#don’t presume to understand how I view and interact with the world

[eternal-trashfire]

And you’d be correct

Saw a thread on Twitter of "gifts to give a person with ADHD and autism" that was full of stereotypical and quite frankly patronizing items, so here's a list of I (autistic individual) want instead as a gift

Money

Fourteen billion dollars

Free coupon to kill somebody with my teeth

Suitcase full of money

Cool looking rock

Scratching post for me to sink my claws into

An albino elephant

The head of Jeff Bezos mounted on my wall

Uncooked rice

A cup full of blood

100k in cash

[delphinus-dancer]

A deep dive into a swan lake and flipping the (metaphorical, sadly) bird:

A Mihaly-centric view of JD 2024 story mode

(because they’re my favorite and I’ve thought about this way too much over the past few days weeks) Spoilers for JD 24 in the almost-essay under the cut, including some images!

Starting off with Mihaly’s first appearance in the story mode in Canned Heat, it seems like not too much time has passed since the end of jd23- Sara seems to be at the same party, Jack still at the tower, etc. (how Brezziana got to the beach that fast and had a workout class is something I’m going to guess was preplanned before everything went down).

We can assume this would be the first time Mihaly’s come back to their room since then (which makes the idea of Wanderlust FaceTiming everyone like 5 minutes after they left even funnier). Of course there’s the shot of Mihaly ripping the poster off the wall, which probably puts their feelings into words better than anything else within an E10 rating. <Side note: I don’t know much on lore but does the setting mean there’s a chance they’re from Eternyx? Both maps started in dark crowd/nighttime so wasn’t sure if confirmed or not>

While Sara has the spot pretty much clinched for a Night Swan’s foil, Mihaly is a really close second. This shot literally puts it into perspective- Mihaly’s color scheme has as many color elements of Master Panda’s (shirt/jacket/foot wraps) as it does Night Swan’s (hair-that-perfectly-matches-the-poster/ gold of headphones and glasses/pants). Their dance style also overlaps moreso with hers than the other dancers, with the precision and technique of their moves, from the footwork and leaps of Rather Be to the dramatic powerful motions of their Swan Lake part. It’s pretty obvious who the song is directed to, and what makes the song so interesting compared to their last story mode one is how loose it feels. This is unlike their usual technical style because of the connection to Night Swan with the control demanded of certain moves that they’ve presumably mastered- maybe they were fueled by a desire to achieve her success. Regardless, the song and emotion fueled, less ‘perfect’ dance lets Mihaly basically flip the bird at Night Swan’s corrupted idea of perfection. Either way, it culminates in them achieving a new high in their training with channeling their ‘true’ inspiration of the (master) panda. Although they retain most of their same costume after sort of becoming a furry?, a noticeable change is that the black leggings are understandably switched to something looser- but to the navy color of master panda instead of Mihaly’s black.

What’s also interesting is that the specific point Night Swan interrupts Mihaly’s song isn’t at the beginning like Brezziana/Sara/Jack’s or the very end like Wanderlust, but at the climax of their journey for the song. Not only does this imply that she may have been watching the entire time but choose to interfere later, but she is also the only character to see the Panda form before Swan Lake.

As Night Swan basically invades Mihaly’s //mind/headspace/flowspace?/no idea on the lore// they initially try to fight her off, but unlike Brezziana in her map, don’t fight until the end. Although Mihaly themselves wasn’t being corrupted like the background coaches in Brezziana’s map, they still let themselves, in a sense, lose a more internal battle to Night Swan as they leave the metaphorical and literal height of their understanding and power in the Flow and come back to the real world.

This then takes us straight into Swan Lake, which is really interesting for the Night Swan/Mihaly interactions and how they compare to the other dancers. Although from a format standpoint it makes sense for the movements in the bridge to be different, there are more differences too.

A big one that I only realized once I watched Majesty again is how the other swan soldiers/minions were turned back- and that was mainly by doing the same moves to ultimately come together and bring the dancers back. Here it’s the opposite for effectiveness- what causes Wanderlust and Brezziana to fail is that they think that’s how to stop Sara. Sara matches the moves in a way that <well> matches, if not surpasses the power that they put in. As a result of meeting them head on and assuming control, Sarah actively corrupts the two of them. She makes motions to bring in the smoke, and both of them also are stationary/surrendering as their color drains.

When it gets to Mihaly, the dynamic with Sara changes completely. While Sara starts off watching with the same expression as when the others challenged her, it shifts as she realizes she can’t emulate what Mihaly does, with the movements almost like Night Swan’s-dramatic and slower. It comes to a head when Mihaly channels the panda again and visibly knocks Sara back, so she’s unable to push any of the smoke towards them.

Sara’s expression also becomes noticeably softer for the rest of Mihaly’s part, and she doesn’t reassert that dominance/control she had earlier- with dancing or the smoke. See how she looks almost pensive in the photos above/below, especially compared to the earlier parts.

Speaking of the smoke, this is the key part about Night Swan seeing the panda earlier. She knows it exists and how to force it off after the earlier song, and as Sara is incapacitated/distracted, she presumably sends down the smoke that starts attacking Mihaly in Panda form.

This attack is why despite having a chance to get through to Sara, Mihaly still ends up failing as they return to normal. However, they are the only character to be so dynamic in their active corruption. Not only does Mihaly manage to send a signal out to Jack, which was a display of power never seen from them previously, but they also do it as they are actively losing their color and control. Unlike the other dances, Mihaly still moves as they lose control, possibly having the strength to continue to fight had they not realized that Night Swan was attacking alongside Sara.

Although the signal is in the shape of a pawprint, its underlying meaning is more than just a plot device to send Jack on a wild goose chase (pun intended that I couldn’t pass up). With the way it opens to form a window into the location from such a distance, it almost seems to be a step away from a full fledged portal. With the sudden appearance of a new power, it’s also an interesting parallel to Night Swan, who here uses powers to create a unique form of control that wasn’t seen in the previous game and who regularly uses portals with her magic.

Another note is the lights that appear for each of the dancers in the upper left corner during the song as they take on Sara. While Brezziana and Wanderlust’s fade out a few moves before they fall, Mihaly’s still goes strong even as they completely turn grey, as seen the the photos above. This could be a possible indication to them having a more stable power than the other dancers, or a form of magic more comparable/competitive with Night Swan’s. Also to note about the lights: looking on the floor during the song, the diamonds flash 3 colors: hot pink (Night Swan), a deep green (Sara, especially while corrupted- her original outfit but darker), and a teal (the exact same color as Mihaly’s flow energy). Like everything else, this is a stretch, but it could possibly mean that Night Swan’s control and magic background could have stemmed from a pure form of flow like Mihaly practices.

This could also be a factor in why they retain the most of their original outfit in the corrupted design- possibly a form of resistance like they displayed during swan lake or general flow magic? Notice that while they have significant changes to their robe/face/accessories, their feather motifs are much less pronounced than the others, simply appearing as marks on the robe that can be mistaken for stripes, rather than overt feathers like Wanderlust/Sara or Sara/Brezziana’s feather tights. Unlike the others, Mihaly keeps their leggings exactly the same (which were notably lost in the panda form, as mentioned earlier), and interestingly enough, their wraps. I initially thought that Night Swan would have changed that to something like ballet slippers with ribbons, so I think it’s really interesting that they are the only dancer who had any details remain exactly the same, especially one that had unique opportunities to be changed.

Going off of that, since they were the last to turn and have (some?) control over their outfit and (some?) magic that may be similar to Night Swan, I could see them being the first/easiest coach for Jack or someone else to turn back when he (hopefully) takes on the coaches.

One last note is the number of maps per story mode coach at this point. Counting Stronger /Survivor, and Treasure/Lose Yourself (hopefully coming soon after that ending!), that seems to be setting a trend for the other coaches to potentially have an additional map as well. If so, maybe that would be one where Mihaly could individually be freed, or a chance for them to further explore their rapidly developing powers (maybe in a confrontation with Night Swan?? a girl can dream).

And there y’all have it! Thank you for somehow reading to the end!! Happy dancing!!

this took forever oh my god

[bisexualamy]

I see people talk about fanfiction and novels being different mediums a lot, and while I don’t necessarily disagree, I don’t feel like I understand either. In your opinion, what makes them different mediums from each other? What decides that two things are separate mediums like in general? It’s totally cool if you don’t wanna answer this btw, I know it’s kind of a lot

No worries I think that's an interesting question! With any categories, the boundaries on this are going to be fuzzy, but the reason I believe they're different mediums is that fundamentally, on a metatextual level, the languages are different. What do I mean by this? Let's use film as an example, a medium that I'd argue is very obviously a different medium than novels, even if we may not be able to articulate all the reasons why.

What are some attributes of film that differentiate it from novels (another storytelling medium) or paintings (another visual medium)? Films and novels are both storytelling mediums, but films have visual and auditory components. They also mainly consist of storytelling through visual cues and dialogue. Exposition is given visually or in media res by characters speaking. In a novel, your omniscient narrator giving you a few paragraphs of background on your main characters is common, and so expected it probably flies over the reader's head. In a film, a narrator doing the exact same thing for all the main characters often comes off clumsy. It takes you out of the story in a film, where it doesn't in a novel.

Film is also a time-based medium. A film unfolds over time, and you cannot experience the entire film in one moment or glance. That's not true of a painting (at least traditionally). With a painting, you can view the whole painting in one look. Now, you can sit with a painting, pick out details, analyze the craft or ponder it for a long time and watch as new aspects jump out at you. Fundamentally, however, if you wanted to view a whole painting in one look, you can, and it would still make sense. You cannot do that with a film. On the other hand, a painting is typically not an auditory experience. To do so would be an experimental use of the form. In modern film-making, the exact opposite is true. Music, dialogue, and environmental sound, all of these things are essential to how a film tells a story. To not use them would be considered experimental or odd.

These are three different mediums with three different "languages" in how they interact with their audience. They may share parts of their languages, like I said above, but they don't speak the same language. What works well for one medium can come off clumsy or strange in another.

I believe fanfic and novels have sufficiently different languages that they should be considered different mediums. Both of them are short or long form written mediums telling some sort of story. But fanfic's relationship to its source material is such an inherent trait that novels do not have. The relationship doesn't have to be positive (it's often, in fact, argumentative or strained or dismissive), but the relationship exists. Even in AU fanfiction. Even in fics full of OCs.

In canon compliant and even canon divergent fics, this relationship is more obvious. These fics are both conversations with the source material as much as they are stories. They're playing in the author's sandbox, or they're wrecking their sandcastle and building something else. They're saying "I like/dislike what you did with this specific story, and I'm going to show you that by rewriting or expanding it." They take large aspects of the author's story whole cloth: the characters, the setting, the magic system, the tech, etc.

These fanfics often have little exposition at the top because they presume a familiarity with the characters, the world, or both. This alone makes them really different from novels. Creatively and seamlessly integrating exposition, immersing your audience in a new world and convincing them to stay, is a really important aspect of a novel that these fics don't have to contend with. This alone fundamentally changes how you'd structure a story.

For AU fics, both fics in AU settings and AU fics full of OCs, the above still applies. These fics are still a conversation with the source material. Something about the source material compelled an author to flip it and remix it and change it around. That conversation might be "in the source material, these characters suffered, and I don't want them to suffer any longer" or it could be "I felt the story had a vacancy that this OC fills" or it could be "if these characters had the time/awareness/ability to grow closer, they would've fallen in love." These are all direct commentaries on the original work.

An exercise that I believe illustrates this point the best is to try and adapt an AU fanfic to an original work. Try to file the serial numbers off. I've done this with some of my fic, and it just doesn't work. You don't realize how much you presume the audience knows until you have to cater to an audience who knows nothing of the source material. That hilarious joke you wrote? Turns out it's only funny because it's a nod to this character's original characterization. This awesome climatic plot point that ties the whole story together? Turns out in relies on a specific bit of lore, a quirk of the magic system, or an aspect of the character's past history or personality. Now that this is a novel, you have to back-fill all of that exposition. And you can try to do that, but watch how your story gets clunky and bloated. You will have to start viciously killing your darlings, as you realize that your favorite scene is beautiful in a fic, but sounds awkward and out of place in a novel. Soon, you're basically just rewriting the whole thing to fit a different medium.

Many fanfic writers are extremely talented. And much of that talent, that wit, that perfect line that you can't get out of your head, is integrally informed by your knowledge of the source material. The irony falls flat without having read the source books. The relationships suddenly feel shallow when you don't have seasons of backstory to deepen them. You do not realize how much of fanfic writing consists of this back and forth until you go looking for it.

And here's the thing: if your fanfic has a totally AU setting and it consists of completely original characters, I'd argue that's just a novel posted to AO3. If all you need to do is change the names to make it work, that's a novel. This is why Clueless is inspired by Jane Austen's Emma and not an AU fanfic of it. If you've never read Emma, if you went into Clueless not knowing that Emma was the inspiration for it, you'd perfectly understand the movie.

In fanfic, the source material is always present. It can be obviously present with canon compliant fic. It can be antagonistically present with canon divergent or AU fic. And it is still present, floating in the background, with totally AU fic. Ultimately, the changes a fanfic author makes to the source material are, themselves, as integral to the fanfic as the words on the page. It is a dialogue with the source material: what it did well, what it could've done better, what this author believes is the essence of the story, or the world pushed to its limit, that even though we're in space or in a coffee shop or 1920s New York, we're still, on some level talking about the source material.

This is an aspect of fanfic I love that novels do not have. Novels have a lot of other great stuff! I love novels! But while novels are often engaged in a dialogue with their present society or their predecessors in a genre, that conversation is much more nebulous than it is with fanfic. You can read Slaughterhouse-Five or Gravity's Rainbow, and while knowing their contexts helps you understand them on a deeper level, that is unnecessary to their enjoyment. They are fundamentally more standalone works than fanfic will ever be.

This is ultimately why I think comparing fanfic and novels is comparing apples to oranges. They're different mediums. They use different languages. They require different skills and they fill different artistic niches. You might as well be comparing a film to a painting just because they're both visual art.

[aousboom]

in defense of pat

(a completely unnecessary blurb that i just need to type out to help organize my feelings)

i feel like i’ve seen a lot of talk between ep 8 and ep 9 about pat’s actions and how they don’t make sense and how could he be blind to jeng’s feelings etc etc but genuinely i think every decision pat has made recently is so indicative of his character and how he operates

there’s been enough posts explaining the how pat being gobsmacked to learn that jeng is gay and how it changed his whole perspective on their interactions thus far and allows the attraction to jeng that pat had in ep 1 to bubble to the surface again but i think this also informs a lot of pat’s actions in ep

he’s confused now. he’s re-evaluating all the things jeng has done for him and the interactions they had in the light of knowing jeng is queer and what jeng’s treatmemt of him could mean beyond a work lens and i think this flows into the main factor behinds pat’s actions... his insecurities

pat is painfully insecure in both his professional and personal life. in work, we know this stems from him being a fresh graduate who is not confident in his capabilities yet and doesn’t see his own potential. in personal life, we know this probably stems from the way his relationship with put ended... put just up and leaving him w/ no explanation... i can only imagine how much pat agonized over what he did to deserve that (he didn’t and fuck u put!!!!). we see this manifest in the way pat preens over compliments... being told he’s done well or when jeng compliments his ramen. in the same vein, he absolutely deflates when he feelings his not up to standard... like the way he shut down when put dismissed him ramen.

and so now factor jeng liking pat in. jeng who everyone calls perfect both in work and in personal life... the opposite of how pat views himself. jeng is 10 years his senior and is set to inherit a company and could presumably have anyone else in the world... of course pat can’t understand why that someone would be him. his insecurities make it impossible for him to see all the light jeng sees in him. and that’s why he says it makes no sense

his only way to rationalize it is to say that jeng is toying with his feelings as expressed in his talk with jane. but deep down, i think pat KNOWS that jeng is sincere and that’s what makes him even more confused... because he can’t under WHY jeng is so sincere about his feelings towards them. add that in with pat also recognizing his own feelings for jeng and letting them bubble up again and...

you’ve got a explanation for pat’s actions in this episode.

it was hurtful yes and my heart broke for jeng bc we know his perspective and know how much he loves for pat and would do anything to make sure pat is never hurting. but my heart also breaks for pat who is just as confused and broken trying to navigate his feelings and jeng’s feelings for him.

but these steps they’ve been taking to understand each other and their own feelings is going to make it all the more gratifying when they finally both see their feelings truthfully (ep 10 let’s gooo)

RANT OVER

[restlesshush]

The thing about Jack interiority is that it’s a dots joining exercise the vast majority of the time. He’s not written with a coherent arc of his own in mind, rather he’s written to serve the characterisation of the rest of tfw in various ways, and then the way you get to his interiority is by piecing together what has to be true to make all these moments work taken as a whole. This is why Jack’s s13 arc is kind of really disturbing, but by accident – it seems like the writers just didn’t think about things from his pov enough to realise the result of all the pieces put together. The biggest thing here is that when you get to 13x23, the widower arc still makes up the vast majority of Jack’s interactions with Sam and Dean. Apocalypse world means that he doesn’t see them at all between 13x09 and 13x21, and so on top of everything else this means that by the finale, Jack hasn’t had remotely enough positive interactions with Sam and especially Dean for him calling them ‘family’ and being prepared to sacrifice himself for them to come off as particularly ~meaningful or ~moving rather than just painting a very concerning picture of how he views both the concept of family and himself. But this is because none of what happens is really about Jack – he’s just performing a storytelling function. And it does give you a very interesting (if distressing) character! Just not the character the writers presumably intended, and not really with any help from them to get there, because they weren’t thinking from Jack’s point of view at all, they were just writing typical supernatural fare and (as is the point of side characters) using Jack to help them do it.

There is an exception to this though, and that’s Yockey. You don’t have to join the dots with Yockey – he joins them for you, but working with the same dots, and so while the result is still upsetting, it’s purposefully, satisfyingly upsetting. Nihilism and Ouroboros are THEE Jack episodes – between them Yockey very clearly gives you a story of an individual who sees remaining alive and remaining them as less important than being useful, even when this is clearly to the great distress of their loving parent. The conversation between Cas and Jack over the kitchen table at the end of Nihilism makes this sentiment very explicit and this carries neatly through Ouroboros as well, where Jack burns off what remains of his soul to save the rest of tfw directly after having asked what good the powers that are keeping him alive are if he can’t use them to save the people he loves, that it would be “selfish” not to. With this very well executed little arc, Yockey draws on the low self worth and the weight placed on his own usefulness, which – rather than necessarily being the intended takeaway – was just the only way to account for s13 Jack, and uses it purposefully and to great impact in s14.

All of which is sort of to say that I suppose I understand not all that much thought being given to Jack’s actual character by people a lot of the time, given the show only does so incredibly sporadically (and had so little faith in their ability to do it well during the soulless Jack arc, that they felt the need to conjure up Hallucifer 2.0 instead). But the character you get if you actually dig into what makes him tick is a much more interesting one to explore, and also directly laid out for you by Yockey very deftly. You can join the dots for Jack, and it’s worth it.

[heyheydidjaknow]

You are so good at writing L. It’s everything I love to see with him. I think as much as he valued Light for being his intellectual equal he really appreciates ‘normal’ people. He does a lot of work to save people, to protect average life. Near says in the one shot that L told him he doesn’t do his work for justice but as a hobby, regardless tho in the show, and in the spin off L change the worLd, he was willing to risk and then give up his life for people. UGH. I love him so much. He needs someone to make him feel like a person

I dunno if I need to put a spoiler warning here or anything I think this is more an authorial intent warning. Regardless, if you mind authorial intent stuff, beware.

It’s important to keep in mind that he was adopted at 8 years old and then was allowed to be in solitary confinement for years. He’s not close enough to the outside world to relate to it but he’s not socially obtuse. He understands how to operate in normal society at the level an 8-year-old does, and he understands how to interact with people in regards to his work— he can keep up a conversation about things relating to his job reasonably well– but I don’t think he spent enough time socializing– he was probably just a generally weird kid– to be comfortable in society. He does seem to enjoy spending time with people to some extent– he doesn’t seem uncomfortable around the others in the task force and he apparently enjoys concerts and amusement parks– but he isn’t so comfortable with people to know how to make friends past that. He seems unapproachable, stuck in his own head, and typically people don’t talk to people stuck in their own heads. I think there was a point in his life– probably early on– when he was genuinely doing this for the funsies. Eventually, though, if you constantly expose yourself to a bunch of terrible people, have to look into every single one of their actions, you have to do one of two things. You either decide to let the fact that there are thousands of people who commit horrible crimes for stupid reasons get to you, hate the world, go use your intellect to bring the whole world down, and impose your intellectual rule which, realistically, would probably make you no better than the people you’re trying to catch, or decide not to care, to let these terrible crimes become abstract and just view it as a game, realize that in your position you only have so much power, take out what evil people can’t be caught normally because allocation of resources and let it be a hobby. He chose the latter, which was probably better than the alternative, but on the way to committing to that decision he lost some of his humanity. I can’t speak to the external works, but I think that’s why he was so passionate about the Kira case; it’s not just that it was challenging– though that’s probably what he tells himself is the reason– but it’s harder to be distant from the deaths of hundreds as opposed to tens. No matter how inhuman he is, no matter how little he reacts to the gruesome, sadistic people he’s usually tasked with, the impersonal slaughter of hundreds of people who were already doing their time is just a whole other level of inhuman.

I think that’s why he cares so much about this relationship. It’s a reality check. The other people in his life grew up in the same situation– teaching themselves to trivialize human life, to distance themselves, or losing their minds to megalomania and hatred for the world– and can’t sympathize with people. They, in fact, sympathize with them less than L does; Near is not so much using distance as a coping mechanism as much as he is trying to replicate L and Mellow is just being Mellow because they came to the house, presumably, way earlier than L did. Having someone come up to him, a normal person who has an average attachment to humanity, and interact with him is a big deal. He relates to you in a different way than he can relate to Watari or the other kids, because he can relate his personal experiences of giving a shit about humanity to yours and fill in the gaps he hasn’t been able to fill for a decade. This sudden reminder of what people are usually is also why he had that introspective moment, like how you don’t know how much you are starving until you eat. That’s also why he is so apologetic and hesitant to get close to you; after having a chance to realize how different he is from them he doesn’t want to make them like him. His existence is almost inhuman; what kind of horrible person would want to encourage that?

It’s not that you’re the first person to care about him. You’re just the first to identify, without prompting, what he needs emotionally as opposed to what he says he needs.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

In your latest post, you said that Dumbledore MEANT to put Harry in a abusive household. That, or when he found out he did nothing to stop it. Why is that?

You’re going to get a lot of people angry with me. Well, I suppose they’re already angry. Somewhere out there, on the wider internet.

Right, anyway, the evidence of Harry’s abuse is so overwhelming that it seems improbable to me that Dumbledore wasn’t aware of what was happening. More, every interaction he has with not only Harry, but characters in similar circumstances, lends me to believe that in the event that Dumbledore does know he’d take no action.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Scene 1

We start out the entire Harry Potter series with Minerva and Dumbledore waiting in the early dawn for Hagrid’s arrival and to place Harry with the Dursleys. Minerva immediately announces her discomfort with this, 

She specifically says the following:

"You don't mean — you can't mean the people who live here? Dumbledore, you can't. You couldn't find two people who are less like us."

Lily Evans’ relatives are infamous enough such that Minerva McGonagall, who is presumably not as close as her like aged peers (i.e. Sirius, Remus, and Peter) knows about them.

Granted, some of this is anti-muggle sentiment. Minerva isn’t sure that suburban muggles raising a magical child like Harry Potter is a good idea. Nevertheless, she has deep misgivings, and relays them to Dumbledore.

We know from further evidence that Dumbledore is perfectly aware of what Petunia and Vernon are like as well. He gives Harry to the Dursleys anyway.

Dumbledore, for his own reasons, chooses not to listen.

Dumbledore’s Letter to Petunia

Dumbledore writes a letter to Petunia, knowing it is highly necessary, as he gives Harry to the family. The letter is... vaguely threatening but in a very polite Dumbledore way. It pretty much implies “Take Harry, or else, also be nice to your dead sister.”

The point is, Dumbledore is aware that this letter is highly necessary. And then... other things happen.

Dumbledore Sends Hagrid

Dumbledore sends Hagrid to pick Harry up.

Ordinarily, in such circumstances, Minerva is sent to introduce muggleborn children to the Wizarding World. “Perhaps she was busy,” you say, too busy for Harry Potter? Wizard Jesus and the child of perhaps her favorite students who she openly favors throughout the series?

“Perhaps Dumbledore was being nice to Hagrid, and he had an errand to do anyway,” well, it’s all well and good to be nice to Hagrid, but is he really the best guy to introduce anybody to the Wizarding World?

This is Hagrid, the likelihood of him having taken Harry to an exotic pet shop where Harry then gets eaten by the Chupacabra is 95%. The 5% where it didn’t happen is because Hagrid went to the pet shop alone and some, distant, rational part of his brain told him that Harry would want the pretty owl vs. the one-eyed blood sucking rat demon in the cage next to her.

You don’t send Hagrid if you want a child returned to you with all its limbs intact.

So why do you send Hagrid?

When you want someone who’s so painfully oblivious, loyal, and stupid that they could stare a hellscape in the face and wouldn’t even notice.

Hagrid gets a firsthand view of Harry’s living conditions. He learns that Harry’s relatives have been actively blocking Harry’s letters, that they have run across the country to avoid them. He sees the state of Harry’s clothing in comparison to Dudley, how thin Harry is in comparison to Dudley, and the way the family interacts with each other.

Harry’s child abuse is staring Hagrid right in the face.

Minerva would demand that Harry be placed somewhere else, they can find some other means of protecting him.

What does Hagrid do?

He gives Dudley a pig’s tail illegally and proceeds to tell Harry that Dumbledore is the greatest man who ever lived. 

Other Evidence Comes to Light

Other characters start getting pretty big warning signs that all’s not right at the Potters.

Ron and Hermione know the situation is “bad” and that Harry’s relatives “hate magic”. They’re also kids and don’t really understand what this means, the idea of being abused and hated by your guardians is unthinkable to them and Harry doesn’t come out and just say it.

That said, they’ve seen enough that they drop hints to those around them. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley are told about the bars on Harry’s window. Ron was so concerned about Harry in the summer after first year that he steals his father’s car with Fred and George to go pick him up. That is not normal behavior, that is deep concern for your friend.

Despite all of this... nothing happens.

Hermione spends far more time at the Weasleys then Harry ever does. Every summer, he returns to Privet Drive, and it’s likely if Arthur and Molly did have concerns Dumbledore told them off.

Arabella Figg

Arabella has been keeping an eye on Harry for years. She’s noted some very disturbing trends and been witness to years of the Dursleys interacting with Harry Potter.

She passes this information on to Dumbledore.

He knows how bad it is.

Harry Potter

Harry tells Dumbledore he does not wish to remain at the Dursleys, he notes that they don’t like him and he doesn’t like them. Now, he tries to downplay it, but this is a child saying some pretty disturbing things. You don’t brush this off.

Dumbledore does.

Dumbledore Visits the Dursleys

In book 6, Dumbledore visits the Dursleys and sees, in person, how bad it is. However, he shows no surprise, only vague disappointment in Petunia. Tsk, tsk, Petunia, I thought you were better than this.

He offers a few threats and then he and Harry go on their merry way.

Severus Snape

Snape is Dumbledore’s spy who reads Harry’s mind for half a year. Granted, Snape is a bastard who loathes Harry Potter, but he sees evidence of the Dursleys abuse of Harry.

We know, from what he relays to Dumbledore later, that he had at least some concern for Harry and was very disturbed by Dumbledore’s plan to murder him in cold blood due to the horcrux.

I think it’s very likely Severus Snape knew and told Dumbledore that Harry was being abused. I’m sure Albus’ response was, “Bitch, I know, would you like a lemon drop?”

Point being, there is no conceivable way that Albus Dumbledore, even if he was the world’s dumbest man, didn’t know exactly how bad it was. He let’s it happen anyway.

But What About the Blood Wards?

Dumbledore eventually tells Harry that the reason he can’t run away from Privet Drive is because of the blood wards created by his mother. They can only be applied if he lives with blood relatives and protect the Dursley house as long as Harry considers it home.

Now, this is a bit suspect given that Harry really considers Hogwarts his home, Privet Drive is just that hell hole he has to go back to every summer. Even the Burrow is more his home than Privet Drive so... That doesn’t sound right.

More, though, there are other means of protection.

There’s the Fidelius which Dumbledore casts on Sirius’ house in book 5. Given that, Harry really could have lived with Sirius (well, Sirius is not in a good place to have a kid around and that would be a disaster and a half). Point being, Harry could be raised elsewhere and there are wards that could protect him.

More, Voldemort and the Death Eaters are out of commission for thirteen years. Indeed, we see Dumbledore up Harry’s security detail by secretly assigning the Order to tail him after fourth year.

So, for a very long time, it’s not about Harry’s protection and when it does become that we see Dumbledore make significant changes.

So, what could it be?

Well, let’s look at Dumbledore’s other actions. Dumbledore prevents Harry from becoming prefect because “he thought it would go to his head”. Which, Harry should absolutely not be made prefect at all, and Ron’s a laughable candidate too but...

To me that’s very telling.

I hate to say this, but this is Dumbledore, but I think he has a very similar reasoning behind Harry going to the Dursleys.

He doesn’t want Harry to be corrupted by the Boy Who Lived persona. He wants him in a certain state of mind when he enters into the wizarding world and... Frankly, he wants him vulnerable. Dumbledore, in time, will need to either murder this boy or have him kill himself. If Harry has a halfway decent guardian, that task becomes a hell of a lot harder.

Harry has to love the wizarding world so much, trust Dumbledore so much, that these things are worth dying for.

You Mentioned Something About Dumbledore’s Other Actions?

Dumbledore has no sympathy for victims of child abuse.

Tom Riddle, an impoverished orphan loathed by those in his orphanage, he thinks is the very devil and sends him back into the Blitz with a smile and a wave. Enjoy the bombs, Tom, hope you die.

Severus Snape, the half blood child of an abusive muggle father and absentee mother, who is nearly murdered by Sirius Black via Remus Lupin, is told to shut the fuck up and sit down before he ruins the lives of his betters.

Dumbledore has a very bad track record with this and, well, Harry Potter is not an exception.

To be fair, I think the wizarding world has not concept of CPS or even child abuse. There’s no hint of a foster system, you go to the closest relative of the godparents. So, I think to them, you’re stuck with whoever you’re stuck with and if your uncle rapes you then it sucks to be you.

[kromabelle-art]

Whumptober 2022: Luken Roth

OC: Luken Roth

prompts used: no.1 “this wasn’t supposed to happen, no.4 waking up disoriented, no.7 silent panic attack, no.15 emotional damage, no.20 it’s been a long day, no.21 “you’re safe now”, no.28 anger born of worry, alt.7 protective, alt.8 made to watch, alt.15 tears

Seeing

The voice of his teacher faded into the background as Luken rested his head on his desk. He really needed to understand these equations, but his eyelids were heavy, and in no time at all, the world around him dissolved completely. A flash of white, and suddenly he was awake. But he wasn’t in the classroom. He wasn’t in school at all. Disoriented, Luken looked around, only to realize he was in the thick of the woods outside town, leaning up against a tree. It was happening again. Great.

Ever since he got his powers, Luken saw things. Visions of the past, premonitions, bits of truth. More truths when he opened his mind up to the possibilities. And then his power grew. Sometimes he wouldn’t just see things unfold, he’d be in it. Able to interact with the world he saw. It wasn’t long before he figured out what was really happening. He was travelling timelines. Seeing parallel worlds where someone made a decision differently, and watching as the consequences played out. Luken was glad to have these powers. If he could see how things went wrong in other worlds, maybe he’d be able to steer his own timeline in the right direction. But it wasn’t easy.

“I’m serious, Adrian!” A voice came from his left, shouting through the trees. “If you don’t stop following me, I will put you in a coma.”

That was Lilika’s voice. Not usually an unwelcome thing to hear, but bad because she would absolutely make good on her threat.

“Maybe if you stopped plotting behind everyone’s back, I would,” Adrian retorted. It sounded like they were getting closer.

“I haven’t done anything wrong!” she yelled back.

“Lilika?” he called out to her, hoping to prevent the argument from inevitably escalating.

“Luken?” There was a rustle of leaves, and Lilika rounded into view. She looked at him with an unreadable expression. “Were you waiting here for me?”

“Maybe,” he responded. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed probable. Lilika tilted her head, studying him. She looked so knowing sometimes, and Luken had no idea how she pulled it off. He was supposed to be the one with powers over knowledge and the like. Then again, he didn’t know the extent over her own powers.

Adrian came into view behind her, scowling when Luken made eye contact with him. No doubt, he was upset that he was suddenly outnumbered. Luken stared him down coldly for a few more moments before he finally caved and walked away with a scoff. Lilika was still watching Luken. Her hazel-green eyes locked with his own.

“What are you up to?” he asked softly.

“I might’ve found something really good. It could be a game-changer. I had thought about sharing it with the others but…”

“I get it. What is the something? Where is it?”

“It’s in Ireland. There’s a portal in the mountains that’ll take us there.” She paused. “That is if you’re coming with?”

“Of course.”

He followed her deeper into the woods until they reached the mountains. It was hours of hiking, but he didn’t really mind it by her side. And it helped when she used her powers to lift the exhaustion off his shoulders.

“We’re here.” She stopped them in front of a rockface with a large fissure running through it.

“This is the portal?”

Lilika looked back at him, then reached her hand into the fissure. The air in the gap shimmered and warped and her hand disappeared completely. She smiled at him, then stepped through and vanished. Luken followed without hesitation.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust as he stepped out into what appeared to be the ruins of a small village, long forgotten. This was, presumably, Ireland. Lush green everywhere, twisty trees, and rolling hills. Lilika was already walking off toward a small house that was mostly rubble. But peculiarly, the front door and frame were whole. She looked back at him, her hand hesitating on the doorknob.

“This should be it.” She said to him.

“The door?”

She shook her head. “What’s behind it.”

Luken looked at it, trying to use his powers to see what was past it. But no matter how hard he tried, his vision was blocked. Feeling uncertain, he stepped up next to his friend anyway. She turned the handle.

The old wooden door creaked open slowly, revealing behind it, a huge space beyond. A corridor sized for giants, bright, gleaming white. The walls stretched up into pure whiteness far above. At the end was an archway, and something in the room beyond. He followed her through the doorway, feeling nervous. Their footsteps echoed through the chamber as they crossed it. The more time they spent there, the more unnerved Luken felt. As they got closer, he looked carefully at the object past the arch. It was huge, hovering, and made of cubes. Like two large, blocky crosses intersecting each other, taller than they were wide. When they finally reached the archway, he realized there were words written on the stone above.

“Proceed if the venture suits you…” Lilika read out. “Well, yeah. I think it does.”

“Lilika…” he started, and she turned to him. “What is this thing supposed to do?”

“From what I heard,” she responded, sounding almost uncertain, “it grants us all the knowledge and understanding of our own domains, in relationship to the universe at large.”

“What does that mean?”

“If I’m right, it should unlock the full potential of our powers. I’d like to see if that’s true.” She turned and took another step, and Luken was about to follow, but they both noticed something at the same time. Another message in the stone, smaller, much closer to eye level, and clearly done by hand. Scratched right into the marble by some predecessor, the words: KNOWLEDGE DAMNS.

“Lilika, are you sure about this?”

“Your domain is knowledge. Do you feel damned?”

He said nothing. No matter how much he thought about it, his answer was always going to be a no. Even when his visions and his knowledge felt like a curse, he knew he needed it. If not to benefit him, then maybe to help her. She didn’t look back as she approached the strange floating shape, and reached out to it. But as soon as she touched it, everything changed.

The three-dimensional cross suddenly folded and started rapidly changing size and shape in midair. Lilika was thrown backward through the air by some unseen source, hitting the marble with a sickening crack. Luken rushed to her side immediately, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw she was still alive. But that relief didn’t last long. Her spine didn’t seem to be at the right angle, her gaze was distant and unfocused, and when he looked closely, he realized he could see reflections in her eyes of things that weren’t there. They flashed by so fast, he couldn’t get a read on a single thing. Just colors and shapes flickering by. This went on for a long time. The flashing images and unresponsiveness just didn’t seem to end. All he could do was hold her hand throughout it all.

And then, her eyes went back to normal for the smallest of moments before turning a bright, unnatural, yellow-green, with cat-eye slits that narrowed immediately. He’d seen her eyes like this before—they looked like this nearly every time she used her powers. Her spine snapped back into place as if it was never damaged. She sat up abruptly before turning away from Luken and puking on the gleaming white floor.

“Luken?” her voice was faint, but desperate.

“I’m right here.”

She turned to face him, and Luken startled at the sight of tears in her eyes. “I need your help.”

“What is it? What happened?”

She sniffled. “I saw the entirety of my domain in relation to the whole universe. Life. I saw the entire life of the universe. I saw everything.”

“It’s okay, you’re safe now. I’ve got you.” He held her close but she shook her head.

“It’s all still up there, in my head. Get it out. Please.”

Luken hesitated. He wanted so badly to help her, but he hadn’t practiced his powers over the mind that much. He could do it; he could erase the memories from her mind, theoretically. But if he fucked up, he could do a lot more damage than good.

“Luken, please.”

He took a deep breath, and placed his hand on her forehead. Closing his eyes, he could see bits and pieces of what she saw. The most beautiful moments alongside the most horrible. Letting out his breath slowly, he willed all the burdensome knowledge away. Lilika sighed.

“Thank you,” she murmured, but when she opened her eyes, they were still unnervingly yellow-green.

“Lilika, your eyes…”

She sighed again. “I think that thing did exactly what I wanted it to. It opened my powers completely. But… I think it opened that door permanently.”

“Meaning?”

She didn’t respond.

Luken was able to get her home safely after that, and they didn’t really bring it up afterwards. Days turned into months, and things got worse in their group. People kept taking sides, Adrian kept blaming things on Lilika. No one seemed happy at her new power-up. The worst was when Adrian and Lilika got in a bad enough fight that he shot a beam of pure death energy at her. Luken’s heart dropped, but Lilika seemed completely unaffected.

“Alright,” she said one day, “clearly, I’m not wanted here. I’ll just go.”

Lilika stormed off, and Luken chased after her, panicking. “That’s not true! I want you here!”

She whirled around. “It doesn’t matter! I mean, it does, but… I don’t belong here anymore, Luken. I’m sorry.”

“This is because of that thing you messed with that day, isn’t it?” Luken yelled, unable to keep it in anymore. “You’re too reckless, Lilika! All the signs were there that it was a bad idea, but you did it anyway.”

He felt bad for snapping, especially when she looked away, her eyes watering. But he was terrified to lose her.

“Luken,” she said softly, not looking at him. “I think I’m immortal.”

“What?”

“That thing. It forced the door to my powers wide open and I can’t close it. My domain is life, Luken. It makes sense.” She looked back up at him, clearly exhausted. “I’m not going to stick around and stay the same while you all grow old and die. I have to go.”

“Lilika…”

She shook her head and turned away. “I’ll see you at the end of the world.”

And then she was gone.

It took Luken hours to get to sleep that night. But when he did, he found himself in another vision. He was standing on dark cobblestone, bits of rubble around him. The cobblestone eventually ended, dropping off suddenly like a floating island. And all around, on every side, nothing but void. He heard something behind him, like humming. Turning around, he saw there was a person sitting cross-legged at the center of this island. The humming stopped, and the figure twisted to look at him.

“You came.” It was Lilika sitting there, looking just the same as he’d seen her earlier, and her eyes still yellow-green. She smiled at him. “I was getting worried.”

He sat down beside her, and before long at all, her head was on his shoulder.

“Lilika, where are we?”

“The end of the world. Just like I said.” Her voice was soft. Peaceful.

“This is what’s left of the universe?”

She nodded. “I’m the only reason there’s this much left, actually. But not for too much longer.”

“What do you mean?”

She didn’t answer, instead going back to humming. It sounded like a lullaby. After a while, she moved to lay down, her head in his lap, and he let her. She gazed out pensively at the void around them. There was nothing in the reflection of her eyes at all. Luken stroked her hair, not knowing what else to do. It felt like they stayed like that for hours, the disc of cobblestone around them slowly eroding and getting smaller, but Luken didn’t mind. He just wanted to keep holding her.

Eventually, there was barely enough world left for them both to sit on. The void was creeping closer and closer to their feet. Lilika looked up at him. Her eyes faded back to their normal, human, hazel-green. Her pupils became round again. He could see the reflection of his own face in her eyes, and she smiled.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too.”

And then she closed her eyes, and went still. Tears started streaming down his face as he held her. But her body dissolved in seconds, and Luken watched as his own body became ghostly and transparent. The stone beneath him crumbled into nothing and he fell through the inky black. There was a white flash.

Luken woke with a start in the middle of his calculus classroom. The teacher was still droning on and someone was humming a lullaby next to him. He looked up and made eye contact with Lilika.

“Luken?” she whispered softly. “Are you alright?”

He noticed then; he was still crying. The classroom fell silent as everyone else seemed to notice. Luken wiped the tears away quickly, still reeling from what he just witnessed.

“Luken?” the teacher was addressing him now.

He stood up abruptly, all eyes on him, and grabbed his backpack. “I have to go.”

“Are you feeling sick?” the teacher tried to ask, but Luken was already gone, sprinting down the hallway.

[blockmengobrr]

Been thinking about how c!Techno and c!Quackity are both narrative and character foils to each other. I have no idea of how much of this was intentional on the part of the creators, but MAN are these two opposites in a lot of really important thematic ways. Here’s a list!

Techno’s character was initially isolated and incredibly paranoid towards his presumed allies at the beginning of his story, but gradually learned the value of having friends who he can trust. On the other hand, Quackity’s character used to be surrounded by allies and friends (and husbands?) alike but became more and more isolated with every tragedy in his life, to the point where he flat out states that “you can’t trust anyone”. After losing everything time and time again, Quackity has become incredibly paranoid and distrusting of even the people he outright recruited for his country.

Strengths & weaknesses: Techno’s greatest strength is his fighting prowess, planning, and physical intimidation. However, his character is socially awkward and has a hard time convincing people of his ideals and getting them “on his side”. Quackity is the polar opposite — while he is terrible at fighting and doesn’t know much about battle strategy, his greatest strength comes from his high emotional intelligence and social skills. He understands what motivates other people, and is skilled at using this information to manipulate them. Additionally, he is great at connecting with others and has the charisma to organize people in favor of a cause.

Values: Techno has always been deadset in his belief of anarchy and despise of institutional tyranny (government). He believes that governments bring nothing but unnecessary suffering and conflict. His ideal world would be stateless, where everyone has full autonomy over their actions, rather than basing them off of loyalty to (or fear of) a country. Quackity, again, is the exact opposite. He believes that a political hierarchy is instrumental to providing safety and security for those who do not have the strength to do so for themselves, and is necessary for punishing those who have done injustice (the Hit List). Rather than focusing on individualism, Quackity prioritizes creating a legacy and creating something greater than himself.

Over/under estimation: People overestimate Techno to the point where they view him as a force of nature, or a weapon, rather than a person. Most of the server inhabitants are incredibly fearful of him, even when he doesn’t want to be feared. Quackity, on the other hand, is consistently underestimated. Practically nobody sees him as a real threat, which in recent arcs, has shown to be their downfall (the egg, the Las Nevadas crew that were manipulated, etc).

The Syndicate vs. Las Nevadas: These two organizations are just such opposites, wow! While both can act as their characters reaching out for collaboration in supporting their ideals, there are some key differences. The Syndicate is basically founded off of the concept that no member is obliged to do anything (other than not reveal that they are in the Syndicate). It is Techno’s passion project where he can bond with people that share his ideals, and the members are all people he has formed a genuine friendship with. Essentially, they are a group that wants to promote anarchism across the server (but secretly I guess?). Las Nevadas will punish any of its residents that step out of line, and at the end of the day, is Quackity’s project to exploit and manipulate people to gain maximum profit (and therefore power and safety). Unlike the syndicate, Las Nevadas very much does NOT want to expand serverwide (at least at the moment) out of fear of danger from other factions of the server. The citizens of Las Nevadas have all been coerced by a very paranoid Quackity into joining, and they definitely don’t have healthy relationships with each other.

Planning (similarity): They both prefer to plan things carefully rather than rush in (unlike characters like c!Tommy). I know fanon Techno is sometimes portrayed as exclusively reliant off of brute strength, but the REASON why canon Techno is so overpowered is mostly due to his preparation and strategy. He never joins a fight unless he: a. Can plan out a strategy to outsmart his opponent and/or b. Has items and gear that completely outclass his opponent(s). The reason why he executed Tubbo wasn’t out of malice, but out of being overly cautious of an opponent who’s strength he hadn’t gauged yet (the whole purpose of him attending the festival was information gathering, he had no idea of what Manburg’s forces were capable of). Quackity is also a planner, however his greatest strength is through planning how he interacts with people, predicting their behavior, etc. although he is capable of planning battles. He is clever and adaptive. Some examples of this are his pooling his votes with Schlatt’s when he realized he likely couldn’t win on his own, or how the butcher army had a pretty high chance of working if it weren’t for c!Dream, how he coordinated the surprise attack on the egg at the banquet, or just literally All Of Las Nevadas.

Anyway if you got to this point, thanks for reading! If these two aren’t “worsties”, then I don’t know who is.

[olderthannetfic]

Not super well-informed about the Ellis thing beyond her Mask Off video and understanding that she’s decided to make an understandably permanent exit for mental health reasons. However something that struck me as a bit… unusual around the same time was her response to a situation happening with another youtuber in adjacent circles.

For context: the creator (plus a large team) collaborated with another youtuber who it turned out had released a transphobic/pro-TERF tumblr post and video about 5 years ago (and having read the wayback archived version of their post, it wasn’t a mis-contextualisation, the last half was quite explicitly ‘phobic) BUT who then independently took down/ unlisted that content a few years later, and was since allowed into a creator community that included trans members/ allies. The video owner decided to go ahead with posting so as not to waste the time and expense of the rest of the production team, went and spoke to their collaborator to check whether they still held the opinions expressed in the deleted posts (to which the answer seems to be “mostly no but it’s complicated”) AND decided to donate over the video’s lifetime projected ad-rev to vetted trans-supportive charities as an added gesture.

Despite this, Ellis still tweeted at them that it wasn’t enough and joined voices insisting that they take the video down, publicly apologise and disavow the other youtuber. Other community members are now claiming that this was the last straw that resulted in her decision to quit. 1/3

Now, it’s quite possible that Ellis has had more direct interaction with the other creator and good reason to believe they still hold pro-TERF beliefs, but if she’s making that claim based on the same years-old, now-deleted content as everyone else… I don’t know, it just struck me as odd given that Ellis has publicly spoken against the practice of digging through old content in search of ignorant/offensive work in service of “cancelling” and harassing people when it affected her, and presumably understands that spontaneously calling attention to years-old prior transgressions in a public apology/decryment is more likely to just invite an unforgiving harassment shitstorm than choosing to quietly deplatform those views and make the sensible decision to keep their ignorant mouth shut in the future. (Especially since Ellis herself did not make a major public post about her decision to depart, keeping it purely for her paid supporters). Like I said, I may have a wildly incomplete picture and be missing important context but the contradiction that seemed to be there in what I saw didn’t really sit right with me. 2/3

But it makes me a little worried that the “progressive” culture of twitter has possibly become so unforgiving of past behaviour that we could end up in a situation where people who have since deradicalized and are trying to do better are met with such hostility for EVER having associated with those ideas that it could drive them right back into the “supportive” arms of the people who radicalized them to begin with. (Similar to how the Jehova Witnesses apparently know that most doorknockers are going to get a face-full of abuse and choose to let them experience this in order to reinforce their rhetoric that the world outside their circle is hostile and dangerous. Except the Left are doing it to our sodding selves, knocking down people for minor perceived transgressions and refusing to let them grow past older ignorance/hatefulness, leaving them perfectly primed for some friendly-faced Nazi to stroll in like “Poor darling, they’re so mean aren’t they? You can’t win, you can’t escape your past, you can never satisfy them. Look at how wrong and hypocritical they are. Come with me, I’ll listen.”) 3/3

It's not that odd, just massively hypocritical.

[ailuronymy]

Thoughts on the new discourse? Warrior cats naming conventions and rank names being straight up stolen from native American people? So many people seem to be... Straight up leaving the Fandom or changing all of their fan content and it feels very performative and, people not actually thinking critically and just being scared of getting "cancelled"? I feel like your opinions on these matters are very informed and well written so I wanted to ask given that this blog main theme is, well, warrior cat naming system and that seems to be the main issue of the new discourse.

This is probably going to get long, since there's sort of a lot to say about it in order to talk about this whole thing fairly and constructively, because from what I’ve seen there’s a lot of hyperbole happening, and panicking, and disavowing this series and fandom, and so on, like you say, and also some people genuinely trying to have complex meaningful conversations about racism in xenofiction, and also probably some bad faith actors in the mix--as well as some just... stupid actors. Kind of inevitably what happens when two equally bad platforms for having nuanced discussions--i.e., twitter and tumblr--run headlong into each other, in a fandom space with a majority demographic of basically kids and highly anxious, pretty online teens. I don’t mean that as a criticism of fans or their desire to be liked by peers and “correct” about opinions, it’s just the social landscape of Warriors and I think it’s worth pointing out from the start.  

If I’m totally honest with you, if not for this ask, I wouldn’t actually be commenting on it at all, because none of this is going to impact this blog or change how I run it in any way. But since you’ve asked and frankly I do feel some responsibility to try to disentangle things a little for everyone stressed and confused at the moment, because I know a lot of people look to this blog for guidance of all sorts, I’m going to talk about what I think has happened here, and how to navigate the situation in a reasonable way. 

Quick recap for anyone blissfully unaware: from what I understand, this post (migrated over from a presumably bigger twitter thread) has got a lot of people very worried about Warriors being a racist and appropriative series, and now are trying to figure out what ethically to do about this revelation. The thing I found most interesting about this screenshotted conversation is that it makes a lot of bold claims, but misses some pretty surprising details (in my opinion). If you do look critically at what is being said, here’s a few things to notice--crucially, there are two people talking. 

Person 1 says that a lot of animal fantasy fiction + xenofiction (fiction about non-human/”other” beings, such as animals) is frequently built upon stereotypes of First Nations and Indigenous people, and/or appropriates elements of Indigenous culture and tradition as basically set dressing for “strange” and “alien” races/species etc., and this is a racist, deeply othering, and inappropriate practice. This person is right. 

I’ve spent years researching in this field specifically, so I feel pretty confident in vouching (for whatever that’s worth) that this person is absolutely right in making this point. Not only is it frequently in animal fiction/xenofiction, but it’s insidious, which means often it’s hard to notice when it’s happening--unless you know what you’re looking for, or you are personally familiar with the details or tropes that are being appropriated. Because of the nature of racism, white and other non-First Nations people don’t always recognise this trend within texts--even texts they’re creating--but it’s important for us all, and especially white people, to be more aware, because it’s not actually First Nations’ people’s responsibility to be the sole critics of this tradition of theft and misuse. Appropriation by non-Indigenous people is in fact the problem, which means non-Indigenous people learning and changing is the solution. 

Person 1 offers Warriors as a popular example of a work that has this problem. Notably, this person hasn’t given an example of how Warriors is culpable (at least in this screenshot and I haven’t found the thread itself, because the screenshot is what’s causing this conversation), only that it’s an example of a work that has these problems. And once again, this person is correct. We’ll look at that more in a moment.

Person 2 (three tweets below the first) offers, by comparison, several more specious insights. Firstly, it’s really, really not the only time anyone’s ever talked about this, academically + creatively or in the Warriors fandom specifically, and so that reveals somewhat this person’s previous engagement in the space they’re talking into re: this topic. In other words, this person doesn’t know what has already been said or what is being talked about. Secondly, this person explicitly states that they “[don’t know] much about warrior cats specifically but from what I see it just screams appropriation,” which as a statement I think says something crucial re: the critical lens this person has applied + the amount of forethought and depth of analysis of their criticism of this particular series. 

I’m not saying that using twitter to talk about your personal feelings requires you to research everything you talk about before you shoot your mouth off. However, I personally don’t go into a conversation about a topic I don’t know anything about except a cursory glance to offer bold and scathing criticisms based on what it “just screams” to me. By their own admission, this person isn’t really offering good faith, thoughtful criticism of the series, in line with Person 1′s tweet. Instead, Person 2 is talking pretty condescendingly and emphatically about--as the kids say--the vibes they get from the series, and I’m afraid that just doesn’t hold up well in this court. 

So now that there’s Person 1 (i.e., very reasonable, important, interesting criticism) and Person 2 (i.e., impassioned but completely vibes-based opinion from someone who hasn’t read the books) separated, we can see there’s actually several things happening in this brief snapshot, and some of them aren’t super congruent with each other. 

Person 1 didn’t say “don’t read bad books,” or that you’re a bad person for being a fan of stories that are guilty of this. They suggested people should recognise the ways xenofiction uses Indigenous people and their culture inappropriately and often for profit. My understanding of this tweet is someone offering an insight that might not have occurred to many people, but that is valuable and important to consider going forward in how they view, engage with, and create xenofiction media.

Person 2 uses high modality, evocative language that appeals to the emotions. That’s not a criticism of this person: they’re allowed to talk in whatever tone they want, and to express their personal feelings and opinions. However, rhetorically, this person is using this specific language--consciously or subconsciously--to incense their audience--i.e., you. Are you feeling called to action? What action do you feel called to when you rea their words, despite the fact their claims are not based in their own actual analysis of or engagement with the text? It’s, by their own admission, not analysis at all. Everything they evoke is purely in the name of “not good” vibes. 

Earlier I mentioned that Person 1 is correct that Warriors is absolutely guilty of appropriation of First Nations and Indigenous people and culture. I also mentioned that they didn’t specify how. That’s because I think the most egregious example is in fact the tribe, which in many ways plays into the exact kind of stereotyping and appropriation of First Nations Americans that Person 1 mentions, and not the clans, contrary to Person 2′s suggestion. For instance, in addition to the very loaded name of “tribe”, there’s a lot of racist tropes present in how that group of cats is introduced and how the clan cats interact with them, as well as the more North American-inspired scenery of their home. It’s very blatant as far as racism in this series. 

When it comes to the clans themselves, though, I think it’s muddier and harder to draw clear distinctions of what is directly appropriative, what is coincidentally and superficially reminiscent, and what is not related at all. Part of this difficulty in drawing hard lines comes from the fact that, on a personal level, it actually doesn’t matter: if a First Nations person reads a story and feel it is appropriative or inappropriate, it’s not actually anyone’s place to “correct” them on their reading of the text. Our experiences are unique and informed by our perspectives and values, and no group of people are a monolith, which means within community, there will always be disagreement and differenting points of view. There is no one single truth or opinion, which means that First Nations people even in the same family might have very different feelings about the same text and very different perspectives on how respectful, or not, it might be. 

I’m saying this because something that gets said very often when conversations of racism and similar oppressive systems present/perpetuated in texts comes up, people frequently say: “listen to x voices.” It is excellent advice. However, the less pithy but equally valuable follow-up advice is: “listen to the voices of many people of x group, gather information and perspective, and then ultimately use your own judgement to make an informed opinion for yourself.” It means that you are responsible for you. The insight you can gain by listening to people who know topics and experiences far better than you do is truly invaluable, but if your approach to the world is simply to parrot the first voice, or loudest voice, or angriest voice you come across, you will not really learn anything or be able to develop your own understanding and you certainly won’t be making well-informed judgements. 

In other words, one incomplete tweet thread from two people who are each bringing quite different topics and modes of conversation (or perhaps gripes, in Person 2′s case) to the table is not really enough to go off re: making a decision to leave a fandom, in my opinion. In fact, I think in responding to anything difficult, complex, or problematic (which doesn’t mean what popular adage bandies it about to mean) by trying to distance yourself, or cleanse of it, will ultimately harm you and will not do you any good as a person. It is better, in my opinion, to enter into complex relationships with the world and media and other people in an informed, aware way and with a willingness to learn and sometimes to make mistakes and be wrong, rather than shy away from potential conflict or fear that interacting with a text will somehow taint you or define your morality in absolutes. 

So. Does Warriors have racist and appropriative elements, tropes, and issues in the series? Yes, of course it does, it’s a book-packaged series produced by corporation HarperCollins and written by a handful of white British women and their myriad ghostwriters. Racism is just one part of the picture. The books are frequently also ableist, sexist, and homophobic (or heteronormative, depending how you want to slice it, I guess), just to name some of the most evident problems. 

But does the presence of these issues mean it’s contaminated and shouldn’t be touched? Personally, I don’t think so. Given the nature of existing the world, it’s not possible to find perfect media that is free of any kind of bias, prejudice, or even just ideas or topics or concepts that are challenging or uncomfortable. I think it’s more meaningful to choose to engage with these elements, discuss them, criticise them, learn from them, and acknowledge also that imperfection is the ultimate destiny of all of us, especially creators.

I’m not saying that as a pass, like, “oh enjoy your media willy-nilly, nothing matters, do what you want, think about no-one else ever because we’re all flawed beings,” but rather that it’s important not to look away from the problems in the things we enjoy, rather than cut off all contact and enjoyment when we realise the problems. That doesn’t mean you have to only criticise and always be talking about how bad a thing you like is either, publicly admonishing yourself or the text, because that’s also not a constructive way to engage with media. 

As I said, there’s a lot to say here, and believe it or not, this is honestly the shortest version I could manage. There’s always more to say and plenty I haven’t talked about, but pretty much tl;dr: 

I don’t find Person 2′s commentary particularly compelling, personally, because I think it’s a little broad and a little specious in its conclusions and evidence, and I also suspect that this person is speaking more from their feelings than from a genuine desire to educate or meaningfully criticise, unlike Person 1. That’s not to say Warriors isn’t frequently racist and guilty of the issues Person 1 is discussing, because it is, but I don’t think this tweet thread is a great source of insight into the ongoing history of this problem in xenofiction, or Warriors specifically, on its own. I would recommend exploring further afield to learn more from a variety of sources and form your own opinions. I hope this helps. 

[thecat-inthehat]

I’m trans. And that affects how I play and interact with XIV. 

I always hesitate to talk about my trans-ness, or trans characters, and I usually feel weird about it when I do, or that I’m somehow indulging in a way. I always feel like I never have anything important to say, or that I’m being a whiny entitled brat about it, or that no one cares. So I think I’ll try and talk a little about it.

I’ve seen some really good trans wols or adventurers, and it makes me really happy to witness, seeing more people Like Me out in the world. It’s not often that I feel lonely being trans, but it really does lift my heart to see others around and enjoying the world that love.

That being said, XIV fandom, and fandom as a whole, still isn’t that kind to trans “headcanons” about canon characters. Fandom’s been pretty okay about trans WoLs, though the erp’ers in the Quicksand have a serious problem with their transphobic ‘futa’ or ‘femboy’ shit. I don’t have Helisent’s gender in her search info, because I don’t want her to be called slurs in game while I’m just trying to do my damn roulettes. More often than not though, it’s the little comments here and there, or worse, the indifference. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen rare art or fic for trans xiv characters, only to have comments about how “that character is cis” or “is this a girl/boy version of x?” Those comments hurt, and those comments are transphobic. (Genderbends are their own post, but by and large they are transphobic as well.)

I say “headcanons” because there’s very little textual evidence that any particular character is cis. It’s just assumed to be that way, that cis is the default, and people thinking that a particular character is trans is a headcanon. Sometimes adding trans!(character) can be ... othering. I understand that sometimes people use those tags as a flagship, a way of saying “hey, it’s safe over here, come join us”, and I appreciate those. But sometimes it’s just exhausting to deal with the idea that cis is always the default, nevermind the fact that there’s sometimes mean comments about “but that character isn’t trans”. Damn it, we don’t really have evidence for one or the other a lot of the time, we only see that character’s gender presentation. 

And sure, you can say that that’s largely because XIV is built and developed around the idea that Eorzea operates on the gender binary -- it’s not exactly pushing the boundaries on gender, or made by openly trans or queer people. While I’m sure that there are trans or queer people that work on XIV, the goal of XIV isn’t to be “Eorzea trans adventure”. I get that. Most of the media I consume is made under the assumption that the fictional world is cis, and I’m not surprised that the characters therein are presumed to be cis. I understand the reasons why it is the way that it is. 

Fiction, and by and large fandom, is a transformative experience. The Devs for XIV have gone on record saying that they keep a lot of things ambiguous to let players have fun, especially in regards to shipping, or the timeline. That should, and does, extend to trans or cis headcanons about characters or how you interact with them. I’m not saying you have to go out and view particular characters as trans (though that would be nice), more ... be mindful of the fact that everyone experiences the game differently, and that cis isn’t the default setting, just a common one.

I guess I don’t really have a point here, just some thoughts that have been knocking around in my head, especially after seeing some unintentionally cruel and transphobic comments on friend’s art. So just... I dunno, be kind. Think critically about a trans “headcanon”, and what it might mean to someone, or how it might influence a character’s arc, or the way they interact with the world. Yeah, there’s some real bad fetishization out there with regards to trans headcanons, but that’s not really what I’m talking about here. Just keep an eye out, and look at things with an open mind.

Anyways, Ardbert’s trans. Lucia is too. So is Minfilia. Thancred is “I’m a man (I think???)”. Alphinaud is trans, and I have the most evidence for that one. 

Sadu’s canonically genderfluid -- her last three lives were male. Urianger is canonically gender non-conforming, and I’m willing to bet that he’s got some interesting ideas about gender. All the Ascians have the ability to mold and shape the flesh of their host, so in what world would they be cis? 

Just... think about it, I guess. I’m happy to talk about it if anyone’s curious. 

[phoenixyfriend]

I never understood the problem of aging up characters to ship.

I understand why it could be squicky.

If someone tried to show me erotic fanart of, say, aged-up Powerpuff Girls, I wouldn't be able to process it without being grossed out because I still mentally view them as kindergarten age. I don't engage with regular fandom enough for my mind to have a conceptualization of them as adults.

Meanwhile, characters from, say, Naruto? I grew up with those characters, to some extent, and their epilogue features their adult selves. My mind has no trouble conceptualizing them as adults because my mind still goes "these characters are my age" like they did when I was sixteen(?) and first getting into the series, because in Shippuden, they were, and in all the fanworks, they were. As I got older, I focused on different kinds of fanfic, and preferred college AUs over high school AUs, and my mental image of the characters shifted, so even though I'd technically been introduced to these characters as twelve-year-olds.

EDIT: this is going under a cut because it's barely coherent.

But if you try to give me smut about Lucy Pevensie or Yachiru Kusajishi or something, I'll give you a "no thank you" and back out even if they're aged up, because my mind can't process that.

Also like.

Nobody has a static sense of self. People don't stop reading Anidala fic because we happened to first meet them as a 9yo and 14yo respectively. If TCW Anakin traveled back in time and met 14yo Padme again, it would be gross for him to hit on her, and he'd recognize that, but the reverse is also true; if TCW Anakin time-jumped to, say, a point where he's the same age as Jango... it would not be gross, at least in terms of age, for them to hit on each other, even if original timeline Jango was over twice Anakin's age at Geonosis. The fact that we once knew Anakin as a child, or that he was a child when Jango was not, isn't really relevant, because they never really met and had no preexisting relationship when they had different ages. Just knowing a person used to be a child, especially when you do know them as an adult (Ahsoka is an adult in Rebels and the Mandalorian, so it's not even really aging-up at that point, just time travel), doesn't mean they're forever off-limits to the brain for shipping.

Knowing that a character exists at multiple ages, and that they change how they interact with the world and vice versa in relation to that age, is like... basic textual understanding. If you read enough college AUs, you develop a mental image of the character as a young adult, even if their canon maxes out at teenagerhood (I'm thinking Pidge from Voltron). You don't see the child version from canon in your mind, you see that future/AU version that is an adult, and pays taxes, and has student loans, and can legally order a beer.

Kanan/Hera is canon and not considered a problem even though the audience met both of them as kids in TCW, yeah? They used to be kids, and now they're not, and if we toss one of them into a time-travel fic where their contemporaries are like... Jaster Mereel and Qui-Gon Jinn or something, then it's reasonable that, should they want a new romance, they seek out someone their physical and mental age. Waiting for people their own age to be born decades down the line would be weird, and gross, because they'd be like forty or fifty years older than those individuals.

Age changes! It's not a problem to process that characters change as their age does. Characters getting thrown through time is a classic trope, and adjusting things for age isn't actually a moral dilemma.

Hell, an IRL rite of passage for a lot of married couples is when your spouse's parents show you baby pictures of said spouse. "Sorry babe, I can't fuck you anymore because your mom showed me a photo of you as a toddler, it's weird now, we need a divorce!" said presumably almost nobody ever.

[ganymedesclock]

Do you personally interpret the end of Quirrel's storyline as him being dead or him just leaving his nail behind to search new things? I wanted the last, but people always talk about how he wouldn't leave his nail behind since he cares so much about that and I think they got a point

So Quirrel talks about weapons twice, once at the Black Egg Temple, and once at the Lake of Unn.

To persevere in this ruin, that old nail alone just won't be enough. Though that's no problem! One only has to look around.

Plenty have come before us and most have met their grisly end, many more equipped than you and I. I'm sure they wouldn't mind were a fellow explorer to relieve them of their tools. It's a kindness really. The dead shouldn't be burdened with such things.

I'd planned to offer greetings, though figured I'd first tend to my nail on chance our meeting goes poorly.

Your nail looks a fine instrument, but it's showing signs of wear.

I'd wager up there it would take you far. Down here however, I suspect you'll soon meet dangers the surface world can't match.

From that, I don’t necessarily take that he has a personal relationship with his own weapon, though I don’t take specific evidence to the contrary; he seems to have a utilitarian view about equipment.

How I personally see Quirrel’s final scene is Quirrel leaving his nail behind as a symbolic death. There’s a theme of death in general in Hollow Knight, often literal, but there’s also a point made that the happiest and most actualized people are able to address their regrets and let go of them- both parts. Ghost has to challenge their Shade and take it back into themselves rather than leaving it out there, but with it restored they are no longer haunted. You can argue, in a selfish sense (not hedging it in terms of they’re here to save Hollow)- Ghost came to this kingdom in the first place in order to ‘no longer be haunted’.

Quirrel, as we interact with him, is a haunted person. He is haunted by who he used to be. Quite often he talks, and more often he thinks without speaking, about the curious haze of his memory. 

I think what we witness, in a game, is Quirrel laying a ghost to rest, and while in one sense, that’s Monomon, in another sense, it’s himself- the old him that lived in Hallownest. From there, I think it’s basically just personal preference and relatively fiddly headcanon whether or not laying this ghost to rest takes the present Quirrel as well; my personal sense is no, because I feel like the game fairly consistently makes a divergence between “your role” and “your self”- Ghost as specifically not the chosen Hollow Knight and people arguing said chosen knight might’ve been chosen falsely (by a metric that Ghost, themselves, if they supplant their sibling, is also ‘chosen falsely’).

To me, Quirrel is not someone I would suspect of yearning to die or believing his death is at hand. Out of everyone in this setting, he’s one of the most optimistic about the future. He’s earnestly curious, earnestly drawn, and I think it’s easy to assume he left his nail behind simply because that past Quirrel, that was relevant to Hallownest, was dead, and the present Quirrel, who is ready to leave all of that behind, lays the scholar’s nail alone in an unmarked grave and moves on.

If he did die, I’d presume that it wasn’t his choice, but also, I think, the people who ‘die when their role is exhausted’ are people who we are shown had a poor balance. The Pale King, who appears to have died by no particular means other than self-neglect, killing himself as he killed the vessels, by simply abandoning in an inhospitable environment- as if he felt that the kingdom couldn’t need him anymore and just left his own body out to collect dust. The Radiance, who has suffered a progressive deterioration from a goddess that did once preside over other living beings, before giving everything to her anger as fuel to stay alive, and who cannot really be saved; she either dies violently, or she continues to fester in wrath and imprisonment.

So I think yes, “Quirrel does die” in one sense of the word, but I think also, in some ways, it’s thematically important to my understanding of the game and its messages that he didn’t. He merely got over Hallownest, and walked away. He did not, as other characters such as Myla, chase his obsessions until they consumed him. There’s plenty of other places in the world. There is a definite sense of closure, of finality, to the moment at the blue lake and its foreshadowing- him commenting at the City of Tears that he’d like to see the source of its rainfall before he leaves the kingdom, that we are told this is our final moment with Quirrel- but I think that finality is hopeful in nature. Ghost, in some ways, is a funerary god; they are a companion of the lost souls that wander this deathly perimeter. Quirrel, ultimately, diverges his path from them- he climbs out of hell, and walks away into the world of the living.

(also this is just me saying if there’s ever a third HK game after Silksong, playable Quirrel would be fun)

[traincat]

I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=

Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)

So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.

But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.

(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.

But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.

"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:

(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.

A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.

(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)

The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.

This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.

[demonicheadcanons]

Pact Headcanons

Okay bear with me because I’m starting this post on mobile at 4am but I’m thinking about pacts.

I’ve had a headcanon for a while that, after the MC makes a pact with Beel, they start to get hungry more often, and tend to build up muscle easier. So I thought I’d go ahead and just, write random pact headcanons for each of the boys?

I have tried not to include any clear spoilers, but if you haven’t yet made a pact with a specific brother, you may want to skip over them.

Some of the information may be considered dark, as a warning.

General Headcanons

The stronger the demon, the more potent / powerful the pact.

However, pacts will also get stronger the closer you are (relationship-wise, but this can also be proximity based) to a demon. For example, if you’re very close to Mammon and not close to Lucifer, your pact with Mammon will overpower the pact with Lucifer and amplify the effects brought about by Mammon’s pact. For a demon further on down the chain you would really have to hate Lucifer and be incredibly close to the demon to overpower the pact. For Mammon you only have to be friends, and close friends with Levi, etc. You can measure how close one of the brothers considers you by examining the effects you feel from your pact with them.

If two pacts interact (e.g. Levi’s envy and Lucifer’s pride), the stronger one will win out, or it will reduce the effects of both pacts. Ergo, you could balance out the negatives of one with the positives of the other by carefully adjusting your relationships with the parties involved.

All pacts have good and bad effects. They’ll vary from person to person, depending on their personality, but with the brothers their sins are the main influence of the pacts.

Having more pacts will reduce the rate at which you age, meaning Solomon is essentially immortal. Again, having pacts with stronger demons will amplify this, so having a pact with 7 of the most powerful demons in the Devildom would heavily slow down the rate at which the MC ages. If you make a pact with Diavolo, you��ll stop aging. Who knows what would happen if you somehow made a pact with his father? ((Note: if any pact involves selling your soul, the aging process will begin again, as you presumably need to die eventually for the exchange to be made))

Pacts create a weak empathy bridge between the demon and human. It’s not perfect, and it’s easy to ignore, but if you’re feeling down then the demons you have a pact with will be aware of it. The reverse is also true.

Even without a pact, the brothers can ‘feed’ from their sins. If you feel proud, Lucifer can gain energy from that, etc. For the MC, its weak initially as the brothers’ powers don’t work on them. However, once a pact is formed, it becomes a source of energy and power for them - this can be dangerous with demons who don’t know how to control themselves, as they may amplify the negatives of their pact as it means they can feast on their sin (or, for other demons, on whatever their influence is). More responsible demons, like the brothers, know how to balance it so that they’re able to feed without harming the MC, as this means they have a more stable food source for longer, and because they won’t want to cause harm to the MC.

Let’s get to the specifics for each brother:

Lucifer

Advantages: When you make a pact with Lucifer, you immediately become more confident. His pact is the strongest of the brothers, him being the eldest and most powerful, so there’s no waiting time for the pact to take effect. Essentially you’ll find it easier to be proud of both yourself, and others. His pact interferes with Levi’s - it counteracts the jealousy that you’d feel, and replaces it with pride, as a pact with Lucifer holds more power usually. His pact also grants an easier understanding of your surroundings and the people around you - whether it’s due to the confidence boost, allowing your anxieties to relax and to let you properly take in a situation, or just part of the pact is debatable.

Disadvantages: Pride easily leads to arrogance. Strangely enough, if you were already a confident person, you’ll find it easier to control yourself and not become too arrogant. But if you were struggling before, you’re going to swing wildly between completely adoring and despising yourself. Because the pact is so potent this can be dangerous, and you might need to distance yourself from a Lucifer and slowly build up a relationship again to be able to adapt to it.

Pact marks: Lucifer is a bit 50/50 on this. He’d like the pact mark to be in clear sight, because his pact was made to demonstrate a control and ownership over the human. However, because of how pacts usually work, he might fear that it would be perceived as being the other way about. Pact marks in clear sight are fair game, but perhaps somewhere where you could easily cover it up if needed would be preferred, so that he can see it when he wants to without it being on show constantly. He wouldn’t want it on show when you’re at RAD, honestly. He’d prefer for it to be on your back, hand if you’re willing to wear gloves, or neck if you cover it up with a high collar or scarf. Like most things, it all depends on his mood. He’ll adapt and make it clear that he’s no one’s pet no matter what you decide to do.

Mammon

Advantages: We’re already told that if Mammon likes someone, money comes easily to them. His pact partially influences this; if you want something, you’ll find that you’re able to get it much easier than before. This works best for material things, but if you’re very close to Mammon you’ll find that you’ll be able to win over people easier. It isn’t the same kind of charm that a pact with Asmo would grant, but still works fairly well. A pact with both brothers would boost the effects heavily, and you’ll find that you have most people wrapped around your finger after a simple greeting.

Disadvantages: Like Mammon, you might end up stealing to satisfy your greed. Getting everything you want is all well and good but it starts to lose its charm, whereas stealing still has some kind of buzz to it. At the same time, you may not even consider it to be stealing; it will start to feel as though everything already belongs to you. You’ll also become greedy for attention and feel lonely quite quickly. If you weren’t greedy before the effects won’t be as bad.

Pact marks: Mammon is possessive. He wants his pact mark on show - his number one spot would likely be on the back of your hands, so that when you’re holding hands he can rub his thumb over it, and so that its visible when you’re writing in classes or if you raise your hand to your face.

Leviathan

Advantages: Levi’s pact doesn’t necessarily offer many benefits to some people. If you’re willing to step back when you feel jealous and look inside yourself, its perfect for self-introspection and personal growth. It would be best combined with other pacts (especially Lucifer’s), and mostly works as a way of dampening the disadvantages that stronger pacts may offer by preventing you from becoming overly arrogant. It also helps to balance out Mammon’s pact, but does so by lowering your confidence in yourself so that you don’t seek attention or material possessions as much.

Disadvantages: You’re going to feel jealous constantly. If you have low self-esteem, it will present like Levi’s - you’ll believe that the world is unfair, that others are better than you. If you have a higher self-esteem, this will mix in an unhealthy fashion with the arrogance granted by Lucifer’s pact to make you simultaneously believe that you’re too good for everyone, and that you deserve better but can’t reach it because people are in your way. Overall, his pact is the most likely to isolate you from others.

Neutral: Depending on how you view it, this could be a good or bad thing, but Levi’s pact makes people jealous of you. This means that they tend to view you as being someone better than them, and might offer you some opportunities, but it can also make it difficult to form meaningful relationships and will likely isolate you in the end up. This will also have an impact on Mammon and Asmo’s pacts - if Levi’s pact is stronger, it will make people more likely to bend to your will, whilst also disliking you more as they feel unreasonably jealous of you whilst also being drawn to you. If the other’s pacts are stronger, it will lessen obsessions that have no base and will make it easier to form decent relationships that aren’t so superficial.

Pact marks: Anywhere. He doesn’t mind where it is, but if its smaller or less obvious than his brothers’ pact marks, he’s going to feel upset and not know how to deal with it. It all depends on your reasoning, but if you appear to see him as equal to or better than his brothers, he really won’t mind at all. When he’s feeling less awkward, he’ll want to trace his fingers over it, so preferably somewhere he can easily access. Number one spots would be on your shoulder, neck, or wrist.

Satan

Advantages: His pact, oddly, is a good confidence boost. More specifically, it makes you a lot less likely to put up with unfair and unjust behaviour. You’re more confident in speaking out against the things you don’t agree with. You’ll likely end up reading a lot more and educating yourself on everything so that you have the most concrete knowledge on any topic of discussion.

Disadvantages: If you’re not careful, discussions can become arguments and can lead to bad blood easily. You’ll be less forgiving than before, less willing to let things go. And you’re constantly, constantly angry. You’ll have to find a healthy outlet for this quickly, or it’ll consume you. Some relationships may end up tainted by the feelings his pact creates.

Your relationship: Your relationship with Satan is going to be strange. You both act as a comfort for each other, and when you’re around him both of you will be less angry. However, if Satan is in a bad mood and in need of a quick energy boost, he might decide to make you angry so that he can feed off of it. He sees it as being a short term risk; he can soothe you after, if he decides to, and if he believes you’re close enough that you won’t hold onto it. The problem is when he doesn’t. He likes seeing you angry, although preferably not at him, but in the end it really won’t matter so long as you’re mad at someone. Relationships can quickly become unhealthy, but your relationship with him will swing wildly if the two of you don’t sit and talk things over and work out a good balance; the best results would be if you were to go to Satan when angry about something else and let him soothe you by drawing out your anger. That way he gets a boost and the two of you remain relatively calm, keeping your anger in a safe and controlled space.

Pact marks: Back of the hand. He wants to see it when you’re reading. He already builds up a tendency to kiss you on the back of the hand, and he’d like to be reminded of your pact when he does so. Its a softer gesture that he doesn’t offer to many, and he gets to offer it to someone who accepts him no matter what, with a visible reminder of that.

Asmodeus

Advantages: People are going to like you. You’ll be able to charm almost anyone (exceptions being people who are immune to the demons’ powers, and anyone with more power than you). Even if you can’t charm someone, you’ll likely to be able to mildly influence their opinion of you. You’ll also become better at reading people, and will be able to guess at their desires. With enough popularity, you may end up influencing the worlds’ beauty standards to more closely match how you look (if you decide to do influential work in the public eye).

Disadvantages: Whether you try to or not, you’re going to attract all kinds of people. This can put you in dangerous situations and can easily build obsessions. You’ll find the human world to be a much more dangerous place, and will have to be wary of the people around you. Eventually you’ll be able to better influence how much people like you, so that it won’t become an obsession, but you’ll need some form of protection at all times in the human world for quite some time after the pact is made.

Pact marks: Asmo doesn’t mind so long as he gets to see it when he wants to. He wants you to be happy and confident in yourself. That said, he does want to feel like your first priority. Like Levi, he wouldn’t want his pact mark to be smaller or less obvious than his brothers’ marks. His favourite places would be on your chest or the top centre of your back.

Beelzebub

Advantages: Beel’s pact gives you an iron stomach. You can eat anything and as much as you want without it having much of an impact on your weight, although you will end up building muscle a lot easier. Your health will improve, and become as ideal as it can be. You’ll find that you don’t get sick very often and have a stronger immune system. Any dietary needs will become less prominent, from allergies to intolerances. Overall, his pact offers a lot of physical benefits.

Disadvantages: You’re going to feel hungry almost all of the time. Beel’s hunger influences your own, so when he’s hungry, you’ll be hungry too. Not only will eating take up more of your time and focus, but you’ll also have to spend a lot more on food. You won’t be anywhere near his level, but you’ll probably be hitting somewhere around triple the normal recommended daily intake.

Pact marks: Beel wants you to be happy, like Asmo, so you can put the pact mark wherever you want. He won’t pay much notice to it unless he’s feeling particularly low or possessive, but even then just having you around calms him down. He doesn’t need the pact mark to be a reminder of your relationship - he’s got you, and that’s more than enough for him. He’d probably like for you to have the mark over your stomach, if you’d be content with that - it’s an amusing idea to him, and it just feels right. Also, if he wraps his arms around you from behind, he can rest his hand over it.

Belphegor

Advantages: After resting, you’ll function better. You’ll be able to focus better, you’ll be more perceptive, you feel healthier, etc. On good days, you feel well rested after quick naps. His pact is a huge boost to your brain and body, and your mood will benefit from it too, leaving you feeling happier and more capable.

Disadvantages: More often than not, you need to sleep more than before, and on bad days, no amount of rest will be enough. You’ll also easily slip into bad habits in which you end up sleeping instead of actually taking care of yourself. Like Levi’s, his pact can be isolating as sleeping can often seem more appealing than spending meaningful time with people. A controlled sleep schedule is necessary to keep things under control.

Pact marks: Where you put the pact mark is your own decision, and he’s not going to make it for you. That said, he’d prefer for it to be somewhere you can easily see, so that you remember him and think of him often, and he’d rather you didn’t cover it up. He views the pact mark as a lasting reminder of him, and feels betrayed if you don’t view it the same way. The most ideal place would probably be on your hands or wrists, but he’s more likely to have places he hates (e.g. your back, where you couldn’t easily see it) than places he likes.

AN: Sorry for rambling and if this is disorganised ;u;. Hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading!! Feel free to ask any questions you have ^^