#considering things not previously considered

[tepkunset]

You, artist who is drawing top surgery scars on a character. Have you considered that not everyone's scars look like that of a skinny, previously small-breasted person? Because not everyone's scars look like that of a skinny, previously small-breasted person!

I have one continuous cool scar across my chest because my breasts were so huge and I'm fat! And I know for a solid fact that this is the approach a lot of fat people receive from top surgery. Because as explained by my surgeon, it removes or at least reduces the chance of bunched up skin in the middle.

Also! Not everyone bothers to get nipple grafts, or sometimes the nips fail. Either way, not everyone keeps their nipples.

Just some things I wish more artists considered. //shrug

[wowcatboys]

trinkets for a magpie.

♡ Lucanis/AFAB Crow Rook ♡

♡TW's: Lucanis's PTSD, implied violence/torture, Lucanis is a little bit of a nasty freak ahhh, Masturbation♡

♡NSFW♡

♡Divider by @cafekitsune ♡

It begins with something small, and almost entirely innocent.

Lucanis awakes to find that Spite has packed them tightly into a previously-unmaterialized closet of the Lighthouse. He’s surrounded by ordinary things—a broom, a large wooden bucket, a fat-bottomed coffee mug stuffed full of paintbrushes. The air tingles with tin and dust. Spite, angry at having control snatched away, snarls in his ear. Give. it. Back! A headache prickles at his temples and the back of his eyes. 

Damn this demon. How long has he been out?

Lucanis scrapes his palm against the Lighthouse’s rough walls, grounding himself. Not in the Ossuary. Not in a cell. Back in control. And then he begins to filter through the mental checklist he keeps for when he comes to, in the middle of Spite’s ‘outings’.

He scans the fronts and backs of his arms, feels for broken ribs, gingerly puts all his weight on one foot and then the other. No new scrapes, sprains, or—Maker forbid—tattoos. (Spite had asked a lot of questions after they’d passed by an abysmally drunk pirate in the Hall of Fortune, getting a beetle inked into the fold of their asscheeks. The implication there fills Lucanis with cold dread.)

When he wiggles his toes in his boots, Lucanis realizes he’s missing his left sock. But before he can ask Spite about it, his attention pulls away. There’s a small weight in his breast pocket that wasn’t there before. It’s round and light, and it presses into him gently but insistently.

He fishes it out. It’s cool, fragile. When he opens his hand he sees it’s a dainty glass bottle, no bigger than one of his fingers. It catches the light and bends it softly, shining like spilled lamp oil. A crystal stopper plugs the top. In the bottom, a few drops of clear liquid make a shallow pond. Lucanis recognizes the bottle. He knows immediately where it’s from. 

He knows the merchant that sells this. He bought shaving cream from her once, and he remembers the dry soft leather of her hands as she carefully pressed his change into his palm. One of the last kind touches he felt, before he was dragged into the Ossuary and almost forgot such a thing existed. 

It’s why he remembers the encounter so well. For a time, before Spite, he unspooled that memory through his brain to soothe himself. To remind himself there really was a world above, beyond the pain and screaming and all that dark, dark water.

The perfume. He blocks his thoughts from revisiting the Ossuary, and focuses on the perfume. He knows it costs thirty four gold pieces and is supposed  to smell like sea breeze. 

Gingerly, Lucanis twists the glass stopper and holds the bottle to his nose. He inhales.

Sure, there is a bit of sea foam there. But also, underneath, something else. Some kind of spice? Lucanis’s eyes flutter closed. His mind fills as he takes another deep sniff. A hint of patchouli. Post-combat sweat. A kind smile. The color of her hair…

Rook.

 Of course it’s Rook’s. Who else would have Antivan perfume?

Panic squeezes his chest as he realizes Spite must’ve stolen it from her. His eyes fly open, and he sends the demon an accusing look. 

“You cannot take peoples’ things, Spite,” he rebukes. “Where did you get this? Why did you take it?”

Spite mirrors Lucanis, scowling. His lips curl back from his teeth, and he snarls his response. 

“She. Threw it out—we did not. STEAL. It!” 

Lucanis hmm’s, at that. The anger on his face softens. The bottle is almost empty, and Spite, for all his terribly annoying and vexingly mischievous tendencies, is not usually a thief. He sniffs the perfume again, considering. If she’s done with it anyway, would it really be so bad to just…keep it? 

His secret. Nobody needs to know he has this.

Lucanis remembers that once, when they weren’t quite boys anymore but certainly weren’t men yet, Illario stumbled across a gloriously detailed picture of a naked woman in a book. He remembers how Illario sliced the page free from the book’s spine with assassin’s precision. For months, his cousin kept the paper tightly rolled up and hidden in an empty dagger sheath. He would quietly unfurl it when he was alone in his bedroom, and if he was feeling generous, he would let Lucanis look over his shoulder, too.

He wonders if Illario ever felt this rush of —what was this, tingling down his spine and spreading through his fingertips? Nerves? Adrenaline? Something else entirely?—when he held that picture in his hands, when he rubbed his thumbs reverently over a pair of sketched tits. Did his secret ever feel this precious?

Lucanis feels a twinge guilty. Perhaps even slightly desperate. But as he rewards himself with one last, deep, mouthwatering sniff, one thing is certain—he doesn’t feel regret.

Lucanis empties a small leather sheath and, with careful hands, stows the bottle within. He doubts that Rook will poke inside his weapons stash. But if she ever finds it— he will pretend he hasn’t held it up to his nose every night for months, and blame it on the wisps.

The ring, at least, makes sense. When Lucanis comes back to himself in the middle of a screaming migraine, he understands why Spite took it. 

He sits up on his cot, groaning, and reaches to grab it off the shelf his klepto-demon left it on. It’s a thick band, gold flecked throughout with something that looks like little bits of charcoal. The pantry candles flicker lazily in its reflection. As Lucanis holds it between his fingers, he realizes it’s still warm. Like someone left it sitting in the sun. 

A shiver races down his back. Did Rook just take this off? Lucanis imagines it. His mind paints her meditation room, and he sees her sink wearily down onto that gem-green settee. He thinks that she would rip her boots off first, maybe, and then flex her toes and groan while she works at the fastenings of her armor. 

He forces himself not to think of those strings, those straps, those buckles coming undone under her fingers. Of the skin that swims underneath it all. He has not studied her armor before, while walking behind her in Arlathan Forest and Dock Town and Treviso, he has not mapped it all out in his mind and thought about what he’d need to loosen and unlatch to make it come off. And there is not a rush of heat that comes to his cheeks while he does not think of these things, and it absolutely does not settle low and darkly in his guts. 

Lucanis shakes his head. His mind refocuses, and he blames its wandering on Spite. He knows she sets her jewelry on that bookshelf behind the settee, next to Varric’s mirror—he’s seen it piled there, before. She must’ve gotten back from a mission, shucked her combat gear, and fallen immediately into a dead-sleep. Spite, in his wanderings, could have slipped into her room and stolen the ring then. Still warm from use. Still warm from her.

Or…it could be the enchantments, woven through the metal. It makes sense. The ring’s meant to augment fire spells. Of course it would be warm. The latent magic thrumming through the band would make it so. 

It isn’t from the gentle heat of her naked hand. It isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t—it’s magic, just magic. And that’s why Spite took it. Because that little bit of the Fade, bound to the ring, called to something in him. It makes sense, and it’s very simple, and there is nothing more to it. 

But this isn’t a discarded perfume bottle. It’s combat gear. It will need to be returned. The realization makes Lucanis’s throat prickle.

Giving it back proves easy enough, though. One doesn’t become a Crow without learning how to lie.

He waits until the next morning, while Rook and Davrin equip their gear. (Lucanis is finished dressing first, as per usual. Even though his armor is the most complex, he’s got the quickest hands.) Lucanis hums Rook’s name behind her as she’s fastening her bootlaces, gently prodding at her attention. 

“Rook?” He asks, and when she turns around with a lifted brow, he simply holds up the prize. “I believe you may have left this at the dinner table? I found it in the kitchen.” It’s a convenient lie, easy to spin, even easier to believe. She got stuck with dish duty last night, after all.

“Oh,” Rook says, “thank you.” When she holds out her hand, Lucanis’s brain floods. He knows what Illario would do, here, and the image almost makes his back stiffen.

 Illario would purr something dripping thick with honeyish double meaning. He would take her soft hand into his, and slide the ring smoothly onto the correct finger. (And Lucanis does know which finger it belongs to. Her left pinky. He’s noticed her trying to fit it on the others, but it’s too small. It won’t go past the second knuckle.) His brain cannot decide how she would react. Would she stare up at him, shocked by his sudden forwardness? Smile shyly, girlishly? Perhaps rub her thumb over his knuckles before taking her hand away, and make his fluttering heart stop dead in his chest?

But really, it doesn’t matter what she’d do. Because he is not Illario, and he isn’t half so charming, and he shouldn’t be flirting with this breathtaking powerhouse of a woman, anyway. Not when there’s traitors in his shadow, and a demon wedged into the crevices of his mind, and gods to kill.

So Lucanis presses the ring tenderly into her outstretched hand. He ignores the pleasant twinge in his gut as her fingers close around it. And with great willpower, he pulls away first.

Spite is angry to see his prize go. He growls and gnashes his teeth and spits that I. took it—for us! 

‘Us’. Lucanis doesn’t like that. So for the afternoon he’s a stone wall to the demon. He lets Spite rage and howl and demand to know why Lucanis gave it back, and he ignores every word. 

His mind is full, anyway. It is busy convincing him that he didn’t notice how the ring felt in his fingertips, before depositing it in Rook’s open, waiting palm. 

By then, it had gone cold to the touch.

Sharing a body with a demon has its quirks. By far the most irritating is Spite’s tendency for escape attempts. Even Lucanis’s coffee pot runs dry sometimes, and the demon lies in wait to take advantage. All he needs is a second—a moment that Lucanis’s tired eyes close too long, that the edges of his mind get too fuzzy. And then Lucanis wakes, confused, usually to one of his companions body-blocking the eluvian. 

On rare occasions, though, something else grabs Spite’s attention. Usually something mundane, some sort of mortal custom that fascinated the demon—Lucanis has come back to himself throwing blank papers into Emmrich’s fireplace, punching a pale lump of bread dough, scraping a dry paintbrush against the Lighthouse’s stucco walls. Odd, to be sure, but Lucanis has learned to roll with it and simply be grateful that at least Spite didn’t try to escape again.

Still. Waking up on top of Harding’s greenhouse with a spoon in his mouth is quite the surprise.

Lucanis sits on the edge, legs dangling over the lip of the roof. His boots and socks are missing, and his pants are messily shoved up to his calves. He regains control of his limbs in the middle of Spite carefully swinging his legs, like he doesn’t quite understand why he’s doing it or what it’s supposed to accomplish. Lucanis’s heels thud against the wall. First the right. Bump. Then the left. Bump. 

Vaguely, Lucanis remembers seeing a little elf girl in Dock Town, sitting on the edge of a pier and breaking apart clumps of seafoam with her toes. Spite had watched for a moment and then asked why nobody came along and pushed her in. Strange, Lucanis thinks. It’s so curious, the things Spite’s mind hoards up to try later.

Like the spoon. He has no idea where Spite got that idea from. Lucanis pulls it from his mouth and stares at it; his reflection stares back, dull and warped. He turns it over, noting the intricate carvings spread across the utensil. Some sort of vine twists around the handle and erupts into a flower bud at the base. 

The Lighthouse boasts an eclectic collection of silverware, as if it reads the minds of those sitting down for dinner and materializes their vision of what a spoon and fork should look like. He recognizes this design, with its delicate leaves and large silver basin. It’s Rook’s. (Because of course it is.)

Lucanis turns to face Spite. He holds the spoon up at him, and raises an eyebrow.

“Why…?”

Spite smirks wickedly.

“Wanted a taste.”

Heat dusts Lucanis’s cheeks. He swallows thickly and looks back down at the spoon, considering. Not long ago, this had been inside of Rook’s mouth. It had known the velvet of her cheeks, felt the caress of her tongue as she cleaned potato soup from it. The flush of heat travels down his face, all through his chest, down into his undergarments. It’s been scrubbed since they ate—very vigorously, considering Bellara did the dishes last—but still…

Lucanis scans the ground below, just in case. And then, when he sees that the courtyard is empty, he slowly lifts the spoon to his mouth. Tenderly, reverently, he slips it past his lips. He drags the cool metal of the basin back across his tongue. Testing. Searching. Yearning.

But whatever he was hoping to find is not there. Lucanis tastes nothing but the faint, sudsy memory of lemon-basil soap. He closes his eyes, sighing through his nose. He’s so disappointed it’s almost painful.

“Her taste!” Spite proclaims proudly. 

“No,” Lucanis corrects. “Just dish soap.”

When Spite spits in frustration and pounds a fist against the greenhouse roof, Lucanis doesn’t chide him. He’s holding back from doing the same damn thing, himself.

Lucanis respects the privacy of others. Really, he does (so long as he’s not been hired to kill them). In normal circumstances, he would’ve put the journal down and walked away. But he regained control of his body about ten seconds ago, and his thoughts are scattered around like the light coming through a suncatcher, and it’s just instinct to examine the book gripped tightly in his hands.

The journal is light. About a hundred pages, he guesses, maybe a little more. It’s leather-bound, dyed to a plummish purple-blue-black. There’s a stub of satin poking out. Unthinking, Lucanis slides his index finger in the journal, right next to the makeshift bookmark, and cracks it open.

And twice as quickly, he snaps it shut. His eyes fall across the handwriting, and he knows immediately that fuck, he just looked inside Rook’s journal. Nobody else writes with such a heavy hand, scraping the pen across the paper like they’re punishing it for something. 

Obviously it’s Rook’s, Lucanis berates himself as he squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. If he took a second to think, he would’ve recognized the cover as Crow leather. He would’ve considered the fact that the satin-scrap bookmark looks suspiciously like a shirt Viago wore until it went out of fashion.

He didn’t read anything, not really. Still, it feels like he’s leered through the open curtains of her mind. The thought disturbs him. He thinks of things he was subjected to in the Ossuary. The blood magic leafing through the folds of his brain. Spite raging against the confines of his skull, ransacking his thoughts, tossing them everywhere before the two learned how to uneasily co-exist in one mind and body.

Of course looking inside Rook’s journal is a tame invasion. It’s free of violence. It’s free of blood. But it feels, in some sense, just as perverse, just as horrid, just as deplorable. He’s taken something from her. Broken into the safety and privacy of her room, and searched through pieces and parts of her life. Does it really matter that it was Spite? It was still his hands that turned her doorknob, his feet that carried him into her bedroom, his eyes that stumbled clumsily across her unspoken thoughts. If he’d been more vigilant, if he’d drank another pot of coffee, if he’d told Spite to stop taking Rook’s Maker-cursed things… 

A sudden guilt sits solidly inside him like the pit of a stone fruit. He needs to bring this back. Immediately.

And he needs to stop thinking about the one word he actually read and noticed, the one string of letters that his brain snatched up before he snapped the journal closed. Written in a gentle hand with curling, sloping letters, almost as if Rook eased up on her poor, weary pen, as if she were whispering it into the pages of her journal—

Lucanis. 

When Lucanis regains himself, his hands are trembling. His chest is sticky with panic, the muscles through his back tight and tense as piano strings. The hair on his arms—the hair everywhere—stands at attention. There’s an aftertaste of tin draped over his tongue. And all along his body, his skin feels the faint but unmistakable streeeeetch of being somehow pushed and pulled at the same time.

Mierda. Shit, shit, fucking shit. Spite went through the eluvian.

Lucanis is back, hunched on his cot in the pantry, but wherever Spite took them—whatever he did—it cannot be good. Lucanis grits his teeth, pushes back rising nausea, and hisses at the demon looking down at him.

“Spite. What. did. you. do?”

The demon licks his tongue over the sharp, canid lines of his top teeth. When he speaks, his voice simmers.

“Stop. Fussing. Just followed—we followed. Her.”

In a better mindstate, Lucanis would’ve wrinkled his nose at being told not to fuss by a demon. But his brain is still stumbling, scrambling. He digs his teeth into his bottom lip, feels his brow knit together sharply, bunches up the pebble-gray fabric in his fists—and only then realizes he’s even holding something.

He loosens his fists and unwads the fabric in quick, jerky motions. When he holds it up to the light, Spite’s chest puffs out. A show of pride. But Lucanis? His heart drops. All the way to his fucking feet. 

It’s underwear. Smalls, specifically. Still deliciously warm from being sandwiched in between skin and layers of clothing and armor. Soft, well-worn, starting to pull loose at those delicate threads that connect the sides. Lucanis’s jaw clenches so tightly his teeth squeak. 

He doesn’t need to ask whose they are. He recognizes the slate gray fabric. An arrow snagged Rook’s pants one time, ripping them across her right hipbone. He touched himself to that shade of gray for three nights in a row and felt pathetic as a teenager. Like some horny boy, pawing and panting in the dark over a flash of underwear and the barest hint of skin. Maker, how she undoes him.

Lucanis’s mind races to answers before he can even ask Spite the questions out loud. They share a body, after all—he knows this demon. He guesses that Spite noticed Rook stumble sleepily towards the eluvian with a towel folded up in her arms. Where she bathes, he doesn’t know, but he’s seen her emerge from the eluvian with wet hair before. 

Lucanis breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth. He does this three times. Then he carefully sets the underwear down over his knee, and shifts on the cot so that his trousers don’t feel so Maker-forsaken tight.

“Spite,” Lucanis asks cautiously. “Tell me she didn’t see you take this.” 

Spite sneers, nose curling like the very thought offends him.

“No! Of course, not!”

“You’re sure?”

“Was cautious. Watched her. Waited. ‘Til she put her hair underneath.”

And ah. Qué pena—that’s too much. The knowledge that Rook was naked. That he saw her naked, that she was close enough and undressed enough for him to map out constellations in her freckles and witness her scars, places where she’d been stabbed but was too strong and too stubborn to die. All that, in his eyes, but not for him. For Spite. He saw her, but the memory isn’t his to keep. 

Lucanis hates masturbating. With Spite lurking, the act is colored with shame. But right now, he can’t stop himself. His skin is burning hotter than Andraste, his mind is all sharp edges, his underwear constricts his cock like a snake that wants to kill. He thinks, he knows, if he doesn’t relieve himself, he’ll surely die or go mad with lust. 

He looks down at the smallclothes on his lap. With a reverent hand, he traces the seam running horizontally across the crotch. Then he sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, and opens his pants with a quiet, slow ziiiiiip. 

“Tell me…what she looked like,” he asks, and his voice has never been so gentle or soft to Spite before, never so pleading. He almost says please. (Almost. He lies to himself as he shimmies his pants down past his hips, and pretends that he still has some dignity left. At least enough that he won’t beg from a demon.) 

Spite’s lips curl up in malevolent glee. Whether he’s pleased from replaying the sight of Rook’s body, or he’s just happy to have the upper hand for once, Lucanis isn’t sure. As he spits on his palm, he cannot bring himself to care. The cool air of the pantry smooths over his thighs, whispers over the ultra-sensitive tip of his penis. There’s already a glistening drop, leaking out from the slit. Lucanis thinks he should feel shame. 

He does not.

“Like a statue,” Spite starts, and Lucanis firmly wraps his hand around the base of his shaft. Not much to go off of, but he doesn’t need much. Lucanis has memorized the cello-curves of her body, the smell of her. He rubs the seam of her smalls and groans. Up, down. He wants to go slow but he burns, and he can’t. 

“Squeaked in the stream. Cold water. She shivered. Made her chest. Jiggle. Like jam. On a spoon!”

Lucanis, Maker help him, can see it. He hears her voice squeal high and girlish, in a way she never lets the others hear. He sees how the cold water beads up on her skin and how her hair drinks up the stream, then falls in limp wet ropes over her shoulders. He sees the chill curl into her nipples—he sees them pebble, and he swallows thickly. He squeezes his cock tighter, pumps faster. A groan erupts from deep in his chest. It’s not enough. He needs to smell her. 

With his free hand, Lucanis grips Rook’s slate gray underwear and brings it to his face. And he inhales like he’s a man drowning. He just reached the surface—these smallclothes are the air he needs to survive for even a single moment longer. He moans, and it comes out quiet, muffled by the fabric. Mostly he smells sweat, but it’s good because it’s her. But underneath there’s a whiff of her perfume, and deeper still he can detect the salt-cream musk of pussy. 

She’s divine. What did he ever do, to earn the right to even breathe in her presence?

Lucanis’s mind flirts with putting that fucking seam in his mouth, and for a moment, he balks at the desperation. But he’s alone. Who would Spite tell? He’s in the depths of his shame and need already. He pumps, hard and fast, and his muscles coil from his toes all the way up into his neck. Everything everywhere is too tight, too hot, he needs her, fuck it—

Lucanis growls and takes the smalls into his mouth, feels the seam line pressing into his tongue. He bites down with violence and moans around it. Rook’s taste—mierda. There’s no words to describe it. Not in any language he knows. 

He can only think in feelings, in images. How velvety and warm her pussy would be against his tongue; how it would taste just like this. Tang, sweetness, salt, paradise. He would lick and lick and lick until she dripped down his chin like the first bite of summer fruit, ripe and leaking and staining his beard with juice. Her thighs pressing against his head, muffling her whimpering, drowning out the wet suck of his mouth on her clitoris. He would make her cum and cum again. His imagination keeps shifting between giving her pubic hair or shaving it clean; between feeling those course, perfect threads in his mouth or feeling his tongue glide against folds smoother than glass—

Lucanis’s thumbnail brushes the underside of his tip just so, and he imagines it’s Rook’s nail instead, and that’s all it takes. He whimpers into her undergarments, biting down. His body shakes and trembles like he’s just been blasted close-range with an electricity spell—his toes curl so hard, he thinks he feels scraping inside his boots. Warm cum jets from him, splatters his pants and coats his still-pumping hand. He’s on fire, yes, but it’s so fucking satisfying. Lucanis rides the last sweet shocks of his orgasm to their very edge, and he imagines Rook sweeping up a thin stream of white and sucking it off her finger. 

Dios mio. He dares not imagine that she could ever be as obsessed with him as he is with her. Even in post-orgasm bliss, with his fingers around his softening cock and his head pleasantly fuzzy with relief, he won’t let himself think that her fingers might, on some lonely nights, sneak past her waistband with similar thoughts. He won’t let himself consider that she might sneak into the pantry while he makes dinner, might bury her face into the stiff bulge of his pillow, and silently breathe him in. Surely, she does not put her lips to his coffee cups, searching for his taste there in the dark roast.

She’s beautiful, she’s a goddess, she’s a godkiller. What is he to her, other than an adoring weapon, waiting in her shadow to be used? 

But in the afterglow of such an intense orgasm, Lucanis finds it impossible to think of anything too challenging. Feelings, desires. What’s deserved and what isn’t. He allows himself to wallow in the pleasant buzz—not quite happy, but for once, content. The flames lick the candles downwards, and Spite remains thankfully, blissfully quiet. Lucanis stays like that for a long moment. It’s been so long since he’s felt so comfortable in his body. So safe. He dares not dwell on all the implications of that.

When Lucanis finally stirs, it is only because his neck has started to seize at an impossible angle. After wiping himself clean, he turns to Rook’s smallclothes. He cannot imagine how he’s supposed to sneak these back into her wardrobe without her noticing. And what could he even say if she caught him red handed, trying to slip her sex-smelling underclothes into a pile of her dirty laundry? Or even worse, if one of the other companions found him. Emmrich? Davrin? Maker’s breath, Taash? Better not to risk it. 

And perhaps that is an excuse. But it is an excuse that settles comfortably in his stomach, and one that soothes his mind as he pulls the dagger sheath from its hiding place. Lucanis picks Rook’s smallclothes up from his cot with admiring hands. He rubs his thumb affectionately over the smalls’ waistband. Then he folds it up, carefully and tender-fingered as if he were handling a love letter. He slips the roll of fabric into the sheath, fitting it next to her perfume. His prizes, his little trinkets. 

He will never admit it. But Lucanis thinks that maybe, just maybe, these tokens are payment enough to kill any god Rook asks.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 5, Poll 5

Please be civil in the notes. We will block people if we feel it is necessary. A character being canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included. This is not a competition of who is better representation.

Check out the other polls in this round here.

Yang Xiao Long-RWBY

Qualifications:

She is canonically wlw (has been for years but specifically kissed and got together with her now girlfriend in the latest season) and uses a prosthetic arm and has been shown to struggle with PTSD due to the traumatic nature of losing it during the show.

Canonically had her right arm chopped off, uses a prosthetic. Has PTSD. Is canonically in a WLW relationship.

She has a canon girlfriend and canonically has a prosthetic arm and PTSD

She's canonically sapphic (part of a recently canonised wlw slowburn relationship) and is an amputee (due to events from the 3rd season finale) who wears a robotic prosthetic. She also suffers from PTSD which is explored in the show

Propaganda:

I will keep on submitting Yang to relevant brackets until I die. RWBY has plenty of strengths and weaknesses with writing, especially Yang's recovery arc, but instead of forcing her to push past her trauma and enter the battlefield immediately, we see her struggle with it, take time to process, and not be pushed into repression and when she chooses to wear her prosthetic, chooses to train to ready herself, and chooses to seek out her family and save lives, she isn't perfectly healed, as no one is. The show depicts her having flashbacks due to sudden loud noise, shaking hand the first few times she has to fight for her safety instead of training with her dad, and snapping at friends when they bring up Blake, the person she lost her arm trying to save (who, near immediately after ran away due to feeling she was endangering those she loved, furthering Yang's already present abandonment issues.) It isn't done perfectly but the intentions and general message sent are extremely positive and honest. She struggles less as the show progresses, and there are opportunities to consider herself less for being disabled or "become whole again" but she explicitly refutes these ideas and says that's she's better because of her failures and losses, and isn't any less whole. Her becoming disabled is also extremely tied to her being LGBT, because, as previously mentioned, she lost her arm protecting her then friend and partner, now girlfriend, directly after the villain who cut her arm off told her love interest that he would "destroy everything [she] love[s]. (Camera pans to Yang, he looks at her.) Starting with her." LIKE. He attacked her BECAUSE Blake cared for her so much and Yang ran to her defense blindly BECAUSE she loved Blake so much. When they reunite, they struggle with communication because Yang feels Blake is seeing her as weak, and through several things, mostly a climatic battle against the man who severed Yang's arm, they affirm each other as equals. I can go on but this is already too long. YANG SWEEP!!!!!

Yang lost her arm while protecting her best friend and future girlfriend from said girlfriend's abusive ex. Had a whole arc about learning to live with that loss and dealing with PTSD. Is totally devoted to and in love with Blake Belladonna and is just the sweetest but most badass character in the show.

She's one of the main characters, and just finished a 10 year slow burn romance. Plus, she has both physical and mental disabilities, but is never treated as lesser or incomplete.

Yang Xiao Long was one of the first examples of a sapphic character I ever saw in animated media with her character journey in the show being an iconic part of my teenage years and current young adulthood. The loss of her arm after a traumatic event in the show's 3rd volume was one of the big shockers of the show that nobody saw coming. Since then the show has done an amazing job in exploring both the mental and physical effects of her losing a limb, gaining a prosthetic arm and the recovery journey. Her character also has a major arc regarding handling her PTSD from both this and her past most notably in the 5th and 6th volume. Her character also has a slow-burn romance with her teammate and fellow main character Blake Belladonna which is one of my fave romances ever (it has everything: canon soulmates, friends to lovers, sunshine x grump,battle couple etc..) that has recently became CANON BABIEE!!! There are MULTIPLE characters in RWBY with various disabilities that are handled well in the narrative but i would say Yangs definitely the top FAVE!

Ballister Boldheart-Nimona (Film)

Qualifications:

He has a boyfriend (and then they have a sort-of-breakup but they're back together by the end) and he has a prosthetic arm.

He’s gay and missing an arm.

He’s explicitly gay, in love with a man. He loses his arm then builds himself a prosthetic while on the run like a badass.

His boyfriend cut his arm off :( he uses a prosthetic now.

His arm got chopped off after being falsely accused of killing the queen, he spends the rest of the movie with a prosthetic metal arm. His arm was also chopped off by his lover, Ambrosius Goldenloin, during said false assassination.

His boyfriend cut off his arm

Canonically has a boyfriend and built his own prosthetic

Qualifies by both being canonically disabled (amputee) + canonically gay

Propaganda:

Please plz plz vote for him

His boyfriend cut off his arm. He made himself a prosthetic. He used his arm to block someone’s sword. He kissed his boyfriend. He has sad wet cat eyes, which isn’t relevant but still. He has them.

He’s so GOOD even though he’s having like the worst day ever (specifically talking about movie but webcomic also applies). He has the biggest wettest eyes how can you not root for him????

People love him! He kinda looks like a sad, poor little cat. A real soggy wet kitten man.

Let's see. He and Ambrosius are lovers, or at least boyfriends, from the moment they're introduced. Ballister gets his arm chopped off by Ambrosius during the false assassination. Ballister spends the rest of the movie trying to convince Ambrosius and the kingdom of his innocence, with a metal arm replacing his missing one. It originated the phrase "Arm Chopping is not a love language!" Did I mention he's a main character too?

Is a science nerd, built his own prosthetic arm with his non-dominant hand, accidentally adopted a trans chaos demon of a 1000yo being

A knight, Nimona's best friend and father figure of sorts, but the plot mostly revolves around him- Ballister is framed for murder and has to hide while trying to figure out who framed him and how to prove he's innocent. Nimona becomes his sidekick (he didn't want one, she just showed up at his place one day like a very chaotic stray cat) and together they form a great duo against the corrupt government. This is complicated by Ballister's ex Ambrosius, who accidentally cut off Ballister's arm and is a bit brainwashed by government propaganda. Oops. You should watch Nimona it's great 💞🦈

The qualifications and propaganda paragraphs correspond, @foulfirerebel is the fifth submitter, and there were at least 7 others.

[deiastormborn]

Arcane Season 2 Finale theory. (Jinx, Cait and Vi)

Heya. Since I was somehow on a roll with my theories about the show previously, and I somehow hit the nail on 90% of the things I predicted, here is a new theory of mine.

Jinx is not dead. Yes, of course, that makes sense considering League of Legends exists, and everything that happened in Arcane happened before the game. Arcane was made canon, and a lot of current lore is being rewritten to match the show, so to people that play the game it's no surprise that Jinx is most likely alive. But how?

Here is what I think:

After Jinx said 'I didn't know your mom was in there', Cait realized that Jinx did in fact change. Or, at the very least, could relate to her pain and mistakes. If you think about it, Jinx's actions were mostly fueled with grief, and the rocket that was shot at the council building happened right after Silco died, who was like a father to Jinx. Caitlyn lost her mother, and became angrier, irrational, fueled with revenge. I think Jinx saying that to Caitlyn made her relate, and maybe understand what is hidden below all the madness that Jinx has in her.

I think Caitlyn and Jinx had a dialogue behind the scenes, that was not shown to us. Knowing Caitlyn's character and somewhat a soft heart, I think Caitlyn sat down and told Jinx that she can't be truely free due to the volume of the crimes that she has done. My idea is that Caitlyn tossed the idea to Jinx about escaping, fleeing, and faking her death. Didn't Caitlyn tell Vi that she became too predictable? Doesn't it mean that Caitlyn knew that Vi will try to free Jinx? Didn't Caitlyn say something about this place being thoroughly guarded too? Yet Jinx managed to escape anyhow?

I genuinely don't think it was done without Caitlyn's interference.

Maybe, after the talk that Caitlyn had with Jinx behind the scenes, Jinx asked Caitlyn to keep Vi oblivious to everything that is happening. Hence why Jinx said that Vi deserves to be with Caitlyn - that could not have gone out of nowhere. Caitlyn and Jinx didn't interact enough in the show for Jinx to say that. And Vi never really spoke to Jinx about Caitlyn for her to make this conclusion.

Now, possibly, Jinx took the whole 'fake the death' quite literal, since we see her go quite suicidal after that. It is possible that she thought that it is pointless, and genuinely didn't want to try and run anymore, hence why she attempted to blow herself up. Luckily, Ekko came in, and the rest we know.

However, it doesn't sit right with me. Not just because Jinx is very much alive in game, but also the fact that we were shown Caitlyn looking at the tower where Jinx fell, while holding the Jinx's monkey bomb in her hand. She also let go of a slight smile when she zoomed in on all the exits and rooms in the tower. Something tells me Jinx knew how to escape, and something tells me Caitlyn was the one who told her. Something also tells me that the balloon we saw at the very last scene of the whole show might have had Jinx in it.

The show is notorious for showing scenes that always mean and imply something. I previously had a theory where I drew a parallel between Vander, Silco and Felicia, with Caitlyn, Vi and Jinx, where Felicia was bringing Vander and Silco closer to each other, and her death ended up splitting them both. I truly think Caitlyn was meant to be the same mediator for Jinx and Vi as Felicia was for Vander and Silco. And maybe that was it. Maybe that's what happened.

Knowing Caitlyn, she is more than capable of forgiveness, and seeing good in people. I think it would be in her character to help Jinx escape, even if it is at a cost of lying to someone she loves.

And, since we see Jinx tell Vi to let go, I think it would be in her character to ask Caitlyn to keep Vi in the shadows.

[sometimeslwish]

So... I've been having some thoughts and...

What do you guys think would be the reason for them saying yes to being pegged?

Cause I'm thinking Sylus has one (if not all) of three:

They made a bet

He himself is curious

Mc wants to so "Sure, why not?"

Xavier has a go-with-the-flow-laid-back attitude that makes me think he'd be like "let's try it once," plus the fact that he's also freaky makes me think that he'd say yes even more. Maybe he's the one that asks, considering his "how to spice things up in a relationship?" search, and then it would turn into a whole "treat" situation.

Rafayel has had his freaky moments, so maybe it would be a semi-spontaneous thing where mc tries something new and they decide to take it a step further.

And then Zayne... mc probably brought up the whole "your g-spot is in your ass, you don't get 'x thing'" joke while they were bicker-and-bantering and later on was like "aren't you curious about how that feels like?" and somehow they end up doing that every once in a blue moon?

This post was previously seen in @unknown-ends

[valkirycr]

There is no mistaking the worry etched on Carol's face; and Val understands. Her own impulsiveness and certainty once she's made a decision is near-unwavering; a trait that has been useful at work so far, but sometimes too much for the ones she holds too close to her heart. It's something to bring up in therapy, that's for certain, but in no shape or form does it seem like a bad thing now. Finding Carol, and clicking with her instantly— it seems like one of those things one would only read in romance novels or watch in cheesy movies— and Val suddenly understands the confusing mention of Hallmark movies previously.

Her own brows furrow a little as she second-guesses for a moment... but then Carol's hand is on her cheek and there is a slight exhale that she lets out, satisfying, before tilting her head to press her lips into a soft palm. Once, a short one, and then another lingering one that remains even as she laughs. "Oh I'm most definitely official. I'm notorious when it comes to going after what I want. Even if it gets me killed.", she adds as an afterthought, continuing the joke.

She owes it to herself to try and make this work; and knows that traveling for Carol will be anything but difficult, considering that she does it for work already. The blonde's words mirror her own thoughts, and they are in tune yet again, and Val nods. Her hand reaches to take the one that was holding her cheek, and imprints a kiss against the warm knuckles.

"Neither have I. But I was sure there was something about you from the moment I saw you... and I don't even know your favorite color yet." A soft laugh, through a smile. "Or your birthday, for that matter. And while all this seems absolutely insane..." her head shakes, a streak of curls falling back from behind her ear, "I know what I want. And right now— it's more time with you."

The moment Val pulls away, even just slightly, leaves the blonde with a breath caught in her throat and brow furrowed in a worried confusion. Was that it? Was the other reconsidering the distance between them, wondering if it was worth it after all? She wouldn't blame her, couldn't blame her, not really. They lived in completely different countries, worked vastly different jobs, and most importantly — they'd just met earlier that day. Even for Carol, it felt like a lot. How were they supposed to make it work when she knew she'd never be able to exist in her home the same way again? The kitchen, the living room, the bedroom... they were all better, brighter, warmer with the other woman in them. To go without that already left her chest aching. Maybe it would be better to just cut it off now and call it a day? Stop anything before they fall too deeply past the point of no return.

However, the other didn't go far and the words that followed were anything but a suggestion to put a stop to what they were going to potentially attempt. It was difficult to argue when Val seemed so sure about doing this. There was still a soft swirling of dread deep in her stomach, similar to the fear of flying too close to the sun, worrying about eventually being burned by the end of this. "This all sounds really official for someone you just met today," Carol started, letting her hand come to rest on the other's cheek, her thumb brushing softly against smooth skin. "You would be so murdered if I were a serial killer." The lightness of her teasing alleviates the anxiety of the moment, the way the seconds tick by as slow as the thumping of her heart, but she knew she couldn't joke around what Val was proposing forever. "I've never had to worry about a girl in another state let alone another country and I... can't promise that I know how to make that work, but what I do know is that I don't think I can let this go without at least trying."

[lucabyte]

Taking pride in One's own appearance.

[saturnniidae]

I think Astrid Hofferson has a bad case of the 'my childhood was wasted, I grew up too fast for something ultimately proven pointless.' Syndrome and that she deserves to get to do silly things she missed out on and take up new hobbies, even if she's not particularly good at them–it's purely for the experience yknow, and learn to finally breathe no longer needing to be on constant high alert and get to be truly happy

[a-heart-of-kyber]

I think one thing I originally missed is that the rune was specific. It was Ekko seeing Jayce wearing that specific rune that allowed for the creation of the Z-Drive and thus allowed for a spark of Viktor’s humanity to return which meant he could be swayed by Jayce.

So, whenever this particular sequence of events has happened previously for God Viktor, Ekko never had the Acceleration Rune which meant he never returned to be The Cog in the Machine.

I'm still, however, baffled by the audacity to imply that Viktor should've just rolled over and died of like Cancer or w/e. What do you mean?! What a screwed up message to send. It's ok to let the rich get richer, but God Forbid you want to cure cancer! How very US healthcare system of you.

And it's so hard to see between the lines when it comes to the hexcore because they waffled/altered Viktor’s character motivation. If you follow the throughline of season 1 Viktor, it seems obvious that Viktor was manipulated. However, because they literally retconned Viktor into always having been a quiet megalomanaical eugenicist...the hexcore was just a means to an end for Viktor.

Or is it both...or neither?

They could've easily had non-manipulated Villain Viktor without retconning, if they'd just stuck with the idea that he was more or less driven mad by the realization of not only his own overwhelming power, but of the world's suffering. We know Herald Viktor can sense and know the thoughts of Everyone In The World, why didn't you just do more with that?

Even when discussing Jayce's betrayals spiraling into a choice to give up humanity, it still seems like it comes from a place of the Arcane manipulating the events taking place to get Viktor to this point of villainy...but...I guess no?

I think Sky was real? Because she lowkey sounds bitter af when she tells Viktor he won't miss her. But if she was real, why was she so chill with what was happening? His choices led to her true death essentially...so why didn't she fight harder? If she represented his humanity as per the writers, why didn't she do anything to convince him not to lose himself?

Idk about her notebook. It doesn't seem to matter 😅.

I'm lowkey contemplating whether or not it's implied that Viktor Is The Arcane. That he's its literal personification now, or maybe he always was.

Because The Arcane chose Viktor and Viktor chose Jayce. In Act 1 Season 1, even when it appears that Jayce is being compelled by the Arcane to stabilize it, it's God Viktor’s movements he recalls/copies. In 1x5, it's Viktor that's given the vision of the hexcore. It's Viktor that the hexcore/Arcane reacts to. It's Viktor who is performing miracles via its power. It's Viktor that it acts and speaks through. But then...suddenly, these choices were always meant to be his own? Meaning it was always Viktor’s power?

Hell, I need to double check but when the Black Rose tells Mel "The Arcane is Waking Up" isn't Viktor Literally going through his final form transformation and thus waking into what's essentially Godhood (hence why I call him God Viktor)?

And hell, I've seen people be like "Mel is a born Mage and Viktor is an Artificial one." Which...isn't really true?

Viktor is Fated to be a Mage. It's his Destiny. You don't use Messianic imagery and give a guy the face of the Biblical Trinity and call his followers/creations Angels if he's at best a Fake.

Based on God Viktor’s lines we can gather that he Always brings on the Apocalypse. He always comes into contact with the Arcane with or without Jayce. Because he is Chosen. It's God Viktor that has solved all problems in the universe searching for the path where he doesn't end it all that has him stumble onto Jayce. And even in the timelines and universes where Jayce Fails, it's Jayce that stays with him and calls to his compassion. Therefore, he tries over and over and over to turn Jayce into his savior because he seems to be the only person who cared about him.

Which is screwed up when you consider it still takes Ekko giving them a moment that stops Jayce from fucking everything up anyways 🤣.

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers

.

.

.

.

.

"There must be some part of you still in there."

Stuck on this line because WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!

Why are you talking to him AFTER SHOOTING HIM?!

Why didn't you do that BEFORE SHOOTING HIM?!

I'm at a loss.

Was future/outside of time/god!Viktor just like playing a little joke on his past self by having Jayce shoot him?!

[helmbarte]

[jacksprostate]

Things I won't forgive the fight club movie for regarding the character of Marla Singer, entry C:

The manic pixie dreamgirlification of her own struggle with life and death. The narrator gets to have a serious issue driving his alienation but Marla gets her cancer removed so her pithy statement about the tragedy of death being that she doesn't fall over dead randomly is just a bit Offbeat And Interesting And Edgy haha! She's a real tourist, really, nothing ever stated to be wrong about her. Sure she overdoses. Sure you can see she's got a shit life. But she doesn't get backstory. She doesn't get a life beyond fun little statements that, when her own reason for saying and thinking them is removed, mostly just reflect the narrator. In the book, it is very, very clear. Marla does what she does because she has cancer and is afraid of The Slow Death. The Wasting. The Struggle. By taking that away you even reduce her suicide attempt. It puts it all in this context of nothingness. Sure, you can assume a depth, but I don't think we should be uncritical about the fact that they chose to remove it. Marla Singer is more than an object that bothers the narrator out of the support groups and gets fucked by Tyler Durden. Marla Singer is a person in her own right in the book, and in the movie she's just... not.

[wildshadowtamer]

Im gonna run through this with what im pretty sure we know from the show, and some theories

King's gylphs actually show up on the bubble he forms to protect the Collector during his beserk rage. the one to the right is his Light glyph, and based off his dad's glyphs, i'd guess the right one is an Ice glyph, and the top one is a plant glyph. that's presuming he has the same elements in his glyphs then his dad.

2. i have no idea why he or Eda enters berserk mode, im just as confused to you, same to question 3

4. Why do harpy eda and titan Luz have similar eyes, probably because Luz or her subconscious designed her titan form around the witches and demons she knows. King's hands and claws, Eda's eyes, etc

5. What did the archivists do to the baby titans. based on the very small skulls in the Titan Trappers base, probably killed them. Especially considering Bill, when under the Collector's puppetry, referred to them as King's 'siblings'

6. How did the archivists defeat the titans. good question, not sure. The mural on King's tower's wall and the Collector's painting both depict titan trappers taking down a Titan, or, based on the shooting star going towards the titan, distracting them for long enough for the Collectors to attack. but, ultimately, we dont know exactly how they managed it, though they are literal gods so who knows.

7. Did the archivists know about the Titans before the collector met the baby titans. according to the Collector themselves, yes, but they sent the Collector down specifically to interact the titans. to quote him; "The Archivists, my siblings. "Oh, let's play a game", they said. "Let's play hide-and-seek." / "You go down there and see if the titans wanna play!" / But the Archivists were scared of their power, so one by one, they disappeared, until there was one Titan left."

8. Why did the archivist entrap the owl beast. im not sure what you mean by this considering they did, by turning it into a curse. but the wiki says "It is not known why the Owl Beast was turned into the scroll, but according to the collectors' motto, they seal living beings to preserve them forever."

9. Why did the titan create Jean-luc and the island. to protect his egg, the Collector says so in Episode 3, "He hid his egg from me and trapped me.", and its said in King's backstory episode, "That thing was defending King from us this whole time". it's shown in King's Tide that the symbol carved into the tower at the island was a protection symbol that hid King from the Collector's sight.

10. What happened to papa titan after king heard his voice. It's implied hearing his dad's voice was the last time the Titan was alive, meaning he died somehow shortly after. his exact cause of death is still unknown

Are titans able to transcend life and death, i dont know what you mean by this question

12. Were the titans able to transfer their powers to other living beings when they were alive, theres no canon that i know of saying one way or the other, but i dont think they could. i think the Titan's ability to do that was purely because his soul was stuck in the inbetween dimension.

13. Was the symbol on King’s collar created by an adult titan to protect its younglings or baby titan to play hide and seek with the collector. as i said previously, likely by his father to hide him from the Collector

14. Did Titans purposely hide their corpses from Belos and his followers to protect their inhabitants. i dont know what you mean by this

15. What is hooty. a demon created by the muck of the rotting corpse, according to himself, though considering theres a mini hooty in Papa Titan's eye in the inbetween, he may be some sort of parasite to the Titan's body. maybe he was a natural part of the Titan, who knows. Dana intended to go into Hooty's backstory if there was a full season 3, but alas.

16. Who is the grand Huntsman. Either the Collector or one of the Archivists, its never really stated

17. What happened with the Titan trappers before for the future. i dont know about before For The Future, but Bill and one of the other Titan Trappers are puppeted by The Collector

18. What kind of powers do Titans possess. Sonic scream, unique glyph magic (presuming the Titan had glyphs when he was alive like King does in the finale), fire breath (based on the Collector's painting), and presumably flight, considering they have wings.

19. Is the owl beast a sort of titan. the Collector states their magic doesnt work on Titans, but the Archivists trapped the Owl Beast, so probably not. Though considering the extensive definitions to 'demons' in the Demon Realm, maybe theres several layers of titans. we don't know.

20. How did the collector know about the draining spell, presumably from his siblings, though we dont know for certain. perhaps its an old Archivist sealing trick.

21. Where did the titan trappers get the titan skulls from. according to the wiki, "At San Diego Comic Con 2023, confirmation was given that the specific young titans whose skulls they wore were King's siblings", so. take that heartbreaking info as you wish.

How did the Titan trappers know what Titans look like, they have the skeleton of one hanging in one of their rooms, and they have contact with the Collector or another Archivist, who has seen them. Not to mention they likely have murals of their own depicting titans.

23. What are Galdor stones, a highly powerful magical stone that boosts a witch's (or demon's, presumably) powers. According to Dana Terrace, there were further story plans for the galdorstones which were not realized in the series due to the shortening of the third season. Personally, i think their crystalizations of some part of the Titan's corpse, like a diamond-izing of pure magic or blood.

24. What was the moon mirror that communicated with the collector. if you mean the thing he was trapped in, i have no idea. i presume Dana had plans to explain it, but for now, we only know its a prison for the Collector.

25. Was everything in the owl house from papa Titan’s point of view. thats a very funny thought and im choosing to believe its true.

26. Was eda’s curse destroyed in the fight with Belos, no, why would it be? there's nothing saying either way if it did, but i dont know why it would be, considering that doesnt match anything we've seen of the Curse.

27. Is King able to peek into the in between or was it because of the connection that the Titan trappers set between him and the collector. likely just the connection the Titan Trappers caused, the same way Belos could only see in with the weird tablet thing

28. Are the titans able to Shapeshift. no? again, not sure why they would be able to?

29. Why did eda curse react to the collector but not Lilith’s. I think its because Eda's curse was the one to be captured, and Lillith's is just sort of an offshoot, though its never explained in canon. so, Eda's beast has the memories of the Collector's siblings trapping them, and Lillith's doesn't.

30. Can the realm in between see the past and future. based on what we see, only the present and past, unless the Titan's heightened powers makes him exclusively capable of seeing the past through the cubes. we dont know about any future sight, though that'd make for a cool fanfiction.

Questions i still have for the owl house that will never be answered

Mainly for the collector species and titans

1. What do king’s glyphs look like

2. Why did king grow more fur and seem to grow bigger when he went berserk in watching and dreaming

3. Why did the owl beast grow bigger and have similar eyes to king’s when eda transformed

4. Why do harpy eda and titan Luz have similar eyes

5. What did the archivists do to the baby titans

6. How did the archivists defeat the titans

7. Did the archivists know about the Titans before the collector met the baby titans

8. Why did the archivist entrap the owl beast

9. Why did the titan create Jean-luc and the island

10. What happened to papa titan after king heard his voice

11. Are titans able to transcend life and death

12. Were the titans able to transfer their powers to other living beings when they were alive

13. Was the symbol on King’s collar created by an adult titan to protect its younglings or baby titan to play hide and seek with the collector

14. Did Titans purposely hide their corpses from Belos and his followers to protect their inhabitants

15. What is hooty

16. Who is the grand Huntsman

17. What happened with the Titan trappers before for the future

18. What kind of powers do Titans possess

19. Is the owl beast a sort of titan

20. How did the collector know about the draining spell

21. Where did the titan trappers get the titan skulls from

22. How did the Titan trappers know what Titans look like

23. What are Galdor stones

24. What was the moon mirror that communicated with the collector

25. Was everything in the owl house from papa Titan’s point of view

26. Was eda’s curse destroyed in the fight with Belos

27. Is King able to peek into the in between or was it because of the connection that the Titan trappers set between him and the collector

28. Are the titans able to Shapeshift

29. Why did eda curse react to the collector but not Lilith’s

30. Can the realm in between see the past and future

[vroomian]

What do you suppose has Alastor deciding yrx is friend-shaped? I remember you posting about how yrx sees how uncomfortable Alastor gets to being hit on and recognizes yrx being respectful of his boundaries, so I’m curious what would be a turning point in their relationship?

ok so this is the accumulation of many many random meetings. after yrz quits sex work but before he finds his perfect location for his bookshop, he bounces around hell working random jobs just to have something to do. he waited tables, ran drugs, delivered food, and worked at a coffee shop just to learn the secret of their peppermint mocha blend. (this has the effect of making yrz's network of 'i know a guy' people hilariously wide. if yrz doesn't know a guy, he knows a guy who knows a guy. yrz has more friends in this au than any other.)

while he's running around he develops a habit of listening to Alastor's radio show. it' a good way to get gossip, events, and genuinely entertaining. alastor, surprise surprise, is good at his job :)

the second time he and Alastor meet it's while yrz is out running errands for an elderly imp who needs a personal shopper, yrz sees alastor on the street and instead of avoiding him like a sane person decides to say hi. alastor does remember yrz as a strange spot of decency on an otherwise uncomfortable night. they talk about alastors latest show and yrz drops some hot gossip about a deal gone wrong between so and so and alastor's deer ears perk up like owo whats' this?? a source of the good tea???

and that's how it starts. yrz seems to know a little about everything, actus as an informal informant, plus he's good at listening and we all know how much alastor loves a captive audience. i think the turning point from acquaintances to actual friends is that Alastor actually offers yrz some of his personal cooking (it's people obviously) and yrz actually has some (yrz: when in rome lol). It's not to yrz's taste but he's game to try anything at least once. how else would he learn new shit?

(look. They are literally in hell. Yrz is all about relative morality tbh.)

But after that alastor genuinely finds yrz to be good company and feels comfortable enough to ask a favor to stay with him after he gets back into town after his disappearance.

(i think that maybe the reason that alastor’s radio towers are still standing after he’s been gone so long is because yrz has been keeping an eye on them.)

[bnhaobservation]

Thank you a lot for contributing to the discussion!

And yes, undoubtedly Quirk counseling is very likely based on the idea of teaching children to show the expected Tatemae, because, according to Japanese people, ‘Deru kui ha utareru’ (出る杭は打たれる “The nail that sticks out must be hammered down”) but in the whole fallout of Quirk counseling there's more than Himiko just behaving in an 'inappropriate way' and needing to learn which is the correct way to act, in fact it ends up being judged a curse by Heteromorphs as well, so I'll say it's also based on racistic pregiudices and the idea of 'impure blood'.

We see that Joki Joki doesn't manage to do something inappropriate with his Quirk, his 'sin' which lead him to being imprisoned is his Quirk was different than the one of his family.

Quirk discrimination started, after all when Quirk owner were accused of being a subbranch of humanity and the 'Meta' people ended up being considered freaks.

My guess is that the Quirk counseling of pre-AFO defeat is still tied to this, to the fact that not only it has to push people to drop 'undesirable' behaviours, but that he pressures who's different by using the idea if they don't conform they're subhumans, freaks, and where it's just impossible to conform (Shouji can't really cut his extra arms for example, nor Shuuichi can not look reptilian) they place in them the idea they are to blame.

Uraraka's new Quirk counseling might be expanded to include also children who instead 'fit the norm', so as to teach them to be more accepting, that the 'tatemae' they've to show toward who's different isn't one that pushes them to run away in disgust but one that accepts the differences.

Also Ochako's words previously implied that Himiko's Quirk wasn't a freak one because since she could share blood with people, she could help with transfusions, like how Eri's Quirk isn't a freak one (even though her mother thought so) because she could heal people, so it can be that the idea is that now Quirk counseling would focus on the positivity of different Quirks as well, not just tell kids they've to hide what's different because it doesn't conform but that their Quirk can do something good if used in this and this way so as to help them find a way to conform not by suppressing themselves but by using their differences positively (it's Himiko's speech at the end, how she could have lived better if she had known she could take and give blood, instead than being told solely she couldn't take it and being left unaware she could give it).

However all of the above are just speculations.

The truth is the series don't explain how exactly Quirk counseling was administered (if to all the class together or to each child in private), if children who had problems with their Quirk could have a level of privacy or if said problems were tossed in the open with a negative judgement attached (completely possible as in Japanese schools teachers often saw bullying as a way to force kids to correct their behaviour) and so on... nor it explains which exactly is the reform Uraraka brought beyond 'expanding' it.

So yes, the fact that western readers might not know about honne and tatemae or how the counseling work in Japan, nor be familiar with ideas of outcasts like eta and hinin makes undoubtedly harder to figure out how Quirk counseling work... but the fact remains that the whole thing with Quirk counseling was pretty vague, as it got mentioned a total of 6 times in the manga (Chap 22, 165, 226, 370, 392 and 460) often without going in deep with it, the last time just praising its expansion without really explaining how this would suddently make it work.

As I said in my post having more cultural knowledge can surely help, but I still think the story would have benefitted of more expansion/development on this side since it's apparently one of the important improvements... but like the whole Heteromorph situation instead it ended up being mostly sidelined so it ended up feeling less impactful... though, of course, that's just me. Again thank you for the contribute!

There something I don’t really get: Uraraka said to have expanded quirk counseling along with her group, but wasn’t that one of the factors that sent Toga spiraling: counseling only be used to push people with certain quirks to be “normal”? I agree on the surface level it’s a noble cause and the closest we got to specific actions being taken by the characters helping to fix society, but if it’s just expanded on and not reformed wouldn’t it just push people like toga feel excluded again since nothing is actually changed in the system? I don’t remember, but did Toga tell Uraraka her time in quirk counseling?

Let's start in reverse.

No, Himiko didn't tell Uraraka about her time with Quirk counseling. If Uraraka figured it out that it was the people in Quirk counseling that tolkd Himiko to stop grinning, kudos to her.

There's to say Curious knew Himiko went to Quirk counseling, so Uraraka might have also discovered about it later. It would be nice if Uraraka tried to learn more about Himiko even after her death.

Now... what's Quirkc counseling and what's wrong with it?

According to Curious:

CURIOUS '“Kosei” COUNSELING', jita rikai no yugami o kyōseishi shakaisei no suri awase o hodokosu jōsō kyōiku (read: PROGRAM). Mochiron, kanpekina PROGRAM de wa naishi, kojinsa o yori tsuyoku kanjite shimau to iu mondai o kakaete imasu. Chi o nomi henshin suru, umaretsuki motsu sono inō ni yotte anata wa “chi” ni tsuyoi kyōmi o hikareru yō ni natta. Shikashi shin no fukō wa “akogare” to iu dareshimo ga daku futsū no kanjō. Chi to akogare kamiatte shimatta nitsu no yōso wa tōtei shakai ni ukeire rareru MONO de wa nakatta. Dakara, anata wa FUTA o shita. Jishin o yokuatsu shi kamen o tsukutta.' キュリオス「『〝個性〟カウンセリング』、自他理解の歪みを矯正し社会性の擦り合わせを施す情操教育（プログラム）。もちろん、完璧なプログラムでは無いし、個人差をより強く感じてしまうという問題を抱えています。血を飲み変身する、生まれつき持つその異能によってあなたは〝血〟に強い興味を引かれるようになった。しかし真の不幸は〝憧れ〟という誰しもが抱く普通の感情。血と憧れ噛み合ってしまった２つの要素は到底社会に受け入れられるモノではなかった。だから、あなたはフタをした。自信を抑圧し仮面を作った。」 Curious "Quirk counseling, it's an emotional education (read: program) to correct distortions in self-understanding and others, and to adjust for socialization. Of course, it's not a perfect program, and it has the problem of making individual differences even more apparent. Your innate ability to transform by drinking blood has made you very interested in "blood". However, your true misfortune is "admiration", a normal emotion that anyone can have. The two elements that go together, blood and admiration, were never going to be accepted by society. So you put a lid on it. You suppressed your confidence and made a mask."

Basically the purpose of Quirk counseling is to help people harmoniously cope with their Quirk and society... but the downside of Quirk counseling is it doesn't really work toward having people accept themselves and be accepted by society, but just tries to remove whatever undesirable trait by suppressing it.

In Himiko's case they told her to stop acting 'abnormal'. I don't know how they handle Heteromorphs but the Heteromorphs have a bone to pick with Quirk counseling as they can't really hide/suppress their appearance.

Now... how expanding it might help something that doesn't work?

It can be that the whole expanding was a typing mistake, early on in chap 22 it was implied all the kids in elementary school receive Quirk counseling, so what does it mean to expand it if all the kids have access to it when they turn 6?

Or it can be that 'expanding' refers to expanding the resources put into Quirk counseling. If more people work at it with more time they might figure out which problems it has and help the children better.

In fact if few resources are put in the program, of course the program will rush to a quick and easy fix that will often not work in the long run. However, if more resources are put in it, people might put more efforts in helping the kids.

Said all this, Quirk counseling was really not well expanded or explained in the story, and mostly tossed in.

It might make sense for Japanese readers as Japanese schools have a counseling program (it seems schools in USA also have it but their own is different) and it turned out this Japanese counseling program needs reform so Japanese readers might see the Quirk counseling program as based on the counseling program of their schools, think it work the same and guess it also have the same problems.

For who's not Japanese, especially if they don't come with a school with a counseling program, the whole thing feels like something Horikoshi tossed in, left it mostly unexplained and generally showed it was bad/poorly working.

We don't see value in it because the story hardly showed us it had value (with Himiko it ruined her, with the Masegaki kids it didn't work, with the Heteromorphs it made them feel worse) so an ending that says 'yay, let's expand it' feels like they want to expand something that makes more harm that good out of nowhere... but again, this might be because we miss the cultural context in which said program is meant to be read.

Still, I really wish Horikoshi had developed it more because while it had potential, it mostly went untapped so it lost it's potential when it got mentioned again at the end of the story.

Thank you for your ask! I love to talk about BNHA! I hope my reply was somewhat of some help!

[thatsbelievable]

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Me clawing at the walls begging to be asked about my TMA swap au because I struggle to talk about it unprompted unless confidence overtakes me suddenly