#it sucks when people take images out of context to make them seem bad

[lunathewafflelord]

Most of those “this celebrity is problematic for these reasons - a thread” posts on Twitter consist of just one or two, maybe three, valid reasons and then everything else is bunch of things taken out of context, social media posts made 10+ years ago, and maybe even straight up misinformation. While some celebrities definitely are problematic, I don’t think someone using a slur over 10 years ago when using that word was commonplace at the time and the celebrity hasn’t said the word since is a reason to believe they’re problematic.

[y3ahwhat3ver]

Been seeing this over and over and it's sort of been annoying me but. Valentino and Alastor are not even remotely comparable. Like. Look I may be a bit biased bc I like Alastor and don't like Valentino beyond the funny moments he has but like.

Okay. Alastor sucks. Like he's a violent dickhead but part of that is that he's very restrained in his violence. The only times we see him do anything outright violent are when he/the hotel are under attack and then his one moment with Husk. His relationship with Husk gets brought up a lot when people make the comparison but to me like.

Throughout the show you see Husk talk shit to Alastor, literally all of the time. He heavily dislikes him (in my opinion a major part of that is bitterness over losing his own title just to become subservient to Al) but he doesn't ever really seem scared of him, beyond the one moment. He and Alastor have known eachother for years and it's pretty clear to me that Alastor sort of just. Let's him say whatever as long as he doesn't hit A Limit. Alastor's own contract is something he's very clearly sensitive about and Husk bringing that up when he was already in a bad mood. I'm not saying the way he treats Husk in this scene is good, or right but just that it makes sense in context.

I guess what really does it for me is Niffty as well? Like it's so clear she loves Al, quite literally crawling all over him and crowning him. They have a very sweet relationship in the show. She's comfortable enough with him to freely speak about her own feelings ("I really like them Alastor. They let me put on roach puppet shows without booing")

You just get the sense that like. Alastors relationship with his contractee's is. Maybe not the most outright friendly but it's not inherently violent.

And then you compare that to Valentino. Valentino is violent, but worse he's impulsive. And also kind of an idiot. Like the first time we see him it's Velvette calling Vox to come deal with him bc the man is on a rampage and killing her models. He has to be talked down from going to the hotel and killing everyone there. (Already a bad idea image wise but like. With the literal Princess of Hell in that hotel it's like. What was your plan for after that Val. What was your plan for after you attacked the only heir to the throne, the literal daughter of the devil. Christ.)

The difference here is that the only contractee we see him interact with is Angel Dust, and their relationship is fraught with abuse. Physical, sexual, and psychological. Valentino enables his drug addiction because it makes Angel more compliant. Even when he is not being violent towards Angel himself, he's still perpetuating that violence through the work he has Angel do (literally the everything about Poison makes me kind of sick to watch. Tbh, like great song but i cannot watch the mv without getting kind of upset. And look there's a conversation in there about sex work, and specifically SAFE sex work but that's not really what this post is.)

Like. There's literally a line in the show about Angel being WATERBOARDED at work. ("You know, Val, he's into that waterboarding shit now - I don't know, it's a kink." - episode 6 welcome to heaven) And this is JUST Angel's perspective. You don't see Valentino's other contracts but from the way Angel is treated, it's kind of clear that he does shit like this to anyone under his control, and thus anyone who cannot tell him No.

Look. You get the sense that Alastor is a dick, but there's no implication that he takes Niffty and Husk out back and beats them when he's aggravated (with them or otherwise.) We literally watch Valentino assault and threaten Angel because there is someone stronger than him [Valentino] who is trying to get him out of work.

[Edit (June 2nd, 2024): I want to clarify that I do like loser, baby and also Husk as a character and this is more abt my grievances with fandom comparing the two. In series, Angel needed that discussion with Husk and even thought their situations aren't 1:1 or even really that similar, it's still clear that Husks attempt to like. Empathize with him worked for Angel. That is all, thank u and goodnight]

[highoncatfood]

im going to dump my thoughts on u here cuz i can anyway have u heard of the song Bed of Roses by Mindless Self Indulgence ive been listening to it on loop and i am going to share with u my interpretation of the lyrics cuz it seems im an outlier amongst what people (or atleast whats on the genius page) think it means but my take is so real and true to me

basically Bed of Roses is thought to be a song about being passive in life and letting things pass you by and happen as they do, not caring about making the perfect life, but for me personally it always came off as being about suicidal thoughts and that interpretation not only makes more sense to me but also is far more interesting

'hey its alright my life has never been a bed of roses' is the singer talking about their life, saying how its unlike a bed of roses which are seen as beautiful and also a symbol of love (also searching it up it seems bed of roses is an expression for a carefree easy life) in short theyre saying their life sucks, but thinking of it in the context of it being suicidal its interesting because the 'hey its alright' then sounds like a rationalization, the following line 'this ways better for me' only helps with painting this image. its a person rationalizing their thoughts by going 'hey my life has always sucked, death would just be better for me'

and the line 'i dont care to live the life ive chosen' further adds to this, its explicitly saying they dont care to live their life

then theres the next part, which is pretty similiar to the last but then there is the line 'dont feel sorry for me', they're asking an outside party to not feel bad for their planned demise, and its repetition makes it seem like begging almost. tying this into the earlier verses which can be read as rationalization makes it seem like the singer is a person trying to comfort and placate a close one, by rationalizing that their suicide will be better for them and begging them to not feel sorry

also 'feeling sorrys been my lifes devotion' is a banger line . i have thoughts on what it could be interpreted as but i feel like the connections arent strong enough and the line like speaks for itself i think

i think this part could be about being resistance to change or healing, it could be a negative reaction to this outside party trying to talk them out of it or reason with them, but in the end they still say 'my friend' showing they care and love them. the 'screw you' could perhaps also be read as someone trying to distance themselves from their loved ones in hopes that their death wont be as painful then

i think its interesting how after that the song ends with just a reptition of 'my lifes never been a bed of roses', perhaps im looking too far into it but it could be seen as the 'last stage', of fixating on the worst parts of life as you spiral annnd .

anyway i like this song and i kinda associate this song with seth but 4 different reasons (flower imagery, lifes sucked, not wanting pity, 'feeling sorrys been my life devotion' -> religion with its emphasis on remorse for sins and devotion. etc.)

was not expecting this at all and i dont know this song but! i like this interpretation thank u for sharing honestly i always love to read too much into lyrics and i tend to come up with diff interpretations than wht was most likely the artists intention

for example recently ive been thinking of reuse the cels by car seat headrest as a song abt gender dysphoria and the transition process (when in.reality its abt like. getting back into a relationship with someone which havent worked out in the past or whetevr)

i like to think the narrator is actually talking abt themself 'i should be glad to have you back' the 'you' being their own sense of identity

'i know every frame so many times that ive seen' refering to their own body, reminiscent of how a lot of trans folks experiencing dysphoria who tend to worry abt their self image and the ways their body looks, r constantly thinking abt it and spotting every detail, being forced to look at it everyday, wishing it was something esle/wanting to change it

this chorus and lines to me r abt hrt and like. thinking of times before realizing they were trans, times when maybe they were oblivious and not yet so worried abt their body and/or identity and wanting to not have to worry again and be happy with themself, hoping tht hrt will help with that. but at the same time the fear and anxiety that comes with not knowing if medically transitioning will guarantee being freed from all the insecurity and pain caused by the dysphoric feelings. asking urself what if it doesnt satisfy. wht if going through all that trouble, all those changes, spending all that time and money doesnt even bring the result ur hoping for. is it worth it? u dont have to do all of that. wht if all it does is drain u of energy and hope and actually make u into something further from wht ur goal was (symbolized by fading colors on reused animation cels [idk much abt that but also u could interpret it as like real body cells i guess] like.... the repeating process of replacing hormones, going through constant physical changes and stuff) so generally like. indecision and thinking too far ahead/overthinking i guess. does any of that make sense im jst saying whtever comes to mind at this point i gave up on trying to keep this cohesive

'doesnt it seem an awful waste' and 'will i lose you again' can be the narrator again referring to themself, thinking that the person they were pre-transition will fade away. that they couldve lived a completely different life, that all they do is bring 'that girl or boy they couldve been' to an end. replacing them with the desired version of themself, but not sure if thats still even the same person they used to be

and. i think it should be obvious but this is all based on how i myself deal with and think of my identity as a trans person. i feel like i should clarify that this isnt me saying that this is the experience of every trans person, each of us is different etc etc

um anyway yeah thanks for the ask wiki i might listen to the song u talked abt at some point <3

[degrees-of-fuck]

Lettie Infodump so I can talk about her here and it'll make sense

I realised I haven't properly explained what I ended up deciding my OC Lettie's uh... Deal is. I have an insane number of thoughts about her too. She's kinda my main general OC that I ported over to DoL cuz she's my main gal that I constantly rotate in my head, so this makes sense. But. Yeah. Anyway, attempting to explain miss lettice rosangel for people that follow my for my OCs for whatever goddamn reason. Infodump to provide Context about her for future posts - and a couple doodles below!

cw for more Blood Stuff than the usual DoL fare. Sucks 2 be a sacrificial lamb. and also for long.

OK so Path/ologic has always been one of the Lettie Games of All Time to me, but the way I adapted her into DoL was pretty heavily inspired by The Changeling's route (Though I also OFTEN make jokes about Cult of/the Lamb in relation to her.) Initially, because of her Dainty Woodland Weirdo vibes and stuff about her personality, I was gonna toss her at Eden and have her be a miracle-worker on the side when she's in town, but then she uh. Then she stopped being a PC and now she's just here. Among my other OCs. Doing whatever it is she does. God I really wanna do a comic based on the Pathologic intro with my PCs lol

anyway. What I actually ended up doing was making her Full Time miracle worker that was raised at the temple, because I found the image of her after being Found, spawned by the elements, getting thrown at it when her behaviour of inflicting indiscriminate psionic torture instead of crying and generally just being an absolutely horrifying creature kind of finally Broke Bailey and his goons a bit, so. Here, temple. Take this fucking thing. Kill it or exorcise maybe, I don't care just keep it away from me. And then she promptly started acting sweet as anything, having gotten old enough to start communicating a bit. (On her gaslight grindset even as an infant...)

SO. Her being thrown at the temple, plus her mysterious powers plus the circumstances of her 'birth' cleeaarly mean this is some kind of divine being, but the question of course is, In Which Direction? Upon realising that this even WAS a question, the obvious thing for her to do is to start acting the role of The Heavensent AS HARD AS POSSIBLE - Perfect and Pure and Incorruptible. Because being revealed to be even slightly bad might get her diagnosed with Lying Hellspawn. So. Yeah. Kind of a situation where you are sat up nicely on a pedestal, but don't have the Right to display any kind of moral greyness. Which is hard at times, because Lettie's kind of an asshole and only More inclined to be awful when she's being constantly treated in such a bizarre manner. Honestly even with her best efforts, I think there's murmurings of people thinking she isn't what she seems. The odd nun or monk cornering her out of sight about it and so on forth.

But yeah. Essentially, she exists more as a symbol than as a person with real thoughts or feelings. Performs illusion-based miracles, pretends to have visions and then makes them come true to fuck with people, lots of Charitable Good Deeds for Brownie Points... The OTHER thing her daily life seems to entail (Other than occasionally being molested by members of the church and overhearing people wanting to kidnap her) is being a BLOOD SACRIFICE. Her body sure is covered in weird scars from being bled on altars for religious ceremonies, or to just collect some lambs' blood for later use. And also sometimes being touched a lil inappropriately during That.

So yeah. Much thoughts on Perfection and Purity basically equating to Emptiness, Fractured Identity Stuff, Religious Trauma, the general horror-show that is the way the people that basically raised her treat her, the effects of the public eye and having to live a life where you're straight up Not Allowed to change or grow at all, because you're already supposedly Perfect. Just a hollow doll (Well not entirely hollow. She has Blood.) to project onto and adore, but also viciously blame whenever literally anything goes wrong. (I mean, is this a lamb or a goat? It's anyone's guess.)

Much Power but Zero Rights.

I have a lot of Other thoughts thematically and such but I find them hard to put into words that make sense so this is all you're getting for now.

Some Extra Facts About Her???

-Chronic Illness Moments! Being constantly a bit drained of blood, side-effects of psychic burnout plus just. Generally being sickly. This paired with the frequency with which she slips and slides around on temple floors on her sheepy hooves, I wanna start keeping count of how many times she almost gives Jordan a heart attack : )

-With her and Sydney both having kind of a IT'S COMPLICATED parental relationship with Jordan and both of them being how they are, I do NOT think Lettie likes Syd very much. Keeps telling on her when they see her break character a bit. And also is constantly just, there, being a human that she can be compared to. And if she's seen to be less virtuous than some fucking initiate, then it's OVER for her which is kinda terrifying. They rank above most of the nuns and monks at the temple on account of not personally mistreating her, but they sure do make her life harder and she delights in fucking with them.

-At some point, I made Original, Non DoL Lettie transfem because of thematic Gender stuff. Anyway I think that she came out via mix of "Your human genders don't make sense to be, but I like dresses :)" and gaslighting the temple into thinking she'd ALWAYS been this way. So she uh. Didn't come out. She gave herself bottom surgery via a terrifying blood ritual of her Own. Good for her.

-I think there is So much to explore with the Ivory Wraith. Idk the details yet, but... Yeah.

-Cuts her hair into a bob and shears her leg-wool in the summer. Also has to do smaller shearings/cuttings throughout the year probably. I think she spins it into yarn, bleaches and dyes it and knits with it. : ) Very into fiber arts in general. Sewing and embroidery and quilting are Fun and also no one can tell her idle hands are the devil's workshop if she's constantly doing something with her hands.

-I've still yet to settle on how to draw her fucking horns.

EDIT:

-Shortly after making this post, I decided she can be the PC Kylar fixates on, so I've been thinking of that. My other OC Edin already is kind of a fucking stalker, but. Yeah, it makes perfect sense for her to have multiple stalkers I think. Part of her whole deal is that she CONSTANTLY has EYES on her. Never free. Two stalkers, each with completely conflicting expectations of her is supremely on brand.

-Feeling of Kylar has figured out that she isn't what she presents herself as - but doesn't know who she actually is, instead deciding to view her as what they Want her to be, leading into the hgufkdsdjd, <3 <3 <3 You're So Naughty type shit. ... Don't tell Kylar she doesn't have a womb.

-Kylar maybe has Hopes relating to her ~special powers~ and what they could do for their parents??

[starjxsung]

Ugh!

I am a firm believer of Stray Kids ending their contract with JYP and I will die on this hill. I don’t mean it in a mean way ofc, bc I love them so much, but I mean in a Fuck JYP way. What the fuck has JYP done for them besides put money in their pocket? All he has done is given them problems with their personal image (body, face), harsh restrictions as well as has gone out of his way to make not only himself look bad but his group. Why should SKZ continue to work with someone like him? I mean he has silenced them SO many times, like the Chan’s room situation where he made Chan APOLOGIZE for something other people took out of context. And don’t even get me started on when Hyunjin was forced to say that he was fine in Italy without any bodyguards when we all know as a fandom that you can.not.send.your.idols.anywhere.ALONE. Hyunjin is a very attractive and popular man and people are CRAZY, something could’ve happened to him there. JYP sucks and I hope that not only Stray Kids but the other groups see this as well. Personally, I would not want someone like him over me. I want Stray Kids to be an independent group because honestly a lot of kpop groups nowadays are just trash and untrustworthy, and I stand by that. JYP should not have a platform the way that he does and anyone can honestly fight me over it because I will rot on this hill!!!!!!! He’s not a good person AND he’s not a good manager whatever the fuck he is. Also fuck all the JYP staff idc I don’t like them either bc why is Minho dressed in the same white shirt, black tie combo every time for every fucking thing? A NYC Fashion student has more dress sense than they do sometimes. AND HOLY FUCK can they lay off the bleach for Felix’s hair, I’m not being a hater but DAMNN I just want to see his hair some other color and nobody can’t tell me he doesn’t want it either cos if I were him I’d grow so tired of being blonde. If he likes it then I’ll take it back but there’s no way he likes being blonde all the DAMN time.

But I’ll always be with skz until the very last step out. It’s a blessing and a curse, a blurse if you will. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

The “Ugh!” that prefaces this message is everything to me. I love you and I love this ted talk

I would be fascinated to see skz under an independent label as well. There’s been such a rise in cases of it happening likely since the CBX departure of EXO and I really appreciate all of the freedom and creative liberty that comes along with if. I honestly don’t think I know enough about JYPE to say that one decision would be better than another one, but I definitely understand the concern with the current state of things and the want for them to depart from the current label. I think aside from skz they also seem to be struggling a fair bit right now, stocks fell 11.52% within the last quarter at almost twice of what Hybe’s fell. Which is really saying something considering the sheer decline Hybe is currently facing

I think all your reasons are very valid and your concerns make total sense. And I would especially be interested to see Minho in something other than white shirt/black tie combo !!

(❤️🫶)

[catgirl-pawbs]

ROSIE HOBBYING UPDATE

though,,, I've said it a few times in a few places but I'm super enamoured with the concept of having different names for different contexts though I've been bad at actually doing it and the name I'd like to use in online spaces / for people I don't know irl is Ryuuka (I know I had another online alias/name before that i streamed under for 2yrs but due to Events I now hate being called that so all 3 of u that know it that name is dead to me now please forget) so I suppose instead I should write

✨🎀RYUUKA HOBBYING UPDATE🎀✨

LONG POST INCOMING sorry if I take up ur whole dash

so I tried to search my blog for the "hobbying" tag to see what I have and have not posted recently but lo and behold,

tumblr is truly the functional of webbedsites, I KNOW ITS THERE I PUT IT THERE now please show me !

except it won't if course because it sucks.

so anyway I'm gonna start typing about things and hope I get everything I haven't posted and nothing I have.

something like three weeks ago, I finally got to play a match of Warhammer 40k with my older brother! this had been in the making in a way since 2014(-ish I don't remember), when this same brother introduced myself and my other brother to the concept of Warhammer and all three of us bought models. sadly both brothers quickly discovered the "building and painting" portion of the hobby and promptly dropped out, one of them giving his T'au models to me because I LOVED THIS SHIT.

anyway I think I posted about all this before and that Match In Question wherein I took 500pts of Grey Knights (Brother-Captain, Terminator Squad, Strike Squad) against my brother's 500pts Imperial Guard (Commissar, Guardsmen regiment, 3x Mortar Crew models, Sentinel, Leman Russ)or something like that I didn't read his list. Unfortunately this battle ended with my noble Grey Knights getting summarily decimated and right tabled by the mighty power of the autocannon-equipped Leman Russ if that bastard Russ wasn't already dead I'd kill him myself

again I'm fairly sure I've posted about this before so I'll stop there and not add images.

also before I continue (to explain why points counts might seem weird to other 40kplayers) I should note that I have been and will continue to be playing Fifth Edition Warhammer 40k, because those are the books that I have. New books are hellishly expensive and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to reasonably use wahapedia so anyone who is going to tell me to play a more recent edition please kindly do one of the following;

1.) shush.

2.) buy me the books urself since you can afford it

3.) go get intimate with a cactus.

Now! about a week ago, a little less, I got to play ANOTHER match of 40k! a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. this time with a friend who has an adjacent interest in similar sort of games and who helped me build the felt-and-aquariumplant terrain pieces Im certain I posted pictures of before though I can't go check >:|

This match was again 500pts and featured both my lovely new terrain and the following armies;

TYRANIDS. >Tyranid Prime (boneswords, devourer) >3xRaveners (rending claws) >5x Ymgarl Genestealers >10xHormagaunts (adrenaline glands) >10xTermagaunts (devourers)

GREY KNIGHTS. >Brother-Captain (mastercrafted storm bolter, mastercrafted nemesis force sword) >5xTerminator (mastercrafted storm bolter [justicar], mastercrafted nemesis force sword [justicar]) >5xStrike Squad (nemesis force halberds [all], mastercrafted storm bolter [justicar])

it was great! took about 4 hours because I hadn't memorized everything yet and my friend/opponent was new to 5th but we had a good time despite getting real exhausted by the end of it there are too damn many numbers to remember

I'm still super happy with how the new terrain looks!! sure it's very Amateur Hour and doesn't look ~realistic~ but I love it and am very proud of it!

Unfortunately in this match, the Grey Knights not played by me this time again tasted bitter defeat. I begin to think that list I made just sucks. or that the army needs a larger point total to make a functional list. further experimentation needed.

First blood was taken by the Knights shooting down a few(2) Hormagaunts, which was repeated in the next turn gunning down another 5 of them. the remaining gaunts took shelter for their lives behind a small copse of trees, though the Knights' Terminators quickly closed to finish their prey.

the Nids took revenge in the Genestealers flanking and stealing the jeans off the Strike Squad, without a single loss.

Finally came the crushing melee of the Raveners charging the Terminators and Captain from the cover of the ruins, slowly inflicting death (with great difficulty and losing one of their number due to those incredible 2+saves), eventually being joined by the Tyranid Prime and Genestealers in finishing off the stragglers.

the Termagants... yeah. those guys were there. they mostly just hung around. fired off 40?-ish shots and inflicted a total of 1 wound. good job guys. worth every point, truly.

Unfortunately because I failed to teach the game and remember the rules properly, this match was unbalanced, as the Terminators were not making 2 melee attacks per turn as they should've and I'd forgot to roll for the Nids instinctive behaviour rules (though the only difference that would've really made was the already useless gants running for cover if they failed)

It was a good learning experience and we had fun though!! surely we'll have a better and more heated match next time! ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ

that kaomoji looks kinda haunted,,

In other news! yesterday I finally took the time to get my printer in Operational Condition again! this means that, after being more than a month with only one arm, my Knight Armiger Warglaive proxy (model courtesy of u/johnbearross on reddit) is finally fully operational! catgirl very extremely excited about this one

additionally, though I do need to print another warglaive and two helverins still, I've started on printing the bigger boy, a Questoris Knight Paladin proxy (model credits the same), something I've been excited to do for forever and the next step towards the biggest finalest goal; the Imperator Titan

base and left leg printed (6h each), right leg in production (another 6h) (also I know the quality is bad because of the flash but my kitchen's lighting is awful and I promise without it looks worse) (don't mind the bag of rice in the bg, girl's gotta eat)

FINALLY, the most recent development in Ryuuka's Hobbying;

MY BOYS??!??! MY BEAUTIFUL LOVELY SPECTACULAR BOYS????? THEY ARRIVED TODAY!!

bit of a story on this one, but first; I know that I told one of my dear friends like 6months ago that the next time I bought gunpla of get one for u too and we sat down and picked one out for u and everything and I didn't forget I swear but I shouldn't've even bought these boys since I have a lot of debt going on, the only reason I did is that on god man I need a distraction project or the depression is gonna Get To Me (not that it doesn't already but,) so like. When I actually have spare money instead of spending money I don't have I WILL get u that gunpla and we will build them together I didn't and am not gonna forget.

Okay so the deal with these boys is that I was talking to a friend recently about how I really like the appearance of Mass Production Mobile Suits over the special Gundam suits (unpopular opinion but I hate gundam suits' horns/crests, I think they look so so silly), in particular I love the look of the DaggerL and the Rgm-79 GM, but I really don't like the GM's helmet, I feel that it dramatically detracts from my man's vibes since the GM is made of angular and square segments and then the helmet is ROUND and also the visor is really large and open, giving it something of a 'friendly' (anthropromorphizing, I know) look that really doesn't suit the rest of it's design. In the same moment I was lamenting this design contradiction, a guncannon came on screen, which has a helmet with a narrower visor, and a- well I guess it's called a visor too but the shade thing some helmets have like a built-in imitation ballcap thing and anyway the Guncannon's head design gives it a much more 'serious' look that I feel would fit great on the GM, and the GM's more open and round design would fit right in with the Guncannon's rounded limbs and fuckoff huge shoulder-mounted cannon barrels.

So immediately in that conversation I had something of an epiphany of this and decided that I HAVE TO make a headswap of those guys and NOW IM DOING IT except what I need right now is a project so we're taking it a couple steps further

I'm gonna trim these guys all out of the runners, file the nubs, label all the parts with masking tape and little baggies, swap the head parts, then going one colour/runner at a time, prime them black, paint them, panel line them, sticker them, top coat them, and ONLY THEN will I finally start assembling them

I've never painted a gunpla before but the best way to start is a headfirst dive into conkcrete babey let's get it

also I want to try weathering on my GM, nevermind that I've never tried it before and have no idea how, and each kit will be getting a different topcoat; glossy for the Guncannon because I want my boy to look like fun lil candy apple lad, and matte for my GM because I want it to be a semi-realistic Setpiece build.

also been thinking about utilizing the power of masking tape mid-painting process to add stripes of red to GM's arm&leg armour, but currently unsure if I want to follow through with the idea.

kay I think that's everything that's a lotta words I've been typing for forever it's 3am im not checking for typos I'm gonna sleep now goodnight gamers, nyan~

[ciaossu-imagines]

Finally responding to your messages. Sorry that they’re so late, just wasn’t able to gather the energy until now. Yes to you loving wikis because I do as well. Like it’s amazing that those people can always nicely summarise the chapters or episodes of the series since summaries are something I’ll always struggle with and they’re really handy when it comes down to needing a bit of info for my stories as well. And that makes sense. Thanks for saying that 😊 Yeah. Like it makes no sense and it will forever wonder why they decided to make that arc since yeah, like I said, the other ones are pretty decent. There is one mini-arc though, before The Key of The Starry Heavens arc, that I also didn’t rewatch because it’s for me just a bit too weird but yeah, the characters that appeared in that arc appear in the Starry Heavens one as well so if you also don’t want to watch those episodes, I definitely recommend reading those summaries so you’ve got all the context. But it is nice to hear that you’ve found some good fan fics that do succeed at doing it 😊 No problem 😄 Yeah. I have all these ideas of how many messages it might be and it’ll be nice to see which idea’s the closest 😅 I see. I don’t blame you. And that does sound so horrible and indeed out of character since all of their actions always just seem so real so it wouldn’t make sense. I’m currently at chapter 230 and nothing to do with what you said has happened so if it is true, it’ll probably also be quite late into the story with no good / long build up. But yeah, I’m seriously hoping that it isn’t because I don’t want that for Jyugo or any of the other characters involved (as in, for their characterisation).

I’m also going to answer your other admin chatter message here if that’s okay so they’re nicely together and I don’t have to send too separate ones. And of course it’s alright that it’s super-late since yeah, this message is really late and I never mind waiting. I see, that does suck. Though here’s to praising wiki editor yet again since every Haikyuu!! episodes has a manga-anime differences section that’s definitely useful. I really do hope that one of your websites / apps does get it because it’s really something that I’d love for you to read  at some point. It’s still a bit more than a hundred chapters and slightly over 400 if you want to read from the beginning but yeah, I hope that one day you’ll get the chance the read it because the arc after nationals is so good when it comes down to Hinata, but also nationals is so great when it comes down to Bokuto. Also I’ll forever love what he said before the match because it’s so funny in the way that he just confused everyone around and was so proud with what he said 😭 Can I send those images to you? He’s just adorable. But yeah well, after the Battle at the Garbage Dump of course and yeah, there’s another match besides Fukurōdani’s one that’s also really important so I’ll forever hope that you can read it for yourself one day. And yeah, I think you’ve been writing them pretty in character since I could always imagine the characters you wrote about in those scenarios.

C

Please, don’t feel at all bad for taking your time to reply! I’m the queen of super-late replies, as you well know and I fully accept that not only do people have lives outside of tumblr, but people can just have low energy, both mentally and physically, and just not feel up to responding right away and that is perfectly okay 😊 I really do think it’s really amazing how dedicated fans put in so, so much work into creating these wikis, doing the formatting, finding and making sure the information is correct and everything else that goes into creating a wiki. Which makes it a real shame when bots go in and destroy what used to be good wikis (*cough* KHR *cough*). I suck at summaries myself, but only because I bloat when writing. I couldn’t keep a summary short and concise, I know myself well enough to admit that. Of course! And yeah, most of the filler arcs in shows make no sense to me. I know it’s commonly done as a way to avoid catching up completely to a manga or to extend seasons of what they want to be big-name, super popular series, but in most cases, the filler arcs are generic, badly done, and nonsensical. That’s great to know, so thank you for giving me the heads up. If I get around to watching the Fairy Tail anime all the way through after reading it, I’ll try the mini-arc and if I don’t like it, I will probably just read the summaries. Honestly, there’s so much really amazing fanfic out there. I don’t think it’s really talked about or appreciated as much as it should be – that we have thousands and thousands of these amazing stories that fans have created for us, of so many different types and styles and genres, and it’s so incredibly easy, as of current day, to find a fic that scratches whatever itch you have. I have so much appreciation for the big name fandom writers, for the small little fandom writers who create these little hidden gems, for really all fanfic writers. I am proud to say I am finally caught up and have replied to everyone, including you. Now it’s just getting down to the task of clearing the inbox and building that queue that I need to get done and, as of writing this, that’s what I’m working hard on, when I’m not at my job! I’m really glad to hear that, as of the point you are at, nothing like that has happened. It makes me much less scared when it comes to doing the reread. Currently reading Iruma and One Piece now, then moving on to Saiyuki after I finish these last 50 chapters of Iruma (I read fast, thankfully), but Nanbaka is the next one after that.

I have no trouble at all with you grouping the messages together! It makes complete sense to me, honestly. And thank you for saying that, though I assure you that your message was not what I would consider late at all! I am with you in that hope, though like I said, once I finish all the series I can get for free, I might have to bit the bullet and pay the like, $10 a month for a month or two and use Shonen Jump’s manga reader to read Haikyuu!! and Demon Slayer both. It just sucks because, again, it limits me to only 100 chapters a day and if I’m seriously sitting down to read, I can easily do that and more. Of course you can send me those images and geek out about the scene! I like it when anyone does that with shared fandoms 😊 Thank you so much for saying that! That really means a lot to me and makes me very happy! I always worry and just want to do all these amazing characters justice!

[phoenixyfriend]

Togruta Marking Headcanons (Evolutionary and Epigenetic)

Okay, so the question is:

Do you think togruta markings are purely genetic or partly genetic and partly influenced by the environment?

e.g. a stressful adolescence leads to more complex markings/breakage

This conversation was had in large part on discord with @atagotiak and @dracothulhu.

Striation and Complexity

Now, my take comes entirely from Ahsoka having VERY complicated markings compared to Shaak, but we played around with it and had a lot of fun tangling out some headcanons that aren't really supported by canon, but aren't voided by it either. Also it makes time travel fun.

(Shaak Ti looks at time traveled Ahsoka and goes "Oh dear. You okay, honey?" The answer is always No.)

(This is actually EXACTLY why I was hoping there's a combined genetic/environmental factor, so any given time-travel Ahsoka has a different pattern, to some degree, from her younger self so that they can say "IDK, maybe we're cousins?" instead getting side-eyed for having Identical Marks.)

(Happy AU Ahsoka ends up with smooth rings instead of what almost looks like blue veins in marble? It would also probably make time-traveling Ahsoka’s bad future story seem a lot more real.)

Reference image:

So like these three with their clean lines and stuff probably grew up ok, as much as their lives suck now.

Some of the complexity of the markings is definitely genetic, especially with face markings. 14 yo Ahsoka has some significant complexity there already, and while she’s got early childhood trauma from that one time she was kidnapped, she otherwise seems to have been fairly happy and healthy as a child in the Temple.

On the other hand, her lekku markings do go from fairly smooth and even to really jagged looking.

My thoughts are that facial striation is indicative of stressors in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, but Montral/Lekku striation indicative of adulthood stressors (and maybe some late teens).

The adult/child distinction in striation is imo because their faces mostly stop growing after they hit adulthood, but there's more growth in the montrals and lekku.

So Shaak has a lot of striation on her montrals because adult Jedi Masters, with field work on the regular, encounter a lot of stressful situations (more dangerous missions, raising a padawan). But her childhood and adolescence, while occasionally adrenaline-heavy on missions with her Master, were usually no more stressful than one would get with, say, hunting lessons on Shili, so her markings end up very simple and blocky on her face and more detailed on her montrals and lekku.

If if we assume that the Montral tips are the later stressors showing, then it’s plausible Shaak Ti’s got a lot of little markings partly because of the stress of being a council member. Sure it’s not life threatening but the stress of a high-pressure administrative position is still stress.

(And the three ladies here probably start getting a little more fragmentation in the years after the Zygerria arc, assuming they survived.)

It doesn’t look like a lot, compared to Ahsoka at least, but there’s a moderate amount.

Between the beskar and the complex facial markings and lekku striations, I feel like other Togruta tend to give Ahsoka a lot of respect as a warrior.

Doesn't matter that she isn't wearing Akul teeth! Whatever! She clearly knows her shit!

It could be a byproduct of evolving as a communal species. Like yes, striation is good for hiding when you hunt, but seeing complex patterns on a child's face can indicate an unhealthy home life or otherwise invisible medical problems. In that context, Togruta in general watch out for complex facial patterns as a sign of child abuse.

(Obviously not foolproof but it seems like a reasonable option.)

A more stressful childhood could be indicative of low food security, and then evolution led to the marking complexity to make hunting easier in response. Tddlers and babies with early complexity might have had mothers with food insecurity or high adrenaline levels in pregnancy, too. It’d be difficult to pinpoint a specific pressure that caused it, but there’s definitely a lot of reasons it was advantageous to keep in the gene pool.

(Baby Anakin didn't know a lot of togruta growing up but I imagine most of them were heavily striated, so in those time-travel AUs, he doesn't understand the big deal with Fulcrum's markings until someone explains...)

(Slaves had stressful lives all around, and slavers liked it when togruta girls had complicated markings, they were considered Prettier, so this... worked out for them and Nobody Else.)

(If he noticed that other Togruta he’s seen since, like Shaak Ti or other Jedi or some civilians he’s met, seem to have less striation he maybe just assumed it was genetics and didn’t question it further?)

Montral Shape and Lekku Length

Another interesting thing is just the massive variation in montral shape.

My guess, personally, is that it's regional evolution. Did your ancestors live in an area with lots of trees, or was it more canyons, or maybe grasslands? It was an evolutionary reaction to how sound bounced around in your area.

In regards to lekku, even ignoring the live action stuff, Rebels Ahsoka has smaller lekku than Shaak Ti does. And some of that could be partly random chance and partly because Shaak Ti of age, but some people also think it’s partly malnutrition. I've personally been assuming it's just age and genetics, but...

We do see a significant lekku length disparity by gender, like these images:

To which I suggest:

...trans Ahsoka, whose lekku started growing out a little late because that's when she started estrogen (or the Togruta equivalent). There are a few male togruta with long lekku, but it seems pretty common for them to have short ones, so maybe they're transmasc.

[silky-stories]

Whitty having a nightmare about accidentally killing his s/o and reader comforting him with cuddles? 👀

Sure thing! Sorry for the wait by the way, the ask ended up glitching and disappeared for the longest time ^^;;

Hope this turned out alright!

———————————————————————

Too Dangerous {Whitty/Reader}

Genre: Angst, hurt/comfort, fluff

Words: 1788

Related Song: sagun - I’ll Keep You Safe (feat. Shiloh) https://youtu.be/7ly7Mhle-4M

Summary: Whitty is scared of losing control and hurting his partner, thankfully his partner is a magician and knows how to make all of his worries disappear.

Disclaimer/s: Death, blood, small description of dead body, a bit of swearing, crying and panic attacks

Notes: (Please read) The start is pretty graphic and may be hard to read for some people, so there’s a double line down further that you can scroll to if you want to skip that part. It gets happy though, don’t worry :)! Also Whitty’s dialogue is in orange, Y/n’s is in blue!

———————————————————————

Numb.

That’s how he always felt after this happened.

After he lost his cool.

After he lost himself.

After his body gave in and combusted into the hot red plumes of rage, engulfing and ripping his body apart in one swift action.

...

After he exploded.

It never took long for his body to piece itself back together, for his pieces to come back and connect and rejoin one another, allowing his mind and consciousness to slowly but surely become clearer.

It was like puzzle pieces, all eventually finding their place as the picture that was his senses to come together, becoming complete once more.

None of this was new to him, he had experienced it many times before.

Only... something was wrong this time.

His vision was still very blurry, but he could make out a few colours, red being the most prominent.

He had never felt especially impatient to regain his senses, but the further along his accelerated recovery was, the more his half healed subconscious screamed that something bad had happened.

It wasn’t until he regained his sense of smell back that he started panicking.

The thick smell of copper and rust that cut through the air quickly invaded his lungs, violating his airways with the essence of metal and death.

Maybe it was the familiarity that scared him the most but...

He knew the smell of blood all too well.

The red he saw was immediately more violent and harsh than it seemed to be before, he stumbled closer to the scene with eyes only partially focused.

His legs still lacked most of the feeling in them, but he managed.

He needed to see what it was, he needed to know who it was. The speed that his blood rushed through his body only sped up his recovery as the picture finally came together.

...

He couldn’t keep his footing as he finally made out what laid before him.

You.

Your bleeding, broken form laid still on the concrete.

He couldn’t move.

Couldn’t think.

Couldn’t breathe.

...

He was trying to breathe.

Why couldn’t he breathe?

...

Suddenly everything hurt. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. His hands hurt. His body screamed in agony and grief at the loss of one of the few people that cared. One of the few that loved him.

What could he do now though?

You were dead.

He had killed you.

It was his fault.

It was all his fault.

It was all his fault.

It was all his fault.

It was all his fault.

It was-

———————————————————————

———————————————————————

Whitty’s eyes snapped open as he hastily sucked in a gasp of air.

He laid there, motionless, greedily filling his lungs with the oxygen that his unconscious mind believed so strongly that he had been deprived of.

He could hear how shaky his breaths were despite the numbness, he was practically hyperventilating as he gave the ceiling a wide-eyed stare.

His form felt frozen in place as images from his dream flashed in front of his open eyes like a movie.

His stillness was disturbed only when you shifted beside him, he flinched, quite violently actually, as your head bumped into his arm.

The groan and words that came from you were his first indication that he shouldn’t have done that.

You were up.

Shit.

“Whitty..? Are you... mmph, are you alright?” You yawned as you propped yourself up in bed beside him, taking a moment to rub the sleep out of your eyes so you could look at him.

When you opened your eyes you saw that he had flinched back from laying down into a sitting up position. He was staring down at you, being the skyscraper that he was. Although there was only one thing that stood out to you, sobering you up from your sleep-drunk state.

“Y... y-yeah sorry I uh... didn’t mean to wake you u-”

“Wait, why are you crying?”

He paused, only now noticing the dark and warm trails that trickled down his face. He was quick to look away to try to wipe them out of existence, the concern on your face had only deepened when he looked back.

“It’s really nothing you... you don’t... don’t have to worry... about me... s-sorry I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

He was a mess and couldn’t piece together a sentence to save his life at the moment but he hoped it would be at least slightly convincing.

He really shouldn’t have thought that.

You very clearly weren’t convinced as you gingerly took hold of his upper arms and guided him to you, leaning back and wrapping his arms around your body as you followed suit with your arms around him.

He wanted to protest, he wanted to further reassure you that he was fine and let you go back to sleep so you didn’t have to deal with his emotional baggage at three in the morning. When he looked up at your patient but distressed expression though, made contact with those eyes that told him that he wouldn’t be judged for whatever it was that had upset him... he just couldn’t hold it in.

It started with tears silently starting to flow again as he pressed his face into your abdomen to hide them, his body starting to tremble in your embrace. It didn’t take very long for him to break into choked sobs, gripping at the t-shirt you had worn to bed like it was his last lifeline.

“Oh Whitty... I’m here, everything’s alright...”

You had no idea what it was that had upset him yet, but the need to console him was intense and immediate. Your hands moved to the positions that had worked before, one on the back of his head and one on his back. Small circular motions were what you started with on his back, gently caressing his head with your other hand as you allowed him the time he needed to vent out his emotions.

This went on for around ten minutes. You didn’t really care, you weren’t watching the clock.

He had stopped crying within the first five, but it took another five minutes to regulate his breathing. Now he was breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, the way you had showed him to before when he needed help to calm down.

You continued to console him through actions, waiting to see if he would initiate the conversation you knew he was ready for now.

He turned his head to the side while still keeping his grip on your torso, he looked exhausted.

“...Y/n?”

You were glad you waited.

“Yes?”

“Do you ever think that I’m...”

You didn’t try to push him to finish his sentence, you knew he just needed a moment to get his words straight.

“...too dangerous to be around?”

You didn’t want to ask, you really didn’t, but you needed the context if you wanted to help him feel better.

“In what way?”

His expression soured as he glared at nothing from across the room.

“There’s a reason why there’s people after me, Y/n...”

Oh.

Oh.

He meant himself being who he was that dangerous.

Well that just wouldn’t do.

“Oh Whitty, why would I think that?”

“Because I fucking am!”

His sudden outburst didn’t frighten you, you had gotten used to them a long time ago.

“I’m unpredictable and can’t control myself sometimes! What will happen if you’re around me when I lose control? Human bodies can’t piece themselves back together Y/n!”

You kept silent as you took in everything he said, committing it all to memory since you knew that these were valid concerns and he needed to lay them all out if he wanted to address them.

“I love you... so damn much... but I’d rather be on the other side of the world if I knew that it would protect you from me!”

He moved to look up at you, the fear in his eyes was heartbreaking.

“I couldn’t... I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that it was me that... that killed you...”

There it was, the heavy statement that served as a queue for you to speak, you could see the anticipation in his eyes. It was peculiar actually, the look he held, it was like he was expecting you to agree with everything he just said and run or something...

You tightened your embrace around him to stamp that thought out of existence.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, you know?”

“I... huh?”

“I’ve seen the amount of times that you’ve been close to losing it, I know how hard it can be to stay in control.”

He couldn’t hold contact with your eyes, the amount of pure love and care for him was overwhelming after all the fear and desperation that he had just given in return.

“But I’ve also seen how much better you’ve gotten at keeping control.”

That was a surprise to him, but you knew that he would know what you were talking about if you gave some examples.

“Remember the guy in the grocery store? You looked like you wanted to rip his head off, and I didn’t blame you.”

You chuckled at the memory of the guy that decided to try to argue why the two of you shouldn’t be together since you were human and he wasn’t. The man was frustrating and made no sense at all, but Whitty’s fuse didn’t even spark, he didn’t lose himself to anger. He gave the guy the sharpest glare he’s ever done, told him to ind his own damn business, and then lightly took your hand and continued on.

His show of restraint was impressive to say the very least.

“You’ve been getting really good with controlling yourself, and we’re still working on it too. I’m not scared of you and definitely don’t plan on going to the other side of the world.”

Your grin was infectious, he hated and loved how infectious your grin was as he tried to stifle the small smile working it’s way up onto his face.

“I’m so proud of how hard you’ve been trying to keep control of yourself, and I’ll be here with you every step of the way.”

He... he let himself smile after that.

“I don’t deserve you...”

“And you’re clearly overtired since you’re just saying nonsense now.”

He chuckled, it was hoarse and faint but it was a wonderful sound.

“Really though, let’s try and get you back to sleep, okay?”

He pushed himself up further on the bed and carefully intertwined his body with yours, breathing out a sigh as he buried his face in your hair.

“I love you...”

“I love you too.”

[tomatograter]

What are your Thots on jake’s pq route?

I already wrote some about it in this post where I discuss the problem with taking dirkjake as a literal parallel to tavris (Mainly, that it’s inaccurate to both situations and misrepresents the dynamics at play) but it’s been long enough since release that I feel like I can talk about it without that criticism being taken as a personal witch hunt. TL;DR: As a general rule of thumb I don’t cite Jake’s PQ as part of his characterization, and I think basing your Jakewriting on it will only lead you astray.

I liked a lot of the Pesterquest routes and the alphas were among some of my favorites, but I think when you play the four of them in sequence Jake’s really... stands as the odd one out. It’s almost as if he’s afforded way less sympathy from the get go for some indiscernible reason, or like MSPAR took a day to say ‘I can’t stand this kid in particular’ after dealing with waaaaaaaay more mindboggling troll customs or stupid dangerous situations that tested their patience and their limits. When it comes down to it, it’s mostly an issue of framing.

Let’s go with the “Just the Alpha routes” example, because I think that makes the overall context clearer and the response/reactions it gathered (or the lack thereof) easier to understand. The alpha kids were the last 4 Pesterquest episodes. They were also afforded entire volumes just for themselves, which cemented our expectations on “oh, they’re going to really dig into unexplored territory!” and for the most part, that’s what we got! It was really nice to see the internal mechanics of Jane as someone raised within a corporate echochamber, Roxy as a grieving, isolated kid, deprived of all human contact, and Dirk as a nerdy doomsday prepper haunted by private flashes of himself as a supervillain. It all works! Those are things the alpha kids were dealing with on the background of the broader Homestuck story, things we were only hinted at as the *larger* problems played out. It makes you understand their point of view. Except on Jake's route, where nothing about his life seems to be relevant at all? 

With Jane we get discussions about HIC and her family, with Roxy beautiful passages about a mother they never met and growing up alone— Same for Dirk, who gets a whole brother zapped from an alternate timeline. But on Jake's route there's not even an expansive dialogue path dedicated to Grandma English, Skaianet, the rebellion, or the giant red ship that came and murdered her in the night and then bombed his house, leaving him trapped inside his only surviving tower. No understanding passage realizing that this kid has had to fend for himself in an island full of Actual Giant Alien Monsters trying to eat him alive, or that he cremated his guardian specifically to avoid attracting predators to the scent of fresh blood drying on her mutilated corpse at the age of an actual toddler. The text refuses to dig into any of the psychological implications or impact an environment like this could have on a kid, which is even weirder when you consider MSPAR has met and helped Vriska get out of a similar situation. The whole thing with Jane in the previous volume has just happened, even, while Jake's particularities go unremarked. He was just supposed to deal with it. And that's because a choice was made to portray all of Jake's problems in this route as sort of... single handedly Dirk's fault? Something he should have Just Dealt with?

There's not even a hint that Jake knows Hal exists. Which is important! Jake can pick out Hal from Dirk based on *verbal cues*, and the fact that he considers Hal a barrier between him and his "real friend" getting to communicate with one another is a whole point of contention (and even comedy) in the story proper. Instead of examining Jake's isolation, or grief, or how he literally locks himself in his room and plasters it with cinematic posters to pretend he's just the main lead of a wacky adventure movie in the face of the immense shitshow outside, we get brobot acting nonsensically and threatening to break into Jake's room to beat him up. 

A general reminder on brobot: He was programmed to scout the jungle and deal with predators so Jake could a) Be allowed to safely leave his room (something he simply didn't do before age 13 out of sheer terror, and we know this because dirk and jake talk about it on his birthday conversation, when he first gets brobot) and 

b) Learn how to defend himself in the case of a surprise attack, with different combat settings adjusted to his level. The brobot has a novice mode Jake feels patronized by, but pushes him up levels quickly enough. In Homestuck proper, the brobot only enters "stalking mode" after Hal gets pissy with Jake for finding him out, and forcefully switches the setting on to make Jake work for the Uranium inside it. When you take Hal out of the picture, this plotline makes no sense! Jake's route is set way before the Alphas even think of entering the game, so this particular event hasn't even happened. Jake goes on to text Roxy and she turns the stalking setting off remotely anyways, so even if brobot was programmed to murder Jake in his sleep, or jump him inside the safe zone of his room (he's not) he has literally no reason to be acting like that when he's been set to Baby Buff Up Mode.

(Brobot does end up spontaneously pulling himself apart to give Jake his reward after this)

Which brings me to my other problem with the general framing of this volume; the alpha kids don't feel present in Jake's life as friends at all. It's all "romantic options" and "shipping discourse" and MSPAR making these silly logic jumps to justify insisting on this line of query, and all it does is completely flatten out anything of interest having to do with Jake as a Person, to build up an image of Dirk as being suspicious and shady for his volume and more or less come to the conclusion that Jake sucks because he just Cant Choose Who To Date Between All His Friends! And that's why jake is just like tavros… and dirk is just like vriska! Or something. 

And just as a reminder, here's Jake talking with Roxy so I don't have to explain why that feels like a weird choice to me. (click to zoom)

And then there's the endings. On the vriska ending, MSPAR just ends up weirdly angry at jake for being such a piss baby and not getting that he's tavros and dirk is vriska so he had to… uh… take all his anger out on this 13 year old alien girl he has never met and teach her a lesson to prepare to do the same on dirk, or something. And on the other ending Jake mentions his pen pal, is zapped to meet jade, they have some non-committal greetings and then a cosplay party where Jake insists that he totally likes Lara croft not because she's a femme fatale and he relates to that, because he's never ever in his life thought of anyone being interested on him. Or Something. He likes Lara croft for normal reasons only. He wears really tiny shorts and does sexy poses because he's not aware at all of how other people find him attractive. He's just too dumb to get this, or the shipping thing, or that he's tavros and Dirk is vriska (who the hell are these people?).

Jake feels like an afterthought in the grand scope of events. Sidelined on his own episode. This volume is busy with rehashing age old fandom arguments that have little to do with his character, because said arguments were started and maintained by bored teens engrossed on fighting online instead of analyzing Homestuck; we introduce vriska for no interesting reason at all (thank god at least Jake has enough decency to say he's not into hitting on 13-year-olds, because that would have been particularly rancid.) And aside from catchphrases and old slang sprinkled liberally into his dialogue like a fog making machine, none of the motivation for the character is there. What does he want? What does he fear? Why does he act like the way he does? What would accommodating him look like? What would helping him look like? We get this on Jane's volume, Roxy's volume, and Dirk's volume. To really heart-wrenching and dramatic results, too. You get to know who they are, where they live, what they want, what they fear, what might help them get better, but Jake is just sort of There. He's a burden. MSPAR either ends this volume berating him for not doing what they want or finding him weird and confusing and like they don't know each other at all, and the fact both of those were marked as dubiously bad ends in the game files speaks for itself, I think.

[sigmaleph]

@serinemolecule asked me for hot takes on this 2006 article on Argentinian food, which I am now reorganising into a proper post for y'all's consumption. you're welcome.

First of all: the titular thesis that you should eat two steaks a day. I am forced to clarify that as 'should's go you should eat zero steaks a day, but this is ethical rather dietary advice and I don't follow it as well as I should, so, y'know. I would engage with this on the level it was stated, but I actually have no opinion on it. Moving on...

Argentine beef really is extraordinary. Almost all of this has to do with how the cows are raised. There are no factory feedlots in Argentina; the animals still eat pampas grass their whole lives, in open pasture, and not the chicken droppings and feathers mixed with corn that pass for animal feed in the United States.

This is, as it happens, completely false. There absolutely is plenty of feedlot beef being eaten in Argentina, and this was also the case back when this article was written. There's grass-fed beef too, and maybe the writer structured their life around only eating those, but the claim that there are no feedlots is just not true.

if you let them make the call, you get a two-inch thick of meat[...]The Argentine steak stands alone, towering three inches over the plate,[...]This gorgeous specimen is called a lomito; it's a standard lunchtime steak, clearly so thin that the Argentines are embarrassed to send it out into the world without a protective wrapping of ham and cheese

I have no idea what their obsession with steak thickness is; meat exists at various levels of thick and thin to suit various tastes. If you like yours thick that's fine but quit the projecting, y'know.

As you might expect, vegetarians will have a somewhat rough time here. For most people in Argentina, a vegetarian is something you eat. One's diet will accordingly lean heavily on pastas, gnocchi, salads, and (for the less squeamish ) fish. Vegans will not survive in Argentina.

This is, unfortunately, true (well, hyperbole, but). Rinna had a rather bad time trying to find vegan food when fae came over for visits. The situation is improving slowly, at least.

The homemade cookies bought in the minimarket downstairs taste of steak. [picture of alfajores de maicena[

Jesus. Find somewhere better to buy your snacks.

It should be no surprise that the land of beef also has excellent milk and butter. The milk comes in plastic bags that would give any American marketing department a heart attack. They proudly advertise "GUARANTEED 100% BRUCELLOSIS AND HOOF-AND-MOUTH FREE". One brand even brags that its bacteria count never exceeds 100,000 per mL, and prints daily statistics to prove it (only 82,000 bacteria/mL on Monday! mmm!).

Are you under the impression American milk doesn't contain bacteria and that when it spoils it's because of the molecules' sheer willpower? Or do you just object to the reminder that they exist?

This menu is delicious, but with rare exceptions it is all you are going to get. People coming for more than a few weeks are advised to bring a discreet bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Eat at better restaurants.

With any order from the master menu comes the Bread Basket, which should be treated as you would treat a basket of wax fruit, that is, as a purely decorative ornament. It is considered bad form to actually eat anything from Bread Basket

What are you talking about. Do all your dining companions just suck, eat some bread.

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives". This cloying dessert tar is so impossibly sweet that you wish you were ten years old again, just so you could actually enjoy it. It is everywhere. There is a special dulce de leche shelf in the supermarket dairy case, and the containers go up to a liter in size. Even the churros are stuffed with it - the churros, Montresor!

It is rare that I feel insulted for the sake of my country, but this? How dare you.

Yes, of course we fill churros with dulce de leche; the real question is why anyone doesn't, short of dietary restrictions. Finding out that people do otherwise was like learning that in other countries, "sandwich" just means two slices of bread. Live a little. Eat a real godsdamned churro.

I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how meals work in Argentina, and they remain a mystery to me. Dinner is clear enough: people tend to go to restaurants beginning at ten o'clock (for those with small children), with the main rush around eleven, and dinner is pretty much over at one or so in the morning. And breakfast - or rather, its absence - follows as a logical consequence of eating a steak the size of a beagle at midnight. But I have yet to figure out whether people eat some kind of meal in the afternoon, and if so, when.

At... noon? Like. We eat lunch. Usually somewhere around 12:00. I am eating lunch right now, and I have done so essentially every day of my life. This is just baffling.

I've come to think the culprit in the missing Argentine lunch scene is yerba mate.

how.

Where the ignorant foreigner may see just another kind of herbal tea (yerba mate is a very unassuming shrub that grows in the northern parts of the country) the Argentine sees a taste treat of unimaginable subtlety, and a tonic for all his problems. The Wikipedia article on proper mate preparation should give you a warning of the level of obsessiveness attainable here (the Urugayans are even worse). To the virgin palate, mate tastes like green tea mixed with grass clippings. The beverage is traditionally drunk out of a little gourd, through a metal straw called a bombilla, with hot (but not boiling!!) water poured into it (without wetting the surface!! clockwise!!) from a thermos.

Yeah, this is accurate. Well, not the clockwise part, never heard anyone complain about that and I can't imagine it mattering.

What distinguishes mate from coffee and tea is the social context - two or more people share a gourd, with a designated pourer in charge of refilling it with hot water after each turn. The ritual is low-fuss but indispensible. You can buy mate gourds and thermoses in any grocery store, and get your thermos filled with hot water at any convenience store or gas station, but you will never see mate served in restaurants or sold in little disposable paper gourds, to go. it's not that people refuse to drink mate alone - anyone working a solitary shift will have a gourd in hand - but that the concept of being served mate by someone who does not share it with you seems impossible.

This is also true. Attempts have been made to sell to-go mate but it's never very popular, the social ritual is important. Also unfortunately a disease vector, I haven't had any mate in a year and a half.

Mate aficionados will tell you that mate contains a special compound, mateine, that serves as a tonic and mild stimulant, promoting alertness without making it hard to sleep, reducing fatigue and appetite, helping the digestion and serving as a mild diuretic. Scientists will tell you that mateine bears a suspicious resemblance to a chemical called caffeine. Mate aficionados will then grow indignant, explaining that mateine is really a stereoisomer (mirror image) of caffeine, with different effects, which will in turn irritate the scientists, who will snap that caffeine doesn't have a chiral center, so it can't have a distinguishable mirror image, and why don't the mate aficionados just put a sock in it.

The first part of this is true; some people definitely think "mateine" is different from caffeine and it absolutely isn't. Never heard the stereoisomer claim before but googling it does confirm some people say so.

still have no idea what any of this has to do with lunch, though. I promise you nobody skips lunch because mate is just too filling.

The wine here is very good (something has to stand up to that steak), but Argentina has no liquor to call its own, relying on whiskies like Old Smuggler and the low-maintenance Don Juan cognac to carry the flag.

There's a fundamental omission from this list and it's called fernet.

Beer is ubiquitous and comes in a bewildering variety of sizes, although there is a skittishness about the full-on liter. Things level off at 970 mL. In my case, it means I end up drinking 1940 mL of beer as a kind of personal protest, and all is well with the world. To make up for the abundance of sizes, beer comes in only one variety, Quilmes, which inevitably comes served with a tripartite platter of snacks - nuts, salty cylinders, and aged potato chips.

I never had trouble buying beer by the litre, but I confess I never tried to do so in 2006 on account of being under 18 at the time.

Anyway, beer comes in a lot more varieties today, thankfully, because Quilmes sucks. I'll never be a beer person, but at least these days there's options I tolerate.

[original post]

[dreamescapeswriting]

Unfinished Business ~ Part 4

WORD COUNT: 4.5K

WARNINGS: Mentions of mafia, strong language, murder, blood

PAIRING: Bang Chan X Reader

DESCRIPTION: Part four of nine of my new Bang Chan series. 

You’re taken hostage but one of Seoul’s leading mafia families Bang Chan but he doesn’t take you because he wants to fake a marriage or make you fall for him in 365 days no…He wants to use you for his own personal gain. To take over another family but when you try to escape things take a turn for the worst and you learn Chan isn’t one to be messed with.(Please I suck at describing stuff)

THEMES: Smut will be included in a later chapter so this is a fic for a mature audience, Chan x Fem!Reader, Self insert

MASTERLIST | PREVIOUS | NEXT

The next morning you were walked down to the breakfast table as though you were some kind of prisoner, Seungmin apologised when he had to take you but you kept your mouth shut not wanting to breathe a word to anyone after last night. You hadn't slept at all, you couldn't get the images out of your head. It was hard to move something like that from your mind, she was like family to you and just like that she was gone. Sitting at the table was Chan, he was reading through something you didn't care about so you sat down where the empty plate was and it was soon being plated with food by Felix who gave you a sympathetic look. They all knew what had happened inside of that room and yet did nothing to help you stop it.

"How's your ankle?" Chan asked not lifting his eyes from the paper he was reading from, searching for any news on Namjoon or about what had happened with Mrs Lu - there was nothing there. He wanted to move his eyes from the paper though, he wanted to look at you and see that you were okay. He knew you wouldn't speak much after what he'd put you through the night before. He knew that it was harsh but it was what had to be done, even after a lengthy conversation with Felix about it, it was what was needed.

"Fine." You mumbled taking the cup of tea that had been poured for you by Jeongin and sipping on it ignoring the burning sensation on your tongue as the liquid hit it,

"Eat something," He said firmly, finally glancing at you from across the table, he could already tell you hadn't slept. Your hair was thrown up in a messy ponytail, you were wearing sweats and a baggy shirt not to mention you had bags under your eyes, Felix said he'd heard you crying when it was his shift so that explained your eyes looking so bloodshot and your nose being red.

"Is the bedroom not to your standards? I can have a new bed brought in if you'd sleep better on it?" You hated that his voice was laced with concern for you and your wellbeing when he'd been nothing but mean from the moment you came to him - or rather were kidnapped by him.

"It's fine. Couldn't sleep. Nightmares." Your voice was monotone as you stared at the plate in front of you not wanting to eat anything that had been placed in front of you.

"I'm not hungry. Can I leave the table?" It felt as though you were talking to your parents when you were younger,

"Not until you eat something. You didn't have anything last night." You looked at the food and took the apple from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, biting into it while staring at Chan smugly who just sniggered at you.

"I'll give you it." He put the paper down and leant on the table with his hands as he stood up from under the table, dressed in his usual suit and tie.

"Han said you wanted to go out and pick paint. We'll make a day trip of it." You swallowed the chunk of apple you'd been chewing on out of surprise and stared at him, this was some kind of test it just had to be.

"You said I wasn't allowed out-"

"Unless accompanied, unless you're still planning on running..." He buttoned his suit jacket up looking at you with a raised eyebrow, it was now that you realised one of them had a slit in it but it wasn't shaved, it was a faint scar.

"No! No, I won't. I said I'll stay." You meant it, you meant everything you'd said. You weren't going to try escaping if it meant more people would die because of you. It wasn't worth it.

"Good. Jisung will bring you up a dress to change into. I'm still having a wardrobe picked out to match you perfectly." You nodded and slowly got up from the table, too scared to make some kind of wrong move around him. Then you began walking with Seungmin past Chan when his hand reached out to touch your wrist, you flinched and he froze. He stared at you for a couple of seconds forgetting everything he was going to say to you when he saw the way you flinched at his touch,

"I-" He forgot everything he'd wanted to say when he stared into your eyes, he could see the fear that you held in them. Your eyes danced from his eyes to his wrist and he let go not wanting to upset you anymore than he already had.

"Make sure she has some ice for her ankle, and bandage it up." He said to Seungmin but his eyes never left yours, you could have sworn that he looked concerned for you and he was. He felt terrible for your ankle, the moment he'd grabbed your ankle he wanted to punch himself in the gut. He knew how painful it could be to be chained up like that and he felt awful for doing it to you the moment it happened.

"Thanks," You whispered to him, quickly leaving him there going towards the staircase with Seungmin who then left you at the bottom of the staircase with Jisung who also felt terrible for what had happened. Except he was the only one showing it clearly, he'd never liked the killing aspect of their life, he never liked this life he only stuck around because of Chan and the boys. He began taking you up the stairs making sure to walk slowly enough so you wouldn't damage the ankle more.

"There's a first aid kit in the bathroom, wait here," Jisung said as he left to go into the en-suite within your room, you stared at the door where you could see him reaching through the cupboards above the sink. You felt bad for running out on him the night before but you had to try and get out. He'd been the only one to show you any kind of kindness except for Felix and Jeongin.

"Why does he do that?" The question came out without context when Jisung came back into the room with some scissors and a bandage, he patted the bed and you followed his orders sitting down lifting your foot to sit on his knee.

"Do what?" He began wrapping up your ankle in a blue bandage to keep the pressure on it and you hissed as he applied more and more pressure each time he wrapped the bandage around, it wasn't awful like Chan's the night before. It felt nice to have it there.

"He acts like he cares when he clearly doesn't after what he did to me." Jisung sighed looking at you from the corner of his eye, he thought you would have been smart enough to see through Chan's clear facade but he was wrong about that.

"I told you. We don't like to kill-" He tried to defend him again but you weren't going to let him.

"And yet he did," He gave you the side-eye he wanted to tell you the truth about everything, about last night and how things weren't always what they seemed to be but he continued to bandage your ankle up in silence deciding he valued his life.

"I have no explanation for anything Chan does, all I have is an excuse that isn't mine to give out. Just know that somewhere deep inside his head he's doing it because he cares." That was all he could say to you without going too into detail about everything that went on inside Chan's head, the original plan for you was changing day to day depending on Chan's mood and it was giving Jisung and the boys whiplash. Your mind was being torn to shreds. Cares? He didn't even know you?

"He cares for me? He doesn't know me-"

"He knows enough, we all do." The folder. You looked at the floor and tried to remember what was inside the folder, everything. Every single detail about your life no matter how big or small was in that folder, your parents, your grandparents, all of your jobs from the ages of 11 and up. If someone read it they could say they'd known you since birth, passed off as you if they wanted to commit identity fraud.

"But why?" you asked. Jisung scoffed and helped you stand back up on your feet, you could finally put pressure on your ankle without it sending shooting pains throughout your leg.

"You're going to ask me to explain his complex brain?" You knew it was a long shot when you asked so you nodded at him and he pointed at another floral dress sitting on the hanger on your wardrobe door deciding he wasn't going to talk about it any more than he had. He could get into trouble for what he'd already told you.

"He doesn't like to be kept waiting." He said simply as you nodded in understanding and he left the room for you to get changed, standing just outside the door so he could walk you downstairs when you were finished.

Walking around the mall with Chan was weird - mostly because you were hand in hand with him but also because people were staring the whole time. The hand holding was his idea, he knew it was one way he could get all eyes on both of you and that was what he needed. Eyes were on you wherever you went, you thought it was just because of who Chan was but he told you it was because he hadn't been seen with a female companion in a while.

"They're staring at me?" You whispered as you walked past another couple who both stared at you blatantly obviously, both of them mumbling to the other about you as you walked, the woman's hand covering her mouth as she obviously said something to her partner. You looked at the dress feeling insecure but Chan stopped once he realised where your mind was going,

"They don't like seeing powerful men with a woman at his side. You look fine. The dress is perfect." Before you could argue with him he pointed at the paint shop you'd requested to go to and you walked inside head hanging low as you tried not to think about people looking at you. His hand never left yours and when the man behind the counter began talking to you his grip tightened,

"Can I get classical white, runaway blue, and a set of your acrylic paints and paintbrushes please?" You said to him, trying not to stare at him as he stared at your hand with Chans you wanted to beg for him to save you but images of the night before raised back into your head, along with images of your grandfather.

"I have to take this," Chan said as his phone started to ring loudly in his top pocket he moved away from you and out of the shop, Felix stood in the door to make sure no one else could go in or out of the shop without him knowing about it.

"Would you like to see the paint being mixed?" The man asked with wide eyes trying to think of a way that he could talk to you in private he'd seen this before with Chan's type,

"I'd love to." Your voice came out shaky and uneasy so you followed him over to the paint shaker and he started it up it was loud enough to cover up the conversation he was going to have with you,

"Do you need help? We can get you out...Just say the word and I'll sneak you out of the back-" A hand was placed on your shoulder before it moved and a voice spoke out,

"That won't be necessary will it, baby girl?" Your whole body was on edge as you heard him call you baby girl again, his arm wrapped around your waist and you felt sick for the man's safety.

"No. I'm fine thank you." Your monotone was back and the man stared between you and Chan and you gave him a knowing look not to press for anything, maybe that had been the real reason everyone had been staring. They were trying to break you away from Chan and get you safe. It was no secret who Chan was; him and the boys were practically famous for what they did. You took Chan over to some canvas' and his hand tightened on your waist as he grew angrier, his pulse racing as he thought about someone taking you away from him. His pulse was beating so much you could feel it on your hip where his arm was resting.

"I'll kill him-" This time your pulse raced,

"He was just worried about someone's safety. Don't hurt him. I'm staying. I'm here. I'll stay," You promised with him and linked your hands together once more to show him that it was the truth, his pulse slowed back down and his expression softened as he locked eyes with you.

"I'm not going anywhere," You matched his soft expression and he looked at you wondering why you were being so nice to the man when you didn't know him but then he remembered the file. You'd always been nice to everyone, volunteering at the nursing home, at the hospital and regularly working for charities. Which reminded him of something he had to do soon and he wanted to ask you too.

"I have something to ask of you." He walked you over to some more paints and you nodded, you'd do anything if it meant no one else would die because of you.

"I regularly attend a charity event and would you like to go with me?" Charity? He...donated to charity your blood boiled at the thought of him only doing it to make up for the shit he did.

"What is that? Your sick kind of way of making up for all of the terrible things you do to people?" The words slipped out before you could even think about them and he looked mortified as you said that to him, it wasn't true at all. It couldn't have been further from the truth, the charity was something he held close to him that he'd been doing long before he came into this lifestyle. You could tell by the look on his face that you'd hurt him and you felt bad for a second, fearing that if you stepped out of line something could happen you tried to justify yourself.

"S-Sorry. I didn't think-"

"It's a charity I hold close to my heart. You will attend the function with me." It wasn't a question this time it was a statement, you were going and you had no choice in the matter. You nodded at him knowing the repercussions if you didn't say yes and he went back to looking at the paint like everything was normal.

Chan was off again on business, the moment you were done inside of the shop he told you he had to leave and you were sent home alone with Jisung, Hyunjin and Jeongin who were watching you closely as you walked around your bedroom as if they had nothing better to do with their time.

"Do you have any plastic covers, Chan didn't get some earlier." Jisung and Hyunjin exchanged looks as if they were having some kind of psychic conversation together.

"There's some in the office," Jeongin said nodding for you to follow him into the office across the hall so you did, walking behind him as he got into the room. You stood in the door and images came flooding back from what had happened the night before, the carpet was gone and replaced with laminate flooring as if nothing had happened. Jeongin followed your gaze as he realised what he'd done and where he'd brought you.

"Shit. Sorry, I forgot-" He was so used to this life he'd forgotten how it affected those who weren't used to this,

"It's fine," You lied looking down at your hands instead of the flooring. He began looking through drawers when you saw a bookshelf, sitting there in the centre shelf was a photograph of Chan and another woman.

"Who's this?" You asked, opening the glass doors to take a closer look at the image that was sitting there. Jeongin glanced up at you, panic rushing through him as you touched the photo. Chan hated it when people touched his stuff.

"Chan's wife. Shes- Shes not with us anymore." You ran your fingers over the photograph, she looked like you. She looked a lot like you, from the hair right down to the dress you were wearing. So that was what he was doing? He saw his wife in you and was trying to replace her with you? You put the photograph back down and Jeongin held up the covers he'd gotten from the bottom drawer. Maybe his ex-wife was the way out for you, maybe her being his weakness was your way out. Make him fall for you, make him weak and escape when he doesn’t see it coming?

"What are you painting?" He questioned as you walked out of the office. He locked the door and added the key into his pocket. Everyone had a key to the office by the looks of it.

"Sunflowers." You whispered as he walked you into the room, Jisung was alone now as he looked at the wall you were planning on painting on.

"Hyunjin is cooking us something to eat, Jeongin go and help him." The small boy left the room after dropping the covers onto your bed for you to sort out. You looked at Jisung from the corner of your eye as you poured paint out into the containers.

"You're being awfully calm for someone who'd spent the day with someone she hates," You ignored his comment, not wanting to raise any suspicion and took the roller dipping it into the sky blue paint.

"He was kinder...didn't hurt that man." He hummed at you, not believing it for even a second and stared as you starting to add a light blue to the wall.

"You didn't try to escape, that was the only reason he didn't do anything. Don't think he's going soft on you." You hummed this time, not believing him and he shook his head at you. All that filled your head was the photo of his wife and Chan together. His arms wrapped around her waist as he had a huge smile on his face, so big you could see dimples on the sides of his cheeks.

"How did he lose his wife?" You asked without moving your eyes from the wall it was an innocent enough question but you didn't want it to seem as though you were prying him for information because you weren't.

"Why?" You shook your head and looked over at him,

"I saw the photo. She looked young." He looked down at the floor. They weren't supposed to talk about her. They were supposed to keep their mouths shut. You weren’t even supposed to know that he’d had a wife so Jeongin had fucked up by letting you see the photograph.

"Is she the reason you're not allowed to listen to music?" He knew you were up to something the minute you asked that question and he cut everything short not having time for the bullshit.

"Whatever you're planning, get it out of your head now. Unless you want a repeat of Mrs Lu with your grandfather." You stared at him as he brought your grandfather up into the conversation,

"Do you think I'd plan anything after what I saw last night! She was like a mother to me and he ripped her away. I wouldn't disobey him again." It was only partially true, you were planning to get away but you were planning on making it easier on everyone else first.

Chan walked up the staircase to see Minho was asleep outside of your room, his head resting on a wall. He didn't blame him, it had been a long day at the offices. They were all tired and he was about to head to his own bed when he heard soft humming coming from your room, he was surprised you were still awake after not sleeping the night before. He pushed the door open silently to see you standing there with a paintbrush in your hand, you were sitting crossed-legged on a set of chest drawers sitting so close to the wall your nose could have some paint on it. He knew the tune you were humming but he couldn't place what it was, he watched as you added another brush stroke to the wall. He made his way inside until he was standing right behind you, you hadn't heard him thanks to your humming which had slowly turned into softly sung lyrics.

"Your favourite?" You fell backwards, your legs spralling out in front of you to try and catch yourself but Chan caught you quickly before you could hurt yourself. Your arms resting on his as you stared up at him and you realised you'd painted a bright yellow stripe down his suit jacket.

"Sorry, it'll come right out if you wash it right now." You struggled out of his arms and stripped off his jacket rushing into the en-suite where you panicked trying to wash the paint off his jacket. His hands rested on your arms to stop you moving so fast and for a split second, it felt nice to have him this close to you, a spark rushing up and down your body making you feel a little uneasy.

"It's fine. I can have it dry cleaned." He slipped it out from under the water and hung it over the shower since it was wet.

"You're scared of me?" You nodded at him and he tried not to sigh, it wasn't what he wanted at all he didn't want you to fear him this badly.

"They are." He frowned confused as you answered something else,

"My favourite, you asked. They are." You said pointing over at the sunflowers on the wall.

"You should be asleep, you haven't slept for almost 48 hours." You looked at the watch on his wrist to see that it was almost 3 am,

"I can't sleep....always struggled." You admitted to him and he nodded in understanding. He'd also struggled with his sleep for a long time which meant he had tips to help you.

"I struggle with sleep too." You ignored the need to make a quip about what he did for a living was probably keeping him up at night and he walked you over to the giant double bed pulling back the sheets for you.

"But you should sleep, we have an event later in the week and I need you to be well-rested for it." You got under the covers and stared at him as he tucked you into the bed and started humming to the song you'd been singing. So music wasn't something he hated completely. That was something that you could work with.

"Can I have a radio tomorrow? To work with while I paint?" He stared at you.

"I don't like music." He answered plainly not looking away from your eyes,

"Oh...Okay." He could tell how disappointed you were and he looked down at you. He hated seeing you look so disappointed about something, he never wanted to see that look again even if it meant doing something he didn't like.

"I'll see what I can do." He brushed the hair from your face and kissed your forehead. Softly sparks shot through your body and you stared at him trying not to give signs away that you felt them. You couldn't fall for him, not after what he did and who he was, he'd killed  Mrs Lu, he ran drug cartels, money laundering, cold-blooded murder, gang wars and...Well, there were many rumours...Not everything had to be true did it? You wanted to question him on that now, find out what exactly was and wasn't true with him and his crew. Trying to get your head back into your plan, instead of what Chan did for a living, you questioned him on the music subject,

"Why don't you like music?" You shifted over in the bed so he could sit beside you, he stared at the space and you stared into his eyes.

"Tell me." You pleaded, placing your hand on his as he sat down on the space you'd left for him. He felt his heart warm up as you talked to him calmly and touched him because you wanted to, not because he was forcing you to.

"It's nothing, just something that used to be played a lot in the house and then there was no need for it." He took his hand away from you not wanting to get into this, it was too much for one night, he'd already told you too much. You were just supposed to be bait for Namjoon but he was starting to feel more for you, he got off the bed quickly and left the room slamming the door so hard that Minho jumped awake and stared at his boss rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Something wrong?"

"She likes music."

"That would be nice...right?" Minho and Felix had really been the only ones to calm Chan down when he got bad like this when he got upset over his wife. They'd been there for him the longest and it was them he could trust the most. Chan hummed in answer of Minho’s question and walked into his bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind him. He walked over to the photo frames that lined his desk, all him and his wife together in the earlier days of the marriage.

"Every day I miss you a little more." But there was something else taking over his heart, he stared at the photos and he no longer felt hurt by them. It was more of a feeling of peace as he stared at his once happy wife, but he was starting to picture his life with you instead of with her. He took the frames and placed them into the bottom drawer of a desk inside his bedroom and began changing out of his suit. He hated that he snapped at you like that, but he didn't want you knowing his weaknesses, you'd use them against him just like everyone else did. Just like Namjoon did with her...but then again. The plan had been to lure Namjoon out of the shadows with you, use you as bait to get the confession from Namjoon but now he could use it to his advantage. Namjoon could scare you into staying with him and Chan wouldn't have to be the bad guy anymore...He could be the one trying to protect you instead he just had to come up with a way to get it to work.

Tagline: @moonprincessdiviniation​ - my beautiful and wonderful editor, @jooniesdarlingdimples​ @taestannie​ @kneel-begyourpardon​ @calling-dips-on-j-hope​ @hugs4chan​ @ncitythoughts​ @inseonqt​ @cloudsgathering​

[missroserose]

Fic Writer Question Meme!

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

How many works do you have on AO3?

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

What's your total AO3 word count?

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

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

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

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

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

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

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

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

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

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

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

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

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

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

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

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

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

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

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

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

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

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

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

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

What's your all time favorite ship?

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

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

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

What are your writing strengths?

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

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

What are your writing weaknesses?

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

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

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

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

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

What's your favorite fic you've written?

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

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

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Hey, do you have anymore thoughts on Membrane's parents? I know we only got a brief glimpse of them, but they're so interesting yet there's so little fan content about them. That, or I'm looking in the wrong place haha.

Ps. If I am looking in the wrong tags or place could you please direct me to the right ones?

Ah, I talked a little bit about Membrane’s parents here during my first ramblings of the quarterly and I did talk a little about that headcanon here but I might as well repeat it again. 

Like I do find it interesting, the idea that his parents are scientists. Like Membrane tried following in his parents’ footsteps and unintentionally put that pressure onto Dib as he grew up... but for me personally, there’s just a lot of reasons this doesn’t make sense.

Like Why is adult Professor Membrane the brand and face of Membrane Labs and Membrane Enterprises when it was apparently a company he inherited from his parents? Of course, it could be that Membrane did make Membrane Labs himself and his parents were just scientists and Membrane Labs wasn’t really founded, but that makes less sense.

I always kinda viewed Membrane as someone who appreciated the value and effort of hard work ethic and built everything from the ground up with his bare hands and became the World Famous Man of Science all his own and it was his Legacy. Kinda like Scroodge McDuck and his fortune. Making Membrane inherit a company from his parents kinda loses a bit for me for him as a character. 

Why did his Parents give him socks for Christmas and claim it was from Santa? They know what Uranium238 is. I’m certain of that. It could have been a Christmas Story situation like “you’ll shoot your eye out kid” but Santa is the one who gives their kids the “cool gifts” I thought every parents knew that. It’s just one of those unspoken rules...... but like... to give him socks...

Like were they really that cruel? It’s kinda hard to say...  But it does kinda paint a bad image that they did have 100% the capabilities to give him what he wanted for Christmas... and they never bothered to explain to Membrane WHY he was given socks. 

LIKE LOOK, THESE TWO FUCKS LEAVE MEMBRANE IN THE DARK FOR YEARS ABOUT THE TRUTH OF SANTA CLAUS JUST CAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO ADMIT THEY FUCKED UP, EVEN WHEN HE PROBABLY WENT TO FAR:

I can only assume that these two science parents are dead, just from how Membrane regards them when he holds that photoframe...(and the fact that we never see them) but honestly, they were probably still around when he was a teenager and still dedicating a portion of his life to destroying santa...

I know Membrane is as thick-headed and stubborn as Dib, so maybe they tried to explain it to him, and Membrane didn’t listen, or his parents suck at explaining things... but like.... come on...  it’s your direct responsibility for unleashing this childhood santa trauma/rage....  You owe it to Membrane to be direct with him... 

But then again, Dib never listens when his Dad tries to explain what he thinks about Aliens, Cause Membrane doesn’t Not believe in aliens. He in fact says so in the show.

So perhaps they were and he just didn’t listen... there’s that...

Why is this family so obsessed with seeking the truth, but don’t listen to anyone’s opinions who are different from their own.... sigh this family.

But in any point, they could have at least said why they can’t give him Uranium238... but if they do, it’s off-screen and no further context is provided to the audience... 

It just makes sense for me that either Membrane’s family is poor, or they didn’t know what Uranium238 is... Making his Parents be scientists as well just throws a whole bunch of questions about just.... everything about this situation. It really makes me ask:

“Did his parents not give it to him because it was dangerous?”

“Or did they give him socks cause they were that unaware of what their son wanted?”

“Did they just give him socks cause they were that cruel as Membrane didn’t want to believe?” 

“If so, why socks? Why not a rocket ship or a science playset or baking volcano kit or something?” 

It just raises a whole lot more questions.

A more simple explanation that gets rid of those questionable morale questions is that his Parents were poor from a humble upbringing and could only afford him socks for Christmas. It’s a more logical and simple explanation and it’s far more cleaner than having his parents be scientists in this. 

Another thing that bothers me is Membrane’s “childhood home” in general. Look at this place:

This huge place, with a giant rocket ship, dressed to the nines in Christmas decorations.

It also very clearly shows the interior. 

We see the living room couch, and multiple Christmas trees and this huge rocketship/missle thing front and center.

And if we compare it to Membrane’s childhood home in the Invader Zim episode this is supposed to be taking place in:

Now I know that the Invader Zim show has a darker color palate than the comics and even the Netflix movie, but I’m not talking about colors here...

A smaller tree that practically touches the ceiling, Fluorescent overhead lighting,  something that looks like a couch or a side table with noticeable stains on it... garland pinned to the walls with a lower ceiling... 

This looks NOTHING at all like how Membrane’s “childhood home” is like in the comics...

This is obviously not a wealthy home, or the home of a respected enterprise as shown in the comics. 

Now, I know this franchise has a thing for inconsistencies. Canon is basically non-canon. There is no continuity, and there is no continuous timeline of events... but to model Professor Membrane’s childhood home so vastly different from this brief flash in the show, that’s a pretty big one... 

So me and @paketdimensioncomic made a theory that can kind of coincide with our fics... 

We think that 

SUPER PERFECT SCIENTIST PARENTS.....  are what Membrane wishes his parents were probably like.

And that he lied to the press about his humble origins and upbringing. He didn’t want them to know that he grew up poor because it would be something constantly brought into question everytime he posed everything... He didn’t want his parents talked about in the media at all, especially if they were passed by the time he became successful. 

So... I think Membrane’s scientist parents are an elaborate lie. He told the press. I mean, He is a scientist, he always wanted to be a scientist, he is good at being a scientist and both of his parents were scientists...

I mean... He didn’t seem too concerned about the photo of his supposed parents.. he even threw it to the wall when his son called:

RIP parents.... he hardly knew you.

Do I think the Membrane Science Grandparents have a cool design and I want to see more fan content on them? Absolutely! Go nuts!

Do I think that Membrane’s parents being scientists makes little to no sense and was just kinda made for the sake of a dumb joke without giving too much thought about how it would lessen Membrane as a character if he were just leaching off his parent's success this whole time? And does it poke a lot of holes in the idea of why his parents gave him socks as santa at all? Absolutely.

I think it’s far more likely that Membrane built up this backstory of “I was always a scientist since birth” to the press and has more fake photoshopped photos around the house to show the press when the topic of his parents actually come up.

Basically, the fandom has been around for a long time you can do what you want with Membrane parent theories because as far as I’m concerned, I always appreciated the vibe of “Poor upbringing Membrane who learned the value of hard work and unintentionally became a workaholic because of it and really put too much value in work to the point he’s unintentionally neglectful towards his own offspring the same as his father was to him” 

Rather then.... “Science parents go brrr”

But again, just my headcanon.

And I always love people drawing the science parents. 

But @esthyradler‘s Farmer Membrane Parents are definitely my favorites. 

[nightashes]

And We Were Roommates

A/N: A gift for @who-said-i-was-asleep for the @sanderssidesgiftxchange. I hope you enjoy!!

Summary: Virgil is tired. So very tired. Luckily, he has the best roommate in the world. Who also might have a crush on him?

Warnings: food mention, creepy face mention

writing masterlist - ao3 version

***

The wood of the bunk was kinda weird. Virgil thought to himself as he laid in bed, staring at the grain of the frame above him. If he squinted and tilted his head just right, he could make out the image of a face. It was kinda unsettling, the way it stared back at him with it’s eyeless visage. It caused a shiver to pass through his bone-weary body. Virgil knew his exhausted mind was making it seem worse than it actually was. But his eyes were heavy and his brain was foggy. And the last thing Virgil wanted to see, as he struggled to calm his mind enough to rest, was the image of a haunted face made up of the sketchy lines of wood grain. 

Virgil rolled his head to the side to escape the stare. The clock greeted him, blinking unforgivingly back at him. Six o’clock. Virgil slapped his hand against his forehead and let out a curse in frustration. Great. Another sleepless night. And another day of fighting to stay awake during class. Just perfect.

Above him, he could hear the beginnings of movement. His roommate climbed down from the top bunk. Virgil watched him attentively, what must it be like to be able to just sleep when you were supposed to? Logan stared back, no doubt noticing the growing bags beneath his eyes. 

“You know, Virgil, your curses in the morning work better than any alarm clock I’ve ever had.”

“I hate you.” Virgil only half joked.

“Another sleepless night?”

His answer was a groan of pain and exhaustion. He pulled his comforter up and over his face, hoping to hide from a world that could be so cruel as to deny him rest.

“Do you want to skip our morning class again? Try and get at least a couple hours of sleep?”

“I can’t miss any more, I’ll fail.” He mumbled from beneath the blanket. 

“I’ll grab you something to eat.” Logan shuffled off to dress for class. 

Virgil laid there listening to the sounds of his roommate. Silently, in his mind, Virgil conversed with his body. It’s time to get up, he whispered to his legs that refused to move. Leaving the safety and comfort of his bed seemed to be impossible at this moment. Perhaps a compromise could be reached?

He rolled out of bed, taking his comforter with him, and flopped onto the floor into a messy pile. He laid there, breathing in the stench of old carpet. This is fine, he thought, he could live here happily, on the floor.

“I’ll be back with food.” His roommate called. The door clicked shut and Virgil was left alone with the floor.

Coffee. He needed coffee. Virgil departed his friend, the carpet, with a reassuring pat to the polyester fibers. The room tilted as he stood. His head whirling from the movement. He steadied himself against the wall and breathed in deeply until his vision cleared. He slipped on a sweatshirt as the chill began to seep into his bones. His hands buzzed from exhaustion as he shuffled over to their busted second-hand coffee maker. It did not glitter but it sure did produce the finest gold, a hot cup of coffee.

He sipped at the steaming hot liquid, as he stared out the window, slowly forcing his mind to clear. It did not work.

Today was going to suck.

He took another sip.

Virgil slipped on a pair of shoes and groggily tied up the laces. His fingers fumbled as his hands buzzed, jittery and fatigued. Logan returned with a white paper bag of fast food. He passed Virgil a steaming breakfast burrito.  Yummy.  The idea of food was not a welcome one at this moment. Not that he wasn’t hungry. He was. But it just felt like too much. Still he forced himself to take several small bites. The taste was better than what his mind had expected. And once he got into the rhythm of eating, it became a little easier. He could do this.

They departed their dorm together and walked across campus in silence. Virgil hummed along to the tunes blasting through his earbuds, desperately clinging to the energy that the noise provided. Lost in his own little world, he tried to imagine a different one. A world without morning classes or sleepless nights or deadlines. A world full of pillowy clouds to drift to sleep on. He thought that would be quite a nice place to live. 

Logan was attempting to read as he walked. His gaze flicking furiously from the page to the sidewalk and back again. Virgil wasn’t sure how much Logan could retain anything reading like that. But then again, it was Logan. If anyone could manage it, he could.

The TA greeted them as they entered the lecture hall. Virgil led the way to a seat in the back. No way was he sitting up close while this tired. He plopped down into a chair and allowed all the tension to drop away. He was here now. All he had to do was make it through this class and then he could try and sleep after.

The hush of chattering voices began to die down as the professor took command of the room. Her voice was soft and monotonous. The sounds of her chalk scratched against the blackboard. Virgil could feel his eyes begin to droop. He shook his head, forcing himself back to attention. He fiddled with his pen. Trying to move enough to keep his body awake, while also making sure to not draw the attention of his fellow classmates. 

In the back of the class, he fought against his own mind. The fog that filled his head and softened the voices of rationality. He struggled to keep his eyes wide and open. He pinched at his skin, as if this were a bad dream that he could force himself to awaken from. But the room was warm from the packed bodies. It was warm and it was quiet. The lecture was a lullaby, a meditative chant that softened his gaze. As the hour ticked on, Virgil lost himself to the fog of sleep. He could feel his head bobbing. And then he lost his sense of presence.

Virgil drifted in consciousness. He knew a little about where he was and what he should be doing. But his body and mind were out of his control. He floated through the haze of thought. And in that classroom he slept.

The sounds of chatter jerked him back to awareness. Class. He was in class. He frantically swiveled his head, taking in as much as he could. What had he missed? Had anyone noticed him sleeping?

People were packing up their books. They were getting ready to leave. Class… he had missed the entire class. Virgil thumped his head against his textbook.

“You mustn't be too hard on yourself, Virgil. You were here, you were marked present. That’s all that matters right now.” Logan reassures him, closing up his own two notebooks. Wait, why did he have two notebooks?

Logan passed one of them to Virgil as he finished collecting his things. “Ready to go?”

Virgil stared down at the notebook in his hand. He flipped it open. It was full of lecture notes. Not just from today. The dates… they were from everyday that he had skipped so far and then today as well! 

“What is this?” Virgil asked dumbfounded.

“You expressed displeasure at the idea of failing. This will help. It is everything that you have missed so far.”

“You copied your notes into a separate notebook?”

“Well, no. I formatted these slightly differently and included certain contexts that you would need after having missed the lectures… It should help.”

“Logan, this is incredible.”

A blush of pink dusted the cheeks of his roommate. “It’s no big deal. I just thought it would help.” He cleared his throat and cast his eyes about, “No one should miss out on the chance to learn, afterall.”

Virgil smiled at his roommate. “I was going to take a nap before my next class. But later on, maybe we could study together? If you want that is. I mean it’d probably be easier to just study on your own and I know I’m really behind-”

“Yes.” Logan interrupted the torrent of thoughts spilling from Virgil’s mouth. “I would love to go over the notes with you.” 

He paused as if just realizing he had used the word love. Logan quickly tacked on: “I have a passion for teaching is all.”

“Of course,” Virgil rolled his eyes at the awkwardness. Logan was such a dork when he was flustered. Wait? He was flustered! Did this mean that… Logan liked him? Virgil cheeks flushed at the thought. “Uhhh… I’ll see you later?”

“Later then.” Logan stiffly departed the hall, leaving Virgil alone with a whirlwind of thoughts. His roommate had a crush on him? His roommate had a crush on him! 

After passing out in their dorm for his afternoon nap, Virgil spent his next class with one thought and one thought only running through his mind. Logan had a crush on him. Logan: who had gone out of his way to take notes for him. Logan: who was one of the smartest people he had ever met. Logan: who had blushed! 

Virgil wasn’t really sure what to make of it. All he knew was that with every passing minute, he was getting closer to their study date. Well, not a study  date, more like a study session. Wait, was it a date? Could it be a date? Did Logan think of it that way? No. Certainly not. He had been flustered by even the insinuation of romance! But maybe… Maybe it could become one… eventually?

And that is how Virgil found himself, pacing their dorm clutching the gifted notebook to his chest, and worrying his lip, as the time for the study session drew ever near. Logan arrived only a minute late. He was weighed down with books from the library and he smiled tiredly at his roommate. Despite this a soft blush was present on his face.

“Hello, Virgil. Are you ready? I got some extra books that might help.” He plopped himself down at his desk, swiveling the chair to face outwards. Virgil followed suit, still clutching his notebook to him.

“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s do this. Ummm… how was your day?”

“Adequate. A small mishap in labs, but nothing I couldn’t handle.” Logan rubbed at the bridge of his nose. 

“If you're tired. We can do this later. You know I would understand.”

Logan’s gaze locked onto him. “I want to do this.”

The heat in Virgil’s cheek was like a warning bell. He was in dangerous territory now. His heart was being stolen by a nerd in glasses. What a way to go!

“Alright, let’s do this!” Virgil smiled brightly.

They worked their way through the gifted notebook. Going over all the notes that were provided there. They stopped whenever Virgil found himself confused. Logan assured Virgil that no question was too small. And then he would beam at Virgil whenever he finally understood it. It made Virgil feel like he could accomplish anything. Virgil’s favorite part was when Logan would pick up a book to rant in depth about his favorite parts. His passion for academics was like a blazing fire. It flooded Virgil’s stomach with butterflies and made his heart race with the knowledge that he was falling hard. Eventually, they began to lapse into silence as they slowly got further into their own readings. 

Virgil was going over today’s lecture notes again. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the person beside him. The notes were written in a tight script. It was precise and easy to read. A sharp contrast to Virgil’s own chicken scratch. He traced his fingers over the blue ink. Virgil didn’t think Logan would be one to write with colored ink, but Logan enjoyed the color blue. The thought drifted into his head again. Logan liked him, right? 

Virgil flipped a page.

Virgil liked Logan. 

He really really did.

He should say something right?

Virgil looked up, the words forming on his lips, only to find Logan slumped over his desk. His face pressed into his arms, his glasses askew and digging into his skin. There was the smallest trail of drool beginning to form at the corner of his lips.

Virgil chuckled.

Now Logan was the bone-tired one.

Virgil stood from his seat. He carefully and gently removed the glasses from his roommate’s face. Pulling the blanket down from Logan’s bunk, Virgil draped it across his shoulders. And with a flick of the switch, the room is darkened.

Virgil readies himself for bed quickly and quietly. As he lays down in his bunk, he watches Logan at the desk. It couldn’t be comfortable to sleep at a desk. But selfishly, Virgil enjoyed seeing his crush asleep beside him. 

He whispered into their darkened room, “Goodnight, Logan.” And promptly fell asleep.

taglist: @stop-it-anxiety @hexatrash @ollyollyoxinfree @battlebunnyteardropsinthesun @leiasolo77 @arya-skywalker @alexxadontplaydespasito

[qqueenofhades]

If/when they make a Joe/Nicky prequel movie, what are some of the Dos and Don’ts for them, with regards to historical accuracy. Like, what do you think they should include, and what do you think they should avoid?

Oof. This is a GREAT question, and also designed to give me a chance to ramble on in a deeply, deeply self-indulgent fashion. That is now what will proceed to happen. Consider yourself warned. So if they were miraculously to be like “well that qqueenofhades person on tumblr seems like she knows what she’s talking about, let’s hire her to consult on this production!”, here are some of the things I would tell them.

First off, a question I have in fact asked my students when teaching the crusades in class is whether you could actually show the sack of Jerusalem on screen. Like... if you’re making a film about the First Crusade, what kind of choices are you going to make? What narrative viewpoint are you going to uphold throughout the story? Are you actually going to show a slaughter of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants that some chroniclers described as causing enough blood to reach up to the knees of horses? (Whether it actually did this is beside the point; the point is that the sack went far beyond the accepted conventions of warfare and struck everybody involved in it as particularly horrific.) Because when you’re making a film about the crusades, you are also making it by nature for a modern audience that has particular understandings of Christian/Muslim conflict, religious warfare and/or tolerance, the War on Terror, the modern clash over ISIS, Trump’s Muslim ban, and so forth. The list goes on and on. So you’re never making a straight, unbiased historical adaptation, even if you’re going off the text of primary sources. You’re still constructing it and presenting it in a deliberate and curated fashion, and you can bet that whichever way you come down, your audience will pick up on that.

Let’s take the most recent example of a high-profile crusades film: Kingdom of Heaven from 2005. I’ve written a book chapter on how the narrative choices of KoH, aside from its extensive fictionalization of its subject matter to start with, make it crystal clear that it is a film made by a well-meaning Western liberal filmmaker (Ridley Scott) four years after 9/11 and two years after the invasion of Iraq, when the sympathy from 9/11 was wearing off and everyone saw America/Great Britain and the Bush/Blair coalition overreaching itself in yet another arrogant imperial adventure into the Middle East. Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember the fact that Bush explicitly called the War on Terror a “crusade” at the start, and then was quickly forced to walk it back once it alarmed his European allies (yes, back then, as bad as America was, it still did have those) with its intellectual baggage. They KNEW exactly what images and tropes they were invoking. It is also partly why medieval crusade studies EXPLODED in popularity after 9/11. Everyone recognized that these two things had something to do with each other, or they made the connection somehow. So anyone watching KoH in 2005 wasn’t really watching a crusades film (it is set in the late 1180s and dramatizes the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin) so much as a fictional film about the crusades made for an audience explicitly IN 2005. I have TONS to say on this subject (indeed, if you want a copy of my book chapter, DM me and I’ll be happy to send it.)

Ridley Scott basically sets it up as the Christian and Muslim secular leaders themselves aren’t evil, it’s all the religious fanatics (who are all made Templars, including Guy de Lusignan, going back to the “evil Templar” trope started by Sir Walter Scott and which we are all so very familiar with from Dan Brown and company). Orlando Bloom’s character shares a name (Balian de Ibelin) but very little else with the eponymous real-life crusader baron. One thing Scott did do very well was casting an actual and well-respected Syrian actor (Ghassan Massoud) to play Saladin and depicting him in essential fidelity to the historical figure’s reputed traits of justice, fairness, and mercy (there’s some article by a journalist who watched the film in Beirut with a Muslim audience and they LOVED the KoH Saladin). I do give him props for this, rather than making the Evil Muslim into the stock antagonist. However, Orlando Bloom’s Balian is redeemed from the religious extremist violence of the Templars (shorthand for all genuinely religious crusaders) by essentially being an atheistic/agnostic secular humanist who wants everyone to get along. As I said, this is a film about the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq made three years after 9/11 more than anything else, and you can really see that.

That said, enough about KoH, back to this presumable Joe/Nicky backstory. You would obviously run into the fact that it’s SUPER difficult to make a film about the crusades without offending SOMEBODY. The urge to paint in broad strokes and make it all about the evil Westerners invading is one route, but it would weaken the moral complexity of the story and would probably make it come off as pandering to guilty white liberal consciences. Are we gonna touch on the many decades of proto-crusading ventures in Iberia, Sicily, North Africa, and other places, and how the eleventh century, especially under Pope Gregory VII, made it even thinkable for a Christian to be a holy warrior in the first place? (It was NOT normal beforehand.) How are we going to avoid the “lololol all religion sucks and makes people do crazy things” axe to grind favoured by So Very Smart (tm) internet atheists? Yes, we have to demonstrate the ultimate horror of the crusade and the flawed premises it was based on, but we can’t do that by just showing the dirty, religiously zealot medieval people doing that because they don’t know any better and are being cynically manipulated in God’s Name. In other words (and the original TOG film did this very well) we can’t position ourselves to laugh at or mock the crusader characters or feel confident in looking down on them for being Dumb Zealots. They have to be relatable enough that we realize we could BE (and in fact already ARE) them, and THEN you slide into the horror and what compels them to do those kinds of things, and THAT’S when it hits. Because take a look at the news. This is happening around us right now.

Obviously, as I was doing in my First Crusade chapter in DVLA, a lot of this also has to spend time centering the Muslim point of view, the way they reacted to the crusade, the ways in which Yusuf as an Isma’ili Shia Muslim (Kaysani is the name of a branch of Isma’ili Shi’ites, he has a definite historical context and family lineage, and hence is almost surely, as I wrote him, a Fatimid from Egypt) is likewise not just A Stock Muslim. In this case, obviously: Get actual Muslims on the set to advise about the details. Don’t make stupid and/or obvious mistakes. Don’t necessarily make the Muslims less faithful or less virtuous than the Christians (even if this is supposed to praise them as being “less fanatic” than those bad religious Catholics). Don’t tokenize or trivialize their reaction to something as horrific as the sack of Jerusalem, and don’t just use dead brown bodies as graphic visual porn for cheap emotional points. Likewise, it goes without saying, and I don’t think they would anyway, but OH MY GOD DON’T MAKE THIS INTO GAME OF THRONES GRIMDARK!!!! OH MY GOD!!! THERE IS BEAUTY AND THERE IS LIGHT AND THERE IS POETRY AND THAT’S WHY IT HURTS SO MUCH WHEN IT’S DESTROYED! AND THE CHOICES THAT PEOPLE MAKE TO DESTROY THOSE THINGS HAVE TO BE TERRIFYINGLY PLAUSIBLE AND FAMILIAR, BECAUSE OH MY GOD!!

Next, re: Nicolo. Evidently he is a priest or a former priest or something of the sort in the graphic novel, which becomes a bit of a problem if we want him to actually FIGHT in the crusades for important and/or shallow and/or OTP purposes. (I don’t know if they address this somehow or Greg Rucka is not a medieval historian or whatever, but never mind.) It was a Major Thing that priests could not carry weapons, at least and especially bladed weapons. (In the Bayeux Tapestry, we have Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, fighting at the battle of Hastings with a truncheon because he’s a clergyman and can’t have a sword). They were super not supposed to shed blood, and a broadsword (such as the type that Nicky has and carries and is clearly very familiar with) is a knight’s weapon, not a clergyman’s. The thing about priests was that they were not supposed to get their hands dirty with physical warfare; they could (and often did) accompany crusade armies, bishops were secular overlords and important landholders, monks and hermits and other religious preachers were obviously part of a religious expedition, and yes, occasionally some priests would break the rules and fight in battle. But this was an exception FAR more than the rule. So if we’re going by accuracy, we have Nicky as a priest who doesn’t actively fight and doesn’t have a sword, we have him as a rule-breaking priest with a sword (which would have to be addressed, and the Templars, who were basically armed monks, weren’t founded until 1119 so he can’t be one of those yet if this is still 1099) or we just skip the priest part and have him as a crusader with a sword like any other soldier. If he was in fact a priest, he also wouldn’t be up to the same standard of sending into battle. Boys, especially younger sons of the nobility, often entered the church at relatively early ages (12 or 13), where it was treated as a career, and hence they stopped training in arms. So if Nicky is actually out there fighting and/or getting killed by Yusuf several times for Important Purposes, he’s... almost surely not a priest.

Iirc, they’ve already changed a few things from the graphic novel (I haven’t read it, but this is what I’ve heard) so they can also tweak things to make a new backstory or a hybrid-new backstory in film-verse. So once we’ve done all the above, we still have to decide how to handle the actual sack of Jerusalem and massacre of its inhabitants, the balance between violence comparable to the original TOG film and stopping short of being exploitative (which I think they would do well), and the aftermath of that and the founding of the new Latin Christian kingdom. It would have to, as again the original film does very well, avoid prioritizing the usual players and viewpoints in these events, and dig into presenting the experiences of the marginalized and way in which ordinary people are brought to the point of doing these things. It doesn’t (and frankly shouldn’t) preach at us that U.S. Invasions Of The Middle East Are Bad (especially since obviously none of the characters/people/places/events here are American at all). And as I said already but bears repeating: my god, don’t even THINK about making it GOT and marketing it as Gritty Dramatic Medieval History, You Know It’s Real Because They’re Dirty, Violent, and Bigoted!

Also, a couple tags I saw pop up were things like “Period-Typical Racism” and “Period-Typical Homophobia” and mmm okay obviously yes there are these elements, but what exactly is “period typical?” Does it mean “using these terms just because you figure everyone was less tolerant back then?” We know that I, with my endless pages of meta on medieval queer history, would definitely side-eye any attempts to paint these things as Worse Than Us, and the setting alone would convey a sense of the conflict without having to add on gratuitous microaggressions. I basically think the film needs to be made exactly like the original: centering the gay/queer perspectives of marginalized people and people of color, resisting the urge for crass jokes at the expense of the identity of its characters, and approaching it with an awareness of the deep complexity and personal meaning of these things to people in terms of the historical moment we’re in, while not making a film that ONLY prizes our response and our current crises. Because if we’re thinking about these historical genealogies, the least we can do (although we so often aren’t) is to be honest.

Thanks! I LOVED this question.