#hes young and stupid i feel like that is very very relevant to his character writing and it would be so different if he was in his 40s

[leounderseas]

Rant I had with my friend that I thought was important since I'm on Tumblr and I can be more open with my opinions than in other places

[itsyoung8]

My theories in Bully

Salut la population! a few years ago I had theories about characters somewhere but I won't say where (no I'm kidding, it's Twitter). But since I was very young and stupid (oh no, that's still relevant) well it stinked of lol. However, for some time now, while reworking them, others have appeared so I thought why not share them with the general public

Zoe is no longer friends with Mandy because the latter did not believe Zoe and preferred to defend Mr. Burton. What made me think that was the fact that Zoe already talks about Mandy as a friend in the past tense but that doesn't add anything to my theory. However, when you see how Mandy talks about Mr. Burton, basically as if he were her father, you can tell that when Zoe told Mandy that the other asshole assaulted her, Mandy didn't believe him and they got angry until today they are no longer friends

We know that Tad has a deep hatred for Peanut. However, my theory is that this hatred doesn't come from because he's a greaser and he's a preppie. I think Peanut did something that cost Tad to be beaten by his father but what? I don't know. Also I thought it's because Tad must have known that Peanut has a soft spot for Lola but not sure

Gary really liked Pete and Jimmy even if he didn't necessarily show it. When he was still taking his medication, he reached out to Jimmy when Jimmy was new, friendless, and already in trouble. In addition, he included Jimmy and Pete in his plans. Finally, in the period when he was no longer taking his medication in Chapter 1, he was, I think, sincere when he apologized to Jimmy and Pete in the cutscene where his jokes towards the two went too far (you know which one I'm talking about). In this period, he had to struggle with himself not to see Jimmy and Pete as obstacles but as friends. Unfortunately he lost this struggle and the rest you know

Gary got rid of Johnny directly by asking the townies to send him to the asylum because he knew he wouldn't be able to turn his brain a second time unlike Derby, Ted and Earnest. That's why Johnny doesn't appear in the cinematic of the mission "Making a mark". If Gary didn't manage to do the same with Russell, it's because everyone is afraid of Russell, even the townies

Dan doesn't hate nerds. She misses those old nerd hobbies and her hatred towards them is disproportionate to other jocks. All this, for me, is just a cover to be accepted by jocks, as he felt obliged to do is to prove that he is a jock.

Lefty and Luis grew up together but grew apart after Luis became a jock and Lefty remained a greaser. This choice of the developers may be a simple reference to Darrel Curtis and Paul Howden in The Outsiders who were two jocks and friends but who drifted apart after Darrel made the choice to become a greaser. It's the same for Lefty and Luis but in the opposite direction

End of this thread of theories. If I have others in the future, I will let you know. Feel free to tell me what you think

[ask-commander-arild]

OOC Post:

Hi, there! I'm @jnix-2006 and welcome to my ask blog, ask-commander-arild!! I made this blog for @pkmoth's @motherbound-askapalooza, and I plan on participating the entire month of August, but if it does well, I may continue it!! But, bear with me, because I don't use tumblr much, so this is all very new to me, haha. Before we start, I feel I should give a little bit of introduction to what exactly this is. So, firstly, what exactly is an Arild? Well, Arild is an OC I created for the game Mother 3 (Heavy spoilers btw)! He can be seen below!

Art done by @pinkalliums!!! Go check them out!!

Say hello to Arild Eskildsen! A young Norwegian lad of 15 years old who, through a series of unfortunate events, was once a pigmask. I know his design may look a little... 2015, but the design quite literally came to me in a dream, and I would've been stupid not to use it. Now, as much as I'd love to go into detail about his backstory, I wanna save most of it for the asks. I guess the most basic gist is that he was taken from our time, currently in the 2010's but may change later, from a very young age, and made to be a pigmask. Yippee, child soldier! He goes on to be promoted to captain. But after yet another unfortunate event, he ends up being chimera-ified and he gets promoted to commander, but not of the pigmasks... Of what, you ask? Well, we'll get there. For now, here's him as a captain!

Art also by @pinkalliums!! Seriously, go check them out! >:)

Few things to keep in mind for this blog:

1. I don't have many artistic abilities, unfortunately, so this will be a text only blog. Some friends have kindly made a few pieces for Arild, and I will show them off, but for the most part, there won't be much in the way of visuals. If you feel like making art of him, feel free! I would actually love to see it!!

2. Quite a lot of the stuff here is going to involve my own headcanons for the Mother series, especially post-game Mother 3. For example, in my headcanon, Claus survives and becomes the leader of the army, rebranding it in the name of peace, and that is why Arild is a commander. Basically, since everyone has unique headcanons for the series, you can just consider this an AU.

3. There will be mention of a couple real life places that will have Mother-ified names. With any mention of Norway, the name will changed to Fjordland, on account of its many... fjords. Canada is also an important place within the story, and that I have decided to call Mapleland. Creative, I know. I figured I would bring it up to avoid confusion

4. Feel free to ask whatever! Though, obviously, just make sure it's on topic, of course. Silly questions are easy to answer and will usually be answered quickest! Lore relevant questions are a little trickier and may take me just a bit longer to respond to, but I will be happy to get to them!! Also, RP is okay with me, if you want to!!

5. When it comes to asking questions, please don't be weird or anything. Like... being a former pigmask, Arild is a plus-sized character, so a comment about his weight would not be great. More importantly, absolutely NO NSFW. This character is a minor, and that stuff is not okay to ask. I don't think any of this will be an issue, but it's good to mention just in case

6. I do not speak Norwegian, so if I want to sprinkle it in a little bit, I have only on option. Google Translate. I know, I know... it's not the best, but I will try my best to avoid mistranslations or misuse of phrases. I wouldn't want to be the new version of that one post about the Norwegian Butter Crisis, haha.

If you're still here, thank you for reading until the end!! As said, I've never done something like this before, so this intro is probably super chaotic in comparison to other blogs, haha. I am really excited to get started here! I've always wanted to do an ask blog, and I really needed an excuse to flesh out my OC, so I'd say this is perfect! I'd like to give thanks to all the friends, and my bf, who helped me out on this!! Thank you to Moth for setting this event up! Thank you to Hal and a few others for the art! And also thank you so much to my friend Red who helped me create this character in the first place! He didn't tell me what his tumblr was, but he is @/Doc_Glowstick on Twitter!! Alright, I think I've rambled enough now. I'll probably go through this and change it later, but for now, let the blog begin!!!

[milolunde]

can u list all the main guys and their roles in the tunes bc i only know daffy and bugs and lola kinda rly but no one else😞😞also is roger rabbit relevant at all to them

YES I CAN.

Bugs Bunny- THE Main Character. Young upstart that’s been the “clever funny snarky guy who always gets the upper hand and makes sure the other person feels like an idiot while he does” since the start. Has a gay charm about him that pisses people off when immediately when they enter proximity.

Daffy Duck- THE The Main Character… before Bugs. Was the one to get the upper hand with some hijinks and shenanigans and always win in the end, just without the “cool” edge. Until, of course, Bugs had to be the one to Always Win. This shifted him from a Silly Duck to a generally greedy jealous and spiteful person, especially when paired with Bugs. He’s recently returned to his role as The Silly Guy.

Lola Bunny- originally appearing in the first Space Jam as sex appeal I mean Bugs’ love interest. She could play basketball and didn’t like being called “doll” and that was it. I counted and she had about 10 lines and 3 scenes

In The Looney Tunes Show and Rabbit Run, she’s portrayed as a complete ditz. She’s stupid, airheaded, and lowkey a stalker to Bugs because she’s so unaware of things outside of herself. In Rabbit Run they toned down the stupid and stalker and just made her a ditz who wants to sell her perfume and I LOVE her.

In the second Space Jam she is a Strong Independent Woman… I truly can’t remember if she plays a role other than being a member of the team, but that’s because Space Jam 2 didn’t utilize their characters correctly. Though she’s not much more than a Strong Independent Woman, I super love her. She’s capable and strong… like, become an Amazonian Warrior capable and strong. Anointed by Wonder Woman herself. She also cares for her friends and cares for family and the love others share as she virtually throws away her life’s work to become a Warrior because she hears a dad pleading for her to help his kid… she’s also sporty. Like the first Space Jam, its core that she’s Sporty and Likes Basketball

Then she appears in one episode of Looniversity, the Tiny Toons spinoff Spinoff as a chef. And a surfer. And skate boarder. She’s the Everything-Woman and she makes it look incredibly easy because, for her, it is. She has a Dude Bro Chick voice which I lowkey don’t like, but she’s fun.

Over all, Lola was made to be Bugs Bunny’s Girlfriend, then got her own Thing in The Looney Tunes Show which developed further (and into a better character) in Rabbit Run… then they lost it because god forbid a woman be a ditz. Hey this became more about my opinion on Lola than about Lola but that’s because, in their attempts to make her not a shallow woman character they made her a shallow woman character

OKAY. Okay <3

Yosemite Sam- Rootin’ Tootin’ souther cowboy with anger issues and guns

Elmer Fudd- THE hunter and THE adversary of Bugs Bunny… though I always thought adversary wasn’t the right word, as it seems more like Bugs messes with Elmer for fun, not because he HAS to outsmart him to survive being hunted

Tasmanian “Taz” Devil- I’ve seen him majorly in Bugs Bunny cartoons and he doesn’t interest me that much so I’m not sure if he’s bigger in a different set of cartoons. He’s a tornado-spinning rampaging beast that can destroy anything in his path but isn’t very smart. Always outsmarted by Bugs but that’s usually solved with Taz eating whatever tomfoolery is set in front of him

Porky Pig- before Bugs Bunny and Elmer there was Daffy Duck and Porky. Typically the victim of Silly Duck Daffy’s silliness. Sometimes his partner in crime. In The Looney Tunes Show Porky is A Loser by trade and usually victim to Daffy being a bag of dicks, I was pleasantly surprised that is different from their other portrayals as a duo

Sylvester the Cat- sometimes a domestic cat, sometimes and alley cat, always chases tweety bird

Tweety Bird- yellow canary of suspicious gender. Has to outsmart Sylvester as a means of survival… but they have a Tom and Jerry relationship half the time where they’re super trying to kill each other but would be devastated if the other was actually gone

Granny- the sweet old lady who either owns Sylvester or Tweety or Both depending on the cartoon. Also the “sweet but tough” grandmother trope. In The Looney Tunes Show she and tweety fought the Germans at war in France

Wile E. Coyote- silent coyote who uses ACME products to try and catch the Road Runner on Route 66

Was also in some Bugs Bunny cartoons where he did speak. Was a self proclaimed genius (“Wile E. Coyote. Geeeenius.”) and inventor. I haven’t seen media outside of Bugs Bunny cartoons where he speaks other than using signs

Road Runner- says meep meep, is fast and blue, and doesn’t even have to outsmart Wile E. It’s in their unwritten-written rules that Wile E. is thwarted by his own incompetence

Marvin the Martian- funny little guy who wants to take over earth for mars

Foghorn Leghorn- so like he’s The Rooster on this farm and he wants to fuck all the chickens and has some crazy Hero Syndrome about it, putting the farm in danger to prop himself up what a virgin

Pepe Le Pew- he’s a skunk that harasses Penelope because he thinks she’s also a skunk. He smells bad and is also French. His whole thing is he’s a diehard swoon French romance man but Penelope Does Not Like Him also he fucking stinks; I haven’t seen media where this is different

Penelope Pussycat- gets harassed by Pepé Le Pew because she’s a black and white cat and he thinks she’s a skunk. Sometimes she gets to beat the shit out of him <3

There was a short they used to show in theaters before movies called Carrotblanca, a parody of Casa Blanca, where Penelope is Bugs’ ex-lover who finds him again by pure chance. Their relationship left Bugs an actual alcoholic and disturbed to the point of he heard a single note of the piano of a certain song he’ll flip out- the song is Penelope’s favorite… worth mentioning as we’ll that Daffy is there with him as he RELAPSES INTO ALCOHOLISM BECAUSE PENELOPE IS THERE and threatens to kick he out when she comes pleading to Bugs for help. She kicks his ass, so… Anyway, she and Bugs end up together again at the end of the short, kissing beneath a parachute and dancing in an empty airport … lot…

As for Rodger Rabbit.

No

That guy means nothing to the Looney Tunes, BUT the Looney Tunes DO mean something to Rodger. Who Framed Rodger Rabbit is (almost) entirely stand alone, referencing and parodying both WB and Disney cartoons and characters.

In the crazy ass Meta Verse Actor World of Looney Tunes, the closet relationship Rodger has to any of the Looney Tunes is that he might work on the same set sometimes, Jessica Rabbit might be a performer, and whatever the movie e Who Framed Rodger Rabbit means to the characters depending on if you view it as a movie where the characters played roles or as events that happened to the characters that is only a movie in real life…

[hypermascbishounen]

Interesting that you point out how babied Lenore was in S4, because

yes, she was. She was written like such an immature brat, making stupid jokes and constantly whining that she was so boooored and no one needed her anymore and oh no she's so scawed of mean cawmiwwa 🥺 and it feels disingenuous, no I'm sorry I get that the context is different but the Lenore who cries that Carmilla lied to her is not the Lenore who was able to gaslight Hector into believing that actually he was lucky that he was beaten and imprisoned.

this is yet another way her character got disrespected, if you care about her. Remember, the other council vampires clearly had a poor opinion of Lenore. Carmilla made fun of her for her tendency to take care of animals, Striga implied that she saw her as a hopeless romantic, Morana talked about her like a silly little girl living in her fantasies. And the most charitable explanation as to why Lenore snapped and beat Hector to an inch of his life when he threatened her is precisely that he, too, saw her as a young defenseless girl: to be fair, would he have thought to attack any of the other three? Probably not. And Lenore clearly resents this situation so much, which is why he beat him way past self defense, which is why she had fun dominating him, which is why she was eager to humiliating him in front of her sisters, who both admired her for her genius and were disgusted by her sexual comments (a way to keep the control of the conversation)

I like this idea. Both Hector and Lenore are the "weak link" of their group, looked down on for their apparent "softness", but while Hector apparently didn't know, didn't realize or didn't care (if the writing was good, I could say that it's because he lived a life of abuse so he doesn't realize his own worth), Lenore very much did, and she rebounded too far in the opposite direction. Her kindness can almost be seen as a subtle way to feel powerful, more subtle than simply beating people into submission: sure, taking care of someone is a nice act... but also, they depend on you, and they're more malleable to your wishes.

So yeah, from this perspective, her constant 🥺 face in S4 is infantilizing an abuser. Lenore did nothing wrong. She always wanted to protect Hector, really. He was having fun when she manipulated him into sex, so what's the big deal. They are such good friends who understand each other. Of course Hector would love her and protect her with barely a second thought. Who wouldn't? An evil person? But they're so cute together 🥺

(btw, I'm interested to know who is the other Beatrice you mentioned lol! As for the Sugarman one, she is such a fascinating character who is so, so pitiable for what happened to her, but still not woobiefied for the horrible way she took her misery on her innocent son)

(also sorry for the ask lol, I didn't want to make a long post longer than it already is)

(no worries, feel free to send asks or messages! I always have more to say than I know what yo do with lol)

The other Beatrice is from Umineko, a series of murder mystery visual novels in the wider When They Cry series. She's hard to describe without spoilers tbh, but relevant atm: she can be a real smug sadist while still containing genuine tragedy, and her relationships get to actually mean something. Here she is expressing true opinions about nfcv:

I feel like a Lenore whose loss of humanity was allowed to be explored as a legit Dracula parrelel, could have almost been interesting. Oh well.

The biggest issue imo, is that she can't really exist as a character without Hector, but the story itself feels threatened by Hector being a character compared to her. This means that no matter how much they try to build her up by contrast, she gets dragged down anyways. So now all they have is two ruined characters for the price of one.

Personally, I think maybe the catharsis granted from a character who does bad things, is only as good as the work lets you engage with them on that premise. If you keep dragging it back to how they're basically in the right anyways, it can lose the emotional opportunity for the audience to explore dark feelings. This doesn't mean you can't write them to be sympathetic ever, but it does mean they risk falling into a weakened power fantasy or cheap fanservice, if you effectively just preach to the audience about how cool they are, esp at the expense of other characters.

[lilypatchkins]

Negai no Astro Chapter 5 Thoughts

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

First off Kuran was a little hysterical to me, first noodle arms and then innocently asking Terasu if Hibaru’s Astro is actually just a strong right arm.

He has quickly become such a lovable character. His design was already amazing, and then we find out he’s a really strong fighter and a really nice guy. He set up a whole security team for Ikebukuro basically. And now we find out that Kou’s older brother was his best friend and he takes care of him on his behalf.

Side note: Im really not sure about Kuran and whether he has an Astro or not. At first I didn’t think so because he wasn’t shown as one of the ones to receive it. Also, he didn’t seem like the type to have some sort of strong wish, but now that we know his story with Kou I’m sure he has a strong wish to protect him. I really hope he does purely because I want him to be more plot relevant.

Anyways speaking of Kou, this chapter did make me think a little better of him. Yes, he’s acting like an arrogant brat but the context of his brother makes his behavior more understandable. He was probably very young when he lost Botan, and from his perspective, he lost his dear brother to a random kid. Not to drag other series into this but it really reminded me of Kota from my hero academia. He probably also felt like that by choosing to be a hero, his brother was choosing strangers over him. So instead, he chose to walk the opposite path (probably also to protect himself from getting hurt like that again too).

Hibaru did have a point though when he reprimanded Kou for not appreciating Kuran who took care of him for all those years.

It does make me wonder if Kuran has ever like, talked to Kou about any of this, or if he just let Kou kind of do whatever he wanted while making sure he was safe from a distance.

Also, rereading the fight, I don’t think Kou actually wanted to kill Hibaru. At the very least, I don’t think he has the guts to actually do it. Otherwise, why yell at the guy to beg for his life and lecture him to be smarter? “Don’t die for a stupid cause like my brother, be smart, focus on yourself.” It makes me think Kou has mixed feelings towards Hibaru. He’s already admitted that Hibaru reminds him of Botan, and I theorized that Kou, despite what he says, did love his brother. It’s like he doesn’t want Hibaru to live the way his brother did because he doesn’t want to see someone else die over what he thinks is a stupid cause. That implies that to some degree, Kou does care about Hibaru? Or at the very least, doesn’t want to see a repeat of Botan.

Now as for Hibaru’s view of Kou, it’s very obvious that he and Terasu do not think highly of him. They think he’s a leech and I believe it’s been stated that he was the weakest in the family. But it’s also clear that they never knew about Kou and Kuran’s backstory until now, so I hope Hibaru and Kou can eventually become allies. Also because while I’m sure Kuran would not mind helping Hibaru, he won’t abandon Kou. Though at the same time, considering the type of person Hibaru is, I understand why he’s so mad at Kou. I know Hibaru says, “I won’t finish you off outta respect for Kuran!” But again I don’t think he would’ve really killed him either way. I think he just wanted to lecture Kou about loyalty and family.

It’ll be interesting to see how Kou reacts! He seems very stubborn so I don’t see him easily admitting to losing, but surely something is going to give right? (also because I really want Kuran to join them but he won’t leave Kou behind).

[loverofstufflof]

The Lord Deer Demon

Megapolis’ most sane doctor

Dr. Bài works at a hospital in the Megapolis Bhikkhu district. Being one of the few clinics that understands demon biology, they get a lot of traffic from all walks of life.

Including the occasional visit with a squad of heroes after their brushes with death.

Unfortunately, Dr. Bài has a rocky history with one of their mentors.

Is it really so bad that he wants to put his past behind him? To live happily with his daughter, and save lives as he’s always wanted? Why does this scheming, knifing, stupid monkey need to be all up in his business?!

He doesn’t know anything about the Bone Demon, so just leave him be, already! There’s a woman downstairs that urgently needs her daily dose of freshly extracted heart and—yes he is still using that method! It works and who cares if a few stupid mortals die in the process?!

-

Bài Lùjing, more accurately known as the White Deer Spirit, is a blorbo I’ve been working on for quite some time now. He’s meant to be my idea of how the show could incorporate the actual JTTW villain.

For those whose knowledge of JTTW antagonists extends as far as OSP episodes (/pos) Lùjing appears as the main villain in the Kingdom of Sons arc.

The king of the land has fallen deathly ill and is desperate for whatever source of immortality he can get. His advisor, the White Deer Spirit, informs him that consuming 1,111 hearts of young sons will bring him back to health.

However, when the pilgrims arrive, Tripitaka’s heart should be hearty enough to do it instantly, because, you know, reincarnation of Golden Cicada.

As you can imagine, this section is very gorey, chaotic, and a great opportunity for Wukong to flex his body horror skills. My favourite arc of the whole book.

A lot went into the design to figure out how LEGO would make his story more palatable for younger audiences, how they would fit him into the futuristic city LMK takes place in, how they would anglicize his name, and so on.

I don’t feel like giving too much away because I’m honestly kinda proud of how I built his character and want to reveal his backstory in a cool, dramatic way, but I will say this:

His surname is very, very relevant.

Anyhow, this is my propaganda piece for the @lmk-oc-competition ! You can vote for him to win a duel to the death! Make sure to give the other creators some love, too! This is just a friendly competition, after all :]

[neechees]

do you have any strong thoughts/feelings about the spirit sequel/spinoff movie and tv show? especially with how you're native and the original had a very strong native storyline

I haven't watched it, don't plan on watching it, but I HAVE seen several reviews from hard-core Spirit (2002) fans, & just based on the info I've seen from them, it ain't good. Some essential info is that the setting is AFTER the original Spirit film, it's set in the early 1900s (which personally I think is inaccurate to the timeline of the first movie & there's no way this could be right, but more on that later), the horse featured is actually Spirit and Rain's SON, and the setting is a town next to a railroad (I initially thought that presumably this is the same railroad Spirit deliberately sabotaged to stop them from invading his home, which means they eventually succeeded, but the show seems to either retcon this or introduce ANOTHER railroad called "JP and sons Railway" and that it was built just pre-early 1900s, but if that's the case then that doubly makes the timeline make no sense. Either there's 2 railroads and the time periods is fucked up, or the show is completely disregarding the films canon and saying there's only one and its the JP & sons one & moves up the timeline for. some reason.).

The timeline is relevant because it plays heavily into both the plot and the themes of the film: the original Spirit film from 2002 takes place sometime between 1863-1865, when the transcontinental railway was being built. The realization that the railway is going to endanger Spirit's herd, as well as the fact that this is partially why they were attacking Little Creek's village & trying to kill everyone is what motivates Spirit to try stop it, he literally sabotages one of the major efforts of settler colonialism alongside a Native man. His son in the spinoff sequels being very happy friends with a girl from a town directly next to the now built railway ENTIRELY misses the point and themes of what the original film was trying to say and completely disregards the history of this railway and how many Native Americans were killed and displaced for it. But, transcontinental railway or some other fictional railway or not, the first film both literally and symbolically showed why this train was bad and the effects it had on the Native wildlife and Native people. But again, the show seems to have changed this to dodge the original film's plot points that were clearly critiques of Western Expansion and settler colonialism in order to make the setting of the spinoffs more palatable.

One rater from Common Sense Media (which reviews & gives appropriate ratings & info for children's media) themselves even stated that both the show & the new movie "does not substantially confront the actual history of westward settlement", presumably because it's aimed at a young audience, but this is stupid either way because that was literally the ENTIRE point of the first movie (which didn't hold back in its depiction of racism & colonization) & was also aimed at a younger audience. I watched that movie when I was 6. I was able handle it and understand what was going on

& whats interesting is that, while I could be wrong, but I actually don't think the White characters EVER call Little Creek a slur (like "Indian/Injun", "redskin", "savage" etc) once in the original Spirit film, & he straight up refers to him by his tribe (Lakota)? Because they didn't need to. They showed how these characters were racist & settler colonialism is bad by every other action they do. Compare this with Pocahontas where you hear pretty much ALL those slurs, her people's tribe/s of the Powhatan confederacy are never mentioned (which would be the Mattaponi, Patawomeck, & Pamunkey), & ends with a lukewarm "racism is bad & both sides are wrong, don't be mean to white ppl even if they want to kill you <3"

There is also a Native character named Mixtli & is of the Atakapa/Ishak people, but as far as I know "Mixtli" is a Nahua word, and the Ishak people were a southwest woodland tribe and a language isolate. His design also moreso looks like a Little Creek ripoff rather than anything similar to other depictions of traditional Ishak clothing/people. AFAIK he's also mostly a side character as well. And again, this goes back to this new show seemingly ignoring the history of racism in the early 1900s: Mixtli is 16 and "considered an adult by his tribe", which seems to be the show's way of dodging the fact that in this era he'd otherwise be forced into an Indian boarding school or have just left one recently (since many left in between the ages 16-18, but some managed to leave earlier if you got married). Most tribes even by the early 1900s were starting to live in more European styled houses like cabins, and wearing European/White American clothing (or incorporating them a lot more) and were forced to keep most of their traditions in hiding because they were made illegal, but this doesn't seem to be illustrated for the show. Call me hardass and a stickler for historical accuracy, but I feel like if you're going to adapt a film set in any point in history, you should do your best to make it historically authentic in tone even if not everything is 100% accurate, and do so with the appropriate target audience in mind. Spirit 2002 did that, the show has not.

Below is just some proof & history nerd stuff & expanding on how Spirit 2002 takes place during the mid 1860's & how we know this, as well as why this decision is stupid as hell. But otherwise I feel like I'm gunna have to stop for now because this is getting long and I'm not quite articulating as well as I'd like.

Remember when I said that The Colonel's look was probably based on General Custer? That's the most obvious in his uniform and attire, compare his character design with that of this photo of Custer in 1865. While the designs in 2d animated works tend to be simplified, this still possibly gives us an idea of what time period the first movie is supposed to be in. I think I saw someone also say that in an early draft of the film, the Colonel was named "Colonel Custer", meaning he might have straight up meant to be Custer originally

Spirit being forced to work on a railroad also lets us know that this is specifically the transcontinental railroad, which was started in 1863 and finished in 1865, so the original movie takes place in between this time, and again going off of the above mentioned point, Custer was also still alive by this time.

So if we go with the idea that Spirit 2002 does in fact take place in 1863-1865, and that the spinoffs take place in the early 1900s, this could not work because Spirit and his son would not be alive. Horses have a lifespan of about 30ish years. MAYBE Spirit Jr would be alive, but he'd be an old ass horse, but he doesn't look very old in the show at all. I think partially the reason for the time jump would be because maybe they thought the fashion for the show characters could be more easily modernized (which, they are VERY modernized with the female characters wearing tshirts and skinny jeans, when they should be dressing like the characters in Anne with an E), or maybe they thought that the racism by this point "wasn't as bad". You COULD make the case to say that the series retconned most everything in the original film and is saying the first railroad was in fact, the same one as in the show, and the movie's timeline was moved upward to be at a later date, but this also retcons the original setting completely and makes no sense. I'm not sure why they decided to do a spinoff of fucking SPIRIT of all things, but whatever.

See Mixtli in the center, and two drawings of Ishak people on either side. Like I guess I can see why they'd not want to animate their traditional clothing, but they really couldn't incorporate ANYTHING? Not even the traditional designs or hairstyle or the breechcloth?

[evilelena]

I'm so weird, I fill out three-year-old Cobra Kai surveys on tumblr.

Karate Kid/Cobra Kai survey

---

It’s the year 2021 and you’re obsessed with The Karate Kid. How are you feeling?

Well, it's now the year 2024 and...fine? I was never really "obsessed" with the Miyagi universe until October 2022 when I started going through all the episodes for my so-called "fan fixion". it's not really fanfic; intentionally bad recaps with fictionalized elements are just something my sister and I used to do ages ago for the lulz. We actually did them for Beverly Hills, 90210 and The Shield. The Cobra Kai ones are done by me; but my sister remains my one consistent reader. She's also the one who challenged me to incorporate the phrases "practice dumby" (yes, spelled that way), "Why is this happening to me?!", and "Ouch, ouch, oh, ouch!" (a line from one of my old childhood stories) into all of my recaps -- or whatever you want to call them. (In case anybody ever looks at those and thinks wtf?.) Despite not being "obsessed" until a year and a half ago, I still really liked CK and re-watched many episodes even before October 2022!

Did you grow up with TKK or are you new to the series?

Kind of both? I was born...uh, long enough ago that I was alive when TKK was released, although I don't remember its release because I was a very young child. I did see parts of all three first movies here and there over the years growing up -- and I watched that masterpiece The Next Karate Kid in the late 90's or early 00's while going on a Walton Goggins movie binge -- but I never appreciated them until my ex-on-good-terms recommended Cobra Kai. (I'm pretty new to the "fandom" but have been watching CK since May 2018.)

We gotta do the basics. Favorite character:

Johnny, for sure. Second favorite is Terry Silver.

Favorite ship:

Johnny and Daniel when they're bickering and squabbling like an old married couple.

Underrated character:

Stiven. Too bad he left, or he and Hawk could've become pals. I like how Stiven bravely tried to start a fight with Tory during the LaRusso house brawl, and she punched him away like she was batting away a pesky fly.

Underrated ship (don’t say therapy, lol):

Johnny and Ali? I (gasp) prefer them to Johnny and Carmen.

Wax On, Wax Off or Sweep the Leg?

Sweep the leg!

Which of Daniel’s dumb little outfits is your favorite?

Any where he incorporates the color blue. Bonus points if it includes his special blue-and-white karate headband.

Character from the films you most want to return, who’s not Terry Silver:

Charlie -- that minion of Ned, or whatever the main bully's name was in TNKK. (Charlie, played by Walton Goggins, was Ned's Rickenberger.)

Scene that lives in your head rent-free:

Oh, there are so many. Way too many to name in a three-year-old survey.

Will Anthony LaRusso ever be relevant?

Technically, he was one of the most relevant characters in 5x10. Without him, Kenny Payne might still be Terry Silver's prize pupil. (And Silver might not have been arrested. Stupid Anthony!)

You live in The Valley and are forced to join the karate gang war. Which dojo do you join?

Eagle Fang, but I'm not leaping from one building to another. (Sensei Lawrence is more than welcome to call me pathetic, though.)

What’s your training montage song?

"Gonna Fly Now"?

It’s the crossover event of the century! Which TV show are you combining with Cobra Kai for an hour-long Saturday night special?

Beverly Hills, 9010. Mel Silver can be Terry's cousin.

Tagging:

Nobody, because this is three years old.

[carinavet]

Okay, I watched the live-action One Piece.

I actually don't hate it.

(Mostly.)

the things they did wrong

The fishmen. The makeup is really, really horrible. They went for "realistic"-looking skin and it just does. not. work. And the prosthetics are just bad. Really, really bad. Arlong isn't big enough. He keeps threatening to bite people but his mouth is so small relative to the rest of his face (especially because of said prosthetics) so you can't really take it seriously. It's just bad, y'all.

The den den mushi. Sooooooooooo creepy. The texture is awful and they need better puppetry.

The emotional moments don't quite hit it like the original story does. Each of my absolute favourite moments from the original have been changed juuuuuuuust enough to not give quite the same punch.

Luffy doesn't feel like Luffy. There's a very specific sort of whimsy that Luffy exudes and this guy just doesn't have it. To be fair! it is a very difficult thing to pull off! But it's also, like ... really integral to the whole story. He's got the wrong kind of smile and we never hear him giggle. He should be 100% guileless and he's just not quite there. Nami doesn't feel like Nami. She's not expressive enough, or bossy enough. She keeps trying to be the holding-everything-in-stoically type and that's just not Nami. She holds back as far as information goes, especially in the beginning, but her feelings are pretty much on her sleeve otherwise. Zoro's personality is off just a bit. He's just a bit too grumpy. We see him smile like twice. We never see him get really excited, and the one time he gets moderately excited he's still pretty stone-faced about it. Also, not letting him get genuinely happy about booze makes him come off less as really enjoying one vice and more just being a sad alcoholic. And he doesn't fully commit to the crew soon enough. He's the type to be all or nothing, so he needs to be all in from the get-go. Sanji can't do a French accent, which is kind of hilarious because he just sort of goes for An Accent and so he'll start a sentence with something that's, like, vaguely British? but then if the sentence is long enough he'll find Vaguely French halfway through.

Everyone is too old. Kaya is supposed to be 18 but that actress is in her 30s for sure. Even the kids are kids that are too old for the parts they need to play.

Except for Mihawk, who's a bit too young. Also his fake beard doesn't look great.

Some of the effects for things like Luffy stretching and Buggy coming apart. Again, tbf, this was always something that would be a problem in a live-action recreation, so it's only a minor annoyance. But there's definitely a couple of little things they could have changed that would have made a big difference in believability.

A lot of the crowd shots have a case of Main Character Syndrome. This actually helps the audience pick out important people at Gold Roger's execution, but it's kind of funny when you see Zoro among his classmates at the dojo or Nami and Nojiko with the rest of Coco Village and are like "HMMM I WONDER WHO THE MAIN CHARACTER COULD BE."

Trying a bit too hard to interconnect everything. They keep both Buggy and Arlong relevant for too long (Buggy by keeping him after his arc, Arlong by having him show up early). Garp being around for the whole show is sort of interesting and funny but it makes me wonder if they're even planning on getting to Water 7, and how they're gonna do that if they do.

the things they did right

Verbally acknowledging Zoro as the first mate. The original never dies that even though he totally is.

The wanted posters. They did a great job of recreating the posters, and the little effects they do overlaying them when they introduce new characters is fun.

Pretty much everyone's physicality. Especially Zoro and Sanji. They're very accurate to the original. Just the way Zoro stands and walks is 100% Zoro. Captain Kuro managed to be cool and creepy instead of looking stupid. Usopp's face is surprisingly spot-on.

On a related note, the fight scenes were well-choreographed. And there were a few cool shots where the camera followed someone who was jumping around.

Anything that can be a practical effect is a practical effect. It doesn't always pay off *cough* fishmen and den den mushi *cough* but it usually does, and I very much appreciate the effort.

Each arc is one episode long. 'Nuff said. Y'all know how long these damn arcs can stretch.

The Vibes. They did a really, really good job of making it ridiculous without making it ridiculous, if you know what I mean. A lot of that is thanks to the abundance of practical effects. A lot more is the lighting. They also had fun with camera angles and focus/blur to just keep things feeling not-quite-real in a way that helps rather than hinders the suspension of disbelief. They also made the show overall darker than the original, which I usually hate but in this case it really works: You can't take things like the Chop Chop Fruit or Zoro's penchant for cutting people up out of a cartoon and into a live-action without it automatically getting creepier, so leaning in to that was absolutely the right choice. It also kind of made Buggy's arc feel more real and high-stakes.

All the little details. There were a lot of them. All the characters are at least vaguely the correct nationality from Oda's Q&A tidbits. When Zoro is laid up, Nami reads him Liar Norland. You can see Mihawk's ship in the bay outside of Roger's execution. At one point you can hear "Binks' Sake" playing in the background. Just about every single costume was accurate to the original, and the sets were incredibly detailed. There are so many little details in every single bit of it that tell you that the people who made this were paying attention, and frankly that alone makes me far more inclined to forgive any mistakes I feel they've made.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

No because Aoyama is a really REALLY uh quirky? I won’t get into it much but iirc he’s half French or something so they really played into the “oui oui fromage” type stereotype with his personality SHEGSHS

Im crying the bro zone LMAOOO honestly the Karasu sibling dynamic felt soo natural to me so good job LMAO I get what you mean! Like sometimes the sibling dynamic feels a little off if it’s too like….lovey dovey for lack of a better term?? Esp compared to what most sibling dynamics are even stereotyped to be like LOL

Otoya a real one fr >>>> really an undercover wingman like bro did not even grab a shirt or pants just walked out like ok bro the rest is up to you

LMAOO omg Karasu change up?? I bet the theme would be FIRE honestly that’s me with like any wallpaper/background/pfp I switch relatively often because I get bored HAHA

LMAOOO everything comes back to Karasu he’s everywhere…it’s ok time to lock in!! No more Karasu from now on /j ok but WAITTT if you made a long series you KNOW I’ll read it the second it comes out!! I’m ngl I got second lead syndrome too reading hollyhock with Karasu HSHSKAHSKA I’m curious would it be a completely diff au/verse or a hollyhock branch?

Also pause…don’t be shy post the smaus LMAOO dw we share the same mind I can put together the context pieces

- Karasu anon

PLSSS the way i’m in france rn…maybe that’s what secretly influenced me DHDJSKSM in my mind bfb aoyama is a very square looking dude?? idk how to put it but in my mind he has a square face, short brown hair, probably not super tall but kinda wide in a muscly way 🤔 he’s def athletic but very much so gives background character energy 😔 like he INVENTED being an npc 😭😭😭 the closest i can think of for a character that resembles him is imagining what young kusakabe from jjk might look like?? idk

siblings in media either say bro and sis way too often for it to feel natural (my brother and i do call each other bro but it’s in a buddy way not a “brother please bring me my water” “okay sister” way ykwim), are way too openly affectionate, or are horribly toxic there is hardly ever any in between 😩 i wanted it to be obvious that yayoi teases tabito a ton and maybe sometimes too much but at the end of the day she’s got his back and does care abt him (and vice versa ofc!!)

okay idk if it’s funnier to think that he knew y/n was coming so he thought he should change into smth better before she got there so he could go out but she caught him at a bad time so he just to roll as he was OR if he knew she was coming and that he’d have to leave but he just thought to himself “nah wtvr this is my fit tn the world can live with it” honestly both are in character because he’s such a dumbass (affectionate)

EEK IT MAY HAVE TO HAPPEN there’s just not any panels or arts of him that scream header to me though especially not following my current theme’s layout…ig i would have to do smth similar to my nagi theme from the beginning of the summer if i did!! we will see hehe

KARASU IS INESCAPABLE FR he’s just so perfect 🥹 i think it would probably be a completely different verse!! the plot and ending i have planned for hollyhock is very dependent on y/n loving otoya specifically so now i just associate the whole sengoku period vibe with eita…also historical au’s are harder for me to put out because the writing time gets doubled due to the necessity of research!! hence why i can’t work on hollyhock on the plane 😵‍💫 i’m not quite sure what au i would go for…i’ll have to do a deep dive and listen to some audios/watch some edits to see what inspires me!!

LMAOAOAO okay be prepared for crack they’re so stupid but i’ll give a little context for the verse so yk what’s going on!! also the queen of miraverse ocs makes an appearance in them 🤩 i’ll only post the bllk ones i’ve made because those are the most recent/relevant to our convos but trust i have many

[miss0atae]

Random thoughts about Cooking Crush ep 1.

"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all" -- Harriet Van Horne.

Few dishes shown in the episode : Thai pork toast (Khanom Pang Na Moo), Thai Meatballs, Green Curry, Spicy veggie Soup with shrimps, Red curry Nang Loi, Tom Kha Gai.

The series is already in their 7th episode so I'm late but I'll give my two cents about it anyway.

▪️Prem looks like a smol bean but he isn't a real one. He has big dreams but it seems harder to get to them. He seems to be close to his family and has good friends. I learnt that he cooks well but has low self esteem.

▪️Ten is the real smol bean and rich boy who has a bad relationship with his father. In this episode he showed that eating is very important in life. He shouldn't have said he won't eat in the day but it leads him to Prem so I guess it was meant to be.

▪️I'm sure Ten was the kid from Prem's childhood memory and they also met at the beginning of the episode in the market so they really had to meet. I like that Ohm plays a gentle character. I never recovered from his role in Theory of Love so I'm always glad when he is playing something very different from that. Not sure about how I feel with Prem. They didn't start well.

▪️Dynamite, Prem's friend is young and very stupid. However, I like his smile and cheekiness. Too bad he has the stalker syndrome which is not really funny in a series from 2023/2024. I don't know why they made him this way. Will he stay like that in the next episode?! Also he doesn't respect boundaries from his crush which is not really a good start in any relationship. He seems like a good friend, but lose any braincells when he sees his crush.

▪️The crush name is Fire, Ten's friend. He is played by Neo so it automatically gave him many points in beauty. He is definitely not interested by Dynamite for obvious reasons. He also has a secret crush on Jane. Like his stalker he loses any common senses when he is close to his crush. I don't know how they will make him fall in love with Dynamite. Their dynamic is not very healthy at this point.

▪️There were two others noticable characters: Samsi, friends of Dynamite and Prem and Blond Guy who according to MDL is called Metha. They had a feud about Meatballs. Blond Guy was really selfish. I agreed with Samsi about him.

▪️I felt like there were a lot of mean people around the school: the 3B, the Blond Guy, the football players... Even the teacher was mean in some way. I felt he plays favorites. Especially during the cooking test or when he calls in Prem about staying late in the kitchen. Would it have killed him to be more understanding?!

▪️ I like discovering more about Thai dishes through this series. I admit I got into Korean Food because of Kdramas so I believe it's a good medium to make people learn more about Thai Food. GMMTV should sell a cooking book as merch for this series. It would be relevant. I would buy it. It's better than the usual keychains or USB key they try to sell us. They can add tons of pictures from their stars inside. It would sell well. I'm sure.

Anyway, let's see in the next episode how Ten's cooking classes will be since Prem will need money and Ten is rich enough to afford overpriced lessons. I want to know how these foodies will fall in love. I wasn't expecting a lot from this series because it's a comedy. I don't really like comedy but it was on my watch list anyway because of OffGun and mostly because I like food. I wanna try recipes from the dishes shown in this episode. 🤤

[benis-chillin]

Sonic Wolf 6 Profiles: Wolf 6

Oops, didn't mean to be so late wrapping up these posts! I was a bit busy getting back into plasma donation after an unexpected absence, is all. These next two should be scheduled, though.

Alright, time to Ken Penders this sucker!

Before we get started, though, I have decided on ONE change since the last post. Instead of linking it all individually, I'll simply make a master list post with all of the relevant links, and link to that in the future!

So, Masterlist with all of the links: https://www.tumblr.com/benis-chillin/706450181935218688/sonic-the-hedgehog-fanfiction-link-masterlist?source=share

Anyway, most of these guys are basically props for Jack's backstory, so we're not going to go TOO in-depth with most of them, but I'll try to give these random assortments of Sonic Forces Avatar pieces their due.

Name: Boom

Wispon: Bomb

An explosives expert, and technically the first OC we saw onscreen(on-page?). For some reason, I've always interpreted him as having a German accent. Other than that, the most interesting thing about him is that I always viewed his Wispon as looking like the Seiza Blaster from Kyuranger. Someone feel free to draw that.

He died in the story he was introduced in, though admitably, if I had that story to do over again, I would probably change his fate to a coma.

UPDATE: As of the 2023 revision, he is now in a coma.

Name: OnePunch

Wispon: Drill

One of my more boring designs, more meant to fill a roster than anything. Because of that, I wrote him as the blandest man alive before taking him out in a blaze of glory.

Name: Quickshot

Wispon: Standard(two)

One of the few females I've created, oddly. She's fairly important to Raccoon, being the one he saved when they first met, and being intergral to his intergration into Wolf 6. She was also the original owner of Lady Chao. Of the slain characters listed here, she probably has the best chance of coming back if the storyline allows it.

Name: Chaz Hardcock

Wispon: Burst

Okay, this one is entirely a joke. He's basically just the OC I made for my Sonic Forces Retranslated cutscene comp that I gave a stupid name. His last name will obviously never be said on-screen, but I view him as a canon member of the team, AND still alive.

His Adventures: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhnIPa8XAn7yEWcJx9jMd-0dH10ttJsYU

Name: Slings

Wispon: None

Another joke character because the goggles reminded me of the Amazing Spider-man. A lizard who was trapped in his spider-filled basement during the first two months of the war, Slings grew attached to the spiders, and believed that he had become one with them, and was thus always covered in them. He was on Wolf 6 because no other Resistance unit would take him, and essentially left to scouting duties. He didn't last too long, and will not be revived. Did not wield a Wispon due to his innate ability to shoot web-like blasts from his fingers, and had complete control over his spiders.

Name: Wrecker

Wispon: Cube

An expert in demolition and sabotage, this young wolf died during the war, and was later brought back as an ECS Unit. I'd like to show how he's doing afterwards someday.

And now onto our bigger two, the ones that are guaranteed continued appearances: Edge and Spike.

Name: Edge

Wispon: None

Age: Undecided, but presumably around 25-27.

Edge has his origins in the original phases of Jack, where I was just making an edgelord called Edgy the Boy because I'm an unfunny hack. I saved his original outfit to my closet in the game, so when I turned Jack into an actual character with his final outfit, I just used this to form a basis for the character of Edge, a loose cannon that went to prison over custom weapons dealing.

He actually got a last minute redesign while Those who left us behind was being written, but his sword has been a constant. It was inspired by that sort of whip sword the red Zyuohger uses, as that felt like a very Sonic-y ability for him to have.

I actually plan to do considerably more with this character in the future, so stay tuned.

And of course, what is a character like Edge without a good counterpoint like Spike?

Obviously, she has a rebellious streak in her, like Edge does, but she expresses it in more healthy ways, like wearing more punk attire, or just the ability to properly question authority instead of disregarding protocol instantly like Edge does. This contrast, obviously, puts them at odds with each other, and Edge's less desirable traits vs Spike's less traditional worldview create a great stage for these two to clash.

I also view Spike as having something of an alternative lifestyle. Obviously, she's taken a liking to doing the Sally Acorn(remember, kids, only break the design rules if there's a good character reason for it), but as her brief cameo in Crawl Walk or Run indicates, she's willing to date pretty much anybody that works well with her. She's basically pansexual, if pansexuality also included robots and stuff. I plan to do more with this later.

Oh yeah, and she’s in the same age range as Edge...Almost forgot to mention that.

Her Wispon is a Spike Wispon, which has only been depicted as a larger weapon in IDW, but I'm gonna handwave that as a custom version and say that hers is more equivalent to the Hover Wispon. And her Wisp partner is the scarred one from the Rise of the Wisps short because why not? Not like it's ever gonna show up again later in actual canon.

So yeah, that's about all she wrote about Wolf 6. I don't doubt that more will show up later, since there were 22 members, but for now, this is all I've got.

And next time, we conclude our little series with a look at each individual story I've done, and their origins! See ya then!

If you wanna read these stories, refer to the masterlist above!

[llycaons]

I bet the kastarions don't even exist. watch.

<- FUCKING CALLED ITTTT

further moffat things: stupid quips about beaches

this appears to be a commentary on weapons manufacturing and capitalism but it's about as unrelated to actual political and economic realities as you'd expect for a dw episode

the performance between millie and ncuti during the handoff was MEMORIZING. the dialogue was a bit silly and quippy bc of moffat's influence when earlier I think it had been quite grounded,but the actors still pulled through

splice constantly calling her dad 'daddy' weirded me out not bc it's an unusual thing to call her dad but because she didn't sound like...a regular child asking, the syntax of the dialogue was just unnatural. like even saying 'him' a few times would have solved it but she said 'daddy' EVERY time she referred to him. and her acting was strangely bereft of emotion as well which could be anything from the writing to the directing to not wanting to push a young actor but it was a very odd scene and moffat writes kids kind of weird in other episodes so I think it's him

the bit about the church being an army was quite good ngl. the combat bit was quite confusing and even gatwa's fantastic acting couldn't make the scene anything besides a jumbled mess 😭

the stuff about ruby being tied to christmas magic is a big hazy in my mind but if you were there for my UC lb you know how disgusted I am at the idea of xtianity attaining Real Myth status in any fantasy cosmos so I did roll my eyes a bit at the snowflakes and such, and also what wasthe POINT. like??? it came out of nowhere and the doctor was like 'she can do that :)' and then that was the end of it

the skye boat song as the doctor's grounding method for this episode is one of the highlights. It's a lovely song, and it suits the eerie melancholy of the characters very well, especially with the performances

as clumsy and melodramatic a speech as this may be, I do love the core concept of an AL creating the conditions for endless warfare to continue profiting and continually killing people who are too expensive to keep alove. it's a little nonsensical, heavy-handed, and not relevant to actual war profiteering except in the sense that AI is used for military purposes, but the righteous anger of it all it satisfying. it could actually be saying more about private healthcare, but that doesn't really seem to be its focus

also moffat really tears into the concept of fighting blindly for a cause you don't understand out of baseless loyalty, which i can't even say I argue with. he may have been a bad showrunner and a weird misogynist and fond of annoyingly convoluted and self-important plots for the doctor, but a lot of his episodes and lines were definitely daring and memorable

the doctor reasoning with the AI by appealing to his fatherly sense of duty was...sorry but that was so dumb. HE WAS A COMPUTER GENERATED SIMULATION!! and you convinced him to somehow hack the system of an advanced weapons manufacturer by yelling DAD TO DAD at him a bunch of times!!!

don't HUSH her. you bitch

I'm going to be sick. WHO CARESSSS

not to be rude about how children process grief but is this kid like, stupid

oh my god so he saved the world by...talking at an AI really hard and making it remember it's based on a dad. okay. well it's doctor who after all

I think it was a mistake to limit gatwa's movement this entire episode. he's such an energetic, lively, physical actor - of course his subtler emotional parts were incredible, he was crying and gasping and singing the entire ep, but all this gesturing and running around and exclaiming is where he shines most naturally. I could just feel myself smiling so big when he started dashing around again!

the doctor seems meaner when moffat writes him but idk, maybe he has his little bitchy moments with RTD later too. but 14 has seemed so sweet and genuine and affectionate so far so this takes me aback

DON'T TRY TO BRING THAT BACK MOFFAT 🙄🙄🙄

WHAT THE FUCK?? MOFFAT????? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT LINE ABOUT?? I know moffat likes doing his 'haha Cool Woman has snarky comments about the stupid infants men in her life' but a white woman saying this about a black man is so fucking out of line. god DAMN. don't let moffat back in the writer's room...ever, maybe?

wellat least they end on a nice scene...

yeah it makes sense this was a moffat one. the convoluted technology...the doctor immediately telling his companion to stay behind when someone was in danger to heroically rush out into a battlefield...the setting itself literally being on fire and as close to war-torn as you could get...the precocious child telling a cool funny woman 'silly, this Random Ugly Man LIKES YOU!!' with the implication she should get her head on straight and date him....it all fits into place and this is literally just from the opening scene

[hamarhemmo]

A way too long analysis/rant/review of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

I watched Rocky Horror Picture Show a few days ago and then proceeded to watch it twice more in the following days. And I have very strong feelings about it. Those feelings are almost exclusively positive, so don't worry.

This is gonna be mostly just me rambling, so maybe not the most interesting thing to read, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

Kind of a content warning before I actually start talking about it, this post will be talking about things like homophobia, transphobia and dubious sexual consent, and include swear words and (reclaimed) slurs. So if any of that bothers you, proceed with caution.

Also I'm gonna spoil the whole movie but honestly the plot isn't as important as some other things in this movie so you should watch it anyways.

I will only be talking about the 1975 movie in this post since I haven't seen the play.

For those who either don't remember or know the plot, the film centers around four people. We're first introduced to a young couple Brad Majors and Janet Weiss who get engaged in the very beginning.

To celebrate their engagement they decide to go visit their former teacher, Dr. Scott, who taught the class they met in. However on the way there, they get lost and a tire in their car breaks. The only building nearby is a creepy-looking castle. In the castle Brad and Janet meet the owner of the castle, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, who is a self-described "Sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania". Frank tells the couple that he's been trying to make a man (like Frankenstein) and thinks that he has finally succeeded. Frank brings a man named Rocky, who is very hot but very stupid, to life, and seemingly marries him.

In the castle there are four more important characters: Riff Raff the butler, Magenta the domestic, Columbia who just kind of hangs around, and Columbia's boyfriend/Frank's implied ex-boyfriend Eddie. Soon after Eddie's entrance Frank kills him, "out of mercy". This will be relevant in a bit.

Janet and Brad are brought to their seperate bedrooms and soon after that Frank sneaks into Janet's room and tries to have sex with her. After some resistance she agrees to it. Soon after Frank does the exact same thing to Brad. Janet finds out about this and has sex with Rocky while Magenta and Columbia watch and have sex with each other. Aforementioned Dr. Scott comes to the castle to ask about Eddie, and it turns out that Eddie was his nephew. At this point it turns out that Frank, Riff Raff and Magenta are aliens from the galaxy of Transylvania from the planet Transsexual. A fight breaks out and Frank turns Brad, Janet, Rocky, Columbia and Dr. Scott into statues. He then moves the statues to a theater stage in his castle and dresses them up in corsets and heels. The statues are turned back into humans and perform a song and a dance.

Also they imply that Dr. Scott is a nazi who moved to America after WWII so that's interesting.

After the performance Riff Raff and Magenta enter the room, kill Frank, Rocky and Columbia and leave back to Transsexual. Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott leave the castle and I'm assuming, head home.

Yes, that is the actual plot. Wasn't that fun?

Now we can get to actually talking about this weird-ass movie.

To me the most important thing about this movie was its unapologetic queerness. Recetly there has been a decenty chunk of movies and TV shows with queer characters and themes, but none of them have really worked for me perfectly for a few reasons. These shows and movies usually either:

a) Center around the fact that the characters are queer and are almost exclusively coming out stories

b) Have queer (usually side) characters who don't really "look or act queer"

I'm not saying that either of those are bad things, but I personally find them boring and can't relate to them. I just kind of always knew I was queer and didn't have that closeted gay teenager phase that the first types of movies are usually about. These movies often also center around relationships and I didn't date at that age. The second type of movies and TV shows don't really work for me either because I do look and act queer and it's a big part of my life. So seeing a character to whom being gay doesn't really matter that much or affect them as a person, isn't very relatable to me either.

Also most of the time gay characters in shows and movies are just boring. They're either evil faggots or cute flower boys who could do nothing wrong. But because Rocky Horror Picture Show isn't really a movie about queer people, all the characters just are very queer, they have the same amount (or even more) depth as straight characters would have in a similar "regular" movie. But a straight movie with the plot of Rocky Horror simply wouldn't work. Sure, the plot would make about as much sense (which is not a lot) but the movie would lose it's meaning. If you removed all the crossdressing, gay sex and queer symbolism from Rocky Horror, it would just be a weird musical Frankenstein adaptation with aliens, cheating women and occasional incest. Doesn't really sound like a movie I would personally love.

Without it's queerness, the movie would not have the cult following it has today. Fans don't watch the movie for the plot, they watch it for representation, hot men in corsets and heels and women finding confidence in embracing their sexuality. The movie is watched because it has been giving people something they don't really get anywhere else, especially around the time the movie came out.

At this point I would love to talk about the songs. Everything from their lyrics to symbolism to just how I personally like them. The movie has around 15 songs but it's hard to say what the exact number is, since some of the songs are so short they barely count as songs, at least one song was deleted from the final product, and at some points it's unclear if it's several songs right after each other or one very long song. But I will talk about these songs in this order in this post:

Science Fiction / Double Feature

Dammit Janet

Over at the Frankenstein Place

The Time Warp

Sweet Transvestite

The Sword of Damocles

I Can Make You a Man

Hot Patootie / Bless My Soul

Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me

Once in a While (a cut song)

Eddie

Planet Schmanet Janet

Planet Hot Dog

Rose Tint My World

Don't Dream It

Wild and Untamed Thing

I'm Going Home

Science Fiction

So this is the first song of movie. It is technically unrelated to all of the plot and kind of just sets the vibe for the movie while also referencing many Sci-Fi movies as a kind of tribute to them. Rocky Horror is after some kind of parody of Sci-Fi and horror movies. The video during this song is just red lips sin ging. Funny enough, the lips shown belong to Patricia Quinn (actress of Magenta) but the voice belongs to Richard O'Brien (the creator of the movie and actor of Riff Raff). Kind of a fun detail if you ask me.

During the song the credits are shown and that is really what this song is for. I personally don't care for it that much, especially since I'm not just a huge Sci-Fi fan but it's a nice song that actually makes me want to not skip the credits.

Dammit Janet

Dammit Janet is the first song sung by actual characters. The song is in the very first scene and during it Brad proposes to Janet. It's a pretty cute love song, the lyrics themselves aren't too special in my opinion. But there are a few fun details in this song.

First there's kind of foreshadowing of the fact that Brad's and Janet's relationship is going to fail. Before Brad sings "The road was long but I ran it", Janet tries to kiss him but he leans away. If that was me and my girlfriend, soon to be fiancée, tried to kiss me when I was singing, I would absolutely stop for a few seconds to kiss her. Especially since he leaned away at the last second. Kissing her wouldn't have taken any time from his song. Later when Brad gives her the ring, Janet seems to care about how pretty the ring is way more than the fact that she's going to marry her boyfriend. This is a fairly common trope but still. She also says "Now we're engaged and I'm so glad that you've met Mom and you know Dad". She isn't glad that they're engaged, she is glad that Brad has met her parents.

Also the whole songs takes in place at a graveyard adn in a church preparing for a funeral service, yet they seem unaware of that. Something something ignoring the bad signs about this relationship.

ALSO in this scene you can see people from the castle. Literally what are Riff Raff, Magenta, Columbia (?) and Frank doing there?? (Also it took me too long to realize that one of them was Frank 'cause he's not wearing any make up.) But like did they plan all of this? And if they did, why?? Is there something special about Brad and Janet? Were they just trying to find random people to trick to coming into their castle?

Over at the Frankenstein Place

I sadly don't have much to say about this song. It's honestly just a bit boring to me. It doesn't really move the plot forward or anything. Though they sing about how there's a light in everyone's life and they can seen a light in the castle. Maybe they will find the light (hope) in their life from the castle. Arriving there does change their lives drastically for the better or for worse depending on how you look at it.

The Time Warp

Honestly when I heard this song, is when I was sure I was gonna like the movie. This kind of fast tempo rock is very much up my alley, especially when the lyrics are abou ignoring time and enjoying life in the present. I have always been deeply afraid of the passage of time and forgetting about it, even for a while, is always great. Also during this song we get to see Frank's Transylvanian guests. I honestly love how they look.

We also learn a little bit of Columbia's backstory. It seems that unlike Frank, Riff Raff and Columbia, she is a human. Columbia's line also implies that Frank owns a pick-up truck which is very funny to me.

The song doesn't contribute much to the plot but it's a fun jam and also taught me a cool dance (Which based on Mgenta's line later in the movie is like a common dance on Transsexual.)

Sweet Transvestite

Frank's introduction song! I love him.

Sure transvestite is technically a slur for crossdressers (is that a slur? I honestly don't know dude) but sometimes things just are like that. Also he can call himself whatever the fuck he wants. Like damn, maybe I'm a sweet transvestite too, who knows.

I'm sure many people know this already but it's pretty funny that when when you hear him say "From Transsexual, Transylvania" you would assume that he's just calling Transylvania (on Earth) transsexual for some reason. But he's just saying that he's from the planet Transsexual from the galaxy Transylvania.

Also yes, transsexual is also a slur but it fucks so I'm using it.

The Sword of Damocles

Sadly this song isn't on the official soundtrack. It's honesly great. Rocky is a silly little guy and I like hearing him sing. Funnily enough all of his songs are dubbed and that is not the actor's voice.

Rocky literally just gets born and immediately starts singing about how his life's gonna suck.

It seems like he's afraid of Frank for some reason. Maybe it's just 'cause he's a weirdo, but it could also be because Rocky has half of Eddie's brain. Maybe he like subconsciously remembers Frank literally cutting his head open.

I Can Make You a Man

When I see the title written out like that I just hear the line from Lola in my head. It's not even the exact same line, I am suffering.

This is kind of funny to listen to 'cause Frank says that Rocky weighs 98 pounds and I have literally no idea how much that is. I'm assuming it's not a lot.

Also Frank starts straight up riding the pommel horse. I sadly don't know how to make a GIF but please go watch the video, I'm begging you.

Look at him go. Oh, how I wish that pommel horse right now. Saying pommel horse so many times in a row sounds very weird but I don't know what native speakers actually call it.

Hot Patootie / Bless My Soul

Eddie simply didn't have enough screentime. He's honestly so cool. Sure, one of the news articles says that he like killed a woman or something but shit happens. I am stupid and gay and Eddie is hot so I'm willing to forgive him.

The song, again, doesn't really contribute much to the plot but it slaps. Even the Transylvanians jam out to it.

Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me

This is in my opinion pretty much the perfect song for Janet. Her whole arc in the movie is her breaking free from 70s purity culture. She has sex for the first time and realizes she really enjoys it and now she wants more. Especially the line "Touch-a, touch-a, touch-a, touch me, I want to be dirty". Earlier in the movie she was this very classic cute pure female character from a movie in the 70s and now she finally gets to do what she has probably been told not to do for her entire life.

In this song she also gets her obligatory bisexual moment, fantasizing about everyone in castle, including Magenta and Columbia.

Also someone is finally nice to Rocky :)

Once In a While

So this song was cut from the movie, at least on Disney+, but is still on YouTube and the complete soundtrack on Spotify. I don't know if the video on YouTube is the original scene but that doesn't really matter. The song is also in theatrical releases but again, I have only seen the 1975 movie.

Anyways this is Brad's only solo and it happens after he slept with Frank. It seems like he's reflecting on his and Janet's relationship and feeling quilty and/or sad about sleeping with Frank. (Apparently in theatrical versions he had also found out that Janet cheated on her.)

I don't really want to comment on this song that much because I don't know everything about it, but it does make Brad look more bisexual. In the version that I saw, there wasn't really a lot indicating that Brad was attracted to women. Of course there's Dammit Janet and the fact that they are engaged but I don't know, he just didn't really seem to be that into her. Especially with his verse in Rose Tint My World, which I'll get to in a moment. But yeah, this feels like a more genuine love song to Janet even if he never mentions her name.

Also I find it funny that Frank is just sleeping on the bed right behind him. I like to think he's actually singing this out loud in the quiet dark bedroom.

Eddie

I've also seen this song being called Eddie's Teddy but it's just called Eddie on Spotify so I'm going with that.

This song really just sums up Eddie's short life. This comes a bit out of nowhere but Eddie's cool so it was actually pretty interesting to hear about his life. A very catchy song.

Also Frank implies that he's serving Eddie as their dinner so that's lovely.

Planet Schmanet Janet

Honestly I have no idea what's going on in this song but the line "A mental mind fuck can be nice" kinda slaps. So true bestie.

Planet Hot Dog

This is technically a part of Planet Schmanet Janet but it's listed as it's own song on Spotify.

Characters basically just finally acknowledge the fact that his name is literally Frank-N-Furter. Very funny if you ask me.

Rose Tint My World

My absolute favourite song from this movie. There's just so much going on. This is actually the reason I wanted to make this post.

First of all, all the characters look very hot in the corsets and heels so I definitely enjoyed that. Also they zoom in on Rocky's dick and show Columbia's titties so that is also very lovely.

Let's go over everyone's verse seperately.

First there's Columbia. She sings about how things were great when she first started hanging out with Frank but as soon as he started working on Rocky, things started to go downhill. He started giving all his attention to creating Rocky and stole hald of Columbia's boyfriend's brain. Now Frank has even killed him and Columbia doesn't have much to live for. She ends the verse with "Rose tints my world, keeps me safe from my trouble and pain". I'm assuming she's talking about the expression of wearing rose-tinted glasses aka pretending that everything is better than it actually is. At this point it's all she can do.

Second verse is Rocky's. Rocky sings about how he was born only hours ago and how the only thing he has really been taught is sex. Throughout the movie everyone just takes turns either fucking him or abusing him. And of those two things only one is widely considered to be nice. Because of this the only thing he knows to keep him safe is having sex. He ends his verse with the same line as Columbia. To him it means ignoring everything negative in his life and only paying attention to the thing that has brought him pleasure.

Brad's verse seems to be many people's favourite (that includes me). Out of the four, he seems to be the most afraid at this moment. He has found out things about himself that he did not want to know and could've lived a decent life by ignoring, but now he's forced to face the reality that he's queer. In his verse he shows disbelief that this could be happening to him. He begs for his mom to help him and wake him up from this dream, missing his days of innocence and naïvety. After falling to the floor he still says that he feels sexy, possibly for the first time in his life. To this point he has always been just an average American young man with nothing that "special" about him. Now he's dressed up in corset, fishnets, heels and make up and actually feels beautiful and wanted. He doesn't know what's come over him, since as he has probably been told, queer people are perverts, rapists and murderers and suddenly he is one of them. And he didn't get to have the slow realization and time to reflect that many others have. All of this has happened to him in one night. He doesn't sing the line "Rose tint my world" like Columbia and Rocky but it is implied. He just wants to pretend that none of this happened and everything's fine in his life. Also unlike Columbia and Rocky who just kind of stay in random poses after their verses, Brad covers himself up as seen during Janet's verse. I feel like this comment on YouTube puts it well:

Janet's verse is pretty much the opposite of Brad's. She seems to be the only one to be genuinely thankful to Frank for opening up her world. Frank let her break free from the oppressive society and she feels more confident than ever. She also says that "[Frank's] lust is so sincere" unlike any attraction Brad has shown towards her. She also very much shows off her body in this scene, clearly enjoying the revealing clothes she's finally allowed to wear. I'm also going to mention now that in the next songs she says "God bless Lili St. Cyr". Lili St. Cyr was a famous stripper around the time. She again is happy that people like sex workers have made it more normalized to wear revealing clothes.

Don't Dream It, Be It

This is technically Frank's verse of Rose Tint My World, but again Spotify lists them as seperate songs on the ceomplete soundtrack. He starts by telling us about how when he was younger he saw Fay Wray (who was btw earlier referenced in Science Fiction / Double Feature) on TV and started to cry because he wanted to dress just like her. I'm sure this is a familiar feeling to many members of the LGBTQ community, getting gender envy as a kid from seeing an attractive person on TV.

After this he sings about how you should give yourself over to absolute pleasure, including dressing and acting however you want. He also encourages you to enjoy "the sins of the flesh". For any fellow non-Christian's out there, sins of the flesh according to Google include "sexual immorality", sensuality, orgies and "things like these". Many of these things are considered pleasurable by the vast majority of people.

After this he jumps to a pool that just is there. He tells you to be it instead of dreaming it. By it he could mean pretty much anything but I'm assuming it's just general "If you want to do something (like crossdress or have gay sex), you should do it instead of just dreaming about it and dying unhappy."

Also the floor of the pool is painted to look like Michelangelo's painting The Creation of Adam. This is slightly unrelevant but there's a fair amount of proof that Michelangelo was not straight.

After this Columbia, Rocky, Brad and Janet join him in the pool and they all start making out with each other. During this Dr. Scott manages to turn back from stone and says that they must get out of there before he also 'goes crazy' so to say. However it's too late and he reveals his leg so that the audience can see that he's also wearing fishnets and heels, becoming like Frank and the rest.

Wild And Untamed Thing

This song is still in a way part of Rose Tint My World.

Frank gets up from the pool and starts singing about how he's "a wild and untamed thing" and "a bee with a deadly sting". This part feels like it's just about Frank's personality. He is a very short-tempered nonconforming murderer. Then the rest join in on the song and now they're singing "we're a wild and untamed thing". Maybe I'm just imagining it but 5 (6 if counting Dr. Scott) bisexuals in drag on stage singing how they don't fit into society, makes it really seem like "we" means queer people.

Also a fun thing about this song is that by the end of it Rocky's actor can't keep up with the rest an he's unable to lift his legs as high as others or even jump. I just think that's a funny detail.

After this song Riff Raff and Magenta enter the room declaring that they're returning to Transsexual. They're also wearing fishnets which kind of makes it seem like this is a normal attire on Transsexual, but that's not really important right now.

I'm Going Home

This is genuinely the saddest song to me, partially because I know how it's going to end.

Frank sings about how when he left the galaxy of Transylvania, he didn't feel like he missed it. But now on Earth he has seen beautiful things including the blue sky, which possibly doesn't appear on Transsexual as it is described as the land of night. But he realizes that it's time for him to go home. At this point he imagines an audience on the empty seats in front of the stage, showing his desire to perform to large groups of people, even if they never say it out loud.

Sadly he is not going, home and he is killed immediately after the song, ending his life too early but completed.

Conclusion or something

I'm not crying, you're crying.

I feel like I've really said all I wanted about this movie. It's been really fun writing about this movie and why I love it. Though I'm surprised if anyone has actually read this far. This post is 4176 words long by the way. That's longer than my Finnish essay for school.

Thank you, if you read this and I sincerely hope that you'll watch this movie if you haven't already. ♥

[robininthelabyrinth]

Children of the Forge - Chapter 4 - ao3

Once, when Jin Guangyao had been very young, he’d witnessed a rape.

In fact, when he was older, he belatedly realized he’d witnessed many of them – even when they’d lived in the better sort of brothel, the one that would throw a man out if he damaged their precious merchandise, there were plenty of instances in which the women wanted to say no but couldn’t, or even instances where they simply gritted their teeth and bore with it because the man or men that’d paid for them was bigger, stronger, wealthier, more powerful…the same old story as always.

Despite that, in his memory, it was this one that stood out. Perhaps it was the violence of it, the screaming, the way the shadows had loomed over it as if the world itself sought to look away from the crime, or perhaps it was simply because it was very much like how rape was described in stories – some man forcing a young girl in a dark alleyway as she cried for help that no one gave. It was just barely visible from the small balcony outside the attic room he shared with his mother and a few of the other brothel girls, though at his age he had needed to stand on his tip toes to see what was happening over the railing.

His mother and her best friend at the time, a woman named Sisi, had been there, too. His mother had turned her face away, and Sisi had laughed at her, a quiet fond thing. “Who are you showing off to?” she’d asked. “There’s no one here to be taken in by your gentleness, just us, and we’ve seen this sort of thing before. We’ve seen worse.”

“Character exists through repeated effort,” his mother said peacefully. “The fact that it’s calculated doesn’t make it any less so. Anyway, whether or not we’ve seen it before, maybe I just don’t feel like seeing it again. The poor girl.”

“That ‘poor girl’ has a rich family,” Sisi replied, rolling her eyes. “With a father to care for her and more money than you or I’ve ever seen. Her brother’s some sort of scholar, I think. Maybe even a minor official. I’m sure they love her dearly.”

“And that what makes her pitiable,” his mother said, ignoring Sisi’s sarcasm. “She’s too soft, too tender after being raised with all that love. She’ll be stupid about this – she’ll go home and cry to that father of hers instead of keeping it quiet, ruining her reputation and turning herself from a precious asset to unmarriageable trash. Or maybe she will keep it quiet, only she’ll not know about what medicines to take and then they’ll hang her when her belly starts to grow. To protect their family honor, of course.”

“And what’s that to any of us?” Sisi had asked, tossing her hair. Her tone was indifferent. “If she gets with child and they kick her out, that’ll still only put her on the same level as – well, you.”

His mother had shaken her head, as if Sisi did not understand, and then she had noticed him standing there, staring, and ushered him away from the railing, saying with a smile, “Gentlemen don’t dirty themselves with such things, A-Yao.”

Jin Guangyao hadn’t thought of that incident for a long while. He never did end up knowing what became of that girl and which of the many paths his mother had laid out had been her fate in the end; it wasn’t something he had the ability to know. It wasn’t something that was relevant to his life, either – his thinking had tended more and more towards Sisi’s as he’d gotten older, even as he’d faithfully learned his mother’s mannerisms. He thought his mother had inclined towards that way of thinking, too, especially once they were forced out of the good places and into lower and lesser brothels.

He was reminded of it now for – whatever reason.

No: let him not lie to himself, as he had been doing so skillfully these past few months. He knew exactly what had led him to think of the incident, and she was red-faced and small, a few handfuls of flesh and bones at the most – and Nie Huaisang had let him hold her.

Jin Guangyao wondered, a little, at his sudden decision to confess his sins before an unfeeling audience.

He didn’t feel bad about the things he had done; that was not his way, it had never been his way. He’d always felt comfortable with his actions as long as they helped him, no matter how he pretended to regret if it served his purposes. For all that people liked to talk about the Nie sect temper, he was the one with a belly full of rage, justified rage at the way the world had treated him, and he had never felt any guilt in extracting all the benefits he could get out of it, no matter what it cost any of the rest of them.

No – like his mother, he was calculating and sly, always thinking about what some action or another would get him. It had made him a superlative spy, and had served him well even in the few months he had been with the Jin sect as one of them. If you could call his last few months being ‘one of them’.

So, knowing himself, why had he done it?

Had it been a matter of simple calculation, as Nie Huaisang had cautioned – a realization that they would figure out who to blame eventually, and a decision to benefit himself by confessing early, seeming to choose righteousness in a moment of redemption? That was the spy’s gambit, using losses already sacrificed to bolster his own position. He’d done it very well in his time in the Wen sect, and the Jin sect hadn’t been much different. The Wen sect prisoners that had been executed to serve as experiment fodder for Xue Yang, for instance; there was no point in trying to preserve their lives, which had already been deemed forfeit by the cultivation world. Even trying was pointless, and would result in nothing, achieving nothing other than tearing down his own life without even the hope of successfully preserving theirs. Look at what trying to help had done to Wei Wuxian.

The suggestion was temptingly plausible, but ultimately had to be dismissed.

That line of thinking might have explained the first part of what he did, but not the second. Sure, one could argue that he’d realized that he needed to keep going along the path he’d started, that only commitment to the bit would carry him through their doubts; that, too, was a spy’s concern. He’d never lacked for boldness when it came to deception. And yet Jin Guangyao did not think that he had handled the situation as smoothly as all that, however it may have been perceived by others – the decision to confess had been a genuine impulse of the sort he’d almost forgotten he was capable of. It had put him in a worse situation than simply persisting forward with assertions of innocence would have been; no one had known about Xue Yang until he’d told them, and now that they did, the rest of the crimes associated with that delinquent were sure to come out from the shadows and into the light. He’d framed it in the best possible light for himself, of course, at least in the first instance, but he had no doubt that he’d be dealing with the sequelae of his impetuousness for quite some time.

And even if strategy could have explained his decision to throw out the evidence of what he had done with Xue Yang, then nothing could explain why he’d admit to the rest of it – the parts people didn’t know and would never know if he didn’t tell them. His father’s anger at Nie Mingjue for consistently rebuffing him and making clear to the rest of the cultivation world that not having a chief was a perfectly valid option, mixed with his own anger at how begrudging Nie Mingjue was with him, the way he refused to grant him his trust even though he gave him his brotherhood, the way he wasn’t there to help him – an absence now explained, he supposed – and how that anger, in combination with Lan Xichen’s sincere desire to see them reconciled, had led Jin Guangyao to have certain thoughts about the Song of Clarity.

Unsavory thoughts.

That, too, he tried to frame in the best possible light when he confessed it in the dark of the night amidst the howling rain to Lan Qiren of all people, the stuffy and miserable old stickler that always seemed to regard everything around him with a certain amount of disapproval – though still somewhat less disapproval than Lan Wangji was constantly sending his way. Jin Guangyao certainly couldn’t have told Lan Wangji about what he’d wanted to do, since in the end there really wasn’t much that could be said about it to cast it in a good light.

He couldn’t even blame someone else for it – the plan was unquestionably his own. He was the only one who could creep into the Lan sect library’s forbidden area in order to discover the Song of Turmoil in the first place, given his brotherhood with Lan Xichen, and only a consummate stealer of techniques like him would have even thought of such a scheme as he had, to adjust the Song of Clarity to serve his own purposes. His own terrible, awful purposes, and no matter how much he claimed he had only prepared them in a dark moment, not intending on actually using it unless things went too far, there was really only so much he could make of his own defense.

One could be forgiven for a crime of impulse with a sword, perhaps, but with poison, prepared in advance?

That was a lot harder to explain away.

So why, Jin Guangyao wondered, why on earth was he confessing to it?

Pure strategizing was certainly a part of it, because it was always a part of it – he could no sooner stop seeing all the different considerations of every move he made than he could stop breathing. That his father’s face would soon be ripped off and all things revealed seemed after a certain point inevitable, and (perhaps despite himself) he believed Nie Huaisang’s ominous warning that he would get only the one instance of mercy, this one moment in time to unload himself of all his crimes and still be forgiven, at least in part, for his role in them. If there was anything left on the table now that could come out later, then the Nie sect’s strict and inexorable standard of justice would fall upon him like an executioner’s axe, and it wouldn’t matter one bit how much they liked him. But strategizing wasn’t everything, because Jin Guangyao was good at keeping secrets, very good, and there were things he could have kept forever to himself without anyone knowing.

What had driven him to his current actions, then, if it was not cold-blooded calculation?

Had it been anger? Anger at discovering the scheme his sect had come up with to plant the near-converted corpses as a future weapon to use against the Lan sect? He truly had not known about that one, and if his father had died before he’d used it, it was very likely that it was a weapon that would remain undiscovered, possibly forever. Wei Wuxian had been right about why he hadn’t been told, too – if his father trusted his enmity with Nie Mingjue enough to entrust him with the task of attempting his murder, then he had known that Jin Guangyao’s bond with Lan Xichen was nowhere near as weak. He would have known that Jin Guangyao would never take any action against Lan Xichen – that he would never hurt him.

Perhaps it had been only Jin Guangyao himself who had been foolish enough to think that he could use money as a means of binding the Lan sect to the Jin so securely that it would prevent his father’s ambitions from taking aim at the person he’d sworn to himself that he would protect.

So, yes, there was anger there. Anger at having been treated as a pawn just when he’d fancied himself one of the players, anger had having been successfully maneuvered around, anger at his father for having tainted yet another thing that had been his – Jin Guangyao had been so proud of having managed to obtain that promise of support for Lan Xichen, his father having made him beg for the right to assist the Lan sect with their rebuilding, jump through hoop after hoop and dirty himself with all sorts of things, and in the end it turned out that offer of help had always been part of the plan. Get rid of Wei Wuxian, cripple the Jiang sect, and obtain the Tiger Seal on one hand, sow corpses along with gold as a potential future weapon with the other, and in the end the Jin sect would emerge all at once as the master of all, a peony blooming unexpectedly in a field of snow.

Not snow. In truth it would be a field of ash and corpse dust, desolate and barren.

There was more than just anger, though. Anger was an easy emotion, simple and straightforward as any Nie; Jin Guangyao was more complicated than that, his emotions murkier, less easily understood. He genuinely loved the wealth of Lanling Jin, loved draping himself with the gold of it and loved knowing that it was his birthright; he loved his father for giving him the right to it, even as he hated him for having needed to be forced to give him what he was due. He wanted to be accepted so badly that he sometimes thought he couldn’t breathe for the want of it. He hated his ‘mother’ Madame Jin, who hated him back, and yet he came back to her time and time again to let her abuse him because that sort of thing was familiar to him, comforting in a way that being forced to be his father’s procurer – whether of whores or of corpses – was not.

Jin Guangyao’s current life was full of contradictions. He was a proud son of Lanling Jin, but he wasn’t allowed to talk to Jin Zixuan for too long. He could call his brother’s wife his sister-in-law in public, and converse with her when she desperately needed a break from all the petty politics that surrounded her now that she’d entered the snake pit, but his father would slap away his hand if he tried to put it on her belly, even though it had been at her invitation.

His father, Jin Guangyao knew, would never let him hold his future nephew.

Nie Huaisang…had.

There had been other babies born in the brothel besides Jin Guangyao. His mother wasn’t the only fool who’d thought she could keep a man by bearing him children, and then of course there were the ones like that girl in the alley, too stupid to take medicine or too high-minded to think of it; there were plenty to go around, and when he’d been young one of his tasks had been to mind those who were still younger than he. He was good at handling babies, actually, and unlike many men his age, he liked it, too – if only he had the opportunity to show it.

Nie Huaisang hadn’t wanted to give him the child at first, too, but unlike Jin Guangshan, it hadn’t been about him. Nie Huaisang would never snap at Jin Guangyao that he shouldn’t go anywhere near the young ones lest the taint of his past be passed onto them like some disease – he would never say with a sneer that the stink of the brothel could never be washed clean, would never claim that Jin Guangyao’s entire body was contaminated by his mother’s blood, would never imply that perhaps Jin Guangyao had picked up some unsavory habits that might make him a risk to the young and vulnerable.

No, Nie Huaisang hadn’t wanted him to touch little Baxia only because of the role Jin Guangyao had played in her creation.

Because Nie Mingjue was like that girl in that alley, too loved to know better than to avoid ruining his own life; because Jin Guangyao had stood by and watched and did nothing, just like he had back when he was a small child. Because he’d forgotten, somewhere along the line, that his mother had turned away from such things, even though they meant as little to her as they did to Sisi – forgotten that his mother had told him that gentlemen do not dirty themselves with such things, or that character exists through repeated effort. There had been no one around to see her turn away to preserve the girl’s dignity, since there was nothing she could do to actually help her, but his mother had done it anyway, while Jin Guangyao, the boy she’d tried so hard to raise into a proper gentleman even though she had no idea what that meant, had stuck around and watched and waited until he felt certain that his strike would be successful.

Nie Huaisang had accused Jin Guangyao of using his brother, who had loved him sincerely, the same way a would-be pimp used the first lover he turned into a whore – oh, he didn’t use those words exactly, of course, since for all of Nie Huaisang’s fondness for spring books and mild lechery he was really quite innocent in the darker ways of the world. But Jin Guangyao, who had in the time since the Nightless City turned procurer in truth, had known the accusation for what it truly was, and it had stabbed him deep in the tender underbelly that he’d thought had long ago disappeared.

The thing was, he liked Nie Mingjue. Back when he’d been at the Nie sect, he’d liked him and respected him, genuinely, even if he’d resented him a little the way he resented anyone who’d been born to the type of life to which he’d felt entitled. He had lied to himself, making him think that all things between them were even – Nie Mingjue started out with the advantage of birth, so it was only fair that Jin Guangyao make him pay for that a little, using it to his own benefit, and by the time they’d sworn brotherhood he’d felt that they were on more-or-less equal terms. That was why it had angered him so much when Nie Mingjue hadn’t, in his view, adequately provided him with the support he needed to claim his true place in the Jin sect, as if Nie Mingjue had anything to do with the way the Jin sect looked down at him, as if feeling disrespected in his brotherhood was sufficient reason to blame Nie Mingjue for how he was disrespected in all other parts of his life. It had been that unjust resentment which had made him feel as though the Song of Turmoil was only the appropriate next step in a battle between them.

A battle, he’d now learned, that was being fought entirely within his own head.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t been fighting with him at all.

He’d been preoccupied with other concerns, ones that Jin Guangyao through his own inaction had caused, and in the end they weren’t equal at all; Jin Guangyao was the one who owed the debt. He knew, just as Nie Mingjue knew, that he could have acted a little earlier, that Wen Ruohan, mad as he’d been at the end, had dropped his guard entirely well before the end; he’d felt safe and secure in tormenting his chief-most opponent in his throne room, beating Nie Mingjue down and stepping on him, humiliating him – Jin Guangyao could have acted then, before Wen Ruohan had shifted over to another, more intimate form of humiliation.

It wouldn’t have been hard. Wen Ruohan had seen him as part of the background, a piece of furniture, no threat whatsoever; he could have walked over at any time and Wen Ruohan would have assumed he’d come over to hand him something. He could have struck the blow then, and spared Nie Mingjue.

He’d waited, instead.

A man distracted by the joy of victory was vulnerable, yes, but there was nothing in the world more distracted than a man who’d just spent, his eyes still closed in bliss, the joy of domination and physical satiation coming together to empty his mind as he emptied his body – Jin Guangyao had enjoyed the irony of it, the boy from the brothel using that oldest of tricks to execute the cultivation world’s nightmare. He’d thought it was funny.

He hadn’t thought about Nie Mingjue at all.

He should have.

Character exists through repeated effort, his mother had said, and Jin Guangyao had for years interpreted that phrase through Sisi’s lens, thinking to himself that she meant that his disguise had to be perfect and maintained at all times, even to himself, lest he teach himself that it was all right to slip up and then do so at some time when he really needed it, when it really mattered. But perhaps she had meant it the way Nie Mingjue meant it, the way Nie Huaisang had shouted it when he’d been holding little Baxia away from him: “You are who you are in the moments when no one knows better,” he’d cried out. “The choices you make that no one sees, that’s the person you are! Tell me, san-ge, knowing what I now know, how can I trust anything you do, if the moment I turn away you stop even trying?”

The answer, of course, was simple: he couldn’t. He couldn’t trust Jin Guangyao at all.

He shouldn’t trust him.

He’d let him hold the baby anyway.

“Faith by contrast,” Lan Qiren said, nodding, when Jin Guangyao had explained in some stuttering stupid pointless way, wondering the whole while if he’d been drugged with some sort of truth serum or something. He’d managed to stay quiet when he’d been working with Lan Wangji, protected by Lan Wangji’s disinterest, but Lan Qiren had taken one sharp look at him when he’d arrived to report on the status of Lan Wangji’s formations, all stern and fatherly in a way Jin Guangyao had never known, and it had all come spilling out of him. “Demonstrating the previous lack by showing what it ought to have been – it can be quite devastating. You’ve handled it well, as these things go.”

Jin Guangyao looked sidelong at the old teacher. “Well?” he asked, incredulously. “I handled it well?”

Lan Qiren looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “My father committed suicide rather than agree to me inheriting the position he believed ought to go to my brother, even after my brother had spurned it.”

Jin Guangyao opened his mouth to say something, but for once, nothing came to mind. He prided himself on having heard all the rumors of the cultivation world, every bit of black history and dark secrets, but he’d never heard a hint of this.

He’d never had a secret voluntarily offered up to him like this, either. Lan Qiren’s voice didn’t even vary in its endless monotone.

“Do not misunderstand my point,” Lan Qiren said. “There is no comparison between the two situations. I am not making light of your own suffering. I only wish to say that I have some measure of understanding of the terrible things one might be willing to do to win love from someone who ought to have loved you from the start, and, equally, some understanding of what it is like to abruptly realize that that thing you had been valuing higher than precious gems would never be worth even half of what you put into obtaining it.”

Was that what had happened?

Jin Guangyao thought it over and concluded that the old teacher had a point.

He’d always known, he supposed, that his father’s love was conditional, something he’d had to tear out of him rather than something he got freely, but he’d deceived himself into thinking that that was a virtue – that he’d won something, been victorious, rather than acknowledge to himself that it was at best a reason for pity. The contrast of having his hand slapped away from Jiang Yanli’s belly – she’d seemed so shocked and Jin Zixuan had turned his face away in quiet shame that did nothing because he said nothing, locked in as he was by filial piety – and Nie Huaisang’s indifference to Jin Guangyao holding little Baxia’s fingers in his own even as he confessed to his crimes…even if there were some reason behind it, the comparison between the two had been the straw that broken his back, snapping every one of his self-delusions all at once.

Lanling Jin could get Jin Guangyao all the power and wealth he could ever dream of, but it wouldn’t win him a single iota of respect, or at least not of the sort that would last. For all his life, he’d still only be the son of a whore who forced his way in, the cuckoo in the nest that shouldn’t really be there. The only ones who treated him differently were Lan Xichen, who sincerely saw the best in him, and Nie Mingjue, who had seen the worst of him and suffered the worst of him and gritted his teeth and swore brotherhood with him anyway – perhaps also Qin Su, who was besotted with her wartime hero, and Su Minshan, a friend still so new as to render it impossible to tell what the future held.

Less than five, in all. Precious, each one of them.

And Jin Guangyao had been about to throw away half of them, or maybe even more, for…

For something.

He was sincerely having trouble remembering what at the moment.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he said to Lan Qiren, cautious, feeling him out – the absolution earlier had been thoroughly unexpected, and from this most unanticipated of people.

Lan Qiren snorted. “Be strict with yourself, be easy on others,” he said, quoting those damned Lan sect rules they all loved so much. “That was not forgiveness. It was a statement of fact: I understand your position, what drove you and why you might have done or planned to do what you did, as well as why you might make a change now. But understanding does not mean forgiveness. That I empathize and sympathize does not mean that your actions can simply be swept away and forgotten - you have done wrong. You must be punished.”

That made sense, Jin Guangyao supposed.

“The advantage of punishment is that it ends,” Lan Qiren said. “It will end, and you will be free again at the end of it. You will be able to build your relationship with Xichen once more, and perhaps even with Nie Mingjue, and you will not need to fear exposure to the light will cause it all to crumble. There will be no need for fear.”

An end, Jin Guangyao thought. An end, and no fear – that sounded quite nice, really. He wasn’t sure he believed in such a thing, but it would do for now, perhaps. He’d put himself into this situation through his own stupid impulse, and the only thing for it was to continue going through. If that way through led him to some sort of punishment, then so be it.

“And Wei Wuxian?” he asked, as idly as a child might wiggle a tooth on the verge of falling, and had the joy of seeing Lan Qiren’s face twist into an automatic grimace. “Will he be punished and forgiven, too?”

“As if I have a choice,” Lan Qiren grumbled, though he seemed much less annoyed than he had in previous instances where the subject of Wei Wuxian had come up. “While he was walking with me earlier, we had an…interesting conversation. In short, he told me that his golden core had been damaged during the war, making it more difficult for him to use his sword – that’s why he doesn’t carry it, and in his arrogance, he hasn’t said a single word about it the entire time!”

Wait, was that what was going on with Wei Wuxian?

“Some people would rather be anything but pitied,” Jin Guangyao said, slightly bemused – he’d never understood such a phobia himself. The pity of others was quite useful. “Even if it would serve him well…as if every cultivator worth his salt wouldn’t agree that demonic cultivation is better than nothing.”

Lan Qiren huffed, angered, but still clearly, if begrudgingly, willing to agree with such an assessment. A cultivator’s duty was to fight evil, but at their core they were still cultivators; they defied destiny and fought against fate, refusing to live the ordinary life of a mortal – every one of them would pick something rather than nothing, even a rigid inflexible old fart like Lan Qiren. If Wei Wuxian’s offense against the cultivation world was in his persistent refusal to adopt traditional orthodoxy, then an explanation that served to excuse his choice would help cure many of his current conflicts with them. And without Jin Guangyao to help his father encourage the rumor-mongers against him, he might even manage to convince them to let his conduct pass, this time.

(And if there was a flicker of doubt in Jin Guangyao’s mind as to whether the ‘interesting conversation’ Lan Qiren had had with Wei Wuxian had been about more than just a perfectly understandable claim of unspecified damage that really should have been offered up as a reason long before this, and that this was the story the two of them had agreed to share with the world…well, that wasn’t really any of his business.)

“At least his manners have improved in the meantime,” Jin Guangyao remarked. He was just making conversation, mostly to ensure that they weren’t going to continue talking about him. “Last time he was unbearably arrogant, overweening, refusing to explain anything – his temperament seems much improved, despite spending all his time in the Burial Mounds, surrounded by resentment.”

He meant it to be a comparison to the Lan sect’s current situation, surrounded by the teeming tides of corpses at their door, filled with resentment that could have seeped in and spoiled their pristine cultivation, a bitter jab at his father for a plan he still thought was unbelievably terrible and short-sighted and to which he had not been privy, but for some reason that made Lan Qiren stop moving and stare out into the distance.

“…Teacher Lan?”

“A forge,” the old man muttered, completely nonsensically, and Jin Guangyao wondered if he’d abruptly lost his mind or something. “A forge…I wonder.”

Later, when they had defeated the enemy at the gate and sent Lan sect disciples of all ages to go start the clean-up, when they had gathered up once more at the hanshi, Lan Qiren said, “Wangji, you visited Wei Wuxian at the Burial Mounds, did you not?”

Lan Wangji was a difficult man to read, his expression often studiedly neutral and cold, but he tensed almost visibly – it was quite clear that he had, and equally clear that he hadn’t obtained authorization for such a visit. It was almost adorable. Lan Xichen has spoken a few times of his despair over what he’d called Lan Wangji’s infatuation, and in all honesty Jin Guangyao had not really believed that such a thing could be possible. Clearly he’d been wrong, and Lan Xichen right.

“I’m not asking for purpose of imposing punishment,” his uncle said impatiently. “You were, were you not? Did you have an opportunity to get a read on his spiritual energy at that time?”

“Why would he?” Wei Wuxian asked. “And why would it matter?”

“Jin Guangyao commented that your temperament had improved since your last visit to the cultivation world, and he is correct,” Lan Qiren said. “He had said that such a thing was unusual, given your recent residence in the Burial Mounds, but in fact that was incorrectly stated – your recent location was not in the Burial Mounds, but in the Unclean Realm.”

“That’s right,” Wei Wuxian said, tilting his head to the side, frowning in thought as he examined himself. “Huh. You know, I think you’re right? I’ve been less – well, less abrupt, for one thing. Less angry.”

“You jump to conclusions a lot less,” Nie Huaisang put in. “You were quite rude when I visited you in the Burial Mounds, Wei-xiong. And very impulsive!”

“All noted side effects of exposure to resentful energy, and of demonic cultivation in specific,” Lan Xichen murmured. “Shufu, what are you thinking?”

Lan Qiren, who had been pacing, stopped and turned to look – at the baby, of all things.

“A child of the forge,” he said. “It’s an interesting name, wouldn’t you say? We don’t give such names to cases of possession, whether or not they’re done by a guai, whether or not it’s done in the womb. Such things are not that uncommon, although the theft of a birth by a mo or a gui is more common than a guai, given that those are both creatures that originate from humans, dead or alive. So why the special name?”

“The Nie sect uniquely value their sabers,” Lan Xichen said, frowning faintly. “Their connection with their sabers are part of their cultivation; naturally they would find it upsetting for them to turn on them.”

As their inevitable qi deviations ultimately will, he didn’t say, though they were surely all thinking it.

“Perhaps,” Lan Qiren said. “But if so, why not simply call them children of the saber, or blade-children, or something like that? Why a forge? A saber is not the same as the forge from whence it came – a saber is innately destructive, a weapon of war, while a forge is transformative, productive, creative.”

“What are you saying?” Nie Huaisang asked, looking around. Wei Wuxian had a thoughtful expression, as did Lan Wangji, they were exchanging expression that suggested they might be on the verge of some revelation; Lan Xichen looked as if he were thinking things through as well.

Jin Guangyao was thinking, too, and fast, as fast as he ever had. Surely Lan Qiren couldn’t be implying what he thought the old man was implying…

“Put the name aside and look at the facts: Wei Wuxian’s temperament has seemingly improved a great deal recently. One could argue that he has recovered to not only to the state he was in before he began dwelling in the Burial Mounds, but to something closer to how he was before he began demonic cultivation at all – tempered, of course, by the fact that he has been through a war, as have we all. Add to that the fact that the child, when brought here, roused the attention of all creatures with resentful energy in the area, drawing them in as inexorably as one of Wei Wuxian’s Spirit-Summoning Flags…”

“Chifeng-zun’s cultivation has increased,” Wei Wuxian said, looking stunned. “By – a great deal. A great deal, really, I don’t think I can stress it enough, I feel like that part got lost in our explanation earlier on. He’s literally glowing.”

“What does that mean?” Nie Huaisang demanded, looking between them. “What are you thinking? That Baxia, who can’t even lift her own head, can…what? Purify resentful energy?”

“It is only a guess,” Lan Qiren allowed. “We are unlikely to know more until she is older, and capable of acting in her own right.”

“What if it’s not purification?” Jin Guangyao asked, and they all looked at him. He was thinking a little about how his own cultivation had largely taken place in the battlefield, that most impure of places, and wondering a little if it had affected his own temperament; he didn’t think it would be enough for anyone to notice, not really, and certainly not enough to excuse his own decisions, which were always wholly his own, but it probably didn’t help. Still, if purification was sufficient a method for dealing with resentful energy, then something like Lan Xichen’s Song of Clarity, which Jin Guangyao had very nearly corrupted for his own purposes, would have been enough to cure the Nie sect’s qi deviation problem long ago, and the monsters teeming at the gate would have been awaked through the Lan sect’s own efforts, so perhaps it was something else. “Teacher Lan spoke of a forge – you use a cauldron to refine and purify, and a forge to transform. What if she converts resentful energy? Turns it into spiritual energy?”

“That’s a great deal of assumptions to place upon a name,” Lan Xichen said, frowning. “Especially when the ancestors who coined it seemed to think that a child of the forge was a bad thing.”

“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” Nie Huaisang said unexpectedly. They all looked at him. “Saber spirits are possessive and devoted. You’ve played with Aituan, Wei-xiong – that’s my saber, pathetic as its spirit is. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“…yes, for sure,” Wei Wuxian said. “He didn’t like me very much, but he agreed to cooperate when Nie-xiong encouraged him to.”

He tapped his flute against his cheeks.

“I think I see where you’re going with this,” he said. “Think of a saber spirit like a wild dog, tamed by one master. Even little Baxia lashes out at anyone who doesn’t share Chifeng-zun’s blood within a single degree of relation, natural or sworn –”

She did? Did that mean that Nie Mingjue’s future pool of potential babysitters was going to be limited to Nie Huaisang, Lan Xichen, and himself?

“ – and I can’t imagine sabers have a very good understanding of the fragile limits of human biology.”

“I understand,” Lan Wangji said solemnly. “Without their master’s guidance, which they have always had in their form of a saber, they would become uncontrolled. Without their master’s presence and, still worse, if they learn that they themselves were the cause of their master’s death…they might go completely feral, lashing out at all around them as if gone mad. Such a thing is naturally a creature of great evil, and must be eradicated.”

“Exactly!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “Why would a saber, which is cultivating perfectly well in its own form, give that up to go start again as a useless human baby? Non-living creatures that gain sentience generally look with scorn upon the living, thinking us weak. But if they meant for their transformation to be a gift – a gift for their masters – and then that very gift ended up killing their masters –”

“Are you suggesting that this is the solution to the Nie sect’s qi deviation issue?” Lan Xichen asked, his eyes bright with excitement – excitement they all shared. “The masters cultivate the saber spirit, but in the process accrue too much resentful energy in such a way that will lead them inevitably towards a qi deviation, but in some case the saber spirit might seek to repay their devotion and seek to become something capable of cleansing their masters?”

“This is all speculation,” Lan Qiren reminded them all. “It will be years before Baxia can tell us what she is thinking, if she can explain such a thing.”

“Not just that,” Lan Wangji said, his voice solemn, and that solemnity put a sudden stop to Jin Guangyao’s giddiness at having maybe solved a problem that generations of Nie sect leaders had failed to unravel.

“Lan Wangji is right,” he said, shaking his head to clear it. “We have just discussed the consequences of a ‘child of the forge’ learning that they killed their master – and we still don’t know if da-ge survived.”

Everyone’s faces paled.

“We should go to the Unclean Realm at once,” Lan Xichen said. “Shufu…”

“I agree,” Lan Qiren said. “The immediate threat here has passed, even if more may be coming. Go at once, and by sword – it will be safer, all things considered. I will monitor the situation here.”

Everyone started bustling around at once. Jin Guangyao wasn’t certain, at first, if he was invited – there were all those crimes they’d all just been worried about – but apparently he was trusted enough to put that aside for the moment, which he appreciated. He slightly doubted everyone’s sanity for doing so, but…appreciated it, nonetheless.

“So,” he said to Wei Wuxian, who was planning on flying with Lan Wangji, his own sword (now unsurprisingly) being no longer in evidence. “If you don’t mind, Wei-gongzi, just so I can get my bearings, when you say ‘ripped apart’…”

“Childbirth is terrible and humanity should become extinct,” Wei Wuxian said. He looked minorly traumatized, which was saying something given the sorts of things he did when playing around with corpses during the Sunshot Campaign. “I have decided never to participate in such a thing ever again.”

“Oh?” Jin Guangyao asked, widening his eyes just a little. “Do you mean you plan to cut your sleeve from now on?”

Wei Wuxian blinked, then laughed. “Well, why not?” he said, clearly taking it as a joke in a way the frozen Lan Wangji right next to him was very clearly not. “Why not? It rather neatly avoids the problem. The only issue is finding a male cultivator willing to put up with me, despite all my nonsense…hey, Lan Zhan, what about you? You’re too much of a cold fish for any girl to put up with, why don’t you marry me instead?”

Jin Guangyao decided to go somewhere else.

“Well done,” Lan Xichen said to him when he joined him. He still looked worried, probably about Nie Mingjue, but his eyes were sparkling a little in amusement at what Jin Guangyao had just done. “I’ve been trying to get them to talk for a year, and you did it in a single stick of incense. With a joke.”

“Every person requires a different mode of communication,” Jin Guangyao said beatifically, then frowned. “Is your uncle going to hold this against me forever?”

“I promise he doesn’t eat anyone,” Lan Xichen said, which was…really not as comforting as Lan Xichen thought it was, that he felt the need to assure people of it quite as often as he did. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go!”

Nie Huaisang flew with Lan Xichen, holding Baxia for the first leg of the journey – Qinghe was far from the Cloud Recesses, and not a journey that could be made easily even by powerful cultivators. Baxia was bundled up as tightly and warmly as they could manage, and she scowled fiercely the entire time as she was handed between them – first Nie Huaisang, then Lan Xichen, and finally Jin Guangyao. On occasion, Wei Wuxian would play some melody on his flute that seemed to soothe her somewhat.

Once, Jin Guangyao even had the pleasure of seeing her try to throw spiritual energy at Lan Wangji for daring to float a little too close. He backed away quickly before it connected, of course, but it was pretty funny. Mostly on account of Jin Guangyao being one of the chosen ones she tolerated, of course.

As they flew, they talked a bit more about the legend of children of the forge.

“Why just sect leaders?”

“It’s not actually just sect leaders, but sect leaders are said to be more prone to it,” Nie Huaisang said. “They bear the weight of the sect, for better or for worse. Other disciples don’t get qi deviations the way the leaders do, not even close family – not so soon, not so far. The sect leaders also cultivate faster that the rest, usually. And even then, the stories said it wasn’t actually every time that there is a child of the forge, only in situations when there was an especially close bond between the master and the saber…which is why it’s usually sect leaders.”

“No one can say your brother isn’t an exceptional cultivator,” Jin Guangyao said, and tried to keep his jealousy to a minimum.

“Some people say his mother was a goddess, actually,” Nie Huaisang said. “And that’s why he’s so good, so young.”

“A goddess?” Wei Wuxian snorted. “Really? What did last generation’s Madame Nie have to say about that?”

“Oh, no one knows! She didn’t actually ever come back to the Unclean Realm.”

“What,” Jin Guangyao said. This was patently unfair, he thought; he’d actually been part of the Nie sect. They weren’t allowed to have rumors he hadn’t heard!

“Oh, it’s old news, ancient gossip, you wouldn’t have heard about it, san-ge. I’m actually not sure what story is more accurate, the one about my father disappearing for a year and coming back with a baby or else the baby being left at the doorstep in a thunderstorm – possibly actually delivered by a bolt of lightning…”

Jin Guangyao felt his head spin a little: there was no way any of those stories were actually true, which meant that Nie Mingjue was more than likely just a bastard like him. A bastard of nameless birth, no less!

Not to mention – a ‘goddess’, really? Could the former generation’s Sect Leader Nie have been any more obvious? Maybe things were different in Qinghe, but in Yunping, the only women that were so euphemistically called goddesses were the flower queens of the brothels, beautiful but very far from unearthly.

…actually, now that Jin Guangyao thought about it, he didn’t know what to do with that newfound knowledge.

He’d spent years resenting Nie Mingjue for being everything he wasn’t – rightfully born, a sect leader, powerful, with exceptional cultivation…even tall. If Nie Mingjue wasn’t that…if he was like Jin Guangayo, then the only difference between the two of them was…was…

The acceptance of their father.

Resentment surged in Jin Guangyao’s belly, a familiar feeling, but for the first time, he thought, for the first time – he thought the target of that resentment might be the right one.

“Hopefully divinity increases his chances of survival,” Lan Xichen said, his eyes firmly on the horizon. Nie Huaisang was curled into his arms, shivering a little. “However theoretical the divinity. Can we go any faster?”

“Getting there faster won’t change the result,” Wei Wuxian pointed out, but he elbowed Lan Wangji regardless. “Hey, Lan Zhan, what do you think?”

They sped up.

“There’s something wrong,” Lan Wangji said abruptly when they were nearly there. “The gates of the Unclean Realm are closed.”

“That’s a good sign, I think?” Nie Huaisang said, although his shoulders hunched up by his ears. “If da-ge were still – all right, he’d close the gates, to make sure no one got out to chase us.”

“They could also have closed the gates to signify the death of the previous sect leader,” Wei Wuxian pointed out, and Nie Huaisang flinched.

“San-ge, could you – ” he started to say, but Jin Guangyao was already flying over to him, offering Baxia out to him. “Thank you.”

Nie Huaisang took her into his arms and held her close.

“He’s going to be all right,” he told his niece, who didn’t respond, only looked at him with a gaze that seemed far more than a regular baby of that age ought to be capable of. Or maybe it was the mindless blank look that all babies had, and they were just ascribing more to it than there was, given what they knew – and given that whole throwing people around with spiritual energy thing, yes. “He’s going to be just fine, you’ll see. We’ve been gone a while, but that’s not too much for an injury, especially one requiring surgery. Just because he didn’t come and get us doesn’t mean something bad’s happened. He promised, you see. He promised me he’d live.”

If promises like that meant anything, the world would be a very different place, Jin Guangyao thought, feeling cynical – and yet, at the same time, wondering. Wondering if Nie Mingjue would manage, somehow, to pull off a miracle and keep his promise to his younger brother. If the Nie sect weakness could be solved, and his father’s crimes unmasked (with Jin Guangyao himself safely on the side of righteousness), and everything, for once, all work out the way everyone might have hoped.

He’d even throw in a wish for Wei Wuxian to reconcile with the Jiang sect and marry into the Lan just the way Lan Wangji so obviously wanted, because why not? It was as wild as all the rest of it.

They landed in front of the gate to the Unclean Realm, and Nie Huaisang rushed forward.

“Open up!” he shouted. “Open up! I want to see my da-ge!”

There was silence for a long moment.

Jin Guangyao gnawed on his lower lip, something he hadn’t done since before he’d outgrown his adolescence, wondering, wondering –

The doors of the Unclean Realm opened, creak by creak, and then suddenly, all at once.

Jin Guangyao tried to look, but saw nothing; there was only a blinding light, like a bolt of lightning come down from the blue, too bright to look at directly, shining gold as any core. He shielded his eyes and took a step back, flinching, and he sent spiritual energy straight to his eyes, trying to make them adjust faster, wondering what in the world…

“Huaisang,” Nie Mingjue said, standing there tall and bright and shining, with skin of gold and eyes like stars, all the power in the world and a smile on his lips, his arms outstretched in joy. “Give me my Baxia.”