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#idk who came up with that concept but they did it specifically for me in late 2022
farminglesbian · 2 years
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THIS SHIT IS LITERALLY MAKING ME SO HAPPY, 1000% SEROTONIN LEVEL, ALL MY PROBLEMS IN LIFE ARE SOLVED
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exopelagic · 1 month
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talking to him more very much achieved. we just talked for like 4 hours in the kitchen holy shit I need to sleep
#I went into the kitchen to wash up wanting it to be a few minutes to get back to my parents by he came home at the same time#unsure what just happened honestly! as in I’m not sure what is going on from his end of the interaction#because I have never met anyone who would just do that before. like four hours straight when before we’d talked for periods of idk 10minutes#and he WAS engaged the whole time#granted he spent a significant amount of time talking. he talked far more than I did which is often the case but Im not sure how I felt here#I think he gets excited abt individual topics and. gets carried away is the wrong word but he gets absorbed in it#he spent a while talking me through the very complex maths he’s been doing recently#(he studies maths. also abt to start masters.) and was assuming a much stronger mathematical background than I have but I understood a bunch#he IS very good at explaining things and I was interested to a point but unfortunately I was not going to ask about individual theorems and#shit like that at 11pm. it was still super interesting I’m not downplaying that but I didn’t know half of what he brought up#there was basically no way I was going to understand much more than the vague concept anyway#anyway! also extremely into food. especially into traditional chinese cooking which is cool as fuck and I now know so much more abt food#I have never personally cared much at all about food. I enjoy when taste good and I enjoy cooking. he’s into the precision cooking#that he told me apparently Chinese and French food is the best in the world at. meant to be amazing at going for specific effects#oh he came back from a musical! apparently abt a woman with bipolar that was on in London I might check what that was. next to normal#cried 7 times. apparently he’s super into stories with that kinda emotional payoff. started telling me later abt tokyo animation#priest if you’re already seeing this I WILL be asking you abt it later but pls tell me whatever. he likes clannad and sound euphorium#bunch of others but those are the ones he talked most abt and started tearing up when he played me a song from clannad where the baby’s born#so I think biggest things I’ve learned are that he’s impressively in touch w his emotions (further damaging the straight guy case)#regardless it’s just nice to talk to a guy who talks abt stuff so openly it’s very refreshing#unsure how cultural differences factor in here. I would’ve expected it to go the other way but possible this is a degree more normal#and he’s very very academically minded. he learned Japanese bc was bored after high school and is doing a WHOLE lot of extra maths for fun#socially definitely very competent he’s very good at talking but a little more focused inward.#definitely did not notice the (admittedly extremely gentle) flirting throughout like when I complimented his bracelet#(this cute gold year of the rat thing his mum got him)#so yeah. was very fun talking to him. will process this for a while#I think this has definitely established that we could be friends if either of us pursue that after summer which is very cool!! will see#luke.txt
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gh0st-t0wn3 · 7 months
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I finally had time to make proper designs for the Trio!
Redson: Ver 1
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Ver 2
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I couldn't decide on if I liked it better with the braids or not so I just posted both, but anyways!
I gotta admit, I used to not like the idea of redson having Bull features (except for a small pair of horn maybe) but the concept really grew on me and now I really love it and wanted to try making my own design and I'm really proud with how it turned out.
I would've added more scars, since Guanyins throne pierced his entire body, but there came a point where it just looked like there was too much going on so I had to get rid of a few scars to tone it down, so we're just gonna say they faded over time, okay? Okay.
I also made him Miao (one of the largest ethnic minorities in southwest China) on PIF's side, and Mongolian on DBK's.
The Miao ethnicity of China has a long history, rich culture, and an ancient folk religion. Adorned in beautiful traditional clothes, possessing natural talent for singing and dancing, they live in uniquely designed indigenous architecture, which I think fits perfectly with how I imagined Princess Iron Fan and with her; Redson.
As for DBK being Mongolian, I saw someone else talking about this headcanon and I just liked it so I decided to use it, I don't really have a specific reason for it, I just thought it fit, not sure why though, it's just one of those things that makes sense even if you don't know why, you know?
Mei:
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I made her taller and gave her a long dragon tail (like really long, it drags along the floor if she's not holding it up), though her scales are pretty much everywhere across her body they're most noticeable on her shoulders, thighs, and face (they're a bit hard to see in this photo because they're kinda hidden behind her hair, but I did give her scales beside her eyes)
I also gave her horns these little spiral designs around them, gave her sharper nails, and designed her ears to look like coral, since she's a water dragon and I thought they looked cool.
Honestly idk what else to say about her design, I didn't have anything specific in mind when designing her, I kinda just had to wing it, but I'm happy with how it turned out :)
(I also made her Bengali, on her dad's side, but it's not really important or has any reason behind it, just a headcanon I've had for a while, don't know where it came from though)
MK:
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Alot of people have speculated that the monkey form we see during the fight against Azure in season 4 isn't MK's full form yet, that we're just seeing a fraction of what he's yet to become, based on the fact that while he has the weird side burns, the tail and the face marking, he also lacks a natural skin tone, they didn't give him a proper nose etc, so I wanted to play with the idea.
I decided to make him this strange mix between human and monkey, leaving him pretty much human with the addition of his tail(s), and weird li'l monkey feet.
(I was also gonna give MK more arm/leg hair, it was in my first sketch, but I forgot to add them when I was doing the line art and didn't realize until after I saved it as a jpeg, so that's my bad, but I'm gonna add it in to any other art I make)
It's also a bit hard to see in this, but I designed his staff with more details, specifically adding dragon-esque imagery to the Golden ends, this is because (for anyone who's new to the fandom/hasn't read JTTW) Wukong's staff was originally one of the several pillars that held up the sea in the dragon palace, until he stole it and shrunk it down to use as his weapon.
I also did MK's clones :)
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Porty MK:
I gave him stripes of coloured hair and gave his tails all different colours, though I don't think he would actually dye it, instead I like to think that he would use that really crappy dollar store spray in hair dye (or hair chalk). I kept the fishnet clothes that I added in my originally design of him for my headcanons post, and decided to give him striped elbow length fingerless gloves.
I also gave him a cropped shirt, ripped shorts and these weird fingerless glove-esque shoes for convenience, since regular shows seem like they would be uncomfortable.
Edit: my dumbass forgot Porty's stupid print jacket 😭
Artist MK:
For Artist MK I gave him overalls and a jacket over it, which he wears specifically for when he's doing paintings so he doesn't ruin too many of his actual clothes (I know I said that this was inspod by Circusapple, which it still is, but this is almost exactly what I wear when I'm painting too, just in different colours).
I also gave him those gloves that digital artists wear so they're hands don't accidently trigger something on the screen because everyone knows that every artist just walks around with their art glove on even when it's not necessary.
Delivery MK:
I have to admit, I was never a big fan of MK's work uniform just being his regular clothes with a work jacket thrown over it so I wanted to try and make him look a little more professional and decided to instead give him a chef coat (similar to the one Pigsy wears on the show as well), with a logo for the restaurant on the chest, along with it I gave him plain black pants, since casual red jeans didn't seem very professional (I know he's just a delivery person, but if you were to look at pretty much any food corporation, even people who do deliveries have to wear uniform, so it's always been kinda strange to me that he's just in regular clothes). 
The shoes were harder to make professional given the whole "half-monkey" thing so I opted to give him the same strange fingerless glove-esque shoes for comfort and convenience, but made them plain black as well.
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nmakii · 6 months
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Omg ! I didn't think you'd actually respond !! We're gonna fly away from here is easily one of the best ones in the series!! It's so Twisted and disturbing but almost domestic... (Also tysm for including my name idea in your story, Idk where it came from, I just liked it and I appreciate you!) I digress. I've returned with a concept. Al almost always has a plan when he does something. I don't know where you want to go with the second child but this won't be too focused on that one...for now. I really liked how you interpreted Alastor being a weasel and weaseling his way back into the families life and was thinking about how many I wonder about if he has a plan right now, like not a long term one, obviously, but a very specific one for a 'short term'. Women back then, especially in the south weren't allowed to have bank accounts so finicial trapping works well in this case. Also just kinda the ability to turn their kids against her would be enough to terify me. People talk about the 1950's housewife, but oh my god, 1920's housewives were a new kind of depressed. I, personally, don't think Alastor is the type of physically abuse women. No, he's far too classy for that. Instead, like I said, I think he'd either use his status in their house to trap his wife. We were able to run away while we were pregnant and alone, but we have a child now...and would we be willing to leave our child with him? No, I don't think I would, personally. This was just me rambling. K, love u, currently hyperfixated on this au. Byeee !!!! _ Cherry Anon!
DON’T REALLY WANT NO TRUST FUND BABY
[before reading this, read the rest of the story!]
— seems as if alastor found out your little secret
— UR TOO SWEET I SC THIS ON MY IG STORY AND YAPPED TO MY BOY BSF FOR AN HOUR AB IT IM BLUSHING SO HARDDDD!! ABUSE WAS LIT MY LAST SOCIAL STUDIES LESSON FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR MY TCH YAPPED AB FINANCE SO HARD 🤭🤭
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being married to alastor, the radio show host is quite the sensation in your town. but, behind the closed curtains, alastor did things that would’ve made lucifer shake in his boots.
no, he didn’t hit you. his mother would kill him if he hit his wife. but, just because alastor never hit you, didn’t mean he didn’t abuse you.
he tormented you in the worst way possible, through noah. and now, emilia.
it’s been 3 years. your little emilia lives up to her name, a cute little girl who’s eager to win. and, little noah is now a big boy, double digits and all.
and, since you’ve returned back to his house, alastor has done nothing but twist your babies’ minds. ‘once upon a time, mama wanted to run away from daddy… so, she ran away and took big brother with her. daddy was sooo worried for mama and big brother though… daddy was able to track mama down, and took her home!’ he cooed to your daughter, bouncing her in his arms— with you right beside him!
you wanted to yell; scream. of course, emilia was too young to understand what alastor was saying. but, still— the fact that he was trying to tell your children that he was some sort of white knight who saved you from yourself. you wanted nothing less, but to snap that neck of his like a twig.
you really shouldn’t act so brashly though. to outsmart alastor, you have to think like him. think of what’s smarter in long run.
alastor was ‘kind’ enough to give you an allowance. $200 every week for groceries and whatever you may need. he’s even so kind as to let you have some ‘private bonding’ with noah and emilia as they accompany you to the farmer’s market.
thankfully, you had a father who wanted to make his little girl survived even without a husband. and so, you had to hear all of his ramblings about finance. saving about 45% each week for 3 years… was about $14,000!
if you saved just a little more, you’d be semi-financially independent until you can get a proper job to take care of your children. it was run-away money, so to speak.
you hid the money in noah’s room. after all, who would expect money there? especially $14,000? and, it worked, for a while. every monday, while you tucked him into bed, you brought the money with you and hid it behind his dresser.
until, what had seemed like a normal tuesday. you came home from the tailor’s, getting back a dress that noah accidentally tore. when you came home, it was only two hours after noon. and despite that, alastor was home.
“a-alastor..! what are you doing home so early? you have a broadcast in 2 hours…” you narrowed your eyes at alastor, on the floor with your children, many new toys surrounding them. “ah, darling! i decided to pick up our children early, and we may have splurged on our little shopping spree…” he smugly grinned. “oh..? where’d you get the money?” you raised your eyebrow, closing the door and laying your bearings on the dining table.
“funniest story ever, my love! there was a random stash of money in noah’s room! seems as if the tooth fairy came early!” he laughed. random stash of money in noah’s room..? “oh. i see.” your breath stopped for a minute, thinking of what kind of consequences could come from it.
“do you have any idea how that money landed there?” he side-eyed you, expecting a lie. “perhaps it was from the old owners? you know this house, there’s so many secrets in here.” you said. “i see… i suppose you are right, darling!” he giggled.
you were back on square one. financially dependent on your husband, if you could even call him ‘husband’. as you climbed up the stairs, you heard alastor whisper to your son. “you see that? momma lied. she got less talkative when papa asked her a question.”
this is what alastor’s been teaching your son. as much as you want to protest, you did lie.
oh, how much you wished for much more simpler times. playing with your baby boy in the kitchen as you make little treats together for his snack at school. and now, the boy alastor’s turning him into— a cunning sociopath, the lord only knows what he will teach your daughter.
this is just a minor setback, it has to be.
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as far as i know, the transandrophobia post you're talking about is the one by ftmtf who pretty regularly reblogs from spacelazarwolf and genderkoolaid, who are both zionists who deny and downplay the genocide in gaza (on top of being open transmisogynists who dabble in claiming trans women have male privilege). i'm not going to tell you what to think about the theory of transandrophobia but i personally question the motives when a lot of loudest proponents of it either are or associate with these types of people.
The post I'm talking about was made by myself. Someone made a vaguepost in response to it suggesting idk what I'm talking about.
That context aside,
I'm none of those things, advocate for none of those things, and my followers know that so what makes their character a reason to question my character, anyway?
.
When did y'all start letting racists and genocide apologists speak for anyone? Radfems came and nobody said feminism had to stop existing right?
I think it's entirely possible to recognize good faith, genuine critiques and analysis of how white supremacy affects men (which is the perspective of oppression that my post focused on) and how that intersects with other systems of oppression.
Likewise, the same way you've learned to spot radfem/terf bs I think it's also possible to recognize when that's being done in bad faith like when radfem-type ppl (like spacelazarwolf) do it.
Another response I get is people assuming that acknowledging someone else's oppression would somehow be lessening their own? and I dont see how that's my problem to unpack after we spent the last 5 years explaining to white people that privilege doesn't mean you can't also be poor or queer. We've already read this chapter as a society, I thought?
Imagine how fucking sad it would be if some totally normal person logged on Tumblr, saw the feminist tag full of transphobia, assumed all feminism was like that, and decided "I'm never gonna be a feminist, they're all bigots and also anyone who calls themselves that is fucking wrong and just doesn't know it."
🙃🙃🙃
That is what's happening to non-femme trans people except it's happening before the concept of our oppression under patriarchy/white supremacy has actually even really been discussed which is fucked up cuz like ...how are you gonna let that pathetic, bigoted explanation of oppression be representative of all trans-masc/non-binary people and actively discourage other people from trying to figuring it out too....and it's not bigoted? Like how.
Esp when my post was analyzed it through the lens of white supremacy. So it was also specifically about marginalized mascs and nonbinary people. Like how is wanting to discuss the way your gender impacts, compounds, and informs your experiences and other forms of oppression bigoted just because you're not a woman or femme lol?
I thought we wanted men to do that specifically. What happened to that?
Ofc trans femmes don't have male privilege!!! I think if your concepts of oppression undermine someone else's then your concepts are shit and you should read more. You shouldnt have to misgender, degrade, or dehumanize anyone else to identify yourself or name your oppression. My posts didn't do that, which is why the reactionary response from especially leftist Tumblr has been pretty disappointing tbh.
I've been fleshing my own idea of it out on my blog and that's been aggressively reacted to every single time I've answered questions about it 💀
And it's always bad faith nonsense, like "you just hate trans women" which is just a factually untrue reactionary statement. Like that's not even a critique cuz I know you didn't check the trans tag on my blog, that's nothing to me. Or it's "you don't know what intersectionality is" when I've made sure to read Kimberlé Crenshaw's source material and share it. When I've made sure to even read recent statements she's made commenting on how it's being used and weaponized in modern times.
Or it's seemingly good faith comments like yours anon "well only bigots have ever talked about it..."
Which is just another reactionary comment that doesn't even bother valuable critique.
How would you feel if I said "radfems are the loudest proponents of women rights so think about that before you start associating yourself with them."
sounds like bs misogyny doesn't it?
And maybe your response would be that I should just widen my circle and stop listening to radfems maybe. Maybe you'd tell me that Bigot feminism is not the only feminism out there and it would be on me to educate myself about that in good faith if I actually care about women :)
And you'd be right.
And I'm saying that road should go both ways.
When I'm having that conversation in good faith on my blog, it shouldnt be difficult for a bunch of people calling themselves progressive thinkers to hear me out in good faith instead of assuming I'm a bigot who doesn't know trans women are oppressed.
Like yeah it's shitty and systemic proof that misogyny is alive and real that the only people who talked about transandrophobia thus far are Like That.
However, I do not think it's proof that nonbinary, transmasc, and other marginalized men need to be gatekept from having the vocabulary to describe their unique experiences. We don't use homophobic straight women as proof that feminism shouldn't exist, right? I'm using the same logic. If the shittiest woman on earth deserves to destroy the patriarchy then why doesn't the shittiest nonbinary man you know have the same right? 💀
And going back to the vocabulary thing: Vocabulary, language, and literacy are necessary to dismantle anything and everything you can think of.
I genuinely don't get all the pushback beyond it just being well-intentioned & reactionary at the same time tbh
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loudclan-clangen · 3 months
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HEY so the last ask reminded me that this is set in Alaska! As someone who used to live there it makes me very happy to see, so just for fun I brainstormed lore ideas/questions for a Clan there n I thought id share :) this is Long lmao i apologize
The terrain for one thing. Growing up I remember all the horror stories of people getting stuck in muskeg and not being able to get out before the tide comes in. so that’s always freaky, but i imagine that if theres any in the area then the cats might try and take advantage of it as safely as they can? for prey and such. on that note whats their water situation like anyways? braided rivers?
any specific ideas for what area of mountains the cats are in? are they in the higher ranges, the ones wrapped up in clouds, the rocky kind like the ones around Denali? the greener ones with all the trees? is their territory frequented by hikers and/or tourists or are they relatively untouched wilderness? I think i remember it being said that LoudClan is somewhere more towards the south, is it intended to be generally vague? :0
Predators!!!! The cats can deal with all sorts of unique stuff in a setting like this, bears n lynxes n wolves… eagles… possibly even wolverines since theyre up in the mountains? i’d be curious to see how a clan would react to a wolf pack passing through the area lol. also ive always just loved the concept of a queen finding an abandoned lynx kitten or smth and unknowingly adopting it and it just keeps… getting bigger… whoops… oh well its the clans weird child now
So many fun lil prey animals too, ground squirrels n ptarmigans n such!! I bet ptarmigans would totally harass cats during breeding season and that could be funny. maybe standard apprentice training is to learn the different ground squirrel alarm calls. maybe they even sometimes encounter dalls or caribou or moose on patrols (perhaps moose have even been known to kill before, so theyre considered dangerous).
Also just….. the day-night cycle??? I’d honestly be pretty interested to see how that ties in, like it’s daylight forever in the summer-early autumn and pretty much perpetually nighttime in the winter-early breakup. do the cats have any thoughts or beliefs towards that? do they like to look up at the northern lights, and listen when theyre so clear that they can hear them?
Okok thats all now sorry. I got way too excited lol i miss AK sm, i left when i was little 💔 if any of this has been discussed already in a lore post then ignore me its been a hot minute and i rattled this off on a whim!!!
Love this! Okay, let me try to hit all of these questions in a way that will hopefully be understandable for everyone so if you're the asker please skip past the definitions/backstory.
A 'muskeg' is like a swamp or a bog. I assume that you're referring to the area outside of Anchorage that we always called the 'Mud-Flats", because that's where I heard stories of people getting stuck. (Specifically there's a very famous urban legend of a soldier stationed in Anchorage who went out with his buddies, got stuck up to his waist, ended up tied to a helicopter, and when they tried to pull him out with the helicopter he uh... separated. And his legs can supposedly still be found in the flats. (I WANT TO CLARIFY THAT THIS IS NOT TRUE. THERE WAS A SOLDIER, HE GOT STUCK, HE DROWNED, THE SEPARATION HAPPENED AFTER HE WAS DEAD AND THEY TRIED TO RETRIEVE THE BODY. THEY DID GET HIS LEGS BACK TO MY KNOWLEDGE.)) It's pretty much a long stretch of quicksand (but it's like more mud and silt than sand? idk how to really describe it i haven't been there much cause ya know, hearing stories like that will kinda cure your curiosity as a kid.)
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Anyway, Ghostclan's territory used to be Mud-Flats, but long before the cats moved in twolegs came and installed the Rip Rap (big jagged rocks that are placed on the coastline to keep it from erroding) that make up Freezingclan's territory and that kinda took some of the danger out of it. Since the tide no longer comes up so high, while getting stuck is certainly not a good thing, it's not a death sentence as clanmates have time to gather help and dig you out. Though it does make it hard/near impossible to launch an attack on Ghostclan without an insider to lead you around the wet spots. Larger prey can sometimes be found stuck in the mud, having died from exhaustion, but the wetness causes the meat to rot quickly, and what is left draws the attention of larger predators, while also adding the issue of having to avoid getting stuck as you retrieve it, so it's not really a reliable source of food as much as it is a last resort. Ghostclan also contains the territory's braided river, which the cats call the "Friendly River" because it's three smaller streams that meet up into one large one. (I didn't do the best job rendering this on the map but that is what I was trying to represent. I'm not a landscape person, I'm doing my best.) Because the territory is a narrow valley set right on the coast they don't have a ton of room for the rivers to braid, but the thought was there!
It is intented to be generally vague, because I'm not an expert on geography and I live a couple of hours from this exact area, I didn't want to say "yeah it's here" and then have people correct me with minute little things. Plus if it's entirely made up then I can alter things to my liking. But the territory is inspired by the land along the Seward highway, where on one side it's these big mountains and on the other it's just a short sloping coastline. It looks like this in real life:
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(You can even see the railroad and layer of rip rap that I included in the territory map) I imagine it's a place where the road veers inland so that the clans can have more space to roam. While the railroad runs through the mountain the highway is just on the other side of it. The mountains here are nowhere as tall as Denali, but they aren't anything to scoff at either. I imagine them being something like this, (which I believe is Exit Glacier?):
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The lower areas are densely forested with tall trees and thick shrubs, but the greenery gets thinner and shorter as the elevation rises until you get to the higher ridges and peak which is pretty much just rock. Loudclan camp would be located at the transition point between grass and rock, so that there is no place above them where their enemies might hide and wait to pounce. As for humans, the territory used to belong to a small mining town. They dug the mine, installed the rip rap, built the buildings, and leveled the area of the mountain that Loudclan camp is set on, but over time resources dried up and people left. Now it's nearly untouched save the railroad, which still runs through the mountain regardless of whether there's a stop there anymore. The fact that you have to either cross railroad tracks or mountains to get to it, and its remote nature mean that hikers don't usually put in the energy to venture that way. (My mom grew up in Sutton, a former coal mining town and railway hub that was long past it's glory days by the time she was born and so this fictional town is kind of an omage to that).
The cats absolutely will interact with unique predators! The game has done me the favor of adding in wolverines already (and let me tell you, they cause PROBLEMS), but the cats might also face off against an aggressive little ermine (which are much fiercer than their appearance would have you believe) or even find themselves stumbling upon a blackbear gorging on blueberries early in the fall. They aren't really in the correct area for a wolf pack (and to my knowledge i don't remember writing about any) but who knows what's to come? Okay, now onto Lynx. Up until about 30 seconds ago I was under the impression that domestic cats and lynx could hybridize. Why did I think that? Well because everyone and their mother up her SWEARS that their female cat got out and mated with a lynx at one point or another. That or their big long hair tom cat is part lynx. So who was I to question whether that could even happen? Well apparently it can't but oops, too late, already headcannoned that several characters are part lynx so fuck it. These cats are special. They've speciated. Juneaucliff's dad was a Lynx. What are you gonna do about it? Huh? Regardless, yes, the cats do interact with Lynx, but they speak the same language, so it's a bit of a different situation. It probably won't be mentioned unless people ask about specific characters, but anyone with ear tufts/unusually large stature/big paws may have been descended from a lynx at some point.
The prey animals I think are more dangerous than the predators honestly. So many of them are specifically adapted to the terrain in ways that the cats aren't. Imagine chasing a snowshoe hare across the mountainside, following directly in their tracks only to suddenly feel the snow fall away beneath you, because while their big feet allow them to skid across the crevasse without disturbing the crust of the snow, you're just a little bit too heavy and you sink a bit to far and now you're falling to your death. You're sitting on the edge of the river during a salmon run, watching an eagle dive down to grab a fish. What are the chances it changes it's mind and grabs you? A cat weighs a lot less than a king salmon. And moose would be a danger. 9/10 they won't even glance twice at you but the one time you get unlucky enough to jump down from a tree and land between a cow and her calf? Maybe with no snow a cat could outrun a moose but those long legs mean that there's no feasible escape in the colder months. Even in the warmer months a cat can be trampled by a herd of caribou if they aren't vigilant while walking along the flat lands of the valley. Ptarmagins are easy food, but they're annoying and they spook off every other kind of prey within their designated "territory" and are just generally a nuisance. Some of them are useful, though, Dall sheep wool is is great for insulating nests and shed antlers from moose and caribou can be used to strengthen camp walls and build dens or can be broken into smaller sections to splint broken bones.
The day/night cycle absolutely plays into it! That's why starclan moved into the Black Water Pool. It's the only place where night always exists. In moon 14 Part 2 Twistedtail explains to Wildfirecry that starclan had to move, saying "We couldn't survive there. Not when the sun silenced the stars for seasons at a time". Many cats believe that their ancestors can't see them while the stars are hidden, that the light of the sun blinds them, and therefore are more likely to do devious things in the summer when the sun never leaves the sky in order to avoid punishment. They don't live far north enough to experience perpetual night but even so, only having 6 hours of daylight in the winter does make patrolling and hunting much more difficult. As of right now, the northern lights mean something different to every cat. They each interpret them/were taught to believe something unique about them. Are they the last words of dead cats frozen in the air? Are they the souls of your ancestors dancing across the sky? Maybe they're a sign from starclan, demanding that the lead healer come speak to them at the black water or a sign of good luck for a little born beneath them. No one really knows, except for that they're something important. (I'm not committing to anything cause they could be used in so many interesting ways that i don't wanna limit myself ya know?)
anyway, thank you for the ask, this was so fun to talk about! My apologies for not answering as many asks as I had hoped to over my break, I was on a trip and then had to buckle down on school work and then got sick (just a cold. im fine) but things are looking good for a beginning of July return time still! (Note because I know what tumblr reading comprehension is like: I'm not returned quite yet. I still have to write a paper for school. But soon! Yay!) If you have asked an ask in the past month: I'm so sorry please be patient. There's so many of you. If you were sending me actual, physical mail I would be completely buried in it. I love it, and hope you keep doing it, but... just know it might be a minute... or two... or ten.
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I should be writing the next chapter but lmao you get some more analysis from me cause somehow this post and the overflowing imagery about death in fromsoft games and some bits of it in dawntrail scattered around has made me think about it more deeply and ya know what. This shit isnt even subtle. Im just gonna say it
Gojo Satoru should not have survived Toji — according to manga itself
The whole scene, the imagery. When we see Gojo die, he’s painfully human. He and Suguru have gotten so close they could practically read each others mind, communicating so well. He had started to care about Amanai. He had started to be human. He allowed himself hope, allowed himself to believe in something else than his own power — in Suguru, and in Tengen’s barrier. He’s human, and he’s weak, and he bleeds, and struggles, and we see his mastery of cursed energy, of his technique, of his own body, with the way he tries to counterattack even with his throat bleeding. This is the closest we see Gojo to not being in control, panicking, not having a back up plan. This scene is powerful, we see his skill and strenght but it’s not enough, and that’s a very human concept. Not strong enough. Him lying in his own pool of blood is the culmination of quite literally making the god bleed and putting him down to earth, to show him that we all bleed and die and we all are afraid of it. Both his heart and his body were touched and destroyed and it was glorious and he was happy and it was supposed to end there
When we see him next, he’s feral. He’s high off his newfound power, not cruel but actively enjoying the fight. He’s transcended what was before. And it’s not a good thing. Its quite literally “came back wrong” because later Suguru doesn’t recognise him. He doesn’t know this boy anymore, this is someone else. We see the end of Hidden Inventory in Suguru’s POV, probably intentionally, because for him, and him only, this is worse than Gojo dying. He’s alive, but Suguru’s friend is dead. By putting us into his shoes we are directly being told: this is wrong. Gojo Satoru shouldnt have survived. But he did, which technically does put him into one category with Sukuna. Those are people who did everything to live, to survive, even if it means losing a part of themselves in the process (im gonna go on a limb here and excite everyones anger but i do think Suguru loved what Satoru was, not what he is rn and its the biggest tragedy. Because he is sentimental because of who he was but still goes with his plans because Satoru is different. And its not so painful because thats no longer the boy he loved. Yeah sorry)
I cant help but wonder what would have happened if he indeed didnt survive. What would it change
Idk its just incredibly wild to me how for some reason jjk actively says “accept your death” as if he should have. Why. Is it because then the curses wouldnt be so strong? Is it because curses exist specifically because people cant make their peace with reality? But coming back to the point, yeah, he shouldnt have survived, he disrupted everything by being alive. By being born at all, you could say, considering the amount of times he was probably under attack from assassins. Rip Gojo, he would have LOVED Heian Era
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clare-with-no-i · 1 month
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theogony part 1 behind the scenes
**SPOILERS ahead for theogony and mild spoilers for Outlander!**
this is just going to be a long infodump of all of the things I pondered while writing theog (specifically part 1, part 2 will come later) but never talked about! I'll try to go chapter by chapter, and maybe I'll end up adding more later on, but for now I just think it'd be fun to chitchat and reminisce on some of my favorite tidbits. this story is really my baby idk :")
Prologue - Alalá
one thing that I wanted to establish in the prologue, other than the obvious James-Sirius dynamic, is the presence of otherworldly or spiritual premonitions in this universe. it was always important to me that the first person who actually made any sort of prophetic declaration was James.
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so much of the story relies on Lily's status as an oracle, but this little tidbit here helped build the world for me so much; we can't be sure if James's various dreams and premonitions are wishful thinking, or really the Gods speaking to him, or something else entirely. of course, this story deals with time travel, so there's an inherent supernatural element. but Lily and James's conflicting – and sometimes competing – conceptions of God felt like such a necessary tension for me to explore. it was such an incredible shorthand for the tension between modern and ancient sensibilities. and we never get a definitive answer to those looming questions, which I knew I wanted to do from the outset. did the Gods bring Lily back to the past? did James? did she do it herself? does God/the Gods even exist?
also: there are probably moments where I failed to do this, but I tried to capitalize Gods in all of the James chapters but not in Lily's, unless she was referring to the Abrahamic Capital G God. that is, until the last chapter, which I'll elaborate upon later :)
also: i wrote the prologue first, then the epilogue, and then i posted the prologue pretty immediately after. I had the entire story roughly outlined but I absolutely jumped the gun when it came to posting the prologue LMAO I didn't even really announce the story, I just joked about writing it and then posted the prologue, which you can see from the beginning note. i remember Suze was about to go to sleep and she started messaging me like wtf Clare what do you MEAN?
and the rest was history (pun completely intended)!
Chapter One: Ouroboros
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the narrative brushes past the other statues in this section pretty quickly, but I always imagined that the first bust is Philoctetes, James's father. I think the consensus on this one tends to oscillate between Philoctetes and Aristides, which is another great interpretation.
The reason I wrote it this way and imagined it to be Philoctetes is because I thought it would have been nice to let Lily 'meet' James's father (in a sense), even before she 'meets' him. when I read this chapter back after I first finished the story, I had a very soft moment where I close-read my own fic (lol) and thought that maybe it was Philoctetes who sent Lily back to the past. maybe he sensed something about her and knew she'd be right for James and for antiquity.
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sooo many people forgot about this! which i was hoping for!!!!! I was hoping everyone would forget about James's statue holding something until the Big Reveal. fun fact is I wrote the reveal right after this. I liked the idea that, no, he was never going to actually be holding anything. he'd be reaching for Lily. the choice to accept his hand was always going to be hers.
a fun fact about this chapter is that I had to pull from a bit more Outlander lore than I originally thought. and no I don't mean the 'Jesus H Roosevelt Christ' part lol. It was always hilarious to me how Outlander set up Claire to be the objectively perfect person to go back in time. she was a combat nurse who happened to develop an interest in medicinal botany and Scottish-English history. she also happened to spend her formative years with her adventurous archaeologist uncle after her only living relatives died. like girl. lol.
so I had to really toss up which traits I thought it would be appropriate for Lily to have as she traveled back in time. the biggest one, obviously, is her field of study, which was necessary given the language barrier and the completely foreign nature of social norms in Classical Athens. I toyed around with the idea of making her mum a nurse so as to give her some base medical knowledge, but that felt a) unnecessary given the circumstances of the story, and b) far-fetched that she would have gleaned enough transferable skills to apply in 479 BCE.
it was also fun to give her more reason to go back to the future; she has a sister who, while they aren't in contact, is a significant emotional attachment; she has academic goals; she has a best friend (however toxic we know him to be). it added a layer of conflict that I enjoyed playing up, even if I definitely could have explored her modern life more fully.
Chapter Two: Kinesis
soooo much exposition and worldbuilding in this chapter. oml. it was so much fun to play around with the reasons why James would be in Tatoi in the first place; I can't remember quite how I landed on the Persian auxiliary soldier thing, it might have been from my initial (admittedly extensive) research on the months leading up to Plataea; it may have just been the fact that I KID YOU NOT this story used to take up all of my fucking brainspace. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd be doing work for my research fellowship and just daydream about theogony. the initial idea came to me AS A JOKE!!!!! when i was idly pondering before going to sleep (as one does), and then it just wouldn't leave me alone. i kept imagining what it might look like. I thought about how the time travel might work. I thought about James's Greek equivalent. I ranted to my sister and her dog (he did not care) about what the statue might look like and mean (sorry bestie love u).
one narrative decision that has given me a bit of strife was the Dimitrios-James name change. I've had a number of people ask me if I'd ever try to pubilsh theog – and this is one of the (many) reasons why that would be pretty categorically impossible. using James's English name in his internal narration, instead of the name I give him as a Greek man, is something that only translates to fic. it makes pretty much no sense at all if you consider these original characters lol.
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honestly putting the word 'practicum' in here caused me SO much pain. in James's chapters I tried really hard to use words which had Greek roots and not Latin roots, even if they're in modern English today. in most of his chapters, I'd try and find synonyms for big/complex words so I could use ones that came from Greek. it just helped me stick to his narrative voice a bit more.
I forgot how much STUFF went on in this chapter. oh my god SO much happens?? we get the lack of the Parthenon as the time marker (felt very clever doing that), Lily processing the fact that she's time traveled (lazy writing on my part to not have this happen in a Lily POV chapter but I'll take that on the chin), the Plataea reveal. OML. tired just thinking about it. lily sweetie i am so sorry
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guys, the amount of time I spent wondering if I should Greek-ify Sirius's name is insane. For so long I thought about making him Seirios, which is the original Greek version of Sirius. But I felt like I had already messed with their names too much, and so I left it. but honestly I'm still torn. looking back, maybe it would have been the right move to make him Seirios and have Lily give him the name Sirius, but I guess we'll never know!
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one of my favorite Sirius moments, and something that, essentially, sets up the rest of the story. but I wanted there to be a little ambiguity throughout the story about how much of this Sirius actually believes.
we know that James has just confessed to Sirius and Pétros that he was hoping they'd desert the Athenian army. we know that he thinks he's going to die, and he's adopted this sort of fatalist view of his future. and then here you have Sirius, who could never abide such a thing, pretty much leaning into the idea that Lily can tell the future – which would allow him to challenge James's prediction. I always wanted to leave it up to interpretation, and I know it comes up in later chapters (at the komos especially), Sirius's skepticism about Lily's origins. but it's such a fun question to ask: does he really believe that she's the Oracle that James prayed for, or does he just need that to be true so he can try and influence the future himself?
Chapter Three: Peribolos
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omg. lol. the chapter three opening academic argument scene. this is a favorite of mine, and something I had so much fun writing. it's actually based on an argument/"spirited discussion" I had with my dad a few years ago about moral absolutism versus moral relativism which forced me to interrogate and expand my knowledge on the subject. I thought it was such a fun way to get into Lily's politics and her character without doing crazy exposition in the ancient world.
it also touches upon one of the touchstone themes of the story: that to study something is, in a way, to detach yourself from it. academia is routintely completely disconnected from its subject matter, and it creates this weird disdain for lived experience versus book knowledge. Lily has spent upwards of ten years studying (in some capacity) the ancient world, but she is so utterly out of her depth when she experiences it herself. as such, she espouses these very revolutionary politics when examining historical conflicts, but she has a blindness to what the real-world realities may have been for the people living in those conditions at the time.
alsooooo, The Return of Martin Guerre is one of my favorite books I read in college, and the easter egg here is that it's about a person of dubious origin entering a community and the politics of how the community might accept or reject them. ha ha!
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^^based on something I said in an argument with a Poli Sci major in college and I have to say one of my better moments. was an absolute haymaker. this was very 'author gives main character a zinger' of me and I will not be ashamed of it
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this! ladies and gentlemen! this was basically a declaration of love!!!! to be loved is to be remembered!!!
in a very romantic way, the study of history can be such an act of love to those who lived before us. i just adore the idea that, even before Lily developed real romantic feelings for James, she had this itching sort of feeling; AKA, when someone has made such an impression on you, and you know (or in her case, you think) that you'll be leaving them at some point, and you just want to be interesting enough, be impressive enough, that they remember you, that they think of you randomly as time goes on. that is such a giddy hallmark feeling of having a crush, in my book. I liken it to making eye contact with someone or having a brief conversation on a night out, maybe at 3am on your way back from a bar when things are sleepy and dizzy, and you just have this sense that you're being seen in that moment as anyone you want to be. i love this moment so much I feel like I could give it its own meta LMAO
Chapter Four: Hamartia
this chapter really put the pedal to to the metal lol. at the time of writing the story, I generally didn't (and still don't) love fake dating that much as a trope; I don't typically love plotlines predicated on (even harmless) deceptions, it's just a sensitivity of mine that I don't expect anyone to relate to or share. but when I was considering how to structure theog, it just made so much sense for James and Lily's arcs to have them get 'married.' there was no way that Lily was going to be able to navigate Classical Athens as an unsupervised woman alone, and even with the Oracle title offering her some protection, there was nothing really tying her to James. much like Outlander, it really did feel like the last possible resort, which softened me to the idea of using the trope.
fun fact, i got a snarky comment a few months ago complaining that i was trying to pass the story off as historically accurate (lol to the fifteen disclaimers I embedded throughout which addressed that) and one thing they took issue with was that lily wouldn't have been able to own property and the only thing that would have kept her from being a slave would have been marriage.
which! yknow! none of which contradict the story! but anyway I digress.
I was initially nervous about how early on the fake marriage happens; we don't really know the characters that well yet, we're not sure who James is as a potential partner to Lily, or how Lily's feelings for him are starting to bump up against her very rightful and justified desire to get the hell out of dodge. but – we only really see James in canon as a husband and as the father to the main character, so it felt pretty true to the source material to throw him into being a husband pretty early.
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I loved writing this scene with Aristides. I've always been partial to his appearances throughout the story, and this one is just so special to me. I think of him as a driving force in humanizing the ancient world in theog, sometimes even more so than the main cast of characters. to elaborate a bit on that: with the Marauders and Lily and the other transplanted HP characters, I think there's this inherent sense that they are already fleshed out people (to some degree) even before they hit the page of the story, because they appear in canon and across Marauder fic verses. no matter how much I make James into Dimitrios and Peter into Pétros and Fleamont into Philoctetes, people know them and love them outside of theogony verse. but not Aristides. he doesn't have a one-to-one HP character. there is some version of him that really existed in 479 BCE (my complex and largely negative feelings on RPF are setting off alarms at this but we proceed) and that's it.
it would have been easy to just give him this very gruff and surly character, to make him a military general who didn't care about anything other than the war. I think that's how we conceptualize historical people sometimes, often without meaning to. but he was a person, and he had likes and dislikes, he probably had a family and maybe he'd fallen in love, and it was such an honor to give him such dimension. not to say that I'm putting that personality upon the actual historical person; but just to really take my time with a character outside of the Marauder canon. in this scene he has this human moment where he reminds James that, yes, love is a worthy pursuit, even to those in positions of incredible power. even when the discussion isn't about romantic love but about James's love for his closest friends. it's this permission that James didn't even know he was seeking but ultimately that changes the course of his and Lily's lives. Aristides is who James might become, in many ways. in the actual Plataea chapter this becomes more and more prevalent. (more on this later!)
overall, I am forever hoping that people come out of reading this story with an appreciation for the humanity of those that came before us. I did a poor job with other characters in this story, and I own that, but I'm proud of how I wrote Aristides.
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oh my godddddd I fucking love this part. i am so fucking proud of it. LMAO. achieving wordplay in an ancient language that i have never studied should be on my fucking CV I swear. like this was just perfect I'm sorry I am BUZZING that I pulled this off.
also, a cute way to introduce a phrase to the narrative which will become very important: se filo!
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I remember that I wrote this passage, which many people commented on and which I loved writing, in a coffee shop on a sunny day when my cousin was visiting me to introduce me to his girlfriend. there wasn't any wifi in the coffee shop so I was blessedly devoid of distractions and could only focus on the doc, and i was LOCKED IN let me tell you.
when my cousin and his girlfriend arrived I told them I was sending an important email and edited the last sentence of that paragraph about four different times while they sat in silence and waited for me to finish LMAOOO
Chapter Five: Ascesis
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a profoundly insane moment in my personal history was reading excerpts from Eudemian Ethics, Nichomachean Ethics, and Memorabilia just to passively mention them in a flashback in a fic. relied heavily on Foucault for this, I will be so honest. why did i do that tho. like girl take a breath...
but in all seriousness this was just a joy to write. i miss being a history student and having these discussions – law school is great, but history classes will forever hold my heart ngl! also, this passage is in some ways an homage to my grandfather, who is one of my favorite people ever. he taught himself Classical Greek and Latin when he was in his 20s, before he went to medical school (and get his pilot's license for fun, he's seriously the most interesting guy alive). he gifted me his leatherbound Great Books printings of Aristotle's works and of the Iliad and the Odyssey shortly after I started theogony, and I cherish them so much. he spurred my interest in ancient greece when i was young. so this is for him :)
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one of the hardest things for me to articulate (and maybe something I could have done better) was the war and the balance between James's inherent goodness and his growing feelings for Lily. i wanted her to have plausible reason to think that he doesn't at all feel romantically towards her, even as she's growing to admire him more and more. I hoped, as I wrote the story, that these little interactions where the reader clues into his feelings (this protective 'peninsula' moment being one of them) still walked that line. as in, i wanted lily to reasonably believe that he's just that good of a guy that he would take issue with anyone being taken advantage of, not just her. she's so destabilized in this moment as well, I think that worked to my advantage. or I hoped it did LOL.
from what I remember of writing this chapter, it just came really quickly and naturally. much more than the later ones. this early period of writing was just an outpouring of the ABSOLUTE BRAINROT I was going through after conjuring up the idea for the story. it just flew. the ending scene where they have their little almost-moment was probably about an hour's worth of writing. it's like I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. not sure i've experienced that since!
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also, the now, here, alive line reappears in the last chapter, which is one of my favorite callbacks:
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:) :) :)
Chapter Six: Kleos
one thing I used to worry about CONSTANTLY is that I was losing the classic (and necessary!) Marauder goofiness to the more somber setting. so it was a jaunt and a boon to write scenes like the opening one here, where it honestly could be copy-pasted into the Gryffindor Common Room and it'd look a lot like my canon stories.
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he's just a dude being hungover and embarrassed about the previous night with his bros!
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the first time we get a hint of Pétros disappearing to dubious locations!
this chapter was one of the most research-heavy. it was a new setting, filled with new characters, and predicated entirely upon planning the Greek front at Plataea. so if I couldn't nail that down (at least to some degree), I was going to have trouble. of course I took liberties, but I spent a lot longer combing through sources for this chapter than some other ones, I'll tell you that for free. it took ages to find any treatises on ancient athenian sword combat, sigh.
yeah I mean i remember thinking that the subtitle for this chapter could have been 'I am going to create an environment that is so toxically masculine' because that's pretty much the whole vibe. James is not immune to that, either, and that was intentional. he feeds off of the violence and the anger of the men surrounding him, and he exhibits some behaviors in this chapter (rushing off to kill Anaxagoras after he grabs Lily's arm, for instance) which are not ideal! but I do think that there's meaningful conversation to be had about Lily's cultural assimilation into an ancient, misogynistic society, and how there was absolutely no way I was going to get out of this story without giving James some sort of period-typical attitude. now again, I took the liberties I deem necessary, because I have no desire to make my main romantic lead into an asshole. that's not my James Potter. not that that's news [gets taken out by a sniper]
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i got CLOWNEDDD for referring to this dude as Dion son of Dion but idk what to tell you!! that's how the old documents referred to him!!! i didn't make that shit up I swear to god!!!!
also - that's the actual text of the Oath of Plataea, except (as Lily points out) it should read Athena Areia. is it likey that she'd remember this off the dome? no. is it possible that she just recognized the missing descriptor from context clues? yes. did i care enough to explain this either way? no, no i did not.
the Big Ticket Item of this chapter, though, is the oh.
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and it wasn't just an oh, it was an oh followed by this innocuous conclusion that isn't even about Lily. i made myself laugh so hard with that. he's just like 'oh god my friend is going to wave this over my head FOREVER' and you know what? he's right!
as for the previous paragraph in that passage, I pulled a bit of a bait and switch, but not as badly as you might think! it was a risk to even bring up the idea that James could leave Athens, because I know it spurred some people into thinking that he'd go to the future with Lily (sorry babies that was not on the table). but what I intended for this passage (however successful it may or may not have been) was to just…allow him a moment of real, visceral empathy for the sensation of displacement that Lily's experiencing, and as well, introduce the idea that he might leave the life he's cultivated in Athens. his entire upbringing has been himself, the consummate Athenian man, surrounding himself with people from outside of Athens and drawing from their experiences, but never venturing outside of his little realm. in so many ways, the story questions what Lily's relationship with 'home' is (especially later on), but it always felt necessary to me to reckon with how 'home' may change for James as well.
finally:
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yeah honestly i just remember the exact moment i thought of this passage. i had been reading the secret history (shoutout Donna Tartt i idolize and fear you) and i was lying down in my local park in the summer. I just thought about the Greek myths I knew, and the kind of cosmic horror that it is to really admit you're falling in love with someone, that they have this power over you that you didn't anticipate. and that closing line of the scene really struck me out of nowhere – I wrote it down in my notebook and just stared at it for a good few minutes. it's still one of my favs of the story :)
ok! if you made it this far, you are just amazing. this has to be a few thousand words at least. TYSM!!!!
see you all later for the part 2 BTS ❤️
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nyerus · 1 year
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Hi! I would love to hear your thoughts about classism in TGCF, but specifically regarding XL. It surprised me to see people hating on XL for not knowing or doing better during his teenage years of luxury as the crown prince and making XL a complete villain because he didn't take down classism and restructure society despite still being a kid himself. It struck me as odd that the fandom is well aware of his 800 years in poverty but also not really addressing the fact that XL, too, is a victim of classism albeit a little different from someone like MQ.
Hi there! So sorry it's taken me this long to get to this ask, I've just been in sort of a funk for a few days haha.
But yeah, this is definitely a topic that comes up from time to time, with lots of discussion about. It surprises me that despite that, there are still people (maybe just newer fans? idk) who still hate on Xie Lian for his naive views as a 17yo. Especially since, despite being a naive 17yo, he still really wanted to help people less fortunate than himself. He didn't quite understand how to do this in the most effective ways (because he was a teenager), so it came off as somewhat patronizing as he was a person in a position of power compared to everyone else. Yet his desire to help people was genuine, and he didn't personally think of "common folk" as being any lesser than "royalty" -- even though in this case, there kind of literally was a difference. (E.g. when Lang Ying goes from being a commoner to a king, he gets a "kingly aura" that protects him!) So it's honestly kind of incredible that Xie Lian is willing to say things like "I think people are equal, even gods and humans, and if the Heavens disagree with me, then it's the Heavens that are wrong" with his entire heart.
I imagine a large part of the hate Xie Lian gets from certain fans is jealousy or resentment, due to the fact that Xie Lian was "born privileged." But on it's own, "privilege" is not "the great enemy" -- it's what said privilege means in the context of society, and what someone does/doesn't do with it that merits judgement. Xie Lian doesn't fully understand the privilege he had until he loses it (again: because he was 17!), but he still understood it enough to use it to protect and help people. That's more than many other characters can say. Him starting out as a prince doesn't automatically disqualify him from class struggles or the horrors of poverty. It's nonsensical to think so, when this is a character who literally spent almost 800 years busking for scraps, while sleeping in dirt outside and eating garbage….
On the flip side, as you mentioned Mu Qing -- yes, he was a victim of classism. But he's a very strange figure to use as the poster boy for that, though he often is by people who are critical of Xie Lian. This may be a controversial take, despite it being something I think that makes the character of Mu Qing really interesting: but he's a very "typical" guy within the concept of classism. He's someone who started off with a bad lot, but then ended up ascending to the highest point you pretty much can in that world/society. Which is great! He did that through hard work, and it paid off! But now, since he got his "happy ending," that's kind of it for him. He doesn't do anything to materially improve the lives of those less fortunate, especially those he has no personal connection with. This doesn't make him a bad person -- it's not really his job to that, even as a god. He's a martial god, so he's there to subdue threats and all that. Yet you can clearly see, that's exactly the type of person society values because such "rags to riches" stories give legitimacy to the whole system, and because they don't rock the boat once they're on top.
So then it's odd to be angry at Xie Lian but not Mu Qing (or others) for the lack of some "grand revolution" that some readers seem to want.
Ironically, Xie Lian used what power he had to try and help people -- and he was worse off for it. If he had done nothing, he would have been able to live a happy and carefree life. He would have lived and died as a rich prince/king with no troubles. Like, that's the point! The societies we live in punish those who want to broadly help others or make meaningful change, while rewarding those who quietly play the game for themselves -- because it helps keep the wheels turning. It doesn't matter at "what end" of the spectrum you start out on, the rules apply the same way. If you go against the establishment, there's a price to be paid.
Throughout Xie Lian's long journey, he learns this lesson the hard way. And the fact that in order to change it, he would somehow have to change the hearts and minds of pretty much everyone -- which is an impossible ask. How is he even supposed to that, or restructure society as a whole, without vast amounts of collateral damage? In the end, Xie Lian discovers that he was not wrong in his desire to help people, even if he cannot help everyone. He can still help people he meets in whatever ways he can, and that is still important. To show kindness, mercy, and empathy towards your fellow man is worth it. Helping your neighbors or complete strangers you meet once and then never again -- all that is still worth it.
I wish I had the time to sit down and really talk about this in a more organized way, but these disjointed thoughts are all I can manage at the moment! I hope it was still valuable to you in some way, and thank you for sending in the ask!
(Also, I recently reblogged a post that talked about something similar if you wanna check it out, Anon. It's right under the manhua highlights I think!)
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browniefox · 18 days
Text
I asked for fic recs so it only makes sense that I provide some.
The Invisible Stan by The Last Speecher (HeidiMelone)
Simple, short, but elegant. You know how hanahaki disease is a trope? I feel like this should be a trope, but idk what you'd call it - Ninny disease sounds bad, but like it's clearly based off of Ninny from the Moomins. Anyway, great fic <3
An Outreached Hand by WDW
Ghost trick au! Love a good ghost trick au! I reread this recently and it still holds up so well, still so good even if unfinished. Haven't played ghost trick since, some of the twists make a hair more sense - especially the twist in the last chapter posted and being like 'OH IT'S *THE* GHOST TRICK'. Shoutout to undead creepiness and cute kitties :3
Retrograde by scrawling_stardumb
Kissing this one on the mouth. Only one chapter and unfinished, but it's a long chapter and really makes you go 'whoa'. It's interesting because the summary *technically* gives you more info than the chapter itself, but it's that kind of dramatic irony that fits the writing so well. A good solid McGucket POV too, which there really isn't enough of. Tbh, it stands okay almost as a one shot? I wish this became a whole popular au like all the others, bc it kicks ass as a concept.
Finding the Right Frequency by impish_nature
A pretty cute one! Ford trying to figure out how to deal with Bill, and Stan having found a stable job, and someow their two worlds intersect. Cute moments between the two, and some good Stans getting to reconnect.
Things You Can't Take Back by thesnadger
Classic by the Snadger! I always appreciate people who take Stan's memory less and make it more complicated, or at least have there be aftershocks to have your whole life erased :D So well written.
like they were a perfect fit by hapful
Stanford Pines and the photo he never looses. A beautiful story about Ford throughout the ages and his opnions on family, specifically Stan.
putting the dog to sleep by parsnipit
Old Yeller is such a sad story, and also some of this made me think of Mice and Men, and ugh just Stan and Ford and beign willing to kill something you love - sometimes because you love it - and it's such a perfect analogy to them I could die.
none of those phds is an md, you dumb idiot by untrustworthyglitch
I always love a fic that acknowledges language barriers. It reminds me of a really old fic where I did something similar, but like, being away from Earth would lead to you forgetting a lot of things, including language.
Too Late, Too Soon, Not Enough by IncomingAlbatross
Ah, gotta love a good fic that shows the missing scene of Ford and Stan switching places. Who came up with the idea? Who needed to be convinced? What swears do they get to use while off camera? Stan I love you so much, and Ford I lov eyou for beig nso complicated.
Raising Stakes by MaryPSue
Mwah! A Classic if I've ever seen one! While I'm partial to werewolf!Stan, Vampire!Stan does have so much potential and MaryPSue puts it to use so well! A great look into what Gravity Falls was like back in taht time period, and I love when people utilize Susan in fics that take place pre-portal <3 Also, Carla! I miss you so much Carla <3 It's drama, it's action, it's everything!
Lost and Found by PengyChan
Tate & Fiddleford have a lot of untapped potential, and while I think going the angst route makes a lot of sense, this one is almost more fluff and catharsis, I guess? I love it, near and dear to me.
Off-Season by anistarrose
Time Travel fic, but not a timestuck au? More likely than you think! A cute oneshot with particular focus on Stan, Mabel, and Dipper. Just a fluffy little thing with a couple strangers helping Stan out through a difficult winter.
Persist and Dwell by fencesit
A bit of Soos's trust in Grunkle Stan, and a mystery that isn't so much mystery as it is simply just not explicitly said. One of the final scenes has still stuck with me, and this is defo a concept I'd love to see explored more.
flee from your ghosts (burn your house down) by thepolysyndetonaddictsupportgroup
While typically OTGW x Gravity Falls crossovers are, like, Pinescone, I'm partial to this version where Wirt is their dad. There'a few details that didn' sit well with me, but over all so incredible and well written. Some of the metaphors are just so evocative I could eat them. The descriptions are to die for. And I love the depiction of a dad struggling to get his kids to open up to him that feels like it's part dads struggle with teens and part those pines twins just won't tell the truth.
If you have any Gravity Falls fic recs, feel free to comment them!
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o0o0thorn0o0o · 6 days
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It’s that time of year again!!!
The amount of times Ibis crashed on me ;~; (still sorting out the storage issues—at a slug’s pace, ‘cause other things be preoccupying my mind), but it was worth it!! I’m very much proud, very much pleased, with how it came out this year if I do say so myself! Ahhh, all that struggling with and “refinding” my art style this year was not for naught!!
I think of my previous years, 2021 is my favorite, but it’s officially been replaced now 😌 I feel so content rn (please don’t let this be a short moodlet, eheh)
That said, I do think I prefer last year’s hands. They were also a pain this time—primarily Yukiko’s right hand…
Anywho, previous versions (+ “base-color” version + a close-up ‘cause why not) under the cut (after some more rambling, eheh):
I was really struggling to start this—I restarted it 3 times essentially—so I’m also really happy with how it came out in that regard. As such (plus the crashes), I’m a wee bit late this year, but only by a few days; I really don’t mind it for once, haha.
I noticed I was going in a certain direction over the years with Yukiko’s hairstyle and the light source, and not the one I intended. Realized that this year, so I fixed those trends:
Tried to make the light source more behind and adjusted it’s position to match with the scene in my head more (though, if I really wanted to be truthful to that, she’d be in one of the other ballgowns I designed for her since she wears this specific one for her first meeting with Gakushuu in this AU, whereas the idea for this scene is supposed to be from when they’re much more familiar with each other later on. But, uh, I like this dress wayyy too much, so let’s just ignore that, haha). I was actually thinking of finally implementing a proper bg this year—even sketched it (mainly for perspective, though)—but I really wanted to just get this done, haha, but also… I didn’t want to deal with more crashes… Perhaps next year… but don’t quote me on that, haha.
As for the hair, the strands that bunch up the rest of Yukiko’s hair—I noticed I was placing them too low. How I imagine her hairstyle to be is that they eventually connect up to her bun (I should definitely sketch a back view concept of this design, mainly so I don’t forget stuff like these, eheh, and to visualize just what in the world is going on… but that’s something distant future me will worry about… if she remembers, of course ^^;). But they’re also supposed the same length as the rest of her hair, so… yeah… I thought this would make her hair less fluffier, which would’ve saddened me, haha, but it didn’t! That said, I have a feeling I’ll possibly make it less voluminous next year… Seems a bit too thick… but idk. I like drawing thick hair, haha.
Oh, also, if you’ll notice: I decided to simplify her underskirt design last year, and… yeah, no, I reverted that change, haha.
Mannn, I am in such a mood to draw more “A Brothers’ Quarrel” stuff/AC Kingdom AU stuff in general (like designing some proper outfits for Gakushuu and Karma finally (they’re the main characters, and Yukiko only appears for a specific part of the AU, yet who do I draw the most…? XD), drawing her horse, Camellia, drawing her in her other dresses, finally getting around to drawing her ladies-in-waiting designs in that other Kingdom AU (just how long ago did I post the traditional sketches of them? Yikes…), etc, etc), but I’ve got too much stuff to get finished before the end of the year. I really need to pick up the pace, eheh.
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lover-of-mine · 1 month
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i just saw a post saying that tommy being so similar to eddie in many ways is deliberate writing and proof yhat buck is misplacing his feelings for eddie onto a similar safer option… and it reminded me of my one fear that i have recently developed
even though that theory makes complete obvious sense, what if it’s not actually what the writers were going for? what if they made tommy so similar to eddie simply to explain why they connected instantly as friends… which made buck jealous. what if that’s literally all it is? that tommy and eddie were written as similar just so their fast friendship was believable. it would make sense considering the hobbies were things eddie has never mentioned before or since, they just wrote them in to increase the similarities lol
but then there’s the question of why they seemingly didn’t stay friends? why their similarities were never mentioned again after that episode? sighhh idk with this show, i guess we will see!
btw i still firmly believe the ‘what buck likes about tommy is what buck loves about eddie/misplaced feelings’ theory though!! who cares what happens in canon haha
Hi darling 🩷
I actually kinda think it's a little bit of both. They needed to justify both of their interest in Tommy so they added the similar hobbies and the army thing to accomplish both things at the same time. Because contrary to what part of the fandom seems to believe, Eddie is very good with people, he makes fast friends with most people we see him interact with, so him being friendly with Tommy works regardless, but it doesn't work to make them hang out as much as they did during 704. I also think that's leftover from the Tommy they were writing for Eddie. The similarities would work to create the idea that Eddie is into Tommy too in the timeline where Eddie came out first. But the similarities to Eddie are convenient in the Buck misplacing feelings thing, because it makes you question how Buck feels about Eddie and how much of his crush on Tommy is not just based on that first glance they are similar people feeling. Especially considering the way the friendship completely vanished after Tommy kissed Buck. And considering the way they made a point in contrasting Eddie and Tommy after that, like with the costumes for instance, the friendship and the similarities kinda fading into the background, and the way the 704 is on Buck's pov, there's a chance they are trying to make the point that Buck was exaggerating that connection to justify his own actions. @eddiegettingshot mentioned a few times when discussing 704 and specifically the twist, the idea that Buck is trying to justify his own reactions to himself and the concept of him building Tommy up because he doesn't want to deal with why he would react like that to Eddie making a friend to the degree of actually physically hurting Eddie works with that. And like it or not, Buck wants what he has with Eddie, he just didn't let himself register Eddie as an actual option, so the projection of his feelings into someone safer who's close enough to Eddie that he can project more than his feelings works. But this is a conclusion I reached rewatching 704 after the end of the season. I was always camp Buck is projecting into someone safer because figuring out he's queer and that he's in love with Eddie at the same time would be too much for him to handle all at once.
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batsylikeme · 2 months
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so here’s my silly little rant/opinions on the new doctor who season
if what i say pisses you off just keep scrolling mary i don’t have the energy to deal with negativity rn
so firstly i don't wanna talk abt how the new doctor regenerated okay that made absolutely no sense to me. idk why even 10 came back as well like ig donna's story was left "untold" ….but so is every other companion’s?
and idk how they split??? i really don't understand how they can do that but it’s aliens so whatever.
im also not gonna go into the christmas episode or the baby episode i...dont wanna relive that.
so!! i love the doctor i think he’s so fun and hip and his style is amazing.
personally i think the fact that he doesn’t have a set outfit is bc he’s trying to figure out who he is, which is always so exciting as the viewer going on this journey with him.
and ruby is awesome as hell!! low key fuck you writers for not making her a lesbian ( i mean she has the eyebrow slit and everything you should be ashamed).
also cool background story i love that she's interesting and a mystery. plus when villains are like "who...are you" that's always so dope.
i think that the "family" of the different "gods" is really cheesy but GOD i loved jinx they did so fucking amazing their performance was everything. i want them to act in every show ever honestly.
with that being said.. that episode specifically wasn’t my favorite, it was a cool concept but idgaf abt the beetles so 😭
and in that episode when the doctor ran away and hid?? that was new to the doctor that we know and i was like “yeah let’s go we’re gonna watch his character develop!”
so you would think it would build up to some sort of solution bc the doctor is tryna figure out who he is and that's gnarly love it
….then they DIDNT?
they didn't do anything with that?!?? at least that i was able to notice?
okay but after the jinx episode the rest of the episodes were actually fierce!
the landmine one had some really cool dialogue moments especially with the bickering like love i'm obsessed. ruby was also really cool and i love how much she cares about the doctor and how she wasn’t scared. i think that says a lot about her character. not to mention i think having her so in awe of the planets was a really good choice bc that reaction is so human and i love it.
buttttt the other characters were like mad infuriating which may have been the point? and throughout the episode it was so tense and nerve racking but the end was so anticlimactic. i loved the idea, and i loved that the dad was able to save the day (even tho i wanted the doctor to save the day but whatever) but i wanted MORE. i wanted the doctor and ruby to go into town, or to see the government and face them and call them out on the war! the fact that it was in one area the entire episode was just not it, me no likey.
the ruby centered episode was AWESOME.
that one was so unsettling (in a good way) and it was sooooo cool to see her like basically save the world and then she dies but BOOM they're back when the episode first started. i loved it, so peak doctor who timey wimey stuff
even tho i'm still a little confused as to if the lady was ruby? but whatever i still really enjoyed it i honestly have no cons on this episode it displayed what kind of person she is perfectly.
next, the bridgerton episode was fun! love the gayness they even kissed and they flirted it was so fierce. and ugh ruby’s character just keeps getting better and better honestly shes so fun and it’s so easy to root for her.
…but… the dialogue wasn’t good in this episode….at all. especially having the aliens say the word ‘cosplay’ took me out of the fantasy completely
also side note but not really-
what always impressed me growing up watching doctor who was that even back in 2005 the alien makeup was always so FIERCE like cunty boots down house houston bc it's makeup centric!
it also allows talented people to show off their skills and add really personal features to the actors who are playing the aliens. but nowadays they rely on the cgi so much that it just doesn’t seem believable and honestly it doesn't look good anymore. like mentioned before with makeup you can use the actor’s features to your advantage which creates the perfect illusion.
makeup + a LITTLE bit of cgi is the way to go and i don't get a fuck if it's more expensive ur a fucking successful ass company you have the money now USE IT
the episode itself was good until the very end when rouge sacrificed himself and then the doctor was like "i move on that's what happens" like bruh
by having him say that, it honestly makes you think that all of the losses the doctor has endured is just moments of his past, and that he’s moved on
like no i want the doctor to be angry, to be motivated!!
and that's what i think this doctor lacked.
there was no motivation or drive for him, which is so fucking stupid bc the actor is amazing.
the episode that ended with the doctor experiencing racism for the first time…you can tell that the actor put his whole heart and soul into his performance (especially the scream). he was unleashing a whole new part of his doctor and it was absolutely perfect.
so why not use that to give the doctor more motivation, more anger? seeing the doctor not being able to move on, to be selfish at times bc that makes him feel human. which would make sense BC!! he has spent so much times with humans and earth is important to him.
moving on; one of the biggest things that made this season an issue was that they cried every. single. episode.
when you only get something every once and a while it makes that thing so much more precious. the doctor only cries like once a season, and when he does it's like actually thrilling bc you don't get that side of him a lot.
and usually it's with a lot of anger bc the doctor is angry!! we've been through how many seasons of the doctor suffering?? i mean the man literally blew up his own planet. he's been thru the ringer.
there are so many episodes of the doctor not having the best morals, of him letting the villain die bc of his own selfish intentions. he's not supposed to be a hero, and i think that’s also what makes the doctor so compelling.
another con was the dialogue. one of my biggest tv / movie turn offs is when they say what they’re doing. and not in the super impressive like monologue way but in the simple way of being like "i'm cooking" like mary yeah i see you doing that??
and this season used that a lot. and again NOT in the cool monologue saving the day way speaking of that, no cool monologues? none? nada?
the best part of doctor who is when the doctor goes against all odds and saves the day with that sexy smirk and has the coolest monologue with the kick ass music in the back and during it gives you goosebumps! it also allowed the actor to put forth a lot of emotion into their performance and allowed them to build who their doctor is.
despite all of that, i did really enjoy the episode with ruby growing old and the racism episode. the fact that they didn’t have to say it was perfect and i think was a really good choice bc it was a surprise factor, especially with the doctor’s reaction. when they brought in a random character to save the day and him be so unlike the rest of his race and then kill him is always gonna be classic trope, bc my sister and i were GAGGED. perfect, absolutely perfect.
however. the season finale can go fuck itself.
UNIT is so cheesy now, and it feels so unreal and silly which i think is stupid. they’ve had this facility for so long so the fact that it is unserious now is lame. it feels really fake whenever they're trying to be serious and sciency, which is not the way to go when ur a literal army based facility.
anyways back to the season finale-yeah it was cool to have a throwback especially with the fact it was “the one who waits” that was gnarly! however,,, when sutukh whatever his name was literally kills the entire universe…it didn't feel like it??? it happened so quickly it didn't have that shock value it was supposed to and i was actually confused.
i did love the throwback to the ruby episode so it made you feel like it was tying that together which is nice!! give them some recognition yay!!
now let’s talk abt the whole plot with Ruby’s birth mother.
the build up of her real mother i mean it's been every episode when they mentioned it. in the first part where they were in the time window, that was giving me the creeps! i loved that it was scary and confusing and i couldn’t wait to figure it out!
so when the birth mother of ruby, the woman that even the god of death was infatuated with, the woman that the doctor couldn't figure out, the woman that was stuck in some sort of time thingy…………..is just a regular woman? its just some teenager who got knocked up and gave away her kid? that's it?
i've been getting edged this entire fucking season just for this?
if you enjoyed that it was a regular person i get it! it’s a throwback to whenever the doctor made his speech about how no one is ever just unimportant, which i do love and appreciate.
the whole reason she's important is bc the unknown is the most powerful thing which honestly i agree. my biggest fears are always the unknown. so yes absolutely i get it….but….are you...are you kidding me?
and then ruby leaves? ruby is done traveling with the doctor? i just. ugh.
there was so much potential and i’m just so empty now.
yes it had its cool moments, but im honestly so heartbroken and disappointed with how it turned out like, some bitch on tumblr could have written this season better than this.
i really really really hope the next season is better, at this point it’s just the writing. so get it together writers!! Ncuti is a phenomenal actor he is so fun and his range is so raw and captivating. not to mention Ruby! i’m really sad she’s leaving so soon, she was really fun and complimented the doctor well.
i can’t wait to see what’s next, and honestly no matter what i’m gonna watch doctor who bc it’s so special to me <3
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I love your nuanced takes. They are always a joy to read.
I'd be curious which songs, beatles or solo, do you think they wrote for/about each other and their situation (beatles&solo).
You don't have to go into great detail on them if you don't wanna.
Hope you have a great day. <3
Hi anon :) Glad you enjoy my takes! Hope you have a great day too <3
Preface that while I think this is fun, I really don't generally think songs are a good vehicle to extrapolate about the real life of these people. So, I try not to base my analyses of them as people on these songs, even the ones I feel more strongly about.
I'll categorize these by how certain I am about them (and I'll leave out confirmed stuff like Too Many People, Early 1970, How Do You Sleep?, Run of the Mill, Here Today etc.)
If you have a question re: why some specific song is in this category and not the other I can try to explain, though some of it is admittedly just vibes (and since I try to separate this from the Main Analysis™, I feel okay utilizing the vibes as a justification at times lol) If I left a song off you'd like my take on feel free to ask as well.
Close to positive:
Day Tripper is imho at least partially about Paul. This one feels so obvious to me, given what John said about it and the timeline (written squarely before Paul took LSD, conveniently after the whole LA fiasco), yet I rarely see people talking about it. Sad! It could also be partially about Cynthia.
Tug of War: Paul said it was about John in 1982 but then retconned that. IDK why he did that but. Come on!
I Know (I Know): I nearly put this one a tier lower but the I've Got A Feeling intro and the way it fits in the timeline. The Getting Better reference. It matching up with Paul's description of them tripping together + "share in each other's mind". It's too much.
A compelling case can be made:
In My Life: it makes a lot of sense. But Paul isn't the only likely muse IMO. he might be the most likely one, I'm not sure. I Know (I Know) makes me tend more to it though, admittedly.
3 Legs: yeah. Probably! It's not entirely clear to me what he's expressing outside a feeling of betrayal though.
Oh! Darling: Likely about John, but perhaps actually about the band as a whole.
The Answer's at the End: the way George quoted that same saying when asked about Paul in that live chat… THE IMPLICATIONS! (at least that maybe George came to associate the song with Paul later on?)
Remember: I tend to think this song is specifically about running away from the Beatles. There's more sadness in it, given John references Bring It On Home in the lyrics.
Who Can See It: this one also appears to be about George's general relationship with the Beatles. I don't think this is a hot take but no one talks about this song lol. I love it!
Cafe On The Left Bank: the song referencing Charles de Gaulle making a speech does place this quite firmly in the 60s. It's not really a love song though so I don't get why people consider this one such a win lol. It seems to mostly be about the city of Paris itself.
I like to think it's true but am admittedly not sure:
Call Me Back Again: it's a vague song, really. But damn… those mellotron flutes.
#9 Dream: IDK. this versus "The dream is over". the production-style. I like reading this song as a reconciliation with The Beatles as a concept.
Little Lamb Dragonfly: the whole being haunted by the dragonfly even though you're trying to move on thing :/
No Words: COME ON??????? but the Denny writing credit does puzzle me lol.
Crippled Inside: it would be soooooo devastating @ Paul!!! (probably only partially, possibly also self-directed)
Could have been inspired by the other but not necessarily in the way people think:
Some People Never Know: I do think Paul felt John was cynical in the way he's describing in this song. (I don't really think I Know (I Know) is a response to this song btw)
Silly Love Songs: ditto. He is Not fucking saying "I love you" (romantically) to John in the song he's duetting with his wife lol. but it could be a cheeky lil nod.
We Can Work It Out: I believe Paul when he says this was written about a fight he'd had with Jane. But Paul was also in conflict with John at the time (again, the LSD thing), thus I think that might have in some way informed his outlook when writing this. And John may have been thinking about their conflict while writing his part.
Let Me Roll It: it sounds a lot like John, yeah! but idk about the lyrics.
Look At Me: it could be about Paul, but it could be about the whole world, really. It's more a wish to be seen and understood really.
Dear Boy: I'm annoyed by people insisting Paul is lying when he says the inspiration is Linda's ex-husband. She's co-credited (and she actually isn't credited on every Ram song. I don't think the credit was "handed" to her, at least not at this point in time)! That being said, Paul may have bonded with Linda over feeling unappreciated in their previous life situations.
Yvonne's The One: Look. I think John's death really shifted how Paul felt about telling people he loved them. That may well have influenced the lyrics song. I don't think it's necessarily that literal.
However Absurd: ditto. This song is even more abstract so it feels even less literal.
?????? Who Knows
If I Fell: usually I think no it couldn't possibly. But– (And I don't find that Valentines card very compelling, no. but it's just like: well then who else would this song John called very personal about? I guess, for all I know, it could even be Brian. wow!)
Girl: I mean. Maybe! Sort of. They also said at the time it was about religion, and that makes a lot of sense, but it could still be that the character of the girl was inspired by how John felt about Paul at the time.
I'm So Tired: it seems equally likely to be about Yoko to me.
Don't Let Me Down: ditto. Actually. this one's more likely Just about Yoko tbh.
I'm Losing You: maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe. but also. Yoko.
Now And Then: genuinely who knows. this one's admittedly stranger for Yoko but… they did "interrupt" their relationship often, requiring to "start again". Also May is an option.
The Pound Is Sinking: Mostly, I don't know how straightforward it is.
Honestly… Not really
(Just Like) Starting Over: the "My Love", "Another Day", "Wings" thing has never compelled me, based on those being OLD songs by 1980, plus none of the phrasing or word choice is particularly conspicuous to me. But I also don't feel very strongly that it's not about Paul. It could be, though I don't know that I'd assume it was meant as a direct declaration of love then. Also the line before being a reference to Through The Looking Glass is neither here nor there. Since when is John Lennon dropping Lewis Caroll references only reserved for Paul? that feels like putting the cart before the horse, based on one single lyric in Glass Onion.
I've Got A Feeling: I think he's just saying words here, tbh.
Real Love: if it's about Paul that's fucking depressing. But I don't think it is really.
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witchofthesouls · 19 days
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for the tfp kids as other au...why Raf is a dragon, and not a Dragon? Like, I assume there´s a difference between those therms. What would make him change into the latter? Also, idk why, but I imagined Miko would end up with Jack, lol. Idk if them three ending as a proper trio is plausible, cause the age difference or not. Just asking cause I have no idea how the Tarn/Miko thing came to be, not that I´m complaining cause I kinda like it lol.
The Tarn/Miko crackship came from this ask about a TFP!Tarn with a soulmate that he found out to be an Autobot-aligned human that's a Wrecker. That's fucking Miko, and the entire concept is hilarious to me, especially with an Other!AU so everyone needs to deal with culture clash and alien biology. (The extended Nakadai family are well aware of their yōkai origins, and the Earthlings are losing their minds that aliens have a soulmate phenomenon as well.)
I did write some thoughts about Jack/Miko pairing, but I basically view them as platonic soulmates/'ride or die' where time and distance is of no consequence. I can see them as a romantic couple, but after a decade of maturing and settling into their own selves. They (along with Raf) would have so many inside jokes about their time with the Autobots.
A dragon is basically an umbrella term for any and all those kinds of draconian beings and various hybrids. But a Dragon is something else completely. They're not born. They're chosen. Such individuals are living acts of theurgy, the bridge between humanity's potential and divine authority of the celestial bodies. They're considered portents of change; something between monster and godkin. Because Dragons embody a specific Aspect from their resurrection, they typically don't live long as no Dragon is made from peace.
Raf (like countless humans) has the potential to become a Dragon, but whether or not it happens is the choice he must face in that crucial moment that many will balk or be consumed by the inferno.
He's also far more aware of what is expected should he gain and lose should he complete the covenant. He's seen what happened to his older sister, who had made a deal with another powerful entity to return back her Earth. Pilar is missing something integral. She's not soulless, but the experienced can tell her fatigue comes from an extremely consuming deal and she always seems preoccupied by something else. Perhaps she could be the first Dragon to die of old age...
On a side note, Dragons are basically part of the answers I built in regards to humanity's relations with Others. Cultures across the world have many tales and folklore that are either enchanted or terrified by the supernatural, so it's part of the "What are the traits they would find beguiling and horrified by?" I'm taking the adaptability to the extreme.
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plutos134340 · 9 days
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hiii pluto :3 you wanna tell me about ur ocs sooo bad /nf (also is calling you pluto ok ?)
Ooooooh i feel like i wanna tell u about them soooo badly (and yes im ok with being called pluto, it technically isnt my name- that which is natalie, but i am chill with pluto as well)
Long text under the paragraph bc i dont feel like subjecting the random viewer to a long post:
Ok so some background for the way my aus work: i suck at making my own characters, but i can like give traits and personalities to existing characters that dont have much in canon, or just replacing a pre-existing characters personality, so thats what i do time and time again. Then i make random characters for funsies
First au concept and darias place in it: So basically i had made some cliche fnaf au where like none of the kids ever died- ig i wanted some happiness in life. And i then made Daria to go along with them and she was Henry's kid and an older sister to Charlie. They also had another younger brother but he is irrelevant. She is best friends with michael afton, and was also closest to fritz and jeremy (foxy and bonnie) She is like a random oc but does has a lot of my traits bc i found it easier to cope with myself through a character with fake friendships rather than actually think about myself and the people i know.
Traits (physical and personality-wise): She is white and has pale-ish skin, and shes got shoulder-length, curly, brown hair (like 2C); she is white, and she is pretty tall. She has hazel eyes (the green and brown being separate kind of hazel because i have that eye color and i like my eyes 💀). Shes queer, specifically being bisexual and ace-spec, and is a cis girl. She is pretty down-to-earth, and is mostly a realist. One thing that has stayed true throughout her many forms is that she often forms intimate relationships with people quickly but can end up starting fights with the same people quickly. Idk where that came from but thats her.
😰😰😰😰😰😰
😰😰😰😰😰😰
And now the second au and all that jazz. I know you dont know much at all about cccc but basically there are these characters Heart, Mind and Soul, who are all technically personified parts of the singer's (chonny jash) brain. In this au they are all human and like half related to their original identities. They go by the names Juno, Keene and Atlas, respectively, with the collection of their names just coming from random sources in the songs (juno and atlas) and then i just picked a random name i saw for the last bc i didnt want to pick two similar names (it would have been Apollo if i did). Bc i love music oh so much, they are all basically in a band. I loooove cliche little tropes it just soothes my mind ig, idc how basic it is and its also just easier for me to imagine. Anywho, this brings Max and Lily into the picture, along with another girl i forgot originally bc i forgot that i created her (that being Terra). Terra is the creator of this band, and Max and Lily originally come from their school's regular band.
Max: He is mixed white/southeast asian, and has tan, freckled skin and short black hair. He is around 5'11. He has a pretty chill and kind personality, and can come off either quiet or loud/intense depending on where he is. He often pokes fun at people but never really crosses the line. In their little band he plays most woodwind instruments, mainly the saxophone. He is bisexual and a cis guy.
Lily (full name being Liliana): She is a Latina and is 5'2. She has long, wavy, black hair, tan skin, and dark brown eyes. She is very sweet and is very in-tune with her own and others' emotions, just overall very emotionally intelligent. She can be the life of the party and lively, but is often the first person to realize if someone else is having a bad time, but also wont jeopardize her own mental health in sake of someone else's just to please them. As said before she came from a general concert band before, and plays the trumpet and the flute mainly. She is straight and cis, but doesnt really put too much thought into her identity anyways.
Terra, who i somehow forgot when answering the ask: She is 5'11 as well, and is a Black woman. She has curly hair, which she keeps at around chin length, and it is black with dyed brown highlights. She was originally more reserved than the others, but has opened up to all of the group members and is pretty talkative. As mentioned before, she is the creator of this little band, and plays the drums. She is a trans girl.
Ok so yeah those are them. I kinda just picked a few categories (that being how they look and basic identity things, some personality stuff, and any sexual or gender orientations) to talk about for each and i hope i stuck to that setup well enough. The other three from the second one are like technically not ocs but i like hijacked their actual personalities and gave them new ones but i did not talk about them bc i do not need to ramble THAT much.
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