#compared to humans I reckon maybe around the same

[toxictoxicities]

Okay another quick question, how tall are your iterators? Like, on average, do you imagine them to be taller, shorter, or about equal size to an average human? And do you have any specific heights in mind for the canon iterators or any OCs?

For now I've got the rough heights for the main 4 (I'm slowly making the reference sheets!)

[kalims]

Hellooo I really like your writing :) May I request taking Malleus/Leona's favorite food from the fridge and leaving $2.18 in place of it?? How would they react when they find out their fav is missing?? Thank you so much !

ㅤas a form of payment

note. ty 🥲 I really appreciate since I basically disappeared for months LOL

in your defense, there's barely anything to snack on inside your dorm—unless you somehow enjoyed the myriad of canned cat food for grim (which you've been spending a lot on compared to your actual food..) and if there were anything to eat at all, you'd reckon the feline would've already gotten his hands on it and kept it to himself.

when you're already on a strict budget plan with the madol crowley 'graciously' provides you, barely enough to scrape by. you'd argue; but with the squawks of the blabbering he has, it's like arguing a wall.

thankfully lilia doesn't even seem to mind when you raid their fridge everytime you sleep over.

the dorm was really nice. nicer than your own, besides the fact sebek practically guards the front door with his life and demanding a formal invite from you the moment your knuckles resound against the door. though ramshackle, and diasomnia held similar vibes. the former looked younger than the latter but definitely in less good shape.

it was too enticing.. you shouldn't overstep as a guest.

but... "it's mocking me," you say to no one but yourself in particular. seated on a stool you found on the kitchen, in front of a counter and in the sights of the fridge. the green eccentrics of material drives your eyes to narrow further, a long, wistful sigh emitted from your lips as your folded hands rest beneath your chin.

not only that but it served like a warning to you, the color reminded you of sebek and his yelling habits. it would be a shame if you were discovered shredding their fridge with your gaze with the screech you'd imagine he'd make.

then something along the lines of; 'what are you planning, human?!'

surprisingly the dorm was eerily quiet during the night. they follow a strict protocol which only serves as fuel for your fire. you grumble. "I'm just a guest," you remind yourself. maybe to steel your morals but your resolve proves to reign when you quietly slip off the stool and open the freezer, eyes skimming through the frozen goods—a bar of chocolate, a frozen... eye...? whatever demon hotdogs were and—finally something normal.

you groan to yourself, feeling around your back pocket before peeling out a couple of coins that would be the equivalent of a dollar or two in your world. (also the last of your riches but atleast you partially paid?)

you look back, nervously looking around like a criminal before hauling the tub of ice cream in your arms. the rumble of your abdomen reminds you of why exactly you're even here committing a crime (or atleast it feels like you are...) you quickly grab a spoon, and tail it to the.. random ominous door you've never been to in your life.

malleus has this strange feeling.

he sums it up to hunger so he ventures down the familiar stairs of his dorm, through the living room, and to the place that will supposedly solve all of his problems. the churn in his gut grows stronger when he steps foot in the kitchen, blinking slowly when he cranes his head and finds the light illuminating and bright. when it shouldn't be.

it must be a resident that forgot. he shrugs it off, trudging over. picking up the smell of something familiar that brings warmth to his chest so his lips twitch into a pleasant smile. he must be going crazy, even now you're on his mind? "hmm," he mumbles, having opened the freezer and not spotting the familiar tub he's put earlier this morning.

sebek did say what it looked like, but none of these are even the delicacy he desires. he thinks, placing down a small cup of yogurt that could only belong to his father. maybe he put it in the refrigerator?

he sighs sharply through his nose and grumbles (coincidentally the same time a lightning strikes.) shutting the door to the refrigerator after finding nothing but a few eggs, chips from random residents, and more random thing that hss no correlation to what he wants. even if sebek did put it down there then what's the point in eating if it's not frozen?

malleus turns, about to sulk back to his room when he catches sight of a sticky notes and.. some madol?

'hi, this is for whoever ice cream that was T-T'

he crumples the paper in his grasp, wanting to seem understanding but the flash of lightning once again serves as a remainder of his growing irritation. a brightening of his eyes comes as quick as the tracking spell he casts quickly. eyes following a trail to the.. inconspicuous closet.

"oh, hi." the sudden light flooding in as you crouch on the floor, tub of desert between your crossed legs brings a hand over your eyes. unknown legs stand in front of the.. whatever room this is, but a closet seems more fitting so you'd call it that.

"child of man?" an incredulous voice echoes above you. the familiar sound illicits you to remove the hand blocking your sight, you wouldn't want to not look at malleus. you blink, fingers grasping the spoon laid forgotten inside the tub as you stare up at him and offer a nervous smile.

you wave with your free hand. "I got hungry?" you justify but that's only when he looks down at what you're glomping on and blinks, the random thunderstorm that started out of nowhere seems to pause for a few seconds before he breaks into a light chuckle and shakes his head. crouching down in front of you.

he presents you a small smirk. "I believe what you're eating is mine," he chides gently, devoid of any ill intent and previous irritation evaporating into nothingness when he finds you as the source of his troubles just a second ago. you open your mouth to reply, probably looking like an idiot with your mouth hung open, frozen when he just casually swipes a thumb on the corner of your mouth. wiping off an excess of ice cream that you didn't notice.

the notion might as well just given you a heart attack with the skip of a beat it did. it's almost as if malleus knows what's he's doing with the awfully appealing smirk on his face, still so gentle but you'd know better that he's doing it out of goodwill and natural caring nature for you. just the thought that he actually is so perfect warms your face.

you open your mouth—furrow your brows, close, and open. "I.. um... I'm sorry I know the money wasn't enough but I was really hungry, I'll get you a new one," a sincere apology, if you'd known it was his you would've never taken it in the first place. with the kindness he's extended you for so many times, you'd hate to see a frown on his face.

he huffs through his nose, a patient look of understanding on his face. "what's mine is all yours," he gestures to the tub between your legs, a reassuring hand on shoulder as he rubs his thumb around. he's close enough for you to see the light in his eyes, the green, and your reflection in the iris. you stare, a little dazed and mesmerized and he stares back.

"something as material as that doesn't matter compared to you," he adds.

oh my god. you gape. suddenly you're not so regretful of committing this crime.

his eyes drift up for a moment, pondering. standing back up to his full height and offering you a hand. "if you really want to make it up to me then why don't we eat it together?"

when you grasp his hand, his fingers enclose around yours. pulling you up with utmost caution. treating you as if you're the most fragile jewel he's ever held but holding you with a grip so firm you're almost afraid he's just never gonna never let go of you. you eye him as he leads you to the living room, having taken the stance as a gentleman and taking out the tub out of your hands.

even with the lasting cold from the tub transferring to your skin you still feel warm, something of a tranquil and quiet silence comfortable falling over as you both settle on the couch. you're surprised he doesn't take the seat on the opposite of you as he's always has, this time next to you. not minding your knees bumping against each other as he scoops a spoonful and offers it to you.

... how did you get in this predicament? you wonder, but open your mouth and allow yourself to shift a little closer.

not pr

[qvrcll]

I have a prompt for you, if it makes u feel inspired! Reader is human, grew up with the sully boys (like Spider) but as her life was in danger, she transfers to her own avatar. The boys (+ Kiri if you'd like!) help her adapt? With lots of physical touch stuff and pining maybe- its all up to you! Thank you!!!

𝐈 𝐆𝐎𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔 — (SULLY BOYS + KIRI) ʚ ɞ

✰༉ — (avatar : twow) -> drabble !

-> cw. ࿐ gn + non sully + human -> navi reader

-> auth notes. ࿐ omg tysm for this req , i really enjoyed writing this idea — i hope u enjoy ! ^^

-> characters. ࿐ neteyam , lo’ak + kiri sully (♡⃕)

-> warnings. ࿐ tiny bit of angst , might contain spoilers ! injury warning

✧    ﹒     ♡       ⁺      ៹    ﹒       ♡    ﹒       ✧      ₊ ✧    ﹒     ♡       ⁺

NETEYAM . ༉‧₊˚

` don’t be afraid, i am right behind you ` .

ଘ human form — he is agile, it is no secret. navi bodies are sinewy and cut from a general, visual audit. but neteyam is kind and slow when it comes to you — he will often curb his pace when you assay or strain your body too much. as an after-stroke, you share bodily sagacities of your own capabilities or struggles ( i.e. your inability to breathe pandora air — as a requital for the info you share, he will aid you in finding masks to breathe suitably + check in on you ) he is unconditional in his love and sacrifice for you, despite the visible difference in aspect, he makes up for it with connection and patience. upholds a lot of interest in human strength + bodily capabilities, so expect a lot of physical touch if you allow him it. he would try to shield you from harm’s way from a lot of things, take the blame for countless misgivings. i also see him as a massive sucker for your hands / feet; he’d find it adorable how soft and small they were compared to his. however, he isn’t a machine — his frustrations will come belting after a tough day, ties of “it’s hard slowing down always, okay!” and when you visibly pull away in hurt and confusion, he will seek you out and apologise. apologise first and foremost. then, if you give way, he will draw you close and exude his frustrations with his family. and when you giggle, let him know that you trust him. grab his hand. rub his knuckles till they’re warm and oozing with an amity unmatched. expect tears, love and a bond re-strengthened, twisted and woven into new.

` your tail , it’s longer . hey , you’re still smaller ! ` .

ଘ navi form — i reckon it’s due to battle wounds / misgivings that you would have to ultimately switch to navi — he’d find you in a heap between shrubs and vegetation, huddled and breathing all too loud. when the transference process occurs, this kid is all tears and fear — he is at your side at any give able moment. it is initially hard for him to deliberate on the change; as eywa twines around the small of your naked back, embosoms your body and counts you for new, he sees life being surged into a newer body. similar to his mother in the first film, he will bid farewell to your old body and render the patch of skin with love and devotion, an orison from eywa. then, after the overhaul, your similarity in nature is easily similar — your height had doubled and your hips had snapped to within a couple of inches. whilst his siblings are less altruistic with their giggles and amusement when you trip over wet, soft shrubs or aren’t accustomed with your legs, he will stunt his speed and carry you with both his hands. just as you had once been patient in fashioning a bond with the sully boy, he will shirk hours upon hours teaching you efficacious routes, how to stretch your legs past the horizon. he would be very verbal + compassionate, a constant string of “come on, let’s do it again.” due to your inexperience with your navi body , he’d be hesitant to amass the same physical touch as he did before , but when you tell him you miss him, best believe his heart is swelling and he won’t keep off you. definitely praises you when you overcome a particularly hard challenge or recuperate from an emotional defeat — ready to jump from the heights of the mountains when you do.

LO’AK ౨ৎ ࣪ . ⊹ :

` you’re short . cute . come , follow me ` .

ଘ human form — heavily influenced by his carnal interests in humans, in you — he isn’t foreign to the aspect of your body, when he is already close to spider. he understands their basic strokes and interests and motivations. how your heart beat is amassed. how your feet and hands are smaller. he’s a grabber for sure, constantly feeling your pinkies or thumbs, stroking the back of your palms, having you raw and flustered for him. on a certain occasion, he had grabbed you effortlessly and swung you onto his lean shoulders, giggling the entire time you are punting his back. he would also be very open to bring you to every inch’s worth of pandora if he was able to — for now, the forest was his heart’s domain ( he makes sure your escapades are safe and secret ). i reckon he’d love your eyes — they’re smaller and glassy, like two globes. he wasn’t always this artless — in the mere happening’s of your relationship, he was rather quiet and kept to himself. it was a certain turning point that depicted that pleasant change; helping him with chores or painlessly kicking him out of harm’s way. he’d be surprised, with your stature already lacking a far way off his, yet your heart was strong. mighty. and half of his already.

` you’re beautiful … but still cute . and smaller ` .

ଘ navi form — i would see him as less than capable of keeping still in battle — he’ll want to be here and there and do this and that, that he’d ultimately blur the line between it and your inability to perform certain things. i reckon it’d be something small, like a slip, or miscalculation in a certain route, and your mask cracks beyond relief or you twist your ankle and are barely conscious as you grit your teeth. i’d see him scooping you up and booking it for the lab — there is a redundant existence of a few avatars and he’s sweat and bones and a little boy holding all your weight, towering above your wheezing body as he plugs you in and withstands his father’s words. the only thing on his mind would be the smell of your blood and struggles, how “it’s my fault… mine…” — after the process, he’d be more than happy to support your quavery limbs and blurry vision. in the future, i’d definitely see him as a trial and error sort of individual + a lot of silent affirmation, presence to keep you grounded. loves, loves, loveeees your ears + tail, he thinks they’re true insight into your deepest wishes and the slightest twitches have him smirking. this cheeky boy would definitely do the most to keep his hand on yours at most times, heart rate hurdling. but he’d spend a life time protecting your honour and life, still that boy eagerly palming half of your heart.

KIRI ・⸝ . 𖥔

` what is a pinkie ? come , sit. tell me ` .

ଘ human form — absolutely enamoured by you. after befriending spider, she is intrigued by humans, having had a human mother. i reckon she’s incredibly inquisitive with your true nature. she doesn’t strike me as an individual to constantly remind you of the difference between you and her; the obvious dissimilarity between the two of you is squashed immediately when you pose your deepest respects for eywa and her countless creations. her verdure. her strength. her heartbeat, mighty. she finds no hesitation confiding in you of her origins or her ‘weirdness.’ she does tend to close off from you in select portions of emotions, when she too overwhelmed. but when she sees you, set apart from the countless, tall beings around you, digging your toes in the sand and painstakingly trying to blend into the noiseless background, she’ll join you. she’ll guide your hand to the heightening marshes or breathing strands of grass. her favourite part of you is definitely your personality + ability to adapt.

` your heartbeat is strong , still , like her ` .

ଘ navi form — i assume since she’s almost always subsumed in lo’ak’s escapades into the deepest inches of the forest, you would take a tumble or wander too far from her eye, whilst she’s synchronous with the life around her. it takes her several minutes to gather herself and place her tremulous hands onto your chest, feeling your heartbeat lodged deep within your bones and flesh — she knows you have more to give. your body is a vessel of energy, where is it borrowed and exchanged for when it is appropriate. so i reckon she wouldn’t find it strange at all when you transfer over to navi. she would definitely need to get used to the similarity in height + appearance, but she would be excited to show you the countless other things connected to eywa + pandora. definitely not as much of a toucher as her brothers but loves holding your hand + braiding your hair into protective styles. jealous when lo’ak or neteyam try to buy your time -> would never say it out loud but her body language is clear and booming. spends entire days teaching you + hugging you tightly when things go off radar, silent and understanding because the feeling of you always chases her.

© 2022 qvrcll ! do not repost any of my works on any platform.

[lollipopsub]

Hey!! I was wondering if you knew the timeline of season 2 of my beautiful man? I'm kind of confused. Is it supposed to be that hira and kiyoi have been together all through college? Or am I wrong about the timeline of the first season, because I thought that the finale of season 1 was during hira's first year of college. I'm just surprised that they seem still so unsure of their relationship if they've been a couple for years? Hopefully I'm making sense 😅 thank you so much if you take the time to read this 💖

Hi! Thanks for the ask. So compared to the timeline of the book, they're jumbling things up a little. The story with the party and the model hitting on Hira happens at the end of book 1 as a little sidestory, so canon they're still very young and just started dating.

In the series, supposing they get together at the end of Hira's year 1, and now he's halfway through year 4, they've been dating for close to 3 years I guess? Though I do reckon the decision to skip to this point in time (both novel and show) was made because of the life decisions they're going to have to make at this point in their lives, so maybe not too much thought have been put into the fact that it means they've been dating for so long.

If we expect this relationship to develop the way most relationships do, we're probably not gonna like what we'll be getting. These two emotionally constipated babes both have way too complicated perceptions of human relationships for this to have ever been an option. It's like asking a spoon to be a fork, it just ain't happening.

My point is, I don't think they are unsure of the relationship; they each know that they only have eyes for one another, but the balance in the relationship is just so completely off still. And this is basically what this season is gonna revolve around :)

!!!! POSSIBLE SPOILER !!!!!!

aka my interpretation of what the story might possibly revolve around based on the book 2 synopsis and 1st novel

I think it's hard to say much yet, but the synopsis for the show revolves around how their ways of loving each other is clashing terribly.

Hira lives in a world that is very hierarchy based and very black/white. He is at the bottom of the pyramid and Kiyoi is at the top. Their worlds are different and they can never truly co-exist on an even level; this world that Hira lives in is almost completely static, and he has no desire to move further up the social pyramid, which in his mind would be the only way for him to deserve Kiyoi.

He does not even see the possibility that Kiyoi chooses to go against this pyramid system Hira's made up. This reality does not occur to him because it simply is not an option. He never thought of it as one, so it genuinely is unfathomable to him. If you went back in time and met someone from the 60s, you wouldn't expect them to be able to explain the internet to you because it doesn't exist in their world and their reality. It's the same idea. It's not that he doesn't want to; he genuinely can't and he also is not aware that he is "lacking" something.

I feel like he still believes Kiyoi is with him as a sort of act of pity or sheer boredom. Hira's purpose is to worship Kiyoi and to be this close to him, even being intimate with him, is making Hira into a sinner committing a mortal, unforgivable sin. He should not be doing what he is doing; he does not deserve it qua his position in the hierarchy of the world. He would need to change everything about himself in order to be a deserving mate for Kiyoi; which I think is what he means when he says he needs to do better. He needs to be better; being himself the way he is now will never be someone who could ever deserve anything good.

ON THE OTHER HAND... Kiyoi may also not have a healthy relationship with love and commitment, but he truly, innerly and deeply wants to be loved. He wants to be the most important one to someone, he wants to be wanted more than anything and anyone else. He initially yearned for the kind of blind fiery, almost violent love that fans give to their idols, because he just wanted to be seen by anyone at all. He grew up feeling like an after-thought and a second choice; his mom was too busy with work, then his younger siblings came around and they were more important than him, so no one paid any mind to him and he was important to no one. Now, with time passing, he knows to himself that he doesn't want just anyone, he wants Hira and Hira only. He tries to navigate the world that Hira lives in, but Kiyoi's person and his free will does not exist in it; how is one supposed to exist in a world where you are not even perceived as a human with feelings and flaws and wants and desires?

I think this show is going to challenge even more how unreliable a narrator Hira has been for the viewer: I personally think that the sole reason some view this show as toxic is because they do not realize that Hira is a terrible narrator. We are not by any means given the whole picture and the whole truth, which is what is shown in the last two episodes of season 1, and I believe it will be shown even more in this show because of a less narrow POV.

Anyways, I might very well be wrong - haven't read the second novel yet, so I'm just based it all off of ~vibes~ and a synopsis.

[the-xp-budget]

Goblins - Part 1 (Warrior, Commando)

There’s a rustling in the bushes as the world around you goes silent. No bird song, no footsteps, nothing but the wind to comfort you.

You look around, seeking a target, a threat, something you can face down. But there remains nothing.

Suddenly, the air is filled with shouts and war cries, as an arrow emerges from the underbrush, followed by another, then another.

You take cover and look up, locking eyes with you assailants. Big eyes, green skin, pointed ears. Your party is being attacked by Goblins.

Roll initiative.

Goblins are perhaps the most iconic creature in all of fantasy, featuring in epic works of fiction such as Lord Of The Rings and Discworld, but also in mythology and folklore of all kinds.

In Pathfinder, Goblins come to us in four main forms, those being the Warrior, Commando, Pyro, and War Chanter, with the first of those sporting a level of -1, and the rest falling two levels higher. They are also a playable ancestry, but that’s not especially relevant to this post.

I’m going to focus on the martials here, with the next post going into detail on the latter two of that group. But first, let’s go over the basics.

Generally speaking, Goblins will want to roll stealth for their initiative, as it is mostly higher than their other skills. A War Chanter might be better served with Deception, and a Commando can probably get away with perception, but in general, a Goblin will want to start the fight hidden.

This gives them an advantage, allowing them to have their weapons drawn at the start of the fight while their opponents may struggle, and allows for greater numbers than the enemy is expecting.

Goblins are comparatively flimsy, which means that they will most likely strike in teams, perhaps laying an ambush to keep their targets busy, and striking them while their backs are turned.

They do, however, have a reaction called Goblin Scuttle, which has a ton of uses, mostly around mobility. Goblins aren’t heavy hitters; they’ll be mostly out for an easy fight.

As more and more Goblins join the fray, you find the battle shifting between blinks. While your gaze is locked on the one charging you, his companion has slipped behind you and is leveling their sword at your back. You've been outmaneuvered, and you're going to think quickly to defend yourself.

As such, Goblins are more likely to strike when their prey is outnumbered, issuing a first round of strikes, and if the enemy is still up, judge the situation.

I usually allow for my PCs to know when a creature they are facing is below half HP, and it would be unsportsmanlike to not offer any opponents the same dignity. Goblins aren’t eejits, they can strategize.

So, I would say this: if the Goblins have brought down one of their targets completely, or brought at least half of them down to half HP, they might shout an offer of surrender to them. Let them know that they are outnumbered and that their valuables are forfeit. If the ambushes decide not to surrender, take them down.

Worth noting here is that I am basing this on the trope of Goblin bandits, but it is completely reasonable to suspect a different reason of a fight. Goblins are thinking beings after all, and just like humans, dwarves, and other such folk, can be diverse in motivation. Maybe they want a prisoner that the party took returned to them, or maybe they are guarding something and just want the party to go away. Those are reasonable demands that can be substituted in for “valuables”.

However, if the fight goes poorly, say the targets manage to get a few strikes in of their own, or the initial volley did next to nothing, I reckon the Goblins would cut their losses and GTFO. I would say that if any member of the goblin group gets killed and the group hasn’t already taken down one of their targets, the entire group would bail.

This is the first place where Goblin Scuttle comes in, offering a quick means of escape if the goblins move together. Each time a goblin moves, it triggers this reaction from its friend, repeat en masse.

Goblin Warrior

Through the chaos of the market, you notice a solitary figure. Sturdy trousers are tucked into riding boots and a dirty tunic and apron that sit over simple leather armour. Yellow eyes, like those of a cat, watch you from underneath a wide brimmed hat, focusing on you as the she raises her bow to take aim at your neck.

The Goblin Warrior is the least powerful of all goblins, with 6 hit points at maximum and an AC of 16, compared to the average of 7 and 14 respectively for a creature of their level (I’m using the Building Creatures tables from the GM core for these statistics). These creatures can’t take more than one strike from almost any weapon if they are hit, which will happen.

They do have an above average attack modifiers and strike damage, with a Dogslicer and Shortbow that both have a +7 to hit and deal about 1d6 damage. So, they aren't defenseless.

Add all this together, and you end up with creatures that are primarily glass cannons that can deal a ton of damage then get mown down by the players.

The Dogslicer has two things going for it, the Agile and Backstabber properties. These lean into what I said earlier about outnumbering opponents. The dog slicer is designed to be used when an enemy is flanked.

Here’s what I mean:

With a +7 to hit against an armour class of 14 (once again using the tables in the GM core and pitting the goblin against a generic creature of the same level), a goblin will hit with this weapon 70% of the time, with a 20% likelihood of scoring a critical hit. The weapon uses a single d6 for a damage dice, so you get an average damage in one attack of 3.15 points of damage.

The multiple attack penalty for the second strike is diminished by the Agile property, so that has 50% chance to hit, and can only crit on a natural twenty. As such, its average damage is 1.93

First Attack: 0.5 * 3.5 + 0.2 * 7 = 3.15 Second Attack: 0.45 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 7 = 1.93 Total: 5.08

I’m not worrying about the third attack here, because I’m assuming that the Goblin has to move to get into position.

The Goblin ducks around your blade, drawing back her own and launching into an attack. The short blade lashes out at you twice with blinding speed, each strike from a different angle. You barely have time to register that her sword has holes drilled into it before you are forced to defend yourself from it. Do a twelve and an eighteen hit?

Now, let’s look at what happens when the Goblin has someone flanked. First up, the obvious flat footedness adds a 10% chance to hit and that affects the crit percentage as well, but if we add on the precision damage, we get the following:

First Attack (Flanking): 0.5 * 4.5 + 0.3 * 9 = 4.95 Second attack (Flanking): 0.5 * 4.5 + 0.1 * 9 = 3.25 Total: 8.2

You will notice that most of the benefit comes from the increased chance to crit. This is because any higher percentage to hit than 50 goes to this chance and increases the damage by twice as much as it would otherwise. Mostly.

One advantage of this strategy is that Goblin Scuttle allows for better positioning as a group to get into place for a flank, making this more likely to succeed.

But let’s rewind a bit, because our Goblin friend has another weapon in her arsenal, a Shortbow, and that has the Deadly property, which allows it to add an extra d10 of damage when it is used to score a critical hit. This is a rarer bonus, but it means that the Goblin doesn’t have to get too close to danger and doesn’t have to waste her first action moving.

Her chance to hit for the first shot with this weapon is the same as for a Dogslicer, but because this doesn’t have that oh so important agile property, her second and third attacks are much less likely to hit. (45% and 20%, respectively). So, our formula looks like this:

First Attack: 0.5 * 3.5 + 0.2 * 12.5 = 4.25 Second Attack: 0.4 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 12.5 = 2.03 Third Attack: 0.15 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 12.5 = 1.15 Total: 7.43

The bulk of this damage is coming from the Deadly trait, but even so, it doesn’t really compare to flanking, despite the extra attack. So, what if we used that action to do something else, instead.

Our Goblin friend has proficiency in Acrobatics (+5), Athletics (+2), Nature (+1), and Stealth (+5), which give her access to a few actions.

Acrobatics and Athletics actions are mostly about movement, with jumps and things helping with mobility around difficult spaces. Reposition and Shove might me useable to knock someone off a ledge if they sneak up on our Goblin. It will work in a pinch, but because of her low Athletics modifier, they aren’t likely enough to work for our friend for her to go out of her way to achieve them.

Nature is useful with two main actions. First up, commanding an animal to defend our friend on its next turn. Maybe the market has guard dogs and she can try out that skill. Alternatively, a nature check might recognise a high level of primal magic and let her know that it’s probably a good idea to flee.

It is Stealth that provides the Goblin with her greatest advantage, as it can hide her from opponents, preventing her from being targeted, and allowing an increased likelihood of striking a target. With a weapon that relies as heavily on crits as a Shortbow, I would advise this course of action.

The average perception score of a level -1 creature is +5, so if you add the +2-bonus gained from cover to our Goblin’s own +5 to stealth, she has 65% chance of succeeding, and that ain’t bad at all.

The first strike, from cover, has an average damage of 5.5, with the following formula.

First Attack (Hidden): 0.5 * 3.5 + 0.3 * 12.5 = 5.5

But is it worth it? The stealth roll isn’t guaranteed to succeed, does that make it less of a viable option? Let’s compare.

Hide Then Attack Twice: 0.65 * 5.5 + 0.35 * 4.25 + 2.03 = 7.09

Ok, this doesn’t look like it supports my point, since just attacking thrice offers an average damage of 7.43. But hear me out.

The difference is only 0.34 hit points, and I think that is worth sacrificing for the defensive properties of the hide action. I think not getting shot back at balances out that miniscule amount of damage. Especially considering how few hit points the Warrior has in the first place. She can't afford to be shot back at.

In addition, we need to take into account the fact that greater cover is a thing, and if you are setting up the ambush, you chose where the battle is. Again, Goblins ain’t dumb, so they might choose a place where cover is more abundant. That extra little bonus to hiding makes the formula above look like this.

Hide Then Attack Twice: 0.75 * 5.5 + 0.25 * 4.25 + 2.03 = 7.21

Now, the difference is even smaller, so we have a gameplan.

Set up fifty to sixty ft. from the ambush site to give a decent amount of space between our Goblin and the party’s Barbarian, who has to waste a ton of movement just to get to her.

For her first two actions, our Goblin raises her bow and takes two shots at the weakest looking party member, hoping to drop them quickly and hopefully take out any spellcasters. She’s seen spellcasters before, and she’s seen how much damage they can do if not counteracted quickly.

Then, she ducks behind cover and hides, setting up her next turn and waiting for the signal from her higher ups as to whether or not to stay and fight or to bail.

As the market erupts into chaos, you lose track of your assailants until an arrow thunks into your armour with a nineteen to hit. You whirl around and catch a glimpse of her as she looses another shot. That's a two on the dice for a total of four, so I'll say the arrow shatters a pot about five ft. from you, way off target. As you glance at the wreckage however, even for that split second, when you look back, she has disappeared once more.

If someone makes the decision to sprint at her, the Goblin will emerge from cover to take a pot shot at them before skedaddling. They most likely can’t cover sixty ft. in a turn, especially not while wasting an action to draw their axe, so it’s safe to take another shot and then bail to regroup. If chased, she will look for the smallest space to squeeze through and avoid pursuit. But at that point, this isn’t a fight anymore, it’s a chase. Even then, the party is now spread across the map, and they are easy pickings for her co-conspirators.

The same reaction goes for if she is hit by an attack such as from an enemy bow. She will quickly realise that another such arrow could end her, and she will back off.

Alternatively, the Goblin could just attack in darkness. She has Darkvision, which renders opponents who don’t have it blinded against her. In that case, she doesn’t have to hide and can just stand there and pick off the party while they stumble about.

For weaponry in that situation, since being flanked and being unable to see both cause a target to be off-guard, and we can assume the targets will try to move around and escape, use the above formula for an average damage of 8.2. Meanwhile, the Shortbow has the following equation.

Shortbow (Darkness): 5.5 + 0.4 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 12.5 + 0.25 * 3.5 + 0.05 * 12.5 = 9.03

Like I said, stand in darkness, pick off opponents that can’t fight back. Our goblin wants to win this fight, so naturally, she’s going to find the easiest way to do that.

Goblin Commando

You hear the scraping before you see it's source. Silhouetted against the setting sun and illuminated only by rays reflecting off the water, you make out long, pointed ears, and a jacket coat over a set of sturdy leather armour, as well as a lazy grin that looks almost demonic in the rippling light. Your eye, however, is drawn to a heavy looking hooked spear, the blade of which this figure is trailing along the dock to their side as if it weighs nothing.

The lore for the Goblin Commando states that they steal glory from their fellows, and I do like that idea. An opportunistic fighter who will make a beeline for the most injured opponent just to claim that kill for themself. I think that's a neat concept to work with when coming up with tactics.

After all, in my opinion, the skills and tactics of a creature should reflect that creature as an individual. If a Goblin has a vendetta against people with cats, for example, they might single out that opponent against all better judgement. Or, if they want to steal glory, they might switch up their tactics to target whoever is the weakest.

As for statistics, the Commando can take multiple hits, with a HP of 18 and an AC of 17. When compared to the averages of 20 and 16, respectively, we have another skirmish fighter, although we are much closer to the average here, meaning we could play around with someone more willing to go toe to toe with their opponents.

Add to this the perception modifier of +5, and this is someone who can play defensive and hold off attackers if the lair is invaded.

The Commando does have a bow, and an attack modifier of +8 on that, so if we run the above tactics (replacing the target AC with 15, and the target perception DC with 17), we end up with the exact same as before:

Hide Then Attack Twice: 0.6 * 6 + 0.4 * 4.25 + 2.03 = 7.33

This is all well and good, but it is slightly worse than for the Warrior, so let’s take a look at the Commando’s other options.

The Horsechopper has the same +8 to hit, but instead of just a d6 this weapon deals 1d8 +3 points of damage, for an average of 7.5. It also has the Reach and Trip properties, which change things a bit.

Reach just extends the range of the attacks, in this case to 10 ft., which means that the Commando can attack from a distance and force their enemies to waste an action to get close. It also protects them from reactive strikes, but they aren’t as common at this level, so I’d say they won’t be expecting retaliation from anyone they move past.

It also extends the range required for Commandos to flank, meaning that an opponent who closes in on one Goblin leaves their back open.

Trip, meanwhile, allows the Commando to attempt to knock their opponent prone with the weapon in their hands, and extends the range of this action to the range of the weapon. Since this is a reach weapon, that becomes 10 ft.

This provides two possible courses of action. Either make two attacks with the Horsechopper, or try to Trip the target and make them off-guard against the next attack.

With the same +8 to hit against an assumed AC of 15, we end up with the same 70% chance to hit the first strike, and a 45% chance for the follow up.

Two Attacks: 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.2 * 15 + 0.4 x 7.5 + 0.05 x 15 = 10.5

Meanwhile, since the Trip action still counts towards the Commando’s multiple attack penalty, we have to take that into account with our formula. For reasons that will become obvious, let’s assume that the Commando’s Trip succeeds, and factor the target being off-guard into the Commando’s singular attack and end up with a 55% chance to land the strike, and:

Trip Then Attack: 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 4.5

This strategy, at face value, doesn’t work. It would seem that trying to be fancy doesn’t pay off. But hold on a moment, let’s run some other situations. What if the Commando starts their turn with an opponent within reach? What then?

Three Attacks: 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.2 * 15 + 0.4 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 + 0.15 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 12.38

Trip Then Attack Twice: 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 + 0.25 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 7.13

It’s still not a viable strategy. I had the idea for what might happen if there were multiple Commandos in a fight. Maybe knocking an opponent prone would allow for everyone to jump on the fallen combatant to gain that juicy off-guard bonus.

But in that case, it would be easier to flank the combatant while they are standing up, and just whale on them while they can’t fight back.

The Commando lunges forwards, twisting their weapon in the air and extending it for an impressive distance, before deftly bringing it back around for a sweeping arc leveled at your head. That is a twenty-one to hit on both attacks.

The Commando is opportunistic, according to their lore, so they can choose whom to target. Let’s say they use their first action to get into a good place for a flank, and then their second and third to swing that Horsechopper twice at the outnumbered prey.

First Attack (Flanking): 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.3 * 15 = 8.25 Second Attack (Flanking): 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.05 * 15 = 4.5 Total: 12.75

Genuinely, this is better than the Goblin just making three strikes against whoever starts in their range, so, we have a strategy.

At the start of the Commando’s turn, they look around to see if there is an enemy they can flank, then spend an action to get there, and use their remaining momentum to strike twice. Because of the extended range of the Horsechopper, there might even be an easier opponent to hit already with range. Also, remember that this Commando has Goblin Scuttle, which they will be more than happy to use to manoeuvre around the battlefield in search of easy targets.

Once again, Darkvision makes this so much easier, and the Commando doesn’t have to flank their opponents to deal the most damage they can.

Finaly, if, at any point in the battle, the Commando is reduced to below about 6 hit points, or to 9 from a single hit, they will turn and run. Glory isn’t worth their life, and they won’t even bother with a last strike. Instead, they will use all three of their actions to sprint in the direction of the closest alleyway or hiding spot.

Alternate Weapons

One of the easiest ways to diversify a battlefield is by switching around weaponry. The proficiency system in PF2e makes this relatively easy to balance, so here are some options:

Our Goblin Warrior might pick up a shield on her travels, most likely a wooden one. It doesn’t change her Armour Class too much, and with her hit and run tactics, she would be better suited to just using that item to strike twice, but it provides options.

Alternatively, she could be equipped with a Horsechopper. You would have to swap around her dexterity and strength to make it work, but that would decrease her AC to 13. In this case, I would advise that she attacks only once per turn and uses the rest of her movement to duck in and out of combat as a skirmisher.

Meanwhile, a Commando would be incredibly well suited to a similar set up, either a Dogslicer, or a Dogslicer and shield. As before, the action is better used striking than raising the shield, but it never hurts to be there.

The Commando adds an extra +3 damage to their strikes with a Dogslicer, which means the formula for that turn looks like this.

Two Attacks: 0.5 * 6.5 + 0.2 * 13 + 0.45 * 6.5 + 0.05 * 13 = 9.43 Two Attacks (Flanking): 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.3 * 15 + 0.5 * 7.5 + 0.1 * 15 = 13.5

This is more damage than the Horsechopper, which averaged out at 12.75 damage per turn using this strategy. But it does lose out on the manoeuvrability and versatility that come from a reached weapon. So, I’d say it’s a fair trade.

Looking to the Goblin Ancestry for more inspiration, the Goblin Weapon Familiarity offers access to a plethora of uncommon weapons. These might not be applicable to every setting, but I'm sure someone will use them, so here they are.

The Explosive Dogslicer functions like a regular Dogslicer in melee, but doubles as a ranged weapon that deals 1d6 slashing damage, with a range increment of 20 ft, and the Backstabber, Fatal d10, Scatter 5 ft., traits. It also has a reload of 1, which limits it to being shot once or twice per turn.

The traits do mean that it is incredibly well suited to the hide and shoot strategy from before. Just substitute the second attack from that strategy with an interact to reload, and you get this:

Hide Then Attack (Warrior): 0.65 * (0.5 * 5.5 + 0.3 * 15.5) + 0.35 * (0.5 * 4.5 + 0.2 * 13.5) = 6.54 Hide Then Attack (Commando): 0.6 * (0.5 * 5.5 + 0.3 * 15.5) + 0.4 * (0.5 * 4.5 + 0.2 * 13.5) = 6.42

This doesn't really compete with the bow. But remember that the strategy deals an average of 0.77 splash damage for a Warrior and 0.76 for a Commando to any creature within 5 ft. of the target. Which means that if a party of four characters are clustered. This attack will generally deal about 8.85 damage in total. Naturally, this scales with the number of opponents.

The strategy does have one major drawback, that being the range of the weapon. So, I would advise this only as an opening Gambit. This would be the warning shot of a Goblin who favours melee fighting. She uses her first turn to shoot and then reload and hide. Then opens her second turn with another shot before engaging her target in melee.

Since the only difference between this and a Flingflencer is the range increment (the Flingflencer has an extra 10 ft. to play with) and the fact that the Flingflencer requires two hands, I would advise the same strategy. However, I think she would be better served using the second action to switch weapons rather than reload, meaning she can rush into melee immediately on her second turn.

A Big Boom Gun, meanwhile, has the same basic traits, although it doesn't have a melee option, and its traits are all replaced by a Fatal d12 ability. Still using the above strategy, its formula looks like this:

Hide Then Attack (Warrior): 0.65 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.3 * 13) + 0.35 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.2 * 13) = 5.2 Hide Then Attack (Commando): 0.6 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.3 * 13) + 0.4 * (0.5 * 3.5 + 0.2 * 13) = 5.13

Again, it's less useful than a Shortbow, and is best suited to an opening gambit. This weapon does also have a misfire option that, while incredibly detrimental to the Goblin, is rather funny when it does happen. So, as a GM, I would definitely advise this strategy.

I would advise this strategy as well for a Spoon Gun. It won't do as much damage against a single target due to not having the Deadly Property, but it does have the Scatter property, so focusing fire on clumped targets would naturally be the most optimal.

Conclusion

Goblins are an integral part of TTRPG lore, and I’m not talking about in game. Every party has fought Goblins. So, I couldn’t exactly start with anything else, could I.

Once again, I want to highlight that the idea for this blog comes from the The Monsters Know What They’re Doing blog, which is an excellent resource designed specifically for Dungeons and Dragons, but with ideas that can easily be brought over. I thought I might try my hand at this concept through the PF2e system, because it looked fun, but also because Pathfinder needs more love and attention.

In any case, if you have any suggestions for creatures you’d like me to cover, send me a message or put your suggestion in the replies or the ask box. I’d be happy to oblige.

[xprojectrpg]

Moment of Awesome - Namor/The Sub-Mariner: When Namor encounters Jay in the Chapel, the King is able to discuss his lost kingdom, and potential opportunities for the younger man.

"You havin' any luck with yer home?" He asked, slightly more gently.

"No," he said flatly, "as of yet," was added more softly. "There have been traces. Histories." And that was apparently enough there, as Namor's eyes pivoted to Jay's laptop. "And you? Tell me of your great tasks."

Jay rolled his eyes there. "I ain't sure you can call it great tasks, Namor," he said, using the name in a casual way that truly spoke of how he did not know the other man as a King. "Mostly just tryin' to get everything settled for a clinic, but all that means is bein' persistent with insurance companies who're all vultures of course and tryin' to find people to staff it at the moment." Technically the staffing wasn't Jay's problem, but he had been communicating with the insurance companies as he technically was executive secretary on the project.

A nod. "This age is full of foolish administrative obstacles. But," and he shuddered, just a little, "Bureaucracy. I myself am suited for more direct paths toward resolution. Have you tried destroying these insurers? Tempting them with what they hold most dear?"

"I think what they hold most dear is money and I've been given access to plenty of that to wave around. It's just seein' whose worth givin' it to," Jay said. "And I ain't never been much of a fighter. I like to talk things over when I can."

"I do not see much of a difference," Namor said. "Effective words are often a sparring match between equal opponents." He gave a glance toward the basement entrance. "As is knowing how to swim and breathe at once. Do you often spend your time here?"

"Wouldn't you if you had access to something so beautiful?" Jay asked. He paused. "Do you not hear it sing?"

The once king turned back, and his expression had suddenly lost all goodwill or humanity. They were now a pair of predator's eyes, devoid of all but sharp interest. "Tell me what you hear," Namor said.

Jay wasn't sure how to describe it so instead he harmonized with it for Namor, letting the other man hear what he heard. There weren't any lyrics, just an almost mournful tune.

"Enough." It was a whispered command. "That is enough," he said again, but this time there was something pleading at its edges. Namor studied the youth like he was considering pinning him to a board.

Jay stopped at the pain in Namor's voice. Was what he heard something from his friend's lost home? "I'm sorry," he said, sympathizing with the hurt Namor showed.

"It has been recorded that everyone perceives the wormhole uniquely," the Atlantean said. The surety behind his tone was reflected in the way he stiffened, walling any of his momentary weakness behind fact. "Is it always the same song, for you?"

"Not always, but I reckon most of it's likely from the same place. Why?" Jay asked, even though he was beginning to have his own suspicions.

"Let us just say it reminds me of something from long ago." Namor gestured in slight dismissal. "Of course, I doubt the wormhole's song can compare to the resonating crystal acoustics of my home. Still," and he leaned in a little, "we have not had someone describe the anomaly in such a way."

"How'd you describe it?" Jay asked, curious.

The look Jay received was blunt enough to indicate Namor's desire to offer more (none), but he did offer a pivot. A confessional diversion. "The wormhole speaks to me like a pressure. A weight."

Weight of his whole culture, maybe. The weight of being away so long.

"So how d'ya monitor it anyways?" Jay asked, trying to offer Namor something to show him instead. Also, he couldn't deny he was curious and wanted to see the wormhole again too. "Maybe ya can show me what all the readin's mean or something."

It didn't take any prodding at all.

"The dred machinations of our science corps do most of the work," Namor said, "but we stand watch as they do their work." He gave a wave, then, and moved toward the basement. "Anyone can learn to stand sentry. Follow me."

Jay followed obediently, glad to be of help. Maybe this sort of monitoring would give him some sense of stability in the wind he felt he'd been caught in. "You just show me what to do."

"I will instruct you at my pleasure," Namor sneered. "But. Follow."

[outofangband]

So, you’ve talked a little about the climate of Himring, but I’m the annoying type of person that needs numbers. How many degrees is it in the different seasons? How long do the seasons last for? If it were comparable to a place on Earth, where would that be (Norway maybe?) ? Sorry if this is a stupid question or you’ve already answered it somewhere lol :)

Not annoying!

World Building Masterlist which has the other Himring posts!

I hope this is ok! As always please feel free to ask more! I enjoy your questions!

So first a note on the Calendar

I will make a more detailed post on the months and seasons and a post on the seasons can by found in my second headcanon masterlist

Our source for this is an analysis of Tolkien’s many calendars called The Reckoning of Time

There are six seasons described in both Sindarin and Quenya;, Spring, Summer, Autumn or Harvest, Fading, Winter and Stirring. Spring, autumn, fading and stirring last 54 days each and Summer and winter last 72 days.

Their dates for seasons are also somewhat different than in the Northern hemisphere

Elves begin their year in the late month of Gwaeron, an equivalent of March. Spring lasts from March 21st until the middle of May. Summer is from mid May until late July. Autumn is from here until Late September. Then, before the start of fading there is a period of three days. Fading lasts until early November when Winter begins. Winter lasts until late January when stirring begins which lasts until mid March.

When exactly a system of twelve months was established in Beleriand is unclear (though it’s worth noting that twelve base systems for Valarin years existed in the Years of the Trees)

(Túrin’s birth month is given as Gwaeron or March though the calendar used by the humans was primarily associated with Númeanor.)

I go with the idea though that it did originate in the First Age, at least in some form

That being said, as I think you implied in your ask, the official start and finish of a season is not necessarily the same as the cultural or local understanding of a season based on the surrounding climate (for example spring might officially start on March 21st in much of the Northern hemisphere but not all places consider it officially spring until snowfall becomes less frequent which might not happen until April)

Himring winters definitely last longer, typically the period from Mid November (Hísimë in Quenya, Hithui in Sindarin) to late March.

The transitional seasons named by the elves, Stirring and Fading, are far less defined in the March of Maedhros.

Spring, when the snow melts and plants start to grow is typically from early April to late June with the high summer characterized by long days and the warmest weather lasting only two months, during July and August. Autumn or Harvest and Fading blend together from September to mid November and finally, Stirring is typically considered only truly in the weeks before the beginning of spring

Winter temperatures generally range -8 degrees Celsius/18 degrees Fahrenheit to -25 Celsius/-15 Fahrenheit (including windchill)

Summers are fairly mild with an average of 21 degrees Celsius or 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It rarely gets above 78 degrees Fahrenheit/26 degrees Celsius.

spring is still very cold with 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 4 to 10 degrees Celsius being common.

Autumn temperatures are mild at first but drop quickly with heavy winds. Similar temperatures to spring at first with temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit or 4 degrees Celsius often starting in Mid October if not earlier

Precipitation is actually low though snow might remain on the ground for much longer around the year. Precipitation in the taiga is usually rain the summer as well as snow and fog. 

As for real life place comparisons, yay! This means I get to talk more about ecoregions and biomes! (Explanation here)

The most likely biomes are boreal forest and taiga or tundra. Tundras are defined by tree growth that is (negatively) impacted by low temperatures though the growing season like with taiga might be longer than in other places as the native flora has a temperature to trigger growth that is lower than plants in warmer climates. Taiga, also known as boreal or snow forests are defined by coniferous forests of mainly pine, spruce and larch in the global North in colder climates. 

As always please feel free to ask more!

[journey-to-the-attic]

Ack sorry I feel like i'm sending in too many asks sobs

I just wanted to share a few headcanons/ideas for the dragon!AU since i'm working on drawing my Dragon Bro designs as we speak!

-I feel like Levi would be a sea dragon, no wings but a suuuper long tail! He' be kind of slick and almost slimy to touch, and his scales would be a kind of iridescent purple that sheens to orange. I imagine his scales as kind of thin, but his horns are the same as his demon form ones and they're super sturdy! he's have a little secret cove he goes to methinks and he'd take IK there to show her the random human things he collects, like dolls and stuff :')

-I feel like Asmo would be a black dragon with a pink sheen, (or his body is in a black to pink/pink to black gradient?) and I feel like he'd be on the smaller side compared to the others? Maybe his wings would be connected directly to his back, and would be fairly large! His scales are probably suuuper smooth, but very fragile so he makes sure to take good care of them) I like to think that he only picks out the prettiest baubles and jewels and etc to decorate his cave/room, and that he will have IK try on some of the jewelry for little fashion shows!

-Mammon my beloved,,,,,.,.

Mammon definitely has a massive horde, classic dragon behavior. Pretty sure he'd be white with a couple gold scales in intervals, and I think that his wings would be the type that are connected to his arms (like a bat!) Once he gets attached to IK and they starts getting closer, what if he gave her one of his gold scales 🥺 and she's like oh,,, thanks,,, because this huge dragon just gave her a 24k slab of gold the size of a dinner plate as a gift LMAO

I also like to think that he'd curl up around her and put his wing over her to protect her while she sleeps

anyways enough rambling :') though i'd be happy to do the other brothers as well if you wanted

no such thing as too many asks! i also will always love dragons (then again who doesn't??) so, very big fan of this au in general

there's so much goofiness to be had with dragon brothers who have no idea how to look after a small human... i reckon they've observed human behaviours and care rituals before, but because a lot of stuff gets lost in translation (and because some humans are just weird), it always ends up really strange when they try to copy them for ik... for example, beel once saw a mother helping up her fallen child, and his version of this is pushing ik over and then picking her back up again multiple times per day as a sign of affection

would the brothers have different dragon powers?? i imagine lucifer at least would be able to do the fire-breathing thing (just seems to fit him, yknow??), so he's always very warm because it's like he has a little furnace inside him. he'd let ik take a nap on his back and lay there blowing contented little smoke rings up into the sky :')

[sailorbowie]

alrighty pal let's hear ur headcanons on what the corinthian does on a daily basis. boyd holbrook calling him a " connoisseur of all things " really shifted my understanding of the character - we see in the show that it's more about the terror, that he doesn't necessarily need to kill to experience pleasure, that he's more of a hedonist overall - the prodigal son ran rampant. (i rlly enjoyed for this reason how he is the nightmare that meets destruction in the waking world when dream is taking him for walkies, maybe he could have taken inspiration from him, who knows?) i also think, given the genuine hurt he displays in the show before dream unmakes him, there's an element of desperation of being taken away from the wonders of life, compared to in the comics where he's mostly just very angry and very eager to show dream all the ways he's learnt to instill fear. also, on the subject of the eyes: eyes being a window to the soul, to experience humanity, but given the importance of the "im gonna reshape the world to look like me" quote I reckon it's also about stealing humanity or at least autonomy/individuality from his victims, establishing balance in a way, would love to hear your thoughts about that. the corinthian wants to be a real boy! how do you think he spends his time every day?

OH GOD OKAY let me think.....

alrighty pal let's hear ur headcanons on what the corinthian does on a daily basis. /   how do you think he spends his time every day?

I think the Corinthian’s daily activities involve a lot of exploration and just fucking around to find out, figuratively and literally ;) .

 I think on a Monday you could probably see him taking walks around whatever city he’s decided to hang out in for the time being. Perusing the shops, just picking stuff up and looking at it. (Like the little mermaid, he’s just so curious about the human world!) He’s been around for a while, so he likes to see how stuff has changed.

I think he also likes checking out people, both in an attracted and a fascinated way. Somehow I think he finds something interesting in the mundane aspects of people. Noticing the same people who get on and off at the bus stops, how their moods change often. Whenever he finds a lucky (or unlucky) soul to talk to and engage with, he watches the way they respond to his facade. Most of the time, he’s truly convincing, if not a little eccentric.

Also, I like to think he’s at least a little bit up to date on trends. He certainly dresses sharply enough. He’s mastered that modern minimalist look, and he has a smartphone. He’s distinguished enough to look good but not stand out too much, as he intended.

"im gonna reshape the world to look like me" quote I reckon it's also about stealing humanity or at least autonomy/individuality from his victims, establishing balance in a way, would love to hear your thoughts about that.

My thoughts on that...I believe it’s his eager enviousness of trying to achieve humanity (his view greatly influenced by the great amazing totally extroverted Dream of course)! I think deep down he knows that as much as he tries to imitate and copy humans, he knows he will never be their equal....so maybe they ought to see (HA) things his way. The Corinthian achieves this by, yes, taking their eyes/individuality, and also by encouraging Collectors to embrace what makes them ‘human’ (spoiler alert: they all lived to regret that). 

Actually the whole analogy of the Corinthian wanting a kind of human normalcy as a Nightmare could be a cool concept to explore. Thanks again for the lovely ask!!! I’m here all week! (I haven’t read Nightmare Country.....YET! But I will soon. Also, I’m slowlyyy rereading the rest of Sandman)

[impalementation]

spike, angel, buffy & romanticism: part 4

part 1: “When you kiss me I want to die”: Angel and the high school seasons

part 2: “Love isn’t brains, children”: Enter Spike as the id

part 3: “Something effulgent”: Season five and the construction of Spike the romantic

* 

“But I can’t fool myself. Or Spike, for some reason.”: Buffy and Spike as a blended self

Before I get into seasons six and seven, it’s worth asking: why would the show do all of this? Why would it spend all of this time developing a supporting villain and joke id character? Why would it give him a romantic arc? I see people say that the writers only gave Spike these storylines because he was popular or they wanted to keep him around, but even that being the case, there was no need to give him the specific arc that they did. It’s more than possible to read meaning into the story that they chose from the array of possible options. 

Here is the thing about the id. It’s not actually something separate from you. It’s not a ravenous monster you can blame your weaknesses on while remaining pure and dignified. The id is part of you. The immediate and enduring appeal of Spike is, I suspect, strongly influenced by the fact that the things the id wants are so very human and sympathetic. His foibles and mistakes are often painfully familiar, even exaggerated through vampirism as they are. In fact, it’s precisely because Spike is allowed to show a full range of reactions to love, because the writing is under less pressure for him to do the “right” or dignified thing, that he can at times be compelling in ways other characters can’t. If Spike just did nasty things, his appeal wouldn’t be much more complicated than the appeal of Angelus, who people tend to like as a villain or storyline rather than as a relatable character. But Spike doesn’t want to dismember nuns or construct elaborate murder tableaux. He wants familiar things like love, identity and meaning, even if the ways he goes about getting them can reflect people’s worst impulses. 

Which brings us to Buffy, and Buffy’s story about growing up. Buffy is Buffy’s show, which means that every writing choice tends to revolve around her arc in one way or another. And this goes for Spike’s storyline even more than most. In the final three seasons of the show, the writing finally engages with how inextricable the id--and all of its impulsive, inarticulate romantic desires--really is from a person’s self. So instead of keeping Spike at a comfortable distance, both Buffy and the writing begin to take him seriously. They begin to invite him in.

Starting in season five, it’s telling how frequently Buffy herself projects on Spike, rather than just the writing setting them up as mirrors. She tells him that he’s the “only one strong enough” to protect her family, and later assigns Dawn specifically to his protection. In “Spiral” she describes him as “the only one besides me that has any chance of protecting Dawn.” This is a very intimate role that she otherwise only assigns to herself (and which is not really based on pure practicality, considering that she’ll later describe Willow as her “big gun”--yet never gives Willow the task of protecting Dawn). She tells him that he cannot love, which is the thing she fears most about herself. Her protests that Spike is a vampire, and thus cannot express or want human things like love, mirror her lamentations that as the Slayer, she cannot have a normal life.

From the Gilliland Gothic double essay:

More than any of her other lovers, Buffy and Spike overlap one another so often that at times their character arcs become nearly indistinguishable. With Angel, Buffy traveled a parallel path in attempting to master self-control. With Riley, her journey ultimately took her in the opposite direction. With Spike, Buffy’s journey is most closely shadowed, in that her interactions with him in many ways can be seen as metaphors for her feelings about herself.

So now Spike is multiple things. On the one hand, he’s the soulless id he’s been since season two. His vampiric behavior represents a morally uninhibited way of reacting to romantic frustrations, among other things. But on the other hand, his vampirism now also marks him as like Buffy, not merely her opposite.* Nor is he only her mirror in the realm of romantic love. The part of him that is a vampire is the part of him that is supernatural (ie, Romantically larger-than-life), that sets him apart from regular people, and dictates how he can and cannot behave. Just like Buffy’s slayerness. His vampirism is what makes him capable of protecting Dawn, while also making him (supposedly, according to Buffy) incapable of human feeling--again, just like Buffy’s slayerness. Instead of Buffy’s Slayer side being aligned with Angelus, who was an unmitigated evil, it becomes aligned with Spike, who is something more complicated. 

*(Though it must be noted that this was a process that began in season four, with the show aligning Spike with the Scoobies by making him a victim of the Initiative. Spike being supernatural suddenly marks him as non-normative, just like the Scoobies, in contrast to the institutional conformity that the Initiative represents. The evolution towards treating the Romantic supernatural as something positive and associated with identity plays a key role in transitioning the show to the more complicated attitudes of the last three seasons.)

This shift in the show’s attitudes towards the id affects how Spike is used. In “Blood Ties” for example, Spike assists Dawn in breaking into the Magic Shop and in “Forever” he helps Dawn resurrect her and Buffy’s mother. In both cases, Spike could be read as embodying impulsive behavior that Buffy is supposed to be better than. Yet both cases specifically involve Spike helping Dawn, who is repeatedly portrayed as Buffy’s human side. As Buffy says in “The Gift”: “[Dawn]’s more than [my sister]. She’s me. The monks made her out of me. [...] Dawn is a part of me. The only part that I--”. In other words, Buffy’s id becomes closely tied to her humanity, even going so far as to become its safeguard. “Blood Ties” ends with Buffy affirming her connection to Dawn, which Spike’s rule-breaking directly enabled, and “Forever” ends with Buffy acknowledging how desperately she wants her mother back too, and becoming closer to Dawn as a result. (Compare to “Lovers Walk”, where Buffy acknowledging her id results in her breaking away from Angel, not drawing closer to anyone). Or in “Intervention”, Spike building the Buffybot directly parallels Buffy’s own anxieties about what she thinks she should be. She thinks she’s losing her ability to love, and that effusive fakery is her only recourse (as she said in “I Was Made to Love You”: “Maybe I could change. [...] I could spend less time slaying, I could laugh at his jokes. I mean men like that right? The joke laughing at?”), a fear that even has some merit, given that her friends cannot tell her and the bot apart. Instead of Buffy and Spike having separate arcs in the episode, Spike learning the difference between real and fake dovetails with Buffy’s own relationship to her realness and fakeness. It turns out that neither of them want a bot version of Buffy. They want real emotion, things like sacrifice and heartfelt gratitude. If even Buffy’s id would let itself be killed for Dawn, then maybe she has nothing to fear from herself. Maybe there is some beauty in the emotional part of her nature that she thinks she must repress.

In other words, part of the writing (and Buffy) fully engaging with romanticism and the id, means engaging with the ways they can be bad and good. There’s this weird thing that happens with Spike as soon as he falls in love with Buffy, where suddenly his actions are more uncomfortable, and to many, off-putting, because their object is Buffy (instead of another vampire like Harmony or Drusilla, who either enjoy the same vampiric things he does, or the audience might be inclined to see as a moral nonentity regardless). His comic id quality becomes somewhat darker and more serious, almost like the way Angel’s early season two darkness becomes more serious after he loses his soul. But at the same time, Spike’s actions are also more intriguing, sympathetic, and even noble...because their object is Buffy. It makes no sense that a soulless vampire should not only fall in love with the Slayer, but genuinely attempt to transform himself into someone worthy of her love. And yet that’s exactly what Buffy inspires him to do. By loving Buffy Spike’s dual nature, and the dual nature of his romanticism, is thrown into relief: it’s something that can be selfish and creepy, yes, but also something that hints at the idea that real romanticism does exist. Something worth feeling romantically about does exist. Thus the writing can at once criticize, say, the way the chivalric mindset conflates love and suffering, while also suggesting that there are kinds of love it’s worth being transformed by. (Meanwhile, Spike’s fumbling bewilderment over how to love Buffy, and what the rules of loving people correctly even are, creates a human middle ground between monstrousness and heroism). By leaning into the way that Buffy and Spike have been used as mirrors for three seasons, and introducing the mythology-bending idea of Spike being in love with Buffy, the writing is able to fully engage with this complicated, contradictory nature of love and romance.

All of which is to say. Spike becomes a potential love interest, and is given a convoluted inner conflict between monstrousness, humanity and heroism, in precisely the season in which Buffy begins to reckon with her own inner conflict between her darker impulses, her human reality, and her supernatural role. It’s no coincidence that season five opens with Dracula, an icon of romantic vampire mythology, tempting Buffy with darkness and promising her insight into her nature. Or that a vampire kidnaps Dawn--again, her human half--in the next episode. Or that the season’s antagonist is a super-strong blonde woman who wants to destroy Dawn instead of protect her. Or that she says goodbye to Riley, the boyfriend who embodied her hopes for a more normative way of being (notice how Riley is progressively destabilized by everything non-normative about Buffy’s life, and provokes those anxieties Buffy expresses in “I Was Made to Love You”). Over and over in season five, Buffy fears that her Slayer half is cold, destructive, and otherwise dangerous. That these Romantic things like gods and vampires have it in for Buffy’s vulnerable humanity. Yet Buffy’s vampire id simultaneously gives lie to these fears by proving itself capable of heroism and genuine human feeling.

In other words, Spike becomes a potential love interest in a season that treats the Romantic--ie the grand and mythical--as something more than just an attractive lie to be disabused of. Rather, the question that season five seems to posit to me, and which will not be fully answered until the end of season seven, is this: once you do clear away the attractive lies, once you accept the hard realities, once you’ve seen the darkest underbellies, what are the things that are left that are truly grand and beautiful? What are the stories that are really worth telling, and the heroes that are really worth having?

And the show asks and answers these questions on both a very personal level, and a more meta, systemic level. On the personal level, Buffy and Spike are forced to confront their illusions not just about the world, but about themselves. They are made to ask themselves what constitutes a heroic role or a demonic weakness, versus basic, unromantic humanity. And on the meta level, the show asks questions about our expectations for how both love stories and chosen hero stories are supposed to go.

part 5: “Everything used to be so clear”: Season six and the agony of the real

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 18 - ao3 -

“I thought he liked you,” Cangse Sanren said, her hands warm on Lan Qiren’s back as he buried his face into his hands. He didn’t even scold her for it, ignoring all the strictures against too-close interactions between men and women in his misery. “I really did, or else I wouldn’t have encouraged him. I’m sorry.”

Words of apology like that came easily to her lips, unbound as she was by the usual complicated human emotions behind them. It was one of the many traits of hers that Lan Qiren envied.

Having finished her tenure at the Cloud Recesses, Cangse Sanren had been living at the Lotus Pier as a guest of the Jiang sect the past few months, and seemed to be quite happy there. Rumors had already gone around about how she’d been night-hunting with Jiang Fengmian and his retinue, much to the frustration of the third daughter of Meishan Yu, who’d had her heart set on him for ages.

Despite this, Cangse Sanren had still written cheerful letters to Lan Qiren, and he’d written back faithfully, although he’d tried not to bother her too much. He hadn’t actually asked her to return to the Cloud Recesses for his sake – after what had happened in the Nightless City, he’d written up some letters trying to explain that he would be very happy to have her company should it not be an imposition, his hand shaky and his calligraphy ugly in a way it hadn’t been since he was a small child, but he’d thrown them all away. He suspected someone had recovered a discarded draft and sent the message for him, probably Lan Yueheng or something like that, but he wasn’t sure; he hadn’t accepted any visitors since his frenzied flight from the Nightless City, locking himself away in his rooms and refusing to see anyone, even his brother.

Especially his brother.

“He does,” Lan Qiren said, his voice hoarse even though he hadn’t really been using it for much in the past few weeks, brooding over what had happened. “I think – he does.”

That was the worst of it, too. Lan Qiren could no longer deceive himself into thinking that Wen Ruohan saw him as a pawn to manipulate, a piece to play as part of a larger game. Their brotherhood might have started out that way, but at some point Wen Ruohan had actually taken an interest in him – a half-immortal like him, powerful beyond reckoning, thinking that Lan Qiren of all people was as precious as the pearls he’d draped him in.

He’d probably had those supposedly spare Wen sect robes made especially for him, too, just as an excuse to see him wearing them; Lan Qiren hadn’t put it together at the time, blinded as he was by the new and exciting feeling of closeness and affection, but in retrospect it had been obvious. Wen Ruohan himself admitted that he longed to possess things that he liked, that his instincts tended towards domination, and even based on their limited acquaintance, Lan Qiren knew that it would be just like Wen Ruohan to manufacture a situation just to see what Lan Qiren looked like wearing his colors.

No: Wen Ruohan sincerely liked Lan Qiren. He liked him a lot.

And he was, without a doubt, a terrible person.

Lan Qiren lived his life by the Lan sect rules. He might only be nineteen years old, two generations junior to Wen Ruohan, but he had at his disposal the wisdom of generations.

There were dozens of rules about what you were supposed to do, how you were supposed to conduct yourself – you were supposed to love the world and strive to fill it with good deeds, to uphold justice and shoulder morality, to be chivalrous and filial and virtuous, to live a life with integrity.

Do not associate with evil.

Wen Ruohan had told him, all that time ago, hadn’t he? It had been one of the first things he’d said to Lan Qiren, stay away from bad men. He’d meant himself then, and he’d been right, too.

It had been Lan Qiren who hadn’t listened.

“I liked him, too,” he said nonsensically, and put his head back down.

“I know,” she said. Cangse Sanren’s voice was not given to gentleness – he’d once scathingly compared it to a horn’s blast, loud and blaring, and she had laughed in delight – but for all her loudness she was also capable of great kindness. “I know, Qiren-gege, I know. You wouldn’t care so much if you didn’t.”

“…I don’t have many friends.”

“I know.”

“I don’t – I don’t need– he’s supposed to be my brother –”

“You have bad luck with brothers, I think,” she said, trying to be a little tactful and largely failing, and Lan Qiren felt himself awash with misery once more. She wasn’t wrong. Lan Qiren clearly had the ability to make friends – Cangse Sanren, for one, or Lan Yueheng and some others like him, even Lao Nie – but clearly he’d no luck when it came to anything more than that.

His blood brother despised him, and his sworn brother, who cared for him, was an evil man who by all rights he ought to avoid. What else could that be but the worst of luck?

“At least you found out early on,” Cangse Sanren said, moving straight back into the practical. She’d long ago admitted that she wasn’t very good with feelings of sadness, preferring to spend her life in joy no matter how difficult. “It would have been worse if it was later.”

“Would it?” Lan Qiren asked. He wasn’t so sure. “I’d have had more grounds to argue with him if I’d known him better.”

“Of course you’d think first of reforming him,” she sighed.

Lan Qiren shrugged. “Liberate, then suppress, and only as a last resort eliminate.”

“That’s for ghosts, Qiren-gege.”

“Most types of resentful energy, actually.” He tried to scrub at his eyes, which were tearing up again. “Most types of evil. And he – he is, isn’t he?”

“I mean, I’d have to do some digging before reaching a firm conclusion, I try not to judge these things second-hand, but based on what you described as seeing in the Fire Palace…probably.” She shook her head. “Even if they were wrongdoers, they ought to be punished according to their crime, or even executed. There’s no call for something on the order of what you described.”

“Maybe it’s different in the Wen sect,” Lan Qiren said, not really meaning it. “They might have different standards – there are punishments we enact that other sects might consider torturous, I suppose. The Jiang sect, for instance, punishes minor offenses only with kneeling, and disapproves of using the discipline rod… Anyway, it’s not - it’s not like it was hidden or anything, like it would be if they thought it shameful. The rumors all said that he was bloodthirsty and fond of torture; everyone knows, and for some reason I’m the only one who seems to mind.”

“Most people didn’t have to see Sect Leader Wen watching it like a particularly good dance routine at a brothel,” Cangse Sanren retorted, and Lan Qiren gagged at the thought. “Anyway, I still think it’s good that you figured out that he was trash before you got in too deep.”

“He’s not trash,” Lan Qiren objected, and she gave him an incredulous look. “He’s not! He’s not – he doesn’t have to stop. He’s a sect leader; he has complete dominion within his territory. His territory is the most expansive of all the Great Sects, he’s the most personally powerful of all the sect leaders…he can do as he likes, and I can’t do anything about it. If anything, I was in the wrong for profaning his hospitality by – by –”

“By putting those people out of their misery?”

“…that,” Lan Qiren said, and felt sick again.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You were entirely in the right! You should always stand up for morality, no matter the circumstance…” Cangse Sanren scowled. “Hold up, are you saying you’d considering making up with him?”

Lan Qiren sighed and scrubbed at his face.

“Qiren-gege!”

“He’s my sworn brother,” Lan Qiren said. “I swore an oath.”

Loyalty and fidelity - all those clauses about not being betrayed. He’d promised.

“That’s ridiculous,” Cangse Sanren argued. “So what if you swore an oath? So did he!”

“He swore to guide me, I swore to follow; it’s not the same.”

“He still has to be a good role model –”

“Maybe in his view he is.”

“Absurd. What utter trash!”

“It’s still an oath, Cangse Sanren!”

“Marriage is an oath, too, and they still invented divorce,” she said, scowling. Cangse Sanren had never met the word ‘no’ and liked it; it wasn’t in her character. “You can’t just let him go on like that, breaking your heart!”

“I wouldn’t call it –”

Cangse Sanren gave him a look, and Lan Qiren closed his mouth.

He supposed it was a bit like that.

“I thought it would work out, that’s all,” he said finally, somehow managing to talk around the lump of misery in his chest. “As something more than – what I have already.”

He’d spent years in denial and privately blaming himself, his awkwardness and his failures and his poor potential, for the poor state of his relationship with his brother, but then it turned out that who he was was enough to make someone like Sect Leader Wen, who had no pity and no sympathy and no natural fondness of other people, like him, so maybe in the end it wasn’t him.

Maybe it was only as Cangse Sanren had said: that he had poor luck in brothers.

“Just that?” she asked, and sounded curious. He looked at her in question, not understanding what she meant. “I mean, I don’t know. You were in the Nightless City for a whole week, unsupervised and clearly getting your feet swept out from under you by the charming and dashing Sect Leader Wen – did he really not try anything?”

“Try anything – Cangse Sanren! I already told you, it’s Lao Nie he likes like that.” He frowned. “At least, I think he does? No, I’m sure of it. Lao Nie calls him Hanhan, and Sect Leader Wen lets him; they must be – close. And Lao Nie’s proud of how undiscriminating he is.”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure Lao Nie lost half his interest in me when he realized I didn’t have a spare set of teeth somewhere awkward,” Cangse Sanren agreed, rolling her eyes. She’d spent a short time at the Unclean Realm, too. “Are you sure? I would’ve sworn…well, anyway, who cares about him? What about you? Did youlike Wen Ruohan like that?”

Lan Qiren grimaced. “I’ve never been good at that,” he demurred, and it was true.

At nineteen, by the standards of the Great Sects, he was generally considered a little too young to marry, and wouldn’t have been expected to – but plenty of young men his age and much younger were mooning over women left and right, and he’d never done that. He wanted a wife, of course, the way that he wanted to be an adult and to go traveling and to be a teacher, a sort of distant far-off future plan; he’d always been attracted by the idea of having a companion to share joys and sorrows with, but he’d never seen the appeal of soft curves or a pretty face the way all his peers seemed to instinctively understand. He hadn’t worried, thinking that desire was something that would come with time, although as he got older he started to worry that he’d perhaps missed the optimal period for it to happen. Even Cangse Sanren, who he liked a great deal – he didn’t think of her that way, not even when she’d admitted that she liked him.

“I know that,” she said, nudging him playfully. “I just thought you might be a cutsleeve, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so? I mean, I don’t know,” he said, and sighed. “I thought about it for a while, you know, after our last discussion on the subject. It’s not that it’s not accepted – I mean, it’s not popular, but it’s not forbidden, either, and there’s plenty of precedent for people in the Lan sect with those sorts of interests. But when I went to look at the spring books in the library –”

“You snuck a peek? Qiren-gege! How daring!”

“Be quiet. It’s a time-honored Lan sect tradition; if peeking weren’t encouraged, the books would be locked away in the forbidden section rather than just placed on an awkwardly high shelf.”

She giggled, and her endless good humor cheered him up a little.

“Anyway,” he said. “I looked it over, but it still just seemed like – I don’t know. Too much trouble.”

Cangse Sanren found that hilarious for some reason.

“Maybe it’s just the bedding you think is stupid?” she finally asked after getting the laughter out of her system and making a completely unnecessary hand gesture in case he didn’t understand that she meant sex instead of actual bedding. “It’s pretty stupid, I’m not going to lie.”

Lan Qiren gave her a sharp look. “You’re not married.”

“Don’t change the subject! Would you like a wife – or a husband, I suppose – if you didn’t have to sleep with them?”

“I wouldn’t ask that of someone,” Lan Qiren objected. “It’s a fundamental aspect of it, isn’t it? Anyway, I don’t – it’s not that – there’s nothing wrong with it in principle, I don’t mean to judge others – only – listen, it’s just troublesome, that’s all, and I don’t especially want to – Why are we even talking about this, anyway?”

Cangse Sanren laughed at him again.

“Regarding Sect Leader Wen, I have no grounds to object to his actions, so I won’t,” Lan Qiren decided, returning to their original subject, which although miserable was far less humiliating. “But I don’t have to pretend like I like it, either. Don’t associate with evil.”

“He’s your sworn brother,” Cangse Sanren reminded him, as if he’d somehow managed to forget. “If you’re not willing to be forsworn, how can you avoid him?”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said with a sigh. “It’s just a disappointment, that’s all. I’ll accept it, the way I’ve accepted all the others.”

She pressed her lips together, clearly unhappy. “One day that’s not going to be enough,” she finally said. “One day, you’ll run into a disappointment that’s so great that it’ll swallow you up.”

Lan Qiren opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. It was said that those who left Baoshan Sanren’s mountain were doomed, their longing to join humanity bringing down a sad fate onto their heads, though it was unclear if they would all go mad and evil the way her first disciple had all those years ago or if they would just die unhappily. What could he say against that?

“I’ll deal with that when it comes, I suppose,” he said, and felt uncomfortably like he had seen some trace of the heavens’ design that he shouldn’t have. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. Tell me about you.”

“About me?”

“How are you enjoying the Lotus Pier? And how do you – uh – that is –”

“Know enough to have an opinion about what people do in bed?” she said, her eyes curving into crescents as she grinned. “Well. Let me tell you all about that, since the two answers are the same. There’s this absolutely darling man in the Lotus Pier, very funny, by the name of Wei Changze –”

“Wei Changze? Not Jiang Fengmian?”

Cangse Sanren winked at him. “Rules against gossip, Qiren-gege!”

“It’s not gossip if it’s news!” he defended himself, though in all honesty it was probably mostly just gossip. “I wanted to know how you were doing!”

“And I’m glad of it! Let me tell you all about the ridiculous love triangle I’ve found myself in –”

It’s not gossip if it’s news, Lan Qiren reminded himself even as he settled in to listen. He put away all thoughts of Wen Ruohan for the moment, and thought that it was all for the best. There was nothing he could do about it, after all.

The facts were what they were: Wen Ruohan was his sworn brother; Wen Ruohan liked Lan Qiren, and Lan Qiren liked him in return; Wen Ruohan was an evil man who enjoyed causing pain.

Lan Qiren would just have to find a way to live with that.

[soultek]

An deiner Seite - Marco Bodt x Reader (Attack on Titan)

Author’s Note: Well! Welcome to my first piece of Attack on Titan writing!

Of course it’s Marco. Bertolt and Reiner are my favourites so of course it’s Marco who I get the idea to write for.

Maybe because my ideas for Bert and Reiner are so messy

I digress. Let’s retcon a certain something for my (and Jean’s) sunshine ☀️

I’m *this* close to the possibility of a series but we’ll see...

Disclaimer: AoT/SnK and all associated characters not mine / I’m certainly not that hot at writing action, but I gave it my best shot / tried to keep reader as gender neutral as possible

Premise: When you find Marco in the clutches of a Titan, you have but one thought. Not him, not today, not ever.

Words: 3270

Warnings: Potential spoilers for Marco’s death depending on how much of the show you have/n’t seen 

______

Screaming filled the air of the quietened district of Trost once more. It was supposed to be over. Nearly over. Eren was certainly stealing all the attention in his Titan form, despite the presence of other Titans still in the area. Ignoring them to marvel at the new ‘Secret Weapon’ proved to be a fatal mistake.

Nearly fatal. The scream that pierced your ears made your blood run cold and you turned on a dime; this was not a time for thinking. It was a time for pure instinct. Of the 104th Cadets you weren’t anything other than good; good at everything but never really excelling in anything. You hadn’t made the top 10 cut, but that didn’t really matter to you. You weren’t aiming for the Military Police as so many of your friends were. But you were quick on your feet – which had been quite the saving grace in this battle already, and you were almost as much of a specialist with your ODM gear as Jean Kirstein. You didn’t need to check your canisters before launching yourself from the roof as you sprinted – you could make it, you had to make it. Even if you consumed all your gas in the process.

Your gear rocketed you through the air towards the Titan and you swallowed back your fear, your hatred – nearly emotionless as you arced yourself, running your blades parallel to make the cut. No time to think about the consequences of not getting there in time. The consequences of not cutting deep enough. You turned your body into your slice and let gravity do the rest of your work as you expended more gas to propel yourself – you didn’t even have time to go for the nape. Oh no, you’d have to slice through skin and muscle and bone; or else risk crushing him in the process of killing it. You would never forgive yourself for coming so close only to end up the cause of the very thing you were trying to prevent.

The Titan’s fingers seemed like the easiest option so that’s where you went, and with all your calculated factors your cuts were successful even if not entirely clean. You hardly cared about that – there was something else on your mind, dropping a blade from your hand in time to snatch the cadet from its clutches. Not today. Not him. If you had your way, not EVER. Your wires slacked as you overshot the building you’d grappled into and both you and Marco slammed hard into the roof tiles, skittering across them. Digging your heels in, you retracted your gear and discarding your now trashed blades, you clicked fresh ones into place. Even now, no time to think. Marco – still slightly dazed and definitely hurting – managed to lift his body up shakily on his arms from his sprawled position to at least see who his saviour was. You? He smiled despite it all; of course! “Stay here.” You growled, and Marco barely had time to get out a ‘huh!?’ as you pushed yourself into another sprint. Steam may have been rising from the Titan’s severed fingers, but it was still staring at you both – you channelled all your hate this time as you released your grapples into the building opposite. This time you didn’t have to be so calculated; this time it didn’t matter as long as you killed it. Marco was safe now. If you’d been even one second later… “NOT MY BOYFRIEND, YOU SON OF A BITCH-!” You hollered, hurling yourself at the Titan. Reckless maybe, but in your eyes necessary. You swung yourself out in the opposite direction to where your gear had set, narrowly missing what was left of the Titan’s hand as it lunged for you. And as your feet left the rooftop the iron cables wrapped themselves around the Titan’s neck, straining. You could feel the tiny smirk on your face as you reeled yourself in, blades once again in perfect positioning for your final strike. It was a shame you couldn’t make it suffer any more than this. But you could dwell on that later. Your cut was clean, perhaps even deeper than necessary, as you felt the snap of bone under your blades again. Neither were intact as you landed back on the tiles, a little harder than you would have liked, considering the way your body jarred for just a second. Grapples retracted, you once again relieved yourself of broken blades. But not before kissing one – hardly caring about the amount of Titan blood on them, or you, now becoming that same vapour. Thank you, for helping me save him… You brushed yourself down, and stored your equipment. You could already feel yourself shaking, adrenaline spent. Taking a deep breath, you allowed yourself to think for a moment how close to death he’d just been, how you’d just thrown yourself in harms way to save his life. You would do anything for Marco Bodt. That’s just how it was. Certainly wouldn’t have gained me any points with Shadis though… Pushing your feet on in urgency, you skidded across the tiles to your ‘damsel in distress’. By now Marco had managed to ease himself to standing, despite clutching his right arm – you guessed that meant he wasn’t hurt so bad, thank the Walls for that. His eyes were beholding you with a sense of wonder, but you could see the horror behind them – Marco knew what would have happened had you not swooped in. You supposed brushes with death would not be so easy to overcome. “Geez, Marco! Jean and I were so worried-!” Somehow these were the first words that made their way out of your mouth, maybe they were the only ones you could say safely right now. Well, actually, you didn’t know if Jean was worried. You didn’t even know if Jean had heard the same thing you had or even where he was - but you knew he’d be pissed once he found out. You stopped in front of him, scariness of the situation suddenly hitting you full force, you felt the lump in your throat before tears brimmed. Although they didn’t fall. You didn’t need to bother him with that right now – Marco needed you. “Don’t ever do that to me again!” You weren’t sure why your instant reaction was to be mad at him – but then you weren’t mad at him, you were mad at the circumstances. That a Titan had even gone for Marco - had been given the opportunity to do so. That he’d had to go through that. If you’d been with him in the first place… No use crying over not being put in squad 19 now.

Marco’s attempt to calm you was valiant, and the fearful look in his eyes almost dissipated as he smiled, despite it still being present in his voice. “I- I know… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to worry either of you…” How could you stay mad at that smile? Those pretty brown eyes? The constellation of freckles that painted his cheeks you just loved so damn much. You gave him a slight smile back, almost by way of apology for yelling… or acceptance of his own. Marco knew it was only because you were so alarmed, your emotions were allowed to get the better of you in situations like this. Your eyes left his to scan his body for any other signs of injury besides the arm; maybe he was trying to keep his weight to one side, maybe he was bleeding somewhere. You’d be forcing him to medical anyway, if Jean didn’t drag him there himself – but you wanted to figure out how urgent it should be… You paused, eyes flying wide in shock once more. “Where’s your ODM gear!?” You took a step back; how had you not noticed!? The pause of significance had you darting your gaze back to his face and for a few seconds Marco looked absent, a flicker as if he’d just seen a ghost. Before he swallowed hard, giving an embarrassed laugh and rubbing the back of his neck. “Oh, I-! I lost it.” You reacted too quickly to what he had said to realise a decision had been made leading to that response; “LOST IT! Babe you almost got eaten!” You grabbed Marco’s hands in yours, squeezing them tight, half to make sure he was really still here, alive and breathing, and half to try to get him to realise the seriousness of the situation. “It wouldn’t have mattered! I was out of gas, I thought I could out run them!” “Over rooftops!? Marco, they’re 15 meters high-!” You didn’t really remember him being outstanding at parkour. Marco was quick, nearly as quick as you, but you would reckon anyone would have struggled with a strategy like that. Even Humanities Strongest… “I know, I know, I’m sorry.” Marco found himself apologising once more as he laced your fingers together. His hands were so warm; you weren’t sure if that was just because you were hyperfocusing on his touch right now, or radiated heat from the death grip of a Titan. You could have lost this… Anywhere else in Trost, a little less skill… you could have lost this… Your boyfriend cleared his throat to perhaps offer better explanation. “But I thought the lack of gear would make me lighter, y’know?” His clarification made sense, but it was still suicide. Had he not thought about his best friend? Had he not thought about you? No, Marco would only have thought about you both – overconfident determination was not his thing. Did this make sense? Could it have made anything other than sense… people did crazy things in battle, in the heat of the moment even the coolest of heads could make rash decisions like that. Even Marco could – hadn’t you just done something comparably insane? Your face pulled back into a look of distress and you chewed your bottom lip for a second to stop yourself tearing up again. “You scared me!” You were glad that your tone wasn’t so much chiding, but that wasn’t about to stop Marco’s expression screwing up in concern. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” There he was apologising all over again, this time with a wince to accompany his nervous smile, hands detaching from yours to be held up defensively. You took this opportunity to really look at him and you gasped gently at the slight redness to his eyes, the tear stains running through the speckles of dust on his cheeks. You tried to ignore that in this light you could see where his crying had dampened his shirt too. You were forgetting which one of you had just been saved from hell. Marco didn’t deserve to be subject to your anger at the world, he needed the exact opposite. Your expression softened and you reached out, holding his face gently in your hands, you ran your thumbs through the subtle marks to rid Marco of them. You don’t need to cry now, I’m here�� It’s going to be okay. At your movement Marco couldn’t help but give you his best lopsided smile; as good as he could when he was still shaken up. You giggled, “Aw! How could I not forgive such a cute face-?” Removing your hands from his cheeks you wound your arms around him and pulled your body into his, head against his chest. Marco’s whole body was just as warm; you wondered once more about the Titan’s hold on him – you knew they ran particularly high body temperatures. Closing your eyes for a second as you melted into his embrace, you focused on his heartbeat; Marco was calming now, but that was all the proof you needed that he was still here with you and breathing. You’d both lived to fight another day. But taking back Trost had only taught you how human you were; how easy you could be taken from each other. You enveloped him a little tighter at your own thought: No. You couldn’t allow yourself to believe it would be easy – you would fight to the death for him. And you knew how protective Marco could get.

You couldn’t help but beam, inhaling him – allowing yourself to be caught in his familiarity for just a moment. The Titans that needed taking down after Eren had sealed the breach could wait for just a second longer. And yet, with Marco in the state he was in without his gear, you got the feeling there was only one way you could go. “Guess I gotta haul you back home now, huh-!?” You reluctantly pulled away from his chest, looking back up into those beautiful eyes. Pink dusted his cheeks slightly, only making you smile wider. Marco’s blush coupled with his freckles was a different kind of adorable all together. His laugh was genuine, and you were glad he was happy. It didn’t seem to take much to get your Marco back. “Haha, guess you get to be my knight in shining armour huh? And I certainly don’t mind that!” He grinned and you smirked gently; “Or-- I can suit you up... and you can carry me home? We can swap gear over and you can sweep me off my feet, my handsome prince.” His blush was already deepening but Marco was a goner as soon as you added the wink.  And the cute collection of freckles really did stand out against the red; you couldn’t help but giggle in happiness. But Marco took a breath, and this time he grinned; besides it would take a little while to take the ODM gear from you and put it on him, and right now he’d rather be out of the reach of Titans, for obvious reasons. “No, no, people should get to know you saved my life-”

Marco suddenly stiffened as his gaze wandered to just over your shoulder, you watched his eyes grow wide and there was that flicker again. His grip on you tightened just a little, and your hand fell to your blades instinctively as you turned to see what has caused his mood change. A few roof tops away from the two of you, and on slightly higher ground, stood your group of friends; Annie, Reiner and Bertholdt. (Well, you kicked around with the guys a lot at least.) You tipped your head watching them, eyebrow quirked, half raising the hand that had shot to your blades in greeting. Their expressions were all unreadable, Reiner was the only one who attempted to return your salutation. “Where the heck were they!?” An aside said out loud. Not that you minded saving Marco all by yourself, but help would always have been appreciated. You turned away from them and back to your boyfriend, whose expression was now worn a little more neutral. His grip on you was not. “Babe, what’s wrong?” “It’s- it’s nothing...” Marco blinked hard and when his eyes returned to you, he immediately softened, with a smile, “Let’s get out of here.” “Okay, Sunshine. Your call!” You gave a nod, grinning, before stepping to his side, looping your arm around his waist as Marco secured his own around your shoulders. Leaning across, you brushed your lips to his cheek gently, thankful he was still with you. All these little things suddenly seemed so huge with renewed context… “You sure you’ll be okay?” “I’ll be fine, if there’s anyone that can get you out of here it’s me and Jean, right?” You teased, gently rapping the knuckles of your free hand against the gas cylinders. Despite knowing you’d used a lot to get to him, you knew you’d be fine taking Marco back too. You smiled; things were on your side today. You all needed to catch a break, and you supposed there was no better time than today. “Thank God I happen to be in with the two ODM specialists of the class!” “Speaking of, he’s probably wandering where the heck we are.” “…Better not leave him hanging.” Marco’s voice was at least amused, as you made sure everything was secure. You had to confirm you weren’t about to lose your own ODM gear trying to get him back to the safety of the wall. “Alright, let’s get you home and dry!” Marco gave a confident nod to match the smile on his face and gripped you a little tighter. You glanced back to the other roof top, but by now the other three had disappeared. You frowned, still a little puzzled by Marco’s reaction, but brushed it off to focus on the task ahead of you. Neither of you needed a count down and pushed off at the same time, running to the edge of the roof so your ODM gear needed to do the minimal amount of work, before you both jumped, laughing as you loosed your grapples into the nearest tall building surface. You had to admit to yourself, you loved how tight Marco was hanging onto you and couldn’t help but notice how his smile grew as you carried him towards the safety of the wall. You held him a little closer too. Today would hit you hard, maybe later, when you’d all calmed down and reality settled in the dead of night. You hoped it wouldn’t come to you in dreams… But you supposed you would find out. You glanced to the ground below, the structures around you, Marco was doing the same and you knew you were both looking for the same person; Jean. The first thing you would do was reunite, regroup and recount… and then would come the big decision. Where the three of you would go, having all just graduated. If decisions would change, now you’d been through hell and back. Marco took your hand, lacing your fingers as you landed back within Wall Rose and the military camp set up – all quiet here, not a Titan to be seen. You squeezed his hand hard in response as you both scanned the movements of people, trying not to get disheartened at how many weren’t there. You didn’t even allow the possibility that Jean was one of them to cross your mind. “GUYS---!” Both of you gasped, turning towards the voice, “GUYS! OH, THANK GOD---!!” Jean waved his arms through the air as he raced towards you both. “JEAN!” You yelled in unison, taking off towards your best friend and practically throwing yourselves at him. Jean Kirstein staggered and you all fell with a thump to the floor, laughing, “Okay, geez, I get it you missed me! I’d miss me too!” He cracked a smile, arms around you both. Marco and yourself shared a look, quietly agreeing that you’d tell Jean what happened later. Right now was a time to be relieved that your trio had made it out of Trost alive. Survived one more day. You both threw your arms back around him and hugged each other close. You closed your eyes tight, enjoying the sound of both of them laughing into the air. You were all still just kids; this was how it was meant to be, right? Having fun and messing around and not having to worry about friends you’d lost, or the monsters outside the walls… You smiled to yourself; maybe one day you’d get that all back.

I’m glad you’re safe… Oh boys, I’m so glad you’re safe… Thank God… that you’re alive… I don’t know how to thank anyone enough for this… I don’t know what I’d do… if you had gone…

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Thank you very much for reading! 😘❤

[goosedawn]

linguistics pog????? :D :D :D i will admit I didn’t do as much thought into the aus/nz language changes as I really should’ve (mostly because my understanding of the regions is basic at best ^^’) and I am 👀👀👀 at your tags……….. if you have more thoughts I would be FASCINATED to hear what you say :D!!! -bio nerd anon

LINGUISTICS POG!!! YEAHHHH

my knowledge of linguistics is limited but its so cool and ur HELLA valid, australia and new zealand are pretty isolated so like. fair (relatedly, most of my thoughts are nz based, i cant really talk much abt australian linguistics) but basically i absolutely have more thoughts >:3c

also im assuming this is still in the context of how language could develop in @possiblyaperson03​‘s strangers on the internet au, so im just gonna clarify this is all purely speculation based on what we know abt the au and my own knowledge + lived experience :D

... i also just keep on going about language development in this au in general so i put it all under the cut :’>

tl;dr: australian and new zealand accents are likely to converge, but also might have a mix of different languages mixed into the way they speak, with pockets of non-english speakers. humans in australia and new zealand might not have as nuanced terms relating to giants, and may not have the same level of understanding regarding the giants language.

....... tl;dr TWO: wild humans might develop “alarm calls” that are shared with other human groups even if they cannot understand each other otherwise, and might even mimic giants. sign and written language could also become more prevalent in giant inhabited areas.

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SO, in new zealand theres already quite a mix of cultures, although. yknow. colonialization ended up in a largely westernised culture/language, with english being the ‘main’ language, however nz sign language and Māori are also considered to be national languages.

nz accents specifically tend to be quicker and kinda. slur some words together, but that also depends on the location around new zealand. people who are surrounded by more Māori influences tend to draw out some vowels a bit longer, which ends up with a slightly different cadence.

im not really sure how to describe the aussie accent kshdfksjd but i think generally its a lot sharper than nz accents but also has more of a drawl, and some vowels are more drawn out/accentuated

i think it would be likely that australians and new zealanders would probably keep these aspects but depending on how much people cross between the two (in lieu of traversing elsewhere, and interacting with other countries) its more likely for the accents to converge.

however!! differing languages would also kind of. stick to how they sounded when they split, with the language spoken by immigrants not only sounding more accurate to the original due to shifts in language in their original location (due to simplification and dangerous situations) but also because of people wanting to preserve their culture.

in new zealand currently (especially in places with a lot of mixed cultures/immigration, in big cities compared to more rural areas) there is already a lot of mixing in terms of accent and language, and even more so with outside influences due to media and such

people do whats referred to as “accent matching“ which is basically changing the way you speak to match other people around you (psychologically, its kinda like mimicking other people so they are more likely to like you/become attached to you because you are similar to them) and so people mimic accents around them and thats part of how you pick up accents when you move to a new place.

so in an isolated space, with a variation of accents, how does that work? honestly i think it would be similar to how things are in big nz cities currently, and because its even more packed together with a whole variation of people who may not necessarily be english speaking is that something that may happen is a mix of language, with people dipping in and out of other languages based off of what specific cultural influences an individual is surrounded by.

this is something that can be seen in places like malaysia, where there is often a mashup of languages and cultures, resulting in a variance of dialects depending on geographical location, picking up some words from other languages depending on who your neighbours are (or at least. thats what i’ve been told by relatives from there, and have seen reflected in the way they speak- they tend to mix english with at least 3 different dialects of chinese as well as malay and indian words)

like i mentioned in my tags on the other post, nz already has quite a few pockets of areas where there are immigrants who either have trouble speaking english or rely on relatives/friends to interact with english speakers, and this is something that is likely to develop in this au as well i reckon. i cant comment on how this might work in australia though.

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also, if isolated with little contact from giants, it would be unlikely for australians/new zealanders to develop terms relating to giants, or at least not terms similar to other countries. they might be more abstract or scientific, with less nuance due to less interaction.

its unlikely humans in australia and new zealand would pick up much accenting from giants and perhaps depending on how long it would be after The Event, may even not be able to say certain words/hear certain differences in giants accents as well!

However, it should be noted that young babies (like a few months old) are able to identify variance in human accents that children and adults cannot, because we learn what sounds to listen out for based on what languages and cultures we are exposed to, so technically we are biologically built to understand a variation of languages, but quickly learn specificity and thus lose that ability.

(RELATEDLY: if this was also true for giants, unless they were brought up around humans when they were very young it would be unlikely that they would be able to tell some subtle differences in human speech, FURTHER solidifying what you said about giants just. not being able to hear human intonation).

in terms of language in countries inhabited by giants, you mentioned that humans might have more simplified language and such, which could result in varying “alarm calls”, much like modern animals have now, which vary depending on where a threat is coming from (e.g. different calls for birds compared to land based predators) these might transcend other language like words, if there was a larger difference between geographical areas.

on top of that, some groups of animals also reciprocally respond to other groups of animals alarm calls due to both being pressured by biological and environmental threats, and i wouldnt be surprised if something similar developed between wild human colonies. humans are great at mimicking, so it could be possible that a series of animal-esque calls, or heck even calls mimicking giants could be something that is used.

furthermore, it might also be likely for some groups of humans to rely more on visual (signed or written) languages to symbolise things, especially if they dont get to interact with other groups, perhaps out of fear of being caught in large numbers. on top of this, having visual signals would be useful for not notifying giants of your presence if you need to be quiet.

warning signs and such would probably be developed pretty quickly, with certain groups maybe having defining features depending on what materials they have (maybe some groups burn warnings into things, vs others who carve the symbols in)

there might also be varying ways of referring to directions that are easier to identify quickly. OH in the alternate universe with wilbur having a guitar, maybe music could be used for communicating certain things also?? idk ive gone on long enough jkfhsdfjhsdf

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thanks for reading all the way to the end! if you got here i appreciate you!! 💛

[littlejanesilver]

The Human Experience (now with paragraph breaks!)

I know it’s not a popular ideology to have right now, because so much we see in the news appears to speak against it, but I think humans are basically an altruistic, cooperative species— with a few caveats. So many of our problems arise out of the fundamental mismatch between the world our species evolved to live in and the world we live in today. Empathy is a natural feature of the human experience. We teach our children positive prosocial behaviours like sharing their food and caring for others who are sick or hurt. We survive and build through cooperative behaviour. Kindness is instinctual and the instinct is reinforced through proper socialization. I’ve seen it in my children before they could even speak, trying to offer a pat on the back or comfort to a crying sibling. Normal, socialized humans feel physical and mental distress in ourselves when we see others in distress and are eager to alleviate it. The thing is human altruism, like that of other primates who live and hunt in groups is usually predicated on face to face personal relationships. It makes sense to share with others in your group when you have more than enough, because someday when they have more than enough they will be more likely to share with your. In humanity the ability to cooperate has been positively selected for through million of years of evolution. It makes sense that over the comparatively long human life span, where you might live in a tribe of 60 people, you would encounter the same members of your tribe over and over again and your prosocial actions would be remembered and influence their prosocial actions towards you further down the line. Our big brains are good for remembering and keeping score. Not to mention in such an environment, you would also probably be somewhat genetically related to your tribe-mates so helping your family members and tribe-mates survive also enhances the survival of your own genes. Among surviving hunter gatherer tribes it would be consider insane for one member to horde all the food while other members of the tribe starve. A person could be excluded from the group for behaviour like that and a human without other humans in nature does not survive for long. Being exiled from one’s tribe is a fate most will do anything to prevent. Also, in the hunter gatherer world, where people are nomadic, having a huge amount of one substance doesn’t make a lot of sense, because you can only own what you can carry with you. There are also no refrigerators, so if you have more food than you need, whatever you don’t eat will rot quickly. Human life in the prehistoric world could be extremely harsh. Few infants survived and giving birth was highly precarious. But when a member of your tribe was in distress, even without modern medicines you still had something you could do and that was offer comfort, through a hug, or helping with a task or offering food. In the world we live in now the instinct to share is sometimes short-circuited. Holding resources has been facilitated by inventions like fridges and silos to keep grain. People decide to keep resources to themselves and their families, because they often don’t see or can’t relate to the people their greed is harming. Executives of large companies never have to see their employees face to face, they don’t grow up with the people they employ (who nowadays may live in another country entirely), and there is no consequence to them for causing others to experience distress. Also there are so many thousands of employees that they become theoretical to the executives, rather than real flesh and blood people they have to live with on a day to day basis who will confront you if you treat themselves shitty and treat you badly right back. Also, if say a factory in another country is mistreating its workers and the factory makes clothes for your company (as well as other companies), there are so many culprits in the problem, front he managers of the factory itself, to the country it is in that allows lax labour laws, to the many companies that have this

factory make clothes for them, to the country the company is located in that makes it more worthwhile for them to hire foreign companies to make their clothes— that the individual executive sitting in an office somewhere is so far removed and their contribution is so diffuse among the many others in the process that he or she feels no shame. More importantly, that executives social group is unlikely to include members of the exploited class, so they will never be publicly shamed or held accountable in a social setting, which, let’s face it, is what keeps most of us honest, when the temptation to take more than our share is strong. The instinct to display compassion and show care for others, is also challenged in certain ways in a modern context. The instinct to display empathy and compassion is strongest for family members and extends to other tribe-mates in a healthy human being, across all cultures and settings. If you saw a loved one crying, you would naturally go up to them and put an arm around their shoulder and ask how you could help. The distress you feel at seeing another person in distress, would reduce, once you could offer them comfort. Feeling an arm around their shoulders, experiencing comforting touch also would help elevate your loved ones feelings of distress. As much as we hate feeling pain or distress, in us and seeing it in others, experiences like this help bond us to those we love. When a friend supports you through a tough time it can cause your friendship to deepen. It feels like a blessing to be able to offer them the same strength they offered you in return at a latter date. When I a can offer a listening ear to a friend’s complaint or be able to offer a pair of arms to hold a loved one who is crying, I feel the most human. Being together in this way with others, knowing that they are feeling what you are feeling and sharing in a moment, whether listening to music or experiencing a film together is so special and so inherently human. It is hard to explain, but there is a positive feeling that comes from when one is acting in accordance with one’s animal nature. The naturalness and lack of push-back your brain is giving you— like when you have really good sex or do a refreshing (not exhausting) physical workout that pushes you a bit, or stare in wonder at something in nature— this sense of doing what you were made for— what is most natural and human feels so wonderful and liberating. I feel that when I am concocting stories sometimes, this ability to be in the moment and intensely aware of what I am doing, fully experiencing it without being distracted by other worries or things going on in my mind. The problem as I see it is that we see so much distress around us that is taking place far away, across the globe and we can see the people’s faces in pain, but we have no ability to take that pain away or even offer the basic comfort our ape ancestors could, such as an arm around the shoulder or the offer of half a fruit. We can’t give them anything. Maybe we can donate money to an earthquake fund or something, but who knows if that money will even reach them and it won’t effect that specific person you see right now, on your screen. Maybe we don’t even have enough money to give a dollar to an earthquake fund and maybe the government of the country that suffering person is living in, is causing their suffering because it refuses offers from the international community to help (see North Korea). What do people do when they are constantly faced with the reality of thousands of people suffering who we can’t do anything to help? We evolved to deal with one or two people in our tribe suffering every once and a while. We evolved to feel pain ourselves at the suffering of someone and to be able to stop that pain by offering the other person comfort. But when you can’t offer meaningful, immediate comfort to another person in a personal way either through physical means or through helpful speech, what are you left with? For some people I feel like the result is a constant low-grade

(or sometimes high grade) anxiety, traumatic stress and depression. The tidal wave of suffering feels so great you are mentally drowning in it if you are the kind of person who experiences empathy for others very strongly. You might be motivated to participate in charities and social justice causes, but all the time, the satisfaction that should come from helping people is out of reach, the anxiety and sadness at other’s distress is still there because no matter what you do, with so many people in the world now, and with news from all corners of the globe constantly in our faces at every moment of the day, you just can’t help everyone. It isn’t possible. Long ago you would only be cognizant of the problems of people in your own little tribe. Dealing with their problems would be mentally manageable and might even benefit you and the other person and strengthen your relationships. Dealing with this tidal wave of billions of people’s problems is unmanageable and hugely distressing. We were not born with the mental equipment to deal with this and it is a huge problem. Avoiding it, in certain societies, to help lessen your stress is not even possible. Everywhere you look, TV screens, radios and newspapers are blaring the death tolls of the most recent atrocity. This media diet distorts your perception, because when all you hear about are huge horrific events, the regular day to day repetitive actions that occupy most of what people are doing all over the world, like today Soorya milked a goat or Bob picked his toddler up from daycare don’t make the news. Some day, I think the world will have to reckon with the mental health problems that this constant media diet of negative and fearful imagery causes humans who have no means to influence the distressing things that are mentioned. Obviously, it is important to know what is happening in the world in some sense, to hold governments accountable when they act in ways that harm people. However part of the problem is even when we see that unfairness is happening we don’t have the tools to help stop it or a deeper understanding of why problems are occurring and how we can help is left out of the reporting. This makes people feel helpless and out of control and it doesn’t help the people who are suffering in the end. Some people are able to deal with this constant exposure to suffering that we can’t help, through selectively turning their compassion and empathy faculties on and off. As someone who can’t do this on my own, I am constantly astounded to witness other people do this. Part of me is slightly jealous of this ability while part of me is highly suspicious of it. People who can do this, I’ve noticed can also be very reckless with others emotions if they believe a relationship with that other person doesn’t forward their own goals. There is something that feels lacking to me about a human that can operate in such a ruthless capacity, but these are also people who seem able to have a lot of success because their mental processes are so efficient with regards to empathy. People can often show great love and compassion for their family and friends, but have little to no compassion for people outside the group they qualify as their “tribe.” How modern people define tribe, as people who share the same religion, community, fan base, sexuality, ethnicity or even as narrowly as their own nuclear family can vary. But I would say the majority of humans display this ability to switch their empathy on and off depending on whether someone is considered part of their tribe or not. This is also, sad to say, a very human quality. In a world where your tribe was your survival, outside tribes who might steal your resources, or kill or steal members of your tribe were far more dangerous than wild beasts you might encounter. I was bullied pretty harshly as a kid and I still maintain that the whole in-group/out-group dialectic that is such a part of human experience is one of the ugliest facets of human nature there is. Most disturbing of all, it is not contrary to human

nature, as most anti-social behaviours seem to be coded as, but is often seen as positive with no social costs in-group. A person who shows altruism and fealty to their own group can show the worst sadism and cruelty to out-group members without the corresponding social penalties they would face if they were to behave the same way in their own group. There is a reason in the Torah there are numerous directives “to love the stranger as yourself” and to “be kind to the stranger” and other lessons about hospitality to people who aren’t from your town because they might be (in Abraham’s case) angelic messengers. If everybody treated strangers and out group members the same as they treated their family members there wouldn’t be so much advice about showing hospitality to those unlike ourselves. The instinct of “stranger danger” is high in human beings and starts before we can talk. Studies done with pre-verbal human infants show that when confronted with two different strangers, one who speaks their own language and one who talks a different language, the infants shunned the foreign language speaking individual more than the person who talked their own language, even if they couldn’t talk or even fully understand that language yet themselves! The corresponding instinct of curiosity in some of us and eagerness to find out and know about something outside our own experience is thankfully, a good check to the stranger-danger feeling in some of us. Sadly, the stranger-danger instinct can get stronger as people get older and lose some of their mental flexibility and the world also changes a lot from the world they grew up in. If you aren’t mindful of that tendency of the human brain, then you can get caught up in thinking that all the changes are bad and threatening and feel fearful and angry at the world as you get older. Also, the more adverse experiences you have with other people, the more they seem to trail after you as you get older, colouring your ability to trust others and harming your interpersonal relationships if you’re not careful. While it may be more mentally healthy to only extend your empathy to members of your own group, feel like society as a whole suffers tremendously when we do this. We don’t live in isolated tribes anymore. Even if the effects are not apparent to us, our actions do effect the lives of other people, sometimes far away. We need new ways and new transparency laws to let us understand what the costs to others of the goods we purchase are, where they come from and what sort of labour conditions those goods are sourced under. We also need more alternatives to buy ethically, that are within most people’s budgets. Having the choice between ethically sourced goods that cost way more than a normal family can afford and goods sold in stores that only offer part-time jobs and starvation wages to their employees that utilize slave labour in other countries for manufacturing doesn’t really offer a choice. If you don’t have a lot of money you can’t afford to be ethical, which seems wrong. How come I can get a food item at the store and every single ingredient that went into it is listed on the back of the package, but how the item was made, where and with what sort of labour is left out? As a consumer we should be afforded the ability to make ethical purchases. There should be some sort of international independent organization with actual teeth that oversees labour practices across the world and gives companies letter grades and provides this information to the consumer with every purchase. It should be a reliable independent source for the consumer that tells us whether a purchase is helping to perpetuate positive or negative work conditions around the world. Companies that have the best conditions should be rewarded and companies that have the worst should be shut down. Getting everyone on board with the philosophy that humans are all part of one tribe is crucial to improving all our lives. If all children can be taught, from the earliest days that we are all one tribe and that

we are all deserving of love and compassion and the means of survival things will probably improve. As long as people continue to believe in in-group/out-group philosophies that see their own group as some sort of master race or chosen people and everyone else as inferior or misguided and not worthy of the same kind of empathy reserved for members of one’s own tribe— humanity will not grow. Accepting the fact that we are all animals, members of the same species and the same planet, which we have to take care of together is crucial. I’ve lived on Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for most of my life. For those who don’t know both these lakes are partially in the U.S. and partially in Canada and proved most of the water and electricity for the communities around the lakes like Toronto and Hamilton in Canada and Buffalo and Rochester in the U.S and Niagara Falls in both countries. Canada and the U.S. in the past have had different laws governing heavy industry on the lakes. But this is ridiculous, because if a company pollutes on one side of the lake, it automatically causes pollution on the other side as well. Right now countries are acting like the laws they make regarding pollution, labour, immigration and countless other things only affect their own country, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. We don’t live in isolated tribes anymore. Every human community is touching countless other communities. We didn’t evolve to live or think this way, but if there’s one thing we humans have mastered, it’s how to adapt. We can adapt to this new world and thinking in a new way about each other and our planet— but we have to stop seeing ourselves as isolated groups and start thinking of the big picture. In this world where our edges all touch each other, we have to be especially cognizant to live peacefully and try to do everything in our power to avoid violence wherever possible. To use a metaphor, you never know how the pollution you dump one one side of the lake will effect a baby yet to be born on the other side of the lake. If there is another choice, even if that choice is just to pause and consider what this action might achieve or to really grapple seriously with the harm it might cause, regardless of whether it is “right” or “deserved.” Make the choice to think before you act. Listen to what other people are feeling who aren’t from your in-group. Even if you don’t agree with them, how can you ever convince them, if you don’t try to understand where they are coming from? More than anything right now I think we need dialogue, not knee jerk reactions. We need nuance, deeper understanding than 150 character soundbites and the ability to listen to each other and the skill of trying to slow down our minds. It is easy to act on anger, greed or fear if you don’t see the people who your actions effect. But we have many tools in our communication arsenal for communicating how we feel to other people and trying to get them to make change. Violence should be very last resort of all the last resorts, not the go-to option. We have to act in accordance with the world we want to live in, in the future, a world that has room for all people. There is no shortage of money, food or land on this planet if we all only take what we need and share with each other. The withholding of these things from others and obscene accumulation of resources for oneself and ones family is not admirable. It is a demonstration of selfish antisocial behaviour and should be seen as such by our society. How our words and actions serve ourselves, our loved ones and the human tribe as a whole and its future existence on this Earth is worth considering.

[constablegoo]

𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 .

1. What does your muse smell like?

nothing. absolutely nothing at all. HOWEVER. if he’s in an environment for long enough, especially one with a lot of... scent in the air, maybe he absorbs a little of it. so: he probably smells faintly like Station Grime, but in comparison to the rest of the... “ambient station scent” (GJDFJ??) he’s pretty much indistinguishable. If he goes to some planet like, say one with a huge field of tulips, then he can smell faintly like a field of tulips. if he goes to one with a lot of pollution, he comes back to DS9 smelling like gasoline or whatever for a day or two. as a solid he probably just smells like whatever soap he uses (??) and otherwise like any other bajoran or cardassian? but he’s a little bit of a hypochondriac so probably he indulges in things like hand sanitizer or... cleaning products. as a changeling he has no sense of smell at all, so i reckon when he gains it as a solid its all a bit overwhelming at first for a while.

2. What do your muse’s hands feel like?

c-c-c-cold, or at least a notably cooler than you’d expect from a humanoid, or like someone with mildly bad circulation. he has no fingerprints. that’s a totally smooth-hand fella. if you hold his hand, you won’t feel individual bones, the whole hand is,,, consistent, though sometimes softer sometimes less. if you’re startled and squeeze his hand, you could crush all his little fingers into one mush if he’s not paying proper attention to them. no sweat, ever. i can never decide if he should have nails or not?? maybe it depends on the day and how busy he is.

3. What does your muse usually eat in a day?

nothing!!! can’t smell, can’t eat. maybe he survives off a nice tasty stream of background radiation or something, like some gooey filter feeder. but when hes a solid... simple things. for the first few weeks, it’s a mostly bland liquid diet (ironic). he’s obviously not in the habit of knowing when to eat, or what, and it’s... chaos. sometimes he gets really cranky because all he’s had that day is a bowl of bajoran cheerios and like 4 raktajinos. BUT once he gets it down, he settles on the same reliable things at the same reliable times every day, studies and plans out as perfectly balanced a diet as he can, and only deviates when purposefully exploring, motivated by someone else, or at an event. when he moves on to solid (haha) foods, he’ll eat all kinds of fruits and veggies and grains, the more plain, the better. he’s not strictly vegetarian considering the cultures around him, but i think when given a choice he avoids meat / animal products, partly because... he has BEEN some of those animals gjfdkg and also just personal preference. they can be awfully rich and i think for a long time anything rich beyond a small dose would make him queasy. he does not have a sweet tooth in any capacity... except in alcohol. bitter things are fine for him, because he is so bitter, but spice (like bajoran hasperat) he can’t tolerate very well. in all cases, texture is a major factor for him and it can totally keep him from eating a food he likes otherwise.

4. Does your muse have a good singing voice?

the fact that we kind of get to hear odo sing (quietly) in canon is ;-; so good. so yeah, i think he can sing in spite of having such a crunchy humanoid voice. certainly, he can match tone and pitch, and in many ways it makes sense - its just another form of imitation, and he’s plenty good at replicating the nuances of sarcasm and other vocalizations. bird noises, anyone?

5. Does your muse have any bad habits or nervous ticks?

hahahaha yes. he has a bad habit of snapping back with a rude comment (even when it isnt called for. he can be pretty defensive, too)  as a changeling, the easiest way to tell when hes unsettled or experiencing a strong emotion (including nerves!) is that he stops reacting entirely / goes blank or is otherwise unresponsive (shame...) or goes stiff. in these cases, he’s too busy experiencing whatever-it-is to manufacture a proper response (or he has no idea how to express it in humanoid terms) -- with the exception of actually losing physical cohesion... if he’s really really upset, he might literally start to melt :^) as a solid (and as a changeling when he frequently chooses to perform these responses) he’s prone to huffing and rolling his eyes (general impatience), THE ARM CROSSING he’s constantly crossing his arms, i mean Constantly, maybe its a comfort thing but its also a defensive thing and an intimidation thing and a in-control-of-the-conversation thing and a habit of his that will never die.

6. What does your muse usually look like / wear?

we all know odo is so sad and pathetic that as a solid he’d sleep in his uniform, but when he does start to wear other things he goes for muted, earthy colors (very bajoran of him), often dark, long-sleeved, very snugly bundled up, much as he’s used to being. i don’t think he’d ever go for anything flashy or fancy, even as a diplomat - he’s constantly going to be trying to get away from the way the founders painted themselves and plain and boring is his life’s design of choice. that said, i think he appreciates the intricacy of certain fabrics etc just like he’d appreciate any other detailed object or creature. and just as with food, texture is also of paramount importance. his other senses are comparable to a human’s -- but his sense of touch even as a solid is far more sensitive. as he gets older, odo continues to refine his face and appearance -- he changes a little every day, but it’s never with any particular destination in mind. in the end, he is genetically limited to stand out among other life forms, but also comes to appreciate the face he’s created for himself as his very own. he tries things like eyebrows (cursed) and defined bajoran nose ridges but by the time he does, they’re just not quite him.

7. Is your muse affectionate?  How much?  How so?

yes and no... he won’t say it much, but he’ll show it in little ways -- looks and smiles (smiles are always something he performs with a purpose) and if its in any way loving, tiny, light little touches. touch is natural to changelings and the easiest way for him to communicate, even if there is no possibility for a link. but even if he’s generally subtle and subdued, the affection is big and very much fills up the entire goo.

8. What position does your muse sleep in?

he only sleeps as a solid... and god he probably sleeps like a vampire. at first the sensation of falling asleep and waking up is really alarming to him, but it becomes a comfort and one of his favorite things about being solid hgfjkdfhjg and he probably becomes good at it, once he gets a schedule down, looks forward to it at night. if he’s with someone else, he will want to snuggle like a starfish hugs a rock :(

9. Could you hear your muse in the hallway from another room?

not unless he’s talking, and even then he’s pretty low and soft-spoken until he’s annoyed. then you can Definitely hear him gfdhjk. but if he’s just passing through, he’s soft-footed and hardly makes a sound, often startling people on accident, even as a solid.

Tagged by:  @sampati  MUAH <3

Tagging:  @positronicminds / @distantsuns / @fasciinating / @thebrazenandbold / @asynjja / @sailorvinus / everybody do this thinnnng !​

[tsskyx]

New Undertale head canon

This one took me a long time to wrap my head around, but... I’m starting to think that maybe Flowey is actually completely fine in terms of cognition. A lot of people say that he can’t feel love because he’s missing a soul, and I believed that for a long time, but the more I’m looking into it, the narrower the definition of “being unable to feel love” becomes, and at this point, I basically can’t come up with any reason as to why that should be the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I still find it weird how quickly and suddenly he supposedly lost his ability to feel love, which I do think is linked to the fact that he’s literally missing a soul, but because of the aforementioned, I don’t think he’s like, lobotomized or something. Although described as “requiring love/hope/compassion to live” (to paraphrase), I think monster souls also aid the monsters with generating those feelings, so losing soul means simultaneously: gaining the ability to live on without having to constantly feel love or be hopeful (similar to the human experience), but also, losing the ability to feel those things “automatically”. It’s like Flowey’s brain (if we could call it that; I call it his essence) had to “relearn” how to interpret those emotions from scratch, because previously, it was his soul’s job to do that.

So in other words, I think that with proper therapy and care, Flowey could become exactly like Asriel from a psychological standpoint, the only difference being, that instead of feeling and experiencing the world “like a monster”, whatever that could mean, he will find his own way of gaining those emotions back, I reckon similar to how a human would - through therapy. Humans are described as not requiring love/hope/compassion to live... but this doesn’t mean that they can’t experience that emotion at all, obviously. Similarly, I think Flowey can experience those things again, it will just take a lot of effort on his and everyone else’s part. And fortunately, I think he’s on a good track, since unlike many humans, he wants to feel again, because he still remembers how it used to be like, and he wants to return to that, whereas many humans have already made peace with their own heartless state of mind.

So again, it will be difficult for him, but not impossible. I also don’t think that just the trauma of dying and finding out his family ripped apart and Chara gone is what literally made him lose the ability to feel love. The way he described it, I really think he was referring to some ability he legitimately lost, I don’t think he was “just confused about the effects of extreme grief”. I know there are people who like to compare this to heavy psychological trauma irl, but again, monsters don’t work exactly like humans, they have magical bodies and everything. If there was a soul in him, he would undoubtedly be overwhelmed and eventually fall sick because of it or something. But instead, Flowey felt completely numb. That’s what I think the absence of a soul does to a monster, at least initially.

(So if we’re talking about Flowey’s therapy, the regular psychological stuff is just one aspect of it. Another aspect would be to unlock his ability to feel his emotions without requiring a monster soul. That’s the untraditional, fantastical aspect of it, the other one being the conventional, “getting better” aspect.)

I think the people who were saying this for years are therefore right in the idea that Flowey can be rehabilitated even without a soul, but I think they’re wrong to assume that he got this messed up because and only because of his trauma. Again, if his family were okay but he still ended up losing his soul, I think he would still have issues adjusting, even if surrounded by people who loved him and had no additional issues. And vice versa, if he came back into the same exact scenario, but with a soul, then like I said, I think his grief would be that much more amplified and it would hurt that much more.

(So any therapy session must factor in both: his legitimate trauma, and also his inability to experience emotions the way he used to as a monster - once again, he needs to find an alternative mental way of acquiring them. He lost his original soul, so now, all he has is his essence to guide him through life. It’s like losing a limb, and then acquiring a neural prosthetic and learning how to operate it using your mind.)

So in summary, let’s neither think of Flowey as some sort of lobotomized demi-being who can’t comprehend the world properly, but let’s also not think of him as someone who’s just “like a human with trauma”. Sure, he is more akin to a human now than to a monster due to no longer having a soul that used to enrich his life, but also, unlike a human, he used to be used to having a soul, and losing that played a large role in his trauma.

As to what this means for speculations, I think that if a fully healed Flowey suddenly regained his old soul back, he would undoubtedly be cast into disarray. He would have to get used to feeling the world in a completely different way all over again. I don’t think giving him his soul back will therefore be very productive, hell it might even exacerbate the issue.