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hanjsquokka · 3 months ago

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*ੈ🏴‍☠️‧₊˚ the sea of monsters.

3racha × fem!reader — badass pirate captain! reader, pirate thief! jisung, pirate! changbin, pirate! chan, greek & roman mythology au, enemies to lovers with a twist, childhood friends to lovers, best friends to lovers, slowburn, found family, poly relationship, pirate au, based on the myth of jason and the argonauts & the percy jackson series, fluff/angst/smut

⸻ 𝕿 he city was dying. the king could care less. you were the only hope in the midst of the cruel pirates that robbed your city of its glory. set aboard haven, you had one job- find the golden fleece to save your home or die trying. the only problem was, no one knew where the artifact disappeared after the fall of the romans. no one expect one extremely skilled and insufferably cocky thief whom you never wanted to see in your life again.

warnings — mature language, alcohol consumption, explicit sexual scenes (warnings in each chapter), sexism, harassment/assault, filthy pirates, mentions of many greek gods and heros from the myths, violence, gore, monsters from mythology, blood, death, past trauma, poly relationship between 3racha and reader, just very very very angsty and dark themes, if you like fluff and sunshine- this is not your cup of tea

word count — 10.1K ( ongoing )

soundtrack — listen here

author's note — this series is my baby. i've been working on this since april. i love percy jackson, so this is a result of my long term obsession with the series. i've tried my very best to make things accurate according to the timeline in which the story is set (early 18th century) and the areas where it is set. this is all fiction, please remember that!!!

3racha are the loves of my life, and even though it was initially supposed to be only jisung (are we surprised? no), as i wrote, i saw so much potential in it being a poly relationship. lots of drama 🤭

and lastly thank you so much to my lovey mars ( @stayconnecteed ) for fueling my pjo au obsession.

*ੈ🏴‍☠️‧₊˚ chapters.

I. POSEIDON'S BLOOD

II. THE FRIVOLOUS THIEF

more chapters coming soon . . .

*ੈ🏴‍☠️‧₊˚ disclaimer.

→ this takes place in the early 18th century in the mediterranean countries following both greek and roman history. none of the places depicted have this kind of history- it is all fiction. i am not a sailor, i do not know the exact time it takes to travel the seas, i wrote this keeping in mind the convenience of the story- it is not accurate. the myths depicted are taken both from history and from the percy jackson series by rick riordon. please enjoy reading this as a story, do not come at me saying that something is incorrect or is historically inaccurate. i repeat, this is all fiction!!!!!!

→ while i know in the pjo series, there are some godly parents' children that do not have romantic relationships with each other because they're "related", keep in mind that the characters in this story are mostly legacies (descendants of demigods) and the gods do not have blood- so no dna, and it's my story so i can do whatever i want <3

→ there are mentions of other kpop idols in this.

→ these are all fictional characters with fictional personalities, they do not reflect on how they are in real life.

*ੈ🏴‍☠️‧₊˚ series taglist. ( open )

please send an ask/dm me/comment on this post to be added to the taglist. to be tagged you must follow my blog rules (have an age indicator, a profile photo and reblogged at least one post). if you want to be tagged, then please interact with reblogs with comments/tags (or) comments.

☆ you can also fill out this form!

@stayconnecteed @starlostastronaut @ta3baee @caitlyn98s @bbokari711 @manuosorioh @oddracha @n1nme4r @dprkbyn @sleepyleeji @realrintaro @starlostseungmin @shuporanporang @baby-stay92

@wordsofkpop @bowsnbang @tirena1 @drunkewok @yeosayang @fixation-dump @reiheis @j-0ne25 @hyunebunx @leetoes @hrskt @kayleefriedchicken @imperfectlyperfectprincess1 @paborachaslvt @peterparkoure @luminouskalopsia @myjisung @frequentlykit

©hanjsquokka | copying, translating or republishing my work is strictly prohibited

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carriagelamp · 4 years ago

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Art of Aardman

I found myself a cheap copy of the Shaun the Sheep movie, so I was rewatching a bunch of Aardman films earlier this month and decided to hunt down some books too. For anyone that doesn’t know, Aardman is a British stop-motion studio that does fantastic work like Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, Early Man… tons of cool stuff. They’re always quirky and funny and warm-hearted. This was just a very nice art book for anyone that’s a fan of Aardman stop motion and wants to see a bit extra; it shows some cool concept art and blows up the neat details in Aardman work, especially in their intricate stuff like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Asterix and the Picts (Asterix and the Chariot Race, and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion)

I decided to try a couple of the new Asterix comics that were done by the new team, just to see if they stand up to the old ones (that and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion cause I’d never read that one before). They were pretty decent! Asterix and the Picts was my favourite of the two though I wouldn’t say either are going to contest for my favourite Asterix comic... but still! The art looks good and the stories felt like what I would expect, they made for a pleasant couple evenings of reading especially since it’s been so long since I’ve read a new Asterix comic. If you’ve never read Asterix it’s one of the biggest name French comic series in North America, as far as I know and very worth the read. It’s about a single Gaulish village that’s holding out against the invading Romans through sheer force of will, slapstick hijinks, and a magical super-strength potion brewed by their druid. Lots of fantastic visuals and cute wordplay, even in the English translations.

Bear

I found out about this bastion of Canadian literature via tumblr post that was losing its collective mind over the fact that some bizarre bear-based erotica novella somehow won the most prestigious literary prize available in Canada. Since I too found this hilarious and unspeakably bizarre I had to give it a read, obviously. And yes, the flat surface level summary is... a librarian moves out into rural Ontario and falls in love with a literal for-real not-supernatural-not-a-joke bear. And I have to say… it is actually worthy of an award, which I was not expecting given that I was there for a laugh. It has beautiful writing, and the subtextual story is pretty interesting… it kind of makes me think of The Haunting of Hill House actually in terms of themes. (Womanhood, personhood, independence, autonomy partially achieved through escaping the male gaze by claiming non-human lovers... listen if I were still in university I would right a paper comparing the two novels).

I dunno man, it’s fucking weird. Actually a well-written book, but sure is about a woman falling in love with a literal bear. Give it a read if you want something bonkers but like… high-brow bonkers.

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites

Best book I have read in like… a while. A long while. I am not a fast reader, and I consumed 90% of this book over a weekend. It’s not at all like Terry Pratchett, but at the same time it scratched an itch for me that I haven’t had satisfied since Pratchett’s death. A very clever, hilariously funny poly romance between a disabled werewolf, an anxious vampire lord, and an incredibly powerful woman, with heaps of social satire, political commentary, and sinister undertones. The whole thing reads a bit like fanfiction and I say that in the most flattering way possible -- it is so easy to jump right in and be immediately taken over by the characters and the world and the plot, you never feel like you’re fighting to engage even though the world-building is fascinating and expansive. It welcomes you in right away, it was the book equivalent of a quilt and a hug which is something I sorely needed with all this pandemic bullshit. If you read any of the books on this list, go read that one while I sit here in pain waiting for the sequel.

Kid Paddle

I watched the cartoon of Kid Paddle as a kid and was thinking about it recently, so I decided to hunt down some of the original comics online. They’re fun and weird, with a cute art style and fantastic monsters designs. (My favourites are always about Kid either daydreaming or playing games that involve Midam’s weird warty troll creatures. It’s like a cross between Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot with the fun sort of quirks that I love in Belgian comics. Unfortunately, unlike Asterix, I’ve only come across these ones in French, but if you can read French it’s totally worth popping over to The Internet Archive and reading the ones they have available.

The Last Firehawk: The Golden Temple

The lastest Firehawk book. Despite being written for quite young readers, I did enjoy the early books in this series quite a bit. They’re about a young owl and squirrel who found an egg for a magical species that was believed to be extinct. With the newly hatched firehawk, the three of them head off on a mission to find an ancient firehawk magic that could save the entire forest. Very basic adventure story but a good intro to the tropes for children. Unfortunately the quality really feels like it drops with each subsequent book; this will probably be the last one I bother reading.

Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up

I honestly think I enjoy these Lumberjanes novels even more than the comics just because it really gives time to delve into each story and examine how the camper are really thinking and feeling about everything. (Also I’m always weak for novelizations of anything.) The Moon Is Up is a book that focuses more on Jo, and takes place during the camp’s much anticipated Galaxy Wars, a competition between cabins that goes over several days. While the campers prepare for these challenges though, they also run into a strange little creature with a penchant for cheese and theft. Roanoke cabin needs to keep ahead in Galaxy Wars and somehow deal with the fearsome Moon Pirates that a closing in...

Lumberjanes v4 (Out Of Time)

One of the Lumberjanes comics, a cool, girl-focused, queer comic series. Honestly, this is just a fun series that I never got as into as I should have. My advice is honestly to skip book one because it gets better as it continues, and I’ve really been enjoying the later books now that I’ve given it another go. It follows five campers at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types (Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley) as they handle all sorts of challenges, from friendship to crushes, camp activities to supernatural horrors, getting badges to not being brutally killed. Great if you liked the vibe of Gravity Falls but want it to be queer-er.

Mooncakes

Another queer graphic novel, but unfortunately not a very good one. It really looked appealing and I had high hopes, but the book itself really didn’t hold up… I actually couldn’t even finish it, the plot was just too… non-existent. The art is fairly mediocre once you actually look at it, especially backgrounds, and it feels very… placid. Not much conflict or excitement or even a very compelling reason to keep reading. If you just want a soft queer supernatural you may get more mileage out of it than me, but it didn’t really do it for me. There’s better queer graphic novels out there.

New Boy In Town

One of the worst books I have ever read. My girlfriend had ordered a very different book online but through a frankly stupendous error was sent this 1980s pulp romance instead. Absolutely nauseating on levels I couldn’t even begin to enumerate here. Naturally we read the whole thing out loud. Probably took us 10 times longer to finish than it warranted because I had to stop every two sentences to lose my mind. If you like bad decisions, baffling hetero courting rituals, built-in cultural Christianity without actually calling it that, and gold panning then boy howdy is this the book for you.

(seriously, you better have patience for gold-panning if you attempt this one, because I sure learn that I don’t)

Piggies

This was a picture book I enjoyed as a kid and had a reason to reread recently. Honestly it’s just very cute and simple, and the art is completely mesmerizing. Wonderful if you know a young child that would enjoy a simple goofy boardbook.

Shaun the Sheep: Tales From Mossy Bottom

Related to my Aardman fascination earlier this month. I tried reading a varieties of Shaun the Sheep books — most of which are mediocre at best — but the Tales From Mossy Bottom Farm series is genuinely good. Just chapter books, of course, but the illustrations match the series’ concept art and each story feels like it could have jumped directly out of an episode. They’re just cute and feel-good! Kinda like Footrot Flats but more for kids, and from the sheep’s perspective moreso than the dog’s.

#aardman animation #shaun the sheep #lumberjanes #kid paddle #asterix #the last firehawk #hunger pangs: true love bites #marian engel #bear #canadian literature #canlit #queer lit #book review #book reviews #chatter

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magpie-of-a-birb · 4 years ago

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@paint-the-ravenclaw tagged me in on sorting Sanders Sides characters (that post is here), and I decided to make a whole new post for it. Here we go-

Editor Magpie here! It's a good thing that I made this a post of its own, cuz boy is it long. Patton's section took up three pages hand-written, if that tells you anything.

(Also, beware spoilers. If you're not up-to-date, I may reference things you haven't seen yet)

Patton

I'm starting off with Patton because, quite frankly, what he's got going on is fascinating. Sad, but fascinating.

He's a very obvious badger primary, but he also has a badger performance layered over top of it. If you've seen The Good Place, or listened to the @sortinghatchats podcast episode where they sorted TGP characters, you'll be able to see that this is the same as what Tahani did.

Patton's primary is for his community, but he also has an idea of what his primary should be. Not "should" as in aspirational, but "should" as in expectation. So he makes a badger primary performance, something that says "look at me! I'm a good person!" but creates self-loathing because he believes that he isn't living up to that performance. And here's the kicker:

His performance is exploding.

He thinks that, to be a good person, he (and Thomas, by extention) has to sacrifice everything for others. That is the badger primary performance that he thinks he should be.

Disclaimer: this is an unhealthy example of badger primary. No house is inherently healthy or unhealthy. There are many healthy, thriving badger primaries, and they are beautiful, just as every other house is.

And his exploding primary put a lot of strain on his badger secondary (he's a caretaker and loves courtier badger). He has to work hard and show up for everyone all the time and he... can't. It's not possible.

The fact that he cannot humanly live up to his own expectations makes his secondary start to burn. You especially see that in the courtier aspect of his secondary. He feels like he should be the "optimistic, goofy dad-friend" and he loves using courtier badger for it. But he burns out from being there for everyone, that face becomes unreliable in courtier badger because he can't feel it all the way down, he's not happy. So his badger starts to burn, and what does he do?

He takes up an actor bird model to handle the strain. He's used to the "happy, goofy dad" mask that it's easy for him to shift it from courtier mirroring to an actor role.

And whew boy, is that actor bird obvious in Selfishness vs Selflessness Redux. When it's clear that the others aren't siding with him, Patton isn't able to shift to match the change to make a stronger argument - as a snake or mirroring badger could - so he doubles down on his role.

"Remember, guys, I'm morality. My role is to make correct moral choices. Look! This is my good and helpful mask! I'm good and helpful!"

He does that all the way until he's sure that it's a lost cause, and that's when he snaps. But his snapping isn't drawing what he knows of the others, it's not using things that he knows will hurt them, not as we expect him to (especially since he uses similar tactics to manipulate Thomas into doing the right thing).

He transforms. Because he can't be angry. He's not allowed to be angry. Being angry is wrong. If he's angry, according to his exploding primary performance, then he's not a good person.

So he transforms. Because he can only be angry if he isn't himself. Patton chooses not to be Patton. He chooses to be a monster. Instead of translating his thoughts to fit the role (like with his dad role) he's using the role to justify the feelings.

Another disclaimer: like with primaries, no secondary is inherently healthy or unhealthy. There's even an example of healthy actor bird later in this sorting.

Logan

First off, his bird secondary is obvious. He loves collecting and using things. He loves lists and plans. His insecurity stems from his tools not being enough. He is a bird.

His primary is a bit more difficult because he doesn't usually make decisions from a moral standpoint, that's not his job. It's clear that he's not a felt primary, and due to the lack of intensity in general, I think snake can be ruled out. So, bird primary.

Virgil

His system is very lion primary. His gut says that something is wrong and he acts immediately.

His tactics are very bird secondary, preferring to construct a reasonable argument about why Thomas should be anxious over forcefully shoving panic at Thomas (which he does do when he sees the situation as an emergency and he needs Thomas to stop/do something now, but it's not his preference).

On top of that, Virgil has a birdy mask up at the beginning of the series. It's one born out of duty (lion primary), so he embodies the role that he's expected to play as anxiety (a bad guy who's goal is to make Thomas scared) instead of being himself (someone who's trying to keep Thomas safe). So he plays the role until he's shown that he doesn't have to.

Also, look at how he acts in the debate between him and Logan. All of his snap-back retorts are of the same type: general, playground insults. They're predictable and formulaic, like a default response a bird may have when they don't know how to respond while in a given mask. Basically: he's falling back on pre-set common phrases that the character he is embodying would say when he's not "translating" his thoughts into those of his character fast enough.

On a side note, I think that's how you differentiate between actor bird from the other forms of masks: playing a role with a tangible name.

Anyways-

Roman

LION BIRD LION BIRD LION BIRD

He hoards music, plays, movies, and musicals like a corvid and references them like nobody's business. His quick wit is in wordplay ("panic at the everywhere" much?) which, while not indicative of a bird secondary, is bird-flavored icing on the cake.

He lives in actor bird, and while his role isn't always applicable, I think that Roman is an easily-visable example of healthy actor bird. He loves and takes pride in his roles and doesn't solely use them as a shield (like Patton and, to a lesser extent, early Virgil).

He's a bit of a glory hound, he's attracted to the glamor that being a well-known creative and a hero entails, and that feeds into his default Hero/Prince in Shining Armor role. But it's wrong for him to pursue that at the expense of those he loves being miserable (see: Selfishness vs Selflessness).

Remus

Remus shares his primary with his brother. However, he's a horizon/fey lion. Everything that is fun is good which, when combined with his loves-to-mess-with-people snake secondary, spells pain for everyone else in a garish neon-green sign that smells vaguely of a landfill and intentionally leaves glitter everywhere.

Janus

Janus is a double snake. His person is Thomas, and anything is okay (especially deception) if it's to protect him.

Bonus sort: Thomas

Thomas is an interesting character. Because he is a character, within the context of Sanders Sides, that is. Sanders Sides!Thomas is not the same as Real Life!Thomas, even if the former is heavily inspired by the latter. As such, I think that there's enough to sort Character!Thomas.

Character!Thomas is very much a badger primary. It makes sense that he'd match primaries with Patton, his morality, but more so, the entire premise of the show has heavy healthy badger messages. Most episodes are about choosing the right thing to do, and Thomas makes that decision depending on what his community (the Sides) think. He's clearly a felt primary, but if he were a lion, then the "get input from others" aspect of the show would not be as effective.

His secondary is less obvious, but I have to go with bird. Most of the Sides have bird secondaries, and as they're aspects of Thomas, that would logically reflect his secondary to some degree. And he has many of the same hoards as the others, joyfully drawing on and pointing out references to things.

There may possibly be a badger (particularly courtier badger) model in there, but I can't confidently say that it's the case.

In Conclusion:

Patton: badger primary with an exploded badger primary performance. Semi-burned badger secondary with an unhealthy bird secondary model (specifically actor bird)

Logan: double bird

Virgil: lion bird

Roman: lion (glory hound variant) bird

Remus: lion (fey/horizon variant) snake

Janus: double snake

Thomas: badger bird with a possible badger secondary model

#magpie speaks #magpie sorts #sanders sides #patton sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #thomas sanders #long post #tw long post #sortinghatchats

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teataearts · 4 years ago

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Sanders Sides Tangled Au(kinda)

This was inspired by @scenecipriano post on Roman being able to use the hurt incantation and Remus being able to use the healing incantation from Tangled so go check them out!

(I made art to go with this yay)

(let’s pretend the dark and light sides got along more or less at some point but had a fallout at some point)

How they figured out they could do the incantations :

When Tangled the Movie came out, Roman sang/hummed the healing incantation all the time. Although he tried to heal stuff while singing it, it never worked. Even in the imagination, it didn’t work for him.

One day, Roman and Remus fought in the common room(again) but Remus pushed Roman a little too hard and he ended up hitting the corner of the table, leaving a huge gash on his forehead.

While Remus can’t hurt the other sides, Roman and Remus can hurt each other (unless they’re in the imagination), although they heal faster than humans since they’re not real. So the cut was there to stay and needed to be treated.

So Roman is laying on the ground, groaning and tearing up in pain and Remus runs towards him and kneels besides him in a panic

Remus panicking and rambling all the worse possibilities of the cut getting infected and green with pus to the point where Roman will get really sick or maybe maggots will start to- suddenly that stupid song that Roman sings keeps playing in his head,(Probably because Roman was also panicking and wishing that the incantation would work and like I feel like any song stuck in your head would be in Remus’s domain)

Remus starts unconsciously singing it and unaware as the white streak in his hair and his eyes starts to glow.

Roman is watching in awe as his brother sings the incantation, glowing like Rapunzel's hair in the movie, but instead of the hair doing the healing, Remus has a glowing aura that starts to heal Roman’s cut.

When Remus ends the incantation, he looks and see Roman looking at him with stars in his eyes and the cut gone with no scarring. (There’s still blood everywhere but that’s a different problem for later)

Roman is a little jealous but generally super excited that Remus can do the incantation starts to bombard Remus with questions and basically fanboying over the power while Remus is slightly confused but also glad that Roman is okay.

When they told the other sides, they didn’t believe the twins because “Surely Roman would be the one who can use healing/good magic, right?” So Remus did the first thing that came to mind.

STAB ROMAN IN THE GUT.

The others(Patton and Virgil) started to scream in worry but before they could try to help, Remus started to sing and glow. They were in awe (except Logan, who was confused as magic defied logic) as the stab wound healed itself and a pleasant feeling washed over them.

They praised Remus on his new found power (but Janus and Patton soon started to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t just stab Roman out of nowhere and give everyone a heart attack.)

Roman, on the other hand, found out he could do the hurt incantation in the worst possible way

When Tangled the series showed the episode with the incantation, Remus found it so cool and would sing that and luckily for everyone, it didn’t work.

He even came up with a first verse to match the healing incantation.

Roman would start to sing the healing incantation for fun and Remus would sing the hurt incantation either after or they would alternate lines.

One day, everyone was hanging out in the common room to binge Tangled together, at the twins insistence. When Rapunzel started to say the hurt incantation the twins followed with her

It started out nice at the first time, but in the dark of the room no one noticed how Roman’s posture became stiff and how a tuft of dark hair that he usually keeps dyed, slowly turned pure black.

Everyone started to shiver and it got harder for them to breath. When the tv began to glitch out and eventually turned off completely, Remus stopped to look around confusingly.

The other sides were struggling to get up or even make a noise of pain. Well, all the sides but Roman whose eyes were black as night and a face with endless tears, staring blankly at the tv, singing the incantation and even using the lyrics Remus came up with.

Remus, who was barely being affected by Roman, tried to yell at him to stop but it was like Roman couldn’t even hear him or stop himself.

So Remus, thinking there was no other way, summoned his morningstar and knocked Roman out.

When Roman came to, he was horrified when the others told him what happened. Even though everyone told him it wasn’t his fault and Remus excitedly told him it’s cool how he could do it, Roman felt like a monster and a villain for hurting his friends and vowed to never sing that incantation again.

When they use the incantation:

Remus usually uses it when he and Roman play a little too rough and hurt one another and they don’t want to deal with the wounds healing on their own

Although he’ll start singing it randomly but because he can control it, he can stop whenever.

Roman NEVER uses it, even when he’s in imagination and surrounded by monsters

He’s too scared since he can’t stop once he starts singing.

But unconsciously, when he’s super stressed or thinking very negative thoughts, he’ll start to think of the song or mumble a couple words. To Roman, it’s like the magic is tempting him to use it and that’s what scares him out of the trance as soon as he feels the cold grasp of it.

Bonus: Post- POF episode because we need a little more angst in our lives

After Roman sunk out of the living room, he went to his room and fell to his knees sobbing.

He wasn’t Thomas’s hero, he made fun of Janus’s name because his own insecurities, stress and past hurt feelings made him scared to trust Janus again.

The thoughts of Patton being wrong about Janus, how no one listened to him when he tried to get Thomas to talk to Lee and Mary Lee before the wedding, how they only listened to Janus, who hasn’t been there all the time to help Thomas in the other videos, say the same things he tried to say and how he’ll always be wrong, no matter what side he chooses and Janus’s comment of him evil like Remus. They all hurt him. It wasn’t fair.

Roman heard knocking on the door but he wasn’t ready to face anyone yet so he fled to the imagination and into his castle, his safe haven.

With all the thoughts surrounding and engulfing him, Roman fell on his throne and started to mumble words that forced their way out of his throat. Not noticing that it was the hurt incantation.

Slowly but surely, he went from mumbling a few words to singing the whole song. The room got chillier and his eyes and tuft of hair turned black. Tendrils of darkness and decay spreading from his throne outward to the kingdom and all his creations.

But Roman didn’t care, the magic not only took away his control, it took away any thoughts he had and it was like he was nothing but an empty doll now, a broken record on repeat.

#roman angst #romangst #roman sanders #sanders sides art #sander side art #sanders sides #remus sanders #creativitwins #roman sanders angst #selfishness vs selflessness redux #tangled au #sanders sides au #sanders side fic

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sonofsallyjackson · 4 years ago

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Heroes of Olympus should have been in first-person.

@jo-march-is-a-lesbian wrote a really wonderful post about how “Percy Jackson and the Olympians is better than Heroes of Olympus…because it understood simplicity and character development.” It highlights some reasons I also found HoO less rewarding namely that it was an overcomplicated story with limited character growth, lacked a common thesis, and was super jarring when it switched perspectives.

And with that my little brain went: I can fix this. Which frankly is ridiculous. I can’t come up with a compelling thesis like “The idea that we should place our hope in our loved ones, our friends and our family, and if we do that, we won’t be tempted to give up hope again.” But I can imagine a simple change that would have solved some of the issues and also played to Rick’s strengths as a writer: Each book should have been written in first person and narrated by a different character.

With so many people on the quest, I often felt like I was watching a bunch of one-dimensional characters fight for their right to be the main character. I didn’t know who to focus on but I was also dissatisfied. There were all these new wonderful characters in front of me who I wanted to love, but I didn’t feel like I actually knew them. I mean I don’t feel like I know the Stoll Brothers either, but I’m not concerned about that fact because they are side characters. When everyone is painted as the main character, I have certain expectations for growth, personality, and voice. The story would have been better served if the characters took turns narrating the action, allowing us to settle into their perspective, see their growth, and better understand their personality.

Plus Rick kills first-person. While I’m not particularly a fan of Trials of Apollo, it’s not because I don’t know the characters. Apollo is so very different than Percy. Their voices, even though they can both be jokesters at times, reflect their different life-experiences, thought processes and provide massive insight into their characters. If the Seven (and Nico and Reyna) got the same treatment, I would be absolutely giddy.

I recognize that rewriting the HoO series in first-person is something a talented fanfiction writer with a lot of time on their hands could actually do. But I am not talented like that and I certainly don’t have the discipline to actually write that much fic, especially if I was trying to keep the events vaguely the same just with different narration and pacing. So instead I’ve included who I think should have narrated each book below the cut. I’d love to hear any opinions people have regarding this idea, especially who they would have wanted to see to narrate each book.

In addition to picking the narrator, I’ve highlighted what should be the “quest” so to speak of each story. Personally, MoA, HoH and BoO are kind of a blur to me despite reading them all recently. It’s hard to distinguish what happens in each book because it’s all one massive quest with a whole bunch of mini-quests. While the different narrators would obviously make the books more distinctive, splitting the series into seven books would also help simplify each book’s individual goal. Eight books would have allowed for better integration of the plot to find the physician’s cure, but with the prophecy of seven, it seemed like seven books was the best option, if I was going to be doing something as blasphemous as splitting books.

As a note, I ran out of steam as I went so not all opinions are fully fleshed out.

Book 1: The Lost Hero The Quest: Rescue Hera/Juno Narrator: Jason

Why this would be cool:

He is literally Juno’s chosen sent on a quest to rescue her. It’s poetic enough to give him the book.

Jason’s journey is just as much about rediscovering himself as it is about saving Juno. Of the new characters, I feel like I understand Jason the least. Mainly because I felt like I was missing the entire first half of his story. Jason, like Percy and Annabeth, is a hero of the Titan War. I know some of his accomplishments, but I don’t have any bearing on what his life was like or how he felt about it. He doesn’t seem like the type to relish Praetor-ship since he doesn’t have the same intense need to get back to his camp as Percy. Was he just hoisted on his comrades’ shields after killing the Titan without any real choice in the matter? Give me Jason’s memories coming back slowly over the course of the quest (with potentially a fractured memory of a mistake he made in the Roman’s final Titan battle that makes him doubt their ability to both rescue Piper’s dad and save Hero but he makes the decision to anyway because he can’t just hurt his friend like that. Let me understand how Jason is the person he is today. Give me glances of the Roman Camp with emphasis on the heavy expectations that have always followed him as the son of Jupiter and foreshadow why he eventually chooses to design all the shrines for the minor gods so he can have his own place in the world as a figure between the two camps.

Let’s dive into those feelings of anger/guilt/resentment when people at camp are disappointed with him for not being Percy or in Chiron’s case are nervous about what his presence means.

I want to dig deeper regarding Jason’s feelings about reconnecting with Thalia. He knows that if the gods hadn’t been determined to keep the two camps completely separate, he could have grown up with his sister.

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

We miss some of the internal turmoil regarding the fact that Piper’s Dad has been captured and she must betray her friends.

We also don’t feel the tensions of Piper’s relationship with Aphrodite. I don’t see Piper bringing up the conversation with her mom saying that her mist memories were so strong because she automatically sensed the potential of a romantic relationship with Jason.

We don’t have any of Leo’s conflicted feelings regarding rescuing Hera or his fear of being made an outcast for his fire abilities. Jason has to go with Leo to discover Bunker 9 and Festus.

Leo doesn’t actively save the day with the Cyclops.

We don’t know how Piper feels about her charm-speak or see her defeat Madea (as the boys are in their weird trance thing).

Knowledge about Gaea’s involvement in wrecking Leo’s life will come later.

Book 2: The Son of Neptune The Quest: Free Thantos Narrator: Hazel

Why this would be cool:

The stakes are so incredibly high. Hazel is literally risking her second chance at life by agreeing to go on this chance. She’s going to the place she died to fight the monster she created. She also has to deal with the trauma of knowing she may have bought the world time with her first sacrifice but it now means nothing if she can’t succeed again.

We get to see Camp Jupiter from the view of someone who loves it but doesn’t really fit in. Hazel joined Camp Jupiter just after the final battle. She enters a community that has learned to fight as a well-oiled machine but that has lost people. Dakota or the others may remark to her about how things were before or the people who are missing. Hazel sees a community that she’s not quite a part of both because she didn’t fight in the war and because she’s in the fifth cohort with a feared godly parent.

It would explore her relationship with Nico more (because I love their dynamic and I want more). She knows she can’t replace his real sister, but she feels comfortable and happy at the opportunity to have a brother, especially one who is out of time like she is.

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

Frankly, the largest pushback would be from the fans who expected this to be Percy’s book since we just watched Jason rediscover who he is.

Percy’s phone call to his mom doesn’t have the same intensity.

Frank’s relationship with Mars and how desperate he was to be claimed but now he doesn’t think he can live up to his father’s expectations.

Frank and his grandmother. We aren’t in Frank’s head as he changes shape till later.

Book 3: Mark of Athena The Quest: Close the Divide Between The Two Camps by finding Athena’s statue and Rescue Nico Narrator(s): Annabeth and Leo

Why Annabeth:

So I can have all the emotions at the reunion with Percy.

Annabeth’s relationship with her Mom has never been great, but imagine beginning the book with Annabeth being given the Mark of Athena. They haven’t left for New Rome yet and her nerves are already all over the place. Then Athena/Minerva comes, gives her an impossible quest, and breaks her hat. Annabeth wants to prove to her mother that she’s worthy because despite everything she still values her mother’s opinions. Also her fatal flaw of hubris makes her believe she will succeed where everyone else failed.

Much of the book already follows her in third person limited so we just get things with a little extra emotion.

Why Leo:

Leo has to grapple with the fact he started this war by being the one to fire the cannon even if he didn’t have any control. He is motivated to fix it

If we’re going to include the Sammy plot, we need to do it now. Leo doesn’t like being the odd one out on the ship but he certainly doesn’t like the feeling of being notable because of his grandfather.

We still need to get into those feelings of abandonment and anger at Gaea for killing his mom.

Nemesis

Leo comes into his own with the discovery of the Archimedes sphere and the decision to value people over objects.

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

The aquarium shenanigans

The fight between Jason and Percy in Kansas needs to happen differently so that the others are present and try to stop it.

Neither of them went ashore to meet Hercules.

I think we might need to move up the Calypso meeting to this book, but that also kills some of the suspense since Frank will have the fireproof coating prior to his adventures in Venice when he gains faith in his abilities. It also might mean Leo opens the fortune cookie from Nemesis unless for some odd reason he doesn’t have it. There’s a lot more narrative weight for it coming later, but in order to get in as many book events as we can in, it might need to come earlier.

Book 4: House of Hades Pt. 1

The Quest: Survive Tartarus Narrator(s): Annabeth and Percy

The first time I read House of Hades, I read it out of order (reading all the Percy and Annabeth chapters until they were on the elevator out of Tartarus before going back and reading the others), because I couldn’t handle the back and forth. I felt like the tension would build, I’d be invested in this plot and then we’d switch to the other plot. Plus I was very concerned for my children. So I feel fully justified in saying that there is more than enough material to give the two of them their own book.

I just feel like all the feelings would be magnified.

Percy’s commentary slowly losing its humor because he can’t anymore.

Annabeth’s guilt at having pulled him in being extra loud.

Downsides beyond adding an entire book: Just imagine all the outrage at two cliffhangers in a row, because you know the book would end with them in the elevator remembering Bob’s words about the stars.

Book 5: House of Hades Pt. 2

The Quest: Close the Doors of Death Narrator(s): Frank and Hazel

Frank and Hazel experience the most growth on the quest to close the doors so this book is all theirs. Hazel learns to control the mist. Frank experiments with his transformations. I want nothing but them growing into themselves and their abilities.

The good thing about turning the two warring storylines from House of Hades into separate books is that we lose very little plot.

Book 6: House of Hades Pt. 3/Blood of Olympus Pt 1 (Personally I would call this one Ambassador of Pluto)

The Quest: Unite the Gods’ Personalities. Narrator: Nico

To clarify what I mean by HoH 3, I just mean anything done with the intention of trying to cross paths with Reyna, including the adventure with Cupid, in addition to the existing Nico&Reyna plotline in BoO.

Nico dealing with all the emotions and his most recent near-death experience.

He kept the secret of the camps so the world wouldn’t end in chaos, but now that the world is in chaos he will be the one to fix it.

In the short time he’s on the Argo 2, Nico realizes that even though this wasn’t his quest; this is his family and he needs to protect them.

The reader has a pretty good idea Nico is gay, even if the word isn’t explicitly said from the descriptions (his guilty Percy thoughts - he let down the man he loves even if he won’t admit it.) This means that Cupid’s forceful outing is potentially less surprising so the reader can be properly outraged at Cupid.

Downside: Reyna definitely has adventures when Nico is passed out, especially the whole waking up with the Hunters, but I think it’s excusable for a whole book from Nico’s perspective.

Also, the battle between the camps and gifting of the statue needs to happen in this book, but we shouldn’t find out if the gods have regained control of their forms yet. We alleviate some tensions because Camp Half-blood is likely to be overrun with Octavian’s monsters instead of the Roman armies and Gaea could awaken any second, but there’s an odd moment of calm and an uneasy truce. (Octavian is potentially taken under custody to be held for trial only to escape in the next book.)

Book 7: Blood of Olympus Pt 2 (and the aftermath)

The Quest: Like The Last Olympian, the final book’s focus is entirely on defeating the series’ big bad, in this case, Gaea. Leo’s quest for the Physician’s cure parallels Percy’s River Styx visit.

Narrator(s): Leo and Piper

Leo has his death hanging over his head. He has decided that he will be the one to die not any of his friends. He got the cloth from Calypso so the “fire” portion of the prophecy applies to him and not Frank. (Yes I know you can’t control prophecies, but do you think that’s going to stop Leo.)

It’s the ultimate revenge for killing his mom. We can have memories of both the happy times with Esperanza and the fear he felt for thinking he caused the fire.

Piper’s perspective is necessary as we need to be with her during the fight with the giants.

This series began with Piper, Leo, and Jason. It ends that way too with the three of them killing Gaea and the two of them narrating.

Downsides:

The Percabeth I love you-the feud is over scene remains in Piper’s perspective.

Since we’re not following Reyna’s delivery of the statue concurrently we don’t know when to anticipate the healed gods appearing in the battle with the giants.

The book can still get away with not showing us Percy’s reunion with Sally or forcing Leo to tell the others he’s alive so they’re all grieving.

#pjo meta #pjo fandom #pjo/hoo #hoo #riordanverse #heroes of olympus #my meta #percy jackon and the olympians #the seven #jason grace #hazel levesque #leo valdez #piper mclean #percy jackson #annabeth chase #frank zhang #the fandom once again improving hoo

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readinganawfullot · 5 years ago

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Okay! Idea central, let’s go!

What if PJO was a thing in Ladybug & Chat Noir?

Okay, so I had some ideas running around during dinner. Apparently, they were good enough to warrant my sister’s approval so I thought I’d post them here! Enjoy! - R

Super excited to tell everyone this, btw!!!

So, Marinette reads. A lot, maybe she doesn’t have a lot of time anymore due to being a ladybug. But back before Adrian and Alya joined, she read as well as designed in her free time

One of those books was the Percy Jackson Series. And she was a huge nerd for it! Tikki doesn’t know it, neither do any of her friends.

And she read the books in English for practice for customers (the bakery gets a lot of tourist okay? She and her parents kind of need to know the language)

ANYWAY- time skip to when she’s ladybugging it out. Maybe she gets break or she’s working on a design when she makes the comment of “I wonder if Percy had to deal with it. I don’t think Percy would let Hawkmoth beat him around like this.”

And Tikki is all like, “Who’s Percy? I haven’t heard of him”

ANd then Marinette fully explains the series and stuff before heading bed. Of how Percy is a half-blood and a hero and he had to deal with a bunch of stuff in the series and maybe he would know how to deal with everything. Something like that.

While Marinette is asleep, Tikki starts thinking. This Percy dude sounds like a pretty solid role model. And Marinette is one of the best Ladybugs she’s had, so why not give her a little gift?

So, in a moment of brilliant “I can give Marinette a gift!!!” Tikki makes the Percy Jackson series real. She makes it a reality. Meaning all the gods in it are real, all the monsters are real, all the half-bloods are real, and all the characters are real. The world changes to make this happen.

Ladybug, the kwami’s, and everything still happen but no one except Marinette knows that Percy Jackson was a series and fictional before.

So now, Marinette is awake. Nothing seems off, and how would she be able to tell?

How should she be able to tell that there was now a strawberry farm in Long Island, NY? Or that there was a summer camp that wasn’t there before? Or that there was a community in New Rome? Or that there was a special floor on the Empire state building?

Or, more important, that certain black-haired trouble making the son of Poseidon was real?

She begins to notice things instead. Like, why did that girl have goat legs? Or, since when did woman look like snakes? And did that guy have one eye?

Tikki fesses up to what she did and Plagg notices the change but can’t say anything about it. Adrien is a little concerned about Plagg and Marinette is panicking more than usual.

How would the class change? Would Marinette change?

Yes, they would! In this change, Marinette is actually a child of the gods. Specifically Hypnos. Now, here me out. Tom is still married to Sabine and still the father of Marinette. But Sabine had was pregnant before anything happened between the two, the kid was Hypnos’s kid.

Now, here’s why Hypnos would be Marinette’s dad. It ties her directly to the demigod world. That and she never seems to be able to sleep. And if, going off the roman aspect of Hypnos, he was used as a threat to keep working. Maybe it would go off to Marinette. She’s always working and productive and she always seems to be tired. Be it of all the akumas or just needing sleep.

Rose would be Aphrodite's kid. I think it’s enough of an explanation just by stating that.

Jukela and Luka would be kids of Apollo. Music for Luka and healing for Jukela. She’s always calm, albeit quiet, and she’s super supportive.

Alix would be Athena’s kid. It shows in her designs for street art and stuff like that.

Marinette would actually meet Percy, maybe on the date he and Annabeth went on in Paris is when he’d meet her.

Anyway, the two hit off great. Marinette kinda freaks out though because trouble does always find Percy in one way or another.

But, she eventually calms down and teases the two. They actually become good friends. “Just tell me when you get married okay? I want to design your wedding dress and suit!” She tells them before they go off back to America.

Now, Percy someone who he considers a cousin and actually introduces her to a few people. Nico and Leo included. The two are great together btw. Nico enjoys hanging around the bakery for free food and snacks while Leo loves exchanging ideas with Marinette.

The whole class, save demigod kids, are confused when they see them with Marinette

None of the seven actually believe who Marinette’s godly parent is and it’s a running gag on “whose her parent?” when they introduce her to new people

Plagg is still having a headache but he’s not going to make a mess of his sugar cube’s actions

I hope everyone likes it and everyone is free to add on to it! Tell me what you think of it! I might write some stuff for it. :) -R

#PJO #Percy Jackson #ML #miracolous ladybug #Crossover idea #my stuff #my writing #Marinette is great #Tikki makes a mess #au sort of

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98prilla · 5 years ago

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Sanders Sides Pt 1 To Leave

Sooo this is part one of a loooong sanders sides series I have going on over on AO3 (read it there https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926434) but I figured I’d post it here too.

Summary: Virgil accepts a deal to go back to the “dark side” with Deceit, feeling like he isn’t wanted by the “light sides” anyways.

It was dark. Not unusual for his room, it tended to be dark and gloomy, lit by scattered purple tinted lights and black heady smelling candles. His things were strewn about, clothes scattered over the floor, bed a nest of blankets, pillows and discarded socks. Papers were posted on the walls, sketches of monsters and disturbing scenes, notebooks next to the bed, filled with scribbles, fragments of dreams and notes and feelings. All the things he couldn’t and wouldn’t say to the others.

He slammed the door behind him, resting his fists against it, head leaning on the cool wood, trying to steady his breathing from the ragged gasps it was coming in now.

“Virgil, that’s not what I meant!” Roman called from the other side of the door, unable to enter with Virgil inside and unwilling to open the door. His will kept it shut tight.

“You said exactly what you meant. You always do, Roman.” He spat the name out, a taste like vinegar on his tongue, acid making his throat burn, keeping back the tears.

“Virgil please, open the door and we can talk this out kiddo.” Patton. His worried voice almost made him give in, just because he hated seeing him upset the most. Of all of them, Patton was the most innocent, what he thought of as the best of them. Everything he wasn’t.

“We should probably give him time to cool off, in most cases once time is between events the emotions that go with them are less volatile and things can be worked out more, well, logically.” Virgil rolled his eyes, sitting on the bed and pulling his hood over his head and his knees to his chest, wrapping himself tightly in a large comforter.

Their noises and discussion were muffled from the safety of his nest, eventually fading completely as they left, probably discussing him somewhere else. Probably talking about him behind his back. About how he always over reacts, how he’s useless, how he does nothing for Thomas besides scare him.

That’s what Roman had said, anyway. Not those words, exactly. But that’s what he meant. Angrily, he grabbed a note book, freeing his arms from under the blankets, sketching out Roman’s profile, his stupid sash, his useless sword, his idiotic outfit. He was making the lines too thick and dark, putting too much pressure on the pencil tip, and it snapped suddenly, leaving a ragged streak across the page.

Even in this drawing, Roman looked perfect. Even in crude lines and lead streaked smears, he could envision Roman’s stupid smile, and over enunciated voice, running off on some idiotic adventure that would get Thomas killed, not that anyone other than him actually cared about danger. Patton would follow anyone anywhere, and Logan would be too busy studying statistics and coming to a scientific conclusion, by the time he got involved Thomas would already be in danger. Did anyone ever listen to him? No. Of course not. He was just the worried one, the silly afraid of everything one, the scaredy cat one, the flight not fight one. The problematic one.

He let out a strangled yell, a sound of anger and frustration and pure sadness, ripping the drawing roughly out of the sketchbook and tossing it crumpled across the room. It didn’t make nearly satisfying enough a sound.

He stood, shaking in anger, fists clenched. He grabbed a ceramic owl and threw it against the wall, it shattered with satisfying zeal, a bright, clear sound. He threw a lamp next, glass bulb shattering, metal stand chipping away the wood of the wall. He knocked over the bookshelf of sketchbooks and archaic tomes, books scattering across the floor, sending loose papers fluttering through the air. He fell to his knees and slammed the ground with his fists, tears finally running silently down his face, heart cracked and bleeding.

They were right. He was useless. He couldn’t do anything. What was even the point. Thomas didn’t need him. They didn’t need him. They all had their happy friendship circle of rainbows and sparkles. He was just holding them all back. He felt a chill run down his spine, the hair on his neck stand up.

“What do you want?” He asked, voice raw and thick, unable to muster the venom necessary to deal with this Side.

“Me? Why would I want anything? In fact, I wouldn’t be able to get in here if you didn’t want me to. Why lock out all your so-called friends, but let me inside?” The voice circled him, and Virgil looked up at the yellow eyed, snake skinned face of Deceit. He dropped his gaze, realizing his fist was so tight he left crescent moon marks on his palm.

“You know I can’t stop you from getting in here, and I’m not in the mood for one of your visits right now.” Virgil muttered, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Why so down? Oh, I see. Have you finally realized what you’ve known from the start? That they don’t want you? That you shouldn’t have trusted them to start with? That the only real friend, the only one who ever truly looked out for you, was me?” His long-nailed hand tilted Virgil’s chin up, feeling his tremors.

“That’s not true.” He whispered, slapping Deceit’s hand away and glaring at the floor.

“Sweet, poor “Virgil”. All alone in the world, no one who understand you. Understands what you do, how important you are. They don’t really know you, they don’t even know your name. You know you only have to ask and I can make everything better.” The yellow eyes were all Virgil’s dark ones could see. They seemed to glow, seemed to suck him in.

“they’ll never understand us. You tried so hard and still they refuse to see. We’re just trying to protect Thomas from himself. They’d rather we didn’t exist at all.”

Virgil closed his eyes for a moment, steadying himself with a breath in, out. He opened his eyes, glowing purple in the dim light, unwaveringly meeting Deceit’s, hopeless and empty. He hadn’t said anything he himself hadn’t already been thinking.

“Just make it all go away.” He whispered, biting his lip. Deceit smiled, black smoke coiling up his legs, around his arms, bright eyes and a white, sharp smile grinning through the black.

“Your wish is my command.” Virgil closed his eyes as the smoke snake struck.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #angst with a happy ending #unsympathetic deceit #but he gets better

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itsclydebitches · 5 years ago

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RWBY: The Horcrux Theory

Yesterday when I answered the lovely @leonhaxor‘s ask, I was surprised by the number of people who said they hadn’t heard about this theory before; people like me who are invested in the characterization of Volume Six and presumably would have come across it. I figure then that I either saw this theory on another blog and it didn’t spread in the way I assumed it would, or I thought of it myself, forgot it, and upon remembering it assumed I’d seen it elsewhere. Considering both of these things have happened to me in the past more than once (woo shit memory!), your guess is as good as mine. The important thing is the theory is here now and I’d like to take the time to lay it out in a more organized---and hopefully more persuasive*---manner.

(*As a bit of a disclaimer, I’m really just working with what I perceive as a valid interpretation of the text, not a theory in the sense that I expect Rooster Teeth to implement it in Volume Seven. If that were the case, I’d have expected our finale to paint Ruby and the rest as less heroic/justified in their actions, instead emphasizing how OOC they are, thereby setting up a situation wherein they would eventually question why their outlook and behavior has changed so drastically. But we didn’t get that. So this is less, “Sincere expectations for Volume Seven!” and more “Based on what Volume Six gives us, this is a plot twist that could work for these reasons...”)

Let’s start with the title. For anyone who may not know, a horcrux is a magical object within the Harry Potter universe that houses a piece of someone’s soul, a way of ensuring that they live on even if their body is killed. Within the plot, Voldemort (our primary antagonist) creates multiple horcruxes, one of which is carried by our heroes over a long journey. The object’s dark nature as well as its limited ability to think for itself results in a dramatic change in the group over time. They become moodier, more prone to fighting, and one character in particular, Ron, succumbs to a number of doubts and fears he’s been carrying since we met him at the start of the series. Thanks to the horcrux’s influence, he ends up acting in ways he otherwise never would have, including saying things he does not mean (“Your parents are dead. You have no family!”) and settling on courses of actions he later regrets (abandoning the group).

We can see some similarities then between the two situations, both in the Relic’s potential influence on those who carry it---to the point where, the longer they hold onto it, the more likely they are to act in ways contrary to their nature---and in the concept of a magical object being able to think for itself. Obviously Jinn is far more of a person than a sliver of a soul is, but the point is each has a certain amount of agency. As leonhaxor points out in response to my original post, there are also numerous similarities between this potential setup and the ring from Lord of the Rings. There we have another powerful, semi-sentient magical object carried by our heroes over a long journey, slowly corrupting them overtime. I think the variety of source material here is worth noting. Meaning, it doesn’t matter which comparison between stories is “best,” but rather that such comparisons are common. The Corruptible Object is an established motif in fantasy storytelling and RWBY is a web series that is highly invested in re-creating standard setups (such as fairy tales) and then attempting to subvert/complicate them. It makes a great deal of sense then that they would use a trope seen in two of the most popular fantasy series ever created, and then work to update it: the Relic is not a simplistic, pure evil thing like the ring or a horcrux is. It functions in similar ways, but---like most else in RWBY post-Volume Three---has a more complex morality attached to it. Jinn seems kindly at times, the Relic was created by the God of Light, etc. Form then, our expectations for how Rooster Teeth pulls from popular storytelling and incorporates those elements into their narrative, can be used as a potential bit of evidence.

But onto the juicier stuff.

The first thing that’s worth establishing is that all of Ozpin’s plans and choices function on multiple levels. For example, take letting Ruby into Beacon. He seems to have done this because she’s a prodigy, and because she has an excellent moral compass, and because a Silver Eyed Warrior is useful in the fight against Salem, and because Beacon is the safest place for someone belonging to a group that Salem has actively hunted in the past, and because she’s now drawn attention to herself by fighting Roman and Cinder. Phew. There’s a lot at play here. This sort of thinking is important because even if we introduce the possibility of the Relic encouraging negative emotions, it means we needn’t undermine any of the already established reasons for Ozpin’s choices in regards to its safety. Why does he put the Relic in a massive, underground vault that looks like it exists in its own pocket of reality?

Obviously to make it difficult to get at, but also, perhaps, to make sure that the Relic is as far away from humanity as possible, unable to influence them. (As a side note: creating what essentially looks like a mini-dimension removed from the real world would definitely drain someone of their remaining magic.) When Yang first enters the vault we see bits of dirt and sand floating upwards, defying gravity, much like how the snow stops when Jinn appears. The Relic appears to have an impact on its environment, perhaps one that grows stronger the longer it stays in one place. Ozpin hides it deep below the earth, in its own little pocket of reality, because otherwise having the Relic sit in one place for too long is going to cause real problems.

Why put it under a school? Both so that there’s extra protection and because these are the people most equipped to deal with the Relic’s influence. If it does still manage to produce negativity---and as a result draws more Grimm---do you want a bunch of untrained civilians dealing with that, or the people used to both managing stress and fighting monsters? Why take the Relic immediately to Atlas? Because, as said, safety works in a multitude of ways. You’ve put the Atlesian army between both Salem and any Grimm the Relic may call; you’ve put the Relic in the city that’s most prepared to deal with the consequences attached to it. All of Ozpin’s choices remain logical even if we introduce the possibility that the Relic is capable of more than just answering questions.

But I’m actually getting ahead of myself. We’re still working under the assumption that the Relic produces negativity at all, so let’s take a moment to lay out some evidence for that.

In short, it comes down to the fact that the Relic attracts Grimm. Ozpin says straight out that he's not “entirely sure” why this is the case, but he clearly has theories, one of which has to do with the Grimm’s “origins.” AKA, the God of Darkness who we know after this episode created beings that are both physical representations of, and are attracted to, negativity. That’s their origin.

The simplest explanation here is that the Relic is somehow producing the thing we already know the Grimm are attracted to: negativity of any sort. Rather than introducing another, convoluted bit of lore---Grimm are attracted to negativity AND now any objects explicitly created by the gods---it would make sense to streamline things. The Grimm are still attracted to the same things they’ve always been attracted to, it’s just now we have an object that actively produces that. It would explain why Ozpin describes the attraction as “faint, but undeniable.” After all, there’s plenty of negativity in the world. Nearby Grimm might get distracted by something bigger and nastier, but you’re more likely to become a target if you’re in the presence of something that eats away at your ability to remain optimistic and generate kindness. This explanation would also function well thematically, both for the trope reasons discussed above, and due to the nature of djinns and genies. I’ve laid out elsewhere how Jinn herself is rather manipulative, subtly encouraging cruelty towards Ozpin as well as reckless behavior in Ruby. Jinn is the lamp, so if that’s her characterization, why not extend that a little further? As an entity she actively does what the lamp passively does: encourage fear, mistrust, and anger towards others.

What’s immediately notable to me then is how negative moods seem to follow the Relic around, literally coming and going as the Relic does. One of the happiest moments in Volume Six is when everyone gets on the train and the girls are settling into their room. It’s just like old times with arguments about video games, Qrow coming in to tease his nieces, Weiss getting playfully annoyed at Ruby, etc. Sure, we also deal with some of Blake’s lingering doubts in regards to Yang, but it’s an incredibly optimistic conversation. Everyone is supporting one another here, everyone is smiling... and notably Ozpin, carrying the Relic, is absent. It doesn’t register as odd to us because Oscar and Ozpin have been removed from most group gatherings that don’t relate immediately to the war, most obviously when Oscar doesn’t join the re-united groups for their celebratory dinner in Haven. His absence makes sense, but it also happens to coincide with one of the last truly happy scenes we get this Volume (the other being the reunion with Jaune’s sister). If we buy into this idea that the Relic can impact people over time, Ozpin’s absence might also help explain why things don’t start going south until the train. As established, he keeps his distance within the Haven house. Except for explaining the Relic’s function---which lasts for only a minute or so, wherein the conversation presumably ends and Ozpin leaves the group to their chit-chat, taking the Relic with him---and other logistical details in regards to their journey, Ozpin and Oscar might have kept to themselves, thereby limiting the rest of the group’s exposure to the Relic.

From then on though the group is forced to keep close quarters with Ozpin and the morale very quickly takes a nosedive. Whoever is holding the Relic and whoever else is in its immediate vicinity demonstrates an incredibly short fuse, starting with Oscar getting into a fight with Dudley and Dudley getting mad enough to shove him in the middle of a fight.

We then see the group’s knee-jerk fury over Ozpin’s new bit of information while back on the train, Yang antagonizing him in the snow, all the way through to the group drawing their weapons on Qrow, an ally and uncle, for merely saying, “Hey.” As myself and others immediately pointed out when the episode aired, that is not a normal response for these girls, especially when Qrow isn’t even the one they’re mad at. What’s difficult in analyzing a theory like this is that we have to acknowledge that all of these emotions are still real. The Relic is just taking them to an extreme that results in unexpected and inappropriate behavior. The Relic isn’t producing these feelings of anger and hurt and confusion---fans are right to establish that it’s natural for the girls to be upset here---but it does seem to be escalating things at an unnatural rate. Which is why I chose the horcrux as a comparison. Just like Ron under normal circumstances, outside of the necklace’s influence, would never say or do these things, neither would the group outside of the Relic’s influence. They’d all feel the same things, they’d just a) be experiencing the normal amount of those emotions and b) be better able to manage their response to them.Things like drawing their weapons, punching Oscar, slamming him up against walls, abject pessimism, rejecting adults, deciding to steal an airship, insisting on fighting Cordovin, or letting out a furious, “He was watching us?” when you learn Ozpin just saved your teammates’ lives are all pretty unexpected explosions among a group that’s normally more diverse, more level-headed, and more compassionate. Volume Six is absolutely stuffed with examples of extreme behavior, actions and knee-jerk reactions that don’t fit the crime and don’t fit established characterization. We can chalk it up to terrible writing, or we can theorize that maybe, just maybe, something is encouraging them to act in this manner.

With these explanations in mind, consider how Ozpin reacts to Ruby merely touching the Relic. It’s quick, but when he finds out she has it his response is wide-eyed fear and an immediate, “Please hand it over.”

Based on what we already know, this makes no sense to me. Why would Ozpin be fearful? Ruby quite literally can’t do anything with the lamp until she has Jinn’s name---his secrets are safe. Even if they weren’t, or even if his trauma is convincing him here that Ruby might somehow divine that there are questions left and find a way to use one of them against him, I can’t believe that Ozpin would deal with that situation in this particular way. Meaning, the guy has a pretty level head and he’s good at putting people at ease. How do you get your Relic back without drawing attention to the fact that it’s still usable? By expressing relief that Ruby found it. Oh good. It’s safe. Wonderful, I’ll just casually take it back now. Yet Ozpin is incapable of doing any of that here. He sees Ruby holding it and is blurting out an instinctual request: “Please give it back.” It implies that his only concern is to get it out of her hands as quickly as possible, which in turn suggests that merely holding it has some sort of consequence attached. This isn’t a problem (questions) that he can take the time to carefully coax a solution to, this is a problem (her holding it) that needs to be solved now. Right this instant. Please drop the magical object that encourages depression and fury in people nearby. That’s my burden to (literally) carry.

He even reminds them then that it’s a “powerful item” (again, what power is at play if Ruby can’t summon Jinn?) and that it’s “[his] burden to bear.” Blake picks up on that implication and asks for us, “Why does it matter who carries it?” but Ozpin isn’t inclined to answer. He simply begs them to listen to him and then Oscar takes control, revealing Jinn’s name. But the question still stands. Why does it matter who carries it, provided that no one else has the word needed to access the Relic’s one, established power? Ozpin’s behavior here suggests that there’s more he’s worried about than just his (well founded) fear that they’ll somehow ask a question.

In my recap of “Uncovered” I theorized that there was a consequence to using the Relic given Ozpin’s non-violent desperation to get it out of Ruby’s hands. If you’re concerned only with keeping your own secrets... just take the damn thing. Ozpin might be in Oscar’s body now, but he’s still incredibly powerful. He could snatch the Relic out of Ruby’s hands easy-peasy, but only if he’s unconcerned with her mental and physical health. If, on the other hand, you’re likewise concerned with keeping her from using it because it would harm her in some way, you’re not going to exacerbate that problem by putting her in even more, potential danger. Instead you beg. You plead. You try to reason. You charge with an open palm, looking like you want only to knock the Relic out of her hands.

That assumed consequence could be a sort of double-dose of whatever negativity the Relic is already producing; an emotional whammy thanks to the increased interaction: someone near the relic won’t be as impacted as someone holding the relic, who in turn won’t be as impacted as someone who actually uses it. While re-watching some scenes for this meta, it struck me that twice now we’ve seen characters collapse immediately after that close interaction:

Granted yes, both Yang and Ozma are reacting to already terrible news: Yang that Raven has officially abandoned her and Ozma that he presumably can’t beat Salem. Visually though it’s an intriguing detail. Those who touch/use the relic tend to buckle under its weight. It literally and figuratively generates the sort of emotion that causes people to collapse in despair. So why don’t we see any more of this? Why isn’t Ozpin falling over in Haven and Ruby on the rest of their journey? Potentially because of either their Silver Eyes or what Silver Eyes represent. We know that Ozpin’s magic is what created children with Silver Eyes in the first place, so it could be that his original magic---Light’s magic---helps to act as a buffer against the Relic’s influence. Ozpin and Ruby are both able to interact with it more easily than others because of that buffer. That is, up until Ruby has been carrying/sleeping with it for days on end and is now mistrustful of Ozpin and throwing herself into canons; up until Ozpin has been carrying/sleeping with it for days on end and is now much more snappish towards his students than normal. Or, a related theory, it’s just their innate natures that do the trick, no literal magic involved. Ruby is the “simple soul” of our story and Ozpin the one who believes simple souls hold the key to success. They’re both already optimists at their core and therefore it takes longer to eat away at those beliefs. Unlike someone like Yang or Qrow who is already grappling with anger and pessimism. They fall right under the Relic’s influence.

All of this would, put plainly, explain a whole slew of issues in Volume Six. Why are our characters so OOC? Because magic is seriously putting them off their game and turning them into people they wouldn’t normally be inclined to become. Why wasn’t there an overt downside to using Jinn like many fans expected (given the mythology attached to her)? There was, we just haven’t acknowledged it yet. Why did everyone have a near identical reaction to the Relic’s information, despite being different people with different experiences and worldviews? Because magic created a blanket uniformity of anger, despair, and eventual superiority. What was up with that side quest to the farm that didn’t lead anywhere plot-wise? It’s thematic work, even more-so than the already established “Oh, our characters have doubts about their mission and here are Grimm that literally make them apathetic!” Those moments may also function as a pseudo red herring. No one is theorizing about “things that magically change your mood” because we already got that this volume. Whole episodes worth. It was those Grimm and then the group set them on fire, freeing themselves... except what if there was more than one magical thing influencing them right from the start? It’s the sort of thematic detail you might include to help establish a plot twist.

As said at the start though, I don’t actually believe very strongly that we’ll see this revelation in Volume Seven. There’s too much else that, if I were setting up such a reveal, I would have changed with this information in mind. But I think it’s still a possibility given what we’ve seen and it’s absolutely something I would accept moving forward. I would much rather be able to say, “Ah. Everyone went OOC because of this conflict with the Relic you were setting up. Far from perfect execution, but you still pulled it off.” Rather than what we currently have, which is, “Team RWBY is turning into a bunch of violent, arrogant, and cruel people entirely of their own volition. This is what ‘heroism’ now looks like in the RWBY-verse.” Magical influences, to my mind, are the preferred explanation here.

#rwby #mymetas

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leilas-digital-scrapbook-blog · 6 years ago

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Giving Love a Bad Name – Confessions of a Fanfiction Writer

I know we’re supposed to blog about our major projects this week and I promise I will get to that soon, but I’d like to go off book for a moment to address something that’s been bugging me since last Thursday’s class. As someone who’s always tried to engage with fandom in as creative a way as possible, I hoped a class on user generated content would offer a fresher perspective than the usual amount of prejudice and self-righteous superiority that sadly seem to accompany the subject of fanfiction even amongst people that make stories and their passion for it their bread and butter.

Guess I should have known better.

In the world of professional writers, fanfiction is still a filthy word. It sums up everything that’s wrong with the people you’re sharing your stories with: the obsessiveness, the entitlement, the disregard for boundaries, the penchant for making everything about sex. Worse, gay sex, as unspeakably dirty as it’s hilarious. Be warned, writers: if you make it big, your stories will inevitably become a free-for-all at the mercy of those people. A worse fate than even George R. R. Martin could wish on his own characters.

I’m used to seeing the world of fanfiction belittled and disparaged, of course, and I’m the first to admit that the community is often its own worst enemy. But for some reason it still hurt a little to sit in class and listen to people I’ve come to like and respect during these past few months buy into every bad stereotype associated with the form. Not because I felt called out (though yes, I do write fanfiction from time to time, and I happen to quite enjoy reading it too), but because of the underlying assumptions that 1. something that’s not 100% original cannot be art, it’s a violence in fact, especially if it twists someone else’s creation into something it was never meant to be (in this case, queer representation); and 2. there’s something wrong with creating exclusively out of love, without ever expecting to be paid for it. And I have Strong Opinions on that.

So let’s talk about fanfiction.

Actually, scratch that, let’s talk about my favorite subject – yours truly. As you may have gathered by now, I love fanfiction. A whole fangirly lot. My gateway drug into it was my obsession with Lost about 10 years ago and its pesky habit of offing every character I was foolish enough to get attached to. But lo! Someone was keeping them alive through their stories! I felt blessed. I got to spend more time in a world I loved, and I stopped flirting with the idea of giving up on the show every time another character I liked bit the dust. Everybody won.

Even more than as a fan, though, I appreciated the world of possibilities that fanfiction opened up to me as a non-native speaker. I come from a small town in the north of Italy; the access I had to foreign books in their original language was limited, and if I wanted to read something in English I’d have to spend quite a lot of money on one of the very few novels (usually chunky airport bookshop thrillers or housewife romances – not exactly my preferred genres) that shared a single shelf in the bookstore with German, French, Spanish titles. But fanfiction was free, accessible, and there was so much of it. If I didn’t like a story, all I needed to do was move on to the next. Suddenly there was an infinite library of engaging stories to help me make my English better. True, they didn’t all read like a published novel would – there’s a lot of unpolished, error-plagued, stream-of-consciousness-y material out there. But there are also so, so many beautifully written works, and believe me, even for a non-native speaker it’s very easy to spot the difference.

Fanfiction also gave me the chance and motivation to practice my English writing in a way school never could have done. I’ve been writing my own stories since I could hold a pen, but I didn’t dare write in English until I was a fanfiction-loving teenager. It was a marketing decision, really – my first foray into writing fanfiction was for a fandom so small that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I’m the only Italian representative, so if I wanted any kind of feedback on my work I’d have to suck it up and try my hand at writing in a language that didn’t come natural to me. I would never argue that the feedback I got on my works made me a better writer – contrary to popular opinion, the fanfiction community is made up of the nicest, most supportive people, and alas, you’ll never get a comment on everything you did wrong with your structure or even just pointing out common grammar mistakes from them (though I was lucky enough to have someone explain to me how dialogue punctuation works differently in English than in Italian, so I guess something can be learned even from the Internet). It did motivate me to keep writing, though, and that made me a better writer. If you think I’m being too dramatic, dishing out this monster of a post nobody asked for just to declare my eternal devotion to fanfiction, it’s because it’s personal to me. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been told that I write in English as well as native speakers, and fanfiction is a big part of why that’s true. I doubt I would even be in this course if it wasn’t for it.

And then, of course, there’s the gay thing. I’m not going to argue about how heteronormativity sucks and representation matters because I’m sure everyone’s as sick of talking about it as I am, but please try to understand how it felt for a gay person like me, used to be depicted in media as a plot device or token secondary-character representation if at all, to be able to step into a world where queerness was the default for once. Where queer protagonists had meaningful queer love stories and queer friends and got to save the world from the Apocalypse too. Or to fight the Empire or go to Hogwarts or everything else fictional straight people have had a right to do since the dawn of storytelling in addition to romancing the hottie of their choice. I’m not asking you to feel as passionately about it, of course, but (especially if you’re straight) you might try and empathize the next time you think a fanart of two boys kissing is something deserving of your amused contempt.

I hope I’m not coming across as the person that screams “homophobe” at everyone who disagrees with her because I guarantee that’s not what I’m trying to do here, but I think the general distaste for slash says a lot about the way our society sees heterosexual relationships as love and homosexual relationships as sex. Yes, there’s a lot of gay porn in the world of fanfiction. But you know what you’re most likely to find? Romance. Not in the saucy literary sense of the word, but in its simpler, most literal acceptation. Fanfiction is just one more way for humans to express themselves, after all, and love has always been front and center in our art. Love, not sex – even if it’s gay. In fact, explicit material doesn’t even make up the majority of what you’ll find on a fanfiction website. Don’t worry, I don’t want anyone to taint their souls by visiting one of those dens of iniquity so I pulled some stats myself. Here’s the number of works for each rating in three of the most popular fandoms on Archive Of Our Own, the current go-to website for the fanfiction community (sorry Fanfiction.net) – Harry Potter, Supernatural and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of 9/3/2019:

Even counting both Mature and Explicit works as straight-up porn (which I don’t think is quite fair, but that’s a discussion for another day), they only make up less than 1/3 of the material. Kinda disappointing, for a medium that’s supposed to be all about filthy graphic gay sex. Imagine if only one in three musicals actually featured singing and dancing, or superheroes weren’t in the majority of superhero movies. They’re lucky fanfiction is shared for free, or I’d be screaming for my money back.

Maybe I’ve just been brainwashed by SJWs, though, and this has nothing to do with my being an immigrant or a lesbian. Maybe my inability to see what’s so bad about appropriating someone else’s intellectual property for your own amusement is a cultural thing. I apologize – as mentioned, I’m Italian, and we all know Ancient Roman culture was basically just a ripoff of everything those inventive Greeks came up with. It’s in our blood. Hell, our 2€ coin, the biggest, has the face of Dante Alighieri on it, a writer most famous for having written 14.000+ verses of self-insert real-person-fic in which the girl he fancied as a teenager, his favorite author, and God himself all fall over themselves to tell him how awesome he is and he gets to prophesy an eternity in Hell for his political enemies. Talk about wish-fulfilling entitlement. Not to mention all those creatively arid Renaissance “artists” celebrated for stealing characters from the Bible and Greek mythology (seriously, the fact that Greece hasn’t unleashed an army of lawyers on us yet is nothing short of a miracle) and putting them in their cheesy paintings. Other countries can rely on a much stronger moral backbone and endless imagination – I’m sure Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, those creative geniuses at Disney and countless others never had to resort to something as cheap and despicable as borrowing other people’s characters to tell the stories they wanted to tell.

Either way, I can’t help it – I see the prospect of creating something that will resonate with people so strongly that they’ll make it a part of themselves, that it’ll compel them to make more art, to reach out and connect with other fans, as something incredibly beautiful rather than scary. Maybe this is my usual naiveté speaking, and I will come to eat my words. It’s certainly disturbing that a bunch of entitled fans bullied the Mass Effect developers into changing the series’ ending, and sending actors explicit fanart of themselves is straight-up harassment, but is fanfiction really the problem here? Or is it social network culture, with its power to destroy all barriers and foster hive mind? To give resentment a platform to spread and be heard? I promise that the average fanfiction writer wouldn’t campaign to get an ending changed. They’d just roll up their sleeves and write a better one themselves.

#my thoughts #aka leila goes off about her life story #user generated content #fanfiction #fandom #tmi alert

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awed-frog · 6 years ago

Note

About your griffin post, about it being Protoceratops... It's not true. Mark Witton did an in-depth discussion about it.

Yes, about that - as I said in the notes, I’m grateful to the person who posted the link because I’d never heard of any of that, and the more diverse perspectives on stuff, the better. That said, a few things about his rebuttal (and yours):

1. When it comes to religion, mythology and folklore studies, there’s no such thing as ‘true’ and ‘not true’. You can categorize theories with other words, such as ‘likely’, ‘probable’, ‘possible’ and ‘utter troll dung’, but those are not exact sciences, so while it’s possible to follow a rigorous and scientific approach, it’s difficult (or even impossible) to prove anything in a definite way.

2. Adrienne Mayor’s book had an interdisciplinary approach. Mark Witton’s article did not. Now, this is more to Mayor’s credit than to Witton’s demerit, because you’re not going to contact fifteen colleagues for a blog post, but it’s worth noting that the lack of interdisciplinary research is a huge problem in academia, and it’s especially noticeable in ancient history (or maybe I notice it more because it’s my field, I don’t know). Since people tend to be either word-minded or numbers-minded, what you get is a series of extremely well-prepared specialists looking at stuff - while being completely ignorant of 98% of the world they’re examining. An ancient Greek scholar, for instance, will know a lot about linguistic shifts but squat about bread making, and that’s a bad way to understand a whole culture. Mayor, who’s more on the word side of the equation, made an effort to consult with science-oriented colleagues; Witton didn’t do that (although, as I said, that’s perfectly normal for the writing format he was using) and it shows.

3. About his first argument, ie that griffins are found in Near Eastern art: who cares? What you need to do here is not look at how you see the world, but at how a Greek person would see the world. Near Eastern griffins are not relevant - not because they don’t exist (they do) or because they’re not objectively fascinating (they are). They’re not relevant because they’re not mentioned in this context by Greek texts. None of the authors Mayor discusses made a connection between the Central Asia griffins and the Persian griffins. Maybe they didn’t know about the other ones, maybe they saw them as different animals - I honestly don’t know. But if they didn’t draw a connection between the two thing, then neither should we. I know mythology books tend to have categories on ‘monsters’ and offer enthralling images of ‘sirens’, ‘giants’ and ‘demons’ from around the world, but the fact is, how a specific culture understands that monster is likely to differ a lot from what their neighbours think of them. Sphinxes are a good example. There’s the Egyptian sphinx and the Greek sphinx - those are never discussed in the same papers because, despite the fact they do have superficial similarities, they’re very different creatures in what concerns their role in their respective societies’ religious and conceptual landscapes.

4. About his second argument, ie that protoceratops bones are not as widespread as she suggests, and one wouldn’t trip on skulls every two seconds - again, so what? As long as those fossils can be placed in that area at the right time, I’m good. This is not a scientific experiment the Scythians are carrying out: one skull is enough to suggest a story behind it, one trader sharing that story in his travels is enough to make it grow, and one bartender telling Herodotus about it is enough to validate it. The Amazons are a very good example of how that works. The idea of a tribe of women warriors had fascinated the Greek for centuries (they’re mentioned in the Iliad) before Herodotus wrote about them confirming they were real people doing real stuff. Western scholars have been scoffing at him ever since - and they kept scoffing until Soviet archaeologists started finding graves of women who’d been buried with weapons. Now - did archaeologists ever find a cemetery that was 100% badass female warriors? No. Did they find a cemetery that was 50% female warriors? Also no. To the best of our current knowledge, some of those Siberian-based tribes had - occasionally - warrior queens, or high-status women who used weapons. They were not Amazons in the traditional sense of the word, but it’s not that hard to imagine what must have happened there: one foreign delegation headed by an armed queen would have been enough to make any Greek go wtf and ooooohh, because that would have been so exotic - Greek women didn’t use weapons (and neither did Persian women, or Egyptian women - cultures some Greeks would have been familiar with) - so the sight of that must have left quite a deep mark. And since that’s how humans work, one warrior queen can become ‘a whole race of man-hating badass women’ in two seconds flat. I mean, we know that’s how storytelling works, and what happens with dubious or spotty record keeping, but also - how many times has that happened to you? You meet one Korean guy, he’s the only Korean you know and he’s an asshole - before you know it, you start to assume that’s what all Koreans are like. It’s just how we’re wired, and I guess it was supposed to be about protecting us from poisonous plants (‘Sure, that other red berry almost killed my brother, but what about this one?’ - that would have seen us extinct in no time), but it’s also something we need to keep in check, because no - people are not ‘all the same’ just because they belong to the same ‘tribe’.

5. Another argument he makes is that Central Asia to Greece is rather a long distance for Chinese whispers and legend swapping, and that’s so wrong I don’t even know what to say. This is exactly what I meant when I said people can be experts in their field (in Witton’s case, paleontology) while being pretty ignorant about others, because the ancient world was way more connected than what we imagine it to be. We know that even in prehistoric times, there were crowded trade routes moving from the Baltics to Greece, that people travelled hundreds of miles to go to some sanctuary on a Scottish island, and that yeah - ideas and legends did travel with goods, sometimes in a very lasting way. The traces of Buddhist doctrine, for instance, are all over Greek philosophy. This is a subject that’s only recently been explored because people like to believe Greek culture was born fully-formed without any foreign influences, but the studies on the exchanges between India and Greece - well before Alexander’s times - are fascinating. So no, I’m not disturbed in the slightest by the fact news about ‘griffin skulls’ seem to have travelled from the Gobi to Athens. That stuff happened, and as I mentioned above, all you need is one person - one guy who’s well-spoken enough, convincing enough, or convinced enough - one guy who doesn’t want Greek traders anywhere near his gold-stuffed mountains - talking to a second person. Today we’ve only got about 10% of Greek literature, but Greeks were an inquisitive bunch, and the country was littered with self-styled historians, geographers and anthropologists who spent their time either traveling around or paying drinks to whomever seemed foreign enough to be interesting. That method has limits, by the way - I myself once invented a fair bit of my town’s history because I was sixteen and bored and those tourists had seen me with my Latin textbook and asked me if I knew anything about Roman settlements in the area, so. I mean - half of a Greek historian’s paragraph start with ‘A man in Samos told me’ - God knows who they were even talking to. A local priest keen to increase tourism, the village idiot - anything’s possible.

6. Finally, something else that’s just uh is how Witton says, why single out griffins? What about other monsters? And, well, that’s the whole point of Mayor’s book. We know for sure ancient people found fossils; what we’re trying to figure out is what impact (if any) that had on their worldview. For instance, fossils did not suggest the idea of evolution, but they did mess with (or confirm) some of their religious beliefs. I’m hoping to summarize other chapters of Mayor’s book in more detail, but just a couple of examples: the Greeks, like many other ancient people, believed their ancestors to have been much taller and stronger than themselves -

(This, by the way, it’s another tantalizing way the outside world may - or may not - have influenced thought and belief: did the Greeks believe that because of the monumental architecture older cultures had left behind, or did those staggering things confirm an idea that had sprung from a different source? Like, humans tend to be pessimistic mofos, so it’s plenty possible you’d assume people are becoming smaller and weaker just because, and next the finding of a Daedalic temple just confirms that for you, because how the hell could anyone built that and Jesus Christ? Or maybe you find that temple first, and adjust your theology accordingly. We just don’t know. Hell - we’re struggling to explain contemporary religious phenomena - everything and anything from ISIS to spontaneous lynchings in India to cults - we have zero chance of fully understanding Greek religion in a way that allows us to say, ‘that’s right’ or ‘that’s wrong’.)

- and they also believed in monstrous giants dying in riverbeds (many Greek rivers are named after giants). Both things are probably related to the giant-ass femurs which kept cropping up in fields and - well - riverbeds, so no - griffins are not the lone exception. We know of people finding stuff they assume to be giant bones, divine cattle, cyclops - if you can think of it, there’s probably a fossil for it.

Ultimately, I just want to say: Mayor does offer some rather sweeping statements, but, then again, her book is aimed at a general audience. Too many conditionals and no one’s buying it (or understanding it). On the other hand, she also never pretends to hold any Universal Truth over the subject she’s exploring, because that’s how (good) academia works: you expect (and encourage) rebuttals, corrections, discussions. That’s how we progress.

Personally, what attracts me to these theories is that they’re part of a movement that’s arising - bloody finally - acknowledging man is not the centre of the known and unknown universe.

Until very recently, we were told the physical world has zero influence on what we think and how we feel - because we’re a superior animal, that is, so that stuff doesn’t touch us in the same way it does other (lower) beasts. And while that is true to an extent - if there’s an inconvenient river, we move it - saying that the world around us has no impact on our souls, brains and way of life - that’s just laughably pretentious. We now know something as banal as the weather can completely transform our mood and our decision-making, even on the long term - that trees make us smarter, that urban landscapes are likely to give migraines - there are studies in experimental archaeology in how landscape influences thought (like, you bury someone in a fetal position because the ground is too hard, you make yourself feel better by imagining he’s like a baby in the mother’s womb and will one day be reborn), and a lot of new ideas about folklore and religion. This line of studies on fossils is one example of that; another is how geography impacts theology - I don’t remember who it was, but I know someone suggested the reason human sacrifice is more common in tropical cultures is because in a jungle, death will immediately (and very visibly) feed new life, whereas in colder climates the relation is not that apparent. And again, it may never be possible to prove right and wrong there. Even if we had a time machine, these things are tricky to understand. People think of faith and belief in different ways, approach their religion through their own filter, will pretend to go along with stuff for personal gain. Who knows. The only thing we can be sure of is that those fossils would have been understood differently by different people. To some, that would have been proof of mythical monsters. To others, a way to strengthen their flock’s faith and thus cement social cohesion. And to others still, it was probably just a way to make money - a temple displaying a ‘griffin skull’ would have led to people selling griffin statues and opening griffin-themed restaurants, same as you see today in places like Lourdes or Fatima. Humans are messy. History is messy. That’s what’s beautiful (and infuriating) about both.

#ask #griffins #mythology #greek mythology #religion #mark witton #sorry i'm not including links #i'm late for a job #gaaaaaah #i hope this made sense?#but i'm open to discuss this of course #witton's perspective was genuinely interesting

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let-me-love-you-loki · 6 years ago

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Hounds of Justice--Ch. 30

Chapter 30

“Hey, Ro?” I leaned against the open door of his locker room. My anxiety rose high, made me pick at the edges of my shirt. Seth and Dean were in the hallway, waiting in case I needed them.

Roman looked up, face a mixture of relief and worry. He was in street clothes—jeans, pullover, boots, hair tied into a knot. He stood, made a move to approach me, stopped. I felt his gaze travel over me, assessing everything all at once.

“I’m okay,” I said softly. “Really.”

I moved into the room, sat on a chair nearby him. He sank down quickly, as if he feared what might happen if he hovered. I hated how worried he looked.

“I want you to know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

He ran a hand over his hair. “What did I do though?”

Deep breath. Face the fear. Give it words. Put all the ugly and the terror and the bruises and brokenness on the table.

I took my time, telling him the story in much the same way that I had the night before. Abandoned. The series of foster homes. The man who nearly killed me. The state that didn’t do nearly enough to protect an innocent girl. How lucky I was with the last family. How they were still the only real family I’d ever known.

At least… until I’d become a part of The Shield.

Roman reached out, took both my hands in his. The grip of his fingers was strong, their touch tender. Silence hung between us, Roman seeming to fight with some inner thought. Muscles in his jaw bunched, tightened, relaxed again.

“I’m so sorry, Llane.” He squeezed my hands, slipped from his chair to kneel in front of me. “I’m so sorry that any of that happened to you. I’m angry that it happened to you. And I’m ashamed that I brought all that back, even though I didn’t know.”

His words filtered through my mind, pushed past the walls that went up, that I was ready to use if he decided he didn’t think of me the same. When they finally made sense, when I understood at last that Dean was right, and nothing had changed, I felt the tears burn down my cheeks. I threw my arms around Roman, let him tuck me into a hug that was warm and safe.

He whispered softly against my ears, the words settling into a tattoo on my heart. “Matou te puipuia oe.” A brief, reassuring kiss on the top of my head. “We will protect you.”

Weight disappeared. My last great secret was gone. At last they knew the real me.

I watched from the commentary table, headset feeling unwieldy on my head. Roman paced the outside of the ring, doing his best to keep Braun Strowman from interfering in the match. Seth and Dean were in their tag match, a title shot against Drew and Dolph at the monthly pay-per-view. It was late in the show, not the main event, but close enough. So far it had been a lopsided match, Drew and Dolph taking control early and not giving up much.

“This is something we’ve come to expect from McIntyre and Ziggler,” Michael Cole said, voice piped in through the headset. He was two seats away from me, but it was impossible to hear him amid the screaming crowd. “Ruthlessness early and often.”

“They cut the ring in half effectively,” Corey Graves added. I hated it when he said that. “McIntyre has kept Rollins away from his partner for most of the match. I mean, how much more can the Kingslayer take before he just gives in.”

“If you think Seth Rollins is going to give up,” I threw in, giving Graves an icy glare, “then you don’t know anything about Seth Rollins.”

Corey looked at me as if he hadn’t expected me to speak at all. “A man can only take so much.”

“Well, a man like you,” I retorted smugly.

“She’s got you there, Graves,” Renee said, chuckling. She started to say something else, but our attention was drawn to the ring. Seth had broken away from Drew, taken a running dive across the squared circle, hit Dean for the hot tag.

“Here comes the Lunatic Fringe!” Michael Cole exclaimed.

Dean exploded into the ring, took down Drew in a running clothesline, hit Dolph on the apron with a hard punch to the jaw. Dolph fell to ringside, effectively knocked out. I watched as Dean turned his attention back to Drew, who was slowly getting to his feet. Every move that my tag partner made was fluid, purposeful. It was his moment. His chance to shut down everything that Braun, Drew, and Dolph had said about him.

Braun climbed up on the apron, yelled at Dean to distract him. Roman came flying around the corner post, grabbed the Monster by the foot and pulled him down to the floor. The two of them squared up, oblivious to Dolph who was still sprawled out on the floor in front of the commentary table.

Dean threw Drew into the corner, barreled at him in a splash that sent the big man stumbling forward. My heart skipped a beat. I knew what was coming, but it was still a sight to see.

Coming up behind the Scotsman, Dean hooked his arms back. He levered Drew up, leaning back so that the only way for him to avoid falling was to tuck his feet on the side of Dean’s knees. In a smooth sweep, Dean swung forward, fell into a sit out, landed Drew hard on his face in a hook and ladder. A quick roll of Drew onto his back, fall into the pin, hook both legs.

One…

Two…

Three…

The bell rang. The crowd popped so loudly that I thought my ears would bleed. I threw off the headset and took off into the ring. The referee brought the tag belts to them, gave one to Dean and handed the other to Seth. He took them each by the arm and raised them in victory. The two of them held their newly won titles aloft, grinning fantastically.

Roman climbed the stairs, Universal Title on one shoulder, Seth’s Intercontinental Title in his hand. He grinned at his brothers, just a little upturn of the corner of his mouth.

The referee stepped out of the way. I hopped up on the apron, stood holding on to the ropes as I watched them celebrate their success. My heart swelled, burst against my ribs. I blinked, trying hard not to cry.

Seth saw me first. His grin grew wider than before. I stepped through the ropes and charged at him. He caught me around the waist with one arm, the other bearing the combined weight of two title belts. The rich deepness of his laugh roared over me.

I laughed.

“Four down, one to go,” I said.

He grinned, lifted his eyes, looked around the arena. Without hesitation, he leaned down, pressed his mouth firmly against mine.

Shock. Disbelief. Adrenaline. Euphoria. Desire.

The crowd screamed, stomped, clapped, shouted. More noise than I’d ever known. It all burrowed into my chest and warmed my soul, served to cover up the scars and bruises that had come to the surface.

“Let ‘em talk about that on the blogs,” Seth murmured. I laughed, grinned up at him. Became oblivious to the cameras and everyone else. There was just us.

The four of us.

Dean smacked into me with the force of a linebacker. He lifted me off my feet, hugged me hard with both arms, the gold plate of the belt pressed painfully into my back. He grinned, a little crazed look in his blue eyes.

We gathered in the center of the ring, Seth and Dean in the middle. I stood to Seth’s right. Roman was on the other end, standing near Dean. They held up their titles, reveled in their victory and their dominance. A statement that the ring wasn’t just the Big Dog’s yard. It was our domain, and The Shield would run it, the Hounds would dispense Justice as they saw fit.

I grinned, not caring that I had nothing to hold up. The only thing that mattered was the three of them, the family I’d been lucky enough to choose.

The Shield music hit, we moved to file out of the ring. We made it halfway before Dean turned, went back and grabbed a mic. He caught me up with an arm around my neck, dragged me to the center of the ring, faced the main camera.

“The Shield runs this place,” Dean growled. “We are the Universal Champion. We are the Intercontinental Champion. We are the Tag Team Champions. And soon… She’ll be the Raw Women’s Champion.”

He gave me a gentle shake, pointed at me, drew the attention of every eye in the crowd to me. I cracked my neck, stared down the camera with a confidence that only came when I was with the Hounds.

“So be on notice. If you want a title… you have to go through The Shield.”

I snatched the mic from him, stalked up to the ropes, climbed up to lean over the top. “Get ready, Rousey. Because when I win the Number One Contender Tournament, you’re going to be the one to tap out.”

Tag List

@samyfireheartashryver @cburdine @bethany99stuff-blog @echrai @0paint-the-stars0 @xbutterflius-effectusx @lakamaa12 @easyobsession

#hounds of justice #seth rollins #seth rollins fanfiction #dean ambrose #roman reigns #wwe #wwe fanfiction #llane black #ofc #oc #multi-chapter

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shoujosoulsearching · 6 years ago

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Mars, AKA The Shoujo Manga with Too Much Emotional Baggage for One Woman to Carry

SPOILER WARNING!!!

The Roman god of war, Mars, was said to love violence and conflict--he was known as the embodiment of bloodthirst. Unlike his Greek counterpart Ares, however, who was considered to be more destructive in nature, Mars was seen as more of a protector, a bringer of peace.

With a title like Mars, one has to wonder what side of the Roman god is going to be showcased in the story: the bloodthirsty divine or the righteous guardian? For a shoujo manga, you’d expect it to go the latter, but upon reading Fuyumi Souryo’s fifteen-volume teenage melodrama, the answer to that question turns out to be much more complicated than you think.

The actual story itself has nothing to do with the literal god named Mars--he’s only explicitly shown in the first volume as a statue, which our playboy prince charming, Rei Kashino, approaches and kisses on the mouth. Kira Aso, our introverted and artistic leading lady, is infatuated with this sight and asks Rei to become a model for her to sketch during her free time. From that moment onwards, their relationship blossoms, and they both bring out things in each other that would have never been brought to the surface if they had never met.

While it has its fair amount of stereotypes what sets Mars apart from its contenders is the way the main couple is portrayed. Rei and Kira are individually appealing characters, and their qualities are only enhanced as they grow closer throughout the story.

Our leading man Rei is the first character that truly jumps off the page from the get-go. A motorcycle-riding playboy who couldn’t care less about school, Rei’s a boy with deep-rooted issues and a devil-may care attitude. He has an unmeasurable sense of justice, and while he has a sense of morality, he won’t always uphold it when the situation tests him. If he gets a bad feeling from someone, he will immediately turn to hostility--but only when the event pertains to something he wants, or something he cares about. He understands what the “right” thing to do is, but he doesn’t care. As long as he isn’t stopped by Kira or someone else’s plea, he will fix the problem in a way that satisfies him.

This type of violent behavior would usually be associated with a sociopath, but upon further inspection that turns out to not be the case. Most of Rei’s questionable actions come from a post-conventional reasoning, and it’s apparent that whenever he acts out it’s because he’s either been deeply hurt by something in the past or he’s afraid to lose what he cherishes in the present. I’m not at all justifying his actions, but the point is that Rei has never been a true monster, and whatever monstrous aspects he had to him were eventually blurred away by Kira (who was the first person to ever love him that wasn’t incredibly toxic.)

The main difference between a sociopath like Masao Kirishima and someone like Rei, is that Rei is just a teenager who’s been hurt one too many times and only knows how to self medicate using violence. He had never been policed for his actions in a proper way. As we learn in the last volume, his memories were altered during his time in the psychiatric ward to lessen his trauma. Once you look beyond his blunt and aggressive exterior, Rei is the most genuine character in the entire series. He’s just a teenage boy that’s been through too much hardship that he never deserved, and was never emotionally mature enough to handle all of it. He’s rightfully angry at the world--until he meets Kira.

It took time for our heroine to shine like her male counterpart did, but a few volumes in, Kira becomes a show-stopping character. Originally an immovable introvert only interested in painting and nothing else, Kira grows into her own loving, hopeful person. One of the things I appreciated the most about Mars was it’s portrayal of mental illness--nothing is never outwardly said, but it’s obvious that Kira had been going through not only anxiety but a deep, dark depression she can’t bring herself back from. The way Kira thought about death, the way she always put others needs before her own, etc, made her real and relatable to me on a personal level. I’ve had those same issues my entire life, and seeing Kira slowly and surely come into her own throughout each volume wasn’t just satisfying, was inspiring.

The most tantalizing reveal about Kira and why she acts the way she does is when we learn that she was raped by her stepfather in middle school. Not only did she start isolating herself after the incident, she began to live in her head, where a more sinister, damaged and unhinged Kira would imagine killing herself and those around her. This is an extremely serious subject to dive into--and Mars doesn’t cover up the darkness behind it. It’s not romanticized, it’s ugly and depressing, and the worst part is that we never get the feeling that Kira will ever fully recover from it. Yes, she learns to become intimate with Rei because she trusts him--but it’s implied that in the deepest, darkest parts of her soul, that horrible memory will continue to live on.

The first thing that struck me, and my favorite aspect of the entire series, was how genuine the relationship between Rei and Kira felt--several times in the story there’d be a break where they would just talk, and not talk as in they’d tell each other things that would move the plot forward, or with a clear purpose in mind--they have actual conversations. They talk about each other’s hobbies, about their existential crises, things that actual teenagers talk to each other about. With every heart-to-heart comes another glimpse into who these two are as people, and it becomes apparent that they cherish and remember every word they say to each other. It’s clear that these two characters grow because of each other, and turn one another into the best versions of themselves. They’re honest and authentic with each other in ways only adolescents can be. As two teenagers who’ve never had anyone to be their shoulder to cry on, their relationship just feels right, and their marriage at the end of the series is one of the most wholesome and satisfying things I’ve read in a shoujo manga.

Up until now I’ve sung praises to Mars for the two main characters and their dynamic, but unfortunately, besides a few exceptions, the rest of the characters in the series are either uninteresting, unlikable or just straight up garbage human beings. To keep it short, just seeing Shiori, Kurosawa or Harumi on every panel would get me peeved. Masao Kirishima was the last straw for me, however; once I got deep enough into his arc I ended up putting down the series for a few days, because I couldn’t stand his presence (not to mention the ONLY canonically LGBT character just HAD to be an evil psychopath who wanted to kill people for pleasure…..REALLY……) but I’ll throw in a head-canon saying that these characters only exist for me to appreciate the main couple more (which it did) so I could look over it.

By far Mars’ biggest problem is it’s tone. Soap operas can be fun, don’t get me wrong, and there are plenty of times where Mars gets it right--but also plenty of times where it becomes overbearing. The series was probably best to read week by week when it was being released in Bessatsu Friend magazine; it’s not hard to imagine Souryo stuffing in enough melodrama in each chapter before it’s release in order to keep reader’s interest. Marathon-reading it is very much a different experience. And it doesn’t help that It’s clear that this is a product of its time. A lot of popular shoujo manga in the 90s tended to stretch the drama, i.e. the insane level of bullying, the evil side characters insisting on keeping the main couple apart, etc.

Using an example from Mars, Rei reveals he used to have a brother, who is actually dead, and when Kira asks how he died, before Rei can answer, a man jumps off a building and the police are called. Rei has a panic attack after seeing this, and it’s implied that his brother died from suicide. Then, we go back to the high school where it’s revealed that a character named Kurosawa also attempted suicide, and is currently getting treatment. Then Rei and Kira go out on a date. ALL IN ONE CHAPTER. If you got exhausted reading that, try reading that page-to-page in one sitting. It was entertaining, sure, but it took me out of the immersion every now and again.

I can shit on these aspects as much as I want, but without them, Mars wouldn’t be Mars. It’s apart of its charm, in an odd way, and it only enhances everything the series does right. At times, it’s as if Mars is drowning you in it’s depressing conflict and weighing you down with it’s emotional baggage, enjoying every second of your agony--but in the end it always comes back around, making wrongs rights and surprising you with its tenderness. That’s why I think this manga has the perfect title. I doubt Fuyumi Souryo intended for this, but in its own roundabout way, I believe Mars is an allegory for the Roman god, and a good one that you definitely shouldn’t miss out on.

And I’m giving this one a STAR rating.

(Check out my other manga analyses here, and my standards here.)

(Follow me on twitter @/choerrychrist)

#shoujo #shoujo manga #shoujo caps #mangacaps #screencaps #shoujo screencap #shoujo notes #shoujo anime #mars #mars manga #90s anime #anime #star rating #rei #kira #my review

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hazyheel · 6 years ago

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Monday Night Raw 2/25/19 Review

This was a weird night. It was filled with the highest of highes when we found out that Roman was coming back, but also pretty bad lows. Boring matches, weird booking, and things are still feeling like the Becky vs. Ronda vs. Charlotte match is the only one that matters for Wrestlemania. But we are starting to build up other stories, the card is getting into shape, and fastlane doesn’t look too bad either.

So, the review this week is gonna start about twenty minutes in, given that Roman’s segment really transcends wrestling. So, after that amazing news, there was an aura of positivity in the air, and we started out with Ricochet and Aleister Black vs. The Revival. The Revival jumped the faces before the match, but Black and Ricochet were able to gain control. As the match just started to heat up, in very short work, Ricochet hit a backflip to the outside to Wilder, and Black in the Black mass on Dawson for the win.

Grade: D-. This match was not long enough to get going. Plus this is the second time that the Raw Tag Team Champions lost a non title match, this time to people who weren’t even a tag team. Just bad booking, and the match was just not long enough to mean anything. Just putting the belts on the Revival is not enough to keep them in the company, WWE. You need to book them well too.

Backstage, Charly talked to Baron Corbin about some very offensive things he said about Roman, like that people need to move on, and that he hoped Roman would never come back. Corbin said that he was under a lot of stress at the time, and no one could understand what he was going through. Charly countered by asking if Corbin’s struggle was harder than Roman’s, and Corbin just said that Roman should hope that the two don’t run into each other. Weird way to get heat on Corbin, but its one way to start a feud.

Elias came out to sing, but was immediately interrupted by Lacy Evans doing a catwalk. She was in and out. But then Dean Ambrose came out and challenged Drew McIntyre to a no DQ match. Elias just played his guitar to get people’s attention, and the two bickered. Elias made fun of the Atlanta football team, cheap heat. Ambrose then asked him to play Dirty Deeds, to which Elias responded by swinging the guitar at him. Dean ducked it and hit Dirty Deeds. As Ambrose walked away, the Riott Squad came out for their match.

Grade: F. Yes, it was kinda funny to hear Dean being his old wacky self again, but this served no real purpose. I don’t know why they are now burying Elias. The Interruptions are supposed to be funny, but its just stupid.

Next, we had Ronda Rousey and Natalya vs. Ruby Riott and Sarah Logan, with Liv Morgan at ringside. The heels were very much in control, which was only made harder with Morgan around. So, the faces took her out with an elevated elbow smash, almost a Hart Attack. As the match came to an end, Ronda hit Logan with her samoan drop finisher, only for Becky Lynch to show up. Natalya tried to keep the piece, but ate a punch to the face for it, causing the DQ.

Grade: D-. Another match that really didn’t mean anything, and ended in a DQ. Luckily, it was quickly overshadowed by the next segment.

As Lynch attack Ronda at ringside, there was a huge pull apart, with various security guards holding them both off. Lynch was even put in handcuffs and led backstage. Funny enough, Becky was telling security to be careful with her hands, because she needs them to hold up the women’s championship. After the commercial, Rousey got into the ring and called out Vince McMahon, but Steph came out instead. Rousey told her to reinstate Lynch, because the attacks need to stop. Steph said, “Becky Lynch did this to Becky Lynch.” Rousey even played to Steph’s ego, saying that it will put her down in history as a great authority figure if she books the historic woman’s triple threat. When she still refused, Rousey got right in her face, and demanded the match. Steph said that the were both bad people, and Ronda responded with an epic promo about how the belt is worth nothing if it isn’t defended against the best of the best. She then left the belt in the middle of the ring and walked backstage.

Grade: A. The angle was phenomenal. They are drawing comparisons to Steve Austin with the arrest, and Bret Hart with the “Becky Lynch screwed Becky Lynch.” She is the ultimate anti hero right now. And then Ronda is playing an awesome champion in distress. Ronda refused to be viewed as anything less that the best, and said that a belt that isn’t defended against those that deserve it is worthless. The Raw Women’s Championship is the most important belt in the company right now, and it is all because of this feud, and how much Ronda cares about it. Even the authority figures are doing well, talking about how they are only trying to do what is right for the company and for their employees. It was Ronda’s best promo, and it was awesome. Best segment of the night.

Jinder Mahal came out with the Singh Brothers in tow, and he was mad that he wasn’t invited to Ric Flair’s birthday party, I think. I don’t really know, I saw Jinder and lost all interest. Kurt Angle came out to have a match with him, Mahal quickly took the lead. Kurt was able to fight back with some suplexes, and tapped him out to the Ankle Lock.

Grade: C-. Fine match, but no story. Another one that didn’t matter. I guess it was good to see Jinder, even though I accidentally paid less attention to the segment after he showed up.

Next, we had a Moment of Bliss with Alexa Bliss. She talked about how she would be a reliable replacement for either Lynch or Rousey. It was funny that she is trying to manipulate her way into Wrestlemania. She then welcomed Finn Balor out, congratulates him on winning his title, and started to flirt with him. She asked to see his abs, and then she would show her..... cut off by Lio Rush (much to Corey’s anger). Rush then demanded a rematch for Lashley. Balor took it as a challenge from Rush, and accepted it, despite Rush not really wanting the match. Rush didn’t want to take it, but Bliss goaded him into it. The match happened next, and we jumped right into it. Not gonna grade it, because it was basically a backstage segment that went kinda long.

Finn Balor vs. Lio Rush for the Intercontinental Championship. Lots of high flying offense between the two, with Lio Rush hitting a moonsault and a pair of suicide dives. Finn was able to counter the big splash with his knees. However, this hurt his knee, and created a target for Rush. It was weird to see a match where Balor had the strength advantage, but that is how the match progressed, with Rush even working the knee. After a series of strikes, Finn hit a sort of underhand brainbuster and then the Coup de Gras for the win.

Grade C+. It was a good match, although not spectacular. It was a pretty fresh matchup to see a genuine one on one match between the two. They clearly weren’t going all out, but they were entertaining enough. Balor defending his belt is not a bad thing at all.

Backstage, we had Tucker of Heavy Machinery being confronted by the Ascension. They made fun of Otis, and when Otis eventually showed up, he attacked them. Otis is very funny to watch, with his loud voice and weird mannerisms. Could be a good comedy tag team. Also backstage, Bobby Lashley insulted Rush for taking a match for himself, rather than getting Bobby a rematch.

Bobby Lashley and Lio Rush then went out to the ring for a match against Braun Strowman. Lashley attacked before the bell, but he was still able to take control. The match didn’t end up starting, they just brawled a bit and then Braun beat them up a bit.

Grade: D. It was fine, I was just hoping for an actual match. Fun beatdown

Backstage, Seth Rollins talked about his destiny to win the Universal championship, and how happy he is that Roman is healthy again. He left Charly to go drink with Roman as Ric Flair arrived for his birthday celebration.

Next, the no Disqualification match between Dean Ambrose and Drew McIntyre. The match revolved around a leather belt, used by both of the competitors, but mostly on Ambrose. It looked really painful. Dean was able to hit a elbow drop to the outside from the corner post, looked quite cool. Ambrose also hit a drop toe hold as McIntyre came at him with the steel steps, driving his face into the steps. As Ambrose was about to win, Elias assaulted him with his guitar, and McIntyre hit the claymore for the win. After the match, Corbin and Lashley came out to attack Ambrose, and the four heels beat him down. Seth Rollins came to his aid, alongside Roman Reigns in his return. Roman hit superman punches on just about all of them, Rollins smacked Elias with his chair, and hit the Curb Stomp. Reigns hit the Spear on McIntyre, and they both walked out. They had left Ambrose in the ring, but turned to face him at the top of the ramp

Grade: B. The match was nothing too special, but the unnofficial shield reunion was quite fun, and even suggested a redemption for Ambrose. Roman looks as good as ever, and seeing him kick ass again was awesome. Good old fashion beatdown from the faces. Hopefully Dean will rejoin them by the time Wrestlemania rolls around, because I have fallen in love with the idea that Brock is beaten by a triple powerbomb.

Bayley vs Nia Jax was next, with their partners at ringside. The match showed how strong Bayley is, while still treating her as the underdog. Jax tossed Bayley around like a ragdoll, while Bayley tried to be crafty and speedy to get around the strength of her opponent. At one point, Nia held Bayley in the tree of Woe, and hit a rough hip attack. Banks tried to cheer Bayley on, and Nia grabbed Banks’ hair. Bayley then hit a running high knee, and the macho man elbow for the win.

Grade: C+. Decent action building towards their title match at Fastlane. It may not be the most exciting match it the world, but I’m into the build. Tamina and Nia are monsters right now, and are being treated as such.

And now the main event. where we celebrate Ric Flair’s 70th Birthday. Triple H and Steph introduce the honored guests: Shawn Michaels, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, Kurt Angle, and even Sting. They showed a nice video package of Ric Flair and his career. They even made a custom gold belt for Flair. When Flair didn’t come out when he was announced, a camera man showed Batista running into Flair’s dressing room, and attacking him. He then looked down the camera after dragging Flair’s unconscious body out of the room, and called out Triple H.

Grade: B+. Honestly, i am embarrassed to admit that I completely forgot about the Evolution Reunion at Smackdown 1000, and the very brief interaction between Batista and Triple H. But, I did, and I was kinda shocked when Batista turned up. The whole 70th birthday party was always a weird concept so I liked the take on this. So, this is a clear set up for a Wrestlemania match between Triple H and Batista. Its a match that could be fun to see, and a story I can get behind.

Overall Grade: D+

Pros: Awesome Rousey Promo; Roman Reigns returns; Flair Attack

Cons: Revival loss; weird Elias promo; Alexa being weirdly sexual again; Strowman non-match;

Commentary Quote of the Night: Corey Graves “If the afterparty is good enough, maybe the Singh Brothers and I will end up in the cell next to Becky Lynch”

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pheo742 · 6 years ago

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Super Sides~Chapter One

A/N: so this is the first chapter of my Super Hero Au, it would probably be best to read my little au post first right here (I hope the link works Im still new to this). Anyway I hope you guys like it:)

Warnings: manipulative Deceit, slight violence, swearing

Pairings: N/A (it'll probably come later in the series but idk yet)

Roman was in the middle of play rehearsal when his phone went off. He technically wasn't even supposed to have his phone on him during rehearsal, but in his case it was crucial for him to have his phone near by at all costs. Of course, Roman could never tell his director or his fellow actors why this was the case, but he was such a good actor that it was easy for him to get away with these kind of things. He glanced down at his phone and saw he had a text from his favorite nerd.

Bank robbery. Patton should meet you there. Sending the address now.

Leave it to Logan to be incredibly straightforward and boring in his texts. Would it kill him to be me expressive? Roman was about to send a snarky remark when his friend and fellow thesbian, Thomas, gave him an impatient huff.

"It's your line, Ro."

Roman gave him an apologetic smile. "Actually, I have to go. Patton's car broke down and he's stranded, so I need to pick him up."

Thomas raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Didn't something like that happen like a week ago too?"

Stupid! Roman thought to himself. Way to use the same excuse twice in a row.

"Yeah, Patton really needs to get a new car," Roman quickly made up. "But we wouldn't want to keep him waiting now would we? If you could just cover for me until I get back? I would be forever grateful!"

"You're lucky you're such a good fit for this part, otherwise I'm sure the director would kick out for sure," Thomas said, but then let out a sigh. "But sure. I can ask Joan if they can cover your part until you get back, but you need to stop running out of rehearsal like this."

"Thank you, Thomas! And this is the last time, I promise!" He exclaimed, but he knew that there would certainly be more occasions like this in the future.

Roman hurried out of theater and made his way to the closest alley, making sure that no one was there to see him. He opened his large backup, revealing a very bright red costume inside. Roman could hardly hold back a grin as he put it on; it was time to be a superhero!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Virgil had messed up.

This was hardly the first time he had robbed a bank. He'd have done hundreds of robberies since he discovered his powers and started his life of crime about two years ago. However for some reason, today he was careless. He had waited for Deceit's signal and had used his shadow abilities to easily travel into the vault, but once he started shoveling the money into his sac the alarms started blaring. Virgil had panicked and fled, teleporting a few blocks away from the bank.

Now here he was, in an alley somewhere trying real hard not to have a panic attack. He knew Deceit was going to mad. Although Virgil didn't even know his real name, Deceit was Virgil's only friend. The man had taken Virgil under his wing after Virgil's powers manifested and he was seen as a monster by his family. Since then, Deceit had trained Virgil to be his prodigy in crime. Virgil didn't exactly enjoy being a supervillain in training and Deceit was a unsettling person at best, but he didn't exactly have anyone else to go to.

Virgil heard the police sirens in the distance and knew he had to get out of their quick, but first he had to calm down. His powers were linked to his emotions, so if he was too stressed out he wouldn't have much control over them. He focused on his breathing and finally calmed down a little bit, but before he could shadow travel an obnoxious flash of red got in his way.

"Well if it isn't my favorite emo nightmare."

As if this day couldn't get any worse, Virgil thought to himself

Now Virgil had dealt with plenty of superheros before, but none were as annoying as Blaze. Clad in a conspicuous combination of red and white, with a sparkly red mask covering his face and samurai sword at his side, one could definitely call him Extra. It didn't help that every time the two fought each other Blaze always came up with annoying nicknames for him.

"Listen, Princey, I really don't want to deal with you today."

"Aww, you see me as a Prince? Why, is it because I'm so charming?"

Virgil scowled. "No, because you're a royal pain in my ass."

Blaze let out a hearty chuckle. "As much as I enjoy our little talks, I think we'll have to postpone this conversation until you're put behind bars."

Shadows began to solidify around Virgil and form threatening tendrils. "I don't think so."

Blaze smirked and accepted this as a challenge. He created a ball of fire from his palm and hurtled it towards Virgil, which he easily blocked with his wall of darkness surrounding him. Virgil's shadows attacked Blaze, and the fanciful hero barely managed to strike them down with his sword in time. Virgil thought he had the upper hand when he noticed that his feet were stuck. He looked down and saw that a tangle of vines were wrapped tightly around them.

"Stop!" A voice rang out behind him, sounding urgent at first but then errupted into giggles. "Leaf him alone!"

"Not helping!" Blaze responded, annoyed and out of breath.

Virgil looked behind him and saw Catastrophe, Blaze's partner in crime fighting. Of course Virgil knew about him, but he had never actually met him in person. He had just as ridiculous costume as Blaze did: pale blue and white attire with a cat mask to match. His powers weren't as threatening though, as much as Virgil knew he could just control nature.

Virgil dissolved into shadows to free himself of the vines, and reappeared a few feet in front of the light hearted hero. He was losing his patience, Deceit was already going to be mad at him and these two heroes stalling him were only going to make matters worse. Virgil sent a shadow full force at Catastrophe, so hard in fact that he tumbled across the pavement and hisask flew off. Blaze cried out when he saw his friend in danger and rushed forward, but Virgil created a barrier between them. Virgil walked towards Catastrophe and he could feel fear radiating off of him, and Virgil let his shadows take shape into something to worsen his fear. The shadows morphed into thousand of little spiders that all hurried over to the man on the ground. He cried out in fear, and that was the moment it hit Virgil.

For the first time he didn't see a hero in a mask trying to stop him, he saw a real person. A freckled face with brown messy hair and big blue eyes that we're currently terrified. Virgil realized he was being the monster he was always worried he was. Guilt hit him like a brick. He immediately made the spiders disappear. Catastrophe was confused, although relieved, as to why he stopped his attack, but Virgil could only shake his head and blink back tears.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," was all he could say as he vanished into the shadows, leaving the two heroes bewildered."

Hope you like it, sorry if there's any typos I wrote this really late at night and didn't proofread it. Anyway thanks for reading it!

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#roman sanders #logan sanders #thomas sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #sander sides fanfiction #sander sides au #sander sides #sander side deceit #deceit sanders #villainous deceit #super hero au

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