#but iirc it's longer than my other ones--And it has more words

[syllvane]

you can hear it in the silence- roy kent x reader

a/n: roy kent x tartt!reader. no pronouns specified iirc. content warnings for alcohol and growing up with a shitty father. ask to tag. yes this is 3.2k words no i dont want to talk about it

You’re outside the bar at your brothers birthday- the night is cool against your skin, a welcome relief from the crowded nosiness of the bar.

You loved Jamie, probably more than anything, and Keeley was always a sweetheart, but that didn’t change the fact that you weren’t AFC Richmond.

You don’t get the inside looks, the intricacies of everyone’s friendships with one another.

“Oi,” A gruff voice said from behind you and you nearly jumped out of your skin before whipping around and seeing none other than Roy Kent. “Did I scare you?”

“No, that’s how I react to everyone.” You deadpanned. “You’re Roy, right? Jamie talks about you a lot.”

He nodded.

“You his girlfriend?” He asked and your face scrunched up.

“Ew, fuck no. I’m his sibling.” You snorted and his lips turned upwards slightly.

“Right, he’s mentioned you. Usually calls you ‘Pip’.”

You cringed.

“Of course he does.” You said, shaking you head as you looked back towards the bar fondly. “Thank you for training him. It means a lot of him, more than he’ll admit.”

“He’s a good kid. Not bad company.” He said thoughtfully. “I’ll flat out deny it if you repeat it though.”

“Oi! I asked you to go find Pip, not chat them up!” Jamie said, walking out and looking between the two. “Is he boring you to death? He has a tendency to do that.”

“He thought I was your girlfriend.” You said, smile on your lips. Jamie groaned and put a hand on Roy’s shoulder.

“Ew,” He said, tone of voice the exact same as yours a moment before. “How did you not know that Pip’s my sister?”

“I know Pip is your sibling. You didn’t call them that.” Roy said, only slightly annoyed.

“Oh, whatever. Come back in, I missed you.” Jamie said to you.

“You know I’ve been gone maybe five minutes. I didn’t even expect you to notice I was gone.”

He looked at Roy incredulously, as if saying ‘can you believe that?’ before turning back towards you.

“Of course I noticed, now come on.” He started towards the bar and you rolled your eyes.

“It was nice formally meeting you, Roy.” You said, smiling slightly as you turned and walked with Jamie.

He smiled back- not that either of you could see- before following you both back into the bar.

The Richmond players cheered at Jamie’s reappearance- you laughed, turning to look at Roy, your smile warm and eyes curious, meeting his. Your eyes lingered until you tore them away, Keeley speaking to you.

“It’s no longer my birthday, so go on then.” Jamie said, looking at you as you both walked through the streets of Richmond.

“What are you talking about?” You asked and he scoffed slightly.

“It’s past midnight.”

“Not what I meant.”

“You like Roy.” He said and you groaned.

“I do not.

“Do too.”

“Do n- we aren’t doing this.”

Jamie pouted slightly, but didn’t argue.

“Y’know, obviously I don’t like the idea of you with anyone from Richmond, just because I’d learn more about you than I ever want to know-”

“Thank you for that, Jamie.”

“- but Roy is a good man. Better than most. You’d have my blessing.” He finished, taking a deep breathe and you smiled, stopping and hugging him.

“You’re very sweet, Jamie. I don’t even know Roy, though. Is he attractive? Yeah.”

“Ew.” Jamie commented, voice muffled from the hug.

“I’m ignoring that. But I don’t know him.”

Jamie pulled away, looking at you.

“You could.”

For a second, her heart thrummed with the possibility. You thought of the way his gaze fell on you- what would it be like to kiss him, to-

You simply smiled, not trusting your voice, and squeezed Jamie’s shoulder.

“You’re sweet, the best brother, y’know?”

“I do,” He said cheekily. “Nice to hear it though.”

You rolled your eyes and scoffed, willing yourself to enjoy the moment instead of thinking about Roy Kent,

Well, at least for a little bit.

When you arrive home to a dark, empty apartment, your mind wanders.

You hate it- hate that you keep thinking about him, hate that you don’t want to stop.

What if they dated and broke up? It would ruin Jamie and Roy’s friendship.

And even that assumes that Roy even noticed you in the first place. You were no model and he was gorgeous and-

“Fuck!” You cursed to the empty apartment, breaking the train of thought.

You were too tired for this, for thinking in circles about things that would never happen.

It’s not a week later when Jamie’s car won’t start and he asks you to pick him up from practice.

Hence your waiting in the Richmond parking lot, waiting for Jamie to hop in the car.

A knock on your window made you jump in your seat, only to look up and see one Roy Kent.

Ah, fuck.

You rolled your window down, looking at him.

“Fucking hell, you’ve got to stop that.” You said, heart still racing.

“And here I thought you reacted to everyone that way.” He said dryly and a small laugh escaped your lips.

“Only you, apparently.”

“Are you waiting for Jamie?” He asked, head cocked slightly.

“What? Oh. Yeah. Did practice run late?”

“He’s doing PR stuff. He’ll likely take a while.”

“Oh. Huh.” You did your best to keep your expression neutral.

“He didn’t tell you.” Roy said, realization dawning on his face.

“Yeah, he may have neglected to mention it.”

“Fuck. I was gonna… do you want a tour?” He asked, causing your brain to fully stop for a second.

“A tour?”

Roy blinked.

“Of the clubhouse.”

Out of instinct, maybe, you open your mouth to say that Higgins took you on a tour of the clubhouse one of the first times you were inside the clubhouse.

Then, you closed it and nodded.

“I would love one.”

More interesting than the clubhouse itself is the way Roy talks about it, the affection that lies in every word he says.

And then, he took you out onto the pitch, the one place Higgins didn’t cover.

“It feels much bigger when you’re actually on it.” You said softly, taking your eyes off Roy.

He looked at you, gaze uncharacteristically soft before forcing himself to look anywhere else.

“You wanna take a shot at the goal?” He asked and you whipped around to look at him.

“I don’t think I’m… am I even allowed?” You asked and Roy let out the smallest laugh, startling you.

“Sorry, I was just trying to picture your brother saying that. Yes, you’re allowed.” He said, passing a ball fo you that had been sitting by his feet.

You- to your great surprised- received the pass and then looked back at the pitch before shaking your head slightly.

“Jamie’s the one with all the football talent. I feel like I gotta work my way up to this.” You said and he grunted. “What does that mean?”

He shrugged.

“You’re selling yourself short.”

“You’re right. I’m actually the one with all the football talent.” You deadpanned. “I’m- hey!”

With a surprising swift move, Roy took off and stole the ball from you, walking casually towards the goal.

You followed him further onto the field until you were about twelve meters from the goal.

“Roy, what are we doing?”

“You are taking a penalty.”

“Are you going to be goalie?”

“Fuck no. I’m retired.”

You smiled, looked at him.

“You’re selling yourself short.” You said, trying to imitate his voice. He rolled his eyes.

“Penalties, it’s just you and the goalie.”

“There’s no goalie.”

Roy ignored this.

“You want to always look at the goalie when you’re shooting, to see which way they’re leaning towards.”

“Looks like this goalie is on vacation?” Someone- Jamie- said, emerging from the clubhouse. “Aren’t you supposed to be gone? Bingo or something, granddad?”

Roy grunted, staring daggers at Jamie.

“You had plans? I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“I wanted to. And it wasn’t bingo. It was yoga.” He said, the end of the sentence pointed towards Jamie.

Jamie held his hands up in defense and you smiled slightly.

“Thank you.” You said sincerely and Roy offered you a small nod before walking away.

Once he was out of earshot, Jamie looked over and started laughing slightly.

”What?” She asked. “You could have told me that you had a PR thing.”

“That’s not nearly as fun, is it?” He said, before smiling. “It’s all on your face, you know.”

“What?” You repeated and he looked at you, same strange smile on his lips.

“You like him. It’s written all over your face.”

“Jamie-”

“I know, I know. You don’t like him, or whatever.” He said with disbelief.

“Yeah,” You said. Or whatever. “Are you ready?”

“Mhm.” He said, walking back towards the parking lot.

When Roy Kent shows up at your ex’s mom’s house, you’re almost positive that you’re dreaming.

When he looks at you and says “Fucking hell”, you snap back to reality.

“Roy, this is Sam’s ex- the super sweet one I was telling you about.” She said before turning to you. “This is Roy. He has the mouth of a sailor, but he’s a good boy.”

There’s a look of panic on Roy’s face for a moment, fading completely as you outstretched your hand.

“It’s nice to meet you.” You smiled. “How do you know Tabitha?”

“We uh… we do yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” He admitted.

“And shows on Fridays.” Tabitha helpfully supplied before handing a glass of red to Roy.

Roy nodded slightly, taking a sip.

“Of course, can’t forget the shows.” Roy said with no particular emotion.

“Right. Why don’t you two grab a spot on the couch?” Janice and Gertie will be here in five- you know how they are.”

In the noisy living room, one of the older ladies in the room motioned for Roy to sit next to her, to which he happily obliged, looking at you as he sat down- an invitation.

You walked over cautiously before sitting next to him gingerly.

“Oh, Roy! Is this your-” The woman started.

“No, I’m Sam’s ex.” You said, saving yourself the embarrassment of Roy saying ‘fuck no.’

Curiosity turned to pity and the woman leaned over Roy, putting a hand on your knee.

You smiled, the pity still feeling better than whatever you were expecting from Roy.

“It was a year or two ago, ancient history really.” You said, half to Roy, half to a woman you didn’t know the name of.

Before you could speak again, Tabitha walked back into the living room, accompanied by two older women- presumably Janice and Gertie.

It takes an episode for you and Roy to get comfortable with each other’s presence- an episode for you to relax enough to the point where your leg brushed alongside his, another half episode for Roy to start catching you up on the plotlines you’ve missed.

When Tabitha pauses the telly and calls it a night, it feels like no time has passed at all and if you didn’t know better, you’d say that Roy almost looked… disappointed when your leg was no longer touching his.

“Did you drive here?” Roy asked and you shook your head. “Do you want company on the walk back?”

You smiled.

“I wouldn’t mind yours.”

He nodded, holding your eye contact before looking away and making for the door.

“Thank you Tabitha, always a pleasure.” He said gruffly.

“Always a pleasure,” She smiled. “Oh, dear?”

You turned and looked at Tabitha.

“Yes?”

“He’s a good one.” She said, voice quiet.

You turned to look out the doorway to see Roy.

“He is, isn’t he.”

Tabitha patted your shoulder affectionately and you turned back to look at her.

“Thank you.”

“Of course, dear.” She smiled, before you turned and walked back towards Roy.

“This is the last place I expected to see you.” You said and Roy shrugged.

“I told you I do yoga.”

“Yes, well, when you said yoga, I thought you meant with a bunch of other fit guys.”

“Oh fuck off.” He said, no actual malice in his voice, before he stopped walking completely. “You think I’m fit?”

You stopped, turning and looking at him, ready to tell him go fuck off.

Your voice catches in your throat at his raised eyebrows and the small smile in his face, and a smile of her own formed, features softening.

“I said what I said.”

“You shouldn’t stay stuff you don’t mean.”

“Who says I didn’t mean it?”

He let out a small grunt, a noise of disbelief, which would’ve offended you if you didn’t see the almost bashful expression in his face.

“We should continue walking.” He said, clearing his throat.

“Right.” You said, and the pair continued forwards. “Tabitha invited me to the get together next week, by the way, but I can always cancel if you don’t want me there.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know, it was your thing first. Just wanted to give you the option.”

“Fuck that, it’s… nice, having you there.” He said, voice full of indignation that you could believe for a second that your presence wasn’t wanted somewhere.

When you’re alone in your kitchen later, the feeling hits you like a brick.

It’s not your plan to go out drinking when your father reaches out to you for the first time in many, many years.

You know he’s in recovery, knows that Jamie has seen him, and none of that prepared you for the absolute vitriol you feel when you hear his voice.

The conversation lasts no more than a minute, your father gracefully taking a hint for the first time in his life.

You ignore the call from Jamie that comes a couple moments later and mindlessly drives to a bar near your apartment.

And you drink until anger turns into a full buzz in the background, which turns in hollowness.

Your phone rings- Jamie again. You looked at the photo of him that popped up. He couldn’t be more than three years old, crooked smile on his face, sitting in the grass next to a football.

Even as a kid, you tried your best to protect him from your dad. You’re still not sure how much you actually helped.

Your phone stopped ringing. You ordered another drink.

It’s not a half hour later when someone takes the seat next to you.

You glanced at them before going back to staring at your drink before doing a double take, because what the fuck is Roy Kent doing here?

“Jamie sent you.” You said, little emotion in your voice.

Roy looked at you and gave a single nod.

“He’s worried about you.”

“Okay. Well, if you’ve come here to say that I need to give my father a chance or some bullshit, you can leave.” You said, fully expecting him to stand up and walk out.

“What? Fuck no. I’m here because I care about you.”

“Oh,” You said, energy draining from your posture. “Oh.”

Silence sat in the middle of them for a couple of moments. You eyed the half-finished drink and was suddenly positive that you’d throw up if you took another sip.

All at once, it’s all too much. You, the entire bar, smells too much like your dad.

“Can we…”

“Are you okay?” He asked, standing up and you shook your head.

“I need to get out of here, I need to…”

“Okay, let’s go.” He said, throwing some notes on the bar top and guiding her to the exit.

The fresh air helps, but the smell of alcohol clings to you and it’s all too much, at least until Roy takes off his jacket and offers it to you.

You don’t put it on, just hold it against you and focus on the notes of his cologne instead of the scent of alcohol.

This and the sound of voice reassuring you that you’re okay is enough to ground you.

“I’m sorry. Fuck.” You said, voice breaking and eyes closed.

He pulled you into a hug.

“You have nothing to apologize about.” He told you. “Let me take you home.”

You pulled away from him, still sniffling, and nodded.

The ride home is silent.

You don’t have to ask him to come in- you simply give him a look and he follows.

“I’m going to shower.” You said and Roy nodded.

When you emerged, alcohol no longer clinging to your skin, you were surprised to see him standing in your kitchen, eyebrows scrunched together as he cooked.

“Thank you.”

He turned and looked at you, giving you a nod.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not.”

He held your gaze for a moment before turning back to the stove, pulling the pan off of the heat.

“How do you feel?” He asked, doing his best to disguise any concern in his voice.

“Better. I’m sorry. You probably had better plans than babysitting.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”

He set a plate of food in the counter for you and you took it, grabbing a fork from the utensils drawer and digging in.

You feel the need to apologize again, as if your mere existence is something worth apologizing for.

A bad habit leftover from when you were your father‘s kid.

You help him clean up despite his protests, and pretend not to notice his concern.

“I should go to sleep.” You said and he straightened up.

“Right, I’ll… go, then.” He turned away and you grabbed his wrist, your skin electric against his.

“Stay. I mean, you don’t have to, but-”

“Okay. I’ll stay.”

You want to kiss him, want to close the distance between the two of you. You don’t, remembering that you’re a bit of a mess right now, but it’s not for lack of wanting.

You let go of his wrist and gave him a small nod.

“I’ll take the couch. I don’t want you to fuck up your back because of me.”

“Now-”

“Roy, please. Let me do this one thing for you.”

He looked at you, narrowed eyebrows, before he sighed.

“This is fucking stupid.”

“You’re a pro-footballer, I won’t be responsible for breaking you.”

“Was,” He corrected you. “Was a pro-footballer.”

“You’re selling yourself short.” You said gently and his expression softened. “Please.”

Without further protest, he listened.

When you wake up, the embarrassment weighs on you almost as heavily as the hangover.

Almost.

On the coffee table next to you, there is a glass of water and some painkillers, which you gladly accept.

Roy is in the kitchen, disheveled and cooking breakfast.

“Twice in twenty four hours, I feel lucky.” You said, cringing as soon as the words left your mouth.

He looked at you, eyebrow raised and lips turned upwards.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” You smiled before the look faded into something softer. “Thank you for staying.”

He looked at you again, expression somewhere between adoration and frustration, because don’t you get it?

Of course he stayed. All you ever had to do was ask.

He gave you a simple nod instead.

“Roy?”

“Hm?”

You don’t say anything, but you don’t need to. It’s written all over your face and for the first time, Roy can see it:

He looked at you for a couple moments before turning his attention back to the stove.

“Me too,” He said quietly, offering you a plate.

You took it, fingers brushing against his, smile blossoming on your face.

“Yeah?” You asked and he rolled his eyes.

“Yeah.”

[u3pxx]

disco meshi au rambling below major spoilers for both disco elysium and dungeon meshi (only up until chapter 62)

BARKS anyways i was suddenly hit with a pang of "extremely normal about harry du bois" and thinking about the idea of harry being a former dungeon lord in this au

i'll copy-paste a bit of the rambling i did in tags (and clean them up) to catch you all up to speed

- ok so maybe harry + kim won't go dungeoneering on their own but maybe they were sent to investigate dangerous dungeons and sent to make sure those aren't threats anymore (kind of like the canaries) - maybe harry had become a dungeon master at some point and the part of him that was eaten was his memories. - GODD dungeon master harry is kind of giving me grief though. can you imagine what he would count as his perfect life. can you imagine when the illusion starts to fall apart and he's accepted that he will be consumed? but he doesn't get to die. that's his curse.

i have like several ideas on what things would be fun to explore in the au and one of those ideas is harry and kim being assigned to maintain the safety of a dungeon which just so happens to be: the dungeon that harry used to control.

(note: i do not remember that well what happens to a dungeon after the dungeon lord has been dethroned. iirc it does still stay there so OOF. imagine traversing to a dungeon and seeing things that should be familiar to you but you just cannot remember anything. it hurts when you look at it, but what did it mean to you?)

i just think that harry after being left, now an even more broken man than he ever was, being granted this false escape from his situation in the form of his deal with this demon. the kingdom he's built inside the dungeon, what if it was just a home. what if it was just a home, like any other home on the surface. surrounded by trees bearing apricots. what if it was a humble home for him, his wife, and their unborn children. what then huh orz

and then i thought: "hey now, didn't dolores have a line that LITERALLY had the words, "i will eat your mind"?" and then --

Dolores Dei: "... it was *a hundred million years ago*. I was someone else then -- filled to the brim with love for you. Hanging on your every word. Oh Harry, you were the *coolest*... But I am no longer that person. This..." She points to herself. "... has taken her place. It will devour you. Harry -- I will eat your mind."

COME ON. MAN. DO I EVEN HAVE TO DO ANYTHING HERE ORZ

thinking about. the demon manifesting as this monstrous amalgamation. if i think of a better animal than lamb that symbolizes what dolores dei represents then i'll change it but MAN.

anyways. thinking about this comic ryoko kui wrote and thinking about the dungeon as a metaphor for addiction. thinking about a demon that devours and feasts on a person's desires until there is nothing left of that person and thinking about the pale that slowly grows and expands and turns everything into nothing at all. MY BRAIN ISN'T WORKING ANYMORE SO I'M SORRY IF I CAN'T EXPRESS MY THOUGHTS MORE COHERENTLY. HELLO CAN ANYONE HEAR ME DFGDHJK

also, i think dora is an elf from a wealthy family in the au. just another layer of arghhhhgghgh to add above everything else. another reason why her family doesn't like harry is because he's from a short-lived race.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I do love my coworkers to be clear they are by and large great people who, despite being tragically cis about it, have no issue with my gender or my presentation.

It's just also funny to watch the occasional newer person/intern try to get a pronoun train going in the meeting and becomes instantly anxious when they stare dead at my clocky ass face during my intro and I just. Don't offer them pronouns. They gotta ask now. They didn't want to. They're so afraid to ask.

And it was that feeling the first time that reminded me of when I first started dating my wife. She told me about how at some point in their relationship, she gets every white person in her life to say the n-word in her presence. She described it as a litmus test. Not just about their resistance to saying it/how long it takes for that to erode, but for how they react while they're saying it and after. Iirc, she has found that resistance is actually less reliable than how the word finally comes through. For her, that reaction is valuable for her in measuring safety of people even if they are good at maintaining plausible deniability about their relationship with race as a construct.

For me, I think it's more about forcing them not to ask me to reassure them that they're still good people if they're confused by my gender. As long as I respond to the unvoiced anxiety, they never actually learn to take responsibility for it. And yeah, with normal anxiety that would be a lil bit of a dick move on my part, but in this case the anxiety specifically comes from "I'm afraid that I don't know how to treat you with respect" as a core conflict against "it is important to me that I am a good person and I believe a good person would treat you with respect." We all of us have to learn eventually how to wrestle with that feeling, on some axis/aspect of our selves. When my wife sat me down and explained that she understood that I didn't want to say it, but that she needed me to be able to say it in her presence so we could work through what showed up there together, I had to face down the fear of "this word means nothing but hate to me and I don't want to believe I could ever see it in relation to you, a person I care about." But I did. Of course I did. Growing up in a racist society means internalizing racist messages, and you can unlearn the ones you can accept being told about. But you can't unlearn jackshit that you can't even look in the eye.

So I said a word I'd never said in my life, and I realized, as I *think* my wife intended, that I shouldn't be afraid of the word. The word doesn't matter. It could just as easily be "taxonomy" and still mean what it means. Because it was the IDEAS being signaled by the words that mattered most, that should be fought and resisted and erased. And if I was too afraid to look at the word and understand what it really meant, I could never actually promise her that I would always work to see her whole humanity and love her for it. She couldn't tell me what words to say for that to be true because the words could say whatever I meant them to say, even I didn't know I meant them. I needed to be able to understand and change on my own.

It's the same thing for me at work. I can't tell my coworkers the right words to say to ensure they don't hurt me. All I can do is hold an open door for their attempts. Hold compassion for the debrief when it goes awry. If they're too afraid of failing their own standards to make that attempt, I cannot be the one to swoop in and save them, because that only deepens the fear of failure for the future. What if the day comes when I'm no longer willing to rescue them? Do they lose their relationship with me? Do they panic and shatter under the pressure the first time it isn't escapable? Better to stand, patient and calm and unmoving, on the other side of the creek with a hand outstretched. Better to catch hold and pull them to solid ground once they take the leap.

And for what it's worth, several coworkers eventually got up the courage to ask on their own! And we had a good talk. And now, they're super chill all the time about ir and great at being kind and respectful, because they mostly all came through with the same realization I had that day way back when. They were looking for a rule to follow so they didn't actually have to think about the beliefs they knew they carried, minor tho they all ended up being. And it wasn't fair to ask me to excuse them from that part of participating in our professional relationship.

I dunno. I have no problem with people who normalize pronoun sharing and I think it's a great tool in the whole kit. But it's just not one I click with myself. And what a grand thing to be able to say to a cis person "Even if you are doing it from a loving place, treating trans people as a monolith that you can "be respectful of" via a one-size-fits-all process is still transphobia and I'm not gonna let you off the hook for it. You have to treat me like a person because you see me as a person. Up to you how you get there."

[nattikay]

Shoutout to my mom who let me dump a bunch of spoilers on her so I could cry about Neteyam. Finally had the chance to get all that sobbing that dehydration robbed me of yesterday out of my system, and I’m feeling a little better now. I mean, the situation still makes me sad, but I don’t think I’ll continue to have my eyes suddenly start leaking every other hour like they did for most of today. :’)

so uuuhhh now that I’ve more or less gotten over that hurdle, I can finally sit down and make a post about all the other stuff from the movie! So here’s a list of some of the other thoughts and observations I had, not exactly comprehensive cuz this is all coming after 24 hours of grieving so I may not remember every single little thought I had, but here we go anyways (also tagging @tenebrius-excellium cuz you said you wanted to hear my thoughts):

-I just want to watch the first five or so minutes on loop for a while (although maybe without the cuts to Neytiri singing the songcord because 🥲, good golly the moment I saw that shot I, already being familiar with the lore behind songcords, was like oh NOOOOO), just the scenes of those ~14 peaceful years where the kids are growing up and the RDA is gone and everyone is happy together and it’s all just so sweet, this is the content I want, I want more of it, please pretty please, I know it’ll be a while before all the gif-makers are able to get a hold of those scenes but man as soon as they do goodness gracious I’m just gonna stare at it all for hours 😭

-While I was already assuming that the Metkayina didn’t actually know English and that we the audience were only hearing English for convenience, I was expecting that issue not to be directly addressed. So I was pleasantly surprised when it was subtly addressed with Jake’s voiceover about now being familiar enough with the Na’vi language to understand it as easily English as the audio of the kids bickering swapped from Na’vi to English. Theory confirmed!

-Speaking of the Na’vi language, I did feel very excited because I was able to understand some of the unsubtitled lines, which was a goal! so yay!! I mean, I didn’t understand every Na’vi line spoken (some of the longer ones I’ll definitely have to listen to more than once to piece together), but to even understand any of it at all, especially the ones without subtitles, felt very awesome!! dopamine rush babey!!!

-And on that note, the fact that Quaritch of all characters was making an effort to learn the language really surprised me! He struck me as the type of character to not give two craps about that sort of thing but hey. I definitely got a kick of out of Spider absolutely roasting him for his lack of skills hrh (note, I very most certainly do not condone actually mocking new learners making mistakes, obviously, but seeing as this is Quaritch we’re talking about...^^”) Spider’s line here was also a place I even managed to catch a subtitle discrepancy -- iirc, the subtitles read “You sound like a three-year-old!” but the actual line was nga plltxe na ‘eveng ahì’i! you speak like a small child! Which, I mean, y’know, same gist, but it was cool to be able to understand the actual words!! I also greatly enjoyed Spider trying to teach Quaritch the distinction between na and nga, just because man that’s one of those things every learner has been through, idk it was delightful to watch it go down between canon characters hrh

-Speaking of Quaritch and Spider....wow, I was surprised just how early they dropped the “Quartich’s son” bomb. That had been a pretty popular and plausible theory for a while, but I was expecting it to either be left up to interpretation or used as a bombshell later in the film. But nope, from the get-go it’s pretty heavily implied that not only is Quaritch Spider’s biological father, but that they’re both aware of this. So. Yeah, that was certainly a surprise.

-Kiri “I would rather drink acid than have Norm be my biological father” good gracious girl! like I mean yes the idea that Norm and Grace were secretly hookin’ up is obviously preposterous, but what did Norm ever do to you to deserve that reaction ^^; haha

-I mentioned in my High Ground post the three primary theories on Kiri’s origins. Having now seen the movie, I now think the mystical-Eywa-conception theory is by far the most likely. However, canonically it still remains a mystery/up to interpretation. Perhaps we’ll get more answers in movie 3...

-Y’know what, vulgarity is not typically my type of humor, but Lo’ak flippin’ Quaritch the double bird when asked to let him see his fingers did get a chuckle out of me hrh

-hey um yo the Metkayina kids were absolute JERKS, what the heck?? like good golly heckin’ rude. Except for Tsireya she’s chill I like her :)

-Personally I don’t think the story of this movie is a total rehash of the first one overall, but I can very mostly definitely see how people would consider it so. There were several lines in two scenes in particular, the one where the Sullies arrive at the Metkayina clan and the one with the tulkun hunters, that were just soooooo similar to lines from the first movie, not quite verbatim but certainly awkwardly close. I can absolutely see this becoming a common complaint from internet critics.

-Tuk pretty much solely exists to make the audience go d’awwwww!!, and y’know what, that’s ok because boy did she succeed :’)

-unfortunately, Quaritch’s ikran has by far the coolest design of all the ikrans, like bruh that color palette is heckin’ dope. what a shame ur now stuck with this jerk lol. Though I did snicker at Quaritch feeling the need to bond with the ikran “the hard way” solely because he couldn’t stand to be outdone by Jake lol

-I liked Lo’ak and Payakan’s friendship, it was very sweet. Also very interesting design-wise that a tulkun’s queue is in his mouth, and that the mouth has more of those bioluminescent patterns on the inside.

-The fact that the tulkun hunters are 100% aware that the species they’re hunting is fully sapient feels very ick to me. Sir that’s...that’s murder. Good gracious. and um “tulkun brain juice stops human aging” wh...what?? can uh...can we get some more explanation on that??? like is that gonna be somehow relevant to later movies or is it just some arbitrary thing to make the brain juice valuable, valuable enough to attempt to justify murder idk but uh....yyyyyyeah 😬

-minor thing, but I was surprised that the swimming baby from the trailer was, in fact, not Ronal’s. In fact, we never actually meet Ronal’s baby, which, again, surprised me. Why make her pregnant if we don’t get to see the baby, it feels kinda random ^^; to link her to her spirit tulkun who just had a calf I guess?? idk. once again, maybe it’ll become more relevant in movie 3.

-until proven otherwise, I am heretofore declaring that final “a son for a son” line to be Spider’s official adoption into the Sully family 😭😭😭

anyways, I guess that’ll do for now. I’m sure there was other stuff but I’ve been sitting here typing for over an hour already. Perhaps later I’ll come back with more comments, idk. I’ll be seeing the movie again next week with the rest of my family, so maybe I’ll notice different things/remember stuff that got swallowed up in the feels. Will I cry more than I did on my first viewing because I’m gonna try not to go in dehydrated again, or less because by then I’ll have had a week to process and accept everything? I have literally no idea. Guess we’ll have to just wait and see...

[bonefall]

Getting my ask in for Clanmew day! I translated some of my OCs from a personal project - they might not be fully accurate, but I tried my best.

Hindstar - Nisushai

For this one, I did a contraction of Niaa and usihu - I chose 'hind' instead of just 'doe' or 'deer' for her name to sound old and grand, which she definitely... tries to be. Her name is specifically meant to be archaic, evoking an old glory.

Deerspring - Augyiao

Pretty direct translation. If -spring wasn't a loanword, I would have it specified as the future tense, "deer about to spring." My cats are in North America, so her name would refer to a whitetail rather than a red deer, but I'm not sure how to translate whitetail calls.

Fawnspots - Mweenwoowoo

Again, pretty direct. She and Deerspring are sisters, and I wanted to give her a relatively plain name for contrast. It makes for a good nickname - I cannot imagine a better one than Weewoo.

Dapplepaw - Paplapwyr

Direct translation. I toyed around with the idea of contracting dapple with fawn to make Mylapwyr, both to tie her more directly into the deer theme of her family and to reference her mother.

Velvetpaw - Gawrekpwyr

Direct translation, don't have much to say on them - although, iirc, I sent an ask forever ago about antler velvet for their name and I think it ended up turning into the guide on deer.

Littlebird - Eebwipwik

"Small quail" - he's the father of Dapple and Velvet, and doesn't have the deer theming. His family has game-bird theming, but 'Littlequail' didn't sound quite right to me so I went with Littlebird instead. I like saying his Clanmew name though.

You're probably correct! Occasionally a Clanmew ask ends up becoming a full fauna guide. Yours probably became the one on deer broadly, the category of "Kleka" including sheep and horses.

So with all the deer totally covered, and your OCs all having great names, here's some fun words for Littlebird and his side of the family.

Wattle = Shubpi

The fleshy facial parts of a male pheasant or the head feather on a male quail.

Interesting etymological origin; the word "Shub" had a use in Old Tribemew AND Parkmew. In Tribemew, it meant Gray as in the normal color of the sky in England; inconspicuous; humble. In Parkmew, it meant uncooked chicken, especially guts and edible bones, rare treats that were not particularly common in the Park and had to be acquired from the wider city.

The siblings Gray Wing and Clear Sky were referring to a wing that blends in with cloud cover, and a blue sky that would put such a bird on full display. Since Gray Wing the Wise was killed before ever meeting a Tribe Cat, xey were associated more strongly with xeir role in death as a great, holy sage of wisdom, conveniently tied to their concept of delicious chicken.

And what's closer to a chicken than a pheasant?

As the two cultures mixed to create what we now know as Clan Culture, the many uses of Shub mingled. Gray Wing the Wise became associated with pheasants, the mid-gray color of thinner clouds with the sun behind them, and revelations of hidden or ancient knowledge. Xeir appearance as a patron reflects that, with prominent wattles over both eyes.

So "wattle" is a contraction of Gray + Perceive. It's also used to quickly describe just about any fancy bit of adornment on the head of a bird.

A fantastical bird = Eer-roo

Before the meeting with the Tribe after the destruction of the White Hart, Clan cats no longer saw eagles, and slowly forgot the truth of chickens as they were confined to farms.

The two things merged into one fantastical animal. A massive predator bearing the most delicious meat you've ever tasted, bearing a huge wattle and thick skin as if its hide was already tanned, big enough to carry off hogs and so heavy that it could only fly by jumping off the highstones.

Could be described as a feathered dragon. Its wisdom is stressed in the tales, unlike many other mythological beasts, even able to trick careless TigerClan warriors.

[sukirichi]

LOVE LETTERS: longer asks

from: shhh anon

okay so with the limited time i’ve had, i do finally have some theories and things ive realised, i also think i may have gone a little overboard so enjoy this mini novel 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

let’s start from the beginning ☝️

→ SHHH ANON OMG this was 1.6k words that’s CRAZYYY I love you for that, really <3 okay LET US DIG IN also I am so sorry this took me forever to reply to, my life is just hectic *sobs*

chapter 1)

wakatoshi being the crowned prince by king’s favor makes sense — he’s the most responsible and with the newly added info that rin isn’t the kings biological son, it’s obvious the king would have wanted to be preceded by someone of his own blood even if it wasn’t an official crowned prince. a male born to a concubine may still become an heir if there is no other option iirc.

oooh yes this!! especially because I mentioned before that ushijima is the favorite son since his mother was the one that the king really liked!

“It was all my Mother’s plan to put me on the throne, and I accepted because she promised I could make you my concubine!” this was from rin in chapter 1. the queen was so adamant about rin becoming the king that she made promises out of desperation, her son becoming king would mean she is still protected by the royal law and even if it had gotten out that rintarou isn’t the late king’s biological son, he’d already have the highest rank of authority. the queen was desperate to keep her title and i guess the benefits of being royalty? or maybe she has nowhere else to go. the more i reread, the more i realise — yuzuru and the queen aren’t as similar as i thought. they’re the same side of different coins, yes they were both cheated on and their husbands ended up impregnating other women, but yuzuru would NEVER be desperate for a royal title like the queen is, like that fuckass eyeball mfer is.

right again, shhh anon! the queen really has taken measures to ensure she’d keep her title as queen because it comes with a lot of privilege, and like that cersei lannister scene, “power is power.” and yeah!! yuzuru would never be desperate for royalty and wealth because she already grew up very privileged and has loving parents, so yuzuru pre-marriage really won the lottery in life. but here’s the thing – the queen’s background wasn’t really divulged, but I will say that she wasn’t poor or struggling like eyeball either. in a nutshell, she really is just greedy LMAO

chapter 2!

‘Princess Iris played the naive part well of concealing her feelings’ it should’ve been obvious from the start, iris never loved anyone really, she loved being loved, but to her everything was an act to keep her afloat, bro actually get me in the ring with her i need to fight this bitch atp.

“you had to choose someone with the power to tear the family apart as soon as she finds out about your affair? I would not take her wrath lightly.” i mentioned this quote in another theory, but i think the foreshadowing was just really well done. i also think it helps highlight the difference between iris and yuzu, like iris was able to make rin believe she was everything he needed to love, she played the part of the heartbroken lover well. yuzu turned her sadness into power and motivation, she knows she’s capable of more than just manipulating the men around her. iris is a performer, she spends her free time being a puppeteer. yn spends her time playing the game of chess that the queen has set up, and i fr believe she’s going to have a checkmate soon.

HELL YEAH. iris loves being loved! she grew up having none of that, and when she became princess, she felt like she was becoming the exact opposite of what she believed – someone great, someone worthy of adoration. AGSHJKA BUT NO WORRIES I CAN GET YOU IN THE RING WITH HER. OOOHHH YES LIKE that’s a really good analysis actually – iris is a performer and a great actor, but yuzuru isn’t. while iris likes to flaunt to the people of what she has to prove a point, yuzuru prefers to have her own way by working behind the scenes (much like how the queen does, she keeps things very subtle but also will not hesitate to go out with a big bang if need be. iris isn’t like that. she’s much more straightforward and not that much of a strategist, we only saw her pull out the big guns from chapter 18 when she also broadcasted that public announcement to make rin a target of the government.

“I know there are no limits to your actions if it means protecting your power and wealth.” this was said to the queen iirc, and again THE FORESHADOWINGGGG. hindsight is truly a blessing

‘Your loneliness was one of the reasons you fell madly in love with the Crown Prince.’ yuzuru uses her loneliness to bond with people, iris uses her loneliness to use people. it’s why iris and suna don’t work well. they’re both people who see loneliness as a reason to be greedy and use those around them to fulfil their emotional needs, and how will those needs be met when they have nothing emotional to give to each other? whereas yuzuomi, both use their loneliness to form a connection and proper bond. or maybe it’s just cuz they’re actually normal humans who have functioning brain cells and don’t live in “me me me” land like ipiss. (rin gets a slight pass cuz he was essentially raised to be selfish and alone as crowned prince)

yuzuru uses her loneliness to bond with people, iris uses her loneliness to use people. OMG YES. A HUNDRED PERCENT YES. iris and suna see their loneliness as something that highlights what they’re lacking in, and it makes them want to take and take, while yuzuru sees her loneliness as a space to be filled and shared with someone else. that’s why yuzuomi works so well – they see that they have spaces in their heart left to be filled, and they welcome love with open arms <3 me me me land like ipiss IM CRYING AGHSJAA

‘You were confused what to feel—disgusted that she thought she could fool you into thinking her husband would be the father when the Prince was rumored to be rarely at home, or utterly mortified with dread over the possibility her husband was not the father.’ clocked it from chapter two, iris being rin’s baby momma was foreshadowed 🗣️🗣️

YEAHHH THE FORESHADOWING IS THERE also CAN I JUST SAY I’m so happy you went back to read the first chapters and noticed all these little things because I was actually trying my best to drop hints here and there that can all be connected to the latest updates and to have someone notice those details… I’m so so happy, you have no idea😭💓

“Royal marriages either happen to form alliances [or] hide a revolting scandal” this is where iris’ family comes in, i 100% believe they used sensitive information to get iris married in. im thinking her family were the original royals in itachiyama (the broken down castle) when it was still connected to inarizaki, and the queen could’ve had to give in, as a way to stop a war from breaking out between the two countries, icepole also referred to her marriage as being “forced, to stop [their] countries from going to war”…. so there’s that, but i do also believe they used rintarou’s status as an illegitimate child as the main bribe. which i also feel like is yuzu’s motivation to publish the article, cuz wdym you’re gonna threaten my husbands peace and identity for your own selfish gain? she got me sooo fucked up. but that begs the question… what is in that article? defamation? an allegation of treason?

ICEPOLE AGAHJSK okay so here’s the thing – we all know that inarizaki and itachiyama were originally one kingdom when a faction decided to split apart and be independent. however, they all still share the same land/country in a way, and itachiyama was richer when it came to natural resources, while inarizaki was more advanced in technology and society overall. the two countries have a peace treaty that they can equally benefit from one another, but as time went on, inarizaki’s monarchs were failing in their ruling hence the economic problems that were discussed around chapter eight or so, and it’s a problem that was attempted to be solved by having iris and kiyoomi marry because the royal family felt that they needed itachiyaman representatives within the crown to show that they are all “still as one.” it worked for a little bit, and it did stop the two countries from going to war (although it was mostly inarizaki being desperate because they needed itachiyama more than itachiyama needed them), buttttt it was still complicated because itachiyama was weirded out that iris (who was supposed to be their princess, too) never visited them, and they felt like she was never really a good rep for them

“Prince Kiyoomi is not the type of man to be reckless and drag himself into scandals,” but he defo cares enough about his brothers to sacrifice his freedom in order to protect them. or maybe he got the short end of the stick and had to take one for the team cuz he’s a fancy farm boy from itachiyama💀

he got the short end of the stick, unfortunately *sobs* the king mostly keeps his conquests his conquests within his kingdom but when he saw kiyoomi’s mother… he just couldn’t help himself, and when he was born, the king thought, “wait, this boy can actually be of use.”

chapter 3.

“Would you rather me impregnate a woman purely for that reason? To father a child I was not ready to have? To bear such the burden of the Crown onto a young boy who was born not because his parents wanted to love him, but rather because I am someone who ‘had to fulfill my duty’?” unironically, that’s exactly what he did. in his mission to rid iris of her loneliness, he impregnated her with a child he was not ready to have.

“And sometimes a lowly Prince must be smart enough to turn away from matters that do not concern him, lest he wishes to be exiled from the only place that puts food in his mouth,” rintarou is going to lose it all. i think the way dtd is going to end will be something like this: rin and his mother lose their titles, or well…. rin steps down, he has growth as a person and learns that the materialistic life and more power than you could ever imagine just… isn’t worth losing your humanity over. or maybe he does it for yn, but i do think he would step down. a motivation to step down as king / crowned prince is the fact that his mother lied, and rintarou realises that after only ever being used as a chess piece for his mother, a tool for her to use to give herself an advantage - after realising he was never his own person but a doll that sat pretty, only ever being dressed up and thrown around, no aspirations for himself other than what he’s been fed to desire… he takes control of his life and gets the ultimate revenge.

EEEEE YOU PREDICTED THIS OMG – RIN AND THE QUEEN LOSING THEIR TITLES DID HAPPEN!! although I will not lie, I really wanted to try a different ending where Rin faces the queen head on and exposes himself as he steps down from the crown, to show the queen that he wasn’t going to continue being her puppet, and also to finally be honest for once to his wife – to let yuzuru know that their marriage was never a valid royal one, so technically, they’re annulled, and he’d hope she’d finally be free from him because rin knows that if he doesn’t do something, yuzuru would still remain devoted to him (even if she’d already fallen for omi.)

HUUUGEEE jump cuz chapters 4-7 already have my theories iirc

chapter 8)

“I never knew my name could sound so important without the titles attached to it.” this kinda feeds into my idea from before!! i think this is the start of rinta realising, being a normal guy isn’t so bad. he has a name beyond the crown, he is a person beyond the roles and responsibilities he’s been forced to have. i think ushiwaka will be crowned prince and eventually king. despite being traditional, i think he would probably make an exception to the royal marriage rule for omi and yn. since their situations were very unique compared to what most royal marriages were about. yn’s technically would be allowed since rintarou isn’t even royalty technically, and id assume he’d let omi out of that marriage since iris technically threatened the royal family!

OOOH I LIKE THIS THEORY but yes!! I really do want rin to realize that being a normal guy isn’t so bad, although it’s still hard for him to accept because then it really just shows how he was a nobody who ruined yuzuru’s life, and the guilt will be something he’ll carry with him forever. not to say that he thinks he’ll have more right if he was someone wealthy, but… yeah that’s really how he thought during the first parts of dtd, that’s why he always said “as the crown prince, I don’t deserve anyone lesser than her.” for ushi though, yes I do think he can make exceptions to allow omi and yn to marry if we ever go down that route – he may be traditional but he is also such a softie deep down!

“but it was always a famous royal saying that whoever was your last dance on your debutante ball was your destined lover.” red string theory!!! MY BELOVEDDDD. this is why i think yuzutarou will have a platonic ending while kiyoomi becomes the main love interest, destiny is something akin to fate, it can’t be change no matter how much you try to manipulate the situation. just like how the queen cannot change her fate, she was destined to fail and i think we could possibly see a conversation in the future about how the universe would not allow her plan to succeed? probably from keiji. i also think she’s gonna rope keiji into her scheme tbh, get him to commit a little treachery maybe? have him be a scapegoat to protect herself and give herself a fighting chance… per chance?

ooooh also I’m sorry to disappoint in this part but when I said that the queen had plans to use Keiji, I actually wasn’t going to write any scenes about that BUT it’s true that the queen planned that if ever rin doesn’t become King, and Atsumu wasn’t approved to be King by the public, then Keiji would be her puppet King since she knows he’s ‘weak’ in terms of title and power, so Keiji “might agree” to be King 🥴

anyways that’s all for now, idk if i was cooking or just regurgitating stuff you’ve basically said 😭 i just don’t think the villains in this story are iris and suna anymore. the villains were always the villainesses - the queen and iris. theyll fight against whatever odds to change their fate, theyll use and abuse whoever they need in order to stay at the top.

this is deadass so fucking long but im excusing myself cuz its got content from like five chapters LOL also sorry for the lack of jokes, i was ‘erm ackchually’ing my way through this entire thing 🤓🤓 goofy ass text analysis bruh, got me typing shit as if me and sigmund freud were psychoanalysis rivals.

→ ANYWAYS I LOVED YOUR THEORIES AND ANALYSES SO MUCH LIKE i hope you know you have a special place in my heart!! you have shown so much love and support to dtd and i am just so so soft about that. thank you again!! AGAHJSK ERHM ACTUALLY I GET THAT BUT YOU GOT THEM RIGHT SO YOU WERE SO ON POINT!!

from: @kyriaan

Bruh i imagined such dark scene 😅😅😅 im so sorry this is very dark dhdhhshahha but imagine after rin tells yn he wants a divorce she just stays there, empty expression, her ears ringing. The word divorce repeating in her head until something shatters. Yn smiles softly but its not quite right? She moves graciously to her room and gets her gun. As graciously she walks around, searching for a certain woman in her house. White noise is all yn hears and then she finds her. BAM she shoots her gun not even hesitating, hitting iris in her stomach. Another shot echoes in the walls and then a thud as iris lifeless body falls on the ground. Rin shows right after his eyes opened wide, shocked as he hesitantly looks at his wife. Scared, hes so scared and she's there smiling oh so innocently and yet so unsettling. 'see, it took care of the problem, isnt that right? Rin' yns voice is sweet, the only thing rintarou's mind can register over the ringing of his ears.

→ I’m not really reading yandere content but does this count as yan?!?! anyways omg. also because it’s a well known fact that yn knows how to use a gun and is an exceptional shooter as well AGHSJAK. I do think this would go well on a darker theme (and ngl I have debated making dtd darker but it just!! didn’t fit the vibe LMAOOO) but also I feel like if yn really did shoot iris, she’d do it during a manic episode and then not even realize what she did until it’s too late 😭

Awww now that you talked about it i remember you briefly telling me the tooru ending and thinking about it made my tiny heart sad then and sad now 🥺 its a bitter sweet ending while they end up together and basically love each others company, yn never ends up loving him 😔 But yes! Totally just write the ending you like best (even if that shatters everyone's heart 🥹) its your story after all 😌

→ THE TOORU ENDING. I remember back in 2022 when I was still getting so much ideas on how DTD would go, my heart really wanted a tooru ending but idk AGHSJA somehow along writing it, I did not really expect to fall for Omi and have him move up a notch on my faves so him or suna have the highest possible endings </3

So the evil in me is working.... while i still want iris to abort... Theres something mmmm say usually women are in danger or miscarrying in their first trimester and iris have been looking rather sick, rin also mentioned doctor telling iris to move bla bla in case she gets sick..... How fucked up would be if she i dont knowwww miscarried it? 👁️ I mean even if she survives the 1st trimester theres just so much stress in the royal life especially now that her safety net aka omi is kinda not feeling so 'safe' now mmmm

→ i actually did plan for iris to miscarry it because she would be too stressed out from being deposed but she's offscreen right now so even if she did miscarry, we would never know 😭

Well i read the full update.. I dont know who i despise more now tbh The queen or iris Probably still iris but i was not at all expecting the surpreme bitch to 1st threaten to kill Rin and second threaten to exile us and Rin and then threatening to make Tsumu above all the king like 👁️👄👁️ Welp i cried when we called for Rin while sick and when Rin rejected us.. Like i said i thought it would hurt less now that i know he loves us but ahah 🤡 I still hope iris miscarries or aborts or goes ahead and dies while miscarrying 🤷 Kinda don't get it why they're all 'i need her here as the father of the child in case she gets sick bla bla bla' when she basically admitted she never wanted to be with him at all since hes no real prince or even royalty, and since both wanted the kid gone AND with the obvious no no from the supreme bitch but wtf do i even know anymore 😭 Like why all this now? They say one thing then they do another at this point my heart and my body are too exhausted to even process reasons why 😭 So much for iris wanting to be our friend and wanting rin to move on and be with us 😒 Also i see you Omi but sorry i still foolishly stand for RinTeam

→ hate the queen more, she’s more fucked up lmao! NOOO BECAUSE PLANNING TO MAKE TSUMU KING WAS SO FOUL LIKE not only did the queen force an incestuous marriage but she really wanted a sex offender be king :skull: oh the whole “I need to be there for her because I’m her baby daddy” thing was actually NOT real at all lol, they never went to a doctor or whatever because both rin and iris plan on getting an abortion anyway. it really was just rin’s sick plan of inviting iris to their room so he can hurt us more when we return, because at that point he really didn’t want us getting close *sobs*

Until now rin always said 'it was always her never you' right? And he never really told us he loves us even tho we know (well we readers do). So imagine if he gets to the point where he just goes like 'it was never her it was always you' when he finally admits his true feelings Jfjsjkaofhak The fact this works in both an endearing good happy scene and a really angsty one, leaves me both hopeful and extremely terrified 🤣🤣🤣🤣😭🤣🤣🤣🤣

→ IT WAS NEVER HER IT WAS ALWAYS YOU AGHAJKS I NEED THIS SCENE TO HAPPEN SO BADLY and you’re so right!! whether it’s a happy ending or a sad one that line delivery would be so heartbreaking AAAAH WHY’RE YOU DOING THIS TO ME RIN

BRO THE MOMENT I SAW FORCED INCEST I HAD THIS WAR FLASHBACK OF YOU TELLING ME IRIS AND OMI WERE HALF SIBLINGS AND I IMMEDIATELY KNEW WHAT THIS WAS ABOUT DHSHGDBSJJAJJA Kinda... Made me realize that iris... Said she was lonely because her husband/HER BROTHER never touched her... 🤢🤢🤢 Like i would forgive her if they were step siblings like no blood related but half siblings.... Yeahhhhhh I was really fucking satisfied by seeing iris in deep shit but god fucking damnit bitch always has to find a way to get back up 😒 like fucking suffer bitch By the way tho since she knew about rin being a fraud doesnt that make her an accomplice 👀👀👀👀 cause he didnt know but she did sooooo if she never told anyone and 'protected' the secret BITCH YOURE GUILTY TOO! PRISON WITH HER! Now the part where rin was drunk had me wanting to spoil him full of kisses omg 😭😭😭😭 Us saying we would pick omi tho 😒😒😒😒😒 like no So the last part while im fucking jumping in happiness since we're with rin now im hating the fact we're all omi omi when in the very last chapter we admitted we still loved rin and well technically we said he still holds a big part of our heart so.. Praying omi was just infatuation since we were sad and cravingg affection 🤣🤣🤣🙏 Thank you so much for this chapter like holy shit i was in the edge of my sit the part where we shoot??? BRUHHHH SO GOOD

→ AGHJKSLAA YES ALTHOUGH I actually took out the whole half siblings thing with omi since I thought it was gonna be just sooo weird but I was like yknow what screw it!! AND YEAH LMAO that’s why omi never touched her. and yes it does make her an accomplice for keeping it a secret!! NAURRR UNFORTUNATELY OMI WAS NOT JUST AN INFATUATION LIKE. we loved him fr. but we also love rintaro (more than romantically) that we couldn’t abandon him… also thank you so much AAAA IM SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT!!

from: 🎧 anon

Owieee you had a busy week :(( but is oki now because it's done!! Speaking of my dream uni, my classes start on August 9 and to be honest, I'm scared because my schedule everyday (except Thursday and Saturday and Sunday) is from 7 am to 7 pm... Plus we still have Saturday classes and I still don't know if I officially have no class on Thursday or if it will be for something else. Yes, I still read Bonten Wives... I read it whenever I miss TokRev and watching Windbreaker made me miss them sm 😭😭 so I ended up rereading the manga again 🤧🤧 and I'm falling for Mitsuya and Rindou all over again 😭😭😭😭 AND YES!! JO IS DEFINITELY NOT A MANWHORE LIKE AIKU AJSHAHSHAHHA SUKI! From the moment I first saw Jo on screen, I knew, that I have fallen HAGSHAGSHAHAHA so here are my rambles This is quite common for genres like TokRev and Windbreaker but sometimes, I like to think on how I wanna patch up their wounds when they run to you. I imagine, Jo would act all smug at first before admitting that he's hurt 🥹🥹 I want a Jo Togame in my life 🤧🤧🤧🤧 Someone to snuggle and cuddle to and all that OKAY BUT HEAR ME OUT! Imagine if the Yn that Jo is dating is like someone's little sister in Bofurin!!!! *sigh* can I not be a college student and just get transported in Windbreaker AHGSHAGSHAGSHA ALSO! Can't wait for later's update in DTD!!! Love ya lots!

→ OMG NGLL I DON’T THINK MY BUSY WEEKS ARE ENDING AGSHJK I have classes that are like 8-10 hours a day (sometimes less, sometimes more LOL) and I also go out like everyday so *screeches* also no way omg?! 12 hour classes?! weekend classes too? honestly I would cry but my class schedules were also like that for a while SOOOO BRACE YOURSELF BABE!!

and aww you still read bonten wives, that’s so cute! I actually miss tokrev so much too, like remember when it was so popular in 2021 and we just had so much content of it? like the dance trends, the filo memes, the timeskip content and everyone was just soooo hyped, ugh I miss that time. also!! rereading the manga after windbreaker is so real! when I got into WB I was actually missing tokrev so much but also I love how WB is still its own thing, and I’m just as in love with the characters as I did with tokrev! (okay, that’s a lie because I may or may not be a little more insane when it comes to the windbreaker boys. like. HAVE YOU SEEN SUO.) ALSO MITSUYA AND RINDOU – THE CANONICALLY BEST BOYFRIENDS <3 OH NO YEAH LIKE I DO FEEL LIKE TOGAME MIGHT GIVE OFF MANWHORE VIBES LIKE AIKU AT FIRST BUT?? idk, but I’ll forever die on the hill that togame is a soft loverboy!! aiku though… honestly I wouldn’t mind if he cheats on me because at least I’m still on his roster LMAO /lh

EEEE PATCHING UP JO’S WOUNDS?!! HIS BLOODY KNUCKLESS!! I think he’d be so soft and gentle while he just sits back and lets us do everything :< but yeah he’s going to play it off for sure and be like, “nah, this is nothing” but as soon as you’re not looking, he’s wincing from the pain AHSJKA. no omG I THINK ABOUT THAT ON THE DAILY TOO LIKE? TOGAME JO IS ACTUALLY MY IDEAL BOYFRIEND IN LIFE but where can I find a man like him?!?! ALSOOOO??????? SOMEONE’S LITTLE SISTER???? OOOH WHY DO I FEEL LIKE IT’D BE GOOD IF WE WERE UME’S LITTLE SISTER?!!?

awww love you lots too headphones anon, I hope you’re doing well in uni!!

[fatcowboys]

yall no im on team fuck wotc so i wanna plug a ttrpg ive played that is decently similar to dnd and id recommend as a cool one to check out if looking for a new system! 

13TH AGE

13th age is a ttrpg system built for a high fantasy setting similar to d&d. its got a lot of similarities to dnd (in fact i believe many of the folks who worked on it worked on older editions of dnd) like a d20 based, class based system, but with a lot of streamlining done to combat as well as fun mechanics to tie your character into the world and game.

some specific details i really enjoyed:

one unique thing: something i enjoy about this that lends itself to character creation well is that every character has ‘one unique thing.’ most of your characters probably already have that, but this is a one or two word sentence that just summarizes that. this is great for both players who get too complicated in their backstories and helps them have a core unique thing (me cough) or characters who don’t super care about backstories come up with something unique even if its not a full shakespearean tragedy of a background

backgrounds: instead of your backgrounds giving you proficiency in certain things, characters have backgrounds with certain modifiers based on the importance to the character. this then lets you use the modifier for things that relate to your background. for example, my character spent years as a thief before the campaign, so she cat burglar +4. any time i picked a lock or did sneaky thief things, i could use my thief +4. another character had a background as librarian, so she got bonuses to speed reading, finding a book in complicated libraries, etc. iirc this character also had a background as a spoken word poet which. while less widely applicable. led to some fun shenanigans with charisma checks for a character who isn’t usually super persuasive. i will note some GMs don’t love this because some players will try to use these backgrounds too broadly and it can slow stuff down since its less spelled out, so be warned, but if you have a good group, its a lot of fun.

no grid based combat: this was the main reason my GM looked into 13th age. she hated grid combat, and in 13th age, rather than specific measurements and distances for spells and moves, everything is either engaged, nearby, or far. i will say there was a bit of a learning curve for the players in this group who were used to having exact distances spelled out, but honestly it was really fun not having to worry so much about exact distances and counting out squares and such.

escalation die: this was something i loved as someone who had a hard time focusing on longer combats. 13th age uses an escalation system to speed up combat - at the end of every round of combat, the escalation die gets a +1 that keeps increasing every round and adds to your attack rolls and damage. this represents the natural tire and fatigue in combat and keeps things moving. after six rounds have passed, it maxes out at +6

there are some other cool things as well such as icons that represent powerful figures in the world, unique abilities and skills that have a similar feel of d&d but fresh and new if youve played d&d to death, but TLDR: check out 13th age if you want a system that feels similar to D&D, but hate grid based and super long combats and want more mechanical weight to your characters history. also its been a few years since ive played so. apologies if i misremembered anything but! 13th age is super fun especially if you want something that feels similar to d&d but with some cool unique features

[katriniac]

Maybe I'm biased. Maybe it's just my memory being selectively forgetful.

I think Cybird gave Kanetsugu more facial expressions than most of their other sprites. 🤔

(Keiji had quite a few, too, iirc)

Kanetsugu has 8 (11 if you count the blushing ones separately) which seems like a lot.

I went through the screenshots I saved thus far. Here's what I have compiled:

Stoic

Surprised

Surprised, blushing

Grr

Grr with closed eyes

Grr with closed eyes, blushing

Appraising/Thinking

Appraising/Thinking, blushing

Hmm, smiling

"I can't meet your eyes right now"

THAT SMILE!!! 🤯🫠

And then these gorgeous CGs from the game:

I am trying to keep my blog spoiler-free for folks. If it wasn't for that -- and my lack of time and energy -- I would be posting several times a day how much I am enjoying this man's route.

Seriously. You would be sick of hearing from me by now.

I was gushing about him to a friend on What's App in a voice message, and realized it was over 30 minutes long when I finally sent it off. And I WASN'T EVEN WINDED YET. I could have prattled on much longer about Kanetsugu and his route. 😅

It has been a very very long time since I've been THIS excited for a new route from Cybird (and have not been disappointed once it was out).

ANYwayssss ... gonna stop it here before I accidentally spill any spoilers or continue to fangirl for another 3,000 words.

🫠 Mmh, this man. 🥹🥺🥹😍

[sysmedsaresexist]

Hey ~

It’s been so amazing seeing the positive change on this blog, we are so here for that kind of growth and energy!

We saw that you recently reconciled with @/sophieinwonderland, and we have a couple questions.

Are you okay with and support those who use “tulpamancy” language (a huge thing she defends)? Curious about this because we have seen many Buddhist POC systems express genuine concern with that language (not the practice, just the words “tulpa” and “tulpamancy”)

Are you okay with those who equate therians/nonhumans and the people who love them to zoophiles (another thing she has stood by which was incredibly triggering and offensive to us, a therian-heavy system).

Personally, we followed her for a long time then unfollowed after we saw someone else’s post which brought this stuff to light. We are just curious what your thoughts on this are!

(Also as far as we know she has shared some really harmful misinformation about dissociative disorders… specifically iirc that DID can form after childhood and trauma is not necessary for this disorder to form. Just letting you know in case you weren’t aware!)

- Starling

I kind of went back and forth on whether to reply to this, but ultimately decided that it would be for the best. I'm sure many of my followers are wondering the same thing and what it means.

The truth is, we're married now. I finally wooed her with my charm.

@sophieinwonderland just so you know that this is out here. I hope it's a fair response to both of us.

No, in all seriousness and honesty, I reached out to sophie because she had the largest audience and sway, and when you're so violently mean to each other, you develop a special bond. It's been... jeez, monthsss since I interacted with sophie directly. I don't know if Sophie will agree, but I think we had a habit of getting each other going, with more ridiculous posts on each side the longer the spats went on. I think the fact that we both left each other alone for so long was really good for both of us, and over that time, as much as sophie saw changes in me, I saw them in her. I found that when she wasn't being an inflammatory twot (/aff) and stayed away from the tulpa-language debate, I agreed more and more with some of her posts. She's really been doing good work with the stuff on reddit-- the RAMCOA deniers and fdc.

And what kind of person would I be if I didn't give her the same chance that she and her followers gave me?

Yeah, she's done some really shitty things, but so have I, just to different demographics (? Does that make sense??).

As well, reconciliation and interaction doesn't mean total support. I'm sure I have beliefs that sophie doesn't support. I'm sure sophie will reblog posts of mine that she agrees with, and skip the ones she doesn't like, and I'll do the same.

All that said, let's get a bit more specific.

The post linked in the ask. I am going to link it so that people can make their own informed decision. I think, though, that most of you reading this answer lived through all of that, experiencing each event first hand as it unfolded. Many people have issues with other events not listed. I can't cover everything. Again, interaction doesn't mean total support, and I can decide at any point to step back in support.

So.

Tulpamancy: I'm white as shit. I made my posts about the topic, and I reblogged everything I could in support of changing the language. I will continue to support changing language. This is a topic that is so much bigger than me, though. That's not to say I don't want to try and that I won't support efforts, but... I think the easiest way to explain this point is to use an example-- that it's not feasible to block and refuse to engage with people using the language. However, in those interactions, I can advocate where possible, and not interact with content I don't agree with.

Therians: I'm going to be super honest... I don't know what that is. I especially don't know how it relates to zoophiles. I do remember there being a lot of talk about this, I remember reading what people were saying and Sophie's response, but... I think the only thing I can pull specifically to mind was reading her response and going,

I really can't comment on this. I don't think that having sex with a therian is the same as having sex with an animal?? If you were hurt by something, obviously I support you.

Dissociative disorders: again, I've been watching her grow. I think she's been doing a lot more research as she's been battling fdc and it really shows. She made a post recently about whether DID could happen without trauma and I think I even agreed with it-- something about rare, fringe cases being inevitable in all things, and I was like, you know, I can agree with that. That's a good, happy medium. It's a far cry from what she used to say. I'm seeing a lot more respect about the topic and research, I see better advice to her followers. I want to give her a chance on this front.

[thevideogameshutterbug]

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (PS5) Thoughts - Beginning At The End

No photos this time (I might add a few later). But I've got a lot of thoughts (and photos) about this game now that I'm finishing it up, but I just got finished my last sidequest in the postgame and I wanted to gush about it.

Spoilers, by the by. Quite a few of them.

----

The Mysteriums were a lopsided a pain the ass but man am I glad I saved this quest for last.

I've been thinking a lot about how much this game seeks to embody why Peter's beliefs in having empathy for the people he fights and getting to know who these villains are as people matters, and this quest - as well as Quentin Beck's final words to cap off the story - are such a perfect capper to that.

Nothing is as it seems, especially when you look at heroes and villains. Anything can change for anybody faster than you could ever realize it. When you take the masks off, it's all people making decisions. A good person can go down a dark path, a bad person can decide they no longer want to be that person any more. Not everyone is going to, but it's important to know that such a thing is always possible.

Heck, this game has an almost ''unprecedented'' number of reformed villains for a superhero franchise: Sandman, Mysterio, Tombstone, Mr. Negative, Prowler technically Lizard, all people who understand they did wrong and whose only motivation now is trying to make their way in the world going forward.

Jonah has a podcast early in the game where he insists that people never really change (about either Sandman or Lizard, iirc), advocating for criminals to be just kept in prison in perpetuity (which, I like this version of Jonah, but goddamn is he hard to like sometimes). Wraith advocates just killing these guys because naturally they're never going to change and they might as well be removed from the equation. And naturally, Symbiote Peter eventually starts considering the idea that maybe the best way forward is just to kill everybody who could be a threat.

But this game doesn't just counterpoint that by having its ultimate evolution be monstrous like most superhero works: instead, this game makes a strong point of why that mentality doesn't work - this is a fantasy story, but it's also a good point for real life.

Coming from a law family where I had a lot of interaction with formerly incarcerated people, and living in an inner city relationship where - again - anything can happen to skew a person's life in ways nobody thought they would go, it's not just a more realistic point - it's an essential point: people always change, and any belief otherwise is just an excuse not to examine the world around oneself. They can change for the worse, they can change for the better, or just kind of laterally shift, but they always change. A failure to recognize it is a failure of the self, not the other.

There's a strong trend of former villains in this game being taken advantage of by other villains, with the new villains doing so with the expectation that nobody will come to the former villains' aid, trust them, or aid them in any way (Mysterio's partners try to frame him, Tombstone and Negative get abducted by people who were sure no one would come for them, Sandman gets driven mad and dumped onto the city to be tossed into prison). And it's absolutely amazing to be Spider-Man in this game and be the one who fights tirelessly for everybody, even the people who have spurned their chances before, because that's who Spider-Man is.

Even if their stories still don't always end positively. Because it's still the right thing to do it, and it's a worse crime to stop.

Man, I love Spider-Man.

As a final note, I especially like that none of the former villains really expect to be forgiven and several never are. This might be the philosopher in me talking, but it's not in forgiveness that one finds redemption, but in the capacity of change in and of itself.

[logicmaru]

i love how ranmaru kageyama is doomed by the narrative from the very fucking beginning and i hope his minisode is even more miserable.

warning i'm gonna talk a lot. ranmaru is very blatantly described as a boring guy, who's underneath the average height for guys, doesn't have any notable likes or dislikes, unless you count his hatred for happy couples + people who are happy in general, which ngl comes into play later

i'm gonna try and explain this as simply as i can bc if i try to word it like an essay i'll confuse myself aha,,,,

it kind of shows us that ranmaru can get jealous pretty easily? and he's upset at the kind of trust keiji and sara share, even though he probably knows that's because they've known each other longer than sara's known ranmaru, but it probably still pisses ranmaru off idk

he wants to prove himself to sara, even though sara already sees him as something alike to an ally, but he wants something more than that. in the logic sara deleted scene, ranmaru states that he would want to be sara's best friend, and he admits how wants to go home with her and laugh casually over jokes together and treat life like nothing's wrong

i like to believe this was deleted because it would be ooc for ranmaru, that he would probably be very reluctant of sharing such an ideal with sara, and him suddenly spilling about wanting to be sara's friend in one moment would probably cause more shock factor, and not do much good for the lore, idk it just seems very "ah omg" and less "how interesting"

i really love how ranmaru is. not a good person. i know how strange that sounds, but ranmaru is, kind of, in a way, a support character for sara. And u would think, well support character, must be someone kindhearted and encouraging, right? well, in ranmaru's case, yes, but no?? he's more like "i will go to lengths for your survival, you NEED to win" instead of "you got this! i'll help you escape!" and it's somewhat refreshing? i'm not sure maybe i'm just not normal

anyway enough about evil ranmaru, emotion ranmaru is just very Sad, and again, doomed by the narrative

he doesn't get any kind of character development iirc, in the infamous ransara "win for me" scene, he just talks about how he knew this was going to be a bad idea, and how he has no right to be sara's friend, but from that point on, we don't get any remarkable moment where ranmaru gets some sort of character redemption, and instead we get a moment where ranmaru AGAIN goes through with some sort of wild plan to make sure sara escapes, which is erasing his personality / replacing it with the joe ai's personality.

gosh, if ur friends with me, u probably know how i love and hate this part of the game, mostly because of how interesting it is and how it could've fleshed out into a whole other issue, but i dislike how it's totally overshadowed by both the fandom and the game itself

sara herself doesn't seem to react too strongly by ranmaru's choice to erase himself to become a "vessel" for joe's personality, which really i'd love to explain but honestly idk,,, i definitely thought there'd be a bigger deal about it, but perhaps it was overruled since the modified maple boss fight was literally like,, moments after that

in emotion route, ranmaru shares little to no information with anyone, though he does come close when he tries to tell sara, which he does successfully tell sara about the asunaro human in the group, but i believe that is the only moment where ranmaru goes "sara, hold on" and actually tells sara about what he was actually going to say, which, on one hand, had me on the edge of my seat, but on the other hand, was nice to see since it was really showing how untrusting and reserved ranmaru is, no matter how much he trusts sara, he's not entirely sure if she trusts him in return, or if he trusts sara to not share this information with anyone else

i love ranmaru kageyama

[notasapleasure]

WIP ask meme

@stripedroseandsketchpads tagged me in this. And oh my god. If you think there are Too Many Words in the fic I publish, you should see my poor notes app. Here is a sneak peek of its contents. I haven't edited for brevity/those I'm actively working on, these are just all the unfinished files I could find. Some I don't intend to do any more with, others I'd really like to pick up again. The only ones being actively worked on right now are the Andor Saga AU and the first one on the list for Andor.

I put ALL the Lymond I could find in mainly for @oughtaagh who has been leaving the most lovely comments on my Lymond fics that I have totally failed to respond to. I'm sorry! I will cycle back round to Lymond one day, it's inevitable <3

Tagging uh.... @distressednoise, @r0b0tb0y, @faceofpoe, @donnaimmaculata, @batri-jopa, @elwenyere, @notabuddhist and anyone else who wants to say I tagged them! Also sorry if you'd already been tagged, I'm not keeping up with the dash very well at the moment!

Anyway please send me asks/comments/cease and desist orders about these. xxx

ANDOR

C: We decided we were thirsty, and you wanted to go to Cavo's. As yet untitled Brassian alternative scene - what if instead of a great collaborative cover story this was a great collaborative fuck? Almost(?) finished?

Saga AU pt 2. This actually does have a working title of 'The Bear and the Berserk' but this doc is just a short bullet point list of plot things for a specific part of the fic.

Cassian pov. It's a Cassian pov chapter! For...drumroll...the first chapter of the Saga AU pt 2! The rest is going to be back to Brasso FPN. The file actually includes a rough first draft of chapter 2, as well.

"You're up early this morning," Bix says lightly. A follow-up chapter to Only Ever Just One Night started back when I had epic plans for continuing this, bringing in Cinta and Vel and Luthen, whumping the hell out of Brasso, and having Cassian rescue him. This is just one scene of awkward conversation with tea though.

Oh god it developed Plot. Related to the previous chapter - a bullet-pointed list of things that might have happened in this fic I Wil Not Write (not least as I'd rather just see what happens in S2 first anyway).

AND THEN WE DANCED

It was a sunny day in Batumi... Patchy few paragraphs of the next chapter of Inchoate.

Plannnnns (again). Plans for how Inchoate would/will continue.

THE LYMOND CHRONICLES

Canon-verse/other AUs

Multiple pieces of follow-up to The next man with a ladder, Danny/Jerott post-canon: It was dark when they rode into the port town... [Chapter 3, basically done, plus most of Chapter 4 but it devolves into broken paragraphs at the end]. "I'm going to the other bed," Danny said in a voice like someone was standing on his throat... [??? there's loads of this written! This is the file where they Get Down To It] Stitch the scenes together [a few paragraphs in which I hoped to make a logical leap from Chapter 4 to fucking, but seemingly never quite got there].

Lymondar saga draft. Actually two files of the abortive first effort at writing a saga AU. I was trying much harder to write in saga style and playing with lacunae in a way that was fun for me but exceedingly nerdy. I think I found the idea more fun than the execution, too.

St Seb. Remember ages ago when I was writing a post-canon 'Jerott gets shot full of arrows and has to admit his feelings because he thinks he's gonna die' fic? This is the file! Some bullet points and some text, some of which I even posted as Sunday sixes way back when iirc.

Fait prosperer qui n'est à croire vain. Fuck me, there's LOADS of this. Pawn in Frankincense/Ringed Castle AU where Marthe steals Lymond's ride with Kiaya Khatun and persuades her they should take over Russia together. Meanwhile Francis is left with Jerott. Hahaha. It kept getting longer because Francis kept trying to escape and I kept finding ways to drag him back, but the 'and now kiss!!' with the two of them behaving in character was just not coming easily.

Francis Crawford's Holistic Inquisition Agency. I wrote this??? One chapter of a Lymond/Dirk Gently AU, where Francis is obviously Dirk and Jerott is a furious/bemused Todd.

She tried every instrument, she redrew every chart. A few short chapters, never finished, of Marthe wrestling with her role in canon and her fate as assigned by La Dame. A couple more paragraphs of a similar sort of thing in Volos.

Malta. Half-arsed few paragraphs of wondering how Jerott would cope with meeting a fellow Knight being imprisoned for sodomy.

Band AU (my 1980s rock band AU for the series, see also @theartistknownaslymond)

Au of an Au. What if, after the Battle of the Bands at Solway, Jerott went to stay at the Edinburgh townhouse for a while and he and Francis got to collaborating in the shed? There's quite a lot of this and it's quite fluffy.

Out out out! The band celebrate Thatcher's downfall. Happy epilogues for everyone! However it's an epic task trying to do all the characters justice, so I was trying to write it as vignettes to match each song on the playlist. Six-ish are written. And earlier draft with plan for characters intercting is in Ding dong the witch is dead.

Jerott/Marthe - four times it just about worked, one time it really didn't. What it says on the tin? aka you just know Jerott has said 'Francis' instead of Marthe at least once when he comes. Only the beginning of the first time exists in this chapter, but I think I explored the idea elsewhere, whenever I dig up that file...

DWTH missing scene. Jerott/OC missing scene from Don't wake the house. Not finished, probably not going to be finished. I think I have enough Jerott smut on the go.

Workshop. Patchy draft of pre-canon Jerott and GRM 'therapy' session in which GRM learns about Francis Crawford and what a hold he has on the boy he thought of as his own plaything. GRM doesn't like sharing.

F/P. Draft of a fluffy kiss prompt someone (@erinaceina? @notfromcold?) sent for Francis/Philippa. Post-canon pregnant Philippa and worried Francis written when it was too hot in summer. It's probably complete enough to post tbh! hmu if you want it posting.

Jerott behaving badly (again). Somehow this ended up in the 'comfortember' section of the notepad, which...no? Maybe it was intended to be originally, but it grew a life of its own. Post-canon, post split-up with the OC, pre-getting together with Danny. Joining the mile high club and regretting it, then ending up crashing at Joleta's (who he meets coincidentally at the airport, NOT who he's screwing in the airplane loo!!). It's meant to end up cathartic, but didn't get finished :') I'm actually really pleased with what I have - post-canon Joleta is so much fun to write!

Somewhere (Google Drive?? an actual Word doc??) there is also loads and loads and LOADS of Pawn in Frankincense band AU around Baron Morgan's place (the Aga Morat), featuring fucked-up Francis/Morgan, fucked up Marthe/Kiaya, fucked up Francis/Kiaya, and bewildered cold turkey Jerott. There's also some Jerott/Marthe from later on.

Other

Crossover. A sequel to my ATWD fic I will shake mountains, where Merab and Irakli encounter celebrity diners in the restaurant they work in: respected musician Francis Crawford and friends take the boys for a drink and share queer/artistic inspiration/history with them. There's quite a lot written but I couldn't quite manage to finish it off.

St Mary's. Another ATWD/Lymond crossover, placing Merab and Irakli among the mercenaries of St Mary's. Mostly bullet points.

3m. Furious that there was no fic for the film Three Months I decided to jot down a scene I wanted to see afterwards. I wrote four lines and cannot remember what my plan was at all.

[wraith-caller]

Hi, Wraith! Lemme just start by saying that I ADORE your lore posts. Your mind is incredible and I love reading your thoughts, speculations, extrapolations, etc. Which brings me to a question I’m dying to hear your thoughts for: How did Iji die? I’ve been scouring Reddit and any other forums I can find and everything I’ve found is cyclical non-answers. The obvious answer is Black Knives- because their bodies are scattered around him. This tracks because Blaidd, when you find him in front of Ranni’s Rise, is also surround by Black Knife corpses. However, this does NOT track for several reasons. First: Iji is drenched in black flame, a sorcery (power?) used by the Godskins, not the Black Knives. I’ve seen lots of people say it’s probably just an oversight on FromSoft’s part. Altogether possible, but would make me sad and I deeply want to believe it’s intentional. Second: The Black Knives are (were?) RANNI’S assassin’s. While she’s self-serving and stone-cold, she claims to love Blaidd and Iji (and tells you to tell them). I find it hard to believe she’d have them killed. MAYBE if they were only found near Blaidd (in preparation for his coming madness), I could buy it, but I’m not sure I can get onboard as it stands. Now I did find two interesting thoughts. One, someone said the Nox were recruited as the Black Knives and turned on Ranni when she killed her own body, because the plan was only to kill Godwyn and plant one of their own on the throne. I’ve never seen or found anything in my own playthroughs to support or indicate this, but it would make a lot of sense. Two, and I feel that this hinges heavily on one, someone soeculated that Gideon killed Iji. They pointed out that he uses black flame sorceries, and he definitely tries to kill any threats to his ascent to lordship. Anyway, this got WAY longer than I meant for it to be. But IF it’s a topic that interests you, I’d love to hear your thoughts! (And if not, no problem at all!) There’s definitely plenty I don’t know/understand and if I’m incorrect in any of my points above, I’d be really interested in knowing what I’m missing. I feel obligated to sign this, too, since it got away from me 😂😅 -nightingale-ghost-writer

@nightingale-ghost-writer sorry to answer this way, tumblr's not cooperating with answering asks lol. Hi!! Thank you for the kind words haha I'm happy my ramblings are of interest to others! I do hope you really enjoy a ramble bc your question sorta set me off on one here lol

I've thought about Iji's death now and then, and found some of the same answers you did about the black flame effect around his body. It may simply be a mistake by the devs like people frequently say. Especially since, iirc, there's no deathflame animation analogous to the blackflame one left on Iji. It could have been a 'close enough' kind of thing, which yeah I agree would ultimately be disappointing! However someone in this reddit thread had something interesting to point out:

"There's a weird detail, possibly an oversight: if you use a Blade of Death weapon art (for example Maliketh's Black Blade or the Gargoyle's Black Blade) on a troll, the effect looks like black flame rather than the usual red and black flame. I doubt there's a lore reason, but maybe something about how that enemy type is coded causes that effect to appear like black flame, and that also extended to Iji who uses the same model."

I haven't tested this myself, but if it's true, it lends more support to the idea it's just an unintentional effect. However, in that same thread, a few folks point out that Godskins were spotted in various places relevant to Destined Death - in the Volcano Manor and Divine Tower of Liurnia. Rykard has a piece of the Death rune, and Ranni's corpse is on the tower, along with her cursemark. It may be that they are searching for the Rune of Death themselves. Their presence in Farum Azula may suggest they were seeking to free the rune and restore the true power of the Black Flame. So while I still believe it's the Black Knife assassins who killed Iji, I suppose there is room to argue the Godskins have a stake in his death, too, in that Iji stands between them and Ranni.

While the Black Knife assassins worked with Ranni, I'm not sure that they were necessarily under her command. I think they collaborated as they both thought they could benefit from each other. Ranni would get to shed her flesh through the ritual, and the assassins of the Eternal Cities, who have beef with the Golden Order, get to strike down one of the GOs most shining and noble icons and throw the world into chaos. As you've said, they have their own agenda with ushering in the Lord of Night, who may either be an outer god or an envoy/vassal to one. This Lord may also have some connection with Ranni's Black Moon and, strangely enough, the Tibia Mariners who, in Japanese, are referred to as "Night King's Kin"(more info in this Zullie video here). The Mariners hold deathroot and raise up Those Who Live in Death, so I have been under the impression they only came into being after Godwyn's curse spread, which is of course a direct consequence of the assassination.

So while Ranni and the Assassins stood to gain from each other in this plot, their ultimate goals are sort of actually at odds. Ranni, while devoted to her Black Moon, seeks to remove the influence of Outer Gods from TLB and leave everyone to their own devices. Meanwhile, the Nox/Assassins are seeking to deliver a new one to the throne. We see indications of this struggle in Alecto's imprisonment in the evergaol at the Moonlight Altar and, if you are partial to the theory that Miquella collaborated with Ranni, in Ordina. Then there's the further evidence of the Assassins coming for Ranni's group to kill Blaidd and Iji. So I agree, I don't think Ranni had Iji killed. Like you, I could potentially see her ordering them to kill Blaidd, as she knew he'd be fated to try to destroy her. While it is cold and calculating, she does express her sympathy for him. But she is ultimately dedicated to sacrificing everything to achieve her goals. When we do find Blaidd with the dead assassins, he's not saying anything about them. He's frantically denying that he could be a danger to Ranni, as if their attack on him is connected to that. So I do see how people could connect the assassins coming for him with them being ordered by her to kill him.

But then we get into the matter of why they'd be ordered to kill Iji, and I just can't think of a good one. He's clear-minded, and not fated to betray her in the way Blaidd is as her shadowbound beast. I've seen people claim it's a matter of 'tying up loose ends' but I can't imagine in what way he'd be a 'loose end' given that he's entirely faithful to her. Loose ends are tied up because they pose a threat. What threat is Iji to Ranni and her goals if he is emphatically supporting her to the very end? And then when I think of Alecto in the evergaol, I'm really inclined to believe it's purely a matter of bad blood between Ranni's group and the assassins after the conspiracy was through. It may even be that we led them to her, as her whereabouts were previously unknown until we found her(though you'd hope people would uh check her home before declaring her missing?? lol).

That being said, I kind of like your idea about Gideon's involvement. Some elements of that make sense. I'm not sure how much he knows of Ranni, since he says they don't actively seek her out due to her having cast off her rune. While he generally seems to send lackeys to go do his dirty work, the Carian Manor could be a pit stop he made on the way into Leyndell. He may have somehow or other learned of Ranni's whereabouts, learned she was behind the conspiracy, but what I struggle with is him learning her motivation for it. She reveals this to us only after we've spent some time in her service. So did Gideon suspect her of being after the throne? Would he have known she wanted to rid the world of all the troubling influences of the Outer Gods? If he did, would that be much of a threat to his desire to become a lord? While he wouldn't be an Elden Lord, there'd still be power to be had in a world without the Golden Order. And the power vacuum left in the wake of Ranni achieving her goals would seem like a good opportunity for him to position himself in a leadership role. But I'll be honest, I don't fully understand him and his revelations about Marika's will, and how that effects his perspective. By the end of it he seems to think vying for Elden Lord is a futile struggle and that the whole thing is just a meat grinder that Tarnished are being fed into. So does he even still want that power by the end, if he believes it to be utterly unobtainable? Still, it's not entirely unbelievable that he would eliminate potential threats to that power before he comes to that fatalistic conclusion.

Okay, anyway, I hope all of this makes some sense!! Thanks for the interesting ask and for sharing your theories about this strange little mystery!!!

[meirimerens]

I love your headcanons/stories about Daniil's mom, as well as the art you've made of her! I was actually wondering if you had any thoughts about Daniil's dad. We at least know that he was a military man and wanted the same for his son but that's about it

i've talked about him a bunch scattered across like seven trillion dankovsky lore posts (mostly about how he reacted to his son being gay + the slow acceptation of it until he offered him a chokha as a university-going gift in a meaning of You Might Be Gay. But You're Still My Masculine Man Son + being kinda. Afraid of his son's boyfriend until the boyfriend becomes interested in his + dankovsky's shared beetles collection and he's like mmmmmh maybe he's a good guy actually) but i have a few other things... come here [grabs you]

dankovsky's dad's side of the family To Meeee is georgian [hence. daniil mikheilovich [georgian romanization] and not mikhailovich [russian romanization]] but has been in russia for longer than his mom's side has been. on mom's side i think either her parents or grandparents emigrated, on dad's side i think it's been longer; hence why the paternal last name eventually became. i don't know what word to choose. "assimilated" maybe? like a fully russian last name came into the picture [and then was passed down to dankovsky] instead of daniil's mom's maiden name that is still armenian. i think the dad's side of the family still stayed within georgian/caucasian communities for a bit, mostly mingling and bonding with other emigrants, keeping in touch with the culture of their country of origins, and that's probably in one of them that daniil's mommy and daddy met

i think he's also kind of a small guy like dankovsky. i see dankovsky as 170cm [1cm taller than in p1 (bc i need mark to be the 169cm he is i think it's funny) but also 13cm smaller than in p2 lol] his mom to meee is 155cm so teeny weeny but i think he doesn't just have that from her i think his dad is also like. either 171cm or 169cm idk who i see as being taller on here

i think he can grow a meeeaaaan fucking beard actually i had taken this image [the man iirc is armenian but i'm going purely off of vibes]

as a ref for dankovsky's dad's portrait when i drew daniil's apartment scene so i think dad can grow that type of beard. (i think daniil also Can he just refuses to do so he likes to be clean-shaved.) he'd be really proud of his big beard i think it's a great deal about his own masculinity and power to him.

he was [canon lore] a military man who truly tried to make a military man out of his son. in my mind it was also a way to try to counterbalance a certain like. Overcompensating. for his son being gay. i've written it more but tldr for a lot of fathers, their son being gay is an attack on their own masculinity/sexuality because they see the son as an extension of themselves, and i think dankovsky's father tried to make him a military man both because he thought he'd do good + it'd offer him an honorable life, because he saw dankvsky as an extension of himself as dads do and wanted to share this with him, AND because he thought teaching him to fight and shoot a gun would like compensate for the Gay Thing. now dankovsky's still gay but a fucking menace and sharp shooter to boot

i think he has a certain like. roughness that came with the time period right like a hold (and wish to hold) on masculinity which maybe made him a bit... not unkind, but unsweet. a bit emotionally reserved, but as like A Man Thing unfortunately. he was a little distant towards dankovsky as he grew up and The Gay Thing became obvious, but has had to like. kind of suck it up and live with it. he's re-grown closer just before he left for uni. i think he would mellow in the company of horses (i think he truly liked horses + maybe even was cavalry) and shared his love of them with his son teaching him to ride + mellow and offer a sort of almost childish wonder in the collection of beetles (which dankovsky took from him as well). i think dankovsky cherishes the beetle-collecting with him because it was among the few times were dad didn't try to Compensate for him and truly let himself be a little whimsical

i think he eventually left the military, i'm thinking he could have been discharged for an injury. i also think he's still alive during the events of the game [just like his wife/dankovsky's mom], however i'm thinking he could be working away from home. mom stays home because she has health problems but i think he's a bit healthier and can travel so he can get money to support her, even if she still works on her own

i like to think he might have played an instrumence... daniil's mom i see as playing the cello [and daniil taking from her] and i'm thinking mom and dad could have met over music. he could play... maybe piano... fiddle... panduri.... makes you think. but i think he stopped as daniil was being expected + growing up because he had Military Things to do. maybe with his discharge of it he got back into it...

i think his ass cannot cook. truly i don't. i think he's a foodie and loves his treats and traditional foods but even when he puts all his heart into it. he fucks it up.

yeas... yeas we see it... THANK YOU FOR ASKING....!

[masterghandalf]

Embers by Vathara: A Too-Long Review

Embers is one of the most famous – perhaps the most famous – fanfics in the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom. It’s also one of the most controversial, prone to creating very strong, very polarized opinions among its readers. The fic’s fans call it an incredible piece of worldbuilding that turns aspects of the original show on its head and enriches others with a darker, more morally complex plotline and sophisticated themes. Detractors call it blatant Fire Nation propaganda that worships at Zuko’s feet and demonizes everyone who ever slightly disagreed with him. The fact that both sides of the debate can get very… heated, to put it mildly, only furthers the controversy. At the risk of igniting old flame wars (pun very much intended😉) I thought I’d step in and offer my own thoughts on things. In brief, I think there’s a lot of positive things to be said about Embers, and I can see why it has the fandom it does… but at the same time, for a number of I reasons, some major, some nitpicky, I personally cannot bring myself to embrace it. Let’s take a look behind the cut to talk about why!

What is Embers?

First off… what’s this about, anyway? Embers is an Avatar: The Last Airbender AU fic, diverging from canon early in Book Two, written by Vathara (a rather famous fanfic writer active in multiple fandoms, and IIRC has also published original fiction under her own name) from 2009-2014. Its basic premise involves Zuko, while on the run with Iroh in the Earth Kingdom, rediscovering, based on things his mother had taught him, a lost firebending technique- fire-healing. From there it snowballs massively as Zuko gets caught up in spirit shenanigans, becomes a yaoren (two-element bender) who can also bend water, wrestles with his own legacy, and ultimately explores finds himself caught up in an ancient struggle involving spirits and dragons with more at stake than anyone has realized. The story begins in a one-shot, “Theft Absolute,” and then continues in Embers proper, and it is long – 91 chapters (not counting “Theft Absolute”) and more than 700,000 words even discounting author notes, making it longer than the entirety of The Lord of the Rings (even if you include The Hobbit too), longer than freaking War and Peace, and roughly comparable to all three volumes of Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy together. Woof. In other words, there’s a lot to dig into here. Though the fic itself (at least the FF.net version) does not internally divide itself in any way other than chapters, its TVTropes page splits it up into twelve discrete story arcs, which I may bring up occasionally for ease of reference. Anyway, the sheer size and complexity of the fic means there’s a lot to discuss, so with the basic intro out of the way, let’s get to it.

What’s Good About Embers?

Before we begin, I’d like to say that while my ultimate feelings about the fic are largely negative, I can absolutely see why it got popular and why its fandom has generally been so devoted to it (and since I will be talking about a lot of negative things, I did want to go ahead and put this part first, to make it clear that I do have aspects I like, and the things I don’t like should be understood in that context). For one, it’s very long, very detailed, and as of 2014 it’s complete. As a fic writer myself who has written some very long fics (none this long, though!) I have an inkling of how difficult a feat this is to pull off and can absolutely salute Vathara for the achievement. As for the writing itself, I wouldn’t call Vathara a great wordsmith, but she is, generally speaking, a solid one, with prose that feels professional-novel-quality; considering what a lot of fic (especially from a fandom that skews young, particularly at the time of the show’s original airing and the time Embers got started) is like, that’s yet another breath of fresh air. While I have some issues with the plot itself (more on that later) it nonetheless has a clear plot, one with lots of moving parts, and pulls it together generally well. In short, as a literary achievement Embers is already head-and-shoulders above a lot of fic, and not a few published novels. It also uses a lot of tropes and plot points that have a lot of appeal in the fandom. Zuko is the hero! Multi-element benders who aren’t the Avatar! Fire healing! Zuko is the reincarnation of an important historical figure! Aang’s Fire Nation friend Kuzon is an important historical figure! Ty Lee is a secret airbender! Koh the Face-Stealer is the big bad and was all along! Spirit stuff! Dragons! Any of these are things the Avatar fandom tends to eat up; Embers has all of them. At the same time, it also avoids a lot of the common pitfalls; in particular, it mostly doesn’t focus on issues of romance at all and thus neatly sidesteps the fandom’s infamous shipping wars, which is both rare and a relief, especially for a Zuko-centric story. It also has a lot of worldbuilding of Vathara’s own devising that’s extremely complex and detailed; said worldbuilding is controversial, and I can say I’m one it doesn’t really work for (again, more on that later) but there clearly was a lot of effort put into it, Vathara did her homework, and if you do like it, it’s one of the fic’s major selling points. She also includes a number of OCs from various walks of life that offer different perspectives and flesh things out more. And, of course, deconstruction fics that seek to problematize the canon and/or offer darker, more “mature” takes on the source material are always going to have a following in any fandom. Regardless of what you think, it makes you think (as the fact that I felt compelled to write this review, something I don’t normally do, should attest… I certainly wouldn’t put this level of thought and effort into a fic I just thought was bad). In short, I can absolutely respect Embers as a piece of writing and as a rare achievement in fandom, and I can also see a lot of reasons why it has the appeal it does for people.

But in the end, the story doesn’t work for me. Some of the reasons why are obvious; some are more subtle; some are more nitpicky issues of personal taste. But I’d like to take a while to discuss why, despite everything I do think there is to like or appreciate about the fic, it rubs me the wrong way. First off, I think it’s best before anything else to discuss the lion-turtle in the room.

Is Embers Fire Nation Apologism?

This is perhaps the most common accusation levelled at the fic by its detractors; that Vathara loves the Fire Nation, presents them as being in the right and the war as justified and everyone who opposes them as being evil. In fact, Embers’s tropes page used to (it’s since been removed) compare the fic directly to The Last Ringbearer, an (in)famous LotR fic (actually a published novel in Russian, its original language, but a free fanfic in English) that flipped the tale’s original morality, presenting the elves and wizards as evil, Gondor and Rohan as their dupes, and Mordor and Umbar as innocent victims of bigoted imperialism. The fic’s fans, meanwhile, says that this is a surface-level reading that completely misses the story’s nuances and ignores its actual messages. So, what’s my take? Is Embers pro-Fire Nation apologism? My answer is… no. And also, yes. Let me explain.

First off, the fic’s reputation as Fire Nation apologism has undeniably been exaggerated by its hatedom. It presents the Hundred-Year War as being wrong. The genocide of the Air Nomads was wrong. Characters like Ozai and Azula (and, posthumously, Sozin and Zhao) who were villainous in canon remain villainous in Embers. Stopping the War and overthrowing Ozai remains a goal of all sympathetic characters in the story. That Last Ringbearer comparison is, I think, unfair (and, honestly, regardless of my issues with Embers, I think it’s a superior work to Last Ringbearer in every way… but that’s beyond the scope of this review). Vathara does not try to paint Hundred Year War-era Fire Nation as being in the right or “the real good guys.”

But. But.

Embers doesn’t try to paint the Fire Nation under Ozai as heroic, true enough. What Embers does do, however, is prioritize Fire Nation POVs and Fire Nation concerns. You might argue that this is a natural side-effect of the fic’s POV centering on Zuko, but I think it goes beyond that. Cultural clash is a major theme in the fic, and this is where a lot of Vathara’s worldbuilding goes is in exploring the worldviews and practices of the four nations in much more depth than the show does (more on that in the next section). But practically any time a Fire Nation character gets into an argument with a person from another nation, the Fire Nation character’s POV gets prioritized and they’re the one the narrative wants us to side with. Characters are frequently lambasted for not understanding the Fire Nation and Fire Nation values, and if they don’t that’s their fault, but the reverse is almost never true, with almost any conflict presenting the Fire Nation character as being in the right. The Fire Nation are literally descended from dragons, it’s eventually revealed (all Fire Nationals seem to have a little dragon ancestry; a few have a lot of it); none of the other nations have anything like this going on. Fire is consistently treated as a “special” element unlike any of the others, and firebenders get to do things like keep volcanoes from erupting to protect everyone else in the world and no other nation has anything comparable going on; we also get a lot of info on how unique the Fire Nation ecology is and the specialized management it requires. The war is mostly understood through the lens of how it affects the Fire Nation, with a lot more time given to how it’s warped Fire Nation culture than the harm they’ve done to the rest of the world (indeed, a big deal is made at various points about how once the Fire Nation conquers territory, they view it as just another part of the Fire Nation and its people as their people, to be treated as such, and those who don’t follow that ideal are presented as aberrations, which is… not how empires actually work). And so on.

But the biggest issue… Kyoshi. Embershas a really weird take on Kyoshi and her role in the Fire Nation’s history that hangs over the entire fic, and not in a good way. See, in Embers-verse the Fire Nation in Kyoshi’s time was a bunch of independent islands ruled by feudal lords (who fought each other all the time but apparently never tried to take more territory than they could control or unify the islands because they knew they couldn’t hold it, because that’s clearly how aggressive warlords think *rolls eyes*). But the Earth Kingdom was attacked by Fire Nation pirates, and none of the local “Great Names” could stop them because hey, the pirates weren’t their subjects. So Kyoshi committed genocide on half the Fire Nation and forced the survivors to swear allegiance to the Fire Lord, and in Embers if you swear loyalty to a firebender, you can’t break it without dying or nearly dying (more on that when we get to the worldbuilding). So, yeah, the political structure of the Fire Nation is presented as being an unnatural imposition and it’s all the Avatar’s fault, with the war being a direct consequence of this. Yeesh. This backstory ends up pervading the Fire Nation’s characterization, providing justification for why no firebender will ever trust the Avatar and why they’re convinced the other nations want to wipe them out and will if the war turns against them or if they try to make peace. It doesn’t justify the war… but it is used to present the imperialist conquerors as victims themselves, doing something they’d never have done if an outside force hadn’t mauled them and rearranged their political system first (all that pent up aggression they used to work out fighting each other had to go somewhere, apparently…). And that… really makes me uncomfortable, not least because of how it takes the onus for starting the conflict off the Fire Nation and puts it on someone else (not the only way the fic does this, as Ozai ends up overshadowed by the real villains too) while also creating a scenario where it feels like the world revolves around the Fire Nation and the Fire Nation’s issues, with the rest of the world as supporting players. In short, while it doesn’t try to justify the Fire Nation’s actions in the present, it goes to great length to make sure those actions are understandable and Fire Nation voices and Fire Nation concerns are prioritized by the narrative while those of other nations are generally marginalized.

 It gets especially obvious when you see the treatment Vathara gives the other nations. So, let’s take a look at the fic’s worldbuilding in general.

The Worldbuilding of Embers

One of the most talked about aspects of Embers is its worldbuilding; Vathara takes what’s established in canon and adds a lot of detail and complexity to it. Like most aspects of the fic, however, said worldbuilding can be very controversial; fans love how detailed it is and how it reframes their understanding of canon, while critics tend to think it doesn’t fit well with what canon establishes about the world. Personally, I tend to fall into “the worldbuilding is really interesting and compelling, but I’d like it a lot better if it was an original setting rather than trying to shoehorn it into the Avatar world,” but there are a few cases where I do think it has very profound issues of its own. So, let’s dig into it, shall we?

Bending: I’m going to address Vathara’s take on bending first, because it influences almost everything else she does with the setting. Bending in Embers works quite differently from how it does in canon. Most obviously, not only does every element have its own sub-school of healing (instead of just water), but every element has mind control powers of a different sort. Yes, really. I’ll discuss each of them in turn as I get to each nation specifically, but in general for a fic that prides itself on realistic consequences for actions and well-researched worldbuilding it's a rather... striking choice to throw in “but literal mind control” as an explanation for peoples’ actions. Also, benders (and non-benders, to a lesser degree) are often depicted as being under their element’s direct influence much more obviously than in canon, to the extent that it’s treated as genuinely surprising when someone does something opposed to their element’s philosophy; despite the work Vathara does to flesh out her various cultures, this ends up making them feel rather “planet of hats-y” at times. Ultimately, I kind of like Vathara’s bending as a magic system, creepy stuff and all, but I do think she adds so many elemental bells and whistles to things that the basic idea of magical elemental martial arts gets kind of muddled.

The Fire Nation (and dragons): I’m going to start with the Fire Nation, because it’s clearly Vathara’s favorite culture and the one where the dragon’s share of the worldbuilding goes to. And, okay, I’m a bit torn. Because on the one hand, Vathara’s Fire Nation is genuinely interesting. On the other hand, it ends up diverging significantly from the show’s Fire Nation, to a level beyond what I think Vathara intended or realized; for another, I think there’s some very problematic aspects of this society that go uninterrogated because Vathara is too busy squeeing over how awesome they are. I’m also including dragons in this section because they’re intimately (in some cases very intimately) tied with the Fire Nation, and because Vathara clearly really likes them and changes them significantly from canon.

To start with, let’s look at the political system. I’m honestly not sure Vathara realizes this because she doesn’t really discuss in in her author notes, but she somehow ends up giving the Fire Nation an entirely different form of government than they had in canon. The canon Fire Nation is clearly a centralized absolute monarchy; everything we see seems to be run by a centralized bureaucracy, its military force is a centralized, professional military, and the chain of command for both culminates in the Fire Lord, who has absolute legal, military and (implicitly) religious authority over everyone. Vathara’s Fire Nation is still a monarchy, but instead of a top-down absolute monarchy it's a bottom-up feudal monarchy where, instead of one centralized country, it’s made up of a bunch of local fiefdoms where people are loyal first and foremost to whoever their local “Great Name” is, that person has authority over the domain and then in turn swears loyalty to the Fire Lord. Needless to say, this is a completely different form of government and would produce a completely different social and especially military structure from the one we see in the show. Indeed, in the fic said social structure is greatly explored and becomes plot-critical, but it doesn’t really jive with other aspects ported over from the show’s version (such as why Embers’s Fire Nation still has a centralized professional military instead of each domain providing their own troops separately when called on, as would be the case in an actual feudal system). Unfortunately, I think a lot of the detail also comes at the expense of the other nations, with a lot of aspects of Vathara’s Fire Nation being held up as unusually awesome in-universe, whether explicitly or implicitly. Most obviously, Great Names (which, considering the Fire Nation’s Japanese influences, is a pretty clear equivalent of historical daimyo) and their heirs are awesome and Vathara really, really wants to make sure we know that. The fic makes it clear that to be a Great Name you have to be a badass, and you have to hold yourself to certain standards of behavior (even a Great Name as tyrannical as Ozai seems to have to have some standards at least where his subjects – ie, the Caldera specifically in his case – are concerned) and have to keep all the volcanoes in their territory under control so everyone should be grateful to them, and have their special court language based on Sanskrit that only they speak, and if you’re a real Great Name everyone will respect you and think you’re wonderful because you’re just. That. Awesome. Even Earth Kingdom characters are impressed when realizing that Zuko (or "Lee”) is probably a Great Name’s son and think that must make him a badass! It gets a little wearying after a while, to be honest, especially since the other nations have nothing comparable (titled Earth Kingdom nobles don’t get nearly as much focus, with a few exceptions, and the Water Tribes and Air Nomads obviously have completely different systems). At the same time, the Fire Nation is also apparently the only country that regularly fields female soldiers (this one does have some basis in canon – they certainly seem to have more of them, at the very least) and also the only country where a commoner can become a high-ranking officer, even though the sorts of feudal societies Vathara’s Fire Nation is modeled on tend to not have much room for social mobility, to put it mildly (military aristocrats are an elitist bunch, as a rule, and tend to guard their prerogatives jealously!).

Oh, and this is all held together by the Fire Nation’s version of mind control – loyalty. Basically, anyone who swears allegiance to a firebender can’t break it without resulting in severe illness or death, and powerful firebenders can even attract the loyalty of people around them and make them want to serve them, even if said people don’t want to or even know what’s happening (in some cases, like Azula with the Dai Li, even if they’re not Fire Nation!). Every Fire Nation citizen (except exiles) owe loyalty to someone, and again, can’t break it or disobey an order without potentially fatal consequences. And this is where I have my real problem with Vathara’s Fire Nation. This system as a whole is never criticized or problematized. Oh, sure, loyalty to the Fire Lord specifically is a bad thing… because it was imposed from outside by Kyoshi. In the natural state of things, every domain would be independent – but still under the control of their Great Name, still with their own little loyalty pyramid, just without the Fire Lord at the top over everyone. And, indeed, at the end of the fic, the solution to the war is… to dissolve the Fire Lord’s throne and return every domain to self-rule but keeping the Great Name/loyalty system intact. This is uncritically presented as a good thing, because this way the Fire Nation will police itself by means of domains fighting each other (and it’s made clear Fire Nationals always want to fight, and it’s a dreadful imposition to try and make them live peacefully) keeping any one of them from getting too powerful. What’s never addressed is the way this would logically lock a quarter of the world into perpetual conflict with itself, driven by the personal honor of feudal warlords whose people are essentially powerless to disobey them (and again, it’s made clear Fire Nation clans have to have conflict; we’re explicitly told Sozin’s father trying to mediate them all was doomed to failure and drove him to die young, and this was crucial for shaping Sozin’s outlook on life, his resentment of the Avatar, and his desire to redirect his people’s aggression outward). And despite Vathara’s insistence that a proper Great Name doesn’t take more territory than they know they can hold, I’m still not sure what’s stopping a particularly ambitious lord from conquering neighboring domains, forcing their lords to swear loyalty, and eventually building up enough of a powerbase to start the whole mess over again. I don’t think Vathara’s intention was for her Fire Nation to be read this dystopian, but personally, I find it very hard to read it any other way (it doesn’t help that almost all our major Fire Nation POVs are nobility, military, or both; we don’t really get the common person’s take on all this, but I somehow doubt they’re all that enthused). It does remind me a bit of PC Hodgell’s Kencyrath series (enough that I wonder if Vathara’s read it…) where the Kencyr also have a feudal society driven by magically binding loyalty to the ruling class and strict, arcane codes of honorable behavior, except that society is portrayed as deeply, profoundly messed up in ways that Vathara’s Fire Nation isn’t. Also, one last word on the concept of loyalty… it pretty much creates a society where the “I was just following orders!” defense is actually valid (yes, you can disobey orders in Vathara’s Fire Nation, but the consequences are bad enough it’s clear people generally don’t, and Fire Nationals in-fic tend to treat “I had orders” as a justification for most things) and… I really, really hope that was unintentional. Because if not… damn.

In hindsight, this may have sounded harsher than I meant it to. I really do find the concept of Vathara’s Fire Nation interesting, and “decadent empire run by corrupt, backstabbing sorcerer-aristocrats” is one of my favorite setting types, but I really wish she’d taken the very problematic aspects of this society and, well, problematized them instead of going all in on “clans and domains are awesome and Great Names are awesome and everyone wants a good Great Name to pledge loyalty to.” It’s not that Vathara’s Fire Nation doesn’t have problems, but said problems are mostly presented as being imposed from outside (the entire office of the Fire Lord, for one…) and the ideal solution is to essentially revert back to the pre-Kyoshi status quo. It plays into the overall theme, which I’ll get to at the end of the review, that yes, the war is wrong, and Ozai was wrong… but the Fire Nation itself is the real victim here instead of the people they were, you know, trying to conquer, or at least as much of a victim as they are. And, well, I don’t like the implications of that very much (and I’m less sympathetic to this sort of thing than usual this past year, considering certain current events), especially when you consider Vathara’s takes on the other nations.

Before we go on, one last word I’d like to have is on dragons. Vathara clearly likes dragons a lot. I don’t blame her – I went through a big phase of dragon-loving in my teenage years, and they still remain one of my favorite fictional creatures. In a broad sense, I really like Vathara’s take on dragons. Unfortunately, she’s shoehorned them into a setting where they don’t fit, and it makes a mess. Canon’s dragons are “the original firebenders,” fire’s equivalent to sky bison for air or badgermoles for earth. They’re powerful, wise, ancient creatures, sure, but still essentially animals. And I really think Vathara didn’t like that, because her dragons are sapient, nigh-immortal shapeshifters who can and do often interbreed with humans. On its own, none of that’s bad – I like most of those traits in dragons, and there’s mythological basis for most of it. But where Vathara tries to jam them into the place of canon’s dragons is where it gets awkward. In particular, she seems to have an axe to grind with canon’s take on dragons, at several points actively mocking how dragons are often considered animals by humans, people who don’t realize dragons are sapient, or how they are regarded as no more than sky bison (which in canon I’d say is no insult at all, but, well, I don’t think Vathara likes sky bison very much). That “can breed with humans” bit becomes particularly important, because it turns out all Fire Nation people are descended from dragons. Most of them very distantly, of course, but some much more closely, including (of course) Zuko. And we get treated to a lot of exposition on how this directly influences Fire Nation people’s psychology and culture and makes them different from other humans, especially “dragon-children” with close draconic ancestry. So basically, what it boils down to is Vathara’s favorite nation having literally superhuman ancestry (I count “being a dragon” as superhuman) something none of the other nations do (it also adds another layer to fic!Fire Nation’s persecution complex, since they think if the other nations find out they’d consider them subhuman). Normally, I’d love to read about a culture of dragon-people, but it’s just so incredibly out of place in the Avatarverse that I can’t really connect with it there, especially since I feel like it just serves to underscore that Vathara’s favorite culture is special, everyone!

Basically, there’s a lot I find conceptually interesting in Vathara’s Fire Nation, but I don’t like it as written. Personally, I’d emphasize the self-destructive nature of their feudal honor culture more, play loyalty for horror in general (not just if you’ve got a bad lord), and move it out of the Avatarverse entirely into another setting where the dragon stuff could be made to actually fit, or at least into a fic where it’s a full AU from the start in a sort of “Avatar: The Last Airbender reimagined, ultimate universe style” rather than a canon divergence AU that still accepts large swaths of the show as having happened. This is something I’ll be coming back to quite a bit, actually, since I think Vathara’s Fire Nation really highlights how much of this stuff I’d find much more palatable as original fic (or, again, full AU) rather than fanfic.

The Air Nomads: Okay, this is where I think real problems lie. Because even if I unironically loved everything else about the fic… I still wouldn’t be able to rec it unreservedly if it had Vathara’s take on the Air Nomads in it. Whereas most of my other issues with the fic are about context and execution, its take on the Air Nomads is something I find inherently irresponsible and indefensible on its own merits. Vathara’s Air Nomads disturb me – not their activities in the fic, but the meta fact that this portrayal exists at all.  What am I talking about, you ask? Well, first off, there’s a running theme that starts in the fic early any time the Air Nomad genocide is mentioned talking about how it actually makes perfect sense that everyone in the world secretly hated and resented the Air Nomads and weren’t that sad to see them go. To the point that it starts getting uncomfortably victim-blamey. Then we later learn that in the distant past the Air Nomads used to be Mongol-like warlike conquerors. Okay, that’s not as bonkers as it seems on the surface (real-world Tibet did have its imperial age, and there are some interesting historical connections between Tibet and Mongolia) but considering the earlier portrayal, I still side-eye it. And then, we get the big reveal – the Air Nomads, or at least the Air Monk elders, were evil. See, the airbenders’ version of mind control is something called “Harmonious Accord” that is never really explained in detail but is apparently just flat-out brainwashing. And the Temple Elders used it to force all their people to agree on everything and to use the Air Nuns as baby factories then force them to give up their children to be raised communally. Anyone who dissented, and anyone who wasn’t a bender (canonically, all Air Nomads were benders, but clearly Vathara knows better) were kicked out and forced to live among the other nations, which boiled down to the Air Nomads inflicting their criminals on everyone else. Since they were all conditioned to not be attached to anything, the Air Nomads wandered around the world, causing disruption and refusing to deal with the consequences of their actions. Oh, and little things like “compassion” were brainwashed away too, apparently (which is, like, the antithesis of actual Buddhist belief – hey, Vathara, compassion’s the whole point). And it turns out that their pacifism was a hypocritical sham, forced on them by one bitter old monk (who started the temple system) who was jealous of the warlords and seized power during a power vacuum and remade the whole culture in his image (and apparently by forcing the airbenders to be peaceful, he somehow locked them out of most of their powers, including healing… somehow). Yeah, so basically, Vathara’s Air Nomads were a literal brainwashing cult created by an evil old man bitter because he wasn’t a good warrior as a form of revenge, and everything Aang knew about his people was a lie! I can get trying to grey up the Air Nomads a bit, break a few of Aang’s pedestals, but this is just excessive. And, sort of as the antithesis of how it seems like nobody can ever get a word in edgewise arguing with a Fire Nation character, any time Aang tries to defend his people, he’s met with evidence of some new horrible thing they did.

Now, like I said, Embers doesn’t try to justify the genocide itself. The mass murder is clearly portrayed as wrong (though it also has some of the edge taken off – a lot of the kids got out, with help, and there are enclaves of surviving airbenders around the world, including in the Fire Nation, so Aang’s not really the Last Airbender). But at the same time, the destruction of the Temples themselves and the culture that was based there… Vathara seems to think that was good, or at least necessary? She even has Gyatso, or at least his ghost, seem to agree with her on that. And, okay, I hate it. I hate that Vathara took a peaceful, monastic people from canon and turned them into evil baby stealers, for reasons I’m not entirely sure on (partially, I feel this may be to punish Aang specifically – more on that when we get to characters – but I also can’t help but wonder if a Buddhist monk wronged Vathara somehow in real life, because it’s sort of… weirdly personal). But I especially hate it because the Air Nomads are a stand-in for people groups who have faced genocide in real life – Tibetan Buddhists most obviously, of course, but others as well. And while Vathara did say in some of her ANs that she wanted to engage with the sort of propaganda that makes genocide possible… what she honestly ended up doing, IMO, was creating a culture where that propaganda is true (they’re not like us! They don’t think like us! They don’t value our culture! They don’t care about family or loyalty! Peaceful coexistence with them just isn’t possible!). And, well, by about the dozenth chapter where I feel like I’m being treated to the Protocols of the Air Temple Elders (seriously, the only thing that saves the fic from flat-out slandering the Air Nomads with blood libel is that they don’t seem to steal other nations’ children – though honestly, I wouldn’t put it past Embers’s Air Nomads) I just feel angry. Even Yangchen gets reduced to having been a brainwashed nun who had to be saved by the yaoren before she could realize her destiny as the Avatar. I just… am deeply disturbed Vathara thought going this far was okay, and desperately hope the unfortunate implications here were unintentional. Desperately.

The Water Tribes: Vathara’s take on the Water Tribes has me torn. On the one hand, she does go into a lot of detail about what the lives and customs of an actual Arctic tribal people might entail, in particular how their wars and raiding work, how their chiefs lead and gain honor, the role of women elders in the tribe as peacemakers, negotiators and sources of wisdom and authority, etc. I like all that stuff a lot. But there’s also some problems. The biggest problem, as I’ll get to when we talk about characters, is Katara. Vathara openly hates Katara, and a lot of what we learn about the Water Tribes is filtered through her take on Katara, which ends up painting a lot of it in a bad light. Furthermore, a lot of the comments Vathara makes about the research she did for the worldbuilding here comes across as, well, pretty condescending in the way she explains how “tribes” have to prioritize survival above all else (as if “tribes” are some sort of unified phenomenon), using the “E word” unironically when talking about real-life Inuit peoples, and the hopefully unintentional implication that anyone who lives in the Arctic is definitionally driven insane by the lack of a regular day-night cycle. Ultimately, this ends up painting a picture of the Water Tribes (especially the Southern Tribe; the Northern and Foggy Swamp tribes don’t get as much focus) as backwards and parochial, focused on their own communities above all else and not really caring about the rest of the world except as it affects them; also, they’re seemingly obsessed with revenge, to the point that it’s treated as fact that if a Water Tribe Avatar is born while the Hundred Years’ War is still ongoing, it will almost certainly end with said Avatar leading their people to commit genocide on the Fire Nation as “enemies of the tribe” (which also serves to feed the fic’s ideas about Fire Nation victimhood, and is part of a general trend where the fic equates “the desire to see the Fire Nation as a state and military power defeated” with “virulent racism against the Fire Nation as a people”). Also, Vathara’s waterbenders have the power to control other peoples’ emotions and bind them together towards common attitudes and goals; it’s very telling that unlike Fire Nation loyalty, this is called out as being creepy and dangerous, and Katara gets portrayed as a terrible person for doing it, albeit subconsciously. It’s not all bad – Water Tribe warriors, including Sokka, Hakoda, and Bato, tend to get fairly sympathetic portrayals (even though they do sometimes need other characters to explain things to them that I really think they shouldn’t) but then you also get weird asides like the implication that Gran Gran is apparently into murder and eugenics(!) on rather spurious reasoning. So, all in all, it’s a mixed bag, with some genuinely interesting worldbuilding I actually really like, that unfortunately often gets filtered through a seeming need to make Katara look bad that negatively impacts the portrayal of the whole culture.

The Earth Kingdom: This will be the shortest section, as Vathara’s Earth Kingdom feels very close to the canon Earth Kingdom. Even earthbenders’ form of mind control apparently just involves binding people to honor contracts and agreements, which is pretty straightforward and doesn’t get much focus. The biggest issue is the Dai Li. Honestly, I think Vathara gives the Dai Li more overt whitewashing than she does the Fire Nation. Vathara’s Dai Li are actually supposed to be an order of badass spirit-fighters, protecting the people from dangerous spirit world threats, which they apparently still do most of the time, with the whole "secret police” thing being more of a sideline. While Long Feng is still presented as evil, the overall vibe is more that the Dai Li are only corrupt because he’s in charge, rather than the whole organization being rotten (and we’re treated to a number of sympathetic Dai Li characters, most obviously Shirong, while the Gaang get called out for assuming the Dai Li are evil, even though none of their interactions with them have given them any reason to think otherwise). And even Long Feng gets a war hero backstory he didn’t have in canon. I assume this is more of Vathara’s desire to add moral greyness to the setting, but, well, I don’t think that the creepy authoritarian secret police were a group that really needed a sympathetic POV showing that they’re mostly a bunch of honorable men who just want what’s best for their city and it’s just the guy in charge who’s a bad apple, honest! She also gives Kuei a bunch of superpowers for being Earth King, which I’ll discuss when I get to the fic’s themes since I view it as part of a larger trend.

Spirits: Embers uses spirits a lot; it also really plays up the blue and orange morality of spirits in a way I genuinely like and appreciate (though Vathara seems weirdly defensive about this, like she expects her readers to assume that all spirits must be “good guys” and she has to defend a different portrayal, despite the fact that in my experience most of the Avatar fandom considers spirits to be assholes and thinks the world would be better off without them). I do have one particular issue, though. Maybe no one else cares, but as a grad student in religious studies it bugs me so much. That’s Vathara’s use of real-world deities. Agni as the Fire Nation’s patron god has some slight basis in canon, since Fire Nation honor duels are called Agni Kais (Agni is the name of the Vedic fire god… but it’s also literally just the word for “fire” in Vedic Sanskrit) but then out of nowhere partway through the fic she throws in Guanyin as a deity worshipped in the Earh Kingdom, and Tengri as the deity of the Air Nomads. Tengri, in real life, is the chief deity of Tengrism, a traditional religion of Mongolia (which ties back to the connection between the historical Air Nomads as fantasy Mongols from the fic’s history) while Guanyin is indeed venerated in China – but she’s a Buddhist bodhisattva, which is especially weird because the Earth Kingdom isn’t really coded Buddhist in either the show or Embers (shouldn’t the Air Nomads be the ones revering a bodhisattva? And this one really gets me in particular; for some reason, likely Guanyin’s comparative real-life prominence, it feels as immersion-breaking as if it turned out one of the Air Temples was now home to a sect of Christian or Manichaean monks). It’s especially jarring because the Water Tribes still revere the Moon and Ocean Spirits rather than real-world deities (and Vathara gets their names backwards – the Moon is Tui and the Ocean is La, but she flips them for some reason). Honestly, I wouldn’t use real-world deities in the Avatarverse in the first place (I have referenced Agni in some of my old fanfics, following fanon at the time, and I now consider that something of an old shame, fwiw) and if I did, I’d stick with a unified theme of Vedic deities (going off of Agni) rather than taking a grab bag of different traditions and trying to weld them into one cosmology.

The Avatar and Yaoren: Vathara’s take on the Avatar is… interesting. On the one hand, she does have a running theme of each Avatar having to wrestle with their predecessor’s mistakes which I like, and which basically became canon as we got more stories focused on different Avatars (though I do think Vathara sometimes takes it a bit too far, making it seem like the Avatar has caused more problems than they’ve solved; seriously, what did Kyoshi do to you?). On the other hand, she for some reason feels the need to retcon that the Avatar is not actually the reincarnation of their predecessors, but the World Spirit (this fic being mostly written before the introduction of Raava) choosing a new, different human host each time. And I absolutely don’t get the point to this (conceptually, the Avatar is basically a cross between the Dalai Lama and the Avatars of Vishnu, and in traditional interpretations that’s not how either of those work) and it mostly just seems to be thrown in to give Aang something else to be wrong about. Yaoren, on the other hand, Vathara loves; they’re her own creation and as two-element benders are basically mini-avatars (though they’re actually older than the Avatar) and of course Zuko gets to be one. And while the fic goes into a lot of detail about how traumatic the experience of becoming a yaoren is, the way it also lays on thick how important yaoren are and how the Avatar needs them as advisors and how the world falling out of balance is partially due to their decline and how her yaoren characters (especially Langxue) seem to have a better idea of what’s going on and how to fix it than everyone else just oftentimes makes it feel like she’s really laying it on thick regarding how amazing this creation of hers is, with the traumatic aspect being more about milking more sympathy for Zuko than something that actually affects the plot (ie, being a yaoren supposedly cuts Zuko out of the line of succession for good, since he’s now technically a waterbender… but that ends up not mattering because the position of Fire Lord is abolished anyway, and it doesn’t stop him from becoming the Great Name of Dragons’ Wings once it’s established).

Well, this is all getting a little long, so I think I’ll stop here for now and split my overall review into two parts (at least). I hope you’ll join us next time, as we dig into characters, plot, theme, and the fic’s relationship to canon. And if you’re reading this and do like Embers, please keep in mind that I’m not trying to attack you for liking it, and all of this is just my own opinion, no more, and no less. Otherwise, see you soon (fingers crossed!) for part two!