#i love that stone canonically is so knowledgeable about coffee. i HAD to include the chicory :}

[a-haunting-of-endermen]

“Tails, you’re a child… I think. I’m not giving you caffeine.” Stone glanced at his watch, interest piqued. Something urgent; some sort of intel? From one of his sworn enemies? Stone ignored the way his heart fluttered in his throat. Tried to, at least. “How about this — I’ll make you a chicory latte and close up a little early. Wednesdays are slow, anyway.”

The fox’s ears perked up. “That sounds amazing!” He settled down at a table close enough to the counter, so he could still talk to the man. “...what’s chicory?”

Stone smiled a little at that, happy to indulge the question pertaining to his skillset — and the bevy from the curious critter that would mostly likely follow — while he prepared the root, milk, and latte-etching stylus. It gave his hands and his mind something to do while the other patrons wrapped up their business and left, eventually leaving the pair alone.

I'm writing, yall??? I'm actually gettin' it done.

[oogaboogaghosttt]

alright now who's this pink haired little alien boy (this is an invitation to infodump)(only if u want)(ily)

!!!!!!WAHEEEEEE ILY ILY ILY !!!!!<33(so many saiki k spoilers below)

ok soooo his name is saiki kusuo and he was born with psychic superpowers (which means he has basically every superpower ever conceived). he was born female but changed his form to male like 20 mins after he was born TRANSGENDER WIN!!! he was born with pink hair and everyone thought it was weird and it really made him stick out so he changed the human genome so that it wasnt unusual to be born with rainbow colored hair. he then mind controlled the whole world so no one noticed the change.LOL! but yeah his powers werent that dangerous when he was a tiny baby. but they got stronger as he aged and by the time he was in elementary school he accidentally almost killed 3 of his classmates for bullying his friend and had to move schools :p when his powers started to become dangerous and hard to control his older brother kusuke (who is a genius but doesnt have any powers and is extremely jealous/obsessed with kusuo) made him some power regulators (those little things sticking out of his head) that limit his powers and make living easier in general. theyre basically disability aids bc without them kusuo literally cant move without risking destroying/killing everything around him and has to use a wheelchair. he wears those green glasses bc if he makes eye contact with someone without a barrier between their eyes the person turns to stone (think medusa), so the glasses prevent that. the glasses dont have to be green for this to work btw hes just a freak. umm what else OH YEA hes autistic like 10000%. he never speaks out loud only telepathically. he hardly ever emotes and always tries to look as neutral as possible (when he does emote its because 1: hes eating coffee jelly <- literally his fav food ever, 2: hes feeling a very very strong emotion and probably doesnt even realize he doesnt look neutral, or 3: hes making an unhappy or confused face on purpose to get someone to leave him alone). hes never affectionate once in the whole show but he helps his friends with his powers constantly (without their knowledge bc no one knows abt his powers except his brother, parents, and eventually other psychics) its also like one million percent canon that hes aroace..very awesome i loev him

ANYWAYS the show is about kusuo trying to be as normal and unassuming as humanly possible bc he hates attention. (his powers got him a lot of attention in elementary school and he quickly learned that that was not a good thing) its kind of a lost cause bc ppl in his class start hanging around him and trying to be friends with him constantly. he is literally only communicates with the people around him when its absolutely necessary and yet his friends are always talking to him whenever they have the chance bc they love him...!!! he describes his friends as nuisances and says he hates them but literally feels guilty for using his powers on them and/or accidentally causing them trouble with his powers??? even when its not his fault????? like when he wrecked their cruise ship and got them stranded or when he accidentally turned a couple of them to stone temporarily...but yeah he always ends up in the middle of some kind of situation no matter how hard he tries to avoid it.. hes very situation prone

its later revealed the whole series takes place while saiki is in the middle of trying to figure out how to stop this big volcano from erupting bc if it erupts it will destroy all of japan. hes failed several times, and every time he fails to stop the volcano he uses his restoration powers on the earth. this returns it to the state it was in exactly one year in the past. THING IS, when he resets the earth by a year he also resets everything on it by a year, which includes all the people. its basically a time loop. the only reason the everyone on earth doesn't realize whats happening is bc saiki mind controlled them and has them convinced its normal. nobody ages or changes physically, including saiki, but saikis powers continue to get stronger. this means that his likelihood of success in stopping the volcano increases every year and he eventually does stop it. BUT PLOT TWIST HIS FRIENDS SEE HIM DO IT!!!! he considers telling them the truth but he just erases the memory from their minds and allows time to move forward

ummm and at the end of the series kusuke made a thingy that could take kusuos powers away and make him normal like he always wanted. kusuo used it and was like "ok now that the world isn't gonna end by volcano and i don't have powers anymore im gonna tell my friends i had powers and apologize and stuff" but then he figured out his powers weren't completely gone. his body was still super strong (to adapt to his super strength) and he would sometimes still hear ppls thoughts and basicallyyy it didn't work lol. but also he pretty quickly learned that he was actually way worse off without them bc like. hed had them since he was born. they were literally a part of who he was. he didn't know how to function without them. and he was lowkey sad bc his life goal was to be normal but also he hated who he became when his powers were gone. they came back completely when a fucking meteor came down and almost destroyed the earth and he had to get rid of it. its kind of implied that he probably told his friends about his powers after he got rid of the meteor which YAYYY

ANYWAYS YEAH i love him he stays silly always he so awesome and cool im thinking about him a whole lot

[politalysis]

# What has happened to JK Rowling?

Growing up in the early 2000s immediately made Harry Potter a huge part of your childhood. Even if you never read the books or watched the films, you can probably name the three main characters. Even if you weren’t interested in Harry Potter in the slightest, you probably know your Hogwarts house. It’s incredible what Harry Potter did for our generation all over the world. Children would stay up on their eleventh birthdays anxiously awaiting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, knowing full well that owl was never going to come. Our imagination kept the dream of going to Hogwarts and learning magic alive anyway. Even now at the age of 23, I can for the most part keep a conversation flowing with anyone who has read the books or even just watched the films. You could even go as far as to say it was our generation’s Lord of the Rings.

JK Rowling came from very humble beginnings. She suffered with depression in her childhood and early teens, and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis in 1990. These struggles inspired her a lot when writing Harry Potter. She channeled her grief and pain into her writing. In 1992, she married a man she had met whilst living in Portugal, but Rowling suffered domestic abuse at his hands and the couple separated a year later. She lost her job and moved to Edinburgh in Scotland, where she had to sign up for welfare benefits, which left her a poor and depressed single mother spending her time writing in coffee shops. When she finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, twelve publishers rejected the opportunity to publish the book. Once someone finally agreed to publish the book, it became the best selling children’s book of the year.

We all know how the story goes from there. Rowling wrote six more Harry Potter books, eight films were made, and Rowling went from a poor vulnerable single mother to a multi millionaire in the space of a few short years. Harry Potter is now a global brand estimated to be worth about $15 billion. The last four books have each consecutively set the record for the fastest selling book in history. Rowling is now the richest author in the world, with a net worth of $92 million. But as well as money, JK Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. This gives her massive influence as well as money. Rowling seemed to initially use this influence for good, spreading mental health awareness, LGBT inclusivity, interacting with fans and creating a website for all us Harry Potter fans to determine our houses and let our wands choose us.

I remember being 8 years old when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, and I was attending a religious school where some parents complained and called to ban Harry Potter over the controversial decision JK Rowling made regarding Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rowling had made the claim that Dumbledore was gay. Looking back, the controversy was ridiculous and I can only imagine how embarrassed some of those parents must be. I also remember as I got older, re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I noticed more that the emotion behind Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was one he held with a romantic love. So years later, when several members of the LGBT community attacked Rowling for only deciding Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written, I publicly defended her with my knowledge that that simply wasn’t true. I had this image of Rowling in my mind, that she had always been on the right side of this debate. She had always been inclusive and supportive of LGBT people as far as I could see, and I just didn’t understand the issue. Rowling had always expressed a centre-left political perspective, and although I didn’t agree with all her views, they seemed relatively uncontroversial.

When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I hated it. It was a literary disaster, completely disrespectful of the original book series, the characters were a shell of the characters we had grown up with, the plot was almost deliberately ridiculous and overly elaborate and I immediately dismissed it as not canon. I have never forgiven JK Rowling for publicly stating the book was canon. She almost destroyed a whole two decades of her own hard work and the franchise that she’d built that had been like a home for a whole generation. All because she wanted to grab a few extra quid for a terrible book she didn’t even write. To this day I can’t help but wonder if she has even read the book. If I had written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter, I would view the Cursed Child as an insult. Perhaps I’ll even write a review one day, just for fun. Rowling also annoyed me by going back on her story, regretting pairing Ron and Hermione together and not pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron and Hermione are my favourite couple from the story, and their relationship had so much meaning. I couldn’t believe that the author who wrote such a clever and consistent relationship between two beloved characters could ever regret it. At this point in my life, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Rowling was losing her mind. It was almost like she was trying to destroy her legacy.

As more years passed, the Fantastic Beasts films were released. The first film looked promising, but the second film was yet another disaster. Again, it was inconsistent with the franchise as we knew it, for some reason Hogwarts was full of people wearing 3 piece suits instead of the robes they wore in the Harry Potter series and Minerva McGonigall appeared as a teacher despite the fact that canonically there is no way she could have been old enough. The film was a disaster with both fans and critics hating it. Amongst this mess came controversy in December 2019. Rowling lost all respect she had once held amongst the transgender community when she made a public statement supporting Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her employment tribunal case against her employer who fired her over transphobic comments. Six months later on June 6 2020, Rowling criticised the term “people who menstruate” and stated: "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling’s views on these issues were heavily criticised by GLAAD and even by the actors from the Harry Potter movies including lead actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

Rowling published a 3,600 word essay in response to the mass criticism of her views four days later. The essay did her no favours, as she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She seemed to be suggesting that trans women are often just men disguised as women in order to trick or even harm other women. This obviously angered the transgender community even more, and women’s refuge shelters that allow trans women were reporting no rise in violence as a result, children’s charities that support gender non conforming children were criticising Rowling, she was being made to give back awards and ultimately Rowling was labelled a Trans exclusionary radical feminist, a term often abbreviated to TERF.

JK Rowling is the perfect example of how money and influence can make someone forget their roots so easily. For someone who survived poverty, domestic abuse and sexual assault, she is so lacking in self awareness and how the things she has said and done can be harmful to transgender people. It is widely reported that transgender women are at more risk of harm in female restrooms than cisgender women. With acceptance becoming the norm, transgender people are feeling more safe to come out now than ever before, and so the rise in numbers of the community is huge, especially amongst our generation who grew up with Harry Potter. For a young transgender teenager to grow up wondering how Hogwarts would accommodate them, only to hear the author who gave us Hogwarts in the first place disapprove of equal rights for transgender people, must be very disheartening. However, JK Rowling has proven that she has no idea how powerful the legacy her books created really is. She was tasked with following up the Harry Potter series, and what she gave us was inconsistent and very poorly written screenplays. I have read better sequels on tumblr. Lots of them. Hogwarts doesn’t belong to JK Rowling, it belongs to the fandom. And I’ll be willing to bet my last penny that if Professor McGonigall witnessed any bullying of transgender students in her classroom (or indeed the girls bathroom!) she’d absolutely defend the victim without a moment’s hesitation. Hermione would decorate the Gryffindor common room with little blue, pink and white flags in support of a transgender first year who’d just been sorted into Gryffindor. Luna Lovegood would sit and befriend any trans student who looked lonely, and Ginny would dish out a bat bogey hex to anyone who dared pick on them. No matter what JK Rowling thinks, Hogwarts is not hers to ruin. It is ours. Regardless of what makes us different, Hogwarts is our home.

[goose-books]

goose-books productions: a 2020 review

view the image in higher quality here! (open the image in a new tab to zoom in.) thank you to my dearest @yvesdot for the template

transcripts and month-by-month details under the cut! for reference, you can find my projects here :-) overall, new and old followers, thank you for another good year over here! [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your h

january

i spent late 2019-early 2020 working on 2019’s nano project, quark, aka the speculative fiction thing about new york city and prophets and dissections of the chosen one trope and gay people. quark is my second-oldest project (five years!), but it’s also probably the most ambitious, so it’s been... difficult to wrangle into place, and i didn’t end up finishing a first draft. oh, well.

enjoy a snippet that is devastatingly emblematic of everything about quark. the tone. the homoerotic tension. the ensemble cast all talking over each other. the fact that caelum has spent pretty much this entire scene crying. fun autopsy report meeting.

Marble stares at the notebook in Shade’s hands. Or maybe he’s staring at Shade’s hands. Dawn feels a little voyeuristic, so she does what she does and says a dumb and unrelated thing: “Augustus, I think this pizza-on-the-floor thing is hurting my ass.”

Augustus flutters his hands. “Sometimes nonconformity is painful.”

“At least we’re originals,” Caelum mumbles into his sleeve.

“Exactly,” Augustus says.

“True originality doesn’t exist,” Marble says.

“Oh,” Shade deadpans, “it’s going to be a fun autopsy report meeting.”

It isn’t.

february

in january i stressed myself out trying to make the plot of quark work. so in february, i decided to take some time and write something Entirely For Fun. like, entirely for fun, no rules. and. my god. how do i explain the project i started calling “third eye for the bad guy.”

it was an unholy mashup of many of my past hyperfixations, including the gone series, a tale of two cities, warrior cats, and the left hand of darkness. one of the characters was a canon scalie and one was a canon fictionkinnie. it centered around a polycule of wannabe-evil-overlord high schoolers. i only wrote like three chapters but i was lost in the sauce for all of february and then i just… like… wiped it from my mind and moved on? somehow??? one character was a werewolf and that literally wasn’t relevant at ALL

I.

Someone was going to die on these steps.

This had been Ivy Lee Palomo’s thought last year during the all-school photo, and it rose in her mind again now. The one hundred marble stairs leading up to the great double doors of Saint Constantine Academy were the school’s pride and glory, steep as the mountain, sharp as the blade under Ivy Lee’s skirt. With the cutting wind and snow glazing the stone more often than not, with the freshmen wild and wired on their first day of their first year, it was really only a matter of time before someone slipped and cracked their fucking head open.

It wasn’t going to be her. Not when she had Doc Martens and reflexes like an electric coil. Still. Ivy Lee didn’t want to watch someone die. She didn’t get along with dead people.

march

in march, i got back to the project i’d started in 2019 - AMT, my podcast! it’s a shakespeare retelling set in a modern high school; this excerpt is funnier and also more unnerving in context. (double, double, toil and trouble...)

INDRAJIT: What the hell are you doing?

[PAUSE.]

DEE (like she’s lying): Making pasta.

[ALL THREE OF THEM LAUGH.]

NONA: That’s right.

MORA: We have the keys to Mab’s office.

DEE: We’re using her stove.

NONA: To make pasta.

DEE: Do you want some?

[A TENSE PAUSE.]

INDRAJIT: No.

april

and darkling rears its head! all of my other projects have existed for at least a year; darkling (specfic king lear retelling) is... special. it was conceived in april, when i started hyperfixating on king lear, and i still managed to write an absolutely ridiculous amount of content for it. it was like the power of hyperfixation let me speedrun the entire process. which. okay.

iv: control

They say Cressida Stayer was nine years old when she turned her hair to gold. They laid her down in bed blonde, and the next morning, the waves cascading down her shoulders were solid metal, glinting harshly in the sunlight, weighing her down, creating that odd head-cocked expression she still wears now. Nine years old. Two or three years before most people develop enough magic skills to dye a single curl. Much less transfigure their hair into precious metal.

People also say Leovald Stayer’s immediate reaction was to hack it off her head and melt it down for cash. But generally they say that part a lot quieter.

may

in may i wrote AMT episode 15, by which i mean that in may there was a day when i sat in my room with the door shut for literally five straight hours listening to the same three songs on loop as i wrote the climax of one of the plotlines of AMT. so. that sure was… a day.

ISAAC: Do you want… do you want someone to drive you home? Hawk, you’re worrying me -

HAWK (almost cutting him off): Don’t. Don’t say that. I’m here to help. With your… thing.

ISAAC (quietly): I… don’t know if you should be here to see this.

HAWK (a little louder, more audibly upset): Well - what else am I going to do? Go home and - and have my dads talk at me and - and not be able to answer them? Because I can’t? I can’t. I don’t know what to say.

[PAUSE.]

ISAAC (V.O.): I wonder if this is what he feels like, on the outside, looking in at me. Watching someone else hurting. Helpless and afraid.

He still fits perfectly in my arms. I rest my chin on top of his head and pull him close to me, like I can stop him from shaking, like I can stop anything from happening the way I know it’s going to. I bury my face in his hair. He smells so familiar. He’s so warm.

God, Hawk. I love you so much. You shouldn’t be here to see this. Something bad’s gonna happen. And you’re not the kind of person who belongs in a tragedy.

june

okay, honestly, i should talk about “night shift” here, because in june i wrote a whole short story in one night (and then foamed over it for a week), but i am still in the process of submitting it places! so i am terrified to put even a sentence of it online. instead: the other thing i did this month was to finish AMT! (sixteen episodes and somewhere around 175k, iirc, but don’t quote me.) these lines are the opener to the final episode!

RAHMA (V.O.): The combined series of sophomore year disasters stretched through November. It’s June now. It’s taken me… a long time to get this all put together. I was going to make a vlog about it, initially - well, calling it a vlog sounds frivolous. I was going to make a video recounting the whole deal. All of it. From when I kissed Avery Fairchilde to the very last night. I scripted dozens of drafts; I put together dozens of bullet-pointed lists of what to cover… and it was never enough. Because Avery and I weren’t the only ones involved. Even if I was only focused on the two of us, it wasn’t just the two of us.

So… I gathered up everyone else. The whole town of Ellisburg is still talking about the week the town went crazy, but it wasn’t just a week. There was a lot leading up to it. And I think if anyone’s going to talk about it, it should be us. The people who lived it. So here we are. The most ambitious Rahma Ashiq production of all time - at least so far.

july

every july i pause whatever else i’m doing to celebrate the birthday of aurum & argentate, twins from my oldest and dearest WIP The Mortal Realm. july fifteenth! mark your calendars. they’re princes, though argentate would really rather not be; you can read the full birthday piece here.

“Do you… plan to get dressed?” A bit of the usual humor crept back into Aurum’s voice. “Although if you want to speak to the kingdom in your underthings, by all means, you have my full support.”

Argentate scrubbed at his face. He wasn’t dressed, no, but the usual malaise hung over his shoulders like a cloak. Guilt. Nerves. The sick sense that he hadn’t done something he was supposed to. The numb knowledge that it was too late to change a thing.

“I meant to,” he said. “Get dressed, I mean.” The rest went unsaid: I have just been sitting here. On the floor. Thinking about how I should get dressed.

“Ah,” Aurum said, extending his hand. “The traditional route. We’ll save the nude speeches for the future, then.”

Argentate took his hand, stumbling a little as Aurum pulled him to his feet. He steadied himself on the closest wall, taking a few deep breaths. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. His hands found their way to the cross, again and again.

august

this summer, i wrote an entire draft of Valentine Van Velt is Dead, AKA “holden caulfield goes to exposure therapy,” AKA the weird little personal side project i keep tucked into my coat. interesting features include second-person narration from a narrator who doesn’t like the main character all that much. so reading it is kind of like the book wants to kill you? with an added dash of general melancholy.

You used to live here. That’s the thing that’s got you feeling so off.

You didn’t recognize your old house. I mean, you kind of did. You remembered that the road was on a hill. That hill felt like a goddamn forty-five degree angle when you were a kid. But if you didn’t have the address written down you wouldn’t have known it at all. It would have been just another little suburban house in rows of perfect little towns that make your skin crawl.

So now you’re in this diner looking out a gross smudgy window trying to block out the elevator music pumping through the speakers in the ceiling or whatever. I don’t know how speakers work. You’re trying to tune that shit out. The waitress comes over and catches you by surprise so you just point at some coffee thing on the menu so she’ll go away. For the record: you don’t drink coffee.

There’s a public library across the street. A little square building. You probably used to go there. The lady comes over and thunks your coffee on the table and gives you a kind of look, like she wants to know what in the goddamn hell you think you’re doing here and not at school. You sip your coffee and look out the window until she leaves you alone again. And then you spit it back into the cup because, for the record: you don’t drink coffee.

september

i spent september and october prepping for nano, so i was mostly working on darkling...

It’s late spring; still, at this time of night, on a rooftop, there’s a chill. The wind plays with the end of Ruby’s coat, with her hair. She hands the bottle off to Jasper, stares up at the fogged-over sky, wishes she were lying in Dany’s arms in Dany’s bed instead of here. Wishes, even, that Dany were the one on the roof with her. At least then they’d be cold together. At least then she wouldn’t have to imagine what Dany would say; she could just listen, and watch Dany’s flashing smile and her flinty eyes.

(She cuddles. This is another thing Dany does that Dany probably shouldn’t do, based on everything about Dany; it’s not like rattlesnakes cuddle. But Dany likes to nuzzle into Ruby’s side and rest her head on Ruby’s collarbones and toss an arm over Ruby’s chest, and hold her down like she’s worried she’ll float off somewhere. She’ll card her fingers through Ruby’s hair and hum. Even though they could get caught, even though she’s probably got better places to be - Dany cuddles.)

Ruby imagines it, momentarily, both of them on the roof together, sprawled like horrifyingly beautiful gargoyles, sharp teeth flashing, blood running hot. Up here - it’d be like they ruled the world.

But whatever. Jasper’s fun. He’s hot. He’s got a sharp tongue in a lot more ways than one. And she likes when he lets the mask down. She likes seeing the soft bits underneath. She wants to sink her teeth and nails into them so hard she draws blood. Masks don’t bleed. Ruby would know; that’s why she is what she is.

october

...though i was also in creative writing class in school, and thus ended up writing a bunch of poems of varying quality (my teacher had a real thing for poetry) and also one darklingverse short story where rory and cressida hold hands! which you can find here.

Lorelai Rory Flowers is afraid of thunder.

This is a bit of an embarrassing thing to admit, as they’re seventeen (“at least seventeen,” they like to tell people, “maybe two hundred, who’s to say?”) and generally wise beyond their years, or whatever it is that adults say about kids with too much psychological baggage. Being afraid of thunder is not a very wise-beyond-one’s-years trait. And yet the state of affairs remains: loud noises make Rory want to melt into the earth. Back when they still went to school, even the fire alarm sent them scuttling under their desk to hide.

Right now, in the elevator, all they can do is shrink into their sweater.

They haven’t let go of Cressida’s hand yet.

november

and then november of course was nano which was an adventure all the way through. (opening tumblr on the fifth day of nano to find out about d*stiel... was something.)

“Apologize to me. Or get out of my house.”

Gracen’s voice is very, very low. For a moment she thinks he hasn’t heard her at all. Then he spins, eyes blazing. “What did you say?”

Gracen watches her own chest heave. She pushes herself up off the desk, stands with the effort of pushing a mountain off of her back. Leovald is six-foot-four. Gracen is six-foot-two. In her heels, in the heels she must wear to be a professional woman, to be a lady - they are the same height.

Gracen wipes her nose. When she lowers her arm, there’s a streak of blood across the back of her hand. Fire shivers in her chest; her heart rings in her ears; her voice could cut steel.

“I said,” she says, low, slow, volume building, “apologize to me. Or get. Out. Of. My. House.”

december

and finally, the poem i posted this year! it’s called the beast sonnet, and you can find it in its own post over here (with commentary! how sexy.)

i kill the beast and drop down to my knees, my blade stained dark with blood of stygian hue, and for a moment these scarred hands shake free, and hold a world unfurled for me anew. but once-mourned victims, victors, vices find; fear winged me; now its absence strips me bare. my sword now dulls, my legs, my voice, my mind; the beast, pried from my throat, leaves no skill there. and still i hear it laugh, O DEVOTEE— O CHILD DEAR, NO GLORY WITHOUT ME.

i was quite productive this year; i have to think it was because i was avoiding things... the peak of my productivity happened over the summer and in november, AKA, college app hell. (almost done with the last applications! pray for me.)

a general breakdown of what occupied me this year:

(no, i don’t know why the “various other things” category ended up so large... i blame all the one-off projects i wrote a single page for, and also whatever the fuck happened in february. yes, i do know why it looks hideous; it’s because each of my WIPs has a theme color

thank you once again for spending some time at goose-books dot gov this year! what to expect for next year: well, i very much hope i can produce AMT... also hoping to get darkling ready for beta readers, so keep your eyes out!

[rwby-redux]

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: History

In hindsight, I probably should have called this topic political sciences, or social studies, or the humanities. Literally any of those would’ve been more accurate than simply calling it history. Sort of shot myself in the foot with that one. Oh, well. I guess we’ll just have to make do.

History (as it’s defined by the Redux) is an umbrella term for human geography, economics, legal systems, global affairs, anthropology, civil rights, technology, and resources. Its primary concern is analyzing how all of these studies shaped the actions of people in the past, and the ripple effects that carried those societies into the present. Being an interdisciplinary topic, it’s nearly impossible to talk about any of these studies in isolation without accidentally overlooking crucial details. Anyone who’s ever opened a history textbook knows that with that complexity comes controversy, and RWBY isn’t exempt from that trend. As we’re told by Salem in the show’s debut, modern-day Remnant was forged by that forgotten past, by the omission of the gods and monsters that set things in motion.

It’s often said that history is written by the victors. And if history is indeed a book, then you’ll quickly find that RWBY’s has pages missing.

Let’s start by laying our cards on the table and talking about what facts we do have. RWBY’s canon can be roughly divided into three vague time periods: the era of Humanity v1.0, prior to the gods’ exodus; the era where Salem and Ozma’s first host briefly ruled together, several million years after Humanity v2.0 evolved; and the era characterized by the aftermath of the Great War, about several thousand years after the collapse of Salem’s and Ozma’s apotheotic kingdom. Anything in-between is obfuscated by the show, either accidentally (due to a lack of worldbuilding) or intentionally (as an attempt to make the series “mysterious”).

My first instinct is to start calling bullshit left and right. There is no justification for spoon-feeding your audience crucial lore through a spin-off series, and then waving your hand and saying that the show doesn’t have the time for worldbuilding. If I had to start pointing fingers, I’d lay the blame on the writers for prioritizing animating bloated fight scenes that ate up the episodes’ already-stunted runtime. I say this knowing that some people will balk at the accusation, because there exists a demographic of viewers that does prefer watching the fight sequences with their brains turned off. And I’m not above that. (I could spend an hour raving about the choreography of the fight between Cinder and Neo, or about the coordination of the Ace Operatives in their takedown of the Cryo Gigas. Believe me, I’m not knocking the absurd enjoyment of spectacle fighting.)

My problem is that RWBY’s premise is so deeply-entrenched in rule of cool that it left its worldbuilding malnourished by comparison.

But fine. Let’s, for the moment, give RWBY the benefit of the doubt. What in-world reasons would the series have for its history being believably underdeveloped? (And no, we’re not talking about the erasure of the Maidens and magic. We know that information was deliberately expunged from the annals of history. We’re focusing on the parts of Remnant’s history that deal with ancient cultures, defunct countries, and influential past events.)

The immediate solution that comes to mind is the Creatures of Grimm. As we’re told by numerous sources, the Grimm not only prioritize attacking humans and Faunus, but they discriminately destroy any of their creations. [1]

“With every alternative form of communication that was proposed, there seemed to be the perfect obstacle. The destructive nature of the creatures of Grimm severely limited the reliability of ground-based technologies.” | Source: World of Remnant, Volume 3, Episode 3: “Cross Continental Transmit System.”

This leads to the conclusion that Remnant’s past was physically destroyed, and any traces of it were removed by the Grimm. This would include archeological records—artwork, architecture, books, clothing, jewelry, burial sites, tools, ecofacts, and so on.

The issue I have with this explanation is that it’s not consistent. Throughout the show we see ample evidence of immediate-past and distant-past societies. The remains of Mountain Glenn and Oniyuri still stand, despite the high presence of Grimm at the former (and the presumed presence of Grimm at the latter). Brunswick Farms is relatively intact and provisioned with food and fuel, even though the Apathy are quite literally hanging out under the floorboards. The Emerald Forest even has the derelict ruins of an ancient temple that Ozpin incorporated into the Beacon initiation.

Petroglyphs (parietal stone-carving artwork) of early hominids fighting a Death Stalker. | Source: Volume 1, Episode 7: “The Emerald Forest - Part 2.”

If the Grimm are RWBY’s get-out-of-jail-free card, then they’re certainly not being used to their full effect. The examples I provided tell us in no uncertain terms that Remnant does have an accessible history in the form of archeological artifacts. For fuck’s sake, Oobleck is literally an anthropologist. He teaches history classes at Beacon Academy and has a PhD on the subject.

Similarly, if we assume the format of World of Remnant (a classroom lecture given by Qrow) to be applicable in-world, then that means the history of the last few centuries pertaining to the kingdoms is common knowledge. [2] The existence of this information tells us that Remnant has a flourishing history, and yet we see little of it represented in the show.

I chalk up the lack of history to a nasty habit of the writers. You see, CRWBY has this infuriating tendency to treat RWBY like “it’s like our world but…” It’s like our world but with magic; it’s like our world but with Dust; it’s like our world but with bloodthirsty monsters. You get the idea. As I said back in the Worldbuilding: Overview, if you make your fictional world a one-to-one analog of your own, you end up either ignoring, underdeveloping, or erasing the history exclusive to that setting. And RWBY is largely bereft of any historical identity that it could call its own. Here, let me pitch a few examples of what I’m talking about:

If slavery was only outlawed less than eighty years ago, why don’t we see Mistral creating legal loopholes to retain the system, like through indentured servitude or penal labor? An empire built on human rights violations doesn’t lose that disregard overnight. While we see plenty of poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Mistral, [3] and we’re told about its infamous criminal underworld, [4] these aspects of Mistrali culture seem rather disconnected from the recent history of the country, and ultimately have no impact on the main characters or the plot.

The Faunus Rights Revolution was a three-year conflict that (presumably) took place across all four kingdoms, and involved countermanding the reparations made to the Faunus after the Great War. From a chronological perspective, this was extremely recent. I know Rooster Teeth has a track record of poorly handling systemic racism. Usually this manifests in characters doing tokenly racist things, like using slurs or refusing to serve Faunus customers. But here’s the thing: a discrimination-based conflict this recent should have more bearing on current events. We should see examples of things like police profiling, higher incarceration rates, a lack of representation in media, social pressure to conceal Faunus traits or assimilate into human culture, fetishization, inadequate healthcare, forced sterilization, a lack of clothing retailers which stock apparel that accommodates Faunus traits, and so on. To put it bluntly: Faunus are an underprivileged minority, and immediate history should be influencing how that plays out in the show.

To reiterate: the Great War was eighty years ago. Meaning that there are likely still people alive that fought during it. How have their attitudes and beliefs shaped the world in the last few decades? Did they pass on any lingering hostilities or biases to their family members or community? What about in the present-day? Do people from Vale that migrate to Mistral ever deal with bigotry? Do people in Atlas harbor any lingering ideologies from that time? Is authentic pre-war artwork from Mantle considered priceless because most artwork was destroyed during Mantle’s suppression of creative expression? Did immigrants from the other kingdoms help rebuild Atlas’ cultural identity by supplying it with the values that they brought with them? What about shifts in culture? Did kingdoms have to ration resources like sugar or cream? Did this result in cultural paradigms, where nowadays drinking black coffee is more prevalent as a result of adapting to scarcity?

Because Vacuo’s natural resources were heavily depleted by invading countries decades before the Great War, did this have a major bearing on technology? Does modern Vacuo have wind farms or solar arrays to compensate for a lack of Dust? How does this affect their relationship with other kingdoms? Mistral loves to pride itself on its respect for nature. [5] Does this attitude ever anger Vacuites from the perspective of, “Yeah, I can really see how much you ‘respect’ nature. You respected it so much that you invaded our country and destroyed our oases.”

As you can see, history can’t be idly ignored. It has long-lasting impacts on the people who lived through it, and it continues to inform the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of people to come. What we get instead are traditions that only exist within the relevance of the immediate past, like the color-naming trend that emerged in response to artistic censorship. Anything which predates it, though? Remnant might as well have sprung into existence a hundred years ago with how little its history exists beyond that context.

It’s frustrating and disheartening. We know precious little about Remnant because its history either exists separately from the story (and is delivered supplementarily through transmedia worldbuilding), or it wasn’t developed in the first place. This doesn’t even take into consideration how much the writers deliberately withhold for the sake of artificially creating suspense. (A suspense, I might add, that frequently lacks payoff, either because it gets forgotten by the writers, or the characters never bother to seek out knowledge from available sources, like Ozma. Seriously, why do these kids never ask any fucking questions? They did this throughout all of Volume 5—Ruby in particular, who I badly wanted to strangle when she said “I have no more questions” back in V5:E10: “True Colors.”)

RWBY didn’t even bother to give us a calendar era, like the BCE/CE one used today. Hell, if the writers wanted to buck the system, they could’ve gone with something similar to Steven Universe or The Elder Scrolls, where eras are divided by significant historical events.

Sorry. I swear, I’m done dredging up examples. I’ve already made my point. As we talk about the other topics in their respective posts, we’ll be able to analyze these problems in greater detail.

Trust me. We’ve only just scratched the surface.

-

[1] Volume 1, Episode 1: “Ruby Rose.” Salem: “An inevitable darkness—creatures of destruction—the creatures of Grimm—set their sights on man and all of his creations.”

[2] World of Remnant, Volume 2, Episode 2: “Kingdoms.” Salem: “In the countless years that humanity has roamed the planet, civilizations have grown and fallen. But four have withstood the test of time: Atlas, Mistral, Vacuo, Vale.”

[3] Volume 5, Episode 6: “Known by Its Song.”

[4] Volume 5, Episode 1: “Welcome to Haven.”

[5] World of Remnant, Volume 4, Episode 2: “Mistral.” Qrow: “There's one common thread that links all these people together, though, and that's their respect for nature. Particularly the sea and the sky.”

[notcrypticbutcoy]

Every Time I Close My Eyes

(This is just a post 2x15 coda fic that I didn't quite manage to finish before 2x16 aired. It doesn't directly contradict canon, it's just a little add-in. Enjoy!)

As the final Shadowhunters stepped through the portal, Magnus kept his head bowed slightly, eyes fixated on the floor as Valentine's words rang in his ears.

At least I'll be in Alicante, where the air doesn't reek of Downworlders.

Everything about the dingy little prison ward Magnus stood in reminded him of things he'd really rather forget. The cell he'd been imprisoned in. The bed with the horribly hard mattress that he'd spent far too many hours sitting on. The chair he'd been dragged onto by his own boyfriend—the location of his torture and his near execution.

The wall Alec had slammed him against, eyes wild and hands poised to be used as weapons, when Magnus had begged him to believe that he wasn't Valentine.

Alec had asked him, before they'd left the loft together. He'd curled a hand around Magnus' shoulder, hazel eyes saturated with unending concern, and ducked his head.

"You don't have to come," he'd said. "If you don't want to go back there, I get it. It's okay. We can call another warlock."

But he'd wanted to. He'd wanted to come. Partly for the closure, for the knowledge that Valentine would be sent through a portal to Alicante, where he'd never set foot in Magnus' general vicinity. And partly to prove to himself that he could. To prove to himself that a single day hadn't crippled him.

Now, he's not so sure it was a good idea at all. The words of a blatantly racist genocidal maniac whom Magnus could scorch off the face of the planet in mere moments should not have thrown his mind into such chaos. They shouldn't have scattered his thoughts and left him reeling, discomfort and upset and nausea settling in the pit of his stomach.

But they did, leaving the face of his stepfather flashing in their wake.

Fingers rested on his elbow, just light enough to feel through the material of his jacket. He glanced up, over, to see Alec watching him with his brows furrowed.

"Do you want to go?"

Magnus nodded slowly, but didn't meet his gaze. "Yes. I want to go."

He didn't look back as they walked out in silence, and turned pointedly away when Alec slammed the door behind them, locking it with a rune before he slid his stele back into his belt. If nobody asked him to go back down there in the next century, Magnus thought it would be too soon.

"Are you going home?" Alec asked, coming to stand in front of him where he'd paused, lingering, waiting, without thought, for Alec.

"Unless my services are still needed here."

"No." Alec shook his head. His brows were still drawn together, skin creasing in the middle. "No, you should go home. Get some sleep."

Magnus couldn't help the muscles in his face twitching at that, because whatever he'd said this morning, and every other morning Alec had asked, he hadn't slept, and he wasn't fine. God knew he appreciated Alec listening to him, letting him unload everything he was buckling beneath the weight of, but Magnus knew it wasn't a magical cure. It helped, someone listening, someone reassuring him, just the knowledge that he wasn't alone, but it didn't undo what had happened in that dank little cell.

"I can come with you, if you want," Alec said, to Magnus' silence.

Magnus' gut reaction, his immediate instinct, was to decline. Decades of being torn down had resulted in centuries of erecting barriers made of stone and spiked with iron between himself and anything, anyone, with the power to ruin him.

But he felt the phantom sensation of Alec's palm against his face, breath warm in the space between them as he told Magnus that there is nothing ugly about you. And he thought that perhaps Ragnor had been right, that day when he'd appeared in Magnus' loft before Alec's wedding. Perhaps he needed to fight for this love that tore down his walls, rather than shut it out by building them up, reinforcing them with distance and denial and white lies.

"Don't you have work to do?" Magnus asked. "With Valentine's departure—"

"It can wait," Alec replied, easily, and Magnus felt his heart turn over. "If you want me to come, I'll come. If you don't, if you...need to be on your own, I understand that too."

"I'd like you to come."

Alec smiled, the spread slow, easing across his face and into his eyes, and he reached out to grasp Magnus' hand. Magnus hadn't realised how good it felt to let someone in. To trust someone he loved with his vulnerabilities, and to know that they were in safe hands.

"Okay," Alec said, voice quiet as he squeezed Magnus' hand gently. "Let's go home."

***

Alec didn't let go of Magnus' hand until they were inside the loft. Magnus could feel his boyfriend's eyes on him as he crossed the floor, shedding layers and dropping them as he made his way towards the drinks cabinet, more out of habit than necessity.

"Drink?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder, the fingers of one hand curled around the neck of a whiskey bottle.

"How about a coffee?" Alec suggested, one eyebrow slightly quirked. "Or tea?"

Unbidden, Ragnor's face flashed through Magnus' mind, because it was exactly the sort of thing Ragnor would say. A gentle suggestion to point to the course of action that didn't include copious quantities of alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Magnus turned around to face Alec, and let himself smile, just a little. "Tea would be nice."

Alec curled a hand around his shoulder and gripped lightly on his way past, heading towards the kitchen. For a moment, Magnus stared after him, wondering where they were supposed to go, now. Now that he'd told Alec about his darkest moment. Now that he'd bared his soul and made himself vulnerable.

"Here," Alec said, coming back into the room with two mugs, steam curling up off the tops and swirling through the air.

Magnus thanked him, and Alec sat down beside him on the sofa, leaving a space of several inches between them. Magnus wasn't sure whether to be relieved or mournful. He wasn't sure what he wanted. Did he want to curl up with Alec, or did he merely want to exist in the same space, together but not together?

"Hey." Alec's voice made him look up from his tea. "Are you okay? Do you need anything?"

Magnus let his lips curl up fondly at that, at Alec's unending desire to fix things, to make everyone around him happy, to bend over backwards to please everyone he could—and even those he couldn't. He shook his head minutely.

"Just this," Magnus said, and shifter closer without thought to put himself in Alec's space, to feel his body heat through the layers of their clothes. He let his head fall against Alec's shoulder, and closed his eyes. "For now, just this."

Alec's arm slipped around his shoulders, sturdy and comforting, and Magnus felt lips press into his hair. "Okay."

They stayed pressed together, drinking their tea and revelling in the shared silence, for what could have been an eternity. Alec didn't say anything, but he didn't need to. He was there. That was enough. That was all Magnus needed from him. He knew it wasn't as easy as it often sounded, to be there for someone, but Alec was. And he appreciated it.

It wasn't until Alec's eyelids began to droop and the telltale sounds of his breaths beginning to deepen, rumbling somewhere deep in his chest, that Magnus considered that, perhaps, it was time to sleep.

Or, at least, make some attempt at it.

"Alexander," he said, dragging his knuckles across Alec's jaw. "Let's go to bed."

Alec's eyes rolled beneath his lids, and he made a low noise of complaint that made Magnus laugh softly. He stood, and extended a hand to the half-asleep Shadowhunter on his sofa.

"Am I gonna wake up to you, this time?" Alec asked as he clasped Magnus' hand and rose, eyes shockingly intense considering his state of clear exhaustion.

Swallowing, Magnus flicked his gaze over Alec's shoulder, fixing on an invisible point in the distance. "I don't know."

"Magnus." Alec's hand cupped his cheek, heavy and clumsy with sleep, but familiar in its callouses and length, and plenty effective in stirring something warm in Magnus' stomach. "You can wake me up. If you just want to...not be alone."

"I think you've just proven that you're tired enough to need a few hours of sleep by falling asleep on me."

Alec shrugged, and his hand slipped to Magnus' shoulder. "What else are stamina runes for?"

Magnus huffed out a laugh. "I don't think that's their intended purpose."

Alec raised his eyebrows, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth, laughter shining in his eyes. "Neither is what I activated mine for the other day, but I don't recall much complaining from you that time."

"But that was fun," Magnus said, unable to stop himself smiling right back in the face of such an infectious expression. "This isn't."

"No," Alec agrees, smile falling to be replaced with something more serious, but no less caring. "But it might be less awful than sitting up alone for half the night and magicking on your make-up in the morning to convince me that you're totally fine."

"I hoped you wouldn't notice that."

Alec's eyebrows shot up. "Magnus, the bathroom was far too tidy. There wasn't even one brush on the floor."

Magnus gaped at him for a moment in mock outrage, and then shoved his chest lightly, laughing. "You ass."

"You told me I snore."

"You do!" Magnus was still laughing. "You do!"

"I don't believe you," Alec said, eyes alight but voice low.

"I guess we'll just have to go to bed and see," Magnus replied.

Alec definitely snored. Magnus could hear it, could feel it beneath his palms and against his chest, but it made him smile, as he tucked his face into the back of Alec's neck and inhaled slowly, grounding himself. He couldn't quite make his brain shut off enough to slip under the dark blanket sleep provided, but he'd get there.

And even if it did all go horribly wrong - even if he was woken by nightmares that made him scream silently into the darkness - he didn't have to go through the aftermath alone. Alec hadn't magically fixed what he'd done, all those centuries ago, and Magnus thought it was probably unlikely that he'd fixed the issue of his nightmares, but he had eased the feeling of being utterly, horribly alone in his grief and his fear.

He wasn't alone. And Alec's heartbeat beneath his fingers left him secure in the knowledge that, whatever the morning brought, he didn't have to carry all the weight of the world on his shoulders. He had somebody to share the burden of leadership, of difficult decisions and second-guessing and impossible situations, with. He had arms to fall into at the end of a long day, that could be balm to his aching soul with a simple I'm here, and I've got you.

And so, lips a mere hairsbreadth from Alec’s skin, Magnus closed his eyes.

(Inspiration for Alec using his stamina rune to combat being tired from http://abloodneed.tumblr.com/post/162618768734/okay-so-what-do-you-think-about-non-sexual )