#it's about the what could've been

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.

[vaguely-concerned]

the fact that iron bull opens his recruitment conversation with pretending he doesn't quite remember the name of the the inquisition's ambassador. Jose-what's-her-name-again. he's just a big dumb jock no thoughts head empty mercenary who likes fighting and drinking don't worry about lil old me inquisitor! I'll hit things for you if you'd like as long as you pay me! ],) and then right after he reveals he's a spy he drops that he knows not only the name of your spymaster and how she operates but also her haircolour. (but like in a safely bro-y way tho! make that fighting and drinking and fucking! I'll be useful to you but in a real meathead non-threatening kind of way I'll be too busy bedding chantry sisters to do any real harm ],) continue to not worry about lil old me inquisitor!)

god bull you're so multidimensionally and fine-tunedly full of shit I love you so much fhdksah

[mint-fixates]

This page is making me feral because they're BOTH being jealous little shits and I'm obsessed with it. Stanford "Off inspiring some other scientist? Were we even partners?" Pines and Bill "I'm not the one carousing with a third-wheel hillbilly!" Cipher. Truly a match made in hell

[starsailorstories]

A series of very good SC AUs that are all slight variations on the same thing but excellent in their own particular ways are:

Lux and Cephie are just a human couple who adopt Rin (also human) when they’re still really little

Lux and Cephie are their canon selves but are somehow just living life on earth after the wreck and raise Rin together

Lux and Cephie do what they originally wanted to do and settle down on Caesura after the war and Rin is just some Derafior street kid they adopt and they grow up with the Revelator crew

[screwpinecaprice]

@animation-recaps-by-sean

I dunno how to design an older Mabel and Pacifica so I just thrown in whatever and hope that works. 😅

hklsafkhakhen Sorry I didn't notice there were still ask requests from April left in my inbox! I'll slowly get back to em.

P.S. Not taking requests right now!

[bemp0]

[WIP] Ahoy

[curemi]

used to be, you and me

[veryintricaterituals]

When I was in school I went to a friend's house to work on a project on a Friday afternoon. At about 6 or 6:30 when the sun was about to set her mom called us over to the livingroom. She lit two candles with my friend and then they proceeded to put the lit candles inside of a little cupboard so no one could see them. Me, a young jewish teenager asked her, my catholic friend, why they did that and she shrugged, said it was a family tradition to bring peace and prosperity, that the women of the family did it every friday evening and then hid the candles. They were very catholic, so I bit my tongue and we went back to her room to study.

This is just one of many, many, crypto jewish traditions that still exist in my hometown of Medellín, Colombia and I want to share a little bit about them with you.

Medellín is the capital city of a region called Antioquia and it is currently the second biggest city in my country. Now the weird thing about my region and my city more specifically is that it is in the middle of fucking nowhere, like we are in a valley in the middle of the andean mountains and it would take over two weeks by river, horse and river, and dunkey and mule to even get here before the invention of cars or trains.

Now Medellín was founded over 400 years ago, and families had been coming to the region for way before then, so that means that for centuries getting to my city from the sea or from the other big cities in the country was incredibly hard. This was by design, because Medellín itself was founded by about 28 families and we know for a fact that alteast half of them were crypto jews hidding from the Spanish Inquisition, and both before and the foundation more and more jewish families arrived to the region.

This is a known fact, the DNA of the people from the region has a lot of sepharadic jewish mixed in there. Early Colombian literature dating up to the 1845 would call the people of my region the Neogranadine Jews or the Colombian Jews. But because they were crypto jews the religion and most of the traditions were lost during the 400 years that have passed, now over 90% of the population is catholic and don't really know about their origins.

But some things stuck. And I want to tell you about them.

On the 7th night of December there is this pre-christmas festival called "El día de las velitas" or the little candle night that started and was unique to Antioquia. It's supposed to commemorate the candles that people had in the streets and the windows on the night Jesus was born and that helped Mary and Joseph to find their way. Do you know how this unique festival is celebrated in my city? People take to the streets to light candles, small colorful candles that they put in wooden planks or directly on the streets, it's the night that people decorate and turn on the christmas lights and it is so important and popular that we have an actual day off on the 8th of december.

Let me show you a few pictures

I don't think I need to explain this one. Even most goyim will know about Hannukah. But it is the weirdest thing when the dates coincide and we are all lighting candles together.

My dad was in the Jewish community board and we needed to rent a place to put our jewish daycare. They found this beautiful old house that had belonged to a family in colonial times but needed a little TLC. We had them remove some wooden floors because they were too old and rotting and found a huge Magen David made out stones in the center of the floor. The house also happened to have two separate kitchens and a mikveh or immersion bath in one of the rooms. These a very traditional things that colonial houses have in my region.

My grandmother converted to Judaism so I have a side from my family that is 100% from here and didn't arrive during the 20th century. I had the pleasure to meet both of my great grandparents from that side though they died when I was young. My grandma tells me that my greatgrandmother used to have one of these immersion baths in her house when she was growing up. Women were supposed to bathe in them after their periods had ended, my catholic great grandmother respected the mikveh traddition more than I ever have.

(I wish I had photos from that specific house but this happened over ten years ago, I'll show you some immersion baths from a different colonial houses that are also in my city)

Now how about we talk about traditional clothes. I'm sure most of you have heard of Ponchos, which are traditional in the Andean region, well the one from Antioquia is a little different and it's always supposed to be worn with a hat. Let's see if you can spot what I mean.

A few years ago Spain decided to grant citizenship to the descendants of the Jewish people that they had exiled in 1492. To get it you had to prove through family trees that your family had been Jewish. My city got the most ammount of passports out of everyone in the world, more than Israel. I could have applied from both my family that came from Egypt in the 20th century (we still have the keys to our house in Spain) or through my catholic side, as both of my grandmother's last names applied. I didn't but I could have.

I don't really know why I decided to finally write this post. I have so many more stories. I just think it's both incredibly sad that so much Jewish culture and people were lost but also it's a little heartwarming to see what survived even centuries down the line.

[14dayswithyou]

no way you dropped the biggest river lore in the tags and moved on like it was nothing 😭 can i ask if this is still your intentions with him? bc it sounds like you changed your mind halfway 🤔

im ngl though i really enjoy how ren and river are similar and different to each other, but does that mean river would hurt his angel but leave our friends alone the same way ren would never hurt his angel but would unalive all of our friends? since they're suppose to be each other opposites. i really hope this makes sense 😬 my final question is what is ren doing on thursday? i want to go on a cute pier date again 🩷🌸

@secretkoa asked: and can i hear more about what unsent memory is suppose to be about or is that off limits? idk if i asked this in my previous question so ignore me if i did! thank yuo and remember to drink lots of water 🐸🌱

⌞♥⌝ For those who haven't seen the original post, I want to quickly clarify once more that while River was originally my OC, he's since been picked up and revamped by my friend Jesse/@unsentmemory!!

However, now that Jesse has stepped away from the yandere community, River's fate (and da fate of Unsent Memories) has kinda been put on the sidelines for the foreseeable future.

‼️ Massive Unsent Memories and River spoilers under the cut ‼️ CW for: mentions of gore, torture, mutilation, self-harm, etc.

With all of that being said, yes, Jesse's original intention for River was for him to be your standard "serial killer-turned-yandere once he accidentally catches feelings for his latest victim (Bunny)". The only main difference is that I originally planned for River to be a generic murderer first, whereas Jesse had him become a yandere right off the bat.

You also asked to know more about Unsent Memories, and I think giving a general synopsis(?) would be fine?? ^^ But basically... After getting involved in a car accident, Bunny wakes up with amnesia and gets tricked into thinking that this random guy — whom they've never met before — is their loving, supportive boyfriend named River. In turn, he convinces Bunny that staying in their shared home would be more beneficial than staying in the hospital as it might rekindle some old memories, he'd be able to take care of them, and it would be easier for them to recover at their own pace. But surprise!! River is actually a frequent patron at the Murderer Motel™ and now has trapped Bunny in his Torture Basement®!!! <3 He also maaaay or may not've been the one who hit them with Ren's car as well... ^^ Oopsie daisy hehe

And yeah!! Similar to what you've said, River was also supposed to share (somewhat of) a narrative foil with Ren!! I personally wanted them both to have similar, complimenting vibes with each other — all while having completely different/separate motives and incentives when it comes to the object of their affection. I'm glad to see it was conveyed well enough; even after Jesse's additions to River's characterisation :3 I know I already shared some examples in the previous tags, but I can share a few more:

Where Ren puts Angel's feelings and opinions above his own, River purposefully ignores Bunny's and does everything for his own personal benefit. Essentially, "I'm doing this for you" vs "I'm doing this for me".

While Ren would never dream about harming Angel in any capacity, he's perfectly happy to kidnap, extort, torture, and kill everyone else... In contrast to River, who's accustomed to torturing and brutalising others for his own twisted enjoyment and sees it as a way to show his interest in Bunny.

Kinda silly how Ren claims to be a freelance programmer (but is actually a hacker) and how River claims to work at a music shop (it's a coverup for his second torture chamber lmaoooo).

[CW: implications of SH] Ren is willing to go as far as mentally and physically hurting himself if Angel asks him to, whereas River is willing to physically mutilate Bunny if it means keeping them by his side. [end CW]

With that being said, you can assume that Ren is easily swayed by Angel's words, opinions, and emotions, whereas River can easily sway and manipulate Bunny due to his own feelings and emotions.

This is something I've actually mentioned before, but Ren always prefers things to be tidy, so he often cleans himself up after disposing of his victims. Compared to River, who casually wears the bloodstains with pride and blames it on getting a bit rough with someone else during a boxing match.

It's no secret that Ren is willing to change every aspect of himself to earn Angel's love, and River is willing to change his serial killer ways to return Bunny's love. Da power of friendship and repressed childhood memories gksdgjh T_T /silly

Ren pretends to be a Normal Guy© with tons of empathy to spare, whereas River pretends to be a Regular Person℗ with the heart of a himbo.

I could go on but you get da point lol

So, yeah!! This is essentially the vibes we had planned for River (and Unsent Memories) before Jesse stepped down /pos ^^ I feel like talking vaguely about UM is fine since River only has a small cameo in 14DWY — and I'm sure that if Jesse ever returns from war (/silly), they'll give River muuuuch more justice than I possibly can :3c

[quesadilla-day]

delicious jade 😋yummy yummy 😍

[jmr-observingfromafar]

ngl Matangi in Moana 2 was kinda gay. like just a little gay. i mean my girl is a "crazy cat bat lady", calls Moana "babe" twice in her song (the way i audibly gasped in the theater when i heard it lol), and is like sooooo queer coded i love it sm. she just gives off the vibes of sapphic-coded older woman who's played as suave and confident and makes the mc just go "haguphuk" and we all know if this was old disney they would've leaned so hard into that. but i could not have been the only one to keep catching Matangi poking her buttons, the hand on her chin in one scene, just being a total fucking vibe like please i know what you are. that whole scene felt real gay and don't think im leaving Moana out of this one. she is gay, i don't make the rules. i'm stickin with this hc no one can stop me from making Matangi the cool lesbian aunt and NO ONE will stop me from turning Moana gay (Auli'i Cravalho knows what she's doing)

ok im gonna be so real for a second i was simping HARD over Moana's character design in this movie.... like even more than baby me was dying during the first one... like this girl is just- oh my gosh. baby-gay me from 8 years ago would have actually DIED if she'd seen this Moana. it's almost embarrassing how down bad i was during that movie like she's so fucking pretty i wasn't ready for her design. like girls are just too much sometimes, i cant cope .

also side tangent but the lazy ass rewrite of Moana 2 from its planned version as a Disney+ series into a freaking MOVIE was just- so painfully obvious. like they didn't even try reworking it. the structure of the whole movie is painfully episodic and it was just so blatantly shoved into movie format without any care for the integrity of basic movie versus tv structure, so the char dev and pacing was just so rough. like what were the writers even thinkingggg. pretty disappointing but that's ok i have the fandom to make me feel better (moana fan art save me....)

[hellohellowelcome]

Standard shonen endings have rotted some people's brains. I've seen so many dudebros disappointed that Izuku didn't at the very least "bag his girl" as some sort of reparation for losing his quirk. And so much Ochako slander for "ghosting" Izuku for 8 years for being quirkless (not true btw, leak mistranlastion) because she wasn't explicitly Izuku's endgame love interest in typical shonen fashion. I even saw a tweet doing crazy numbers (70k+ likes) suggesting that Izuku should've gotten with Hatsume because at least she spent 8 years working on his suit....? Ask yourself why you feel like Izuku needed a canon love interest post-time skip to be happy. And then ask yourself why you hate women and view them as the MC's "much-deserved" reward for saving the day.

[sforzesco]

DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis

Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie

Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson

Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong

[auuwmk]

HAPPY YAOI DAY

only real ones know my yuri day one

[violent138]

HC that Crime Lord Red Hood routinely donates medical equipment, money, and well-trained black market medics (formerly employed by gang leaders he took down) to Leslie's clinic. He's also obsessive about updating or improving the generators at the clinic and wears her down in a way that Batman couldn't.

[shorthaltsjester]

Imogen Temult, Exaltant Hope of the Red Storm

Heroes and Monsters by Penny & Sparrow // Critical Role Campaign 3