#i’ve observed this tendency in fandom for a year now this isn’t about any one post

[milkywayes]

this might be controversial but i actually think it’s more interesting and perhaps even more in the spirit of the narrative if we don’t make garrus’ dad out to be some super swell guy who was right all along and whose only mistake was getting saddled with a headstrong child who couldn’t see reason. actually. it’s also funnier imo if the relationship is more than one-sidedly dysfunctional

[scrawnytreedemon]

Neurodivergency, and Sephiroth

Right, I’m going to see if I can try and explain why this reading appeals to me.

For some background, I’ve watched a full silent LP of the OG, watched Advent Children, and am largely familiar with his characterisation in Crisis Core(though it gets a bit patchy in some areas). I am not familiar with his characterisation in KH, Dissida, or any other spinoff appearances.

I’m going to be looking at this with an autistic lens, as, hey, I’m autistic, however much of these patterns aren’t exclusive to autistic people by any means and thus are fairly applicable to other labels.

This is an explanaition on why I find this element worth considering, and while I hope that others can relate or take away something from this, in many ways it is highly personal and not intended to be a decleration on Sephiroth’s ‘true nature,’ as it were. I’m not claiming that this was intended by the writers-- Infact, I’d be very surprised if they considered it, at all --As many of the traits he exhibits could be brushed aside as due to his upbringing.

That being said, let’s get into it!

1. Alienation

A common thread in neurodivergency, autism in particular, is some form of alienation. This doesn’t necessarily mean being outcast-- I, for one, have been largely accepted by those around me, and yet there is still that sense of being ‘other‘ that’s always been there, long before I even had a word for it.

Now, of course, in Sephiroth this is more related to his lineage, and how it’s expressed in... well, everything. Even still, I find value in expanding that, and considering just how getting the sense you’re implicitly divided from your peers.

There is, of course, the matter of Sephiroth’s literal isolation-- However, as fun as those scenarios are to play around with, I don’t think Sephiroth was raised wholly, or even mostly in the labs. The reason being that it would be nigh impossible to have hid just what made Sephiroth different, especially knowing how observant he is. It’s clear that Sephiroth had had extensive contact with other children, as epitomised by the line:

“I knew ever since I was a child, I was not like the others. I knew mine was a special existence. But this is not what I meant!” 

Sephiroth was painfully aware that he is different, even if he didn’t know exactly how. It is at once an oddly thrilling, and lonely sensation. Thrilling, because-- Hey! --You can do and see things others can’t and/or wouldn’t; and lonely, because it makes it hard to relate to others or have them relate to you.

2. Socialisation

I would like to start off by saying that, while I find it a tad more faithful and endlessly less grating than Sex God Sephiroth, Sephiroth is not a complete and utter social failure. While it’s clear he has difficulty articulating emotions and understanding others, it’s very clear even still that he knows how the game works, and knows how to play it.

This is going to dip far more into speculation territory, so buckle up.

A thing that, perhaps, I don’t see talked about often enough online when it comes to neurodivergent experiences, is that many things that are considered ‘normal‘ get experienced as systems that we need to actively learn and maneuver-- Socialisation especially!

Now, of course there is always some degree of social interaction being a give and take, a step forth and step back, regardless of neurotype, but it’s dialed up far more when you deviate from ‘the norm.‘

If I can give my own example, a thing I struggled with when I was little was humour! Not because I didn’t find things funny, or didn’t know what it was, but because I had issues grasping at the machinations of what made something funny. This lead to alot of nonsensical jokes that left my siblings confounded, until I picked up a joke-book, and started analysing from there. It was mostly alot of puns, which! Due to their simple structure, are a great way to learn the basics! I didn’t even know this was unusual, until my mother pointed it out to me years later.

And that method goes for alot of things.

Sephiroth, above all else, is observant. He makes efforts multiple times throughout the OG and Crisis Core to check up on others and ask how they’re doing. He asks Cloud how he feels returning to his hometown, and about seeing his mother, and urges Zack to check up on Aerith in Crisis Core, to name some notable examples. Even if you get the sense that his attempts are, perhaps, a little ungainly, it makes it clear more than anything that Sephiroth tries.

I think the reason that people have leaned alot more into the overly-awkward perception of Sephiroth in recent times, is because it humanises him. I feel there’s been far more of a shift within fandom to focus on the mundane, on relatability, on humanity. A veneer of endless, effortless confidence really isn’t that sexy anymore-- When sexual-appeal even comes into the matter, at all.

That being said, this section more than anything, I think, is very easy to brush aside due to his... interesting upbringing. Depending on how you construe the timeline, Sephiroth got sent to war as early as twelve, and wouldn’t have had much of an oppurtnity to develop these skills in a healthy and timely manner.

Even without that, a degree of social awkwardness is far from exclusive to any particular neurotype-- It’s the way it arises in him, though, that piques my interest.

3. Analysis and Obsession

This... I think, is the one where I’ll be grasping at straws the most.

While, yes, the obsessive research demonstrated in the OG during the Nibelheim incident and even before that to a lesser extent in Crisis Core could be some indication of a degree to absolutely immerse yourself in a subject in that Very Autistic WayTM, more than anything these are brought on by dire circumstance(the former especially by the question of his very humanity), and as we don’t see Sephiroth as a child, it’s uncertain as to whether he displayed these behaviours as such and to this degree under ‘normal‘ circumstances.

Even so, I get the feeling that Sephiroth is very analytically-minded, in a very Stranger In A Strange World sort of way(not in any way referring to the 1961 novel by a similar name, lmao). I get the feeling he’s the type of person to pick up some highly-esoteric text just for fun and come away with a menagerie of strange and unusual and obscenely specific factoids that he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

Like, someone might mention a topic offhandedly, and though he’d keep his mouth shut because He’s Like ThatTM, a slew of all the little bits and pieces he’s seen or read on the matter over the years would just jump to mind.

What I’m trying to say is, I think Sephiroth would take joy in painstakingly pouring and mulling over topics that not many people would have the consideration nor the mind to hold any long-term, inimate interest in.

If the last point was easily brushed aside, then this one you’d merely have to breathe and it’d fall apart. Nonetheless, I feel that within fandom’s current common framework with how we perceive Sephiroth, this wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

I, however, want to make it clear that I can see the issue with labelling Sephiroth as neurodivergent. He could all too easily fall into the cliché of cold, emotionally and socially-inept, often rather callous depictions we see all too often in the heavily-neurotypical media that sees us as Missing Something; less than. Things have gotten better, but even still, there’s such a tendency to flatten us down to the things we can’t do, or lawd as us Potential Einsteins in spite of it-- Which, just, while it happens, on the whole it isn’t very helpful or realistic to expect this from us.

We are by no means a monolith, and while I take comfort in the idea of a neurodivergent Sephiroth, I understand that for some, it can feel like taking on a label to a character that vaguely fits the stereotype, and thus, perhaps, insinuating that to be autistic you have to look Like That-- And when it comes to villains in particular, it’s all too easy to dip into demonisation.

This isn’t even getting onto some of the issues that’d have this fall apart, were we to look at other symptoms. The first that comes to mind, and one that even I, as innocuous as I am, experience: sensory overload.

While it is entirely possible that Sephiroth learned to deal with it accordingly in life, or was forced to surpress it, because Shinra’s Science Department(cough cough Hojo) has been shown time and time again to force its subjects into little boxes and blame them for any failures expressed, the fact is that such a symptom could make fighting on the battlefield downright impossible.

Again, this is something that could’ve been given a ‘solution‘(as much as you can or even should think about long-term surpressing your basic thresholds), it nonetheless remains an issue.

I just hope that, on the whole, this served as some food for thought.

TL;DR: Sephiroth is autistic because I Vibe With It.

Also, happy Disability Pride!

[theggning]

I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on Curie, if you have any.

Sure thing! Apologies in advance if I get any of this wrong, I don't personally hang out much with Curie so I had to do a bit of brushing up on her.

Curie's key role in the meta is another facet of the theme of "what makes a person a person." She single-handedly displays the differences between robots and synths and through her we get a lot of what we know about the nature of synths and how it feels for her to become one.

But before Curie becomes a synth, she's another example of a rather unique robot. She starts off quite sophisticated and unusually intelligent-- though unlike Codsworth, her unique personality and knowledge were programmed into her, not developed over time. The Vault 81 scientists loaded into her all of the great academic works they had on hand (she lists Kant, Einstein, Born, Darwin, Curie, Faraday, Turing, and Braun) along with her initial capabilities as a medic and a doctor. Also unlike Codsworth, she hasn't become accustomed to the wasteland, nor traumatized by it-- nor does she even have the capability. Curie has spent the past 210 years trapped in the secret section of Vault 81, and since the deaths of the scientists, she has been completely isolated from human contact. Thus, she is incredibly booksmart, while being... quite unprepared for the horrors that greet her in the wasteland outside.

My favorite description I've ever seen of Curie is "a doctor coming to the slow, horrified realization that nobody washes their hands." She has a picture of the world in her mind that's dictated by science, math, logic, reason, and ethics-- and as a still, quite basic robot, she's baffled when reality doesn't match up to this. Just like Sole, she emerges in a world that resembles what she knows and yet is completely strange and oftentimes very hostile-- she's just doing this with the capabilities of a robot reconciling observations against what was literally programmed into her.

I think there's a fandom tendency to infantilize Curie to some degree, or to play up her naivety to the point of farce. But Curie isn't clueless, or stupid. In addition to her scientific knowledge, she has a very firm set of morals and ethics and will speak up or push back if she feels the Sole Survivor is behaving poorly. She is one of the "good" companions who approves of kind acts, and she is a pacifist, if she can help it. She's philanthropic, but also more scientifically-minded than the other "good" companions-- notably, her approvals all lean in favor of helping scientists and supporting the advancement of knowledge. She supports the Minutemen and the Railroad-- but also the Brotherhood of Steel, since their knowledge and preservation of technology strike her as more important than their feelings on synths. She is pro-synth and disapproves of the enslavement or mistreatment of synths, but when the Institute is destroyed, she chiefly expresses sorrow for how much knowledge was lost. She disapproves of Dr. Chambers' cruelty, but dislikes it if you kill her-- cutting short any contributions to science she could have made. Curie is kind, but she's also ambitious, logical, and values "big picture" scientific advancement.

Really, if there was any companion besides X6-88 who could fit an Institute mindset, it's Curie. She has more compassion for people than anyone in the Institute does, but it's interesting to compare her logical, pragmatic beliefs to the faction that has taken them and twisted them to evil purposes. (Am I saying that Curie would make a terrifying villain if she were to slip too far down that road of logic and pragmatism? Maybe I am...)

This pragmatism extends to her desires to become a synth. Curie comes up with the idea mainly because she feels her scientific ambitions cannot be reached unless she feels inspiration, which she's not capable of as a robot. She insists that her new body will allow her to do good for humanity, and to her, this justifies any ethical problems around transferring her into the braindead G5-19 (Curie doesn't understand Glory's hesitation to let her friend's body be used in this way-- because as a robot, she's literally incapable of empathizing with her.) It's only after Curie opens her eyes in her new body that we understand what a stark difference it is, and how many new and frightening things she's feeling for the first time-- emotions, wayward thoughts, urges to breathe and eat and sleep-- hell, fear is a new concept for her. Her robotic brain worked in numbers and data and programming, and all of a sudden she's capable of all these other things that could never be replicated by data. Curie's transition clearly illustrates the difference between a robotic brain and a synth brain- a human brain, for all intents and purposes.

(I've always thought it takes a special kind of dingus to travel with and befriend and even romance Curie and yet still proclaim that synths are "just machines." You'll see PLENTY of them, but boy oh boy, that's quite a load of cognitive dissonance going on there. Or creep, depending on the argument.)

Which leads me to one of the hot-button topics when it comes to Curie: the romance. While Curie's romance does fall under the umbrella of the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope, I think this aspect of it is a bit overblown. Like I said, there's a real tendency in fandom to infantilize Curie, or make her seem more clueless pwecious uwu cinnamon roll than she really is. But the difference between Curie and most of your standard issue Born Sexy Yesterday waifs is that Curie isn't helpless, nor childlike, nor incapable of standing up for herself. She's both extremely intelligent and fully confident in her morals and beliefs. She asks for the Sole Survivor's support with her emotional transition because she already trusts them as her friend, not because she has no one else or can't handle it on her own. From early on in her affinity convos, Curie expresses attraction to the Sole Survivor, and approaches learning about these new feelings with the same enthusiasm and curiosity that she does everything else. It's her attraction, not begun by the Sole Survivor manipulating her or tricking her into it. I feel like a lot of surface-level descriptions of the romance disregard Curie's agency, as though she's a bubble-headed innocent who's completely vulnerable and clueless about the mere prospects of attraction, romance, or sex.

Now, that said... did Curie have to transfer into the body of a conventionally attractive woman for her plot to work? No. Does her romance scratch the itch for people who like Born Sexy Yesterday? Yeah, probably. Is she designed to be Prime Waifu Material*? Undoubtedly. Is it my cup of tea? Nah. But different strokes for different folks**. I don't think Curie's romance is inherently bad or anyone should feel bad for enjoying it, or her as a character. She's extremely intelligent, cute, and wholesome, and if that's your type, then embrace her!

* Like oh my god, this is video games, Curie's entire character and romance could have been done so much worse.

** And seriously, I'm not about to judge someone for falling in love with the cute waifu-bait romance when I'm over here lusting over Strong Flawed Sad Tragic Himbo Whom I Can Save With My Love.

It ain't like they didn't cater to my tastes, too.

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Whole Cake Island

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano

sanji is such a self-sacrificial idiot. and i know that’s not exactly a ground-breaking statement, but it does define the entire first half of whole cake island, so it may as well be reiterated here: sanji does not value his own life as much as he should, and fails to grasp that other people care about him outside of what he can offer them, which is why he’s so surprised when luffy later comes charging headlong into big mom’s territory.

zou is a really good little arc, and it also mirrors the themes of whole cake island in miniature. the minks collectively make a massive sacrifice and risk absolutely everything to protect raizou, and wci is essentially all about loyalty and sacrifice, whether its sanji giving himself up to protect the strawhats and zeff or luffy and the strawhats facing impossible odds to rescue him to pedro giving up his life to get them all out of there safe.

huge fan of this panel partly just because it’s cute and partly because it’s a great visualization of just how dysfunctional the heights are in one piece.

zou is one of my favorite settings in one piece just for the sheer creativity of it. zunesha is so massive and so mysterious and so strange. and she really looks unspeakably old just from how she’s drawn, looming over everyone and everything, eyes hollow and empty, an entire forest and an entire people growing on her back that have been there for thousands of years. it’s just so neat and so wildly inventive.

this applies to zou as a whole, but i think it’s really cool how all the little threads that will become important during wano are set up so effectively even before whole cake island starts. we get this shot here of kidd beat to shit and then forget it because so much happens between here and when he shows up again in wano, but then oda punks us into caring about him and killer so much and this retroactively becomes very important.

ever since his introduction sanji’s always been a character basically defined by his adherence to his principles: always feeding the hungry, never wasting food, never hurting women, never using his hands in combat. he’s probably the most firmly principled person on the crew, and that’s more obvious in whole cake island than in any other arc except maybe baratie.

sanji is very stubbornly good, which puts him in acute contrast to his siblings and their general cruel apathy. it’s something i really like about him.

i’m a huge fan of big mom’s introduction, which is also our introduction to tottoland in general. it’s cutesy and colorful and musical while simultaneously being deeply creepy, with lyrics about killing people for ingredients and making jam out of blood, which is a great summary of the core of big mom’s character. she’s an old lady all in pink who lives in a cartoon fairy-tale land- but she’s also a deranged cannibal, and all those singing trees and flowers are animated by the life she steals from her citizens as tax.

whole cake island draws on a lot of fairy tale motifs (especially with brulee), and the contrast that saccharine appearance creates with how fucked up the actual content is is super effective and memorable, i think.

honestly i find most of the content of sanji with the vinsmokes just plain upsetting, which i’m sure is intentional, so i’m not going to go into it a lot here, but i am including this panel of him kicking niji in the face.

sad as this scene turns out, luffy’s absolute thrill at finding sanji and the corresponding bafflement of the vinsmokes as to how the fuck he even got there always kinda makes me grin.

i always love seeing people’s underestimations about luffy get thrown right the hell out the window- because let’s be honest, he’s easy to underestimate, he’s like a five and a half foot tall rubber teenager and not very physically intimidating and all, and then he goes and pulls off the impossible without blinking.

the thing that makes luffy unique as a captain has always been his willingness to rely on his crew, and his willingness to openly admit that reliance, like he did all the way back in arlong park. most of the other contenders for the pirate king’s crown we’ve seen- big mom, kaidou, crocodile once upon a time- have been stubbornly individualistic people who explicitly shown not to care for their crew and allies, generally seeing them as disposable.

luffy is the opposite of all of them, because his crew are everything to him, to the point of being willing to sacrifice his dream for them. and the loyalty he wins from them in return is unmatched, as opposed to big mom and kaidou, who both get cheerfully betrayed not just by their own crewmates but by their own children.

brook is really cool in whole cake island, and honestly it comes at just the right time for him as a character. ever since his introductory arc in thriller bark until this point he hasn’t gotten a ton of focus, so it’s great that he gets to be the mvp here and demonstrate exactly why he’s a strawhat pirate and how much he’s grown over the timeskip.

oda is generally really good at introducing and handling characters contained to a single arc/saga, but i do think he absolutely knocked it out of the park with pedro. he has an interesting backstory, compelling motivations, and basically an entire sub-arc ending in his death that never distracts from the main plot, but only ever adds to it.

pedro really feels like a fully realized character who’s had a whole life offscreen, who we just happened to catch at the very end of his story. i think that’s super impressive.

i really love this moment, because for me, this is the moment where whole cake island becomes a tremendous arc, and where the tides begin to turn and the dominoes begin to fall, one after the other. this is sanji hitting absolute rock bottom. the one ray of light he pinned all his hopes on was a lie, and he can’t even light a fucking cigarette.

but one piece is, very often, a story about picking yourself up even when you feel like you can’t.

i think there’s something lovely about how much one piece emphasizes the value of honestly asking for help. luffy waits for nami to ask for help, and for robin to say she wants to live, and for sanji to admit he just wants to go home, and then says, “okay, i’ll make that happen.”

it just makes me so happy how happy the stawhats are to know sanji’s back with them. it reminds me a lot of how they all brush off robin’s thanks after enies lobby. sure, they’re going to have to crash the wedding and confront big mom directly and might all die, but who cares? they’ve got sanji back. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, i love how much they love each other.

i think the gangster outfits are super fun, and i love that oda is committed enough to his aesthetics to come up with an excuse to put them all in formalwear. it pays off, they all look extremely snappy.

i know i just said it in the dressrosa posts but i’m reiterating it here because this is my favorite example of it by far: i love when oda does this split-screen thing with his panels. the contrast between the two halves of pudding is so severe and yet they’re so clearly the same person i honestly just find this pair of panels fascinating to look at.

this panel also kind of gets at my favorite thing about pudding as a character, really. i know she’s a little controversial in fandom, but i’ve always found her entertaining (at least post-reveal), especially in the contrast between her unhinged evil side and her genuinely sweet romantic side and her post-wedding tendency to randomly ping-pong between the two.

i just always like reminding people that sanji is fast enough and his observation haki good enough to dodge a surprise attack, while thoroughly distracted, from katakuri.

sanji in this arc tends to get shit from a certain side of fandom for being ‘useless’ since he doesn’t have a big climactic fight despite being the focus of the arc, which i think is thoroughly missing the point. sanji is still plenty capable in combat, as demonstrated both here and later, with chiffon and oven. it just happens that his strength isn’t what saves the day ultimately, because combat ability isn’t everything, which is the entire point of the vinsmoke backstory/subplot. sanji saves the day just by being kind.

i’ll admit big mom’s flashback isn’t one of my favorites, taken in isolation- there are some parts of it that kind of unresolved (at least as of now- i still suspect they’ll be followed up eventually), and in general, although there is a tragedy to it, it doesn’t quite hit the way many of the other more effective flashbacks do. that said, i do think it does a really good job of succinctly explaining why big mom is the way she is in the present: she’s a child who was never told no, who never grew or matured past the disappearance of her adopted mother. that’s it, and that’s enough.

i’ve always been a little bit in love with how seriously and consistently one piece handles its themes of found family, and sanji outright disowning judge in whole cake island is maybe the most outright they ever get: family is found, not made. you owe nothing to your blood and are never beholden to your abusers.

and i just like that a whole lot.

i do think the tamatebako is one of the best uses of chekov’s gun i’ve ever seen. we’re first shown it at the end of fishman island, it’s revealed it got sent off to big mom rigged with explosives which is a minor “oh fuck” moment, and then it gets forgotten about, because the entirety of punk hazard and dressrosa happens in between! which is a lot!

i remember when i reached the moment in whole cake island where we’re reminded that that bomb still exists and is still waiting to explode, i just started laughing hysterically out loud, because i’d completely forgotten, and now that i remembered i was just delighted to know it was going to definitely go off at some point, almost certainly in a very satisfying way.

pedro is, if i remember right, the first time the imagery of the coming dawn that will become quite important in wano really has attention drawn to it in-text- the recurring motif is there before this, of course, dating all the way back to the names of the first chapter (romance dawn) and first island (dawn island), but this is the first time it’s actively addressed in-story.

in doing so, oda essentially presents a fresh mystery for us, but one that has been set up so consistently ever since chapter one that it feels like it fits perfectly into the world and story.

luffy’s been punching way above his weight class ever since crocodile all the way back in alabasta, fighting enemies who clearly outmatch him but always managing to win anyways, but his fight with katakuri is maybe the clearest the sheer differential in strength ever gets, because katakuri’s powers are similar enough to luffy’s that he can pull off pretty much all of luffy’s techniques, but better. so luffy has to fall back on the two things that have always been his greatest strengths, again all the way back to crocodile in alabasta: innovation and sheer fucking stubbornness.

one thing i love about one piece is how no character is immune to being clowned on. absolutely nobody. everybody looks like an idiot sometimes, and it makes everything so much more fun than if the series took itself more seriously. katakuri basically actively tries to avert this by building up a fearsome, flawless, and utterly no-nonsense persona, but it winds up failing hard because it actually only makes the contrast and surprise of his actual personality and vices that much funnier.

i’ve always loved this one panel of carrot going sulong, because she just looks so monstrous, like a true werewolf. the same goes for the shift in big mom’s design when she starts going truly mad with starvation and gets even more threatening-looking (below). i just think oda should let women be monstrously scary more often.

i do really love that the entire climax of whole cake island hinges on the degree of trust and faith the strawhats, and sanji and luffy specifically, have in each other. they’re all facing massive challenges that would seem insurmountable to an outsider- luffy facing down a yonkou’s commander with a bounty of over a billion and sanji remaking a massive cake that took months to plan and make in just a few hours, the others evading big mom’s full forces and big mom herself for a full night- but none of them have even a shred of doubt that the others can manage it.

i wrote a meta post awhile back about one piece’s concept of ‘honor in a pirates’ fight, and what it came down to is this: honor can never be expected between pirates, but the best of them will show it anyways, and it can be a very telling judge of character. nobody would expect katakuri to do this, and luffy even calls him an idiot for it, but he has enough respect for luffy as a strong opponent to do it anyways, and that’s how we know for absolute certain that even though he’s an antagonist, he’s also a good, honorable person.

i really like the gesture of luffy leaving his hat over katakuri’s mouth, especially because until this point, we’re never even given any indication that he’s really noticed it, let alone that katakuri is insecure about it. he never reacts to or comments on it (which is in itself kind of unusual from someone who tends to nickname opponents by their appearances as often as luffy does) one way or another.

and then he does this, confirming all at once that he did fully notice and understand, he just doesn’t care. which i think sums up one of the more under-appreciated aspects of luffy’s character- he’s generally way more observant than people give him credit for, especially when it comes to people, it’s just that he has a very different sense of what’s important and what’s not than your average person.

i love the sheer contrast between big mom’s delighted, rapturous singing as she devours the wedding cake against the violence taking place on screen as her army rains fire and hell down on the thousand sunny. it parallels her initial introduction at the start of the arc perfectly, and is just an excellent way to close out the arc with a bang.

i said it earlier but it bears repeating here, for a different reason: luffy is not very physically intimidating. he’s shorter than most of the other main characters, he’s a lanky teenager, he dresses casually and his most identifiable accessory is a farm hat.

but then there are times when he looks like a captain, like a future pirate king, and it just looks so natural on him. i can never get over it.

i really like that, after spending a whole arc demonstrating just how different (and how much better) sanji is than the vinsmokes, it ends like this- showing us just how similar he’s grown up to the man he’s chosen as his real family, and just how proud zeff would be of him.

[missroserose]

Fic Writer Question Meme!

Thanks for the tag, @venhedish—I love stuff like this! I'd apologize in advance for how long this is likely to be, but I suspect we share that tendency, haha.

How many works do you have on AO3?

20 total. I've been publishing there since late 2018, so about three years now. That sounds right for me—I'm way too perfectionist to ever be prolific.

What's your total AO3 word count?

125,744! Apparently it takes me three years to write a novel's worth of words I feel are worth publishing...which also sounds right.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Three, primarily: The Lost Boys, Stranger Things, and Supernatural. Mostly Stranger Things, since I was pretty enmeshed in the Harringrove community for about a year and a half, though these days I'm hanging out more with the SPN crowd. We'll see if that translates to more fics.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1.) Sunflower (524) 2.) Quickly, look away (506) 3.) We'll Become Who We Meant To Be (383) 4.) Too Young To Fall In Love (333) 5.) When the Waters Start to Cross (283)

First, what's not surprising: all are Stranger Things/Harringrove works. I'm a little surprised to see that "Sunflower" had edged out "Quickly" as my most-kudosed story, for years it was the other way around—but maybe that's actually not that surprising—part of the reason I haven't been as active in the fandom is that I really love the darker and more complex renditions of Billy Hargrove's character (a la "Quickly") and since S3 aired it seems like the fashion has moved more towards more lighthearted fluff (a la "Sunflower"). Still, both are pretty undemanding smut, so it makes sense that they're on top; similarly, I'm not surprised to see "Too Young To Fall In Love" in the top five either.

I am a little surprised that "We'll Become Who We Meant To Be" is #3—it's honestly close to genfic, there's only the tiniest moment of hinted-at attraction in there. I'm not mad about it, I honestly feel like it's one of my better efforts; on the other hand, "Wake Me Up" was in a similar vein and it's close to the bottom. I guess there's just no telling what's going to catch on...in fairness, a 25K outsider POV novella is a much bigger ask than a 3K short story.

Honestly, I'm probably most surprised at "When the Waters Start to Cross" cracking the top five—it's a 52K+ WIP and a profoundly complex atmospheric existential horror/romance, which is, like, five strikes against it. I'm not mad about it, though—I love that fic, even if it is a huge time and energy suck, and it definitely contains some of my best writing.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do! Sometimes it takes me a while, but I genuinely appreciate people taking the time to leave feedback (even if it's just a string of emoji!). And every once in a while I'll get really thoughtful or incisive comments that spark whole conversations—that's one of the best reasons to write fic!

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Hmm...to be honest, nothing immediately comes to mind; I love angst but tend to want it to serve a purpose, i.e. it gets a character closer to who they want to be. So most of my endings are at least hopeful. *checks list* It looks like probably my angstiest ending is also my first fic posted, "Blue Masquerade". Poor Michael.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

I don't currently write crossovers; I wouldn't rule it out, but frankly I haven't come across an idea that appeals to me. Waaaaaay back in the mists of time I had a Daria/Harry Potter crossover that I was actually pretty proud of, but I got about as far as getting them to Hogwarts and then kinda ran out of ideas, so I never posted it.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not that I can think of? I'm not big-time enough to get hate, haha. Worst I ever got was some rando asking for top or bottom tags, which I just ignored, and one person on "We'll Become" who was like "I don't like this pairing but you did a good job", which kinda had me like ??? thanks, I guess? I did get one comment on "Quickly, look away" from someone who felt like it was in a different headspace from the fic I wrote it as a sequel to, but that didn't strike me as hate, it's a perfectly fair observation.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

So first off, yes, and second...I recently came across this great Garth Greenwell quote that really gets at what I'm trying to do when I write smut:

In America in 2019 we are inundated with images of bodies to an absolutely unprecedented degree—images of eroticized bodies, images of sexual bodies; the Internet makes all our fantasies visible, and it trains us in new fantasies. And yet it also seems to me that our culture suffers from a dearth of representations of embodiedness, by which I mean of bodies imbued with consciousness. I’m not at all antiporn, but sometimes pornography (maybe especially Internet pornography, with its arms race of extremity) seems to want to evacuate bodies of personhood, to present them as objects. I think literature is the best technology we have for representing consciousness, and so I think there’s a kind of intervention that literature can perform in representing sex explicitly: it can reclaim the sexual body as a site of consciousness.

"Embodied porn" is probably the best description I can come up with—I love writing sex precisely because it's such a charged form of communication (Greenwell's words again), because there are things a character can do and say in that context that they never would normally. Like, sex acts are great and all, but what really does it for me is what's going on in their head, what's the history that brought the character to this point, how're they handling the inherent vulnerability and intimacy of this incredibly risky but potentially rewarding moment. Kink (whether through roleplaying, props, costumes, or whatever) is really just another way of adding to that personal meaning, since without the characters' reactions any trappings are meaningless.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I'd love to work with a translator someday (whether with fic or another context)—I'm fascinated by the inherent puzzles in translating between languages, especially with informal speech and its many idioms and cultural references.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not yet! I'd be open to the idea, but it definitely has to be with the right person...

What's your all time favorite ship?

Isn't that basically like asking a mom to choose her favorite kid? Seriously, I like different things about all of them...which one's getting the most attention depends entirely on mood and headspace and other effectively random variables.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I don't have any I've given up on entirely, yet. Even Waters, as beastly complicated as it is, I've been ruminating on and adding to and arranging in my head lately...

What are your writing strengths?

Atmosphere, character, dialogue. I've said it before, I'm a capital-R Romantic at heart: I love writing settings that reflect and reinforce a character's headspace—while also implying what said character might be missing in their viewpoint.

Something I've noticed—my husband worked for years as a penetration tester, which meant he would regularly have to talk his way past people on a moment's notice. So, unsurprisingly, we both notice people, but he tends to observe their presentation (clothing, accessories, especially ones that're markers of social class and group belonging that allow him to tailor his approach), whereas I notice what they say and how they say it—and, often, what they don't say.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I suddenly feel like I'm in a job interview, haha. Perfectionism is a big one—I have a tendency to feel hopeless and quit if something's taking too long, rather than persisting until I get it sorted, even though some of my best work is stuff where I persisted. Also, I'm big on emotional intensity—which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I sometimes read back over my stuff and I'm like "geez, Ambrosia, ease up a bit"...I could definitely use some comic relief in my writing sometimes, but I think I'm often too insecure to try it.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I don't have any in particular—I rarely do it myself, because I don't trust myself to do it properly. (Perfectionism again!)

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Daria, way back in the day. My work is still up on FF.net...sometimes I wonder if anyone's ever going to dig it up and confront me with it, haha. (I doubt anyone will ever care that much...I guess I'm more just curious if my style from twenty years ago is recognizably me.)

What's your favorite fic you've written?

If we're talking about finished fics, probably either "Wake Me Up" or "Young At Heart"—they're both pretty oddball, but both required a fuckton of work and both came out pretty close to what I wanted. But "Waters" is my biggest baby...maybe I'll open up Act III to work on today...

Thanks again for the tag, Ven! I'm going to tag @ihni, @redmyeyes, @twobrokenwyngs, @skybound2, @sambrosia, @shewritesdirty, @introvertia, @coffeeandchemicals, and @anarchist-billy—if you're up for some rumination, I'd love to hear your thoughts on your writing!

[bitchapalooza]

Hetalia nekotalia headcanons(covering just a few of them)

It seems weird that the cats would just be called "Italy-cat" by the actual nation whose name is already Italy so I wasted my time in figuring out their possible breeds and searching up acceptable names(unless stated otherwise) for them that the nations may pick for them and even where the nations obtained these cats. I think they've come to value these cats on the same level as themselves due to how long they may have been around(the same goes for whatever other pet(s) they may own). I thought this was a fun thing to do and honestly it was! :)

Might do more when I get the time again~

***Tw for mentions of animal abuse***

Americat:

Domestic long hair, possible Maine Coon mix!

I think America adopted his cat in the 1980s. He was just a kitten, abandoned outside a supermarket in a box with a sign with one other kitten inside. At least 2 months old. America, having a big heart and soft spot for animals of any kind, took them both in. However he was already struggling to buy proper food for his other animals so he needed to find a different home for them. America ended up keeping one, as he fell absolutely head over heels for him, and named him Liberty— for obvious personal reasons. America raised him for the majority of his life as an indoor cat but with how much energy he has he decided to train him to be an outdoor cat as well, even teaching him to use the doggy door. This gave him enough room to actually grow faster into the adult cat he is now compared to if he'd ALWAYS be around America(as in staying small due to the slow aging around America).

Canacat:

Domestic longhair, possible Maine Coon mix!

Canada adopted him after America offhandedly asked. Canada was pretty stuck when it came to naming him. It was 4 weeks into owning him, mostly calling him a range of names such as Paul and Rookie but never sticking to one for even one whole day, but when Canada was just sitting there eating breakfast before leaving for his daily duties, just a normal quiet morning it came to him. Again, he was just sitting there. That is until the kitten figured out how to climb onto the chair next to him that is. He sat there meowing and pawing at Canada's thigh for 10 minutes while Canada ate. And then he tried to jump onto the table 3 times in a row. Canada gave in and allowed him up there for a minimum of 3 minutes. Not even 1 second passed and suddenly the little rascal is trying to steal the last couple bites of pancake. That was apparently what he wanted. And so Canada named him Pancake! Pancake was an energetic little kitten that a spring in his step but he did mellow out as he grew into adulthood. He's mainly an indoor cat. Come winter time when it snows, Pancake has a tendency to forget the existence of snow so he goes bolting for it only to regret it later.

Germany-cat:

A black or gray German Rex!

Germany isn't exactly a big cat person, he prefers dogs. But after this kitten followed Prussia's cat all the way home and noticed how thin he was he couldn't resist taking care of him. Germany ended up naming him Maus in reference to how tiny and often silent his meow was as a kitten. Now it's just a hilarious name as he's grown quite big and has a very strong meow! Maus is a very well behaved cat although it seems he doesn't favor being played with. He's most often seen at the top of his cat tower or in the window basking in the warm sun. As he was previously found as a stray outside he still does favor being outside. He tends to escape whenever Germany unlocks the doggy door or when Germany let's the dogs out in the backyard to run around for a bit. Maus may be a very mellow cat but he does tend to be loud when he wants food and doesn't want to wait for it. He also tends to attack people when suddenly being pet.

Prussia-cat:

An albino German Rex!

Prussia adopted him in 1998 after his and Germany's new home became a little overrun with mice. Prussia affectionately named him Gunther. Gunther was a spunky little kitten, in fact he was the runt of 6 other siblings and noticeably different to his siblings in appearance(originally thought to just take after the father's white coat despite the orange coats of his siblings and mother). Prussia chose him, the teeny little runt, after watching him easily sneak up and take down his bigger sister and win the play-fight he started. Prussia proudly took him home and trained him to catch the mice! Some years later, Gunther apparently got curious and brave and got loose outside. He was gone for weeks. He came back with a limp, a fresh scar, and a kitten clinging to his side. Gunther rarely escapes outside anymore. Prussia didn't know Gunther was albino until took he took him to the vet for his shots.

Itabby and Romano-cat:

They're both European shorthairs!

When the Italies were freshly unified and everything was still pretty awkward they were forced to go bond by taking walks every morning. Veneziano didn't mind this, he enjoyed the morning and even more so the countryside around them. Romano however could care less about it all and just wanted his bed back. Veneziano was all conversation, very observant of his surroundings as he commented on them to strike up an interesting conversation. And that's how he noticed a man cruelly stuffing two kittens into a sack on their way out of town. After alerting his brother, the two confronted the man. The man claimed these two were sick because neither were getting any of their mother's milk like the rest. Romano demanded he hand the kittens over or else he'd regret it. Veneziano annoyed him with his whining to the point where he gave in and handed them over quite harshly. Once they got them safely away from the man they took a look at the 1 week old kittens; they were both terribly skinny but clearly hanging on for dear life and the brothers both agreed, for once(well more like Romano kept saying "whatever the fuck you want"), that they wanted to help these poor creatures. Luckily for them they knew a stray cat that just had another litter of 3 and could perhaps try to get her to accept two more. And she did! Well it took a day but she did eventually take them in and feed them. Veneziano immediately decided that once they were old enough to eat solid foods he was going to keep one of them and name him Gino! It took a while for Romano to warm up to the idea of keeping even one but he eventually did. He took the other kitten and named him Sonno. They've lived so long due to just how clingy they are to the brothers. Their aging was so slowed down because of how often they're near the Italies that they didn't become fully grown adult cats until some time around 1932.

Japan-cat:

Japanese bobtail!

Named Yoshi* for being Japan's little lucky charm. Yoshi was left behind by his previous family after they moved away. He left his home and began wandering around until he got to Japan's house. Taking notice of how the cat stuck around his house, Japan began feeding him. And feeding him. And feeding him. And eventually he accepted the idea that he was now a cat owner. Not knowing his previous name, Japan decided to rename him Yoshi. Because of Yoshi, Japan began to come outside more and more each day as he is an outdoor cat that seldomly comes inside anymore. What's more is Yoshi came into his life in 1999, just a few months before 2000— aka when The Lost Decade was coming to an end as well as his personal on and off string of depressive episodes. Japan spoils Yoshi with treats and only the best cat food he can afford!

*The real name given to him by Himaruya is Tama, most likely a reference to calico cat Tama from Kinokawa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan(that's at least what I've gathered). Before I knew this(in my early fandom days) I headcanoned his name to be Yoshi, as I said above it was a reference to luck(I didn't have as easy and unmonitored access to the internet as I do now so I never had a steady way to look these things up). I like Tama as well but I still can't get the name Yoshi out of my mind! I'm not sure if Yoshi and Tama can be combined like some names here in America can be combined(like Lilian Pad[as in Lily Pad] or Patches Poo) and I don't want to attempt it in case I get it wrong no matter how much research I do.

Austria-cat:

Domestic longhair!

Austria has quite the soft spot for this kitty surprisingly. He was born on his estate after his mother wandered in and settled between a couple bushes in his garden. He was born one of three kittens, almost entirely identical to his mother. Austria ended up giving names to all the cats but this one specifically was named Mozart— for very obvious reasons on Austria's part. The mother cat and two of the other kittens ended up moving along a year later after Austria decided to renovate part of his house; however the only one to stick around was Mozart. Austria would let Mozart come inside if only he could manage to pick him up. Mozart will jump into his lap outside, brush up against him, greet him in the morning, allow him to come near(especially with food and clean water) and even pet him but he won't ever peacefully allow Austria to carry him. Mozart was originally thought to be a Ragdoll however it was France who identified him to be a simple domestic longhair instead.

China-cat:

Burmese cat!

Originally a stray that endlessly bothered a shop owner and his own cat, China attracted his attention when he fed him only once. This cat followed him all the way to the hotel he was staying at not far from the little shop, which annoyed him greatly but honestly gave him a little laugh as well. As his car ride home was only going to be an hour at best he decided to at least attempt to bring the little fella home for proper care and attention. And obviously it worked. On his way home he decided a name like Zhi seemed perfect for him! Something told China Zhi was used to car rides and being around people, which told him Zhi was originally in a loving home. Feeling a little sad that this nice loyal cat was living on the streets he began to pamper him. Now Zhi expects to be brushed twice a day, let out at least once a day to soak in the sun's warmth and lay in the soft grass. He's fed the best food possible, has more toys that he knows what to do with. China's cellphone is overrun with videos of Zhi playing fetch— a trick he didn't teach him which, to him, is further proof he had a previous owner.

Russia-cat:

Siberian cat!

Taken in from a rescue shelter, at first fostered, then adopted. Russia kept the name the shelter gave him, Boris, as it fit him very well considering his past. Boris was unfortunately neglected when his previous owner was around. His fur was matted, he was skin and bones, upon pick up he had an eye infection. He was terribly scared of people. After being treated and showed kindness, it wasn't very long for him to open up. When Russia came along and took him in to give him all the proper attention he lacked, Boris fell in love with it. And Russia fell in love with having a cat around. Before anyone could swoop in and try to adopt Boris, Russia already put in to adopt. Now Boris is a happy healthy cat who's favorite toy to play with is Russia's supply of yarn. Boris loves bird or feather based toys the most, however, and will often drag his favorite feather wand over to Russia so he'd play. He's not much of an outdoor cat but after being kept mostly in a small cage since birth he does enjoy at least laying on the porch outside.

France-cat:

A Sacred Birman with light creamy point colouration!*

Obtained as a newly born kitten in 1992, France had offered to help nurture him as his mother had died shortly after giving birth. France named him Minou, more so in honor of his deceased mother Minet rather than it being a common French cat's name(some assume he was lazy with his naming). Minou grew up to be properly spoiled and loved by France. From the time he could see and walk properly, France began putting light outfits and accessories on him for very small amounts of time(like hats and ties mainly to avoid overheating). Minou often silently greets France at the door whenever he comes home, barreling through the hallway or off the couch in order to get some much needed love and attention. He surprisingly gets along very well with France's pet birds, only ever going after them once as a kitten. Minou can be found in his luxurious cat bed made of cardboard from the cat tower's box and a quilt France had crafted long long ago that's now drastically torn in various places. OR he can be found planting his fanny on France's face at night, nearly suffocating him. Minou seems to have a likeness for Russia and England.

*I know France-cat doesn't have any visible point colorations to him but him being a Persian doesn't fit him in my opinion, especially a blue eyed white cat. There's a high percentage of blue eyed white cats being deaf. However a common trait in Birmans are blue eyes so that, to me, fits better.

Iggycat:

Scottish fold-American shorthair mix!*

Obtained through a small litter from a colleague. England named him Lopsy  immediately upon seeing him, completely falling in love with him. Due to Lopsy's health concerns(osteochondrodysplasia) he's strictly an indoor cat. He's not very playful due to the pain he endures so he's prone to lay about, especially in England's lap, in his cat bed that sits directly under the window to reach the sunlight, or under England's bed. Despite being on them for so long, it still takes quite the struggle to give Lopsy his medication as he's come accustomed to when England is preparing to give it to him. As he's not very active, Lopsy isn't too fond of France's, America's, or Canada's cats— all of which tend to love playing together. However there are times when Minou is in non-playful mode where Lopsy will lay near or eat with him, but will absolutely refuse to lay with since Minou does have a tendency to attack another cat's tail without warning.

*The reason I see him as a mix is due to the major health concerns breeding two Scottish folds together can bring. However, breeding a Scottish fold with an American shorthair or British shorthair is often the better choice as there's less issues involved. There's talk about banning the breed all together. Even with this talk, breeding persists, preferably for cat shows from the sound of it. There's even research going into fixing these health concerns but it seems incurable due to the Scottish fold disease seeming to be a very dominant trait no matter what secondary breed it's bred with. Scottish fold disease doesn't always occur in a litter, mostly being a 50% change.

Spain-cat:

European shorthair!

Named Vivo for his lively personality, this little guy was found in the rain, drenched and hungry. He looked to be roughly 3 months old, very well fed and groomed so Spain assumed he had a family he ran away from for whatever reason. Without any other solution, Spain took him in until someone came to pick him up. A few weeks go by without anyone coming to claim him, so Spain opted to keep Vivo. Vivo is very loving, he possess a strong purr and often falls asleep purring. He's a lap cat but also has a tendency to curl up on or near Spain's shoulder when he's on the couch. Vivo is mainly an outdoor cat, often chasing mice or other vermen away from the garden without ever destroying it. Spain is pretty grateful to of found him as it had gotten quiet with Romano gone and all. And Vivo defiantly brought some noise to the house! He's not always vocal but when he is he tends to run around happily meowing for attention. He's surprisingly very territorial however— when introduced with then young kits Gino and Sonno, the Italies' cats, Vivo almost attacked them. It took small steps forward to get the three of them to warm up to each other. It also took a while to warm Vivo up to Minou and Gunther.

[hearthandhomemagick]

Food For Thought - Steven Universe

Hello there, I would like to tell you my story and journey with the amazingly beautiful, and wonderfully written TV Show...

Steven Universe.

I started watching this show when it first came out in High School. I mean, I was so excited to watch it that I anticipated the very first episode and sat down with snacks to observe it’s premier. I had become immediately enthralled not only with the art style, but also with the genuine wholesomeness and elucidations of processing emotions and life experiences. I was astounded that a kids show could express to me how to manage my emotions as well as connect with my moral standings. It’s a show I recommended to everyone, but often didn’t talk about because of it being a kids show, and me being almost being grown. It was my secret love until someone else brought it up.

This show stuck with me through the years, and helped me through some of my hardest moments in life. 

I remember watching the episode, “Mindful Education” and melting into Garnet’s lesson of mindfulness and self-awareness. I had been going through a lot at the end of 2016, graduating and going through a rough election along with having to move states for college. My opinions were forming in the extreme area and I had a fire to protect my thoughts and opinions with no restrain or any form of control of my emotional reality. I was rambunctious as much as I was head-strong and, at times, hard-headed all together. 

When this episode aired, I didn’t know why I loved Garnet and Stevonnie’s song, “Here Comes a Thought.” But I did, and it still carries with me into my life today. 

I want to discuss a specific time, though, that this episode saved my sanity and opened my eyes to a concept I didn’t understand when I first watched it. I was on social media, and was defending my opinions against quite a few people by myself. Eventually, I was getting nasty comments from a bunch of millennials telling me, 

“You’re too fucking stupid to understand, maybe you should go back to school, child.”

“You’re so emotional, and your emotions don’t matter here. Imagine being this dumb.”

“Imagine being a dumb bitch like Carly and saying you wanted to cut your penis off to look like a woman.” *NOTE I am not transgender, there is nothing wrong with being transgender and her insinuating such did not bother me. Her rhetoric insinuating trans was wrong is what irked me, this bitch was transphobic and had issues that she needs to repair in her own time. She wrote an entire post based around this context on her personal page using my real name, and she didn’t even know who I was.*

and my personal favorite, “Here’s the suicide hotline, I know your generation is prone to killing themselves and are overly emotional.”

Now, there were over 50, under 100, messages going back and forth where these people were just bullying me and I refused to back down. I wound up in a panic attack in my bedroom, literally wanting to kill myself because they were bullying me. The hotline would have come in handy if it were the actual hotline. I ended up going to my dad and older sister (my older sisters friend was the main one I was arguing with and her posy showed up on my post), because no one on the post was on my side.

Both told me, “If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” My sister told her friend to stop, and threatened the other girl for her nasty posts and comments. My dad tried to mediate on the post itself, but the people wouldn’t stop. I eventually had to take it down.

My family didn’t calm me down in this moment. Not even a little bit. It felt like a back-handed helping hand. Like they wanted to protect me, but also somewhat agreed with the people on the post.

The only thing that calmed my nerves in this moment, ultimately, was the song, “Here Comes a Thought.” 

I sat in my room, sobbing, hoping to myself that it would make sense as to why it was okay for these things to happen. The song soothed over my nerves, eventually releasing my muscles and giving me a sense ease. I was able to process and realized a few personal things as well. I didn’t realize it, but before long, I was meditating to the song on repeat. I kept telling myself, “I’m okay, this is a thought. A moment. I am not my thoughts. I am not this moment.”

This was simply one of the ways Steven Universe has helped me process and understand myself more. I bring this up because I came across and article today that disappointed me to the core.

The Steven Universe Fandom has toxic tendencies.

I was shook.

How could a child’s show be turned into something so negative? Something that was meant to promote self-awareness, self-love, acceptance of character, and understanding of others had been morphed into a gatekeepers safe haven.

Now I know this isn’t the majority, and before you get offended, hurt or start defending yourself, I want you to ask yourself if what you are defending is an action you would defend from anyone else. If it is, by all means defend your ground.

But the one concept that eludes me, and offers zero substance in terms of valid arguments, is that men can not watch this show. Let me explain why men NEED to watch this fucking show.

My boyfriend watched this entire show, episode for episode, and benefitted from it. This show offered him coping techniques, an understanding of why love should come before war, and mediating every situation so you see and understand every perspective. These are things children shows didn’t offer him growing up, he has often and openly verbalized his need for this show in his childhood because of certain traumas, and we often continue watching it even after seeing every single episode and movie.

This show was never meant for one or two groups of people, and if you feel that way then refer back to the writers themselves who were literally trying to teach the lesson in the show over and over again to NEVER EXCLUDE PEOPLE FROM YOUR GROUP. You exclude people, and you create a division, a war of sorts. You immediately have become the thing Steven Universe advocated against in the first place.

This also leads into the whole “art” situation in the fandom. 

This show is anti-bully. There are commercials for it and everything. It is expressed in multiple episodes why bullying is never a good thing in any situation. 

You simply cannot justify the hypocrisy in bullying someone out of self-expression that literally harms no one. You can’t justify it.

Think about it. You draw or sketch a piece of art that took you hours, or even a few minutes. It’s your favorite character, and maybe you yourself are going through some mental thoughts regarding your weight that lead you to draw the character thinner or bigger. Size shouldn’t matter in any capacity when relating a character to ones self. 

If you’re skinny, you’re beautiful. If you are thick or curvy, you are beautiful. If you are obese or overweight, you are beautiful. Weight doesn’t matter, but representation of body types in different characters does matter.

Imagine a child falls in love with a bigger character, but is experiencing body challenges where she is being picked on for being too thin or scrawny (it happens, I’ve seen it with my nieces). Who are you to say that making her favorite character look like her own body is wrong? Especially if art is a coping mechanism they use for mental health reasons.

Like Malachite, a fusion that was devastating and abusive in every way, you are taking the choice and voice of an entire being to make your actions and opinions “right” or “okay”.

There is so much more I could say on this show, and so much more I could say about the fandom. And I know it is not the majority of the fandom, but I did want to make everyone in the fandom aware that we are human.

None of us are stoic and balanced like Garnet, and even Garnet had problems in her relationship. None of us are strong and laid back like Amethyst, and even she had self-love issues. None of us are as analytical and organized as Pearl, and yet she had problems throughout the series. 

None of you are perfect, and to act as if you are is defeating the purpose of a show trying to teach you how to be responsible for yourself and your actions. I’m not perfect either, and preaching about a fandom I’m not a huge part of sounds counter-intuitive, I’m aware.

But my nieces want to watch this show. My nephew watches this show with me. My boyfriend’s niece is going to start watching the show. 

Please do not make a toxic environment for kids who need this show to grow up. Kids who experience trauma, and learn from this show deserve a safe space without people trying to justify bullying or force them to think that because they are a boy or girl, they can or can’t watch the show. Without people making people feel bad for being themselves.

Why don’t we create a new space? A space where everyone is accepted as they are, and negative behavior is addressed the same way the gems or Steven would address them. With education, perception awareness, and PATIENCE. 

I know some will say, “It’s not my job to raise your child.” and “It’s not my responsibility to make people aware of their tendencies.”

You’re right. It’s also not your responsibility to bully people into changing themselves to fit your dialogue. Simply put, you’re responsible for yourself alone. But you have no right to complain on someone's behavior, art or experiences if you are not willing to be patient with correcting said behavior in yourself first.  

Who knows, maybe I’m in the wrong here for not knowing the full story. All I’m saying is, if you see someone being a bully, being mean or even being a hypocrite, call them out in the sweetest way possible. Let them know we are facilitating a safe space for people who need a community rather than a closed off club.

Be the change you want to see in this world.

Learn, grow and prosper. 

I wish you all well and genuinely hope we can all expand our perspectives to fully understand each other in healthier and more communicative based ways. We deserve that sort of kindness from each other.

[ouranor]

I saw your latest hanyo no yashahime post because I followed the tag and I have to say as a victim of grooming myself, I would rather be aggressive towards the adult Sessrin shippers,I do think some of them have pedophillic tendency’s, I know you hate that word being thrown around but how else would you describe people enjoying seeing sexualized fanart/actual porn of child Rin and sesshomaru. And a ship is just a ship yes but when large amounts of people try to normalize grooming I draw the line

Dear Nonny

First of all: I’m so sorry that you had to go through such a horrible experience and thank you for sharing this so openly. I’ll do my best to explain my point of view about the current chaos and how to navigate it as best as I can. In order for me not to repeat myself too often, I‘ll assume that people reading this will also have read my previous post that prompted Nonny to message me.

About the ship itself:

As far as the ending of the manga goes, Rin and Sesshoumaru are blank slates, leaving lots of room for interpretation. What is true for both characters is that neither of them have any romance set up, because neither Rin nor Sesshoumaru are anywhere near ready for any kind of romantic relationship (no matter with who) at that point in time. Rin because she’s a child and Sesshoumaru because he’s an emotionally stunted and immature mess of a man (which is why I find the sequel‘s premise incredibly unbelievable. There‘s no way Sesshoumaru was ready to have half-demon children and this is a flat-out character assassination for Sesshoumaru but I DIGRESS). In the manga, not a single trace of romance can be found, and thus not a single trace of grooming. Giving a growing child a new kimono is not grooming, it‘s common sense.

Now, most people that oppose SessRin do immediately jump to pedophilia and grooming for multiple reasons and, while I don’t ship SessRin, reducing the ship to assumptions like these is not an okay thing to do. I firmly stand by this statement and I’ll do my best to explain why.

Now, because this will be important to understand the thoughts I‘m conveying, please remember these key points:

1) Explaining does NOT equal excusing. I will never make excuses for people that romanticize children in romantic relationships. All I‘m doing is do my best to cut through the very emotionally charged and hardened fronts in this ship-war.

2) We NEED to separate the ship from its shippers. SessRin is an extremely difficult ship to write that needs to be treated with much more care and awareness than most other hetero-ships, but because people abuse Rin as their Mary-Sue and don‘t give the characters actual care and love, you end up with terrible fanfiction that depicts SessRin as „a given / destined / Rin‘s the closest vagina in the near vicinity“. And yet: Sesshoumaru grooming Rin is not the ONLY possible continuation of this ship. I‘ll get back to this in a bit.

3) Grooming is a choice, pedophilia is a mental disorder. While the two overlap at times, they are NOT the same. I’ll broach this issue near the end of this post.

Now, to get the worst out of the way, I’ll agree to this: The interpretation coming from the loudest and most aggressive shippers (Celestia on Twitter is an excellent example) is highly problematic and, as mentioned, shows a lack of comprehension regarding subtility and a lack of emotional intelligence. They‘re very black and white and they romanticize the characters as they were left in the manga, saying (among other things) how Rin is Sesshoumaru’s soulmate and understands him like no other, in spite of being a child, and THAT raises all kinds of alarm bells. Because this is exactly the rhetoric used by predators towards impressionable children. People claiming that this isn’t the case are being willfully ignorant and I usually don’t tolerate such people and use the block button generously.

But this is the WORST manifestation of this ship. Notice how I say the worst, not the ONLY.

Unfortunately, this worst interpretation usually comes from the laziest and most aggressive shippers that simply lack the creativity to imagine anything else. I’ve read many a SessRin fanfiction that built this relationship up in a believable way, taking its time and addressing the potential pitfalls, unfortunately this type of dedication or writing talent is not easily found in a fandom as vast and trope-y as Inuyasha. But I‘ve also read a ton of fanfiction where SessRin is a „logical conclusion“ because the author is actually writing an InuKag fic and has no idea what else to do with Sesshoumaru and Rin, hence: Another pairing to make babies with, yaaaay. SessRin happens by proxy, which is a huge NO-NO. This echoes one of my mantras: In order for Sesshoumaru to even get into a romantic relationship (NO MATTER WITH WHO), there is an entire story and development that needs to be told first. The same goes for Rin because again, by the end of the manga, she‘s not much of a character at all. “Why do you even read SessRin if you don’t ship it??” I hear you ask (not you, Nonny, I mean this and the following in a general sense). Because I keep saying that every ship has its merit and I’m interested in the stories that can be told. I keep saying that all ships are legitimate and I don’t want to miss out on any potentially amazing stories, especially because those were seriously hard to come by back in the day (anyone remember the 2000’s? Anyone?). I’ve read fanfiction from literally every Inuyasha ship under the sun. So if I see the tell-tales of a bad SessRin fic, I leave the author and their world behind and move on to something else. I’ll use this short interlude to say this: It has become such a horrible trend in fandom to put the sole responsibility of one’s fanfiction-experience on the author instead of taking responsibility for the content one might consume. There’s an incredible lack of self-sufficiency, a lack of ability to just move away when people read something they don’t want to read without taking personal offense. Now, I’m not saying that you have to be like me, but at least take responsibility for your own experience. ANYWAY, back to the topic at hand.

So again: In order for Rin or Sesshoumaru to get together romantically at any point in the future, a LOT needs to happen first. A lot of development, a lot of questioning, a LOT of build-up, because this relationship needs a heck of a lot more explanation than most other hetero-ships out there, but most fanfic writers and shippers are too lazy to set this up properly, leading to problematic romanticization, sugarcoating and hand-waving away of serious subjects that need to be addressed. Most of these types of SessRin shippers I see are found on Twitter and Tumblr (many are Spanish, too, wth is up with that), as mentioned, and they are are extremely questionable, seeing no issue at all with this ship, and here’s my opinion on why that is: Given from what I’ve seen, these types of shippers equal Rin with themselves. If you read how they justify this ship, it has nothing to do with her being a child, and everything to do with the blank slate that she is (like Bella Swan in Twilight). Rin has endless potential and it’s much easier to project ones own fantasy on a character that has yet to BECOME an actual character you can write a love story WITH. Of course, shippers don‘t realize this, because projection is usually done on an unconscious level. But to someone who’s been observing in this fandom and lurking for years, this seems incredibly obvious. Neither Rin nor Sesshoumaru have any agency, because they’re fictional, and that’s why SessRin is such a ticking bomb, always has been. They can be turned into whatever you want.

Now, that’s of course what fandom is for: Fulfillment of fantasies and works depicting any dynamic from fluffy to dark. But here’s the second main problem: Because SessRin is usually depicted as your typical, trope-riddled “male is alpha, woman is beta at best” romance, it falls right into heteronormative standards. Heterosexual relationships are TEEMING with extremely lazy writing (and normalized abuse, but that’s a subject for another time) and for some reason, I’ve observed how hetero ships have this insane entitlement to “purity”. What I mean by that is that hetero-ships are much more likely to attract fans that need their ship to be canon, otherwise they can’t function. This is EXACTLY what happens with SessRin. If you just had SessRin shippers doing their thing, I don’t think we’d be in this situation. But because of the sequel and its excellent marketing strategy, SessRin shippers are full of hope and, worst of all, grasping at straws and lording their ship’s superiority over everyone else with renewed fervor. If Takahashi/Sunrise weren’t such absolute cunts (pardon the language), we’d not be in this situation. Because SessRin is now a “possibility” in the sequel, people suddenly see the fulfillment of their own personal fantasies within reach. Let me repeat: This is about the fulfillment of their OWN PERSONAL fantasy and has nothing to do with Rin. She just happens to be the female character that’s closest to Sesshoumaru. The fact that she’s a child does not factor in this particular scenario, even though it SHOULD.

So again: The ship is fine on its own, because it’s literally a blank slate that you can go in ANY direction with. It’s the people that desperately grasp for canon and have decided that SessRin is a foregone conclusion WITHOUT any build-up or explanation that are the true problem. They look to the sequel and their own interpretations to justify their lazy and problematic interpretation of the ship. They make the ship into the potential grooming/pedophilia shitstorm that many “antis” are caught up in, but that’s not the ships fault.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about the grooming and possible pedophilia.

I’d ask people, after reading all of the above, to remember this: If there is any grooming at all, it has yet to happen, because NOTHING has happened between Sesshoumaru and Rin after the manga. Hell, they didn‘t even speak to each other in the charity chapter. They are still the same blank slates now that they were back then. Whether or not grooming happens is in the hands of any creator that decides to take their dynamic further.

As for pedophilic tendencies: I will not deny that there are traces of that in SessRin shipping (some prominent people also ship Zabuza/Haku from Naruto which is telling), but I swear to you that 99% of SessRin fanfictions I’ve read do NOT depict Sesshoumaru with a child Rin (except for 1-2 dark fics that portrayed the dangers of a relationship with such a power imbalance, which are extremely important works as well imo). Same goes for the art. This again because Rin is not treated as a proper character, but as a vessel for wish fulfillment.

I have said many negative things about the shippers that are triggering the entire fandom at the moment, but people that oppose this ship need to be honest with themselves and acknowledge that them jumping to the conclusion of “SessRin ALWAYS equals grooming and pedophilia” also lack creativity and the ability to differentiate between different paths and outcomes. Accusing others of pedophilia is inappropriate and uncalled for, not matter how upset you are. I too have had to learn and accept that pedophilia is a mental disorder and needs a proper diagnosis and treatment. What happens because of a mental disorder should never be excused, no matter if it’s depression, bi-polar disorder or pedophilia, but what we can hopefully all agree on is that mental disorders are not something you choose.

So the only thing I can say to you, Nonny, is this: If you see something that looks like pedophilia or grooming to you, absolutely do report it. As someone once told me: The block button is a form of self-care. Use it! I have done the same over the last couple of days and it’s cathartic. If something triggers you, avoid it and find someone/somewhere to vent to if necessary. Your feelings are extremely valid, your aggression towards others (if you have shown any, that is) is not. Your experiences were horrific without any shadow of the doubt, but the way this possibly influences how you react to and treat others is absolutely something that is YOUR responsibility.

What I would, again, ask all of the people aggressively opposing SessRin is that you reconsider your stance on pedophilia. Its potential consequences are inexcusable, but accusing other people of being pedophiles because you’re jumping to conclusions is in extremely bad taste and leaves you not only on the same intellectual level as the shipper you’re accusing, but possibly even lower than that because you’re cherry-picking which potential mental disorder you’re discriminating against. It’s a free world, of course, but I’m sure we’re all trying very hard not to be hypocrites.

I wanted to TL;DR this entire post, but there’s honestly no way to do that without skipping over important parts. So thank you if you’ve made it to the end of this massive ramble. I understand that this is a very delicate subject and I am open to any and all people that would like to discuss this further. Special thanks go to Nonny for giving me the opportunity to talk about this more. I hope I answered your question, even if it might not have been what you wished to hear. Have a wonderful day and please take good care of yourself!

[flydotnet]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. I don’t have any request left, so feel free to send in suggestions for this card!).

Adrenaline really does makes you do what you usually can't pull off, huh?

The other day, I was trying to write something that wasn't Valiant Soul because I'm not mentally ready to tackle on the FFI arc for it, so I was brainstorming. I then realized I hadn't written much Kidou up until this point, which was weird because he's one of my favorite Ina characters (really, the most I've written of him was his appearance in From the Eye of the Typhoon), so I set on to correct at least a part of this mistake. I also realized it'd be a good opportunity to write more of the Break Trio, since their dynamic is one of my favorites. Writing Endou is always fun and Gouenji is a pretty cool character too. I'm not sure of what this AU is, tbh. At first I was going for my usual magical girl-like AU setup, but the Hades inspiration was too strong, and that's when the references started to slip. I may expand on this universe or merge it with my usual set-up; I'll see. Just know people are usually hunting for stuff in teams and fight monsters I guess.

I also didn't know when starting on this fic, but the actual name of the "I Ain't Got Time to Bleed" is "Belated Injury Reaction" on TV Tropes and it was a bitch to write. I had no idea of what I was doing lmao. I tried to make most of it through.

One of my new kicks in writing Inazuma is to use underused given name (see: my obsession in Valiant Soul to do just that), so y'all get to see my weird POVs in action. Gotta do what no one else does!

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No Time to Burn nor Bleed

Summary: As long as his sister isn't sure and safe, an older brother will pull through the pain and the blood to find her. That's something the Break Trio knows all too well as they head onto another adventure through fire and monsters.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven (with a weird AU and aged-up characters, no minor was harmed for this piece of fanfiction)

Wordcount: 2.4K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo.

AO3 version available here.

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Haruna is in danger and that’s all he needed to get moving.

 While Yuuto doesn’t know why he’s got that feeling, he’s sure of it: if there is one part of his instincts that never gets wronged, it’s what Endou would affectionally refer to as his “big brother instinct” (a concept whose existence Gouenji hasn’t even tried to debunk, most likely because it hits even closer to home for him). If the alarm inside his head telling him his little sister is in danger starts shrilling, he can be certain she’s in some sort of harm’s way and he won’t stand for it.

Not after they almost lost each other forever a couple years ago.

 He likes to think of himself as the rational one of their little trio, but right now, he can’t put together two thoughts that aren’t a mix of anger, panic and fear. All he wants to do is rush in and follow his sister’s trail before it’s too late, because the smell of blood and burnt ash from the Phlegethon Swamp area only inspire him further negative thoughts that are starting to catch up to him and poison the well of his mind. He knows he’s being reckless, and yet, he pushes through his barrier of rationality.

It can’t have gone over his partners’ heads. As much as he’ll give people thinking Endou is a brainless idiot credit, surely the latter can’t have not noticed a stark change in his friend’s attitude: multiple past missions and adventures have proved that to him. Gouenji, being noticeably more level-headed despite some hothead tendencies, has absolutely made note of it already and has simply kept quiet until now; perhaps because he already knows the answer to his question without needing to ask.

 He’s clutching his spear like a lifeline – it’s always given him a feeling of power, especially in times of hardship such as this one. He doesn’t think very clearly as he hacks through whatever monsters get thrown at him, sometimes throwing his weapon and retrieving it before he can get hit by another goon, sometimes seeing Endou panic and throw his shield between a monster and a comrade.

Yuuto figures this is where he should draw the line, but the fear of harm happening to his sister is too strong to stop. There’s nothing like the fury pulsing through him right now, to think of what could be happening to her, and the possibility they may arrive too late to do anything – he knows she can defend herself, she’s proven that time and time again, but

 He brushes blood that got splashed on his face from a nearby monster’s wound, swallows the taste of iron in his mouth and pressures onwards. There is no time to lose and no reason to stop for a break of any sort.

  From what he can see of Kidou and what he knows about the guy, Shuuya doesn’t think his friend is thinking clearly anymore… or that he ever did when they decided to go on that hunt for his sister’s safety.

 It’s not that he doesn’t understand the feeling: if Yuuka was in such the same position as Kidou is convinced his sister is, as she still hasn’t come back from a mission with her partner, he’d have been possessed like that too, would’ve rushed and burnt everything in his stead. It’s the most understandable feeling, to him, since he’s been in those shoes when he almost had to become a mercenary to save her from his blackmailers. He can only sympathize and, to be fair, if he wasn’t understanding of the feeling, he’d have never agreed to come.

However, since he’s not Kidou right about now, he can notice all of the sloppy mistakes his comrade is making. Usually, Kidou is the thinking head of their trio, while he’s the executioner and Endou is usually on the guard so they can avoid taking too much damage while Kidou calculates the best strategy when the situation calls for more than their reflexes and muscle memories. Tonight, however, has nothing to do with what habits they have: he’s the one who has to think so Endou and he can advance properly while Kidou is on a rampage.

Never anger an older brother – people like Kidou, Tsunami and he are perfect examples of that, and tonight’s adventure into darkness is almost too illustrating.

 Still, and as street-smart as he is, Shuuya isn’t too reassured with Kidou’s trance. They still don’t even know if their mission has a point, so he’s not been entirely on board, but there was no way to tear his friend from whatever fury he’s been in ever since he realized his sister hadn’t given a single life sign. He can’t do much except follow, he supposes…

The most concerning, however, is that he can see Kidou is bleeding from somewhere. Since the latter is in the lead and Endou is guarding their backs, the blood trail they see can’t be anyone’s but Kidou’s – to which their oh so level-headed tactician replied it may be Haruna’s, and that made him even more furious than he had been until that point. Not good, but also fairly predictable – getting caught in such a mindset does a number on your rationality. He’s learnt that the hard way.

 That does mean, on the other hand, that Endou and he need to be even more careful than he expected. There is no telling when Kidou’s adrenaline rush will end or when the blood loss will be too much: since they won’t stop running and there is no way either Endou or he will convince Kidou to stop so they can at least check if he’s injured (even though they have no need to check for that, because even Endou must have noticed the splatters of red on the ground in front of them and where they must have come from), Shuuya guessed a little while ago he’d have to muster what medical knowledge he has to make sure they don’t have a dead man on their hands.

In the meantime, he continues slaying enemies Kidou hasn’t seen as blood continues to spill, red or black, while they go through the charcoal trees of the Phlegethon Swamp. His sword slashes through hordes of monsters at a time, humanoid or not, not letting any chance get taken by them.

 He nonchalantly throws a potion of healing he’s had buckled to his belt in the direction of where he thinks Kidou’s injury is (on his right shoulder, since blood has splashed on this side of his face, and they haven’t faced a single red-blooded enemy since arriving here) and hopes everything will go as planned and they have an opportunity to do something about that wound.

  They’re finally reaching the end of the tunnel and, to be honest, Mamoru is very relieved of this fact.

 Usually, he’s the most enthusiastic of his group because, to put it bluntly, he’s always loved the thrill of a good quest. Of course, he does those to help around the people asking for them, and he’s never put much value in the prize (unlike Kidou, who always calculates the “risk-to-reward ratio” for a given mission, as he’d put it); but the thrill and adrenaline rushes are undeniably a huge part of why he’s here.

The thing is, now that he sees one of those rushes happening to someone else, he’s not sure if it was such a good idea to blindly follow his friend into a hunt when nothing except Haruna coming home late from a hunt of her own. Yes, he’s the most impulsive of the group, and he can’t deny that: that makes him a little knowledgeable on how rash that sort of decisions can be, right? Right?

Oh well, they’ve got no time to think over stuff like that: they have a mission to carry out and, tonight, he has someone whose back he needs to guard even more than usual.

 He’s been closer to Kidou than he ever has, to the point there’s blood splattering on his left side and around his shield, red droplets landing on its surface from time to time. It’s a little worrying, even if the thrill is here, and he’s glad he can pay his friend back for how many times he saved him by making him notice his own injuries and patch them up before it’d be too late.

Mamoru has never been the observant type, obviously, and he’d never pretend like he was, but even he can notice some things, especially if these are based on his habits. The one thing he’s noticing, unfortunately, is how reckless Kidou is being despite the very same Kidou usually scolding his head off at every opportunity given to make a misstep into a lesson to remember. Dashing into enemies like that, especially when he’s bleeding? Not a good idea.

 But, you know, there’s something familiar in Kidou’s rush to the lair of the enemy he suspects his sister fell to. Mamoru has felt it countless times – the most out of their trio, he’d say, due to what he’s been told is his “sanguine temperament” (he’s not a man of fancy words, this much he knows, he’d much rather call it “hotblooded” because that’s easier to understand and shorter to say) – so he knows what it feels like to power through an injury so you can arrive in time and do something.

The thing is, Mamoru is also familiar with the risks that comes with an adrenaline rush, mostly because his friends have had the patience to lie them in front of him. In the red-tinted atmosphere of the Swamp, it’s hard to tell about colours, so he has trouble seeing the paling skin typical of blood loss no matter how much he tries. What he can notice, however, is how Kidou’s pace has been progressively declining despite how hard his teeth are clenching, to the point Gouenji has gone ahead when it was the complete opposite earlier – he feels like he should do something about that, but what?

 Mamoru isn’t a talker nor a genius, so he tries to make things quick and safe as much as he can. His senses are more alert than usual, no doubt in part due to the smell of blood in the air that he doesn’t like much, so stopping incoming assaults and preventing some others by bashing some heads has to happen. He’d usually much rather hang in the back and make sure nothing creeps up on his friends, perhaps shedding some blood in exchange for their safety – but today is reverse role day, so he’s the careful one and Kidou is the one who gets hurt, apparently.

Mamoru doesn’t like that. He usually likes change and gets excited for things to be shaken up, but that change is one that doesn’t ruffle his feathers in the right way, and it makes it all wrong and unlikeable. At least, it’ll be over soon, so he better get back to bashing the enemies away and provide the backup he’s always made sure to bring to the table.

That’s pretty much all he can do aside from letting himself be bit by concern when seeing Kidou’s usually fluid movements slowly turn into a wobbly leg dance; and he’s smart enough to know which one is the better option.

  When they arrive at the clearing where Haruna was heading, he’s surprised. If he usually dislikes those because he’d much rather be able to predict every outcome to any situation, Yuuto can’t deny this one is, as is rarely the case, a good surprise: she’s safe and merely enjoying some time in private with her partner. In fact, she seems happy, waving at him as his trio steps into the calm and serene Temple of Hestia, where the scorching heat becomes a comforting warmth.

Seeing this, the energy that he had left vanishes in an instant and his knees buckle under him, prompting Haruna to run up to him screaming his name. She kneels to his level, concern all over her face and words, as they both discover at the exact same time why he’s so winded out, much more than usual:  a nasty, bleeding wound on his shoulder, barely hidden under the right edge of his cape. That’s not to forget a second injury near his side, much lighter since it’s closer to a scratch – but threatening nonetheless.

 That explains a lot of things that, now that he can breathe again, he noticed here and there, such as Gouenji speeding ahead when their usual formation has him in the middle, or Endou being so much closer to him when he’d usually barely see him and instead trust his voice rather than their eyes. They both seem very bothered about what just happened: to be fair, he did drag them through the burning swamp to discover Haruna was actually doing fine on her own. He’d be pretty miffed too if that was the case.

They nonetheless sit down next to him to take a breather as Haruna’s partner rushes to them, shield still in hand, the other holding a first-aid kit he remembers having given to his sister. He’s more than happy to drink a bitter healing potion, for once, especially since his teammates tell him they’ve been worried they were going to lose him.

Adrenaline makes you do things that should be impossible, doesn’t it? If he didn’t feel like his sister was in danger, he’d have never been able to pull through the pain and daze he’s now hit with like a hammer hitting a nail – he’s no Endou, he doesn’t have the constitution to do what this man can do on a weekly basis. He didn’t have time to bleed so that’s how he pressured on: that’s the only answer he can think of to give her when she asks how and why.

 Unlike him, Haruna hasn’t really been harmed – she managed to fight against the menace on her own with only one other person with her, whose bandaged appendages and indented shield show who protected who. She is, on the other hand, very much unamused by the injuries she’s busy patching up while she asks her partner to hand her different tool from their first aid kit.

They all deserve a nice, long break and to be away from that stupid swamp for a while, that’s for sure.

[funkymbtifiction]

which are the behaviour patterns and cognitive processes you observe on yourself particularly that you associate with being an ENFP?

That’s easy. Not. Ha, ha.

The most prominent behavior patterns I notice are typical for ENPs -- in that I become obsessed with something for a short amount of time, exhaust every possible resource I can find on it, and then promptly drop that interest in pursuit of something else. These things can be longer-term interests (I took up hoop dancing for two years, mastered a lot of the tricks, and lost interest) or shorter (various and sundry fandoms I was hot and heavy with for a few months or weeks and then walked away from). As a result of reading up on whatever happens to catch my interest (which is a lot of things), I am something of a “know-er of many things” -- and often people, particularly ISFJs and INFPs, tend to notice that I can hold a competent discussion about anything and contribute to it in some way. I remember random things relating to it and it always comes up in conversation -- someone will mention in an e-mail they watched Vertigo last night and I’ll tell them something I know about the filming / Hitchcock / the symbolism / that happened on set, or what psychological disorder it is about. Then I’ll turn around and talk about cat behavior patterns or that Tolkien based his most memorable myth-romance in his creation story on his own marriage. Basically, I’m a walking storehouse of random information on a bunch of topics, but specialize only in a few things -- and I can never predict what will be a lifetime fascination or a momentary one.

Secondly, is both a plus and a negative -- my idealism. The nice thing about being an ENFP is that they tend to bounce back from things, through a dogged determination to believe the best of other people, the potential the world holds in general, and their desire to change things through ideas. But with this also comes a tendency toward naivety. So on the one hand, it’s nice being able to go through bad things and come out like Anne Frank, still believing that someone somewhere is good and that good things will eventually happen -- and another to be blithely unaware of how being “advanced” and idealistic yourself does not mean the world has suddenly changed. I still remember (and cringe over) an essay I wrote about five years ago talking about the end of racism; in an idealistic way, I had assumed everyone had moved beyond it -- but obviously, that is not the case and race still continues to be a huge global / social issue. That was nothing more than my Ne envisioning a reality that didn’t exist -- and a nice, pleasant, and positive one of optimism and joy, to boot.

Inferior Si’s main problem for me isn’t necessarily neglecting details, though I do have trouble keeping track of them, but more a case of -- not learning from my own encounters with people. SJs have healthy Si usage, which means they learn from their experiences -- and treat them as learning experiences. Inferior Si means weak Si, which translates to “Charity approaches people with hope and optimism rather than realism and has to get kicked 47 times before she realizes who this person truly is.” It’s only after I’ve been hurt or let down or disappointed that I remember this person ALWAYS does this to me, and it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve been able to start recognizing when I’m just using my Ne default to believe the best in other people. It’s this weird dynamic, between Ne “I know what you are doing, you’re trying to manipulate me” intuition, and naive Ne going “... sure, you let me down 46 times, but this time you COULD be different! I’m gonna give you that chance, because I KNOW you can be a better person... I see it in you.” IDK if this is also my 1 fix, but I look at people and just know who they COULD be with some encouragement and support. And it’s hard for me to accept that most of them have no interest in changing. (Because my actual default is: who wouldn’t want to evolve / change / be getting better??)

Fi is hard to put into words. It’s feeling three things at once, and not knowing how to talk about any of them. I more often default into Te -- and I’ll give you an example of how all my functions have been working against me this week.

I have had a lot going on the last few weeks. Whenever my environment is chaotic, so is my mind. My Ne is going in all directions at once, and doesn’t know where to look. It has multiple things going on and projects in mind and can’t focus on any of them -- and half the time, I will pile on MORE ideas or projects as an escape. Case in point: Black History Month typings. Now, a sensible person, a judging type, would have been probably thinking about a month of themed postings for weeks, if not months, gradually storing them up over time so as not to frantically be watching / typing things at the last minute. But not me. Oh, no. I decided the week after I had company, when my house was a mess from painting my office, on the cusp of a massive deadline at work, and while I have a book in-progress... that I would do this. 10 days before I would need to start posting typings. 29 days of them.

My Ne thought it was a great idea. What a way to celebrate the month! What an awesome way to get more POC typings on the blog, and be representative of a huge part of the population! But once the reality of it settled into me, I freaked out. How on earth could I pull this off in time? Would I have enough typings? How many things can I get watched in the next two weeks? How many back-up typings do I have, to help flesh them out?

So, I kicked into Te. I printed out a Month of Feb calendar page. I divided it up into the typings I wanted / intended to contribute, scattering “historical-based” characters to weekends and the middle of each week. Then I found all the archived / in the drafts characters on the wordpress blog, and counted those up. I started filling in the blank squares. My anxiety depleted as the squares filled. I’ll still have to watch films and type new characters, but not nearly as many as I feared, and I’ll probably have enough altogether between new / old / updated with Enneagram typings to fill all 29 days with at least 2 per day. I scheduled everything I have, made a list of the ones I need, and will work at it. Now under control. While at it, I made a list of to-do things for this weekend, itemized it according to importance and need, and am working my way down it. I did the same for my work week, which meant working off it, I got half of it done in advance and won’t have to feel “last minute pressured” next week.

This sort of thing is... somewhat typical with me. I get a great idea, it turns out to be more work than I thought -- I consider quitting, but then break it down into sizable chunks / a work list and make my way through it. The less interest others show, also, in the result, the less likely I am to keep doing it, because my ultimate goal is to impact others through everything I do (typical extrovert).

- ENFP Mod

[welcometocaritas]

‘if you love me, don’t let go...’

First chapter of my yumagna fic is out ladies and gentlebabies! 

Chapter: 1/6

Characters: Yumiko & Magna

Pairing: Yumagna

Fandom: The Walking Dead

Format: Multi-Chap

Summary:  At some point, you just have to let go - or so Yumiko keeps telling herself.There was never any letting go of Magna.

Links: A03, FF.NET

[watermark is from my instagram yumagnas.home don’t worry i didn’t steal the pic ;)]

 A/N: 

[The rape/non-con is there for Magna's cousin and it will only ever be in references I will not be writing anything detailed about it because I don't want to trigger anyone and this isn't the story for writing about something like that as I would not be able to give it the time and attention it deserves]

Small note: Magna's cousin is called Maisie in this and I've also given her a brother called Morgan.

y'all are going to hate me because yes, this is going to be over 20000 words about a single night. And probably not even the whole night. but there's also flashbacks so it's OK? In my defense, we've gotten very few conversations with these two so there was a lot to talk about. I can't be held responsible for my actions. blame the writers.

I’m honestly a little worried that I’m going to bore people to tears because there’s really no plot. It’s just yumagna being soft and finally sorting out their shit.

I'm also working on a short oneshot - for real this time it's actually going to be short - that's set in the indeterminate future after this. It's basically just going to be pure fluff which you should knew is unheard of - I never write fluff. So hopefully it's not terrible.

There be angst here, lots of angst, but also comfort - if you’re familiar with my writing that won’t be a surprise to you.

I don’t have much hope for canon so I decided to do what I could to fix the mess they made.

I normally wouldn’t reveal anything that’s going to happen in a fic but y’all have been tortured enough already so just know I will absolutely be getting these girls back together, it won’t take more than a night, but it will take about 20000 words. Most of the story is written out already I’m just doing post-edits so I’ll update daily :)

If things seem a little disjointed it’s because I wrote everything out of order and it’s been a bit of a struggle to get everything to fit into place. I also haven’t slept more than 1-4 hours a night for the past three weeks, have been getting constant migraines and blood sugar crashes so I’m gonna apologize right now if there are any mistakes. I’m super sorry.

This is for the yumagna fandom cos I wanted y'all to have something nice with everything that's going on. I would also like to give a special thanks to Abbey and Mina who acted as my sounding board throughout this whole thing and were very patient with me - love you guys :)

....

"If you love me, don't let go

Hold

Hold on

Hold on to me

'Cause I'm a little unsteady

A little unsteady . . . "

- Unsteady by X Ambassadors

. . .

Nightmares had always been an issue, though less so in recent years. Magna had gotten almost gotten used to having a full night's sleep, barring the occasional pillow snatch. Back before all this started, she'd been on medication for PTSD, but well, it was kind of hard to fill a prescription in the middle of the apocalypse - and, well, the apocalypse had only added to the previous need for said medication. At least she was in good company. These days, it was more of a surprise if someone wasn't experiencing some form of post-traumatic stress, and that was a somewhat odd reality to wake up in, day after day. For years, this thing had set her apart but now? Now it just made her like everyone else.

Miko had nightmares too.

It was what had led to them sharing a 'bed' in the first place, way before things between them moved beyond the confines of friendship. They'd fallen asleep by the fire one particularly cold night, curled around each other for warmth, and they hadn't awoken until morning.

It had been something of a revelation.

On Magna's end, she suspected it had had a lot to do with trust. She'd trusted Miko not to shove a shiv into her side or try to cop a feel whilst she slept, trusted her even more to have her back if things went south during the night. She'd been . . . safe. Magna wasn't used to people being safe - she wasn't quite sure what she offered Miko in return, though; maybe the same thing.

Of course, in many ways Yumiko wasn't safe. There was nothing safe about the way Magna felt about her. Or the way those feelings seemed to be returned. She knew Miko had had a girlfriend in college who cheated - and when the other woman had told her that, a vindictive part of her had hoped the bitch had been one of the many, many people to meet their end by sicko teeth. Miko had smacked her on the arm for that comment, exasperation tempered by fondness and reluctant amusement.

She'd realized in her time away, that this past hurt would have only sharpened Magna's betrayal. Trust was important to Miko - hell, it was important to Magna - and she had broken hers by lying, lying for years. She hadn't thought of it that way when she'd been doing it. The secret had weighed on her, yes, but she'd been viewing it from a place of hadn't really considered how it would hurt Miko, only what it would do to their relationship if it had ever come out, what it would do to her.

That, more than anything, had made her realize that Miko had been right to kick her out. More than right.

Which is why she could hardly believe that they were here now. That Miko was letting her head rest in her lap, that she had invited her to do so. Sitting back against a tree and patting her thigh with a small smile her way when Magna had gone to settle a short distance off. The way she had nearly fallen over herself to accept that invitation was almost embarrassing but she couldn't bring herself to feel self-conscious about it, or to second guess the action. They'd done this as friends too and she was glad it wasn't something she had sacrificed with their relationship.

She'd been attracted to Yumiko from the moment they met. It was hard not to be. She wasn't blind - hot lawyer lady in a suit, how could she not notice her in that way? The woman had entered into her dilapidated life with a sureness and determination that was hard to dismiss. Intelligent, strong, and fighting for her.

No one had ever fought for Magna. Not until Miko.

(really, she'd been screwed from the start)

Of course, the person Yumiko was fighting for was little more than an illusion. If Miko had only known the truth then . . .

She probably would have dropped her like a hot potato, just like everybody else. She probably would have been wise to.

Or maybe she wasn't giving Miko enough credit. After all, she was still here now. Carding her hand through Magna's hair in a soothing motion as she pretended to sleep - and Miko pretended to believe her. She knew the truth now, and still she kept close. Maybe they weren't together anymore but that had been as much Magna's choice as Miko's. She couldn't let herself get to that place again, where she was so terrified of losing something, she ended up destroying it.

  And God, Magna was so tired, so tired of being afraid, so tired of being angry.

Just so tired.

('I can't do this anymore.')

She needed a distance between them, even if she didn't want it. Romantic relationships had a tendency to blow up in her face. But friendships . . . well, they tended to be more reliable. After all, she had been friends with Miko for years and things only turned sour after they had crossed over the safety of that border into something more.

(things turned sour because you couldn't stand keeping it a secret from her anymore. The same thing would have happened if you'd still been only friends)

She shifted uncomfortably, remembering at the last second that she was supposed to be asleep. But Miko only stilled a moment before continuing with her motions, allowing the deception to maintain itself.

The relief passed her lips in a shaky exhale.

Magna couldn't bring herself to talk anymore. She was drained - both emotionally and physically - and the thought of pulling any more words out almost made her cry from exhaustion. And Miko seemed to sense that, almost as soon as Magna had first fallen silent. But then, she'd always been good at reading her.

She was observant. Like Connie.

Squeezing her eyes shut tighter, she immediately regretted the action. In the darkness, all she saw was her friend's face, disappearing into the crowd of sickos, possibly never to be seen again. Of course, Magna hadn't seen that at all. She'd kept her gaze ahead, too wary to look around and give away the disguise, but she had felt Connie's hand slip from hers, the ache of the empty space it left behind. Her imagination filled in the blanks now, even adding in a few colorful extras - wide eyes, a silent scream, falling beneath the weight of too many bodies, torn apart. Gone.

So many people were just . . . gone.

"Do you think she survived?" The words hung in the night air; foreign, distant. Magna blinked, unsure if they'd really come from her. She couldn't remember opening her mouth. But her tongue felt thick and heavy, her lips cracked, she could taste the metallic hint of blood caused by the effort.

Miko paused. Just a second, her fingers tangling in Magna's hair a little too tight, almost painful, then a breath, and she returned to smoothing it back. "You did."

"Barely. I was lucky."

"And there's no reason she won't be, too. Connie's smart, strong. She could make it."

Magna could think of a hundred reasons. A thousand.

Her stomach turned and she closed her eyes, opening them in a snap when Connie's face answered her. She trembled. "I should have stopped. I should have looked for her."

Miko didn't hesitate. "Then you'd be dead. Might even have gotten her killed as well. All for nothing."

At least, I wouldn 't be feeling like this.

Magna opened her mouth to argue but found that she didn't have the strength. She closed her eyes again, inhaling the scent of the woods, of the leaves and dirt beneath their bodies, of Miko. Especially Miko. "What the hell am I going to say to Kelly?"

If she wasn't dead.

What if they were the only ones left? Her and Miko. Bernie gone. Connie gone. Kelly gone. Luke gone. She'd failed to protect them. All of them.

And she'd thought she'd cried enough tears but her eyes burned and she rubbed at them fiercely, like there was dirt, like if she could just get it out the fire would vanish and she wouldn't crumble to ashes in its grip.

And there was Miko's voice, all at once gentle and firm, pulling her back. "She won't blame you. She knows you. You've always fought hard for us. As hard as you can. This just wasn't a situation in which you could."

Magna nearly scoffed.

No, she could have fought. But she'd gotten scared. She'd hesitated. She hated being fucking scared (small and shaking, hugging Morgan to her chest as Daddy's voice got loud, so loud, why was it so loud?). It was such a useless emotion. And now it had probably gotten Connie killed.

Miko tugged at her hair slightly, gentle but scolding. "Seriously, Magna. You couldn't have done anything. If anyone should be feeling guilty it's me."

Frowning, she turned her head in her grip to look up, a strand of hair snagged but she didn't mind the pain. "What are you talking about?"

But Miko shook her head, refusing to meet her gaze as she focused on raking her hands through Magna's hair, avoiding the knots with an ease born of years of practice. "I should have been there with you. I shouldn't have stayed behind that day."

And then you might be dead, too. Magna shuddered at the thought. Her worst fear, worse than Miko choosing to leave her, being taken from her. Forever.

And it wasn't even a what-if situation. It felt inevitable. This was the apocalypse: their expiration dates were always inching closer.

"I'm glad you did." Even though Magna couldn't see her face, she sensed her hurt, felt the flinch of her hand. "I couldn't lose you. Not like that."

Giving up on getting Miko to look at her, she settled back in her lap but kept her eyes open.

Yumiko's voice was caustic when she responded, fragile and harsh all at once. "I thought I lost you." The hand resumed its stroking, stiffer now, almost angry. "At least if I had been there I could have helped, and I would have known. I would have known if you were okay."

Not if you got out with Kelly.

But, no, Miko wouldn't have left them, wouldn't have left her. She would have seen her double back with Connie and gone after her too - like Magna, she was always watching. Maybe she would even have noticed and gone after Connie first - she was equally as protective of their group - and then Magna would have been the one left behind, to wonder, to fear.

Thinking about it, that probably would have driven her to punch Carol, too. Though her fuse had always been a lot shorter than Miko's.

Now, she snorted at the sudden memory. "I can't believe you punched Carol. I've never seen you like that." In a way, it had scared her. She was so used to Miko being the calm one, forever in control. She was the one who reined Magna in.

Okay, it had also been kind of hot. Even half-dead on her feet, she couldn't fail to notice that.

"To be honest, neither can I." There was a wry note to the older woman's tone, and Magna wondered if she was smiling, almost risked looking up again to find out. "I don't regret it, if that's what you're wondering."

"Not like you to kick a dog when it's down."

"Not like you to be so forgiving."

She scoffed. "I'm not. Connie's gone. Probably dead and she-" Magna swallowed, collecting herself. "I'm not forgiving. I just don't have the energy to be angry anymore."

"Well that's definitely not like you." Miko teased, hesitating for a moment before severity bled back into her tone. "Are you going to be okay?"

She closed her eyes, sighed. Why was she so good? "You don't have to worry about me, Miko."

Scoff. "Another lie. I found a grey hair the other day, thanks to you."

"Oh and it couldn't have possibly been the literal end of days that we're stuck in?"

"Have you met you?" Another tug at her hair, this time playful and, for a moment, Magna could breathe easier. "Seriously, though, are you going to be okay?"

For a moment.

She shifted, hair pulling painfully but that was almost welcome. "I'll be fine. I'll be a lot better once we find Kelly and Luke."

"And Connie."

"And Connie." She wished she could feel more hopeful on that front. Miko squeezed her shoulder and she relaxed slightly, trying to push the dark thoughts away for now. There'd been too many of them tonight already. There were always too many. But just for tonight she wanted to escape them, to hide away in Miko's lap and absorb every touch, every smell, every word . . . that she had come so close to never experiencing again.

. . .

"How can you lose me? You've owned me from the first moment I saw you."

― Dianna Hardy, Cry Of The Wolf

. . .

The full gravity of the world ending fell upon Yumiko within a matter of hours, there'd been no time to trivialize or hope. Right from the start, she'd felt the impact.

Her mother had been a doctor in the old world and she'd been working a shift at the hospital when the outbreak hit the city and surrounding areas. Yumiko's stomach still turned at the memory of calling her up from the safety of Magna's apartment, her eyes trained on the insanity playing out across every news station, her heart pounding as she pleaded, pleaded for the other woman to pick up, to be alright, to-

But the phone had rung and rung. One, two, twelve phone calls later and nothing.

----

Unable to sit and wait any longer, Yumiko swiped her abandoned keys off the table and marched towards the door, ready to drive over there right that second and  make  her mother okay. She was smart, her mother was smart, and resourceful, and she'd never stopped practicing krav maga - and Yumiko would definitely come to regret refusing all those classes the woman had tried to get her to enroll in growing up but she 'd been focused on her books and her studies and all her dreams for a future that fighting never entered into-

Her mother would be  fine .

But a hand grabbed hers - strong, nails almost biting into her skin - and pulled her back. "You can't go out there."

Magna.

At some point, she 'd forgotten the other woman was even there, just whose home she stood barricaded within.

"I have to get to the hospital, my mother she-"

"Yumiko, you saw the news - hell, you just almost got your face bitten off by one of those sickos - the world's fucking lost it. " Her face took on an expression of incredulity. "And you want to go to the fucking hospital? No, no way."

Yumiko clenched her jaw, trying not to snap. "She's my mother. I  need  to make sure she's okay."

"I know, OK? Trust me I get it but . . ." she took a breath, frustrated and Yumiko could detect an air of desperation in the way she closed her eyes, pressed her lips together. "But you just, you can't, okay? They said that part of the city is already overrun and it's a  hospital . The amount of people in there,  dying  people . . . it's a death trap."

Yumiko looked away, knowing she was right but unwilling to face it. It was her  mother .

For a spiteful moment, she wondered whether Magna really did  'get it'. As far as she knew, the other woman hadn't visited her own mother since she was a child. Yumiko didn't even know if she was still alive - or if Magna knew for that matter.

"Look, I . . . " Magna shook her head. "If I thought that it could work, that we'd be able to help, hell even be able to get  in  there, I would drive you myself."

"You don't have a license." She wasn 't sure why she said it, why out of all the things Magna was saying,  that  had stuck out the most. But it was the only thing she had the means to protest.

Magna huffed. "Fine, I'd let you drive but that-that's not the point. Miko, we don't even know how to kill these things. I stabbed that guy in the neck and he barely even flinched. The dead are eating people, I can't . . ." She shook her head, lost for words. "I can't protect you from that."

Yumiko cursed the way those words made her stomach flip -  not  the time. Her phone felt heavy in her pocket, useless, and her mind was a violent hellscape, tossing up image after image of all the situations that could be keeping her mother from answering but . . .

Fuck it.

She was right.

The world shook for a moment, shaky legs almost falling out from under her as she allowed herself to sink down onto the floor, hiding her head in her hands.  She was right . The darkness made everything still and she could imagine for a moment that this wasn't really happening, that it was just some big nightmare, that-

People were fucking  eating  people, for god's sakes.  Dead  people. How  could  this be real?

There was a pause, the sound of shuffling, and she felt a stiff form settle down beside her. Hesitantly, an arm came around her, too lose, too distant, but there. "I'm sorry."

Yumiko shook her head, forgetting entirely Magna's discomfort when it came to any kind of physical intimacy - hell, any kind of intimacy in general - and allowed herself to collapse. Falling into her, she buried her head in the other woman's chest, hands coming up to latch onto the fabric of her shirt, desperate for something, anything to hold onto.

Magna flinched and her body became like a rock, rebelling at every place of contact between them.

Remembering herself, Yumiko moved to withdraw, "Shit, sorry, I-" but the arm around her tightened, keeping her in place. Slowly, she felt the muscles against her force themselves to relax as that arm found a surer purchase, pulling her closer. After a moment, she felt the slight weight of a chin coming to rest on her head, a hand coming up to find one of hers. Disentangling Yumiko 's almost rabid hold, they wrapped around her and squeezed, held tight and this-

This was better.

"Stay."

She did.

. . .

"I am your friend. a soul for your soul. a place for your life. home. know this. sun or water. here or away. we are a lighthouse. we leave. and we stay."

― Nayyirah Waheed

. . .

Magna knew that Miko's upbringing had been a fair bit more stable than hers. Parents divorced at nine, yes, but that was terribly common wasn't it? (and neither of them had tried to shoot the other.) She'd graduated at the top of her class, whilst Magna had been kicked out of three schools for fighting before her aunt and uncle had given up and stopped sending her. It wasn't a huge loss. The only classes she'd been doing well in were art and P.E. And whilst she had missed those it was a relief to get away from the taunting students and judgmental teachers.

Considering her criminal record that kept her from working at anything other than a seedy truck stop with its overly handsy customers, that had probably worked out for the best. Good grades wouldn't have been of any help to her by then.

She still laughed sometimes at the memory of Miko popping by on her shifts, how out of place she'd looked, sitting on a rickety stool behind the counter whilst Magna tended customers, still dressed in a suit from work that never seemed to wrinkle.

The pair of them had garnered more than a few looks.

But Miko had been at ease with it, picking at her fries - the only food on the menu that would probably pass a health inspection - making small talk, interjecting with the occasional complaint about Jerry, the company vulture, who kept trying to steal her clients. Magna had been confused by the attention, wary even. She'd wondered if the lawyer checked up on all her former clients like this, or if she was just a special case. She hadn't asked - she hadn't wanted to know the answer, to face the inevitable 'yes'.

A part of her had wanted to scare her off, had hated the way she got instantly on edge as soon as she saw Miko's form enter in the door, the way she felt even worse when she watched her leave out it. But another, more secret part, had been starved for company; the kind that didn't make her want to punch someone, anyway. So she'd held her tongue, and slowly let down her defenses.

Until one night, a trucker had gone to bite a chunk out of Miko's face.

It had been her turn to work the truck stop diner connected to the store, and Yumiko had been leaning against the counter, nursing a cup of too-sweet hot chocolate and conversing with her between customers. She'd just glanced down at her phone after hearing a ping and Magna had looked up at the sound, glimpsed the man lumbering closer, closer - too close.

She'd never been so glad of the quick reflexes life had beaten into her, because in that moment she hadn't needed to think. She'd shoved Miko back, a little too forcefully since she ended up hitting the ground with a smack that made Magna wince - but it was enough.

Her hand had been grabbing the knife from beneath the bench before she even registered, her arm jolting with the shock of sinking it into flesh that gave way too easily as she leapt across the counter, blood spattering against her face in a terrible sort of deja vu, her stomach turning - fuck fuck fuck - but he didn't fall, didn't scream; and then she'd grabbed Miko, tugged her up and ran, ears howling with the sound of all hell breaking loose around them. The police sirens in her head hadn't been real, she'd known they weren't, they couldn't be, not this soon, but her heart pounded in her chest from more than just adrenaline and fuck-

She'd done it again.

And just when she was finally starting to get used to freedom.

She hadn't realized until later that night, hauled up in her apartment - it had been closest and neither of them had really wanted to be alone after that - and watching the actual End of Days unfold on international television, that it had been the first time they'd touched. Magna had always kept a certain level of distance and Miko had never tried to cross it. Not until later that night, when Magna had reached out to stop her from leaving, when she'd collapsed into her arms with an ease that made Magna want to run out the door instead . . . and later when Miko grabbed her hand as she was heading to bed. It was just a moment, just a brief squeeze accompanied by a weak but grateful smile - but Magna had felt her heart try to escape her chest at that smile, at that touch . . .

It had just been a push. Barely anything compared to getting someone out of jail at least twelve years - though more likely an entire lifetime - earlier than expected. Especially when she still hadn't known that the person she'd been fighting so hard to free wasn't nearly as innocent as she'd assumed.

Somehow, the most surprising event of the night, was that Magna hadn't minded the touch, hadn't pulled away. More shocking, she'd missed it when it was gone; had felt empty each time Miko left her grasp, yearning to reach out and-

And that was when Magna had known she was screwed.

Miko told her that she'd known the same thing sometime around the third day of planning their trial strategy.

Thirteen years later and they were still pretty screwed.

. . .

"I've spent much too long in the space between staying and letting go."

- Perry Poetry

 . . .

A/N: So this story has turned out to be a lot more Magna-centric then intended and that's not because I love Yumiko any less, I just find it easier to get inside the heads of characters like Magna. I'm used to writing somewhat dysfunctional people with more than a bit of trauma (probably cos I have a bit of trauma of my own lol). You know, the loveable walking disasters of the world. She might come off a bit ooc in this and that's partly because I'm still familiarizing myself with writing her and because she's a tad bit fragile after everything that's happened, which i think we all saw in last episode - Miko is also feeling pretty fragile for the same reason. Speaking of which. What. The. Fuck. It makes zero sense to me that these two would make up but still not get back together and I'm gonna sue the writers for torture if this keeps going on. So I had to write a fix-it fic. And I also felt like there was a lot these two still needed to talk about that I'm not entirely confident the show will ever address so voila a fic was made.

Also, just gonna note going forth that Magna’s own feelings about herself aren’t necessarily a reflection of my own feelings about her character. Girl’s got some insecurities to sort through. Likewise, her judgments - good and bad - about Yumiko aren’t necessarily true, either, for the same reason. It’s one of the causes for conflict in their relationship.

So there are probably two ways to look at how these two might have noticed they had feelings for each other: a) these two idiots have been in love for 13 years and were both too chicken and oblivious to do do anything about it, or b) their love developed slowly from the bonds of friendship over a very long time. I like both options but I decided to go with the former for this fic.

The series titles is from the song You by Keaton Henson. If you're familiar with the song - my Lost Girl buddies will be - don't worry nobody is going to die! that line just really fits them so much, and it's also about accepting the fact that you might lose the one you love but that doesn't mean you should be afraid of loving them or living your life.

. . .

OK, just gonna do a little shameless self-promotion, hope you don't mind :)

I made a yumagna vid so if you haven't seen it already and you're interested it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grzrpr0QZEE (I'm gonna do more so if you want to stay in the loop subscribe to my youtube channel. I'll probs end up doing a short one for Unsteady because of this fic but I'm holding out till we get a yumagna hug)

I have an insta for yumagna called @yumagnas.home . my multifandom one is @bonnielextra (lots of awesome women that i make edits for just fyi) and my personal one is @cissyalice. Hit me up so I can follow some more yumagna stans!

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[joannalannister]

Do you think grrm could have based the targaryens on the aryan race? Their obsession with keeping their Valariyn blood pure, with being exceptional and special (superior = master race anyone ?). Their looks set them apart from the rest of westeros too, they're meant to have white hair (blonde hair) and violet eyes (blue eyes). They seem like a mix of colonizers and arryans the more deeply I think about them, a Targaryen restoration seems like the worst possible idea to me.

Why would you ask me, a Lannister blog? Me, a Lannister blog. Yet here I am hoisting the Targaryen banner; the things this fandom makes me do smh. Nobody’s even gonna read a post this long but I’m not doing this by halves. 

So, GRRM has said that the Targaryens have an “obsession with the purity of their blood”. Let’s look at the text to get more details:

The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew; a boy, a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. “The blood of the dragon must remain pure,” the wisdom went.

The way the Old Valyrians maintained a “pure bloodline” was by marrying “kin to kin”. Marrying one Valyrian-blooded person to another Valyrian-blooded person was not enough in Old Valyria to keep the blood of the dragon “pure.”

What historical precedents could GRRM have been drawing on when he wrote that Targaryens  “marry kin to kin”? Fortunately we don’t need to speculate, especially when speculation leads to … this anon. GRRM has told us that he based the Targaryens on the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 323BC to 30BC:

The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. Also, there’s sometimes a fine line between madness and greatness. Daeron I, the boy king who led a war of conquest, and even the saintly Baelor I could also be considered “mad,” if seen in a different light. ((And I must confess, I love grey characters, and those who can be interpreted in many different ways. Both as a reader and a writer, I want complexity and subtlety in my fiction))  [SSM]

The Ptolemaic dynasty included Cleopatra, who married her brothers and whose parents were the products of incestuous unions to keep their Macedonian bloodline pure. Here is an interesting article comparing Daenerys and Cleopatra. Another fun article. (I am throwing this wish out into the void that I would like to see in-depth Dany-Cleopatra comparisons on my dash please.)

It’s interesting to me to read that the doylist reason GRRM chose to include interbreeding among Targaryens to accentuate “both flaws and virtues.” To me, GRRM has written ASOIAF as a story much larger than life, like the Paul Bunyan of fantasy, with impossibly large castles and impossibly vast geography and impossibly long seasons, an oversized place where GRRM’s characters do superhuman feats. GRRM’s characters have glaring flaws, but they also have glorious virtues to which I can only aspire. That’s the point tho. That’s one reason why we read: to see ourselves, only magnified. 

Why do Targaryens have a tendency to interbreed and keep their Valyrian blood pure? GRRM says the Targaryens intermarried to avoid conflict. It’s a matter of  common sense to avoid fights when giant fire-breathing lizards are involved, as the Dance of the Dragons illustrates. 

The Targaryens are the extreme example of that policy [to reinforce the family’s bloodline]: they only marry within the family to keepthe purity of the blood, and that way you avoid the problem of having several candidates for thethrone or the rule of the family. 

If you have a generation of five brothers and each of them hasseveral children (sons?), after two or three generations you could find yourself with thirtypotential heirs: there could be thirty people named Lannister or Frey, and that produces conflict,because all of them are going to get involved in hereditary fights for the throne. 

That’s what originated the War of the Roses; An excess of candidates for the throne, all of themdescendants of Edward III. Laking an heir (like Henry VIII) is just as bad as having too many ofthem. If you have five sons and you want to avoid that kind of problem, maybe it’s not such abad idea to marry the firstborn girl of the oldest son with the third son (or with the firstborn of thethird son?), and that way you avoid fights and the bloodline remains united

Something to note about this SSM entry is that GRRM was discussing all this blood purity stuff in the context of Tywin. The asker was literally asking why Tywin married Joanna, and GRRM answered that it was a love match and to reinforce the Lannister bloodline. Now, why would GRRM jump to discussions of blood purity when Tywin Lannister comes up?? Why ever could that be?? 

I know why. If we’re looking for the family that was inspired by fascist ideology, we don’t need to look far. 

This issue of blood purity is a way to maintain dynastic power in a feudal system. 

Which is bad, in the sense that feudalism is inherently a bad system, especially in comparison to, say, democracy. Even Ned Stark’s benevolent feudalism is bad compared to democracy. Lemme say that again - Even Stark feudalism is bad. 

There should be a populist revolution in Westeros and literally every noble should lose their aristocratic status and wealth and power, and all this wealth and power should be redistributed to the common people, and everyone in Westeros should be given equal rights and there should be free and open elections to choose democratic representatives. 

But I suspect anon isn’t interested in TWOW detailing their fav aristos losing all their fancy jewels and samite, and I don’t think anon is making signs saying “Down with feudalism! Down with monarchy! Down with the aristocracy! Eat the rich!” Somehow I really don’t think that’s what this anon is campaigning for. 

*~*~*~*~*~*

(Note to self: is there a correlation between real-world economic systems and the types of fantasy produced under those systems? In other words, does capitalism motivate medieval fantasyland? And how do real-world levels of income inequality influence income-inequality in fantasyland? These are questions I am interested in.)

*~*~*~*~*~*

 Anyways.

If we accept feudalism as par for the course in medieval fantasyland, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that the nobility wants to maintain their dynastic power in a feudal system. It’s what they do with that power that’s important. 

As the original asker of this SSM question pointed out, marriages are a way of maintaining power and building alliances in a feudal system, but such marriages also raise up the lesser House and make it more powerful

For example, I believe Lord Roger Reyne wanted to marry one of his sons to Genna Lannister to gain more power in the Westerlands, but was thwarted when Tytos betrothed Genna to Emmon Frey instead. Similarly, the previous Lord Reyne, Lord Robert Reyne, arranged a marriage between his daughter Ellyn Reyne and Gerold’s heir Tywald Lannister. The Reynes wanted more power and influence in the west, perhaps even to go so far as to topple House Lannister and become the dominant House in the West. 

The Targaryens face a similar problem, on a much larger scale. Whatever House they marry into, it raises that House up and grants them considerable power, potentially creating a disequilibrium point in the game of thrones and causing more innocents to suffer. (…honestly why do you think Tywin wanted his daughter to be queen?) 

This is why the Targaryens (and all the nobles really) need to consider their marriages (or even mistresses) very carefully. If you choose your partner poorly, without concern for dynastic politics, it could throw the land into chaos. (See: Tytos Lannister, Rhaegar Targaryen, Duncan the Small, etc) 

So, who are the Targaryens marrying? Because anon seems to be making the assumption that the Targs don’t marry outside their bloodline in any significant numbers, and I intend to challenge that assumption. 

The Targaryens certainly do have a tendency to intermarry, as we see in The Sworn Sword:

Egg spoke as if such incest was the most natural thing in the world. For him it is. The Targaryens had been marrying brother to sister for hundreds of years, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. Though the last actual dragon had died before Dunk was born, the dragonkings went on. Maybe the gods don’t mind them marrying their sisters. 

“The Targaryens had been marrying brother to sister for hundreds of years, to keep the blood of the dragon pure.” And yet, despite Dunk’s observation, the Targaryens have been marrying outside of House Targaryen for hundreds of years as well, suggesting to me that dynastic politics rather than blood purity is their greatest concern. 

I will attempt to compile a list of people who are not of Valyrian descent who married a member of House Targaryen. I have not read Fire and Blood yet, so I hope that someone will let me know if I’ve forgotten anyone and I will edit this post to include them (I do not mind spoilers). Any corrections to this list are appreciated. 

Ceryse Hightower 

Elinor Costayne 

Alys Harroway 

Jeyne Westerling

Tyanna of Pentos (Tyanna of the Tower)

Argella Durrandon (who married Targ bastard Orys)

Rodrik Arryn

Rhea Royce

Alicent Hightower

Corwyn Corbray

Garmund Hightower

Rohanne of Tyrosh (who married Daemon Blackfyre)

Michael Manwoody

Ossifer Plumm

Ronnel Penrose

Aelinor Penrose

Betha Blackwood

Dyanna Dayne

Mariah Martell

Maron Martell

Jenna Dondarrion

Kiera of Tyrosh

somebody from House Tarth

Jenny of Oldstones

Lyanna Stark (I believe in R+L=J. I personally do not think R/L got married in the books, but even without a marriage I think this relationship should be included here. When Rhaegar chose someone to have his ice & fire prophecy baby with, he did not choose someone with valyrian blood.)

I think it’s also important to note that there are various Targaryens who wanted relationships outside of House Targaryen, but who couldn’t marry outside their House / couldn’t marry who they wanted, for various reasons. For example, Aerys and Rhaella did not want an incestuous marriage.

And gay marriage is not legal in Westeros but anyways:

Daeron Targaryen, son of Aegon V - in love with Jeremy Norridge

Rhaena Targaryen, daughter of Prince Aenys - idk if she was bisexual or a lesbian or what but Rhaena definitely liked a lotta non-Targ girls, and Westeros is a homophobic, misogynistic place that hates women and hates wlw so it’s not like Rhaena could have married any of these women

I am counting this as (at least) two non-Targ “marriages”. Fight me.

This makes a total of 27 non-Targ relationships. 

There are also instances where a Targ has married someone outside of House Targaryen, but that person has some Valyrian blood. As mentioned above, tho, keeping the blood of the dragon “pure” is defined in the books as marrying “kin to kin” but I will keep this as a distinct subcategory for now. 

Valaena Velaryon

Alyssa Velaryon

Jocelyn Baratheon (valyrian blood through Orys)

Corlys Velaryon

Larra Rogare

Aemma Arryn

Laenor Velaryon

Laena Velaryon

Alyn Velaryon

Daenaera Velaryon

Ormund Baratheon

Elia Martell

This brings us to a total of 39 non-Targ marriages. These 39 marriages do not fit the in-world definition of keeping the blood of the dragon ~pure~. 

So how many Targ*Targ marriages do we know of exactly, so that we can figure out if blood purity was the main concern for House Targaryen?

Gaemon and Daenys

Aegon and Elaena

Aegon and Visenya(+Rhaenys)

Aegon and Rhaenys(+Visenya)

Aegon and Rhaena

Jaehaerys I and Alysanne

Baelon and Alyssa

Rhaenyra and Daemon

Aegon II and Helaena

Aegon III and Jaehaera

Aegon IV and Naerys

Baelor and Daena the Defiant

Aelor and Aelora

Aerion and Daenora

Jaehaerys II and Shiera

Aerys and Rhaella

I’ll list Targ*Targ affairs too to make it fair, since I included potential gay marriages above:

Aegon IV/Daena the Defiant

Brynden/Shiera 

Aemon the Dragonknight/Naerys (this is only speculated and I honestly don’t actually think this was consummated but let’s throw it in here)

This is a total of 19 Targ*Targ relationships. 

It is possible I’ve forgotten someone and I appreciate corrections. 

So I have a total of 58 relationships here in my sample. 

25+12+2+16+3 = 58

Let’s break that down:

~pure dragon blood~ relationships = 19/58 = 32.8%

~impure~ relationships = 39/58 = 67.2%

Roughly two-thirds of known Targaryen relationships do not keep the blood of the dragon “pure” by the book definition of blood purity. 

If you wish to break the ~impure~ relationships down further:

Targ*Valyrian-blooded relationships = 12/58 = 20.7%

Targ*non-Valyrian-blooded relationships = 27/58 = 46.6%

At the very minimum, at least 46% of Targ relationships were not motivated by blood purity reasons. Note, I think this number is too low, because like Queen Victoria “the grandmother of Europe” and her descendants, the nobility tend to intermarry a lot (because of classism). People like Aemma Arryn have valyrian blood because everyone is intermarrying. 

I will say again, roughly two-thirds of known Targaryen relationships do not keep the blood of the dragon “pure” by the book definition. 

Targaryens intermingled with the people of Westeros, they didn’t keep their blood “pure”. This is a very different attitude from, say, the 20th century anti-miscegenation laws that made it illegal for people of different races to have sex. 

I already pointed out above how GRRM has said these incestuous unions were motivated at least in part by dynastic politics. Could there be any other reasons?

Why did the valyrians before the Doom all practice incest? The “blood of the dragon” is not just about valyrians marrying valyrians, although that’s how anon is trying to spin it. The text specifically says that maintaining “the blood of the dragon” is about marrying “kin to kin.”  

We do not yet know why the valyrians practiced incest. Why is it important that “the blood of the dragon must remain pure”? It has not yet been explained. But there are theories. @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly​​ has already addressed this issue, so I will refer you to her posts: 1, 2 and her entire tag for #the blood of the dragon.

Why is it important that “the blood of the dragon must remain pure”?

I don’t know, but we’re definitely not reading books with magic. We’re definitely not reading books with blood magic. We’re definitely not reading books with giant magical fire-breathing lizards. We definitely don’t need easy ways to control those lizards. Definitely not. 

I mean, we still don’t know exactly what “the blood of the dragon” means but I  think what GRRM wrote with House Targaryen’s incestuous ~blood purity~ is something different from Aryanism. 

Which isn’t to say that all this blood purity bullshit GRRM wrote shouldn’t be criticized. Placing importance on the ~purity~ of someone’s blood in any context is … not a good look. GRRM has been kinda playing this trope straight so far, but I am hoping he smashes it in future books; Tyrion is eager to ride a dragon, and A plus J does not equal T.  

To quote what @moonlitgleek​​ said:

I hate it when people start talking about percentage of Valyrian blood as if that’s the measure of who rides a dragon. Whip up your calculators, everyone. We need to figure out how much Valyrian blood it takes to ride a dragon, be the subject of prophecy or be a savior. Anyone below a certain percentage can not measure.

This blood purity bullshit is bad, I actually agree with anon on that. But I’m not sure why that means we should condemn the entirety of House Targaryen. 

Especially when GRRM loves the Targaryens so much he keeps writing history books about them instead of finishing the series…

Like, from Fire and Blood, Jaehaerys I and Alysanne Targaryen are one of those Targ*Targ marriages that I admit help reinforce Targ blood purity. But this marriage was how Alysanne exercised her own bodily autonomy, by marrying who she wanted, because she and Jaehaerys had their dragons and no one was able to stop them. But anon … anon gonna call that Aryanism …

Anyways. I want to move on to anon’s other claims, but first I think it might be useful to define Aryanism, since anon seems to think it is about marrying brother to sister, which it is not. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Aryanism grew out of 19th century fascist ideologies. The term Aryan is related to the root -arya which is related to a Sanskrit word meaning “honorable, respectable, noble.” In the mid- to late-1800s, the term “Aryan race” was coopted by racists to justify their repellant “scientific racism” that claimed that “blond” Germanic / Nordic / Northern European people were a “superior race.” Note that “blond” is specifically mentioned by these ~scientists~ espousing their racist ideology. They claimed that “Aryans” were “natural leaders, destined to rule over” the other races. According to Jackson Spielvogel, Hitler described the Slavic peoples as “a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master.” Himmler said, “whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. Otherwise it is of no interest.” 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Anon was correct that racial superiority is a characteristic of Aryanism. 

But do the Targaryens consider themselves to be a superior race to the other peoples of Westeros, or other peoples in general?  

GRRM says he wanted the Targaryens to be “a race apart”:

Speaking of Valyria… right from the start I wanted the Targaryens, and by extension the Valryians from whom they were descended, to be a race apart, with distinctive features that set them apart from the rest of Westeros, and helped explain their obsession with the purity of their blood. To do this, I made a conventional ‘high fantasy’ choice, and gave them silver-gold hair, purple and violet eyes, fine chiseled aristocratic features. That worked well enough, at least in the books (on the show, less so).

But in recent years, it has occured to me from time to time that it might have made for an interesting twist if instead I had made the dragonlords of Valyria… and therefore the Targaryens… black. Maybe I could have kept the silver hair too, though… no, that comes too close to 'dark elf’ territory, but still… if I’d had dark-skinned dragonlords invade and conquer and dominate a largely white Westeros… though that choice would have brought its own perils. The Targaryens have not all been heroic, after all… some of them have been monsters, madmen, so…

Well, it’s all moot. The idea came to me about twenty years too late.

What does it mean to be “a race apart”? Does “apart” automatically mean superior? To me, “apart” here means different or distinct.  But does that mean “superior”?

I’ve already addressed the fact that Targaryens are on average twice as likely to marry someone outside their House than to marry a Targaryen, so I don’t think the incest can be used to say the House as a whole claims superiority. 

There are certainly some Targaryens who view themselves as racially superior. Aerys Targaryen comes to mind; he said of his newborn granddaughter that she “smells dornish.” The Blackfyre cause is certainly racist (for example, Team Blackfyre did not like it that their ~precious white princess~ Daenerys Targaryen, was married to Maron Martell). There are many other Targaryens who were racist. But racism isn’t exclusive to members of House Targaryen. Many nobles in Westeros are racist: Joffrey, Cersei, Tywin - but we were talking about House Targaryen.

What of Daeron Targaryen, who married a Dornish princess, who surrounded himself with Dornishmen and women and artists and intellectuals, and he wanted to include all these people at his court? I don’t know where the textual evidence is that King Daeron adopted an attitude of racial superiority.

What of Maegelle Targaryen? Would you truly accuse her of an attitude of superiority? Maegelle was a septa who nursed children with greyscale, until she herself caught greyscale and died. 

When Aegon the Conqueror became high king, he adopted some Westerosi customs to assimilate. For example, 

Heraldic banners had long been a tradition amongst the lords of Westeros, but such had never been used by the dragonlords of old Valyria. When Aegon’s knights unfurled his great silken battle standard, with a red three-headed dragon breathing fire upon a black field, the lords took it for a sign that he was now truly one of them, a worthy high king for Westeros.

Aegon the Conqueror literally wanted to join with the Westerosi nobles and become one of them. Compare this to Tywin, who disparages nobles from another continent as nothing but "spice soldiers and cheese lords”. So who has the superior attitude? 

And what of Daenerys Targaryen? Dany embraces the Dothraki customs of her husband. (Contrast this with how her brother Viserys belittles the Dothraki.) Daenerys befriends orphans, former prostitutes, former slaves, people of many different races. I don’t think Daenerys adopts an attitude of racial superiority. (It’s true that GRRM does fall into some racist tropes when he writes ASOIAF, but I don’t think this means that Daenerys supports Aryanism, or that GRRM was inspired by white supremacy when he first imagined Daenerys. (Like, srsly, wtf??) Daemon Blackfyre I can definitely see being inspired by white supremacist movements in the real world, but Daenerys?)

Anon accuses the Targaryens of being “exceptional and special”. idk I thought controlling dragons was special.  Kinda like controlling direwolves is special. Controlling magical creatures is special. But I didn’t think controlling magical creatures made you a fascist or a supporter of Aryanism. 

If you want to make the case for a group of white people in ASOIAF posing as ~the master race~, I would actually suggest the valyrians of Old Valyria. The sorcerer-princes of Old Valyria captured and enslaved people and used people to fuel their magical empire. The attitude of Old Valyria actually seems very similar to that Himmler quote I gave you above:  “whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. Otherwise it is of no interest.” The dragonlords of Old Valyria definitely colonized other places and practiced imperialism. 

But the Targaryens were like the hillbillies of Old Valyria. They weren’t very powerful. Shortly before the Doom they relocated to a rock in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the Valyrian empire, and then the Doom and the Century of Blood meant suddenly the Targs were on top by accident (and a really smart woman). It’s like an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard or The Beverly Hillbillies, and this is why Tywin and his ancestors before him were so fucking pissed, because who the fuck even is this hillbilly targ family with their ~dRAgoNs~ and their ~InCeSt~ that’s ~bEtTeR~ than our ~LAnNiCeSt~ and ~~~We were kings in Casterly Rock for thousands of years, so who the fuck are these hicks~~~

Anon mentions the characteristic silver-gold hair and purple eyes of House Targaryen. GRRM explains that he “made a conventional 'high fantasy’ choice, and gave them silver-gold hair, purple and violet eyes, fine chiseled aristocratic features.” 

Is there racism in conventional high fantasy? Yeah. 

Does ASOIAF have racist writing? Yeah. 

Is GRRM playing some of those racist tropes straight instead of subverting them? Yeah. 

Could GRRM do better? Yeah. GRRM himself thinks he might have made the Targaryens dark-skinned.

Despite GRRM’s racist writing, I don’t think this means that the Targaryens as GRRM wrote them are all, without exception, terrible people. 

I would also like to point out that House Targaryen exhibits a variety of phenotypes. They are not all the same, they’re not all blond and fair and ~Nordic looking~. Here is a partial list of Targaryens without the traditional look. If someone has statistics on the percentage of Targs without Valyrian features, I would appreciate a link, but I’m math’d out right now. 

Speaking broadly, House Targaryen has certainly done some terrible things. For example, I think the Targaryen conquest of Dorne was imperialistic. Many people have already addressed imperialism in ASOIAF in detail, so I will refer you to this tag. 

Was Aegon’s Conquest of Westeros a good thing, or a bad thing? I don’t know. Truly I don’t know - there is good and bad both in what Aegon the Conqueror did. 

GRRM says this about him:

“Aegon finally decided to take over Westeros, and unify the Seven Kingdoms (that existed at the time) under a single rule. There is a lot of speculation that, in some sense, he saw what was coming 300 years later, and wanted to unify the Seven Kingdoms to be better prepared for the threat that he eventually saw coming from the North – the threat that we’re dealing with in A Song of Ice and Fire.” 

Individually, some Targaryens were certainly awful. Others were good and kind. Some of them were mediocre. I think we should evaluate these characters individually, instead of condemning an entire family. I think that is what GRRM is trying to get us to do, judge each character individually based on their crimes and/or their heroism. 

“a Targaryen restoration seems like the worst possible idea“

Anon thinks the worst possible thing that could happen to Westeros is that Dany becomes queen of the Seven Kingdoms. 

That’s “the worst possible idea” of what could happen. 

The Others could win the War for the Dawn and enslave/murder every single living creature on Terros. That’s a distinct possibility. 

But anon would rather have every single person on Terros die than for Dany to become queen of the Seven Kingdoms? 

And people say this fandom isn’t misogynistic. 

I really don’t think it would be a bad thing for a person as compassionate as Daenerys Targaryen to become queen of the Seven Kingdoms. 

Westeros could certainly do worse than Dany. The Lannisters could stay in power, for example. 

Cuz you know which family is repeatedly described as blond and fair and there is a LOT of uniformity in their appearance? Which family didn’t want to marry a Dornish girl? Which family described the Westerlings as “doubtful blood” and wouldn’t marry them? Which family had a common girl gang raped because the heir married her? Cuz it sure wasn’t Aegon V’s family.

Who said Lannisters are “worth more” than other people? Who captured and enslaved people at Harrenhal while burning their lands?

Tywin Lannister did that. GRRM ain’t exactly subtle about pointing out the fascist. It’s Tywin and Randyll and people like them who are the fascist who support Aryanism.

Daenerys is repeatedly in direct opposition to Tywin’s philosophies. Daenerys is one of the heroes. She’s a complex, well-written hero. She flirts with darkness but ultimately rejects it. She’s a grey, complicated hero. 

This fandom doesn’t deserve Dany, but she’s gonna save the world anyway.

[bucci-gang]

you asked for it kiddo... do you have any la squadra backstory hc's? (i saw it in one of your tags don't try and hide it 👀)

oHHHHH!!!!!! THANK YOU- this got pretty long jhhhhhggh,,,, and also!! some of these are very heavily influenced by stuff i’ve seen in the fandom, although a majority of these are my own!

(Content warning though, this gets pretty heavy- i’m going to be talking about death, miscarriages, illnesses, injury, neglect and csa in this one. Tagged and under a cut to be safe.)

RISOTTO NERO

No one would believe you if you told them, but Polpo is his father. If the eyes didn’t give it away, Polpo’s old pictures (if you manage to get a hold of them, that is) most definitely will. No one knows how Polpo ended up looking like that now, but in his younger days, around the same age as Risotto, he looked pretty much exactly like him. 

He’s not aware of his biological mother, but he knows she’s a stand user from Egypt, who utilizes magnetism.

Risotto was adopted by a Sicilian family, and was raised without knowledge of his connections to the mafia, or stands. It was not until he began killing at age 18 that he began to look more into who his real parents were.

He doesn’t resent his adoptive parents- his adoptive father was a carpenter, who raised Risotto to be well-versed in carpentry as well, and his adoptive mother was a seamstress. He had an adoptive older sister, and of course, his little cousin who came over so often he practically lived with them. His family isn’t perfect, of course- his father is too strict, his mother too troubled, and his sister was too distant. Thinking about it now as an adult, he couldn’t blame them for being like that. His mother’s miscarriage probably weighed on the family too.

He was always the quiet brooding type. As a child, his quiet inclinations were regarded as him being shy. When he reached into adolescence and began forming opinions of his own, Risotto was then given the “quiet and serious” adage under his name. He’d always been the type to lead and act according to what he believes is right, after all. That being said, however, he operates under his own judgement and experiences, and the same can still be said about him even after so long. His general distrust of authority began showing itself in his adolescence, as well.

Sometimes, Risotto feels a tug in his heart, begging him to come home in their little house in Sicily, and visit his family once more. He painstakingly ignores this, and carries on. He does keep tabs on them however, and the knowledge that they’re safe and sound is enough to carry him on.

He joined Passione at 21 years old, around the same time he awoke his stand. He used to be of equal footing to Sorbet and Gelato, who at the time were both under a different capo. He broke apart from the gang to form his own, having decided that assassination was the best application for his skills after being involved in one of two many murders that were considered “overkill”, even for the mafia.

FORMAGGIO

Formaggio came from an average to low income family. His family was big, too- he had a mother, a father, two older sisters, and three younger sisters. As the only son, he was depended on for a lot of things, and often had to fill in for the father that his little sisters are clearly missing, by being the best older brother he could be. Obviously not by his own volition- he’d very much just relax and enjoy his teenage years, thank you very much- but he’s smart enough to know that his sisters deserve someone to guide them in their early years.

He’s always been street-smart, having dropped out of school just after he finished 7th grade to work. Home life was rather bleak- his father wasn’t home often, but when he was, he was always drunk and would go and beat his mother and his older sisters. This eventually stopped when their father died of liver cancer. Formaggio’s never been religious, but he felt overwhelmed enough to thank whoever was responsible for it.

He committed his first murder when he walked in on one of his elder sisters getting beaten by her husband. Formaggio at the time lived with her, and with two of his little sisters in tow. His other elder sister lived with his mom, along with his other little sister. Thankfully enough, the children were not there to witness either of the abuse or the murder. This had Formaggio contemplating a lot of other things, and soon, he succumbed to the bleak, and harsh criminal underbelly of Italy. He was recruited a year later by Risotto.

Just to establish my last point- Formaggio is actually only one year younger than Risotto- which makes him older than everybody else save for Sorbet. No one else but Risotto, Sorbet and Gelato believe this.

ILLUSO

Came from a well-off, but not wealthy, family. He had an older brother and an older sister, and while their parents weren’t always present due to work, they made sure they were there when public appearances were necessary. He’d always been distant with everybody except for his elder sister, who would care for him to the best of her ability despite being frail and sickly.

Illuso always had a fascination with observing behind the scenes. Being quiet and often overlooked, he grew accustomed to being alone. That doesn’t mean he didn’t sneak off to spy on other people’s conversations he probably shouldn’t be listening to in the first place. 

He knew something was bound to come out of those late night meetings where his father would come home tipsy and infuriated about something. Soon enough, his suspicions were confirmed. His father had lost everything to his gambling addiction, and with it came the family’s already estranged relations with one another. The final straw was when his sister died. 

Illuso, having lost all motivation to keep living in such a life, left home. He figured, he’d always been alone, anyway. What’s a couple of years in the streets gonna do to him? With his natural intuition and general sneaky tendencies, his skills proved important out in the world, where the rule was survival of the fittest.

He was found by a capo, and drafted into the Intel Team after he’d been shot by the arrow by accident. He was a key member until he was reassigned to La Squadra due to a sudden influx of newcomers in the mob.

Admittedly enough, his origins have made him somewhat sympathetic to Fugo, although he’d never admit it.

PROSCIUTTO

Prosciutto was born from an American-Italian family, and was totally a private school kid. He was raised in the States for a while until his 15th birthday, where he travelled with his grandfather from the US to Italy. His family was distant and secretive, but he definitely knew they had ties to something very, very illegal. His mother was sickly and stayed at home, seeing doctors more than she saw her own sons; and their father was never around. Despite the luxury they were raised in, he and Pesci were all they really had. 

He might’ve not noticed it when he was young, but he was trained and educated exactly where they wanted him to– to eventually take over the family business when he was old enough. His grandfather was incredibly supportive of this, and when Prosciutto started showing signs that he had tremendous potential to become the head of the famiglia.

When he travelled from the US to Italy, this was his first introduction to the bleak life his grandfather led. He committed his first murder at 16, all curated and taken care of by the mafia. It was certainly a bit much, but Prosciutto showed commitment to his grandfather’s will for him.

He joined Passione at 20 years old, after his famiglia’s territory was taken over by Passione. Some of his men survived, while some were not so lucky. He was officially drafted into the Hitman Team shortly after Formaggio was.

PESCI

Him and Prosciutto are actually full brothers. Him and Prosciutto were private school kids, and while Prosciutto aced all his classes, Pesci was content receiving  average marks. He truly excelled in choir and in theater, however, and in turn made his mother incredibly proud of him. She would always come to his recitals whenever he performed, main role or not, despite how sickly she was.

Pesci didn’t bother with their dad- Fra says not to. And while was not close to his own grandfather like Prosciutto was, he was incredibly close to his uncle. While he had his suspicions about the true source of their family’s ludicrous wealth, his uncle always made sure to spend time with Pesci, taking him out swimming and fishing and all that. His uncle made sure he had a childhood- too concerned with Pesci being drafted into their dangerous lifestyle too early like Prosciutto was.

When Prosciutto left for Italy, Pesci stayed behind for a while, as he was only 12 when his brother went. He caught wind of his brother’s untimely fate of joining the mafia when he was 17, and it goes without saying that Pesci was heartbroken. He then ultimately made it his goal to find him and be reunited once more.

Pesci was drafted into Passione at age 20, but became a part of the Hitman Team at 21, after a particularly intense argument with Prosciutto.

MELONE

Melone was born in Switzerland, but he moved to Italy when he was around 10 years old. His parents were doctors who were constantly away due to their job, and while he had no other siblings, his parents made sure he had everything he could ever want. From toys to new clothes to books, he was very much spoiled. Perhaps it was to compensate for the fact that while he attained a lot of academic achievements, his parents remained absent. They were very proud of him, however, as he’d proven himself to be nothing short of a genius at a very young age. He was polite, and spoke well with elders. He generally got along with his peers, although they did find him odd and intimidating at times.

When he was in his teens, he begun to seek out partners. Perhaps due to his own curiosity, he saw too much a little too soon. This was also when he’d killed his uncle in a fit of rage, after he’d tried to assault Melone. This was when his genius turned into a maddening hunger for knowledge. It goes without saying that Melone experimented on his uncle’s corpse, and a bunch of other laboratory samples.

When he dropped out of university, he begun to sell information about his research in shady places online. He was drafted into Passione when a capo took note of his rather… interesting discoveries about reproduction and genetics, and figured his abilities could prove useful.

He became part of the Hitman Team shortly after Illuso joined.

GHIACCIO

Ghiaccio was born in Korea, but moved in his pre-teen years after his parents were offered work in Italy. He had an older sister whom he idolized, and initially was his reason for pursuing ice skating in the first place. Their parents were never the most outwardly affectionate, towards each other and their children, but Ghiaccio’s older sister always made sure he knew how much she loved him.

His interest in linguistics were sparked by his parents, who were interpreters. He never really cared much for it when he was really young, but when he began to turn his attention to books instead of his peers who would often cast him out, he found out he was a natural at picking up different languages and its quirks.

He started seriously skating when he was 10 years old, and would always beg his sister to come with him. She humoured him, being a skater herself. Ghiaccio has very fond memories of those winter mornings when him and his sister would sneak out of the house to go find a lake frozen over, and skate for a few hours, forgetting all their troubles. He started competing at age 13, and won his first gold medal at 14. He proved to be a prodigy in ice skating.

Due to his peers casting him out and emotional neglect from his parents, his characteristic anger issues began manifesting. They started showing more violently out of humiliation and hatred for himself when he injured himself during a performance. He begun to shut others out, only ever reacting in anger and annoyance. His anger issues got worse when his older sister was injured just before one of her performances, and out of anger, he took off and killed the person who had orchestrated her injury.

Knowing he could never return to his old life after this, he set off and took his anger out on a random group of strangers at a bar who pissed him off too much at the moment, the alcohol in his system amplifying the anger and shame he felt. He was found by Sorbet and Gelato, who recommended him to Risotto. He became part of the Hitman Team shortly before Pesci joined.

[raywritesthings]

Pain

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Quentin Lance, Dinah Lance, Sara Lance, Ted Grant Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Summary: The five years Oliver is away change drastically when his soulmate can feel all the same pain that he does, and vice versa. Notes: Inspired by, and thus gifted to, @unusual-raccoon, for the observation that there are not many Lauriver soulmate AUs. I hope you enjoy! *Also can be read on my AO3*

The problem is, her soulmate has never had a painful day in their life.

Not that there haven’t been little twinges here and there. The odd sting of a nonexistent paper cut, a groggy morning in a hungover state Laurel has done nothing the previous night to earn. But that could be anyone anywhere. It doesn’t give her any sort of certainty, so she doesn’t pay it much attention. She already knows who she loves: her boyfriend, Oliver Queen.

As it is, their combined sheltered lifestyles leave her woefully unprepared for when it all changes.

Laurel awakens in her childhood bedroom in the middle of the night with a jolt. She’s freezing, she’s falling, there’s nothing but inky blackness all around her. Somehow she cries out, or chokes, because her father comes racing in, grabbing hold of her.

“Laurel? Laurel, what’s wrong?”

But she can’t answer. She can’t get air. She is drowning, drowning on dry land—

With a great heave of breath, it lifts just enough. Laurel falls into her father’s arms, shaking and sobbing. What had that been? Why had it happened?

“I’m here, honey. You’re safe.”

“I’m o- I’m okay,” she manages, still gasping with every other breath.

“She’s breathing,” she hears her mother say, and it only just registers to her that her mom is on the phone. “It seems to have passed. What should we do until the paramedics arrive?”

“I don’t need paramedics,” Laurel protests weakly. She feels better mostly. Her shaking has calmed to just a shiver. It’s so cold in here.

“They’re already on their way, honey.”

“And for good reason. I’ve never been so terrified,” her dad remarks. He brushes some of her hair back. “Were you dreaming? A nightmare?”

“I don’t know.”

The paramedics don’t know either. They check her over and give her parents some vague instructions. Her dad insists on sitting up in her room the rest of the night to make certain there would be no repeat of whatever had happened.

The next day she gets up and tries to go about things as normal to ease her parents’ worries. She feels fine, aside from a parched throat that doesn’t seem to be quenched by any amount of water and a growing hunger in her belly despite the breakfast and lunch she eats.

Laurel volunteers to help her dad with the dishes while their kitchen television plays on in the background, and that is how she gets the news: the Queen’s Gambit has gone down in a storm.

Mrs. Queen arrives sometime after with even worse to tell them. There were no survivors, and her own sister had been on the yacht. She’d snuck off to be with Oliver. His last act had been to cheat on her.

Whatever strange pains she had been going through are nothing compared to the weight of that betrayal. Laurel can’t believe it. She’d known about Oliver’s playboy tendencies, but how could he do this to her when they’d been planning a life together? And with her own sister. How could Sara?

They hold a quiet funeral with family only and an empty casket. It was shameful the way Sara had died, after all, and not many are interested in claiming her as a friend. Her mother sobs the whole way through and nothing her father does or says can seem to console her. Not that he’s in a good state to do so.

Laurel is numb. Just numb to it all. She goes down to the docks where she’d said goodbye to Oliver, where he’d acted like nothing was different, and stares out at the ocean that had taken two of the most important people in her life away. She looks up statistics, research about shipwrecks. Surely there’s some way someone lived? But there’s nothing.

What else is there to do but go back to her classes?

Laurel keeps her head down the first couple of days. Everyone knows what happened, that she is the one who  lost her sister and boyfriend while they’d been screwing each other behind her back. She can hear whispers wherever she walks and feel the stares on her back. All she can do is ignore it; it has to go away after a while.

Only a day or so later comes the next incident, just as she’s walking down the steps of the lecture hall. Pain erupts in her chest, and Laurel screams in anguish as it rips through her.

She doesn’t know anything for a time, only dimly coming back to herself in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, classmates and the professor standing over her with looks of alarm and even fear. The pain is still there, and she doesn’t have words to describe what it is.

By the time it’s dull ache, her father has arrived.

“What happened?”

“I don’t- I don’t know, Daddy. But it hurt so much.”

He takes her to their family doctor who refers them to a specialist. During the wait for that, she suffers another attack, though not nearly as painful.

“In the absence of any physical wound, I would have to assume your daughter has a soulmate connection.”

“But this has never happened before,” her father protests.

“Then it’s likely that her soulmate’s circumstances have changed.”

“Well isn’t there a drug, something that dampens that connection?”

“I’m afraid those are very closely regulated. We would need the confirmed identity of her soulmate.” The doctor turns to her. “Miss Lance, do you think you might know them?”

Laurel has been thinking it over. The first night this happened would have been the night the Gambit went down. “I think, maybe...Oliver?”

“Queen?” Her father practically screams. “That good for nothing? He’s dead, Laurel, he’s at the bottom of the ocean. And it’s the one bit of happiness I’ve got left to cling to anymore! Now you better hope it’s somebody else!”

They go home in stony silence with no treatment plan and Laurel trying to hold back tears.

Laurel doesn’t know what she wants. If Oliver is alive — but then, wouldn’t he have reached out to his family? Wouldn’t any survivor have reached out?

She loved him. She can’t imagine finding that with another person. But she’s found something with someone, apparently.

Why did it have to hurt so much?

—-

The problem is, he’s in so much pain on his own that it takes some time to notice it. Or rather to separate it out.

It starts a few days after the Gambit was torn apart, some time when he was drifting alone towards the island. Oliver thought the ache in his chest, the hurt, the betrayal, was a result of his father’s confession and subsequent suicide. How could he leave him alone like this to fend for himself? Why had he made him watch?

Yet it persists. After he meets Yao Fei, after he joins Slade at the fuselage, after they rescue Shado. This constant gnawing loneliness that eats at him remains. The brief moments of what counts for levity on Lian Yu don’t chase it away. Sometimes it felt like he’d never been plucked from the North China Sea and into the life raft, like he’s still drowning out in those dark waters.

As the months drag on, he thinks he hears things in his sleep. Grumbled curses and oaths, his own name. If you hadn’t met him.

In those times he seeks out company — though he doesn’t dare tell the others he thinks he’s hearing things — or takes to staring at the photo he’d managed to hang onto of Laurel for some kind of solace. How can someone possibly be expected to live like this?

It isn’t until Sara arrives on the island that he realizes that someone else out there in the world somewhere is.

“You didn’t feel anything, did you? Any of what they did to me.” Her voice is pitched low as they sit around a pitiful fire. Slade is off somewhere like he’s taken to doing ever since the Mirakuru. Ever since they lost Shado.

Oliver blinks and looks up. “No.”

“Neither did I.” Her lip trembles. “Ollie, I thought I loved you. I thought we were soulmates. What- what did we do?”

It crashes over him in an instant. He hadn’t felt Sara’s pain, but he is feeling someone else’s. And who could be so hurt, so alone—

He doesn’t want to hope somehow it’s her he’s so connected to, and he doesn’t want to wish that this kind of pain belongs to her. Laurel. Lord, what has he done?

—-

The solution is to fight through the pain.

She has to withdraw from law school after the third time she’s hospitalized. Her condition is too unstable, too distracting to other students, the university says. She looks at online programs, none of which seem particularly promising.

Without a prescription from a doctor that would lessen some of the effects, Laurel turns to alternatives. At first it’s alcohol. But as her own father’s dependence on the substance worsens, Laurel finds herself not as keen to indulge. She doesn’t like the person it makes him, the person slurs his words and slings insults at her even as she supports half his weight on the way home. Home is a cramped apartment now that her mother has disappeared into thin air.

A friend from law school who’s interested in working internationally puts her onto the idea of meditation and body movement. She starts taking classes at cheap dojos in the Glades. The meditation and martial arts helps to calm her, ground her focus. But nothing feels quite as good as punching at something until her arms ache. That eventually leads her to the Wildcat Gym.

Ted is a good teacher. He doesn’t ask too many questions, and when he does he doesn’t mind if you don’t want to answer them. Laurel has to tell him about the soulmate situation in case she suffers another attack of pain in the middle of training, but he doesn’t freak out. 

So far they’ve gotten lucky. Sometimes she feels a soreness or a twinge here or there in the middle of a combination. Once, she has to drop to a knee, her hand bracing over her shoulder at an explosion of pain. It feels like her skin and bone have been shattered into pieces. Ted takes her other hand and tells her to breath. She does, in and out, and before it even starts to dull Laurel climbs back onto her feet and raises her fists. “Let’s go.”

Her soulmate seems to be coping with whatever they’re going through better with time as well. Whether that is because their situation is improving or they have simply increased their pain tolerance, she doesn’t know. Laurel hopes their suffering will be at end soon, for both their sakes. No one deserves to go through that, not even—

But whoever they are and wherever they are, Laurel is running out of her savings here in Starling City. She can’t hold onto a regular nine to five job thanks to her condition, and she had to sell her downtown apartment for a smaller duplex in the Glades. That section of the city is in a severe downward slump, with cops and reporters alike unable to keep up with the rate of crime. People out there actually getting hurt, unlike the phantom pain that haunts her.

And that gives her an idea, especially once she hears the neighborhood legend of the Wildcat himself.

“They’re somewhere out there, Ted. My soulmate. And there have been so many near misses. What if they don’t make it? What if they die? What happens to me?”

“Hey, that’s what you’re training for. So you can handle whatever life throws at you.”

“What if I want to do more? I took this training on to help me, but I could be helping others like you did.”

Ted takes a lot of convincing. He doesn’t want to get into it, and Laurel doesn’t pry, but a past experience with a student didn’t go well. But eventually, he comes around. In the meantime, Laurel starts putting together a nighttime disguise, as Ted explains she’ll need if she’s planning to go outside the law.

Maybe in the past she would have felt guilty for doing so. But Laurel has been denied the side of the law too many times, and she is tired of sitting around wallowing in her own wounds. This, too, is a way to fight back. A way to try and hold the world together, if not save it.

Sometimes at night she thinks she can sense a comforting presence, a soothing voice telling her it will all be okay somehow. With few friends left in her life, it helps to ease the loneliness just a little. Whether or not she is crazy to buy into that feeling, Laurel doesn’t mind holding onto a little hope.

—-

The solution is to find the bright side.

Oliver knows that if he lets himself wallow in the darkness that hangs over his soulmate like a cloud, he will never make it home. He has to force himself to think of the good things, for both their sakes.

He takes to listing all of the positives of each day. He found food. He learned a new grammar rule in Mandarin. Thea will be entering high school, provided his math is correct. His soulmate is still alive. Somehow, impossibly, it makes his situation seem less bleak.

It helps him to hold onto who he was, as well. Not that there had been many redeeming qualities to his character before he’d been shipwrecked, but it’s nice knowing Waller and her missions can’t completely change him. Even if his humor has turned more biting than it had once been, his grins sharper.

People he comes across tend to say he is unnaturally cheerful given the circumstances, that it just isn’t appropriate. They don’t understand this is the only way he is going to get through this, that he is just trying to keep his head above water. And the truth is, the more he thinks about it, he doesn’t want to go through life all dour and appropriately serious anyway. What’s the point of it all if he can’t find a bright side?

Sometimes when things go south and he finds himself in a fight for his life, he feels a reserve of energy he doesn’t normally have rise up and take control. His fists become more coordinated, his moves more practiced, and it gets him through to another day. He has a guess as to where it comes from, but no way of knowing for sure.

Because he has started to feel things. A broken nose, bruises that aren’t his own. Part of him wonders if this is an attempt at payback for the hell he is no doubt putting his soulmate through unwillingly. Another part of him worries they’ve been inspired to enter a life of similar risk.

As much pain as his soulmate is in, they are also his only link to a world outside the island or the crazy missions Waller forces him to take part in. If he loses that, it’d be a lot harder to feel as though there are still good things to be happy about. What if he is the reason they do something that causes him to lose them?

If he can just hang on and make it home, then he can set things right. As much as his father’s mission matters to him, he needs to take care of this, too. He doesn’t want to feel his soulmate suffering in solitude for another day. They need each other.

—-

The result is it becomes impossible to maintain secret identities.

Oliver Queen returns home, and a man in a green hood shows up to attack Adam Hunt. The night of his welcome back party, Laurel finds herself having to hide behind a table and brace a hand over her mouth to hold in grunts of pain from blows being delivered only the next building over. 

The woman in black who stalks the Glades runs into a little trouble with a street gang later in the week, and Oliver has to stop his construction of his base thanks to the slice of a knife and other unpleasantries.

She feels it when his kidnappers taser him. He feels it when he tells her to stay away from him for her safety.

When they finally collide down at the docks — her after the Triad and him after their business partner Martin Sommers — they make short work of their opponents together, though not without retaining some injuries.

“You okay?” Laurel asks her newfound partner.

“Yeah, just my nose,” he says, pressing fingers lightly to a perfectly straight nose just as he turns to see blood running from hers. “I mean, uh—”

He gestures vaguely to her face, and Laurel reaches to feel at the tender spot, her hand coming away red. “Oh. I thought that was—”

Their eyes meet, and everything is clear.

“It’s you,” Laurel breathes, and no greasepaint or hood or mask or wig or any obstruction can hide one from the other. She steps closer. “Ollie.”

“Well I’ll be.” He takes in those familiar green eyes, feeling himself falling all over again. “Dinah Laurel Lance.”

Approaching police sirens cut them off, and they flee, somehow ending up in her duplex. He takes down his hood, and she sets aside her mask, the two of them looking and really seeing each other for perhaps the first time.

He puts a dish towel under the faucet and holds it out to her. “May I?”

She nods, stepping forward. Laurel approaches him carefully. She knows, after all, how wary he’s had to become of any sudden movement.

He takes her chin with one hand, wiping gently at the drying blood with the towel. It’s not as bad as it looks, and as he clears it away something pleasant seems to tingle through them both. Healing, they can only guess.

“I always wondered if you were still out there. If what I was feeling was you.” Laurel murmurs.

When he looks back up after discarding the towel, she’s silent, only taking one final step to wrap her arms around him. She hasn’t let herself be this gentle or vulnerable with anyone in so long. All the walls she put up to keep out the hurt, and they’re coming down.

“I did this to you — to us,” he reminds her. All the pain, the loneliness, it could have been avoided if he’d only known.

Laurel just holds him close. She knows what he’s thinking, too. “We had to learn it first.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did.”

Without the pain, there isn’t this. This sweet peace found in each other’s presence, the soothing balm to all the years spent apart.

“Finally.”

[firecoloredwater]

Ace representation gives me weird feelings.

This was originally posted on pillowfort, and is being reposted here for the September 2019 Carnival of Aces.

To be 100% clear: I AM ACE.  (And aro, and the concept of gender gives me approximately the same feelings as the concept of being covered in live spiders, which I will grudgingly/squeamishly refer to as being agender or nonbinary when a label is required.)  Relevantly: ace.*

I began to identify as ace when I first heard the word, and had an "oh" moment.  (Or rather, multiple simultaneous "oh" moments.  "Oh that's a thing" and "oh maybe my classmates aren't all just faking relationships to mimic TV" are the two I remember most clearly.)  It was July, and at the time I was fifteen; I'm currently 28, so that's a bit over 13 years.  I'll skip the full journey, but the point is, this is an identity that I've had for a while and am comfortable with.

Despite that, ace characters in fiction give me weird feelings.  I mostly end up metaphorically staring at fiction which I know contains ace characters, going "hrmmmm I can't parse exactly what feeling I'm having, but I'm not enjoying it," to the point where I sometimes end up avoiding them entirely.  I doubt I'll be able to analyze all of why, but I'd like to at least try to start.

I'm also not referring to bad representation, or even to representation that focuses heavily on angst/suffering/prejudice.  Several years ago I read a large chunk of Shades of A (which, for anyone unfamiliar and about to click that link, includes a lot of kink and general adult themes; since it's been years I can't recall exactly what's in it) which was, from what I recall, very well done, and then I hit a point where I just... couldn't make myself keep going.  More recently I've heard several times about Every Heart a Doorway and thought 'that appeals to literally everything I want in fiction that I can think of' and then... not read it.

On the other hand, if a character is called asexual or characterized in a way that I can easily interpret as their being asexual, but it's not a major focus of the story or descriptions/advertisements/reviews thereof, I don't have the same reaction.  So for the rest of this post I'm just going to be discussing the former category (fiction with asexual representation that does give me weird feelings), and not addressing works that have an asexual or easily-read-as-asexual characters without giving me the weird feelings about it.  (The only real explanation I have for why a work falls in one category or another is the 'is it a major focus' question, so I don't think I can get anything useful out comparing them.)

Some of this, I'm sure, is that I'm just generally low on energy; I'm not reading much of anything that isn't fanfic right now.  But I tend to avoid fanfic tagged or described as having an asexual character too, so it's not just that.

The most obvious source is just that ace characters are unfamiliar.  There are a handful around now, even in mainstream media, but that wasn't true until I was in my 20s.  (Unless, of course, you counted the monsters/aliens/serial killers, and even then it was only the monsters/aliens/serial killers that the creator wanted to emphasize were really, really inhuman, even more than your typical monster/alien/serial killer.  And I was never fond of horror anyway.)  So ace characters stand out to me in a way that straight characters (and gay or lesbian ones, thanks largely to the Valdemar series) don't.  That extra attention-catching element can in itself make the representation feel weird and off on a level that's often subconscious and therefore difficult to dissect.  Again, though, while I think this is likely to be an element, I don't think it's the only reason.

I think some of it is the expectation—mine, but absorbed from a more general one—that if an asexual character is present, that should be the character that I most strongly (or even exclusively) identify with and connect to.  But that's often difficult: Anwar from Shades of A, for example, I have prettymuch nothing in common with except for being ace, our general age range, and maaaybe some of the social awkwardness and tendency toward geekiness that 98.5% of characters on the internet have.  I spent a lot of the time I was trying to read the comic being frustrated at every significant decision Anwar made because, while I probably would not have made better decisions, I certainly would have made different ones, and couldn't bring myself to empathize with his reasoning or priorities in any but one minor aspect.

And again, it's not that he's a bad character, it's just that he and I have nothing in common.  But I felt like I ought to empathize with him—I'm pretty sure he was the first ace character I ever encountered, so obviously I should empathize with him strongly and immediately and easily, right?  Not even "I should be able to," just I should, like saying the sun should rise in the morning, it's expected to just happen.  And because of that I couldn't pick another character to identify with (JD is nonbinary!  Chris and I have the same hair color! From what I remember they both have a more similar personality to me than Anwar does!) and I also couldn't just let myself gradually develop an understanding of Anwar's thought processes and start empathizing with him over time, because I was supposed to identify with him yesterday.  (Or rather, at least five years ago.)

(To be clear: none of this is something I was thinking consciously at the time, I was just frustrated with Anwar's decisions and didn't really analyze it further until like, two hours ago.  But from my current perspective, I think this is what was going on.)

Since I haven't actually read Every Heart a Doorway I of course can't be sure the same thing would happen, but I think I've avoided it because I expect it to.  From the summary it sounds like the main character is maybe fifteen or so, and the majority if not all major characters are mid-to-late teens?  So I'd be reading the book more as an observer than projecting myself among them, which is fine and often a thing I enjoy in fiction (because I'm way too empathetic and that distance helps tone down my distress at every little thing ever). But with an asexual main character... well, I wouldn't quite feel guilty about not identifying with her, but I'd be conscious of it the entire time I was reading in a way that would be distracting, and wouldn't be enjoyable.

Another possible element is that I tend to avoid fiction (and fanfic) in which a romantic relationship is the primary plot.  Since the majority of all fiction is romance, logically the majority of fiction with ace characters will be as well, and 'has an ace character' isn't enough to make me interested.  I think there's also a chance that romance fiction is in fact more likely to have an ace character, and/or to be labeled as having one (particularly in the case of fandom/fanfic/original work in fandom-derived areas).  A creator whose primary story focus is the characters' romantic and sexual relationships is more likely to consider the characters' romantic and sexual orientations, and therefore more likely to explicitly call a character asexual (whether in the story itself, a summary/description, or tags). Trying to read a story with an asexual character but being bored because it's a romance gives me about the same not-quite-guilty-but-not-comfortable feeling as being unable to identify with an asexual character does.

When I was in college I explained Asexuality 101 to various people or groups of people at various times, and one of the things I found myself explaining a lot is that "asexual" is actually just as much an umbrella term as "queer" or "trans" is.  Even without including demisexuality and the gray-a spectrum in the term (which at the time as far as I knew, at least, the most common approach was to just say "asexuality and gray-asexuality" if you wanted to discuss both) "asexual" includes asexuals of every romantic orientation and aroaces and people who prefer not to use the construct of romantic orientation, asexuals who are repulsed and who enjoy sex and who don't care too much either way, asexuals who lack attraction or libido or both or who experience both but are asexual anyway, because humans are complicated and sexuality is complicated and human sexuality is, therefore, utterly bizarre, and it would be weirder if asexuality (or any sexuality) were easy to define.**

And I think that's a factor too; there are asexual people whose experience of What It's Like To Be Asexual will have not one single thing in common with my experience of being asexual, and so a character that perfectly represents them will just leave me confused.  Which gets back to the thing about asexuality not really being sufficient for me to identify with a character, and the way that that fact runs into my expectation that it should be sufficient.  Like walking down a sidewalk, pausing to do something, then looking up and discovering a wall half an inch from my nose.  It's not painful, but it's jarring and annoying and I kind of want to look around and check if anyone saw that, because if so I'll be embarrassed about it.

(And I expect that most likely there are other factors, but I'm not coming up with them right now and this is long enough already, so I'll wind down here.)

I don't think this is a problem, or something that needs to be fixed; if "I'm not consuming the fiction that I would have expected myself to consume" is a problem at all, it's definitely the most minor one I've ever experienced.  If it does need to be fixed (or prevented), I think that "have more ace representation so it's not a Rare New Extraordinary Thing all the time" is probably the solution, and I'm pretty sure that aces are already in favor of more well done ace representation in fiction.

But it's still an experience, and it's been gnawing at my brain for months, so I'm posting this and... well, we'll see if and what use people make of it.  Has anyone else had the same or a similar experience?  Any thoughts on other factors which I didn't think of?  Some other related thing I missed?

*I'm not discussing aromantic or agender or nonbinary representation/my reactions to it because 1: asexuality is by far my "primary" identity (in the sense that it's significant to how I define and think of myself, while being aromantic and agender are just sort of... facts that forms sometimes request; probably largely because I settled on both those identities much later), and 2: frankly I haven't encountered aromantic or agender representation enough or in the right ways to experience this dynamic with them.  Or any dynamic, really.

**If you want to argue with me about the definition of What Is Really Truly Actually Asexual and how something I included Doesn't Count, please make a separate post and like, send me a link or something if you really want my opinion specifically.  My opinion is pretty firm but I'm willing to discuss it in good faith, but it's not the point of this post and I'd rather not go off on that tangent here.  Same if you want to argue that gray-asexuality ought to by default be included with the term 'asexual;' I don't honestly care either way on that one, I'm just describing the vocabulary I was familiar with at the time.

[gimmesumsuga]

50 Questions Tag

tagged by the illustrious @cinnaminsvga (thankoo Zee, Ily) 

This could get longwinded, so it’s going under the cut... 

1. What takes up too much of your time? 

Admin related stuff at work.  Chasing up appointments, making endless phone calls... 

2. What makes your day better? 

Lots of different things!  An unexpected compliment, coming home to find my fella has bought us something extra special nice for dinner, getting snuggly and warm on the sofa watching one of my fave tv shows (I’m addicted to Luther, atm)

3. What’s the best thing to happen to you today? 

I’d been given a work-related task to do that had the potential to be horrendously long-winded and time-consuming, but it turned out to be not nearly as bad as I’d thought it would! 

4. What fictional place would you like to go to? 

Middle earth, most definitely.  I’d love to spend some time with the Hobbits!  

5.  Are you good at giving advice? 

Uhhhmm... I suppose it depends on what kind of advice people are looking for.  I’ll usually always try to give practical solutions to problems, and then find it difficult when there isn’t one I can give.  I also worry so much that I might be giving bad advice that sometimes I’m afraid to say much at all.  

6.  Do you have a mental illness?

Luckily, I’ve always been blessed with fairly good mental health.  I’m so thankful for that.

7.  Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? 

Nope, and I have absolutely no desire to.  

8. What musician inspired you the most? 

It’s going to have to be BTS.  I’ve never written for any other fandom as much as I have for this one. 

9. Have you ever fallen in love?

I have, many a time.  I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic tbh.

10. What’s your dream date? 

I’m pretty traditional and boring like this, really!  I guess it depends on what number date it is, too.  I’m someone that embarrasses easily so I’d hate to be taken on something totally out of my comfort zone before I know that person really well.  

Just going out to a movie and then getting something tasty to eat afterwards is good enough for me.  Or maybe dinner and then drinks at a bar?  Something where we’ve actually got time to talk to each other properly. 

11. What do others notice about you? 

Uhmm... apparently I have a nice smile! 

12.  What’s an annoying habit you have? 

I don’t know quite how to describe this but I have a tendency to... ask questions as a way of hinting at things lol  I remember one of my friends doing my nails once and I was like ‘oh... were you going to do ‘x/y/z’ too?’  and she was just like, Steph, if you want it doing just SAY that’s what you want, don’t just dance around it.  

I guess that’s pretty annoying lol I’m sure there are other things, too.  

13. Do you still talk to your first love? 

HA.  Noooooooooooooooo.... 

14. How many exes do you have? 

Oh dear. Uh. This might take a while.  

*much counting on fingers later* 

Like... 10?  

15. How many songs are on your playlist? 

I don’t really have a playlist, to be honest.  I use spotify and just put that shit on shuffle.  

16.  What instruments can you play? 

In school, I played both the cello and the flute, but I doubt I’d be any good at them now.  I can also play one song on the piano really well, but just that one song lol 

17. What do you have the most pictures of? 

It’s gotta be either BTS or my doggo, Shiro

18. Where would you like to go before you die? 

The Grand Canyon. 

19. What’s your zodiac? 

Taurus! 

20. Do you relate to it? 

Lord, yes, and I think it shows in some of the answers I’ve given up above (like what makes me happy and what my dream date would be)

21. What is happiness to you? 

A hug from someone I love, a comfortable blanket, and a full stomach.  

22. Are you going through anything right now? 

A bit of writer’s block, I suppose.  Procrastinating doing this probably isn’t helping lol 

23. What’s the worst decision you ever made? 

I can think of a couple of exes that spring to mind haha

24. What’s your favourite store?

Hm.  If we’re talking designer, I love All Saints.  Oooohhh, I LOVE Paperchase though, too.  I could spend a fortune in there. 

25. What’s your opinion on abortion? 

I pro-choice, but I have to admit it starts to get my back up a little bit when people use it as a form of contraception rather than a last resort.  

26. Do you keep a bucket list?

Can’t say I do, nope. 

27. Do you have a favourite album? 

I really do love Love Yourself: Answer.  It has so many great tracks 

28. What do you want for your birthday?

Seeing as it’s coming up next Tuesday, I’ve been asked this quite a lot just lately lol the only thing I can think of is a Fitbit, really.  I’ve been working out quite a lot lately and I’d be interested to know what it’s looking like calorie-wise.  

29. What are most people’s first impressions of you? 

I have no idea!  I hope they’re positive.  I think most of the people I come across professionally tend to think I’m a lot younger than I actually am when they first meet me.  

30. What age do you seem according to most people? 

Ha, I didn’t even see this question before writing that last answer!  Um, most people put me at around 23-25 when I ask them.  Hopefully, it stays that way! 

31. Where do you keep your phone while you’re sleeping? 

Under my pillow.  I know, I know, it’s a bad idea. 

32. What word do you say the most? 

I really don’t know.  There’s nothing that sticks out particularly.  

33. What’s the oldest age you would date? 

Hm.  I’d probably date a 40-year-old but no older than that.  I think it’s all well and good at the age I am now, but a ten year age gap might really start making a difference as time goes on. 

34. What’s the youngest age you would date? 

I think 20 is my maximum, and even that seems a big gap this way around.  Plus it really depends on the maturity of that person.  

35. What job/career do most people say would suit you? 

No-one’s really made that kind of observation in a very long time, to be honest. I know my manager is currently trying to get me ready and primed to take over when she retires, though lol 

36. What’s your favourite music genre?

I like all sorts, really.  I guess I’m a pop-rock girl at heart.    

37. If you could live in any country in the world, where would it be?  

Despite the rain, I quite like the UK!  Although Australia would be a nice option if I could take all my family with me. 

38. What is your current favourite song?

It’s gotta be Make it Right.  Man, I can’t get it out of my head. 

39. How long have you had this blog for?

I believe it’ll be 2 years in July! 

40. What are you excited for? 

My bachelorette party this weekeeeeeend!!  And my wedding, of course haha

41. Are you a better talker or listener? 

Either!  I give as good as I get

42. What is the last productive thing you did? 

Finished that work thingy today

43. What do you want for Christmas? 

My mum’s Christmas dinner.  Her roast potatoes are fucking amazing. 

44. What class did you get the best grade in?  

English Literature and RE (religious education). I got an A* in both subjects, and a First in my degree.  

45. On a scale of one to ten, how are you feeling right now?

Eh, I’d go for a 7.  I’m alright! 

46. What can you see yourself doing in ten years? 

Complaining to my husband about what a fucking mess the house is because of our two kids, most likely.  

47. When did you get your first heartbreak? 

When I broke up with my first ever boyfriend, I guess 

48. What age do you want to get married? 

Well, I mean it’s happening next month sooooo 30! lol 

49. What career did you want to have as a child? 

I think I wanted to be a vet for a while.  I also wanted to be a traffic warden.  It STILL pisses me off when people park in parking spaces that they shouldn’t. 

50. What do you crave right now? 

The dinner I can smell my brother-in-law cooking.  I’m hungry, damn it. 

Wooooooow that was long! 

Imma tag @readyplayerhobi @johobi @hoseokiehopie @underthejoon @kpopfanfictrash @floralseokjin and anyone else who’d like to do it!