#honestly this should be the one comic age thing that we should be able to pin down

[deadbandsong]

So, I know it’s canon that Pietro is the older twin (other than that wonderful random page from the 80s where Wanda refers to him as “baby brother”). But I still like to headcanon that Wanda is actually older but she’s let Pietro believe the opposite because he cares SO MUCH And Wanda’s just like, ‘Go ahead, if it’s that important to you.’

talking to my brother about quicksilver and i was like 'ik him and wanda are twins but he exudes little brother energy so much' and my bro Without Hesitation just went 'well thats what happens when you're the least favorite in the family' and he says this to me, the youngest in our family like 🧍‍♂️

[devine-fem]

why don't you like jayjon? Genuinely asking btw and I'm neutral btw I don't really ship superheroes kids, so yeah

Alright, firstly I have always come across damijon shippers that ship them as kids because their purest connection peaked when they were young so you kind of permanently keep Jon and Damian as kid in your head because of what DC did to them.

We ship them in a ‘wholesome crush on your best friend, twisting inside you over time that you snub out till you reach your adulthood and have the maturity to deal with it’ type of way. The beauty of Damijon is not the fact that it’s Bat x Super. I honestly don’t care for this dynamic ergo not shipping superbat and not liking Timkon at all. The beauty of Damijon is that they could become something with a friendship to back it up, then continue to push each other’s characters forward while being in a relationship if the writer cared enough. It’s a plus that they care for each other so much and have the personalities to really balance each other out.

I enjoy ships like Daminika, Dami x Colin and other Jon ships as well. I just only post damijon and talk about them. It’s only Jonj*y I have issues with. It’s not about ‘getting in the way of my ship’ nothing can ever get in the way of me enjoying damijon and fandom is just gonna have to deal with that. We all come here for enjoyment because we should supposedly enjoy DC for DC and find community in that, enjoy our ideas and takes on it and one person is not going to perceive or enjoy something the same way but we are so damn MEAN to each other. Damijon gets a lot of heat, mostly because twitter damijon stans are annoying and horrible and damijon antis are just as bad.

So the problem I have with Jonj*y is just deep rooted.

Firstly, I hate the way it came about. The last thing Jon’s character needed was to be in a relationship period but then for it to be a queer relationship used as a tool to garner sales? There’s nothing in the world I dislike more than queer baiting. The last thing we needed from DC was to pull something like this and as a queer person it just really gets under my skin - as it should anyone, to be honest.

Even regardless of that Jonj*y is the relationship equivalent of stale bread. They have no chemistry, Jay has no character besides catoring to Jon’s sexuality, and even if they were to explore him there’s no point because objectively they’ve tarnished Jon Kent way too much to be wasting comic ink on Jay.

I don’t like aged up Jon Kent as a whole, it’s not like I want him to stay a kid forever - obviously not. The fun of a comic book character is their growth! Jon over time should have never been able to get to the age he is now when other comic book characters struggle to get near that age in decades. I MEAN HE’S NEARLY OLDER THAN KON RIGHT NOW. Bendis did what he did to Jon because he ain’t even like him.

There are real serious issues with Jon Kent’s age up than him getting with Damian. I know how to seperate my ship/fanon from canon. I can go on and on about the problems with it without mentioning Damian once.

I had to put “JonJ*y apologist DNI” in my bio because the stans kept coming to my page and spewing BS 24/7 so I thought it was my absolute right to make sure they knew this page was not for them.

If you enjoy the ship at all then you will not like me because I have almost every single active Jonj*y poster blocked because I have fought with them at least once because they wanted to be stupid and spew nonsense on Jon Kent when you can tell they haven’t read a damn comic besides SSOKE and it really shows.

If you enjoy it, just block me. It’s only a matter of time before we fight anyway, so don’t waste your breath because the whole time you could be trying to open your mouth, you could open a comic book instead, how about that?

Thanks for the asks though, LOL.

P.2

[zahri-melitor]

Okay a loose Recent Reads roundup:

Birds of Prey: Sirens of Justice: so I was lured (tricked) into reading this as Gail Simone wrote one of the stories, even though it, sigh, contains far too much Harley Quinn due to movie synergy. The Dinah and Helena banter is decent, but otherwise this felt...aggressively fine. The Helena story is very pat in terms of how people tend to write Huntress shorts, though I guess it wasn't 'Helena worries about a student' this time.

The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage: very much in conversation with O'Neil's run, of course, and also clearly reacting to contemporaneous US racial discussions. Shifting Myra to be the Mayor's sister not wife definitely alters her position in the narrative, particularly in terms of her obligations and response to situations. It is incredibly bleak in places, but that simply reflects the run it is based on and is a tribute to.

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen: This is definitely for the Silver Age fan. Matt Fraction manages to string together solving a complex assassination plot over 12 issues by telling the story in short, 2-4 page sections that wildly jump around the timeline and are framed by 'the many ridiculous things that have happened to Jimmy Olsen'. I have absolutely no handle on the canonicity of some of this, particularly the extended Olsen family, and not knowing probably makes this read more easily. Looking at it as a whole, I'm impressed how well Fraction stitched what was effectively episodic 2 page fills into a complete narrative. The energy of the story is relentless. Best read in small doses.

Batman: Pennyworth R.I.P: god this comic could have been so much better than it was. It’s fine and accomplishes exactly what it was intended to do - tell a story of how Alfred influenced and looked out for each of Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian and Barbara - and sets everyone up to be mildly pissed at Bruce. But just for one example, it would have been HUGELY more powerful if they’d been able to use Dick, with his memories just restored, facing the fact he wasn’t there when Alfred needed him and his last interactions were so impersonal and spent pushing Alfred away.

Catwoman 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular: again, underwhelming. Tom King played shipper and wrote his version of how the Helena Wayne story should work; the Dixon story felt 90s appropriate but the art was dire; Brubaker’s felt like a missing scene to his run; Dini’s honestly wasn’t up to the standard I’d hope for from Dini. The art pieces were great though; a lot of good commissions.

Robin 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular: I cannot work out who chose the covers used in the issue, which swing between 'iconic' and 'reminding everyone ASBAR exists was unnecessary, DC'.

Generally: they did manage to round up fairly iconic lineups for most of the stories, with some chopping and changing for a few.

Wolfman got another run at trying to frame the 'Dick quits v Bruce fires him' debate; Dixon and Grayson both submitted literal fills (Dixon's is a scene immediately after Nightwing #19 1996 and before #20; Grayson's is at least just an extra story that fits into #1-12 of her Titans 1999 run on a day all the second stringers didn't come to work). I don't actually have a problem with any of these - they're nice additional material, but mostly more of the same. Seeley & King's suffers from the usual Seeley problem for me where it would be vastly improved by having a different focus; but it does feel straight out of his Grayson run, with everything that implies (down to the St Hadrian's student I wish was not present). All of the Dick stories are basically "we got the team back together" creative line ups.

Jason, in contrast, makes it really obvious that nobody can define a definitive Jason run, and so gets the tiniest story with Winick and Dustin Nguyen. I checked, and Nguyen did draw part of UTRH, but I wouldn't have associated him as a character-defining artist for Jason. The story's cute. Winick sidestepped having to commit to anything about his opinions on post-Flashpoint Jason direction.

Tim got Adam Beechen (which honestly makes me happy, I don't care about anyone else's opinion) and luxuriates in Tim having to play civilian; Tynion gets a Rebirth story that I can't quite work out his timing on (it's supposed to be a prequel, but Dick is already back in costume as Nightwing and talking to Tim, suggesting that several issues of the Rebirth Nightwing take place significantly before 'Tec #934) that is a classic 'Tim tells everyone how he feels about his brothers' story. I realise everyone boring has complained about Tim calling Damian a 'horrible gremlin' but the thing is you see I can only read nicknames like that as full of affection. The back and forth is an important part of their relationship, as shown by Damian snapping 'you're only listening to the insults'.

Steph gets her 71 days as Robin slightly padded out and Amy Wolfram manages to pick up Willingham's tone pretty well; I suspect she liaised with Damion Scott quite a bit on this piece.

Damian has a Super Sons piece from Tomasi, because it's the most lighthearted option available and it sells very well (it's sickly sweet). Which was probably the right call as the other piece is clearly written by Robbie Thompson to accompany his Teen Titans run and for the downward spiral going on there. Which is honestly a bit of a pity for Damian, given everyone else got feature pieces from favourite runs, and he got the 'this slots into your current story' piece.

[mooncalfe-art]

Finally got to read issue 140! I gotta say, I'm confused and disappointed with what's happening to Raph. He's not really my favorite but the treatment he's getting is unfair. Once he said his dream was to become a farmer, and now he's offered the opportunity, he reacts like he was asked to kill his family! And Alopex sure is suffering from tunnel vision because she was NOT abandoned, SHE abandoned the clan out of fear/frustration. I can't believe she's poisoning the kids' minds like that.

As for Casey being missing... I feel like the writers exhausted their possibilities with him and that's sad. He and Raph used to be tight, like brothers, and with him gone... couldn't they have made him a cop, perhaps? Give Casey another purpose? Or is he off to find IDW Gabriella, adopt her child, and that's how we get Shadow in this universe?

At least now we know Bob's motivation for his betrayal, he just wants to be normal. And frankly, if going back in time brings Splinter back (because let's face it, the guys need guidance), then let Armaggon consume this timeline and end this madness.

Other than that, I'm hopeful the comics will have a sort of happy ending and don't get the Mirage treatment.

People make bad decisions and behave badly sometimes, especially teenagers. I'm not condoning Raph and Alopex's behavior but it's fun to explore characters acting like little shits sometimes, and just think about what they've gone through up to this point, honestly I feel like they should be BIGGER assholes than how I'm writing them.

I'm actually kinda surprised by how some readers are reacting to what I've been doing with Alopex. Like I know everyone wants her and Raph to be together and I get that but I keep saying to imagine things from her perspective; imagine your loved ones teaming up with the guy who killed your family, burned your house down, and brainwashed you, gaslit you, and abused you. Regardless of why your loved ones teamed up with this guy, sure maybe it was dire circumstances and they felt they had no choice, but to you, you'd still want them to refuse the team-up, you'd want desperately for them to make a different choice and find another way to solve the problem than immediately giving in and allying themselves with your abuser. Maybe that's shortsighted of Alopex since the fate of the world was on the line, but when I was writing that stuff I just couldn't justify it that Alopex wouldn't feel utterly betrayed and blow up at the Turtles and take a scorched earth approach, at least at first. Maybe she'll come around eventually, it hasn't been that long, maybe she'll cool off and forgive the Turtles and they can reconcile eventually, but right now she DOES feel abandoned. I would feel abandoned and betrayed in her shoes.

The Raph farmer thing: I haven't forgotten about that, but he's not just going to run off and become a farmer at this point, he's ticked off at Alopex and he's hurting and exhausted. He's sticking around because of Alopex. I think if Raph believed that Alopex was a lost cause then yeah he'd probably go off to Northampton and start a big farm there and figure out a business model for selling produce to the locals or something, but he's not at that point yet. He's frustrated and lashing out without direction as Raph is wont to do.

The Casey thing I'm frustrated about, too, that was a thing from the powers-that-be and he was shuffled off in Armageddon Game #8 (which isn't out yet and which takes place before #140). He's not missing, it'll explain it in AG #8. I had a whole big storyline with Casey I wanted to do where he goes out west to find himself and hunt monsters and meets Shadow, and Raph eventually goes out there to find him and they have their own adventures out there. Casey is probably my favorite TMNT character and I'd been trying to make him more grizzled and "hard" like his Mirage counterpart and I think I was able to do that a little bit but the rest of what I had planned for him was unfortunately not to be. Maybe down the road, who knows. Anyway, I share your frustration on that point.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #62: the Witching Hour!

September, 1990

In final battle against IMMORTUS

Oh, comics, you silly. Always labeling things final when you know that they're just going to happen again.

Wonder Man isn't looking well. I think he forgot to eat his Wheaties.

Anyway. Immortus. What gives?

Last times on Avengers West Coast: a lot of things have happened. But apparently it was all Immortus' fault, manipulating Scarlet Witch from early in her career to make her fall for Vision so she would later have fake kids with him an have a mental breakdown over losing them. All so Immortus could use her powers, which he jacked up, to take control of time. For reasons. He's also been winnowing down the infinite divergent timelines to just one. Also for reasons.

Honestly, who cares? Let's just get this over with so we can hopefully move onto stories that aren't about torturing Wanda Maximoff.

The Avengers West Coast and Quicksilver are hesitant to attack Immortus as long as he has a catatonic Scarlet Witch as a hostage but he scoffs. He's not going to hurt her! She's so very essential to his plan!

Through her power, he'll safeguard whatever future he decided is the only correct future! You could say, that as a hero, this is what Wanda should be doing to serve the entire multiverse!

The Avengers and Quicksilver tell Immortus that he's dumb and these answers in no way satisfy them.

I'd also like to add that the team recovering between issues from their hard fought victories or near-defeats makes most of the last issue completely pointless.

I love a good Legion of the Unliving, I do, but it was all time wasting.

Anyway, hearing that Immortus needs Wanda for his plans, the Avengers and Quicksilver all charge in to kick Immortus' head in.

He tells them to knock it off because they might rouse Wanda from her trance.

Protip: Telling a hero team that the thing they're doing will thwart you will make them want to do it more.

So Immortus summons more assistance. Which he wouldn't have needed to do if he hadn't gotten rid of the Legion of the Unliving, for some reason.

Although in this case, the assistance is a big white dude named Tempus, the guardian of Castle Limbo. Which explains why he's never showed up any other time the Avengers have been here.

He can age anyone he touches, I guess. Which is a cool power to have in a world that is explicitly timeless.

Back at the Avengers West Coast Compound on Earth, Agatha Harkness yells at the afterimage of Immortus for his evil plans.

Agatha Harkness: "I know what you're planning, Immortus -- and you're a fiend! But -- why am I wasting my time shouting at a transparent doppleganger like you?" Afterimage Immortus: "I am sure I have no idea, Agatha Harkness."

What a weird series of writing decisions led us to this point.

Agatha realizes that she needs to get to Limbo to help Wanda but the only way to get there is for her to astral project her ethereal self out of her body and dive into Afterimage Immortus. Because of reasons, this sends her to Limbo.

Where the Avengers are getting their various asses kicked by Tempus, guardian of Limbo Castle.

Tempus smacks Old Man Wonder Man with his big club, knocking the aged hero at US Agent who catches him. And then passes the fuck out from the impact.

Hawkeye is surprised US Agent would be a team player - although he also calls him John Walters instead of John Walker.

Quicksilver watches Tempus no-sell attacks from Hank Pym, Hawkeye, and Iron Man and wonders whether even his superspeed will be able to help.

But seeing Trance Wanda inspires Quicksilver.

Quicksilver: "Wanda -- can you hear me behind that shield? We have been through so much, together and apart. For you to become, now, nothing but a human storage battery for Immortus to draw on -- no matter how noble or vital he claims his purpose is -- ! NO! In the name of Heaven itself -- no good was ever born -- out of something so clearly evil!"

Then he runs really fast and bonks Tempus with a club-shaped piece of rock.

Which doesn't knock Tempus down but at least gets him to react like he's been hit.

Iron Man and Hawkeye speculate whether it was because Quicksilver hit Tempus with a piece of the castle he's the guardian of. Hawkeye wondering whether he could make arrows out of it.

Tempus gets right pissed and decides to hit the Avengers and Quicksilver with... TIMESTORM!

Everyone of them is forced to relive their own "most fearful, most deeply buried memories!"

Which. I dunno.

That's not what I'd call a timestorm. Trip during memory lane. But not a timestorm.

And I dunno.

Quicksilver sees himself and Wanda fleeing one of the angry mobs that are ever-present in Eastern Europe and America in comics. I think, specifically, the ones that led to them being discovered by Magneto.

Hawkeye sees the moment of broken pedestal when he discovered his idol mentor Swordsman was stealing from the circus.

Wonder Man re-experiences that time he died. Again.

Hank Pym re-lives when he had to identify his first wife's dead body.

Iron Man gets that shrapnel to the heart moment. Oddly, not anything related to his alcoholism or Armor Wars.

Wasp sees when her dad was killed by an alien, all the way back in her first appearance.

And US Agent sees when his mom and dad were killed in front of his eyes by the far-right Watchdogs group.

All very emotionally devastating to have to go through again but I don't know if all of these would qualify as most fearful or most emotionally devastating. And the point is to confront the heroes with "the foe which, above all others, you can not hope to defeat."

But.

Everyone here has lived through these memories already. They've continued on. Coming to terms with what happened or not but still able to keep going.

Like, Wonder Man has coped with dying. So. MANY. TIMES.

This is called a timestorm so you'd think it'd be horrible, character-specific What-Ifs! Although, that wouldn't work with Immortus hating branching timelines. But still! Seems like a more interesting idea.

Whatever. Either way, these bad memories are enough to floor the Avengers and Quicksilver and leave them quivering helpless.

Agatha Harkness has basically just watched all this happen, sure she could do nothing to influence events.

But then she thinks 'what if yes can influence?'

And since Immortus is really distracted by watching the Avengers quiver, Agatha uses her mystic rapport with Wanda to try to contact her mind.

Agatha begs Wanda to give up the extra power that Immortus has been jamming into her. That if she gives up the ability to "alter the probabilities of cosmic timelines", then Immortus won't have a use for her.

But Wanda doesn't react.

Meanwhile, Immortus is wondering whether he needs to kill the Avengers or not. He should would hate to fit into the villain niche they're trying to jam him into but on the other hand he also hates that they might keep getting in the way so, yeah, sure, go ahead and kill them Tempus.

Agatha is able to get the faintest of brief reactions from Wanda when she begs her to fight against Immortus' control for the sake of her robot husband and for the sake of her imaginary kids who aren't real.

Okay, Agatha doesn't put it that way but the reality of Vision being an emotionless machine now and the kids being totally fake not real causes the ploy to not work.

So Agatha instead tries pleading for the Avengers' lives. Surely the Avengers hold a place in her heart? Her brother? Her friends?

Agatha runs out of time because Immortus can "feel their presence -- within my brain!"

While he blasts Agatha with PSYCHIC ENERGY, he orders Tempus to finish off the Avengers.

As Agatha fades she pleads for Wanda to "Reject those extra powers you never wanted -- for the sake of those who love you -- reject them also for the sake of those you love -- Reject the powers, Wanda! Reject themmmmm"

Wanda does awake. And she does reject the powers. And she basically declares "No more this arc."

And expelling the energy apparently somehow creates new timelines diverging from the most fearful, most deeply buried memories that were tormenting the Avengers.

Wanda and Pietro get burned at the stake instead of being rescued by Magneto. Grim.

Hawkeye scolds Swordsman into not doing crime.

Tony Stark dies of the shrapnel.

Wonder Man's death triggers a burst of radiation which kills all the Avengers except Thor.

Janet van Dyne is killed by the alien that killed her dad.

Maria Pym just... stops being dead on the morgue slab. Didn't even try to come up with a reasonable divergence on that one.

And the spray of bullets that would have killed Mr and Mrs Walker instead miraculously miss them.

These changes jar the Avengers from their bad memories floor quivering and also alarm Immortus who shouts that AGATHA HARKNESS HAS DOOMED THE VERY MULTIVERSE.

So dramatic.

Not Evil Anymore Wanda wonders if her blasting out all that energy is what will doom existence and thinks maybe she can just slurp it back up.

But then the Time Keepers show up and tell her not to bother.

Immortus is again alarmed. These are his boss mentors and them showing up is like they don't think he can do his job without intervention.

Time Keepers: "Immortus... be still. Long ago, we appointed you custodian of the segment of time between 3000 B.C. and 4000 A.D. Your duties required little more than the eventual transmutation of a particular nexus being into a source of power. You were to use that power over probabilities to safeguard key events which must occur in various timelines, in order to assure a certain future in which we have a vested interest... but even that simple assignment seems to have proven too difficult for you to fulfill."

Okay, so these are the dicks that told Immortus to go after Wanda?

Wellll, no. They gave him a list and he chose Wanda off of it. But choosing Wanda and then letting the Avengers and Agatha Harkness meddle caused such temporal chaos that it puts all futures in jeopardy and risks the Time Keepers never existing.

And what a big loss that would be.

Look. Immortus is a sometimes food. Too much of any Kang or Kang derivative is too much. But the Time Keepers kind of take away the only kinda cool thing Immortus had going for him. He's just middle management now.

Also, the Time Keepers are introducing so many words words words to this ending.

Wanda doesn't really care about all the words words words. She just points a finger at Immortus for fucking up her life. Immortus can only weakly claim he was just doing his job.

And then the Time Keepers jump in to remind him that he was shit at his job. And apparently, Immortus was trying to get control over all of time instead of the seven millennia they promised him?

I really can't care at this point.

The Avengers are all standing around commenting on this but it's just prolonging things.

US Agent yells at the Time Keepers that he wants to arrest Immortus and take him to trial by the US Government. The Time Keepers blah blah blah our actions are ineffable our deeds for the greater good. Also, we're cosmically powerful and you're a guy with a metal disc.

Hawkeye and US Agent can't take the Time Keepers' cockiness and both try to attack them. The Keepers just crank the velocity on the arrow and the shield way down and then commentate on which one would reach them first, ie which Avenger launched a faster attack.

Apparently Hawkeye wins but by so little it's hardly worth doing this sequence.

US Agent concedes that messing with Galactus-tier dudes is annoying and asks Hawkeye what they do now.

Hawkeye: "Not much... unless you've got a deck of cards up your sleeve."

Hah. I think he's suggesting they just play poker until all the exposition finishes.

Despite having fumbled the ball, Immortus demands his prize anyway. Because dammit, he worked really hard! And just as a reminder, that prize was rule over the stretch of time from when he was Pharaoh Rama-Tut to the time he spent as Kang conquering the year 4000.

Not that Immortus was ever that cool but he seems so much less cool when he's whining about 7000 years versus when he surveyed all time and had grown out of a desire to rule.

You suck, this new Immortus.

And apparently the Time Keepers agree.

They gather all the energy Wanda expelled and shove it into Immortus.

He at first crows at how much more powerful he's growing and then, like Wanda, he becomes catatonic.

Now, he will remain unmoving in Limbo, the power of probabilities residing in him to ensure that the correct future happens, or whatever.

This story is suck.

Despite everything, Wanda just feels sorry for Immortus. Sure, he was going to do the same thing to her but it is a truly horrible fate and she is not a jerk anymore because I guess she expelled the racism goo traces.

(Something that Hank mentions too, although more in the general sense that if she's feeling pity for Immortus, she must be on the road to recovery)

Actually, Wanda tries to claim that Immortus was "noble, in his own way."

Oh, Wanda, no. You don't have to big him up. He sucks.

Then, the Time Keepers decide they're tired of looking at the Avengers' dumb faces and just instantly scene transition them back to the compound.

Convenient.

Agatha Harkness claims that Actually, she didn't carry the team. Truly, this was an Avengers victory because they did a really good distracting Immortus by getting their asses soundly beaten by Tempus.

She phrased it nicer than I did but that is the gist.

Hawkeye just instantly passes out as soon as the plot is over. But Hank is left to worry about the dangling subplots of Tigra being tiny and feral and the Human Torch being broken.

Also, hey hey, Living Lightning's first appearance! I remember him fondly from the two things I've ever seen him in! The Great Lakes Avengers Misassembled mini and Avengers No Surrender!

Of course, next week next time, we're back over to the Avengers and the Crossing Line arc. Eh.

Follow @essential-avengers. Like, reblog, or comment. I'm hangry for feedback.

[northwest-cryptid]

im sending a cute moth to cheer you on while you're high

Oh man I love moths, fun fact; in my Native language the word for moth roughly translates to "The Night Spirit Butterfly" and I unironically think that's such a great name for moths

I wanted to see about the credibility of this however since a lot of the time I've heard people say that "the Native american word for this is [generic mystical sounding animal thing]" and then I look it up and it's like "nah we just kinda call that a bird." So I did some digging and located the original text it's sourced from:

I've been learning Lakota since it's my Native language and I was forced to learn English directly after learning barely enough Lakota to be conversational; since I wasn't able to keep up in school when it came to learning English. This is why I will always say English is my second language, because I was literally taught Lakota first and it made learning English significantly harder.

As a quick aside, I think it's interesting that after learning Lakota I had much more trouble learning English; while my brother who did not learn Lakota had no trouble picking up English as a first language. I believe this is honestly because English uses a completely different sentence structure and since my brother didn't have anything to compare it with it became the first and only structure for sentences he knew; it was the only pronunciation he knew. Meanwhile I had learned that wášte is pronounced like "Wash-teh" with a very subtle "ee" after the h, so then I went to school and they said "okay here's the word "Waste" how do you say that?" Not to mention the word wášte basically means "good" so learning an entirely new concept of a word made no sense at a young age.

Regardless, now I'm older and have a better grasp on how language works since I've spent my life learning a good few now (memory problems be damned) translating everything from games to web comics and novels for fun. So I've picked up Lakota and boy I forgot just how much of a weird language this is.

Like okay I know we're on a tangent here, but hear me out right; I need to explain this because it baffles me why they would do this.

So the word tȟó means blue, the word zí means yellow, and the word šá means red.

So then if we know what Blue, Yellow, and Red are; what do you think the word tȟózi means? It means Green right? because Blue and Yellow make green! Alright so then what about tȟóša it's gotta be Purple right? Yea exactly! Because Blue and Red make Purple! Okay one more here, zíša You probably already know this is Orange because of how this has been working so far; and that's 100% correct! It's a really simple and effective system right?

Alright, so then if we look at Black which is sápA and White which is ská we should be able to discern Gray!

So then what would Gray be? Based on what we know; there are two possible answers right? So we all agree that it's ȟótA right?

...

...

...

Wait, oh no it had such a good system it can't just NOT use it...

SURELY Pink would just be Red and White right?! Skasa or Saska or something...

WHY IS IT šamná?! In fact why is it šamná / šásaŋ / šástaŋ?!

Yea so anyways color system was so cool until they decided to just not use it and I am forever baffled by why this is the case.

So knowing what I know let's look into our case of the Night Spirit Butterfly.

Well right off the bat we can see it uses the word for Butterfly, that being Kimimila and I happen to know very well the word Nagi or "Wanagi" means Shadow or Spirit. So that gives us Wanagi and Kimimila but we're still missing that bit in the middle, where does that Ta come in?

Well the only example of ta being used is in the word Tatanka, which is literally the word Tanka and the word Ta which is cited as making it possessive. My best guess is that in this case it's being used as some kind of particle but I don't necessarily see how it making the word Wanagi possessive would fit that translation. That would make it closer to The Spirit's Butterfly, or something of that sort.

Of course this source actually does know what their talking about upon further reading through the document they have a lot of translations that are perfectly accurate so I believe them on this one but personally the inclusion of the "ta" particle there makes me wonder if it was suppose to be something closer to seeing the night in a possessive sense.

As to say Butterflies are to the day what Moths are to the night, they are The Night's Butterfly. The only issue there is that we need to remember that Nagi and Wanagi don't really mean "Night-Spirit" like that they do mean Shadow or Spirit and in some cases even Soul or Ghost depending on the context so I see even "The Ghost Butterfly" as being more accurate than to say The Night-Spirit. However this might just be a case of it being context sensitive as it does get across the fact that they're nocturnal rather than just being a dark butterfly.

Bonus fun fact, Mothman is my favorite cryptid.

tl;dr

[weclassybouquetfun]

Say the Name!

Yes, yes, the box office for SHAZAM! THE FURY OF THE GODS is dismal and has pulled in less money than its predecessor but for my tastes, it's the superior film and is now among my favourite DC films. I've had to qualify things when I talked about AQAUAMAN or the WONDER WOMAN films and even the first SHAZAM! but this one I don't have such caveats. It's fun, it's funny; the humour and the action hits its mark. The big plus? You can actually see the action. It's not darkly lit like it was filmed in a cavern.

SPOILERS FOR SHAZAM! THE FURY OF THE GODS.

THE GOOD - What I love about DC Comics comics is that there are writers who have really driven home the familial bonds amongst the characters whether they are related or it's a found family situation so I love that this is a film about family.

The film already comes in at 2 hours so while I would have liked to see a bit more of that dynamic (especially Billy's worry about aging out - a great plot point), I think they were able to utilize what minor screen time they had to delve into that well.

-A lot of cheers in the theater when Pedro came out to his family.

-We had little time with the Marvel family in the first film so I couldn't appreciate how perfectly cast Adam Brody is as the hero version Jack Dylan Grazer and Meagan Good as Hero Darla.

-I would think separating Freddy so much from the general storyline with Billy and Marvel Family would feel uneven but the character worked equally well with Rachel Zegler's Ann/Anthea and Djimon Hounsou's Wizard.

-Leaning more into the magic. This has been my biggest issue with the DC theatrical side - DC has fantastic mages and magic wielders who are not named John Constantine and they don't utilize them so it was great seeing the world of magic built up with a library and sentient pen worthy of the Wizarding World.

was a creative way to cut back on wall of exposition by doing it in a witty way via Steve the Pen.

-Giving Diedrich Bader who voiced Batman in BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD a small role was cute.

-Helen Mirren was great. She gave a perfectly modulated performance. She didn't take it too over the top and campy.

-So glad Michael Gray who played Billy Batson in the 70s SHAZAM series got to make an appearance. He was unmissable in the classic red and yellow.

-Glad to see Mark Strong back. I had a feeling Dr. Sivana was going to return because Mark Strong doesn't have a poker face and when doing promo for CRUELLA he didn't sound very convincing when he said he wasn't returning.

THE NOT SO GREAT

-I understand the need and desire to want Wonder Woman in the film and at least there was a logical reason for her to appear, but it still felt clunky. I liked the fake out in that we had "seen" her earlier in the film from the back so it stood to reason that it would end like Superman's appearance in the first film but nope, we got Gal Gadot -albeit filmed separately from the actors, hence the clunkiness.

-I am so tired of Batman. I don't remember but is Batman supposed to be Billy and/or Freddy's favourite hero because there's a Batman emblem on the lamp in the Rock of Eternity and a Batman drawing in Billy and Freddy's room. Where's the love for Superman?!

-Are they actually going to go anywhere with Billy joining Justice Society or was this just another way to put Harcourt and Economos into something?

I see the Authority (mentioned by Shazam) but no JSA in Gunn's Chapter One.

Them and Amanda Waller being the Nick Fury of the DCEU should be over. We don't need a joint universe because it obviously hasn't worked for them. The ungenerous part of me feels this is just a way for James Gunn to keep his wife employed since, but honestly they should stay relegated to PEACEMAKER.

[itistimeforusalltodecidewhoweare]

Buffy Summers, Natasha Romanoff aaaand Elizabeth Swann for the character ask game 👀

you should've seen the way i just started grinning in class <3

Buffy Summers

How I feel about this character i love buffy so much. i've been stuck mid season 5 on my rewatch for ages because i don't want things to happen. it's rough out here

All the people I ship romantically with this character zero controversy here i think because it's angel, spike and faith

My non-romantic OTP for this character buffy and willow mean everything to me. but also giles!!! 😭

My unpopular opinion about this character idk if this is unpopular but i thought buffy forgetting everything after "i will remember you" was increddibly satisfying from a narrative perspective (even if it hurt like a bitch). also sarah michelle gellar is such an underrated actress.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. i wish we'd gotten more time/interactions of buffy with other slayers!!! introducing the concept of "there always needs to be a slayer" for a main character that dies in season one only to underutilize it should be criminal

Natasha Romanoff

How I feel about this character sometimes i forget how much i love nat and then i watch an instagram reel or something and i'm like HER

All the people I ship romantically with this character … see, no one actively. i see steve and nat in a sort of schrödinger's ship way where i both like them and don't like them at the same time. i'm very neutral about buckynat, but then i've never read many of the comics.

My non-romantic OTP for this character steve, yelena, clint. probably in that order.

My unpopular opinion about this character i liked the black widow movie!! a lot!! even if it came 5+ years too late!!

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET NAT BACK OR AT LEAST AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF HER. WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE GET ALTERNATE GAMORA BUT NOT ALTERNATE NAT. i will never forgive endgame's sins

Elizabeth Swann

How I feel about this character honestly one of the reasons i'm bi probably. love of my life. made me consider pirate as a job prospect at eleven years old.

All the people I ship romantically with this character it's gotta be will turner. gotta be. as much as i love both norrington and jack as characters, nah. canon did right with that one

My non-romantic OTP for this character the dynamic she has with barbossa in at world's end is a delight to watch—as is the slightly awkward "we used to be engaged and because of me your life went to shit" situation with norrington in dead man's chest

My unpopular opinion about this character okay like this is me being nitpicky about realistic things in a fantasy action film but like. sword fighting is hard. as is firing a musket. why (apart from her short fumble with the decorative sword in the first movie) is she naturally good at all these things? we couldn't have gotten a side remark of her training between movies or something if we don't get to see it happen?? anyway this might be my love for training sequences speaking

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. never. do you hear me. never not in a million years would elizabeth swann, elected pirate king, stay on a goddamn island for ten years. are you goddamn insane?? no!!

give me a character;

[arunneronthird]

Hi, this is the Bruce and Jason anon again and you're completely right! Tim and Kon's situation is very different from Bruce and Jason's because Tim was like...literally trying to engineer a perfect replacement for someone he lost ON PURPOSE. Which is just completely fucking crazy from start to end. Especially when Kon, as a clone himself, struggled in the past with the idea of being created in a lab explicity to perfectly replace another person, then ending up not being identical/perfect enough to do that and having to learn to become his own person instead, not just superman 2.0. Like Tim was actually insane to still try and clone him while actively KNOWING all of this about his best friend and still deciding to go ahead and become the cadmus/lex luthor in this poor clone's story.

Also with the benefit of being able to actually know what happened while Jason was dead, how Bruce grieved, the whole messy process of how Tim actually became Robin, etc. through the comics, I agree that Bruce wasn't necessarily wrong. What I was mainly talking about was Jason coming back from the dead without any knowledge of how much of a wreck Bruce was when he was gone and seeing the product of that grief without any of the context.

Like Jason checks back in on his dad after maybe a year or two (idk comic timelines) and there is just a full ass new child (around the age jason was when he died no less) living in Jason's house, swinging round Gotham in Jason's old suit colours using Jason's vigilante name (the suit he died in, the name that he died for). He even LOOKS like Jason with his black hair a blue eyes. And because of the severe lack of context Talia provides, from the outside it's exactly as if Jason has been replaced, not grieved. Like when TV shows recast one of their main actors and the story continues on without stopping to acknowledge that anything is out of the ordinary. As if this new person has been here the entire time and the old one never existed at all.

Jason was also having problems with Bruce before he died so seeing this shiny new Robin take his place (and actually be good at it) is just so heartbreaking. Again, without knowing anything about Bruce and Tim's relationship, to Jason it'd seem like Bruce just got a shiny new sidekick that was Robin in all the ways B wanted and valued, all the ways Jason wasn't. It's worse when Dick, who Jason had a pretty strained relationship with, is all over the new guy in a way he never was with him. It mirrors what you were saying about Tim making the version of Kon that loved him in the way original-Kon didn't. Obviously not what happened to Bruce and Tim but WE know that not Jason

The third part doesn't really fit them so much, the only thing I can think of is Jason coming to the realisation that Bruce didn't actually care about him, or Dick, that he probably didn't even care about the new kid either. Like Tim and his clones, Robins all eventually get discarded and thrown away when they don't meet B's standards, when they're not perfect enough. It's what Bruce and Dick used to fight about all the time too, before Jason died. Has Steph been Robin yet by the time Jason comes back? Idk. It would certainly add to that idea. Child after child, in the middle of gun fight after gun fight. What kind of a monster does that? So Jason decides to put it to the test. How much does Bruce actually care about Robin? He certainly didn't seem to care when Jason died, but maybe that's too small of a sample size. There needs to be multiple test trials. If Batman thinks so little of his sidekicks, if he's really going to be so careless with them, then he should to be prepared to lose a few.

Sorry for how long this is, I was typing and completely lost the run of myself.

i... had like a page typed out and then the whole building lost power so i think thats a sign for me to stop answering while at work, i wont listen though

honestly im really glad that tumblr now shortens posts, but never apologize for length, i thought this was a great read and i love getting peoples opinions on things!

i agree with all this, really, i think jason, pumped full of green pit rage water, would come back and see himself replaced and completely snap, it works really well and i love that narrative

i dont think jason feels bad for losing robin, it wasnt his to lose, he wore dicks suit while tim wore a new one out of respect for him, i think he felt replaced in a... deeper level

he came back to see that someone was occupying the space the grief and pain would have been in, someone else was pushing his ghost away, living his life, being loved by his father, being cared for by his brother, someone better at his job than he ever was, cold and smart where he was rash and angry, he came back to see that he was not only replaced, him being dead made things better

ofc, this wasnt true, his death nearly destroyed bruce, and it took a lot of effort to get him to feel human again cause he had lost his son, but jason didnt know that, as u said

meanwhile, i love the new 52 tim, i think hes tragic in a visceral way, and i love how his pain is so easy to feel, but in a way im glad we dont really talk about that era too much and usually act like its not relevant to the canon cause... its hard to justify tim being a good person in the new comics after reading the 2015s one

like, tim failing to clone kon doesnt justify him actually trying to replace his dead best friend who struggled with his place in the world, and i think the writers recently realized if they want tim to be a dark but brave hero they cant also make him morally corrupt at best and absolutely insane, theres a difference between red robin desperately trying to find batman and being a rude mess in the process and red robin basically experimenting with lives

[the-stray-storyteller]

you asked for a shitty poem istg this is the only poem ive ever written HEY COME BACK *grabs you and pulls you back* NOW YOU HAVE TO TELL ME ABOUT ALL YOUR NEW STUFF AND SHARE SOME OF YOURS >:(

also literally you don't have to feel pressured to answer this take your time like honestly you don't even have to reply I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR NEW WIP SACRIFICE!1?1?11??1

AAAAAAAAAAAAA! HI!

*offers you tea*

I sent you an ask a few days ago but my tumblr is acting funny so I don't think you got it. Anyways.....

The poem omigod. It's wow! Is it the complexities of human emotion that we hide with beauty. Or is it about romanticizing the dangerous and falling in love with it. The juxtaposition. The rhythm. The contrast. Holy fucking wow. ITS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. ITS SO GOOD. *frothing mouth*

Also you new pfp is so cooot. eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Okay now to answer your questions. New stuff, nothing much there. I have been writing Rebel and Havenpoint (I should really post the next chapter) really slowly. Writing more chem notes than stories.

Rebel is a part of a series. I still haven't decided if it is going to be a duology or a trilogy. But there will be another book if I have the energy and will to write it.

And I have been concentrating on making two comic strips for my college scholarship. I finished the first one, one more to go.

Long rant below. Like really fucking long. Not joking.

Sacrifice is a placeholder name for my WIP. I haven't decided what its actual name will be. I am really hoping I don't abandon this WIP.

Like I did with Masque, Woven Worlds, Orphic Academy, Timekeepers, Card Thief, Games of the Astute, Mortal Bound, The Playground, After the afterlife (dumb name), Stolen by Silence, etc.

So Sacrifice is an Indian Dark Academia novel.

25 of the best magic users from all over India will be invited to attend a prestigious and mythical academy after they finish 12th grade. So they take this mysterious train ride to another fucking realm where the school is (nobody knows its exact location cause they all faint in the train). Also the academy's architecture will be based off on Indian architecture throughout the ages, so I am currently researching on that when I get time.

The students have a year to conduct a study in the academy. They will have access to all sorts of ancient scriptures and previous alumni's studies. At the end of the year the Dean will see what they worked on. If the dean is impressed by you project they will tell you the secret of life and death magic. The Dean is never impressed. If they fail to impress the Dean they go home with absolutely nothing and they would forget the place.

However, the people who went back home with nothing went mad after a while and killed themselves. Their minds are not able to process the magical place they had just been to. Being at the academy also manages to mess with the minds of a person. It drives them a bit crazy. Some people have suicided there or have killed somebody else. The students don't know this.

Spoilers after this point.

So a group of six students join together and decide to help each other with their projects so they can get the secret. One of the group finds out about the whole madness thing and tells the others about it.

Now each of the six students has a hamartia (tragic flaw). From jealousy to manipulative. This is actually a small experiment from my side because the main characters are not good people, so I am gonna try and make them likable. Its going to be so hard.

Anyways desperate and power hungry the group decides to find the secret themselves and steal the academy's resources and escape before the end of the year.

The others fearful of dying/going mad start to push the limits of their magic. They experiment with things that they are not supposed to experiment with. 

With every experiment their hamartia takes over. They start going mad. They become a fucking cult. They start to sacrifice the other students to ancient gods (in true ancient fashion) and become more powerful. Once all the students are gone they start killing each other and the last one left ends up destroying the academy along with themself trying to become the most powerful being.

*sobbing* I talk too much.

[allthefujoshiunite]

THE COMPETITION BY JEONG SEOLHWA

The other day, I decided to move my Twitter threads here to archive them because the Moments are gone. We can never have good things now, can we…

Hi friends! I'm here to talk about a chapter that I haven't been able to get out of my mind, and what better way to gush about a webtoon than putting together a thread?

I have recommended Jeong Seolhwa's The Competition on Manta Comics before on Twitter and I'll include the summary and certain points that charmed me upon reading it immediately after the release.

The story focuses on Hokyung, who met violin at a young age thanks to his close friend Eujoo, who’s competing on a national level now and was given Eujoo’s old, 3/4 violin. Being from a big family with average financial means = Hokyung can’t pursue music, when his hand-me-down violin is finally broken, he’s off to a luthier Eujoo recommends. He can’t get it repaired due to the cost, but that meeting opens up a different door to the dreams he’s been putting a lock on.

First of all, hello gorgeous! It’s so pretty and it’s more similar to the manga form than webtoon format w/ infinite scrolling. And it has the most beautiful chapter covers, just look at them:

There are two things I especially appreciated in this work: first is Eujoo’s conflicting feelings were portrayed really well. He’s constantly torn between cheering on his friend and wanting to compete against him bc he knows how fond Hokyung is of violin. But he fears his talent and HY surpassing him might mean all these years he practiced like crazy was all in vain. There was also a past regret that weighs on EJ and that affects his performance & health.

The second would be the emphasis on money. Not only it costs a fortune to buy a good instrument and take classes from a renowned teacher, the idea of pursuing music as your carreer isn’t generally even an option when you’re a child in a middle or lower class family. Even if they mean well & are supportive of their kids, music can be a hobby at best. My first impression of this series was that it was emotional, sweet, and looked super pretty!

Circling back to why I'm once again talking about The Competition. Currently, Hokyung is in the middle of a violin competition, and the chapter that left me in awe and got me all teary-eyed by how beautiful and expressive it is, is his most recent performance. It's his first time officially playing with an orchestra, and first time his family is hearing him perform. All the contestants in this round play their interpretation of Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No.1 in G Minor:

Chapter 69 opens with HY stepping onto the stage, and save from one comment before his performance, the rest of the chapter is "silent". Except, it isn't. The flow and depth of the music, the communication between HY and the conductor, HY's emotions, the audience's response, all are shown through body language (hand gestures specifically), gaze, and the color and the density of lines.

Those "blobs" first emerge from the orchestra, then you see the release in the hand gesture of the conductor, he and HY make eye contact, and in the next page, you see the energy being condensed into HY's violin, and then is released back into the auditorium. The whole time, we witness how the sound permeates and changes throughout the performance, it's also important to note that the "blobs" vary depending on the nature of the performance.

The ending's again beautifully visualised when HY finishes, then it's followed by the conductor and then, the audience.

I haven't read tons of manga that focuses on music, but it was the very first time that I've felt THIS immersed in a musical performance on paper. It was honestly phenomenal and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how some artists are capable of conveying things that /should be/ beyond lines that are "just pen on paper". I have to say, if you aren't reading this masterpiece, you're missing out!This webtoon is seriously guilty of making me feel things every Sunday!! I can't have that!!!

Note: Due to its format, The Competition is only available on Manta's app.

[winns-stuff]

LO RANT:

Okay I have to get this off my mind but I really am tired of everyone looking over the age gap. Like come on y’all, why is Persephone the only god around other gods that have been around for centuries only 19. Has no one in the fandom thought to think about that? I’m being serious cause that’s never made sense to me.

First of all, I hate how people who defend it are always stating how “gods don’t age like we do so we can’t use our morals for them”, yeah I agree with you so why are we being normal about a 19 year old being mixed up with a 2000 year old even though everyone else is way older? Since we’re not using our morals on them wouldn’t Persephone indefinitely be a baby to them? Like genuinely asking because why would anyone over 1000+ years look at a fresh 19 year old immortal being and respect them like an adult. I’d even say 30 is still young as hell. I’m pretty sure Persephone is the youngest person ever in Lore Olympus which makes all of this even worse when you think about it.

Even Hera stopped aging around her 30s (maybe??) and we don’t even know how old Artemis is compared to her so literally everyone she hangs around has centuries worth of knowledge compared to her which is still very weird. No matter how much knowledge Persephone gains over the years she will still be inferior towards her peers in that department and no sort of internal intelligence (that’s barely even used) will ever be able to staple that. This honestly just puts her at a disadvantage as well because why would you want Persephone to be so young and inexperienced but also want everyone to listen to her and respect her when she literally will never be equals to them.

Which brings us to the point of Persephone ruling the Underworld. Me personally I would be absolutely pissed if I was a citizen living under these two idiots. I don’t understand why Hades is so adamant about leaving Persephone out of learning how to rule his kingdom, has he ever even seen her leadership skills? Does he know that all she knows is school based things? Has he even asked her about everything she knows about the Underworld? If he wasn’t such a fucking idiot he would’ve been on her about learning more about properly ruling it instead of letting her sit on her ass because she just used her powers for 10 years which should be nothing for gods right cause time doesn’t work like ours so we can’t use our way of thinking towards it. You see how that doesn’t work? So many people were so upset about the punishment and they were saying how it would be too long but they were going against the very rules they set. For Persephone it wasn’t even that long for her and besides, like Hades told Thanatos in their “intervention” being trapped in the mortal realm surrounded by flower nymphs isn’t much of a punishment anyways which completely disregards everything the comic built up with Persephone’s punishment.

Anyways that’s the end of this rant. I can go on and on about how the age gap is just so unnecessary and incredibly stupid but hey, that would take all year. It’s just an annoyance I’ve had with the comic since it started though.

[thebreakfastgenie]

🍀 <3

🍀 - What thoughts or emotions that didn’t make sense to your past self make sense now that you know you’re queer?

Okay I'm sure I can think of more for this one.... I think I had kind of this sense of being different and not knowing why, but I had enough confidence it kind of turned into a superiority complex. Not being interested in boys and thinking dating was trivial was kind of normal and rewarded in my smart girl circles into middle school. We were independent! We had more important things to think about! And I don't think this is a bad attitude for young girls to have in our society, but sometimes it's something else. In high school, several of my friends didn't date, because honestly most of our school kinda sucked and we did in fact have a lot to do and not a lot of time. So I was able to ride that "I'm not interested in boys yet" wave longer than I should have, but it started to waver. When I was around 15 or 16 I was looking at rage comics people had made about their relationships and for the first time I thought "I actually like the idea of being someone's girlfriend" and then I immediately thought "of course I don't want a boyfriend, though." It took a very long time after to that to figure out what I actually wanted in that situation which is very funny. When I was younger, I always felt totally out of the loop when girl talked about their Disney channel and boy band crushes. I just didn't get what they were so excited about. When I was in about 6th grade (give or take; my grade was an unknown quantity for years) our teacher had us do this game for Valentine's Day where we named a celebrity we'd like to get a Valentine from. I like that teacher a lot and she had good intentions but looking back... Valentines at that age are at least quasi-romantic and that's a whole can of worms. I said Chessie the manatee, tapping into my romance hater reputation, and it's not like I thought of a girl and was afraid to say it. But still, I think I remember that because I was gay. The only other kid's dream Valentine I can remember was a boy said Taylor Swift (she had just become known; I think this was the first time I heard her name) "because she's hot" and the teacher cautioned him. I was really paranoid about coming across as romantically interested, both in girls and in boys. I panicked when I accidentally sent a girl a kissy emoji on yahoo chat when I was 13ish. I had a weird friendship of sorts with a boy in middle school where we couldn't admit we wanted to be friends, so we "hated" each other and attacked each other in various harmless ways. I cut him off without explanation because people kept relentlessly saying we were flirting and calling us lovebirds and it freaked me out. Later I did have boys I was friends with develop feelings for me and interpret my friendship wrong, so that one wasn't totally irrational. One I've been thinking about a lot recently is I was always drawn to tomboy characters. The girls who hated all things girly and wore dirty jeans and backwards ball caps and only played with boys. I adored Leslie Burke in Bridge to Terabithia because Jess couldn't even tell if she was a boy or a girl at first. There was a part of me that related to these tomboys. I was not a girly-girl. I was brash and outdoorsy. But I was in-between. I had long hair and I liked pretty things and dolls and pink. I did relate a lot to the girls who passed as boys in historical fiction, but that was because their options were pretend to be boys or not be allowed to do anything. I thought I'd do that if I lived in that setting, but I'd prefer to just have adventures while being a girl. I guess I always admired tomboys, but I think a lot of it was also attraction, in whatever way kids experience it. I still like jock women, so.

[mobbothetrue]

i’m struggling to get to sleep a little, so i’m going back over childhood memories and stumbled across one that was almost a one hit KO.

I read a lot as a kid. My parents encouraged this, and got me a lot of books. Enough that, at one point, early in the morning and the only one awake, I was able to cover nearly every square inch of our living room in books. This probably led my parents to the realization that I, perhaps, had too many books, and we should get rid of some.

I was fine with that. I didn’t like to read books twice, you see, because I already knew where they were going and they didn’t entertain me anymore. That’s a philosophy that has changed, somewhat, with age, but that’s besides the point— there were a few books I wanted to keep. Strawberry Shortcake and something to do with mermaids. The few issues of the Beano I had. The Tin Soldier.

My parents boxed up a ton of books, and handed them in to my first grade classroom. Multiple large boxes of books. A comical amount of books. My teacher, Mrs. B, was very appreciative, But.

I don’t remember how this was uncovered. I don’t remember how I realized it, but… the tin soldier had been given away too. I didn’t mention it a paragraph ago, but it was my favourite book. I loved that book. It was about a tin soldier, missing a leg, in love with a princess or a ballerina. He got lost, or dropped, or maybe went on an adventure, I don’t recall, but in the end found his way back to the princess and was happy.

We did look through those boxes. Didn’t find it.

In sixth grade, I moved.

Well— technically, it was the summer between fifth and sixth grade that I moved. Still. In the years between, we never found that book. I had honestly forgotten about it. Sure, I had cried, but I did eventually find other books.

I guess word got around that I was moving. It was… something like the last day of school— not quite the end, but close. I remember snow on the ground, grey and slushy and mostly gone. I was just getting on the school bus to go home when Mrs. B came bustling out of the school.

She caught my backpack handle to get my attention, and I stopped on the steps of the school bus, looking down at her for what may well have been the last time I ever saw her. She had a book in her frail hands. The Tin Soldier.

She had never forgotten. She kept looking for that book. There was an apple sticky note on the front, addressed to me. It said some incredibly kind things, though most of the words are lost to memory. Encourage your creativity, I think, was the gist of it.

I just. Four years. She kept looking for that book for me for four years. I still have it, now, over a decade later. She must have had other, more important things to do. Four years! Where on earth had it been? I still don’t know, can’t imagine what could have possibly happened to it in the interim short of it slipping into a dimensional pocket. I loved that teacher.

[ladyhoneydee]

30 Day Song(fic) Challenge: Day 13

I'm late (again) but here's today's Song(fic) Challenge! The prompt was "A song you love to dance to", and I decided to go with that most iconic song of high school dances: "YMCA". Yes, that YMCA. Please enjoy the crack that lies ahead, which I dedicate to my irl friend Maximum. This boy has never played a Zelda game and yet laughed his head off when I shared this idea with him last summer. @minimum-underdrive, this one's for you.

you can make real your dreams (but you've got to have this one thing)

Game: OoT

Pairing: None

Word Count: 1373

Keywords: crack. humor. more crack

He only made it a few steps before that familiar feeling arose: the sensation he was being watched. Well, if he was an adult, that meant he could swear now. Dammit, why was he already dealing with this shit?! Hehe, that felt good. Link unsheathed his shiny new sword and turned around, bobbing straight into a fighting stance.

Read the fic on Ao3, or under the cut!

Link really wasn’t sure what to make of this ‘being an adult’ thing. 

One minute, he’d been struggling to lift a sword way too big for him out of the pedestal in the secret chamber in the Temple of Time, and the next, he was practically too big for the sword, and some old guy wearing more orange at once than Link had ever seen in his life was telling him that he was in some magical temple, and that the old guy was a magical Sage, and had…thrown Link some kind of golden coin? What was he supposed to do with that?

Besides, was he even actually an adult? Link hadn’t exactly celebrated his birthday in Kokiri Forest, but he had memories of six Renewal Festivals, which meant he’d probably actually been alive for ten years. Which meant that, unless the old guy was a dirty liar in addition to being weird and long-winded and piercing Link’s ears—what was even up with that?—Link was supposedly now seventeen. Which was not what Talon had told him the “age of majority” was.

Navi seemed to be in disbelief as well, sneaking his new big body quizzical glances while the old guy talked. Link wondered, absentmindedly, what those seven years had been like for Navi. Had the sword he pulled put her to sleep, too? Did the magic extend to her because she was his fairy? Was it an area of effect kind of thing?

As if to confirm her skepticism, Navi turned to Link the moment the old guy and his surreal waterfall land disappeared, and they were back on the cold stone floor of the Temple of Time. “Link...we're back in the Temple of Time... But have seven years really passed?”

Link raised his hands to sign an answer, but as usual, Navi talked right over him. “It looks like you won't be able to use some of the weapons you found as a kid anymore... Let's get out of here!”

Huh. She was right, really. The shield that he’d practically been able to hide beneath as a kid was now just normally sized for his big body, and both his boomerang and slingshot were comically tiny in comparison to his giant hands—which seemed larger than they should be, honestly, was he some kind of puppy with giant paws he needed to grow into? His deku sticks seemed twiglike, rather than the fearsome spears they’d been in the past, and the first one he tried to pull out of his pouch snapped in his puppy paw. 

Link stared, deadpan, at the pieces. Too bad the temple pews were in the other room. He’d just kick the chunks under them to hide the mistake if he could. As it was, he shoved them unceremoniously back in his pouch, and shivered. It sure was chilly in the temple, even with his brand-new white tights spangling his previously bare legs. Was it winter, or something? Wouldn’t that mean it had been either six and a half years, or seven and a half years? Maybe the orange man had forgotten how to count in his old age.

“Guess so,” he signed to Navi, who had been flying in figure-eights over his head, stretching out her wings. “Where do you think we should go?”

She didn’t reply—too busy loop-de-looping—so Link shrugged to himself and started forward. First step was to go somewhere it wouldn’t be sacrilegious to use his deku sticks to build a nice fire.

He only made it a few steps before that familiar feeling arose: the sensation he was being watched.

Well, if he was an adult, that meant he could swear now.

Dammit, why was he already dealing with this shit?!

Hehe, that felt good.

Link unsheathed his shiny new sword and turned around, bobbing straight into a fighting stance.

It…wasn’t a monster. Similar to one, the eyes on him were red, but that was where the likeness ended. It was a person, wearing the weirdest thing Link had ever seen—and he’d just hung out with a guy pretending to be a magic human orange. They had red-blond bangs covering half of their face, including their entire left eye, which seemed awfully impractical; bandages wrapped around their wrists as if they were broken and around their head as if they had a concussion; and a Sheikah bodysuit waaaay more obvious than Impa’s had been, with a teary red eye design smack in the middle of the person’s chest. 

“I’ve been waiting for you, Hero of Time…”

Link was kind of not a fan of the nickname, which was longer than his real name and so it wasn’t really a nickname at all, but he didn’t bother to correct them. Talon had warned him about talking to strangers. Too bad strangers kept talking to him. 

He relaxed in his posture to show the person he wasn’t going to cut them to ribbons, but kept the sword unsheathed. Just in case.

The person began to take a page out of the old guy’s book, and Kaepora Gaebora the owl’s book before him: the art of the monologue. And like literally every other person Link had ever encountered, they had plenty of things to tell him to do, too, starting with a laundry list of places Link had to go that got progressively worse-sounding the further down the list the person got—the ‘house of the dead’, really?—and continuing with giving the fakest of fake names Link had ever heard. 

Sheik of the Sheikah stared Link down through his bangs. “As I see you standing there holding the mythical Master Sword, you really do look like the legendary Hero of Time... If you believe the legend, you have no choice. You must look for the five temples and awaken the five Sages…”

If you believe the legend. Link was pretty sure he’d just been assigned legend status by old man. Belief had nothing else to do with it. But, it checked out that collecting coins from Sages would be the sensible thing to do, even if they were a downgrade from the priceless gems he’d retrieved for Princess Zelda last time. 

While he’d been thinking, Sheik had continued on blabbering about something with the Forest Sage. Oh well. It probably hadn’t been too important, or involved anyone Link really cared about.

“Unfortunately, equipped as you currently are, you cannot even enter the temple... But, if you believe what I'm saying…” Sheik trailed off. 

The suspense was positively killing him. 

“There’s a place you can go, while you’re still feeling low.” Was that rhyme…intentional? “You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal. You can do whatever you feel.” Definitely intentional.

Sheik lowered his voice, and despite how wild this entire situation was, Link couldn’t help but to lean forward to listen. “You know, I was once in your shoes. I was down and out with the blues. I felt…no man cared if I were alive.” Sheik laughed dryly. “I felt the whole world was so jive.”

Jive? What kind of seven-years-in-the-future slang…

“Hero, you can make real your dreams! But you've got to have this one thing.”

Whoa, were they just going to skip over the part where no one cared about Sheik and he was all alone in the world? Was that why he…rhymed???

Sheik had continued, red eyes beaming genuine interest and support. “Hero, put your pride on the shelf, and just go there: to the Kakariko Graves! I'm sure Dampé can help you today.” He cocked his head to the side, just slightly. “Do you understand, Link?”

Link understood that he wanted the heck out of here, even if Sheik wasn’t rhyming anymore. Kakariko sounded like a great place to start. It was right under a volcano, after all. It would at least be warm there. And it sounded like there might be food there, too. 

Link turned tail and ran right out of the Temple of Time. 

Unbeknownst to him, Sheik stood still at the Pedestal of the Sword, a self-satisfied smile on their face. To the hero’s back, they whispered: “It’s fun to play at the Kakariko Graves.”

With the flash of a deku nut, they were gone. 

[hard-core-super-star]

I don't know how I didn't stop to think that being anonymous actually makes me very mysterious - you just avoided my villain era. Oh yeah, there should be a complaints box, so we could inform and complain about this total mutual discomfort we are going through.

who knew my messy essay would save my neck, thank you for your mercy. I think it could be a result of the second star, the power has gone to my head, I'm going to try to change that😔

now you kind of have to tell this joke or I won't be able to sleep peacefully.

yeah! they actually did a titans show and it looks like it was something like 8 or 80, I didn't watch it either but the reviews are always someone either liking it or hating it, never in between. buying all the comics is my princess dream- but okay, since you're talking about game universes, I agree with you, but tell me I'm not crazy when I say that nightwing completely eat in the Lego games.

that's exactly why I started watching Legends of Tomorrow lmao, they're so silly and chaotic and I love it, not to mention it's the kind of humor that makes me laugh genuinely when I least expect it. OH NO- WAIT In that case I would happily get started for you with an honorable mention to the kiss after their first date and the phrase “I can't be normal” and right after the “I don't want you to be normal” HJSJWKSNDEKK time passes but I'm still stuck in this moment.

they... they canceled the show? haha what? 😀

“slightly traumatized” LMFAO- this shouldn’t be so funny but yeah, I totally get it. I know there's this supercorp thing (I think that's the name) and they are literally the golden retriever gf and the black cat gf 😭 do you still have this blog? asking for scientific research

– 🌟

you're welcome, i'll be here all night [ignore the timezone difference] to remind you how cool and mysterious you are. i would joke and say my inbox is technically a complaints box too but i feel like we'd make one joke about it and somehow add another conversation to our list 👀

i'm not saying i told you so but i did warn you that the second star would be too much. keep that in mind if you ever want to ask for a third one.

honestly, the joke was just going to be the blood-sucker thing which is a direct reference to vampire [both the song and the fic] but then you made the blood-sucker comment for me so my reference is kind of irrelevant by now 😶

i would poke fun at the show for that but i think all my comfort shows have those types of reviews too. i'm pretty sure hawkeye didn't do that well with the general public so i can't hold it against titans. i cannot believe you're bringing up the Lego games because, this is embarrassing to admit but, i was OBSESSED with the Lego Batman 2 game and that's exactly what led me to fall down the DC rabbit hole and eventually the Nightwing rabbit hole. after Lego Batman came Injustice and then the Batman Arkham series which is still my favorite videogame series to this day. even though i never finished origins.

i'm serious do NOT encourage me to talk about this show, i can go on for ages, it's so silly but so important to me and it honestly has the best queer representation of all the Arrowverse shows. [with the exception of Batwoman which was taken from us too soon. and yes that is another rant.] ajksdfhjaghjhdagjh that episode will live in my mind rent free until the day i die! i remember watching it when it aired and i lost my damn mind at the "i don't want you to be normal!" outburst. i love them with all my heart.

whoops, i didn't realize you didn't know. i don't know what season you stopped at but basically, without spoiling anything, Season 7 ended in a cliffhanger and then the news came out that both Legends of Tomorrow and Batwoman were cancelled AKA the two shows with the most queer representation. meanwhile, the flash [aka the show with like literally zero rep unless you count subtext] got to do its last [awful, btw] season. as you can tell, i'm still pissed about it.

i have a love-hate relationship with supercorp because i adore them but [to no one's surprise] the CW ruined them and just used their relationship as queerbait since the show was obviously going downhill. the blog is actually still up but i am far too embarrassed to leak it because...yikes.