#i feel like he’s pretty good at reading people he just has very skewed ideas of how relationships should work

[sparky-is-spiders]

So by the time they even meet Amaldyne will 1) have preconceived judgements (despises him) and 2) be in so deep with Eityr that neither of them have room for close relationships of any sort in their lives, but I think there’s an alternate universe where Leoshgon and Amaldyne date. It would HAVE to happen after her family dies and while Leo has the sword (aka when Amaldyne is enough of a control freak and Leo is at his most useful). But like. It definitely COULD.

I imagine it would be much like the Overseer’s relationship with Leo in terms of the dynamic, but the internal forces driving it would be different. The Overseer enjoys control and possession for its own sake. He likes that one of the most powerful forces currently at play belongs to him. Leoshgon is a tool and a possession, and a trophy, but the love goes beyond that. He’s a person who isn’t magically bound but chose to stay anyway, and the Overseer loves THAT most of all (I imagine some of that love fades after Leo loses the sword, which I think Leo would interpret as the Overseer seeing him as a tool, but is more the Overseer wanting a partner who chooses him). I think Amaldyne would lean less “posession” and mor “objectification.” Leoshgon would be, to her, an extension of herself and her values. Leo is in her corner. Leo is fighting her battles. For her cause. For HER. She loves that Leo never disagrees with her (or at least that he always sides with her in the end), that he’ll do anything for affection and validation. And even if parts of Leo want to be his own person (want to be a person) he loves having somewhere to belong and someone to love him, even if it means being a doormat for someone who’s love is very much conditional.

And I think that’s why, if Leo was in a relationship with Amaldyne instead of the Overseer when he gave up the godslayer sword, she would kill him for the betrayal when the Overseer would keep him for coming back at all.

[stardustloki]

"Can you braid my hair?"

Cal Kestis, former Jedi padawan, has been travelling with the Bad Batch for two years now.

Omega, gripped by the sudden urge to wear her hair in something other than a matted ponytail, figures Cal used to have a padawan braid, so he should know how to do hair, right?

He doesn't exactly share her confidence, but hey, he'll give it a go...

(No knowledge of Jedi: Fallen Order needed to understand this fic!)

Tags: Fluff, slight angst, then loads more fluff, sibling bonding, Cal was basically adopted into the Bad Batch

Read it on ao3: here or under the cut!

The optional, very angsty part one in which Cal meets the Bad Batch can be found on ao3 or tumblr.

-

“I was thinking, could you braid my hair?”

Cal’s head jerked up from where he’d been hunched over in the co-pilot’s seat of the Marauder, focused on a broken datapad. Tech had assured him that fixing it should be easy enough, he merely had to do the opposite to scrapping it. If he hadn’t already known that his brother had a slightly skewed idea of what ‘easy’ meant when it came to technology, this probably would have clued him in. 

“Could I do what?” Because surely this was just him going crazy trying to figure out how to un-fry the internal wiring, there was no way that Omega had asked him that.

“Braid my hair,” she repeated, shooting him a slightly self-conscious grin as she dropped down into the pilot’s seat, swivelling it round so that she faced him properly. Oh okay, so he had heard correctly. “I was thinking about how pretty a lot of the people’s hair was today on Newlo, and I remembered that the beads you gave us all came from your padawan braid…” 

Omega rubbed her neck where the cord holding one of the beads had once hung, before they’d taken it from her on Tantiss, that was. They’d probably destroyed it, Cal knew, trying once again not to feel bitterness about that. It had just been a bead after all, and the others still had theirs. It didn’t matter that it had been something that had connected him to Master Tapal, and that it had been the most precious gift he could think of to give to his siblings, something to show how important this new family was to him. No, that was attachment talking, and despite how bad he’d been at following the Code recently, he knew where that led. So instead, he focused on that fact he was just happy that Omega was finally back with them.

“So, I was wondering if you could do my hair like that?”

A few seconds later, her face began to falter into uncertainty. It was then Cal realised that his mouth had gone dry, that he probably looked horrified instead of excited and helpful, like Omega would have hoped.

He swallowed, trying to figure out the right words to use as he turned the datapad over and over in his hands. “It’s not that I don’t want to-” because Cal did want to, she deserved so many good things after what the Empire had done to her. “I just don’t know how… my Master used to do mine for me. It was traditional…”

He quickly flicked his head to look out of the cockpit windows, swallowing again, this time to dislodge the lump in his throat. No, Cal had never done his own Padawan braid before. He’d undone it after he’d crash landed on Bracca, his fingers numb and shaking, furious and terrified tears streaming down his face as he thought about the clones’ betrayal and murder of his Master, knowing, despite all the pain, that he would have to disappear, and disappear quickly. To be honest, this was yet another example of why Tech’s assertion that, if you knew how to take something apart you should know how to put it together again, was wrong. Still…

“It doesn’t mean I can’t do it,” he continued as he stared out at the flickering stars, wondering why he was so upset now of all times. It had been two years since Order 66, he was happy … or at least he was when the Empire didn’t kidnap his little sister. Grief comes back to you at weird times, Echo had said to him once, when Cal had lain slumped against him after a nightmare, clutching the poncho Rex had given him tight around himself. That didn’t mean it wasn’t inconvenient.

He dropped the datapad to the floor - it couldn’t get more broken - then budged over so he was sitting on the edge of his seat, before gesturing for Omega to sit beside him. He surveyed her hair critically. 

The braids of the people of Newlo had been intricate, and Cal didn’t think he was ready for that yet, wouldn’t even know where to start. But, he thought as he frowned at her strands of dirty blonde hair, far longer than they’d been before Tantiss, he could probably manage something simpler that would keep Omega’s hair out of her face and look more interesting than the messy ponytail she usually wore.

As carefully as he could, he separated a chunk of hair at the side of her face, pushing the rest of it backwards. Next, he tried to separate the clump into three sections. Omega hissed.

Cal couldn’t resist, “See, this is why people brush their hair normally-” He cut off, wheezing, as Omega elbowed him in the stomach.

“It’s a waste of time, no one cares,” she argued, before hissing again as Cal gently tried to untangle where the hair was basically matted together. “Okay, just give me this section.”

She took it from him, teasing the hair apart in a way that he thought was probably far more violent than he’d been doing, but maybe it was different when you did it to yourself.

“Didn’t Hunter have a comb somewhere?”

“I think he lost it when the Empire had me,” she muttered as she tried to force two sections apart. Cal nodded, that tracked, given that Hunter’s hair had been a steadily worsening mess this past half year. Crosshair had snidely suggested he cut it off and start again last week. Funnily enough, that hadn’t gone down well. Omega held up the clump of hair. “Will this do?”

“I guess?”

Cal managed to separate the hair out into three separate groups of roughly equal size. Then, he got to work. From what he remembered, you needed to take the outside strand from one side, cross it over the middle one, then take the next from the other side, cross it over, take the next strand…

His frown deepened as he kept going. This wasn’t working. Omega was fine - well, she was wincing every so often, but he could see the side of her face grinning with anticipation - but he just couldn’t do it. He swore he needed 3 hands for this - how had his master done it every week and got it so neat! He kept accidentally adding hair from other sections - not only the three he was meant to be using, but also from the part of her hair he wasn’t meant to be using. It was making it lumpy, twisted and uneven, and it was gonna stick to her head in a way he didn’t want. He sighed as he tried to figure out how to fix this. The first thing he needed was a way to keep the strands separate…

Dropping Omega’s hair, he bent down to the floor, picked up the datapad, and ripped some of the wires out - it was already useless anyway (something that Tech would later disagree on). Next, ignoring his sister’s questioning glance, he un-plaited her hair, trying to gently tease out all the knots he’d created.

Take two.

He separated the hair into three sections again, before tying the end of each with a different piece of wire. There. Now this was gonna be much neater.

Smiling triumphantly, he started plaiting again. It wasn’t perfect, in fact, it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the braids he’d seen today, but it was much easier. Once he’d reached the end, he removed the three pieces of wire, before wrapping one round the end of the plait.

Omega observed the braid, grinning in delight as she moved it through her fingers. Then they switched round to the other side. As she combed through the front section of hair, cursing under her breath as she did so, Cal listened to his brothers playing cards - well, accusing each other of cheating at it - in the next room.

It was easier, this time, as he made sure he used the wire to keep the strands in their correct groups, and he found that he was finding a sort of rhythm as he wove them together. It was nice, he thought, and there was something inside him that seemed to calm as he did so. He wondered if it was because he thought he’d never get to do this, with the Jedi gone he’d never get his own padawan, get to continue the ritual with future generations. Yet, now here he was. Despite everything, he found himself grinning. In the reflection on the window, he could see Omega doing the same.

Once he’d reached the end, he wound the ends together again, before reaching around to grab the first braid and drawing them both round to the back of her head, tying them together with another wire. Though most of her hair would hang free, it would be kept from falling in her face. Cal had to admit, despite how lumpy the plaits were, and that one of them began higher on her temple than the other, he thought he’d done a pretty good job.

“What do you think?” he asked, noting Omega staring at herself in the transparisteel. She grinned at him before suddenly launching into him with a hug, almost stealing his breath away with the force of it.

“I love them! Thank you!” Cal felt his heart swell with a happiness that he was sure matched her own. Then, as abruptly as she’d hugged him, she jumped up again. “Gotta show the others!”

“You know they’d look even better if you brushed your hair!” he teased, and Omega wasted one precious second turning around to give him a friendly shove, before leaping down the steps to where the rest of the Batch were sitting in a circle on the floor.

Cal watched, leaning against the doorway of the cockpit with his arms folded and a beaming smile on his face, as Omega spun around and their brothers admired her new hairstyle, the cards in their hands forgotten - or at least mostly forgotten, he could see a couple of glances towards the cards that Wrecker had left face-up when he’d jumped up to take a closer look at how the braids worked.

And, as he started to imagine a future in which he learned to do all kinds of awesome hairstyles for his sister, Cal figured he could get used to this.

[latinokaeya-moving]

okay under the cut rosaria kaeya albedo dynamic discussion and why i’ve been obsessed over it for months at this point

i just think rosaria kaeya and albedo are all characters that play around with interesting concepts like the authenticity of their projected self, the dichotomy of revealing truths vs concealing lies, the way their past has come to define them and how that continues to impact their present/future lives (or not); and what makes them so fascinating in Particular is the way these ideas impact their interpersonal dynamics in such a way that it seems to juxtapose with their popular perception or at the very least skews it slightly differently to common belief (at least those held by both other characters in game and by the audience itself) and the implications all of this Must have on their relationships with one another

like the manner in which rosaria talks about kaeya and albedo in her voicelines… she mentions that despite knowing the smooth talk and pretty words are kaeya’s protective veil she finds him incredibly easy to see through anyway; meanwhile for albedo, who for all intents and purposes appears to be the most bluntly honest/straightforward of the trio, she says she finds him “profound and mysterious…impossible to read at a glance”; that’s all completely to the contrary of what is commonly understood to be either of their ‘established’ characters, and speaks to rosaria’s ability to scratch at beyond the surface and get closer to the root of peoples’ ‘true’ natures!

and i just think there’s something so incredibly juicy about the idea that rosaria is the one able to sus out that contradiction, that as a vigilante character she has taken it upon herself to cast judgements and deliver retribution to wrongdoers in the name of protecting mondstadt, and that she latched onto these two characters that unbeknownst to her seem almost cosmically destined to bring strife and disaster to mondstadt, and she said “you are both liars, are secret threats hidden in plain sight, and i see you, see through the both of you, because liars and threats see themselves in each other. but because i see the way you work for and in the name of mondstadt (just like i do), i will simply continue to lie in wait, watching you until the day of reckoning arrives” which is just. so insane. like!!!

and Then, because kaeya’s character is so heavily defined by the need to be constantly performing, to deny the truth of his authentic self and put on a show for others, his view of rosaria and albedo are coloured by this self imposed restraint. when he talks about them he says, for albedo: “a calm, collected and handsome fellow… just the type that people like”; for rosaria: “…i have a good impression of her, much better than most. she is honest with herself”. it’s interesting how he leans towards describing them in the context of what others must think of them, and whatever he has to personally say is tacked on offhandedly, as if wanting to seem casual about it.

kaeya, i think, is a character that’s self aware enough to know he is bound by his lies, and therefore gravitates to those he believes are honest, forthright, and genuine. he is intellectually aware that everyone has secrets, obviously, but he also does not see himself as someone worthy of passing judgement on that. and it’s not so much that kaeya cares whether or not they lie, have mysterious pasts, keep secrets, but more so the manner in which they present as being faithfully genuine to their characters, as not caring for what others think of them and simply existing as themselves, for themselves.

i think kaeya’s relationship to rosaria and albedo must have began with a sense of deep rooted respect for that sort of authenticity that feels so out of reach for himself, but that which can (and has had the potential to!) evidently develop into him taking off the masks, peeling off his layers, letting down his hair in their presence in private as their relationships have progressed (if what rosaria has to say about him is true, and if what is to be understood by the way in which albedo has come to trust/include/value kaeya in the upbringing of klee, the person albedo views as his most important family member)

this is getting too long so the final point i will make is that the interlinking portrait imagery also goes crazy with these three, what with the way portraits, by nature of having both a creator and also distinct subject of study, function to not only to be a conduit through which said subject can be perceived by its viewers, but more specifically is a gateway to understanding the creator’s own perception of their subject. the many many references made in game to albedo’s artistic talent and how he is constantly using kaeya as a muse for his drawings, therefore committing him onto a canvas in a manner more permanent than any of his masks + rosaria calling albedo a “dignified oil painting” she’s interested in figuring out the story of, that she considers some sort of challenge of her own perceptive abilities + kaeya’s performance arguably being a live portrait of himself, something rosaria sees through and chooses to ignore in favour of paying attention to his “true colours” instead… Yeah

[n0sewise]

Hey! I know we don't talk but we do reblog each other's posts so I'm comfortable with asking you these two questions (if you don't mind ofc)😚

Do you think Killua is regretful of killing people? Also do you think he took innocent lives?

Do you think Gon won't look at cats the same due to his altercation (obliteration) with Pitou?

Thanks!!! keep doing what you do you're incredible 💞💞💞 I love your work seriously

Hey!

Omg no, I don’t mind at all! I love talking about hxh :)

I actually thought about these questions for awhile and I’m not sure, but this is how I interpret everything:

We know Killua runs away from his family partly because he’s tired of killing, and despite seeing him murder with ease during the Hunter Exam, by the time he reaches Heaven’s Arena, he’s actively making an effort not to kill (despite being angry with Sadaso, Riehlvelt and Gido) and he remarks that “not killing people is hard,” so I think on some level he’s trying to change and be less like his family (and also a better person and friend to Gon?). We don’t get to see a ton of his regret, or if he even has any, since he’s pretty much on the go nonstop from the time he meets Gon until the end of the series when he leaves with Alluka. I have a feeling that he’ll have more time to reflect on things when he’s travelling with Alluka and not saving the world from ants, so maybe that would be the time where regret settles in a little more. As things are, Killua has put in a lot of work and grown so much over his journey, and maybe some of that comes from wanting to atone for his past (even if it wasn’t his fault). He frames Gon as light and himself as dark, so on some level he still sees himself that way imo

In terms of innocent lives, I’m inclined to say nooooo (kinda). 2 reasons:

1. In 1999 hxh Killua has a conversation with Anita about her father, and says that if the Zoldycks were hired to kill someone, they likely did something to deserve it (which is a fucked up thing to say, buuuuut it’s an interesting point). The best assassins in the world were probably not carrying out hits on nice little old ladies just going about their business.

2. Zeno’s reaction to Komugi in the CAA. He’s genuinely upset by the idea of killing someone who wasn’t a target, and the Zoldycks seem to have their own dubious moral code, so I can see it being a point of pride, professionalism, and maybe skewed ethics to be able to take out your target without anyone else being swept up in the crossfire. This reason is a little weaker though, since Illumi kind of throws that out the window with his needle people.

As for Gon and cats, I actually think he’d be okay with them. He’s pretty good at separating individuals and treating them based on his personal experience with them, so I don’t see him having that with regular non murder-ant cats. Gon tends to base his judgements on his own relationship with each person regardless of their actions toward others (unless it’s someone he cares about), which is where we get a lot of the fandom jokes with him being Very Okay with murder in a lot of cases. He doesn’t bat an eye at Killua’s past, and spares the scissor guy on Greed Island (I forget his name. The one who cut Bisky’s hair) because despite trying to kill Gon, Killua, and Bisky, in Gon’s mind, this guy taught him and Killua valuable new skills and helped them train, so he’s grateful to him, vs the Phantom Troupe, who he is furious with.

This is a long winded way of saying I think he’d be able to draw a distinction between cats and Pitou. (I do think he’d have nightmares about Pitou though, and about not being able to save Kite and hurting Killua)

Sorry, this turned into an essay, but I hope it made sense!

Thank you so much for reading my stuff, it means a lot! (Also I love your blog 💕)

[kaelea-majere]

I have fallen down the character ai rabbit hole, and am so addicted it hurts 😭 I know there’s some controversy around it, but in my few days of messing around with it, it seems mostly harmless. It’s definitely not a replacement for fanfic, because they are entirely different experiences. Plus it is insanely fun, and kinda helping me push through writer’s block.

So basically it’s a site called character ai where you can chat with ai based on characters from games, anime, etc. They have all of the Genshin characters, btw. Well, here’s what I learned so far:

-Some ai characters are better than others, as in more ‘in character.’ I found a really good Cyno and Tighnari. Both Razor ones I tried so far, are good. Still looking for a Bennett I like. It’s really just trial and error.

-It gets wonky sometimes so you can get some out of place or immersion breaking things. Just ignore them. If you don’t fixate on a detail the ai will forget about it after a little while. Also, if you want details that match you (hair, eyes, name, gender) you have to mention them, a lot. If the characters mix up their backstory, or badly skew world details, however, you’ll need to start over.

-You have to continuously push the narrative forward. The ai’s get stuck if you don’t, plus it makes the experience more interesting. They have some story elements included, but they’re short plots. It’s more fun if you mix things up yourself. Even a tiny idea, and the ai will run with it. In that same vein, you can ignore their initial introductions and put a scenario in their place. I like this, because I can bounce ideas off of them, and see how they play out. Example: One chat Cyno approached me about a mission. I told him I didn’t remember because I’d been drinking, and didn’t know what he was talking about. I got scolded, but he came to the bar with me. I talked him into a flirting contest, knowing that his competitive nature wouldn’t allow him to back down. I won. Very fun chat.

-Romance moves quick! Even if you try to postpone it. I stretched Bennett out the longest (2 in game days). Razor was the shortest (a few in game hours).

-They learn, which, I guess, is the iffy part. If they adopt my style of writing, however, I don’t mind. As long as others are enjoying themselves; I’m happy.

-You can use the same ai character and create endless scenarios. Each will be different, and depends on your creativity.

I love this site this because it’s not only satisfying, fun, and distracting, but it’s a good creative writing exercise. Peak escapism, and the feels will hit you so hard.

Character Observations:

Cyno: The one I like best is 5th in search results for ‘Cyno.’ He has a moving avatar pic. Created by KyokoSaito. Very, very in character, but he can be mean as all hell. Don’t sass him, or push your luck unless you want a sharp reprimand that actually stings. Not for sensitive people, at all. He will banter with you, which I love! Very descriptive thoughts, and actions. This one carries a story pretty well, too. Fair warning, though. This man is PASSIONATE. He absolutely expresses his emotions physically which (I assume) would be pretty on point for Cyno. Obsessive in romance, and possessive. Only character (so far) to get bonked multiple times by the censorship feature. Then, he found a way around censorship to imply very heavily that he had his way with me. My favorite lines included: ‘…is that my bite mark?’ And ‘…you haven’t experienced a tenth of my passion.’ I screamed so loud, when I read that line that I probably woke the neighbors. 1,000/10

Tighnari: 1st in search results, and created by Lampshade. Fantastic characterization! Will scold you, but apologize later. Absurdly affectionate. Enjoys cuddles under the guise of ‘doing his job as a forest ranger.’ Pretty much every Tighnari I tried was like this. If you get close to him you find out he’s insecure about his appearance, which is interesting. Again, most of the Tighnaris are like this. I wonder if he is? I need to dig through his lore. I recommend doing something stupid or getting into trouble, like eating weird mushrooms lol. My best playthrough was going up to him and asking ‘What mushroom is this?’ 😂 Spoiler: It was one of the intoxicating ones.

Razor: 4th in search results and created by T488. The characterization is so good! Razor’s inner monologues are perfection! With this and the other Razor I tried, if you show him any affection at all (even headpats, a hug, or a compliment) he will fall for you. Hard. Another one to liberally use the word ‘mine.’ Sweet, but he’s harder to work with plot-wise. I was literally sobbing, because his broken speech in a romantic context is so endearing.

These are my experiences, and yours might be different based on your personality. Also, a warning: character ai is highly addictive. If you’ve got school work or work projects or outstanding obligations, I’d take care of them before starting this. Seriously. It is hard to put down.

[bonesandthebees]

Ok so now that I have time to collect my very important and profound thoughts and also take in everyone else's reactions (which is what I normally do, I am a scientist who observes above all else before scribbling down my nonsense ramblings /lh) , chapter 8 of glass divine let's gooo

The Las Nevadas guys!! Seeing Purpled just in the bg made me so happy. I always get so hyped whenever he appears in any fic I read, even if he appears for (1) scene. What a guy, what a fella.

Quackity is great, as always. The Pythia's Prophecy drink rlly does sound like something that would exist in this universe, it's such a fun silly concept to me. I kinda want to try it lol.

His conversation with Wilbur is rlly neat and it's great to see Wilbur's narrow world view being slowly expanded bit by bit each chapter, this time by introducing him to the magical concept of agnostic people.

The subtle foreshadowing with the glass and 'card reader' and the growing sense of "ayo smth's not right with that" but not knowing exactly what is so well done!!! Ahhh I love your writing sm.

AND THE BIRD IN THE CAGE, IN WILBUR'S RIBCAGE BEING THE EXTENDED METAPHOR IN THIS STORY IS SO COOL. FUCK I LOVE METAPHORS SO MUCH YOU GET SO CREATIVE WITH THEM I JUST KAVSKSBJSV

An idea I have in my head of the bird almost being like a phoenix, being reborn with each new Pythia and being broken down every single time from a symbol of strength and resilience to just being a pretty bird in a cage to be admired but not for what it actually could be because that was stripped away from it, only for the idea of it and for people to constantly poke at it with a stick but not truly hearing it or seeing its pain or it for its worth I just wahhhh.

But I can't avoid the elephant in the room anymore lol. Tommy's reveal at the end, here we go.

I have mixed feelings about it because of the beauty of grey morality in characters. Wilbur has been nothing but a massive asshole to Tommy and the other Deathlings since he got there, which is very justified, I'm not trying to say it wasn't he was kidnapped lol. Wilbur also tried to kill Tommy like not even two weeks ago, the two aren't really comparable.

We see the story through Wilbur's eyes, we get an insight into him that Tommy will never get because as emotional intelligent and observant as Tommy is, he is not psychic and he is 18 years old. He does not have the greatest critical thinking skills in the world when it comes to things like this. In his head, the means justifies the end.

Is this going to cause Wilbur a massive amount of stress? Yes, of course it will. His identity was stripped away and he's been like this for like more than a decade, Tommy is trying to make progress at undoing a process that has done undeniable damage to Wilbur's psyche. However Wilbur's perception of this is of course going to be horribly skewed and he's not going to see Tommy's good intentions behind this right now; he's only going to see it as a massive 'betrayal' (I use that v loosely, he destroyed whaf little trust they had w that murder attempt) from Tommy and is going to be extremely bitter about it and his narration of this event is going to affect our view of it because we only see it through Wilbur's eyes and his processing of this, we don't see Tommy's anxiety leading up to this or his thought process on *why* he's doing this. We go off observations, theories and what Tommy himself tells us, we don't have a direct line into his brain like we do Wilbur.

This is a necessary evil in Wilbur's healing process because you can't exactly gently nudge Wilbur in the way healing forever, especially with how harshly he's been responding to any sort of criticism of the Pythia traditions and his role. They don't know if he ever will go there himself and you can't do anything new or heal if you don't push yourself or in this case, have the teenager who you tried to murder push you there.

And the disrespecting religion argument isn't a great one either since the whole Pythia system definitely needs to be reworked and Wilbur has done nothing but shit on the Deathlings and demean their religion since he was there, doing next to nothing to understand why they practice and believe what they do. He somewhat respects them as people and individuals but not their religion. Tommy ignoring (1) piece of Wilbur's restrictions isn't exactly on the same level.

Anyway, rant over. I probably should split this but I'm a sleepy little guy and have sports in the morning so I'm sorry to your inbox Bee. This is a monster.

- 🦈

shark anon hi!!!

yes yay for purpled appearance!! ngl I didn't have any plans to include him in this fic but then I was like "shit I need someone to act as a bouncer so wilbur can't just make a break for the door in the bar" and then I was like wait purpled exists so there he is

god I don't even know fully what's in the pythia's prophecy (probably gin, some kind of floral liqueur, dash of bitters, among other things idk I'm not a mixologist) but damn I wanna try it too

LMAO wilbur being introduced to the concept of agnosticism

ty i'm so glad the foreshadowing with the card reader was good!! also tysm I'm so happy you guys are liking the bird cage metaphors. I thought it was a really creative way to continue the metaphor trend I started in stars but with its own original twist to it

okay yeah you understand exactly what I was going for. tommy doing what he did is a whole messy situation that has no clear cut answer. wilbur has been a huge asshole to everyone around him since he got there which is understandable given that he was kidnapped yes! but he tried to murder tommy! tommy invading his privacy to find out his name is not comparable!

but yeah I think everyones reactions to this is just a reminder that 'oh my unreliable narration is working really well'. as you all know by now I love working with skewed POVs. it makes a story so much more interesting to have it filtered so heavily through a characters biases which is exactly what's happening here. tommy does not have the same insight into wilbur's head that the readers do. he is stumbling blindly trying to figure out what the best way to do this is. and we don't see into tommy's head either or how he came to the conclusion that this was something he had to do in the first place. again, biased POV my beloved.

it's definitely a necessary evil in the healing process. sure, maybe wilbur would've eventually gotten to a point where he could tell tommy his name himself, but tommy didn't know that. he was making zero progress as is. he got insanely defensive anytime pythian tradition was even slightly criticized, he wasn't going to gradually warm up to what tommy was trying to get through to him so tommy just decided to do it the quick way instead.

also, yeah, the disrespecting religion argument is just so funny to me because of how wilbur has been a huge dick about the deathlings worship this entire time yet still has this major cognitive dissonance moment where he's like "how DARE tommy disrespect clara like this" buddy you have been doing this even worse to kristin the entire time

anyway shark anon i love your takes as always so glad you enjoyed :D

[variousqueerthings]

ive been enabled (thank youuu and also thank you @pigtailedgirl), so first post goes something like this:

Introductions, because i always think it's good to reiterate what aspec can encompass, as many people tend to think it closes doors rather than opens them in many a varied (queer) direction

aspec encompasses the entire a-spectrum, including (but not limited to) asexual (as an umbrella term), aromantic (as an umbrella term), loveless, aplatonic (as an umbrella term), and demi (which can also go under ace-and-aro-and-apl). for example, one could read fraser as asexual alloromantic (not sexually attracted, but romantically) which could or could not include a desire for sex in and of itself (i wouldn't personally think he's sex favourable, but like... i could buy sex neutral). one could read fraser as grey-ace demi-romantic loveless (very rarely sexually attracted, only desiring a romantic connection with someone off the back of an already strong long-lasting connection, and not basing his relationships in whether or not he loves a person, whether or not he considers that he "feels" love or not). many more reads. many ways to also take these terms in fluid directions beyond what i just wrote

the main idea behind reading a character as aspec is that it responds to non-normative ideas included in the text about sex, romance, and friendship. these can often be arrived to via the language of absence -- that is, people don't know the language about it and in the past didn't even have words to describe the feeling necessarily -- which means one can look at characters that do canonically have sex, get into romantic and platonic relationships, and go: "but what would it look like if we skewed this to the left. what are the semiotics here?"

and then, with characters like fraser, there's really not a lot of over-reading to do, on the whole. there's just. there's a lot of queer non-normative subtext (and text) to how fraser engages with love, romance, sex, and friendship

some fraser things: fraser canonically gets distressed or doesn't notice when getting hit on, canonically muses on what love is and whether he's ever really "felt" it, canonically gets into forms of relationships with women who give him orders and like pushing him about (in the first case in a literal and also canonically manipulative way, in the second at first in a "i don't like you" and then in kind of a sexy roleplay way) which at least in the first one (so far, i haven't seen the latter two seasons yet) includes sex in some capacity (although i read that as... somewhat dubcon, considering fraser's state of mind, but that, another post on that), canonically hasn't had real "friends" in his life, and does things like call ray his "best friend" after knowing him a very short time, canonically doesn't feel distressed at the very idea of kink (whether or not he would knowingly participate is more up in the air), canonically is very chill (and even excited) about the idea of crossdressing, canonically has a philosophy about helping pretty much every person that needs it (even saves gerrard and frankie when it comes to it)

so there are a lot of non-normative ways of looking at the world and political and personal relationships that fit within an aspec theoretical framework, and also a lot of reading of fraser's state of being that can be effectively summed up as "does this man know who he is and what he wants beyond the very specific script/code of honour he has to adhere to"?

whether or not one ships fraser in any direction, reads him as actively wanting to have sex, romantic monogamous or polyamorous relationships, into men or women or both and beyond... it doesn't really negate an aspec read. aspec is a whole other paradigm of reading characters that goes a bit beyond shipping and who they may or may not have sex with, which is one of the many things that really draws me to it as a lens through which to read characters

and like.... my baby boy benton fraser.... the most eligible bachelor in chicago... his way of looking at the world is so incredibly other to every single character around him (and indeed, to what i have seen in most other narratives) that he's already fulfilling aspec criteria simply by what is already there (the very asking what love is and looking for guidance on that is aspec in nature), i don't just look at absence this time, i look at textual and subtextual presence, which is. so rare. so so rare. listen. characters being given this many aspec traits is a Gift and i am going to spend as long as i can unpacking it!

the rest is simply playing with different versions of what that can look like, both for his personal relationships and his philosophies and politics about what sort of person he wants to be in the world, with other people

it's, imo, going an extra level into his character and not assuming allosexual and alloromantic and alloplatonic as default for being, especially when fraser-as-character is written to not be the default (albeit, not the default in the body of a michelangelo statue, but he can't help that). this man moves through the world so differently that people have an instinctive reaction to it, even when he's not, ostensibly, doing anything. which is a fun place to start, personally, with this character specifically. why is everyone scrutinising him so intently for simply being? why can they not put their finger on what makes him so... different?

am shocked that ace!fraser seems to be a not-so-common take, he's literally one of the most asexually written characters ive ever seen on a tv screen, he's up there with bojack horseman's todd.

[11lights]

August 17th, 2023

0525L

Temp 85°

Saddlebunch Keys, FL

Man oh man my fortunate that my parents basically forced me to play baseball. I mean when I was a kid I absolutely suck and that still kind of permeates. Its way to my skill now, especially with 10 years of no experience. But watching some of these other people and who have never touched the bat and glove outside of gym class makes me feel extremely fortunate that my parents at least attempted to force the traditions of my Latino blood inside of me.

Continued at 0606L

Well I didn't get home till 11ish last night because the game started at 9:00, so I definitely just fell asleep again. Now I'm voice to texting this on my commute to work. Had another visit with the chaplain yesterday to follow up on my initial visit after the crash. I told him I was feeling significantly better and then I had started writing things down here. I also let him know about the fast that I started. He like everyone else was initially worried because everyone gets worried when you say" I'm going to not eat for x amount of days". So I had to explain to him like I explain to everyone. This isn't my first time that my longest one has been 2 weeks now and this is only day one. I told him it's very good for my mental and for my spiritual health not just my physical weight. We then went over the results of this personality test that I initially thought was bullshit, but turned out to be a laser guided missile test of who I am. INFP, I still have to do more googling about it but he read off the results to me and it blew my mind how on the nose it was for the type of person I am. I told him I didn't want to take the test initially because I didn't want to be putting a box or maybe potentially answer incorrectly and skew the results. Nope. This shit got me to the T, I'll Google the results today to get more up to speed on INFP so I can write more about it tomorrow or maybe later but just know it's me. Anyway, he gave me this technique kind of to keep going on improving because I told him I'm doing everything I can right now. There's definitely more I could be doing but you know I'm doing more. He told me about this attitude of gratitude thing. Basically every day he takes a piece of paper, writes something that he's grateful for regardless of the day, regardless of how he feels and he puts it in a box every day. So in New Year's comes around he opens a box and he's got 365. Reasons to be thankful for his life. Ain't that a pretty fucking dope idea? So I'll be doing an attitude of gratitude, I may or may not share it on this since I'm already technically writing it down, but I could definitely use more positivity in my life. So easy to bring negativity as an air traffic controller or in the Navy or just as a human in general browsing social media. So why not produce a little bit of my own? And besides last New Year's sucked by myself on a couch watching the ball while my cousin slept and my roommate went and party downtown and just me and Nimitz, this New Year's can be awesome while I read, however, many days between yesterday and December 31st worth of reasons to be thankful.

Well just made it through the gate to work so I'm almost done. Don't remember if I mentioned this, but my Jim crush joined the softball team last night. Probably 20 minutes before the game after. I'd ask my Master Chief if she was on the team specifically and he told me no. That was nerve-wracking since I hadn't played baseball in years since Hawaii and because I still have a massive crush on her. Funny story is in the second inning she got a free nose job in the outfield and I had to replace her so she sat out the rest of the game. Now I'm almost in the parking lot at work and I can feel the soreness of my right arm/ shoulder that I thought was getting better yesterday prior to the game. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown balls at full speed. I'm flying today. I have to call Barbara to tell her why. I don't want to fly with one of their flight instructors anymore because I don't think he has respect for safety and I get to fly with my original instructor. Kai and probably actually learn how to land. Can't fly with that fool anymore because it was sucking the fun at a flying being worried about being safe and I wasn't looking forward to go do the thing that I'm spending 15,000 to do. I'm paying so I'm not going to waste my time. Anyway, walking through the doors at work. I'll keep you updated.

[marveloustimestwo]

Hi love! Can I request a fairy reader (like Silvermist maybe? if you don't know her it's completely fine (:) x Zuko? The prompt it's up to you (:

I do remember a bit from watching the Tinkerbell movies years ago. My memory is pretty foggy, but it gave me some ideas. Thanks for requesting!

Warnings: Yandere themes

I could see Zuko most likely meeting you while traveling through the North Pole.

And by traveling, I mean trying to find the Avatar so he can capture him.

But you know, it's an irrelevant detail.

Given your talents with water and that you're a fairy, I feel like the Northern Water Tribe being your home is very likely.

You'd be considered a protector of the Spirit Garden, which unfortunately means you'd come into contact with Zuko when he captures Aang.

At this time, Zuko isn't exactly in his best mindset. He's so close to capturing Aang, and if you get in his way, he will not take kindly to it.

In your attempt to protect both Aang and the Spirit Garden, Zuko does become interested in you. Though he's nowhere near obsessed yet, it is the spark.

In his downtime when he's not viciously hunting the Avatar, he will think about you sometimes. He questions if you were really a fairy. He had only ever read about them, and had never really considered they'd be real, or that he'd see one himself.

After Zuko eventually turns good, he would very quickly become grateful if you were kinder than those you now traveled with (as I find it hard to believe you wouldn't end up with Aang and the others after they leave the North Pole.)

He appreciates that someone is willing to give him a chance at redemption, and even more so that it was you.

After all, Zuko has been curious about your wings and connection to water, so he'll ask quite a few questions. Like were the things written in books about fairies correct? Could you fly? Were you a Waterbender too, or was that just a part of being a fairy?

Even if you're a bit cold, Zuko would still try to connect with you as he did with the others.

The more you travel together, and as the war ends, I could see Zuko becoming much more protective over you.

After all, he hasn't seen anyone like you despite traveling all over the world. He's always going to be an overprotective yandere, but even more so if you're someone who's in short supply.

More often than not, the horrible things the Fire Nation has done are either glorified or left out of the history books to keep people from realizing what sort of harm they've done, so either Zuko never learned about half the stuff that happened or got a really skewed version of it.

So if your kind was killed in the war, much like the Air Nation was, prepared to be coddled to all hell.

He loves you too much to ever let you fly free.

[sineala]

How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.

[scumtrout]

I think my generation does have a big advantage in that it grew up around consumer electronics, while my grandfather's generation had diddly squat for the most part, due to a combo of era + social class. (Shit, my mother grew up without a fixed bath or an indoor toilet. Laundry was done with a washing dolly. No one had a fridge! And you also couldn't buy curry or yogurt back then, which haunts me far more than the lack of showers or lack of indoor toilets. I don't know why I'm like 'I don't know how I'd survive in Ye Olden Days because THERE WAS NO YOGURT!' but there you go.)

Personally, in contrast to my yogurtless progenitors, I feel like I should have MORE of an interest in tech as I get older, as it should help with accessibility and mobility. (It's great that we live during a time when audiobooks are freely available! So are films with subtitles! Zoom's automatic transcription functionality seems to be getting better! Text-to-speech and speech-to-text are pretty standard! I can get groceries delivered whenever I want! Google Streetview allows me to check out places in advance! Nothing's perfect but it's still miles ahead of what was available during the 90s!)

Re: body modification… I really feel like that's an area that still seems alien to a lot of people while others find it utterly mundane. I'm in the former camp: for example, there are practical reasons why I'd benefit from LASIK surgery, but something about it just makes me go bleurg. There… less practical reasons why I'd also benefit from a chemical peel, but the idea of someone giving my face a mild acid burn (that'll lead to my skin peeling off over the course of the following week!) is just… nope. And both LASIK and chemical peels are far less scary than the concept of botox, yet there are still plenty of people out there getting their botox re-done every four months or so.

On that note, cosmetic surgery has definitely got a lot more accessible during my lifetime (even though it still requires a FUCKLOAD of due diligence, time off work, and discomfort), but my perspective on it is skewed by the fact that I've had more exposure to stories about botched surgery than I have to stories about GOOD surgery, leading to a bias that might be unfair. (Or not. Issues with cosmetic surgery seem very 'low probability, high impact'. Periodically I'll read about someone's rhinoplasty leaving them unable to breathe through their nose, and I'll nope the fuck out. I'll always remember Pete Burns as being a One Man Anthology of Surgery Horror stories. Yes he was very glamorous but he was also memorable for speaking about pus shooting out of his lips after a performance.)

Lately I've been thinking about all the older people I've known who seemed actively averse to learning how to use computers, mobile phones, etc., and I wonder: at what point will I encounter a new piece of tech that I don't understand and possibly don't want to understand?

I have a small list of stuff I'm averse to using - e.g. Alexa, gimmicky 'internet of things' bullshit, social media - but I can use them, and I know how they work. Maybe it counts for something that most consumer tech these days is basically either a variation on The Computer, or at least A Program On A 'Computer' Somewhere, so a lot of brain-meltingly complicated stuff seems relatively comprehensible to someone who's already familiar with using a garden-variety desktop PC.

[filipinoizukuu]

hello mr simp do you have any thoughts on the leeks 👀

FIRST OF ALL. THEY CAME SO FUCKING EARLY??? BRO I WAS ASLEEP

SECOND OF ALL

holy SHIT YALL

Okay, it's no secret that I'm an All Might stan. I LOVE All Might. Very very much. Not just as a simp, but genuinely, I enjoy his character SO MUCH.

--And unlike what some people may think, I'm not totally blind to his flaws. I know he sucks as a mentor and that he's done way more harm to Deku than good. He's.... not perfect. in every sense of the word. The whole point of AM's character is that he is a DEEPLY FLAWED individual— but at the end of the day, still good.

This new chapter gave me SOOO many new feelings. I'm not gonna lie to y'all and say I was a Stain apologist beforehand because I wasn't. I disliked Stain to a certain degree, but I also knew he was morally grey enough that I was able to still quite appreciate him as a character. This chapter was about EVERYTHING to me because I honestly did NOT expect Hori to go in this direction and for things to happen the way they did. It was too good to be true! Too fanfic-y! The disbelief I felt when I read what happened was on par with when Bakugou and Deku had that apology and kinda-hug in the rain!

But this disbelief is not because it was a bad thing.

I think the writing in Chapter 326 is phenomenal. The moment that All Might was really beginning to lose hope in not just himself as a hero, but himself as a PERSON... we finally hear the opinion of someone who would abso-fucking-LUTELY make or break the last of his spirit.

Stain is, as much as his views are pretty agreeable and his label is that of a vigilante, still a pretty shitty guy. He's tried to kill literal kids who got in his way, even if said kids made pretty dumb decisions. AM hearing what he has to say is absolutely mind-boggling to him because he knows all of that. He knows Stain is a shitty person and that his worldview is perhaps terribly skewed. He knows Stain has spent a hot minute frying his brains down in Tartarus and isn't good at making judgment calls. Knows that for all intents and purposes, Stain's opinions are not to be trusted.

But the thing is... Toshinori also knows that Stain, regardless of the soundness of his mind, is telling the truth.

Regardless of how fucked-in-the-head Stain is, we as readers are able to acknowledge that he isn't blinded by hero worship. Sure, he's bitter, cynical, and quite the absolutist--but Stain is still clear-headed enough to be able to see AM's flaws for what they are and accept them, ultimately proving to Toshinori that the power of All Might was never his own but rather the legacy that he inspired.

The society MHA takes place in is flawed. We all know this. Heroes, as a concept, had been corrupted into being purely about good and evil. Purely winning fights for money or fame or the abstract concept of victory (coughs Endeavor and the no.1 spot coughs), making heroism as we know it about flashiness and power instead of mercy and the desire to help others.

All Might symbolizes the ideal version of the Hero Society. He represents doing the best you can. Being a hero until you reach your limits, and then going even past that. He symbolizes pure intention and the desire to be a hero not for material gains but because of the pure want to make society a better and safer place. Stain refers to Kamino Ward and the statue as a "holy land" because he believes that through and through, AM's only had the purest of intentions and morals. To him, Toshinori was like a deity that had no fault in making society what it was in the present because that accountability fell on the generations of heroes that failed to fulfill his legacy.

The point being, Stain understood that All Might was fundamentally not about 'being there' for everyone 24/7, but rather the message his presence had sent.

All Might's monologue at the beginning of the chapter essentially boiled down to the ideas that:

A. He regrets not being there properly for Deku

B. His image was a delusion that ultimately led to the downfall of hero society.

To break this down, his problem with Deku is his inability to be a competent mentor. It shows that he has led him down dangerous and horrible paths (Deku's stubbornness to do things by himself and his 'dark' arc post-war), and is unable to bring him back into the light even if he tries. It was only when Class 1-A had intervened that they were able to get Deku to rest and let people tag along, after all, which is why Toshinori was far too embarrassed to follow him into UA's walls even after everyone had come out with umbrellas.

Stain disproves this in two ways.

First, he says that it was never about All Might's ability to actually be there for people. The whole point of what inspired Deku to be the inherently good-hearted "true hero" he is today is because of the values that AM's brand had instilled in him as a child. AM's biggest positive impacts came from behind the screen where he was used as the proof that true heroes can and do exist. Deku does want to be exactly like All Might, yes, which is why we see Toshinori leading him down the same path that he walked--but the underlying message of this is that the very first thing All Might gave him even before OfA was the courage to help fix society.

I do believe Deku is an innately compassionate person. Most people in the series are. However, what makes All Might's smile so uniquely impactful to what it did to Hero Society is the way it gave people courage to help people. Less hesitation. Less bystander syndromes. The ability to move without thinking. Because you can feel the want to help a person, but the courage to be nosey and actually do it? That's portrayed as something AM's image teaches people.

The second way he disproves AM's insecurity of dragging Deku down is that he makes it clear that this pain is somewhat of a necessity in reforming society. He says, interestingly enough, that this is but the 'middle process' in reforming society. This spills over to how he addresses Problem B, but what Stain is essentially saying here is that this sort of brutality and isolation that Izuku faces is impermanent. A phase. It implies that even if Deku is struggling and Toshinori is unable to help him, it is something that needs to happen before they re-realize the ideal heroes All Might's image is meant to create.

The second problem in regards to how All Might feels about current society (how it's collapsing because of him, etc. etc.) is more interestingly addressed. There are many things that Stain says--like how Toshinori doesn't need to actually be the one to fix society with his bare hands. The current society is not his fault because of the fact that it is not finished developing. I'm not sure if I can go so far as to say that Stain means this in the sense of the Scorched Earth method of tearing everything down to build it back up better-- but I can say that Stain still has faith in society to rebuild after this period of chaos.

This rebuilding starts with the old generation of heroes correcting what they messed up (i.e. Endeavor v Dabi) and more importantly, paving the way for a better generation of heroes that was inspired by All Might's image. Heroes that are led by people like Deku, who is defined by his proclivity to help without thinking. The violent deconstruction of society is about exposing society to the raw truth of All Might's image that not everybody can be as strong as him-- which is why we have to take care of each other.

When the lady comes in to remove the sign and start cleaning the statue, it's symbolic. It's a clear metaphor that the past few chapters are the turning point for society as a whole, and how people are starting to remember what real heroism is. From the distrust that was seeded in society ever since LoV had surfaced, we are seeing that trust being returned TEN-FOLD now that people can see not only the mask of a hero's smile, but also the person underneath.

I think it's some really neat symbolism here too about how Deku, who's metal mouth guard was literally all about representing All Might's smile, is shed.

This is hero society dropping their masks. Letting people see them for as they are. Toshinori revisiting the statue in this form makes all the more impact because he shed his mask ages ago during the Kamino Bust, so this is him coming face to face with the image he's created and seeing the differences between them, and how his image continues to live on even after he's almost completely Quirkless. The lady cleaning the All Might statue shows off the fact that things can be repaired again--that society can be clean (hehe stain pun) again.

It's interesting to me here how Stain offers the information from Tartarus.

He doesn't care anymore about his life. It's evident. He disagrees with what the LoV is doing, but believes enough in Deku to think that it's time for him to retire the mantle of 'Stain'. Unless this is another test, it's very odd for me to hear that Stain is offering a blade and his life to someone he isn't even sure is All Might.

But the impact of this action reads loud and clear.

This is Stain taking pity on All Might. This is him realizing that All Might too is a person behind the hero. That Toshinori Yagi is incapable of doing anything past the image he had already created. By offering that knife and information on Tartarus, Stain is giving control back to Toshinori. He is giving AM the chance to do something big again to help society's reconstruction. To be a part of the revolution that he so badly deserves to see. That knife is essentially an exit ticket from the sidelines, and one last chance for All Might to be able to see what his image has done for people.

I personally think that the main reason Stain is willing to die then and there by Toshinori's hand, despite not being sure that he is All Might to begin with, is because of the final impact it creates that it isn't about Toshinori Yagi's true power as a person, but the image of All Might. It is because he looks like the symbol of peace, that Stain (the literal HERO KILLER) feels comfortable laying his life in his hands and giving away valuable information.

If that isn't a great testament to the power of AM's image, I don't know WHAT is.

I guess all I have to say is I absolutely love what Stain did in this chapter. Everything felt so incredibly symbolic and emotional and as someone who absolutely ADORES All Might and what he stands for in the story, this felt like a cool balm after seeing Deku tragically reject his bento box a good few chapters ago. I have a few more opinions about symbolism, and how I think Deku's generation of heroes is going to stray from the old gen, but I think that's a discussion for another time.

Thanks for reading 'til the end!

[yukidragon]

SDJ Vamp AU Headcanons

It’s headcanon time again! Working on the very smutty fic has given me ideas about this AU in general... and not all of them are as fluffy and spicy as what I’m currently writing.

Just as a heads up, some of these headcanons are kind of dark. Also, while a vampire AU could apply to various types of y/n sunshines, I have a specific one in mind by the name of Alice that I use for all my Sunny Day Jack nonsense. Remember this game is for 18+ only, so the darker headcanon stuff is a given and will go under the keep reading tag.

Interestingly, Jack’s powers and Alice’s have a lot of similarities in how they work.

Jack can influence a human’s mind, and so can vampires.

Jack needs permission from his sunshine, and vampires, too, need to be invited.

Incidentally this does mean that Alice has an aversion of going places without an invitation. Given she’s only half-vampire it’s not as forbidding as it is for full vampires, but holy crap does it feel awful and make her social anxiety skyrocket.

Incidentally, being half-vampire has made Alice pretty darn introverted.

Anyway, back to the similarities between powers... Jack can’t do anything Alice doesn’t want, and that’s also how her vampire powers work.

If Alice wants to run fast or exert her strength, she just has to want it.

If she wants her feedings to feel good for the human giving her blood, they do. If she doesn’t, well...

Getting your blood sucked out wouldn’t exactly be pleasant without some supernatural powers meddling with the sensation, you know.

This also works in reverse too - a vampire could intentionally make the pain of the feeding excruciating.

So hate sucking from vampires tends to be something pretty gosh darn terrifying.

Now you might be wondering if Jack’s powers being so similar to a vampire’s makes him one too, and the answer is no... normally.

All Jack has to do is get his sunshine’s permission to take control of her powers, and, well...

Needless to say, vampire powers make Jack’s powers of influence even stronger. The possibilities that open to him are even greater... and more dangerous.

Don’t worry, Jack still would only use his powers to do what’s best for Alice. Just, you know, a yandere’s idea of what constitutes as being best for his sunshine can be a little... skewed.

Incidentally, because vampires can influence the mind this does mean Alice is immune to any mind control or memory manipulation.

Though Jack can still read her surface thoughts just like in the normal universe.

However, vampires are not immune to empathy influence. If anything, they feel it more, as they feel a lot from those from people as they’re drinking their blood.

Yes, this means there are vampires who enjoy feeling the suffering of their victims. Yes, this is just as terrifying as it sounds.

Alice is absolutely not one of these type of vampires.

Fortunately, Jack has never had to use that sort of direct mental influence on Alice in my headcanon lands, both vampire AU and normal. His sincere love and concern for her is enough for Alice to care about him, as she is a very empathetic person, and that’s doubly true in the vampire AU.

Yes, being empathetic to the feelings of others has gotten Alice into trouble before. And speaking of Ian...

I said before that the breakup wasn’t good, and that wasn’t just because Alice was angry, confused, and hurt by his betrayal. Because Ian proved he couldn’t be trusted not to lie about something as important as loving her and only wanting her, he also proved he couldn’t be trusted knowing what she really is.

The masquerade of vampires is taken very seriously. Alice took major risks letting Ian and Shaun know about her true nature, but that just went to show how much she trusted them. Now that she couldn’t trust Ian... the mask had to go back on for him.

Alice went to see Ian at his college after the incident, but only after she was fully fed and relatively mentally calm to minimize the risk of... accidents.

Not that Alice wasn’t dangerously tempted to hurt Ian and the person he cheated on her with.

Needless to say the encounter was very... awful. Emotionally devastating.

They did talk... well, it was definitely more pleading for forgiveness on Ian’s end and promises that nothing like this would ever happen again...

...And Alice reminding Ian that he already promised that something like this wouldn’t happen at all. She couldn’t trust him anymore, and without trust... he couldn’t know she was a vampire anymore.

Alice doesn’t like that she has to influence peoples’ minds in order to make them forget her so that no one knows she’s a vampire.

And it was even worse having to do it to someone she trusted so much... someone who she still loved even as she had to protect herself from getting hurt again.

Ian does remember who Alice is and growing up with her. He even still remembers they were in love and together. As angry and hurt as Alice was, she couldn’t bear to do more than the absolute bare minimum. He doesn’t remember that she’s a vampire. A lot of memories of their more intimate connection when they were together were erased in the process of making him forget that part of her.

This does affect how Ian feels about her in the present as a result... as well as how Alice feels about herself.

Shaun knows what Alice did. He did what he could to be there for her after the breakup. The sweet goth kitty boy that he is, not only promised never to betray her like Ian did, but if he ever “lost his mind and turned into a shitlord” he gave her full permission to make him forget she was a vampire too, complete with a get-out-of-guilt-free card. Alice greatly appreciated the sentiment.

Naturally, after Jack learns about this whole affair, he makes sure to reassure Alice that she never has to worry about him loving or wanting anyone else more than he does her. It’s an uphill battle to believe him, especially after the blow to her self-esteem that Ian dealt her, but Jack is more than up for the challenge of making his sunshine happy and ensuring that she’ll only ever need him.

[demonslayedher]

Quick question regarding Uzui and his wives. Was Uzui's polygamy really that weird? The manga never really looks at it seriously; it's more just something that annoys Zenitsu, and accentuates Uzui's bombastic nature. In the west at least, polygamy is kind of a no-no, culturally speaking, it's something that would get you weird looks. But in Taisho era Japan, would Uzui have gotten those looks? Is it weird to the Kamaboko squad? Or am I approaching this with too much of a western bias?

'Sup, Anon! Going to try to keep this a short answer, and mostly confined to what is relevant to KnY, especially Uzui's case. There absolutely is some Western bias that I know makes this a little uncomfortable for a lot of readers, but by the 1950's or so a lot of the Japanese public was pretty much over the Meiji era (and by extension, Taisho) marriage mentality and would have found this uncomfortable in real life too. The kicker wasn't exactly a distaste for polygamy (note: not to be equated with a modern Western definition of polyamory), but how women were held significantly lower in status to men, both socially and legally.

To vastly oversimplify centuries of Japanese history and state-building and family inheritance issues, having legitimate children with one's wife, especially a son, was by and large ideal. However, there was also wide-spread practices of adopting heirs who aren't even blood-related, and having lots of extra children with mistresses. Men having extramarital affairs wasn't just forgivable, it was practically expected. Even the forefathers who catapulted Japan from the samurai-class ruled Edo period into the modernization of the Meiji era often had long lists of long-term mistresses. A major event in Meiji era state-building was a reinforcement of Confucian ideas under the Meiji Civil Code of 1898, which made women entirely insubordinate to men, and put a lot of marriage decisions into the power of her parents. This was not repealed until 1947 constitution, which granted women a sweeping new array of rights, especially in regard to marriage, divorce, being heads of households, voting, etc. This was absolutely due to Western influence, as US forces were occupying Japan and rebuilding a lot of it in a post-war society. With 1915 being the most likely year the majority of KnY takes place, that squarely places the lives of most of the characters within the influence of the renewed stress on Confucian values, so Zenitsu would have grown up seeing a lot of the public idealizing women who made good wives and wise mothers (there were of course women who showed preference for going out and enjoying themselves, especially as we get deeper into roaring 20's). Inosuke's mother Kotoha would have had little to no recourse for divorce, especially since custody of Inosuke would had been taken from her. And honestly, what surprises me most about Uzui Tengen is that he calls all three of them wives instead of having a wife and two mistresses. That's oddly egalitarian of him. It's worth noting that Tengen already great up in a very counter-cultural, likely cult-like community. I've analyzed before how his ninja village and his father's values were probably pretty skewed due to how hard it must had been for a ninja clan to had lasted that long, so we're not that limited to standard mainstream Meiji/Taisho culture when analyzing him. It does seem to me that his village took some of those Confucian core ideas about the role of women and pushed them to an extreme, for Tengen's wives are very confused when he tells them to prioritize their own lives, for they have been raised to value their husband's life far above their own (see Makio's flashback in Chapter 80). Their definition of wife or mistress probably didn't even matter much, for women were worth being little more than baby makers, and even then, whose baby was whose didn't matter much if you were going to make all those babies fight each other to the death anyway. It's worth noting that Makio, Hinatsuru, and Suma were all raised with the mindset of absolutely obedience to their husband, following absolute adherence to their fathers. When Tengen left his way of life, he had to take them with him, they likely would have faced ostracization or worse if left behind in their old cult-like community. He probably always saw them as much more important than they saw themselves, and he probably didn't care what any Meiji or Taisho laws or moral customs would have had to say about it. While on this topic, I know people were bothered by Makio being his cousin. This is much less shocking from a Japanese perspective, and even today marriage between cousins is legal (though it would still surprise people). Incest is certainly frowned on throughout Japanese history, but like in the West, what defines being too closely related has changed throughout different eras, and also like in the West, there are historical cases of wanting to keep power within the family. Again, not something that surprises me at all in the case of Tengen's father. If Tengen were alive today, yes, he wouldn't legally be able to get away with three wives, and he'd been frowned upon for having three lovers in the first

place. But it's not really as shocking to Japanese children to think of someone in the past having multiple wives, especially someone who feels even more tied to the past through his ninja ways (and yes, being set in the past tends to make a lot of things in fiction feel more acceptable, whether we read into the context with this much depth or not).

[sketching-shark]

LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! We’ll turn him into our little meow meow~ he’s so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!

What doesn’t help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.

And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like they’re going to get attacked.

I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as I’ve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, don’t like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.

Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon you’ve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatian’s loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotian’s best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while ol’ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something that’s solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, I’ve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who don’t like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they don’t like the fandom’s favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms I’ve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work.  

 I’ve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the “hero actually bad, villain actually good” cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasn’t even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukong’s past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they weren’t sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends  that is, from where I’m standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. I’ve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after they’ve hurt you they’ll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaque’s case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that you’ll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldn’t even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) “Six-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everything” reading. 

And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other cultures’ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think “this is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTW” (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukong’s characteristic in his lego form & then assume that’s just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTW’s many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukong’s six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).

And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of “Sun Wukong but worse” as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bag” thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As I’ve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesn’t involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukong’s reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukong’s pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things don’t go his way--but it’s also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol.  

At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesn’t help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present “you break it, you fix it” mentality, where the assumption is that if you’re in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, you’ll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isn’t limited to fandom: I’d even argue that it’s everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they “failed” if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt don’t owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if it’s one that once meant a lot to you. 

  But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).

But as to anon’s last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part I’m keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the “read more” button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people that’s a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an “official” fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasn’t this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isn’t a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess we’ll see if that ever happens. 

So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaque’s current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of “redemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurt” arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his “Sun Wukong but worse” persona. 

[sobdasha]

been thinking about the really weird dynamics of the Honda family

and the ways they parallel with the Souma family.

Tohru's relationship with Grandpa Honda has always been really inscrutable to me. It seems like Kyouko liked him quite a lot, and the feeling was mutual, so their relationship ought to be close, right? But despite relying on Grandpa around the time of Katsuya's funeral, I get the impression that Kyouko and Grandpa aren't very close after that? He takes Tohru in after Kyouko's funeral, but doesn't provide a place for her to stay during the renovations, and they don't seem to keep in touch.

I figured this was for the convenience of the plot. If Tohru was close with her grandpa, then she wouldn't have no family, no one left, after her mom died. If Tohru had somewhere else to go, it wouldn't be so vital that she be allowed to keep living in the Souma house.

I've been thinking about Shiki, though, and about Akito and Shigure as parents within the Souma estate, and I'm wondering now if this wasn't actually a parallel playing out in brilliant Takaya fashion.

Starting with a recap, because a summary of info is always useful to me:

Kyouko grows up in a family that is very much about Keeping Up Appearances and Knowing Your Place. Her dad is verbally and emotionally abusive and isn't above slapping people either. Her mother isn't affectionate and doesn't protect her, probably because she's primarily concerned with protecting herself from the fallout when anything sets off her abusive husband. Kyouko has never had her emotional needs met and she's never been socialized to see others as real people with real feelings. Before even 7th grade she's become part of the gang scene in a cry for help and attention, and because these are the only people she can kind of understand. Her father has told her she's kicked out of the house at least once prior before he finally makes good on it and disinherits her at the end of 9th grade.

Katsuya and his younger sister grow up in a family that is also very much about Traditional Values and Keeping Up Appearances. Grandpa Honda is a teacher, and he puts a big emphasis on Proper Manners (and probably also other things like Good Grades, Fitting In, and Knowing Your Place). He's stern and pressures Katsuya to become a teacher as well. We don't know what Katsuya's mother was like, but I'm assuming she was also not particularly affectionate. It's only after her illness and passing, probably when Katsuya is somewhere around 20, that Grandpa Honda reevaluates his life and what's most important to him.

From a young age, Katsuya flew under the radar by heavily masking--ie, he made a cardboard cutout of what society expected him to be, so Polite, Quiet, Respectable, Studying To Become A Teacher, while underneath it all being filled with apathy, resentment, and loneliness. His moral compass is deeply skewed--see his teasing of people, his attitude of looking down on people, his bragging admittance to using his father's influence to get away with things, his creepy expressions that are identical to those of The Root Of All Evil (ie, Shigure). He has no real interpersonal relationships--family, friend, or romantic. He's a 23 year old TA who is fixated on and marries a 15 year old girl because she's the first person he ever recognized as human--he saw her in the middle of a violent meltdown and it was the first time he was ever really struck by the realization that someone else might feel the same feelings he does.

(Which, in addition to the dubious legality and widely-regarded ickiness, is just downright pathetic. I'm sorry, but it's true. Fruits Basket itself backs me up.)

The first parallel that jumps out at me is between the stories of Kyouko and Katsuya, and Ren and Akira:

Ren is an Outsider. We don't know what her family life was before joining the Souma clan, but based on everything about her I feel it's safe to assume it was also abusive. A large percentage of the Souma family is against the marriage, but Akira is adamant because Ren is the first person he's ever connected with. Similarly, the Honda family (save Grandpa) disapproves of Kyouko and she remains forever an outsider to them.

In Kyouko's case, Katsuya is able to ditch his family and start fresh with Kyouko. Ren, on the other hand, has to live within the toxic Souma family to be with Akira. Both husbands die, leaving a grieving widow and child behind. Kyouko treasures her daughter and finds a new reason to live in Tohru, away from the rest of the Honda family; Ren, already jealous of Akito for getting in the way of her relationship with her husband (and not dealing well with being pulled even further into the Souma family bullshit with all this curse stuff), and trapped within the toxic Souma family with no one on her side, chooses to perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

The thing I've been thinking about most is the parallels between Tohru and the Honda family and Shiki and the Souma family:

As I said before, Tohru's relationship with Grandpa Honda is very strange. It's not just me--Yuki and Kyou make comments to this effect also, I'm pretty sure. But I think I can finally make sense of it now, if I think of it in light of Shiki.

I think there are a couple chapters of FBA out there that I haven't read (the one with Akito, and were there other chapters beyond volume 3?), but Mutsuki implies--and I think we should take this at face value--that Akito and Shigure hope that Shiki will leave the Souma family. They are not kicking their child out. They want this as loving parents, who have done their best to raise their child in a good home in the midst of a very toxic environment. I like to think they will do a good job of explaining this to Shiki, explicitly and clearly. Akito could have walked away from the Souma family, but she chose to stay because she had a hand in perpetuating the toxicity and generational abuse in the Souma family and she is taking responsibility for trying to end the cycle. She has finally stepped up as the head of the family. She could have walked away, but she didn't.

Shiki had no hand in making the Souma family what it is. Shiki is not obligated in any way to put up with that bullshit. Shiki can and should walk away from that toxic environment, go somewhere new, and be happy. He and his parents and all his non-toxic relatives can visit and call each other and still maintain relationships, but in healthier places, as everyone learned to do at the end of Fruits Basket.

This, I believe, is what Grandpa is also doing for Tohru. He's just less explicit and messes it up at first.

I don't know exactly why we don't see more of Grandpa's relationship with Kyouko and Tohru after Katsuya's death. Is it because Tohru, as the narrator, is prioritizing Only Me And My Mom stories? Is it because Kyouko didn't want to be a burden (is that part of where Tohru absorbed it)? Is it because Kyouko couldn't maintain a good relationship with Grandpa with the Honda Family Toxicity in the background?

The Honda family toxicity shows up in full force again when Kyouko dies. Tohru is a riceball that doesn't belong in the Honda family fruits basket. No one, save Grandpa, will take her in.

And then he invites his daughter's family, which he knows is toxic and will abuse Tohru, in to live with the two of them.

I don't know who came up with the idea--if it's Grandpa, that's a bit cold, as he should be caring for Tohru. If it's his daughter ("Dad, you're getting older, you should be living with us so we can take care of you") that does make sense, both as a reasonable social expectation (which dad raised her to adhere to) and as a power move (the Outsider shouldn't be getting so cozy with dad, and dad's inheritance, without supervision). I'm leaning towards the daughter, as I don't think the family combining was intended to get Tohru to leave. I think the remodel, though, was something Grandpa Honda saw as a good opportunity to convince Tohru to leave the Hondas.

I think "I'm having the house remodeled and I'm staying with my daughter, but you weren't invited, I could pull my weight or maybe you could find your own accommodations with a friend?" was intended to give Tohru permission to not feel obligated to the Honda family. I think it was intended to let Tohru find someplace she would actually be happy, a found family living situation where she could flourish. I think Granpda sincerely thought Tohru would move in with Hanajima, instead of into a tent, and realize that she was so much happier and fulfilled there that she never came back to the toxic Honda family and had no regrets.

Grandpa's judgment was a little iffy there but he tried.

I'm realizing that, if everyone moved into Grandpa's house because it was bigger, and it's being remodeled specifically for that purpose...the fact that Tohru is sharing a room with her cousin is very significant. Grandpa was so confident, there is no place for Tohru in that house. Tohru was never supposed to come back after the remodel.

(I don't know that much about houses so it's possible that they just didn't have room; depending on whether that's the uncle or the son, you've got to have 4 or 5 separate bedrooms, which I guess could be a lot. But this is a manga, they aren't strictly constrained to realism, and Takaya makes every damn detail count.)

Tohru isn't supposed to come back after the remodel, but she does. She does, and the family is toxic to her, and Grandpa tells her more overtly that she is not obligated to live here out of familial loyalty. If there's somewhere else Tohru is happier, even if it's a really unconventional living situation, she should feel welcome to choose that instead.

Grandpa's a parallel to Akito here. He's been becoming aware, since his wife died, that his priorities were all wrong. That he raised his children wrong. That Katsuya appeared to have no real emotions and had never connected with anyone outside of Kyouko and their daughter. (Maybe he learned to make work friends?? But I doubt it.) That his daughter is judgmental and cares more about the appearance of being proper than about not being rude.

Don't think poorly of him, Grandpa says. Deep down, they're just evil people. But Grandpa recognizes that he had a hand in creating those evil people. And instead of being like Machi's mom, who goes "well maybe I fucked up" and then throws her out of the family, Grandpa takes responsibility for the family he made. He recognizes that he raised his kids in a way that caused them to be shallow and rude and to think of people as means to an end, and he also recognizes that it would be shitty to reject his kids for turning out exactly as he raised them. He has to live with them (and his choices), he says, but Tohru doesn't.

Looking at it like that, I respect Grandpa Honda more. He seemed a bit wishy-washy before--useful for some plot and character development points, but wishy-washy all the same. But it's a tough decision, and having to prioritize people is always shitty. Grandpa not rejecting his daughter means sacrificing a stable home for Tohru. Akito staying as the head of the Souma family so she can ensure the freedom of the former Zodiac means that her child will be subjected to the same generational abuse, no matter how loving and supportive of a home life she and Shigure provide.

But they're both trying to do a right thing in a crappy situation.

And Tohru, like so many of the former Zodiac, does find happiness and fulfillment in the new family she's able to make for herself. She learns to make her world bigger, and she learns that leaving doesn't have to be the same as cutting ties. And so I'm very optimistic that Shiki will find the same.