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heartfeltletters-written · 6 months ago

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I love this because I think it's so much more complex than Xaden not realizing he's loved by his friends.

Xaden Riorson is someone who has the weight of the rebellion on his back, he's his father's son and responsible for 107 lives. Those lives he's protecting were entrusted to him, he didn't choose them to be connected to him, and he didn't choose to be responsible for them, but it was the only way they were going to survive.

When Liam says "i owe everything to Xaden" to Violet, he's probably talking about more than his scars, but it's still heavily implied in the text that he is talking about Xaden's responsibility for them. When Xaden speaks of Liam he refers to him as his brother, which implies that his love for him is unconditional, but also "granted". You love your family because they're of your blood, and while neither Liam nor Xaden are actually brothers for a time they lived as that, which made their bond stronger. Liam loved him because they're family but also because of Xaden's sacrifices.

(We could argue about chosen family and how you don't have to love your blood family but I don't think that's the point here. Chosen family or not, after a while you expect the love they have for you, and Xaden knows that even if they fight his and the rebellion kids relationship will always be thick)

In Xaden's mind, Liam and the other rebellion kids love him because of what he did, not because of what he is. It's the wrong way of thinking of course but in Xaden's mind it's the only thing that makes sense. They love him because he's their "savior". They love him because he leads a rebellion, they love him because he's a good leader.

But he has done nothing (in his mind) for Violet to love him, he didn't have a scar on his body for her at that point. She was unaware of the deal he made with her mother so she couldn't love him for that either. In a way, Violet not knowing of a lot of things made him believe her love for him easier. She had only ever seen his bitch ass attitude and still decided to love him, and I think that's what distinguishes the different types of love Xaden experiences.

It makes me so sad that Xaden says "I'd forgotten what it felt like to be loved, really, truly, loved." bc like... Liam was right there :(

just breaks my heart that Xaden doesn't realize how much he's loved until Violet says the words specifically.

#i hope this made sense #xaden riorson #liam mairi #fourth wing #character analysis #meta analysis #xaden riorson meta

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katakaluptastrophy · 11 months ago

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Masterpost of TLT metas

This is mostly for my own reference, as tagging doesn't seem to guarantee something being findable on Tumblr...but if you like wildly overthinking lesbian necromancers in space, enjoy!

Overthinking the Fifth House:

What is a "Speaker to the Dead"?

Actually, Magnus Quinn isn't terrible at sword fighting

Imperial complicity: Abigail the First

Pyschopomp: Abigail Pent and Hecate

Did Teacher conspire with Cytherea to kill the Fifth?

What does the Fifth House actually do?

The Fourth and the Fifth can never just be family

Cytherea's political observations at the anniversary dinner

Abigail Pent's affect: ghosts and autism

Were the Fourth wards of the Fifth?

Abigail probably knew most of the scions as children

Magnus Quinn's very understandable anger

Fifth House necromancy is not neat and tidy

Are Abigail and Magnus an exception to the exploitative nature of cavaliership?

"Abigail Pent literally brought her husband and look where that got her" (the Fifth in TUG)

The Fifth's relationship dynamic

The Fifth's relationship is unconventional in a number of ways

The queer-coding of Abigail and Magnus' relationship

Abigail and Palamedes, and knowing in the River

Was Isaac the ward of the Fifth?

Did Magnus manage to draw his sword before Cytherea killed him? (and why he probably had to watch his wife die)

How did Abigail know she was murdered by a Lyctor?

Fifth House necromancy is straight out of the Odyssey

The politics of the anniversary dinner

Was Magnus born outside of the Dominicus system?

Overthinking John Gaius:

The one time John was happy was playing Jesus

Is Alecto's body made from John's?

Are there atheists in the Nine Houses?

Why isn't John's daughter a necromancer?

The horrors of love go both ways: why John could have asked Alecto 'what have you done to me?'

Why M- may have really hoped John was on drugs

What is it with guys called Jo(h)n and getting disintegrated? (John and Dr Manhattan)

John's conference call with his CIA handlers

Watching your friend turn into an eldritch horror

Why does G1deon look so weird? (Jod regrew him from an arm)

When is a friendship bracelet not a friendship bracelet?

Why did John have G1deon hunt Harrow? (with bonus update)

The 'indelible' sin of Lyctorhood and John's shoddy plagiarism of Catholicism

Are John Gaius and Abigail Pent so different?

What was Jod's plan at Canaan House?

John and Ianthe tread the Eightfold path

The Mithraeum is more than a joke about cows

When was John Gaius born? (And another)

John Gaius and the tragic Orestes

John and Jesus writing sins in the sand

John and Nona's echoing chapters

John's motivations

Overthinking the Nine Houses:

'No retainers, no attendants, no domestics'

Funerary customs and the violence of John's silence

Juno Zeta and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time

The horror of the River bubble

Every instance of 'is this how it happens' in HTN

Feudalism is still shitty even if you make it queer and sex positive

How do stele work?

Thought crime in the Nine Houses

The Houses have a population the size of Canada

What must it be like to fight the Houses?

You know what can't have been fun? Merv wing's megatruck on Varun day...

Augustine's very Catholic hobby (decorating skeletons)

Necromancers are not thin in a conventionally attractive way

Matching the Houses with the planets of the solar system

Why don't the Nine Houses have (consistent) vaccination or varifocals?

How would the Houses react to the deaths at Canaan House?

How does Wake understand her own name (languages over 10,000 years)

What pre-resurrection texts are known in the Houses?

Camilla and Palamedes very Platonic relationship

The horrors the Cohort found at Canaan House

Do the Houses understand the tech keeping them alive?

Overthinking House religion:

What do the Houses believe about death?

Was M's nun a Franciscan?

Cavaliership and arbitrary socio-religious structures

Ritual scarification

Sacraments and sacramentals

What did Silas think god wanted at Canaan House?

In defense of Silas

There's no such thing as a 'good' necro/cav relationship

Veiling and shaving in Ninth House cult practice

Tongue-in-cheek thoughts on Eighth and Sixth religion

A very long deep-dive on House belief and practice

Overthinking Harrowhark Nonagesimus:

'The meat of your meat...belonged to god' and 'that is how meat loves meat'

The horror of parental touch: Harrow, John Gaius, and Abigail Pent

Why is Harrow so obsessed with Abigail's hands?

Frontline Titties of the Fifth and transgressive necro/cav relationships

Harrow, Wake, and permeability of the soul in HTN

Bible studies for weird queer necromancers:

Epiphany: revealing god's child to the wider world

The Holy Innocents and the creche massacre

The Virgin Mary and Commander Wake

John Gaius and John the Baptist

Instantiating the Trinity and the Second Resurrection

What's the significance of Paul?

St Paul's theology of gender and sexuality and the House theology of cavaliership

Maundy Thursday: consuming another for eternal life

Harrow and the Harrowing of Hell

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #I like thinking about TLT a normal amount #Please do reply or reblog with your ideas or send asks!

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diamonddeputy · 29 days ago

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Okay I put this together for a buddy who couldn’t make it so I may as well put it here too now that I have it all in one place

All the dev commentary I picked up from the UTY anniversary stream

PLEASE REBLOG WITH ANYTHING I MAY HAVE MISSED

• It apparently took them FOREVER to solidify a design for Decibat. One of the early concepts was a literal baseball bat with wings and I enjoy this fact very much

• They originally had an idea that Dalv would accidentally try and move into Martlet’s house after leaving the Ruins LMAO

• They expanded on this piece of concept art that had been floating around: there were never really plans for the Feisty Five to be evil, they just made their own wanted posters to inflate their own egos LOL

• I didn’t really write any of the specifics down, but listening to them talk about the Flowey fight was so interesting because they were all chiming in about who worked on what parts and where the inspirations were from and where they sourced their materials. Some details I remember off the top of my head:

- Flowey’s voice lines were pulled from the same McDonald’s commercial as his canon ones

- The audio for the scene where Martlet melts before Meta Flowey was a combination of a stock laugh and a clip one of the devs just so happened to have, when they used to edit for a YouTube channel, and the file got corrupted and just randomly made that sound

- The heartbeat monitor sound that plays during the Organic speciman is taken from the frequency of an actual human heart. Don’t remember the story about how they acquired that one

- The graphics for the Polygonal speciman were inspired by PS1 horror, Ben Drowned and that meme that went around in the late 2010s of a gif of a bug that made it look like a bug was on your screen (in specific reference to the little Flowey gremlins that crawl down the screen)

- They originally had plans to include a spectrogram in the fight, but decided it would make them seem too tryhardy

• There were plans for an underwater segment that were scrapped extremely early in development, something about a bridge in Waterfall breaking

• The comment Starlo makes in the Wild East about there being a fourth mission that was scrapped from the regimen is a reference to a literal fourth mission that the devs cut because they felt like it killed the pacing, where Virgil would kidnap the Feisty Five and tie them up in places around town and you had to go rescue them and it was a stealth game type thing

• - The designs for the Feisty Five have a lot of funny inspirations

- Ed was originally designed to be a normal monster, but they liked his design so much they used it for something more important

- Initial concepts of Moray’s design had them in a fisherman’s cap or a paper boat hat, to show how unserious they were about this. Also, they weren’t originally designed to be Angie and Gillbert’s child, a playtester just made that assumption and they were like y’know what sure we’ll roll with it

- Mooch’s design originated from a Minecraft RP OC that one of the devs had that she never got to use. Which is iconic tbh

• Mo was inspired by this lil dude, who showed up and had babies in one of the devs’ attic. Additionally, while coding the game, there were little variables they put in for fun like a timer. One of them was a number that just incrementally increased, and was labelled “Crimes that Mo has committed”

• The fact that sparing Dalv doesn’t abort Geno, that everyone chalked up to being a genius narrative decision, was AN OVERSIGHT??????? It was a coding error caused by the fact that they were initially gonna make everything that happens in the Dark Ruins not count towards any route, like Flowey implies in his dialogue, but they went back on that decision and fixed it for everyone except Dalv. They made a comment on stream like “we should really fix that” and everyone in chat was like PLEASE don’t LOL

• There were never really concepts for a Geno Starlo fight. And a lot of it is the reasons the fandom talks about that he’s a coward before his character development and it makes more sense for him to back out in the face of real danger. But also because in terms of power level, it didn’t make sense for him to stand a chance. And also because they were making all the routes at once and designing the boss fights at equal times and this was the first chance they got to make a boss fight for Ceroba LOL. But the plan was already set by that point that it was gonna be her instead of him

• No one truly knows the origins of the super faded silhouette standing in the background of the UG Apartments shop in Geno. Apparently the dude who made the CG just. Put it there

• We got more insight into the Martlet transformation animation. It was made with SO much purpose. If you look closely, she starts to melt and the determination puddles underneath her, but then she gains control of it and the puddle ABSORBS BACK INTO HER, then shoots out in a burst when her first wing transforms. THAT’S SO COOL

• Additionally, they also canonized that Martlet took the determination before Alphys had any of the fallen-down bodies, and that she had no idea what it actually WAS, other than that it had something to do with the human SOULs. Which makes this even MORE impressive because she wasn’t intrinsically prepared to control determination, she just DID it

• The dive-bomb attack Martlet does in her first-phase Zenith fight was inspired by Dyna Blade, as a Kirby fan that fact just made me happy lol

• Retribution was the last song made for the game, and was composed in just a couple days, which is WILD to me

• We got confirmation that Flowey is still in control of saves after defeating Axis in Geno, and Clover’s text in the overworld/after dying is just them being so focused on their mission that they’re drowning out everything else

• CANNOT forget The Jincident

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indigovigilance · 1 year ago

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Maggie is Possessed

This is my second meta! My first one is here.

I’m not the first fan to be suspicious of Maggie but I’m going to argue why she might be possessed (and I hypothesize that specifically she is possessed by an angel), rather than being eldritch herself, and will propose some reasons why the hitchhiker might be doing this.

First, a quick list of her early observable behaviors:

She cannot spell urgency

She signs “very faithfully yours”

She refuses to drink alcohol

Golden angel-wing earrings, anyone?

Have you seen those clothes?

All of those things are angelic, but why possession, specifically? Evidence is presented in order of chronology and not necessarily how strong it is, below the cut:

First: The timeline is weird. She’s eight months behind on rent, and suddenly decides she needs to speak to Mr. Fell “on a matter of some ugrency” and insists she can be out by next week. It’s inconsistent behavior that could indicate that a new decision-maker has taken over. First-point-five, she calls Aziraphale an angel: does she know?

Second: re-watch the first coffee shop scene, S2E1 at 13:20. Yes yes, it reads like a cute lesbian flirtation scene. That’s the cowrie shell. Pick it up. There’s a caraway seed underneath. When she arrives at the coffee shop for the first time, Maggie’s confused “ah, yes, coffee” might not be the flustered redirect you thought it was, but rather indicating that whoever is riding around in that body doesn’t actually know how a coffee shop works. But Nina (to Hitchhiker!Maggie’s relief) remembers her order. So Human!Maggie has been here before, in fact, Nina calls her a regular, to which Hitchhiker!Maggie says “oh right, yes, I’m that.” Not sus at all, sister.

Third: During the “herbal tea” exchange, Maggie says to Nina that “I didn’t go to parties” and she was “not that sort of teenager.” On it’s face it reads like she was a goody-two-shoes human teenager, but consider for a moment that whoever is speaking right now was never human; the statement isn’t a lie, but its very misleading. Who else do we know that does that?

Fourth: During the lock-in, Maggie tells the story of how her great grandmother’s store was in a corner of Mr. Fell’s bookshop, so he lets them stay on for old time’s sake. One possible interpretation of this phrasing is that Hitchhiker!Maggie knows that Aziraphale has owned that shop continuously for at least 100 years. Nina is the one that suggests that it was actually Aziraphale’s grandfather, and Maggie nods along.

Fifth: Maggie says it’s a “coincidence” that the power goes in and out when Crowley passes by; could read as a deliberate redirect from someone who actually knows that Crowley is a demon? But more on that later.

Sixth: I’m skipping a lot of intervening content BUT at the ball, during the dance, she says “this is just what we do, isn’t it?” to which Nina emphatically replies that no, it isn’t. So even though Nina has been effected by an emotion-suppressing aura, she hasn’t lost her memory of how society generally works in 2023, but somehow Maggie isn’t up to date. This is parallel to Point #2, not knowing how to order coffee.

Seventh: Aziraphale’s attempted miracle memory wipe doesn’t work on her. I’ve seen others suggest that it’s due to a miracle blocker but all of his other miracles work, so…

Eighth: Nina calls her “angel.” You thought it was cute. It’s not. It’s a double-bluff. She’s actually an angel.

Ninth: She tells Crowley that “we’re real people.” Okay, human police officer Inspector Constable, whatever you say.

The rest of this is wild speculation. Abandon hope all ye who read below the fold.

So of course this raises the question: why are is the hitchhiker here, and what was Human!Maggie’s motivation to give them permission to hitchhike?

I’ll start with Human!Maggie’s motivation. I believe that she is not just pretendy-good but a properly good person who feels a lot of anguish about her failing business, one that’s been in the family for 100 years, and guilt for not paying her rent. I think she prayed for help, and a “guardian angel” answered her prayers, and she gave that angel permission to possess her and fix the problem.

As for why the angel answered her prayers, I propose that the Metatron sent them to fuck around with Aziraphale. My evidence is that Maggie frequently meddles to Aziraphale’s detriment. In chronological order:

She puts him in a moral choice position: if he evicts her, he’s the bad guy. If he forgives her rent, he’s done something good. Both of these can be leveraged by the Metatron. Notably, after he forgives the rent, Maggie calls him an angel, perhaps to remind him whose side he’s really on *wink wink nudge nudge.*

She confides in her landlord about her crush on the business owner across the street, who’s already in a relationship?! How ridiculously inappropriate?? Maggie??!! But she does, and plants the idea in his head about love, which ultimately becomes the runaway train that makes him extremely vulnerable later.

She refuses to leave the shop during the attack (S2E5), I propose is for purposes of fucking over Aziraphale, as evidenced by…

For this part, I need you to go back and watch it. S2E6 at 3:28. During the pissing contest at the threshold, Maggie turns her head away, there is a sound effect, and that’s when she turns back to Shax and invites the demons in. Hitchhiker!Maggie has taken over and rolled out the carpet for the enemy invasion.

Maggie is the instigator of the “you have to talk about your feelings” conversation, dragging Nina from behind the counter across the street while she has a shop full of customers. Considering that the Metatron is at that very moment at the French restaurant next door, making a job offer to Aziraphale, the timing choice seems very suspect. Almost as if they coordinated to talk to each husband while they were separated.

So, it is possible that Hitchhiker!Maggie was sent by the Metatron as a spy and a saboteur to meddle with Aziraphale. To what end, specifically? Probably to get him to break up with Crowley and/or get him to return to Heaven, but ultimately, I just don’t know. I will admit that I don’t have a very strong conviction that this will become canon, but it was fun to write and I hope that it was fun to read! Leave a note if you enjoyed it!

edit: a link to another meta about why this was such an effective strategy against the husbands

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #maggie #ivoc

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heartfeltletters-written · 5 months ago

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I absolutely loved this analysis but i wanna add that people might not understand or see the character this way because RY writing in IF was truly atrocious but that's a topic for another day.

For someone who is centered by facts, information, and truth, to learn that you’ve been on the wrong side of history at no fault—or choice—of your own is devastating.

This is the foundation of Violet's struggles, she is centered on facts and truth, which she has always associated with the Archives. I think in the next few books we will see the dismantling of her grounding place. She admits to Xaden that she can't seem to find her own feet because she's always too busy looking at him. While this line seems weird and might make her seem incompetent I have another interpretation for it.

The Archives are no longer her safe space, we see the first time she enters them in IF she's chanting in her head that the place is full of lies. So what happens when the place you ground no longer brings you safety? You must find another one that gives you the same protection you lost. Violet hasn't figured that out yet, she still tries to ground in the Archives and of course, that is doomed to fail. Subconsciously I can see her working on finding a new grounding place which is why she turns to Xaden. He dropped everything to save her from torture which I think is why her brain starts to associate him with safety. But at the same time, her brain also associates information with safety and Xaden can't provide that. So right now she's in a tough spot, she's split between two realities: Xaden being her safe space while compromising her need for information which is associated with the betrayal of her old safe space.

What happens in the second part of IF also helps in her spiraling into desperation. She is used to being the smartest person in the room, the one who can always think logically and seek a solution. But she has lost everything she held true, she no longer has the information that made her smarter because those are all lies. This reminds me of what happens when people go to college. In high school, you are the smartest kid in class, but in college, you're stuck with other prodigies so obviously you start feeling like a failure. Except Violet's case is even worse because her reality has shifted. She's stuck in a classroom where all the people have attended high school but she only made it as far as primary school. Her sense of self has been lost, and worst of all she associates her self-worth with her knowledge, she is being betrayed by her body constantly, the only things she had were her hair and her brain, and one of those things has been gruesomely taken away from her.

On the topic of Lilith Sorrengail, I think Violet is taking out her frustrations about it on Xaden. I don't think Xaden was completely wrong in waiting for her to approach the topic because she clearly wasn't ready to talk about it. He wanted to do this at her own pace, but forgot to consider that her grounding place was down already and that they needed to have this conversation sooner rather than later. This is also a topic we need to talk about later: the misunderstanding that both Violet and Xaden have of each other, but that's for another post.

Back to Lilith, Violet has always held the belief that "hey yeah my mother might have sent me to a death college, but she believed I would make it out alive. In a sense, she was the only one who has ever believed me." So what happens when Violet learns that her mother only believed her because she asked a stronger rider to look out for her? Her world falls apart (once again). She has always wanted her mother's approval, and when she thought that she had it, it was all a lie, her belief in Violet had never been genuine. So Violet takes her frustrations about her mother on her closest person: Xaden.

This also adds to the guilt Violet feels because how dare her mother ask something of Xaden when she already marked his back with scars. The weight rests on her because the price for the deal for the marked ones was her safety, which is another pack of worms she's not ready to open yet.

Anyway, my only wish is that we had seen more of this inner conflict and a deeper look into it. And I'm not even addressing her trauma of being captured for torture by a person who was supposed to be her friend. That had to have shaken her own beliefs of trust which again reflects on the person who's closest to her: Xaden.

The Death of Violet’s Worldview

I just saw @nesta331917’s post about how Violet being unable to trust Xaden in Iron Flame makes complete sense and I just wanted to spit out my thoughts on that—and Violet’s characterization—because I completely agree!!

When I’m rereading I tend to fixate on Violet’s difficulty grappling with failure (to uncover the truth sooner, to save Liam, to protect her friends from the bitter truth & dangerous rebellion, to raise the wards in Aretia—whatever defeat she is internalizing at the moment) not only because I’m in this photo and I don’t like it, but also because it is such great characterization.

Violet previously protected the people she loves (and herself) by weaponizing the wealth of information she had, but now the very foundation she used to define herself has been ripped out from under her. Not only was she unaware of the reality of venin, wyvern, and the truth behind the attacks on Navarre’s wards, the entire rebellion that she (and her dad!! her favorite person!!) has studied and analyzed for her entire life was censored and propagandized by her government to shape public opinion and she was none the wiser.

For someone who is centered by facts, information, and truth, to learn that you’ve been on the wrong side of history at no fault—or choice—of your own is devastating. It’s a feeling of utter powerlessness and betrayal; no matter how many hours Violet had explored the archives, no matter how many times she reread the death tolls, maps, and battle strategies, no matter how ferociously she believed in the power of information, nothing could change the dismal reality that the truth was simply not accessible to her.

Not only that, but the discovery that her own mother was complicit in the death and destruction of entire provinces for the benefit of her country and children introduces a whole new burden of guilt and hypocrisy Violet didn’t know she complied with. Add in that (1) the man she’s just fallen in love with is leading a revolution against these terrors she knew nothing about, (2) Dain, Violet’s best friend since she was a child, stole her memories to aid in the hypocrisy of their government and nearly get her killed, and (3) her brother Brennan, whose death completely altered the fabric of her whole family and may have contributed to their father’s own death, is fucking ALIVE, and it’s the perfect (onyx) storm of disillusionment. Absolutely everything Violet held true came barreling down in a matter of weeks, and no amount of rereading or reanalyzing could mend the hurt or justify Navarre’s (and, from Violet’s perspective, her) lack of intervention.

Violet is selfless to a fault, and being misinformed about the horrors outside of the wards robbed her of her choice to defend the defenseless. Of course we saw her escape Basgiath/the “safety” of Navarre to join the revolution as soon as she could, but the feeling of failing not only those you love, but also countless others you didn’t even know were in peril is still so heavy. She also has consistently been targeted for being The General’s Daughter, and now the full implications of that association is branded on her like a third relic.

Of course Violet’s relationship with Xaden has been affected by the guilt, betrayal, and disillusionment that are ingrained within it, whether either of them has accepted it or not. Even if Xaden had nothing to do with the revolution and they were living happily ever after before graduation, once the truth about the dark wielders came to light and Violet didn’t know up from down I’m sure the identity crisis still would have (at the very least) strained their relationship.

Anyways.

I so desperately need Violet and Xaden to finally be able to finish their fight and figure out how to move forward while trusting each other.

Give Violet (And Xaden) A Break 2025, Pleeease Rebecca

#i could talk about this forever #but im gonna shut up now #i just find it interesting #how Violet copes with all of this #and Xaden too #which is where the mistunderstanding of each other comes into play #i hope any of this makes sense #fourth wing #violet and xaden #violet sorrengail #iron flame #violet meta #character analysis

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justinspoliticalcorner · 27 days ago

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Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee. The news of the seven-figure donation comes just a few weeks after Zuckerberg went to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a private dinner with the president-elect. A spokesperson for Meta told the BBC at the time, “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.” Earlier in the year, Zuckerberg praised Trump as a “badass” for pumping his fist after Trump was shot at during a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Zuckerberg is one of the most influential technology and media executives on Earth and is worth over $219 billion as of Thursday morning, ranking as the fourth-richest person in the world. In the past, conservatives have derisively labeled his political donations as “Zuck bucks,” though they surely have a different take on the CEO’s latest contribution. Early in 2024, Meta announced it would limit the reach of political content on Threads and Instagram, meaning millions of people would simply not see information relating to the ongoing election. A subsequent investigation by The Washington Post found that the suppression of content across Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, meant that posts incidentally mentioning voting were hidden from millions of users. Meta’s actions occurred at the same time that Trump backer and megadonor Elon Musk opened the floodgates on X, formerly known as Twitter, to amplify right-wing content, including content from neo-Nazis and Republicans.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sucks up to the felon-elect by donating $1M to Donald Trump’s 2nd inauguration.

#Mark Zuckerberg #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Instagram #Donald Trump #Trump Inauguration #Inauguration 2025 #Trump Inauguration II

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pumpkinmetaphor · 7 months ago

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Ouran, Performance, Audience

Okay I said I was going to write this and I can't look at it anymore so posting. Anyway, performance in Ouran is interesting and we’ve all been chatting about it lately. Each character puts on an “act” for the guests, each character puts on another “act” for the people around them. It’s a testament to how well the characters are written that we can unravel these performances throughout the text. I still think there’s several levels of reading the characters and the text as well.

Ouran is satire- hence why they’re essentially parodying these archetypes. But Ouran is also self-aware, self-referential, and meta. Characters break the fourth wall. They’re, at varying levels, aware of being in a story. We have characters who obviously break the fourth wall (Kyoya looking right into the camera in episode 1, for example. I would say Tamaki’s “homosexual supporting cast” speech, except it’s kind of an anomaly for him) and characters who are resistant to any sort of self-reflection that might lead them to any sort of conclusions like this (Hikaru.) I will at one point go through the entire manga again and count how many times each character narrates– which, to my recollection, is uncommon outside of Haruhi (MC obvs, and framed as talking to her mother) and Kaoru (framed as talking to himself/ the audience/ Hikaru-that-lives-in-his-brain) but I could be misremembering.

This is generally played for comedic effect. Tamaki breaks the fourth wall when it’s funny. Kyoya plays dumb about plot conventions (such as “we have birthdays here?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”) when it’s funny for him to do so.

Anyway that’s just my setup. I want to discuss the Paris Arc, specifically whatever is going on with Kaoru.

Read More because this is 2k words.

Kaoru is an interesting character because I think the performance is a little more pronounced. There’s reason to interpret he generally controls the scripts, his host club act is a bigger deviation from his natural personality, and fundamentally, as a person, Kaoru is less solid in his sense of identity.

Which does kind of beg a question. The version of Kaoru the host club girls get is clearly fake. But the Kaoru most people get is some form of a mask. Kaoru reflects Hikaru– which is what Hikaru needs until Kaoru fears he doesn’t. Kaoru seems to take Haruhi’s assertion that he’s the “less evil one” to heart. I think neither Hikaru or Kaoru know what Haruhi is going to say is the difference between them in Episode/Chapter 5 because they themselves don’t know– aside from this very philosophical “well the one who is you is the one who is not me and the one who is not you is me etc.”

Anyway, we all kind of understand the general baseline– Hikaru is going to grow up, fall in love, and spread his wings– Kaoru is afraid this means Hikaru will leave him behind. This is the plot.

But I think a lot of this comes down to “the thing they won’t be able to share,” which is presented to us in the form of that cookie. Haruhi notes that Kaoru will just give whatever it is to Hikaru. Hikaru ultimately snaps the cookie in half and forces Kaoru to take half of it anyway. This kind of embodies the fundamental difference between them, in my book.

(Ch. 45, various spliced together pages) Hikaru: It is literally not on Hikaru’s radar that there might ever be anything that he and Kaoru do not share. He does not conceive this on any level before the Paris Arc. Kaoru will literally always be here, he is a constant that Hikaru cannot conceive losing. Hikaru’s not afraid of Kaoru abandoning him– he may be, afraid something will happen to Kaoru that will take him away, but he’s not afraid of Kaoru choosing to leave. Why would he? Kaoru is the one person who cannot betray him.

Kaoru: It is a given that Hikaru will one day leave. It is simply the only way. Hikaru will grow up and, for various reasons, Kaoru will not grow with him. And Hikaru will choose to leave– this will not be a betrayal, it’s just how life works when you’re not the main character in your story. Your carriage turns back into a grubby ole pumpkin and you’re left all alone.

After the cookie scene, Kaoru tells Hani that he has feelings for Haruhi. This is, in my opinion, when Kaoru takes the reins of the narrative. Of the carriage, so to speak. The carriage in the anime exists on the condition that no one acknowledges that they’re in a love story and “breaks” the found family. Kaoru saying he’s in love with Haruhi steers the narrative on the course to the inevitable.

Which is great!

Except is Kaoru in love with Haruhi?

My hypothesis: it literally doesn’t matter. Kaoru’s feelings for Haruhi do not drive the narrative. Kaoru talking about it does. He could be lying. He could be mistaken. He could be genuinely in love with her. It could be an idle crush. It doesn’t matter. It’s the performance of this love for the appropriate audience (aka: Hani, Hikaru etc.) that matters.

I think the base reading of this arc is that the cookie is Haruhi. Haruhi is the one thing they can’t share, right? They can’t like, keep eating biscuits out of her mouth and licking her face if Hikaru wants her to be his girlfriend and Kaoru wants her too. While I don’t think it’s incorrect to read this as a concern Kaoru has, I don’t think it gets to the heart of the issue.

So, performance!

Kaoru puts on his little act for Hikaru throughout the Paris Arc. Generally tormenting him, ostracising him. In a way giving him a taste of what Kaoru goes through in a zillion Hika/Haru fanfictions or Kaoru’s own nightmares. This culminates in the date, where Kaoru basically brings Haruhi on the date he asked her on first (before giving it to Hikaru) and hitting every single mark that Hikaru missed. Not that anyone is enjoying themselves regardless to be honest.

And of course, at the end, he kisses her and Hikaru sees and runs off upset.

Except we, the audience, know Kaoru kisses Haruhi on the cheek. It’s a clear enough stage kiss from the art. Just close enough for us to understand that, from Hikaru’s perspective, Kaoru kissed her on the mouth. We’re bystanders, watching this plot unfold. Hikaru is Kaoru’s intended audience– that’s who he’s performing for.

So what’s the difference then between this scene.

And this scene?

Well, first: what else can be the one thing Hikaru and Kaoru can’t share? If you go one level further, I think you come to the conclusion that Hikaru is the one thing they can’t share. After all, Hikaru cannot keep giving half of himself, half of his time, energy, love, self etc. to Kaoru all the time, and grow up. They suffer a classic case of enmeshment. Kaoru determines that Hikaru needs to be shoved out of the nest– and that the only way to do that is to stab him in the back.

I don’t think Kaoru is trying to make Hikaru hate him. I do think what he’s trying to do is make Hikaru realise that he’s a person? Who is capable of betraying him, just like any other person. As long as Hikaru believes that Kaoru is “the only person he can trust,” he’s never going to grow up. By knocking himself off that pedestal in Hikaru’s eyes, Hikaru is forced to see him differently and Kaoru is prepared to accept however Hikaru might feel about him in the aftermath (though assuming he’ll drastically distance himself).

(Side note. I think Hikaru and Kaoru internalise their maid-related-trauma slightly differently. While Kaoru’s fear is abandonment, Hikaru’s fear is betrayal. They just manifest similarly because there’s a lot of crossover. This is sooo long already, I’m not getting into it unless someone asks lmao.)

Loop back to the image again then. What’s the difference here? Well, it’s still a stage kiss! They both are. But, with one fundamental difference.

Image one, Hikaru is Kaoru’s audience. He is performing to trick Hikaru (and possibly anyone else, like Hani and Mori, watching). But reality is clear to us, the reader.

Image two, you are Kaoru’s audience. He is performing to trick you. (but reality is clear to Hikaru, the participant)

Like, that’s pretty in your face huh? Faces obscured in a way that you don’t infer it as a cheek kiss as easily as you do with Kaoru and Haruhi. It’s also on the left page of the physical edition, meaning you have to skip to the next page to see the aftermath:

Kaoru’s not just tricking the audience. He’s queerbaiting the audience. Typical.

Firstly, I do think one can be led to the conclusion that if the one thing they can’t share is Hikaru, not Haruhi, that means Kaoru is not in love with Haruhi but is in love with Hikaru. In fact, I think that’s kind of the point with these panels. It’s framed as a bait-switch, which only works if the audience misinterprets the kiss. My ultimate conclusion therefore is that there is no textual romantic incest occuring. It is enmeshment at a bare minimum though. But that's another topic, another day, for somebody else.

Secondly, I think this is because the audience is, regardless, on the wrong track. Or at least not the full track. We have access to the narrative when other characters don’t, but we’re still reading the story Kaoru is telling. We’re still the audience to his performance of the story. It’s easier for Kaoru to tell a story that’s all about his brother– he’s been doing it his whole life. He’s not the main character, after all. So he’s telling us a story where the one thing they cannot share is Hikaru, telling all the other characters a story where the one thing they can’t share is Haruhi.

So the one thing they can’t share is something more nebulous. It’s the identity.

Which feels like a contradiction in a way, because the identity is Hikaru, isn't it?

They can’t be one double act, split down the middle. They can’t be one seed sprouting two leaves. They can’t be two halves of one cookie, or two halves of one soul. And the problem is, Kaoru views everything as something Hikaru has split down the middle and shared with him– and now he has to give it all back.

I don’t really think Hikaru views “their room” as being “his room, that I share with Kaoru.” But I think Kaoru does. I think Kaoru views everything as something Hikaru has shared with him, right down to his own personality, his own face. Hikaru cannot leave, cannot grow up, unless Kaoru stops pretending to be him and gives him the half of his identity back to make one whole, true Hikaru.

Only problem is, Kaoru has to cut that tricky spare leaf off. After all, when he gives Hikaru back the identity, Kaoru won’t have one. Kaoru is defined as being “the one who is not Hikaru.” My brother is Hikaru. The one who is not my brother is me. And how do you define that? When your brother is no longer there, who are you?

That’s why it’s important that Hikaru dyes his hair. Because I don’t think him dyeing his hair matters if the issue is Haruhi (Haruhi can tell them apart anyway). I don’t think it matters if the issue is Hikaru (this would not, in isolation, fix Kaoru's thought process).

It is however enough for Hikaru to be able to illustrate to Kaoru that their identity is inherently interwoven, not necessarily shared. It doesn’t matter if Kaoru is the same as Hikaru or not– because Kaoru is who he is. That may have been affected by the fact that they’re twins, but his identity is not negated by it. Kaoru's identity is not inherently a performance just because it reflects Hikaru, and he doesn't lose it when he ceases to reflect Hikaru.

(breathes)

CAVEAT AS ALWAYS: I am reading the English translation. While it is the official Viz Media translation, something is always changed in translation, localisation, and interpretation. With the assumption that everyone here is reading the manga in English (sweeping assumption, sorry) this is therefore a reading of the text inherently coloured by the site of circulation (English translation, volume compiled) and the site of audiencing: aka the fact that I am an English-speaking, European, media studies/animation academic, speaking on an largely American blogging platform to the like, twelve Kaoru stans that follow me. It also means your interpretation may be very different to mine! Anyway If you read this far, congrats! You deserve a cookie– whatever that might or might not signify.

#i'm haruhi.#kaoru hitachiin #ouran high school host club #anyway sorry if that was me talking shit or me talking about something v basic i can no longer tell #/incest mention #i don't even know if this is coherent anymore

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f4nd0m-fun · 1 year ago

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I keep coming up with cryptid!Batfam ideas, and @hallowsden is a very helpful coconspirator.

This is the Hell-touched AU

Constantine paused as the figure coalesced into a human shape, though his magic sight was privy to the multitude of eyes and shadows that stretched as far as he could see. "Bloody hell," he muttered, pulling out a cigarette, only to pause as several eyes bore into him, shadows slinking over, refusing to let him light the smoke.

"Perhaps I should have brought the swear jar." While the voice seemed normal at its most audible point, there was echoes and screeches buried beneath the words.

Before John could finish processing the jar comment, Batman stepped fourth and spoke in some language not of earth.

Constantine may have been magically versed in many languages but even he could only catch a few words, one of which angled somewhere towards 'caregiver'.

"Bats?"

"Not now, Clark." Part of his words dipped into the incomprehensible tongue, almost an overlay before he cleared his throat. "An issue has come up in Gotham, I am needed."

Gotham... somewhere the hellblazer refused to step foot in, the land reeking of sulfur and rotting magic, the air stagnant with pain and hopelessness, a city chained by greed and insanity.

The monstrosity's form layered over itself and Batman, before the two were gone with hardly a sound, no hint but the lingering scent and magic showcasing that they had ever stood in the room.

John shuddered and finally lit his cigarette. "Bloody Gothamites, the whole lot is cursed."

In this AU, Gotham is a part of hell, whether it was originally so and rose to the mortal realm, or because of the demon chained to its land - Lady Gotham. Whatever the reason, curses run rampant, and Lady was already weakened by being forced into the mortal realm. Because of this, she cannot do much, but nearly everyone in Gotham is demon-touched in some manner, but some also have inklings of being angrl-touched, some more than others.

The Waynes and Kanes are among the most hell-touched due to their long lineage in Gotham, but there are those Gotham tries to welcome with open arms and, in doing so, warps them to be more demonic than they should be as a newcomer. This does not always turn out well, as the chains on her limit her control

Some who are hell-touched have demonic traits, usually very minor and easy enough to excuse as meta traits if anyone ever asks. Others have much stronger traits, and there's the lucky ones who can morph their form, though they will never fully lose the traits of their demon-blood.

----------

Alfred seems the epitome of a normal butler from the outside, until you realize how unflappable he was towards Gotham's chaos, or hear his tales of being a veteran in years long gone. Perhaps he's yet another demon, right? But no, not even that fits him. And perhaps you'll never be privy to the full truth, but the Waynes and Gotham herself know. Alfred is no mere demon, he is eldritch, from before the world was even a speck in the Creator's eye. And while the children are physically fighting for Gotham, he is there for them, but he is also there for Gotham, spiritually untangling what he can from her.

Bruce Wayne's appearance doesn't seem to relay his ancestry as much as one might think, but his fangs and claws are clear for any to see, as well a his piercing blue eyes, glowing life sulfur flames amidst a backdrop of black sclera. Batman, on the other hand, has stiffly curving horns arcing over his head, leathery bat wings and a sturdy tail, with digitigrade legs and talons, perfect for scaring enemies or for carrying what appears to be his young.

Dick Grayson was never truly one of Gotham's. She certainly granted him care and consideration and treated him as kindly as her curses would let her, but he was never able to accept more than the slightest blessings, if they could be considered as such. He never learned to fly like Batman did, but he became faster and stronger, his only visible demonic traits being nails and teeth slightly sharpened. Even so, he put forth as much effort as the rest of the colony, doing his utmost to help anyone he could.

Barbara may have lost her ability to walk, but that doesn't mean she's defenseless. She still has her claws and horns, and a unique affinity for technology that she's worked hard to hone after what happened to her.

Jason Todd had wings too small for much more than gliding, but his autumn rich curls hid the beginnings of majestic horns, his pale blue eyes shining with a hope few in Gotham could muster. But Robin had augments to his wings, enabling short flight to follow his mentor, at least until his grounding. Gotham could not let go of him for long, and dragged him back herself, but failed to do so completely, watching him be whisked away by Talia. Red Hood never regained his wings, not fully, more bone than flesh, what few feathers left struggling not to fall off. Pain arcs through his body from time to time, but he has a duty to Gotham and her people, one he would willingly choose any day. As for his pit rage, it is the equivalent of eating something you cannot process, as his system already had its fill of demonic energy from Gotham.

Tim Drake was born in Gotham, but his family's adventures dragged him throughout the world until the tender preteens. Before that only, he had been loosely tutored on the travels, but now his parents had deemed public school of importance, and also thought he could help organize their collections when he was not learning. One night, while cleaning up a gallery, he found an artifact he apparently had not put away yet, a statue that Catwoman would find quite fascinating. Upon interacting with it, pain ricocheted through him. When it finally stopped, his form had been twisted. For anyone else the statue would have merely given one the abilities of a cat, perhaps a curse to go with them, but his supernatural features were malleable enough for the power to take advantage of, turning him into a human feline. Eventually, he went to join Batman as Stray, knowing he needed a Robin but not wishing to take the name on himself. Many rogues seemed to think him a child of Batman and Catwoman, and they oft went uncorrected. He likes to perch on his family.

Cassandra is demon-touched primarily through the league and proximity to the pits, but nothing strong enough to truly take root until Gotham welcomed her to her new home. While her features are limited to black sclera and not much else, she is strongest in the ability department, able to literally move through shadows and hide in them at will, though she cannot speak while doing so and it can be hard watching for a shadow signing. Due to her past and being hell-touched, she is a bit stronger than Dick, though not as physically strong as those who grew up in Gotham.

Duke is more angel-touched than the others are, resulting in the enhanced strength of his light abilities and visions. That doesn't mean there isn't demon in him though, it just showcases itself more quietly.

Stephanie may very well have the sharpest claws and fangs of the family, but her razor wit is one of her best attacks depending on who you ask. Her and Cass sometimes seem joined at the hip, and, while their styles are somewhat opposite, they work quite well together.

Damien was created with the blood of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul, grown in a Lazarus Womb. He looks like a tiefling, with skin dark like Talia but tinted the slightest bit red like his father, burning green eyes like Talia but black sclera like Bruce, and the very same Wayne horns and talons that dominate the generations. He does not have wings and it seems unlikely he will ever have them, but that does not stop him in his tracks.

#hell-touched au #Batfam au #Batman au #batfamily au #batfam #Batman #batfamily #demon-blood au #cryptid au #cryptid Batman #cryptid batfamily #cryptid batfam #cryptid

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 7 months ago

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tuesday again 6/18/2024

might flood today! might not! who knows! i live in the paved over swamp! mackintosh’s main concern is this bowl of grapes

listening

sligo river blues performed by john fahey. part of the point of doing this weekly is when i sit down to draft these, i am occasionally forced to go "ooh. i forgot to listen to music while pacing around last week. maybe that's why i was a tremendous cunt and wanted to claw out of my own skin."

anyway i care about two people on tiktok and one of them is a couple renovating a stunning house in the pacific northwest from a level 5 hoard (DK Dreamhouse), and one is this guy dylanwesch who is i guess music nerd tok? a lot of ambient stuf which i love to click around on the computer to. listened to part of this album while debugging a GIS problem this week

youtube

reading

i read six books this week, which is really the clearest possible sign i need to up my antidepressants. read the shepherd king duology by rachel gillig (Fine but i had some issues with the authorial style, felt very YA as opposed to NA, did have a very cool magic system, unfortunately i liked the second couple’s banter and relationship Way More than the main couple’s). finished the last three books in the temeraire series, i have not much to say about them except i adored them wholeheartedly. also before i read those i wrote all the below in a fit of pique

the great state of west florida by kent wascom. instagram kept serving me ads for this book and i am once again a little unnerved by meta's advertising.

publishers' weekly synopis

In Wascom’s wacky and wild fourth adventure for the Woolsack clan (after The New Inheritors), lawless gunslingers and reactionary Christian nationalists face off in a divided Florida. The year is 2026 and 13-year-old orphan Rally Woolsack is rescued from the abusive foster family who brought him to Louisiana by his long-lost uncle Rodney, who regularly responds to challenges of mortal combat on the app DU3L. Rally is thrilled to get away from his tormentors and return to Florida, although it turns out Rodney has pulled him from the frying pan into the fire. Troy Yarbrough, a state legislator whose family runs a creepy evangelical Christian college in its mansion on Florida’s panhandle, has introduced a bill calling for the region to secede from the state. Rally, reckoning with the long-running bad blood between his family and the Yarbroughs, derides Troy’s vision as a “Jesus-riddled white ethnostate with a beachside pastel tinge.” With the bill on the floor of the state legislature, and with everyone packing firearms, the Florida Wars begin. Fans of pulpy dark humor will relish the climactic showdown between Yarbrough’s henchmen and those loyal to an elusive figure called the Governor, as right-wing nutjob Troy is saddled by mad cow disease and Rally is rescued by his crush. This high-octane satire feels all too plausible. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (May)

i had some trouble with this one! on its face it seems like the kind of thing i would eat with a spoon. in practice it's more of a coming-of-age than a just-before-the-apocalypse story and i have a lot of trouble relating to a thirteen-year-old boy. even if he is bisexual. in this interview wascom says he's "re-mythologizing the Western" which i can kind of see? it's very pulp and ultra-violent in a spaghetti western kind of way, and seems written in a way easily adaptable to the screen. not quite vaporwave but a lot of anime influence: the author thanks twelve Japanese directors and manga artists at the end of the book.

there's an odd authorial quirk where the thirteen-year-old boy often points out (internally and externally) that the adults in his life are just talking at him about politics. which is a pretty accurate portrayal of childhood, but lampshading it in this way doesn't really make me excited about wascom's authorial chops? this is your fourth book. this book revolved around a couple brutal fight scenes (and one giant setpiece crowd scene, which has vibes and atmosphere in spades), and that's a perfectly fine reason to write a book, but if that's your strength i would be very happy to have you focus on that instead of sections where both the kid and i the reader are bored.

there's a scene with babysitter/babysittee sexual abuse that unlocks how the abused character makes decisions for the rest of his life, but it was extremely graphic and i wasn't really prepared for that. i don't know that i would have read this book if i had that knowledge aforethought.

overall not quite what i wanted it to be: the author in this interview said he's been working on it for over a decade and had to keep throwing out parts coming true during trump's presidency. i picked this pulpy novel up as an escape from the terrible politics of today, which is not what this books is. i don't know if i buy that he was simply too good at predicting the future, but i do like the choice stated in his interview "I abandoned the predictive stuff and tried to tell a story like it was written on an obelisk in the future, like what Denis Johnson did with Fiskadoro, or Joanna Russ with The Female Man". it does feel very much like the narrator from Mad Max 2 telling his story of meeting Max as a feral kid. again, some interesting ideas in here, does deliver on the Southern Gothic doomed political family aspect, as well as the same flavor of heat-wave climate tragedy as JG Ballard's The Drowned World, but i would have liked to focus more on his cool furiosa-like aunt in a white mustang with an anime mech arm. criminally underused character

watching

watched The Hunter (2011, dir. Nettheim) because of the Temeraire books! they used an archaic name for Tasmania that made me go “where the Fuck is that” and then i looked at the media mentions section of the wikipedia page. beautiful film in a very spare way. lots of long loving shots of willem defoe in the wilderness enduring various weather conditions.

i don’t know if it stuck the landing quite as well as i would like, but like defoe you fall in love with the land and the family so slowly it’s very startling when you finally do fully realize it. i think i was supposed to cry at the end but didn’t quite manage it. one of my favorite springsteen songs is part of the diagetic score in a way that made me cry, which i also did not expect.

playing

shoutout to the Thing Matching genre of phone game. this one is very much watch-ads-to-win but the levels are pretty long and i like shuffling objects around while listening to podcasts and trying to fall asleep

making

fallow week

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #mackintosh

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ficwingrecs · 4 months ago

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Fourth Wing Femslash Week Is Coming!

Have you been looking for an excuse to post that Rhiannon/Tara epic? Did you come away from Fourth Wing thinking that Imogen/Quinn was canon? (It's not, but you wouldn't be the only one.) Want to explore Cat/Maron or Mira/Syrena? Ever wondered if Violet and Jesinia got up to anything in the Archives?

Femslash Week is the week for you!

From September 22nd to the 29th, please post, reblog and recommend fanart, fanfic, and meta about the ladies of the Empyrean loving each other!

#fourth wing femslash #4w femslash #empyrean femslash #fourth wing fanfic #empyrean fanfic #violet sorrengail #imogen cardulo #rhiannon matthias #quinn #tara #jesinia neilwart #mira sorrengail #syrena cordella #catriona cordella

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oh-no-its-dragons · 7 days ago

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2024 Fic Writer End of Year Roundup (Distrated Version)

aka only the ones I can do off the top of my head after the first few questions because otherwise I'll never get this done

1. How many words did you publish on AO3 in 2024?

On AO3, I've got 150,559 words for the year.

2. How many fics did you complete this year?

Oooh "complete" is not a thing I'm good at, but let me see...

Looks like there were three multichapter fics and about twenty one-shots. I've gotten better at making something a series instead of an open-ended multi-chapter fic when that's what makes more sense for it.

3. How many in progress or ongoing fics did you start this year?

Started posting? Only three. I've got a few more in my WIP files but they don't count until there's something posted somewhere.

4. What was your favorite thing you wrote?

This is a super hard question for me and not only because I forget everything exists once it's posted. Maybe Country Air? I'm enjoying The Cure Is Worse Than The Poison except for when I hate it. I had a lot more fun writing Defying Gravity than I expected, and Early Tyrrish Romantic Poetry was an act of love so it's especially close to my heart.

5. What piece was your most experimental or different from your usual style?

Gotta be the faux-translated ancient dramatic poems, lol.

6. Did any fics surprise you - either while writing or their reception?

Defying Gravity probably surprised me the most- there's probably two or three points in there where I had a good idea of what would happen and then when I got there it just. Didn't happen that way.

9. Who is an artist/author that inspired you?

Can I just list the entire Riders Quadrant discord? Because seriously I had so much fun writing fic and talking about it this year. @suebswrites helped me restructure both Poison and Defying Gravity in ways that made them better. @alexandia03 and @siobhanbooks and @essjaywrites and @tegantales all made me think a probably unhealthy amount about Imrrick. @yanny-77 and @siobhanbooks made me fall in love with Bodoc and Bodhi in general. @fantasywithkassidy's adorable Altitude Adjustment is directly responsible for the modern-with-magic AU Moth and I are starting. @lizardsrunfast and @saranova and @hockeyspiral23 are incredible writers who all inspired my design work which has been like a whole new bonus hobby. @illustratinghan and @essjaywrites and (ig)cuddlydevil1114 and (ig)mangaurania all make me want to be a better artist every time I pick up my tablet. I'm blanking on tumblr names for Mint and Mara_Leigh but both of them blew my mind too, and @overjoyedisland and @shipmistress9 and @caeli0306 all writing amazing stuff and @serahadmoni and @greeneyedwildthing killing me with the meta and... shit I'm sure I'm forgetting people too. This fandom is so fucking talented.

10. Who is a new author you discovered?

I mean, the whole fandom? I discovered the whole fandom. I'm endlessly impressed by how many people in this fandom wrote for the first time this year and are killing it right out of the gate, y'all are amazing.

11. Did you do any collaborations? How did it start?

@sarcasticmothwrites is my favorite person in the world

like how it started is they picked up Fourth Wing as a lucky day at the library and read it in less than a week and made me read it immediately and we couldn't stop talking about it. and then I made them join the discord, and we either co-write or beta everything for each other anyway because we're just that couple. lol.

14. What is your advice?

Write what makes you happy. Try things because they seem fun or because you always wanted to and haven't yet. If you told me a year ago I'd be designing t-shirts and making stickers I'd have laughed. I learned to make discord emotes! I got my first tattoo! In 2025 I'm going to try getting acrylic charms done and I'm going to try doing my own embroidered weapons patches for my denim jacket.

Just find time to do what brings you joy and celebrate with other people when they find their joy.

#the fandom as a whole

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