and he can't swim. he's drowning in the narrative he's making for himself. "speak now of the man you will leave behind, the man you have been... drown him in the river’s depths" yeah he's been trying to. he kinda always is, a little bit, just by virtue of being there.

it just speaks to such a fundamental incompatibility in my eyes. he's still scared - he ran out of the hotel when he sainted the hotelier in season one and he runs away from the angel he summons in s3e6. it seems like he can only partake in violence through abstraction - it's just water and symbols until someone's dead or changed in front of him, and then it's real. the withermark is a holy triumph until he counts the houses and the people inside, and then it's something no one should ever have. sacrifice is foundational to all faith in this universe. this isn't something he can avoid, even if the upcoming schism lets him steer his part of the faith where he wants.

(and, to tangent, someone telling him that they finally killed her in some distant town isn't real because he didn't see her face when she hit the soil. if that happens then she's just someone who's not there anymore and he can keep on missing her like he's been doing. i am convinced this is why he gave the shoot on sight order.)

it’s mentioned that he's left alone in his room at the gulch for hours at a time, just like when his father would neglect him and his brothers and leave them to their own devices. he wants a real and genuine love like family, but instead gets worship and idolatry from one hand and schemes to kill him from the other. he keeps climbing the ranks, distancing himself from the potential of gaining the closeness he craves, all in the hope of getting closer to the god he's losing faith in. he's crawling towards the river and he can't swim.

he is trying to love something that wants to drag him under. even if there wasn't a god in the river, the water would greedily swallow him anyway. river currents do not care about your love. he is putting the sunk in sunk cost fallacy. he’s participating in reverse self-immolation. he is drowning in deep water and has only just learned how to keep his eyes open without goggles. he needs to reach the surface but he still can't fucking swim. he is going to die thrashing in the river he loves so much, trying to get out once he realized it wasn't ever going to love him back the way he wanted.

and if he can’t learn how to swim in time, he’s going to need the help of someone who can to pull him out.

[adracat]

Law of Casuality Write-Up (Pt.1?)

Warning!!: the following contains self-indulgence to the likes you’ve never seen before

Law of Causality: The proposition that everything in the universe has a cause and is thus an effect of that cause

Happy Sulemio week! Since it’s Fantasy Day, I decided to finally get cracking on this freeform analysis of my G-Witch series— Law of Causality. I’ve mentioned before this may be my favorite thing I’ve ever written. I was in a manic ADHD-fixation trance while writing this series. If you want the literary version of a triple-layer myth cake, this may be for you. I was considering an essay-style dissection but that’s taking too long. So here are my loose insights into this series as a whole!

Art by my friend Tay, or @TaruhtQarineXiV on Twitter

As Above, So Below: Where it all began. I’ve mentioned in the A/Ns that this was spawned from my deep looks into what the show was taking inspiration from (imo). It’s my little love letter to Sulemio and gwitch, which quickly grew into something more.

Queen in White/King in Red—Beyond the alchemy, I wanted titles that sounded fairytale-esque while also hinting toward another mythos. Hastur or the King in Yellow (Signalis and True Detective enjoyers know that name) The initial King in Yellow appears in Haïta the Shepherd as the benevolent god of shepherds; a domain Hastur shares with Mercury. The short story is about the impermanence of happiness and how it can only be found once you stop seeking it. It’s a theme I ran with for the entirety of LoC, particularly Elnora. The later incarnations of Hastur are malicious eldritch figures. Suletta vs Prospera 😊

On Faerytales: LoC is obsessed with cycles and the rhyming of history. To me, fairytales embody that perfectly. The oral traditions of them are never the exact same, flavored with variations throughout the years. It’s how we got mythology to local folklore to Brothers Grimm to Disney renditions. That’s why I used Eros and Psyche and Sleeping Beauty for Suletta and Miorine (I’m convinced the show does this too but ymmv)

The latter is inspired by the former with Psyche placed under a sleeping torpor Eros breaks. In Sleeping Beauty, the offending curse is a spindle and she’s barricaded by a witch in the form of a dragon. The Hawthorn serves as Mio’s ‘spindle’ as she suffers depression and isolation in the wake of her mother’s vanishing. Prospera (coded as witch Satan) is the dragon. Notrette is the fairies bearing gifts. In a twist, Suletta wakes her with Love as Anteros in the place of Eros. Yes I layered this cake excessively. It’s probably still confusing; I’m sorry.

Tldr; I used Sleeping Beauty alongside Greek myth.

Chaos and Night: Paradise Lost twisted into a toxic witch romance. One of the most insane ideas I’ve had, but I adore it to bits. Both Prospera and Notrette are vested to the teeth with mythology and theology.

Notrette: Besides Thelema’s Nuit/Babalon and cuing her as ‘God’, as a being of creation, opposed to the Devil, I fit so much into her character. She’s Lilith, Pandora, Circe, Ceres, Virgin Mary, the Morrigan, Ariadne, a deconstruction of the Mother Goddess from neopaganism, and the capricious Queen of Elphame from folklore.

Another figure I styled her after is White Boann, the Dagda’s mistress and wife to Nechtan (cognate with Nuada or the silver-hand) which is where you get the hazel tree link. Boann names her son Aengus because the Dagda was her ‘one desire’.

Circling back to Paradise Lost, she also plays the willing Eve who falls to Satan’s temptation in place of Miorine. There’s likely things I’m forgetting; I was so normal plotting her character.

Elnora: What can I say about this glorious wreck that wasn’t in the text? Venus, The red dragon Satan, the Beast from revelation, pagan Horned God, Neptune to Ceres, Theseus and Bacchus to Ariadne, Prometheus to Pandora, every Phosphoros, etc I’d be here all day. She’s coded as Orion the hunter who’s undone by Gaia and also the Teumessian fox to Suletta’s Laelaps. I mentioned she’s the riders of the apocalypse at the end too. White Rider is Suletta but her mom fulfills the rest; ‘Riding’ Vim as War, Riding Belmeria as Famine while wielding the ‘scales’ (Notrette as Libra) Finally, she wears the visage of death to bring Pestilence to the kingdom. I squeezed in the other omens of revelation with symbolism such as the crown of wormwood (Revelation 8:11)

When it comes to her role as Prometheus, I coded both Delling and Mio as birds of Venus (swallow and dove respectfully.) It’s meant to symbolize the ‘eagle’ devouring her was primarily herself all along. She was the architect of her ruin, lampshaded by Notrette from the beginning.

Remember Haïta the Shepherd? In the story, there is a maiden whom embodies the ephemeral nature of happiness. Notrette is Elnora’s transformative destruction into cathartic acceptance/happiness. In Paradise Lost, Satan succeeds at banishing Eve and Adam from the garden but similarly fails when he’s turned into a snake. She’s lucky I was more metaphorical.

I liberally used Revelation 12, the woman and the dragon, as well. Look at me shipping crackships from the Bible. This is mostly self-explanatory, ofc Christ is genderbent and a role shared by Sulemio. Mio’s allergy to iron doubles as a nod to this, since she doesn’t take her father’s kingdom in this universe.

There is more, such as Dionysis/Bacchus being a many-faced god with younger and older versions paralleling the Horned God’s dual aspects and the Dagda’s relationship to Aengus which led to me pitting Suletta as a lighter mirror of Elnora. But I’ll leave it here for now.

Writing this all out has me questioning what I was on, and how I can reproduce it. If you got this far, thank you for humoring my unabahed love for this world. Happy Fantasy Day, Sulemios! ❤️

[mephistopheleswasrobbed]

BL or no BL, is that the question?

I've been wanting to talk about this for a while now but I came across a post in the tags that made me finally do so because I mostly agree.

I make a post every week accumulating all the "proof" I found that Home and Peach are actually gay for each other despite the "not a BL" label of the show. And I used to say in the tags that I don't intend for this to be taken entirely seriously but I kind of stopped doing that because I felt like I was repeating myself but now I think maybe I shouldn't have (I might go back to add those disclaimers back in).

But I would actually be completely fine if the show never has them kiss or plainly state "we are dating" or any other irrefutable "proof" that they are in a romantic relationship. I don't think not doing so would make it queerbaiting and I don't think it would diminish Home and Peach's relationship in any way. (Just to clarify, I would also be fine with it if they do say explicitly that they're in a romantic relationship.)

Personally I don't like the idea of strictly separating romanitic/sexual relationships from platonic ones. In my opinion/experience there can often be overlap between the two or rather many relationships just don't fit neetly into one of those categories.

I'm not an anthopologist and I haven't really done any reading into this so take what I say here with a grain of salt but my impression is that our current understanding of love and relationships is not universal across human history and cultures. Maybe, when we changed the intent of marriage from an economical union between to families, to a proof of love, we went too far in the oposite direction, maybe capitalism has an influence here through its concept of the nuclear family, I honesty don't know. (If you come across this post and do know, feel free to recommend me some resources because I'm genuinely curious about this). Anyway what we have currently is this idea of a strict differentiation and hirarchy with romantic(+sexual) monogamous partnership at the top, familial relationships beneath that and platonic relationships of varying degrees beneath that. And I fundamentally disagree with that idea. I think you can love your friends romanically but still see them as friends and not someone you want to date. I think you can be in a commited partnership with someone you love platonically but not romantically. I think you can love the same person both romantically and platonically to different or varying degrees. And sexual attraction is another factor that varies (imo, and to varying degees for different people) relatively independently from the other two. (I am personally also not a huge supporter of the idea that monogamy is somehow superior to other relationship constellations and I'm convinced that if monogamy wasn't so ingrained into our culture, fewer people would choose that relationship model. Does this have something to do with men wanting to ensure that their offsping is "actually theirs" before the invention of dna testing? Who knows, not me, but I could see that being a factor)

All of that to say, I think the show has so far made it very clear that Home and Peach have grown to love each other and want to form a family together. A family that also includes Pangpang who is Peach's sister by blood and Home's sister by choice going by her contact name in Home's phone. If we compare Home's relationships with Peach and Pangpang it is also clear that Home doesn't view Peach as a brother. I think if one were to ask Home who's more important to him, Peach or any of his numbered ex-girlfriends, the answer would be pretty clear. Even if Home doesn't want to have sex with Peach (but if he does, all the power to him), he clearly views him as more than just a friend (again not that I agree with the idea that frienships are somehow lesser that romanic relationships, in the first place). He views him as someone he wants to be a family with. And imo that's pretty queer.

A lot of discussion of queerbaiting comes from a time and place where studios put little hints of queerness into their shows to hook the queer and shipping viewers but always kept it subtle in a way where the stock standard straight viewer didn't pick up on it because they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. A lot of frustraition around this comes from the fact that we, as viewers who picked up on those hints, were constantly ridiculed by other fans who didn't want any 'icky homo shit' in their media. And because those "fans" would have never accepted anything but the caracters saying "we are homosexuals in a homosexual relationship" before making out on screen for 10 minutes as "proof" that anything queer might be happening between them, they could always feel like they were "right" and we were "wrong". (It hurt especially when the creators of those shows, who themselves put out the bait, participated in making fun of us.) And a lot of frustraition came from the fact that there wasn't a lot of explicitly queer media easily available to us at that time. So the subtle bait we got made fun of for noticing, was kind of all we had. Obviously we wanted them to make it more explicit, to make it "real".

But neither of these factors are really at play here. (I can't speak to the TV viwership numbers in Thailand, maybe they will contradict me) I don't think Peaceful Property is more popular than it would have been if they had marketed it as a BL (judging by the apparent spike in engagement for ep 7, it might even be the opposite) so I don't think they left it more vague (if that is the route they're going) in order to not alienate a staright conservative audience. There is also definitely not a dearth of explicitly gay media from gmmtv (and we've even gotten to a point where BL characters are increasingly allowed to call themselves gay/bi and aren't portrayed as straight boys who incidentally fell in love with another boy but are definitely not queer or anything).

With this context I think we can (again, if that is what they're going for) portray queer relationships that don't map neatly onto the predominant idea of a romantic relationship and that maybe don't have a sexual component to them.

Thanks for making it through my unorganised rambling. Have a pic of my beloved Chai-Un as a reward.

TL;DR If Home and Peach kiss, that's cool. If Home and Peach don't kiss, that's also cool. Either way what they've got going on is pretty queer.

[chiisana-sukima]

Oh when you used to sing it to sleep

@jinkieswouldyoulookatthis and @blue-chimera - thank you both for your kind and thoughtful replies to my reblog of this post. The og post is getting quite long and also I don't want to put too much writing effort into a reblog that's susceptible to disappearance, so I'm continuing here instead.

I agree with you both that Dean's parentification and Sam's continued acceptance of vs rebellion against it as an adult are an important part of their dynamic. Dean's dying words in the finale attest to this beautifully (as well as many other things throughout the course of the show); I love you so much, my baby brother. To a certain extent Sam is Dean's baby and always will be.

I think though to a large extent, the framing by both Sam and Dean of Dean as Sam's parentified elder sibling is a mutually employed, mostly cooperative sanitization of the central and most damaging aspect of the roles they internalized through their upbringing: Sam is a monster and Dean is the tool to "take care of" it (double reading of "take care of" 100% intentional on my part). Because of this, while readings of spn through the lens of Dean's parentification are definitely valid, I do think they sometimes risk distorting or leaving out important aspects of the characters' personalities, motivations, and relationship.

Jinkies, in my fruitless quest to process without reblogging a take I knew the OP wouldn't appreciate, I had listened to the interview before posting, and I think while Jensen is being flip, he's also getting at what he sees as a truth in the brothers' relationship. I think he's right from a Doylist/co-creator/actor's perspective--Sam is the protagonist who we see through Dean, the deuteragonist's, eyes. Dean, as a piece of the narrative artifact, Supernatural, is there to save Sammy in a way that Sam (up to that point anyway) is not a piece of the narrative artifact whose purpose is to save Dean. From a Watsonian/in-universe perspective though, I think he's mistaken, and that his mistake is the reason his take sounds uncharitable, even aside from the flippant part.

It's just not a very convincing analysis imo to frame a character who spends the first few seasons rejecting immoral power, the next few in an arc that ends with him willingly subjected himself to eternal torture for the good of the world, and the one after that intending to sacrifice himself dramatically to rid the world of one particular species of monster but doesn't because Dean asks him not to, as self-absorbed or not particularly concerned with his effect on others, including on his brother. Likewise, Dean holds up well as a parentified older sibling with no sense of internal self and abysmal self-esteem in some ways, but in others not so much. He does have interests and priorities and a sense of purpose outside Sam. They're all over spn every day, much more so in fact than Sam's are. They're just not enough to override his Sam prioritization.

The main place I think this analysis fails on Dean's side though is that he, as an adult, is just not a very good parent. Obviously as a child he couldn't be expected to be a good parent (or a parent at all) and as an adult he's already damaged and so it's understandable that if big brother-ing Sam is how he chooses to spend the rest of his life, he may still not be equipped to do it. But he fails on such a fundamental, obvious level at the the most basic aspects of parenting--providing safety, unconditional love, and preparing your child to go out into the world as an independent adult--in ways that once he's a grown up are absolutely within his power to at least attempt (for example: if he wants Sam to be safer, it would ultimately have failed because of Fate, but the logical thing to do first would be not hunt. Dean could've followed Sam to Palo Alto. He could've told him to go to Harvard Law if he can't tolerate Stanford after Jess dies. Could've refused to support him throwing his life away of a mission of revenge. Bought him his own car, encouraged him to have his own tastes. Told him convincingly that trusting Ruby was a bad decision but Lucifer is still not his fault).

None of that is meant to be insulting to Dean though, because I don't think that parenting Sam is Dean's real job--even from Dean's perspective--and I don't think his real job is palatable enough that it would be better for either of them if he admitted what it is head on. What his and Sam's real jobs both are imo is being a container for Sam. On Dean's side, this means holding Sam in his arms with love or if that's not enough, holding him in the panic room, which, from this perspective, is also an act of love. Substituting his judgement for Sam's is an act of love. Not encouraging Sam to hold his own interests first or to grow towards independence are acts of love. Given the nature of (what I believe to be) Dean's actual job, they are effective and competent acts of love undertaken under impossible circumstances, even if the results are sometimes pretty horrific. Because they're still better than the alternative.

Likewise on Sam's side, doing his job well means being a model monster--go to an Ivy, exercise, eat healthy, cultivate empathy, don't have desires of your own, hold yourself to an impossible standard, suppress your anger, kill other monsters when they get out of line. And in the moments he can't manage all that--because who can?-- submit to Dean. When he does those things, he's succeeding at his job, and while it would be nice if "let your brother hit you" or "jump in the Cage with Lucifer" wasn't his job, in the world of spn, it is. He is right to be contained by Dean and wrong to have opinions or priorities of his own unless Dean approves them first.

I do think this sometimes ends up looking like Sam has better self-regard, because Dean's job is to "take care of" Sam, and Sam's job is also to "take care of" Sam. But actually they both have absolutely abysmal shit self-esteem. "I should submit to eternal torture because it's my fault someone else is going to do terrible things he could choose not to do if he wanted" is not the thinking of a person with healthy self-regard. The reason neither of them could fill a thimble with their self-esteem or healthy boundaries imo is because neither "monster" nor "blunt instrument" is a person. Neither of these roles is better or more healthy than the other. Fundamentally, if you don't see yourself first and foremost as a human person, then your life is going to suck horribly. And neither of them see themselves that way.

[royal-confessions]

“Harald and Sonja and Haakon and Mette Marit are not good parents IMO, they are enablers. I'm not blaming them for anything Martha Louise and Marius has done, but tough love is part of being a parent if you know that they are straying. Every young person will do the most stupid things if you let them. The measure of a good parent to me is having children who are self-reliant. Notice how not one in the family seems interested in having jobs other than becoming influencers? They don't even bother with university studies despite having all the means in the world. Yes, Spain has Victoria Federica and Netherlands has Eloise, but Infanta Cristina's sons have jobs, even Froilan who used to be a trouble maker has a job, Eloise's siblings and other cousins also look like they have no interest in following her footsteps, Nikolai and Felix model but Nikolai just graduated from university, and in Belgium all of Astrid's older kids have jobs and lives far from the spotlight.” - Submitted by Anonymous

“I have a soft spot for Harald and Sonja but they might be too forgiving with their children and grandchildren and it's not helping any of them. Martha Louise was trouble before she got married the first time and had kids. She was accused of having an affair with a married man and Harald decided to use her diplomatic immunity so she would not have to testify in court. Now she's marrying a scammer and none of her kids have a proper job (the only reason they are getting attention is because of who they are, the eldest might be talented but she never had to struggle to get her artwork seen). I was happy that they let Haakon marry whoever he wanted, but now their granddaughter who is set to be a queen is haunted by her mother's past and her half brother's antics, I can't forget the jokes people were making about her sniffing cocaine on her 18th birthday.” - Submitted by Anonymous

[do-u-know-this-autisticcharacter]

Do You Know This (Non-canon) Autistic Character?

Evidence under the cut!

Other characters in universe often describe him as being condescending, aloof, arrogant, etc. To me at least, it seems like he's just somewhat socially awkward and doesn't know how to interact with most people. He has extreme difficulty interacting with basically anyone besides Asta (his foster brother/best friend). Flashbacks reveal that he was very shy as a young child and struggled with emotional regulation.

Yuno doesn't appear to have a good intuitive sense of how others around him feel about him, such as not noticing or paying any attention to Alecdora's (one of Yuno's squad mates) intense envy of him for like 6 months. He's not very modest or humble about his magical ability, which irritates other characters who think that he's bragging. Imo, this doesn't come across as bragging when Yuno talks about himself and his strengths; he is established on several occasions to actually be ridiculously powerful, and so I imagine from his perspective, he's self-aware of how powerful he is and treats it as a simple statement of fact.

Aside from a few extreme situations, he doesn't emote very much and his line delivery is very deadpan. He has a couple of catchphrases—commonly translated into English as 'you can't be serious' or 'you have to be kidding me'—that seems similar to scripting, and he occasionally borrows Asta's catchphrase.

He's very one-track minded and devoted to his goal of becoming the Wizard King. Every major life decision he's made over the past 10 or so years has been towards this goal.

[goodqueenaly]

Is there much in the text to really get a sense of the relationship between Aegon III and Jaehaera? it seems like there was not any investigation of her death and wondering if that's a sign of anything? Maybe because of just reading on investigation of Amy Robsart's death from a fall that my mind went to the mystery around Queen Jaehaera. Unsure if it makes sense, but reading fan message boards on the topic where a prevalent idea Aegon III was too young to have made a fuss one way or the other.

Inherent to Fire and Blood Volume 1 - and this is one of the major weaknesses of the book IMO - is that we as readers are kept at arm’s length from the characters GRRM (via Gyldayn) describes. Because the conceit of the book is that it was written by a maester living more than a century and a half after most of the events he records, we cannot have the same personal narrative experience of characters that we get in ASOIAF or the Tales of Dunk and Egg. Consequently, we are far more limited in how much we can say about the personal feelings of any given character, or the personal relationship between any two characters. (Except the points in the book when GRRM decided to forgo the conceit entirely, but that’s a different story.)

To the extent that we do get any insight into the relationship between Aegon III and Jaehaera, Gyldayn emphasizes the lack of personal interaction between the two. Gyldayn states that the two “had very little contact with one another [after the wedding] save on formal occasions”. Even interactions on such occasions were apparently rare, according to Gyldayn, because “the little queen was loath to leave her chambers” and “never left her own apartments”. Too, Gyldayn states that after Unwin Peake took over the regency government, “Queen Jaehaera hid in seclusion in her chambers” while “King Aegon trained in the yard by morning and stared at the stars by night”. (Note that while Gyldayn reports the contemporary rumors that Jaehaera killed herself out of grief that she “loved [Aegon] with all her heart, yet he paid her no mind, showed her no affection” and “did not even share his rooms with her”, Gyldayn provides no source for this rumor, and indeed admits the higher likelihood that Jaehaera was murdered.)

Of course, it is very understandable why Aegon and Jaehaera would not have been very close to other another. As Grand Maester Munkun himself noted at the time, “[b]oth of them [were] broken”, very much traumatized by the tragedies they had witnessed firsthand or experienced in their still-short lives: the violence and cruelty of Blood and Cheese, the assault on Aegon and Viserys’ ship in the Narrow Sea followed by Aegon’s harrowing flight home on Stormcloud (and the loss, seemingly permanently, of his younger brother), the deaths of nearly every member of their respective immediate families (including the immolation and draconic devouring of Aegon’s mother in front of him). Add to all of this whatever GRRM wanted to imply with Jaehaera in babyhood - that from her birth Jaehaera “did not cry … did not smile … did none of the things a babe was meant to do” - and it’s pretty evident that both Aegon and Jaehaera were deeply scarred children suffering from severe emotional trauma that really no one in-universe was trying to treat (even if any would have been equipped to do so, which is far from certain). Brought together in a solely political marriage (itself aimed to address the violent recently ended war between their dead parents), deeply scarred while still young children - after all, we’re talking about an 11-year-old and an eight-year-old - neither Aegon nor Jaehaera was positioned personally or emotionally to become close to the other. 

It’s also important to note that whatever Aegon’s feelings toward his late “little queen” were either ahead of and/or immediately after her death, he was (purposefully) given very little opportunity to consider, much less mourn, her passing (read: murder). Unwin Peake, having had Jaehaera killed by his agents Mervyn Peake and Tessario the Tiger, moved with what both contemporaries and Gyldayn the historian considered unseemly, openly ambitious speed to force Aegon into another betrothal, specifically to his own daughter. Indeed, Ben Blackwood “questioned the haste of” the betrothal, as in his mind “Aegon should have been allowed half a year at least to mourn his little queen” (in, perhaps, standard Westerosi fashion for widowers). Whether or not Aegon would have actually wanted to or felt prepared to mourn Jaehaera - and again, the lack of introspection forced by the conceit of F&B really limits how much we can speculate on his feelings - he himself was thrust, suddenly and unwillingly, into the role of new bridegroom, faced with the prospect of marrying yet another unknown maiden while he himself was still suffering so much.

As far as the lack of investigation goes … I think the regency council and court became distracted too quickly by the question of Aegon’s remarriage to consider the manner of Jaehaera’s death. Because Peake had moved with such “presumptuous” speed in trying to slip Myrielle into Jaehaera’s place, the other regents and the Westerosi aristocracy at large had to react very quickly to what was very obviously a power play on Unwin’s part. The flurry of responses, both censuring and nuptial, to Unwin’s move, and the subsequent recalibration of his plan into the Maiden’s Day Cattle Show, meant that the matter of Jaehaera’s death lost its immediate significance. With “no shred of proof” against Unwin for Jaehaera’s death (as Gyldayn is at pains to insist), very little way to prove Unwin’s guilt beyond a confession from any of the conspirators involved, and an ostensibly plausible explanation for her death (in the deliberate parallel between Jaehaera and her mother), Jaehaera’s murder was simply not a target for inquiry. Nor, of course, would Peake have encouraged any real investigation into Jaehaera’s death, considering he himself arranged the murder in the first place: indeed, Unwin brutally distracted from his own guilt in the matter by having his ally George Graceford torture the queen’s servants for inconsequential misdeeds and mistakes and his other ally Lucas Leygood arrest and torture a septa merely for words against Jaehaera. 

(Incidentally, I wrote about Amy Dudley’s death a while ago.)

[best-aroace-parent]

Best aroace parent; Semi-finals

Propaganda for Della Duck 💛; She’s literally the best mom ever (eventually) and this does not once take away her ability to be a character in her own right. She gets trapped on the moon for 10/12 years (sources vary) while her brother looks after her sons and she spends every single day of those years trying desperately to get back to them. Mid season 2 she finally gets back to her kids and tries her best to become the mother she missed out on being while her kids grew up. She learns that she doesn’t need to be the “perfect” mother, it’s just important that she’s there now. She bonds with her kids and is just overall an incredibly supportive and encouraging mother.

As for her being aroace, the father of her kids is never addressed and never even a question asked in universe. Imo she just had kids cause she wanted to have kids, all ready to be a single parent. She also really just doesn’t show attraction to anyone throughout the series so it’s fairly common to hc her as aroace.

Propaganda for Alfred 💛; He took Bruce in after the Waynes died and did his best to raise him. He also helped take care of Bruce's many children and loved them all dearly, even if he did nothing to curb their vigilante tendencies. Some adaptations tease a relationship with one of the older women in the cast, but most agree that Alfred is at his best when he's focused on the family.

[rise-my-angel]

re: the bastardphobia post.

It’s such a stupid discourse too, when Jace, Luke and Joff are (rightfully imo) pointed out as bastards it’s gReEn PrOpOgAnDa and bAsTaRdPhObIa and yet their rebuttal is always half a billion pathetic arguments to try and claim they’re not. Most of them are also nasty to Addam and Nettles for betraying tRuE KwEEn Rhaenyra and being bastards. I think it’s fairly easy to say that the bastardphobia allegations are coming from inside the house.

Their arguments are entirely contradicting. It's wrong for Alicent's side of the family to use them being bastards to bolster their claims as it is wrong for fans to agree. But they also consistently demand that any argument that they are bastards is wrong.

Either some argument that because of some grandparent's hair colour being dark, that means its reasonable for the boys to turn out with dark hair. When that is not how that works at all. With hair colour specifically, it's mostly luck and chance that Alicent's kids all had silver hair. But if Jace, Luke, and Joffery are all Leanors children, then they would have had silver hair too. The in universe characters don't know this kind of science though, which is why the kingdoms all thought it was entierly plausable that all of Roberts children inherited Cersei's blonde hair, when in reality in most cases, natural blondes are only born to 2 blonde parents because its a recessive gene. On first glance no one notices, until someone points out that the children don't look at all like one parent then suddenly everyone else realizes it too.

Also, it's possible one child may be born that inherits an older ancestors dark hair, but not all three of them. That is literally the same unlikely scenario as Robert's children all being blondes when literally every single other Baratheon has dark hair. (Literally Gendry describes his mother as having yellow hair). If those boys were Laenor, they would look even the slightest bit similar to him, but they do not.

The second argument is Laenor accepted them as his own, which means they are not bastards. Which....literally no. First of all, he does express an exhaustion of playing this lie for Rhaenyras sake for so many years. Secondly, that is not how legitimization works.

Bastards getting true names is a process. One which needs to go through public, legal documentation through the King in which actual written declarations are provided. Rhaenyra would have had to admit to Viserys they are bastards and demand legitimization, and then also beg for him to keep that a secret to play the lie off as if they always were. If Catelyn had been a mother to Jon, that doesn't automatically mean he is a legitimate Stark. Ned still would've had to go to Robert and request it.

But the thing is, both of these arguments contradict their point. They would argue instead that Rhaenyra should have pushed for their rights as bastards regardless. To force change to make the system less oppressive to them in general, but she didn't. She lies to suit her own image and threatened her mutilated brother with torture for saying what around the court, is more known as common gossip.

They don't care about bastards outside of Targaryeans. These are the same people insisting that Jon Snow recognize his Targaryean heritage and align himself completely as one. They do not care about him as Jon Snow, they want him to be a Targaryean. They belittle characters like Nettles because her status as as a bastard cannot be looped around to making her a true Targaryean.

They only care about the discussion of bastards enough to morally grandstand about how people discuss them within the Targaryean family. Other bastards that cannot be a tool for their pro Targaryean agenda, do not matter. They do not actually care about it.

But because we use the in universe logic to discuss their in universe legal rights and lack of privlages as argument for a complicated legal debacle, they say its bastard phobic. We don't not support them for being bastards, we are explaining why IN UNIVERSE they would not have the rights to the things Rhaenyra is pushing for.

In universe characters too are not in the wrong for using their status as bastards as why they support the other side. They are well within their right to support the strict legal system which the Targaryeans themselves implimented.

We the audience know theres nothing wrong with being a bastard, but we are not supposed to use that to judge the story with our own moral compass. The point of a character like Jon Snow isn't to condemn others for their views of him as a Snow, its so we understand that bastards are normal people who should not be villanized on sight. It's meant to tell us that we shouldn't judge bastards the way other characters will but it is not to condemn the system people have grown up and and thus think are normal.

But these people make excuses to say why they aren't bastards while also getting mad at us for calling them bastards. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. These people don't care about bastards outside of the discussion of the Targaryean family.

It's both a total hypocrisy and a total lack of nuance.