#but i know i got stuck because of that fundamental issue

[abluescarfonwaston]

Really liking how you wrote a scene but realizing it needs to be completely redone... Loss...

[noahsartt]

My reservations with the 2022 Interview with the Vampire tv series:

My thoughts on amc’s Interview with the Vampire (2022) tv series compared to the 1976 source material and what I liked about the 1994 movie.

Some reflections before the second season airs. I watched the series as it was coming out in 2022, so these thoughts have been sitting for over a year.

This is a subjective critique of the show, not me hating on it. I liked the show a lot & watched it twice. Many of the key changes were extremely creative ways of exploring those characters from new perspectives, instead of just pointlessly remaking something that's been done before. Distinct creative change should be the basis of every remake, no point is making something 'new' if there's nothing new about it. This show knew that, and the changes for the most part were written beautifully. ...But the movie is still my favourite despite its many flaws. Camp classic right there.

Issues with the show:

Making it take place 100 years later, it ruins the specific aesthetic of the book for me. (But I understand they had to in order to re-write Louis & Claudia as black).

Aging up Claudia. The way Bailey Bass played Claudia was amazing, no notes at all for her. I just wish they kept her younger because that was a very symbolic part of what made Claudia’s original character so tragic. She suffers in an entirely different way to Louis because of her age. New Claudia is supposed to be in the body of a 14 year old, but the actress was 18/19 so she looks much older already,  and no matter how well she played it, the age factor can’t be helped. Being stuck eternally in the body of a 5 year old (book) is so different to a 14 year old, who looks much older (tv show). Kirsten Dunst who was 10 in the movie, was able to play the little child - adult vampire progression a lot better. People say Claudia's original age is too 'disturbing' to see on screen... but that's the character...

Daniel being old… WHY?? Just so they could tie together the storyline or him meeting Armand multiple decades before ???? I only read IWTV and some of the TVL so I don't know everything that happens down the line for him, or what amc plans for the character in the show... but I don't understand the aging up except for 'diversity' reasons. Which, ok, but just to check a box? Louis and Claudia's race change make sense as a creative decision. But the Daniel in the book and film is a 20-something year old which is why he's so fascinated by Louis' 'gift', and doesn't understand the message Louis is sending, instead wanting to become a vampire too. Why would old Daniel want those same things? Changing Daniel's age is such an inherent thing... it's like if they didn't make Lestat blond. Eric Bogosian plays him funny though, I will say that. Christian Slater kind of just sat there.

Louis having no money and needing Lestat's financial support for his business ventures????? When it’s supposed to be Lestat leeching off Louis' estate … WHY. Why did they change something so fundamental about their dynamic. Lestat moves in because he needs wealth and Louis has it. And then he starts acting like it's both of theirs and Louis just lets him. Funniest thing ever. But in the show Louis moves in with him instead. That's just wrong.

Louis asking (basically begging) Lestat to make Claudia when Lestat is supposed to be the one to do it in order to ensure Louis doesn't leave him. Another fundamental part of their relationship that just got flipped around completely... and for what? Why did it change the things it didn't need to?

Antoinette... girl why are you there... we don't need more characters. Go away.

The guy that Louis gets with to make Lestat jealous …. why is he there either? In the book they don't need to bring other people in to irritate each other.

One of the most perfect scenes from the film was when Lestat was tormenting that girl and trying to get Louis to kill her. The show’s version with the opera singer wasn’t the same. The original scene is such a good depiction of their dynamic with each other: Lestat's eccentric killing methods and Louis’ shame and guilt. The show’s version didn’t live up to it. That scene was so excellent in what it set out to do. It captured their back and forth in such a simple way. That dynamic follows them forever, even as Louis begins to accept his nature, that spark of annoyance towards Lestat is ready to become a full fire at any moment. That scene is enough to be a full character study. The show has little bits here and there which capture something similar. But they should have recreated that scene at least.

Claudia and Lestat's relationship evolving from enjoying each others company and similarities, to detesting each other and competing for Louis’ affection. They didn’t spend enough time on Lestat and Claudia’s relationship in the show to fully demonstrate that, only a few scenes of them driving together and hunting together at the beginning. Even the two hour movie found a way to intergrade that better. Their relationship and the way Claudia is so starkly similar to Lestat when they move to Paris, is one of the my favourite parts of the book to analyse. Louis leaving Lestat and moving all the way across the ocean, only to be reminded of him in everything Claudia did. The show did have some purposeful parallels between Lestat and Claudia in the dialogue which I appreciate, I hope that continues in season 2.

Louis being in on Claudia's plan to kill Lestat and even being the one to finish off Lestat when it’s supposed to be Claudia’s idea on her own...?? Lestat's death is supposed to be an "ok, I guess that was necessary, time to move on with our lives now," moment for Louis. But he wasn't supposed to have the courage or the want to be the one to do it himself. He was hesitant and regretful in the show, but he still slit his throat... it was supposed to be Claudia alone. Credit where credit is due, the scene was beautifully filmed, the red blood on white cloth looked incredible and the entire scene captured the tone of devastation that the movie didn't. It was all very quick and emotionless in the movie.

Even though I hate Br*d Pitt's acting, his Louis was way more accurate to the book Louis. He basically was the embodiment of book Louis. Just sad and whiny the entire time. New Louis had more to him, I think Jacob Anderson even said in an interview that it was a purposeful decision to give Louis more grit. It's not a change I appreciated because it alters the original character too much. You can't change something that fundamental. Just ugh. In the show, Louis is more angry than pathetically sad, it’s very different to how the character was originally written. 

Sam Reid’s Lestat is pretty on the nose but still more serious than the original Lestat & Tom Cruise’s portrayal which was the perfect level of camp and eccentric. Tom cruise was playing Lestat from just IWTV but Sam Reid is playing him with the baggage of his entire life as written in the other books, maybe that's why he is different. Maybe his performance is even better because of it. I haven't read the other books so I can't really say.

I won't say anything about Armand (yet) because he hasn’t had his time to shine. We’ll see after season 2. I loved Antonio Banderas as Armand, and even though he was very different from how book Armand was, it was a change I liked. New Armand is going to be more accurate to the books I believe, but i didn’t like how Armand was there the entire time Louis was being interviewed… why...

Maybe I am one of the few that doesn't overtly appreciate the 'fresh' take of this story. Many of the things that draw me to the book and the movie have been taken away in this adaptation.

---

I recommend this fan fiction that explores the idea of Louis being a person of colour in the context of the original book's 1700s timeline. It explores the intersectionality of Louis' struggle with vampirism, queerness & race while still being authentic to the book. Go read it.

In the Author's words: This is NOT a rewrite of the AMC TV show, nor does it intend to be. This is us making one (subtextually plausible) change to canon in order to 1) explore underlying issues with the source material and 2) see how it affects the way the events of IWTV played out.

Ok that's it. Will maybe add to this when the second season airs. For months, this was just for me in my notes app but what is tumblr for if not to air out my locked away ideas.

[nyaagolor]

Paldean Elite Four (+ Geeta) Headcanons

They've been on my mind recently bc of all the asks I got

Rika:

Rika is the office gossip QUEEN. She knows everything about everyone, so if you need or want to know something you ask her. She knows a guy. She also desperately wants to figure out what Larry and Geeta's Deal (tm) is. They bicker constantly, are insanely passive aggressive, but despite their opposing attitudes agree on most fundamental issues. They look like they hate each other, but Larry constantly takes on new responsibilities for the League and Geeta constantly showers him with raises and promotions. Rika has taken to snooping thru their emails and prodding Hassel for info, but he doesn't know anything either. It’s driving her nuts

Paldea had a Region’s Sexiest Man contest. Rika won. Women Want her. Despite this however she can only pick up women accidentally. If she actively tries to flirt she will fuck it up spectacularly. Just the in-universe version of this

Rika is actually on the payroll as the league receptionist and does that Elite Four thing as a side hustle for extra cash. She gets kind of embarrassed when you call her a receptionist during her Elite Four duties though because other regions often use her as an example of why the Paldean league is garbage (i.e. they're so understaffed even a receptionist can be on the E4. They must have grabbed the nearest person, etc etc). She puts on the vibe of someone chill but this in particular is a bit of a sore point for her

She hates dresses / skirts with a burning passion and refuses to wear them. If you give her a REALLY good reason it's a solid maybe, but good luck with that. She needs to stretch

Her Clodsire's name is Pancake :) I like to think all her pokemon are named after breakfast foods (which, btw, is her favorite meal of the day. She is easily bribed with good waffles)

She and Larry are drinking buddies. She does most of the drinking

Poppy:

Everyone in the league is very careful to alter their habits around Poppy. She’s small and cute and sweet and a little baby so the usual informal cursing (like Rika shouting that HR needs to “cut the bullshit”) or the smoke breaks on the roof (yes I think they all smoke) can’t happen when Poppy is around

The league spoils her rotten. Candy? Toys? Help with her kindergarten homework?? Anything for Poppy. Even Larry, who seems too strict or apathetic to care, has her drawings in his desk drawer and lets her decorate his ties. The toys in the lobby are also hers

Her parents are accountants who brought her to take your kid to work day and let her play with their Pokémon outside. Rika challenged her to a match as a joke because they had a cancellation and Geeta watched— but both were shocked that Poppy’s skill with her parents’ steel types and her own Tinkaton were unparalleled by anyone in the building. When another E4 member retired, the league decided to let Poppy battle under her parents’ names just to blow off some steam. Poppy gets to let out energy, her parents make extra money, and the elite 4 has a strong battler. Win win!

Poppy loves to braid and play with hair, so the other elite four members will often let her play with their hair and add clips while they work. Larry is Poppy’s favorite because he sits Very Very Still

If Poppy really likes the battle she had with you, she’ll give you a sticker. Geeta once walked into a meeting with a gold star directly on her forehead because Poppy stuck it there and she didn’t want to take it off where Poppy could see it, forgetting about it by the time she walked in. She later moved it to her jacket

She has nicknames for everyone except Rika, which drives Rika insane. Grandpa Hassel, Mister Larry, Miss Geeta (or Auntie sometimes) but Rika? It’s just Rika. It’s always Rika. When Hassel was babysitting her at his and Brassius’ home in Artazón, Poppy’s eyes went really wide and she asked if she had two grandpas now or if Brassius was just SUPER old. He found that insanely funny

Larry:

I saw a fic that had Larry naming his pokemon after Excel commands and I cannot stop thinking about it. It's canon in my heart. Btw if anyone knows this fic / the name pls lmk I can’t find it again but I remember his Flamigo was named COUNTIF

Larry is actually pretty wealthy, partially because he's raking in cash from his three jobs and partially because he doesn't spend money on anything but food and pokemon products. Considering that the Treasure Eatery feeds him for free and the pokemon products are provided or subsidized by the League, that leaves him with a LOT of extra income, which he uses to help out his friends or gym challengers with financial issues or simply buying them dinner

Someone added this on another post of mine but every single one of Larry’s passwords is some variation on “password”. He’s many things but creative is none of them. Also these tags are canon to me

In contrast to his outward grumpiness and seeming apathy, Larry is incredibly gentle with and good with kids. He is confident the future will be better because of them, and does what he can to encourage them. It's a big part of the reason Geeta picked him for the positions-- they have a pretty similar philosophy regarding children and the future

Geeta has been doing everything in her power to get him to quit his third job (which is not League-affiliated) because he does the best work of anyone around and his other boss is a complete and utter asshole. She's tried promoting him, telling him how valuable he is to the team, using raises, praise, and passive aggression, but nothing is working. At one point she even tried overloading him with hours so he'd be forced to quit something but that didn't work either. She's stumped. The man won't quit

That third job? I'm not actually sure what it is but I do have an AU where he's a hitman. Call that a business casuality ;)

Hassel:

He always keeps candy in his desk (and his coat pockets) because he's a teacher and wants to be prepared. It's the strawberry kind, yall know the ones. This came in handy when Poppy joined the league, so all the other members started doing it too

His family gets traditional tattoos all over, which Hassel likewise has. He'd never remove them, but still keeps them covered most of the time for modesty reasons. Brassius has filled in the gaps in the traditional dragon shapes with various flowers to show how Hassel has grown from but not forgotten his past. They look very cool and Rika is insanely jealous of that

This old man is way more fit than he appears. He's a sensitive sweetheart and prefers the arts to sports or battling, but he's still a dragon tamer and keeps up his workout regime quite meticulously. Peepaw’s fucking shredded

His favorite art medium is paint, and he loves it when the little kids have class so he can finger paint alongside them. His office in the League building is covered in art. Geeta thinks it's sweet how he remembers every piece and how emotional he gets talking about it

Hassel has a hard time turning off teacher mode, which makes his training sessions at the league insanely funny to watch. “Haxorus, we do not Guillotine our friends!”

He can, and frequently does, play classical Paldea guitar. Once his rock career fell flat, he started experimenting with the style of his new home region and fell in love. You can often find him giving impromptu concerts from his balcony in Artazon

Geeta:

As much as she micromanages others, she's more than willing to take any responsibilities herself if she can't find someone else to do them. Plumber cancelled and they need the sink fixed asap? Get her a hammer. Rika is out sick? She'll cover those emails. Part of the reason the league struggles to complain about her is that they know for all the work they're doing, she's doing double. This doesn’t necessarily mean she’s GOOD at it but she’s doing it

I’m not sure how I want to explain it backstory wise but a lot of her skin is crystalline just like the AI professors. She’s got a LOT of connections to Area Zero and her top priority is making sure nothing goes in and nothing gets out. The professor hates her. The feeling is mutual

No one has ever seen her blink

She’s incredible at traditional Paldean dances. When Hassel plays classical guitar, she’ll dance along, and it’s magical to watch

That whole thing about not being able to hold back during battles? It’s a PR thing to make kids feel better. She’s not very good at battling. Geeta is just like (gestures at her Avalugg) I just think they're neat

A huge point of contention between her and her employees is that she takes everything literally and is terrible at reading tone. Her gym leaders are scared of her and try to drop hints about things because they think they’ll be punished if they’re too forward, but all those hints go right over Geeta’s head. The gym leaders then think Geeta is ignoring them on purpose but she’s none the wiser. Everyone is losing.

[alliluyevas]

Have you ever posted about what about Mormonism first caught your interest and why its stuck as such a major interest?

I've been asked this before, but not for a while, so I'll answer again.

I've always been pretty interested in religion and religious history, I think part of this comes from growing up with a few very different religious perspectives in my extended family. I was raised Episcopalian and so was my dad, but my mom was raised Catholic and my dad's older sister and her husband are born-again evangelical Baptists. I was very much a type of kid who paid attention to and noticed stuff like this, so when I went to Catholic mass with my grandparents I would pick up on both similarities to and differences from what I was used to at the church my immediate family went to, and have questions about that. And my mom talked with me when I was still pretty young (late elementary/preteen) about why she left Catholicism and issues she had with it, and I also remember talking with her about how my aunt and uncle are creationists and what that meant and creationism versus evolution versus intelligent design and how to avoid arguments about this when we visited them. So I definitely grew up navigating having very divergent religious experiences and perspectives in my family and how to engage with people respectfully about that, and I was always curious about how different groups worship and define themselves.

I had a couple different phases as a kid where I was very interested in researching religious topics, like I got very into Ivanhoe in fifth grade and read a lot about the crusades and medieval Catholicism for a few years, and then later in middle school I first became interested in religious extremism and cults and I used to watch 19 Kids And Counting and read a lot of Time magazine special editions about Heaven's Gate and similar topics. 

I didn't really know a ton about Mormonism until I was an adult because I didn't know a lot of LDS people and I don't remember learning anything about Mormonism in my US History classes in school. When my brother and I were in elementary school, one of his best friends was a boy whose family was LDS so I had been over to his house several times and played with his sister and stuff, but I don't remember him or his parents really talking about their religion at all and I don't think I asked any questions either of them or of my parents. (Though I do remember my mom explaining that his parents didn't drink because of their religion, and I also remember reading the titles on their living room bookshelf and seeing a lot of books about Brigham Young and assuming he was my brother's friend's dad's historical blorbo essentially because my dad had multiple biographies of Abraham Lincoln and I thought it was a similar circumstance.)

About three years ago when I was living in Boston I was reading a fair bit about the Nation of Islam because a) Louis Farrakhan grew up in Roxbury where I worked and there's a main street in Roxbury named after Malcolm X, and I remember thinking that it was ironic that Farrakhan was the local but the street was named after Malcolm X and wondering if that pisses him off b) the Nation of Islam is fascinating to me in general. So I watched this Hulu documentary about the Nation of Islam and then Hulu recommended me a documentary about FLDS and I watched that too. I felt like the documentary didn't really go into enough detail about the historical context for modern Mormon fundamentalism, so I checked out the book Under the Banner of Heaven from my local library, and then I wanted to know more about early Mormon history in general, so I checked out a few more books, and then I got hooked and started ordering some of the ones the library didn't have online.

I can't entirely explain why my interest in Mormonism has stuck around, because I do tend to be very fixated on special interests and sometimes that kind of feels a little arbitrary, especially when that sort of hyperfixation intersects with and becomes genuine investment in academic scholarship (which it doesn't always for me, but here it did). I am interested in women's history in general and always have been, so I initially really found polygamy fascinating, and wanted to learn more about the dynamics of polygamous households. Specifically, the fact that early Mormons created a very controversial social order that wildly diverged from the norms of their culture, did this essentially from scratch, and were able to maintain it for roughly 3-4 generations of polygamist families despite significant external pressure and initial internal opposition is really interesting to me. I also think Mormonism is a very American religion that has also sometimes been at odds with American mainstream culture despite that and that's a very fascinating dynamic to investigate. I think I've also often been interested in attempts to create a new, utopian community or culture and the ways in which these experiments often fall short, which has been a constant in a lot of my historical interests like the American Revolution, the Soviet Union, and Mormonism as well.

[furiousgoldfish]

I just realized there’s a fundamental difference in people I do and don’t feel comfortable around. It has to do with the way they interpret the world.

The ones I don’t feel comfortable around, are usually people older than me, but that is not what I take issue with; it’s their manner of speaking to me. These people will speak their views of world as if it’s final, the only correct way to think They will also attempt to force this view of the world on you, with the complete assurance that you will. If you try to correct them, they’ll respond with almost a threat in their voice if you don’t immediately comply and validate that you agree. Their values, the ‘old values’, are the only ones that are true, and they don’t wait to see if you think differently, they’ll state it as if it was a timeless fact and dare you to confront them on it. I will sometimes, carefully, try to point out inaccuracies or research that has proven it wrong - and they’ll fight me on it.

For instance, I’ve had an elderly person complain to me about the ‘today’s youth’ and ‘how they’re ruining everything’. The problem was that the children in the park were loud, and sometimes, they would see teenagers late at night in the park, and they assumed these teenagers were doing drugs (can’t confirm if this is true). The elderly person got upset, yelled, and insisted it would all be better if some physical violence was thrown at those children. I couldn’t listen to that kind of line without interfering, so I pointed out, hey, that would only make the children more likely to become mentally unhealthy, depressed, and learn that the violence is the only rule in life. I also pointed out that even if the teenagers in the park were doing drugs, they cannot be the source of the problem; after all, they’re not the ones who invented drugs, or circulated it here, or would be easily able to buy them; it was the older generations that created this problem, and gave them to the teenagers. The elderly person pretended not to hear any of it, and stuck to their original opinion, while now seeing me as the enemy. After all, if I didn’t conform to their worldview, I was the problem, one of those who need to ‘get some common sense’ and be ‘persuaded’. Because blaming kids and teenagers on problems created by the older generations, is the only way they can keep seeing themselves and their contribution to the world, in a positive light. The only way to keep control.

The other type of person is the one who doesn’t attempt to enforce their worldview on you, instead they try to see where you’re at. They’ll tell you what they think, add ‘at least that is how I see it’, and then ask you ‘What’s your view on this? What do you think?’

Sometimes we’ll find pretty soon that our views differ, and we’ll agree to disagree and talk about something else. Sometimes, we’ll display our information, how we know it, and offer arguments that lead us to believe what we do, sometimes we’ll have little anecdotes to tell. Sometimes we’ll find out some new information, be encouraged to research it, and come back to revisit the subject in order to decide on a new, more informed standpoint. Sometimes we’ll find out we’re completely on the same page, and then be glad to have found out. But we don’t assume. We don’t see each other and go ‘yes, this person I don’t yet know perfectly, must have the exact stance on every issue in the world, they must have this specific information and subscribe to the same ideas and thoughts’, because that is presumptive, rude, and creating impossible expectations.

I wonder if the first kind are people who shared their perception of the world with their entire generation, and then project that idea on the entire world, believing those who disagree can only be blind and stupid? And in that case, assuming someone would disagree, is the same as assumption they’re lacking in intellect? My generation has vastly different views on everything, I can find people my age who disagree with my every view, and people younger than me who agree with me. I can’t assume for anyone that they would adapt my views, but I also can’t assume them clueless, because we all form our view based on information we gather thru life, and different people will have different information and experiences at their disposal. So it’s necessary to not assume, to find out where people stand, and then meet them where they’re at.

[transvaltrans]

Looking back on the books I read this year, and was reminded of just how much Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief- absolutely frustrated and disappointed me. Spoilers ahead.

To some degree, this was going to happen; the whole series has been heavily hyped up to me, it's hard for any book to live up to such lavish yet vague praise. But, you know, I actually got through most of the book without being distracted by my own expectations. It was tense, and spare- it felt like every word mattered and hinted at an underlying truth. I love when books withhold from the reader, and nudge at you to consider what might be left unsaid. And I was so, so satisfied when my predictions paid off (totally called Gen palming the stone rather than losing it).

The worldbuilding was interesting and unique, I enjoyed that the author wasn't committed to a super specific and our-world-accurate timeframe for technology, and I found the characters compelling and variable. I always enjoy travel stories, nevermind stories about thieves.

Which is exactly why I was so annoyed by the ending.

Again: I love twists. I love being able to predict them, and I love being surprised. I did not feel like any of the twists in The Thief were unearned; it's a well-composed book, with plenty of foreshadowing.

However, one of the twists, despite being foreshadowed, absolutely blindsided me- because I would not have considered it as a possibility, due to undermining exactly what had me so excited to read The Thief in the first place. Fantasy literature sometimes shies away from politics, into pure escapism and fluff. Even some of my favorite fantasy books are pretty hollow when it comes to their fundamental beliefs, and shy away from challenging the status quo- unless it's to restore old glory (cough The Old Kingdom series).

But I can almost always count on stories about rogues, and thieves, and con artists, to at least bring up the issue of class. These characters so often come from disenfranchised backgrounds, from the poor and displaced. They're street rats and gutter scum, who have clawed their way up from the bottom, and never forget where they came from- can never forget, from the way others treat them. Theft is subversive; there's a reason we won't let go of Robin Hood, but even more self-motivated thieves often have something to say about the unfairness of wealth distribution. Stories about thieves almost always have something to say about the relationship between the wealthy and the poor.

So, yeah, I was really fucking annoyed at the reveal that Eugenides was actually the Queen's cousin. That pretending to be from a lower class background was so insufferable to him; that of course he's only so educated and knowledgeable because he's a noblemen, that it was so hard for him to pretend to be stupid and crass like a peasant. That the reason he was so pissed about being disrespected by his captors wasn't because they beat him and imprisoned him and insulted him constantly, that they treated him as less than human because he was poor and a criminal, a tool for their own use and disposal- but because he was one of them, and it injured his pride- his noble pride, not his human pride- to be treated like that. Like he wasn't one of them, and deserving of their respect.

Fuck, I hate it so much. It immediately took away my favorite parts of the book- the tension between Gen and the magus's companions, the weight of the magus having been a commoner once, the way Gen constantly stuck by himself and refused to just accept his shitty treatment- the way every monarch treated him as a means to an end. I thought there would be more tension in Gen having conflicted feelings of resentment and camraderie with the magus- I thought it would pay off with either some of them acting in his interest for once, and/or some of them rejecting their freindship and leaning back into that class difference between them.

I'm not opposed to Gen having been working for the mountain kingdom the whole time! But there are so many other ways to do that- I was suspecting that someone was holding his family hostage in some way. It's easy to imagine a story where Gen is a lower-class thief, who was also being used by his own country's royalty.

But, making Eugenides a nobleman is a subversion of the classic trope- which means it's clever and interesting. Uugh. It just exhausted me, and- disappointed me. I loved so much of this book, and it had been a while since I'd read a good low-fantasy story about thieves. It was suspenseful, with rich descriptions, and interesting character dynamics. I thought I was getting something like Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge, or The Goblin Wood by Hillary Bell- not necessarily stories about thieves, but stories about the underestimated and undervalued, peasant con artists and hedgewitches. But with more of the tension and bite of your average dnd rogue getting up to stupid shit (my go-to class since I was a kid).

I totally understand why people love this book. There is a lot I really admire within it. But man, I don't think I can get over how much that final twist- not just rejected my original interpretation of the story. That's fine, plenty of good science fiction or horror does that. But that it specifically rejects the character and story type of the lower class thief. The very name of the series, The Queen's Thief, had me expecting a story about that seeming contradiction; about the power imbalance, and a constant game of cunning, of maintaining autonomy despite being bound to a royal power. And I expect there will be some of that, in the later books; it just loses a lot of its appeal, when it turns out Gen himself is a nobleman, who was doing a favor for his cousin, the queen.

I liked that the book ended with more insight into the mountainous kingdom, and Gen's feeling of belonging and pride to a cultural group everyone else had been deriding- but that didn't have to be accomplished by him being related to the nobility of that country. None of this had to be accomplished through Gen being a nobleman; it just felt like a 'gotcha' subversion, taking away, rather than adding more.

[neoxghoul]

sleepy anon here!! here's a mini write-up on melanie and timothy's synastry. i'm still a beginner but i just write about what jumped out to me!

melanie 04/28/1995 rising - scorpio sun - taurus (VI) moon - taurus (VI) mercury - taurus (VII) venus - aries (V) mars - leo (IX) jupiter - sagittarius (I) saturn - pisces (IV) uranus - aquarius (III) neptune - capricorn (III) pluto - scorpio (I)

timothy 08/17/1992 rising - unknown, idk birth time sun - leo moon - aries mercury - leo venus - virgo mars - gemini jupiter - virgo saturn - aquarius uranus - capricorn neptune - capricorn pluto - scorio

so right off the bat, melanie's sun challenges timothy's mercury, AND timothy's sun challenges melanie's mercury! there's tension on both sides and because of this fundamental difference in communication styles, it's no wonder a relationship didn't work out between them. melanie's mars also challenges timothy's pluto, as they both strive for independence from each other, mel's mars actively and tim's pluto passively. (i'm sensing mel wanting to end the friendship, while tim just wanted out from under mel's shadow)

mel's rising sign challenging tim's saturn also doesn't help because saturn grows resentful of the rising sign's goals, leading to even further conflict. mel's sun also challenges tim's saturn, mel could have even seen tim as someone stuck in their past, a vision of someone mel did not want to be. combined with the communication issues, i think it's no wonder their relationship fell apart.

however, i think if career hadn't come into play, they could have had a very stimulating friendship swapping ideas off each other, since mel's rising sign complements tim's uranus and neptune very well. i think ego just got in the way the closer they got to each other.

that being said, on their natal charts in general, melanie is extremely stubborn but extremely driven, with a good sense of know what needs to be done in order to get somewhere along with a lot of trust in the process. timothy however is held back by her aries and leo placements because while she also wants to make a name for herself, the waiting and building a steady foundation is not something that comes easy to her at all. they're just fundamentally incompatible as people.

Omg sleepy anon!🥺💗💗

This must of taken a lot of work thank you so much for sharing it’s really interesting! 🤍

[nimble-stuff]

Make an Example of Them | Umbra, Part I - Kai Mysterious assailants hold the ninja prisoner. Kai becomes the example.

FANDOM: Ninjago Also on AO3

@badthingshappenbingo

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What was the cliché? ‘It should’ve been a simple mission?’

Kai couldn’t count the number of times they’d gone on a ‘simple mission’ and had it turned into a complicated one. He couldn’t count the number of enemies they’d faced, the godlike beings they’d tangled with, the supernatural shenanigans that had come their way. But for the first time, he started to consider that maybe the ones who would kill him were ordinary humans.

He didn’t know if it was a cult or LARPers, though it very easily could’ve been both. LARPers so good that they easily emulated the skills of any well-trained ninja, clad in black, invisible except for when the light hit them just so. Even the smallest shadow seemed large enough to conceal them, and that had been the crux of the issue when they’d gotten caught. Kai could count the number of ways they might’ve been able to defeat them. Maybe if they’d had forewarning, and maybe if they’d been altogether at once. But instead, the LARPers had taken them down one-by-one. Lloyd first, because he was the heart of their team. Cole next, because he was the strongest. Then Nya, Zane, and Jay. Kai had been last. Fumbling in the dark.

He hadn’t even known that there was trouble until he’d gotten grabbed from behind and dragged into the shadows.

He was thinking about all the ways Master Wu was going to lecture them as he was dragged through what could only be described as a dungeon. The LARPers hadn’t even given him the choice to walk. He was dragged by his ankle, passing underneath scant lights overhead. His captors were only visible when they passed underneath them, and then they disappeared. Like light switches turning on and off.

“Y’know, I got a hot date starting pretty soon,” Kai said loudly. “You better not make me miss it.”

The LARPers didn’t answer him. They hauled him to a cell door and dragged him in.

“Kai!” Nya’s voice cried out.

Kai didn’t get a chance to answer when a shackle clamped around his ankle and all the warmth inside of him suddenly drained out like someone dumping icy water on a campfire. The chill ran all the way up his spine and settled in the base of his skull, throwing him off-centre.

“Ah, the ol’ ‘Chain the Ninja Up With Vengestone’ trick,” said Kai. “Y’know who uses that? Ninjas who didn’t get hugged enough by their mothers.”

One of the LARPers kicked him in the side. It stung, but mostly it just kicked out the strained laugh stuck in his throat.

And just like that, the LARPers were gone, and the chill in the room was more pronounced. Kai sat up, rubbing his now-bruised side. The room was something out of a medieval torture dungeon. The walls were made of chiselled black stone, and the rough, rocky flooring was uncomfortable to sit on. Cole, Lloyd, Jay, and Nya were chained up along the far wall, side-by-side. Their hands were free, but that was fundamentally useless when vengestone was involved. Kai was chained up to a wall further from them, closer to the door.

He resented the distance almost at once. Lloyd was unconscious.

His eyes had yet to adjust to the darkness, but he would recognize the smattering of blood on his face anywhere. Cole had him cradled in his lap. Jay and Nya were held back by their own chains. Instead, they wore their worry plain on their face. He hadn’t seen Nya look as tense as she did in that moment in a long time.

“What happened to Lloyd?” Kai asked.

“What do you think happened?” Jay snapped back. “I said to watch your backs, but no! No one ever listens to me.”

“I was watching my back,” said Cole. “It was my front that they attacked.”

“That’s no better!”

“Guys, will you stop already?” Nya barked. “How’s Lloyd doing?”

Cole pressed two fingers to his neck. “His pulse is steady. He’s clammy, though. It’s fucking freezing in here.”

Kai didn’t even think twice. He shucked off his gi and threw it to Cole. He was wearing only a black tank top underneath.

“What are you doing?” Cole asked.

“Relax, I’m hot-blooded,” said Kai, “and you need to keep him warm. He’s probably in shock.”

“Not with that vengestone you aren’t.”

“Uh, half of Lloyd’s brain is hanging outside his head. I think that takes precedence.”

Jay made a gagging sound. “Don’t word it like that!”

“What? I can practically see the jiggly pink parts.”

Jay gagged again.

“It’s just a fractured skull,” said Cole. “Lloyd’s gonna be fine.”

“Where’s Zane?” Kai asked.

“Not sure,” Nya said. There was a subtle wobble in her face, undetectable to the others, but deafening to Kai. “They took him somewhere else.”

‘Who’s ‘they?��”

“I don’t know, Kai! I didn’t have time to play twenty questions in between them dribbling Lloyd’s head against the ground!”

Kai’s gaze rested on Lloyd as Cole dabbed away at the blood with the gi. Well. It was up to him.

He pulled himself up and yanked on his chain. Even fully extended, it wasn’t long enough to reach Lloyd and the others on the far wall. However, it was just barely long enough to reach the door.

It was a design flaw, for sure, but one he wasn’t going to complain about. The window was small and barred, and enough for him to stick his face right up against it.

The hallway outside was almost in complete darkness, and he saw no one there.

“HEY!” Kai shouted. “HELLO? Get your asses over here! I need to talk to the guy in charge! Or girl. Or somewhere in between. Um, HELLO?!”

“That’s not gonna work, Kai,” said Nya.

Kai ignored her and rattled the bars, but the hallway was silent.

The mass in his stomach felt dense with anxiety.

-

Kai made a nuisance of himself for hours, and when he got tired of yelling and screaming for someone to come, he settled for rattling the bars and just making a general racket. Meanwhile, Lloyd bled and bled and bled and did not wake up, and there was no sign of Zane anywhere.

In between Kai going to the door and shouting for someone to come pay attention to them already, they speculated on who their captors were.

“So, ninja wearing black, who are not serpentine, ghosts, pirates, or jaywalkers,” said Kai, listing off the possibilities on his finger.

“Of course they’re not me,” said Jay. “Do I look like I can clone myself?”

“No, I mean they’re jaywalkers.”

“No, they’re NOT!”

“Haven’t you ever heard the term ‘jaywalker’ before?”

“Yeah, it’s my name!”

“A jaywalker is someone who crosses the street at any place outside of a crosswalk,” Cole said.

“I don’t do that!” Jay protested. “I follow traffic laws!”

“Jay, your stupid is showing.”

“I’ll show you stupid!”

“The point is, that we don’t have the slightest idea who these guys are,” said Nya. “Does that sum it up?”

“Pretty much,” said Cole. “Didn’t recognize the emblem on their gi, but they all have the same one, so I’m guessing they’re part of the same clan or organization or whatever.”

“I hope Master Wu finds us soon so we can ask him,” said Nya.

A metallic click of the lock caused Kai to startle back from the door.

Like ghosts, three of strange ninja entered, their footsteps completely silent. They scanned them all, one-at-a-time.

One pointed at Kai.

“HA!” Kai said, grinning at Nya. “They picked me and not you!”

“I don’t think that’s a good thing, Kai,” said Nya.

“Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out with these guys. You guys just hang out.”

“You think we have a choice?” Cole said.

“Kai, what are you doing?” Nya snapped. “This isn’t funny!”

“You’re right, it’s not. Don’t worry about it. I’ll sort it all out with the big boss.”

“KAI!”

The cell door slammed behind them, but he heard Nya calling for him all the way to the end of the hall.

Kai scanned his two assailants, and wiggled his eyebrows at the girl. He was calculating the moves he’d need to take to incapacitate both of them at the same time. “So…am I getting dinner and a show?”

“Do not resist, or your fellow ninja die,” she said.

“Wow. Dramatic.”

There was barely any time to discuss anything when he was shoved into another room, more open than the cell, and much colder.

Kai realized why it was colder. Zane was restrained on a table.

“Hey, Zane!” Kai said. “How’s it going?”

“It could be going better,” said Zane.

“Are these friends of yours?”

“…I do not know them.”

“Right, right. Any idea who they are? They’re the strong, silent type.”

“I do not.”

“Can’t you do a—”

“Kai!”

THWACK.

The blow hit Kai in the back of his neck and he went down hard.

He didn’t know how long he lay on the cold ground. He felt frozen. The hair up and down his arms stood on end, and Kai realized he was panting heavily into the earth, and it was the only noise he could hear. The pain in his neck was tremendous. He wondered if he’d broken it, so he curled his toes and fingers to make sure he could still move them.

Kai forgot everything. Why he was here. That he was the Red Ninja. There was only profound pain rippling up and down his spine.

“Kai. Do not move. You are injured.”

It was Zane’s voice. It had been a long time since Kai had sound him as afraid as he did.

There was little risk of Kai moving. He couldn’t. He could only lie there, and wonder how he’d ended up there.

He pried open an eye. There was blood dripping down his forehead and into his eye from an injury he couldn’t remember getting, and a set of feet by his head.

“Tell us the codes,” said the owner of the feet. “Or he’s the example.”

Kai looked up, his vision fuzzy. Zane was lying on a table, but he couldn’t remember how he’d come to lie there.

“…I cannot help you,” said Zane.

“You possess the means to access the Ninjago City Police database. Give us the codes.”

“Why do you wish to possess them?”

“Information. Will you comply?”

“That information is sensitive. You could potentially use it to harm others.”

“Potentially. Yet there are five other ninja aside from yourself here. Five ninja that we can set an example with.”

Kai heard the words, he was wearing them, they were going into his head, but he couldn’t understand them despite his best efforts. The best he could do was to try to tell Zane he was okay.

“Zane,” Kai droned out. Zane looked at him with a haunted stare.

“…I…cannot,” said Zane. “Torture me if you must, but leave him alone.”

“This is not a negotiation,” Kai’s attacker replied.

“Wait, no! I will tell you.”

“You had your chance. Now you learn the consequences.”

------

Down the hall, Nya leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, trying to think calm thoughts. Kai was strong. Stronger than all of them combined. He was going to be fine, and soon, Master Wu would show up and get them out of their problems.

She felt so certain that he was going to swoop in, that when Kai screamed, Nya almost screamed herself. Her hands flew over her ears, and she looked around at the others, and they all looked, horrified, back at her and at each other and at the door like Kai’s face would show up in the window to say ‘Psych! Got you all!’

Kai had never screamed like that before.

It was one, long terrible scream. And then it was quiet.

A ripping sensation tore apart Nya’s chest. She fumbled for Jay’s hand and crushed his fingers. Jay held back, large eyes terrified and shining in the darkness, and she hoped against hope that Kai had stopped screaming because he’d passed out, and not because he was no longer alive.

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: hello! so, for the longest while, i was convinced that i was an infp. but, very recently, i realised that the struggles that i was going through, the problems that were coming up repeatedly, seemed to be more indicative of ne-te loop. i didn't actually get very far with the function development guide once I'd determined myself to be an infp btw. life kinda got in the way.

anyway, this realisation prompted me to delve back into your type theory guide. for the past week or so, I've been going through it in detail with a clear mind, considering every single type as a possibility and rejecting them one by one according to the evidence I'm typing up. I'm still about midway through the inf functions in the proper procedure that I'm following, but i've skimmed that entire post and others, because there's a couple of questions that's been bugging me throughout.

I've more or less narrowed myself down to an xnfp, although like i said, I'm still open to considering other types as well. what I'm mostly stuck with is the following:

1. how is an enfp's ne-te loop going to look in contrast to an infp's te grip?

2. how is an infp's fi-si loop going to look in contrast to an enfp's si grip?

i understand that, of course, every person is a unique example of their type. but I've been stuck with these two points, since i couldn't find anything on your blog related to how a specific tert function's loop looks in tandem with the type's corresponding dom function. like, i know what te-loop looks like, but i don't know how it would work with ne dom. i suspect where i might have gone wrong with typing myself (if i was mistaken, like i said, i am still going through the theory guide intensively), was misidentifying si grip as fi-si loop.

if you do have any past posts that I've missed, I'd appreciate you redirecting me to them. and i hope my doubt is clear, and that you'll be able to help me out. thank you!

-----------------------

As far as I can tell, there are several issues to address:

1) Overemphasis on how functions "look": This usually means you're too focused on outward behavior (superficial) and not really understanding how functions operate inside the mind (fundamentals). Until you are able to draw a proper distinction between cognition and behavior (which is the first major principle that I teach in the Function Theory guide), your focus will likely be misplaced on the what and then missing the why. Asking "what does my Te look like?" won't get you as far as asking "WHY do I use Te in this way?" Basically, you're not going deep enough.

2) Not accounting for Function Dynamics: Newbies often get stuck on viewing functions in isolation, which exacerbates problem #1 above. Once your learning becomes more advanced, you'll understand that functions are dynamic and intertwined. For instance, tertiary loop and inferior grip are very different because the function interactions that produce them are very different:

- Tertiary loop arises due to a unique relationship to i) dominant dysfunction, specifically dominant immaturity, and ii) auxiliary underdevelopment, specifically auxiliary resistance. Thus, evidence of tertiary loop must also include evidence of those two issues, which I have already included in the guide under the dominant and auxiliary function sections. These three parts must fit together properly.

- Inferior grip arises due to dominant dysfunction, specifically dominant extremes that create a troubling imbalance. One reason people find themselves in dominant extremes is because they're trying to force the function to work in unsuitable ways/situations, which causes escalating problems with stress, to the point of not being able to cope and adapt well. Thus, evidence of inferior grip must include i) evidence of dominant extremes, and ii) eventual loss of healthy dominant functioning, information which is already included in the inferior function section of the guide.

3) Not accounting for Type Dynamics: Type dynamics refers to the theory of the functional stack, of how the whole is more than just the sum of its parts. Each of the four functional stack positions serves a unique and specific purpose in your psychology with regard to what the ego needs and wants, which is briefly explained in the beginning of each stack position section, as well as the type dynamics section of the Type Dev guide.

For example, the proper purpose of the tertiary function is to complement and temper the auxiliary function. However, tertiary loop means that this healthy dynamic is altered and the tertiary function is being misused for a different and more nefarious purpose of propping up a failing dominant function.

This goes back to point #1 above of not grasping the "WHY" - what is the purpose of each function in the mind? It's very important to ask yourself WHY you are using the function in that particular way, in relation to the other functions. To what end or to what purpose is the behavior meant to serve?

.

It looks like all the information you need is already included in the study guides, so perhaps you have only been picking out some superficial points about the "look" of functions and ignoring the more important theoretical concepts that would help you understand WHY functions look a particular way. The problem with not reading the guide all the way through to full understanding before you start doing the hard work of analyzing yourself is that you won't see the bigger picture of how all the parts are meant to fit together.

Psychology is complicated, so function theory isn't exactly easy to learn. There are many levels of comprehension and you're still at the beginner level. It's certainly not a crime to be a beginner, since we all have to start somewhere. However, don't sabotage yourself with poor learning methods such as disorderly/unfocused reading, taking shortcuts, or thinking that the "gist" equals complete knowledge - these are common learning obstacles for NPs.

[eruhamster]

I think what people miss about Berserk when they complain about stuff that tends to not make sense, like claiming the sexual violence is all for shock value and how it's misogynistic, is like... For all its themes, Berserk is a hopeful manga.

It revolves around three characters who are all victims of sexual violence. Guts was raped as a child. Casca was saved from rape from a man she then worshipped, and that man later raped her in front of the person she loved. Griffith as a child prostituted himself out for money for his army.

This sexual violence is intrinsic to their characters. They aren't shock value and it isn't just shrugged off as things someone did to them, but events they went through that fundamentally shape their characters. Guts has trust issues and has a perpetual urge to run away, Casca became catatonic, Griffith runs from his feelings and developed a belief that sex violence = power that caused him to enact that onto others, including Casca.

And this entire manga is how they handle these problems. Guts was at his best when he was in Griffith's army because he had a support network that helped him move on from what happened. The pain was still there and the urge to run still existed, but it made his fear of touch go away. Guts only got worse and worse and was on the edge of getting himself killed until he faced his problems head on. It is said very blatantly in the story that you must "face your sorrows" with the people irreplaceable to you. He was told to not just fridge Casca and run off. And he takes that to heart, he takes Casca with him, and when that is still too much for him to bear, he opens up his heart and starts to develop a support network. That support network help him and helped Casca. Casca is no longer catatonic (even now she only seems stuck in a dream loop of sorts; a cage she's trying to escape from to get back to Guts because she KNOWS he needs her), but the things she went through still heavily affected her. She couldn't look Guts in the eye, but it was getting better.

Griffith refused to live in sorrow with everyone. He is the enemy. He decided no one in his life mattered but him, and didn't just sacrifice others, but also has been perpetuating a cycle of self-harm of digging himself a deeper and deeper hole rather than just try to admit his feelings and improve.

And these themes are CONSTANT. The two girls who dream of the fairies taking them away from their abusive families. The prostitutes who took care of Casca, specifically the girl with syphilis and her boyfriend who both end up hurting each other. Farneese and her brother, who love each other and take care of each other and help each other through all their bad tendencies, Rickert and this girl he's adopted as a sister, who insists comes with him rather than be left alone. And so on, and so on - the foil to Casca and Guts even exists in Danaan and the Skull Knight, where they are good people, but Skull Knight refuses to face sorrow with Danaan even now, holding onto her death when she was very much alive and smiling right in front of him, albeit not the exact same thing she was before.

It makes me tear up to think about and it's a story that can only be told by showing just how bad things can be that they permanently change your mannerisms. But no one talks about that part. The true meaning that Berserk is trying to tell.

Terrible things happened to you, but you aren't broken. You can't deal with it alone, and it can cause you to hurt other people. But if you try, you can go down the road to recovery with those you love who are hurting, too. You can lick your wounds and become better, together.

[shallowseeker]

I think it was you had this meta about how dean as when he's a leader has to be like a doctor that does surgery on his own family. This image stuck with me! I looked but tumblr won't let me find it. Was this yours? Do you know it off the top of your head?

I think you're talking about this? TFW are fascinating disaster parents and I dig it. There's a snippet at the end that compares Dean to a doctor operating on family.

///////

SNIPPET:

Dean craves safety and being protected, but that’s somewhat incompatible with protecting everyone

Dean never got to be valued and protected growing up, so he secretly craves that. But Sam is correct in his psycho-analysis. Dean’s neurosis is wanting to protect everyone, and this is often fundamentally, violently incompatible with letting your family fight alongside you.

All things considered, Dean rarely resorts to going lone wolf, like with the Mark of Cain. Despite his discomfort, he tries to marshal everyone under one roof, and that often results in a degree of my-way-or-the-highway type rigidity as a means of neurotically trying to keep everyone safe.

In fact, Cas often avoids this dilemma altogether by going lone wolf. (They all do this on occasion, but Cas's background as a soldier is especially tired to this. Mary, as a child soldier, has this issue, too. Jack has the same issue in AU earth when he tries to run away to confront Michael on his own.)

................ When the fights get too BIG (as they often do in Supernatural), Dean cannot ensure the safety of his loved ones, and he freaks the fuck out. When Dean can neither protect nor stop family/comrades from going into danger, you get these coping mechanisms:

Benching the player: “Wait, you might get hurt, so I’m gonna say that I don’t trust you to be in that fight at all so maybe you won't!" Sometimes, this need to kick people to the bench comes out as a barb: “You’re an incompetent baby who does stupid things. Baby in a trenchcoat. You’re an idiot. To Jack: You’re 98 pounds soaking wet.” etc etc.

Fatalism: “I’m powerless / this whole fight is meaningless / there’s nothing we can do / we have no choice.” All members of TFW slip into this in different ways. Giving up is a natural part of SPN, something that each family member goes through depending on the psychological wound of the moment.

Denial: Other times, Dean downplays the danger, which can result in meanness and occasionally a lack of support/neglect.

With regards to Cas, we see an even more colorful option deployed and one of my all-time favorites: goading him into being stronger. It's a barbed version of, “You can do it, Cas!”

SAM: Tell me again why you don’t just grab Adam and shazam the Hell out of there. CAS: Because there are at least five angels in there. DEAN: So? You’re fast. CAS: They’re faster. (CAS takes off his tie and wraps it around his palm. Dean looks on worriedly. ///Aside: Hilariously, two seconds later Dean is like WAIT YOU'RE GONNA TAKE ON FIVE ANGELS? :((((( )

Cas doesn't fit in his pre-conceived notions of anything

In early days, Dean is incredibly spun out and confused by Cas, who he wants to be protected by and protect. In the beginning, in season 4, he’s still wanting to think of Cas as invincible.

Post-Cas’s first death, Dean tries to pin him down as brother, and at times he even infantilizes Cas as he evolves into needing to protect him. 

But bottom line, he just can’t make Cas FIT. He’s a comrade, but there are extra layers to their relationship that get confusing real fast. We get these Dean coping mechanisms in seasons 5-6 alone!

(A) Goad him into being more powerful and better so he’s safe

(B) insult him to underscore that he’s in danger and maybe shouldn’t be fighting at all

© go full denial and pretend the situation isn’t that serious blah-blah Raphael

I think in season 8, Dean figures out what those extra layers are, and in season 9, they deal with rejecting each other by accident, and in season 10, they’re respectively dealing with their past traumas and baggage. Then, in seasons 11-12, they’re grappling with the whole embarrassing and terrifying fiasco of wanting to commit to each other.

But to my point about cosmic family members, there’s this simmering tension concerning the danger of celestial power running throughout. A feeling of:

“Dude you’re kinda scary and I instinctually know this because I’m a seasoned hunter. But I’m gonna keep ignoring that gut instinct because reasons.”

And confusingly, there’s also this feeling:

“I can’t really protect myself from you, since you’re stronger than me. And I’m not strong enough to protect you from your enemies… or stop you from leaving.

See this quote from season 8:

CAS: See, it wasn’t that I was weak. I was stronger than you. I pulled away. Nothing you could have done would have saved me, because I didn’t want to be saved. DEAN (distraught): What the Hell are you talking about?

Dean was SO upset that Cas let go. That he didn’t even try. (Dean and Cas often give up, but they become unhinged if the other partner gives up.) For someone like Dean, whose instinct is to squirrel away his family in a protective underground bunker? That’s a tension that feels devastating.

///

As a main character/battle commander, Dean knows that tactically, Jack and Cas will take on big, scary responsibilities by virtue of being, as season 15’s Belphegor so eloquently puts it, “the muscle.”

…and this is in direct conflict with Dean’s baseline need to protect everyone.

He doesn’t want to gamble with them at all. (See season 12's "We gambled with Cas, and now Amara's got him!") He wants to say, “you’re more than a weapon,” (13x14 Good Intentions script) and Cas wants to tell him, “in times of peace, I can be.”

DEAN: Cas, you’re more than a weapon– CAS: In times of peace I can be, but if (war) is coming…

....

TFW and the burden of leading

This, at times, makes Dean a rigid, unhinged leader. That’s because he’s too often sending his own fam into battle. And who wouldn’t be unhinged about that? There’s a reason we don’t operate on our own family members in a medical setting, for example.

When Dean is a leader, he can be like a dog with rabies foaming at the mouth, backed into a corner. It’s the worst.

Sam, on the other hand, fares pretty well as a leader, because he values independence so highly, and that kinda works for him. (He’s pragmatic and he dissociates very effectively.)

[theradicalscrivener]

I am a really big fan of how you write shrinking stories (specifically when it comes to cock shrinking, but I also like when it involves the entire body).

And I was thinking about Wash from Canis Drainem.

The thing is, I cannot stop thinking about two possible scenarios.

1) Wash stopped shrinking when he was the exact same size as his cock was when he was full size. I think there is something very hot about being the same size as your cock, but even more so when you were proud about how big it was. And it's now your height. You can be a human cock, in a way, if you wanted to. It's a very hot idea to me, at least. And I wonder if you have ever written something like that? Or if Wash would have enjoyed his existence as a cock sized man.

2) Instead of shrinking and shrinking, Wash stops at what is small, but not out of the ordinary for humans. That is, he goes from 7 feet tall to something like 4'11. Undoubtedly small, but he would still be able to be independent. It also effectively changes the dynamics Wash has with the world, as he is shorter than most adults. And it would be interesting to me how his life would have been like if he stopped shrinking at that height.

I know it's a long ask to answer. And I contemplated asking two different asks, but since both are derived from the same story... I thought it was best to include both scenarios here.

But you are free to just write what you think about one of them, or none. No pressure.

Anyway. Thank you. And have a nice day. Hopefully your new ears have been working properly and comfortably.

Those are both very fun ideas, but they'd be fundamentally different stories.

That would have put Wash at about the 10 inch range. Which would have put him a bit bigger than Harvey's cock. Would have been interesting to see him having a bit of pride at being bigger than Harvey's cock despite being less than a foot tall. I feel like I'd have to have done something in the past in that size range because it's so much fun. I know that Devon is very close to his old cock size. (He was 8" hung and now he's a smidge over 7" tall). It's a fun scenario. Especially if the tiny guy is a bit cocky and or dominant in such a way that he likes to like manhandle the cocks that are nearly as large as he is. In wash's scenario, he'd probably really get into being that size. The biggest issues would be that he would be so large that he's easily visible and would not be easy to keep his new size a secret. So the main story would probably focus around them trying to decide if they wanted to try and keep his existence a secret or if Wash wanted to go public with being a ten inch stud. I remember there was a scene in that story when Wash got to be about the same size as Harvey's cock where Harvey pinned him to the floor beneath his dick and was basically grinding his cock against the guy. This was about the part where Wash really started to realize that he was enjoying being tiny so him getting stuck at that size would probably be a lot of him going back and forth since he's enjoying being small but doesn't want to admit it, and also, he's still large enough that he can almost interact with his old life if he chose to. Like, he can't play ball anymore, but he could try to reach out to his old teammates, but that most likely wouldn't go well for him.

There's a lot of fun to be had at that size as well, but it would be a very different story. It would more be like the shrinking was the prologue, and him learning to adjust to being kid-sized would be the major plot arc. Like, he couldn't wear any of his old clothes, and when he has to shop for more, he has to get like some loaners at first. He's used to being massive, and so having to borrow clothes from a little guy that he used to bully only to realize that these clothes are far too huge for him to wear, and then when he does find clothes that fit him, he realizes he has to shop in the kid's section. It's just a series of blows to his ego. Then he tries to go about his life. He's still beefy, but he's almost half his old height. He's like eye-level with his bro's belly buttons. Imagine him getting to the locker room and getting ready to gear up for practice, but all his former subordinates are now looming over him and teasing him like he had once teased them. Although... Wash is so hung, proportionally, that his cock would still be well over 6 inches. I'd imagine he'd still have some ammo he could use with that.

And yeah, the ears are working well for the most part. I've been slowly working out the bugs. Although, I have some kinda flu this week (not the rona fortunately) so my ear's are like sore and itchy and inflamed, so the little implants hurt a lot. orz

[kustas]

if you're still doing it top 5 relationships... can be romantic platonic family etc

I'll be assuming you mean among animanga characters!

whatever is going on between matrioshka and mister 5 protagonist of the manga that bears his name. a friend of mine who's better with words described them as simultaneously acting like old friends of several decades and like a couple on a honeymoon. they're clearly fond of each other yet by nature do not express it in ways that are socially normal, both being distant and rather asocial people in the middle of serious geopolitical bloody drama; but neither care about that and are fine just chilling and trust each other with infinite amounts of personal space. the concept of a normal (ish) human person in a mutual loving relationship with someone bearing a level of intelligence and perception that is so inhumanely high that their take on life is fundamentally unrelatable for other human beings is so so good. I don't have to wish them the best they got their happy ending fucking off in the moebius desert to raise a kid

custas and dagda 😢 cus describing their relationship is what got me to love both of them so much in the first place..."he's not my dad but he's family [...] He's a really great guy, he's too nice" vs dagda seeing him as his son because he taught him what he knew, but being surprised custas sees him as family regardless. very heartfelt and bittersweet. I do like found families and this one is a good example of a very loving one that does not fit in the mold of a nuclear family fandom is so obsessed about. they're both flawed people with a rocky relationship but who genuinely love each other so they don't mind those bumps in the road...

the kazukabes from dorohedoro. what did i just say about a human being and a greater form of consciousness being in love? but this time they're both retirement age and also huge freaks. the stage of romantic love where it's been so long it's mostly just commitment and lovingly held up routine that remain is my favorite but this is dorohedoro that we're talking about so they're batshit on top of it all. when he violently dies and she pulls out his dismembered hand to hold it to say she loves him? peak romance. when he talks about how she burns people in hell with fondness that freaks out his colleagues at the coffee break? peak romance. when he's all flustered bc she opened her back to hide him in her innards? peak r- you get it

it's hard to pick a favorite relationship in dungeon meshi because they're so well written, but i really like laios and farlyn's unspoken complicity in being siblings born to parents who did not give either a happy childhood; chilchuck immediately noticing and taking into his own disgruntled hands the teenage moody callousness of izutsumi and protecting her emotionally without overstepping her boundaries because goddamn that's a man who's raised four teenage daughters and knows what to do; kabru and rin being childhood friends who both survived similar traumatic events and grew up into an introverted stuck up discreet mess and a master of emotional manipulation with unmatched shrewdness for analyzing human behavior who yet is completely blind of how in love she is of him

the unique flavor of genuine love, codependency and mutual mental health issues ping-pong between black and white. white's little speech about their relationship defined as "i'm missing some screws but i got all the screws he needs" is one of my favorite scenes especially in the film. their relationship and its duality is a major focus of the story so i could go off for pages but it's interesting how one is mentally disabled yet very emotionally intelligent vs his brother being on the stupid side and so hellbent on protecting his brother it bends back into borderline ableism. every horror happens to them that my tragedy loving self can ram into walls about INCLUDING how their love for each other and dedication to a common goal that might doom them concludes the whole story. alexa play plaid - white's dream

[spookyrobbins]

I'm loving this discussion. And you have such a good grasp on Arizona. I have to say I struggle with understanding her post amputation. But I think I'm starting to get where you're coming from when you talk about the loss of control and why amputation hit Arizona so hard. But there are still two things I don't understand. First, WHY did Arizona believe her life was over because she lost her leg. I mean, how did she go from 'I'm getting a prosthetic to walk again' to 'my life is over'. And second, if it was about loss of control, wouldn't she do the opposite? Wouldn't she try to skip steps, go too fast, like for example want a prosthetic before her leg even healed properly, if she wanted to be in control of her life again?

hm okay i think i’ve got some answers

for your first question about arizona feeling like her life is over: in a way she’s right, her life as she knew it is completely over. nothing will ever be the same. she’ll always have to think about things differently there’s a hundred things that she can’t just do normally any more. and a huge part of that for arizona is surgery. her job requires long hours walking and standing and moving quickly. but most importantly is the standing. arizona needs to be able to stand and be solid and balanced in surgery. she has no idea if she can do that and that prospect is terrifying to her. and even if she has a prosthetic will she be able to do the things she used to? can she even still be a surgeon?

as for the second about arizona basically going numb: i kind of think of it as a fight flight or freeze response. arizona froze. she’s frozen. she desperately wants and needs to be in control but i don’t think she’s even got a concept of how to get that control back. logically, yes, it’s getting a prosthetic, it’s learning how to walk and live her life again. but i don’t think arizona was actually able to see that. like you know if you’re in the middle of a panic attack or something and you can’t even conceptualize a solution? that was basically arizonas life for a year straight.

arizonas stuck in almost a feedback loop of “my life is over” “i can’t fix anything” “im too broken” and it’s just on a loop for her and she can’t get her head above water. she’s gone super numb and kind of lost that sort of drive usually associated with her. she’s just lost. and she’s out of control bc she can’t control anything or even figure out how to get that control back.

arguably boswell was sort of right sort of wrong when she identified arizona’s control issue. it was partially that arizona was too tightly wound but arizona was feeling out of control and on some level, sleeping with boswell was about needing to be in control of herself again. idk the cheating is such a headache bc it’s really fundamentally ooc even when you layer in the miscarriage and the dark place arizona was in for a year straight. but it is about control and arizona desperately needing to be in control of something anything

[regallibellbright]

Sometimes I think about my ideal Batman story, in which the Joker is killed by some nameless random Gothamite in the middle of a scheme with no build-up whatsoever, no mystique, just some henchman who he's turning on just saying "fuck it" and shooting him or some hostage managing to get free and then hit him repeatedly with their own chair until he doesn't get back up. It's quick. No one stops them. They're all too shocked it's working to stop them, and at the end of the day, EVERYONE wants that clown gone. That's the first action sequence and it's done by the end of issue one, preferably even at the three-quarters mark. (As far as I can tell he is considered dead at the moment, but it was climactic and showy and while he presumably exploded we all know he'll be back and probably be revealed to have never died at all somehow, and I want him dying in the most anticlimactic way possible.)

The rest of the arc's just dealing with the fallout. We see his body at the coroner's and confirm it is disposed of (thoroughly and in secret, so there's nowhere for assholes to visit or necromancers to try and resurrect.) People across Gotham throw parties. Some people OUTSIDE Gotham throw parties. Batman is in the cave making sure literally every means of resurrection is NOT available to the Joker, thank you VERY much, because he gets to be JUST shy of fourth wall-aware and therefore recognizes this is never going to stick and he'll be back as soon as the next writer comes on. No alternate universe versions are able to come through. There is no DNA from which to clone him. It wasn't a body double, a Doombot, or an elaborate illusion. He has been 100% confirmed to be 100% dead like three times in this issue alone. No time traveling Jokers to account for. Everyone else thinks Bruce is overreacting but when the Joker does inevitably come back ideally Bruce does get a scene being utterly unsurprised because on some level he understands that he is stuck with this fucking clown forever no matter what he does.

We get a mention that the random Gothamite IS put on trial for murder but it's unanimously ruled self-defense. This is the one circumstance where I'm willing to give this Gothamite a name. It is important to me they never appear again after this. They are here to kill the Joker and then recede back into the crowd.

Because the point is that the Joker dies like a fucking loser, because he's not some unkillable mastermind force of chaos, he's just a clown whose biggest win was killing a twelve-year-old, a feat he only got away with at the time because of an incredibly convoluted and even MORE incredibly racist plot point about him somehow getting named an Iranian ambassador. (No, seriously. That happened. It is every bit as terrible as you're thinking. There's a reason why adaptations cut it, but it's TELLING that the writers felt the need to come up with this contrived reason for why the Joker could kill Robin and live to tell the tale so they wouldn't have to utterly BREAK Batman as a character whether he breaks the rule or not.) Jason Todd is alive again. His second biggest win was shooting someone I'm pretty sure he didn't know was a superheroine, which was entirely incidental to his desire to torture her father which was ITSELF incidental to his desire to prove a point to Batman. And I have the DEEPLY mixed feelings of a disabled person who thinks Barbara Gordon's treatment in TKJ and especially editorial's approach to it was atrocious but who still deeply appreciates Oracle as a wheelchair user and such a nontraditional superhero, but ultimately: Yeah that's no longer a win for him, either.

So the Joker dies, it's made entirely clear that he is dead, he dies in a way that underlines how fundamentally pathetic he is and how fundamentally RIDICULOUS it is no one in Gotham did it before that point (because if you're going to die either way, why not go down swinging?), everyone celebrates, eventually even Batman's hypervigilance is appeased enough to eat some cake, and we get a good few years without that fucking clown everywhere until he inevitably returns. Hopefully by that point, everyone in reality considers how absolutely BORED they are of the Joker as some Ultimate Evil Super Successful Murder Clown of Doom, and when he does come back it's a version who's much more funny than scary.

Yes, my favorite episode of BTAS is Joker's Favor, but I don't think that changes the fact that the clown is overplayed and that having villains around who routinely kill is just narratively and objectively a bad choice to put with a character who you're defining by "does not kill". Like, you as the writer are weakening your own central thesis and then you have to come up with elaborate justifications why Batman Not Killing is right (because these comics are nominally still being sold to children, and also editorial will never let you ACTUALLY do it) when you could just solve the problem by not having the villains Batman fights routinely kill people. Knock it off. Yeah it's unrealistic but superheroes are inherently unrealistic, and yes, I'm including Batman, do you KNOW how much any given injury writers consider routine ACTUALLY fucks you up long-term?

Don't even get me started on Victor Zsasz.

Anyway I saw DC's doing a Joker Year One next year and just wanted to get that off my chest. Carry on.

[somehowmags]

also honestly, girl at an all boys school has been such a common trope for YEARS like. i know not everyone is insane like i was and went through a gacha phase but the fandom was literally 1/5 built off a girl mc in an all boys school trope. obviously we were all kids when we made it so gacha mvs weren't the best for the portrayal of nuanced, gendered issues or specifically, proper handling of misogyny for the matter but like. the theme itself definitely not weird as bad as people think. yuu literally got their asscheeks yoinked to an alternate world them being a girl is the least of their concerns. if any thing, it can be more interesting to see how characters differently interact with yuu and come to build positive, intimate and meaningful relationships with her especially as guys who have had limited interactions with girls, so both yuu and the characters learn from each other putting aside the main character development in the storyline. adding onto the feeling of the divide yuu would feel at the beginning as someone who's both from another world and of another gender in nrc. these girl in an all boys school plots often end up as a harem story where the mcs are just a blank slate in the character drama. and i hate it cause most of the times it ends up perpetuating the notion that guys can never be friends with girls due to romantic or sexual interest electing the girls as either someone to possess in a relationship or someone not suited to them at all, just generally being misogynistic pricks, or actually being a decent friend to a girl is humiliating and a sign of inferiority. or girls just aren't as interesting. my best friend is the lesbian to my gay twink and building relationships with people fundamentally different than you can be so, so beautiful and fulfilling. i love seeing girls and guys just being HOMIES!!! seeing fem yuu's learn and stumble and grow with the nrc and just. overall people drawing and writing their yuu's with their favorite character is like fuck, speak your truth man. to be honest i was mainly speaking about the inexperienced first years but just any character. malleus, lilia, vil, etc etc. let's go yuu nation

tdlr its a really intriguing dynamic and allows for a lot of possibilities a fan could think of. masc yuu's are great, gn yuu's are great, fem yuu's are great. some twsties need to LET OTHER twsties just enjoy their whimsical thoughts.

YES YES YES YES EXACTLY AGREEING WITH ALL OF THIS!!!! having a girl in an all boys school or a boy in an all girls school has been a trope for years, and sure sometimes it is used for uh. fanservice. but when it is properly explored it can be a really interesting trope!

i saw someone say once (before yuuka came out) that there shouldn't be an official fem yuu because then the studio would HAVE to canonize a yuu ship which is soooooo. firstly why would having a fem mc mean that you have to ship them with someone, and secondly what about the studio implies that they would ever do that, and thirdly what an ass backwards misogynistic take, and fourthly you have to understand that f/m and f/f ships are not lesser than m/m. please LKAHSDFLKASDHFLKH the lengths people go to to justify not liking fem yuus. i laugh but it sucks going in the twst tags sometimes because people are so mean its depressing.

nyeah i feel like fandom is a bit like. too romance focused. people can do whatever the hell they want forever ofc! i like shipping also! i am known to enjoy an reader insert fic! i buy romance novels and play otomes all the time ajksldfhlakshdfasldhf but it sucks when its all that there is yknow. i love pushing dolls faces together to make them kiss but sometimes i would also like to play something else.

i also wish there was less disdain towards different yuus. like man we're all stuck in disney anime boy hell can't you guys suffer with dignity like the rest of us instead of being mean. we should all hold hands and imagine our favorite characters together.