#i love the concept i think its always so interesting to escalate situations like that if a little bit indulgent and cliche

[dayurno]

I know you've read every kevin fic in the world but have you read the new kevjean fic where kevin gets kidnapped? there's only one chap but something about it made my stomach twist, i just wanted talk to someone about its existence😭

EVERY kevjean fic in the world is too strong but yes i have LMFAO im excited for more i thought it was interesting and so worrying..... kevin where did you go what happened to you....... i think if kevin took a plane to meet jean in california and disappeared right after jean would seriously pull the plug like he CANNOT have anything good in his life apparently! anyway i hope they find kevin soon...... jeandreil have a suicide pact ready if they dont i wager

[wilcze-kudly]

I am definetly in the minority here, but I was always so deeply touched by Mai's confession during that scene.

There's just something about Mai's confession that makes me feel so unbearably sad. I think the first thing that hits me is just how... empty she seems in this situation compared to the rest of the Firesome Foursome. Zuko is angry™️ and lashing out, Ty Lee is sad and concerned and Azula is posturing. But Mai is just so devoid of even sadness around her chidlhood trauma.

It's sort of like she shut down emotionally to some extent, (even more than usual) especially after her fight with Zuko.

This is quite a common reaction to arguments from someone who was raised to be obedient and non-confrontational, so I'm not surprised she was acting like this.

Analysing Mai's behaviour on the beach is interesting.

She seems to try to reach out to Zuko in her own, tepid little way by greeting him, but clams back up when he asks her where "her new boyfriend" was. This leads to her smacking his hand away when he tries to reach out to her by asking if she's cold. They're both trying to mend the bridge, but end up escalating the conflict further.

She remains silent for a good while, but does speak up in order to defend Ty Lee from Zuko lashing out. Despite this, when Zuko persists, Mai doesn't push the issue, perhaps due to her upbringing to be placid.

Due to this, I find it intriguing when Mai mocks Ty Lee for attention seeking, since she had attempted to defend Ty Lee from Zuko's ridicule. But perhaps its due to jealousy or frustration by Ty Lee's freely expressed sorrow and trauma that made Mai lash out in her own way.

Or it's just because the writers didn't know how to jump from Ty Lee's traumadump to Mai's lol

This is where we get into the meat and potatoes of Mai's confession.

Ty Lee bites back at Mai and parrots Zuko's opinion of Mai being "a big blah" as he said.

Ty Lee : Well, what's your excuse, Mai? You were an only child for fifteen years, but even with all that attention, your aura is this dingy, pasty, gray ... Mai : I don't believe in auras. Zuko: Yeah, you don't believe in anything. Mai : Oh, well, I'm sorry I can't be as high-strung and crazy as the rest of you. Zuko: I'm sorry, too. I wish you would be high-strung and crazy for once instead of keeping all your feelings bottled up inside. She just called your aura dingy. Are you gonna take that?

I think what's interesting here is that while Ty Lee saw Mai as recieving the attention Ty Lee had craved, Mai seemed to receive less loving, parental attention, and more scrutiny. Mai's parents also seem to be actually rather neglectful emotionally towards Mai and them just leaving Tom Tom unsupervised behind a screen in Omashu leaves me questioning if they actually cared that much.

Mai deflects, not adressing Ty Lee's question, but rather focusing on the nebulous concept of auras instead. When Zuko butts in, trying to rile her up, Mai gives a sarcastic apology. I find it very interesting that she sets hereself so aside from the others in terms of her not being "high strung and crazy", because it really shows the difference in Mai's upbringing and that of her companions. Azula and Zuko were raised to be leaders and fighters, and their "firebender instincts" were encouraged, while Ty Lee persumably had to compete for attention with her siblings. While Mai was raised with the :be seen and not heard" mentality.

Now is also a good time to mention that I think Mai has almost comically obvious signs of depression, which wouldn't be a stretch.

Zuko calling Mai out for not getting angry over Ty Lee insulting her aura leads me to my next point. Persumably, being a child raised by parents like Michi and Ukano, Mai wasn't allowed to voice her discomfort, offence or upset. Hell we see this in Omashu when Mai complains about being bored and Michi basically shuts her down and tells her to enjoy it.

I mean look at the expression Michi gives Mai when she starts complaining about being bored, a very normal teenager thing to do.

And when Mai finally does speak her mind, it is no less heartwrenching.

Mai : What do you want from me? You want a teary confession about how hard my childhood was? Well, it wasn't. I was a rich only child who got anything I wanted... as long as I behaved and sat still, and didn't speak unless spoken to. My mother said I had to keep out of trouble. We had my dad's political career to think about.

The first thing that jumps out at us is how Mai presents her trauma. She doesn't explicitly express any pain or sadness, despite it being rather obvious to us. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the group. Ty Lee and Zuko are both very open about their negative emotions, hell, even Azula admits that Ursa's actions hurt her.

But Mai? Mai kneecaps her complaint. This can also be seen as an effect of her upbringing. No complaining, no making herself inconvenient for mom and dad.

We also see the theme of conditional love, an implied idea that Michi and Ukano would only give Mai affection or gifts if she acted the way they wanted her to. Now conditional love from people who are meant to raise you will fuck you up.

The comics also add that Michi actively told Mai scary stories about the Kemurimage to keep her in line. Now, telling kids stories about magical beings to get them to behave isn't anything new, but it appears to be so bad that Mai had nightmares over it. Also we're in a world where spirits actually exist, evil chidnapper spirits don't seem too far out the realm of possibility.

Also as someone who got raised by a heavily Catholic mother who made me believe I would burn in hell for an eternity if I even mildly displeased her, I do sympathise

Azula: Well, that's it, then. You have a controlling mother who had certain expectations, and if you strayed from them, you were shut down. That's why you're afraid to care about anything, and why you can't express yourself. Mai : You want me to express myself? [Stands up and yells.] Leave me alone! Zuko: I like it when you express yourself. [Approaching, attempting to put a hand on her shoulder.] Mai : Don't touch me! I'm still mad at you. Zuko: My life hasn't been that easy either, Mai. Mai: Whatever. That doesn't excuse the way you've been acting.

I love when Mai yells at Azula for frying to psychoanalyse her. Like Azula was right, but it understandably upset Mai, and it's a good thing she expressed that. It means she's growing.

I also do adore that Mai does not let Zuko get away with acting out, particularly towards her. I like that the writer's didn't just have Mai give Zuko a free pass because he had a shitty life and she actively called him out on his actions. It's probably my favourite part of their relationship. And Mai expressing so much anger and upset is a perfect crescendo to her little scene.

I don't know why but Mai confession scene just holds so much weight and emotion for me, I can't help but feel something whenever I watch it.

Also, side note, I find it an interesting detail that Azula's confession only came after the fire was extinguished. Perhaps it wasn't intentional but it kinda feels like its symbolising that the light "went out" for Azula (at least narrativewise) and that while Zuko, Ty Lee and Mai would be able to get out of their shitty situations and from under the Fire Nation's influence, she would not.

[shihalyfie]

What went down with the DigiFes situation, from the community and translator perspective

I think the events of the last few days have gotten everyone in a huge fuss, and because everything got caught up in a lot of chaotic social media stuff, there’s been a lot of questions about what came from what and who knew what at what time. Fortunately, I happen to be:

Someone who’s a veteran in this fanbase and thus has a small handful of friends in this community, who also have their own friends

Someone who understands a little Japanese (although not as much as others in this community do) and therefore can read things in Japanese myself to some degree without needing someone else to translate it for me

So hopefully I can shed some light on what kinds of things were being discussed, and what was known and not known at what time in this fanbase with all of this.

The most important thing I want to establish is that there was no organized coalition or smear campaign. (Kind of ironic I have to say this when the topic at hand has so much to do with conspiracy theories.) I’m a veteran, I know friends who are veterans, they know other friends who are veterans but don’t know me at all. My friends usually agree with and like the same things I do, and I give them advice and assistance with my skillset when I can, and they return the favor. We pass things along through the grapevine, not through some super-secret club grapevine, just via the nature of social relationships and some Discord servers (multiple; again, not everyone knows each other). So these are my impressions of what happened, based on said grapevine.

How it all started

Konaka’s blog is long. Like, really long. Which is only natural, because he was recapping basically the entire 51 episodes of Tamers in excruciating detail, so no translator in this fanbase would be able to translate all of that and not lose their mind! So for the most part people who couldn’t read Japanese had pretty much given up on reading it (with maybe a few dedicated people using machine translation), and some people who understood Japanese would point out parts they found interesting, but for all intents and purposes it remained untranslated and not super-accessible to the mainstream. (Even the Japanese fanbase itself wasn’t super aware of the blog’s existence.)

So when that first post in May about 9/11 dropped, the people who did read Japanese started going “uh...”

At the time, the DigiFes stage reading hadn't been announced yet. So, in other words, everyone reading it only knew it as, functionally, him namedropping an alt-right YouTuber and praising his observations. The reaction from anyone reading the blog at the time was something along the lines of “disappointed and mildly concerned.” (Note the mildly.)

The posts in June about the Great Reset and the anti-vaccine sentiment were when people keeping an eye on the situation started to get really worried about how far this was going to escalate. At this point, I want to make something clear that may not be apparent to those who weren’t keeping up or who are outside the fanbase: Most of the translators and Japanese-reading people deliberately chose not to be too public about this at this time.

Why?

This is the irony surrounding the fact that said translators are now being accused of trying to further “cancel culture”: cancellation was absolutely not what anyone wanted back then! If anyone wanted to create a smear campaign, 9/11 conspiracies, the Great Reset, and anti-vaccine statements are already more than enough to make a starting case. But at the time, this was a blog that very few people (Japanese or otherwise) knew about, translating it would basically just boost its platform more than it would have had in the first place (which would be counterproductive), and -- well, let’s be real, it’s not hard to imagine that people might get reactionary over it, and people would go nuts. Was there any real benefit that would come out of that? Not really, no.

So at the most, those keeping an eye on it might have vented a bit on their personal accounts, but some even tried to self-censor with “[redacted]” or vagueposting, because this was a matter that needed to be handled with delicacy. Thus, there were “mild rumors through the grapevine” about what was going on, but those who knew were trying to hold back with restraint and mostly inform people quietly in the hopes of this not needing to become some kind of huge social media campaign.

(Also, to be a bit blunt about it, it’s really hard to be in front of someone who loves Tamers and is gushing about it and showing admiration for Konaka, knowing all of this and wanting to say something, but feeling like a jerk if you pop their bubble like “also, he’s probably an alt-right conspiracy theorist now.” Not to say that the ignorance-is-bliss concept is always a good thing, but...)

But since the blog posts in question were discussing the prospect of having his sentiments in fiction, everyone reading them was on edge anticipating what might be in store for DigiFes. The hope was that it might blow over. Hopefully, everything would be in the form of subtle themes with plausible deniability, it would all stay within the realm of “it’s not worth causing a fuss over this,” that would be the end of it, and we’d all move on with our lives.

Unfortunately, “Political Correctness is activating Cancel Culture” isn’t exactly subtle.

DigiFes and the aftermath

I think it’s too easy to assign too much responsibility to the fansub group that was indirectly responsible for breaking the news for all of this, but actually, the truth is, this would have gotten out anyway.

Even when the stream itself was going on, there were Japanese livebloggers, and there were also English speakers who caught on that something was happening with “the Tamers fighting political correctness”. Some hours later, an upload of the stream went live on YouTube, and quite a few people started watching it and caught onto what was going on. If the fansub group that released the now-infamous version hadn’t done it, I’m absolutely certain someone else would have eventually (perhaps in a different language first, but nevertheless). And even before then, information about what the hell was going on was already starting to circulate in broken and incomplete forms. That fansub solidified what was going on, and perhaps accelerated the moment the bomb dropped on everyone, but if it hadn’t been there, it would have happened much more gradually and chaotically.

On top of that, while the use of Western alt-right rhetoric (seriously, please do not try to bring the “injecting Western politics into Japanese media” argument here when all of us are asking him to take the Western politics out) meant that it went over most of the Japanese audience’s heads (hence your answer to “who approved this?”), there was at least one Japanese person who was politically savvy enough to call it out for what it was in disgust. (I’m not linking them here because I’m not dumb enough to fling them in a place where some of you trigger-happy people will go after them.) They didn’t even need to be super in-tune with Western politics to get it; they understood enough to tell that there were some pretty alarming extremist views in there. If they understood that much, it was naturally going to follow that the Western side was definitely going to become aware one way or another.

Even all that aside, at the very least, said fansub is accurate; imagine how much worse this situation would have been if someone else had taken it up and confused things further with a misleading translation, or, worse, deliberately messed with the contents. Basically, this debacle could have easily been a lot worse.

I don’t think anyone expected this to get as big as it did (as in, to the point mainstream anime reporters outside the fanbase picked up on it). There was a similar tri. reading back in 2016, but even a lot of the hardcore fanbase barely remembers it exists! These aren’t even supposed to be canon, either! But when you have that disclaimer at the front, and the contents are really like that, it was probably inevitable for it to become a social media sensation. I mean the contents...sure are a thing.

One thing I should point out about the disclaimer is that it only mentions the program itself. It doesn’t bring up the blog, and it doesn’t bring up who wrote this scenario, just the fact that the program contains alt-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Because it does! It’s not even technically praising or condemning the content within, it just says “we don’t agree with it”! What the group did condemn was...approaching staff about it (and especially starting a fight). Because, in the end, that’s what the disclaimer was for: a heads-up about what was in there, and an added reminder that the people translating this are just translating it for the sake of informational purposes. Or, in other words:

It was a content warning. Even without the disclaimer, there were many, many people who would have recognized the contents for what they were and been caught by it unawares, and become upset by it. There were many people who said that they were glad to have that there because it at least gave them some time to mentally prepare for what they were about to be slapped with!

It really, really was a disclaimer. When you have something that level of extremely politically charged stuff, it’s only natural to start suspecting that the translation group had an agenda (official translations tend to get this a lot when content is remotely political). But no, the translation group did their due diligence, even if their opinions were starkly opposed to what was in there.

I was not personally involved in that translation, but I’ll give you this (copy-pasted with permission, from someone who wasn’t technically involved directly in it but was privy to discussions while it was being done):

no we brought up all of those questions like the fact that Yamaki's clearly off his rocker and this isn't supposed to be taken seriously in the first place or that maybe if we're lucky he'll just sound like a fake woke boomer but no matter how you slice it the plot is about him "convincing" the unbelieving Takato and co. into rallying up against the true enemy of Political Correctness and that's just literally the alt-right playbook in a nutshell

the thing even made it to YouTube, we were basically racing against the clock

I mean I really want to say this is plausible deniability but I don’t know how you can get any less subtle than this, this is not something you can mince words

like I really wish we could pass this off as “as long as you don’t know the blog you can take this innocently as political commentary or something” but I honestly don’t think this is something you can take innocently even without context

tbh the Political Correctness part is the most cringeworthy but Yamaki’s rant about fact checkers being evil and all that is probably a lot more worrying when you think about it

tbh I’ve never felt as conflicted about what’s the right thing to do as I do now

So in other words, it was not a reckless decision to just tack on a political label; it was done after a lot of consideration about the consequences to put the label on and what people would think of it with or without context, whether there might be a glimmer of light possibility to try and pass this off as more innocuous as it was, and eventually a determination that, in the end, there was indeed alt-right rhetoric in the program, and should be labeled accordingly.

The result was that, of course, everything broke out on social media, chaos burst out, a lot of hearts were unfortunately broken, and a lot of alt-righters started invading spaces accusing people of proving him right with cancel culture. Ironically, my personal observation is that, while there were exceptions, most people in the actual fanbase did honor the requests to not harass people about it, and this may actually be the most solidarity I’ve ever seen from the Digimon fanbase in my life, which is saying a lot considering how we usually tend to be a drama magnet most of the time. The ones who were actually directly messaging him were his newfound supporters locking down on offering him “support against people trying to cancel him” (I think they were more heartbroken and upset at him than anything...), and most of the harassment came from alt-righters not even in the fanbase, namesearching and sending harassing, accusatory messages to anyone involved for as much as expressing mild dismay. (You want to talk about harassment and being attacked for having an opinion? Pot, meet kettle.)

This leads us back to the question of the blog: if you’ll remember, I just said that the fansub in question did not bring it up at all. That’s because, at the beginning, there was no intention to bring it up if it wasn’t necessary; this was not intended as a smear campaign. The warning was attached to the DigiFes program because it was about the DigiFes program. But the resulting chaos had a lot of people bring up the blog because it better contextualized what was going on, and discussion led to people looking it up themselves and posting fragments of it on social media, sometimes even using machine translate.

Ultimately, that’s the reason this document was released: it was the same reason as the fansub being released at the time it was, which was “if it hadn’t been released, the alternative was watching things get disseminated more slowly and chaotically.” I will say outright that I was one of the people who got to lay eyes on that document before it was publicly released (and even helped out with some advice here and there); it’s no secret that it was being quietly passed around as an internal memo prior to the outbreak. The original version of the document had a request to not post it on public social media because of the chaos it would cause, and while I don’t know how many people got to see it before it was released, I’m under the impression that it was enough people that I was quite surprised everyone who saw it respected that request.

Why does the document contain a ton of analysis and debunking on top of just the translations? Well, when you’re translating those blog posts, you’re technically giving it a bigger platform (which was one of the reasons it was originally considered better to not post it publicly). Since the document exists primarily to inform people, especially about why certain things that may seem innocuous actually have wider context behind them, it’s going to need to contain an analysis like that.

The summary

There were a lot of decisions involved by a lot of different people through all parts of this ordeal. I think it’s fair to criticize whether they were the right decisions in retrospect or whether certain things should have been done slightly differently (including my small role in this), but nevertheless, it was one where the risks involved were thought through and taken into account in every step of the situation, with a desire to avoid chaos, or at least prevent it from getting too much worse. When you have contents like this, a controversy honestly is inevitable -- how on earth are you going to be able to put contents like Yamaki reciting off all the typical alt-right YouTuber talking points and ending in Political Correctness activating Cancel Culture and not expect that to make a stir at some point? -- and so, in the end, this wasn’t so much a conscious attempt at stirring the pot as much as it was the dam finally breaking, and a desire to keep it from spilling over too much. Nobody coordinated this! I think everyone just really hates drama.

Knowing all the steps and thoughts that went on behind all of this, I think being reactionary or accusatory for clout is the last thing anyone involved wanted to be. Considering just how many of these steps above could have easily been made into exposure, from the posts all the way back in May and June to the internal memo document that was made to keep friends quietly informed but could have been leaked to the public with only one bad actor, there was an active, common desire among people who didn’t even know each other to try and minimize the potential damage as much as possible. When you look at the situation now, of course it looks awful and hardly like something that came out of “trying to minimize damage”, but in reality there’s only so much you can do when the contents really are like that, and I personally believe everyone involved was doing what they thought was their best option as the situation kept changing.

I can’t speak for anyone else, especially since I don’t even know most of the people involved, and I didn’t have much of a role in all of this, but I think everyone involved, myself and my friends and everyone who’d been keeping tabs on this situation for months, has been going through a lot of heartbreak and conflict over what to do next, so please understand that there was a lot of thought put into all of it, and that it really was a difficult situation no matter how you look at it.

[it-was-summer]

Video Killed The Radio Star - Chapter 2 (Spencer Reid x Reader)

A/N: I’ve gotten so much positive feedback and a lot of people seem to like so I am so happy to share another chapter with you all! In this chapter I will put Asterisks  (***) before anything that might seem triggering to some viewers just to give you all a heads up! I would also like to add that virginity is a concept made by man and if you are/aren’t one that is valid as hell!- much love, Em❤️

Warnings: torture, blood, cursing, distributing individual / content, sex talk, sensitive material ahead.

Plot: The team works to find you before the situation escalates, you spend time in a less fiery version of hell.

Word Count: 2.2k

“This girl made my job easier,” Garcia was logging into your computer with a smile “, It was never difficult, but now I get to skip a few tiny steps.” She was searching through your emails, looking for any messages that could have been from your stalker, there was nothing so far. So she moved to your phone records, unknown calls, texts, anything that could help.

She did find one call from an unknown number that had left a voicemail a few minutes before two in the morning on the night of your abduction, but the only thing that she could get from it was the sounds of sobs before the line goes dead.

The rest of the team was combing your apartment in Richmond. The most impressive thing about this whole case was how you knew something was going to happen and the evidence you left behind for them. Sticky notes decorated your desk, labeling everything from your passwords to the gifts your stalker had left you. Another thing that shocked the team was seeing photos of almost all of them, you didn’t get one of Garcia, with little sticky notes next to them.

The sticky notes contained little comments like “Fine as hell,” that one was for Reid, Morgan teased him about it before he looked at his own picture that had the note of “Arms?? Yes?”

It seemed like you had a sense of humor that you didn’t let on in your videos. It made Prentiss laugh, but as soon as she did her eyes looked down at the carpet, seeing a single rose petal near your nightstand. Instead of being red like all of the others, it was the pale color of pink. “It looks like the Unsub is in love with her,” she bent down to pick up the petal with a glove “, or whatever their demented version of love is.”

Reid was focusing on the books, you had a tiny library growing at your house filled with classics, some fiction, others nonfiction. He took note that you already had copies of the Brontë sister collection in your library, and they looked slightly worn down. He couldn’t help but wonder why the Unsub would give you books you already owned. Was it just for their notes? Why couldn’t they use the copies you already own?

Hotch tore Spencer away from his thoughts “The bed was neatly made and there are no signs of struggle, indicating that our Unsub probably made the bed and had time to clean up.”

“Or that she was too afraid to sleep, either way, they probably drugged her and got her out of here as fast as they could,” Prentiss added as she searched the bed for any other evidence.

Reid hummed as he watched Prentiss flip pillows over “It could have been someone she knew, a friend maybe?”

“We can’t rule out anything.” Hotch said as he looked at his wrist for the time “Ried, go with Morgan to the library. Prentiss and I will visit the family.”

                                                      ***

March 6, 20XX

The night of your abduction you were sitting on your couch, holding one of the decorative pillows close to your chest as you watched the black screen of your television. You felt numb, after you recorded your video you broke down. It started off as crying and then slowly developed into a panic attack, but now you were on your couch trying to think about anything but this horrible situation. You glanced over at the time seeing it was nearing two in the morning, you had already called your mother. She told you to come home and you said you would in the morning.

You couldn’t think about her right now, you started to cry, finding it surprising that you still had enough water in your body to cry again. Sobs escaped your mouth, then something pricked your neck and the world was gone.

When you woke up it all felt so soft. You felt like you were laying on the softest bed ever created, your eyes fought against you, opening slowly in fluttering moments. The room was illuminated in a wondrous pink light, you smiled in your drugged state before it all registered. You suddenly felt hot, on fire, everything was on fire. You attempted to sit up on the bed, slipping back down with a yell, red rose petals flying up around you as you collided with the bed. You carefully sat up, looking down at the bed, if you hadn’t just been kidnapped you would think was romantic.

You tried to pull your legs up to your chest, but you screamed out in pain. Your eyes darted around the bed, in a terrified attempt to stay calm as you looked down at your leg. Bile found its way into your throat, burning in your esophagus as you looked down at your snapped ankle. You vomited off the side of the bed, your body shaking vigorously.

“Catherine,”  A terribly sweet female voice spoke, “ My sweet Catherine, you’re awake.”

You coughed lightly before spitting the rest of the vomit out of your mouth, turning your head to look towards the sound of the voice seeing a familiar and beautiful brunette woman smiling over at you. “My name isn’t Catherine,”

“Yes, it is. You’re Catherine Earnshaw, Jane Eyre,” she walked closer, her hair swaying to and fro gently “ Hell, You’re Emma Woodhouse and I am,”

“Crazy, you’re fucking crazy!” you screamed.

“I’m Heathcliff! I am Mr. Rochester! I am Mr. Knightley!” She screamed back at you, her happy demeanor changing in a second, rage decorating her face for a simple second before she let out a calming sigh and smiled once again. “I’m sorry, my sweet, I didn’t mean to scream at you like that. I love you.”

Tears were streaming down your face as you nodded, slowly “You love me,” too afraid to speak out against her again, you nodded through your tears.

She sat on the edge of the bed, that you were slowly realizing was indeed heart-shaped. She reached her hand out, you flinched feeling it land on your head, her hand petting your hair gently.

March 8, 20XX

Morgan was smiling a considerate smile across the table at one of your coworkers, Noelle. She was a pretty blonde, had a sweet smile. The only thing they got out of her was that you were single, her eyes stayed on Reid when she said that, and that you were nice to everyone. Baked for people on their birthdays, or days they were struggling, you were… you are considerate.

Reid hated to admit that the nicest people always seemed to capture the attention of the most dangerous people. Unwanted, cruel, attention.

Spencer excused himself, stepping away to take a look around the vast library. There was a small cafe in the corner of the library, it was possible that the unsub first met you here, checking out a book or something of that kind. He went back to Noelle, “Would you say that Y/N had admirers?”

“Not really, but there was something in December,” she let out a soft sound as she gathered her memories “,this woman came in, beautiful, said she knew Y/N from college or something. It was a weekend so she wasn’t working, but uh she was nice, wanted to buy Y/N a Christmas gift, and asked what she would like. Y/N likes roses, she likes romantic stuff so that’s what I told her.”

Morgan’s eyes widen, holding back his comments as he thanked Noelle for her time before turning back to Reid “A Woman?”

Spencer nodded, trying to make connections in his head. The books and the roses made sense, why the blood-soaked panties?  The roses because of what Noelle said, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were classic romance books. He had read them both, but he wanted to see your new copies of the books, your annotated versions.

As for the blood-soaked pair of panties, his mind went to one thing, innocence. Assuming that you weren’t a virgin anymore the blood covering them would mean that your innocence was already taken from you. The unsub might’ve given them to you to remind you what you’d lost or to make the threat that you should have stayed a virgin, that you should’ve stayed innocent. However, despite your so-called ‘ruin’, it seems that she still loves you, hence the gifts.

Spencer assumed that the unsub thought that the two of you were connected through romance, maybe even a taboo type of romance. The romanticism of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre made that fairly obvious to him, as well as the rest of the team. Red roses symbolized romance, while the pink rose symbolized admiration and grace, indicating that your relationship with the unsub could have been anything but new.

“Can we get a map of all of the florists in the area?”

                                                            ***

You pressed your face into the cushions, it was a weekday and she had yet to come in. Heather, after a day or two you finally remembered who she was, Heather Alexander, she lived on your floor your freshman year of college. She was quiet, sweet, and, apparently, crazy. In college, she seemed less glamorous, wore glasses, had quirky hair, complete with a babyface. You used to invite her over whenever you would bake something sweet, till one day she was gone. Dropped out.

Now, almost seven years later, she seemed so broken. Living in a delusion, thinking that she was some hero or romantic interest of yours. The two of you were destined to be together, well that is until you live out the fate of Catherine Earnshaw and die.

You found it painful to cry at this point, you were so dehydrated and tired that you didn’t even try to force the tears out. It wasn’t that you were too tired to fight, well that was to be debated, you still had plenty of fight left in you. You were playing it safe, the thing that was holding you back from fighting was your mother. You couldn’t bring yourself to put yourself in danger, you needed to hold on to her, you needed to see her again and you knew she needed to see you again. So, you did what you thought was best, for now, lie in bed and feel numb.

It wasn’t that hard to feel numb, given that Heather had you hooked up to a morphine drip. You learned that whenever she was mad at you she would call you Emma, sometimes Jane, but for the most part you were Catherine. When you were Catherine,  she would give you all the morphine you wanted for your broken ankle and when you were Emma or Jane she would ween you off till she saw fit. So if you were Catherine, you would feel numb, feel okay at least for now.

You were staring up at the ceiling, feeling especially stoic, when you heard keys jingle at the door. It opened, showing a glimpse of a regularly lighted room, fluorescent as ever, before leaving you and Heather in this disgustingly pink room. “Catherine,” she threw her keys off towards the counter in the corner of the room. You were too drugged up to think about an escape plan, too drugged up to do anything but stare up at the ceiling. It felt so desperately good to be numb, you barely noticed when she touched you, but as soon as you did her touch felt like fire. “Catherine,” she leaned in close, her lips meeting yours in a second. Heather kissed you with her eyes closed, you always kept your eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling waiting for her harassment to be over. You never kissed back and she didn’t seem to mind so long as she was enjoying herself.

Heather pulled away with a childlike grin “Did you enjoy yourself today? I wish I could have stayed with you, but duty called!” Your eyes traveled down to the name on her uniform, it was the name of a floral shop near your work, the roses.

Your speech was slow and slurred, causing Heather to reach over to the morphine drip, fixing it so you would get lower levels of the drug, but that wouldn’t start working for a couple of hours. Heather seemed to know that so she simply got up, walked away, grabbed her keys, and went towards the door “You can answer in a few hours. Till then, my Catherine.”

                                                           ***

Prentiss watched your mother as she played with her hands, her mouth trembling as she spoke “Y/N called me when it all started,” she looked up, her eyes shifting between Prentiss and Hotch “I should have listened, oh I should have listened!”

“Mrs. L/N, you didn’t know this would happen. You can’t blame yourself here.” Prentiss offered comfort towards your mother only for her to let out a heartbreaking wail of pain.

“She’s all I have.”

Hotch and Prentiss were walking down the porch steps with a tin of chocolate chip cookies, a habit of her’s that you had picked up on. Prentiss looked over at Hotch, whose eyes betrayed him, she didn’t say anything about the look in his eyes. She knew that he probably didn’t want her to ask. She blew out a sigh as they got into the car

“Need a cookie?”

[crossdressingdeath]

Every so often I’ll come across a fic that has a summary that essentially reads: “after JFM brings WWX to Lotus Pier YZY takes JC to MeishanYu where he becomes the sect heir” and it always acts like this situation is a fix-it for the entire plot of the novel. And I was thinking about this premise over the past few days and realising just how little it makes sense. (I would like to clarify that I have not read any of the fics with this premise but that is because they all look to be written by JC stans and I decided a while ago that I wasn’t interested in anything like that. I would also like to say that I have only the vaguest understanding of Chinese culture so if something is glaring wrong in here I accept corrections.)

So. The logistics of the events coming to pass. The summaries imply that YZY left Lotus Pier with JC in tow, marched into her natal sect and without question JC was named sect heir and never had any problems ever.

Firstly: if YZY is such an amazing mother to take her son away from the ‘awful’ environment of Lotus Pier under JFM, why does she leave her daughter there? There never seems to be any mention of JYL also going to Meishan so this really just feels like YZY doesn’t actually care about anyone other than JC (in a similar way to the author not caring about anyone other than JC).

Secondly: the actual inheritance thing. As far as I can tell YZY and therefore JC are so far down the line of inheritance for the MeishanYu sect that it doesn’t actually matter. JFM calls YZY ‘Third Lady’ which based on my understanding means that she has two older sisters who would be the First and Second Ladies. In the line of succession her eldest sister would be first, then her children, then her second sister, that sister’s children, and then YZY and JC behind them (this isn’t even taking into account any older brothers she might have). I think I read somewhere that marriage order is based at least partially on age so we can assume that the two older sisters got married before YZY, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the eldest child of the eldest daughter could be fifteen when JC is nine, so at the very least the eldest sister could have a child who is close to being of age (though I freely admit that I have little idea as to what is classed as ‘of age’ within this world) while the son YZY brings is a child who throws a tantrum over having his pets sent away for someone else’s mental health and being told he’s going to share a room.

(Sidenote: I know JFM has JC’s dogs sent away but for all we know they’re just taken out of Lotus Pier itself (as in the bit where the cultivators live). We know there’s a market area where non-cultivators live literally right outside so rather than sending three puppies miles away to other cities, couldn’t JFM have just found someone living outside of the cultivator’s part of Lotus Pier to give the dogs to? Wouldn’t that have been the easiest option? And one that could potentially allow JC to visit the dogs he was so upset about? Did he just not ask to see them so JFM decided that he didn’t actually care about them? Did JC go see them every week until they died and was just angry that he wasn’t allowed to own them anymore? What proof do we have that JC never saw those dogs ever again?)

Anyway, back on track. Thirdly: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and into the YunmengJiang sect. She was very insistent on this. She wanted this a great deal even though we know that JFM didn’t particularly want to marry her. I believe that by the culture of the time marrying out of a family meant you were no longer part of that family. Like you might visit or write and introduce your children to them but you weren’t part of the family in the sense that you weren’t in the line of inheritance for anything of that family. So YZY marching into her natal sect with her bratty son behind her, declaring that he would be the sect heir to MeishanYu honestly reads to me as YZY flat out not understanding anything about how family inheritance works. She married into YunmengJiang. By the rules of the time, she should be devoted to building up the YunmengJiang sect, not leaving and returning to her natal sect because she doesn’t like the mother of the child her husband brought in off the streets. JC especially isn’t in line for inheriting MeishanYu because he is a member of the Jiang clan. Honestly the best equivalent I can think of is if people expected Jin Ling, heir (and sect leader and the end of the novel) to LanlingJin to also take over the running of YunmengJiang even though nowhere is it implied that he’s in any way in line of that — JYL married out, any children of hers were part of the Jin clan with no inheritance in the Jiang clan (it’s also for this reason that I am firmly of the belief that Jin Ling was mostly raised at Koi Tower rather than Lotus Pier, who lets the heir to a sect be entirely raised by another sect? For all we know Jin Ling spends a couple of months a year with JC and the novel just happened to take place during those months, and it’s saying something if Jin Ling spends the entire time he has per year with JC running away on night hunts without JC there). So, to put a long point short: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and has literally no inheritance there and neither do her children.

Also, at this point hasn’t she essentially kidnapped the heir to YunmengJiang? I doubt JFM is going to say “oh you don’t like my best friends’ son so you want to take our son away. Of course you can do that I have no problem at all with losing my sect heir due to your petty dislike of someone who has been dead for years now. Goodbye.” JFM may not really stand up to YZY, but there’s some things even he isn’t going to tolerate from her. So YZY is causing a political disaster between her natal sect and the sect she married into by kidnapping the sect heir of one and attempting to make him the sect heir of the other. At the very least I feel like JFM could divorce her on the grounds of kidnapping his son and trying to depose the sect heir of her natal sect in favour of a child who by law cannot inherit that sect.

From what I can tell these fics look like they’re set up to be fix-its. Again, I haven’t read them, but I can feel just by reading the summaries and glancing over the tags that they’re intended to be stories about how without the father who ‘hates him so much’ and ‘that awful WWX who always held him back from his true potential’ that JC is so much happier and more skilled and also absolutely going to be the best person in their generation at everything and in at least one of these it looks like he ends up marrying LXC (which is just. No). Honestly it could be a fix-it for JYL and WWX who would no longer be being berated for their general existence (WWX) and hobbies (JYL, specifically how she likes to cook). Them growing up without YZY constantly breathing down their necks and having better mental health as a consequence? Yes please.

Honestly I wouldn’t mind seeing something where the concept was written by someone who didn’t think that ‘actually all the positive traits of other characters are JC’s character traits and also JC should have been the main character’. Something where it’s set up as YZY taking JC with her to Meishan, expecting everything to obviously work out the way she wants, only to be shot down. Her eldest sister is potentially sect leader if their parents have stepped down and has a fifteen-year-old child who everyone in the sect is pleased with as their sect heir. YZY and her expectations get shot down, it’s made clear that she and JC aren’t even in the line of succession since they’re officially part of YunmengJiang and not MeishanYu, and she’s told to leave. She returns to Lotus Pier, angry but still convinced everything there will go her way because JFM has never stood up to her before, only to get back and find JFM in the process of organising their divorce. This isn’t an internal matter due to her not doing the duties expected of the mistress of Lotus Pier anymore, this is a political matter where she kidnapped the sect heir and tried to depose the sect heir of MeishanYu. She’s legally part of YunmengJiang, her actions reflect on the sect as a whole and could be taken as hostile intent. Really the only way to keep this from potentially escalating is to divorce her so that everyone knows her actions aren’t condoned by JFM individually and YunmengJiang as a whole. The end result is that instead of JC somehow fixing everything as a result of having less political influence/lower status than before (sect heir of MeishanYu which is a minor sect compared to the sect heir of YunmengJiang which is a great sect) and without an extremely loyal WWX supporting him, YZY instead undergoes some consequences for once in her life and the family dynamic of the Jiangs + WWX might even manage to be healthier without her constantly being around to antagonise everyone.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure YZY’s children would be so far down the line of succession that they’d have to murder a bunch of people to stand a chance of ruling Meishan, and her taking JC, the heir to the Jiang sect, to another sect without his father’s permission and with the intention of deposing the rightful heir of that sect would be... just a bit of a problem, yeah. Also like. I suspect the reason YZY doesn’t canonically do that is because not even she is that stupid. That goes beyond being a bitch and straight into Actual Crimes. Also love the idea that JC, the most useless of all the great sect leaders, would be less useless in a position of infinitely less power. ...To be fair he would certainly do a lot less damage.

[dwimpala-67]

Whatever Happens....

My two cents on the whole Prequel-Gate ...

Warning: The opinions expressed are purely personal and have no bearing on any person and if they do it’s merely coincidental and are without intention. If you choose to read this, it’s solely at your own risk and the writer is not responsible for any consequences thereof.

Jared and Jensen have been at the heart of Supernatural for past fifteen years. J2 - along with the show have been the source of joy for everyone in the fandom.  We’ve seen them grow up, seen their friendship evolve and seen the way they interact with each other. We fell in love with them, with the beautiful friendship they share, and their compassion and empathy and strength and understanding. These two beautiful individuals weaved their way into our hearts. Somehow, they’ve become a part of our lives. And we trusted them, like we do with any individual that is close to us in real life.

The end of Supernatural was bitter sweet for many of us, especially the J2 shippers. We could see our beloved show being ruined and we all thoughts perhaps, it was time to end it but secretly still wanted a miracle to happen and the story line to be back to its true canonical nature without the OOC story line that was being fed to us. Then came the announcement that Supernatural would end with season 15. Even if we knew the it was inevitable, it was still a shock. We have a saying back in my culture: “Whatever has a beginning, has to have an ultimate end.” And true to that, it was time for Supernatural to end. It doesn’t mean we had to be happy about it. After all, this was the show that meant a lot, personally to many of us.  To see it coming to an end was painful, shocking, even heartbreaking. But we accepted it eventually because life must go on.

With end of the show, we had to accept another reality. To watch our lovely pair - Jared and Jensen- go their separate ways. For 15 years, there never has been a moment where J2 weren’t in each other’s pockets. We saw them refusing to acknowledge personal space, saw them making heart eyes at each other, saw them going on dinner and lunch dates, saw them living together, getting married the same year, saw them grow their family together, saw them living in Austin together, saw them doing campaigns together, saw them golfing together, saw them being there for each other, making each other smile, saw them having each other’s back. We practically saw their love blossoming - for some it was a unique friendship and for some it was more than that. I don’t mean to point anyone out here, but the bottom line is that everyone of the J2 fans saw an ideal relationship between two people we loved the most. We choose to believe in what we saw.  And for us to suddenly see them being away form each other was hard to digest. It still is!

But we chose to believe everything was good, because we believed what our eyes saw. The way Jared and Jensen talked about each other in interviews even after the finale, the way they spoke at the virtual conventions, the way they interacted on social media and even the few instances of fans seeing Jared in Colorado exactly the time it was Jensen’s birthday, the way Jared knew about Jensen’s Soldier Boy suit before anyone else, and I could mention countless such instances that made us believe that the relationship these two idiots share was special and perfect. The kinda thing that can be called “made for each other.”

One fine day, we came to know not everything was as we believed it to be. It turned out Jensen did something by not telling Jared anything about it when the latter has been an integral part of the original concept. Everyone was beyond shocked. Each one of us felt betrayed, angered, pained at the way our beloved pair had a public fallout. Some chose to take sides and some decided to leave the fandom while others decided to be angry and disappointed in Jensen. There was despair all around and no one knew what was going on behind the closed doors. The only thing we knew was Jared was hurt and Jensen was the reason behind it.

I won’t go into the what, why and how of the whole fiasco, because by now, everyone has their own theories as answers to these questions. I have mine too. I see these theories as some sort of “justification” from our side to make sense of the situation. It’s not wrong because we’re searching for answers. We’re also searching for answers we will never get. (Unless either of the J’s decide to speak on it.) But there are a few questions that I feel are important to be addressed.

Do we have the right to feel angry and hurt over the issue? Absolutely Yes.

Do we have the right to take sides? Of course.

Are our feelings of hurt and pain that we resonated with Jared valid? Hell yes.

Everyone has a coping mechanism and the initial emotions or reactions were absolutely valid. However, it’s what happened later that has me thinking.

1. Do we have the right to know what happened behind the scenes? Probably but we would never. There lies the uncertain feeling of “how should I proceed from here?” and “How do I feel about it?”

2. Do we have the right to demand an explanation or an apology from Jensen? Absolutely no.

3. Do we have the right to throw vile words at/abuse the people involved? Hell no.

I would like to look at the whole thing in perspective. This has affected many of us and perhaps woken us up with a hard slap of reality.

For all of the 15 years, we’ve been fed with the “happy couple” image and for us, maybe the boys became the image of the “perfect couple with no issues” and when there was a very public spat between the two, there was a serious damage to our perception. This is where people didn’t know how to react. Many spoke out their emotions clearly, many were sad, confused and scared and many decided to be bitter. Few decided to leave I have no problem with it, I don’t judge, as I said earlier everyone has their own coping mechanism.

I feel like the issue is, as fans we are here to celebrate and have fun and not become entitled to know the truth or demand answers from the celebrities. Sometimes we forget entitlement is a delusion based on self centeredness. The demand to know what happened or the demand for Jensen to apologize in a particular manner cannot be the way we deal with the situation.

We need to consider the fact that the people we idealize, in this case J2, are also that - “people” or “Humans” to be more precise. Humans make mistakes. Just like we do in our everyday life. the problem with celebrities is, anything they do feels like “more than life” size. Even a small compliment makes us go “aww” and a disagreement/misunderstanding makes us go “Omg! They’re enemies.” It’s normal reaction because we hold them in the highest regard like “celebs/fan favs can do no wrong.” So, when this happened with J2 everyone had a reaction like this was the end or it has ruined it for me, or I’m done with this fandom. There were also a few reactions like anger and entitled demands. I always say false sense of entitlement always brings you doom rather than happiness.

The fact remains, Jensen disappointed all of us. A huge blow was dealt to the “happy couple” image and we all were left floundering. I was observing the reactions and I suddenly realized I’m far too much invested into the lives of two actors whose lives are already complicated. I mean, after the entire chaos, I too felt sad, angry and disappointed. It was upsetting me more that it should. Fandom is a space where I come to escape from real life. But if Fandom starts affecting my real life so bad as to make me upset, I felt like there’s something wrong. It shouldn’t be the reverse of what I would rather have the fandom to be, which is a happy place or the place where I go too relive my stress. And if the apparent relationship status of two actors affects me this much, it’s time to take a step back, evaluate and then proceed.

the other day, I was reading a twitter thread full of theories and according to the fans who was right and who was wrong and etc, etc, etc. I found, it shouldn’t matter to me to judge who was right and who was wrong. I’m in no position to judge who felt what, because in no way am I the party involved in the conflict. It’s a conflict between J2, who had some issues obviously and they manages to talk about it and even let us know that they are good. Now, I personally, felt like if the J’s claim they’re alright, then why should I doubt or even theorize about how their friendship has taken a toll. If someone tells me they’re fine, I usually believe them to be fine, unless I see something contrary to the fact. In this case, either of the J’s didn’t comment further on the matter and just as I was watching everyone calm down, other elements decided to jump into the muddy waters and splatter it everywhere.

The interesting thing about Kripke’s tweet was “assumption.” This word “assumption” is a very interesting word and has the capacity to blow up even the most calming waters. So, Kripke assumed, and then based on Kripke’s assumption, everyone else assumed. I’m just pointing out what happened, in no way am I justifying any of the J’s behavior. Just a thought. So assuming Kripke was right we assumed Jensen deliberately kept Jared out of the project and the issue escalated even more. Everyone was jumping the gun and then as miraculously Kripke has tweeted, he also deleted those tweets. Then came the damage control.

When Jensen and Jared had tweeted about the “truce” I thought the matter was supposed to be put to rest. Perhaps Kripke deleting the tweets and then Jensen going back to promoting his prequel was their way of brushing off the conflict and focusing more on what was more important to them: The Winchesters prequel. Another theory to add to the already existing million ones..lol.

Does this mean we should be hateful and abusive towards Jensen? No.

Our feelings of disappointment are valid but it doesn’t mean I have aright to be abusive at Jensen. No matter how he acted nothing gives me the right to throw abuse at anyone unless I’m the one who’s directly involved in the conflict. They way I see it, as a fan, I was hurt and caught off guard but I am in no position to judge either Jensen or Jared, especially when they say they’re alright. I decide to trust them. I choose to trust them, just I chose to decide they were the made for each other friends in the past.

There’s this another saying that I remember “To Err is human, to forgive is Divine.” It’s not as if either of the J’s have been flawless as a person. Everyone has some shortcomings and so do they. As a fan, I need to find the same level of “acceptance” that I do when I’m in the similar situation in real life. As a fan I need to accept that Jared and Jensen too are going to have some issues going ahead in life. Just because they are actors doesn’t mean there won’t be miscommunication or misunderstanding. They’re not perfect. They are bound to make mistakes. Just think that because this was a very public fallout, we came to know about the disagreement, try to think that in past 15 years how many times did the J’s had these disagreements and had to deal with them without telling us? No matter how huge fan you are, no one can ever claim that they now what goes behind the scenes in the celeb’s lives and same goes with J2.

We know what kinda place Hollywood is, and the J2 tinhats already have theories about bearding and stuff, and yet the J’s have remained positive throughout. There must have been contracts and papers and the “powers that be” who are involved in regulating their lives. It’s one of the many countless possibilities. We don’t know many things about their lives (even we’d like to claim otherwise). The information we get is just a 0.01% of what actually is happening. All we do is “assume” on the basis of their SM interaction or the way J2 appear in public. It’s all imagery.

They’ve been a source for inspiration for many. So, a public fallout doesn’t mean we should overlook the past. But we choose to look at it in a way that is suitable to us. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. If some of us feel like siding with Jared, it’s all good and if some of us feel like siding with Jensen, it’s all good. It’s their personal opinion and no one has the right to judge them or call them out for that.

For me, I’ve come to a conclusion that the secured bubble that I was living in has finally burst and given me a chance to look at things objectively. No matter what happens in future, I’m here to stay as long as I enjoy the fandom. If I let it affect me more than is plausible, perhaps then it’s time for me to rethink about the power I give the Fandom over me. Because it’s my choice. I alone have the choice to either let the negativity affect me or see the positive side. There’s a saying that goes, “You yourself alone are your own enemy and your true friend. The choice is yours.”

If J2 claim to be alright with each other, then I choose to believe them. Reason is simple. Because it helps me find some peace. It helps me cool down my emotions and helps me go back to enjoying the little things in fandom that bring me happiness.

 Don’t get upset with people and solutions because both are powerless without your reactions.

Let the drama continue....

After this, if you fell like unfollowing me, the door is always open.

In the end, whatever happens, happens for good. If it’s meant to be, then I’ll be the happiest and if it’s not, well, it’s beyond my control.

I love them both.

Peace and Love.

- A J2 fan.

[solacefruit]

enemies to lovers (or similar) for the fanfiction tropes. it's always been one i personally enjoy, lots of stuff to explore with the characters (and setting, usually)

Hello there! Thank you for asking in.

Enemies-to-lovers: absolutely A tier, god level trope, I love it. I genuinely do not think I could ever be bored of this one, and honestly there are so many potential iterations of it too and they’re all good. 

I love that petty rivals thing where two people basically despise each other out of attraction and envy and it’s especially good when they feel threatened because they’re each almost the best at whatever it is they do, except for this one other person, who they hate for that. I love when people bitterly obsess over each other for reasons that they can only partly articulate, and also it’s so good when that loathing is just a way of coping with and reframing genuine respect and interest that’s so evident to the reader but only fleetingly understood by the character. Very much that “if I didn’t hate you, I would have to adore you and that frightens me more, so I grip closer to hate and find increasingly destructive excuses for interacting with you and justifying the fact I’m not getting over you, I can’t ignore you and somehow that’s your fault” thing. Mint concept in all ways.

But I also love that genuine, heartfelt enemies situation where two people mean each other so much ill and would rip chunks from the other if they got the chance, or worse, but can’t quite get the chance because they’re each other’s foil and match, so it’s a constant, brutal escalation with very real, dangerous stakes. Or perhaps they finally get their chance, and experience a strange twinge of mercy--but maybe not enough. 

I devour this kind of thing, not least of all because the potential resolutions are so delicious. Like, sometimes it’s fun when they kill each other--or one kills the other, or they betray after that tentative moment of kinship and trust, because I’m a little awful and I love a good tragedy and I love strife and tasteful agony. But it’s just as good when they slowly learn to be honest and trust each other, becoming genuine friends; or learn to trust each other enough to fuck occasionally without a fatality risk, but ultimately remain somewhat opposed and at odds; or lean in and stay enemies (in name), be nemeses outwardly, and keep their affection as a secret between them; or never get resolution and smoulder for eternity, going slowly insane from unidentified longing; or be deeply toxic and codependent and destructive, because they’re not a good partnership, they just match each other in intensity--that old thing of getting on like a house on fire (no survivors); or--you get the idea. 

Just about the only thing I can’t forgive is if writers rush from enemies to lovers, as if enemies is just set dressing and not a very challenging thing to become lovers from. It has to ultimately feel earned, whatever is happening. As a writer and as a reader, I really enjoy when characters have conflicting worldviews and ideology in equally persuasive, understandable ways, so that it’s hard to cleanly decide who is “right” (if anyone), and enemies-to-lovers is often that when it’s done in a way that’s satisfying. 

There’s actually this wonderful line in Pratchett’s Masquerade that really gets to the heart of what I enjoy so much about this trope: 

Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought. And because the theater was fiction made flesh, she hated the theater most of all. But that was it—hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.

She didn’t loathe the theater, because, had she done so, she would have avoided it completely. Granny now took every opportunity to visit the traveling theater that came to Lancre, and sat bolt upright in the front row of every performance, staring fiercely.

There’s something about hate that’s fun and compelling. It’s a form of passion, and if you block off the usual path for passion to follow--love, for instance--the river will rise elsewhere and find another way to run whether you like it or not. That’s what good hate is, in my humble opinion.  

Send me a fanfiction trope and I’ll rate it!

[cruelfeline]

A common statement within this corner of the fandom is that Catra and Hordak are parallel characters. That their motivations and actions, their general storylines, are very similar.

I agree with this... to a point. Which is what I want to post about: to what extent I find Hordak and Catra to be the same, and at what point I find their characters diverge and deviate into their own, unique forms.

Obligatory disclaimer: this is my interpretation only; your mileage may heavily vary! This is also not a slight against either character; it’s just my observations based on the canon I can see. In the end, both characters end up happy, and that’s lovely c:

The basis of similarity between the two largely lies in their motivations: Catra and Hordak seek to impress their authority figures in order to gain said authority figures’ love. Both characters have difficulty self-validating and feeling worthy without receiving approval from their parent/authority/god, so they perform various “evil” actions (actions condoned by those they seek to impress) to earn that approval. 

Catra attempts to fashion herself as a successful Horde Force Captain in order to earn praise and affection from Shadow Weaver. 

Hordak attempts to conquer Etheria to earn praise and affection and the right to live from Horde Prime.

These are concepts I accept as accurate, but I feel that they only describe the characters to a certain point in the story. And that point is... oh... probably somewhere mid-season three. Namely: it is the point at which Shadow Weaver leaves the Horde and essentially becomes unreachable for Catra. It is at this point that, to my eye, Catra shifts her motivation, and we see the stark difference between her character and Hordak’s.

Once Shadow Weaver leaves the Horde and joins the Alliance, Catra no longer has any real hope of earning her love. She has, for all intents and purposes, been rejected, and my word, does she react poorly to it. One might argue that this is the moment when Catra truly begins her descent into full-out villainy, and I would agree with that argument. Why?

Because once the chance of impressing Shadow Weaver is gone, Catra needs to find another way to self-validate and achieve that sense of worthiness. And the way that she chooses focuses on enacting vengeance upon the person she identifies as responsible for Shadow Weaver leaving her: Adora. So Catra shifts her actions from trying to impress Shadow Weaver to trying to do whatever she can in order to actively harm and beat both her and Adora. 

Once this happens, we see the real extent of Catra’s worst traits: her aggression. Her tendency to use others for personal gain without respecting their wellbeing. Her habit of blaming others for failure, even when said failure is truly her fault. Her affinity for lashing out instead of taking responsibility.

I would say that, at her lowest point, Catra is no longer really seeking love. What she is seeking instead is to prove that she doesn’t need love because the source of love rejected her. Shadow Weaver rejected her, and she needs to prove that that doesn’t matter while also venting her anger on the supposed reason for said rejection (Adora). And so Catra’s motive becomes uglier, more spiteful, more prone to fostering violence, and she shifts away from the motive that she shared with Hordak. She shifts away from seeking love and towards proving herself stronger than (and punishing) those who she feels have wronged her.

Hordak, on the other hand, never really loses the original motivation. He never shifts into this aggressive state of “sour grapes,” so to speak. Even when Prime truly does reject him (at least, rejects him as a meaningful individual) at the end of season four, Hordak continues to strive for that love and affection and acceptance. He does not switch motivation and attempt to prove that doesn’t “need” Prime’s love. Well. Not until the very, very end of the show, thanks to one purple-haired Princess. c:

My point being that Hordak maintains this sort of... self-blaming state of trying to attain Prime’s love by fixing himself. He continuously claims a tragic sort of responsibility, never blaming others for his inability to win Prime over and instead trying to do whatever he thinks might succeed in netting him that coveted approval. This starts out as conquering Etheria. It eventually transitions to erasing himself in the purification pool. But it never switches gears into the sort of angry vengeance that Catra progresses to.

Which, I think, says something about the differences in their characters. 

Though their motivations (initially) match, the nature of their personalities alters how said motivations evolve. Hordak is, to my eye, far more like Adora in basic personality than he is like Catra.

Catra, over the course of the show, demonstrates this tendency to avoid blame and shift it to others. It starts off fairly small - remember how she allows Shadow Weaver to take the fall for her own bad plan - but develops to dangerous levels. She blames Entrapta for betraying the Horde rather than recognizing that she, Catra, made a grave error in tazing her and activating the portal. She blames Adora for... well, for her own mistakes, really. And so when Shadow Weaver leaves and takes her love with her, Catra doesn’t sit back and reassess the situation. She doesn’t pause and consider if, maybe, what she’s trying to do is not the best idea. She also doesn’t blame herself for Shadow Weaver’s departure, the way Hordak blames himself for Prime’s rejection. Rather, she seeks out a target for blame, resolves to attack that target, and... escalates the Etherian War to its worst heights in order to take down Adora. 

Hordak is far less like Catra in this regard and... well, far more like Adora, really. Like Adora, he takes responsibility for whatever flaws he recognizes in himself to the point of self-harm. He assumes that whatever is going wrong is his fault, and that he has to work and alter himself in order to address it. Like Adora, he tends to focus his anger and blame inward, and so the shift in motivation never occurs. He continues to strive for love and acceptance even after rejection, which means that the sort of violent downward spiral we see in Catra (where she pushes everyone away and mires herself in spite and vengeance) never happens in him. Instead, he brings himself to near-destruction, essentially enduring a death-of-self, in order to rectify what he views as his own transgressions.

Neither of these paths is necessarily better than the other, mind you. 

While Catra’s route might lead to her breaking free of her abuser as soon as she is reasonably able to, but her aggression leads to her personally harming more people and damaging more friendships.

And while Hordak’s route boasts a more honorable sense of responsibility and never features him hurting those who try to help him, it also results in him doggedly attempting to reunite with his abuser to his own horrific detriment. 

Each path has, I suppose, what might be termed “pros and cons,” but neither is actually healthy. And both, thankfully, end well: Catra takes responsibility for what she’s done and resolve to make better choices; Hordak recognizes Prime as his abuser, experiences true love thanks to Entrapta, and breaks free from Prime’s tyranny. 

So... well, that’s really it, I guess. Hordak and Catra start off as parallel characters, but I feel like their different personalities take their arcs to different places. They don’t maintain that parallel nature throughout the show because, initial motivations aside, they are very much different people with different ways of interacting with others. And different ways of viewing themselves.

Which is interesting! They’re interesting characters to compare and contrast, and I always appreciate the opportunity to do so. And I look forward to others’ opinions in the same regard!

[xplrerdolan]

what abouttttt, a concept with Aryia or Colby (u choose) where you see eachother at a party and there’s a lot of pining and flirting before they finally kiss at the end

i FEEL like i should write this for aryia bc i haven’t written for him before.........BUT i am simply colby brock’s personal fleshlight bitch so imma write this one for him 😭 i love you so much for sending this in, you’re the best ok ��

—

You can feel his eyes on you. You don’t even have to look at him, however far behind you he is. He’s somewhere close, though—either standing against a wall, or pretending to listen to a conversation, or cracking open another White Claw with his ring-clad fingers. Whatever he was doing, wherever he was, whoever was around him, there was no doubt in your mind that his eyes were fixated on the curve of your spine.

You periodically moved through the crowd, mingling meaninglessly with other people—flirting whenever you had the chance, and doing it painfully obviously. You weren’t avoiding him. That would be the farthest thing from the truth. This was only the beginning of the little game the two of you played... a cat and mouse dance where the cat was too pussy to catch the mouse. You flirting with others was bait for him to rise to—interesting, how the prey can stalk the predator sometimes.

And it always worked on him. “You seem to be having a lot of fun,” came his voice from behind you. He liked to think he was sneaking up on you. But he was far too predictable.

You looked over your shoulder, barely looking at him out of the corner of your eye. He hated how disinterested you looked. Honestly, if he didn’t make a move soon, you wouldn’t just look the part anymore.

“Nice of you to notice,” you smirked, biting the edge of your red solo cup before taking a sip of your bittersweet drink.

With your side-eye still taunting him, you looked him up and down slowly. You let your eyes linger on certain parts of him, letting him feel the intensity of your gaze, before finally meeting his eyes. You turned to him, crossing one arm over your chest while you let the other dangle at your side, gripping your cup by its rim.

“Surely you didn’t just come over here to comment on how much I’m enjoying this party?” You quirked a brow at him, tilting your head to the side. You were challenging him, once again setting up the opportunity to pounce.

But, as he hadn’t for the last two months, he didn’t take it. He shrugged, frowning comtemplatively. “Maybe I did.”

He turned away from you, your eyes now watching him. You narrowed them at his back, clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Your eyes trailed after him, waiting for him to leave your line of sight before you followed after him. You kept your distance just as he had kept his. You found him again after a few seconds of searching; he was making his way to the kitchen, probably to get another drink. You let him walk ahead of you before going after him.

You walked into a surprisingly empty kitchen to find Colby taking a cold White Claw out of the fridge. You walked over to him, putting your drink down on the counter loud enough to make sure you got his attention. Sure enough, you did. You turned and hopped up to sit on the counter, your legs dangling over the edge as you leaned back onto your hands.

“I like your skirt,” he said, leaning back against the island counters that ran parallel to the ones you were sitting on.

The article of clothing in question had ridden up quite a bit when you jumped up to sit down, leaving much of your legs exposed to him. “Do you? Or do you like what’s under it?”

His cheeks and neck flushed slightly, making you flash him a cocky smile. “Don’t act so smug,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

He pushed himself off the counter, keeping those smoldering eyes on yours as he stepped closer.

“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve got you all flustered.” You tried not to look affected by him as he continued to close the distance between you, but with every inch, more butterflies raged in your stomach.

He stopped less than a centimeter away from your knees, the closest he’d been to you since you’d started playing this game with each other. You weren’t sure what the objective of it was, since neither of you ever acted on these advances—they only got more intense as time went on. And now was no different.

You held eye contact with him, not flinching away from his azure stare. However, because of this, you hadn’t noticed his hand moving towards you until his fingertips brushed against your knee, barely making contact. Suddenly, his fingers were curled around your calf and he was pulling you to the edge of the counter, now situated between your legs. You drew in a sharp breath, your right hand shooting out to clutch his shoulder. You barely registered his movements before his lips were next to your neck, his breath fanning against your skin, tickling you in the most sensual way. You remained completely still, stunned by how quickly things had escalated.

With his lips now next to your ear, he whispered lowly, “Who’s flustered now?”

And just as fast as he had put himself between your legs, he was gone—his retreating form going back to the crowded party a few steps away. You caught your breath for a second, calming your heart rate. You closed your legs subconsciously, worried someone might see the wet spot on your panties, before jumping off the counter and grabbing your drink again. You chugged what was left of it, welcoming the burning sensation. With a final steadying breath, you moved back out to the party to pursue the source and target of your desire.

You wandered through the crowd, dancing around groups of people with your eyes darting around for any sign of Colby. You looked around for a few minutes, starting to feel frustrated when you couldn’t find him. Because of this, you were startled when a hand rested against your waist, and even more surprised when the pressure of three rings was evident against your skin. He never managed to sneak up on you.

“Lost?” he asked mockingly, pulling your body against his.

You pressed yourself against him in response, moving your hips in time with the music. “No, only wandering.”

“Really? You seemed to be looking for someone,” he said, leaning down to rest his chin against your shoulder.

“Maybe I was,” you said, the alcohol you’d chugged giving you the edge you were looking for. “Maybe I still am.”

“Oh?” he replied, the hand on your waist gripping you tighter. “Who are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for someone who won’t just flirt with me for two months without making a move; someone who won’t start something he knows he doesn’t have the balls to finish—”

Before you could get your next words out, the hand on your waist was spinning you around and the softest pair of lips you’d ever felt were on yours. You relaxed into his embrace, lifting your hands up to wrap them around his neck. Your fingers laced themselves through his hair, pulling at the strands just enough to tease him. Your tongues met and a hint of the flavors of your last drink and his combined, leaving the ghost of the taste behind. You moaned into his mouth and it was enough to get him to bite your lip just hard enough to make you moan a little louder.

He pulled away from you a little breathlessly, a smirk playing on his lips. “Let’s get out of here so I can show you a thing or two about balls and finishing.”

[seaofthemind-art]

The “Abuse” Trope in MCU Spider-Man Fan Fiction: Part 1

[Edit Note: This first post completely missed my point, and as such is now being continued in "Part 2". I have made several edits and additions to this post for coherence between the two.]

I became interested in these tropes partly due to what seemed to be its abundance within the fandom. Re-reading several stories recently led me to consider how this trope has been handled in the fandom, its variations and ways that it has been turned on its head, as well as stories ideas that have not been explored yet to my knowledge.

Within the "Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)" category on AO3 there are several overarching areas that would come under the trope of abuse.

To put it in context, on the 26th October 2020 there was 28,637 works in the category; this included 626 stories tagged as "child abuse", a total of more than 2% of the stories. Of course, as we well know, tagging on AO3 is not consistent: there will be "abuse" stories which do not use this tag, whilst the tag may also be referring to a range of characters' situations (ie: Tony's childhood, Flash's backstory, OC characters). However, for these posts I'm going to look at stories related to Peter's experiences.

For all the "popularity" of these stories in the fandom, it is just an example of what are wide spread tropes across media. TV Tropes lists several related tropes including Abusive Parents and Foster Kid, showing that it is not only this fandom in which it is common.TV Tropes also makes a good point in its Sliding Scale of Parent-Shaming in Fiction, in that: what one person classes as abusive behavior may be perfectly acceptable to another.

Major Plot Categories

One of the common targets for this trope is "May's Abusive Boyfriend", which seems to have grown in popularity in the last year as Endgame has provided a convenient set-up for this trope:

the second law of thermodynamics by extraordinarythings

"It happens the same way it always does. (It's just discipline. It's not that bad. It's fine, Peter is fine, he'll be fine--). Except he really isn't fine, and Tony knows something's up, and Peter's house of cards is falling apart, and so the story goes."

Who Saves The Hero by CamelotQueen

“May brings home her new boyfriend. Something about him makes Peter feel nervous, but he makes May happy. And if May's happy, then Peter is happy. Then it escalates.”

Fear all else but never me. Please. by Webtrinsic

“May's new boyfriend proves himself to be a grade A-asshole when he decides to abuse Peter. And that doesn't sit well with Tony at all.”

i get by (but it’s eating me alive) by Livinei

““Do you not want to be home?” Tony starts. “No.” Tony considers for a moment. Peter’s never not wanted to be home. Not before… Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t know a lot about David. Peter doesn’t bring him up a lot, and when he does then he’s not very eager to discuss it for long. Tony hasn’t gotten an impression that Peter’s particularly fond of the guy, though.”

The Homes We Make by iamq

“Peter Parker isn't the type of boy to run crying to Tony Stark because he can't handle a punch. Michelle Jones and Ned Leeds aren't the type of friends to ignore Peter's rapidly declining health. Eugene "Flash" Thompson isn't an idiot.”

to this day by hopeless_hope

“It's months before anyone realizes May's boyfriend abuses Peter. The effects are lasting.”

Promotions Aren’t Always A Good Thing by Agib

“When May gets a new boyfriend, Peter's okay. When Carter moves in, he can deal. When May gets a promotion so she works days and Carter works nights, Peter finds it harder to deal. When Carter starts abusing him, he begins to feel crushed by the weight of it all.”

The Black And The Blue (All That It Takes Out of You) by Buckets_of_Stars

“David wasn't a person Peter would ever want to be around, but with him being May's new boyfriend and all, it makes it harder and harder to avoid him. But it was fine, May was happy and of course, Peter still has Tony. But that was before the hitting started. Before David spit neglectful words in his face and the spiderling begins to question his very worth.Tony, on the other hand, is not having it.”

Vertigo by GalaxyThreads

“Coming back from the dead wasn't nearly as awesome as TV made it out to be. Peter's learning this on the go. And it really doesn't help that May's new husband absolutely hates him. And that May is pretty ignorant of that and him now. But it's all fine. Really.”

Your Heart Changed (mine stayed the same) by @loboselinaistrash​ [WIP]

"Peter Parker is back but 5 years into the future and the world has changed. Peter goes home with May only to find she had moved on, with a husband and two kids. Peter struggles to find his place in this new family with a strict step uncle, the longer he's there the harder he finds it to stay on his good side, uncertain if May will believe him."

A Peter Parker Problem by @spagbol99​ [WIP]

"Peter comes back to find May has a husband and a kid. A new family he has to fit into. But he has done it before, he can do it again. The only thing that feels solid is Tony: the Blip and fatherhood have mellowed him and Peter loves the bond they have now. He knows Tony would be there for him through anything. But Tony needs to focus on his own recovery - not small time Peter Parker problems. When things at home take a turn for the worse, Peter decides that he'll handle it himself. He is Spider-man. He's been to space and fought aliens. He can get through anything. After all, if May is happy, he is happy, right? Right?"

--

This premise has been turned on it's head by a couple of authors with the straight opposite of this trope in "May has a new boyfriend who is decent (and confused)":

The Secrets We Keep by @euphoric-melancholyy​

"May has a really awesome, loving boyfriend who's just a little confused as to why she lets her teenage son stay out til 1 every night and sleep somewhere else every weekend. Also, he’s friends with Tony Stark? Chris - May’s new boyfriend - feels like he’s missing something here."

A Good Kid  by kuragay

"Ricky thinks that May's an exceptional woman, and he thinks that Peter's an exceptional kid. But there's no denying that the Parker household is full of mysteries, and most of them are centered around Peter and his supposed internship with Tony Stark."

--

Then there has also been several stories changing the abuser, such as in the concept of "What if May (or Ben) is the abusive carer?":

Brooklyn by @hailing-stars​ [part of a longer series]

"After leaving Peter with Tony and months of no contact, May shows up in Peter's life again, interrupting Tony's plans to adopt him. Peter has to decide who he wants to live with, but soon learns the decision may really not be his."

Parker Luck by CreepyLittleLullaby

"He never met one, he got left behind by the other, the next one died, and the only one he had left was pushing him away. And he doesn't know what to do. Peter really has rotten luck when it comes to parental figures. No matter how hard he tries. Parker luck will always prevail."

Please, Understand by jipseebree

"When Aunt May discovers that he's Spider-Man, something inside her snaps. She starts to abuse him and he deserves it, doesn't he? After all, people have died because of him. People who wouldn't have died if he was a better hero."

Spiders hunt alone, anyway by karma_is_a_turtle [WIP]

"Ben’s death hits the Parker family hard, May worst of all. May Parker struggles to cope with her husband’s death and her nine-year-old nephew grows up learning how to pick up her slack."

Always Silent, Peter Darling by LlibLo

“After a traumatic experience at age 6, Peter Parker hasn't spoken a word. Most blame it on the fact that he witnessed his Uncle die in a horrible fire, this is only partly true. Now, almost 10 years later Peter is given the chance to finally speak, but will he take it? Or is the fear of his Aunt to much for him to take that chance? Either way, Tony Stark can tell something's not quite right about the kind hearted May Parker.“

It’s All Just Static In My Head by Blue__Dreams

“And then May was shot. Foolishly, childishly, Peter hoped Iron Man would swoop in and save the day again. He hoped and hoped and hoped. And Ben drank and drank and drank. As Ben grew worse, and their fridge grew empty, as Peter’s face became more bruised, and his powers grew, Peter realized, you can’t depend on superheroes. So Peter created his own hero - Spiderman.“

 I told you I had issues by Bergen            

“Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, and right now, a little exasperated. Because some guy is swinging around New York, shooting webs and making trouble, Fury is breathing down his neck, and his latest intern took off with his coupon for a free coffee.“

--

Another focus for the abuse trope are the "Skip Wescott" stories, which take their concept and the character from a one-shot from the comics. @irondadfics​ has a good rec list for this. Many of the stories take it further than the comic that inspired them, and within the fandom it has also become common to see it re-mixed in variations of “Abused by Other Person of Authority” AKA: Babysitter/Teacher/Foster Carer/etc.

Although Skip is a common character for authors to use when they need a character as the abuser who isn't a complete original character, both original characters do appear as well as other characters from within the MCU.

The Third Option by Uncertainty_Principle

“Ben and May divorced before Peter’s parents died, so when Ben is murdered Peter goes into foster care. It takes just a tiny taste of superpowers for Peter to decide he doesn’t want to put up with his horrible foster father anymore—the streets are infinitely more appealing. All he wants is to be Spider-Man anyway.“

take a look at me now, there's just an empty space by @lyssismagical

“As much as Peter does want to disappear to his bedroom and avoid the awkward attempts at a one-sided conversation or inquiries about the life Tony’s read about, he craves the closeness to another person. The last time he felt properly close to someone was May. Every home in between had people who tried or people who didn’t, either way, it never felt the same. He was just another mouth to feed, another set of house visits and questionnaires from Elaine, another troubled kid under their roof. He was never treated like a human being, like a kid.“

Like A Flame That Flickered Out Too Soon... by @mysterycheerio

““He did this to you?”. Peter nodded. “And this is why you haven’t been talking?”. Another nod. Tony left the room in a hurry. Peter didn’t know where he went. Pepper knew. Rhodey knew. The whole damn neighbourhood around Stark Mansion knew, his yells were so loud.”

The Education Complication by Buckets_Of_Stars

“When young Peter Stark was diagnosed with Asthma, he was given two very important rules to always follow: 1. No long distance running. 2. Always have your inhaler with you. But when a new Gym Teacher with a hatred toward Iron Man gets hired, the 13 year old is going to find that following these two simple steps has never been more difficult.”

--

This is just a selection of the stories which can be found on AO3, from which it should be already clear that these cover a wide range of treatments of the subject.

Across all the categories, the reactions of characters to the abuse is varied; as well as some notable omissions in the range of stories. 

This we will look at in Part 2.

[clearlypositive]

14, 36, 56, 57, 58, 88, 96, 107, 136, 140 (lol so many im sorry, you can just answer the ones you want if its too many)

don’t be sorry, i can totally answer them!! 

do you share any of the same hobbies/interests/passions?: we both like dogs, music, and drinking/smoking. we met at a bar, so i guess that’s a given haha. we also both like the NFL and NBA, so we watch lots of games together! we’re also both into puzzles/games. he’s more into video games than i am, but there’s some we’ve found to play together :) we also both love to cook! 

how does your partner impress you? how do you impress them?: he’s so smart!! he just knows so much, especially when it comes to math, physics, and music history. he’s also a VERY fast learner! i think i impress him with my singing voice, my ability to relate to others and be personable, how well i get along with (almost) everyone, and how i keep track of little details/time management. 

what’s the funniest thing you can remember your partner doing?: he talks in his sleep A LOT, so he says funny things pretty frequently! 

does thinking about your partner still give you butterflies?: of course! i hope that feeling never goes away <3 

what’s the weirdest part of your relationship?: we do gordon ramsay impressions... daily. like sometimes we’ll just start responding to one another as if we were gordon ramsay. 

do you remember how your partner takes their coffee/tea/bar drinks?: he doesn’t drink coffee or tea (neither do i), but i know his go-to beers for when we’re at the bar or i wanna pick up some alcohol running errands.

what are each of your zodiac signs, and how do they compare?: i’m an aquarius and he’s a taurus. idrk how they compare, so if someone who is more into that/knowledgeable wants to tell me, lmk! 

what happens when you argue with each other? how do you usually make up?: i argue quieter/more calmly than he does. he gets loud, and i stay quiet - it’s how i’ve always been in loud situations and is likely part of my trauma response. i’ve been actively working to not escalate things into arguments and find other ways to express my frustration/feelings before it gets to the point where we need to fight about it. we always talk directly and figure things out right then and there. when we’ve been able to identify the problem and a solution, we apologize and engage in self-care activities (either apart or together) to make things feel ‘okay’ again. 

can you imagine what your ideal home would look like?: it would definitely be more modern, although i do love victorian style houses. i know we both want a porch and don’t like ‘open concept’ houses with lots of windows. as far as decorating, most of that will likely be left to me. with our current living situation, we go for mostly neutral (gray/brown/beige) tones with an accent (teal). 

got any relationship advice?: be with someone who cares for you and accepts you without stipulations. understand that you always deserve basic human decency and respect; if you’re not getting that, then it’s time to go. be open with each other about feelings, desires, wants, needs. you need to make sure you’re on the same page about certain things. at the end of the day, relationships aren’t 50/50; they’re 100/100. you put your all into loving another person, and expect them to do the same. 

cute couple asks // my inbox

[intersex-ionality]

A friend requested that I post this response separate from the main thread so that it can become its own discussion. Here it is in “isolation,” with minor clarifying edits.

CW: This post discusses a hypothetical person’s dysphoria and experiences with medical, physical, domestic, and sexual violence.

I want to address the claim that intersex is not a gender.

That concept--intersex being separated from all other aspects of gender theory--is very young. It is, in fact, younger than me. When I was a child, intersex was not only considered a gender, it was specifically considered a subset of transgender.

For reasons that, I hope, will become obvious by the end of this post.

You see, all of the forces that target, oppress, and harm intersex people are the same forces that target, oppress, and harm trans people. The causes and the effects are almost identical.

Let me present some examples, because human beings often learn best through pattern matching and examples.

Imagine a child is being assigned male.

This means that the child is being forced to adhere, both physically and mentally, to other people’s definitions of manhood. Society looks at the child, declares the child to be a boy, and then enforces boyness on the child.

This enforcement may be medical, and it may not. But, the enforcement will always be psychological.

There will be actions the child is forbidden from taking. Spaces the child is forbidden from entering. Expectations the child will be forced to adhere to. Toxic societal beliefs that child will be forced to internalize. All because society looked at a baby, and said, “you’re going to be a boy now, with everything that entails, with nothing outside boyhood, and you don’t get a choice.”

Imagine the child grows up feeling trapped in boyhood, forced to conform to these limitations. The child knows, on some deep level, that boyhood is wrong for them. The child even knows, in as much as a child knows things about anatomy, that something about their body doesn’t match up quite right with their identity, and becomes despondent and alienated from themself over it.

Is this child suffering because they are intersex? Or are they trans?

It doesn’t actually matter.

In both cases, the child is being constrained to boyhood, often by force, and denied anything else. Because someone, when the child was born, decided, “this baby looks like a boy, better make sure they become one.”

And because every other aspect of society followed along the same path.

Whether the child is trans or intersex doesn’t change those facts.

The only thing that changes is the details. A trans child is far less likely to have undergone infant surgery, but then, not all intersex kids undergo such surgeries either.

The underlying cause, and the resulting trauma, are the same for both the intersex and the trans child.

Let’s say our hypothetical child grows up a bit, learns about gender and sex theory, learns about dysphoria and surgery. And ultimately, decides to seek out medical treatment to achieve a body that feels more right.

Our now adult thought experiment spends years trying to find doctors who will help them.

They’re denied most therapeutic interventions because their therapists consider the alienation they feel from their body to be a type of mild delusion. They’re turned away from most clinics, because “transitioning to something outside the binary” is seen as frivolous or as faking for attention. Surgical intervention becomes less and less accessible with each denial, because now they have a mental health record that makes them “unfit” to decide healthcare issues for themself.

Again, being trans or being intersex makes no difference. The denial and the isolation are still the same. And are still caused by the same force.

A ray of hope for our thought experiment: surgery to bring a body to a state outside the sex binary becomes more possible and successful. Eventually they are able to get the necessary therapeutic letters to seek out this surgery.

And another seemingly dead end: there are so few doctors who perform these surgeries, even fewer who are covered by insurance, and none at all within a realistic traveling distance for them.

This scarcity of options, the therapeutic barriers to access, and the obscene costs associated with specialized gender and sex surgeries are also the same whether the person is intersex or trans. The sex binary doesn’t care why you want to do something different, it only cares about making sure you can’t.

But, let’s say that our thought experiment is luckier.

They have the money, the support, and the opportunity. They get their hormones and their surgeries without so much as a hiccup. There are no false starts, no failed attempts. They achieve a 100% perfect realization of their physical ideal.

Their body is visually androgynous and sexually ambiguous.

And now, they are faced with a new set of problems born from binarism. Problems that still don’t care whether they are trans or intersex.

They get sick, and their doctors blame the illness on their hormones. They get injured and their doctors blame their injuries on their surgeries.

They get attacked and their doctors blame their broken bones not on their attackers, not on blunt force trauma, but on their own “risk seeking behaviour” because of their body and the changes they’ve made to it.

They were attacked because the bastards that jumped them could see that their body was hard to gender. It doesn’t matter if the reason their body was hard to gender was because of being trans or being intersex. The outcome is the same. Violence and victim blaming.

Let’s say our thought experiment is luckier still. They’re white, wealthy, attractive, young. People don’t perceive them as a threat.

They start dating.

And a new set of problems arises. Again, the problems don’t care about the underlying motivations of their decision to have, embrace, and celebrate a body outside the binary.

Again, the problems are based simply on that body, on that divergence from the binary.

When a relationship begins to get heated, and they explain the facts of their body, partners panic and abandon them. If they don’t explain, partners panic and attack them for lying. They’re told that their body is rape, because it’s “false pretenses.” They’re told that no one will ever consent to sex with them.

This, too, happens regardless of being trans or being intersex. The cause is the same either way: a body outside the sex binary is perceived as a trick, a lie, and a scam.

Our hypothetical adult persists. Carefully navigating the minefield of sex and romance, until they finally find a partner who loves their body just as much as they do.

Or, maybe more than they do.

Or maybe it’s not love at all.

Because this new partner obsesses over their body. Begins demanding particular sex acts that they aren’t comfortable with, which emphasize how different their body is from the norm. At first, they are okay with the demands, but as things escalate, they begin shying away from these acts. They begin feeling used, and reduced to a sexual object. When they try to explain their feelings to their partner, they are ignored, or shamed, or made into a guilty party. After all, their partner just wants to celebrate their beauty, how can that be bad?

This objectification through sex also does not care if their body is the way it is because they are trans or because they are intersex.

But now they’re in a relationship, with all of the interpersonal complexities that entails.

And they know from long experience that if they leave it may take years to find another person who is interested in them romantically or sexually. What if that new relationship is just as bad as this? What if it’s worse?

So our thought experiment becomes trapped in a cycle of domestic abuse.

Abuse predicated not on being trans, or being intersex, but on being outside the sex binary.

This pattern repeats over and over. For every negative experience trans people have, there is a matching intersex experience. For every negative experience intersex people have, there is a matching trans experience.

The reason trans people are oppressed is their divergence from what society has deemed correct and appropriate within the binary.

The reason intersex people are oppressed is their divergence from what society has deemed correct and appropriate within the binary.

The cause is the same, the effects are the same. Details may vary, but no more so than details vary among, say, racial groups marginalized for their shared divergence from whiteness in different ways. No more so than individual disabilities are marginalized for their shared divergence from the abled norm. No more so than different orientations are marginalized for their divergence from straightness.

In fact, these differences in detail are significantly less pronounced than the differences in detail between trans people and LGBPQA+ people’s marginalization for their shared divergence from gender roles.

So we’re left to ask ourselves: who benefits from setting up this separation between trans and intersex people. Who benefits from getting intersex people to police trans people, and getting trans people to police intersex people, and getting us both to think of trans people and intersex people as Irreconcilably Different?

It’s not trans people. And it’s not intersex people.

But the sex and gender binary?

All of a sudden, a group that presents a real and present danger to it, and to the class systems it upholds, is fractured. Is fighting itself rather than overturning the oppressive force.

Trying to inflict hard boundaries between trans and intersex people just serves to dis-empower trans people, dis-empower intersex people, turn us against each other, and leave those of us–like you and I–who are both trans and intersex, stuck trying to figure out which parts of ourselves to embrace and which part to ignore in any given situation.

It doesn’t benefit us in any way.

But it sure benefits the people and systems hurting us.

TL;DR: any system that targets and harms intersex people also targets and harms trans people. Usually in the same ways. There are differences in the details, but the causes and effects are both the same for intersex and transgender marginalization. The only people who benefit from intersex and trans people ignoring our commonalities and policing each other, are the people who want to divide and conquer us so that the sex and gender binary continues to be upheld.

[miximax-hell]

Happy Goku Day, everyone!!

I checked and, miraculously, I still have followers on this blog. In fact, I’ve gained some since the last time I posted, for some reason! I’m not going to question it, though. Just... bless. But, hey, long time no see! As usual!

This time, I’m going back to my roots. The first drawings I posted on this blog were meant to show my love towards original Raimon, and it’s never a bad time to remind you all that I still adore these kids. Especially now that my friend @dust-monsters-under-my-bed​ has reminded me of them. Go check her art, btw! She’s not very active on Tumblr, but you can find her art on Twitter right here: https://twitter.com/rachelmonart

Anyway, she’s watching Inazuma Eleven for the first time and she’s made me think again about how much love these kids deserve, BECAUSE THEY SURE GOT NONE FROM HINO. DAMN YOU, HINO. So, today, let’s talk about the one and only IE character whose feet are classified as mass destruction weapons, who decided to borrow power from someone who will make you all question me, my logic and my tastes: Yamhan (or, as he is known in the west, Tiencha), THE FUSION OF YAMCHA AND TENSHINHAN FROM DRAGON BALL.

Introducing ShoYamHan! More on him under the cut.

So, first of all, how have you all been? I suppose many of you, like myself, are being told to stay at home to fight this situation. I salute all of you who do your best to stay safe and not help spread anything. It’s a very necessary fight, even if it can be boring at times. Many of us have friends or relatives fighting on the frontline, though (unless you yourself are the doctor or nurse friend!), and we hopefully know that staying at home is a small price to pay.

As for me, I got a job in December and lost it last month, so... yeah. It’s not been great. Still, something I’ve been working hard on for a while should be released soon and that’s so exciting! MY NAME WILL FINALLY BE ON SOMETHING’S CREDITS AND I CAN’T WAIT FOR IT TO BE UP.

But, anyway, back to business!

Rachel suggested I talk about the reasons behind this particular miximax, and considering it makes for a perfect parallel with my first posts, where I talked about the reasons behind Max’s and Kageno’s miximaxes, I’m all up for it! But, this time, I will have to do something new: explain WHO THE HECK YAMHAN IS. So let’s start with a picture of this handsome devil.

As most of you hopefully know, this project is about miximaxing Inazuma characters with video game characters. No anime, movies or anything else. Only and exclusively video games. Dragon Ball has probably spawned all those things, but it started as a manga, so you’d be right to think it most definitely does not qualify for this project. And, indeed, Dragon Ball doesn't. What DOES qualify, however, are Dragon Ball characters exclusive, or first introduced, in a video game. And that’s exactly the case we’re dealing with here!

Growing up, I loved Dragon Ball games. Even before I watched the show properly, in fact! I would go to my friend’s house, who was a fan of the show, and we'd play the Dragon Ball Budokai games nonstop with absolutely zero regrets. Those were some great times. And once I came to know the source material, the game that blew my mind the most was Dragon Ball Budokai 2. Was it the best one? Not necessarily. Is it my favourite? Not by a long shot. Still, it was the most creative! Most games follow the story of DBZ, which, obviously, is always the same. But Budokai 2 wasn’t afraid to do new things. Its story mode resembled a tabletop game and it was more than happy to deviate from the source material in some really fun ways; most notably, with exclusive fusions.

Budokai 2 introduced us all to Yamhan, the fusion of Yamcha and Tenshinhan, two long forgotten characters in the series, as they (and especially poor Yamcha) didn’t do anything especially relevant past... well, past the original Dragon Ball. As a champion of the unloved, that blew my mind. There were other fun things in Budokai 2, but what fascinated me and stayed in my thoughts for years to come was Yamhan. It was just such a cool concept. Two underdogs who had fallen into obscurity fusing to create a much greater warrior!

Of course, Yamhan isn’t the only videogame exclusive characters in Dragon Ball. He isn’t the first, nor the last. Yamhan isn’t the strongest, nor the weakest. But I haven’t played FighterZ nor Fusions (yet), nor pretty much any game that wasn’t on PS2 or GBA. And even if I had, I doubt Android 21 or any of the HUNDREDS of combinations available in Fusions would captivate me and my imagination as much as Yamhan did back in the day. Yamhan was a fusion, which is something that has always fascinated me to begin with. I MEAN, THIS ENTIRE BLOG IS ABOUT FUSING CHARACTERS, SO I THINK IT’S PRETTY OBVIOUS LMAO But he wasn’t just one among hundreds. He was this very specific, never-seen-before, cool as heck and usable fusion. Like, wow. That was wild for me. Sign me up, man.

But, you know, I try not to let that sway me too much. Of course, I wouldn’t likely pick a character I hate for a miximax, but, still, my preferences aren’t everything. And choosing Yamhan begs a question that I have already alluded to: if Yamhan isn’t the strongest game-exclusive DB character out there, then, why him? Well, the answer to that is related to the biggest problem posed by the sheer concept of miximaxing with a Dragon Ball character:

Power escalation.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Goku is, pretty much, the strongest character that has ever played the lead in any manga, and one of the strongest fictional characters ever, period. By the end of the Dragon Ball Super anime, he has EXCEEDED THE POWER OF MANY LITERAL GODS AND IS (or has been) A CANDIDATE TO BECOME ONE. You may prefer One Piece, or Naruto, or anything else, but few things reach the astronomical, reality-bending scope of Dragon Ball. Not to say DB is the best series--I’m just saying that it’s so out of control at this point (and I love it). But, of course, the stronger Goku is, the stronger the villains need to be, and Goku ends up becoming EVEN stronger than said villains. Rinse and repeat dozens of times until you can make an entire universe disappear by raising your hand.

Now, imagine applying that out-of-this-world power escalation to a context where the power balance isn’t so outrageous. For example, Inazuma Eleven.

Goku wriggling in his sleep is more powerful than Zeus, and an accidental sneeze would smash all of Ixal Fleet to smithereens. Do you see what this would do to the balance? It would ruin it completely, as anyone who miximaxed with Goku would be immediately a one-person army able to defeat ANY opponent--and if the opponent were to be EVEN GREATER than Goku, well, the rest simply wouldn’t stand a chance. Ever. Remember: the point of this project isn’t to create perfect and unbeatable players, and I’m not trying to prioritize anyone or make them noticeably stronger than anyone else just because I happen to like X more than Y. That completely ruins the tension and the fun (and my attempts to create justice in this unfair universe). The point is to come up with a balanced team full of players with strong points, but with flaws, too, that complement each other when they play together against stronger enemies.

So, if we go with Dragon Ball, and I love Dragon Ball WAY too much to not include it in this project in some way, we have to be careful and avoid overdoing it. Balance is key. And now that you know why I didn’t just choose the fusion between Beerus and Whis or something crazy like that, I’ll move on to explain what makes Yamhan a very interesting option. I SWEAR THERE ARE SOME ACTUAL REASONS.

First of all, the very concept. You know, Yamcha and Tenshinhan fused to created Yamhan, and now, Shourin is fusing with a fusion. That’s just... hecking cool. I won’t lie--my preferences towards Yamhan didn’t tip the scales towards making this happen, but my preferences towards FUSIONCEPTION totally did. XD But there’s more, thankfully.

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted a fighting game character to miximax with Shourin because it fits his theme best. I’m not big on fighting games, though, so it was quite tough. Especially because just any fighting game wouldn’t do it. Shourin is a martial artist. As I mentioned at the very beginning of this post, his feet are his weapons. His entire body is a weapon, really. If I were to suddenly miximax him with some character who wields a sword or an axe, for example, it would be a complete disservice to Shourin. Original Raimon members don’t have much going on for themselves, and I’m going to cut or ignore the ONE thing that makes one of them special? Not in a zillion years. Shourin needs to fight with his body. That, of course, cuts many characters already: pretty much the entire roster of Soul Calibur, many members of Mortal Kombat, many from games like Skullgirls (which I still want to try to represent here in the future, because @lumaga worked on it and it makes me happy just because of that), etc. For a very long time, I considered someone like Ryu, from Street Fighter, but then it hit me: I have never played Street Fighter and I don’t want to include him just because I know what a Hadouken is. It’d be... cheap. And fake. Thankfully, as I also mentioned earlier, I played LOTS of Budokai back in the day and I am an actual fan, so I don’t have to pretend to know what the heck I’m talking about. XD And, thankfully, most of the characters in DB games fight with their bare fists and legs, so they perfectly fit my needs. Yamhan is, of course, no exception.

Now comes my favourite reason to choose Yamhan and not, well, literally any other DB game-exclusive character. And that reason is style.

Remember that power escalation thing I mentioned earlier? Well, it’s epic, but it comes with a big disadvantage: power ends up becoming much more important than skill. Early Dragon Ball was very focused on fighting styles. There was an ongoing feud between the Turtle School and the Crane School, who taught different martial arts to fight in different ways, and there was a big plot involving which one was superior. It wasn’t just about who was strongest, but about who fought better. With time, that disappeared, though. Even though battles became flashier, aerial and more spectacular, they were much more indistinct. Sure, there were gimmicks like “heh, I have a tail and I will sometimes hit you with it,” or “I will try to hit your face with the palm of my hand instead of my fist for some unspecified reason,” but that isn’t... much. You just see very fast people avoiding equally as fast punches to the face. And Goku, the main character, only shows some style when he adopts a fighting pose BEFORE fighting. Once the punches start flying, it’s all a race to see who can hit the other the hardest in the gut to make them spit blood. Cool nonetheless, but still.

Ironically, though, it’s two of the least relevant characters who never really lost those styles that made them unique when they were first introduced to the series. And those are, of course, Yamcha and Tenshinhan.

Yamcha joins the Turtle School and learns techniques as classic as the Kamehameha, but he had his own style way before that, based on attacking and tearing enemies apart like a wolf would. This is best represented by his signature move, the Rougafuufuuken or Wolf Fang Fist. He never drops this style, but instead builds up on it through his training to make it even fiercer.

Tenshinhan has different things going for himself. First of all, he is a hybrid between a human being and a civilization known as the Three-Eyed People, which grants him powers such as growing extra arms from his back or dividing in 4. Not just moving so fast that it looks like there’s four of him, but ACTUALLY dividing into 4 separate bodies. In terms of skills, he was a Crane School student, but when he realised the wrong of his master’s doings, he decided to start training and developing on his own. Basically, a path that mirrors Yamcha’s, but both lead to unique fighting styles unlike anyone else’s in this universe. And, most importantly, none of them depend on appendixes that are always there, like the aforementioned tail, so they totally work for us here!

Shourin is a proper martial artist. He wouldn’t want to make himself crazy strong as much as he would like to refine his technique and learn new moves and tricks. Martial arts are about discipline, self-control, skill and protection. He would take a cool-ass combo based on a wolf’s moves over earth-shattering strength any day of the week, hence why the fact that these two have so many techniques to offer is so appealing.

Finally, and probably least, is the design idea that immediately came to my mind when I thought of a miximax between Shourin and Yamhan. Historically, I have had to work with characters like Fudou, who are usually mostly bald and they miximax with someone with hair, thus making for some very... difficult things to figure out. But the idea of miximaxing Shourin, who is mostly bald, with Yamhan, who is ALSO mostly bald, was just golden and too good to ignore. And the fact that Yamhan has three eyes GIVES ME AN EXCUSE TO ADD A THIRD CROSS-SHAPED EYE ON SHOURIN’S FOREHEAD. IF A MIXIMAX BETWEEN BALD PEOPLE WAS GOLDEN, THIS IS OUTRIGHT PLATINUM.

Shourin would've probably looked a lot less like a joke if he had had hair covering his entire head or if I had at least given him proper eyes... but that would no longer be the Shourin I love. Not to mention that it’s very likely that Shourin willingly shaves his head to begin with (even if the ponytail ain’t doing him any favours--but that’s just Inazuma logic, so let’s not look too much into it), just like Tenshinhan or Krillin do, so he would probably be happier to keep that, uh, advantage. Relative advantage, but still.

As a side note, though, we can’t forget the balance. When Yamcha and Tenshinhan fuse, they undoubtedly become the strongest human being in the DB universe, overcoming the one who is usually strongest: Krillin. A fusion is always greater than its parts individually, and Yamcha and Tenshinhan aren’t so far away from Krillin to begin with, so that’s not even a question. Regardless, they still don’t have that overwhelming and surreal strength from other characters, so we still don’t get into absolutely OP territory. Yamhan is strong enough to provide Shourin with a power that can make a real difference without completely putting him above everyone else.

Sadly, Yamhan doesn’t really have a backstory, as he’s a game-exclusive character that, honestly, was probably only there for a laugh. That means there is no deep connection between them. We can, however, make obvious connections between Shourin, an aspiring martial artist whose dream, as stated in IE2, was to study at Manyuuji (Kogure’s school) for their focus on martial arts, and is now trying to become stronger to protect what he loves, and two skilled warriors who have been training nonstop under different masters and on their own for basically their entire lives to keep becoming stronger and more skilled in order to defend what’s precious to them and, simply, to be the best version of themselves they can be. Upon seeing such dedicated warriors and artists, Shourin would undoubtedly want to learn from them and, if necessary, borrow their strength too.

Or he might just fanboy and ask for their autographs, honestly. I sure as heck want Yamcha’s. And his baseball card.

[lairofsentinel]

Beware of the Narrator II - Viren’s nature, and the ends justifying the means.

[Probably this analysis has been done dozens of times, but I need to do it myself to keep it fresh when future seasons come]

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Viren full analysis [part one] [part two] [part three] and its Summary [here]

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Since I started watching The Dragon Prince, I’ve been under the suspicion that we have to be pretty cautious about who is narrating what event. Aaravos has his own discourse in which he feeds us with a vision of Dragons and Elves that makes us sympathise towards humans. Viren has his own similar Narration too. 

When Viren is in the Pentachry Meeting, he narrates the events of what happened nine years ago. We see that Harrow is a King that wants to be just, and for that,he thinks of himself as a “servant of the people”. The Servant King [note that we have again a Servant-concept]

When the Queens of Duren appear and ask for help, Harrow doesn’t hesitate in giving it. But we saw that Viren as well as Sarai don’t like the idea of sharing their harvest because it means starvation for their own people. It was a rash decision of the King in order to be “just”, and it ended up in a martyr situation in which everyone should accept sharing this suffering with another Kingdom. 

Viren is worried about this. I think he is shown here as truly worried about it, because Viren may be evil in Season 3, but in Season 1 he is, as I always repeat, toward humanity, the same way that Claudia is towards her family. They will do anything to save humanity/her family. And Viren in Season 1 thinks that Harrow is the best option for humanity. We can consider he also loves him as a brother, and I truly believe that. Viren loved Harrow not only as a just King, as a King that gave his best to protect humanity, but also as a brother, crafting a deep bound in a human level [which to me helps a lot to keep at bay the effects of Dark Magic, because it had been said by the authors that “hollows you out”, so having bonds with others may help]. 

So, after Harrow accepts sharing the food that his Kingdom doesn’t have with another, Viren comes with a creative solution. The hunt of the magma Titan in Xadia. 

What starts making this narration interesting is the following

It was Sarai. It’s just a comment, and in ALL the narration we don’t see any friction between Sarai and Viren [We don’t know if this was that way, or it’s Viren’s manipulation of the narrative]. Ever. But Viren’s observation was there. 

Then, when they slay the monster, we see again Viren, worried about his people, about the wounded, about the nonsense of the King again:

I always truly believed that Viren wanted to save humans. He is part of the Royal circle, he would not need to worry about the famine hitting the Kingdom at all because his family and he would be safe anyway [royal families never starve] so he did not need to work in a creative solution if he were not truly interested in saving those people. 

When they retreat from Xadia with the Titan’s heart, Viren is worried about the ire of the Dragon. He proposes to leave the wounded behind so they can escape with the heart. Once again, Harrow, in his excess of being “just” and “good” rejects this plan and suggests everyone returning together at a slow pace. 

In this part, we see again Viren suggesting to leave the wounded behind but not lightly, it gives him some conflict. He sighs because he doesn’t like to leave humans behind. He loves them, but he is realistic. The whole plan would go to trash if the Dragon catches them with the Titan’s core. [Once again, this may have happened, or maybe it’s Viren’s control of the narrative]

From that moment on, the Narration switches to Harrow’s letter and goes back and forward with Viren’s in the meeting with the other leaders of the Human Kingdoms.

Then, the narration [Viren’s and Harrow’s so we can be more or less sure about this part] explains that the Dragon Avizandum appeared, and it was in that moment when the Queens of Duren offered themselves as a distraction to let the Heart reach the Border and save their Kingdom. 

Viren could have gone with the rest of the army, however... he helped them. He stayed in Xadia to help the Queens. 

He faced Avizandum to give the Queens a way to escape. But it did not work. Avizandum killed the Queens anyways. This part was narrated by Harrow’s letter too, so I think we can be absolutely sure that Viren wanted to help the Queens. Again, I believe he did it because he loves humans in season 1, and in particular “special humans”, those humans that are irreplaceable, such as Royal families [We saw it in the first part of the serie]. Soldiers can always be replaced, but Queens, not at all. So, he truly wanted to save them.

Then, Harrow’s letter explains that Sarai told him that they needed to save Viren because otherwise, they could not perform the spell and help both kingdoms. We are sure that this happened, not only because Viren is narrating it, it’s written in the letter too. 

So, Sarai retraces her steps and tries to save Viren. But Avizandum hits them with a lightning and they fell on the horse. After that attack, The Dragon leaves.... and here is another horrible situation:

That scene is narrated by Viren in the meeting, and also by the letter... but both are Viren’s narration. Harrow was not there, he didn’t see how Sarai died. He only knew later when Viren told him. Both Sarai and Viren were hit by the same lightning, and both fell on the ground. However, Viren managed to be okay while Sarai “was dying”. The black screen may suggest that something went different than the narration. 

Now... I think Viren killed Sarai. It was the opportunity of his life, when she fell from the horse. We know that he has a spell that suffocates people, since it’s the same spell he used against Lain, Rayla’s father. He killed her “taking away” her “last breath”, because he decided it was going to be her last. That’s why he got that breath in a jar years later [he can hold that breath in his hand with the magical paw he uses to cast the spell].

By removing Sarai from the King’s side, Viren guaranteed himself to be by Harrow’s side and became his adviser. Viren thinks in himself as a special person, as someone who knows better than anyone [as it was seen in the previous part], who speaks but nobody listens to him [as he told Aaravos]. Viren knows that Harrow will guarantee a good kingdom for humans under his advice. 

It’s true that ALL this narration was done by Viren, most of the time, and maybe, he showed himself more gentle and kind of what he truly is. I don’t know. Maybe he never worried about leaving the wounded behind, maybe he was not so compassionate with the starvation that was going to affect the people of Duren. But he truly cared enough about “humanity” to find creative solutions to the problems that Harrow created by accepting impossible requests in his way to desperately be “just”. Viren also returned to “save” the Queens of Duren [the letter says so, so it means that Harrow SAW him leaving the retreating group in order to help the Queens]. But he totally killed Sarai. It was the best choice, in his eyes, to secure a kingdom where humanity could be safe [because he was planing to kill dragons with this event too, as it will show the following part of these narratives]. 

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

UPDATE: Since some people told me that the authors claimed that there is no more info about Sarai’s in the following Seasons [I’m believing in their words despite not seeing proof of this, sadly], everyone assumes that she simply died by a lighting and Viren has nothing to do with that death.

Exactly because my whole hypothesis and the reason behind these posts is to show that “maybe” we should be careful about those fragments of the past, is because it’s Viren himself who is narrating them. There is not much information about him and about Sarai’s relationship with him at all. Omission some times is a way to manipulate and twist a narration, the whole series is about that.

As a person who watched the show, to me, Sarai’s death is at least questionable. We don’t have more witnesses than Viren, and we know that Viren, like Aaravos, can be unreliable narrators, making us be more judgemental on certain creatures than what we should. It’s a question. I’m not assuming things happened that way [maybe in the summary sounds more rotund than in the post with details, but meh]. Again, this is what I understood, that sadly, not always ends up what the authors wanted to [The example of Isabela in Dragon Age 2 being understood as barren was a big misunderstanding that, no matter how you see that scene, it looks like that despite the writer told us already that it was not the intention. But the scene looks like that! XD]

So, after reading some people who were between angry and sad about this matter, I believe there are two possibilities:

**He killed her. Viren did not like Sarai as Harrow’s advice, because she may put in danger humanity [we saw he was present when she talked to Harrow about she disagreeing with this plan and Harrow being a stupid]. Although there was not exactly a precise plot against her, Viren, as the opportunist he is, took the chance in the moment he saw it. As soon as he saw the possibility of getting rid of her, he did it, using her last breath as an ingredient for a spell he knew already could be used to kill the Dragon King as soon as he could find a unicorn horn. He awaited the horn, while letting the hatred in Harrow grow. This is why Viren wants to sacrifice himself during the night of the Moonshadow attack, in order to “clean” his sin with Sarai [he did not do all what he could, because his intention was other, and he saw it only escalated things], because he explicitly says that “he needs to be the man that Harrow once believed he was”. This is an interpretation.

** He did not kill her. Viren in fact is kinder and has a more beautiful soul than we want to believe. He saw Sarai dying and he could not do anything about it, he felt deeply guilty, so he took her last breath without knowing what to do with that [I always saw these dark mages gathering Xadians limbs and Xadians bodies, not human ones, but ok, he took her last breath having no idea at all what could he do with a human last breath]. However, years later, out of guilt, decided to avenge her and, by super chance, he had all the elements to do so when Claudia found him the horn. He insisted too much to Harrow about taking revenge. So, in the end, he avenges Sarai’s death and he is in peace with that, until the night of the Moonshadow attack. It’s when he decided to acknowledge his mistake of looking for revenge [or guilt for Sarai, for not doing enough when she was dying] so he tries to save Harrow by convincing him to exchange their bodies. In this interpretation Viren is shown too selfless and too focused on Sarai’s life/vengeance, to a level I didn’t see in him in any other part of the series, except in those in which he controls the narration. All the info about his relationship with Sarai was omitted or doesn’t exist at all. We have no idea, so why would he focus so much on her revenge if he sees Harrow happy with his current blessings?.

That’s why I wrote all this... to try to have all the info and the important scenes in a same place highlighting who is saying what. This Series works, apparently, with unreliable narrators, so it’s more than important to know who says what. But again, this is just for personal use and it’s my own interpretation. Everyone is free to disagree.

[baconpal]

talkin bout fire force

shit boys it’s been too long time for another unprompted juvenile rant about manga, click keep reading if you’re insane and keep scrolling if you aren’t 

So Fire Force anime starts in just about a week and I decided to just read it all instead of waiting for any anime. It took a while to read all of it and now I just kind of have a lot to say about the manga, the anime, and the author. So here we go. 

I actually have a lot of good things to talk about, but I’ll get the bad shit out of the way first:

THE WRITING

idk his name it doesn’t really matter since he’s made like 2 things he’s just the soul eater guy; his art style has always been charming and the action scenes keep improving but his actual narrative writing is real bad. I’ll talk about the characters themselves since I actually think FF’s characters are a ridiculous improvement from soul eater, and the setting/aesthetic are on point as well but the plot is just as bad if not worse than whatever soul eater was.

The story is riddled with what should obviously be throwaway characters that keep being brought back and doing something evil and unexpected because it’s a shounen manga and if you aren’t being betrayed then the plot isn’t moving forward, or someone introduced as an obviously villainous character just kind of agrees to be friends in a couple chapters. This is used as a constant cycle of introducing both a set of “evil” and “good” characters, then one of the old “good” sets of characters does something evil and the newest “evil” guys turn out to be good. It’s not interesting or shocking to have a character you can’t even remember come back and act like they’re important, especially if it’s repeated over and over.

FF pretends to have some kind of politic overtones where religions and businesses and such act as their own entities and betray each other and prey on the civilians, but you see absolutely none of the impact anybody’s actions have on the world despite ridiculous things constantly happening and world shaking truths being brought to light over and over, nothing happens. Villains will also  have ridiculous unbeatable abilities but then just be ignored, such as making zombie apocalypses or controlling minds and such. This is also likely a concession of being a shounen manga, where you can’t expect readers to read every single chapter, and usually on a week to week basis, so every chapter needs to have its own big shit happening, even if there’s no plans to follow through on anything. 

The worst part about the writing is how much stuff that the reader didn’t know about and has no idea what it is is passed of as some shocking twist when it’s introduced. This mostly happens with powers and with new factions. There’s a ridiculous amount of times where a new group steps in as the bad guy like mentioned earlier. But for the powers, there’s so many things layered on top of an actually acceptable power system that just seem to cause a DBZ type of escalation of power without the fight scenes actually becoming that much crazier at all. On top of the simple 2nd/3rd generation fire fighter powers, the main character is meant to utilize the adolla burst, the adolla link, the preacher’s divine protection, the okay hand emoji that makes you go fast, the breath of life, and superfire fighting. None of that means anything to anyone and are just used as “MC needs to be better at something but only temporarily” over and over. It’s similar to Maka and Soul’s deals with the devil in soul eater except much more common and with absolutely no downsides.

Also not the fault of the writer himself but there is not ANY good translation of this manga out there holy shit. There’s so many incredibly obvious puns and connections and choices of words to be made that are just entirely ignored, the typesetting is always awful, and no name for moves, characters, or even the title are ever agreed upon. It took until the official release titled “Fire Force” before people stopped trying to call the manga “Burning Firefighter Squad of Fire”.

THE ANIME

Just a bit more bad to say before I go into all the shit about this manga i actually like. The anime looks awful. A lot of anime does right now, very little of note has been coming out or seems to be coming in the future, which is usually the case but its not getting better and that sucks! 

But specifically the fire force anime, following up after soul eater, has absolutely none of the visual charm translated from the manga to anime, the voice casting is absolutely abysmal, and there’s nothing to give me hope in it, not enough to even give it an episode most likely. People might try to defend David productions because woah man I love jojo!!! but they’re pretty fucking bad at animating anything. The choice of color is gross and the visual effects are bland, which is a bad place to start for a show that will contain tons of fire and other bombastic effects. Big shame.

OKAY ONTO THAT GOOD SHIT

CHARACTER DESIGN

The visual designs in soul eater were cool if a bit janky, and the actual concepts for characters were far from astounding, usually being able to fully describe characters in single words and not having much development outside of combat abilities. But Fire Force has some of the most tight characters I’ve seen in a while, they’re all simple and focused with strong thematic elements.

Ya’ll know me, hopefully. I really appreciate simple designs and simple characters. Complicated does not equal deep, and simple does not equal shallow. The characters in fire force will usually embody a concept, or a concept and its exact opposite, and be never waver from their design. I’ll talk about em for specific characters when I get to em but even lots of minor characters are very well focused and I appreciate it.

SHINRA

The main character, and while his grocery list of special abilities and “chosen one” kinda shit is annoying, he starts of as a very strong introspective of the weight of your actions vs the impression you give of in the eyes of society. The easiest way to describe it is through the very obvious identity struggle he goes through of wanting to be known as a “Hero” but instead being “The Devil”. All Shinra ever does is selflessly save peoples lives and put himself at extreme risk, he tells everyone and their grandma that they can call on him when they need a hero, and yet his visuals consist of a dark haired punk who constantly smiles a sharp toothy smile, his ability that he uses to fly in and do kamen rider kicks with spews fire from his feet in the shape of pointy wings, and this fire puts a heavy shadow over his face, giving him a monsterous siloutte. It’s not at all subtle that he just looks as evil and menacing as possible, and so his reputation is constantly negative no matter how kind he is. It’s not explored all that deeply but it is still a strong contrast.

ARTHUR

What a fucking idiot. What an absolute buffoon. This stupid fuck functions as a very simple gag character by being nearly too dumb to function and living in a made up reality as a fantasy knight, but is also able to exist as one of the strongest characters in combat. His ridiculous power is handled in a much more engaging way than Shinra’s. As instead of layering multiple chosen one abilities on him, he becomes weaker or stronger depending on his suspension of disbelief. The more in character as a powerful knight he becomes, the stronger he is. It’s a clean way to make a funny delusional characters struggle actually mean something to the people around them, instead of being left to his own devices or constantly told to fuck off. And while I said the plot isn’t very good, the smaller character beats can be very powerful. For example, It was already pretty easy to just accept Arthur as he was, but his family situation is explored late into the manga, and it’s shown that he began to live in fantasy to escape from his families arguments and poor living conditions. His parents take advantage of his disconnect and abandon their home with him in it, leaving all their responsibilities to him with a note saying he’s now the king and has inherited their castle. This pushes him to an even more absurd degree of fantasy in order to just live out his life knowing he was unloved and unwanted. It very understated how you can make a character that’s mostly used for jokes still be very easy to connect to and empathize. 

TAMAKI 

This one is likely to be the hottest take made from me here today, but this is the most interesting character in this series for a variety of reasons. 

Visuals out of the way, the fire fighter outfits everyone wears already look cool as shit and big puffy coats just get me goin, this girl absolutely rocks it on top of having twintails and a cute face. That’s not objective in anyway this is just a character designed to bait specifically me and its fucking working, okay? The writing is the actually interesting part.

So something that’s usually not even worth talking about is fan service. Show of a girls titties cus its what dudes in their teens want to see, its free (You)s for shounen manga, and soul eater was full of it. It was pretty bad in soul eater and could come at jarring and unneeded times for characters that didn’t seem to exist for any sexual reasons. It was a very poor way to include fan service. 

Fire Force also begins in a similar spot, the 3 main girls that are around in the beginning chapters are occasionally seen changing or in a bath or covered in water or whatever, with one particularly bad spread of them with the classic no nipple no vagina bodies all standing together in a shower. Its awkward and stiff and even as a fan of anime tiddie it just wasn’t worth having. 

But then that wildman just does it. He creates one single character to put literally every single ounce of horny energy in to. A character who exists to fall over and get her tits pushed into someones face, but pushed to a cartoonish extreme. It sounds silly to try to pass off fanservice as funny, but it is. It’s so ridiculously intended and impossible and always varied that its actually fun to see her do something stupid and for something to happen. Sometimes its just her ass landing on a dudes face (god i wish that were me) or her body being exposed and drawn in pretty high detail. Sometimes instead they get an entire dude stuck in her shirt after just tripping in a way that is not not being sexual to the reader at all since you see absolutely no skin. She’s simply destined to be put into lewd situations in universe, not in regards to the manga itself. For an example, here she is just standing completely still, and suddenly becoming naked, drawn in a distant, goofy way: 

It’s stupid. It’s definitely still fan service, but it’s just ridiculous. And that’s way more interesting than having every girl in your series randomly get naked at some point. Despite being insane it still works on boys, as Tamaki is the most popular girl in the series by far, ranked as the second most popular character consistently. 

Tamaki also leads to the single best chapter of the manga where a horribly designed throw-away assassin who was beaten by her returns for revenge, but just ends up as a short, self contained, well paced comedic story of love. 

And guess what, she’s still interesting outside of being funny and having fan service. Her cartoonish luck is essentially treated as her actual power, and her fire cat abilities aren’t explored too deeply during most of the series, but this is done for a greater purpose of essentially spitting in the face of high stakes. Tamaki easily witnesses the most deaths in the series, and most of them are cruel and unusual. She witnesses children being killed by a man who inspired her, she sees people she just met be beheaded in some gruesome shots that aren’t anywhere else in the series, and she gets involved in all sorts of life threatening situations. She still just falls over and gets naked. She’ll have fairly serious fights where she tries her hardest or the people around her are completely serious, and without bringing any direct attention to it she still ends up showing skin. There’s a point where every single character is at risk of dying at once to a trap set by the enemy, and Tamaki quietly laments over how she’ll be the only one to survive. She is completely aware of her ridiculous luck and her complete immunity to stakes, which is honestly just great.

Even beyond that, Tamaki is slowly being built up as more and more of an actual character, she has a short backstory section where her own hard work and effort is basically ignored by everyone around her, as if her success in life is only a result of her good luck, which is a feeling that hits very close to home to me (fuck you if you’ve ever discredited someones hard work because they’re “””””talented””””). And in the most recent couple of chapters, shes made an active effort to train alongside Shinra and Arthur, who both value the improvements they can make to themselves through hard work. No other characters in the cast make conscious efforts to improve from their status in the way Tamaki does. She moves up from a joke character to now trying to stand along side the main character as a useful and though out character. It’s a genuinely wonderful character to have been developed and the best thing I’ve gotten from this author.

VISUALS AND COMPOSITION

Okay enough about the characters, the last little thing I wanna touch on is just some of the absolutely bonkers kinds of compositions in this manga. One of the villains has an ability that is explained incredibly poorly. Pretty sure it’s just a time slowing ability that has nothing to do with fire but whatever. The pages where he uses the ability have this absolutely sick warped look to them that plays with the panels in a way that couldn’t be depicted in any other medium. Just look at this shit.

Every panel has a different background and yet still describes a single cut in time. It might not really mean anything, but that’s fucking sick dude.

Another pretty interesting one is this one kid named Nataku, who has an ability forced onto him by a maniac with a motif of stars for eyes, who dies immediately after. This event is shown to have absolutely traumatized him not because its directly said, but because this dead character appears constantly in panels with this kid, sometimes taking up the entire background to yell at him, or being an almost impossible to see spec lingering behind him. Nataku is also drawn in this strange sketchy style where he seems to be melting, and sometimes melds into shapes that resemble this dead character, such Nataku’s mouth becoming the fucking eyeball of the dead guy, star pupil and everything. It’s just such a specific and horrific way to depict that kind of identity trauma and it really stuck out to me.

I’LL SHUT UP NOW

And ye that’s about it. It was a lot of rambling and there are still lots of little things i like about the manga, good designs and cool fights and stuff but i just wanted to talk about the things that were really noteworthy to me. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve spent 4 hours just typing about stuff but if you actually read any of this, on this dead website of all places, you’re cool. Hope you found something interesting too.

[hillnerd]

I kinda want you to write a story that would deal with Ron is virgin but Hermione isn't. I just feel like I read a lot of Hermione dealing with Ron sleeping with Lavender (or another girl) but hardly the opposite so I just think it would be interesting. Btw I love your newest story your working on!

Thanks so much! Sorry for the long time coming on this. (Not sure which story you mean, but I think you! I’m assuming Won Won?) 

PG-13- alludes to sexual acts, but doesn’t actually show or describe anything in any detail. 

Ron and Hermione had always been known as a passionate pair of people. He was the hot-headed ginger who would leap into altercations every year. She was the stubborn firebrand who would debate anyone at any given time. When they were together, their verbal spars were well known throughout the school, and now that they were together their passions raged on.

When Hermione had kissed him in the middle of the Hogwarts Battle, it hadn’t been anything chaste or tepid- it had been fiery, ardent, passionate and mindblowing. He’d swept her up in his arms and it had seared through him, having Hermione finally kiss him as he’d always wanted her to.

After the battle and the war, it took a bit for them to get that fire back. Ron found himself haunted by phantom death eaters and visions of his loved ones dying, making him so cautious he seemed like a worried mother hen much of the time. Hermione was uncharacteristically withdrawn, finding it hard to even get out of bed much of the time as nightmares and flashbacks plagued her.

They were able to find their way back to their fire, though, together. Every time they were alone and able to kiss, reverent passion would begin to work its way back into their souls, and soon they found the physical part of their relationship begin to escalate in intensity. Being alone in Australia led to some nights where they very nearly went all the way- but with the stress of everything, they hadn’t quite managed to get there.

Once back in England, Ron moved in the Grimmauld place with Harry. Hermione had been spending much of her time with her parents, trying to rebuild their relationship. He couldn’t blame her, but he also missed her a lot. It made their moments together even more important.

One particularly heated evening at Grimmauld place, when snogging had turned to much more, Hermione rubbed into him in ways that made his whole body rigid with anticipation, and they were very nearly naked. She was so beautiful, and Ron couldn’t believe she was allowing him to see touch and taste so much of her. Things continued to escalate and before he knew it they were at the precipice of having sex.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” said Ron, as he was close to entering her.

“We did all the ‘necessary prep-work,’” she said, giving him a naughty smile that made his mind zoom to just what all they did to make her quite satisfied. The way her body had quivered had almost been his undoing. “Just go easy and it won’t hurt.”

“But first times… They always say it hurts a girl- a woman- the first time she-” Ron cut himself off, somehow unable to say anything more, as he was suddenly embarrassed.

“Well it… It won’t be my first time,” Hermione said, biting her lip and looking away. Ron stilled. What had been so special, tender and beautiful now felt uncertain and brittle. Ron rolled off of her to take in the information.

He turned away from her and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at his knees. He had thought they were both doing this for the first time.

“Ron?”

“Yeah… Yeah… Give me a moment…” He said trying not to sound sharp or feel hurt.

Hermione slid beside him, still looking so beautiful, and put a soothing hand on his arm.

“Please say something.”

“I just… I dunno what to say…”

“It was only one time, and it didn’t mean anything, Ron. It really didn’t.”

Ron let out a sigh and covered his face with his hands a moment. He felt so hollow inside right now, and oddly embarrassed.

“Did you and Lavender not–?”

“No.” He hadn’t really been saving himself for Hermione, as romantic as the notion was to him. Did he have a right to feel hurt? Given the chance, would he have had sex with someone else? If Lavender had offered, would he have been able to resist?

He just hadn’t had sex. He hadn’t expected Hermione to ‘save herself’ for him, exactly, but he’d sure not wanted to think about anyone else getting to touch her and love her like he wanted to. He knew he should be incensed or jealous, or maybe even hurt- but oddly enough he wasn’t. He was just shocked more than anything. And embarrassed that he was a wilting virgin and she was finding out this way.

He heard a sniffle beside him, and turned to see big tears working their way down Hermione’s face. She got up from the bed and started to gather her clothes to her, looking so vulnerable it made his heart clench.

“What are you doing?” he quietly asked, stilling her hand as she reached across him to pull her shirt from his nightstand.

“I j-just assumed you’d, you’d not want me to stay… You can’t even look at me!” she said, rubbing at her eyes and scrambling to put her bra on.

“I can’t stop looking at you, Hermione. Kindof always been an issue for me,” he said with a small lopsided smile.

“But… But I’m. You thought I was–”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ron said cutting her off, and bringing her to stand in front of him. “You love me, right?”

“Of course I do!” she let out.

“Then what does it matter? I love you back, and in the scheme of things… It’s really not that important. I mean, we nearly died about a hundred times in the last year. This is just… not really important. I’m not thrilled or anything, and I feel like a right tosser, but… I can’t change the past, and I don’t want to pull another Lavender situation to even the playing field… I just want you.”

“I want you too! So much,” she said, hands still holding her clothes in front of her. “Are you sure you’re okay with this though? I mean-”

“Just cause it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean I want to talk about it.”

Hermione nodded, though she looked pained at not being able to talk something to death. Her brows where drawn together and she looked so uncertain.

“How about,” Ron said, standing from the bed. “You and I get dressed and we finish off that tin of biscuits I have downstairs. Who knows. Maybe we’ll end up back in bed after?”

It took some convincing, but she finally acquiesced and let him ply her with some sweets, and sweet talk to boot. She was looking so deflated and unsure of herself it made him feel a sod for even having reacted at all. At one point, he would have been so hurt and vindictive about it. He would have really made it into an issue, but really, there was no point in doing that. It’d do nothing but hurt them both, and he’d well learned his lesson from sixth year and the war. He’d let jealousy drive a wedge between him and Hermione before, and he’d be damned if he’d let it happen again. There was no point in dallying about with hurt feelings and petty jealousies. They’d survived so much, and he wasn’t going to throw all of what they had built away. She was beautiful, smart, kind - and she wanted him of all the blokes in the world. Loved him.

Later that night he was no longer a virgin anymore, and he and Hermione continued to learn each other’s bodies and wants and needs in ways no one else could ever know. They had the rest of their lives to make a million memories, and he wasn’t going to waste a moment of it.

To me, after EVERYTHING they’ve gone through- I honestly think Ron would handle this fairly maturely. He’s done with all that bullsh!t from before, and even during, the war. He’s gained so much heartache and perspective at this point that this is just so small potatoes. (Frankly, I think it should ALWAYS be considered nothing important because the concept of virginity being important and romanticized I find problematic, but that’s a long-ass speech for another day.) And as logical and confident as Hermione is, I think would be insecure about it at first as she’s not confident when it comes to feeling wanted, loved, and admired romantically- and she would definitely be self-judgmental about it. But anyways- there ya go, anon! Not some giant angsty story- but rather just an awkward moment between them that they get over relatively quickly- because life is too short.