#identities both in-universe and out of it

[vinelark]

I've been going through ur fic recs and after binging through "A Meditation On Railroading" and "The Long Way Home", I'm now obsessed with Jason and Tim. Something about hating each other but not really, all the bad blood and hurt and still becoming brothers bc how couldn't they

I wanted to ask if you know any other fics that are about them?

Thanks! :)

i had to make a real effort to keep this (relatively) short or it would just be hundreds of fics long. here is a very incomplete list of old favs and recent reads! i've definitely rec'd some of them already, but i think others are new to my fic rec tag.   you already mentioned a meditation on railroading and the long way home; i’m linking them again here for anyone else who wants them, because they are two of my favs and would kick off this list if you hadn’t already read them.   robin!jason era   Brother Wanted by Vamillepudding one of the most impressive things a story can do, imo, is pull off a really believable kid/teen pov—this does it twice, for both tim and jason, and it’s one of my fav rereads.

Like a Hinge, Like a Wing by @bonesbuckleup i’ll always be reccing this one; it’s one of my favorite slow-burn hurt/comfort fics, and the tim & jason relationship in this context is very sweet + compelling as they deal with some rough edges unique to this story.

1-800-ROBIN by spqr jason volunteers for a mental health hotline, and this leads to bonding with tim. this has some incredibly tender moments and a great robin!jason pov.   red hood!jason era

cake is a four letter word by @sonosvegliato jason just wants to make a loaf of bread. then tim shows up. i love when a writer nails tim in peak Annoying Mode (❤️).

geolocation by @envysparkler i love a good forced-to-work-together oneshot, and this one gets bonus points for the sheer amount of “actions speak louder than words” going on with every single thing jason does.

Tim in a Bottle by @coyote-nebula (wip) angst and humor galore; tim and jason and their giant pile of unresolved issues all get locked in a walk-in freezer together. need i go on?

the trolley problem by @silk-scarlet-ribbons this is—i say with full appreciation—an absolute pangfest. jason is taken by an enemy, and that enemy has kidnapped a "random civilian" (you guessed it: tim) for leverage to get jason to do what they want. (also check out requiem for the forsaken by the same author, which is the fic that finally got my best friend to start caring about robins with me.)

Short-Term Memory Loss (Leads to Long-Term Sibling) by Vamillepudding a bittersweet + hopeful story in which red hood!jason gets temporarily whammed back to robin!jason, and bonds with tim.

Say Uncle by @megaerakles an incredibly fun twist on tim’s fake uncle with layers upon layers of identity shenanigans.

of crime lords and literature by @adelfie a wonderfully angsty, plotty fic in which tim ends up in danger as himself, and—after a very rocky start—jason is somehow the one who rescues him.

unequipped by Valkirin there’s a lot of jason saving tim on this list, and this story is a delightful reversal of that trope. red hood’s in trouble, and tim shows up to bail him out.

For All The Just Alike Birds by @sunflowersandink tim breaks his arm, and jason makes it his problem. featuring some excellent begrudgingly worried jason pov!

alternate universe

clean it like you mean it by @wynterstars (wip) i adore this jason-joins-the-family late AU; the central robin!tim & sort-of-civilian!jason dynamic is so compelling. marked as a wip, but currently leaves off in a very satisfying place!

[astronicht]

I love the very subtle but important presences of bez and pecco in tavullia radio!! and also everything else about it obviously. would love to know if you had any more thoughts about like what they're doing thinking seeing feeling! the image of pecco running into freshly fucked and sucked marc at the espresso machine he can't use and making him a tiny coffee enchants and delights me. in my mind he is suffering horrors. thank you for such a perfect fic!!

thank you Leah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 <3 So in my head etc Pecco and Marc are already technically or already have been teammates. I was thinking as I wrote it "is this next month? or is this december after the 2025 season?" haha. Either way Pecco is like. In a phase of life where he has decided that he is professionally obligated to have some form of rapport with Marc. And if they've been working together for a bit, they awkwardly kind of already DO, just not. NOT in this setting. Always on neutral Ducati ground. THIS scenario (freshly fucked and sucked marc at vale's ranch, in pecco's friendly ranch kitchen, where he was NOT expecting visitors) is NOT part of this carefully polite professional rapport. Unlike the rest of the guys Pecco can't just grunt and shuffle past (he totally could have; Marc did not want to talk to anyone). He's forcing himself to try to be normal and thus extending everyone's suffering lol. They don't even dislike each other. This somehow makes it all worse.

Pecco made Marc a Turkish coffee instead of just getting out one of the 3-5 mokas kicking around because he has gotten into foodie youtube and Turkish coffee came up, and he carefully bought the correct little cup to boil it in and the correct finely ground coffee and he has like, watched videos on how to get the foam right. Very much your friend who gets really into foodie youtube and is suddenly making what you think of as simple staple dishes with all the right utensils and the correct dipping sauce that no one in ur family ever bothered with. He actually had come in to make a coffee for himself before practice (i think he's considering doing a little mentoring? which never interested him much. Marc appears in moments of Pecco identity or professional crisis, in this universe) so you have to picture Pecco out there somewhere with a little cup of Turkish coffee and haunted eyes, wondering if he can drink it.

Marc actually wanted tea, or to have the balls to wander around the ranch in boxer briefs and a t-shirt smelling violently like sex, but he saw the giant fuck-off luxury espresso machine and was like. the look of it annoyed him so he was definitely going to force it to work or just break it. a little bit his instinct to push at vale a little, to try to figure out where the lines are, or to know for sure that vale isn't going to snap over something normal again.

So that was the mood and then pecco came in and was like oh god. oh god he's going to touch the espresso machine and we'll have to have it repaired again. oh god we won't be able to tell vale that marc did it and we'll have to blame celestino again. Just polite Pecco voice being sooo normal like Hi Marc Would You Like A Coffee :) [intense suffering]. He is overcompensating and being as normal as possible bc marc looks fucked ouuuuut and also is doing the terrifying dead fish eyes and slight grin he does when in extreme physical pain and forced to converse, bc he's dissasociating and also does not care enough to make nice expressions for pecco. (Vale used to fuck himself to sleep despite insomnia -- like he just did -- all the time when Marc was 22 and the memory is a bit much.)

Bez meanwhile is having a total gay... crisis isn't the right word. ring of keys dot mp3. the particular egg-cracking feeling of seeing something you didn't know you desperately wanted until you want it violently and think you're gonna cry for no reason. seeing it is both horrifying (for the same reasons pecco is horrified; marc is fucking motorcycle dad) and makes him want so much it fills his mouth with spit, and that scale of desire is weird and confusing and almost a high. but also he LIKES having a grudge against Marc. It's comforting. It's so awful to be jealous of him, while also realizing he's not jealous that Marc is fucking Vale, because in the end Bez is also being forced to realize that he doesn't exactly want to fuck Vale (well, it's complex, but he doesn't want to fuck Vale like Marc wants to fuck Vale and thus Marc even managed to get a win over Bez by being gay in the way Bez would've liked to have been gay).

Anyway!! Bez got wronged in this fic, I don't want to assign him "italian son with sisters who never learned to make coffee". But i did do that. Also he feels twitchy and guilty about the falsely attributed coffee thing for days. Probably vents to Celestino, who is like "why are you talking about coffee bez i am at the club. did i break the espresso machine again bez?? i can't hear u maybe there's better signal on the roof [call dropped as cele's phone dies and isnt' charged for 3 days]"

[deviantly-inspired]

The end of Arcane where Jayce and Viktor are beings of light except for their hands and faces, the parts of themselves and eachother they're most proud of, most fond of, draw identity with. Two scientists who've done nothing but work with their hands all their lives using their last moments to draw eachother close. holding onto one another with hands that create and bring what is arguably most human, the most individual part of the human identity of "self" together not as one hive mind but as Two separate individuals choosing to reach out, one last time, and picking eachother.

The end of arcane where jynx honors her her second father and her third father and her sister as best as she knows how because she knows the weight of Vander's death is never going to set her free, she can never outrun the guilt of it and so she embraces the love of it to save what she has left letting that love drag her to death to save what's left. Because walking away and death are the same thing in Jynx's mind and the two have always been linked since the day Vi left her. Because the guilt she and Vi held over Vander's death destroyed the city and killed Isha and it was going to kill Vi too unless Jynx dragged the guilt down with her

The end of Arcane where Ekko has had a taste of what could have been and chose to leave it all behind to save what was and is the only person in the entire world to know what Powder looks like when she's in love. To know a world where forgiveness is enough, and an intended letter was found by another pair of Star-crossed lovers/friends/family. To know a softer world and all it's temptations and ask only for a first-second-first kiss. To love a girl and a memory and a city and a people enough to tear himself across time and space for it.

End of Arcane where Cait and Mel both keep three lessons in their heart, and a secret fourth one too. To carry the sacrifice of love for the rest of their lives as Ambessa taught them to: with their heads held high

End of Arcane where Vi and Cait both stand atop bodies worth of love and still choose eachother still love eachother where Cait tries to find what's left of Jynx and Vi hums a lullaby and stays. Where it's choosing to reach out over and over and over again.

End of Arcane where love beats ambition. Where love saves the day. Where love is the underpinning layer of the universe so fundamental that it doesn't matter which one you're in because it's there. The love was there. The love was always there. And it wasn't just enough: it's the whole reason any of it matters in the first place

[profoundlyfaded]

I’m now thinking about some romance related headcanon’s for Yaryna (MW Reaper) and Emmrich that seem locked in my skull. Yaryna is she/her but I hope anyone who romances Emmrich with another gender identity will enjoy this as well.

At her request, Emmrich calls her by her real name in private. As the Necropolis foundling, her name is the core she built herself around. Her name is important for her.

Their courtship begins after the first visit to the Memorial Gardens, but really ramps up after Wiesshaupt. They often visit many of the other gardens across the Necropolis walking side by side, sometimes with Yaryna’s arm tucked into the crook of his elbow.

Emmrich often leaves flowers in her room, hand picked bunches tied with ribbon; sometimes from the various gardens of the Necropolis, sometimes its flowers growing around the Lighthouse, or from the places they visit. After affirming their relationship, Shrouds Kiss often appears in these arrangements even if they aren’t native companions to the rest of the flowers.

Yaryna starts making Emmrich a death shroud (in my head canon this is an acceptable gift between necromancers in Navarra) as her main project which she would later gift to him when his acceptance of death improves. An ornate work, it features motifs from their adventures both during and after The Veilguard.

They share their first kiss shortly after he shows her the deeper fade. Seeking each other out as promised, their first kiss is on his balcony, slow, tender.

Neve is the first one to realise they are seeing each other; she catches the little glances, the tender but otherwise unnecessary touches, finding the pair together in the library or laughing over the stove as they make a pot of tea.

Harding is the second one to twig, knowing something is different and it’s Neve that spells it out for her.

Davrin is the last to find out, catching them in an intimate dance; he tactfully withdraws to leave them to it but around the table thinking he’s got the news of the century, he gets shot down as the others all tell him they knew/noticed.

The first time they make love is after clearing the Blight Eruption. After catching Yaryna examine the formally dormant flowers, Emmrich knows himself to be utterly taken by this woman. He takes her back to the Necropolis for dinner, ending the night in his apartment (I imagine him having old Oxford style university digs) and he forgoes his morning stretches to stay in bed with Yaryna.

While trapped in the Fade, Emmrich often returns to Yaryna’s room just to be close to her. At first searching for a way to try and communicate with her as she did with Solas. He eventually peaks at a journal she had left on a shelf, apparently bulging with notes - he discovers she’s been pressing some of the flowers he brings her and there are sketches of some of the gifts he’s given her. Her last entry stating ‘will he ever realise I’ll love him no matter what’ breaks his heart.

During her time in the Fade, Emmrich buys an engagement ring, deciding that once he gets her back, he’s never letting anything part them. He proposes a few days after their victory and they marry two months later.

There, there is the brainrot.

As an aside note to the death shroud thing, I can confirm that Yaryna also makes a simpler one for Lucanis, which she sends to him without context a few years after Veilguard ends. It goes over exactly as expected.

[the-sprog]

thinking about Naruto MHA crossover where post Shippuden but pre Boruto Team 7 end up in the world of MHA and have to choose a hero name for themselves for whatever reason and this conversation happens

N: "... You know what would be funny?"

Sasu: "You're not going around calling yourself "The Jinchuriki", Naruto."

N: "oh cmon why"

Saku: "We're not letting you call yourself a human sacrifice."

N: "but think of how funny it would be!!"

K: "I'm with him on this one. It would be hilarious."

Saku: "Why not... something related to the Ninetailed fox? Kyuubi or something?"

N: "do you want Kurama to eat you? Because if you suggest that again he's going to eat you"

Saku: "Ok ok. tell him to chill out"

Sasu: "I think he can hear you. Also don't tell the demon that lives in Naruto's stomach to chill."

K: "Yeah sakura. That's rude."

Saku: "I hate you all."

N: "... so I'm gonna go ahead and use jinchuriki-"

S&S: "NO"

N ":C"

Sakura decides on Medic-nin, very basic, she's the first that chose and didn't think everyone else was going to go take it THAT seriously.

Kakashi decides to repurpose his ANBU name and goes by Hound.

Naruto wants to use Jinchuriki because he thinks it would be HILARIOUS and is not letting anyone tell him otherwise.

Sasuke didn't want to do this, wanted to use Uchiha but got outvoted. He gets bullied into choosing Amaterasu. Him and Tokoyami would get along here.

I thought about how they'd go about the quirk thing. They can't attract too much attention using all their abilities, so they plan out what to use.

Sakura thought calling herself the Medic of the group would get her underestimated as the sideliner, but she uses her strength to shatter people's bones while naming them.

Naruto mostly stays within Shadow clones and Henge techniques, as well as speed. He allows himself the occasional Rasengan if things get real touch and go.

Kakashi goes all copy nin on them. I'm going to say he can use chakra to copy emitter quirks, so he goes with that and predicting people's moves and general taijutsu.

Sasuke goes all genjutsu on people. Allows himself the occasional chidori too though. Once they get a reliable way to care for them, he also starts sword fighting people.

In my head the first chapter of the fic would be a pov alternation between Aizawa telling a task force of heroes about the new vigilantes on the rise, all serious and gloomy, and team 7 having the above conversation

I was thinking of why this could've happened and I can very well blame the aliens still. I mean, they make a comeback in Boruto. But I want to ignore that show and make up my own ideas post Shippuden. But I mean. If the aliens have a time traveling device what's stopping me from saying they also have a universe traveling one?

So my idea is that team 7 accidentally activated it and it's got this ENORMOUSLY long cool down because it uses a ridiculous amount of chakra. This was only possible because Naruto was there essentially. So they're mostly chill. It's long enough after the war that the biggest issue is Kakashi isn't there to be Hokage, but I mean. Yamato can fill in for a few. So they're only biding their time and making sure the aliens don't come cause problems. Hence the double identities. They wanna make sure they can both spy around and hang out in public places without being constantly Henged.

Meanwhile the hero commission is in shambles because Naruto is physically incapable of minding his own beeswax, especially when children are being mistreated. He's honestly one fist fight away from befriending the LoV let's be honest.

[griffinborn]

ARCANE ENDING ANALYSIS

****obviously SPOILERS ahead****

Everyone is debating whether jinx is alive or dead so here’s my thoughts first I’m going to try and explain my view on WHY jinx is alive but made to look dead and then I’m going to prove HOW she is Alive. And why air vents have nothing to do with it.

WHY JINX IS ALIVE

With ARCANE coming to an end we are to believe that The piltover part of the show is over, the reason?

Well… we all think this season felt rushed, the beats didn’t land properly and character development felt shallow. That is because it was rushed it’s been 9 years since they started writing this story arc and they wanted to end this story arc that had to end at this point in this way.

if they could have produced the more quickly over a shorter period of time they would have streched the arcs and have had better pacing but it’s a long time and they wanted to move on to the next arc of this universe.

That doesn’t mean this is the last we’ll see of these characters or even piltover as a lot of piltover champions haven’t been introduced because this wasn’t the arc for that yet. We get hints of that as we see sevika become a councillor but be met with distrust and being looked down upon so now the class division and healing will go on in the background as we explore different parts of runterra (cause the writers don’t have the competence to write engaging happy stories).

The characters will come back to begin the next arc of their character growth.

Take Vi for example she is not even a person in her own right, right now she’s just ‘dirt beneath Caitlyn’s fingernails’ that does not seem like a fulfilling way to live your life for anyone. But makes sense for Vi, she needs to grow relax not be a person for a while because for her being a person means sacrificing everything she is to save others live for others but she’s never successfully done that she needs to do that live for someone else (1 person- cait) be successful in protecting them so she one day live for herself, find herself, find the meaning of being a person, her own goals. Till now we haven’t seen the story of Vi - just Powder’s sister her keeper since the first scene when she became wholly responsible for her a role that Vander did nothing to deter her from but pushed more heavily onto her.

And we kinda got a happyish end for jinx, NOT because she died so is free, NO, but because she finally got to save Vi not just from death but also stop Vi from killing herself (cause that’s what she has doing staying on that ledge not because she thought she could save Vander but because she left his dead body behind once). Show her that she has to rise above her self sacrificing bulshit, cause that only works when she is the only one protecting others not when she is fighting with others together, cause in those scenarios if she puts herself uncaringly in danger someone else will protect her and get hurt doing so.

She is alive but more importantly ready to go go on a journey of self discovery and define for herself her identity (herself not silco as Vi’s sister but not one dependent on her) away from Piltover and Zaun. Truly find herself, and be ready to come back on her own terms not bcz the outside forces dictate it.

HOW IS JINX ALIVE

I want to preface this by first cursing the guy responsible for camera work on Ep9 May seven generations of your family cry tears of blood!!

it was so hard to figure everything out!

let’s start with our North Star the stationary point around which everything revolves.

You’ll understand that in a moment.

I’ll like to draw everyone’s attention to this Frame.

Aww… Sob.. jinx hugging Vander while she kills them both… 😢 Forget that focus on the background!

the glowing runes the circular shape with an opening in the middle in 3 rings like oh? The hex gate beam!

but that could just be a pretty backdrop yeah I wouldn’t believe that even if this was the first time I was seeing it but it’s not. We’ve seen it before…

here

Here

Directly followed by

then after cutting to jayce and victor in the tunnel, different backgrounds for a sec but none of them from a consistent camera angle

and we’re back here again

Then another cut to jayvik, them finally entering the sphere, and again different backgrounds for jinx/vi/vander

and then? We’re back here again

And it’s here that jayvik enter

Disrupting the vi/jinx/vander fight and creating the ledge.

now the North Star why do I mention it? Because the existence of the gate itself is not enough to prove that the hexgate turned on, so what is?

let’s go back to the image of the blast

Notice that rune in the corner?

that’s also a repeating marker it first appears not when we get the first look at the inside of the hex gate where where jinx/Vi/Ekko/Vander have crashed but after jayvik have started their ascent and the tunnel lights up.

and again when jayvik finally enter the sphere

and again after Viktor has blasted through the ledges and is exiting the sphere

notice the lack of light entering the scene from the hole created by Vi/jinx/ekko But in all these instances the rune has the top horizontal straight line facing away from the tunnel but when the explosion happens the line is facing inwards towards the tunnel that means a the rune turned in its casing implying that a mechanism was activated.

vs

also notice how the tunnel is between the tube on which jinx lands and the ledge vi and vander land on no way that somebody moving like this

will fall towards the centre of the tunnel.

also take these 3 frames

vander gets a hold of jinx

cut to vi coming to rescue

Back to vander with jinx in his grasp turns his head towards incoming vi

The camera in the first and second image is the same, a split second has passed but the background changed.

because the sphere started rotating the moment the tunnel light up the first time, the first time we see the North Star.

Let’s have a positive outlook for the future and until then see you all on ao3

P.S. - If you think my theory makes no sense or the evidence is insufficient or disapproved do let me know….

[eggrolls-and-fandoms]

I always saw it as like. How do I put this. Kris is BOTH Chara and Frisk, while also being uniquely their own. Like both and neither.

Kris wears Chara’s colors in the light world, yeah. But in the dark world they have the blue and pink that Frisk did. They’re very mischievous and prone to being ‘creepy’ like Chara was, but the possession they go through, as well as different flavors of oddball behavior (like when they’re good at flirting with Hathy or eat moss), could draw parallels to Frisk.

I always thought that Chara and Asriel were pretty close in age too, while for Kris he’s clearly older - and we haven’t seen any mention of being best friends nor having the locket. The closest we’ve gotten to the locket’s thematic equal/parallel is the horns headband, which is rather unique, and thematically feels quite satisfying to imagine as something only Kris would do.

I don’t think Chara and Frisk exist really in deltarune? Like the timeline, universe, and basic laws of reality are so altered it’s like. I don’t think there is any 1-1 equal to everyone in either universe. I think their narrative/emotional purposes are smushed into Kris. Someone adopted by the Dreemurr’s when they were young, who doesn’t have a great past with humans, like Chara. But who feels like they came in later, is younger than Asriel, whose Asgore and Toriel are divorced, like Frisk. I also think that that in and of itself contributes to the themes of identity issues surrounding Kris, bcus clearly when the game starts all you see is Chara. I literally shouted ‘WE’RE CHARA???’ Out loud the first time I played. But in the dark world everything changes, and you can see Frisk instead. And it makes you question - who are we?

Then Kris of course declares their freedom in a way Frisk and Chara never did, and instead we are forced to realize and ask who is Kris? And, well, we’re still finding the answer. But one things clear: Kris is their own.

Transcript: I've been stuck here since 2016 and I am utterly convinced from all angles that Kris is Chara. Not in the sense that Chara from UT jumped universes and possessed Kris, but in the sense that they're the deltarune universe's equivalent. And I don't get why it's such an unpopular idea.

Like... it's so obvious that that's the connection the game is trying to draw, from being Asriel's sibling to the chocolate to the talent for unnerving facial expressions to the fashion sense. Is it because different names? Is it because the old and deprecated idea that chara is a one-dimensional demonspawn? Is it some other weird fanonism that subtly nailed itself into our heads that we forgot was fanon? I don't know and it's like... am I missing something? Am I being blinded by some weird fanonism that nailed itself into my head that I forgot was fanon?? Am I reading into it too much? Are other people reading into it too much?? Or not reading into it enough?????

It's frustrating

[mouthpoisons]

Something I want to see a lot more of in post-canon fics is Viktor not turning back to human, and still being stuck in full Arcane Harbinger form.

The main reason is for the angst and the drama: the damage is done, and he can't go back to human. He has to navigate his newfound romantic relationship with Jayce while also coming to terms with his transformation-as well as having a LOT of Identity issues and Body Horror-related trauma. (The "mask" literally split his face open. I imagine he probably gets a lot of unpleasant sensations from that.) He also has to learn to curb his newfound Control Freak tendencies and that it's Not Okay to try to turn people into walking soulless automatons just because they were rude to Jayce. (In Viktor's defense, the guy was an asshole who no one would miss.)

Not helping is that Viktor still has some of the unsettling Arcane abilities he developed. They've been greatly weakened, but he still has a limited version of them-and it really only hammers home his lack of humanity.

(Of course, that begs the question: will Viktor come to accept his current form, or will he begin to pursue a more... Cybernetic path in order to feel like himself again? Regardless, Jayce is with him every step of the way-and he'll help in any way he can.)

oh absolutely yes i love this angle so much... i think on the whole, postcanon stuff is hitting a lot more for me if him processing what he did and that dark place he went to also means processing what happened to his body and being comforted through it by jayce (and yknow what, both of their bodies, jayce spent a whole episode in a torture nexus and has been irreperably damaged too and he hasnt really had a moment to sit with it yet). i appreciate a pure fluff magical fix-it and people are drawing such sweet art of them reemerging and vibing in different universes as essentially pre/early show versions of themselves but also theres so much potential for infinite interesting and complex thematics here and i hope people will see the value in exploring The Entire State Of It All. you guys better not forget the message that imperfection is lovable

we have no damn clue what happened to them at the end there and the options truly are limitless. a beautiful fanfic for every possible mood and every possible needed genre of catharsis is hopefully gonna come out of this and i will be Sat and Reading. i want them both to wake up in a meadow just like the one wizard viktor teleported baby jayce to. i want them cosmically entwined in space forever. i want them covered in magical scars and they have matching bad legs and shards of crystal embedded in their hands and they get to adore every inch of their mangled selves and grow old together. i want viktor remaining a cosmic horror with half his face blown off and jayce still showing him infinite unconditional adoration and care

also just insanely potent monsterfucker potential lol. jayce get the hell in there and keep telling him how beautiful he is!!!!! chop chop!!!!!!!!!!!

[yusuke-of-valla]

I don't remember exactly what I dreamt about but I did wake up very upset about shows that treat the secret identity part of being a superhero as a burden for their narrative that they have to speedrun getting rid of

[cabeswaterdrowned]

“Democracy’s a farce,” Ronan said, and Adam smirked, a private, small thing that was inherently exclusionary. An expression, in fact, that he could’ve very well learned from Ronan.”

Adam emulating rich boys he’s attracted to continues to go crazy

[tasticturbo]

[starculler]

Reverse Robins AU except the first kid Bruce collects is originally from the correct timeline/universe (physically and/or mentally, but either way having no way back home).

It's a tossup for me between having that first kid be Duke or Damian (both at once might be an interesting challenge!), but the results are the same:

A kid stuck in a world where they're the first sidekick with all the weight and responsibility and the learning curve that entails. Thinking they're alone until the one who came before them crash lands into their life, and then trying desperately not to let the version of this person they know best overshadow how they interact. Clinging desperately to a hard-won legacy while also having to re-invent themself from the ground up.

[notmyenergy]

how does Ateez lore also center on a character named MITO who wears an all-black cowboy fit

[narrator-navigator-storyteller]

Hi, I said I wasn't going to reblog this because I wanted to stay out of conflict, but I kinda had to.

This is a serious misunderstanding and misrepresentation of actual intersex experiences, and a very disingenous description of what it means for an intersex person to be AFAB or CAFAB (your daily reminder that those are not the same thing).

To be clear, for starters, assigned gender at birth is an event, not a permanent status. Your gender later in life can be medically changed without purposeful transition (such as, y'know, actual CAFAB people, who often develop male traits at puberty even if having gone through IGM, and get reassigned as male because doctors find it easier). Your assigned gender at birth doesn't inherently mean that you are going to look that gender, or be raised as that gender, especially for intersex people. People who are assigned female at birth can in fact have experiences identical to a transfeminine experience, even before you bring the complexity of the intersex identity into the mix.

As such, as much as you claim you aren't being bioessentialist, what part of this isn't? You explain to a person with a condition you don't have what her condition means for a possibility to identify as transfem, while using language that, honestly, reeks of this weird medicalization of someone's experiences ('struggles with virilization' reeks of 'disorders of sexual development' language, that shoves intersex people into "woman intersex" and "man intersex" boxes that don't actually exist). You paint AFAB and CAFAB people under one brush of this "woman but weird who could never be forced to identify as male", when that is not the universal experience. There are children who are AFAB and, even without having mixed genitalia at birth, go through an early mixed or outright male puberty. Sure, some of those children are going to be treated as 'women but wrong', but a whole lot of them are going to either be reassigned as male or just not be allowed to be either, and be punished if they try to break that assignment. You cannot go onto a post talking about the complexities of intersex identity with gender and transition and try to paint us all with the same brush. This applies to both transfemininity and transmasculinity: we have different experiences because we are intersex. Each intersex person will have a different experience with this. My friends who went through IGM and have had to go through the same HRT as transfeminine people in order to live as their genders are different from me as someone who is AFAB and CTF and still was not allowed to identify as female whatsoever for the majority of my life are different from my friend with turners whose womanhood was never questioned until her development was an issue and suddenly she was treated as an other, and all three of us have unique intersex experiences with womanhood. Not all three of us are transfem, but nobody else gets to decide that for us based on the idea of what doctors told us when we were born.

This is probably going to be massively controversial, but I just feel like it needs to be said at this point. I desperately need people to read this very carefully and approach this in good faith. General blanket warning for intersexism, transphobia, and intersectional misogyny with both of these I just wonder how many people in the intersex community just like… fundamentally don’t understand the way being intersex impacts your gender. I know that sounds fucking wild because obviously being intersex impacts your gender but like… it feels like a lot of people reach for comparisons to the binary over just, like, the label intersex itself. The thing on my mind in particular is the stark difference in what transfemininity seems to mean inside and outside the intersex community. This isn’t to refer to AMAB and/or CTM intersex transfems, but in particular people who were AFAB and/or CTF.

I want to clarify before I get into the main body of this post that I fully believe people can be AFAB and/or CTF and be transfem. This post isn’t to say that this never happens, no one ever experiences the combination of these two* things, or that people who identify this way are wrong for it. I just want to open up a discussion about why people are identifying this way, I guess. It’s not about invalidating anyone or their experiences, on the contrary, I really want to discuss the varied nature of the intersex experience.

I was AFAB, and I would generally consider myself CTF. I have simple virilizing classic CAH. I experienced many of the events which a lot of people talk about as why they relate to the transfem experience or consider themselves to be transfem. I grew up with a tenuous connection to girl/womanhood at best, I had the locker room harassment, I was widely rumored to be a hermaphrodite and transgender (no one could decide in which direction), I was put into situations specifically to attempt to uncover my “real” sex/gender. Even when I was seen as a girl/woman, I was Wrong about it. When I was seen as a boy/man, it was before I had ever come to terms with that identity for myself, and it was instead something thrust on me against my will for being a girl/woman Wrong. I was, for much of my life, locked out of womanhood in various ways.

I can very easily understand why people with experiences such as these would relate to transfemininity (and on a “relation” basis, yes, I would say I relate), and perhaps even identify with it based on how these sorts of things impacted them in particular. That being said… I have never understood why people think this is somehow not just being intersex. I’m not trying to say it can’t possibly be both, but sometimes it feels like people just refuse to acknowledge that this is a very common experience of the intersection of misogyny and intersexism. There are certainly transmisogynistic elements to it, I think transmisogyny and intersexism are deeply intertwined and always have been, but like… to act like this is solely transmisogyny feels like a denial of the intersex experience. For intersex people who were AFAB, are CTF, and/or likely some other types of intersex people depending on their circumstances, this is entirely par for the course because they are intersex. The things I described are, above all else, intersexist in nature. They happen to people for being intersex. There are aspects reminiscent of transmisogyny and perhaps even motivated by transmisogyny in many cases, but this distinct experience that I see many, many intersex people have experienced, it is to me such a classic experience of growing up intersex.

This is to say nothing of the appropriation of the transfem experience (no, I’m not accusing you or anyone else specifically of doing this, if it doesn’t apply to you, it doesn’t apply to you, but yes some people are objectively doing this). I am not focused on that. It is its own separate issue, but the thing I am trying to communicate here is why people struggle to find themselves in the word intersex when the thing that caused them these traumas is being intersex. The denial of intersexness and intersexism as explanations for the experiences directly caused by being intersex. The need to use terms broadly conceived of within perisex communities to describe perisex experiences of sex and gender to describe experiences inherently outside of the perisex view. To me, it seems like there is a very clear difference between using intersex transfem to describe “I have Klinefelter and also I am a trans woman” and “due to my experiences with PCOS, my relationship with femininity is deeply complicated and I use transfem as a sort of code for reclaiming my womanhood that I feel has been denied to me.” And like. I am not saying that these couldn’t possibly both be transfem experiences! I am not the decider of what makes people transfem, and it’s not really my business at the end of the day, but these are still just like, objectively different concepts being described. This is what I meant at the beginning of the post by the inside-outside usage of the term. It feels like transfem, in intersex spaces, is often used as a shorthand to describe a specific relationship to femininity and womanhood and this relationship is not necessarily “transitioning to femininity.” At the same time, it feels like it is being used this way because in some way, perhaps, the community is lacking in language that adequately communicates “my being intersex locked me out of womanhood, even though womanhood is what I was assigned and expected to conform to” which is, to me, a fundamental difference between most (not all, I’m aware we cannot ever make absolute statements when it comes to intersex experiences) AFAB/CTF and AMAB/CTM transfem experiences.

To me, I feel that intersex does adequately express these sentiments. Or, at least, it can if you let it. Intersex people pretty much inherently experience a complicated relationship to their sex and gender, and I wish we were allowed to talk about this without there being an obligatory comparison of how every intersex experience is always analogous to some equivalent transgender experience. Intersexism is intersexism, and intersex people experience it because we are intersex, and maybe we should fucking talk about that sometimes.

[fellhellion]

head in hands miles’s arc in spiderverse means so much to me. choosing to embody all that spiderman IS by earnestly trying to save those around him and rejecting the notion that he should simply lie down and let fate take its course....augh....

[rathayibacter]

thinking a lot about how IMMORTALITY squeezes a ton of meaning out of being a game. like, theoretically, you could get all the same themes and significance from watching all the footage once or twice, in order, all the way through. after all, that's kinda how previous game by the studio Her Story was: there was a full picture, and it was waiting for you to put all the pieces together so you could see it.

but IMMORTALITY's a bit different. the thing that you perceive to be the big mystery actually isn't that hard to solve, and is really just a couple stops to check off along your much longer journey of understanding. and so much of that is thanks to the specific mechanic of how you uncover new clips. you click on something in the shot, and you're brought to another shot with the same object, or a shot related to that object, or a shot thematically linked to that object. you're navigating via the Kuleshov Effect, and that means you're constantly, inevitably creating meaning through how you interact with the game.

like, super minor, non-spoiler-y example: there's a set of scenes connected by a cat. you see a cat in one scene and click on it, and you're taken to the rehearsal of a scene that will have that cat, but they aren't using the animal actor yet cuz it's just rehearsal. you're brought to the moment that an actress is leaning down and petting where the cat will be, at some point, later. it's a cute little move by the game designers, cuz yeah, these scenes are connected by that cat you clicked on, but not literally, only in the final product.

but then i clicked on the space where the cat would be, and it took me to another scene, once again with the actual cat. and isn't that funny. isn't that interesting. of course it makes sense in hindsight, right? we're traveling via cinematic language, and in rehearsal there's no difference between a cat and an empty bit of floor where the script tells you a cat will be. you gotta treat that empty space like there's a cat there, or else the whole thing falls apart.

this isn't a significant moment in the game. none of the three clips involved really matter that much. but like, at the same time, by connecting these three pretty empty filler scenes in this way, by taking you from a cat to a not-cat to a cat, and telling you that they're all equivalent, the game is making a pretty strong thematic declaration, one that would be completely absent if you'd just watched these three clips separately, in the parts of the movie that they belong in.

not every player is gonna read that deeply into this moment, just as i havent read this deeply into most of the other connections ive made in my so-far 12 and a half hours with the game. some folks will read something completely different into it (there's a pretty fun discussion you could have about it happening in 2 Of Everything specifically, playing into the mistaken identities plot via Schrödinger's cat). some players won't even find that connection at all! there's enough redundancy in everything here that nobody needs to find every possible point of interaction to finish or understand the game. and all that's kinda the beauty of it, right? there's a million ways to examine this text, to work your way through the enormous tower of information you're presented with, and every single one of those paths is gonna create unique meaning. they've taken the process of interpreting art and made it a game mechanic, without hamstringing the actual act of interpretation in the process. the game says "hey, in order to see everything, you're gonna have to make connections," but never forces your hand in what those connections have to be. it's absolutely fascinating.