#by the fandom as their child. and it happens to a lot of different combinations of genders

[veetowervaporwave]

The funny thing about Vox and Val being Velvette's dads is that it also (partially) comes from the old Instagram accounts (Vel would sometimes say things like "My parents are fighting again :(" when the other two were going through another breakup), except even there it was glaringly obvious that Velvette was an adult and just acted childish and cutesy on purpose to fuck with people. And it made Vox sooo mad he was like "Stop saying shit like that you're a grown ass woman" and Val would play along (but it didn't stop him from talking shit about her)

[flamingpudding]

Fictober23 Prompt: 21 - "Just in case this doesn't work."

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: T

Warnings: -

A/N: Inspired by this Post about Danny bullshiting his way by saying he is Tims future kid. Also once again posting this early, cause I need to destress tomorrow and not worry about writing or work or anything.

Edit: Thanks to @kisatamao in the comments I found the post again that inspired this and linked it!

"Chronus"

"Nowadays I go by Clockwork."

"Fine, Clockwork then."

"John Constantine."

The Ancient of Time and Justice League Dark members stared at each other blankly. Until the ruler of time smiled and Constantine sighed. "How is the time baby doing?"

"Very well. Your timeline is safe. There was an incident that could have possibly splittend the timeline again and in a way it did but the destruction timeline was once more prevented, by the child himself like I hoped for. Three times now."

Constantine grunted, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag. "You know if Bats or any of his kids ever learn about this I will be the one to take the burn right?"

Clockwork only smiled a knowing smile and Constantine paled. "When?"

"Where is the fun if you knew. The little Drake has been quite unpredictable and entertaining." The Ancient mused floating around the room and Constantine's eyes narrowed.

"There won't be a paradox?"

Clockworks tilted his head with a mischievous smile on his face. "Well the timeline in which he was born no longer exists and his father of this time line has ceased his efforts in cloning. He never even got to the point of trying to combine his own DNA with the one he so desperately wanted to clone."

"I feel like I am hearing secrets I definitely do not want to know. Just tell me if this timeline is safe or not now."

"It is safe. Your timeline has now a true Ancient of Balance in the making and just in case this doesn't work, I have anchored Daniel's existence in this timeline with several means one of which was his own time clone created from a split of destruction line."

Constantine's eyes twitched. "For all of our sakes I hope Bats never finds out about this. If he ever learns that I replaced a still born with a grandson of his from a different destruction timeline… You know what, I am not nearly drunk enough for any of this mate!"

Clockwork chuckled, his eyes glinting with unhidden amusement. "Well John Constantine, would you like a word of advice?"

The JLD member took another long drag of his cigarette before flicking the butt of it somewhere to the side. "No riddle."

"When 17 turns to 4 it is not the grandfathers, you should fear."

"I said no riddles!" Constantine huffed as clockwork disappeared from his side. He brushed his hair with one hand, glaring at the spot where the Ancient of Time had been. He should have never agreed to help that damned being 15 years ago, having been somewhat of a beginner then John did not realize what kind of deal he had agreed on.

Now he wasn't sure if he should be relieved or fearful of the consequences. Especially now that he had worked with the Bat Family a couple of times already.

Exactly one year later Constantine decided he was fucking fearful!

Unknown to the Brite a lot of things can happen in three years. Like Parents turning on their child after accidentally learning about a truth. A teenager that was already hurt trying to salvage whatever peace he could.

—--

"Mom! Dad! I swear it's still me, Danny!"

"Give me back my baby boy you monster!"

—--

A governmental organisation committing mass genocide on an interdimensional species.

—--

"Ember, get out of here! Now!"

"Baby Pop! What about the others?!"

"Dan already released them! Get out of here! I will hold them off and keep them busy!"

—----

The interdimensional species try to convince said teenager fighting for them to forgo humanity.

—--

"Welp, this can't go on. No hunt is worth this much."

"Give it up already. The humans made their decision."

"They broke too many rules, it is time they suffer the consequences."

—--

A heavy conflicted ending with the teenager receding into its core and getting picked up by one of his papa from a different timeline.

—--

"What kind of crystal is that? It radiates a pretty strange but familiar energy."

"I wanna see! I wanna see!"

"If it's not dangerous, why not keep it?"

"It looks like there are snowflakes in it."

—--

The kid then reformed out of his core in his ghost age instead of human age with a green note appearing on his forehead. Said note confusing the kids papa making him contact the kids dad.

—--

"Tim you won't believe this…"

"Kon you sound weird, what is going on?"

"Remember that shiny crystal I picked up at the end of our last case?"

"The one with the snowflakes in it, yes."

"I think I just became a dad."

"WHAT?!"

—--

Which then led to the dad overanalyzing the note while the kid insisted that a certain ghost was involved. The child's grandparents then getting tipped off through the grandchild of the Ancient Constantine still curses in his mind.

—--

"So Pandora mentioned something to me."

"Hn."

"Have you tried asking Constantine about it? He is apparently in contact with a being that likes to write cryptic messages on green notes, or that's what Pandora told me at least."

"..."

"And your new grandchild came with such a note right?"

—--

And now John Constantine was fearing for his life, because Batman had tried to contact him several times now. Several times Constantine had found reasons to ignore. Only for the Bat to come knocking on his door -well more like rudely kicking it down- with fucking Super too! He was cursing up a storm internally and thinking of how best he could get out of whatever had crawled up the two hero's asses when right behind the two hero's stood another set of hero's he did not want to face especially when he noticed one of them holding a four years old toddler in his arms.

"Chronus you fucking asshole!" The Brite muttered to himself as the four hero's plus time baby stood before him demanding answers.

That was when the toddler piped up, eyes glowing a bright green. "So Clockwork does have something to do with this! I knew it!"

"Danny, sweetheart not now. You can tell us you were right after we figured out what timeline you are from and if we need to send you back or can keep you." Red Robin calmed the now pouting toddler Super Boy was holding and petting with a small chuckle. While Batman and Superman turned on Constantine.

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

Hey Gwen! Can I ask you something? What do you think of this post? https://www.tumblr.com/philhelaena/757011234089566208/thinking-about-how-hotd-introduced-adult-aegon-as?source=share

I don't really agree with it since Dyana is still present in this season and even in the previous season he was the punching bag and scapegoat of the family, but I can't find the words to explain how I disagree. What do you think?

Hi anon. With no disrespect intended to the OP of this post,. I've seen this take floating around for awhile now, that Aegon is somehow completely different from his S1 character and that it's somehow of fandom pandering, and I disagree.

First of all, the idea that half the fandom decided to ignore the fight pits and the sexual assault and focus on Aegon being drunk and funny is just flat out incorrect. At the end of S1 it was hard to write a single sympathetic word about Aegon without someone accusing you of being a rape apologist, and even now, while the casual audiences are more sympathetic towards Aegon, people can hardly say they've been enjoying his character without issuing a disclaimer, "he's a terrible person but ...". Team green has always been in a minority (I think in the polls HBO puts out team green is consistently under 15%), and even among people who enjoy team green, until recently it wasn't uncommon for people to say they loved all the greens except Aegon. On AO3 were more Lucemond fics than there were fics featuring all of the Aegon ships combined. So the idea that the showrunners were somehow listening to the 10 people who admitted to enjoying Aegon back when they were writing the S2 scripts and changing his characterization accordingly is pretty silly.

That said, I do think the show toned down Aegon's awfulness a bit. I think TGC himself probably had as much to do with this as any of the fans. That man is relentlessly advocating for his character, stating again and again that he not simply a villain, that that he is capable of empathy and love, that he is someone who feels too deeply rather than the opposite. The way he talks about Aegon and his children makes it pretty clear that he has a vision for this character and has advocated for certain character choices, and good for him! He cares a lot about Aegon and takes his job seriously and it shows because he has gotten heaps of praise for bringing depth to a character who could easily veer into cartoon villainy, and is winning over the sympathies of people who 2 years ago wouldn't have pissed on Aegon if he were on fire. In fact, recent poll on the main HotD subreddit of all places placed Aegon as the best written character so far and it wasn't even close.

And this is good! Considering what happens to Aegon in S2, as well as the endgame of the whole entire story, it's pretty important that the audience be able to connect with him on some level and feel some level of sympathy for him.

And to be honest, I'd challenge the idea that Aegon had some huge personality switchup between S1 and S2. People have to remember, we had a grand total in S1 of about 8-10 minutes with Aegon. He was not, at that point, a fully realized character. Some people envisioned a much darker character than the show ended up settling on, but those headcanons are as much headcanons as the silly goofy drunk Aegon was, as "good loyal brother" Aemond was. And I have to stress, people can interpret characters however they like, and they can certainly disagree with the direction the writers go with a character, but a character who has 8 minutes of screentime ending up having more facets to him once he appears in a primary role in S2 is not the same thing as a character assassination. And perhaps, just perhaps, the child fight pits were the OOC part and Condal etc. pulled back on that characterization because it was incongruous with the guy who was genuinely baffled when Aemond threw him under the bus for the bastard remarks, the guy dying of embarrassment when his sister roasted him at dinner, crying over a slap from his mother, trying to run away rather than take the crown, and asking Alicent "do you love me?" before crying his way through his own coronation. Aegon was a depressive alcoholic in S1 and remained a depressive alcoholic in S2. Was there a chaotic element to him? Certainly! He's got massive substance abuse problems which completely skews his judgment and inhibitions, making him self destructively impulsive. Is there a darkness in him? Of course! If nothing else, he's a Targaryen prince, someone who has grown up with the power of life and death at his fingertips. And we see this! The show has not allowed us to forget about the ratcatchers (and as you mentioned OP, Dyana is still there too)!

Finally, I will say that people who think Aegon is being shown to be a pure buffoon this season haven't been paying attention. Aegon was gaslit by his family members for four episodes straight because they wanted to keep him weak, and the way to do that was to undercut his confidence and trash his self worth. He was correct about nearly single issue he raised -- Harrenhal, the blockade, the smallfolk, needing to be informed about the battle plans Cole and Aemond were making. Hell, even the assassination attempt is something that Otto himself was planning, and Otto himself ordered landed gentry executed for refusing to bend the knee before Aegon was even crowned, a much bigger deal than executing a few ratcatchers! Aegon has a class clown demeanor a lot of the time, but he's not stupid. The thing is, Aegon could have been spouting the most eloquently worded arguments and they were still going to resist him because they whole entire point was to discourage him so that he would lose interest, Alicent even says it point blank to Otto. The thing is, Aegon has good instincts but lacks the confidence to not second guess those instincts because he knows he doesn't have the experience or the training necessary to be an effective king on his own. Aegon's ability to listen is one of his better qualities as a king in fact (I'm sure the council is missing it now that they have Aemond), but he is too concerned with winning the approval of not just his subjects, but the people he cares for, including Alicent and Aemond. Aegon is remarkably perceptive, and he does have a good sense about people, but this is his weakness and unfortunately his family has zero problem exploiting it. Now, will that continue going forward? Unlikely! Aegon is still evolving! In the span of a few months he's been crowned king, lost a child, been undermined and diminished, and has become permanently disabled due to the betrayal of his own brother. Certainly, he is going to change, for better or worse.

[yuri-is-online]

After reading a translation by Yuu Rei on twitter, I’ve been thinking about Book 7 and how this could potentially end. I know there’s been a lot of discussion of how this may need to be ended with a peaceful resolution since Malleus is so powerful and/or Idia’s plan is looking too much like Henrik’s very successful take down of Maleanor. Personally, I actually want to see Idia’s plan succeed to a degree and think it would be fun to defend why.

I’ll link it for reference here if you want to read the thread too: https://x.com/yuurei20/status/1672514883215331328?s=46

1. I personally would find it narratively fitting. History repeats itself when no one learns from it, and it was a previously mentioned lore tidbit that fae history is not well known among humans. And let’s be honest, anything that does exist on the human side for history would not be completely truthful on what happened with Maleanor if her fate is even mentioned. There has also been a lot of buildup with how overblots are dangerous to the health/wellbeing of the overblotter, and using Malleus to pay it off would both parallel Maleanor’s fate and nerf him for Book 8. A necessary action in order for the plot to not be immediately solved by Malleus’s ridiculous might.

2. I think it works with Malleus’s portrayal so far. He does have his good moments and traits, but I haven’t forgotten his tendencies to steamroll the opinions and perspectives of others. Take the Spectral Soirée for example, when Malleus decides to freeze time and kidnap a significant part of the student body simply because he sees himself in the lonely ghosts. No concern whatsoever for harm to his classmates or how it would look for an entire chunk of the student body to suddenly go missing. Or his dorm uniform vignette, where Malleus remains stubbornly insistent that it is the fault of the other housewardens or circumstance that he does not attend the meetings despite very reasonable measures to remind him having already been taken. Followed by a complete disregard for what’s polite/acceptable by summoning the other housewardens using magic reserved for objects because he doesn’t want to miss another meeting. The point I’m making here is that a massive rebellion like Idia gathering up his peers may be what it takes to get through to Malleus that what he is doing is not acceptable behavior just because he was afraid of Lilia leaving and didn’t want to be alone.

3. The last two books set a precedent for the shift from teaming up with solely the current and previous dorm to defeat an overblot to joining forces with students across various dorms. Combining that with the opportunity to build characters further by showing the NRC boys being capable of working together it would make sense for the big overblot battle to involve the other cast members like Idia’s plan intends to.

But I’m also kind of Malleus hater so take it all with a grain of salt. - 🦐

I am also kind of a Mallues hater and think his relationship with Yuu kind of gets overplayed by the fandom to an annoying extent at the cost of the character development and friendship of all other characters in the game by the English speaking fandom. In fic anyway, in game I appreciate him for what he is specifically for reasons like this, he's an interesting character.

I sort of disagree about Idia's plan looking too much like Henrik's take down of Maleanor. It might look like that on the surface to a fae who was there at the time but there is a big difference between Maleanor defending her territory and her child and the temper tantrum Malleus is throwing. To compare the two is disingenuous at best, which is why it is so narratively fitting that they might go down the same way.

I sort of get the sense that what happened is lost history because the fae eventually destroyed the human kingdom/ the kingdom destroyed itself. There is a reason Silver is an orphan and the fae keep to themselves. In a way Briar Valley seems sort of bad at history education? Which makes sense in a weird way, if you don't reproduce often and everyone lives for an age you sort of just expect to remember things and you don't always think to explain important stuff to kids. The point about needing to nerf Malleus for Book 8 is such a good fucking take I would be so surprised if the health complications angle didn't come up. I wonder if the consequences are worse for fae due to them being made of magic?

Malleus does seem to understand that his power is great and that it is meant to be used to bring people happiness... he just does not seem to see other people as. Well. People nor does he seem to understand the concept of dreams. In a way the ideals of someone like Azul are completely foreign to him because he's never had to work to be good at anything he's needed to do. Sure he might like learning to do mundane things like use a washer and dryer, but he doesn't need to do it and that's the only reason why he likes it. If he had to do it every day he would find that exhausting so yes, this plan does seem like the only way to get through to Malleus. He needs to realize he is treating people not like his subjects but his toys, just because Sebek is ok with that doesn't mean everyone else is.

Agree. I feel like the real threat in Twisted Wonderland, whatever it is, will need every student to work together in order to face it and not just a handful of students from one or two dorms. We still need to find out what's up with Grim and Crowley... and RSA if we're lucky!

[nightcolorz]

truly on board the armand meta train this evening but you mentioned in a post earlier about how the amc iwtv fandom reacted to the depictions of SA with Claudia in s1 and how it was responded to with sensitivity, and then in s2 this does continue- but only for her. The amount of people i have seen on various platforms (mostly show only fans) believing that Armand was lying about his own sexual trauma and repeated assaults for his own gain (again seemingly for some fan’s need to have a clear villian)

It just feels really horrible that a fandom that reacted in such a way to this sort of material in the first season concerning a female character who was underage (if only physically), then goes on to deny, belittle, and even romanticise and sexualise the same sort of trauma that happened to a male character who was also underage (and also mentally as well as physically.) Especially because Claudia’s trauma was only added by the show, which makes it no less valid- but pointing out it was not in the books like Armand’s explicitly was.

I think what im trying to say with that is that Armand’s sexual trauma was already explicitly canon and adapted from that book canon to the show, whereas Claudia’s was a show invention yet is treated a lot more sensitivity and is being believed more (again, i think this is due to show watchers seeing anything Claudia says as objective truth as it is more through the eyes of Daniel- who is of course always completely right and fair (/s) compared to Louis and Armand who of course must always be twisting the truth in some way from their own gain)

Anyway i have gone on a bit but I would love to hear your thoughts on the show’s audience reaction to Claudia’s SA and trauma in comparison to Armand’s

ooo yes I love this question, I’ve thought about it before. the double standard there is honestly pretty upsetting to me. I think part of why the fandom treats Claudia’s sa differently than Armand’s is definitely partly bcus of what u said, how Armand is assumed to be never truthful and Claudia is considered always truthful, which is applied by some ppl to everything they say and do with no nuance. I think a part of it is also a broader fandom issue where male sexual assault isn’t considered as serious/valid/wrong etc as female sexual assault is. so you’ll find people in fandom spaces who believe and discuss how sexual violence against women is a sensitive subject that needs to be treated with care, then go and treat male sexual assault in fiction like it’s sexy, or funny, or not so serious. because of the bias of course that exists with real sexual violence where male victims r often less likely to be treated seriously, believed, etc then female victims. when u think about it, considering the pretty prevalent socially ingrained belief that men can’t be sexually assaulted or that sexual assault against men isn’t as serious as sexual assault against women combined with a chunk of the fandom’s tendency to interpret everything Armand does or says as malicious or deceitful, it makes sense that this would be a prevalent take, but god it’s so disgusting, I hate it.

Armand’s history of childhood sexual abuse is extremely important to his character, as u said it was in the books, and the reason it was adapted so faithfully is because u *can not* remove it or change it without completely rewriting Armand and changing a lot of his fundamental characteristics. So frankly, it’s so fucking stupid to see people saying he’s lying, as if that would not be a character assignation so drastic it would be absurdly stupid for any writer to come up with. It would be like, idk, saying Claudia lied about being turned into a vampire when she was a child and that she actually was over 18, or some shit like that. Like genuinely be so for real 😭. And I mentioned it in another ask but I can’t say it enough, it’s repulsive to insist that a fictional sexual abuse victim who’s history of sexual violence is actively incredibly impactful to everything he does is “lying for sympathy”. Like y’all need to realize that u r making disgusting implications about real victims of assault and u sound like actual freaks. Also u sound dumb lol, like USE UR BRAIN, how would Armand be lying or using his trauma to manipulate when he is clearly actively acting due to his trauma 😭

So many people who were talking about how sexual violence against women is super sensitive and the show needs to treat it with more care, making sure to add tws on their posts and to make respectful disclaimers and such, are now taking another character who was sexually assaulted and saying he is lying or manipulating or their making jokes about it because they see him as some villain only worthy of ridicule and nothing else. It’s gross!!

I think another part of it is probably how a lot of people only see victimhood as real or valid if they perceive the victim as none-complexly “good.” Since Claudia is perceived by the fandom as always in the right she is a real victim who deserves respect, and since Armand is the villain who’s in the wrong he is faking it or smth. In reality people who have experienced trauma, especially childhood sexual abuse as intense and horrible as what Armand went through, are very flawed!! And having flaws or being a bad person, especially when said flaws r very tied to the trauma itself, does not make someone in any way less of a victim!!

Armand was taught to believe that he is an actual object, he grew up in a dog eat dog world where there r men with power who use weaker people to stay in control and there are slaves who the men use for whatever they please, and he internalized that this is how he will always has to live bcus this is how the world works. Assad zaman literally said Armand doesn’t know what love is bcus he’s never experienced it 😭. Armand models every relationship he has after his relationship with Marius, who literally raped and abused him as a child, because he was the first person who ever loved him 😭 and armand is always chasing love because he has never truly felt it and doesn’t know why he feels so empty. Marius taught Armand that love is using someone for their body and hitting them when they disobey u. Of course he’s fucked up! Of course he sees his relationship with Louis as a transactional power grab where he’s either the master or the slave before he sees it as loyalty and trust and companionship, of course he betrays him ‼️. And like 😭 everything wrong with Armand and all of the fucked up shit he does can be tied to his trauma . Come oooonnn 😭🙏 he is not lying 💀 he’s not trying to manipulate Louis or “gain sympathy”, Jesus Christ.

the petty, book purist part of me is so annoyed that a somewhat irresponsible rape plot line that was added without as much care as it should have been, especially considering it wasn’t necessary to the character or the story and wasn’t in the books, is being treated with more validity and sympathy and respect then a male characters childhood sexual trauma that has shaped every aspect of how he functions and behaves. And that’s petty 😭 but like, I can’t say I’m wrong for being off put. This is genuinely mf gross.

thank uuuu for the ask u r literally the best ahhhh!!! I hope this was interesting, I’m a lil brain fried rn lol

[insufferableprotagonistpoll]

Propaganda why Dean Winchester is insufferable:

Really mean to Cas (called him a child, zero respect for him, calls him family and casts him out when the angels are looking for him), and an absolute dick to Jack (threatening to kill him CONSTANTLY)

>Was a misogynist (loved to call women skanks, bitches, hoes)

>Used gay as an insult multiple time during the show's run (idc if he's gay an homophobic, that's still insulting)

>Beat up his brother for being possessed

>Beat up his brother for losing his soul (not his brother's fault)

>Used dubious consent to get his brother possessed in a different unrelated possession incident after possession was being used (badly...this is supernatural after all) as a metaphor for SA

>Threatened to murder his brother when he was hallucinating (yay we aren't ableist)

>Locked a child up in a box

>Threatened to kill the child he locked up in a box

>Made a creepy, sexual comment about a barely-legal high school girl

>Got the woman and kid he was living with memory-wiped

misogynistic scumbag. theres also a few different times that dean finds teenagers sexy with the most recent and prominent example that i can recall being the scooby doo crossover episode in season 13 where hes super into daphne who in the version they chose for the episode is 15-16 and is interacting with her as if shes a real person cause they got magicked into the episode. he treats everyone around him like shit and the only time the narrative agrees that thats a bad thing is when he has the mark of cain put on him and hes acting no differently than he does usually its just now acknowledged that hes treating others like shit. ive been rewatching the show for shits and giggles with a friend and wow he really does not treat anyone well but i wanna focus on how he treats sam for a second cause dude's hobby seems to be ignoring what his brother wants and lying to sam about doing stuff that directly concerns him the demon blood and souless things are reasonable cause those were both Bad for sam but theyre still part of a wider pattern and the most prominent example of this being when dean tricks sam into letting gadreel possess him and actually gaslights sam about it with the whole ordeal ending when its revealed gadreel lied about who he was and while possessing sam murders a friend of theirs. his voice is just also stupid as fuck im sorry this is just petty but he just sounds like hes trying so hard to be gruff n intimidating but he just sounds like a kid pretending to be batman

Dean’s list of sins is crazy long because of how long the show ran, but the key thing for me is that post-locking Sam in the bunker (season 4 I think?), I just can’t enjoy their relationship anymore. I normally love their sibling dynamic, but Dean’s ultimate worst past-the-point-of-no-return moment for me was demonizing (pun intended) his little brother for being “addicted” to demon blood, which only happened because of a series of events that were either Dean’s or someone else’s fault, not Sam’s. I also really dislike how the fandom treats Dean like this angel (pun intended) who has done no wrong and even tries to justify the MULTIPLE times he’s beaten up and otherwise abused his little brother. Canon Dean is like the polar opposite of fanon Dean: he’s homophobic and racist (jokes about a Black man being sexually assaulted in prison), misogynistic (take a shot every time he calls a woman a slur and you’ll die of alcohol poisoning), and abusive.

Propaganda why the Tenth Doctor is insufferable:

They’re so *edgy*

That one time he committed a genocide by drowning the last children of a near-extinct species (Racnoss) because their mother was evil. The closest anyone ever got to calling him out on it was when Donna noted that his take on a *different* set of weird alien babies (the Adipose) was a lot nicer than last time.

A combination of hypocrisy, sanctimony, and an equally insufferable fanbase. And the dissonance between what he actually does and how the narrative presents it.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Got tagged by @chaotic-neutral-knitter to share my favorite fics I've written and I feel a little bad not putting any of my 3 OFMD fics on the list. But in my defense it was very hard to choose between my 116 slutty slutty children, and while I like my OFMD fics a lot (especially Learning and Remembering) I decided to limit myself to five fics across all the fandoms I have written for over the past nine (!!) years, and there are some that stand above the rest.

Maybe I'll Show You the Way (Dune, Paul/Chani). Maybe my recency bias is showing but I really think this is one of the best things I've written. Paul and Chani's whole "falling in love while fighting side by side in an anti-colonial armed resistance movement" romance in Dune Part Two felt like it was designed in a lab to appeal to me specifically, and I just wanted more of it! What started with a simple "5 times they fucked in between fighting the Harkonnens" premise has become a novella-length character study about war, politics, solidarity and resistance to oppression in all its forms, interlaced with a very sweet, youthful first-love romance that always has a bittersweet edge because we the audience know these characters are living in a tragedy. This fic is one chapter from completion and I've been stalling because I really wanna stick the landing on this one, but it will get finished!

a narrow door, swiftly closing (Dune, Paul/Duncan) Different ship, different era (post-Dune Part One) and a very different vibe. The fun of this ship is the multiple power imbalances running in different directions (younger/older, student/teacher, lord/vassal, end product of a 90-generation eugenics program with a mind that can bridge time and space/Just Some Guy). It's also got that chewy age gap thing where the older character has watched the younger character grow from a child to an adult and has to wrestle with the realization that they find them sexually attractive now. Peak forbidden romance and mutual pining in this one and not just one but two of my favorite finally-crossing-the-line kisses I have ever written.

Three Times Is a Habit (Trust, Primo/The Other Paul) Ah yes, my "which doomed curly-haired teenage twink heir to a powerful dynasty named Paul are we talking about?" era. For a hot second (most of 2021) I was really into this hidden gem FX limited series Trust, based (with many creative liberties taken) on the real kidnapping of John Paul Getty III in Italy in the 1970s. The fun of this fandom is that every ship is an absolute garbage fire of bad decisions, and writing the trainwreck emotional logic that leads to a traumatized teenager repeatedly hooking up with his kidnapper was an adventure. There's also a fun meta layer at play in the relationship between our reality, the fictionalized "true" version of the kidnapping that happens in the show, the lies the characters tell about the fictionalized version of the kidnapping in the show, and the version of the characters I'm writing, some of whom are based on real people and some of whom are made up. (Is this RPF? You decide.) This fic will make zero sense if you haven't watched the show. But you should! It's a wild ride with a great cast (Donald Sutherland presente!)

Salvage & Scrap (Mad Max: Fury Road, Gen) Two minor characters who have a combined total of maybe five minutes of screen time produced what was until recently my longest fic on AO3. This fic was based on a fantastic prompt: what if Ace (the older war boy who seems to be Furiosa's second in command on the War Rig) and Valkyrie (Furiosa's Green Place gal pal) both survived their violent vehicular encounters and met each other? The idea was immediately appealing to me because they both care about Furiosa but have known such different versions of her, and the way their worldviews would clash seemed like great story fodder. I still love the imagery of them meeting at the place where their worlds have literally collided--the wreck of the War Rig in the Rock Riders' canyon. Also I recently reread this and I forgot how devastating the tiny glimpse we get of Furiosa is in this fic.

Fightplay (Mad Max: Fury Road, Max/Furiosa) You know this list wouldn't be complete without a smutty Maxiosa fic. It was really hard to pick one piece of the 127k smut novel I wrote about them in non-chronological order over the course of about 3 years (2015-2018). But Fightplay was definitely the start of writing uhhh a certain kind of dynamic for them. The prose is very spare and exacting in a way that I still find hot 9 years later.

Tagging @thebyrchentwigges, @thetardigrape, @nandamai, @bethagain, @demolitionwoman-blog and anyone else who wants to do this!

[nualaofthefaerie]

Hi! This might be a bit of a broad question but here it goes: What is it about Nuala that you love so much in particular? Is it a general appreciation of fairies or something that narratively you are drawn to re Nuala in Sandman?

Just asking because I’m always so in awe in how much love and care you have for the character and it’s overall such a nice vibe you bring to the fandom 🖤

What a truly wonderful question! Thank you so much!

I will do my best to answer, please bear with me.

First off, I have indeed always had fascinations with fairies. Ever since I was a child, my favourite characters were Tinkerbell and her gang, which at the time looked a tad different, but Tinkerbell was the very first character I fell in love with.

Both the old Pixie Hollow and later the new Pixie Hollow fairies were my chosen Disney poison.

(If anyone ever asks me, I will go into heavy detail).

Another big inspiration to my character love roster (please, bear with me, this is all relevant, I promise), was the original run of the WINX club.

And specifically from both, my favourites were Tinkerbell and Flora, respectively. Now, I am not saying, there is a pattern, but it is quite...on the nose.

The influence is undeniable, side by side.

Another favourite visual inspiration of mine is the Kpop girl group, Red Velvet. Nuala encapsulates a lot of their aesthetic, so that certainly was there as well. Especially, Wendy, is a very seemless Nuala stand-in to me. Because Nuala sings and there is no voice in the entire industry such as Wendy's. So yes.

However, it is certainly not enough. There a lot of beautiful women in the Sandman - Calliope, Titania, they are close to that concept, however why Nuala?

To me the answer is simple - Nuala is one of the very few modern female characters that encapsulates girlhood. She is not a girlboss, neither does she have it all figured out. Cluracan and by extension, Titania in combination with Morpheus, throw her in for a ride where she is forced to explore all that she is, reevaluate it and come on top of what makes her, her. I think this is such a human thing, where our environmental circumstances put us in situations where we are at a loss, so then we have to actually either adapt or lay down and die.

And that very thing, is what makes her the most unique Sandman character to me, alongside Morpheus. Nuala is diametrically opposed to Morpheus. Being put in imprisonment (Nuala was very much imprisoned in the Dreaming, I could write a whole post about that) Morpheus and Nuala react to their world differently. Of course, Morpheus was far more limited and yet, he could always reach out to those who would've helped him. He didn't. However, Nuala in complete opposition makes the best of her circumstances - she makes connections within the Dreaming, creates a "life" that wouldn't fill her with absolute dread, despite the crippling wish to be free. Morpheus believes he shouldn't bother anyone and hence always carries the world on his shoulders, while Nuala infamously says:

And I think THIS one, THIS panel right here, it made me fall in love with her helplessly. She opposes Morpheus by simply breathing, by simply believing no one has to be alone in this world. She is hope. She is kindness. She remains kind throughout everything that happens to her. And even though she cries for Morpheus, she also realises this os her right and it is her journey. And I think if people took her a bit more seriously, they will see what I see. That kindness is not weakness and kindness can be beauty.

But all and all:

"People need people."

Author Note:

I hope this answer made a smudge of sense.

My inbox is always open!

Love,

Li 🪷

[lapinbunwrites]

Artwork by Kore! And Kore's IG!

Title: The Dish That Went Wrong

Ratings: Gen

Warnings: None

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic & Mercedes von Martritz, Mercedes von Martritz & Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Annette Fantine Dominic & Ingrid Brandl Galatea

Characters: Annette Fantine Dominic, Mercedes von Martritz, Ingrid Brandl Galatea

Additional Tags: During Canon, Fluff

Words: 2,665

Ao3 Link

For as long as Mercedes could remember, she was in the kitchen baking. Every time she made something, it always brought back fond memories of when she was a child—baking with her mother and brother always gave her a nice warm feeling in her chest. She wished she could go back to those times, but she knew that it was never going to happen. Mercedes learned to live with that fact and moved on—but, she was able to make new friends and meet new baking partners.

Baking with Ingrid and Annette was a trial and a half. Annette, in her own sweet but scatterbrained way, set multiple fires and destroyed many cookware supplies. Ingrid on the other hand, tended to get too excited for food and miss her steps, often combining multiple steps at once, or would stop to eat in the middle of the baking session. Needless to say, they ruined many dishes they intended to make, but Mercedes was still happy that they were spending time with her baking sweets together. If there was one trait that Mercedes inherited from her mother, it was patience. She needed a lot of it when she baked with those two.

“Let’s see,” Mercedes whispered to herself. She checked over the list of ingredients that she needed. “I have flour, two different sugars, butter, and—”

“There you are Mercie!” Annette chirped, walking over to her.

Mercedes was distracted as her friend talked when she looked over her list, concentrating on it to confirm that she had everything to make a cheesecake.

“Mercie,” Annette asked, shaking Mercedes.

“Oh!” Mercedes yelped, turning to her friend. “Sorry, Annie. I was lost in thought.”

“You seemed really entranced,” Annette noted, letting go of her.

“I was so focused on counting I didn’t even hear you.” Mercedes gave her a soft smile. “Was there something that you needed?”

“Ingrid and I were planning on going shopping,” Annette smiled. “We were wondering if you wanted to come along.”

“Oh, I wish I could,” Mercedes frowned.

“Why is that?” Annette asked. “Something going on?”

“I promised Dimitri that I would bake a treat for everyone,” Mercedes replied, putting her basket of ingredients on the counter.

“Oh!” Annette said, excitedly. “Let me go get Ingrid and we both can help!”

“It’s alright,” Mercedes started as she watched Annette rushing off.

Mercedes shook her head and smiled to herself. As she waited for Annette to get Ingrid, she took the ingredients out of her basket and placed them all on the counter. She began to think of all of the steps, or everything her mother did, to make the cheesecake. Without realizing it, she began to crush down the graham crackers to start the crust. With all the stress she had recently, dealing with the war, training, and checking up on everyone, it was very therapeutic. The recipe and steps instantly began to come back to her.

“Mm,” Ingrid said, walking into the kitchen with Annette, interrupting Mercedes’ silent baking. “It smells so good.”

“Heh I just melted down some butter and combined it with the graham crackers,” Mercedes chuckled.

“It looks very tasty,” Ingrid said, salivating.

“Really?” Mercedes teased, grabbing a pan. “It’s just a bowl of crackers and butter.”

“Yes,” Ingrid reassured her. “I would still eat that by itself.”

“You really shouldn’t,” Mercedes reminded her, dumping the concoction into a round pan.

“I am more than happy to help to get it done!” Ingrid insisted, joyfully tapping the counter.

“Very well, but you must go step by step,” Mercedes said, hesitating for a few seconds.

“Of course! I will not disappoint!” Ingrid smiled.

“You can start by flattening out the crust on the bottom and pushing it up the sides just a little,” Mercedes instructed as she watched her friend carefully.

“Oh!” What can I do Mercie?” Annette chimed in with sparkles in her eyes.

“Hm,” Mercedes murmured, placing her finger on her chin. “Let’s start putting the dry ingredients in a bowl.”

“That sounds way too simple and boring,” Annette pouted.

“Annette’s right,” Ingrid agreed, wiping her hands clean of the crumbs. “We should be able to combine some of these steps.”

“If we do that, we risk messing with the taste of the cheesecake and how it bakes,” Mercedes reminded them. “We need to do the simple things first, as they are still very important.”

“Fiiine,” Annette sighed, slumping. “So what do I combine?”

Mercedes placed all of the dry ingredients in front of Annette. “These all go into a bowl and need to be whisked together.”

“Why are you making cheesecake?” Ingrid asked, distracting Mercedes from Annette.

“Dimitri asked me to make something for everyone to help lift up spirits during the war,” Mercedes explained, looking back over to Annette. She giggled as she stared at her friend who was covered in flour and sugar. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Annette coughed. “I was mixing one second, and the next I got it all over me.”

Mercedes chuckled as she handed Annette a towel. While Annette was cleaning herself off, Mercedes put the cracker crust into the oven.

“Ingrid, do you mind watching the crust?” Mercedes asked. “It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.”

“Of course,” Ingrid agreed, looking attentively at the oven.

Mercedes looked over the ingredients and she realized that she was missing one item.

“Is everything alright, Mercie?” Annette asked.

“Oh, yes,” Mercedes reassured her. “I’m just trying to remember the recipe correctly.”

“You don’t have this written down anywhere?”Annette asked, tapping the counter and humming.

“No,” Mercedes sighed. “When my mother and I were living in House Bartels, my stepfather didn’t give us much peace.”

“Mercie,” Ingrid said, taking her eyes off the oven. She walked over to Mercedes, placing her hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“When my stepfather left us alone, my mother would make me happy by taking me into the kitchen,” Mercedes said, faintly smiling. “She would teach me how to bake and tell me how to make the treats. She has an amazing memory, she remembers every recipe she ever learned. She could remember anything really.”

“Heh, only if you had that kind of memory outside of baking,” Ingrid teased, trying to lighten the mood.

Mercedes somberly laughed at her friend’s statement.

“Oh, Mercie,” Ingrid paused. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Mercedes reassured Ingrid, walking over to the oven. “I know I can’t go back to those days standing in the kitchen with my mother and brother, but I have you two now—and we can bake whenever we get the chance.”

“Yes!” Annette agreed. “We can even make new and happy memories.”

“That’s right!” Ingrid nodded.

“Anyways, what should we do next since the crust is out of the oven?” Annette took a whiff of it.

“Mmm! This smells good,” Ingrid agreed.

“We make the filling,” Mercedes faintly smiled as the conversation turned.

“So what do we do first?” Annette chirped.

“We take a bowl,” Mercedes replied, taking out a large bowl. “Mix in cream cheese and granulated sugar.”

“Awesome!” Annette said as she unpackaged the cream cheese with Ingrid.

Mercedes quietly watched the two putting the ingredients together. Mercedes quietly watched the two putting the ingredients together. It was hard for her to focus on the other two when all of her thoughts were stuck on her family. She wanted to be with them again, but at least she had Ingrid and Annette. She took one deep sigh, trying her best not to show her shaking hand, as she stopped Ingrid from dumping too much sugar into the bowl. She watched intently as Annette put all her strength into creaming the ingredients together.

“Is everything okay?” Ingrid asked, watching Mercedes walk off.

“Oh, yes,” Mercedes reassured her. “I just need to get some fresh air.”

“Oh, okay.” Ingrid nodded. “Is there anything specific you want us to do?”

“You just need to beat in the eggs, vanilla, and cornstarch until it’s combined,” Mercedes instructed. “Once that’s done, mix in sour cream.”

Ingrid and Annette looked at each other, making sure that they didn’t hear her wrong. By the time they looked back to Mercedes, she was already walking out the door.

Mercedes took one deep breath and exhaled. The stress of this war was starting to get to her; even her friend’s well-intentioned help was getting to her. She had to tell herself not to complain about it, she was still lucky to be alive and able to have the peace and down time that she currently had. Not everyone was lucky enough to have it. She had seen many soldiers lose their lives, she had seen Dimitri and Byleth run around their camp sites in a frenzy to make everything perfect, she had seen the amount of training Felix, Dedue, Ashe, and Sylvain put in. All of it was so stressful, even for her to watch.

It was hard for her to take her mind off of it. Even the cheesecake that she was trying to make was to help those who needed a morale boost. Mercedes took one long sigh as she heard a crash in the kitchen.

“Are you alright, Annie?” Mercedes asked, rushing over to her.

“Yes, I’m fine!” Annette reassured her, getting up from the floor.

Seeing all the ingredients all over the floor and all over Annette, Mercedes laughed from deep in her stomach.

“Mercie?” Annette asked, wiping herself clean with the help of Ingrid.

“Hahaha,” Mercedes laughed as she helped out. “I’m sorry, Annie! It’s a little funny that you were able to get the mixture all over yourself.”

“Mercie!” Annette pouted. “It’s not funny.”

“I know, I know,” Mercedes said, her laugh dying down. She took a little lick of the mixture off of her finger. “Hmm, this is a bit off.”

“Mercedes?” Ingrid asked, trying to get her friend’s attention.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mercedes said, heading back over to the counter. She looked into the bowl and breathed a sigh of relief. “Luckily, we still have enough to make.”

Mercedes smiled as the other two excitedly watched her pour the batter into the pan as if she was a professional chocolatier. She made sure to even out the pan before chucking it into the hot oven.

“What do we do now?” Ingrid asked, looking over to Mercedes.

“We wait,” Mercedes replied.

“How long do we wait?” Annette asked.

“Hm,” Mercedes hummed out, looking at her fingers to count how long. “About two hours.”

“That is so long,” Annette complained.

“It’s alright,” Mercedes smiled. “We can always do something while we wait.”

“Yes,” Ingrid nodded. “We can always train. The stronger we get, the faster we can end this war.”

“We can do something more fun than that,” Annette suggested. “We can go shopping like we originally planned.”

“That sounds lovely,” Mercedes agreed, clapping her hands together. “We still do deserve time to relax.”

“Fine, but not for long,” Ingrid pressured. “We still need to get this out of the oven.”

“Of course!” Mercedes and Annette said in unison.

The three of them gathered a few of their things before walking into town. They stopped into the various shops, grabbing a few things that they wanted. They teased each other on the spoils that they got. Mercedes with her fabrics and sewing needles she was going to use to mend clothes for everyone. Annette with the many plushies she bought for her closest friends. And Ingrid with her new weapons.

“Here,” Ingrid said, handing both of them a knife.

“Ingrid?” Annette asked, biting her lip.

“Ingrid!” Mercedes gasped.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Ingrid reassured them. “An old friend of mine told me about knives and their meanings. He told me about the meaning of knives in the Alliance and how they are a symbol of friendship. So I’m giving you each one.”

“Hehe,” Mercedes laughed, clutching it tightly. “Wouldn’t it be better to give each other white roses instead? They are a sign of friendship.”

“I, uh,” Ingrid mumbled. “Did not think about that.”

“It’s alright. There is a flower shop right over there,” Annette laughed.

Mercedes nodded as Annette dragged them over to the shop. She bought a small bouquet of white roses, giving a few to the other two before leaving.

“Whaaa!” Annette screamed.

“Is everything alright?” Ingrid asked, very concerned.

“It’s been over two hours and we forgot about the cheesecake!” Annette said, rushing towards Garreg Mach.

“Oh!” Ingrid said as she rushed right behind her.

Mercedes chuckled, knowing full well she was not going to run. That was too much work for her to do and she knew that the two of them could handle a fire. Better yet, she knew Ingrid knew how to deal with a fire.

“I’m so sorry Mercie,” Annette apologized profusely, holding up the very burnt cream cheesecake. “I don’t know how this happened!”

“It’s alright,” Mercedes reassured her, walking into the kitchen, smelling the burnt air.

“I’m still willing to eat that,” Ingrid said, taking the pan from Annette. She stabbed a fork into the confection. “Mm, not bad. I can still taste the bitterness of it, but it’s still sweet enough to eat.”

“This reminds me of a basque cheesecake my mother would treat me and my brother,” Mercedes laughed.

“Ah, so it’s still good!” Annette cheered.

“Yes, but I still wouldn’t take Ingrid’s words for it. Her taste buds are still very much different than ours,” Mercedes teased.

“Heh. That’s true,” Annette laughed, taking a fork herself. “Hm, it still does taste good!”

“Right?” Ingrid agreed. “Though we shouldn’t serve this. I don’t think anybody would be too happy.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Mercedes said, looking through the cabinets to see what they had.

“I have picked up a few things, Mercedes,” Ingrid said, handing a baked good to Annette.

“Really?” Mercedes said, looking over to Ingrid.

“Yes,” Ingrid said, holding her basket full of a few goodies. “I got them just in case.”

“How did I not notice that,” Mercedes said, walking over to her friend.

“You are a bit ditzy, so I didn’t expect you to,” Ingrid teased.

Mercedes chuckled as she shuffled through her basket full of ingredients. She smiled as she realized the confection she could do, chocolate chip cookies. While Annette and Ingrid devoured the cheesecake, she quickly made the batter for the cookies. Mercedes was able to make many batches of the cookies before they were able to finish the cheesecake.

“Mm, that smells so good!” Annette chirped, reaching over for a cookie.

“It does!” Ingrid agreed, following suit.

“Thank you!” Mercedes said, taking the last of the cookies out of the oven. “That is the last of them.”

“Hooray!” Ingrid and Annette cheered.

“Well, I better get these wrapped and handed out,” Mercedes said, wrapping the cool cookies up.

“Oh right, I forgot about that,” Annette said.

“Would you like any help handing them out?” Ingrid asked.

“Oh, that’s alright,” Mercedes replied. “I like the long walks around the monastery. It’s very soothing.”

“If you wish,” Ingrid nodded.

Mercedes smiled at them both, waving them goodbye before leaving. She walked around the monastery, handing out the cookies to everyone. Seeing their enlightened faces, was easing the stress off of her shoulders. It was nice to see everyone in good spirits again during this trying time. Just seeing their smiles gave her warmth in her heart.

When she got back to her room, she felt the warmth becoming warmer when she saw her things safe and sound. Her smile grew bigger when she saw that Annette and Ingrid put the white roses she had into a vase on her windowsill with the knife and lion plush toy next to it. Thinking about it, Mercedes was grateful that Annette and Ingrid were in her life and that they still helped her with making the confections with her.

It was a great sense of relief having them both with her during this war.

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

I got to be apart of a lovely Blue Lion's Ladies centric project that was so much fun! This is the piece I made for it! Just little shenanigans with each other. Hope you enjoy!

Also leftovers are currently open! You can your copy here!

[herejusttosufferalong]

"Girlfriends tend to be kept away from the wives"... first LOL. But also; I was in a Fandom for years that has a similar, but different, dynamic as L and N, which is why I clocked the body language and unspoken communication stuff immediately even tho I only came into this whole space around the Toronto premiere. This former couple, however, was a lot messier. He was 10 years older and married with a kid. She was young and new to the industry and beloved by everyone. He very much did not like his wife but clung to the image it provided. They filmed away from where his wife and child lived, so they had their "safe space." But they eventually got tired of the studio constraints and plotted with their combined friends group to basically promote a friendship with the wife and the girlfriend so the couple could be together in public without causing rumors/uproar. You can imagine all the shenanigans that went on to promote not only the friendship but also keep the wife happy (she also happened to be jobless and a clout-chaser who benefited from inflated IG numbers from their antics btw). It was a clusterfuck. And in the end, after the show ended, it imploded spectacularly. All that to say.... there's a reason the gf and wife don't usually mix. 😂😭

lol damn who was being this messy???

[absolutely-esme]

My ghost biology head canon

I've found that sharing my head canons is a lot of fun, so I thought I would share more of my thoughts on ghosts.

First off, I imagine the particulars of how ghosts work being something that varies widely. There are some things that are relevant for everyone, but a lot of things that you would expect to be species-wide constants vary based on the individual.

Each person's experience as a ghost is shaped by their particular mind and what works for them, with some minor influence from their ideas about ghosts. While their assumptions/beliefs about ghosts can influence how they function as a ghost, it will never override their own nature and cause them to develop into something antithetical to their own self.

Do ghosts need to eat? Some do. Some don't.

Do ghosts need to sleep? Some do. Some don't.

Are ghosts bound to a place or object? Some are. Some aren't.

I imagine that some ghosts have cores that function like a brain/heart/whatever, are their one vulnerability, and injuries to them are serious business, like the fandom likes to imagine. I don't personally think this would be true across the board. Some would have cores that operate differently and others would have a system that doesn't have anything similar to cores at all.

Some ghosts might have something that could be called a core, but rather than a delicate vital organ, it's more like a combination of a lifeboat and the black box from an airplane. It's small and not especially powerful but virtually indestructible. If their body gets messed up too badly they can jettison themselves as a core and hide away somewhere safe until they manage to rebuild their body.

I imagine Skulker working like this. The "real Skulker" is not a tiny blob sitting in a cockpit, piloting a giant robot. When he's all suited up, he's experiencing things as the man-sized being he appears to be. That said, if he gets roughed up to the point where it makes more sense to just cut his losses, he can go tiny-blob-mode and bail before rebuilding himself.

Some ghosts exist split among multiple bodies because some parts of themselves work better separately. I imagine Johnny 13 and his Shadow are actually one ghost, but there were parts of himself he didn't understand and wasn't managing well that he was better equipped to understand and accommodate as a separate being. Johnny probably fought a lot with shadow when he was newly formed before stepping back and finally managing to view him with a sort of empathy that is often easier to offer to others than to oneself.

The particulars of Danny's ghost half were largely shaped by the dance of give and take between his human and ghost half adapting together. A lot of it either follows the lines of his human half or fills in the gaps, but it also follows Danny's nature in ways that always would have been part of his ghostly self even if he hadn't been a halfa. Being the child of ghost hunters actually left Danny with less of an idea of what ghosts were than the average person because he actively avoided thinking about it as much as he could, so a lot of his ideas about ghosts stem from his own personal experiences. His ghostly nature is fluid and highly adaptable, as well as eager to learn and explore.

Sometimes he develops abilities similar to things he's seen other ghosts do because "that's something ghosts can do." Sometimes he develops abilities as a response to whatever stress he's under (Danny will never admit he developed accelerated language acquisition because he was so stressed out about his grades that his ghost half interpreted the need to better understand purple-backed gorillas as a life or death emergency). Some just happen just because he grew that way.

Ghosts in general are not static. They learn and grow and change over time. The particulars of how they change over time are a bit less predictable than for humans, but it happens. They can have children (like Box Lunch) but the development of those children may not follow the same patterns as a human child's development.

I don't tend to imagine ghosts having "obsessions," exactly. The term "obsession" implies that it is unhealthy, overpowering, and impeding one's ability to function. Instead, I imagine them having something I'm calling "focal points" until I come up with a better name.

Focal points are things that are important, grounding, and central to a ghost's experience of the world. They may be activities or subjects of interest, but ghosts need to engage with at least some of their focal points with relative frequency for their health. Ghosts generally have more than one focal point and engage with different ones at different times.

Being denied access to one focal point in the short run will be disappointing but not dangerous, so long as they can still engage with others. Long-term, lack of access to one of their focal points can cause restlessness, anxiety, irritiability, and depression.

In some cases, a long-term inability to engage with a specific focal point may result in a focal shift, in which the focal point changed to something more reachable. This happens most frequently with a focal point centered on a person who is not willing to cooperate. While the focal shift is ongoing, the ghost will be atypically sensitive and prone to mood swings and experience an amount of discomfort proportional to how major of a focal point they are shifting. After the focal shift is over, the ghost should be able to function normally with no lingering ill-effects.

Not every focal point can be shifted and ghosts are highly recommended to seek council from a professional in ghost-medicine on any focal point related difficulties before making any decisions on how to proceed.

If not managed in a healthy way, it is possible for a ghost's relationship with one or more of their focal points to start bridging into obsessive territory, but this is the result of a problem, not normal functioning.

[jokeringcutio]

Fic authors self-rec! ✨ When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers.

<3 Wow, since I've been writing fanfics for years, I have so many to choose from. But let me stick to my reader-insert-focused darker fics that I post on this account.

1:

The Man Who Claimed To Be Yours – Fandom: Joker 2019, Pairing: Arthur Fleck/Joker x (Female) Reader. Explicit with lots of warnings. By far my proudest (and smuttiest?) work.

By far a number one position. Not only do you people seem to love it, I have received so many messages of readers going back to the story for the umpteenth time to reread it all. (And you have no diea how those little messages strengthened me when my health abandoned me). You devour it. And even I have been rereading my own tale several times and enjoyed it. So yes, I definitely want to write an ending to it. I also have plans to have the full story out before Joker 2 comes out.

Fun fact: The entire fic was inspired by the gif I added above)

2:

Pine Cone Child – Fandom: Enola Holmes, Pairing: Enola Holmes/Linthorn (one-sided & Noncon), Enola Holmes & Sherlock Holmes. Explicit with lots of warnings.

I got a big thrill sending these chapters out into the world and found myself on a roll with this fic. The idea came with one scene, of a boy meeting his biological father, and realizing that he had a far more gritty past than he always had assumed. But to get to that chapter, I had to write many more. In the end, that chapter was never posted online. And the chapters I had finished about Enola and her mother visiting Linthorn’s grave and the chapter that was to follow after got lost when my laptop crashed. I was also too ill and too tired to write, so it never reached its end. I am not sure if I will ever finish this one. I think, it is pretty okay as it is. Even if I never got to the ending the whole idea sprouted from in the first placed. For now, it is on hold.

3. Removed Fics/Or old account fics:

The first multi-chapter fic became a success, many years ago. I will not name the title, the quality is shite compared to what I write now (still shite, but different shite). One of the first fandoms I wrote fanfiction in was Inu Yasha. The much-explored ‘Inu Yasha scampers off with Kikyo and Kagome finds comfort in Sesshoumaru’s arms’ was still new, there were about 20 fics or so about this pairing in English. The encouragement I received made me want to keep posting my work. I still receive reviews for these fics.  

4. A deleted Sweeney Todd Smut fic, featuring Sweeney Todd x Lovett’s daughter. I might reupload this one day, perhaps as a reader insert.

But because I want to tag a tale: Have you tried reading my dark romance (aka, Reader let yourself be kidnapped by a slasher guy)  The Chance to Make A Change. Fandom: The Black Phone. Pairing: Albert Shaw ( The Grabber ) x (f) Reader. Explicit. Loads of warnings.

Shared 5:

His – Fandom: Moon Knight, Pairing: Dr. Arthur Harrow x (f) Reader. Mature with warnings.

I am surprised by how much feedback and likes I received on this, even if the numbers of hits and kudos on AO3 are low. But for the short tale it is, I like it. Because it shows a budding relationship over time, cut into short chapters, and has a little evil twist at the end of it. Also, I could totally live with this happening to me, if I were the reader.

Shared 5:

No Family Man – Fandom: Joker 2019, Pairing: Arthur Fleck/Joker x (afab) Reader. Mature with warnings.

Another one of my fics I love to return to, and that was generally received well. It started as two imagines which I then combined. It has lots of personal experience elements in it that to me, make it all the more special. What they are, I will leave for you to guess.

I would love to finish the Princess and the Clown - Joker 2019 fanfic of Arthur Fleck/Joker x Reader I once started. Perhaps rewrite it a little. Same for my Benvolio x Mercutio Hanahaki Story (you Shakespearean lovers might know me of my many Tybalt x Mercutio and Mercutio x basically anyone fics).

I have a few Star Wars Reader Inserts that were never finished but tickle my fancy. Mostly Reader x Kylo Ren or Reader x Hux (or both lol).

By far most of my proudest fanfics have been personal gifts to friends. It is how I started writing when in High School, and I still gift fics for people's birthdays. I especially like the Sherlock Holmes range I did for several friends, in which my friends always ended up being the evil masterminds who outsmarted Sherlock and Watson. But also, because I had illustrations to go along with these fics. <3

But first, I need to finish a whole list of unfinished works: starting with a Crimson Peak inspired modern reader au that has been pending for over 2 years, as well as the Joker fic mentioned on number one. Then there's a summery romantic Arthur Harrow x Reader tale I want to gift to someone on here, and a Harrow Patient x Reader fic that wants to be written in between.

ARGH!

Not to mention the many Arthur Fleck x Reader prompts I have pending. I LOVE YOU, KEEP SENDING ME STUFF <3

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

You have accomplished so much and written so many words and put out such a variety of fics for the fandom this year that YOU should do an end of year wrap up!

How many stories did you post?

Which ones were your favorites?

Which one was the most satisfying to write?

The most difficult?

Rec something that you're proud of.

Wow us with whatever big thing you might want to work on next!

Show us that word count stat!

You should be very, very proud of you. I certainly am <3

Ahhhhh FRIEND you are so nice to me! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Any excuse to talk about my fics :)))))))))))))

1. How many stories did you post? I posted 38 stories!

2. Which ones were your favorites? That's like picking a favorite child! But if I haddddddd to: no thing's so sure that i can't learn to doubt it (aka Jamie is hurt during the Zava period and hides it. It does not go well), in the morning i'm bulletproof (Rupert has Jamie taken out BEFORE the final match of the season) and The Inevitability of James Tartt (Man City introspective).

3. Which one was the most satisfying to write? I don't know if it's one specific story. It was extremely satisfying to write some of the conversations between Jamie and the coaching staff in no thing's so sure that i can't learn to doubt it. And I have a few different post Mom City convos between Jamie and Ted that were satisfying. Mostly I love writing anything where people tell Jamie he's a good lad (after I put him through the ringer).

4. The most difficult? when i told you i was fine you were lied to. Someone requested some Roy whump, so I tried to give him an appendicitis. I had a longer version, but then I was driving home from another state on Friday the 13th, and my brain latched onto the idea of writing something spooky, so I kind of combined that and the comfort at the end got changed. The final product is kind of all over the place. I'm not happy with the ultimate story, but I got caught up with posting each day with whumptober, and it being Friday the 13th. I just ran out of time. I also blame the fact that I was on day 2 of one of my top 5 worst hangovers, stressed about finishing whumptober and knew I had plans or work literally every day the rest of the month. Maybe someday I’ll rewrite it when I can give it my full attention.

5. Rec something that you're proud of. I'm proud of all the fics I managed for whumptober (24!). Even though I'm still working on the final two days, I'll have done at least a chapter for each prompt once I’m finished.

6. Wow us with whatever big thing you might want to work on next! I do have a bad things happen bingo board that I want to work on, plus all the WIPs I have filling my Google Docs folder.

7. Show us that word count stat! My word count is 275,415 (I delayed answering these until I posted two new chapters of not to me, not if it's you haha)! BUT, my third fic is an extended, canon-compliant version of my first fic. The first one was 22K words, so a lot of those were adjusted slightly for the third fic, so really, it's more like 253K.

AND because this was so fun! I think it should be a tag game. So I'm tagging you @jamiesfootball to answer the same questions, as well as @sighonaraa and @fanficfanattic and anyone else that wants to play but as usual zero pressure <3

[myristicisms]

A Semi-In depth analysis of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Miriam

I haven't seen a lot of posts that have a timeline for the events listed and seeing as I write Miriam and am replaying the game, I've taken to compiling information I find important regarding the timeline as well as detailing thoughts I have regarding her characterization and personality, this is definitely something that ended up being a lot longer than I'd intended but regardless I'm very proud of it and wanted to share my findings in case anyone in the fandom was also wondering and wanted information or for anyone I write with that's not fully familiar with Miriam but wants to know her better for plotting/interacting purposes. With that said, there are four main sections to go through with the last two being full of spoilers for the game.

Part I; The Timeline Pre Game

Bloodstained Ritual of the Night begins with detailing the summoning of the hell castle by the alchemist guild in a last ditch effort to restore spirituality in England to maintain funding for their research, as per an unnamed alchemist's notes littered throughout the castle it's found that the prototype of a shard was unintentionally created as a byproduct of an attempt at creating a homunculus in the year 1764, in 1765 there was a demon that appeared and was dispatched by the guild which resulted in the discovery of other shards and their existences alongside the binding effect of the original prototype shard found a year prior, this discovery would eventually lead to tinkering with the idea of combining the shards with the human body to test what might happen and in 1766 it's implied that the first Shardbinders had been created; We see in the alchemist's notes once again that of the Shardbinders, the one that showed the most promise was Gebel however his shard lagged behind in developing further capabilities compared to the other children that had gone through the same procedure.

It's at this point in time that it's important to make mention that, due to other notes that will later be delved into, Miriam was born in the year 1765, one year before the beginnings of the Shardbinder experimentations and procedures became a thing which could imply one of three things; Either the alchemist guild acquired her as an infant and grafted the shard in her when she was a year or two ( unlikely though that's out of my own optimism which might be ill placed in this regard ), the alchemists acquired her as a toddler but waited until she grew a bit older before implanting the shard ( more likely given it's been said the shards attract demonic entities and that would endanger a young child that's defenseless ), or ( the most likely ) Miriam wasn't orphaned until later in her childhood and once she was sent to the orphanage, the guild likely took her in much as they did other children ( As Gebel is just slightly older than Miriam ) and grafted the shard into her during early teenhood.

It's also important to note additional information given by the unnamed alchemist's notes as well as Miriam herself that once the shard effectively bound itself to their flesh, the Shardbinders themselves were put into training against the different demons that would come to the guild and absorb the shards as a means of further expanding upon the guild's research and this effectively lasted until 1783, which is how I was able to find out Miriam's birth year because shes said to be 28 during the current events of Bloodstained, meaning Ritual of the Night itself takes place in 1793-1794, as we know Alfred put Miriam into an alchemical coma right before the ritual to summon Bael, which is stated to be a decade prior to when we start in the Galleon Minerva, with that being said, that's how I was able to calculate the year Miriam was born as well as when the game takes place.

Part II; Humanity, Family, and Grief

With previous timeline stuff out of the way, now I can move onto Miriam lore, I just wanted to get basic timeline information put out there, let's start off with Miriam's early life or with what we know about her early life ( likely around her early to mid teens but not too terribly close to 18 ), we know based on two separate conversations she has with Gebel and Johannes that before the ritual, likely at least a year or so, she resigned herself to feeling as though she was no better than the demons she'd have to absorb the shards of after killing them which eventually led into an argument with Gebel. We aren't given a timeline for any of Miriam's earlier years however with what we are given, it's safe to assume that a lot of her childhood/teenage years were far from normal circumstances and even traumatizing to a degree as per Miriam herself stating that the pain of all of the experiments and the shard itself had left her feeling hopeless as is stated in conversation with Gebel aboard the Galleon Minerva, quote “ I was the one that came to you broken, convinced I was a monster. And you told me— Our power doesn't make us good or bad. Our choices do. I'd given up on my humanity, but you restored my hope. Don't you remember?! ”

We also see her expand more upon this conversation/argument in a conversation with Johannes when he asks her about a promise she had made to Gebel, “ Well, back then, the experiments left me feeling stripped of my humanity. The pain from the crystal was a constant reminder. At one point, I lost my will to live entirely. Gebel and I got into a fight over some stupid thing, and I shouted,"How long are you going to pretend you're human? We're monsters now." ”; “ It cheered me right up. I felt like a person again." ” Followed by, “ And that was when we promised to stop each other if we ever lost the ability to choose. ”, As those are just her lines and not the dialogue from Gebel, I'll paraphrase the in-between; Essentially she had repeated to Johannes what she had said to Gebel aboard the Galleon Minerva, quoted in the previous paragraph.

Additionally Miriam also points out in dialogue aboard the Galleon how painful absorbing shards truly is, “ I'd... forgotten the way it felt... Like uninvited claws scraping across my bones... ” which lends to another interesting point; Miriam's willingness to sacrifice herself to some degree. Throughout the game, Miriam has to traverse the hell castle and absorb different shards in order to gain abilities and make progress, Gebel had knowingly put her into a situation where she would need to absorb shards in order to reach him and ( albeit with little success ) try to convince him to give up summoning Bael/quit being the lord of the hell castle. Something else worth noting is that with each shard that merges with her crystal, the more risk she has of the crystal corrupting and taking over her body which would effectively lead to her death; She's aware of this and even tells Johannes “ I know my body's limits better than anyone. And I'm going to need all the power I can get. ” After he expressed his concerns on the matter, of course this conversation happened prior to her conversation with Gebel and yet even with that knowledge she still put herself at risk in hopes of saving her best friend.

Moving on though, we also find out that Miriam wasn't completely parentless to some degree; Among the alchemists in the guild, she'd taken well to one named Alfred and saw him as a father figure of sorts, unfortunately though it's unlikely that that had been reciprocated as we see in the Den of Behemoths, Alfred's motivations for putting Miriam into the coma and attempting to keep her away from the castle weren't out of a sort of fatherly concern but because she's “ the most attuned ” in reference to her ability to wield demonic power through her shard, essentially making Miriam one of the main keys necessary for the summoning of Bael and effectively making her coma the main reason for the prior ritual's failure, though that isn't to imply he held no care for her either given the fact that he just as well could have killed her a decade prior which still likely would have halted the ritual much the same.

I'll be delving into spoilers now therefore this is the only warning I'll be giving regarding spoiling events in the game;

Part III; Storyline and Character Development

After initiating combat with Zangetsu for the second time ( initiate is a strong word, he decides they need to speak his language; Combat ) and proving herself worthy of wielding the Zangetsuto ( Zangetsu meaning moon slayer/to slice the moon, just neat trivia ), after which Miriam heads to fight Gebel and, depending on the player, will either receive the bad ending or unlock the final portion of the game. Should the player kill Gebel in combat ( this can be done prior to getting the Zangetsuto, similar to that of Castlevania SOTN with Richter and the holy glasses ) then a cutscene will play out depicting Miriam and Johannes standing outside the castle talking about what to do next, the castle has yet to fall and they decide to leave it to Dominique and the church despite both feeling as though something was off, this is the bad or wrong ending of the game. The true ending is unlocked via damaging Gebel just enough for the moon within his room to turn red, after which you need to slice the moon in half with the Zangetsuto which forces Gremory out and leads into another cutscene, this time between Miriam and Gebel.

In this cutscene, Gebel starts off with recognizing Miriam and telling her he's missed her and even thanks her for keeping her promise ( showing Miriam to be someone who keeps her word regardless of how painful it might be for her to do ), while the dialogue plays out, we can see Gebel slowly crystalizing and get to watch Miriam panic over how rapidly the process is taking over his body ( resulting in his death ) and insists she'll handle the castle while trying to convince both him and herself that Gebel will live, he does not. It's right before he fully succumbs to the crystal that Gebel delivers his final line, “ I'm glad I got to see you smile... one last... ” Only to die off which leads into Miriam weeping and Johannes finally making his appearance, it's here where Miriam expresses that she “ has a new promise to keep ” and then eventually finds her way into the Den of Behemoths after slicing the moon in half once more and opening a portal to the location.

It's here where she bumps into a severely wounded ( and dying ) Alfred and Zangetsu, who both reveal to her that they'd all been manipulated by Gremory and Dominique, at this point this leads into another point regarding Miriam's personality where it's mentioned multiple times throughout the game that she's incredibly stubborn as per Johannes and even Zangetsu mentioning the trait in their own backwards ways. Additionally, she's also shown to be incredibly independent as per her mentioning that she should be the one to handle the castle's problems since she's trained properly in combat compared to Johannes who is merely just an alchemist. Johannes also tends to put a focus on dietary needs for Miriam in some of his "extra" dialogue when interacted with after most of his story driven dialogue has been listened to, while not particularly impactful or important to note it can definitely be implied that Miriam could have an issue with not eating enough or simply he's concerned for her metabolism and a lack of proper sustenance due to her alchemical coma, regardless she's displayed delight in both cooking her own meals and eating new foods since she has a special animation whenever she does cook and often makes a happy remark whenever she eats something save for eating the dark matter, which results in a pathetic " that's foul... " And resulting in Miriam being poisoned, this shows she's not quite a picky eater which likely stems from a combination of her being an orphan in 18th century England and the likelihood that the alchemists may not have been too concerned about what was fed to the kids.

Moving on in the timeline as well as further characterization, upon reaching the glacial tomb, Miriam first faces Gremory, it's in this leading cutscene where she witnesses Zangetsu being ( presumably ) dragged down to hell and likely killed, during this scene just before he vanishes with Gremory's arms he says “ Good luck... Miriam. ” which then leads into Gremory taunting Miriam about the fact that while she has the Zangetsuto sword, she doesn't believe Miriam will succeed in killing her only for Miriam to respond with “ Wrong, demon. Zangetsu's wrath and mine are now one. ” Which while a bit of a cheesy cliche ( power of friendship or whatever ) also adds onto how important companionship and friends are to Miriam despite how she continuously loses those closest to her. ( RE; Gebel, Alfred, and even Zangetsu to an extent. ) After killing Gremory and acquiring the shard " Dimension Shift ", Miriam makes her way to the final room of the Glacial Tomb and encounters Dominique.

This encounter is dramatic with how intensely Miriam feels, her sense of justice shining through while listening to Dominique talk about her sought after power and reasoning for her ambitions. Dominique reveals her plan had been to slowly acclimate Miriam's shard to demonic corruption and upon being exhausted from her fight with Gebel, Gremory was meant to possess Miriam much the same as she had Gebel. Dominique further irritates Miriam by accusing Zangetsu of betraying her to which Miriam responds with “ Doing the right thing isn't a betrayal. ”, once again showing Miriam's strong sense of justice. Later in the dialogue it's mentioned that Dominique managed to find a way to receive her own crystal and with the shards sold to her ( or I guess pretend sold to her if the player refuses to do so? ) begins the ritual with the Liber Logaeth to summon Bael, Miriam makes a remark that it's a slow process to which Dominique says “ Do you really think you can stop me before then? ” resulting in Miriam retorting back with “ Oh yes I do. You don't understand what power is for. You wield it stupidly, arrogantly. And now you will pay the price. ” That line among other spoken dialogue throughout this particular conversation demonstrates a strong distaste for those that pursue ambition and power for the sake of doing so, it's after this conversation that Miriam must fight Dominique and unfortunately is just barely too late, resulting in yet another portal (?) being opened and starts the fight with the demon lord Bael.

It's after the defeat of Bael that Johannes uses the Liber Logaeth to destroy the hell castle and the ending dialogue begins with Miriam and Johannes standing outside Arvantville, their conversation essentially is just discussing the losses it took for their victory, Miriam grieving each one while Johannes remarks that they all made their own choices and their lives deserved to be celebrated, not mourned. The scene ends with Johannes mentioning that before Alfred's passing, he'd given advice on permanently halting the spread of Miriam's crystal and while he could not promise it would work, he would do his best. Miriam seems pleased enough and the duo leave to return to wherever they call home.

Part IV; Additional/Miscellaneous information

Miriam is able to play the piano, demonstrating prior training, this can be found in the Secret Garden and if you have the Carabosse summon equipped, will lead into a song, otherwise Miriam just plays a nice instrumental version of said song. Miriam's name has multiple meanings, the main ones being Bitterness, Sea of Stars, drop of the sea, and Beloved depending on which etymology you're looking at, all of which are very fitting of her character. Just before Alfred's death, his final interaction with Miriam is asking for forgiveness for all he'd put her through. While we see that Zangetsu was dragged to hell, players who play in a wider resolution will see his model walk in from the right side of the screen which could either just be a fun little easter egg or is meant to imply that he'd somehow escaped it, I don't really know the answer but I wanted to make mention of that small clip too just to get that out of the way.

[squid-ink-symphony]

hey i saw a post where you were talking about ships.. Uh.

callie x agent 3.

discuss.

please..

we need all the exposure we can get there are 5 of us.

we are very lonely.

NO BUT LIKE I LOVE THIS SHIP

ALONG WITH 4 X MARIE

LIKE IVE SEEN CALLIE AND AGENT 3 ART BEFORE AND ITS LITERALLY SO GOOD

i didnt wanna mention idol x agent ships in my post cuz sometimes ppl get all defensive about it like "erm well actually the agent is canonically a child and-" shut up. shut. up. they are whatever age you want them to be. they are literally a self insert for the player. plenty of ppl have agent ocs who are adults. it just varies from person to person and their headcanons.

but then i got an ask (that i already deleted) accusing me of being a proshipper bcuz apparently 3 x neo 3 is problematic bcuz its "power imbalance?" and like.. ig yeah that could be an issue irl w ur boss taking advantage of u. but like..... thats.... clearly not what im talking about???

so may as well discuss idol x agent ships as well lol

3 x callie is like. top tier. its so good. like you just know 3 and callie would goof around together. especially the splat 1 version of 3??? like their dynamic would be top tier. and i just know 3 would whisper stuff to callie and they would giggle about it and refuse to tell anyone else what they are laughing about. and i am always a rarepair enjoyer. like. its so good. (i ship callie x marina x pearl so you know im masochistic when it comes to my ships)

AND 4 X MARIE??? i know this one is a bit more well known but i love it. i dont know if i would ship my main agent 4 with my main interpretation of marie, but like another version of them? yes. it works so well. marie is literally in love w 4.

BUT OK ANOTHER RAREPAIR: 4 x callie. i know everyone loves 3 x 8 cuz blah blah 8 beat up mind controlled 3. but ??? 4 beat up mind controlled callie and we got NOTHING from the fandom. im mostly a 4 x 8 shipper at heart but this is another one i rlly like. i just know 4 would try to show off by picking smth heavy up or doing some cool trick only to fail miserably. and callie would be able to do it first try.

and i have even more opinions on different idol ships and combos but uhh thats for another day when someone wants to listen to my ramblings lol

anyway in conclusion i love rarepairs and pretty much every splat ship so yeah feel free to talk to me about them any time. i love figuring out character dynamics and all that. also everyone has such good designs everyone looks good together. also just like. non romantic pairs as well. like ppl who have sibling dynamics. ppl who are clearly in a qpr. ppl who are besties. apprentice and mentor dynamics. i just think every splat character is so interesting on their own that pretty much every combination is top tier. and like. things dont have to mutually exclusive when it comes to relationships. im a multipshipper.

and i think the same goes for other dynamics. like in my mind one version of neo 3 and 3, 3 sees neo like a younger sibling and spoils them and doent want what happened to 3 to happen to neo. in another version 3 sees neo like a younger version of them and tries to toughen them up and neo sees it as unfair and there is angst while 3 has to confront everything they went thru and if it was even fair for them to have gone thru it. cuz in their mind ofc its ok to do this to neo, its what 3 did to become the way they are. in another version they are just besties. in another version they are dating. in another version they have a competitive love/hate relationship and argue a lot about whos better.

LIKE THINGS DONT HAVE TO JUST BE ONE WAY!! i like exploring different stuff and seeing everyones takes on them!!!!!

so yeah come talk to me about splat characters im very normal i swear :)))

[lemonhemlock]

Bestie expand your thoughts more on this!

https://at.tumblr.com/lemonhemlock/do-you-think-greyjoy-will-succeed-in-taking/nrryawkbqc7q

I'll start by saying that I haven't read The Forsaken. Not because of spoilers, because I already heard some things that happen in the chapter, but I wanted my first experience reading it to be within TWOW (look how that's going so far).

So what I'm about to say is mostly vibes and guesswork. But Euron is a genuinely terrifying character and one of the properly, old-school evil ones in ASOIAF. Like, there is no moral ambiguity here. The man wants to turn himself into a god and will stop at nothing for it. Euron says a lot of crazy ass things like how he visited both Asshai and Valyria and, though it's tempting to label it as bullshit, he does seem to have collected very rare artifacts like his Valyrian steel armour (??) So I would be inclined to believe him.

In any case, Euron has figured out something, some recipe to a transformative ritual. He has imprisoned priests from different religions onboard his ship and he intentionally impregnated Falia Flowers so as to use their unborn child in this upcoming blood ceremony (king's blood is known to be powerful, as Melisandre tells us, and Euron has been elected king by the kingsmoot).

Euron has had weird dreams/visions since he was a child and there are theories saying those images were sent to him by Bloodraven, who might have wanted him to be a Bran-like figure, but dropped his arse because he was way too deranged. There are also parallels between him and the Bloodstone Emperor, who is known to have caused the Long Night. One worrisome thing is that the Horn of Winter is also in Oldtown, having been brought by Sam, so it's very important that Euron NOT get his hands on it. But then again - why did George bring the Horn all the way down to Oldtown if not for this very purpose?

It's interesting that both the Hightowers and the Greyjoys are associated with Lovecraftian imagery. For the Greyjoys it is more obvious with the krakens, the tentacles and the Drowned God, but Oldtown is in a part of Westeros surrounded by places with selkie and merling legends, like the Shield Islands (north-wise), the Mermaid's Palace (Island of the Arbor). Both the base of the Hight Tower and the Seastone Chair AND the buildings in Asshai seem to be made from similar material (??) - fused black stone.

I have no idea what's about to happen - a believable theory would have been that Euron would raise the Deep Ones out of the sea, but I think George shot that one down (dunno whether he was lying or not). Another would be that Euron is going to blow the Horn of Winter and bring down the Wall. I've seen people link him to becoming the next Night's King, but I'm not really sure he is connected to the Others in a meaningful way like that. His symbolism seems to be more kraken/sea related.

The problem with Euron is that, while he is not the Final Boss in any way, he is a very dangerous distraction and could pose a fuckton of problems. Oldtown falling would be catastrophic for the fate of Westeros. This is why this fandom needs to cut it with the bullshit and start stanning Lord Leyton and Malora ASAP, since they're the last defense against the coming of the storm. Sam is also in Oldtown and I doubt George is going to kill him, so that gives me a little bit of hope that maybe Euron will be defeated.

There is also the fact that Leyton & Malora have been preparing for this for 10 years now. They must have something up their sleeve. Oldtown should be, by rights, a source of great magical power, with the High Tower, the Citadel and the Starry Sept there - so magic + science + religion combined for one last face-off against the dark. It's pretty romantic. It's pretty valiant.

Perhaps there was a reason why George placed the dragons Tessarion and Morning in Oldtown, after all. Maybe their remains or eggs will come in handy in the fight against Euron.