#i actually have no idea what era this is... taking a wild guess

[luka--lu]

Anthropological and philosophical analysis of Viktor’s story in Season 2 - Part I

Finally gathered thoughts that floated in my mind since Season 2 had ended. These will literally be my first posts ever, will be a bit chaotic, please be kind, I’m shy. But also very critical.

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a person with a disability. I cannot claim to know this experience, because I simply don’t. I love Viktor as a character and it so happens he has a disability, it’s something I always consider when engaging with his story. Besides, his story revolves around his disability since S1 Act 2 and he kind of falls into the trope of ‘disability as character motivation’, but he’s much more than that. And that’s what I want to explore in these posts.

My analytical approach is obviously influenced by my experience as an able-bodied person. I’ve had extensive courses on disability studies while at university and focused my bachelor’s thesis partially on disability representation in media (I focused on scars and ‘deformities’, something many Arcane characters have, but that’s perhaps for another post). To people out there who have disabilities and wish to engage with this post - please let me know your thoughts, I’m genuinely trying to learn more.

I want to stress that in my analysis I’m not saying Viktor is entirely ruined as a character by the writers or is bad disability representation. I analyse his story from the perspective of philosophical, cultural and social contexts, and through disability studies theory. I’m not an expert and certainly can't speak on behalf of people with disabilities, I'm talking as an anthropologist and enjoyer of storytelling and art.

Ok that being said, I’ll try to make it coherent and divided by topics, because these’ll be long posts. Some thoughts are a bit disjointed, I’ll be sharing some of my ideas for how Viktor’s arc could’ve been improved. Hopefully it makes sense as a whole.

TRANSHUMANISM & POSTHUMANISIM

Transhumanism as a philosophy and social movement originates from the notion that many people are forced to live worse lives than necessary and can’t reach their full potential. One of the most important thinkers of transhumanism Julian Huxley argued that application of science can prevent poverty, illness and change the world for better. He literally wrote that ‘the man can manage evolution’. 

Viktor represents transhumanist ideology in a way that, in Season 2, he literally can’t refuse the job - he was forced the moment Jayce fused him with the Hexcore. Sure, he could have refused to use its power, now residing in his body. But the writers chose to disallow him that choice. So Viktor ‘heals’ Huck and begins his Jesus Era. Viktor later asks Singed if the doctor believes in fate, which is followed by Viktor declaring evolution has a course - superseding nature. This way Viktor exemplifies Huxley’s idea of what transhumanism is:

(...) whether he [man, as in human] is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution (...). That is his inescapable destiny and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned. (Huxley, Transhumanism)

If the Hexcore was actually sentient and controlled Viktor, then I guess it’s the soul of Julian Huxley.

The same way Huxley's work was grounded in a desire to make the world a better place, so is Viktor’s. His dream of betterment of his people was the primary motivation of Viktor’s character, but it got hijacked by the magical mumbo jumbo of the Hexcore and Arcane powers in S2. His transhumanist ideology wasn’t developed organically, the story just jumps to act 2 and then 3 without proper explanation as to why he turned to this philosophy so radically.

Important to add, Huxley was a eugenicist. Kinda wild to take transhumanist ideas and write Viktor’s, a disabled dying man’s arc, the way they did. Viktor wanted to use technology to change the world, but writers said: ‘hmmmm, what if… magic?? And eugenics! because he has internalised ableism now!’ But more on that later.

Central question regarding transhumanism is who decides what’s an enhancement and what’s a limitation. The short answer is: it’s a personal choice, we can use inventions to improve quality of life if we wish. Yes, some things can be a choice, but in reality it’s kind of compulsory, because the society is built in a way that demands conformity.

Viktor changed himself instead of trying to change the world the way he intended to in S1. His arc was derailed from his initial will to act for the society that needed positive change. Progress for Piltover meant technological advancement in the name of scientific and economic gain. In Viktor’s transhumanist vision, progress is about extending the self - to live without suffering, to cure physical and mental afflictions of Zaunites. It goes beyond his motivation to cure his disease, his actions in S2 don’t fit his characterization in S1. This is why I believe inserting parts of his original League Lore into Arcane would have made an amazing story with transhumanism as background.

Good part of technology is that it gives us opportunities for different forms of embodiment. Embodiment, important in phenomenology and feminist studies, means how we experience ourselves as a living body that feels the world as we inhabit it -  how we experience it in connection to us, simultaneously being influenced and influencing the world. There’re plenty of theories that tackle this concept, but let me go the short way.

Transhumanist philosophers talk at length about progress in relation to embodiment. Some critics ask questions about the ethical side: who’s gonna get to use the technology to enhance themselves? What about people who can’t afford technology used for the enhancement? How will technology influence the embodiment of certain people? Specifically, what does this philosophy say about disability?

I will talk more about disability in another section, but the transhumanists consider physical disabilities as something open to changes. Different technologies can be used as mobility aids, different advanced procedures could help in various ways improve the standard of life for people with disabilities.

But there still remains a question: what kinds of disability are considered in need of improving by technology? If technology changes a disabled person's body so they can function similar to able-bodied people, then is the category of 'disabled' even relevant anymore? Is there a definite line when it comes to influencing the body with technology? What kind of progress do transhumanist actually seek and for whom?

We don't hear Viktor’s stance on ideas similar to transhumanist ones, until his talk with Singed, but it's a bit convoluted and isn't developed well enough to be an interesting take on a very controversial and fascinating philosophy that is transhumanism. It’s only indirectly addressed at the end by Old Man Jenkins Viktor when he says ‘There’s no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit’, meaning that the glorious evolution doesn't really have a destination, even though Viktor believed so.

The change transhumanists seek can never actually reach a final, perfect end - who and when will decide what the end of human evolution looks like? What is the ultimate, trans- or even posthuman form we’re supposed to achieve? Arcane seems to argue that nobody will ever be able to decide, even with godlike powers and knowledge.

Old Man Jenkins Viktor calls back to primary belief of posthumanism, which Nietzshe wrote about:

Man is not the effect of some special purpose, of a will, an end; nor is he an object of an attempt to attain an ‘ideal of humanity’ or ‘an ideal of happiness’ or an ‘ideal of morality’. It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of ‘end’: in reality there is no end. (Nietzshe, Twilight of the Idols)

Posthumanism is another philosophy that provides an interesting context for analysing Viktor’s arc in S2. I first focused on transhumanism, since his story originally involved using technology to change lives. But Viktor seems to mix transhumanism and posthumanism.

Posthumanism is more about getting rid of core values of humanism. it’s about going beyond what makes humans, well, humans, which is a lot of things (biology, culture, economy, science, politics, environment, religion, social relations ect.). Posthumanism states that humans aren’t really that special, and argues that there are many other creatures and things that are equally as innovative as humans. It’s a philosophy critiquing anthropocentrism. It dismisses the notion of humans as apex creatures that can control and bend the world to their needs and will. The will to extend ourselves and find power within us isn’t exclusively a human trait - all organisms and things on Earth have that potential. (Interesting, that in the destroyed Piltover Jayce saw, the flora and fauna still expanded at the top of the Hexgates).

Viktor’s story isn’t really about that, but it ties to posthumanism when Viktor declares that emotions clash with reason, humanity is a contradiction which causes destruction, so there’s the need to go beyond humanism. Viktor’s ideas about human nature aren't really posthuman. His thought as he was dying after Jayce's attack revolved around the humanist idea that humans actually have an unchangeable essence.

Posthumanism, as understood by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri, states that there’s no essence of ‘humans’. There’s only the potentiality, which comes from an individual will to create oneself, apart from fixed rules of the world. Funny enough, Viktor speaks about similar ‘charge, potential, impulse', but I don’t think it’s in any way connected to Deleuze’s idea. The philosophy of Viktor in S2 seems all over the place with trans- and posthuman ideas underneath, but it's an interesting mix that I wanted to explore, even if only on surface level.

Deleuze is fucking difficult to understand, French philosophers are the demons that always kick my ass, but they had some good stuff to say. In 'Postscript on the Societies of Control' Deleuze claimes that society is made by machines, not only in technological sense, but also by different systems: social, political, economic, religious ect. Every system is a machine. In the case of Piltover and Zaun, the social and political machines categorize people and program them to inhabit certain identities and spaces. Human body is also a machine consisting of different anatomical systems. We are machines living in machines, the flow of information and experiences between us and the world is constant. In a way, even before Viktor tried to change everyone into machines, the world was already run by machines.

I also think that technological posthumanism is an amazing lens to analyse the usage of Hextech and its final destruction of the world in Arcane. Technological posthumanism states that humans use tools and technology as integral to our identity and functioning. Inventions are made by humans, but inventions also invent humans - we use tools, art, machines, that extend us, that make us. Humans don’t make technology because they’re free and rational, rather they’re free and rational because they make technology.

Donna Haraway says we're already cyborgs, because tool-making and technology is always a part of our evolution - we incorporate the world into our bodies. We use tools, but according to posthumanism, tools use us in some sense, like a parasite. Interesting that Viktor becomes literally a mix of flesh and machine, influenced by the Hexcore.

Going further, posthumanist thinker Bernard Stiegler writes:

(...) the pursuit of the evolution of the living by other means than life - which is what the history of technics consists in, from the first flaked pebbles to today, a history that is also the history of humanity. (Technics and Time, 1)

Evolution's course is always directed by technology and tools. Stiegler asks: ‘Who’ or ‘what’ does the inventing? ‘Who’ or ‘what’ is invented?.

Jayce and Viktor invent Hextech. Piltover, City of Progress, is made by the development of Hextech. Hextech invents Piltover’s identity, makes its citizens and government free, rational, innovative and progressive, in opposition to Zaun, which supposedly lacks these traits. Is it really Viktor who causes the calamity in the end? Or is it Viktor and Jayce’s invention of Hextech that caused the end of Piltover? Was it humans using technology, or was it technology using humans? Technology can be human’s progression in evolution (as Viktor represented) but it can be the destruction of the world (as Jayce saw in the apocalyptic Piltover). There is no predestined essence or course, there is only the potentiality.

Viktor’s arc with the transhumanist/posthumanist Messiah plot fits a subgenre of these philosophies which states there’s a possibility of a Posthuman God. It means that humans, no longer limited by nature, flesh and emotions, will be able to grow into a god-like state of intelligence. It’s not about ascending to a literal god like Viktor did, but more about posthumans being so advanced and intelligent that modern-day humans wouldn’t be able to comprehend it. It is tied to Nietzshe’s Overman ideal, but that’s another long story.

Summing up, the writers butchered Viktor’s character and did something typical for the general transhumanist discourse. That our problems are technological, not political and social, it’s about science that changes our embodiment, and we need this change because the world is unfair. But why is it unfair? Too difficult of a question for the writers apparently… I'll be dissecting it further below.

* Interesting to add, transhumanists of today go as far as suggesting we’ll be able to upload our minds into computers/certain devices and this way live forever. Viktor sorta reminded me about that with his astral plane self. There was a movie with Johnny Depp with this idea, Transcendence. This movie is bad tho (*Wendy Williams voice* Guess who’s jealous of Viktor Arcane? … JOHNNY DEPP!)

DISABILITY

In The capacity of contract Stacy Clifford Simplican distinguishes two ways of thinking about disability: medical and social. Medical model means that people have a medical problem when we compare their state to fixed diagnostic norms. The social model is about how society creates disability by making the world adjusted to able-bodied people, while disability is an exception to the norm, an anomaly. 

What the social model explains is that the problem isn’t the disabled person’s body, the problem is that they didn’t have a chance to design the world that would accommodate everybody. Medical model is appealing to able-bodied people because it allows them to dismiss their anxieties connected to disability and the possibility of acquiring it. People would have to then face the fact that society is actually unfair, so the medical model allows thinking there’s a distinct difference between able-bodied ‘normal’ people and persons with disabilities. There is ‘us’ (able-bodied) and the Other.

The idea of a cultural Other is key in various theories, especially in post-colonial critical theories, disability studies, social stigma theory ect. It basically means that the dominant group considers everyone who’s an outsider or lacks certain attributes essential to the group, as inherently different, oftentimes meaning lesser, therefore considered ‘other than us’. The Other needs to be distinctly alien to the normative group or culture. In case of people with disabilities the line marking the difference is located in their bodies.

In season 2 Viktor literally crossed the line (haha see what i did there) by rejecting his disabled body and changing into the Machine Herald. By rejecting his embodiment, he wished to fit into the ‘perfect’ embodiment represented by the people of Piltover. However, I consider Machine Herald Viktor as the epitome of what Piltover society considers as the Other. At the end of S2, for people of Piltover the line between what’s worth saving and what’s dangerous yet again locates itself in the body of the Other. The body that originated from the embodiment of the disabled Zaunite.

Viktor’s body is central to his character. We see his embodiment is an experience of pain, struggle, not only physical (he feels his body eroding) and emotional, but also social, he’s a Zaunite in Piltover. He’s double stigmatised as an undercitizen and a disabled person. Theory of stigma tells us that problems disabled people experience oftentimes aren’t connected to the disability itself but to the unequal, negative approach, harmful representations and institutionalised practices that cause the stigmatisation. It all reveals itself in ableism. One of the most important authors of disability studies, Rosemary Garland-Thompson wrote at length about these topics, notably in Extraordinary bodies. I’ll be referring to her work a lot in this post.

Viktor changed his body in S1 and then again in S2, he became Machine Herald, what he thinks is ‘the most he’s ever been’. But Piltover still thinks of him as the Other, a threat - and we know that in their worldview ‘Zaunites’ equals ‘danger’. And here’s the thing - ‘disabled’ is a position you get in a concrete socioeconomic context.

Viktor’s Jesus arc and commune activities focus on ‘fixing’ people and allowing them to live on the outskirts, away from the stigmatising society. Paradoxically, he fixed Zaunites to be able-bodied, like Piltover’s society accepts, but Zaunites can’t join that society, they’re still on the outside. Arguably, they’re trying to create an alternative for the stigmatising society, a new ‘Herald’s vision’. But why does this vision involve getting rid of disabilities? 

‘Overcoming limitations’ isn't really about transforming the body. As Abigail Thorn said: ‘You're not gonna fix homelessness by turning homeless people into inspector Gadget’. Arcane S2 Viktor took the wrong angle on the whole ‘helping the Zaunites’ thing. The show for sure states that. And that makes me sad and mad because it’s just.. idk stupid? Viktor as he’s established in S1 is fiercely intelligent, has very strong morals and convictions. He acts recklessly and crosses ethical limits only when it comes to saving himself from literally dying. I don't see how he would go from ‘In pursuit of great we failed to do good’ to complete opposite and being SO misguided in act 2-3 in the 2nd season. They character assassinated him so hard it’s almost unbearable. Still love him, but gods, look how they massacred my boy. Anyway-

Viktor’s disability makes him significantly different from the rest of the cast - as Garland-Thompson wrote, the figure of Otherness is a result of interpreting and giving meaning to bodies. It gives categories and paradigms, which then give us identities. By making Viktor a person with disability the creators had the responsibility of understanding that their writing has real life consequences. Representation in art and media is a means of identification for real life people who relate to Viktor’s embodiment.

Disability is not only a physical state of being, a form of individual embodiment, but also an economic one. It’s true for Viktor - he self-described in S1 as ‘a poor cripple’ - using the language of his oppressors, clearly to pinpoint how he’s perceived by the normative majority of Piltover. I’d argue this doesn’t tell us how he actually feels about his disability. We don't really get his thoughts on it. I see many people assuming he thinks of it as an imperfection from the start and point to S1 when he shies away from the spotlight and then more obviously in S2 Jayce basically confirms to the audience Viktor’s internalised ableism in The Speech.

But I’m not so convinced. Viktor in S1 strikes me as someone who hopes his work will talk for itself, so he doesn't crave the spotlight, but it absolutely could be argued that the reason he hides in shadows is to protect himself from the scrutiny of onlookers. It might be an argument for him thinking poorly about himself and Arcane is known for ‘show don't tell’, but I sort of… wish they told us?

Viktor talks about his disease and focuses on his incoming death, which is central to his character in S1 after act 1. Disability and actively dying are different things though, but in sociocultural contexts are often considered almost the same. It seems to me that the writers made such an assumption - treating Viktor’s leg and his disease interchangeably.

Viktor’s internalised ableism wasn't prominent, I'd say nonexistent, in S1, his focus was on preventing his death, not on getting rid of his disability. He experimented on his leg and tested its durability when running. Season 1 already established that it was the wrong choice (although the running scene is contradictory in its message because of the ‘victorious’ framing and music). Viktor changes his mind at the end of S1 and asks Jayce to destroy the Hexcore. Never, not once, in S1 Viktor declares that he wished to help people of the Undercity get rid of disabilities or that he wants his own to go away. He only speaks about his general health deteriorating.

But then we get Jayce saying Viktor ‘always wanted to cure what he thought were weaknesses; his leg, his disease’. Um no, not true? Viktor always wanted to invent things to make a change for the disenfranchised. He couldn't do so because of his terminal illness and Piltover’s politicians not giving a damn about Zaunites. We don't know how he feels about his disability apart from recognising it as a part of his social status as a Zaunite in Piltover. We get the scene when as a child he shows Singed his leg, meaning he can’t play with kids and is lonely. This could mean he’s either shunned or can't access places where kids play. That's an issue of accessibility and how disability is created by alienating disabled people. It’s not enough proof to argue that Viktor dislikes his disability to the point of wishing to fix it when he becomes an adult.

I argue that Viktor’s internalised ableism was forced onto him by the writers. This way they put the responsibility of dealing with ableism on the disabled individual instead of asking the real question: why is Viktor experiencing ableism in the first place? Why is it Viktor who has to bear the burden of injustice and feel bad about himself? Apart from the positive sentiment of ‘disability is a part of humanity and doesn’t mean you’re broken’, the message of the ending seems to be: 'it's sad you feel bad about yourself, you need to hear you’re valid and get over your internalised ableism or you’ll doom everybody, but we won’t be addressing systemic opression’.

Audre Lorde pointed out issues that stigmatised people face, especially having to be representatives of their marginalised position, having to use their intellectual and emotional labor to address oppression. I can’t agree that Viktor taking on the labor of realising his internalised ableism thanks to Jayce’s Speech is amazing writing. His humanity was denied by the oppressors so much he ended up rejecting it all together? The framing of Viktor’s motivation after becoming Machine Herald is extremely detached from his original character’s. I can’t- it seems like they made him self-loath and cause harm just because the final battle would look cool?

I like Arcane’s message that erasing disability is like erasing humanity and love wins in the end. At the same time it’s done at the cost of the disabled character’s entire arc and positions him as the villain to a society of able-bodied people. I don't vibe with that writing choice. If the writers had the guts and we didn't live in capitalism, maybe we’d get more seasons and something truly revolutionary.

Feminist scholars pointed out how people’s standpoints shape politics, how identity, personhood and body are cultural constructs that need to be questioned. Standpoint theory suggests that representation is always a political act and thus disability representation needs to be treated as such. I don't think Linke and others thought about it this way while writing Viktor. They created a great character though, so allow me to open my ao3 tab and look up canon divergent fics.

Because of Viktor’s arc in S2 becoming about having his autonomy revoked and his supposed internalised ableism, we unfortunately got an interpretation that Garland-Thomson notes as widely accepted - that physical disability is a part of lower social status and a personal tragedy. We could have had Viktor as a transformative example of a physically disabled person who exposes social institutions of power and questions the notion of othering as a rule that permeates the Zaun-Piltover conflict. For that to happen, it wouldn't be Jayce who affirmed Viktor as valid - it would be Viktor affirming himself.

And we know he had the capacity to do that. In S1 act 1 he’s self-confident and we know he got to Piltover thanks to his intellect and resilience. Why would he lose these parts of himself so radically in S2? I understand that he was severely depressed and that could change his perception of self when his health deteriorated. Yet, I believe in S2 the acceptance Jayce talks about could have come from Viktor seeing his own value. Garland-Thomson calls it 'speaking with one’s voice’. To be seen and accepted means having autonomy and possibility to speak about our embodiment with other people. We don't get to see/hear Viktor do that. He speaks of his mortality and deteriorating body in the context of disease, not disability. And he doesn’t really react to Jayce’s Speech.

If the creators wanted a really empowering story about a disabled character, they needed to address that. According to Garland-Thomson, the body is a text that needs interpretation by their owners. Giving meaning to his body, affirming it (maybe choosing to change it only to stop himself from dying) would mean that Viktor frees himself from symbolic and systemic violence, and rebels against fantasies and anxiety projected onto him by the normative society. That would have been based as fuck.

I ship JayVik, but it doesn't mean The Speech is all fine. Jayce might understand some of Viktor’s struggles but he’ll never understand him fully. It’s true that Jayce experienced horrors beyond comprehension, saw how his dream destroyed the world, he starved, had to reflect on his decisions sitting in a dark cave and injured his leg. Him acquiring a disability to parallel Viktor is a very important moment, yet it’s not the same as knowing Viktor’s experience of embodiment.

Jayce didn't live with a disability all his life in the society that considered it as something inferior. Jayce didn't live with despair and desperation of struggling to prevent himself from dying of an illness caused by the actions of an oppressive state. Jayce’s speech is emotional and important for his relationship with Viktor, and I did get teary eyed when he expressed how much he adored Viktor. But they lost me with ‘fix weaknesses, your leg, disease, and there’s beauty in imperfections’.

The Speech is sweet on the surface level but it rubbed me the wrong way, because not only it didn't make sense with Viktor’s arc in S1, but it also feels weird to say that disability and terminal illness are an imperfection in which there's beauty. Imperfection is a tad insensitive of a term in this context... Having Jayce - who was more privileged socially, essentially able-bodied all his life and acquired his disability only recently - say this to Viktor, is kind of an odd choice. I do see what they’re trying to say: such experiences shape us but they don't define us. That Jayce loved Viktor as a whole human being with every part as integral to who he is.

At the end Jayce frees Viktor from his loneliness. Lovely stuff and I like it on a personal level, altho the Speech was poorly worded. Narratively, it tells me that the disabled character needed another person to say he was all he needed to be from the start. But it ignores the social context of why Viktor was lonely. Jayces speech shifts focus from systemic oppression and inaccessibility to interpersonal connection he had with Viktor and the emotional side of it. It's possible to both establish a loving bond and acknowledge the discrimination Viktor experienced. But that didn’t happen in the story.

 Viktor’s actions as written in S2 seem to stem partially from an immense need for acceptance and a wish not to be lonely. Of course he has Jayce in the end. My JayVik side is kicking its feet in the air and giggling, but when I look at it from a representation perspective it's kind of bad. Jayce is after all a privileged man who has never experienced life long marginalisation, chronic pain and despair of accepting his death when there's so much work to do for a good cause. And he might have understood how lonely Viktor was, how Jayce neglected his partner but still, Jayce cannot fully get it if it's not his lived experience.

Viktor is defined by his body by the unfair society he exists in and it's impossible for him to ignore it, because that's what shapes him every day. It's understandable he’d want to be healthy but I dislike the ‘Magic Cure for disability’ trope they went with in S2 when Viktor merged with the Hexcore. The trope is widely considered regressive and even harmful when it comes to nuanced disability representation. Viktor's case isn't as obvious, so I'm not trying to pass any finite judgement here.

I wish we knew if there were people with disabilities or sensitivity readers at any stage of the creative process of making Arcane.

I’ll be referring to the topic of Viktor’s disability in other sections of my posts, so it’s not really the end of this subject.

THE RADICAL OTHER

As I wrote earlier, the concept of the Other is extremely important in anthropology. There’s a more expanded and emancipatory theory that I'd like to touch upon - the concept of Radical Otherness.

In itself, this concept is disruptive. When we’re faced with the Radical Other, we’re confused. We cannot relate to them, cannot ignore them, our predisposed opinions and structures of understanding are being postponed. It creates a cognitive dissonance, forces us to change perspective, create space for the Other and look for Otherness in ourselves. It can also cause bigger fear and cause us to alienate the Other even further than we initially did.

Experiencing Otherness touches our bodies and senses without us having prior notice of it. This experience disturbs us, it calls on us, it asks us to respond and to react. German philosopher, Bernhard Waldenfels writes in  Bodily experience between selfhood and otherness that people usually either welcome the Other as a guest or exclude the Other as an enemy. The Other is always transformed in a way that the normative society has disposal over them or they're available for the society's intentions. Radical Otherness, according to Waldenfels, is not available to anyone.

Viktor's disabled body is turned into a grotesque fusion of flesh and metal, then into an alien-like creature, not a cyborg which would be more in sync with transhumanist ideas of technological augmentation of the human body. The way Viktor looks in his god-like form is aesthetic but foreign.

What it means for disability visual representation is that Viktor either reinforces or rejects the sociopolitical relations that make the disability a kind of Otherness.

Interpreting Viktor the Machine Herald as rejecting oppressive notions, I’d say he symbolises what’s rebellious, exposing injustice and disrupting social order. He left Piltover behind and came back to cause a radical reinterpretation of the world. He looks absolutely different, strange, magical - and we know people of Piltover fear magic. But because he’s the villain and dies at the end, I'm more inclined to say the writers meant to show his transformation as a symbol of unpredictability, lack of stabilisation, anarchy - and that’s both dangerous and brave.

Viktor as Machine Herald can be read as embodiment of personal freedom by rejection of cultural uniformisation. But if it were to be true, he should have rejected conformity while still disabled or at least not transform with Singed’s alchemy. By the time we reach the last episode, his arc is a story of Piltover having to tame ,,the freak’’ as Garland-Thomson would describe it.

The freakiness of Machine Herald’s form is also an interesting choice, because it’s somewhat humanoid but unnatural. It reminds me of the practice of freak shows where people with unusual bodies and disabilities were displayed as freaks of nature, odd creatures. Able-bodied audience gawked at them and while looking in the face of the Others, they’d re-establish themselves as ‘the normal ones’. I hope you catch my drift and see how this is not a good look to have Viktor morph into an alien looking creature that all of Piltover fights in the end…

If I try to find positives in S2’s writing, I can speculate that Viktor becoming the Radical Other in an empowering sense would mean that he embodied an alternative to the status quo. Him leaving and in sense rebelling against domination of Piltover wouldn’t be an intellectual choice but a manifestation of his condition as a person. In this interpretation, his transformation is radical, it’s a positive marker of his individual story.

It’s still a story of oppression though - our Viktor doesn't save himself, Jayce does it for him. I’m not gonna be talking about Old Man Jenkins Viktor orchestrating everything to save himself by having Jayce sent on a mission to save main timeline Viktor. I’m focusing on the Viktor we got to know in S1. It’s beautiful to be seen and supported, the scene at the end was so loving, and my AroAce ass relished it. I love JayVik, yeah, though I think the message of Viktor’s arc being so centered on Jayce’s affirmation of him made the message a bit less complex. They’re soulmates, your honor, but they’re so codependent it’s really toxic yaoi.

Jokes aside, it would be amazing if Viktor chose to become the radical Other. He’d make an autonomous decision to use his status of the Other as the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the system. The system that overlooked him and prescribed him the identity of an undercitizen, ‘an outsider looking in’.

His arc would be even more profound if he recognised his internalised ableism and chose to become the Machine Herald the way he did in the League Lore. In League, his practices aren’t entirely ethical either, but that's besides the point. His decisions were made out of dissatisfaction with Piltover’s corrupt academia and politics, and the moral duty he felt to aid his fellow Zaunites in the face of calamities and everyday hardships. 

The Arcane version of the Divorce arc could’ve made JayVik more complex if they let Viktor express disappointment with Jayce’s decision to weaponize Hextech and Council’s lack of interest in the Undercity’s issues. Then the 'our paths diverged long ago' would be more inpactful.

The character arc is a mess but I tried to reach and look for sth more interesting. I think the Radical Otherness of Machine Herald is a compelling angle. Not what writers intended, for sure not, I don’t think they taught anything through that deeply. My take on Viktor the Radical Other is a bit surface level, but it's just one of many things I wanted to share here.

ENDING PART I...

It all could have been more interesting if Viktor wasn't influenced by Hexcore as we’re led to believe, because… this is cheap writing and yet again takes away his autonomy, which he was denied far too much in S2. The magical stuff took away from Viktor’s character and lost focus of his actual motivation.

I think what we got isn’t good enough, but I appreciate bits that can be read as more meaningful, that's where my idea for this 'essay' came from. I just wish the writers had the guts to let Viktor be angry, come back to Zaun, not do the cult stuff and just help people, join the rebellion, basically tell the Pilties: ‘I hope I confuse the hell out of you’.

That’s it for the first part of this analysis. Part 2 coming soon i guess.

 literally me writing this fucking dissertation:

[greendayauthority]

"Billie Joe and I met on the very first Green Day tour when Al Sobrante was in the band. I was one of only 10 people at a Green Day gig and me and Billie ended up hitting it off. So, I moved out to California in the heat of Dookie. That's when we got married, a month later. I had been working in the this small town in Minnesota called Mankato as a manager for Pier 1 Imports. I had graduated with a degree in sociology from Mankato State University and stayed there 'til Billie Joe finally convinced me to move out to Cali. I work now, occasionally, at Cinder Block Printing. They do music merch for band like Screeching Weasel, Op Ivy, Mr. T -Experience, first GD shirts for Kerplunk, tons of other great bands. But mostly Joey and Jakob are my full time job."

— Adrienne Armstrong

[onlyangel4]

living the dream. cl16. mv1. smau.

actress!reader x charles leclerc x max verstappen

reader becomes one of the only current actresses to openly admit that she is in a throuple, but when she reveals who her boyfriends are she accidentally breaks the internet

faceclaim: liana liberato

celebsattheerastour posted a story

written: f1 driver charles leclerc pictured at the eras tour last night, also in attendance pierre gasly and actress y/n y/ln

y/ninsta posted a story

written: last night i got home and my boyfriend asked if i got any pictures of my make up (and of course i forgot to) so ofc i had to touch it up a little and take this sleep deprived selfie

y/ninsta posted a story

charesleclerc posted a story tagging maxverstappen

written: paddle to beat those summer break no racing blues

maxverstappen

liked by charlesleclerc, y/ninsta, redbullracing and 1,292,293 others

maxverstappen: one of the best summer breaks of my career, back to racing this weekend

view all 109,121 comments

charlesleclerc: who is the redhead

maxverstappen: you know, shut up

landonorris: how come he knows and i don't

maxverstappen: you would not understand you are too young

user1: a redhead, max verstappen i had no idea you had game like that

user2: omg a soft launch

user3: i know it is not my place but i am desperate to know who she is

charlesleclerc

liked by maxverstappen, y/ninsta, landonorris and 1,420,202 others

charlesleclerc: after a much needed recharge i am ready to get back to racing

view all 120,293 comments

maxverstappen: who is the redhead

charlesleclerc: hahaha very funny

user4: i don't get the joke lads please explain

user5: two soft launches in one day both with redheads i can't take it

user6: i can't believe they are both taken

user7: could they be dating sisters?

y/ninsta

liked by jennaortega, maxverstappen, charlesleclerc and 2,102,102

y/ninsta: just another day in paradise

view all 210,293 comments

jennaortega: so obsessed with you

y/ninsta: miss you love

sydneysweeney: be careful y/n you will break the internet again

y/ninsta: that is the plan syd

user8: surely everyday is paradise when you have two (seemingly) hot boyfriends

user9: actually obsessed with this relationship and i don't even know who the guys are

francisca.cgomes posted a story tagging y/ninsta

written: my date for the netherlands weekend

y/ninsta posted a story

written: baby's first f1 race

y/ninsta posted two stories

story one written: guys what do we think, is blue my colour?

story two written: or is it red?

f1wags

liked by user10, user11, user12 and 23,193 others

f1wags: new wag alert! we are losing our minds cause wtaf actress y/n y/ln is dating not one but two f1 drivers. just before heading to the cool off room both max verstappen and charles leclerc ran over to her and kissed her they then kissed each other. this is actually insane. y/ln confirmed that she was in a throuple just before the summer break, we never could have guessed that her partners were max and charles.

view all 4,283 comments

user10: looking back at their recent posts it is so obvious i can't believe none of us realised

user11: why is it never me

user12: genuinely the luckiest girl in the world

user13: do you reckon they are looking for a fourth

y/ninsta

liked by charlesleclerc, maxverstappen, jennaortega and 2,538,283 others

tagged: maxverstappen. charlesleclerc.

y/ninsta: living the dream with my boys.

view all 341,293 comments

charlesleclerc: glad the world finally knows your ours

maxverstappen: the theories were wild

y/ninsta: yeah apparently you guys are dating identical twins

maxverstappen: so grateful to have my people

y/ninsta: love you maxie

jennaortega: i knew about this and i was still shocked when i saw you trending on twitter

y/ninsta: jenna love you were the first person i told

user14: people are always arguing about the hottest couple in f1, these guys win no competition. two attractive drivers and one very attractive actress, no one else could even compete

∘•···············•∘ʚ ♡ ɞ∘•················•∘

@bibissparkles

@milkysoop

@hadids-world

@callsignwidow

@barcelonaloverf1life

@queen-of-the-hunt

@piastrams

@kravitzwhore

@a-beaverhausen

@fangirlforever2000

@formulaal

@azeal-peal

@magical-spit

@that-one-little-soybean

@raizelchrysanderoctavius

@zatarias-pandora

@unknownmystery22

@anotheranotherblogwoah

@leclercdream

@charlesgirl16

@kikiki04

@dullypully

@awritingtree

@stylesmoonlight12

@pippyth3hippy

@hc-dutch

@whosra

@lancestrollsgf

@dying-inside-but-its-classy

@vulkaari

@random-human02

@daisyfreecs

@fandommaniac07

@mbioooo0000

@novelswithariana

@exotic-iris13

@natashaalinovaromanoff1984

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@sltwins

@nichmeddar

[bokettochild]

Linked Universe Enterence p.3

Okay! So I have thoughts!!!!

First off, does anyone remember when JoJo shared those first snippets? How there was a fun little detail that suddenly disappeared when the comic actually became more than doodles?

Yeah, I'm talking about this guy

(Not the grouchy old man being offended, the owl LOL)

I know there's a chance I'm wrong, a big one at that, but I think it would be really cool if, if only for a short while, JoJo brought him back, even if it's just for this era of Hyrule. Let Time have his owl buddy!

Anyways, to the actual comic!

I noticed that the boys are all still together, so I'm guessing they're waiting until they come to a cross-roads to actually split up like Four advised last time. So we have that to look forwards to in the coming updates!

I love that she's really highlighting the similarities and differences in this arc, showing us who knows what and what they've done, but also the little things; both with owls and the antifairy!

I adore the Owlan reference/appearance!

And Time immediately agreeing about the "long, drawn out lectures part" made me laugh. (His expression, my Hylia!!!)

That is the face of a man who kept accidentally asking to "hear it again" and regrets it with every bone of his being LOL

It's good to see more call backs to the last comics too! Having Hyrule be wary of the statue because he remembers seeing it before, and Warriors agreeing, but also reminding that it didn't cause harm. The fact that Hyrule keeps his sword pointed at it though, wary, does say a lot about how cautious he's being all the same (Wild ought to take notes)

And of course this whole panel

Twilight's awkwardly trying to assure the rest without spilling the secret, Sky laughing and turning to look at Legend, and the fact that the vet is just so entirely done with even just the thought of being a rabbit. (I love his face, omgosh).

Te way I screamed "anti-fairy!" when I saw this, and then was so, so delighted that Legend and I had the same thought (I am unwell about this man).

I'm equally unwell about the fact that Legend just has to say "ouch" (which you only say at inconveniences and not real, actual hurts) and immediately everyone's turning, weapons out and ready to help him face...whatever. Like, he's fine, guys, but it's sweet you care (now Legend, please take note and realize you belong, you idiot)

Love that Time hears "fairy" and immediately is all ears. All the more so at the "anti" part. Man was raised by fairies and he absolutely doesn't like the idea of something that would hurt them.

Meanwhile Legend is just being freaking Haku (Spirited Away) over here!

Tell me you don't see it!!!!!!

Also, his casual use of magic to purify something, to just make it no longer a threat, rather than hurting it. That need to save EVERYONE is really showing through here, huh?

And immediately, everyone is shocked that he did that, but also what it means about fairies. About dark magic. But Time and Wars especially!

Gosh, just Legend's little worried face and Time's offense at the idea of fairies being corrupted and harmed. Shows a bit about them here too I think. Time is maybe slightly obsessed with fairies (reasonably so) and hates them being harmed, but he shows his worry on the matter in anger. legend, meanwhile, becomes more sombre, quieter: it bothers him too (maybe reminds him of a certain predecessor?)

Get this man a tiara, he's a freaking Disney Princess over here, good grief!!!! He's carrying fairy food on what? The slim chance he has time to stop and feed them? Honestly, i know he's probably as attached to fairies as Time (although with a healthier relationship with them), but this is just too cute. this man is going to be the death of me!!!

Anyways, here's the bonuses!!!!

SUN APPEARANCE!!!!!!!! We have a canon Sun appearance!!!!! Like, sure, sleepy student Sky, but it's SUN!!!!

This smile. Oh my gosh I adore him. He's just so glad he got to help the corrupted little one become normal again.

JoJo was having fun with Four I see LOL

Man really said "hang on, let me check my purse, I think I have snacks in here"

Freaking Mom Coded

[hazelsmirrorball]

Back To December | Charles Leclerc

SUMMARY: Charle's Pop singer girlfriend drops a song in honor of Charles FACE CLAIM: Sabrina Carpenter pairings: Singer! Reader x Charles Leclerc authors note: Christmas Vibes!!

liked by taylorswift, charles_leclerc, and 4,050,245 others

y/n surprise! i love you guys so so much that I decided to give you guys an early christmas gift... Back to December is out now!

view all 5,694 comments

y/nsmirrorball I'm sorry what?

y/nsferrari you can't keep getting away this!!!

user5 Back to December, you know what also happen in December?

→user6 what?

→user5 Y/n and Charles break up was announced on December

→user7 you are reaching so bad. How do you even know this.

→user6 no because I get it

taylorswift in love with this song

→ y/n I'm in love with you

y/nlover real music is back!!

user10 omg! omg! Charles is in the likes!! WHAT DOES THIS MEAN

→user12 IT MEANS THAT OUR PARENTS ARE BACK TOGETHER.

via twitter

charles_leclerc via instagram stories.

y/nxcharlesupdates via instagram

liked by arthur_leclerc, user101, user10 and 1,245 others

y/nxcharlesupdates things are pretty wild right now. Today is one year since Y/n and Charles broke up and we prayed for them to have an interaction but this wasn't the answer we expected. Y/n dropping a song unannounced after a being on break for almost a year and a half and Charles congratulating her in her stories after posting a picture of some roses. I truly believe this is a petty war.

view all 94 comments

user10 no because Charles is being so shady and I'm here for it. Have you guys even seen the time stamp, he. would go back to December!!! he misses her bad.

user68 I love that we are assuming everything, she didn't say the song was about Charles!

→user6 girl are you dumb? I want to be as oblivious as you are....

user5 Arthur in the likes? He knows something we don't

user9 okay but we all have to agree that back to December is the anthem of December. Fuck all I want for christmas is you or whatever

user5 Y/n and Charles break up was announced on December

user7 Charles is in his reputation era and I'm here for it!!!

→user6 I usually support women's wrongs but right now I want peace

user11 my parents will get back together

→user45 Girl. Keep dreaming

y/nxcharlesupdates via instagram

liked by user1023, user101, user10 and 1,245 others

y/nxcharlesupdates guess we are technically back in December :)

view all 103 comments

user10 what the actual fuck

user5 screaming, crying, throwing up.

user9 they want tea pages to go crazy

user5 Y/n and Charles are back together in december

user7 wake up and make up

→user6 starting the New Years right!!

user11 I support this

user45 the world is healing

user68 hun, what's this? @ynnn

→ynnn what? I was clear when I said I would go back to December

...

The cold breeze hit y/n’s body making her cover herself for some type of warmth. She was starting to regret doing this. It felt she was doing something wrong, she could feel the guilt eating her away. Yet she couldn’t manage to knock on the door in front of her. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, maybe she should just go back home and act like she didn’t see his car parked in the driveway and pretend he wasn’t home. She wished she could just go back to the night where everything happened, take back every word that haunts her at night. She wished she would’ve stayed and maybe things would have been different. She wanted him, she wanted everything she had before. 

Before she even had the chance to knock on the door she was faced with those soft eyes she had fallen for. She slowly pulled her hand down and stared at him, taking him in completely. 

“I was debating on opening the door. But it’s too cold to let you outside. I’m not that mean” Charles said, moving to the side so she could enter. Y/n slowly entered the room noticing that it was practically the same as the day she left. As she looked around she noticed how Charles stood awkwardly in front of her wanting for her to speak. She debated on what to say first, not wanting to risk her chances. 

“Happy Birthday” She managed to get out, as she did, her words echoed through her head she scrunched up her face in embarrassment. She knew it wasn’t his birthday but she had decided not to text him that day. She needed to start somewhere. She needed him to know that if they loved again, she would love him right. 

[merrybloomwrites]

It's Just a Game, But Really

Summary: When your brother starts dating Taylor Swift, you figure your wild dreams of dating Harry Styles are now definitely crushed. But some meddling from Jason, Travis, and Taylor may make some dreams come true after all.

Word Count: 3K

AN: This idea randomly popped into my head months ago and I couldn't get it out until I fully wrote it. I feel like this falls into the category of "Crack treated seriously" lol

Also, I understand this is niche, but as an Eagles fan (pls don't come for me) I've watched the entire Travis/Taylor relationship unfold and just thought this would be silly. Writing Jason and Travis was pretty fun too since I've been listening to their podcast for years and it was a cool challenge to write in their voices

Finally, I took creative liberty here and while I normally try to keep details as close to reality as possible, I've changed some things. So the Packers vs Eagles game that happened in Brazil now takes place in philly, and the Chiefs game on Christmas is now against Baltimore so it would be plausible to have the dinner scene in PA. None of this actually matters, this is fiction lol

Title from "So High School" by Taylor Swift

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Growing up with two athletic brothers had been quite an experience. Hundreds of hours were spent at sporting events, often bundled up to watch them play ice hockey or attend the late season football games. In your family, it was important that everyone supported each other.

It went the other way as well. Your brothers attended every spring concert, theater performance, and dance recital you were in. They were your biggest fans, always cheering you on and bringing flowers to give you.

They also took time to learn about your interests. Instead of getting annoyed when Taylor Swift’s music would play through the house, they started listening.

Especially Travis.

He liked the music, and thought she seemed pretty cool. He didn’t admit it, but you guessed that maybe he had a bit of a celebrity crush on her.

Life continued to change as your brothers left for college, then moved to different cities when they got signed to two different NFL teams. You missed them, but it was great seeing them succeed.

Jason and Travis still made time for family, even when Jason got married and started a family of his own. You and Kylie became friends right away, and you immediately loved having another girl in the family. You couldn’t wait for it to be Travis’s turn to find someone. But preferably not through his dating show.

When Taylor Swift announced her Eras Tour, you desperately wanted to go. So you were highly disappointed when you weren’t able to get tickets.

And then Travis surprised you with tickets to her show in Kansas City. By this point you had moved in with Jason and Kylie near Philly, but Travis assured you that he’d take care of all the travel logistics to get you to the concert.

You flew in the night before, getting to spend the day with your brother before heading to the stadium. It was weird to be there for a concert, having attended numerous games there before. It was cool to see how it was transformed into something almost unrecognizable.

Being there with Travis meant getting to be seated with a great view in a cordoned off section. It also meant Chiefs fans coming close to the barrier to talk to him before the show. Watching your brother trade friendship bracelets with these people was a strange moment, one you never would have imagined happening.

Through all that, there was one bracelet he had that you noticed he wouldn’t trade. Taking a closer glance you see what’s written on it and give him a confused look.

“Travis, what in the world is this?” you ask.

“Friendship bracelet,” he answers simply, dodging your true question.

“Obviously. But why is your number on here? Who is this for?”

He laughs nervously but before you can press it further another fan comes up to say hi. You can’t help but wonder what his plan is for that bracelet, even though you have a pretty good idea who its intended recipient is.

The concert begins and you have a wonderful time, dancing and singing along, Travis just as excited beside you. As it ends, Travis speaks with one of the staff members, looking slightly disappointed but not too bothered. Once again you’re left wondering what that was all about.

It’s a couple weeks later and you’re listening to the latest episode of Travis and Jason’s podcast when they bring up Travis attending the concert. Sure enough, he confirms he was trying to get that bracelet with his number to Taylor, and you have to commend him on his creativity and optimism.

What you don’t expect is for Taylor to find out about that and get in touch with Travis. Now a year later, your brother is in a happy, committed relationship with Taylor Swift. She’s come to family dinners, you’ve been next to her during Chiefs games, and she’s made it so you could come to a number of concerts on her tour. You cannot believe that this has become your life. And you have to give your brother credit for his powers of manifestation.

One afternoon you’re hanging in the living room while Jason records the podcast in the basement. He calls out for you and you go down to see what’s going on.

He hands you a set of headphones so you can hear Travis as well, and fills you in on the topic.

“So,” Jason begins. “Fans are starting to give you credit for Travis and Taylor getting together. Do you think that’s fair to say?”

You laugh for a moment that this is why you’re called to speak on what should be a sports podcast, before answering, “I think that’s fair. I mean, he did the work but I would say my childhood Swiftie obsession planted the seed.”

Travis replies, “You don’t think I would have found out about her on my own?”

“Oh you totally would have. But I got the ball rolling ages ago. Timing is everything, what if you’d been too late?”

“Alright, I’ll give you that. We can say you had a hand in this.”

“So that means you owe me,” you say.

Jason chimes in, “Yea Trav, your turn to manifest for Y/N.”

“You want me to manifest a boyfriend for our little sister?” Travis questions.

“Oh, right, wait, don’t actually do that. I forgot, Y/N’s not allowed to date until she’s forty,” Jason says, leading you to roll your eyes at his overprotectiveness.

“Ok, but if I were to try, who would it be? Y/N, who’s your celebrity crush?” Travis asks.

There’s no way you’re answering that on camera, especially with who the answer actually is. You clench your teeth and lift your eyebrows before cheekily saying, “Oh, no, I cannot answer that on the pod. That’s uhm. That’d be messy.” You then shrug and laugh, trying to play all of this off as a bit.

While Travis tries to dig and get you to answer, it clicks for Jason and he says, “Wait, I think I know who it is. Is it, uhm-”

“Don’t you dare say anything!” you exclaim to shut him up.

“Alright, alright. I won’t spill your secrets.”

“Well at least tell it to me later,” Travis says, to which you reply, “Absolutely not. I’m afraid you may actually try to meddle.”

“Who, me? No way,” he replies only to be met with an unimpressed look from you.

The boys drop the subject and you head back upstairs as they finally talk about football again.

You assume that they’ve moved on, and you’re happy when they don’t bring up your celebrity crush again.

You’re even happier when Jason tells you he’s taking you to the season opener Eagles vs Packers game in Philly. You’re super excited to be able to experience an Eagles game alongside your brother. You’re also glad you can be there for him in case it’s hard for him to watch them play without him for the first time since his retirement.

What you’re unaware of is the plan that Jason and Travis had made behind your back.

“So now you’re on board with trying to set up our little sister?” Jason had questioned during a phone call a couple weeks prior.

“Yes. And I have a way of making it happen,” Travis had answered.

“And you want me to help Y/N meet and potentially date a popstar who happens to be your girlfriend's ex-boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s a Packers fan?”

“Yea, that is the unfortunate part. And you’re not really helping them date. That’s all on them. But you could at least help her meet him at the game.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jason says. “But I’ll do it.”

And that’s how you find yourself walking through the tunnels of the Linc with Jason before the start of the game and bumping into Harry Styles.

“Hello, I’m Harry,” he says cheerfully, holding a hand out for you to shake.

Mustering up all of your chill, you smile in return while reaching out to clasp his hand and say, “I’m Y/N. It’s so nice to meet you, I’m a big fan.”

“Well, thank you for your support,” he says.

“You kids want a picture?” There are few times you want to kill your brother, but him butting in while you’re talking to Harry Styles is definitely one of them.

“That’s alright,” you say, trying not to impose on Harry too much. So you’re surprised when Harry says, “Of course, let’s get a photo!”

You stand next to him, and his arm wraps around your shoulder and you hope your expression doesn’t show how crazy fast your heart is beating while Jason takes the picture.

“It was so nice meeting you both, I’ll see you around!” Harry says as he walks away.

Before Jason can begin to tease you, you say, “Don’t even say a word.”

He listens to you and instead just laughs as you keep walking.

After some quick hellos to the stadium staff, you’re led up to a box.

“I thought we just had seats today?” You question.

“We did. But when I was talking to Mark he said we got upgraded.”

When you step into the box you’re once again surprised by the presence of Harry Styles.

“Okay, we are definitely in the wrong place,” you murmur to your brother.

“Oh good, you guys found us!” Harry says. You look to see who he’s talking to and get shocked to see it’s you and Jason. “There were some open spots so I asked if you two could join us,” he explains.

“Wow, thank you!” You manage to squeak out.

Suddenly you’re realizing what is about to happen. A four minute encounter in the hallway? Easy. An entire three hour football game? There’s no way you make it through without embarrassing yourself.

And yet, halftime comes and you’ve so far managed not to make a fool of yourself. In fact, you’re even impressed by your witty banter as the Eagles and Packers go back and forth taking the lead.

“So, I read about these botanical gardens nearby,” Harry says.

“Longwood?” You ask.

“Yea, have you ever been?”

“A couple times. I went with Jason, Kylie, and the kids earlier this summer. They’re really nice. If you’re thinking about going, I highly recommend.”

“I actually got a couple tickets for the fountain show tomorrow night. I was wondering if you’d like to go with me.”

Quickly processing that Harry is asking you to hang out with him, possibly go on a date with him, you reply, “I’d love to!”

“Fantastic! I can pick you up in the afternoon?”

“Sounds good to me, thank you.”

You exchange phone numbers and give Harry your address, still in disbelief that all of this is actually happening.

The game resumes, and as the Eagles make their comeback you can’t help but cheer and get wrapped up in the game. And even as Harry’s team starts losing, he still stays happy and continues to joke around with you.

When the game ends and the Eagles fans celebrate, you say to Harry, “I hope this doesn’t affect us hanging out tomorrow.”

“Not a chance, in fact I think that will cheer me up,” he says with a smile.

“Hey Y/N, I’ve gotta go talk to a couple people. You hanging here or coming with me?” Of course, there’s your brother interrupting again. And while you’d rather stay with Harry, you don't really want to be separated from Jason in the post-game chaos. So you say goodbye to Harry with the promise to see him the next day.

On your way back home you put up with the teasing from your brother.

You beg him to be on his best behavior when Harry picks you up the next day.

You know he won’t.

So it’s no surprise that he gives Harry “the talk”, telling him that if he hurts you at all then he’ll have to face two NFL players.

You’re hanging in the living room with Kylie and the kids while this happens, and when the two boys come back Kylie asks,”He wasn’t too scary, was he?”

“No,” Harry replies. “Just scary enough I’d say. Shall we get going?” He addresses this last question to you and you agree, more than happy to get out of the house before Jason takes his big brother role too seriously.

When Harry drives away he lets out a deep breath and you say, “You good?”

“Yea, just- Your brother is scary.”

You start to laugh at the fact that Jason managed to actually shake up Harry Styles. But you decide to help him out by saying, “He seems scary, but it’s mostly all talk. Unless you do something to hurt me. Then you should be scared.”

“Oh I feel so much better,” he says, laughing along now.

The two of you have a wonderful time together at the gardens, especially since Harry manages to somehow fly under the radar. The fountain show is fascinating, and you stand together, Harry’s arm around your waist sending butterflies through your belly.

It’s late when you get home, and he walks you to the door like a gentleman.

When he asks if he can kiss you, of course you say yes. He leans in for a soft kiss before saying goodnight, not leaving until you’ve made it safely inside.

Jason is waiting up for you, and as you tell him about your night you watch his gruff exterior fade away. He looks truly pleased by all you have to report and you’re glad that he seems to approve of Harry.

For the next couple of months, it all goes well. Your relationship with Harry flourishes. You get to see him more than expected since he starts working out of a studio in NYC, only two hours away from where you are.

There is one mild bump in the road, occurring on a Friday evening when Jason and Kylie are supposed to be out at a party with the girls.

You’d been planning on a quiet night home alone. But then Harry had surprised you by showing up at your front door, a bouquet of flowers in hand.

One thing led to another, and before you know it you’re both on the couch. You’re straddling his lap, his hands sliding under your shirt as the two of you make out.

As much as Harry had surprised you, Jason surprises you even more by suddenly coming home and walking right into the living room.

Harry notices him first, and in an effort to save this interaction he pushes you off of him, luckily managing to shift you to the open spot next to him on the couch.

There’s a moment of oppressively awkward silence as Jason stares at the two of you, speechless. Without saying a word he walks to the mud room and grabs the diaper bag that had clearly been left behind earlier.

As he passes through the room to leave he says, “You are adults. Just- don’t be stupid. There are enough kids in this house already.”

Without waiting for a reply he leaves the house. After another moment you and Harry break into nervous laughter.

The mood is pretty much ruined but you still have a nice night watching a movie together. Harry stays with you but has to leave at lunchtime the next day.

That afternoon Jason knocks on your bedroom door, asking if he can talk for a minute.

“Sure, what’s up?” You say, not expecting the conversation that follows.

“I just wanted to ask how things are going between you and Harry,” he says.

“Oh! Good! Yea, things are going well. I really like him,” you answer.

“And you’re being safe?”

“Oh my god, Jason! We are not having this conversation,” you say as your cheeks warm at the implication.

“Well you’re living in my house, I just, you know. I feel responsible for your well being.”

“I’m safe. Very safe. You don’t have to worry.” You hope your words will convince him to drop the topic.

“And you trust him? Cause I mean, he’s a big time Popstar. Bet he’s broken a fair number of hearts before.”

You find yourself needing to defend Harry and ask, “Have you had this conversation with Travis about Taylor?”

“Fair point,” he concedes. “I just don’t want you getting hurt. You’re sure about him?”

“I am.”

“Okay then. That’s what matters. I’m only looking out for you.”

“I know. But Harry and I are happy. I promise.”

With that smoothed over, the next few weeks continue drama free.

And then comes Christmas.

Due to scheduling, Harry had yet to meet Travis. You’ve talked to your brother about him, and you know Travis has talked about all of this with Taylor. So while you’ve been told that it’s no big deal that your boyfriend and your brother’s girlfriend are exes, you’re still a bit nervous for Christmas dinner.

It’s a late meal, since you have to wait for Travis to get there after the Chiefs vs Ravens game, and you spend the afternoon entertaining your nieces and helping prepare the food.

Finally Travis and Taylor arrive, and for a moment you can’t help but feel self conscious. The room is full of NFL players and international pop stars. You excuse yourself to the kitchen for a moment to collect yourself. When you walk back to the living room, Harry greets you with the biggest smile, and those feelings of self doubt melt away. Because those big accomplishments and accolades aren’t what matter to him. What he cares about is how kind you are, how fun and loving you are. He wraps an arm around your shoulders, pressing a kiss to your head and you blush knowing your whole family is watching.

But looking up at them you see nothing but support. Your mom is practically glowing seeing all her children with their significant others, and quickly organizes a family picture.

It takes some time to get all three of the little girls to cooperate, and by the time the photo is taken, dinner is ready.

There is something surreal at seeing Harry and Taylor pass the potatoes or bread basket, never having imagined this is how your life would turn out.

But that night, as you all agree to break the internet by posting the family picture, you know you wouldn’t want it any other way.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AN: I wrote the first half of this as the Eagles lost to the Commanders, thus breaking a 10 game win streak soooo that was a bummer.

I wrote the ending after watching the Eagles beat the Cowboys, so at least that turned back around!

I think this may be the silliest thing I’ve ever written.

[colourstreakgryffin]

Hello, sorry from before. I am the illusionist person.

I guess Alastor, Velvett, and Emily (but only if you do her).

I apologize about before.

No problem! I just do not like the idea of taking away credit from others’ choices and picking out the characters for others’ subjects. It just doesn’t feel right. I am sorry for being so… well, I guess, annoying and picky! To be honest, not a lot can be done here so sorry, it’s going to be kinda short! Also, this is my first time handling Emily!

Alastor

Alastor almost thought you were an ordinary sinner. A lady not unbelievably special but special in your own ways. But he is mistaken when he begins seeing your illusions and asks you about it. He is so surprised, jaw-dropped, amazed… that’s incredible!

Alastor is actually really supportive towards your illusion power and eggs you on to use it more than you normally do. Use it to get what you want, use it to mislead, use it to defend yourself. He will be right there to cheer you on

Alastor finds it fascinating when you begin to use your illusions on him. Changing his clothing to 1800s, making his ears disappear, all for shits and giggles but it’s just eye tricks. Everything is still there and hasn’t done anything to you, it’s just so realistic, that it’s incredible. He is impressed and has to remind himself that everything you suddenly ‘make’ is not real at all

It can be considered minor but to your boyfriend, your illusionary power. The most powerful, hyper realistic delusions that even shatter like glass when being hit. Enables Alastor’s pride and he is happily brags about how powerful you can be. He mentioned you a ton during his broadcasts and now, he mentions you as a whole even more. He’s just so proud of you

“My dear. Your mind is quite wild and livid. I can’t help but wonder what else you can do. May I ask, how does this power work? It’s so unique and I’d love to get to know it even more, may we speak over a nice date on my room’s balcony over some tea and cookies?”

Velvette

Velvette actually would much more prefer if her harmless little sinner girlfriend was just a normal demon. Didn’t have any powers that made her override the Overlord of the pair… but boy, she is so wrong and she ends up being jumpscared by your illusion-inducing power, directly falling for it and afterwards, she can’t help but directly fall for you even more

Whilst it’s true that Velvette enjoys being the unique one of this couple, she finds herself not at all salty or jealous of your power. In-fact, she wants to see it more in action and she even asks if she can post videos or pictures of your abilities to show you off, as a way to also demonstrate to the web that you belong to her, and this power belongs to her as well

Velvette is uncontrollably disturbed and annoyed by just how hyper realistic and convincing your mind images are. They are fully seeable to everybody, it’s not just you two but she feels like it’s tricking her individually. Whilst she gets irritated with them sometimes, she has grown to support you as a whole. She does like, however, when you use your mind and dress her in 1800s era clothing. Yeah, the dresses are ugly and old but the effort behind them is adorable so she allows it

As stated before, Velvette takes pictures, videos and stills of your illusionary magic and posts them online. She doesn’t just use this as claiming you as hers, she also uses it to brag about you. You went from just beautiful to beautiful and powerful, and that’s all hers. She has your heart and she wants everybody to know you can render them useless with your illusions. She brags to even the Vees

“Yo. Bae, can you please do me a fav with your luse-power? I want to make a really good fashion runway picture for my social media accounts and this one is shit. Could you please make some accessorises for me… pleeeaase~? I promise I’ll buy ya a present~!”

Emily

Emily is a Seraphim. A powerful, higher-up ranked Angel species of the Heaven Hierarchy, so it’s quite surprising when she is as surprised to seeing the precious ordinary Angel lovely woman she calls hers form a illusion creation of her friend, Charlie Morningstar, trying to cheer her up after a bad day. She is so amazed and so proud, eyes sparkling with awe

Emily is the most supportive and encouraging being ever and she wants to rise you up, even more up above Heaven’s majestic cool clouds. She wants you to feel invincible and she wants to you feel proud of yourself so she’ll, much like a child, ask you to use more of your illusions, explore your power and get more confident with it and everytime she watches it, her mind basically explodes

Emily happily and excitedly spins out when you use your illusionary power on her to change her looks; gorgeous hair, gorgeous dress and even her wings. She feels so different yet so blessed at the same time, even if the new look is just a magical sheet covering her body. She also finds it interesting and funny that you dressed her in human 1800s era style, she wants you two to match so she basically begs you to use your magic on you too

Emily legit goes out of her way and with help from Sera, finds and brings back needed magical training items and spell books to try help you hone your already hyper-convincing Mirakinesis and your skills with that power, so you can expand your percentage and even maybe make it even more powerful, with her right besides you as your biggest cheerleader

“Sunflower! Can you make yourself invisible yet? Did the books and items help you at all? I hope they did! I also hope that you know that I am so proud of you and I love you so much! Please never keep something like this from me ever again! You’re incredible, with and without it”

[scottfreed]

Orion & Scott should be friends if not awkward step brothers. The forced antagonism is lame.

I had an argument with two people about the way I characterized Orion and Scott in a fic a while back, and I wanted to make a big post to compile my canon basis for writing them as somewhat distant brothers who respect and defend each other. I particularly had one fan continuously say Tom King's characterization is gospel and completely consistent, and I was an "abuse apologist" for writing them in a positive way. I wanted to pay particular attention to the question of succession since that's the main source of conflict for them in MM '17.

Orion and Scott have had numerous character interactions that have predominantly ranged from generally amicable to warm and familiar with key exceptions. (Rough recount incoming)

MM '74

Their first interaction Orion literally saves Scott's life so he and Barda can get married.

Dude is actually the one who called for the wedding in the first place. And he was playing the Bouncer. And look at him on Barda's side of the alter. He's totally the Maid of Honor:

Super Powers '86

(This was the first comic I ever read with both characters just to disclose my bias.)

Short but fun lesser known title! But there's some interesting world building happening. And Orion and Scott paling around in their co-rulers era:

They're buddies and its great. Also look and Orion's drip.

Look at this! The bois are co-ruling Apokolips for a brief stint. The exact opposite of Orion trying to "steal the throne form scott", He literally called him up to help him manage his own!

This is such a great expression of both their characters. Scott's survivors guilt for being able to escape the Hell of his upbringing and Orion's driving fear of ending up a tyrant like his father.

And look at this "interview":

We need to bring back authors doing make-believe interviews with fictional characters. Simply outstanding. The idea that in the face of nature and nurture they both gravitated to the light is honestly fascinating.

"(still hushed) Thank you, thank you, my friend..."

^^^ like... there are hurt/comfort fics that aren't as tender as this action adventure comic from 1986 😭😭😭

The New Gods Vol 3

But whoa what's this?

Bickering? I guess they do just inherently have an antagonistic relationship... except look what's actually being said.

Orion and Lightray aren't pissed because they think Orion is so great that he should be in charge of everything and Scott's in the way Ala Tom King. (It's because this writer didn't want to write for Scott in this title and the crappy answer for this is to make Scott an annoying "80s era pacifist" which is pretty shameful in the context of world-ending stakes tbh.)

But again, Orion's not miffed because he wants Scott gone. If anything, He want's Scott to be more involved in the fight against evil. He wants him to remember his roots. He wants him to be a part of New genesis. He want's him to take on more power and responsibility.

Plus, idk I'm projecting but it's almost giving: "hey the family misses you, please call/visit more" to me at least.

JLA/I ('90)

My heart is aching look at this! Called him his brother, gave a beautiful eulogy, joined the JLA in his memory. It's wild how the writing in this arc went wildly back and forth between quality and pure nonsense 😭

JLA ('98) - #24

This is how you do clunky exposition about who tf these characters even are showing up in this title all of a sudden.

Is it perfect? No.

But it's still a heart to heart desire to understand. Underline everyone's characters and central motivation. Boom. We're in and we're out. Back to the Justice League.

MM Vol 3 (1996)

Okay, so weirdly aggressive, right???

But, not quite, it was indicated that his reaction here was due to Darksied having just been resurrected and was influencing him.

But also take a closer look at what's being said! It wasn't a result of Orion being covetous of Scott's power or even wishing harm on him or anything.

Quite the opposite, in fact. He's telling him he needs to better protect his own life as future king, even if it means sacrificing others.

It's almost giving concern tbh.

Far be it from trying to kill Scott to steal NG from him, even in this ooc moment, he's chastising him to stay safe so he can come into his throne.

Jack Kirby's Fourth World (1997)

We get a fight and Scott gets over whelmed casue he's fucking around. Barda is lowkey laughing at him. But what does Orion do?

Dude Pops off. Pops off so hard everyone is concerned.

And then this happens:

Look! He struck Scott! Tom King is a genius! haters btfo.....

But wait. this was actually how it was revealed that Orion was possessed by DeSaad, because this was so wildly out of character for him!

Literally this action, that Orion-haters seem to think is like their mundane default character interaction, was so off-putting and out of character to all the other New Gods that they immediately knew something was very wrong. And it was. He was possessed!

lol gross...

But what about when he's back in his mind again? Well...

(idk who's serving more cunt in this tbh)

And here not for the last time we se Orion supporting the idea of Scott as the ruler of Apokolips.

Orion ('01)

(d...did scott do blackface in this cosplay??? lol)

This is the classic. We all know it. We all love it.

Look at Scott meddling in his life. You're fucking up pretty bad when the "god of freedom" has to step in to stop you.

Also the contrast between their actions when dealing with Sirius is better than any hackney fist fight or argument.

And how interesting is it that Scott's unwillingness to kill isn't treated as admirable and pure in contrast to Orion's evil-bad violence.

Nope. He was a kid. He wasn't strong enough yet to do what had to be done. And IIRC it was to do with what he'd just gone through with the emergence of the anti-life equation. But Orion was! And Orion was the one to finally put the poor soul out of him misery.

I like in particular the way they are portrayed as the "god of war" and the "god of freedom" and how the way this is explored isn't a black and white dichotomy. Scott recognizes Orion is absolutely needed to oppose Darkseid. And the way the two of them are working behind the scenes to protect and help each other repeatedly is so perfect.

And the way Orion decides not to kill Metron to protect scott not because it's wrong or whatever but because time travel could prevent anyone else from following the same bread crumbs and coming to the same conclusions is so funny.

But he was fully ready to kill Metron to save the weird little circus man.

But yeah I think its very telling that at the end of this character arc, Orion, in coming to terms with himself, must come to terms with Scott and their respective places in the world.

I just think it's cool that they each saved each other's life twice in this series. Scott prevented Orion form falling too far with his black racer gambit. And reminding him of his purpose. And Orion Saves Scott from the parademons and Metron.

I can only dream of the paradise we'd be living in if this characterization continued on into the future.

Cherish it. It's all down hill from here...

Death of the New Gods ('05)

Okay so this series isn't great, but at least it's consistent with how these two interreact with each other and kind of keeps to Simonson's continuity... kind of.

Orion aggressively defends Scott’s claim yet again. He looked like he was gonna deck Clark when he suggested Scott was not fit. I’m talking bolded, italicized and pt.18 font text when he first suggested it. "WHAT?" He "begrudgingly" admits Scott's not "currently" fit. But still declines that position for himself.

And the two of them discussing the fate of their people like this almost harkens back to '86 with the co-ruling.

This story is weird, with the worst interpretation of the Anti-Life Equation I've seen. And I'd argue both are ooc in general, but even in this slopy story there is no succession crisis. and they are working together:

(lol at his face here. The bois are trying to discuss their family business and clark is just standing there gobsmaked. rude tbh...)

And here is Orion saving his ass again for good measure:

I hit my picture limit, but Scott goes on to try to kill Orion and Clark later in this series.

Up to this point. Orion might have shoved Scott once or twice in weird circumstances but Scott was the only one who seemed to actually make an actual attempt on his life. Which is why the post reboot characterization is so freaking weird to me.

Tom Kings MM (2017)

(This is where it officially falls apart)

Cliché toxic masculinity abusive stepbrother who exists only to make Scott an even bigger victim. Steals the throne, is weirdly aggressive and abusive for no fucking reason. Tries to kill him in jealousy, etc, etc.

And unfortunately this has seemingly become Orion's standard characterization in the minds of most fans.

(Now, in those post-n52 reboot GL books (sorry tbh I don't feel like tracking them down rn) he's not AS bad as he was in the WW and Tom King MM, but he's still portrayed as being far less intelligent and articulate for some reason??? The idea that he's the dumb jock of the NG and not basically a warrior poet. It's better to go more himbo than violent monster I guess but it's still a far cry from his proper characterization.) I wonder if it had to do with his awful portrayal in that Wonder Woman run??? Idk.

... Jack Kirby didn't deserve this.

DCeased(?)

Ripping off Tom king directly. I'm not just saying that since I don't like the characterization. I'm saying this because they ripped this stupid fucking scene off beat-for-beat, Seriously, Tom King should sue this dude for plagiarism.

And like a game of telephone their characters keep getting mangled more and more. This is the writing equivalent of a bad photo copy of a bad photocopy.

I just gotta pray it stops here and we can get back to a normal dynamic for these two again. But this story's existence doesn't bode well.

MM (2021)

Orion and Shilo seem to be on good terms! He still doesn’t speak right but it’s still an improvement!

Buuuut, no relationship or character interaction with Scott and Barda's daughter at all??? Like that's the main antagonist (for some fucking reason) and they just say nothing to each other? ok sure why not at this point.

Like that's High Father's granddaughter!

Highfather is probably the cornerstone of Orion's identity. Even if you don't consider Scott and Orion to be brothers, she's still his family through HF.

Anyway, I just wanted to add at the end here that I find some of the fans (and writer's) continuous characterization of Scott as the loser wife guy and a massive victim all the time, and Orion the violent psycho, who is power-hungry and ambitious is lame and sucks.

And just to be a little biased. I think the dynamic from 50 years ago is better and more relevant to people today than the MM '17 version.

Think about it. There are more blended and mixed families than ever. Awkward and somewhat distant step-brother is so much more compelling and interesting than the chirst vs. anti-christ thing they keep doing.

“What Is It They’ve Sent Us?” “Hope.”

Barda '24

This book seems to be getting us back on track from what I've been able to see so far! I've been unable to get my hands on it yet but everything I've seen and heard about it is really exciting for me as a fan. I'm both excited and fearful to see what comes next!!!

[chvoswxtch]

I’m so excited to be joining the court eras tour! Congrats on the achievement! Can I request speak now about Frank and Matty competing for the attention of the same girl? Wether it means she ends with one of them, none, or both *wink wink*

you know, my philosophy in life is why have one when you can have both?

side note: i'm the worst person to go shopping with bc if you ask me if you should get something, i'm gonna tell you to treat yourself and if you ask me to help you decide between two things, i'm gonna tell you to get them both

with that being said, let's fuck date them both <3

electric touch (frank's version ft. matt)

firstly, frank and matt are very different when it comes to dating

matt flirts with anything that has a heartbeat. he's a charming, smooth talking fucker, and he knows exactly what he's doing. he doesn't even need to use his heightened senses to be able to tell that his dazzling grin and dimples coupled with his alluring deep voice makes a person's blood rush to their cheeks and to other places in their body

frank on the other hand is a little more shy. if you remember, maria approached him first when they met, and that actually seems to be a recurring theme for frank (karen makes the first move, sarah is the one that kisses him, beth is the one that invites him home). essentially, frank is a consent king who lets his partner come to him. not that he doesn't flirt, I think he does when he feels more comfortable, but it doesn't come second nature to him like it does to matt

secondly, I think their different personalities also shine in terms of the kind of date they take you on

matt's go to date idea that we've seen tends to be a romantic dinner somewhere. despite him being a huge slut flirt, i do think he's a hopeless romantic at heart. matt could ask you to dinner as easily as he could ask you what time it was, but I think he'd do his best to make sure to pick a spot that he knew you would like based off your preference in food, meet you at the restaurant looking devastatingly handsome, and then take you on a nice little stroll to keep the evening going

frank on the other hand seems a little more old school and traditional. despite where he's taking you, he's definitely picking you up at your door and bringing flowers. I could see him being a dinner and movie guy, but I also think frank would wanna get to really know you, and it's kinda hard to have a conversation with someone while watching a movie. so I personally think he would take you to do something fun (we know he loved to take his family to the park with the carousel), something like bowling, mini golf, an arcade (where he'd totally show off and win you a prize), an aquarium, etc. somewhere where the two of you could do something fun together and then get a bite after

NOW, we know frank and matt are super competitive with one another, but if they were trying to win over the same person? absolute chaos

let's just say for fun y'all all go on a first date at the same time (bc I personally think it would be hilarious)

you let frank pick the activity y'all do together, and he purposefully sends matt on a wild goose chase telling him to meet at the mini golf place at 7pm, but, he doesn't specify which one. so a pissed off matt finally tracks you and frank down around 7:30 (by the scent of frank's cologne that he would know anywhere) and frank fires the first shot

"'bout time you showed up, red. don't you know it ain't polite to make a lady wait?"

"well I would have been on time if you had specified where this place was. do you know how many mini golf places there are in this city?"

"my bad, thought you'd be pickin' her up at her door with flowers too. guess that was just me though."

frank has the biggest grin on his face, meanwhile matt's cheeks are burning red, both from annoyance and from sprinting to catch up

but frank's victory is short lived when matt beckons you over with a charming smirk and an innocent request for help

"sweetheart, you mind helping me hit the ball? I don't exactly know where i'm aiming."

much to frank's dismay, he has to watch you press yourself up against matt's back, holding onto his hands that were around the golf club, and giggle instructions into his ear as you help him on where to aim

"aw now that's horseshit. you don't need her goddamn help, and you know it."

"i am blind, frank."

matt wears a cocky smirk with every ball you help him hit, but the more you start cheering for frank with how many perfect shots he's hitting (if there's one thing frank is good at it's aim), matt starts showing out too, and eventually the two men forget you're even playing with them bc they're competing against each other so hard

before they break out into a brawl in the sand pit, the three of you make your way to dinner, each of them insisting on holding one of your hands (which they refuse to let go of) so everyone walking in your direction has to go completely around the three of you

matt chose an incredibly romantic italian spot, and needless to say, the host was very confused seeing the three of you together (especially with the disgruntled looks on both of their faces bc they wanted you all to themselves)

not even five minutes pass before they're back at each other's throats

it starts with matt recommending a red wine to you and pronouncing the name of it wrong, to which frank sassily corrects him, and matt scowls across the table behind his red glasses

"what, you suddenly speak italian, castle?"

"i am italian, you dipshit."

matt, completely stunned by this new information, completely misses frank's insult and just stares blankly at him in surprise with raised brows

"what? since when?"

"the hell you mean since when? since I was born. ain't you s'posed to be some kinda genius or somethin'? I really gotta explain simple shit to you-"

"castle isn't italian-"

"no, but castiglione is. it got shortened to castle when my parents moved here from sicily-"

"and how the hell would I know that-"

"well maybe if you shut the fuck up every once in awhile-"

and this is where you have to intervene and redirect the conversation bc while them fighting over you was exciting and truthfully hot at first, it seems like they've spent a better half the night fighting each other, and that simply isn't acceptable

so you warn them that if they don't start playing nice, you'll leave them on the date alone together and go get your own dessert somewhere else

needless to say they suddenly start showing model behavior and redirect their attention where it should've been all along: on you

and i'll let your imagination run wild with how well that date goes and if you invite them both up for a drink or two ;)

[sapphicseasapphire]

More child of mountains 🥺

More Cryptid Wild??? I will happily oblige.

I’ve already shared quite a bit about him! But here’s some things that I may have left out:

Wild is not as sensitive to changes in temperate has he is in canon. Since he’s a spirit made mostly of light, it takes a lot for him to feel cold or hot. He hangs out in hot springs because then he can actually feel something, and he can be found in Hebra just vibing in the snow for the same reason.

While it’s rare, he does change his clothes from time to time. Mostly, he wears armor to assist him with stealth, since he’s pretty terrible at it on his own. When he walks, it jingles like little bells. Like a Blupee! (This absolutely freaks Sky out, as he has Silent Realm trauma). The first time he ever changed out of his ruined Champion’s Tunic was to infiltrate the Yiga Clan Hideout. He wore the Sheikah set to be quieter and stole the Thunder Helm for the Gerudo without any consequence.

(He may also wear clothes to cover his glowing skin if needed. But in his own era, he doesn’t hang out in villages enough to need that. He’s rarely seen. And if anyone does see him, they know better than to approach. And in any other era, he relies on Hyrule’s glamour to hide him).

SPEAKING OF THE YIGA. This is not really Wild lore, but it’s IMPORTANT. The Yiga are not smart enough to connect the dots. They have no idea that the Child of the Mountains is the very same fallen hero that they’re out to kill. When Wild stole the Thunder Helm, they assumed that it was just one of Hylia’s pesky little spirits messing with them (which is pretty much the truth, to be fair). They fully 100% believe that the Hylian Champion Link is dead and has been for the past century (which is, again, true). Because of this, they are on the lookout for the new hero. They believe that since Link died a century ago and they’re still working to bring Ganon back, a new hero will be born to stop them. Their plan is to kill the new Link before he can pose a threat.

Even though the hero still exists. They’re… a little dumb, I guess, but they’re not technically wrong.

Cryptid Wild is family with every single spirit in the game. Koroks? Little siblings. Blupees? Little siblings. The Great Deku Tree is a father figure to him and the Lord of the Mountain is very close to him. The dragons are a little scatterbrained but he likes to hang out with them anyway. And Fairies! They may not be spirits, but they’re just little balls of spiritual magic and so Wild makes an effort to know every single one of them. He loves them.

He uses any/all pronouns. (More like he doesn’t have pronouns. Not a single one. He’s never heard of them before. I mostly use he/him for Wild since the Hyruleans of his era will typically use those pronouns in their stories but you must know that Wild legitimately does not care). He’s also aro/ace but he needs companionship. Poor lil guy can’t stand being alone, and while human presence overwhelms him sometimes, he’s super friendly around spirits. Any spirit. Looking at you, Wars.

Alright that was very long but I hope this is what you were looking for haha!

[invested-in-your-future]

One of many things I have been figuring out is how different Kingdoms might handle their legends about monsters, since Grimm would be intrinsically linked to concepts like folklore and fairytales of this land, having been there for as long as humanity remembers.

Would creatures of Grimm replace the traditional monsters in the stories? Would there be cryptid creatures of Grimm whose existence hasn't been confirmed but lone Huntsmen would swear they exist?

One thing I've decided is that this version of Remnant would contain many sightings and stories of Grimm that could be considered apocryphal—types of creatures never scientifically confirmed to even exist. Over the years, Huntsmen and civilians alike would have shared rumors, written entire books, etc, about the experiences that nobody can confirm having happened.

The important aspect, however, is how contradictory and ambiguous legends and rumors can be.

For example, one such piece of literature is "Die Wilde Jagd" (The Wild Hunt)—an autobiographical book by one of Vale's Huntsmen centuries ago, where he chronicles his journeys chasing after a folk legend, gathering tales, as well as chronicling encounters that he claims have happened. As the book is old old, it's impossible to confirm or deny the authenticity of what the author wrote about—he could have actually faced those creatures, he could have embellished confrontations with "usual" Grimm, or he could have thought all of the stories up while drunk in some wayside tavern.

Let's say characters come upon something they do not understand—more literature-focused ones would know the stories they would have read or at least heard about, but how do they know any of that information is "useful" or fit? They can only guess.

One of my pet peeves with the show will always be how MilesWBY era handled one of its better ideas, The Apathy—it's just too neat of a conclusion that takes away any mystique of this creepy and unique and weird type of creature of Grimm—they are built up as a threat, and then Ruby plot-eyes them, and it's all solved without any doubt. Meanwhile, for me, that threat was always something that felt like it shouldn't have neatly "concluded"—a threat where the characters should have been left guessing if they had defeated the Apathy or if these things are still out there and that maybe there's no real way to "defeat" them, that some things in this world just are and should be avoided at all costs. And then the show doubled down on that by having Ruby randomly be able to defeat one of the Goliaths.

Neatly concluding creatures of Grimm as a threat doesn't work. Some of the STRONGEST moments of the early RWBY that are stuck in my mind are when Ruby first sees the Goliaths and then in V3 when that thing bursts out of the mountain. The show pulls back a curtain and shows just how much unknown there is in the world and how out of their depth humanity might be.

It's important to leave ambiguity AND uncertainty in the concept behind The Creatures of Grimm. It's supposed to be an endless, eternal, ever-changing, ever-evolving threat that has always been there and will likely always be there.

And tying that into the bigger theme of how ambiguous, twisted, and incomplete myths and legends of the world are just makes sense. Even in the show, it would have made more sense to do that if Salem's very existence was supposed to be this big secret that would have thrown the population into chaos when revealed.

[9w1ft]

Lately I cannot stop thinking "Peace" is from Karlie's perspective. If the whole "Josh is gay and Taylor coming out would push Karlie out wich would in turn push Josh out" is true, Karlie may be the reason why Taylor is stuck in the closet.

The song talks about how she will do anything to keep her warm and keep the blue away, which is how Taylor represented them in previous song: T is blue and K is sunshine, daylight, warmth.

It also mentions being a friend and the devil being in the details, talking shit with the friends and wasting her honor and this can be explained as Karlie doing anything necessary to get into Scooter's circle of trust to help T bring him down.

It beautifully explains unconditional love: at the end of the day she would do anything for her and she would be there during the toughest times, take risks, swing for the fences (I cannot even imagine what would have happened if anyone knew K was playing a double agent). Give you my wild and give you a child, both literally ;) and as a metaphor are fantastic to explain growing oldtogether, sharing adventures first and commitments later.

Give you my sunshine speaks for its own.

Robbers to the east may represent the Trumps and Kushners in the East Coast meaning serious problems and threats. Clowns to the West, I take it a representation of the entertainment industry and situations that make no sense, are chaotic, etc

What do you think?

i hope you don’t mind my freeform response! it had me writing about this and that.

regarding your first paragraph im not sure i fully agree with the premise that you mention. its definitely a way that people who talk about kaylor think or frame things, and i think i was of this mind for a time as well. but as the years pass and i think on it more and see more, i would hesitate to suggest that the end goal or win condition that taylor has in mind for her life is her coming out of the closet, and everything else she encounters is things getting in the way of that. to offer an alternative, maybe taylor’s end goal (at the time) was be able to share a happy public life with the love of her life, and coming out was a means to that end in her best laid plans, and then there were situations and circumstances that complicated the path she had laid out to this more ultimate goal.

maybe these two things don’t seem all that different but to me i think its worth it to make a distinction because i think it reflects different motivations or drivers that compel taylor to take the actions that she has. also, i don’t think we can definitively say that they were/are keeping taylor in the closet because as we see with lover era all indications point to taylor being all systems go for coming out herself, so i assume there was some sort of agreed way that thing would have rolled out that included taylor coming out. maybe not but, i don’t think it’s particularly wild to assume.

i guess one might go on to say that that the lakes and “i’m setting off but not without my muse” suggests that she was held back from coming out because of her muse, but i would argue that the lakes is a good example of how taylor’s core priority is actually her muse and not her impulse to go where the ‘poets’ live and die free

alright, so, putting all that aside, let’s talk a bit about peace. at the time that folklore came out there was a lot of discussion about peace being a karlie perspective song or a back and forth conversation between the two of them, so you are definitely not alone in this idea! i too feel like parts of the song read as sentiments from karlie, but im not sure about the song in its entirety—

for me, there is one line that’s hard to square with this karlie perspective idea: “your integrity makes me seem small.” because it’s hard for me to imagine someone writing a line like this about themself, praising one’s own integrity. it’s self aggrandizement, in my opinion. and not that all keywords have to carry through with 100% consistency but i think that this line matches up well with the Hits Different lyric “your sense of belief in the good in the world” — also the line “all these people think love’s for show but i would die for you in secret” rings like something taylor would sing of herself, because, and im not sure how to articulate it but speaking as a person who’s been around all this stuff for a reasonable chunk of time, ive always gotten the sense that it’s taylor of the two that is more quick to pull the plug. karlie is much more outspoken about what she believes in the moment, evidenced by whenever she speaks publicly, and i think she is often left more open to attack, whereas taylor is more the one to throw smokescreens and leave her on waves being tossed… etc.

i don’t think that everything taylor says in interviews is true, especially when it comes to how she explains her songs, but i do think it’s worth watching the snippet from long pond studio sessions where she’s talking about peace with aaron (you can search for clips of this on youtube). taylor acknowledges that she can protect a relationship from some things but not all things. i think in this explanation you can sort of see ideas about her self forming that connect to songs like anti hero, the idea that maybe some portion of this isn’t just a matter of can or cannot but also will or will not, the idea that she might be the problem in the relationship because of her tendency to distrust. i fear i’ve slid into psychoanalysis territory so let me just reiterate this is just the impression i get from taylor’s art and from what she has said and what we see she has done or not done, i don’t mean to claim that i know who she is.

to backtrack a little bit, if you play the keyword game it sort of becomes a game of othello with this part of the song because, do the dreamscapes connect to the impressionist paintings of loml? same with the shit talking? does that disposition match up to the contrarian shit line from gold rush? is the brother taylor’s literal brother or karlie’s often-referred-to-as-a-brother friend in derek? or someone else? can taylor contain sunshine as well? does the fire building connect to ciwyw or can taylor build fires too? is the rain always going to come when standing with karlie or is that a metaphor connected to the cursed motif taylor employs when describing about herself? etc etc.. it becomes hard to piece away at some point but i do think that all these themes do describe their story.

oh one technical thing i would add in closing is that the lyric “robbers to the east clowns to the West” is stylized in the lyric booklet with a capital W for West, and i think it’s generally accepted as a dig at kanye.

[wutheringmights]

For CTB’s 3rd anniversary (holy crap!!!), I’d like to ask if there’s any fun/interesting lore u wish u could naturally add in, but haven’t had the opportunity to do so yet?

As you could probably guess with STP, I have so many ideas for New Hyrule that I will probably never be able to convey in CTB proper. STP only scratched the surface of all the little cultural differences that make New Hyrule different from Warriors's Hyrule.

Actually, there's a lot of tiny cultural things I would love to delve into more with all the various Hyrules across the eras that I wish I could explore.

Here's a few:

Skyloft has a lot of Greek trappings, such as valuing Gladiator-esque fights and masked theater productions as entertainment. Skyloft is also freaking huge, with multiple sky island clusters making various communities across the sky. Sky's parents are actually still alive, but they live far away from him and he hasn't had the chance to visit in years.

Four's Hyrule has very little concept of the Triforce, but the myth of the Master Sword is fairly prevalent across his time and is conflated with the myth of the Picori sword; his Hyrule is also the smallest with it being more a fief than an actual kingdom.

Even after stopping Ganondorf, tensions between tribes is still really intense in Time's era. The memory of the civil war / the Unification War is still recent and every side is still bitter about the outcome.

Twilight's era is the most similar to Warriors, with stark class differences and plenty of newly acquired land. Being from Ordon, Twilight identifies more with regular humans than Hylians and gets indignant when he's lumped with one but not the other. The humans of Ordon also worship spirits more than the goddesses, so Twilight is very culturally disconnected from other Hylians.

Legend's Hyrule is on the upswing after years of economic troubles, and is surrounded by much richer kingdoms. Magic is also the most prevalent and common in his era. It's not unusual for young men to leave Hyrule in search of riches to bring back to their families.

Hyrule's era is extremely poor, but so is the other kingdoms surrounding Hyrule. The aristocracy takes no responsibility for the lower classes, which leads to a lot of regular people not giving a shit who their princess is or what the laws are. Towns are very close communities, as being a wanderer like Hyrule is more risk than its worth.

The Great Sea is also far bigger and more populated than what is in the game. All of the myths about the sea portray it as an violent, uncaring father. There is so little fish in the world that deities are often portrayed as fish/human hybrids. There's a lot of tiny superstitions involving sailing too, such as never killing a gull out in sea or else risking the wraith of the sea god.

There's a underlining sense of fear in Wild's Hyrule that there are no other kingdoms beyond the borders of Hyrule or on the other side of the ocean. While the older generation can recall stories of foreign lands, the younger generation are more prone to believing that they are the last of humanity. Round-eared humans are unheard of in Wild's time.

--

And now, various New Hyrule facts:

While most other Hyrules have a traditional European fantasy biome, New Hyrule's biome resembles California. Trading Post's real world analogue is Canary Row in Monterey.

Hats and bonnets are essential outdoor wear; to leave your hair out is impolite at best.

Trainspotting is a common past time; people who are fans of the rail industry without being royal engineers are called rail rats. So mechanics like Jean would be a good example.

You probably noticed in STP that New Hyrule has a lot more modern trappings, such as gramophones, heated plumbing, and gas lamps; telegrams are on the way too.

New Hyrule has a significant celebrity subculture, which Spirit and other famous engineers get folded into; there are plenty of tabloids that cover Spirit sightings across New Hyrule

As New Hyrule becomes more industrialized, tensions are building between the people and industrialists, the crown and the common folk, and Hylians and Lokomo.

[the-moon-lullaby]

hi! <3 I hope you are having a nice day :D I was wondering if you could do some headcanons for episode 26 from High School Life? I always thought that episode was really cool and fun, so if you could make maybe some headcanons mainly about the picnic Candy has with the girls and Alexy could be pretty awesome :D like just general headcanons about it. Also bestie I FEEL you about wanting to write anything else than an essay for uni :")

Random headcanons about episode 26

N/A : I really liked this episode too ! I was kinda inspired (I think ?)so there'll be some headcanons about the date but also some about the picnic with Alexy & the girls (also yeah, it's refreshing to write about things I actually enjoy, it didn't happen in a while sadly, so thank you for your understanding dear <3)

So let's start with the dates with the HSL Boys :

About the date with Nathaniel, I found it funny how Candy thought it'd be a good idea to invite him on a picnic, in a park, in the middle of spring, when she knows that he's badly allergic to pollen (I just know that my boy had to make a stock of antihistamines and was suffering in silence, guess he really wanted that date)

I like to think that Nathaniel actually took the time to carefully prepare himself for the picnic. Because even if Candy didn't specified it or anything, Nath wanted to believe that it was indeed a date. So, he thought a lot about what he should wear (let's ignore the fact that he still wears the same outfit in the illustration) and he put on a nice cologne, hoping that Candy would like it

It's pretty clear that Nathaniel intended to declare himself (there's a moment where he really seems about to kiss Candy) so when they got interrupted by Thomas, he tried to hide it but he was pissed (really Iris, put a leash on your brother, some people are trying to get it here)

In the case of Armin, I liked how he freaked out at the wasps' attack and it kinda make sense since at the frequency he goes outside, he probably hadn't seen a wasp since 2007 lmao

Also this little picnic date surely did him some good because there's no way this boy doesn't have a vitamin D deficiency (Okay, I might be a little hard on Armin right now, I'll stop)

Armin brought the sandwiches and believe or not but it was pretty good. He's not a big cook but I don't think he's a bad one, he just sticks to simple things (also he mastered the art of making sandwiches because it's his favorite 2 AM snack to make when he's pulling an all-nighter)

I believe that it's during this picnic that Armin realised that he had a crush on Candy (Guys, he spent a WHOLE afternoon out in the wild just for Candy, that says a lot if you ask me)

Okay one thing about the date with Castiel : I wanted him to bring Demon to the picnic (maybe it could have been hard to manage with all the food around but come on, he's a good boy LET HIM OUT BEEMOOV)

I am also a dog person so I might be biased lol

But just picture it : Castiel and Candy enjoying their little lunch with them taking turn to feed Demon with little bites of food (adorable plus, Castiel would enjoy to see Candy playing with Demon)

Also, Castiel's change of tone when talking to his dog (if you have a pet, you know what I mean). Candy would melt (and me too)

After eating, Candy and Castiel could have take Demon for a little walk in the park and Castiel would have let Candy hold the leash as she seems really excited about it (and he would have been really happy about it. Once again, if you have a pet you know how great it feels when someone you like gets along with your pet. It's so cute to see !)

Since Demon has this bad habit to pull on the leash (as seen in episode 3 of HSL), Castiel would help out Candy by putting his hand above hers to get a hold on the leash (and also to hold her hand)

Firstly, I am convinced that Nina was hiding somewhere in the park when she saw Lysander and Candy together (Back to the time where Nina was in her Joe Goldberg era lmao)

I think Lysander was the calmest amongst the boys about the date (and luckily he was because Candy was stressed out enough for the both of them. As usual)

He might have asked Leigh advices about dates 'cause like, he's supposed to have some experience right ? (the truth is that when his brother asked him that, he was just like "well, I was just existing and then Rosa decided that I'll be her boyfriend. So just stand there and exist I guess ?" Yeah, great advice from the big bro)

When I tell you that Kentin was ecstatic when Candy invited him on a picnic, that's an euphemism (bro was internally screaming)

Really, he probably wasn't able to stand still until the D-Day (he waited for that since basically forever so understandable)

Also, just like with Castiel, I wanted him to bring Cookie (I really like dogs, sorry)

The illustration for Kentin's route is so cute

The both of them, laying in the green grass, so close to each other with the bright sun above them. (That's such a picturesque vision, I love it !)

I like to think that they reminisced together of the memories they had from before they arrived to Sweet Amoris. Kentin tends to feel insecure when talking about this period of his life. However, as they both talking he realises that there's no judgment in Candy's tone and that the moments they spent together actually means a lot to her. It would warms his heart and if it was even possible, he'd be even more fond of Candy

(I wish they talked more about it in the game because even if it gets better by the end of HSL, his route still feels a bit superficial. Like there's this idea that he had to completely transform himself and become handsome to become "interesting". I don't know if you know what I mean)

Now, about the picnic with Alexy & the girls :

Before starting, I kinda wanted to see more interactions between the characters during the picnic (but I guess that the episode would have too long then but it's okay, I'll put some here)

Kim & Capucine's conversation (might sound odd but I'll explain it)

Kim (just know that I love HSL Kim, she's such a good character) just has this protective and « I won’t take any shit » vibe (even though she’s actually a big softie as we see with her interactions with Violette and it's so cute) and everyone respects her like naturally ?

In the beginning of this episode, Capucine was insufferable. Really, this girl was trying really hard to be like Amber when she’s nothing like her (and if you take into account the fact that Amber herself is putting on a persona, you kinda get a girl trying to put one someone else’s persona thinking that it’s the way to go. Kinda sad).

(just putting it here but I liked having a character like HSL Amber in the game because she brings the drama you know ? she's also a bully but she also have some depth to her character ? I am really confused 'cause I've had some bad experiences with people like her during my school years so I am wondering : Is Amber character actually good or do I have a Stockholm's Syndrome-ish thing ???? pls help)

Let's go back to our sheep : Kim & Capucine's interaction 

So I like to think that during the picnic, Kim and Capucine got to talk a little and boom, two worlds meet : Kim doesn’t really give a shit about what people think of her and oppositely, Capucine lives by that. And I think because of it, Capucine kinda have a negative image of Kim. 

Until they get to talk. Kim is friendly towards her even if she acts like a bitch because I truly think that Kim is pretty good at reading and understanding people (she probably doesn’t even realise it herself but when you’re capable to bond with someone so reserved as Violette as well as getting along with Castiel AND Nathaniel at the same time, it says quite a lot about this ability she has)

I think this conversation they’d have on the park would make Capucine think that Kim is a pretty cool person even though they are quite different and what's the most striking difference is that Kim is truly authentic (it’s something that’s pretty rare these days so when you come across someone like that it can really makes you question a lot of things) and she might even realise that the persona she puts on everyday at school doesn’t suit her and that she’s actually not happy with it (which I believe, after her relationship with Samuel, is one of the realisations she had before trying to become a better and truer version of herself)

This one was a bit long but I think there's so many things to say about Kim's character lol

Now, Melody and Iris talking about the whole Nathaniel situation and Alexy coming from nowhere just to say something like "there's too many fishes in the sea to waste time on one that doesn't want be caught. Move on girlie"

Like 'ayoo, mind your own business boy ?' (that's Alexy, of course he's not going to do that. He just has this radar for drama)

It's either that or HE IS the drama

Anyway, Melody is a bit startled because "how do you know about that ???" when the really question is "how could anyone not know" with how she's so not subtle. And that's how Alexy would basically become a love coach for the afternoon (wtf)

However if Melody starts to talk about Candy being too close to Nath, oh boy, Alexy goes defensive mode and he won’t hear more of this nonsense (like girl it’s not Candy’s fault if Nathaniel likes her better, wake up) 

Anyway, this conversation would be pretty random and Melody wouldn't really know what to answer because I feel like she’s a pretty reserved person and on the contrary Alexy’s quite unhinged and then, there’s Iris in the middle watching the show (honestly same girl, I’d like to witness this conversation too)

Violette (my sweet girl) would try to draw the landscape but would end up practicing drawing silhouette using her friends as models. She’d be too shy to show it but I just know she’d end up showing her sketches to Kim later and she’d blush when told how good this is (pls their relationship is so lovely, I kinda ship them)

A Peggy and Rosalya’s interaction could also be interesting : they both like to know the gossips and all but the difference between them is that Rosalya would not spread rumours the way Peggy does. So I think Rosa would try to make her understand that she sometimes goes too far which is unfortunate because well, she’s cool to hang out with but if she keeps going like that, she might end up having everyone turning their back on her. 

The water fight is honestly quite fun to imagine

Despite what he says in the game, Alexy lost it (and quite significantly) 

I mean bro, you’re trying to put a fight against Kim, what did you expect ???

That's all I have for this so I hope you enjoyed reading this !

Wish you the best and see you soon !

[lovepmd]

You know what I just remembered from Explorers? The fact baby Pokémon can start to fight in dungeons and talk from the day they hatch. So, what if the Hero had the body of essentially a newly hatched Pokémon? Maybe it was a boon from whatever forces decide to call upon a human or even a side affect. The Hero (whichever era’s one) kinda has to rely on their Partner for protection because their body is known to get exhausted easily.

It takes a long time for them to have the stamina to dungeon dive. An aspect that makes them master many applications of their low level moves to a terrifying degree. They learn more utility moves (Incinerate, Will’o’Wisp, Grass Knot, False Swipe) than the heavier hitting moves in the long run. Not many take them seriously due to them having a very young face. Partner sometimes slips up by baby talking them. Rescue!Hero especially gets a bad rep because the Ninetales legend states the bad human would be “reborn” as a Pokémon.

Super!Hero barely escaped being in Budew’s class because they are very mature for their physical age. (Aka they begged Nuzleaf not to put them in the quote on quote “class for toddlers”. Super!Hero had to literally show how advanced they actually are—math wise.)

Gates!Partner thinks that their Hero was from a bird Pokémon carrying an egg and hatched mid air. Thus, leaving Hero to free fall to where the two met.

Explorers!Hero ironically has it the easiest. When they manage to convince Chatot to accept their and Partner’s team, the two tend to have duties as normal. Though they are assigned more requests from town than normal—Chatot doesn’t want such a young team “leader” venturing too often in dungeons. Wild or not.

oh my god

it really is interesting to think about that though

in pokemon, both main games and pmdverse, baby pokemon can do things right after hatching

but also I like the idea of baby!hero

though I guess that wouldn't fit since it's just the body that they're in is newly hatched but with a more mature mind (but that is similar to how it is in super depending on how old you headcanon hero to be)

poor gates!partner, the world is cruel enough as is and now a damn baby fell out of the sky, of course they'll take care of them

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 387: Congealing

Howdy, everyone, guess who had an unusually high amount of research to do for this post? Next chapter's should be up faster, between being extra short and largely Todo-centric.

Content Note: I will be talking quite a lot about the Himura inter-family marriages below. An enormous chunk of this post is going to be dedicated to dispelling some of the most frequent misconceptions in the fandom response to the Himura situation, which I don't think is anywhere near as drastic as a lot of people are making it out to be. That's not the same as saying there's nothing wrong with it at all! However, I want to be very clear on what I believe Geten is describing before I talk about what we can gather from it.

(Spoilers: A lot of people don't have the first clue what the phrase "branch family" indicates and good lord, does it ever show.)

Hit the jump.

On Geten and the Himura

O Wow, you guys.  Wow.  Okay, so, obviously, lots to cover here, and I know I’ve said before that I try to make these posts with minimal reference to Bad Takes I’m seeing out there in the wilds of the fandom, but holy shit, people, the takes are SO INCREDIBLY BAD.  I should have known better, I guess, than to expect the fandom to be remotely reasonable about a reveal that intersects with both the MLA and the Todoroki.  So, first things first:

Please, please, please, knock it off with the inbreeding jokes and the screeching panic about Rei’s only choices being an abusive arranged marriage or a cousin-marriage.  Geten specifies in nearly every translation we have that the intermarriages within the Himura clan were between distant relatives.  And I strongly, strongly suspect that the majority of people who are making banjo jokes or fretting about the deleterious effects of inbreeding on their faves have not the faintest idea what Geten is talking about when he says “branch families” and “main family.”

As an illustrative example, let’s talk in brief about the Fujiwara clan.

The most dominant clan throughout virtually all of Japan's Heian Era (794 – 1195) was the Fujiwara clan, whose whole shtick was marrying their daughters to Emperors and then relying on the practice of raising the future Emperor in his mother’s household to take advantage of filial piety traditions—which applied even to in-laws!—to secure the loyalty of the Emperor/future Emperor to his Fujiwara father/grandfather.  Even after they fell from the heights of their influence, they still monopolized powerful positions as imperial advisors and regents all the way up to the Meiji Restoration in 1868!

That’s over a thousand years of first marrying into the imperial line and then being the only family who were even eligible to be chosen as regents for child Emperors or Empresses Regnant.  They certainly didn’t achieve that by being a single family for a thousand years!  Rather, there were branch families under the clan umbrella, four of note—

—Well, actually, it was four during the Heian Era.  Once the Kamakura period rolled around the most powerful of those four further subdivided into five.  So eight families total—

—Well, wait, those were really just the most important and chief of the families.  Actually there were five more cadet branches, too.  So thirteen families total—

—But actually, those five cadet branches were subdivided even further as well.  According to Wikipedia, the total number of subfamilies in the Fujiwara clan, families that were specifically aristocrats in the Imperial court (the kuge class) or higher—is…

Uh.  Ninety-seven.

Now, I don’t know how many of those families existed concurrently, but with numbers like that, I hardly think it matters.  All those families—and they are families, not individuals—fell under the broad umbrella of the Fujiwara clan.  So, you know, if some of them intermarry, it’s not exactly on the same level as you marrying your first cousin!  Or your second.  Or your third or fourth or fifth.

Obviously I don’t think the Himura were anywhere near that big or influential, but I hope it illustrates my point: Japanese clans that have had a few hundred years to develop can be fucking enormous.  Please banish from your mind the idea that the Himura have been marrying their direct cousins this whole time.  When Geten says they created multiple branch families, and started marrying distant relatives, the plural on "branch families" and the adjective "distant" are giving us crucial, meaningful information, not just superfluous clutter.

Truthfully, I think a lot of this panic is due to the fact that most people aren’t very into genealogy and thus have no idea how quickly you can become very distant indeed from people with whom you share a common ancestor.  I mean, how many of your third cousins can you name?  For me, that answer is zero.  Heck, I can’t even name any second cousins.  The best I could do would be to tell you of their existence in broad strokes—the son of one of my mother’s cousins, whose name I don’t remember but who I know exists; the hypothetical children one of my father’s cousins might have had at some point after the last time I heard anything about him, well over twenty years ago, at which time he was still single.

Now, it’s a little easier to look down the family tree rather than across, in this case.  To wit, you almost certainly know your cousins much better than your parents’ cousins—your children and your cousins’ children will be second cousins.  That’s probably much closer feeling, right?  But put yourself in the shoes of those kids—unless you live in the same town as your cousins, and see each other pretty frequently, your children and theirs will probably meet only a handful of times before they grow up and head off to live their own lives.  After all, look back up—how well do you remember your parents’ cousins’ children?

And, again—that’s second cousins, the outer periphery of what people who study this stuff class as “close relatives.” [1]  Geten specifying distant relatives means we’re talking farther removed even than that.  Your second cousins once removed, for example, would be either your second cousins’ children (that is, your parents’ cousins’ grandchildren) or your grandparents’ cousins’ children.  Your third cousins, meanwhile, would be your grandparents’ cousins’ grandchildren.

Have you ever met family that far removed?  Have you seen pictures?  Do you even know if they exist?  How many members of your extended family do you know of, generally, perhaps because your parents brought you along on visits a few times as a child, but you’ve long since forgotten their names or their specific relation to you?

Now, in a situation like Geten is talking about, you probably would be able to positively answer some of my questions above, because you’d be mid-level ruling class; your parents would be talking about marriage to someone (hopefully) your age in a branch family.  But that doesn’t mean you would have met them.  They’d probably live in a different part of the country entirely, your common ancestor married to some outside group before the Advent of the Exceptional.  The branch families of, for example, the Tokugawa shogunate lived in four strongholds, each a hundred or more miles distant from the next.[2]  You can track descendants of Queen Victoria through royals from England, Spain, and all three of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

What all this boils down to is that, no, it really is not that strange for a widely spread clan to do a bit of intermarriage now and then to consolidate power.  People in power want power to stay in the family.  Duh.

However.

That all said, I am not saying the situation Geten describes is 100% fine and cool.  Obviously if it were totally normal and unremarkable, there’d be no point to even bringing it up, much less having Mr. Compress disparagingly comment on it!  But look at the timetable here.  The Himura began as village leaders a long, long time ago, and even after the land reforms, they still went on creating branch families, enabling them to maintain their wealth and pride.

It’s after the Advent that the marrying between the families starts.  And even this, done a handful of times and then abandoned, would not be a damning thing—as I said, those big families in power do have marriages across branches sometimes.  The real trouble is carrying out such marriages repeatedly, across many generations, within a small group.  Some research on the Habsburgs, for example, surely the most famous inbred royals in the Western hemisphere, turned this up:

From 1516 to 1700, it has been estimated that over 80% of marriages within the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty were consanguineous. In other words, they were marriages between close blood relatives. Most often, these unions took the form of marriages between first cousins, double-first cousins, and uncles/nieces.

Nowhere does Geten suggest that things with the Himura got this bad.  In fact, I would argue that the text is quite clear that the family slowly stopped intermarrying, and this is what led to their demise!  Consider the following points:

The Advent happened in modern times.  The glowing baby is delivered in what is very clearly a modern hospital; the very next panel shows a geeky dude levitating a volume of manga, which didn’t even exist in the form we know today until after WWII.  Technology stalled in the wake of the Advent, but the characters now still have cellphones and laptop computers—the Advent was modern.  My rough estimate for how long it’s been since then is a bit over 150 years.    

Because the Advent happened in modern times, the Himura family would have known about the dangers of excessive intermarriage.  This isn’t something they’ve been doing since the Stone Age and refused to change their minds about until the last twenty-five years!    

Because the Himura family would have known about the dangers of inbreeding, look at what happens: they do inter-branch marriages to “distant relatives” for about 125 years and then they stop.  Over the course of that time, the clan shrinks and wanes, for one reason that is immediately self-apparent and a few others that we can guess were probable.     The self-apparent reason is that, even though the families started out as distant relatives, the divide would get shorter with every wedding that produced children.  Thus, the pool of marriageable candidates for those children gets smaller and smaller as the families become more closely entwined.  Avenues close off, marriages become unavailable that would be illegal under Japanese law (which allows marriage between first cousins, but not between uncle and niece/aunt and nephew), or which would have too high a concern of congenital defects—which, remember, a modern family would be aware of.     We can hypothesize plenty of other reasons for the clan’s diminishment.  Once it became clear that quirks were there to stay, entire families might have broken away rather than go along with an inherently doomed endeavor.  Some marriageable candidates likely ran away or otherwise abandoned the family rather than continuing along the path the family had laid out for them.  There would probably have been otherwise acceptable candidates who became unacceptable due to developing quirks that were undesirable to the bloodline.[3]  And so on and so forth.    

Eventually, Geten says, the head family—presumably the one Rei’s from—started selling off their children to outsiders, and that was the end.  If the head family threw in the towel on preserving the bloodline, the branch families certainly weren’t going to be bound to do it anymore!  And so the remnants of the clan shattered.

So, no.  Rei’s choices were not, “Marry Enji or marry a cousin.”  Rei’s parents were looking for someone who could bring money to the family; by that point in time, I don’t think they would have let her marry within the family even if she’d wanted to!

By the same token, Dabi and Geten are not cousins—not in the way people have been using the word, at least, to mean “someone I am imagining to be as close to me as, like, my first cousin, ew.”  While the repeated intermarriage would indeed have reduced the distance quickly as the generations passed, if the common ancestor (that is, the family founder) was from, say, eight generations ago, two and a half centuries prior to the point at which the intermarriage began, and there were at least five or six branches of family at the start,[4] it would have taken more than just one or two generations before the only options available to wed were close relatives!

And, to reiterate, that’s exactly what we saw happen—the Himura kept it up for a few generations, shrinking all the while, but fragmenting for good four or five generations after the Advent.  I would guess that, while Geten would have been more closely related to any children Rei had borne via intermarriage, Dabi and Geten are third or fourth cousins at best.  The Himura were in denial about the new state of the world; they weren’t idiots that managed to forget everything history has ever demonstrated about what happens when you keep marrying off first cousins in a closed environment.

That all said, what else have we got this chapter??  Because make no mistake, the fact that I’m pushing back against reductive cousin-marriage takes in no way means that I wish to shy away from examining the darker implications here!

O I love how ambivalent about all this Geten is.  Given that Rei was married to an outsider over twenty years ago, if the branch families scattered around that time, Geten must have been very young, so he’d have been profoundly impacted by it.  This is especially apparent given the harshness of the language he uses to describe the event: the families don’t merely admit defeat and grudgingly set to integrating; they “scatter.”  The main line doesn’t just start marrying outsiders; they start “selling their children.”

This suggests incredibly bitter feelings in the family, and no wonder!  I imagine there were a lot of people, especially in the branch families or among younger members, who’d hated the clan’s insularity, and they would have left the moment they had an excuse to!  Conversely, though, there would also have been people who’d been indoctrinated into the clan’s worldview all their lives, people who’d quashed their doubts or discomfort down long ago, who would be clinging to sunk cost fallacies with all their strength because change would be terrifying to them.  Those people, I think, would be particularly likely to have complete breakdowns (or meltdowns) when the main family surrendered.

Whatever happened, it must have been quite dramatic, given the way Geten talks about Re-Destro having found him.  Counter to a couple of, just, woefully awful takes I’ve seen around, Re-Destro did not buy Geten; it doesn’t even sound like he found him via any official channel.  It was the main family members who were being “sold off,” remember; the branch families, which Geten explicitly associates himself with, were “scattered.”  It sounds, then, like Geten was basically an orphan, and not one living in any kind of facility or home.  He clearly had family, but whether he bolted on his own, was abandoned,[5] or whatever, that family’s no longer in the picture.  This despite the fact that, again, he would have been a very, very young child at the time.

On a similar note, because of that youth, it’s also probable that his view on the family tragedy is colored at least in part by whatever Re-Destro’s reaction to it was when he got Geten’s story upon taking him in.

Re-Destro, of course, is all for radical quirk acceptance, but he’s deeply entangled with issues of bloodline himself.  Although he uses some pretty flowery language to talk about his inherited blood from Destro, he also views that duty as a huge burdensome responsibility from which he is deliriously happy to be freed by Shigaraki.  So we might suppose that he himself is pretty cold on chaining children to bloodline purity politics, especially in absence of a Worthy Cause.  And rejecting the glorious future of everyone using their quirks to become who they were meant to be is the very opposite of a worthy cause!

O  Gee, I wonder what Spinner would have thought about this.  What a shame we didn’t have a three-month period where the League and the MLA were living together to explore oh wait.

O  Congratulations to everyone who ever ventured to suggest that the Todoroki microaggressions against heteromorphs might stem from Rei, with her old money, traditionalist family, rather than New Money Endeavor, who went whole scenes being mad at Hawks and never called him anything dehumanizing even in his own mind.  Guess there was something to Natsuo not bringing up his mouse-eared girlfriend in the hospital scene after all!

I’m mostly being facetious about this, but you can check here if you want my thoughts on who in the Todofam uses animal insults, who doesn’t, and some analysis as to why. I'd add two observations in light of new information:

First, Natsuo's girlfriend isn't at the shelter with him and the others, despite having a far better justification for being with him than the Masegaki kids have to be hanging around Fuyumi. It's a small absence, but noticeable in the context of the Himura being specifically described as heteromorphobic by Compress.

Second, while a lot of people say that heteromorph discrimination is a recent retcon, it's got a lot of early evidence. In that same vein, it's notable that Rei brings up bloodlines and obligation to them all the way back in Chapter 39—Shouto's Sports Festival flashback—where she reassures baby Shouto that he isn't a slave to his blood as the two of them watch All Might on TV talking about quirks being passed on from parent to child.

It's a little obscured by both Shouto's fears of coming to resemble his father and All Might's (frankly pretty contradictory) claims about what his, "I am here!" catchphrase is meant to indicate, but even back then, Rei's comfort is phrased in terms of being free from obligation to one's blood. If Horikoshi already knew what the Himuras' deal was even back then, one can easily imagine that he already knew the sorts of people the Himura were rejecting.

   

On the Todofam Reunion:

I love all the information packed into Geten and Compress scene, but I do wish it felt less arbitrary.  Indeed, it’s the second scene we’ve gotten of the incredibly specific “captured villains sit in their cells and randomly, with no apparent prompting, talk about something relevant to the Todoroki situation” scenario. But then, this whole confrontation in the Todofam is wildly arbitrary.  Which is frustrating!  The family had that great scene in the hospital where they all talked about stopping Touya together and then did absolutely nothing to actually make that happen, and it really does not reflect well on either them or this whole scene.

Consider:

Dabi is only in this location, confronting Endeavor, because of spill-over effect from other villain actions (Spinner, Kurogiri).  This was not planned in advance because the villains didn’t plan for being split up.  Likewise, Endeavor confirms this chapter that he was trying to lure Touya away from the fighting at the Villa, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have intentionally led Touya towards one of the evacuation routes if he’d known there was a stalled box in the danger zone.  (Why exactly didn't one of the people at police HQ tip him off about that?)    

There are many, many other transports Rei and the kids could have gotten onto; they’re on this specific one rather than any others by total freak coincidence, not active choice.    

The transport only stops where it does because of outside villain interference (Skeptic, and, as of next chapter, AFO’s spies).  This interference was obviously not intended to stop the transport in the specific location it did because Skeptic was already interfering with them long before Dabi was warped in, and the AFO spies ought to value their own lives too much to willingly try to get themselves killed in a blue flame inferno.  (More on them next week, because my god, does their scene in 388 annoy the hell out of me.)

So, taken all together, the Todofam’s vow in the hospital has amounted to absolutely nothing, and the fact that they’re being reunited now is a result of villain actions at best, random chance at worst.  At no point have any of them been seen to make an effort at facilitating a full family action.  While, yes, it is the case that the rest of the family are civilians, why even talk about “dealing with Touya as a family” if they’re going to do nothing of the sort?  When did “deal with Touya as a family” become “allow the planners of this combat to move us all to different locations, leaving only Shouto—who knows the least about Touya of anyone in the family!—to try and talk down the brother who resents him more than anyone?”

It's just another point where Team Hero talks big but takes no action to back that talk up.    

On Enji and Touya:

O  The, “Watch me!”/”I don’t want to watch you die!” exchange is good stuff—all that telling people to watch him, and now Enji’s on the other side of that.  Even better is that ludicrously delightful panel of the two of them with hands and flame-hands entwined, Enji’s arms wide open as Touya comes in[6] for a landing.  As ever, Dabi’s dancing imagery is on-fucking-point.  Good work getting your dad to dance with you in hell, Dabs.

O  As to Enji’s actions here, I’m torn.  On the one hand, it’s extremely telling that Endeavor leaps straight to, “Guess we’ll die together, then,” when he fails to talk Dabi down, and that’s emblematic of the flaws of the hero mentality, which is so drastically bad at dealing with nuanced situations in which they or their society have failed.

On the other hand, Enji does try to talk to Touya here and gets nowhere, not necessarily because he’s saying the wrong things (though you could argue that he is) but because Dabi’s frying his own brain.  This is uncomfortably reminiscent of Spinner’s mental decay, and, as others have said, I’m Very Not Here for the villains being so damaged mentally that they can’t even articulate their own grievances, allowing heroes to get the last word by default even though their “solutions” are wildly insufficient and ultimately in support of the demonstrably failing status quo.

Anyway, Enji is obviously taking the wrong tack here, but I can’t help but feel like the writing has put him in a no-win situation by stripping Touya’s ability to reason from him, rendering him unable to even attempt to respond to Enji’s attempts at engagement. Enji’s still ultimately to blame for this, of course, thanks to all his many, many failures to engage with Touya at literally any point prior to this, but it’s just an ongoing disappointment to me that we continue to be deprived of a proper intellectual back-and-forth about this society’s ultimate worth because, at all times, either the heroes are unwilling to engage or the villains have been rendered unable to.

O  Travel times in this series continue to be unbelievably whack.  Endeavor has gotten 800 meters from the Villa ruins? 800 meters? That's less than half a mile! AFO is most of the way to U.A. by now! All Might has driven even farther, going all the way from the police HQ, which is probably in Tokyo near Central Hospital, past Kamino and every other active battlefront, to far enough out from U.A. to intercept AFO's flight path. That's well over a hundred miles, traveled in a matter of minutes![7] But Endeavor, even on injured legs, couldn't make it one single mile?? And Dabi couldn't have caught up to him if he was moving that slow?

God save me from these arbitrary fucking travel times!    

Stray Notes:

O  The “land reforms,” not “the agricultural revolution,” jfc C.Cook. There's a pretty huge difference between a family sustaining their power through an agricultural upheaval in 1947 vs. 10,000 BC!

O  Why is it so cold in there??  Get Mr. Compress a jacket!!! Also, like, Geten doesn’t seem terribly bothered, as one might expect from an ice quirk user, but it’s a bit inconsistent with his wearing a full-length parka during his fights, seeing as the parka would suggest he is, in fact, not totally immune to sustained chills!

That being the case, why is it so cold in there?  I wouldn’t think it’s actually just that cold in the prison, since there’s obviously a cold mist drifting into Mr. C’s cell, rather than being ambient in both of them.  Does Geten just generate it?  His whole thing up to now has been that he controls ice but can’t create it from nothing, so if it is coming from him, that would be—well, not quite a retcon, but certainly a swerve.

Does he naturally generate it but do so very slowly, not in sufficient amounts to use for his preferred Ballistic Iceberg fighting style?  If it’s coming from him automatically, can he turn it off?  Presumably not, since if he could and isn’t, that would suggest he’s doing this with a goal in mind, something you have to think his jailers would have Opinions about.

So if he can’t turn it off, and this just happens in anyplace he sits long enough, is the parka to protect other people from his chill, rather than to protect him from the cold of the ice he uses?  Recall that there wasn’t ice caked on his chair during e.g. the MLA dinner scene.  What a fascinating idea, and one that speaks to the need for support items like Detnerat makes!

Well, whatever the case, I certainly hope he’s about to use his ice to decisively break them out of there!  Because haha, why wouldn’t he be able to do that if he ambiently creates cold just by sitting there and the prison can’t even be arsed to crank the temperature up??  Surely no one thinks that those restraints on his hands are sufficient to stop him from using his ice?  I haven’t forgotten that he definitively does not need to touch ice in order to control it, and it can’t be that hard to find a fire suppression sprinkler system line or the plumbing connected to whatever the toilet situation is for prisoners or something!!

(Sigh.)

O  Unexpectedly good of the heroes to let Mr. Compress keep his prosthetic.  And a bed, no less!  I wonder where Geten’s bed is.  (My god, these jail conditions are so inhuman.  Get them a damn futon, at least.)

O  That hint that Mr. C has been talking to the cops and heroes—Geten asking about the conversation—I wonder if anything will come of that?  Because it would be incredibly lame for Horikoshi to promise us we’d see Mr. C again only for this to be his final appearance, doing nothing but weighing in with disgruntled expressions on Geten’s out-of-nowhere backstory drop.  It’s a pretty shit final scene for Geten, too, dropping backstory exposition for no reason save to layer in some justification for the ice powers Dabi is about to exhibit.

--------------------- FOOTNOTES ---------------------

[1] The cut-off between close and distant relatives is made here because, once you get further out than second cousins, there’s little to no difference in the impact of shared blood on the child of two such distant relatives and that experienced by any random person in the general population.

[2] I eyeballed this on a map, so it’s not exact, but it’ll do as a ballpark.  Two of them looked a little closer together than a hundred miles, but that’s also a straight overland route from Point A to Point B, which the roads probably wouldn’t have been.  Incidentally, traveling a hundred miles in a time before cars would have taken at least five days if you weren’t a military messenger in a hurry and trading out horses at multiple stops.

[3] Given that the characters in-universe still don’t know the origin of quirks, there’s no way to completely guarantee desirable quirks, or even to perfectly guard against the dreaded heteromorphic quirks.  Eventually, the Himura would get a kid whose ice quirk is tied to the fact that they were born looking like a snowman, or they'd crop up a polar bear heteromorph or something.  And whoops, there goes another viable bloodline.

[4] A very reasonable and indeed conservative estimate. Remember that Geten says “the few remaining families” scattered after the main family gave up; the plural indicates that there were still at least two branch family holdouts even after all the waning and shrinking.  In turn, those being the remainder means there must have been more previously.  Losing only two over the course of over a century of mandated intermarriage throughout the chaos of the Advent is possibly undershooting quite a bit!          I talked about the Fujiwara earlier, but for an anime example of how ridiculous the branch family situation can get, look at Kakegurui: we’re at ten and counting branch families under the control of the main line, and if we read the kanji of that main line's name literally, there could be ninety more in the wings.

[5] I lean towards some form of abandonment because it makes the Dabi foiling tastier if Touya left his family by choice when he became Dabi, whereas Geten was left alone through no choice of his own. Abandonment also provides more meaningful context on Geten’s attachment to RD and his determination to be useful and strong for him.

[6] Crotch-first.

[7] Maybe he gave Lady Nagant a ride and that’s how she got in range to start taking potshots at Shigaraki at U.A.? It'd be nice to have any kind of explanation for that particular feat, though it would mean All Might didn't leave Tokyo until after Kurogiri was freed, cutting into his travel time even more. But heck, what's a few minutes matter when your car can drive eight hundred miles an hour, right? Christ.