#i've been meaning to do these ship manifests for like.........all my canon ships but this is a Good Start and now im Weeping so...........

[saimotass]

unfortunately i do like the coffin of andy and leyley. however! i'm not one of those weirdos that ships andrew and ashley together, and you shouldn't be either! anyway more thoughts on my stance below the cut

i'm not a fan of the fact that the incest is there - i understand why, as another way that ashley can manipulate andrew's emotions and affections, and it's supported as an interpretation in the text. but their relationship could still be just as toxic and codependent as it is in-game without that being a canonized route. the overtones and subtext will be there regardless, and i do view it as part of andrew's character that he has a subconscious attraction to ashley, but there are other ways for their dynamic to change other than canonizing and romanticizing the romantic undertones of their relationship.

i understand that it's fictional and that it's also not the only morally reprehensible thing that the graves siblings do in the game. however, the incestuous dynamic between them only manifests on the route where they're both still alive and both coming to more of an understanding with one another. while, yes, neither route is a particularly good one for either of them, the questionable route being an offshoot of the burial route (the route where ashley continues to get everything she wants out of andrew) inherently paints the dynamic as a better solution than ashley and andrew getting their comeuppance for their crimes.

i am aware that not every story needs a moral backbone - some of the best stories have reprehensible things happen in them and their perpetrators never see retribution. however, when people outside of those stories read them, they affect reality and their perception of it. all good stories do. no matter what, fiction does affect reality and the way we interact with it, because fiction is inherently based in reality - even sci-fi, fantasy, speculative fiction.

people actively shipping and glorifying the incestuous dynamic between andrew and ashley affects the perception of incestuous dynamics in the real world for those people. ignoring the manipulative tactics that led to that route leads to more tolerance of those manipulative tactics. even when people claim that they know better, it still affects their perception, even the slightest bit. and people who aren't aware of the context seeing their incestuous relationship being glorified will assume the context makes the situation more palatable than it actually is.

ashley's been really good at manipulation thus far, it stands to reason that she could probably figure out a way to keep andrew along without resorting to incest. he's already pretty clearly devoted to her as an older brother, she could keep using their familial relationship as a means of manipulating him, or hell, eventually if andrew ends up fighting back there could be a route where she kills him and ends up using another person later, this time with romantic and/or sexual motivations. i've seen suggestions that it could even end up being julia, which would both make sense and add to the fucked up nature of ashley's motivations and manipulation.

andrew's underlying attraction to his sister could be refuted more openly and clearly. his reactions to other people noticing their dynamic could be more overtly against the idea. he could start trying to distance himself from her as a means of putting a boundary. he could be more forceful with setting up that boundary with her when she teases him about it. all of the reactions in-game lead people to assume that andrew wants this, potentially even more than ashley, and that because of that, it's okay because they're "consenting" to it.

there is no consent in this relationship - ashley has been manipulating him since they were kids, their power dynamic is uneven and leads to ashley taking advantage of his emotions, and ashley's been essentially grooming him into seeing her as the only woman in his life for years at this point. not saying andrew is without fault here, but putting myself in that position, if i had a younger sister who threatened me for a murder i was an unwilling accomplice to, all because she was jealous that i was starting to have a life of my own with people that aren't her, i would have felt similarly helpless.

[princeanxious]

are you out of the TSS fandom for good, do you think? just burned out on lack of updates?

I mean, it's complicated.

Edit: pressed answer instead of save to drafts while trying to back out, tumblr what the fuck

Anyway, it's complicated. I've become burnt out creatively lately, and I've been part of the sanders sides Fandom since 2018, it's been a big portion of my life, I'm not letting it go that easily.

However, this is my main blog, and I cant really shift everything to a new side blog, so I do feel bad for those who followed me exclusively for sanders sides are now seeing a v distinct lack of it.

But for the most part, yeah, I'm burned out on a lack of updates, I was a fander creator doing as much as I could to create content to entertain myself just as much as for others in-between the hiatus-gaps while awaiting updates. I love these characters with all my heart, but every gap in between has gotten longer and longer, I can't keep waiting for a year at a time for one single update even if the finished product is grand and *absolutely worth* the time it took to make. I was scrambling, bc I no longer have the time I used to to create my own fanart and fanfiction and animatics for this fandom, and I can only reread the library of my favorite saved works over so many times before I feel hollow and under-stimulated.

It'd be one thing if the rest of the fandom was as active as it used to be, I bounce off others creative energy far easier than single handedly manifesting my own inspirations all the time. But it's not, and interaction with my own content slowed way down. (Not to say that I'm leaving just bc of this or anything, but its become a struggle to feel motivated to keep going when there's literally nothing new from Canon to keep riffing from.)

I have the want to finish my remaining fics, specifically The Lost Guardian in particular at the very least, but I just can't solely be a sanders sides blog like I used to be.

I'll be here when that season finale comes out, but at this rate of progression, I think Thomas has overestimated the fact that this could very well be a series finale, not season finale. And I've come to peace with that, if only Thomas would be more transparent abt it.

Sure, Thomas has other content, but funfact, I've had very relatively low interest in getting super into it, there isn't the same level of comfort in shipping characters of a single person with the versions themselves when other characters played by other people are involved, especially when u know that they are alot of his v close friends. I don't ship real world actors together, especially if they play a character very close to representing themselves. The characters they play, maybe, but that's why I'm far more entertained and comfortable with animated media.

In short, I'm tired and burnt out and for now-for *whatever* reason- the silly lanky clown jesters from fnaf have more of a grasp on my brain than sanders sides does. I'm following the serotonin.

I may still create sanders sides content in the future, but getting maybe 100-500 notes on a piece when u have a fandom following of roughly 11.5k followers from over the years has spoken volumes on how active the community is rn. I'm not leaving, but I can't be stagnant and hyperfixate on this anymore after doing so for almost 6 years straight. Yknow?

And for those who have always left a comment, shared my work, interacted with me in any capacity over the years in this fandom, and have made my time in this fandom worth while, thank you. I love you. U have made every second worth it💜

[decepti-thots]

Pardon me, but after reading though your blog, could you go into detail about why you hate the megamins/megamags pairing (megatron x minimus/magnus). No judgement from me. I think you may have a post about that, but I can't seem to find it. I love reading your analyses.

I do think back in… I think late 2021 I wrote a little about why it's my nOTP, but I doubt I tagged it (good manners, y'know), so sure, I'll talk a little about it for you, anon; thank you for asking. Let me just cut it so the minimegs likers can go about their day happily (hi friends <3), haha. And thank you for the kind words!

First off: I consider this a functionally canon ship, which influences my feelings on it a lot. It's something I'd describe as subtextual but largely unambiguous; it never explicitly gets quote-unquote "confirmed", but I think that to assume it's not present in the text in some form requires a degree of deliberately reading against the grain, tbh. It's unresolved, inexplicit and largely peripheral compared to e.g. CDRW, but it's hard to deny its obvious canonicity IMO. If I can point to Chromedome/Prowl as being obviously present despite the technical lack of confirmation, it'd be wildly inconsistent to claim otherwise for Magnus/Megatron, I think.

This matters for my purposes because I really dislike the way it manifests in the comic and what it narratively does. I've usually avoided talking about my ambivalent feelings about the execution of MTMTE Megatron's arc on this blog because of historical unpleasantness for both me and several close friends, but I've probably discussed it enough by now longtime readers (or backreaders) of my blog have inferred. You know, the ambivalence. Haha. In itself.

I think a lot of the Megatron/Magnus dynamic represents a kind of reliance on narrative shortcuts to try and force reader engagement with the Megatron arc Roberts is writing that, unfortunately, came to exemplify for me the formal shortcomings of that arc, and the more… not just "this didn't work" elements but actively "this is annoying now" stuff. When we first see them interact in MTMTE very early on post-Dark Cybertron, it's actually a set-up I find really interesting. I think theoretically at that point, they're very very obvious characters to put together, because Magnus is a character who is unusual in that he really does feel like someone it makes sense to have be scrupulously fair to Megatron despite the latter's actions and his own personal grudges. When you have Magnus argue "technicalities" during his trial because shut up, the law is the law and nobody is excluded from a good legal defense, he's the kind of character who you can really believe thinks like that on the Autobot side. At the same time, he's someone whose scrupulosity also means he's really unable to reconcile what Megatron has done- there's that early POV shot of his little HUD where he puts notes in about who he's looking at through the armour that shows he has one for Megatron reminding him of what terrible things he's done, and the early "Lost Light insider" insert where it's shown people on the ship have seen Magnus yelling at Megatron because of how uncomfortable he is with Megatron being co-captain. This sets up a potential interesting dynamic where Megatron in MTMTE has all these things he's done and represents that Magnus is intractably morally opposed to but all these little personal traits day-to-day he likes which could have been a very interesting contrast to explore as a conflict.

…but it's not a conflict that gets played out. We jump, quite quickly, to "Megatron and Magnus are the only two kinda uptight rule-likers who understand each other among all the chaos", with only perfunctory gestures at the core and very large moral quandry this ought to present. The entire middle section of this conflict is implied but never shown, and it's something the reader is expected to just sort of gloss over as probably existing in theory but there's no room to show it. That's not even quite it actually. It's almost like a timeskip, where it acts like it happened but there's no room for it TO have happened, and we never see it happening; suddenly, they're just in this ambiguously has-feelings-for-the-other space where the audience understands the alluded-to conflict underpins what makes the tension theoretically interesting but it's never actually shown. It's shorthand we never see, and it drives me nuts because it's not something you can get away with reducing to shorthand with how incredibly central that tension actually is to the attempt to convey Megatron's arc convincingly.

What bugs me about this more is how this exists, IMO, as a shorthand for the broader issue of defensiveness about the fact that many people were not onboard with Megatron-as-captain in a straightforward way. There are characters in MTMTE that are like… let's use Rodimus as an example. He's beloved by many and disliked by many others, because he's an engaging, complicated, abrasive, sympathetic but asshole character who fucks up royally in ways that go way beyond the flaws of many protagonists in comparable series. What makes Rodimus work is that it understands that for every person who loves him (hi) in all his abrasive glory, there will be readers who simply don't, because he is abrasive… and so it makes the story interesting even if you do not like him because of his glaring flaws. It's not interested in "convincing" the people who dislike him, because it is confident enough to deliver a story where if you don't like Rodimus, the narrative will still give you stuff to engage with. Same with Whirl, actually. Whirl is terrible and morally difficult, and if you never quite get on board with his brand of assholery, you still find something to enjoy in how the narrative presents him, so it never feels like it needs to "fix" people who are not quite onboard.

Megatron feels like a character the narrative quickly becomes defensive about occupying a similar role, IMO. It can't quite abide the idea some people will just never be cool with his redemption arc and offer that same ambivalence in a way that allows the story to accomodate such divisiveness. It becomes very reactive to on-the-go fan criticism in a way that ultimately undermines it far more than any inherent conceptual flaw in the idea, because it comes to devote more and more effort to like, course correcting rather than playing in that space. To bring this back to the issue of shipping, Magnus becomes a kind of mouthpiece for this, where his sudden shift to "we went through all the implied difficult conflict and now this Objectively Moral character is on board" becomes a way to be didactic; two really obvious examples for me are the on-the-nose bit in the second Functionist Universe arc where Minimus turns to the camera like Well I Don't Think He'd Betray Us, and the really bad post-FU bit where his exaggerated description of Megatron's assumed betrayal as a kind of reactionary thing Rodimus exploits is blatant commentary on people who were not a fan of that arc. It goes from a potentially interesting conflict to a way the comic leans on preexisting reader opinions on other characters to hammer home there is One Right Way to feel about a contentious element of the comic that I simply can't enjoy, and which especially serves to reduce Magnus' character to a mouthpiece for someone else's arc. I would hate it even if it were in service of my actual ships, frankly! If the comic had done that with him for Rodimus, I'd go from OTP-ing rodimags to resenting it in a heartbeat. I just find it poor writing, and with so little in the back half of the comic to do once his original arc is concluded in "series one", it comes to dominate Magnus' arc in a way I so dislike it makes me unable to even try to play with the Magnus/Megatron dynamic in fandom.

The thing is, the degree to which this becomes baked into the moment-to-moment canon makes it difficult for me to engage with it outside the textual elements I find frustrating. If it was less canon, I could play with it in ways that turned it into a more interesting transformative fandom thing, but the presence of it in the canon as a driving part of that arc narrows my ability to do so without feeling like I'm disregarding the text, something I do not enjoy in fandom spaces. It becomes too central to ignore, and since I dislike what it does and represents in the canon, I can't enjoy it. (By contrast, the comic's inability to actually zero in on a real definitive Megatron-Rodimus dynamic paradoxically means that in fanwork, I really enjoy playing with the space that failure leaves, and I have a lot of fun filling in the gaps that failures in the writing leaves me to work with.)

…All this is admittedly a little compounded by a bias due to the fact that the broader fandom for Magnus/Megatron was, historically, very obnoxious. From the fact people in the fandom were virulently awful to people who did not like this plotline (multiple friends of mine were- and in one case, still are years later- directly harrassed due to this at points) to the fact that it's been presented as Morally Superior to other ships by people in the fandom starting shipping wank, the fanwork culture around the ship has only exaggerated this impression to the point I just can't engage with it without feeling a little rasp of annoyance. (And also there's the issue of Megatron/Magnus stuff often having some of THE worst takes on the already fraught issue of Magnus' OCD in my opinion, but that's another post, probably, lmao. Which also involves the role Rodimus plays there, haha. It's not just my personal shipping bias, it's an issue much more broadly, including in the canon. Alas.)

What it boils down to is this: the writing for these two in canon is some of the laziest in canon, to me, and I find it impossible to engage with them outside the very present canon material, so I just can't enjoy it. I can actually do a lot with the various bits of Megatron's arc I find lacking with OTHER characters whose interactions with him are less textually clear. Rodimus? Oh, yeah. Loads of room there, just to name an obvious example. It's totally workable, especially as someone who prefers to react to canon I find unsatisfactory with "how can I make this interesting to me". But the Megatron-Magnus stuff is too… present. I cannot find the wiggle room. And so I really dislike it, and tbh, it's a shame to me that nowadays almost all of the little MTMTE Magnus character work discussed is in the context of these two, because both characters are better served IMO by exploring their arcs separately and with other characters.

tl;dr: if it was fanon I would feel able to expand on it in a way that let me make it more than the issues that exist in canon. but as it is, i find canon so restrictive i struggle, so i can't even enjoy it in fanon, especially since because of how this stuff works by default of course the fans of the basically-canon ship are building off the canon i am so dissatisfied with; there's just nothing for me there when of course the people who like the canon ship like that canon. so. anyway s/o to all my minimegs friends, of which i have a few, you all won and i love you.

[liliallowed]

so @leafwateraddict have me some ideas about ship children for the og LV triangle.

I don't really like ship children but like I don't mind making goofy fanon hypothetical scenarios.

I mean y/n does have seal babies in my ocean au. I thought it'd be a fun shitpost.

head canons below cut.

since y/n is gender queer and can be any gender (male or female, trans or cis, enby or anything beyond) I've decided I don't want to involve pregnancy.

it's just with souls.

anyways. so the souling is just there chilling but when it starts to mature and manifest a transparent physical form it starts dying cuz monster forms can't handle determination.

it's why there's never been a hybrid in history. cuz well... humans and monsters souls don't mix.

so like crimson uses their vessel to stabilize the souling. they're an exception to this worlds laws so their inherent nature is the glue needed to mix magic and DT.

it now has three parents. it's 10 percent god/anomaly. 10 percent human. 10 percent monster... and 70 percent dormant exp and LV condensed into a passive lil squishy bean.

crimson holding the child like the lion king: "I have birthed the antichrist. holy shit they're stats are crazy! who's a good strong baby? yesh you are. yesh you are. you're going to be a natural disaster wen u grow up aren't you? THEY INHERITED MY STATS! FUCK YEAH! I CAN'T WAIT TI SEE THIS LIL DEVIL GROW UP TO KICK ASS!"

and then the two snatch the child away from crimson cuz they're a fucking horrible (low-key abusive) parent that just... doesn't understand tenderness. (they're kinda like hand plates gaster lol 😂)

like it's not their fault they don't really understand how to love something for what it is instead of what it can be used for... or just focus on the new "perfect hybrid" like it's a work of art or a perfect specimen from an experiment...

but the child does have two loving parents that will kick crimson's ass whenever they're bothering da bebe.

anyways dust throws crimson out the window.

dust and crimson would argue over who's LV corrupted the child whenever they do something bad. (somewhere away from the kid. they never argue Infront of them.)

"excuse me!? THAT'S YOUR LV SIR. MY LV ONLY HAS PURE JOY. THE KIDS CRYING BECAUSE THEY INHERITED YOUR DEPRESSION LV."

while y/n has not one but three people to take care of. (they need a break)

it's like... a functional dysfunctioning family 😂.

as for the ship child. they're kinda like unprocessed uranium. it's not dangerous by itself.

so like they have the potential to be a world ending calamity but that doesn't mean they WILL.

sure they have an inherent talent in combat n stuff but if they grow up with love and safety? it's just like any other kid.

there's no "evil urge" they have to fight off. their magic just might be hard to control and unstable.

they might actually go become a healer or a doctor! develop green magic and follow their own passion regardless of their soul being basically a dormant LV condensed hellfire.

like... two of their parents might be world ending serial killers but like... that's not how genes work. you don't inherit your parents wrong doings. just a bit of their looks personality and like... maybe neurodivergency.

if they become evil later? nothing to do with how the kid will turn out.

it depends on how the child is raised. and with dust around drowning them in all the affection he can give I wouldn't worry about them turning out like crimson XD.

[silverwings22]

Caught in the Crosshairs: Chapter 52: Blow- Eva Under Fire

Series warnings: Smut, mind control, canon typical violence, childhood trauma, language, chronic illness

Chapter Warnings: Unethical experimentation, death by nom, mentions of medical torture

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Miria crossed her arms, leaning against the back of the deck chair as Cid talked on holo. She didn't even look at the trandoshan as she spoke. "I don't know what's got you guys so twisted."

"We were stranded on that planet, Cid. And you left us!" Omega sounded as bitter as her general felt.

"And now you're not. Plus you got your ship back."

"No thanks to you." Wrecker grumbled. 

"You want to mope or make money? I've got Intel on a wreck worth salvaging."

Miria pursed her lips. "You want to employ us again after you abandoned us?"

"Don't give me that, Stripes. After all I've done for you."

"I suppose you think I should be grateful you left my family marooned on a hostile world with less than three days rations, where we were nearly killed in your mine, and then almost enslaved by a madman exploiting children?" Miria finally gave her a look, right down her little button nose. "Not a single clone on this ship is ever going to be a slave again, Cid. I don't care what I have to do to ensure it. I'd think you'd feel the same, after all we've done for you."

Cid wilted a little under the woman's stare. "Thirty percent cut of something big would be worth your time."

"Thirty percent is our standard rate." Tech looked up from his datapad. 

"You're not impressing me, Cid." Miria huffed.

"Thirty-five. For the trouble."

Hunter scoffed. "Yeah, sure." He looked at Miria, who looked unimpressed and had started examining her fingernails.

"Forty, then."

Omega made a face, shaking her head. "After what you did?"

"Stripes, work with me here. You were a Jedi, you know the value of a good information broker."

Miria huffed. "The Jedi had the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean they didn't make errors in judgment. I'm beginning to wonder if you were one of them."

Cid groaned. This ragtag band of misfits had been driving a much harder bargain lately, since Miria got back from Thule with an attitude to bely her height. The clones rallied right around her. "Fine. Fifty percent, as a token of my goodwill."

Omega looked up at Miria. The former Jedi shifted, cocking her hip. "Send the coordinates, then."

"About time you see reason. Don't come back without something worth scavenging."

"I'm surprised you think we'd come back at all." Hunter leveled her with a sharp stare.

"Don't test me, Bandana. Just get the job done." Cid hung up. 

"She's starting to wear on my nerves." Miria said mildly. "Maybe we shouldn't go back."

"Severing ties with Cid would be exceptionally difficult, given the information she has about us." Tech grumbled. "It may be wiser to consider this a final mission for her, and leave on good terms."

"She did have a point about a good information broker." Hunter sighed. 

"I'm sure Uncle would make a more reliable substitute." Miria shrugged. "What did she send, Tech?"

"Only coordinates, without any transponder data or cargo manifest. And nothing on the cause of the ship crash." 

"Limited intel again." Wrecker groaned. 

"As usual." Miria sighed. "Wonderful."

"Scavenging a wreck can't be that hard." Omega grinned. 

Hunter sighed and shook his head. "Let's get this over with."

"Looks like the ship crashed near a village." Wrecker looked up at the plateau of lights from homes in the distance as they stepped out of the Havoc Marauder.

"That is likely how the crash was reported so quickly." Tech nodded. 

Miria stood next to Wrecker, looking at the lights for a moment. She wondered, as she often did, about the families inside. Were they sitting down to dinner, telling each other about their days? Mothers and fathers would soon be putting little ones to bed, kissing them goodnight and singing lullabies to soothe them into sleep.

If the galaxy hadn't been swallowed by the Empire, she might have been doing the very same thing. She'd either have a newborn in her arms or be still round with child, content in a rocking chair by a fireplace. It laid itself out so inviting to her mind's eye; the warm stone hearth of the parent's farmhouse casting cozy and nebulous shadows around the room. Annalise would be bringing her tea as she knitted and rocked, fussing in her loving way about Miria not overtaxing herself. Argais and Jet would be laughing about it, Irene trading war stories with the team while Aram listened in between pages of whatever galactic law book he was studying and Omega looked at them with starry eyes. Crosshair’s hands would settle on Miria's shoulders when he entered the room, her head would come up to look at the look of faint delight and pride replacing his usual grumpy disinterest. Maybe, if she pulled his hand down from her shoulder to her belly and Mayrin kicked, he'd even smile…

Doesn't that sound so much better than this, my love? Wouldn't you rather live that way? We could still have it, even now. It would be different, maybe, but it would be ours.

She pushed the image through the battered but unbroken bond between herself and the sniper, a silent plea once again for his return. No matter how she hardened herself to survive the tempest the galaxy around her had become, she was still Miria Halcyon. She still dreamed of a quiet and peaceful existence, one that some might call diminished after her role in the war and after. 

It wasn't diminished to her. It was everything worth having, and worth fighting for. 

"The ship appears intact on the scanners, so the cargo should be simple enough to transport." Tech nudged her lightly, noticing the faraway look in her eyes. She nodded and put her helmet on, shaking the melancholy off her skin. 

"Lead the way." She murmured, tearing her eyes from the village. 

When they reached the crash site, Hunter put his hand on the hull. Wrecker made a concerned noise. "No markings."

"That's unusual." Miria frowned. "What in the Force was it doing before it crashed?"

"Judging by the hull damage, it is likely the crew all perished. They will not be able to tell us." Tech shrugged, working to get the hatch open. 

"They could be trapped inside. We should check." Omega pleaded. Miria was forever amazed at that kind heart the little girl had, that never seemed to waver no matter what she saw. 

When the hatch opened, they carefully moved in with their blasters out. It was eerily silent, like a tomb.

"Sense anything, Miri?" Hunter frowned. 

"Something is alive… but what I can't be sure." She frowned. 

"Hey, check out out! High-volt electrostaff!" Wrecker, never one to be made dour, picked the weapon off the floor. 

Miria shifted her grip on her rifle and touched the wall as she leaned to get a closer look. Her fingers met deep gouges in the durasteel instead of smooth plating. "Oh… oh dear."

"Something unfortunate happened here." Tech whispered, his head lamp illuminating the claw marks. 

"Whatever did this wasn't human." Hunter suppressed a shudder.

"I will go to the bridge and restore power." Tech volunteered, quite eager to hurry this mission along. This place gave him the creeps.

"Alone?" Omega squeaked. 

"Your concern is unwarranted. I will be fine." The genius reassured her before walking out. 

Omega looked at Miria. "Why is he like this?"

"He's a Mandalorian, my dear. We're all like that." She waved for Omega to follow her and Hunter down the opposite direction, with Wrecker at the rear.

They entered a large room in the center of the ship, and even in the darkness they recognized laboratory equipment. Miria stood in front of a large containment tank, shuddering as the prickly feeling that she knew well returned to her. This felt like the labs on Kamino, the place clones were birthed and changed to be better soldiers no matter how they felt about it. This was the kind of place Crosshair had been taken after Kaller, where the Kaminoans made the chip in his head stronger. 

Where the man who'd once said he'd beg for her life had gone to die. 

"This is Kaminoan cloning technology, but it looks different from what I saw in Tipoca City." Omega confirmed. 

Hunter hit his comm, thoughts wandering the same way as Miria's. "Any luck, Tech?"

"The bridge power will soon be restored." Their brilliant inventor replied.

"These walls are reinforced." Wrecker frowned, touching a flashlight left on the ground. It was slick, covered in a thick slime. "Gross…"

"Something is in here with us, Hunter." Miria whispered, reaching for her saber. She could feel it; the pulse of primal intelligence and hunger. "It's sentient. And angry. It wants…" She ignited her blade and held it up, eyes widening when she came face to face with a creature. 

It had an oblong head, no eyes she could see, and a long scaled tail. It growled at the light bathing in before taking a threatening step towards Miria. 

"What the hell is that?" Hunter gasped before it let out a roar and jumped. 

Miria was frozen in horror, only saved by the clones opening fire and forcing the monstrosity up the wall and into the ceiling. She'd only felt this one before, in the second year of the war, when a well-intentioned mistake by Anakin and Mace Windu had unleashed a gargantuan creature hell-bent on killing Palpatine upon Coruscant. It can't be! It was the last of its kind! 

The power came on around them, and the creature jumped over them and down the hall. Miria tried to strike, but her saber glanced off the scales harmlessly. "We have to get off this ship, and we can't let that thing escape." She looked at Hunter, and the wild fear in her voice was enough to turn his stomach to knots. 

"Tech, we've got to go." He ordered. 

"It would seem this was a research vessel. Imagine what we could learn-"

Miria hit her comm. "I know precisely what this is, and it's still on board! Now, Tech!"

"You sound upset, General."

"A juvenile Zillo Beast is heading right for you! Yes I'm upset!"

"Shit." Hunter took off after the creature, rounding the corner to find it munching on electricity from the power generator. It was bigger, spinier now. 

Wrecker stopped short behind him. "Does that thing look different to you?"

"It's eating the power supply." Miria whispered. "It's getting bigger…"

Tech ran up from the other direction, eyes widening at the sight of the creature. "Fascinating…"

"Tech!" Omega squawked. 

"Take cover!" He got a handle on his nerdiness and pulled a grenade. Hunter grabbed Omega and Wrecker scooped Miria to his chest, ducking behind a wall as it blew. 

Instead of killing the Zillo, they inadvertently gave it an escape route and it ran out of the hole, heading straight for the village. 

Miria started swearing softly. "We have to contain it!"

"It likely ate the previous crew, so we are fortunate it is probably not hungry." Tech shrugged. 

"It ate the crew?!" Omega yelped.

Hunter cut Tech off when his know-it-all index finger popped up. "We have to stop it."

"I will double back into the ship for further information." Tech nodded. 

Omega followed him. "I know about Kaminoan cloning technology."

Miria nodded. "Hurry." She, Hunter, and Wrecker took off after the monster. 

"You know what it is, Miri. How do we kill it?"

"The only way I know is Malastarian fuel." Miria panted, running at full speed. "Which we don't have."

The village was in danger. Those innocent families she'd been so envious of, their lives of domesticity and peace, were all in danger. 

"Our blasters don't touch it. Even your saber didn't hurt it." Wrecker wheezed as they scrambled onto the Havoc Marauder. 

"Get on the tailgun, I'll take the gunner's nest. Hunter, fly like you mean it." She ordered, climbing into Omega's room. 

They couldn't kill it like this. Lasers wouldn't touch this creature. She needed a plan. 

The knock on her door was so quiet she almost missed it. It had been a hard day, half the city sector destroyed by a rampaging monster, and her shore leave was interrupted by tending to the creche all day. Those poor frightened little ones had cried for hours, and her team was blowing up her comm to make sure she was okay. They'd only been on Coruscant so she could see Master Che… Crosshair was probably going to climb through her window before nightfall, if she didn't go back to the ship-

"Come in?"

The man in her door looked like he was going to crumble. "Miri…" There was dirt on his face, he smelled faintly of fuel, and the regret in his blue eyes could have swallowed the Force itself. 

"Anakin?"

He crashed into her arms, bent over her smaller frame, and started to cry on her shoulder immediately. "I made a mistake, Miri. I should never have let him bring it here… he said he wouldn't hurt it, and it'd help the clones."

"Oh, Ani…" She hugged her boy tightly, because Anakin Skywalker had always been her boy. One of her many children, the ones she'd raised and loved and seen grow with her precious little time. "Shhh. Tell me what's happened."

"The dugs were going to kill it, so Windu and I captured it instead. But the Chancellor made us bring it here, and Padme was mad at me, and it got out, and now it's dead!"

Miria hugged her friend a little closer, heart shattering at the broken sound of his voice. "It wasn't your fault. You did all you could, dear. It was an unfair situation you were put into." She didn't know what to say to ease his pain, but she knew one thing abundantly clear.

Sheev Palpatine was a cruel, terrible man. 

Tech on the comm tore Miria from her thoughts. "This is indeed the same species that attacked Coruscant during the war. It feeds on energy, you must not let it get to the village's power grid or it will grow exponentially in size."

"Too late." Hunter groaned. 

Miria looked out the window at a familiar sight, a three armed reptile roaring its fury at the galaxy as it clung to the biggest building it saw. 

"We have a larger problem. Imperials!" She jerked her head as three LAAT gunships whizzed by. "Pull out of the wreckage, Tech. We'll come get you."

"The data transfer is not complete."

Miria gritted her teeth. "The Empire is coming to capture the Zillo!"

"Let's not be next." Hunter jerked the controls, ducking them out of firing range and heading back towards the crash site. 

Miria dropped out of the gunner's nest and to the hatch, opening it and grabbing Tech and Omega as they slowed enough for the two to board. "Go! They're coming back for us."

Hunter yanked them into the atmosphere and slammed the hyperdrive faster than was probably safe. 

When the adrenaline wore off in the silence of space, she stood up. Omega crawled into her own bunk and hugged Lula as the former Jedi began to pace. "A Zillo. It's supposed to be extinct…" She all but growled. "What did those bastards do?!"

Tech sighed. "It seems that it was cloned, General."

Her teeth ground audibly. "Palpatine." 

Of course, it all came back to that monster. The Sith the council suspected in the Senate, the inhibitor chips, Anakin's downfall, it all led to one person. Palpatine. 

She wanted to bury him alive with a straw in his mouth for air, just so she could put her thumb over it.

"The order was given when he was still Chancellor. Before the Empire."

"Why would he even want a Zillo Beast?" Wrecker grumbled. 

"The same reason he wanted the first one. To weaponize it." Miria sank into her deck chair, fists clenched. "He tortured that creature. No wonder it broke out and went after him… Anakin should have let the bloody thing eat him."

"Where were they taking it?" Hunter frowned. 

"The ship did not have a destination in its system. It was heavily encrypted data, even on the ship's internal system." Tech explained. "I… do not believe the Empire destroyed the cities on Kamino to end cloning, but to control it."

Miria stiffened and looked at Hunter. There was a silent conversation held between their eyes, the general looking more demanding that usual and her sergeant more resigned. "Send the data to Rex and Echo. See what they make of it." He said quietly. 

From her spot, Omega gave a small and anxious smile. Miria stood and went to the bunkroom, sitting on the bed with her fists on her knees. 

Open your eyes, Crosshair. Look at what is happening. I know you hear me. How long are you going to make me wait?!

[rightpastnowhere]

📓📓📓📓📓 FIVE PLS

this feels like that bit in animated shows where the teacher drops like a stack of books on the student's desk, you know what i'm talking about ??? maybe ?????? anyways

TIME FOR 5 FIC IDEAS I GUESS

send me a book emoji and i'll tell you a fic idea that i have thought about but haven't written anything for yet

1. okay so. stupid one first - tangled au. like the disney film. percy as rapunzel, which means that, yes, he has beautiful long and flowing hair. the flower is still some sorta sun flower, which makes sense with the de rolos being connected to pelor, but it makes his hair white instead of golden. delilah as mother gothel, who steals baby percy away from the de rolos, and is trying to use his magic hair to bring back sylas, as well as to keep herself young. vex & vax collectively as flynn ryder, the thieves who split from their band after a heist gone wrong and kind of fuck up a lot. (percy is initially attracted to both of them, but only falls in love with vex.) the rest of VM are the hooligans at the snuggly duckling. trinket is maximus. also?? you know the scene where flynn cuts rapunzel's hair??? same thing happens here, and it fades to the soft brown that matches his family.

2. kind of tentative about posting this one, since i do hope to write it, but maybe manifesting a little of it into the world will motivate me more to write it. so! i'll give you a little sneak peek. the bare bones of it is a modern au where percy and vex, newly engaged, have to deal with the sudden and unexplained fire that burns down percy's family's home, as well as some other things happening behind the scenes. it's a mix of a big hurt/comfort fic and a mystery fic, with a focus on percy learning to navigate non-rich boy life while he stays in vex & vax's apartment. i'm unsure on what happened to the rest of the de rolos as of right now, but i'm workshopping it!! anyway unlike the rest of the ideas on this list, this one is still something i'm holding onto, so pls don't steal it if you see this

3. i had this idea based on one of the cr q&a's from a while back, and i actually think this one might be right up your alley, aich: what if cass actually managed to slip away from the castle when the briarwoods attacked, and stayed in whitestone to lead the rebellion? it changes so much about canon - percy would likely meet her much sooner into the whitestone arc, he wouldn't have her name on the list, and the rebellion might actually have made more progress. i admit that i haven't watched much of the briarwood arc of the campaign, so i don't know the minor details surrounding cass' involvement, but it might be fun to play with!! i also have no idea if someone else has done this lol

4. this is an au i've spitballed with my friend to a point of pretty decent development, but i also know it would be a long fic, and i SUCK at writing long fics, or completing them if i do write them, so i'm tossing it into the crowds!!! for your consideration: siren vex. she and vax are both sirens, and they usually go after pirates (the like, nasty ones) or trade ships or military ships. vex specifically likes to go after the extravagant fancy rich people, luring private boats or larger ships to crash on the rocks. she's only had one exception so far, and that was this sad rich boy who was running away from harm - he all but collapsed into her arms sobbing after his boat had been wrecked, and she sees it's a dingy little escape boat, and this man is so pathetic she almost feels bad. this, by the way, is tary, and he eventually gets a lil shack by the shore, and becomes her gay human best friend and he hangs out on the rocks all the time.

the SECOND time she spares a sad lil rich boy's life is when she sees this beat up lifeboat, and sitting in it is the most haggard man she's ever seen. she was initially drawn to the crest on the boat (half-scrubbed away, unable to be tied to a name, but she's familiar with the style of the engravings), and then she noticed that the finely-made clothes are all but water-laden rags now, and the man looks like she hasn't eaten in days. she lures him over to the rocks if only so he won't drift out into the open seas, full of creatures that hunt and sirens who are much less merciful (all sirens are much less merciful, really; she's the outlier here), and hauls him up to a rock while he's in a trance so she can look at him. she calls to tary for him to help, and together they help the man - whose name they learn is "percy" - to get back on his feet. he moves in with tary, and becomes fast friends with the two (and vax as well), and it's all fine and dandy until they realize why he was out to sea with nothing but the clothes on his back: he's being hunted, and the hunters - the briarwoods - have just arrived in the nearby town, and are asking after a man named percival de rolo.

this au was initally inspired by art of mermaid!vex by @burr-ell (here's the art!!) and i would LOVE if someone wrote this, i'm happy to throw more ideas at people for it if they like!!

5. AND since you're also a fan of wanda maximoff, have one of my ideas from my marvel phase! this was an idea i cooked up for AU-gust 2021 but never ended up writing (in fact, i only ended up writing one prompt, whoopsie), and it's essentially a doomsday fic. the world is ending by meteor, the bunkers are full, and both wanda and vision have no place to go. neither has any family to speak of - wanda's parents died young, her brother in a car crash recently, and vision's adopted mother passed earlier that year - so they're some of the only people spending their last minutes outside, in the park, just looking at the sky. (it's a morbid picture.) they just... sit on a park bench and talk, getting to know each other, having a nice and normal conversation. it feels like any other day, for a few hours. i was thinking of a little parallel to tie the ending to earlier in the fic - maybe one of them mentioning they didn't have any regrets as an early icebreaker, except now they both regret they hadn't met each other sooner. not necessarily romantic, although knowing me i would have hinted at it, lol

if anyone wants to use any of these as prompts for writing (except number 2 of course) please feel free!!! and please tag me so i can read it, i'm trying to manifest these ideas lol

[adamsvanrhijn]

17, 24 for writers’ ask :)

Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?

i mean... yes?? i feel like that's an inherent part of the sharing process, it stops being just yours once you share it (which is why taking everything back last year was emotionally effective for me)

but i don't necessarily know how that is and what the nuances are... obviously as a writer there is both. (i feel like) people miss things i put in there, or, they find things i didn't mean to put in there but perhaps did.

i think the main thing about my motivation with fanfic in particular is i write literally just to get words specifically out of my head, it's only very very rarely that i like, sit down and intentionally come up with an idea about something to write or try to write to a specific concept/idea (which is why prompt memes frequently go badly for me) without having literally a string of words or a phrase or something to go with it, and sometimes that makes me really trip up when i start sharing it with other people... but it's a double edge sword because i benefit greatly from the external validation of people liking it and wanting to read more

if i were doing this for praise or attention or to monopolize a shipping tag and forcefully impose my views upon the rest of the fandom with over saturation as has been speculated i would have finished everything by now lmfao

to normal well adjusted people that one should not really be a surprise imho.

i also just. love characters and ships and stories a lot, and i think fanfic is a good format to present textual/literary analysis in a way that is relatable and easy to consume... demonstration of what i perceive and am picking out from the canon, which is fulfilling to me too, and obviously i like very much when people agree with my arguments (in the rhetoric sense) in this regard. i don't Need others to agree with me, i am perfectly happy being right all on my own 😌 (and also revisiting and adjusting my opinions with new information or new angles which if you're paying attention you would have noticed many times over), but it feels good when i change people's minds or draw their attention to things that they missed before. i think that's really rewarding and i appreciate the feedback when people say I've improved their experience in some way whether it is representing something they relate to or prompting them to see something that already exists in a different way that makes them happier and/or more satisfied with it. i am glad i can do that for people.

i think two other things are like.

one. i actually talk like this... like my meta and commentary (which is another genre of writing i am pleased has been well received + is also and much more explicitly about making an argument that something can and/or should be seen in a certain way) are usually in a tone i also use conversationally.

and two

i am like. in terms of how i perceive myself. incredibly basic, i do not consider my personality or interests to be particularly special or anything, and i don't think very highly of myself as a rule. like i think other people are frequently doing more interesting and valuable things than i am... obviously i can recognize that objectively the way i engage with things is out of the ordinary, but that's literally just how my brain works, i get deeply invested in and excited about things and it manifests in these research+pattern finding ways, i'm not like, trying to... usually there just isn't another way i can think to do or make myself to do something

like i am just talking.... that meme about saying words recreationally. and i say things definitively because i believe them or think they have value in the moment, and i try to cite sources and construct logical arguments because that's what my brain needs to support ideas and take things on board and i want to justify what i am thinking to myself and to others. but i really don't think i should have to say this every single time or always caveat that other people can interpret things differently or be right (Or be neither right nor wrong) about things too... I've tried to be better about this since the hooplah last year but i really don't want to be responsible for other people's emotional state about whether what they believe is correct or true or not, i am much too occupied with my own. like i don't think it's fair to expect me to do that. and a lot of what i share here and in fic is me trying to sort out what i think or believe and making sure my thoughts and beliefs are structurally sound. because that's how my brain works.

like i want to know a lot. and sometimes i think people assume that means i think they should know a lot too but that's rarely the case (exceptions include like. homophobia.), i realize that my way of approaching things is weird and too much for most people. but i don't want people to feel like they need to engage with me in the exact way i do things and i don't want people to feel attacked when i add things i know or bring up alternate angles when ideas they agree with are presented to me.

that's just not why i am here and it really hurts when people assume that it is. i really struggle when i feel like others don't understand what i am trying to say (which is another reason i try to back everything up). but i don't know how to be or do anything else because this is just how my brain works and it's also the only place i can let it work that way.

24 answered :-)

[sneezypeasy]

The last reblog in this chain touches on a few things I think actually are worth addressing to an extent - namely, if anti Kataang shippers can call Kataang a predator ship, why isn't it fair game for anti Zutarians to call Zutara a colonizer ship?

I think there are a couple of nuances here that do matter - and important caveat, this is just based on my observations, and I do deliberately avoid wading into fandom discourse most of the time so I fully concede my observations here may be limited/incomplete - but, from what I have noticed: when it comes to moral arguments surrounding both ships, anti Kataang shippers tend to frame their criticism more along the lines of "how the show portrays Kataang in abusive/problematic ways"; in contrast, anti Zutara shippers tend to frame their criticism more along the lines of "how the fandom portrays Zutara in abusive/problematic ways". Anti Kataang shippers tend to bash canon, anti Zutara shippers tend to bash... Zutara shippers. (There is an interesting way this difference manifests, by the way, in terms of how each side of the ship war wields the accusation of fandom toxicity towards the other.) Either way, I think that's a distinction that isn't irrelevant here.

Now, that being said, I still stand by my belief that equivocating moral criticism with literary analysis is harmful. Like I said, I deliberately avoided talking about Kataang or Maiko being "problematic", beyond the scope of how I thought their flaws might have resulted in them adding more value to the story as false leads. I am 100% proship, and in fact where proshippers sometimes limit their "tolerance" to fandom engagement, I go further than that and argue that in general, problematic ships should be allowed to exist in mainstream canon works as well. If Kataang is problematic or "toxic", it has to be toxic in a way that actually does a disservice to the story overall, for me to use its toxicity as a foundation for a "Kataang being canon = bad writing" argument. Otherwise, it's just an aspect of the ship that icks me out, and while that might be a valid reason for me not to ship it, I do not consider it a valid reason, in and of itself, for the story to have been enriched from them being false leads.

Of course, there may be a conversation worth having as to whether some problematic aspect of a story creates - or has the potential to create - a negative cultural impact too significant to be ignored. At what point does that outweigh the artistic value of the work as is, or the freedom of the creator to tell the story they want to tell? These can be important questions to ask, and I don't mean to suggest we shouldn't be asking them. But, as I've said so many times now, I think we can and should ask these questions, while being careful not to miscategorize these critiques as something they're not, and definitely taking care not to shame people for finding something to enjoy about the work regardless.

All this to say, if you have indeed observed Zutara shippers/anti-Kataang shippers conflate moral criticism with literary analysis and if that bothers you, I sympathise. I especially sympathise if you've seen any Zutara shippers/anti-Kataang shippers use a "Kataang is an incel/predator ship" to then attack Kataang shippers for shipping it. I believe this kind of behaviour is unequivocally wrong. Unfortunately, anti-ship logic has a way of infecting a fandom/ship war, spreading its tendrils into the far reaches of fandom, until both sides end up adopting anti-rhetoric uncritically, even when they're defending their own ships. And yeah, this - this is bad. As freedom-of-fanfic put it in one of the blogs I linked in my original post:

ship defenders and anti-censorship blogs end up focusing on pointing out the ship is not csa or the fanwork does not feature abuse, not necessarily conscious that by doing so they quietly cede ground: ‘but if it was unhealthy/immoral,’ they quietly imply, ‘it would of course be indefensible.’ losing that ground - losing the position that all ships are valid and all fanworks are allowed to exist, moral value and purity aside - has naturally led shippers to adopt the language of antis when fighting back against antis or complaining about their NOTPs.

I do understand how and why anti-rhetoric from one side of a ship war can end up creeping into the language of defenders from the other side of the ship war. Hell, even I had to resist the urge to unload my ethnic background as "credentials" to support my takes on this subject, and I had to remind myself that doing that would just validate the very tenets around shipping and fandom behaviour I've written dozens of paragraphs now trying to challenge. I get it. It's a trap that's disgustingly easy to fall into, but one we have a duty to try to avoid regardless.

So, to answer the question posed above: while I think that anti Zutarians and anti Kataangers moralize shipping in different ways, reaching different conclusions that have different impacts (one side generally targeting shippers/fandom vs the other side generally targeting canon), I do think anyone conflating moral value with literary merit is making a dangerous mistake, and certainly, anyone extending their moral judgements to the point of shaming or harassing other shippers is being actively harmful - and this is me drawing a line in the sand to say there is absolutely no excuse for that behaviour, from either side of the ship war.

I hope that covers it.

Why I Deliberately Avoided the "Colonizer" Argument in my Zutara Thesis - and Why I'll Continue to Avoid it Forever

This is a question that occasionally comes up under my Zutara video essay, because somehow in 2 hours worth of content I still didn't manage to address everything (lol.) But this argument specifically is one I made a point of avoiding entirely, and there are some slightly complicated reasons behind that. I figure I'll write them all out here.

From a surface-level perspective, Zuko's whole arc, his raison d'etre, is to be a de-colonizer. Zuko's redemption arc is kinda all about being a de-colonizer, and his redemption arc is probably like the most talked about plot point of ATLA, so from a basic media literacy standpoint, the whole argument is unsound in the first place, and on that basis alone I find it childish to even entertain as an argument worth engaging with, to be honest.

(At least one person in my comments pointed out that if any ship's "political implications" are problematic in some way, it really ought to be Maiko, as Mai herself is never shown or suggested to be a strong candidate for being a de-colonizing co-ruler alongside Zuko. If anything her attitudes towards lording over servants/underlings would make her… a less than suitable choice for this role, but I digress.)

But the reason I avoided rebutting this particular argument in my video goes deeper than that. From what I've observed of fandom discourse, I find that the colonizer argument is usually an attempt to smear the ship as "problematic" - i.e., this ship is an immoral dynamic, which would make it problematic to depict as canon (and by extension, if you ship it regardless, you're probably problematic yourself.)

And here is where I end up taking a stand that differentiates me from the more authoritarian sectors of fandom.

I'm not here to be the fandom morality police. When it comes to lit crit, I'm really just here to talk about good vs. bad writing. (And when I say "good", I mean structurally sound, thematically cohesive, etc; works that are well-written - I don't mean works that are morally virtuous. More on this in a minute.) So the whole colonizer angle isn't something I'm interested in discussing, for the same reason that I actually avoided discussing Katara "mothering" Aang or the "problematic" aspects of the Kataang ship (such as how he kissed her twice without her consent). My whole entire sections on "Kataang bad" or "Maiko bad" in my 2 hour video was specifically, "how are they written in a way that did a disservice to the story", and "how making them false leads would have created valuable meaning". I deliberately avoided making an argument that consisted purely of, "here's how Kataang/Maiko toxic and Zutara wholesome, hence Zutara superiority, the end".

Why am I not willing to be the fandom morality police? Two reasons:

I don't really have a refined take on these subjects anyway. Unless a piece of literature or art happens to touch on a particular issue that resonates with me personally, the moral value of art is something that doesn't usually spark my interest, so I rarely have much to say on it to begin with. On the whole "colonizer ship" subject specifically, other people who have more passion and knowledge than me on the topic can (and have) put their arguments into words far better than I ever could. I'm more than happy to defer to their take(s), because honestly, they can do these subjects justice in a way I can't. Passing the mic over to someone else is the most responsible thing I can do here, lol. But more importantly:

I reject the conflation of literary merit with moral virtue. It is my opinion that a good story well-told is not always, and does not have to be, a story free from moral vices/questionable themes. In my opinion, there are good problematic stories and bad "pure" stories and literally everything in between. To go one step further, I believe that there are ways that a romance can come off "icky", and then there are ways that it might actually be bad for the story, and meming/shitposting aside, the fact that these two things don't always neatly align is not only a truth I recognise about art but also one of those truths that makes art incredibly interesting to me! So on the one hand, I don't think it is either fair or accurate to conflate literary "goodness" with moral "goodness". On a more serious note, I not only find this type of conflation unfair/inaccurate, I also find it potentially dangerous - and this is why I am really critical of this mindset beyond just disagreeing with it factually. What I see is that people who espouse this rhetoric tend to encourage (or even personally engage in) wilful blindness one way or the other, because ultimately, viewing art through these lens ends up boxing all art into either "morally permissible" or "morally impermissible" categories, and shames anyone enjoying art in the "morally impermissible" box. Unfortunately, I see a lot of people responding to this by A) making excuses for art that they guiltily love despite its problematic elements and/or B) denying the value of any art that they are unable to defend as free from moral wickedness.

Now, I'm not saying that media shouldn't be critiqued on its moral virtue. I actually think morally critiquing art has its place, and assuming it's being done in good faith, it absolutely should be done, and probably even more often than it is now.

Because here's the truth: Sometimes, a story can be really good. Sometimes, you can have a genuinely amazing story with well developed characters and powerful themes that resonate deeply with anyone who reads it. Sometimes, a story can be all of these things - and still be problematic.*

(Or, sometimes a story can be all of those things, and still be written by a problematic author.)

That's why I say, when people conflate moral art with good art, they become blind to the possibility that the art they like being potentially immoral (or vice versa). If only "bad art" is immoral, how can the art that tells the story hitting all the right beats and with perfect rhythm and emotional depth, be ever problematic?

(And how can the art I love, be ever problematic?)

This is why I reject the idea that literary merit = moral virtue (or vice versa) - because I do care about holding art accountable. Even the art that is "good art". Actually, especially the art that is "good art". Especially the art that is well loved and respected and appreciated. The failure to distinguish literary critique from moral critique bothers me on a personal level because I think that conflating the two results in the detriment of both - the latter being the most concerning to me, actually.

So while I respect the inherent value of moral criticism, I'm really not a fan of any argument that presents moral criticism as equivalent to literary criticism, and I will call that out when I see it. And from what I've observed, a lot of the "but Zutara is a colonizer ship" tries to do exactly that, which is why I find it a dishonest and frankly harmful media analysis framework to begin with.

But even when it is done in good faith, moral criticism of art is also just something I personally am neither interested nor good at talking about, and I prefer to talk about the things that I am interested and good at talking about.

(And some people are genuinely good at tackling the moral side of things! I mean, I for one really enjoyed Lindsay Ellis's take on Rent contextualising it within the broader political landscape at the time to show how it's not the progressive queer story it might otherwise appear to be. Moral critique has value, and has its place, and there are definitely circumstances where it can lead to societal progress. Just because I'm not personally interested in addressing it doesn't mean nobody else can do it let alone that nobody else should do it, but also, just because it can and should be done, doesn't mean that it's the only "one true way" to approach lit crit by anyone ever. You know, sometimes... two things… can be true… at once?)

Anyway, if anyone reading this far has recognised that this is basically a variant of the proship vs. antiship debate, you're right, it is. And on that note, I'm just going to leave some links here. I've said about as much as I'm willing/able to say on this subject, but in case anyone is interested in delving deeper into the philosophy behind my convictions, including why I believe leftist authoritarian rhetoric is harmful, and why the whole "but it would be problematic in real life" is an anti-ship argument that doesn't always hold up to scrutiny, I highly recommend these posts/threads:

In general this blog is pretty solid; I agree with almost all of their takes - though they focus more specifically on fanfic/fanart than mainstream media, and I think quite a lot of their arguments are at least somewhat appropriate to extrapolate to mainstream media as well.

I also strongly recommend Bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians" which the author, a verified giga chad, actually made free to download as a pdf, here. His work focuses primarily on right-wing authoritarians, but a lot of his research and conclusions are, you guessed it, applicable to left-wing authoritarians also.

And if you're an anti yourself, welp, you won't find support from me here. This is not an anti-ship safe space, sorrynotsorry 👆

In conclusion, honestly any "but Zutara is problematic" argument is one I'm likely to consider unsound to begin with, let alone the "Zutara is a colonizer ship" argument - but even if it wasn't, it's not something I'm interested in discussing, even if I recognise there are contexts where these discussions have value. I resent the idea that just because I have refined opinions on one aspect of a discussion means I must have (and be willing to preach) refined opinions on all aspects of said discussion. (I don't mean to sound reproachful here - actually the vast majority of the comments I get on my video/tumblr are really sweet and respectful, but I do get a handful of silly comments here and there and I'm at the point where I do feel like this is something worth saying.) Anyway, I'm quite happy to defer to other analysts who have the passion and knowledge to give complicated topics the justice they deserve. All I request is that care is taken not to conflate literary criticism with moral criticism to the detriment of both - and I think it's important to acknowledge when that is indeed happening. And respectfully, don't expect me to give my own take on the matter when other people are already willing and able to put their thoughts into words so much better than me. Peace ✌

*P.S. This works for real life too, by the way. There are people out there who are genuinely not only charming and likeable, but also generous, charitable and warm to the vast majority of the people they know. They may also be amazing at their work, and if they have a job that involves saving lives like firefighting or surgery or w.e, they may even be the reason dozens of people are still alive today. They may honestly do a lot of things you'd have to concede are "good" deeds.

They may be all of these things, and still be someone's abuser. 🙃

Two things can be true at once. It's important never to forget that.

[venator-signum]

I've fallen back into the EAH rabbit hole so I have some thoughts (mainly hcs) I will be sharing unprovoked and unasked for:

no wonderlandian is straight let's be clear here

also none of them are neurotypical thanks

anyways chase redford my beloved I would die for you

he deserved to come back cause he's an angel but also the tired mum friend who is trying to keep his idiot children maddie and kitty from blowing something up for the 20th time today

all wonderlandians will drop what they're doing for tea time no matter how important

they survive off of tea and will go into lengthy rants on the proper way to brew, the best kind of tea cup, the best food to have with what tea and of course, the best tea flavour (especially Maddie)

Maddie is very steampunk with her clothing but adores jackets with coattails and she loves her wacky top hats

the three most likely to kick your ass with a smile on their face are lizzie, maddie and chase

bunny is too sweet but she's got a mean roundhouse kick and she's super fast

bunny is also albino idk if it's hc or canon but that means she now has red eyes and super pale skin

she hates being late and can get quite frazzled when it happens so don't steal her watch unless you want to die

Alistair will follow small creatures (particularly rabbits) or insects (ie. blue butterflies) and he does need to be snapped out of the trance he goes into when it happens

also he cries a lot (cause that's practically all alice does for like half the animated movie) and if something is labelled 'eat me' or 'drink me' he will do it it's an instinct

avid waistcoat wearer, he dresses like he's from whenever it was set so like 19th century or whatever but also dresses lowkey like a pirate there's no inbetween - it's either british nobleman straight out of a period drama or a pirate

kitty can turn into a cat just like her mother and will chase Earl Grey and bunny (rabbit form) around

any hooded items of clothing she owns have got holes cut out for her ears cause both she and her mother have proper cat ears now and like a tail

every wonderlandian would kill for Raven cause she saved them and she's always been kind to them, even when they were ostracised or told they were "too weird"

chase is best friends with darling and yeah he's probably hella gay

that being said when I first saw wtw and the reveal I shipped him and darling and lowkey still do but it's MY BRAIN so unless you wanna take it-

anyways every charming sibling is at the very least bi

daring is in denial abt this and so continuously dates girls cause he won't admit he thinks that a guy who could beat him up is hot

dexter has a preference for girls and so does darling good for them ig it's a twin thing

the darling/apple ship is kinda eh to me idk why I just don't vibe with it but that's okay

DEXVEN ON THE OTHER HAND

these two are completely and utterly head over heels in love with each other and I go crazy at aus where dexter is raven's "good king" (without the wack ass snow white parent thing whatever we ignoring that)

dexter deserves much love because he is wonderful

okay very early on, apple was incredibly selfish cause she wanted her happy ending at the expense of others' and it felt like she didn't really care so...

I also feel like apple, if she was so self-conscious abt her hair, could have died it to fit the story (it wouldn't be hard considering her hair colour) but she didn't give in so good for her ig

briar and ashlynn my angels - I love these two cause they're were like the first instance of what everyone in their world to be hardcore royals like apple but are actually quite rebellious and I love it

raven adores her dad very much

also I think that if she doesn't have slight anger issues (which I can see) then girly just has a short fuse which is entirely fair

(lizzie has major anger issues)

her magic mostly manifests as fire and when she goes apeshit, her eyes turn into flames

there's like stages to her magical anger ig and it goes: 1. irises glow bright and things start to float (including her hair) 2. she begins floating and her eyes go purplish tinge like in that present room scene 3. flames from hands 4. finally she's encased in flame that follows as she moves (I'll try draw this one day)

okay evil!raven is my shit and I'm in the process of writing a fic that started as evil raven but the way I'm writing her makes her more of an anti-hero basically she's like pre-auradon mal

anyways bad!raven, after signing cause she gave in and didn't see Giles yadda yadda (further explained in the fic when I eventually write enough of it) becomes very very petty

anyways evil!raven aus. where are they. send me links pls.

I'm gonna push the raven and hunter childhood friends agenda

hunter and cerise are also childhood friends but she was super apprehensive towards him at first cause her dad is the big badwolf and he's the hunter but they chill now (she still hasn't told him abt her family situation tho)

cerise is a bad bitch you can't kill her she'll mess you up

I would fight milton grimm and win he has weak person energy

my hc of lancelot/story of king arthur in eah universe is that the original tale was actually bbc Merlin but then somewhere along the line they scrapped that and got rid of any evidence it existed

(more to come if I ever think of anymore)

[bexfangirlforlife]

Tumblr what have you done to me? All the non-canon ships I've gotten into (especially this year) are absolutely ruining me and I mean that in a sense that I feel like I start to get so extremly delusional...

To give it context: I'm watching this daily soap (GZSZ) where I just started to ship two characters (m|m) that I'm very sure are not gonna be a thing at all. One of them (Moritz) is openly gay, while the other (Luis) has just been in straight relationships so far (and I think also once said that he's not gay), which my brain apparently took as 'technically that doesn't mean he is straight though'. They had I think 3 scenes together at this point, in which one of them (M.) accidentally hit the other (L.) in the face with brass knuckles on (it's a long story), which he reported to the police and is really really angry about.

My brain is now trying to manifest a enemies to lovers / enemies to friends to lovers... Additionally L. just came back into the show after being abroad for about two years and he came back with a girlfriend, which since we didn't get to see anything of their lovestory could be just an obstacle for the M&L lovestory to tell... (why am I thinking this? Because I'm delusional, like I said.) Another thing I took as a (delusional) hint was that M. was loosely dating a small side character over the past 2 month, but had kind of a break up scene just the other episode as well. And last but not least M. has been in the show for about 1 year and a couple of month, never had a real lovestory during that time, just some fun here and there, so it would be about time...

Now that I wrote it down, I can't think anything else than "why? why am I doing this to myself???"

Since I'm probably the only person in the fandom of this ship, I gotta choose the shipname though, right? I went through a couple: Luritz, LuMo, MoLu, Moris, Mois, Luitz, Lutz, Muis, ... I like LuMo and Moris best, but since L.'s girlfriend is named Miriam and therefore they could be Miris, I think that would bring a nice touch to Moris (you know Miris vs. Moris), so I guess I'll settle for Moris for now.

Sorry for this (long) post, I had to get these thoughts out of my head in some way.

Ps: if you think me shipping this is dumb, you don't agree or whatever, that's totally fine, just let me be delusional, it's for my own disappointment anyways.

[adam-sadmon]

Aight so this may be me self-assassinating this account but I'mma say it anyway:

Shuake/Jokechi has ruined the P5 fandom on tumblr for me

I'm lucky that my favourite 'villain' of all time (take a wild guess who that is) fortunately has a fandom just as devout, and honestly when I come on tumblr for P5 content it's solely for Maruki, not because I don't love every fucking thing else about P5, it's my favourite game of all time and has been there to help in so many times of crisis throughout my life, but the P5 'fandom' on Tumblr outside of Maruki is just Shuake/Jokechi.

And why do I even hate Shuake/Jokechi?

It (wrongly) simplifies a great character, Akechi, and reduces him to any other palatable yaoi tsundere, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that the vast majority of Shuake/Jokechi shippers are cis women who fetishise gay relationships. Seriously, Akechi is such an interesting character because he DOESN'T love Joker, they have a complex relationship not because they're the 1,000,000th 'hates each other but secretly wants to bone' yaoi ship but because Akechi is the one young adult spurned by society that the Thieves just couldn't help, who's fascinating because instead of succumbing to the power of friendship he's a dark reflection of the Thieves' rebellious hearts, so much so that he decides to take down Maruki because he REFUSES to live in a world where he's not the master of his own fate.

Their shipping actively ruins other characters by default. I've seen so many people be like "I wonder if Haru and Futaba only bite their tongue around their parents' murderer because their friendship with Joker and how much they know he loves Akechi'. Like yeah fuck them just being nuanced characters with their own trauma and ways of manifesting and working through it while holding to their own ideals and morals regardless of how hard it is, they're not the hunky twinks, fuck em.

It's pure delusion, like it's not even like that one single frame in the Colours Flying High opening is responsible for the ship, its been a festering weed in the fandom since the game came out. There is NOTHING in the game (though how many Shuake/Jokechi shippers have actually played the game is another question) that implies that Joker and Akechi are in love, and I wouldn't even mind so much if this one delusional fantasy wasn't the entirety of the P5 fandom on tumblr.

And really, I do genuinely wonder how many people have played the game and still ship them, I don't know if that'd make it better or worse, cause I've known people to spend their time shipping characters from franchises they have literally no investment in and know nothing about outside of the surface layer, and that surface layer, at least as portrayed by the Shuake/Jokechi ship is: beautiful, pale tsundere twinks. My friend put it best, in that for the sheer amount of cis-man on cis-man ships that are big on this site, I haven't seen one that's between 2 black men. Like yeah, in canon Joker and Akechi are Japanese, but I'm not gonna pretend to be generous enough to give the benefit of the doubt that that's how shippers see them.

And before anyone asks 'it's just a harmless ship that makes people happy, what's the harm? ', I mean, yeah, no ship that I've yet encountered as run up in my house and stabbed me yet (yet) but it undeniably has hurt mine and a lot of people's engagement in one of our favourite pieces of media of all time.

P5 is a story about found families, about shirking societal expectations and not being forced to find a place for yourself in THEIR world but being content in your own, it touches on government corruption, misogyny, rape culture, the fucked up education system, the very ideas of what happiness is and if it is what we as humans truly seek, and it's all been boiled down to two of the (and lets be real) least interesting characters in the story hating each other but secretly wanting to fuck.

P. S. No its not just because I'm Ace

[all-hallows-evie]

Chapter 1: Marooned

Rating: T, for language, Canon Typical Violence/Action. Honestly, this chapter isn't that bad, the T rating is just in case I forgot about something lol

Wordcount: 3,776

Warnings: Canon typical violence and adventure, female OC with name × Tech slowburn, but not too slow lol, NOT BETA'D, because if I have to stare at this first chapter again I'm not going to post it.

A/N: HAPPY TECH TUESDAY, LOOK I'M FINALLY POSTING SOMETHING, WHEEEEEEEEEEE

There were bad ideas, really bad ideas and then there was this.

The ship hums under her feet as it trudges through the far corner of the mid rim, chugging along on it’s route without any sign of trouble or disruption from it’s preplanned course.

It should have been a routine pillaging, something she had placed firmly in the ‘great ideas’ list but instead it had turned into a routine mutiny and finished the day as a routine marooning. She sighs as she lays her head back against the seamless panel behind her.

Fucking pirates. 

She has been stranded on the old freighter for at least two moons, but it was hard to say with certainty. The droids that man the ship have no need to eat so more often than not they forget to pass along anything to keep her mounting hunger at bay, adding along to the lack of any kind of panel to the outside world, getting her bearings is proving to be more difficult than usual. 

She hisses a swear to drown out the low growl of her belly and focuses her gaze on the far corner of the room. Another day, another chance to count the diamond shaped tiles above her cell, she swears the number changes every other time she counts. She doesn’t get farther than eighteen when the door of the maintenance room blows open. 

The dust fills the room, hiding everything under its grimy shadow. The grit in the air crackles as it’s pushed against the red of the electron walls that keep her prisoner with the ships cooling coils and a water filtration unit that has calcified and has never been fixed.  

"Well look at that, we found it! Lucky break!"

"Luck had nothing to do with it, if you had studied the schematics of this cruiser like I had asked-"

"Yeah yeah yeah." The first figure, a hulking shadow in the doorway brushes off the smaller one as he stomps into the suddenly too tiny room.

"The memory core should be at the end of the-" the smaller of the two figures stops in front of her cell as the big one charges towards the end of the room without stopping. They launch themselves into the piles of junk thrown haphazardly inside, "That's concerning."

"Concerning? You see someone in a cage and you go with ‘concerning’?" She replies as she pulls herself up to standing. She takes in his armor, modified clone armor from the looks of it painted pale with a bright red stripe down his chest, his eyes slightly magnified by the goggles on his face, the rest hidden by the elongated helmet.

"According to the intel we were provided there weren't supposed to be life forms aboard." He seems irritated to see her.

"Good old Republic intel, still living up to its reputation."

The other clone approaches, he rips open the metal box in his hands and yanks out the core as if the casing was made of thick flimsy and nothing more, "I've got the thing, time to go!"

She watches, dumbstruck for a moment as her ticket out starts to head for the gaping maw that used to be a door, "Wait, you're taking the old database?" The two of them stop and turn, "It's not complete! It's missing pieces of the coordinates!" Firefek she didn't want to sound desperate but she was.

"Likely story-" The big one chuckles.

"I was trying to steal it too, I almost got all of it before my crew turned on me!"

"A mercenary or a pirate? No matter, I trust you even less now."

She had never wanted to punch anyone's face as hard as she wanted to punch his, "Check the core Goggles, I swear to you! It's missing pieces!" He hesitates and in that baited pause she knows she has him, "Please, just let me out and drop me off wherever you dock next. You can have my data chip. No harm, no foul, just get me out."

The one with the goggles glares at her, the yellow tinted transparisteel of his visor snapping downl before he turns to the bigger man. Klaxons ring all around as he scans the core with a handheld device, but it's taking up time they do not have.

The two clones share a look, silently deciding her fate.

The bigger one caves first, "Aww c'mon Tech, we can't leave her! You saw what's on this ship, she'll be a goner on some mining planet!"

"Under normal circumstances I might agree but she's caged for a purpose, and I'm disinclined to put any trust in her."

"How much damage can she do? She’s smaller than you are!" 

Tech, the one in the goggles, sighs before he turns back around to face her, "If we spring you, you play by our rules. You follow our orders, no complaints, no rebuttals and if you put one toe out of line-"

"Out the airlock, understood." She nods furiously, hands pressed against the panel as she watches Tech short out the electron wall holding her hostage, the panel shudders and then it spews sparks on to the ground as the red fades and she's finally able to step through. 

"Lets go shortie!" 

"Wait, let me just grab-" She scrambles to the other side of the wall, trying to pull at something from the top of a shelf. The bigger clone reaches over and tosses the crate to the floor. She throws open the top and snatches out a bantha leather bag and a helmet.

"Run!"

Tech doesn't have to tell her twice, the three of them bolt out of the door and into the corridor, the lights above flash in time with the klaxons. There is a low rumble that joins the hum of the hyperspace engine, as whatever security droids are on board begin to activate.

"Back to the ship, short stuff!" 

The three of them book it down the darkened halls, ducking behind walls and crates as the first cluster of security droids pass through.

She tosses her bag across her shoulder, slinging it against one side of her hip, clipping it into place with snaps sewn into her jacket. They watch three more droids pass them by before she speaks again, "My name's Nox, by the way." 

"Doesn't sound like a girl's name." The big one chuckles, so deep and rumbling it almost feels like a growl.

"Well it's the only name I've got. My parents named me a bit of a mouthful, Nox just works better."

"Clear." Tech calls out and they continue on their way heading to the service hangar where their ship hopefully was waiting for them.

"How'd you end up out here?" The big one asks, with every flash of light above them she can see more of the large scary face painted roughly on his helmet, lines thrown on haphazardly only to be scraped away by carbon scoring.

She is about to answer when she is shoved back into a corner by Tech. He slaps a hand over her mouth before she can yelp, the leather slightly singed, it smells of electricity and grease.

“Wait.”

"I'm getting tired of all this sneaking around, I say we blow our way outta here!" The big one growls.

"We’re almost there Wrecker, it would be pointless to try now."

She shoves Tech's Hand away, "Blow your way out of here, are you insane? With the amount of baby on board you'd blow us into the next dimension!"

There are a few beats of silence before both helmets turn towards her.

"Baby?" Wrecker repeats but is shushed by Tech.

"You don't mean baradium-"

"Bisulfate? I absolutely do! There were containers of the stuff in the holding bay."

"This Imperial ship is headed somewhere to mine thorilide?" He repeats, tone stressed over every syllable in the word ‘Imperial’.

"That or some unlucky planet is about to be wiped from existence."

"The location of the Republic thorilide mines have been kept under the utmost security for ages, not even the Jedi Council was ever advised of its location."

"Can’t say I blame them, I barely trust them with those glowy sticks of death." She murmurs, making lightsaber sounds with her mouth as Wrecker snickers.

"Stop that. Do you know where this ship was heading? Do you have a copy of the manifest?"

"What, your amazing Republic recce didn't get you that information shiny?" He glares back at her, brows pinching together behind the dark frames of his goggles, "Maker! Did those cloners take your sense of humor? Yes, I know where this ship is going."

"Bet Cid’s contact would pay more for that bit of info." Wrecker’s grin can be heard even through the plastoid of his helmet.

Tech meanwhile has typed something to a com on his wrist, "Hunter, there's been a complication."

"What kind of complication?"

"There is more on board this ship than just the republic database-"

"What do you mean?"

"This ship is a mining vessel, out to mine thorilide."

Tech’s wrist comm goes silent, just quiet static while the voice on the other line thinks, "Ordinance?"

Both clones look at her, she nods emphatically, "Ordinance, med supplies, if there was coaxium on board I wouldn't be surprised, this place is the motherlode."

"Quite a bit of supplies on board, it would seem."

The comm goes quiet again for a few moments, "We don't have time for this, it's only a matter of time before they realize that your cruiser is stolen. Grab what you went in for and leave."

Tech shakes his head, it's so tiny and quick that if she wasn't looking at him in that moment she would have missed it, "Where is it being kept?" 

"Up, five or so floors unless I've miscounted."

"Tech, Wrecker, Get out of there, now!" The voice on the other end grows more and more irritable as they stand around in silence.

"We'll be out as soon as possible." Tech replies curtly as he cuts the comm. He makes it sound so easy like they were stopping by the nearest market to pick up fruit, instead of about to hijack high quality explosives from Imperial custody, "Lead the way."

"What? Just like that?"

"Are there, or are there not these items on board?"

"Yes." 

"You swear?" Wrecker leans in close, hovering over her.

"Yeah."

Tech nods, "Vital signs are stable, no signs of heightened stress-"

"What if I'm just a really good liar?"

"You can try all you want my dear, but the data doesn't lie."

"Does he do this to you too? I'm finding it a bit creepy-" She asks Wrecker as her eyebrow raises.

"You get used to it."

"Weird, so weird…" she mutters to herself as she turns and peeks around the corner. She looks around for anything that is familiar, when she sees a maintenance lift at the very end of the hall to the right. She motions them forward, and silently they sneak their way closer to the lift. She turns her attention to her side as she digs in her bag, her fingers grasp at the odd collection of junk in her pockets until her hand finally wraps around the cool metal of her code cylinder and she can finally stop holding her breath.

Tech's hand on her shoulder pulls her back to the task on hand as he drags her back a few steps. The catwalk above them from here to the lift is no more than a shoddy looking set of grates that creak as a group of security droids march along their patrol, oblivious to the three of them below. 

“The maintenance lift?" Tech sniffs as they come to a stop at its doors. He raises hand to push his goggles back into place, "Perhaps you have failed to notice but none of us are maintenance droids, the moment you try to access that panel they will -”

“They’ll what?” She asks as she jams the cylinder into the port, the lift clicks open silently and she steps inside. 

“The alarms-”

“What alarms? According to this," she snaps her code cylinder from the panel and drops it back into her bag, lost again to the chaos of the random junk held within, "I'm a maintenance droid doing routine inspections. How stupid do you think I am?”

"Hey hey, this one's pretty smart huh Tech?!" Wrecker is thrilled.

"Pirate." She reminds, "You don't see many my age that aren't intelligent and I'll give you one guess as to why."

The doors silently click open and before they can step out a team of at least half a dozen well armed sentry droids roll past. 

They all leap from the inside of the lift and fall into a crouch behind a stack of supply crates. They wait for a few moments before Tech quickly peeks over, "They don't seem to have spotted us."

"Fuck, there weren't this many when we tried this the first time." She swears a few more times under her breath.

"We should do this my way." Wrecker offers.

"What's that mean, what does he mean?!" Nox looks nervously over to Tech, "He doesn't mean-?"

"Explosives and violence? He absolutely does," Tech sighs, “ and I'm afraid we are running low on options and even lower on time. Wrecker, what does your ordinance look like?"

“But you said I couldn't bring any?”

“Yes, and when was the last time you actually listened?”

Wrecker, the fun if not absolutely homicidal one, pulls out a couple of detonators, a roll of plastic tape, a half dozen hand grenades and three droid poppers.

“Great, nice to know you could have turned us into a small sun if I hadn't told you about the baby on board.”

"Everything save for the poppers is far too dangerous to use around those crates." Tech hisses, "Any more of those brilliant pirate ideas floating around in your head?"

She chews on her lip for a moment, wracking her brain for anything else that might be useful as she ignores Tech's sarcastic tone. Apart from the crates on this floor littered with treasure, there didn't seem to be anything of any use...except for the busted water filter. “How big of a distraction do you think it would take to get all those sentries away from the haul?”

“It would need to be something quite large or destructive enough to threaten the integrity of the ship.”

“The water filtration system on board is completely calcified, I don't think it was ever fixed since there are only droids on board. If you could flood that with enough pressure the entire pipe should burst-”

“And flood the entire floor, along with the engine room, that might just do it.” He’s on his data pad before the words are even out of his mouth, he scans the room all around and matches it with the wireframe schematics on his screen. He stalks his way backwards until he finds the panel he is looking for. He pops it open easily and then begins to slice into the mainframe of the ship, “On my count, take Wrecker to wherever the baby is, let him handle it. You get your hands on as much of the medical supplies as you can, the security onboard is a little tighter than I would have preferred so I will have to stay here and continue to flood the filter.”

“Oh, easy.”

“Think you can handle all that tiny?” Wrecker’s thundering chuckle threatens to give away their location even with the steady moan of the alarms overhead.

She grins, Wrecker is back to being the fun one, “Try and keep up.”

There is a sound of roaring water all around them as tech funnels every liquid on the ship into the filter, then a sound like an explosion a couple of feet below them rocks the ship like a lightning strike. 

The sound of the alarm overhead changes as every droid on the floor turns away and heads to a lowering platform, all instructed to assist with the burst pipe.

“That’s our cue!” 

She shoves Wrecker forward playfully before they both break into a sprint toward the storage rooms where their bounty is being held. She points to one of the rooms as they approach, "This one's your big boy!"

The door is sealed shut, but not for long. Wrecker doesn't slow, instead he hunches low, bringing his shoulders down and tucking his chin into the collar of his armor before he barrels straight through, punching a hole through the doors with enough force to make even her teeth rattle.

She dips into the storage room across the hall, thanking the stars that her haul wasn't locked away like his was. She rips open any crate within arms reach, tossing open the tops and letting them scatter around the room wherever they land. She snatches bacta patches and hypos by the handful and packs the crate as full as she can, slamming her entire body weight against it to get it to close. She drags it out into the hall, placing it by the door before she bolts into the room right beside the one Wrecker is standing in. 

Wrecker watches her disappear into the room, the four small crates of explosives tucked carefully under his arms, “Wait, where are you-”

His question is answered as another crate hits the floor beside him. She comes running out of the room, grabbing this second crate by the handle and yanking it along, “Perfect! Not a single explosion! Love that for me!”

Wrecker bends down to offer her a hand but she has already snatched up the first trunk and is flying down the hall with them. She's faster than Wrecker would have believed she would be capable of with the two crates almost her height. She almost trips over herself as she stops and with a swift kick, the second crate lands at Tech's feet, “Come on 20/20, cut her loose, let's go!”

“What’s in that- I specifically ordered you to only carry medical supplies.”

“Yeah well, it sounds like you are used to not being listened to so, ship. Now!”

Wrecker races past, hopping off of the side and down to the level below, the halls are empty as all hands are called to help with the floor that is flooding. 

Nox peeks over the side, she watches as Wrecker sets the small boxes of baby down beside him, "Toss your crate!" He calls up. She nods and yanks the crates handle, flipping it up and off of the edge with a nudge from Tech. 

She helps him in turn, as they gingerly haul the crate full of ordinance over the edge before tossing it below. 

Wrecker sets the crates to one side before turning back to catch Nox, but she's already climbing down. Her fingers dig into spots on the wall where she should not be able to have any grip. She finds her own way down and with a little hop, lands right beside Wrecker as Tech lands beside her. The clang of his boots echoes down the empty hallway. "We'll need to make our way through the flooded floor of the ship in order to get back to the hangar." Tech types away at his data pad again before picking up the side of his crate.

Nox follows close beside the two clones, tossing the crate up onto her back to avoid making any unnecessary scraping sounds as they get closer to the flooded area, the sound of pouring water gets louder and louder with every floor. The next floor they walk through has the water barely deep enough to wash over the toes of their boots, but it rises rapidly after that. By the time they are on the same floor as the hangar, the water has risen up to their knees and Nox has a harder time trying to distract her mind from where all of this stagnant water has been hiding this whole time.

“Holding out ok over there tiny?” Wrecker chuckles. 

She turns to answer, when everything becomes...not alright. Her next step slips out from under her and she goes flying forward, crashing face first into the dark disgusting water, the crate on her back keeping her under the surface as she struggles to pull herself back up to standing. 

A hand at the back of her collar pulls her back up into fresh air, slimy water pours from her mouth and nose as she gags. She doesn't need to clear the water from her eyes to know what the dark figures that are starting to line the hallway are. Tech and Wrecker are on either side of her, blasters raised as the sentry droids file in.   

“I'm hoping you can fight better than you can swim.” Tech calls over as Wrecker leaps over them both and charges straight into one of the sentries.  Tech keeps a few of the others at bay, clipping them with bright bolts from his twin deecees, but it's not enough. She rubs the slime from her face and charges right behind Wrecker, using her entire body to check a droid in her path, she grabs the blaster from its hands as it goes tumbling backwards and into the water. Techs shots ring out around her as he stays behind, watching over the crates behind him. Wrecker tears through any droids that get within reach, sparks flying on to the water before they sizzle and die. She concentrates her fire on any droids Tech misses until the hall is clear.

"There'll be a second platoon on their way, we better get a move on." Tech calls back to them, she tosses the almost empty blaster into the water beside her.

"Are you always just, you know?" She makes growling and ripping sounds at Wrecker.

He laughs, "Not often enough." 

She stifles her laughter behind her hand as she walks back to where Tech is to retrieve the case of medical supplies, for a brief moment the last couple of days are forgotten and even the slime on her skin is the last thing on her mind. For a brief moment she was back with her men, waiting for that score of a lifetime, but when she grabs the handle of the crate and looks back it’s the clone armor that reminds her she is in fact alone. The sudden quiet of sadness doesnt last long as the doors behind them open and a new series of drods begin their march towards them. 

“Incoming!”

-----

Tag list: @themarvelbunch @agentwhiskeysdarlin @pascalisthepunkest @ashotofspotchka

[toukatan]

Hello Beni! I hope you don't mind me writing again coz I think my previous ask got lost (if it didn't that's okay! I just thought I'd make sure ☺️)

So basically, what I wanted to tell you was that I still remember us talking almost 3 years ago (when all this time went???) when S3 was airing and even tho we eventually stopped talking, the posts on your blog always made me smile, you're really like a ray of light (excuse my corniness hskshj) in this fandom and also because of you I've never stopped believing in Eremika, and now we can proudly say: EREMIKA IS CANON!!! (I still can't believe this hshsgs)

Thank you Beni for always making Eremika fandom thriving, and I hope you can manifest some of it in ch139 (I mean, it worked last time!)

Hugs and kisses 😘 💖

JULIAAAAAAAAAAAA!

omg yes i remember chatting to you all those years ago i was sitting in classes doing course work things but talking about eremika with you instead audjhwjshw BUT HAS IT REALLY BEEN 3 YEARS WHAT THE HECK TIME? HOW? i’m gonna change that as soon as this pops up, yep imma change that.

your corniness is absolutely adorable just like you i said what i had to say— but nooo you don’t have to thank me at all for that because without you and everyone out here analysing, roasting and having a good time shipping em we wouldn’t be here yelling ‘eremika canon!’ but look at us now— we did it together and i’m so thankful for the amazing community we have! so thank you to you and everyone here— it’s all on you!

haha i manifested something little like em closure but yams said ‘no we want something bigger and better’ let’s see if i manifest hard enough yams can give us more but yams is wild so we’ll see 😉✨

i love and adore you with my whole heart 🥺💗

[sapphirescales]

erik and raven in first class

give me excuses not to be resting in bed after meds by asking meta stuff—— ( status: always accepting excuses to procrastinate! )

DID YOU MEAN: MY FAVE TOPIC OF ALL TIME?!?!

*clears throat* *puts on ableist toxic che/rik shipper voice* but LILY! erik and raven came out of nowher–

HERE’S WHERE UR WRONG BUDDY!!!!

the question you should be asking yourself is: where IS their development? why is it that erik looks to her in the final scene and asks her to come with him? why is it that, after being so callously rejected by hank, raven goes to erik for comfort vs let’s say, alex or sean ( who have never been Weird about how she looks! ) or even charles ( her oldest and dearest friend )? 

so. we see them on screen for the first time as they arrive at the Secret C.I.A. base ( tht shaw later blows up and kills darwin in ), in the car! the seating seems to be like this: moira & the c.i.a. agent in the front, and in the back charles-raven-erik, in that order. idk how far away this base was but if we assume tht it was Really Far tht means tht for a few hours, raven and erik were literally squished in a car together. cuties! this has no character-development relevance beyond my own headcanons and experiences w/ being in a car w someone for Hours, but it’s cute!!! i bet u raven drooled on him and won his ever lasting affection!!! anyways, this at least suggests Off Screen development!

fig 1. u can see tht erik is climbing out of the car, charles is already out, and there’s a blonde blur in the middle which is, ofc, ravne. also icb moira is ALWAYS driving sdklfjsdkfj

later on, we see them in the base, meeting hank! erik stands apart from charles/raven/moira/The Agent when they look at hank’s mutation but! you can CLEARLY see him watching with a close eye at the hank & raven interaction, he’s v v v much side-eyeing the two!!! his Immediate suspicion with regards to hank’s motivations with raven, his Immediate ability to pinpoint this possible relationship as Not Good!!! ( TAKE A LOOK AT THIS GIF! )

fig 2. and to the side, u see erik being tsundere like he isnt interested in other mutants what a fake!!!!

then, there’s the Iconique “ki/nky” scene!!! though you see hints of it when he’s side-eyeing raven and hank earlier, this is where we get canon confirmation that erik ALREADY knows not just what raven can do, but how she REALLY looks. although you could argue that maybe raven showed hank and erik at the same time, the earlier Side-Eye Game Strong scene suggests that erik already knew, hence why he’s v much ://// about raven and hank! and look at! where his gaze is!!!

fig. 3 and fig. 4

erik, looking at raven: “by the way, if i looked like you – “erik, looking at hank: “i wouldn’t change a thing.”

fig. 5, fig. 6, fig. 7:and hank unable to meet raven’s eyes after! knowing full well tht erik Knows His Game!

so, from here you get a HUGE set-up for erik and raven already! something absolutely vital to who they are! where charles Avoids the topic of how she looks ( “what, blue?” / “you’re my oldest friend” / “i feel responsible for you” / “i don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, you’re awfully concerned with your looks” ) and where her entire relationship with hank comes to revolve around how they look ( and how they can look normal / pass for normal ), her and erik’s relationship is, from this point, built on something completely different – ACCEPTANCE & BLUNT HONESTY.

i also always get! so mushy! about how erik’s gaze basically zeroes in on hank. it’s the physical equivalent of @-ing him and i cry about it all the time! keep in mind that at this point in time, erik is literally just about to go and steal the files from the C.I.A. and Leave Them All to go after shaw himself; he has no reason, no real need at all, to actually stop and SAY anything to either raven OR hank, to stop and point out that hank is a giant shit for wanting to change both his looks AND raven’s! but! he does! he stops and calls hank out! i Weep

moving onto the next scene – the cerebro scene. ofc this is one of my Most Fave che/rik scenes, but also! there’s an interesting parallel here tht most people don’t usually make – which is that both erik AND raven are wary of cerebro:

fig. 8 & fig. 9: [loud confused noises]

these are not the faces of ppl Excited by the idea tht the C.I.A. has been working on findings mutants ( using other mutants lmao @ hank !!! ) ( which, ofc leads to another question: how much of raven wanting to look Normal is a combination of societal pressure to be blonde, blue-eyed and fair-skinned as it is Fear of dropping her shift, outing herself and being vulnerable [cf. mystique, in xmen ( 2000 ): “people like you were the reason i was afraid to go to school as a child”], how much of her is actually ALARMED by the idea of being able to be found, even if she can hide? ) but it’s definitely! a far cry from charles’ face and general demeanor – nervous but also, excited ( “don’t ruin this for me, erik!” )

but this is a good similarity between them that sets them both Apart from charles, and more similar to each other!

my next scene is ofc, the Naming scene!!! listen every time sb describes tht scene as “mom n dad come home and yell @ the babies” i get so mad because, legit, STOP INFANTILIZING RAVEN!!! just Stop lmfao charles is definitely not her dad and she’s never seen him that way so please just fucking Stop being gross thx! anyways the scene was condescending, though it serves to ( crudely ) highlight the idea tht they still don’t don’t really know what they’re up against at all ( although, im 98% sure if erik saw oxford!charles from like 30 mins ago he’d say the same thing abt him but anyway! im not bitter or anything ). what’s absolutely significant abt this is that, after cuba, erik DOES go by the name “magneto” – so, as dismissive as it is now, as dismissive as he is of it now, he chooses to use this name that was given to him by a group of mutant kids. how Important is it that erik goes by a name that raven gives him, in the last vestiges of her Innocence before darwin is killed in front of their eyes – a name that carries her Hopes for him, when she was more childish? almost a protector’s name – a hero’s name, chosen by His Own Kind ( raven & the rest of the first class )? i’m,,, crying! that he’s so dismissive of it could possibly be as much to do with their perceived immaturity as it about his own dismissiveness about how Big this could be? how Significant? because, at this point in time there’s no cause yet… idk maybe u should weigh in @mutantism ?

ok next bit – after the base gets blown tf up! the car arrives ( with moira driving babbbe ) and both erik and charles share a look and then run over to raven. i die. i die. anywayz, that’s def v important for my tiny poly shipper heart but the Most Important is the Look raven gives to erik:

fig. 10 & fig. 11:

raven: “darwin’s dead, charles. and we can’t even bury him.”charles: …erik: “ – but we can avenge him.”

and i know the meta is only supposed to stick to xm/fc but! how significant is this response, for raven, even in do/fp? she loses all her friends and her response is vengeance, and it’s something both erik and raven are On Board for. it’s both of their instinct to hit back, hard, instead of turning the other cheek / taking it / giving up. MORE SIMILARITIES!

and then they’re at westchester, and erik is Dragging charles for his ( presumably ) easy life, literally Unable to consider for a Second tht maybe :0 ur family ISN’T always lookin out for ur best interests :0 i love him sfm, ADN THEN RAVNE SLIDES IN!

fig. 12:

erik: “i don’t know how you survived, charles, living in such hardship.”raven: “well, it was a hardship softened by me.”

honestly she looks like she’s gonna somehow beat the shit out of him if he ever Thinks abt pressing charles or taking the piss ever Again. but also? look at the lil smirk on her face, look at how erik’s face is just “r u srs” – she’s also absolutely rubbing it in his face that she’s known charles Longer and knows him Better. and he just. lets it be. bc he can’t say anything abt it in front of charles. she’s so. unbelievable.

icb we’re only on the training sequence, we haven’t even gotten to my fave bits. ONE SWEET N GENTLE MOMENT THAT I LOVE IN THIS TRAINING SEQUENCE THO is when sean squawks his way out the window.

erik, in the miami scene, to charles: GET OFF ME!erik, now, in the training sequence:

AND THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME!!! that he lets her in close, that he’s Open to her physically touching him ( even like this, even in this skin that he Hates her wearing! ) when she communicates so strongly with touch. you can see it better in this gifset but i’m also gonna post screencaps because raven LITERALLY is leaning on his back to see how sean goes ka-put. literally! leaning on him! HE IS LETTING HER WITHIN HIS PHYSICAL PROXIMITY LIKE THIS! erik “GET! OFF! ME!” lehnsherr is letting her!!! i Die

also another thing is that while charles is busy Seriously Training everyone else, erik included, raven’s been … given weights to do. it’s … so condescending, even if it does come from a place of wanting to protect her ( in which case, charles, u probs should’ve left her in oxford but wait! u Couldn’t Trust her to keep her shift up and not fuck up or be able to deal w/ her fuck ups bc she’s an adult, so here we are! ) AND THE ONE PERSON WHO GIVES HER SOLID ADVICE, the one person who DOES seem to take it as a Given that she’ll be Part of a Big Battle w/ the hellfire club, the one person who gives her pointers that are for the purpose of helping her SURVIVE – is erik. while everyone else is focused … on everyone else, erik is focused on raven. while charles is focused on making everyone else unlock their full potential by learning how to accept themselves and their mutations, erik focuses on unlocking raven’s full potential by helping her learn how to accept herself and her mutation.

erik: “if you’re using half your concentration to look normal, then you’re only half-paying attention to whatever else you’re doing. just pointing out something that could save your life.” [drops the weights.]raven: [catches the weights, but drops her shift.]  …erik: “you want society to accept you, but you can’t even accept yourself.”

crossing over with @mutantism ‘s headcanon for erik & clothing – he’s dressed in short sleeves for this “Lesson” in self-acceptance. is it premeditated? is it deliberate? does he use it as evidence of he, himself, being Other in the eyes of The People, to create and deepen a connection between them, knowing full well how Other raven feels? you decide. bop it. ( my tiny hc is always that erik does more than just this One Scene; he does focus on her, and help to train her, while charles is focused on everyone else, but we’re here for meta Only and firmly sticking to what’s available in the materials. )

next, is the big controversial scene: raven shows up in erik’s room. there’s plenty of build-up for this, and this isn’t even the culmination of their relationship or even a Peak Point ( which comes much later, in cuba ) but, in case people still aren’t Seeing It, here’s what we’ve got:

erik knows what raven Really Looks Like before hank does;

erik Actively Expresses the idea that he doesn’t think she needs to change to fit society’s standards – and certainly not change to fit hank’s standards;

erik is Watching Her and she Knows It;

there are plenty of similarities between them, which are also differences between them and charles;

raven teasing erik and getting away with it;

erik focuses on raven’s development whilst charles ignores it in favour of The Other Mutants;

erik lets raven within his physical proximity and allows her physical touch – the same way he allows charles’ physical proximity and his physical touch ( so kiss my goddamn ass toxic che/rik shippers who insist charles is The Only Important Person in erik’s life );

erik Wholeheartedly Likes how she looks and Makes It Known Repeatedly.

okay, now next: a breakdown of this scene.

erik: “well, this is a surprise.” raven: “the nice kind?”erik: “get out, raven, i wanna go to bed. maybe in a few years.”raven: [shifts into an older self.] “how about now?”erik: “i prefer the real raven.”raven: [shifts back into her blonde self.]erik: “i said the real raven.”raven: [drops her shift.]erik: “perfection.”

important things to pick up on here: the fact that erik rejects her, even when she’s shifted herself into what she’d look like in a few years is significant because it means that he doesn’t actually think she’s too young – he means, in a few years, when she’s moved past her self-image issues, when she’s grown out of the need to please society. he means in terms of maturity ( which! is a constant theme of the men in her life, thinking she’s Immature and so, incapable of making decisions / knowing what she Really Wants ), especially with regards to her self-esteem. 

look at how smug she looks when he says the real raven that first time. she’s absolutely testing him, and she’s viciously smug when she feels like she’s been proven right; that he prefers this raven. this is, to erik ( the way it is to hank, and to charles, and to everyone in her life ) – the real raven. compare this to how vulnerable she looks when he keeps insisting on the real raven.

she even looks back to check that this is what he means – that he means what she thinks he does, when he says the real raven. the raven that she feels is her real self – who is her real self – is also the one he’s talking about. checking to see if she’s assumed wrongly about what he thinks. and! she hasn’t!

look at how he looks at her! my heart is melting! im honestly dying! you assholes can Meme tf out of this as much as you want but it’s so important! his eyes are so soft on her, esp when you compare it to the earlier training scene where she was lifting weights and hiding! it kills me!

okay, the next part of the transcript:

raven: “could you pass me my robe?”erik: “you don’t have to hide. have you ever looked at a tiger and thought you ought to cover it up?”raven: “no. but – “erik: “you’re an exquisite creature, raven. all your life, the world’s tried to tame you. it’s time for you to be free.”

okay, i laugh ALL THE TIME at this tiger speech but? it’s so Much. raven is immediately feeling vulnerable and exposed around erik, feeling even more vulnerable because he can see how much she’s affected by his insistence – and his response is to ( clumsily ) tell her that she doesn’t have to hide around him, ( their entire relationship! is BUILT on acceptance and honesty! ) that she shouldn’t hide bc!!! she looks So Cool, like!!! like a tiger!!! that’s how cool she is!!! it’s the cutest thing? erik obviously trying for reassurance!

you can see that when he touches her face, too. keep in mind, this is erik “GET! OFF! ME!” lehnsherr, who has passively accepted physical touch, and initiated it once ( 1 ) time with a knee pat with charles ( feel free to correct me if i’m remembering it wrong! ), is holding her face. he holds her face and leans in and kisses her, because she communicates by touch, because it costs him so much to do this but the cost is worth it to reassure her! from the very beginning, them being squished in that tiny car together, their relationship is so defined by the give/take of physical touch!

and, most importantly, how this tiny close-mouthed kiss is enough reassurance for her. she doesn’t demand anything more – doesn’t need anything more from him ( at this point in time ), and he doesn’t need more from her at this point either. this is when their relationship makes the turn from ACCEPTANCE & BLUNT HONESTY and growing into something that also has UNDERSTANDING.

next up, my two fave cutie pies being cute!!!

erik, seeing an opportunity, legit just? drags her? after spending a few secs tryna catch her eye, looking over charles, and then he says hank’s been busy with tht stupid? insinuating tone? she just glares at him and? he smirks? like the little SHIT he is? I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!!! when will ur faves ever?!

and this bit, right before they board the blackbird is so fckn EXTRA like i can’t? believe?

im crying just! she’s just asked where’s hank? and erik has legit spent a good 30 seconds or so just staring at her, bordering on incredulity, and she’s smirked just as hank has spoken – you can see charles in the bg turning to face hank, which raven would’ve seen, so she knows he’s arrived, but she legit is just. holding erik’s gaze. she’s SMIRKING! erik can’t believe this! and neither can i!

but this is such a good, defining point of their relationship – that she can give as good as she gets, and so can he! i cry about it! and also, erik side-eyeing hank pt 2 ( because, another tiny hc sorry! but you can Bet that raven tells erik Exactly what hank says! )

and this is so important to me, that erik is still so Suspicious because! the audacity / self-centeredness of hank coming up to raven seeking her reassurance after he said she was more beautiful when she was hidden! that her natural form would never be accepted – that he could never accept it! and erik!!! being so Suspicious and disapproving of this!!!

ok anyway, next up, i’m gonna try and point Important things out in cuba without .. crying about cuba. so! the blackbird crashes, everyone is screaming, charles and erik have their Iconique scene where erik and charles are screaming together, as couples do, and he’s using himself as a safety belt.

now, focus on this next bit, after they get up off the floor. charles goes to unbuckle moira and erik gets up … and unbuckles raven. look:

that little figure w/ the booty bending down is charles – and the figure w a flatter booty unbuckling raven is erik.

my tiny children!!!

and then, another Fave ( and important ) scene: erik after killing shaw, after the missiles go off, and charles tackles him, even in a disassociated state, lashing out at everyone, telling them all to back tf off and MAKING them back off …

lashes out at charles  … 

but not raven.

even in this mental state where he’s clearly Not Okay, there’s no part of him that sees raven as a Threat, that sees her as being on a side that’s against him. he sees a threat in moira, in the rest of the fc, in charles – but not in raven. he throws them all physically away, except for raven.

and, once he’s made his Speech, the way they look at each other? that cements this? he looks at her like he Knows, and she looks at him, having made her choice already.

she walks forward and she! she doesn’t even look back at hank or alex or sean, she doesn’t look back at any of them!!! what makes her waver for a second is the fact tht charles is bleeding and just got shot, but erik clearly doesn’t hold it against her. and he CLEARLY doesn’t expect her to stay with charles because he … lets her go to charles, lets her talk to him and say her goodbyes. ( again! how much of their relationship is built on acceptance! on understanding! erik understanding that she cares abt charles! even as she resents him! ) just holding his hand out when she’s ready! 

their relationship was always headed this way from the start! they’re similar, their relationship – unlike most of the other relationships in this movie – are based on mutual understanding, and honesty, and acceptance! it’s a much more Lowkey story than the big, sweeping che/rik romance that is the Highlight and driving point of most of xm/fc but! it’s there! it’s definitely there and a Key Story as well! you don’t have to squint that hard to see it!

anyways this got long but basically, they love each other

references

screencapped.orgsuperheroscreencaps.comthis gifset

[just-like-playing-tag]

Isabella

Asked by Anonymous. Thank you very much for the ask!!!

Favorite thing about her: She's one of the greatest villains I've ever heard of! She fulfills her role as Emma's nemesis magnificently. I really like how she made her own choices, even if they were selfish ones. We cannot all be Emmas. It's in the human nature the instinct to survive, and I don't blame her for that. It makes it also kind of sweet how she wants to survive for Leslie too- kinda mirrors how, after believing he had died, Emma and Ray wanted to survive for Norman as well. Isabella is determined in being the one who survives in the end, and I think that makes her really cool.

Least favorite thing about her: Eh it has to be how she treated Ray. Now, hear me out:

you know there's this kid who knows that him and his siblings are being raised in a farm. He knows none of them will survive their 12th birthday. He has to see the siblings he obviously loved (because that's what kids do, they love their siblings, no matter how much Ray tried not to get attached) being shipped once every two months. He had to go through all of this, while acting like everything was fine.

And you think "oh yeah why don't we treat him like a fucking animal that's obviously the right thing to do". Just. Girl what's your problem??????? His life was a nightmare, why did you had to make it even worse??????? She called him "dog". She made him hate himself more then the already did. She made it so that he'd never forget that his byological mother hated him. Really,,,, why. Why didn't that boy deserved the "happy life" you promised to give every child you rised. Why did you chose to fuck him up more that he already was.

Even worse, the thing is,,,, I know the reason she did it. It's because she knew Ray was her son, and she didn't want to get attached in any way. It's because him himself was born out of the system that had tortured her in every way. Because that too was probably the manifestation of a deep self loathing for all she had done and she kept doing. But still- woman, you're an adult. And he was a freaking five years old. All you had to do is not to add more trauma.

Uhm also I didn't really like how her redemption arc was handled- but for completely different reasons than the rest of the fandom. What bothers me is how easily they forgave her. I think it's easy to understand her actions when, as the reader, you know plenty about her pov; but I don't think a bunch of kids would forgive her that soon. I don't think they would consider her mom their (but I'm getting to that later). Sometimes the fact that you were forced to do some horrible things doesn't change the fact that you've done them- at least to the eyes of your victims.

Especially Ray. I love him but I really don't think he wouldn't have forgiven her. He'd been upset and thorned of course, but I don't think he would cry over his mother's body– why would he, all of his life she had never been one to him.

Favorite line:

Ok maybe this:

I love this scene, it may be my favorite of hers? I already mentioned it in the past, but I really like how after having lost, she actually makes an effort to protect the children. Even though it's a small step, and even though it's too late, she finally does something to love them as she wanted to. It may be a stretch, but even if that's not how thiss scene is supposed to be read... I still find her resolution amazing. Look at her, so stern and unshakable, like she was made of stone. I love and admire people who take responsibilities into their hands, that's how I aim to be.

But I also really like this. Her tired face. Her admitting her defeat. I don't know, there's just something really beautiful in how this panel was composed.

And this is nice as well, isn't it? All of the above (and under) still stand, but I like how at some point she gave up, and genuinely wished the best for the children. "Lights" metaphors are extremely cliché, but that doesn't make the any less sweet.

brOTP: I really don't know where this came out from but I think in a modern AU Isabella and Yuugo would bond really well just. I don't know. Ruthless bitches with actually a soft heart squad.

Another squad I love:

OTP: Ok totally not in canon, but Isabella / Krone sounds so so nice, I really love them.

nOTP: Bah nothing really.

Random headcanon: Through all the years she has been a mama, she has never ever cried. She's really not one to shed tears.

She really likes reading. She has read all the books of the orphanage as well, even though it took her longer then Ray (she read most of them only after she became mama)

Unpopular opinion: Ok everyone is going to hate me for this but. She has never been a mother to the children. Never. She was kind and nurturing towards them, of course! But honestly it's my opinion that a mother would always chose death over hurting her children. And like, I don't blame her at all for not doing so?? It's totally fine if she chose her life over the ones of countless children; some people think about themselves first, and I respect them for that. The survival instinct instinct is part of all humans, and that's ok. But what I mean is, stop acting as she loved her children as much as a mother would, because she didn't? It's a big part of her character - and it's also part of what makes her an amazing villain. What she was aiming for has always been surviving herself - for Leslie and all that stuff. You can't take off such a big part of this from her. She was determined to do everything to do that, even the most ruthless, bottle of things. She hurt children- but not her children. Those children were never hers, because she never loved them as a mother would.

(I'm obviously talking about mother as a motherly figure, and not as mother by blod– I understand perfectly not all byological mothers would be willing to die for their children, but in that case I just don't consider them mothers to them.)

Song i associate with her: OK LOOK THERE'S THIS ONE LES MISÉRABLES SONG THAT IS ABSOLUTELY PERFECT EVERY SINGLE WORD SOUNDS LIKE IT'S BEEN WRITTEN FOR ISABELLA PLEASE GIVE IT A LISTEN

I Dreamed a Dream (performed by Caissie Levy) - Les Misérables

(Yes she's talking about Leslie) (Yes it's "He slept a summer by my side" because that's how time flee for her and "He took my childhood in his stride" because her childhood died with him) (Yes I'm crying)

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

When hope was high

And life worth living

I dreamed that love would never die

I dreamed that God would be forgiving

[...]

But the tigers come at night,

With their voices soft as thunder,

As they tear your hope apart,

As they turn your dream to shame!

Also, Miss Honey's bridge in When I Grow Up - Matilda makes me think about a younger mama Isabella:

When I grow up

I will be brave enough to fight the creatures

That you have to fight beneath the bed

Each night to be a grown up

Favorite picture of her:

I like this... She makes it look like after decades of fake smiles, this is her first, true, heartfelt smile.

Sorry I'm very incisive tonight

And this!!!!!!!! The coldness, the power, the sheer determination!!!!!!!!!!!

Also love her unreadable face in this; she's so cool!!!!!!!!

Send me a character and I’ll list

[aspoonofsugar]

Hi! I've already asked this from hamliet but I'm interested in your thoughts too :) I was wondering what you think of Zeke's remark in this chap? According to Shuuko9 on twitter: "Eren talked with Zeke about Ackerman’s will and headaches. Zeke says it’s not the ackerman instinct that makes Mikasa protect him. It’s love." Do you think besides eremika this confirms eruri and kennuri as romantic canon too?

Zeke literally said Mikasa's Ackerbond is different from her love toward Eren meaning Mikasa's love is something personal and it doesn't apply to all Ackermans. I don't hold anything against Eruri and kennuri shippers mostly bcz I'm neutral when it comes to shipping but as far as eruri is concerned Isa has referred to them multiple times as sworn friends. First in the character guide & then back in RtS where Erwin said "I deceived my 'friends' where the shot switched on Levi". What do you think?

So if we were to consider headaches are due to Ackerman instincts according to Zeke, how would you explain Levi's reaction to Eren's actions back in 112? 🤔

Hello anons!

These three asks can be answered together.

This is the panel where Zeke and Eren talk about the matter:

I think this panel simply confirms that Mikasa, Levi and Kenny’s feelings were their own feelings and had nothing to do with their genetics. The Ackermans are people and as all people they develop bonds with others. As far as the nature of those bonds is concerned, one can interpret them like they want. When it comes to Mikasa’s feelings for Eren, it has been stated by multiple people that their nature is romantic. When it comes to Kenny and Levi’s feelings for respectively Uri and Erwin, I think they can be read as either platonic or romantic. I don’t think they are less powerful or less beautiful than Mikasa’s either way.

Personally, I do not care that much about an author’s comments even if some can be interesting. From what little I have read, I think Isayama’s comments tend to underline the importance Erwin and Levi have for each other, so I don’t think they preclude the possibility of a romantic interpretation.

In short, this chapter tells us nothing new about Mikasa, Levi or Kenny. It has been clear for a while that they deeply care about respectively Eren, Erwin and Uri.

When it comes to Levi in chapter 112, I think you are referring to this panel:

I don’t think he is having a headache. He is simply touching his head and wearing a tired expression. All in all, Levi has never shown to suffer from headaches, which to be honest makes the whole explanation given by Zeke kinda weak in my opinion.

I think the wording is pretty strange too:

Zeke: “Headache? It must be a specific side effects for Ackermans. I doubt previous titan shifters or even Mr Xavier had them”.

Why, if they are talking about Mikasa, is Zeke mentioning previous titan shifters? I do not think it makes much sense. After all, who cares if titan shifters have or not headaches? It is true that the Ackermans are said to be people who can manifest titan-like strength/were created thanks to titan science. However, they are...not titan shifters. They are extremely strong and gain great battle-experience thanks to paths, but that is. They can not regenerate, nor turn into titans. What is more, they do not die after 14 years like shifters. In short, I do not think they have much in common with titan-shifters.

Because of this, I wonder if the headaches Eren asked Zeke about are not really Mikasa’s, but his:

Eren has been said to suffer from headaches as well since when he was little. It is true that it is something seemingly linked to his lacking memories, but at least it is there. Who knows? Maybe Eren asked Zeke if headaches had something to do with titan powers and Zeke said they might have had something to do with the Ackermans instead and the fact that Eren is supposedly Mikasa’s “host” (hence why they both suffer of headaches).

Well, take it with a grain of salt because I think Eren’s headaches were framed as consequences of him forgetting what happened to Grisha. As for now, it is probable Zeke and Eren were simply discussing the Ackermans and Eren asked about Mikasa’s headaches. However, the fact neither Levi nor Kenny are shown to suffer from them, makes me wonder if this is just a poorly executed detail or if it will be important later on.

Thank you for the asks!