#like . using up their food etc . that i rejected it for a while . which is dumb as fuck bc straight up rejecting to eat smns cooking

[harfanfare]

I like to think that romance with Idia widely differs depending on the time you’ve been in a romantic relationship.

1. “Just started dating” stage.

If you're reading Idia fanfiction, there is an 80% chance this is the stage your relationship is on.

Idia is… treating you like a very precious stranger. He's on his toes and seeks your approval in whatever he's doing. He is going to great lengths to understand the theory of dating and your hobbies - so you can maybe share even more interests - but won’t really act on anything.

He’s constantly surprised by every romantic move you make and you have numerous occasions to adore his cherry blush and various puckles of hair igniting with pink and red. He stutters a lot and can’t focus on anything in your presence.

Idia will outright reject any suggestions for bolder moves. He’s unprepared, and although guilt is eating him from the inside, he is not up to anything you two weren’t doing as friends. Well, maybe handholding, kissing, and cuddling get a (hard) pass, but you are the only one initiating these things.

He will try his best to reciprocate effort, though.

2. “Have been dating for a while” stage.

It’s an interphase between two very different stages, so he’s a funny mix: a very shy outsider and a cocky genius at the same time.

Gaming sessions will be the centre of your couple's time. Idia regularly invites you to his dorm, sometimes even on spontaneous sessions when a new event comes up or he has found a new game that looks very cool. You share snacks, drinks, and clothes (read: you have unwritten permission to claim his blouses).

This boy would be dead without you and Ortho, and with that knowledge, you make it your mission to (somehow) tidy up his room, buy some cosmetics, healthier food, etc. If you are up to organizing a “self-care evening”, he will be hesitant at first but will be looking forward to it after a while, with some older anime. (I like to think it would be a magical girl series like Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew or Chobits, or some shoujo).

In exchange, he might construct some little gadgets (maybe anime-themed?) for you, helps you get the merch you want, and supports you in your games.

At this point, he doesn’t weigh his words much. He’s still easy to fluster, but he comes with comebacks right away. The most flirty he gets on the phone when it’s late at night and you are using a chat to talk, especially when you are not in the same room. 3. Long-term relationship stage.

He knows you are doomed to him and shamelessly takes advantage of that.

He has no claims against calling you in the middle of the night to watch him sharing his screen when he pulls for a character he wants to get in the gacha system. He believes your presence brings him luck, so he must have you when he does crucial things!

Idia disses your taste in fictional men. Sometimes, he reads the dialogues out loud from the otome games you play. He may alter them, which can make you either huff or laugh. If you read or write fanfiction, he might read them too, giving you an out loud commentary on some fragments and asking you if you are that desperate for dates so you are sending fanfiction to inspire him. If you say yes, he will hum and return to whatever he was doing before, but he might plan something out that you will preferably be able to do in his room.

Chatroom with him and Ortho is quite calm, almost polite, but your private chatroom with Idia is the most chaotic one you’ve ever been. You learned to not leave your phone openly if you don’t want to explain some inside joke with a layered backstory. An app you use to chat with Idia is the one your screen time is counted on most, and writing with Idia is your guilty pleasure.

If you are interested in IT, he might program you an app or something to help you with it! He will give you the best feedback ever, and although it may be harsh, the last thing he wants is to discourage you from learning further.

On one anniversary of your dating, he will gift you this kind of couple bracelet which lights up if the other person touches it. He created them himself. When he receives signals throughout the day, he thinks of them as a promise from you, that no distance can sever your bond.

If you bring up some serious talk, you will be bullied with memes. It’s Idia’s coping mechanism. He will plan his future with you, don’t worry, but wait for him to muster up the courage to get on one knee and ask the question.

[walkawaytall]

I really wish there was more interest in how to handle ADHD other than just addressing the symptoms that affect the people around us.

Like, the best pharmaceutical treatment we have right now is stimulants, and I agree that being on stimulants 24 hours a day, 365 days a year is probably not good for your body. Hell, I’m on a less-than-ideal dose of my medication from a concentration perspective because the ideal dose had my resting heart rate sitting at a cool 115BPM. I know taking med holidays is important. I know all of this.

But because ADHD isn’t just an attention problem (or may not actually be an attention problem at all at its core), it sucks that the only time period medical professionals seem to be concerned about treating are the “important” times: the length of a school or workday. Forget the fact that ADHD affects executive function, forget the fact that people with ADHD often experience chronic and unending anxiety and/or depression as a result of the ADHD, forget that there are important times that have nothing to do with an 8-hour school or work day, forget the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, the sensory issues that make things like clothing, food, and group situations a nightmare to try to navigate, the household stuff that has to be taken care of outside of the 8-hour school or work day. It feels like none of that matters because it doesn’t affect a group of fifteen or more people.

On top of ADHD, I have been plagued with anxiety-related issues for the majority of my life. I likely have a form of OCD and I have a history with a restrictive eating disorder; both of those conditions are very closely associated with high levels of anxiety. I’ve been on anxiety medications before. I was first given an as-needed medication that took the edge off but also made everything feel a little fuzzy, like there was a pane of glass between me and the rest of the world; I was put on an SSRI that somehow made my OCD-related intrusive thoughts about 50x worse than usual and had me wondering at one point if I should be hospitalized; and I’m currently on buspirone, which is doing what it’s supposed to do without the side effects of the others thankfully. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has reduced my anxiety as much as my ADHD medication.

Two hours after my first stimulant dosage, I just suddenly didn’t feel on-edge any more. I estimate that being on ADHD medication has reduced my anxiety by about 70% (buspirone’s for the other 30%). I started taking it in the summer of 2020 and I remember, in 2021, when I saw my boss in person for the first time since lockdown, he remarked on how much more confident I seemed, how I was more likely to speak up in meetings, etc. And I was like…yeah, man, it’s a wonder what not feeling anxious every second of every day will do for someone.

ADHD affects so much more of my life than just attention and anxiety, too. I have sensory issues with mine, which is pretty common, and they make eating — an already sometimes-complicated task due to the ED history — difficult at times because, while I can eat foods that I don’t particularly like, if something is what I call “the bad texture”, I will gag no matter how hard I work to overcome it (believe me, I’ve tried). And my brain sometimes decides that foods that were previously fine are now “the bad texture” and they may or may not shift back to being okay eventually; I don’t know.

The sensory issues affect me socially. My therapist and I have recently come to the conclusion that I’m probably not actually an introvert, but if I’m around larger groups, that means noise and movement and probably being touched, and too much of that causes my brain to either freak out or shut down. I used to always say, “I love people, but when I’m done, I’m done.” And that was likely because the overstimulation was building and building in the background, and at a certain point, my brain would just be like, “We gotta get outta here.” I was Queen of Irish Goodbyes for a very long time because of this.

And the executive dysfunction affects…well..everything? Not just work, not just school (but also those because if my environment is chaotic, my brain feels chaotic, and it is difficult to maintain a non-chaotic environment if you keep getting stuck on order of operations when picking up a room).

I’m not saying that I want to be on longer-lasting stimulants or that I want to be on the higher dose that I know helps my concentration more, cardiovascular system by damned. What I’m saying is, I wish treatment research had been more holistic rather than just figuring out what would give teachers and managers an easier time despite what the person with ADHD might be dealing with as soon as their meds wear off.

Maybe current research is working on it; I don’t know. I just know that, the older I get, the more frustrated I am with my brain and the more apparent the deficiencies I used to be able to counteract with pre-chronic-illness energy and crushing perfectionism become, and I wish there was an answer to this that actually helped me most of the time rather than forcing me to pick which parts of my day/week is “important” and making sure I’m medicated for those parts.

[moonyinpisces]

I am curious what you, a preeminent Aziraphale Understander, thinks about all the Final Fifteen theories i.e. the slew of theories that basically boil down to the F15 are not to be taken at face value, Aziraphale is either lying under threat or being manipulated by the Metatron via coffee or whatever, etc.

thank you for asking! it is a blessing and a curse to understand aziraphale but i will do my very best to put vibes into words. like everything he did in the final fifteen tracks to me, but i'll try to explain why in case people are still struggling with it. obligatory this is my opinion blah blah blah but if you disagree then make your own post so it's easier for me to ignore

anyway. here's the thing. i think textually it's pretty clear that aziraphale didn't have a choice. i think the show made that obvious with the "give me coffee OR give me death", the title sequence includes a coffee cup marching along with the other figures, this being a shared moment of materiality/consuming human food which was established as significant in "othering" angels/demons from their respective sides in the job minisode. the end result is meant to be a kinship to rationalize aziraphale agreeing with the metatron, as everything about the metatron in e6 was designed to 1. attract aziraphale 2. repel crowley

the repulsion worked on crowley, even just secondhand. he sees the manipulation and understands that aziraphale being used as distraction for the second coming is far more significant than what aziraphale believes he is capable of towards making any meaningful change in heaven. but i don't think the metatron's attraction worked on aziraphale. i don't think the end result we saw was aziraphale agreeing because the metatron was likable, and i think he's fully aware of the manipulation (even if he doesn't know about the second coming yet). just as, with the coffee cup, he is fully aware that he has no other choice. of course, this isn't a removal of autonomy to aziraphale; most of his character choices throughout the series are him working inside the idea that he he NEVER has a choice anyway (re: god's plan, ineffable or otherwise). and in this case, he knows just as well as crowley does that he was offered this position in heaven to be split up from crowley/earth for whatever reason; he just absolutely thinks that what he'll be able to achieve in heaven overrides however the metatron thinks he'll be able to be restrained/distracted. and in a much larger sense, he sees this as something he's meant to do via god

and aziraphale wants crowley to come with him. that's not fake or naive, and he doesn't think crowley will refuse bc their communication skills are quite literally the central conflict of the show. aziraphale is like, look how powerful we are together. look how much heaven wants to split us up. if you come with me to heaven, we are in a much better position of making meaningful change so we can have a peaceful existence together in the future, ON earth. which is what you clearly want. and i don't think this is a naive viewpoint to have like other people have said; i think this is confident. i think aziraphale is saying we can change the FOUNDATIONS of heaven, while crowley is saying the foundations CANNOT be changed. they are operating off two different modes of thought. and aziraphale uses crowley's perceived 'rejection' as fuel when he steps on that elevator, not out of anger towards crowley (at least not genuinely) but as desperate fodder to the fire that's been stoking 6000-so years of anger. in that moment (regarding the smile in the elevator), following the look to the bentley after he learns about the second coming and understands what crowley knew and was purposefully not saying, i just think that to aziraphale, crowley becomes another person to prove wrong

so ultimately did aziraphale have a choice? no. does he know this? yes. does he still make the decision to accept the supreme archangel position as if he had a choice? also yes. why? because he's insane (i say this with love). and also he has aligned himself with god more than he's ever aligned himself with heaven, and he's going to show everyone what he's capable of

[runawaycarouselhorse]

Our pure-hearted, all-loving hero... he can be a little brat (especially back in OS/early in his journey, when he was much more of a hot-blooded boy hero), but his heart's worth its weight in solid gold and he grows into such a kind, patient character with strong ideals, which is why Hero of Ideals suits him best (even the movie manga opted to adapt that version of the movie, rather than the one where Ash is Hero of Truth, and expanded on it!)

[I hope you have "long post" and "image heavy" muted if you need to, because this post's a doozy and given tumblr, if my blog's ever deleted, posts with read mores will be rendered inaccessible forever, so I don't like to make them!]

A lot of people complained about how young Ash looked in BW! (and complained even more about Sun & Moon's very divisive art style... and we wound up seeing great growth for his love of a whole region, and achieved a goal integral to achieving his dreams), but from the first episode of BW!, my first impression was of how mature and calm Ash is with Iris and Trip in regards to their initially abrasive and varingly aloof personalities.

Iris was friendlier and more excitable, more childlike, but Ash took her barbs in stride and patiently waited for her to open up about her dreams (she keeps it secret in the first episode, using that cute, childish word "naisho" instead of saying it's a secret "himitsu"--the same childish word she uses when asked about what Kairyuu/Dragonite told her in their reunion episode) and background (we don't know she ran away from the academy or what her hometown was like until season 2!)

The way Ash handled Tory (who was a traumatized, younger child--and Ash wanted to fight him at first, before understanding him!), Lucario (also traumatized, insulted Ash and Pikachu's bond--Ash fought him and fell off a hill, wrestling with him, before he saw Lucario's memory of being "abandoned" and broke down in tears, apologizing for what he said when he didn't know anything...), Chimchar (a traumatized Pokemon, Ash was patient, kind, and loving to him, even when he lashed out while out of control due to Blaze, which he previously could only use to save his life...), etc., is very different from how he handled Iris (who was bullied subtly by being completely ostracized, no one would sit or eat or play with her at the academy, she was so depressed, she stopped eating--this is canon and not lingered on, but she plainly says it and that her dorm mother making her food that would remind her of home, just berries skewered on a stick, "saved her") and even Trip.

(By the way, Ash apologizing to Lucario, in tears of regret over what he said to Lucario when he didn't understand him is when I first started to truly love and respect Ash's character and growth! Before that, I really was only a big fan of the TRio.)

By contrast to those rockier beginnings with other kids, Ash was patient and encouraging with Trip, even while Trip purposefully kept him and everyone else (even his Pokemon who loved him, as Alder said...) at bay and rejected all his attempts at friendship, before he got the answers he needed from Alder and slowly stopped shutting others out. He had every right to lash out at Trip for making fun of him, but kept trying to befriend him and showed interest in his journey and growth.

(Trip was also his youngest main rival at that point, even if he is a very book-smart child prodigy type who was an excellent battler from the start, he still fell apart in front of unexpected, unorthodox techniques like Bell/Bianca and Satoshi/Ash's out-of-the-box strategies.)

Naturally, there's also his very patient and encouraging bond with Lillie, who also had her trauma-induced fear of Pokemon (much like Tory!) and dissociative amnesia, the early loss of her father in infancy, and the distance between her and her mother (too wrapped-up in work and her obsession with Ultra Beasts to notice her own child's trauma and falling behind her peers...) to overcome, but the focus of this post is BW! I already write a lot about Lillie, she's another favourite of mine. <3

It's worth noting, too, that Pikachu was Ash's first "problem Pokemon"... even if it's usually the Fire types who are traumatized, Pikachu has abandonment issues like Chimchar and Tepig did. Pikachu famously hates being inside a pokeball and Ash always repesects this boundary and becomes very, very upset in XY when he believed Pikachu was forced into a pokeball... the pokeball factory episode was, otherwise, a very light-hearted episode, but Pikachu's boundaries and possible trauma is taken seriously.

This scene mirrors a similar breakdown Alain has when he finds out all he's done, under the impression he was protecting his loved ones, was aiding Lysandre's genocidal plans... both smash their fists into hard surfaces, blaming themselves for failing to protect loved ones.

In a very early Kanto episode, Sparks Fly for Magnemite, we learn Pikachu has abandonment issues so bad, he doesn't want to be separated from Ash for even an overnight stay in the Pokemon Center. It seems Pikachu (fortunately) quickly become much more secure in his bond with Ash and no longer fears being separated for medical treatment, but this is very, very sad and telling!

Although we never delve very deeply into that for most of the series... (an early magazine scan has Ookido-hakase/Professor Oak theorize Pikachu's previous trainer abandoned it), we were finally given some answers late in series!

In the AU movie, Pikachu says* his reason for not going into the pokeball: "It's because I always want to be with you." ;O;

... unless this is a dream or hallucination, given Ash is on the verge of unconsciousness when it happens--but if we really want to believe it happened, maybe his latent Aura post-cognition abailities kicked in and he understood Pikachu's feelings, like when Victini slept in his lap, crying, and Ash saw Victini's dream of his past.

As for the main series canon, in the first episode of Pocket Monsters 2019 (Pokemon Journeys), we learn Ash's Pikachu was a lone, possibly orphaned, Pichu, who was briefly raised by a Kangaskhan, carried in her pouch with her child, until he grew too heavy and quietly left at night (without saying goodbye) to live by his own strength, evolving into Pikachu as he did so.

If Lusamine not taking Lillie's (because they're irrational or not logical) feelings seriously gave her a complex where she always needed to claim her stances are "logical" even when they're based in emotion... I wonder what it tells us that "child prodigy" Trip defaulting to blaming his loss to Alder on him doing something wrong or being inherently lacking ("What did I do wrong? What do I lack?"), because he doesn't ever consider a simple difference in experience is all it is... that Alder's many years of wisdom and Pokemon training give him an advantage over rookie trainer Trip, who's shown to be averse to being called a "child" (Iris ropes him into battling Ash twice by calling him a kid), because he always has to prove he's an adult. He thinks there's something inherently "lacking" in him or "wrong" about his method if he doesn't achieve.

All of that is canon, but if you further analyze his character, Trip has a superiority complex, which is very often a defense mechanism to mask feelings of inferiority. He canonically places a lot of worth in the image he projects and constantly puts down others. Add that to being a child prodigy and his preoccupation with proving he's an adult (but doesn't bat an eyelid at someone calling him "unjust" for his violent methods in the Venipede episode, like he's already accepted being a terrible person, because he thinks striving for peace like idealistic Ash is "naive"--Trip has a very cynical view of adults, yet thinks of himself as such...)

Trip only cares to be seen as strong and mature, not good (he's not even surprised to be called bad, he's already accepted it, he doesn't care), and if he fails, he blames his lack of knowledge or his inherent nature as lacking.

Because his self-worth is in being a genius and being better than the rest, so he seeks outside validation, namely Alder's, who Trip behaves so jealously about, Alder canonically compares him to a fickle-hearted woman (well, he messes up the phrase 'Onna-gokoro to haru no sora.' "A woman's heart is as fickle as the sky of spring" because he was hitting on Junsa-san/Officer Jenny earlier, so he says "fickle as Junsa-san"... Freudian slip. ^^;;;;)

Trip, when asked what he was battling for, what he wanted to prove... he said it was to prove his strength to Alder.

That's all he wanted! To prove his strength and be acknowledged by his hero. Alder even asks him if he likes him. Adeku frankly asks it in the Japanese version, but the dub dances around with "do you have any admiration for a man such as myself"--which Trip doesn't answer verbally, although he really doesn't have to, because the scene makes it clear and is a lens that clarifies all his past behaviour.

That's all Trip wants: love and acknowledgement. Which he believed he could only get by becoming stronger, smarter, and more mature as fast as possible, likely taking Alder's to be some stronger and grow up quickly too literally, as head animator Iwane said, Shootie was just "a little too grown-up."

It takes a long, long time for Trip to unlearn prioritizing battles over anything else and to embrace childhood (which hey, is one of the main themes of BW!), because it's a precious time which we can never return to... so, Alder's current idealogy is to enjoy life, make friends, love Pokemon, and not dwell on the past. Ash's approach to being a Pokemon Champion and Master is the same.

Alder's introductory episode made it very clear he and Ash are very, very similar characters... and we see this again in Journeys, in the kind of advice Champion Ash gives younger kids. Ash and Alder have a similar wisdom they'd like to impart, I know, it's funny calling Ash wise, but he has high emotional intelligence and is incredibly wise in that respect for his age... it took Alder many, many long years to arrive at the same conclusion Ash reached.

Ash's Japanese name, Satoshi, means "Wisdom." (Another cute detail: Ash's little brother, Lei, whose Hawaiian name means a "Garland of Flowers-- in Japanese, would be pronounced as Rei, which also means "Wisdom." Lei likely has a name chosen to have meaning in both Hawaiian and Japanese. ^^)

Bonus shout-out to Ash, Iris, and Cilan all protecting Keldeo until he finds the courage to face his fears, correct his mistakes, and save his friends...

Ash is a very good friend, AG, DP, and BW! are all part of his development into the kinder character he became today. Some people might miss how rude he was to his friends in OS, but he can still playfully dish it out, he's just calmer and more sure of himself, so less likely to sweat the small stuff and recognizes when someone, whether Pokemon or trainer, just needs time and patience.

[vidavalor]

Bread: A Good Omens Sex Meta Thing

Let's talk Aziraphale and blasphemous sexual innuendo, shall we?

We are still going to talk about what the deal is with the Fish soon as promised but I wound up finishing this shorter one first. You do not have to have read my other metas to read this. NSFW under the cut.

What do *checks notes* Jesus Christ and Ella Fitzgerald have to do with Aziraphale's "get thee behind me, foul fiend" moment in 1.01... and how do they make it somehow even more delightfully filthy?

Probably as a result of putting on a show to sound angelic and demonic when speaking to one another in public, Crowley and Aziraphale seem to have a thing for using scripture, Bible references and/or Heavenly mandates as sexual innuendo.

It overlaps at times with their general love of wordplay and also their repeated use of destructive/apocalyptic terminology as sexual metaphor and innuendo, which is not unique to them but which they do a rather stellar job at. While all of these things are in multiple scenes and one of them-- the "seeds of destruction" scene in the car on the way to Tadfield-- is especially interesting and will be its own meta at some point soon, I'm not sure we've fully appreciated just how completely, gloriously obscene the "get thee behind me, foul fiend" moment in 1.01 is and that is largely what this meta is about.

In Good Omens, it's established in the 1.03 Cold Open that Satan himself didn't tempt Jesus Christ-- he sent Crowley to do it. While Crowley and Aziraphale witness the crucifixion of Christ, Crowley tells Aziraphale that he's the one who "showed him [Jesus] all the kingdoms of the world", which establishes that it's Crowley who tempted Jesus in the desert, in what would have been an attempt to claim Jesus' soul for Satan but which we can probably figure that Crowley wasn't particularly wild about, especially since he liked and admired Jesus. Spoiler alert for The Bible here lol but the story goes that Jesus rejected Satan, as you no doubt have heard. In Good Omens, this would then mean that Crowley failed to tempt Jesus, which he likely wasn't exactly heartbroken over.

Crowley appeared to tempt Jesus on three occasions and, throughout all of it, Jesus was fasting in the desert over 40 days and 40 nights. The first temptation was to turn stones into bread to relieve Jesus of his hunger. The second was to jump from a high cliff and rely on the angels to break his fall. The final temptation is the one that Crowley references to Aziraphale in the Golgotha scene-- to worship him in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus rejected Crowley at every turn and so was spared from Satan claiming his soul in what is arguably one of the most famous stories that has ever been told in all of human history, right?

The way this relates to sexual innuendo in 1.01, though, is related to the first temptation of Christ, which was to try to get Jesus to alleviate his own self-imposed hunger. It was to try to get him to eat bread-- actual bread for actual hunger for food. In Ineffable Husbands Speak, though, bread is related to sex by way of it being euphemistic for participants in partnered sex. (See: Mrs. Sandwich, who arranges for different breads to come together; references to black bread, brioche, sourdough, etc..). In 1.01, when Aziraphale drops "get thee behind me, foul fiend" while inviting Crowley into the bookshop (and into him), they have just come from eating lunch and 'lunch' is also their word for a food kinky date that ends with sex, as we looked at in the Crepes post, which I'll link at the bottom of this post, for anyone who hasn't read it and is interested.

So, what we're saying here is that Jesus refused Crowley's offer of relief from hunger for food and we know from The Bible that, in rejecting the last of Crowley's attempts to tempt him with all the kingdoms of the world, Jesus said: "Get thee behind me, Satan" (all of Satan's ministers being referred to as "Satan" as they are-- theoretically, anyway-- of The Devil). Later in The Bible, it is noted that Jesus also repeats "get thee behind me" in an intentional reference to his temptation in the desert when admonishing Peter for being too concerned with "worldly" things and not things that Christ felt were "of God."

Aziraphale. Knows. All of this.

Not even just because it's one of the most famous bits of The Bible and because parts of what is retold in The Bible are things Aziraphale has lived through. Just to make it abundantly clear to us that Aziraphale knows the story and that it was Crowley in the desert, they gave us the 33 A.D. scene, in which Crowley directly tells Aziraphale that it was him who failed to tempt Jesus... which adds some layers to Aziraphale using "get thee behind me" in 1.01, no?

Aziraphale-- an angel-- is standing there in 1.01, intentionally saying to Crowley the same words that *Jesus Christ* used to reject Satan through rejecting Crowley's temptations-- and he's using those words of Christ to invite Crowley *to fuck him.*

After Jesus rejected the temptation of bread but Crowley and Aziraphale? They just went to out to eat...

Aziraphale is enthusiastically not resisting any temptations and satisfying all the hungers here lol. Which is the point--

--much like the "tempt you to a spot of lunch?"/"temptation accomplished" scene, they're joking about temptation.

Pleasures like food and sex are not a sin and Aziraphale happens to like having both of those things with Hell's most notorious tempter, whom they both know Aziraphale has wrapped around his finger. Aziraphale is not risking his soul to enjoy being with Crowley-- the stakes are not the same, nor are the temptations, as what Jesus faced-- which is Aziraphale's dirty joke. Aziraphale's partner is a tempter for Hell who takes pleasure in being with Aziraphale, an angel who rebels against the repression of Heaven and allows himself to enjoy the good things in life. Crowley and Aziraphale tempt each other as they find each other tempting, in the sense that they're attracted to each other, but they don't view alleviating hungers for food and sex with one another as truly sinful.

Crowley is loving every minute of it, of course. His sweet, kind, lovely, clever angel who is also just so very deliciously bad that he's using innuendo related to that poor bugger Jesus to talk to Crowley about what they want to get up to in bed. Aziraphale is all Jesus might have resisted you but I've no such inclinations.

That's profane lol.

You just know they've also had conversations about how hot Jesus was that included some smirky references to consumption of "the body of Christ" and a dry "amen."

There is another thing "get thee behind me" references as well-- something that I think is a sharper reference after S2 added in a connecting piece to it. Here's where Ella Fitzgerald begins to come into this...

In S2, during The Resurrectionist minisode, Crowley, at one point, quips to Aziraphale: "you say potato, I say 'excellent'", which is an example of one of Crowley's historical anachronisms. As we know, he sometimes says things outside of historic time and place and another musical example of this occurs in this same minisode, when he sings "O Flower of Scotland" before it was actually written. The "you say 'potato', I say 'excellent'" has the lyrical rhythm of the famous Gershwin song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." The phrases "you say potato" and "po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to" literally come from the lyrics of this song so Crowley's "you say 'potato'" in The Resurrectionist minisode is 110 years before the song was first written and performed in 1937.

The fact that this reference is happening in the scene in which Crowley has switched his accent to Scottish, causing him to pronounce things differently than Aziraphale, is also part of a joke that goes along with that song, which is a duet built around using the different pronunciations of the same words to illustrate the love between a couple who sometimes see things differently but actually adore it in each other and really never want to be apart. The lyrics also use wordplay to marry food with love throughout the song (yes, it really is the most Crowley & Aziraphale song that has ever been written lol) and include a line around oysters, which are more than a little relevant to Crowley & Aziraphale's story.

Maybe funnier is that if you take Crowley's "you say 'potato'" moment in The Resurrectionist and you add it to Gabriel's arrival in 2.01-- in which an enormous bin of tomatoes spills at his feet and roll into the street-- you have a further reference to "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" because the first two lines of the song are centered around potatoes and tomatoes and what happens in the Gabriel scene? He turns around after putting down the box and the crowd gasps, right? There's been endless debate over what Gabriel's whole deal down below is and the show-- which basically couldn't show us even if they wanted to because it would up the content rating of the show past what the studios would prefer-- had an opportunity for ambiguity and took it. It ultimately doesn't impact the story they are telling if Gabriel was efforting in that moment or not or what kind of effort he was sporting-- the answer can be whatever you want it to be. The debate over it is very "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off", as it's "'you say 'to-MAY-to', I say 'to-MAH-to'". The end result of the scene is the same no matter what Gabriel's deal was in that moment, which is the point. To some extent, this is the show itself overall, too.

Okay, so why am I going on about Crowley's historical anachronisms in a meta about Aziraphale's blasphemous innuendo?

I'll explain how it relates to the "get thee behind me" moment on the other side of the song, which I've included in case you think you know this song but you aren't sure or if you do know it and just want to listen to some Ella. :)

I bring this up in a meta about biblical blasphemy because it's actually the second, subtle reference to Ella Fitzgerald in the series-- the first is actually "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan"... which is also an Ella Fitzgerald song from the 1930s. Specifically, it is an Irving Berlin song that was also, like "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off", written for film, during the same period. ("Get Thee..." was written in 1935 and first played in a film the following year; "Let's Call..." written & performed in 1937.) The fact that the Jesus-ish "The Resurrectionist" minisode had another subtle nod to Ella Fitzgerald might strengthen the idea that Aziraphale is also referencing the Ella Fitzgerald song in 1.01, as well as the Biblical story that it references.

Making things even more interesting is one of the possible reasons for Crowley's historical anachronisms in the series in the first place, which might be that they hint at some of the ways that our professional midwife/cobbler Bildad the Shuite has been subtly influencing humans towards different ideas throughout history.

There's another meta on my blog about a different reference that ties to this a bit and it relates to how some of Crowley & Aziraphale's dialogue during the scenes of The Blitz so far (both parts) reference the 1957 film 'North by Northwest', which had the same screenwriter-- Ernest Lehman-- as the film adaptation of 'The Sound of Music'. Since the film came out 16 years after Crowley & Aziraphale first said these things in 1941, the implication is that at least one of them might have known Lehman and the two of them are actually partly the inspiration for the main couple in the film. I talked in that post about how this is hinted at by Crowley's repeated euphemistic references to trains in S2, as 'North by Northwest' is responsible for originating trains-as-sexual-metaphor forevermore through some now very famous scenes.

If it's already canon that they knew classical composers and Shakespeare and such, it's not far off to suggest that this type of interaction continued into more modern times and that maybe the Gershwins, Irving Berlin and/or Ella Fitzgerald were people Crowley and Aziraphale knew whose work was then inspired by bits of their story. "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" could have been kicked off by one of them recounting (or Crowley repeating) the "you say 'potato'", which is bound to happen anyway, since Crowley and Aziraphale are so self-referential about their past in how they speak with one another, like every old married couple. (This would also be interesting as it might point to them in New York in the mid-1930s.)

So, right, Aziraphale and blasphemy, yes, yes, we're back to that now... :)

Mah point is that whatever you think of Aziraphale's present musical tastes, he was absolutely listening to the then-current music of the 1930s and Ella Fitzgerald is an example of an artist that both he and Crowley would have liked and still like. They both know these songs so, at minimum, saying "get thee behind me" to Crowley is potentially not just referencing Crowley and Jesus in the desert but also referencing this Ella Fitzgerald song and what's of note here is that this is a very sexy song that is pure, blasphemous innuendo in the best way. It describes a secret night of passion between a couple in a forbidden relationship as being unable to resist temptation by comparing it, just as Aziraphale does to Crowley in 1.01, to Jesus' successful rejection of temptation in the desert.

Lyrics like this:

Get thee behind me, Satan I want to resist But the moon is low and I can't say "no" Get thee behind me

Get thee behind me, Satan I mustn't be kissed But the moon is low and I may let go Get thee behind me

It's possible that Aziraphale suggested the Biblical metaphor to Irving Berlin at one point and the song is actually inspired by Crowley and Aziraphale, even if no one but them knows just how much. At minimum, Crowley is responsible for this song in GO in the sense that it wouldn't exist without his interactions with Jesus in the desert, which would also be enough for Crowley and Aziraphale to just have a thing about the song. "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan" also being from the mid-1930s means that it pre-dates "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", so maybe there's even an element of this being one of their songs. At the very least, Aziraphale totally thinks of it as one.

...and have I mentioned that the last lyrics of the song are just the recurring Crowley line of "It's too late" repeated?

Someone I'm mad about Is waiting in the night for me Someone that I mustn't see Satan, get thee behind me...

First post in the 'GO sex meta things' series:

[forever-1895]

CALLING ALL Since I First Saw Your Face fans

Let's work together and post as many supportive things about this story so hopefully the author sees and feels motivated to update!

In case you don't know, Since I First Saw Your Face by Stavia_Scott_Grayson on ao3 (@artemisastarte on Tumblr) rewriting the Sherlock Holmes books from the point of view of Holmes. It very realistically develops the relationship between this iconic duo, taking into account the events which would have happened at that time in history (e.g. Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, Jack the Ripper 1888, etc), and the period typical homophobia is shockingly well researched. Even the concerts Holmes & Watson go to actually happened at the times stated in the story.

At the start of each chapter, there is a painful (3rd person) recording of the time Holmes spent abroad toiling after Moran (the late Moriarty's right hand man) during the hiatus (after faking his death at the Reichenbach Falls); about how he wishes above all to return to England and see Watson again, whom he misses in extremity.

Holmes receives news from England via Mycroft (his brother), which updates him about the state of affairs in England. Apparently, Watson has been wasting away after his wife's & Holmes' death. Mycroft tells Holmes that if he doesn't return quickly, Watson may be no more.

However, Holmes cannot return, as some things still need sorting out. He does however, ask Mycroft to send Watson The Sigerson Papers, an account written by Holmes under the name of Sigerson about the things he experienced in Asia. Watson notices that Sigerson is a lot like Holmes, and asks Mycroft whether his beloved is still alive.

However, even after finding out Holmes is still alive, Watson's condition doesn't improve. He feels betrayed. 3 years of hell, and Holmes was lying to him the whole time. He still loves Holmes, but all the same, he is not pleased.

Mycroft sends to Holmes about this, and Holmes is torn between homesickness and the fear that Watson will no longer like him. Holmes bides his time in Asia, until one day a letter from Watson arrives, telling him that he knows that Holmes is scared to return for fear of how he might react, and that though he is angry, he still loves him and wishes more than anything to have him back.

After a section detailing Holmes in Asia post-hiatus, there will be a recounting of events years ago, starting from when Holmes first met Watson, who was very weak and ill after returning from the army. Holmes takes a liking to him almost instantly, though he tries not to show it. Holmes describes moving in together, and even pays their landlady (Mrs. Hudson) to provide extra nutritious food for Watson so he might recover faster.

Holmes helps Watson get over his Soldier's Heart (PTSD, I think), Watson accompanies Holmes to cases, Holmes plays the violin for hours on end just for Watson's enjoyment, they go to concerts together, and support each other when one is feeling depressed.

All while this happens, Holmes tells us of his struggles of hiding his sexuality and desire from Watson, the struggles he has fighting his drug addiction, and the struggles of being an invert (homosexual) in the late 18th to early 19th century.

We also have some VERY tense scenes for when Watson is being too kind to Holmes and Holmes is about to let his feelings pour out his mouth like a waterfall, but fear of rejection holds him back.

It builds up to Holmes & Watson first meeting Moriarty at a concert, and then all the trouble starts from there.

Moriarty is constantly trying to cause distress for Holmes, first sending an anonymous letter to the police accusing of the two of sodomy, a terrible crime at the time period, taking advantage of multiple female murders and framing Watson for having committed them, and though disproved, it shows how close Moriarty can get to Holmes without even appearing; it's always one of Moriarty's goons who does it for him.

Moriarty threatens Holmes to end his association with the good doctor at another concert some years later or he will never cease trying to condemn Watson, and sooner or later, he'll succeed in ruining him.

All this unfolds while Watson is chatting animatedly to a Mrs Forrester and a Miss Mary Morstan in another area of the concert hall...

And that's what's happened so far. There's a LOT more, but I don't have time to write it all 😝.

In conclusion, post-hiatus: Holmes is still in Asia pining for Watson, Watson is pining for Holmes in England, and pre-hiatus: Watson has just met Mary, and Moriarty is stirring up a ruckus. SO NOW DO YOU SEE WHY WE NEEEED AN UPDATE? IM DYING HERE!

and to make y'all feel better, in case you haven't read it yet, Watson does reciprocate Holmes affections

[deadtiredghost]

oh sorry I meant your opinion on the character.

I love all the turtles but have differing opinions of them across itterations.

Raphael is such a great character with so much potential and I think that this potential isnt explored enough in any of the series really - though I think the same about all the characters really. I know there is only so much you can include in a kids series etc. which is why we have fanfiction!

Obviously everyone associates Raph with anger issues, but I really dont; I think the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Raph is protectiveness and sensitivity. Raphael definately has issues with regulating his emotions but not much more than any of the other turtles tbh. The main issue with his 'anger' is that he resorts to violence first while others like Leo or 2012 Donnie resort to shouting first. ya know? Siblings argue and are competitive, especially when you live in the sewers with no one but your father and brothers for company. They're teenagers who only really have each other, so of course they're gonna act kinda odd and sometimes innapropriate to us - humans who have grown up in normal society.

When it comes to the canon relationships, I can't see Raph with a human. full stop, I personally dont see him attracted romantically to humans. I enjoyed 12!RaphMona, I like the fact that Raph crushes on a woman who can beat him up, its cute and their relationship is cute puppylove which is refreshing, but I enjoyed it more as an idea than the actual episodes that were shown, sorry I cant get over the betrayal (he deserves to be happy tho). Would have loved more episodes about Mona adjusting to earth - or Raph trying to learn her language and adorably mispronouncing her actual name. On the other hand 03!Raph aromantic anyone? anyone? just me? okay.

favourite itteration of Raph: I love them all equally!(lie) I would love to say I love them all equally but my favourite always will be: 'Don vs. Raph' by Jhonen Vasquez from SDCC (check it out)

In a brief few words I'll include my thoughts across the cartoon series:

(in retrospect: this is not brief. I wrote much more than I intended rip.)

(tldr: I like the Raphs and want more content about them.)

1987 - uses sarcasm and insults as a defense mechanism because they have lived in a world that continuously rejects them despite saving it over and over. When they meet the other itterations in crossovers they are delegated to 'comedic relief' and no one takes them seriously. So of course they're annoyed about everything half the time. Despite this they are probably the only 'passive' Raphael and can take an insult but doesnt enjoy fighting physically - though this doesnt mean they are incapable of it, they're still a ninja. the 1987 slander is large and unjustified, it's great. There is also not a day goes by that I remember that Raph chose to spend their 'last moments' playing superhero for humans who will never accept them - i think this reflects all the Raph's really. they dont want to be monsters they want to be accepted by humans deep down, even if part of them resents humans for all that they have put them through

2003 - his accent and whole demenour is 'cause he enjoyed movies with characters similar to how he presents himself growing up - obvi. I think he would be that judgemental and protective wine aunt over Casey and April's kids. We know he has a soft spot for kids across all the itterations and he would be every kid's favourite babysitter. He is a wine drinker not a beer drinker and no one can convince me otherwise. Casey thought he was an adult for like at least a year because of the way he sounds and talks, and Casey only realised he was a teenager because Raph rejected a beer etc. Raph was a stickler for 'health' as a teenager - like paranoid about junk food, smoking and drinking fucking up his health and ability to fight etc. As an adult he might drink recreationally but I still see him and Leo as the paranoid ones about 'drinking too much' and getting caught unawares by their enemies. or something.

Honestly though on the first watchthrough of 2003 I was happy that they made Raph progressively get more mellow and all that, becuase 2012 Raph's 'anger issues' were handled so badly. But now as an adult I was like... he deserves to be more angry if anything. Like with everything they go through all the turtles realistically should get more and more emotional as they react to the trauma of everything going on in their lives. So I would like to see more fanfic of Raph in 2003 dealing with his emotions which are too strong to control after the series is over, and how he deals with controlling his emotions. He is impulsive and nearly gets himself or everyone else killed quite a few times - I think this is key. We know his greatest fear is himself becoming the person who hurts his family, so I think this self-loathing is a part of how he deals with his anger issues. His main driving force for everything he does is how he wants to protect his family. But is self-loathing a stable and sustainable way to deal with your emotional issues? You decide!

2007 - following on from that, I see 07!Raph as very similar, especially if 07 follows on from the 1990 movies. Raph is depressed and in denail and becoming a vigilante is just as much out of some obligation he feels to justify his existence (to prove he isn't a monster,) and a way to vent his frustrated emotions at everyone and everything. He is angry with Splinter for sending Leo away but Splinter is his father who (is a bit of a shit dad in the movie lets be honest) demands perfection and respect, he is angry with Leo for leaving and never taking their emotions into account (all four of them have been together their entire life, they have never spent a significant amount of time away from each other and something bad could happen to Leo without Raph knowing or being there to protect them), he is angry at Donnie for being gifted the 'leader role' when Raph barely just adjusted to listening to everything Leo said and hates being told what to do by anyone; his dad, his older brother let alone his younger brother/twin (however you want to see their relationship). He is resentful of his brothers for 'making' him be a vigilante alone and he is angry with himself the most for being unable to adjust to this change and for feeling like if Nightwatcher is taken away from him he might have a breakdown -(he will have no outlet for his emotions). Raph = Angry Angsty Emo Boi. But he is still Raph and he is still soft on the inside, he is just a little traumatised from everything and needs therapy. Unfortunately therapy doesn't work if you dont actively want to change.

2012 - the audhd is strong with this one. Unfortunately when I see 12!Raph I just see myself *sob*. This entire family is so traumatised and have no adults in their life that they can rely on. I said his 'anger issues' were handled the worst: I stedfast believe that his 'anger issues' were simply undiagnosed neurodivergence and that the majority of his emotional outbursts were ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED. His entire family call him the 'angry one' and tread on egg shells around him a lot of the time waiting for him to blow up or just expecting him to and having really irritating (to me) reactions to his emotions. for example, when Mikey ruins his stuff on purpose and Leo just tells Raph that 'posessions are fleeting' or whatever. Like sometimes Mikey is just teasing and riling Raph up to get a reaction, normal sibling behaviour, but sometimes they just go overboard - case en point, Leo's comics being used as toilet paper which he then proceeds to beat Mikey up for. All his brothers piss him off sometimes (on purpose I might add) but there is a big difference between a snide comment and ruining someone's possession methinks. I wouldn't do that to my bro and he wouldn't do that to me - but I understand that the turtles grew up with no one but each other and that Mikey tries to joke around for a laugh and/or attention sometimes. But Splinter singles out Raph in training and nothing that anyone says or does actually helps Raph in his attempts to control his emotions. Not out of maliciousness or anything, just that they dont understand him or incorrectly assume where the anger is coming from (in Splinter's case I think he sees himself and all his own flaws in Raph, clouding his judgement). But ya, Raph's emotional crutch was venting to Spike who was his only friend and his beloved pet... and we all know how that turned out. But also he probably doesn't do the same with Chompy because of how Slash turned out. I think he consciously realises that he only talked shit about his family to Spike and thats why Spike incorrectly assumed he hated his family and was better without them, so now, he consciously choses not to do that. I like to think that after everything the entire family get better coping mechanisms becuase April's dad is a therapist, please by god let him be useful for once. 12!Raph is incredibly protective and incredibly paranoid and rightly so with how their lives have gone, but it isnt a sustainable mindset and he will run himself dry with that if he continutes - much like his brothers.

2018 - this is such a fun take on what things might be like if Raph was the eldest! I like to think that biologically Leo and Donnie are older than Raph but Splinter just aged them based on how big they were and how their development went (Raph talked first or something). Raph is more responsible but still the headstrong idiot that we know and love. I think the protectiveness is inherent to all Raph's and all that, but that deffo stems from an accident in his childhood. I'm thinking he got angry or overstimulated and hurt one of his brothers because he is so much bigger and spikier, which leads Splinter to giving him a few books on anger issues or child psychology - this could also be a fun source of Mikey's interest in psychology. Donnie is canonically ASD and Mikey is canonically ADHD, I think Splinter got some parenting books on neurodivergent kids and helped Raph with his own emotional issues better than in the other itterations. Either that or Raph is repressing, repressing repressing - both ideas are fun to write! But then Raph's whole 'Savage' thing, which stems from getting lost in the tunnels as a kid - we have seen before that mutants can go feral when left alone over time like 12!Splinter. etc. ALSO! never forget that Draxum created them as super soldiers which might imply that they have some propensity for violence ingrained in their DNA and all that - possibly why he used animals instead of humans at first.

Raph also probably had no strict education along with the rest of his siblings, and they all definately grew up on more modern tv which I think separates them from their counterparts a bit - more chaotic than uniform. They get that from their father of course. 18 makes jokes that are self aware and this leads me to believe that Raph is very aware of his issues "tire, laceface - my emotional crutches" he has plushies and physical affection that he relies on to help his self-esteem issues (the clothing episode "i'm a disaster" as soon as he faces a tiny amount of criticism). It's all reading really nerodivergent to me - wouldn't supprise me is every single one of the 18!turtles had issues with rejection sensitive dysphoria.

Raph has eldest dughter syndrome of course but I firmly reject the idea that Splinter was neglectful as a father when they were kids and Raph was parentified, because it's canon that Splinter was involved in his kids lives and did a lot of things with them, including lemonade stands which would have to be playing protend as they were in the sewers, and the Lair Games. But Raph is shown to not really know how to deal with his bros (such as using a baby voice with Donnie and trying to baby Mikey etc). I do not think that my beloved Red raised these chaotic motherfuckers.That being said when they got into their teens they become more independent etc. sneaking around as to not worry their dad (same as 2003 where they go against their dad's orders to stay home multiple times) and there is clear evidence for emotional neglect, especially with the twins. (personal info here: I have an anxious attachment style, but both my parents were present and doting my entire life, they were just not exactly what I needed etc. and worked 24/7 throughout my childhood - I see Splinter to my dad, down to the depressed infront of the TV 24/7 as I got older.) Splinter clearly loves his sons, but with Leo being so similar to Splinter personality wise (similar to 12!Raph I think that Splinter has a hard time connecting because he sees everything he hates about himself but of course he loves it in his son and conflicting emotions etc.) and Donnie having a very independent and headstrong personality, I think Splinter misstepped and needs to fix it properly, but wasnt entire shit.

MM - mutant mayhem Raph looks fucking hillarious and I'm so excited to see him in the series. Easily knew I would love him from the trailer and after watching the movie he looks like he has a great relationship with his bros, even if he can be critical of Leo - which is just teenager behaviour. I loved that in MM the turtles acted like kids, because they are kids and thats how kids act. I also anticipate that Raph might be a bit insensitive while getting absorbed in his own things, which I was thinking would be a fun conflict to write of course. He just wants to beat people up and I love that.

Mikey: you have a violence problem

Raph: it's not a problem; its a solution!

[jojotichakorn]

for the game - phum 🤲

you said i should do all of them, which is insane, but also thank you weeeee ✨🫶

i'm gonna put the headcanons under the cut though, y'all can send asks with other characters (& emojis) from here

🏳️‍🌈 a sexuality headcanon

i personally definitely headcanon him as gay.

🏳️‍⚧️ a gender headcanon

a good ol' cis boy.

😇 a headcanon about their religion/lack thereof

hmmm... i'd imagine he's probably not religious, because he was shipped off from thailand at a really early age, and no one was socialising him and really involving him in the culture oversees either, so religion probably just kind of naturally passed him by. at this stage, i also can't imagine when he would discover it later in life on his own either.

🧸 a headcanon about their childhood

well 💀 horrors beyond our comprehension, basically. tbh, we know quite a bit about it, but just to solidify, i think 1) his parents and oldest brother genuinely never called to talk to him; 2) fang did call almost every day, but it got to this slightly weird juxtaposition of like "oh, you're calling me, but then if i start complaining about the horrific situation i'm in, you shut me down", so it wasn't Great, 3) the distant relatives he lived with did not care about him at all, it was truly unimaginable levels of neglect; 4) he had zero friends and the "i cried every day" thing was not an exaggeration.

👻 a headcanon about what scares them

well, we know about heights. for some reason, i also think darkness. that's if we're talking specifically classic fears. if we're talking more psychological - definitely fear of rejection and abandonment.

👽 a headcanon about a weird quirk of theirs

i do not think he sleeps with his plushies, that's not really their function. they are a comfort item during the day and also just a special interest on their own, as a collection.

💤 a headcanon about their sleep

i actually think he has a really hard time falling asleep, specifically because he isn't used to feeling safe, and that's also why he wakes up at the smallest sound.

🦾 a disability headcanon

autism in the biggest boldest letters.

💝 a headcanon about their love language

i'm gonna be honest, it's all of them equally. he is very acts of service, he starts driving peem around everywhere almost right away, he exchanges food with both peem and fang, so they wouldn't eat what they don't like. crossing over into gift-giving as well, he bought peem a bunch of seafood even though he doesn't eat it because they were at sea and peem would have wanted to eat it, he buys peem stuff all the time tbh, he pays for toey as well. quality time is also up there - he follows peem around everywhere and doesn't mind just sitting there in silence while peem works on his art. physical touch, of course, he can't stop touching and kissing peem. finally, words of affirmation, he is really good at compliments and just talking about how much he loves spending time with his friends etc. like i always say, his heart is the size of a skyscraper, and he has so much love to give.

🫂 a friendship headcanon

he still has a really hard time making friends and i think it will take him a long time to actually start hanging out with his new friends from peem's friend group separately and not when everyone is invited.

💔 an angsty headcanon

his self-worth is incredibly shakey, it's truly like a game of tumble tower, when you can see that it's gonna fall on the next player's turn. and i think that, though it will get better, especially if the family thing is resolved correctly, it will genuinely take decades to deal with it fully.

🪢 a headcanon about their family

his parents are gonna get hit by a bus that will be driven by someone who looks suspiciously like me :)

📓 a headcanon about their hobbies

i think he definitely has a hobby that involves a lot of reality-escaping. probably not video games, because i can't remember seeing a good pc/console at his apartment. i am leaning more towards books and/or movies/series, something like that.

👗 a headcanon about their clothes

he does not really care about fashion rip 😔

🔪 a headcanon relating to fighting/violence

unlike fang, i actually don't think he was ever that big into it. he ended up in a couple of fights anyway, because of fang, but he himself is very 👉👈

🌟 a headcanon about their desires/wishes

i think he wants kids, but is afraid he is going to make a terrible father, because he hasn't really had any good examples of parenting throughout his childhood.

🥇 a headcanon about what they’re best at

perhaps a slightly weird answer to a question that's probably leaning more towards skills and achievements, but i'm gonna say taking care of people. he is very attentive and loving, he is genuinely just incredibly good at the small gestures and remembering things about other people and giving the right gifts and saying the right thing at the right time, etc. etc.

🍫 a headcanon about food

he eats a very limited amount of food, which is also why fang can only cook spaghetti - he learned to cook it specifically for phum, and phum just kept asking for the same thing every day. i wouldn't be surprised, if he isn't actually allergic to seafood as well, but just says that, because it's easier than explaining that he eats exactly seven foods and nothing else.

🎭 a headcanon about what they lie about

his exact feelings about his parents. i think he's been shamed a lot for feeling the way he does towards them, so he keeps making things up and skirting around the conversation, so he wouldn't have to directly say "i do not want to see them anymore".

❤️‍🔥 a romantic headcanon

he is extremely romantic in my opinion. i think he believes in soulmateism and true love and the whole shebang. i think he watches lots of romcoms and has probably seen every mlm storyline in existence, dreaming of his own gay little relationship. he has all the proper romantic gestures down to a fine art too, obviously.

💄 an appearance headcanon

yes, he did dye his hair that shade of brown to look more like a teddy bear. slash srs

🖕 a headcanon relating to anger

anger is his mortal enemy. he has a lot of it pent up inside (understandably so), but he thinks it's a very ugly feeling he is "not supposed to feel", so he suppresses it. whenever he feels angry, he just kind of goes inside his shell and leaves the situation.

😺 an animal related headcanon

he is a cat person (hence, peem).

😬 a headcanon about the worst thing they’ve done

straight up the agreement he made with peem at the beginning.

😭 a headcanon about the worst thing that happened to them

being abandoned by his parents at five years old.

😶 a random headcanon!

he isn't as close to toey as he'd like to be, because he is 1) autistic and 2) not particularly well-socialised, so he has a hard time really understanding what social rules to follow for their particular relationship. in his head, he definitely considers toey his younger brother and would absolutely just spoil him rotten and hang out with him a lot, but not a lot of that gets actualised in reality, because he's a little afraid of making any sudden big moves or actively saying that he feels about toey the same way fang feels about him.

[reikunrei]

"More than just an ordinary human."

It's that time again! Another Doctor Who episode wahoo!! Let's check out season 3, episode 6:

"The Lazarus Experiment"

So, Lazarus is, obviously, taken from the biblical figure of Lazarus who was brought back from the dead by Jesus. The story of his revival is meant to exemplify the power Jesus has over death itself, but I won't be talking about that in-depth here; the Bible-talk is more James's wheelhouse lol.

As it applies to this Doctor Who episode, it's not so much about coming back from the dead, but rather about cheating death. Professor Richard Lazarus has created an invention, which he calls a "miracle" (the same word used by Patty in reference to "Henry's" powers in tfs), that will essentially de-age anyone who steps inside.

(Peeping the fact that he specifically mentions the moon landing like Mr. Clarke mentions it in st3)

However, there's a catch! He didn't do his proper research! He didn't account for all possible variables! And something in his DNA is trying to change him! (Another tfs word! We love to see it!)

Rejuvenating, you say? Even after the Doctor blows up Lazarus in his monster form and he comes out entirely unscathed? Golly, I wonder who that reminds me of! Anyway.

So basically what happened is Lazarus "changed his own molecular patterns" by "hack[ing] into his own genes" which is SUCH a NINA-ass word to use. Don't even remind me of all the computer stuff that's being pushed in the st5 leaks and updates. This has seemingly activated something in his DNA that's trying to make him change, and that "change" is a giant scorpion-like monster that is absolutely ravenous. Before the Doctor and Martha are looking at his DNA, we see a scene of Dr. Lazarus grabbing a finger-food platter from one of the waitstaff at his invention's unveiling and scarfs it down, saying he's famished, which the Doctor isn't surprised by (it's insinuated that he understands, at least loosely, what's happening because of the Time Lord's ability to regenerate, which always wears them out and makes them very energy-hungry).

In his monster form, Dr. Lazarus drains all the "life-energy" out of several human victims in order to sate his hunger, leaving an empty shell. (Insert Vecna consuming his victims to get stronger, insert "Henry" killing animals in tfs to sate the Shadow and it being much more powerful when "he" finally kills Virginia, insert Max being left an empty body without a soul/life, etc. etc., you get the picture. Not to mention that the Doctor equates it to "squeezing the juice out of an orange" ... I wasn't expecting a little st vr connection, but I'll take it!). He has little to no control over his transformation, and while he can feel it coming on, he can't just snap in and out of it; it simply takes over and he changes. The first time we see him transform, he writhes on the ground in agony and his wife asks if it's "some kind of seizure" (smash cut to "Henry" in tfs seizing).

Later, after some running around, being chased, and doing some thinking, the Doctor explains to Martha that this "thing" (Lazarus) isn't alien, it's "strictly human in origin." This form was becoming "dominant" because the process of de-aging himself likely awoke some dormant genes that "evolution rejected...millions of years ago...forgotten until Lazarus unlocked it by mistake."

A big part of this episode is about hubris. Dr. Lazarus is overconfident in his invention, and he spends ample part of the start of the episode dismissing the Doctor and Martha when they both warn him that something may be wrong/this may be more dangerous than he realizes. On top of Dr. Lazarus seeking out youth/prolonged life, much like the idea that Brenner is looking for some sort of power/immortality of some kind in st (barely even touching on the other weird stuff like Brenner not aging in tfs between 1959-1979), a lot of it made me think of El tearing into Brenner in 4.08, especially her emphasis on him being the monster, on all of this being his fault, all because he couldn't let Henry go. Brenner has constantly been presented to us, throughout all mediums, to be fairly stubborn and determined to get what he wants, even if the results are catastrophic (ie. the number of guards and orderlies who have died helping him with his child dungeon project, all of the children themselves dying in one way or another, even his own ass getting jumped by a demogorgon and then shot to bleed out and "die" in the desert).

Which leads into the other core aspect of this episode: humanity.

Throughout all of Doctor Who, the Doctor makes it clear that he finds humans utterly fascinating, especially in their mundanity. He emphasizes the importance of everyone's individuality and tells everyone they're special and important, even if they don't really "do" anything. Simply being who they are is what makes them matter; they don't need to be useful or supply anything groundbreaking in order to be amazing in his eyes. They exist as humans, and that's all that matters.

In this episode, we see Lazarus talk about how humans, as they are now, are basically inferior. While a large part of his motivations are about the money he'll make off of such an invention, we learn later that he has a distinct and deep fear of death and being defenseless against it. He wants to "change what it means to be human," to give them "a chance...to evolve, to improve" and to make sure he never has to face death like he did as a child: terrified and vulnerable.

We get the two following conversations between the Doctor and Lazarus, one at about the midway point of the episode before shit really hits the fan, and the other is near the very end of the episode after shit has really hit the fan.

This next one is split into several pieces to get in all the lines because they say a lot that jumps out as very important and distinctly Brenner, with some smatterings of One's monologue and some Henry-isms, especially from tfs, and the general presence of many of The Words.

I wanna point out that the Doctor being at the London Blitz is a direct reference to the episodes I talked about in my last dw post. And I find it incredibly interesting that a lot of the original tfs promo was heavily centered around church, like how this final standoff is in a cathedral, even so far as having Mr. Newby originally be listed as Father Newby, etc., despite the final play not being as heavy-handed with the religious imagery. Idk it's just itching something in my brain! I also wanna note that, since it's kinda hard to see here, the camera pans around Lazarus in a counterclockwise circle, following the path of the Doctor as he circles him, and we aaall know how st loves to use circling camera shots like that.

I especially want to touch on the second conversation the Doctor and Lazarus have in the church. The Doctor speaks to him calmly, trying to get him to understand and have compassion for the experience that is being human rather than trying to cheat it, and that living an exceptionally long life really isn't all it's cracked up to be. Even though Lazarus is now a "monster," he's still intensely humanized. He's killed at least four people at this point, but the Doctor doesn't go about simply trying to belittle, dehumanize, or kill him.

When it comes to Brenner, unfortunately, we still don't know much about his past, but we have a lot we can assume or extrapolate, at least based off what tfs has told us and the gaps we can fill in from st itself. We know, at least vaguely, that he and his father had a strained relationship. During the opening sequence of tfs on the USS Eldridge, we hear Captain Brenner talking to his other shipmates about how "it's my kid's birthday today, he told me he hates me."

However, later in the show, Brenner tells "Henry" that his father's return from Dimension X and subsequent death because of it compelled him to join Project Rainbow and devote his life to the cause and figure out what happened. With "Henry's" seeming ability to survive being infected by the Shadow, Brenner tries to tap into that. His main goal in tfs is to make contact with the Shadow and figure out what happened to his father, and since it's then explained that he made more children like "Henry" (specifically the immunity to the Shadow/the shared blood that supposedly gives them that immunity), it's clear he's trying to avoid is father's fate in that way. In short, it very much comes off as an attempt to try and cheat death.

Brenner, throughout the show, often presents what he does as good, both for the children in the lab and for humanity as a whole (though specifically for the US, focused on beating back those nasty commies). Even if he does bad things, it's for the greater good! He has good intentions! That's gotta count for something, right? /s

Both Lazarus and Brenner went into their respective experiments because they thought they could become better than human. Or in Brenner's case, at the very least he could live vicariously through his experiments to feel better than human, which was explicitly touched on in the vr game in clips like this one. As we also see in st4, El tries to call Brenner a monster, but when she relays this thinking to Vecna, he rejects it, and calls Brenner "an ordinary, mediocre man."

Shortly after that first conversation I showed between Lazarus and the Doctor on the rooftop, after Lazarus transforms, there's a sequence where, from inside Lazarus's machine, the Doctor is able to reverse the polarity of the capsule so it reflects energy rather than receive it, and it blasts Lazarus away, turning him back into human form and supposedly killing him.

Right away, with this comment from Martha, Lazarus is equated back to an ordinary human. He's not made to be the "big bad villain" where everyone is glad he's dead, nor is he made out to be this reverent being. He's someone to be pitied. It's decidedly solemn. He was just a man out of his depth who bit off more than he could chew... much like how Brenner is a man out of his depth who bit off more than he could chew.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned that Brenner was actively harming himself in his attempt to do… whatever. Much like how Lazarus was harming himself (and others) in order to maintain his new youth, Brenner may be harming himself with his experiments. Whether that be via blood transfusions/consuming blood (see the post I linked from Stav above), or by doing something as drastic as physically combining himself with one of the Henwards, I doubt anything 100% good and rewarding could come from it. Even if he's looking for something like regenerative healing, as we see in Vecna and as hinted by Brenner not being dead despite getting jumped by a demogorgon, what does he have to do to reach that point? What risks are there involved that he may not have accounted for, simply because he would have no idea that they exist in the first place? Just looking at the circumstances of the weird Brenward face combo we get in 4.07… he didn’t exactly wind up in a great spot after combining himself, did he? Plus, while I'm of the mind that Vecna and the guy we see shape the Mind Flayer are two different dudes (James and Em have other posts about this as well), the way it's presented to us implies that Vecna evolved from the MF guy, so there's a sort of compounding that changes in his appearance from mostly-human to mostly-infected-by-the-UD, which... also doesn't seem great.

We can already see how being infected by the Shadow affects people, which is highlighted in Henry not sleeping and barely eating when he's flayed. Hell, Brenner saw what happened to his father after he returned from Dimension X, and he took the lives of several test subjects (many of them children) in his own experiments. He already knows that there are risks and detractions in this work.

At the very end of this dw episode, Lazarus is finally actually killed. Using the organ in the church, the Doctor amplifies its sound using his Sonic Screwdriver to create "hypersonic sound waves" in order to interfere with Lazarus on a molecular level, which is more or less the same thing he did with his machine. Lazarus falls from a high balcony within the church, disoriented by the noise, and turns back into a human upon death. He even reverts back to his "correct" elderly appearance as the Doctor kneels over him and gently shuts his eyes.

We've already seen something similar to this sort of death with Brenner in st4. While I wouldn't say it was a soft moment for him, since El was still clearly rejecting him, she still leaned into his touch, still listened to him, and clearly was grappling with a lot of messy feelings. She, in that moment, wanted to view him as a monster, but she couldn't. Not entirely. That's her Papa! That's someone who, for most of her life, despite every horrible thing he did, took care of her; who said he loved her and held her best interests at heart.

In my mind, this sort of "soft end" is what we should expect for Brenner and Vecna in st5. It could be even softer than what we see in st4, because as much as Brenner deserves to have his shit absolutely rocked, we've been increasingly shown that he is only human. Human's are not monsters, but humans can do monstrous things. That doesn't make them inhuman. And, as people like James and Em have spoken extensively about lately, Brenner is likely but one cog in the machine that is the Cycles in this show, and not necessarily the source of the cycles to begin with. He didn't pop outta the womb wanting to build a child torture dungeon, but something happened to bring him there and cloud his judgement.

And even if the death is something more intense and dramatic like that of Lazarus, it's not necessarily something to celebrate, yknow? Even if the threat is gone (which is a very good thing), it took many horrible, avoidable things to get there in the first place, and that's what's tragic.

B-B-B-Bonus Round: Just Some Extra Shit

vs "Henry" going missing in Nevada for 12 hours per tfs. Martha has been on several trips with the Doctor thus far, so there's the added bit of "the passage of time is messed up" seeing as, for her, it's been several days, but to everyone else it's only been 12 hours.

All of the above is so... yeah lol. Lazarus is repeatedly very weird to the two young women in this episode, Martha and her sister Tish, and he even rejects his elderly wife in one scene when she kisses him and he tells her to "look at [her]self." The sniffing thing even made me think of the demogorgon being given the trait of "smelling blood" so... I see you, Brennergorgon.

I could've probably fit this bit somewhere above, but I'm too lazy, so it's going here instead. Love a good boiler room setting and talking about sacrifices!

"Always the mothers" just like how Brenner say it was always the mothers who came to him convinced their children had abilities or issues, etc. (plus just a little context for Martha's mom's "dangerous" comment: this season has an overarching hidden plot about the Master, who I touched on in another one of my dw posts, wherein he basically holds political power over the city (hiding the fact that he's a Time Lord) and is trying to sabotage the Doctor).

[northstardrabbles]

nightfall's intro post

tw for human experimentation and a bit of cannibalism in the backstory section—it'll be below the cut if you don't want to read that

basics

full name - nightfall/0011 age - 27 gender/pronouns - transmasc (he/it) species - human (sort of)

appearance

extra appearance notes:

he's 6'2

the purple bits glow in the dark, he cannot turn it off

he has a bunch of little bone spikes on his shoulders/arms. i'm just too lazy to draw them most of the time

physiology

i genuinely need a section for this because this guy is messed UP. all of this is a result of the experiments run on him and/or how they went wrong.

his need for food/water/rest is about half that of a normal human. he still feels hungry/tired/etc at the same points as most people, but can push through it for MUCH longer

he can see in the dark and his pupils are reflective

has a significant healing factor, he's not unkillable but can survive a frankly stupid amount of damage

its saliva is basically acidic, corrosive enough to damage skin. he's not immune to this effect so it seriously screws with his throat and whatnot

personality

generally pretty antisocial. since he lives in a rural area and looks as fucked-up as he does, he prefers not to interact with people most of the time. when he does (normally because he has no other choice), he tends to get straight to the point and can be somewhat impatient. while not exactly prone to violence, he knows his strength and is willing to threaten people if necessary.

when he does form attachments it's very slowly, and although he never really drops the blunt attitude, he's seriously defensive of the people he likes.

backstory summary for the people who need to heed the tw

basically he got experimented on, broke out of the lab, and fucked off to live in the woods on his own

side tangent before the backstory

there are going to be a lot of mentions of these things called 'exoliths' in this project, including nightfall's backstory.

the tl;dr is that exoliths are fist-sized stones that are conduits for EXTREMELY concentrated magic, they're fully sentient and can take control of a human body to use as a host. normally this isn't permanent and control must be traded back and forth, but stronger exoliths can make a permanent bond with their host and basically replace them—the person ceases to exist and the exolith is in control of the body full-time. when this bond is made, the 'person' is also referred to as an exolith.

backstory

most of his early life is unimportant, and he'll tell you so himself. he ended up on the streets at a young age, eventually taken in by a stranger named sev. alongside a large handful of other kids/teenagers, nightfall was raised in an almost clinical environment that turned out to be a testing ground for making new exoliths and testing their abilities to form permanent bonds. he was stripped of his name and given the designation 0011, as well as the eventual project name of 'nightfall', which he uses to this day.

once he was deemed fit for the next round of testing, sev and their team attempted to forcibly bond an exolith with nightfall's body. initially the test actually seemed to be successful, but it didn't take long for his body to start rejecting the process. instead of having his consciousness overwritten as intended, nightfall actually survived—somewhat. the partial bond resulted in serious damage to his mind and a slew of physical mutations from the unchecked magic in his system.

in this unstable state, nightfall eventually made an escape from the lab, leaving a trail of carnage behind him as he went. nearly-feral, there was no difference to him between humans and any other kind of meat—food was food.

even in this state of mind, he recognized there was no safe way to return to how he'd been before and sev would surely come to recollect him—so he simply walked off into the woods, now finding cover in abandoned shelters and hunting for food as he travels from place to place with no real destination in mind. he still regresses back to that state from time to time, going back to the same violent tendencies, but is more stable nowadays than he was before.

[tanadrin]

Putting an end to an oil exec wouldn't stop the machine. But that's a given. What does put a stop to the machine is people demanding their right to live outside of this disgusting system.

No, not running away to the woods like some libertarian bullshit, but dismantling the system. Refusing to lay our hands on our neighbor as the system tells us to do. Refusing to deny food, water, shelter and fighting to wrest such things from the stockpiles around us.

I should note I do not mean getting more money or a living wage. I mean for certain the food, water, shelter, etc.

To dismantle the system, you've gotta ask yourself what the system is. What the machine of capitalism really, really is.

Cause there's a saying: "we're all cogs in the machine". And I think people forget what that actually means.

It means the only cogs in this machine are us. We're the ones that keep this thing going. We're all the ones that oppress each other for one reason or another. And while some of us are malicious and wish the system keeps going out of pure sadism, the grand majority of us go with the flow and keep turning the wheel because that's what we know.

The system's hands are our hands. It's people from our population that become the legislator, the white nationalist, the cop, etc. That isn't meant to humanize their actions, but to point out the source of where the system's manpower comes from: us. All of us.

It's hard to actually put this in a way that doesn't sound wishywashy or not possible. But straight up, the way you stop the machine is by having enough people say "no, I won't turn that wheel". And also not letting scabs turn the wheel either.

That actually does shut down the oil refineries tomorrow.

I mean, I agree, but that's also not a trivial task. You have to organize, you have to connect with other people, you have to have actual positive policy goals and a positive political vision of the world to replace the status quo with. You can't just go "1. Totally dismantle society as it exists, 2. ???, 3. Utopia." And unfortunately the more you flesh out the ??? the more the thing you are doing looks like actual politics with all its messiness and coalition-building and compromise, which a lot of people--who are deeply invested in a very narrow sort of ideological purity--will reject out of hand.

[alkalineleak]

While im rewatching mcd, ive made a few notes for my own rewrite:)

the first episodes of mcd are very self referential and have the 4th wall/audience as a character and as a normal fic/project, i don't think the media im using will mesh well with that, so im gonna veto the "villages are unaware but aphmau is -> aphmau becomes detached from the 4th wall and becomes part of the story" thing. This means i have to actually come up with backstory for aphmau and phoenix drop.

Personally ive never liked her being Irene with amnesia. In rebirth, i didnt like how clueless she was and in the original, i didnt like how detached she was from the world. Instead ive been playing around with her being a shad descendant or an irene descendant (leaning towards shad). With the ro'meaves and levin and other characters with such heavy family ties, i feel like being a descendant is a lot more powerful bc itll implement this theme of family defining you.

The reason why im leaning towards shad is because theres a lot of other descendents from the divine warriors (garroth, travis, etc.) for example, levins a descendant of irene, which makes him a target of kidnapping, but he's one of hundreds ykn? meanwhile theres not many of shad? Or at least in the text there isnt. This would also make it so aphmau would have destruction and violence in her blood, and instead she's a force of good. I also think that being a descendant of shad would be really good as blackmail? Like if the public found out, theyd villainize her, or maybe zane could put her in a bind later on when he's introduced in season one.

Now to actual episode by episode notes, my current idea is her being a hunter. She's lived secluded in the woods for some time for Some reason i havent come up with yet, which gives her reason to be able to do carpentry, farming, identify edible foods, and fight on her own. Also, with her amount of isolation, she's fairly paranoid and scared to be rejected. This means that when she arrives in phoenix drop, she's afraid of being kicked out, so she helps out in exchange for staying there (she's the only one who thinks this is a debt ). I think this state of mind will make her connect with zenix a lot more later on. ALSO her paranoia makes her hard to interact with, explaining why emmalyn didnt like her...

That's all i feel like explaining rn :33

[mikuchan]

my Tavs😊

@gaeldricge the deep lore lol

Findingway - wild magic sorcerer

I made her just to run through the game again as research for Something to Play For, but I really like her. She was born to a family of respectable and scholarly wizards in Baldur's Gate -- no one will confess to who made a deal or slept with a devil, but she suspects her mother. Either way, her appearance + her uncontrollable magic made her the odd duck out. She has a troubled relationship with her family.

At boarding school she met & became close to another tiefling student. He told her how some tieflings choose their own names based on who they are, or who they want to be -- and so 13-year-old Wilhelmina James, desperately trying to figure out where she fit in the world, became Findingway instead. Actually I took the name Findingway from the FFXIV Lopporit because I thought it was cute and didn't expect her to become more than a research vessel

She is a control freak who bottles everything up until she explodes and does something dumb, and/or makes a stupid power grab. She's eaten every tadpole, got the hag eye + ate the skin piece, exploding blood, etc etc and is mad none of them fixed her situation. Try as she might, she's chaos on two feet.

She has I think 23 Charisma and can talk her way into (or out of) aaaanything, but she's not very smart. She's not evil, but is closer to amoral than pure good; she puts herself first. She's romancing Minthara.

She hoards gold and food. It makes her feel important. She has about a million bottles of wine right now, and her future plans are to open a wine boutique in Baldur's Gate.

Yrollam - Dark Urge high elf barbarian

Yrollam woke up in a crashing nautiloid with no memories, but luckily there was this super cool necromancer there to help her. Now it's Yrollam's job to carry bodies and books for her new BFF Elberos (my husband's Tav), and she does it with pride.

She's very much a 'pleeease let me bloody my hands for you' type. Eager to please and with very few limits.

Before the game, she was scholarly and unethical, more of a mad scientist vibe. Currently, she is struggling with controlling her Urge. She's romancing Wyll while Elberos romances Minthara.

I drew her AU where she didn't meet Elberos and she went with Auntie Ethel instead

Sabine - drow druid. I put her at the end even though she's my favorite, since her info runs longer

She was born the third noble daughter of a very low Menzoberranzan House. Seeking Lolth's favor, her parents thought she would make a worthy sacrifice, so they left her as a toddler at the entrance of a giant spider nest. However -- the spiders were sentient but not Lolthsworn, leading to Lolth taking offense at their waste (leaving a precious noble girl out for random spiders? really?) and rejecting their clumsy 'offering.'

Lolth punished her parents instead with a cave-in (killing both her parents, and spelling doom for their now-leaderless House) which also cut off the heretic spiders from her city. The spiders, however, found the drow child, took her in, and raised her as their own.

Sabine is the closest name in Common to what the spiders call her, which is itself a bastardization of the drow name her parents gave her (Z'brnn) - so it's the name she uses aboveground. After reaching adulthood, she left to learn more about drow, figure out where she fits into the world, maybe find a new way into Menzoberranzan... she can wildshape into a spider, but she's uncertain whether she wants to do that permanently so she can return home and fit in with her family, or -- now that she's found so many friends and loved ones -- stay a drow and remain aboveground (more or less - she loves her spider fam, and will visit them whether spider or drow!).

I changed her hair when she got to the city + added some age lines.

She was the Tav I made in early access + again in my first runthrough. I'm going to restart her because I couldn't recruit Minthara back then. Also, she romanced Astarion/Halsin but I think she would be a better fit with Gale (very curious woman + excited infodumper) so I'm changing that on her new playthrough.

She was excited to meet the drow prostitutes. She hired them for several hours just to sit and talk with them about drow culture.

Her Dream Visitor took the appearance of her (bio) father, who she only vaguely remembers.

There's an AU where she was not taken in by the spiders, but by a different House who followed her parents to the edge of the city. They killed her parents in Lolth's name, destroyed their House, and took Sabine (Z'brnn in this canon) + her older sister. She's a Lolthsworn ranger in this timeline, traveling with my husband's Durge (who was redeemed in his playthrough, is evil in this one).

Bonus, Elyon (Ellie) - Dark Urge assassin rogue (based on my neighbor's kitten who went HAM on a pigeon outside...), but I lost heart in her. She was going to be my super-evil playthrough but I don't want to kill Isobel, so she's just stuck in Act 1 forever

[hedoughnissm]

I think there is 4 basic approaches to fatness feedism stories can take, ancient, modern, post modern, and self conscious

The first I’ll talk about is the Modern approach, this one is firmly stuck in the 00’s Peak Fatphobia. You can see it in those tumblr blogs that steal pics of fit college boys on spring break and tease them about having the slightest sliver of flab on their flat bellys. ( seemingly not into fat as much as degradating people for being fat) This is firmly a form of BDSM, heavy emphasis on humiliation and degradation and fatness representing moral impurity or fall from grace, In straight stuff with male feedees it often emphasizes the feminizing nature of getting softer and rounder, in gay stuff it may pair with slobbery and alcoholism and body hair as they become less pretty-boy-twink. Even if Fat is hot here it is still bad and degrading.

The second is what I would call the Postmodern attitude, this is your standard Fat Positivity sort of approach, but it firmly exists in reaction and context of the Modern viewpoint. Maybe one partner is self conscious about there body and the other shows them they find it sexy, maybe one partner starts gaining weight after being a fitness/diet junkie as they “ try less” after getting a partner, and there partner reassures them they don’t mind and like it, here lots of terms like sympathy weight, relationship weight, more to love, cushion for the pushing, throw your weight around, thicc, you can say fat is hot but you have to be a bit corny about it, and that all bodies are actually sexy, a more extreme variant is maybe fattening up is Karmic magic punishment for being a fatphobe, which hits the emmotional beats of Modern without actually degrading fatness.

The Self Concious feedism approach, is just to make the characters feedists, they use terms like feedism, Gainer, Feeder, Feedee etc, they meet online and then meet up later, or maybe its bear night at the local gay bar , maybe there both mutual gainers, or a feeder and gainer, or maybe the feeder starts gaining weight cause habits rub off, likes it, and becomes a gainer also. They may be straightforward with each other about being into fat and wanting to do this and respect each other without any degradation, ( though theres variation and roleplay) but its still in a larger context, where fat and Feedism is stigmatized, you get emotions about them getting to show this stygmatized side of themselves with each otherwithout rejection , the feedee who would be labeled as engaging in self harm by society, and making themselves uglier, the feeder who would be labeled a selfish manipulator ruining there partner, you can play around with this, the feedee sees there family and are teased and given unwanted diet/exercise device while the feeder plays along as “ trying to encourage healthy habits” , conscious feedism slips into Modern norms whenever the secret can’t be revealed.

The fourth is what I call the Ancient view, and it’s basically the uncomplicated unselfaware Pro-fat view, that isn’t in response to the Modern view, but instead older, this is Fat as something straightforwardly celebratory, fat being just good and a sign of prosperity and power and health and goodtimes, fat and sassy. This one plays around the most with setting and genre because it is in contrast to the norms of our society. You get fantasies of fat Royalty, tropical paradise islands with local stereotypical “ primitive tribes” that are sometimes cannibals. You get fertility rituals associated with fat and sex and crops, enacted by early midevil quasi-pagans, or the aforementioned tribes, or ghosts in Mesoamerican ruins , you can have fae ( or Dionysus) with impossibly delicious food. Now you can take this attitude in the a simulacrum of the Real Modern World, but genre conventions require that it be a bit rural/republican blue collar coded, it will require plumbers or construction workers or Midwestern farmland or county fairs or bulking for football/wrestling, occasionally there an alcoholic fratboy showing off how much beer there belly can fit. Something something conservative=masculine Feminine=more socially acceptable to put effort into your appearances, It’s like a counter signaling thing I think.

Anyway my tastes are firmly strongest for Ancient feedism, Postmodern and Self Concious are fun also , and Modern feedism doesn’t do anything to me at all. I’m pretty fat myself and I want to be pushed around and mounted and fucked by someone bigger and fatter and more powerful than me, and fat is beautiful and shows your really darwinian fit in the ancestral environment and is soft and squishy and makes moobs to suck and is a great weighted blanket and everything. And also cause Ive always been fat since a little kid and was always ashamed I really don’t like feeling fat( derogatory), and beyond it not being my taste imagining degrading a chubby guy who’s smaller than me for being fat just feels awkward, I would rather praise them for good eating and insist there too skinny and shove a cookie in there mouth , honestly my ideal setting is one where I wouldn’t be “fat” cause size contrast is hot, and a society that praises weight gain is good for that also.

Anyway that’s sort of the flavor of all this I’m coming from,

[tolkpopfan]

Mouth foaming over these mental scenarios,

So, like, I had these ideas and they’re mostly comfort scenarios I imagine myself in, but I feel like they’re too good to NOT be used in fanfiction, and I’m not going to write it so I figured I’d donate them to someone who might want to make use of them. So here you go @blizzardfluffykpop

This is long, and this is not to be interpreted as a request, but rather as a donation for ideas to write if you so desire.

The alternating bold and regular distinguishes between separate scenarios

———

impulsively kissing someone and then being like “oh shit, I am so sorry. I should NOT have overstepped like that…” and then them being like “Is it really overstepping if I want you to do it again?”

“I’m not pretty… I mean, it’s not a bad thing, I don’t need to be pretty to be valid and deserve love, I’m just not what people generally consider attractive, and I’m okay with that.”

“But then what would you think of someone who did find you attractive??” (Very confused)

Laughing, “I don’t know, probably that their tastes are a bit odd.”

“Do I seem odd to you?” (This is like an indirect confession, feelings have not been expressed yet 🫣)

Rejecting a friend’s slightly drunk request for a kiss and saying that you don’t want your first kiss with someone who might not remember it the next day and might not even genuinely be meaning it. So you assume they’ve forgotten the next day and you put it behind yourself but then the next time you see them, they start acting awkward and say, “I don’t entirely remember what your answer was the other night but it was something about me being drunk… so I’m sober now, and I still want to know if you’d let me kiss you”

Getting intentionally bumped into at the work cafeteria by the group of mean girls while carrying food so nice white shirt is absolutely ruined and soaked thru (was imagining soup) and then running into work crush on way to bathroom to clean up who sees the situation and takes off and offers his flannel because he’s fine with just being in his t-shirt. And ruined white dress shirt becomes a blessing unbeknownst to him because oh my god wearing his flannel and it smells like him. Bonus points for mean girls seeing the flannel being worn lol. (also this was created in my head as company employee x idol/producer which would make more sense why he’s wearing a flannel but other people at the company being more formally dressed - could be smth else tho, also I’ve had varying continuations with this one when I came up with it a few years ago, some wholesome, some horny, so it can really go in any direction)

First ever boyfriend breaks up with you because after a little over a month, you’re still too nervous to get remotely physical with him for the first time and even though it wasn’t super serious yet, you’re still emotionally a wreck after being dumped. So, your friend who you won’t admit to yourself that you’re in love with is there for you in the weeks following your breakup. You almost begin to realize how safe and loved you feel with your friend but you think with all the interesting and beautiful people he happens to know that he could never be interested in you, and after a series of events you end up getting VERY physical with said friend who is in love with you too.

(Based loosely on a recent event I experienced) He’s five years older (I’m thinking of someone specific teehee lmao but it’s not essential to the story) and recently you were treated like a kid by someone (classmate/coworker/etc) not much older than him and it’s a painful reminder of the fact that due to certain mannerisms and behaviors, you sometimes come across as childish despite being just as mature as, if not more mature than your peers. And you try not to think of it too much but it affected you pretty strongly. You get stressed and snap at him for something minor he said or just about something in general and say something like “I’m still a fucking adult even if it doesn’t always seem like it!” And he’s kinda shocked but mostly worried about you and says smth like “do you think that’s how I see you?” And you’re crying because you don’t know and you’re afraid to find out. And he earnestly explains that it never occurred to him that someone would see you as anything other than intelligent and funny and interesting (a self indulgent fantasy, I know). And he decides to show you (romantically, sexually, etc, you decide) how he really sees you. (Could be not dating yet or established relationship)

———

Anyyyywayyyyy, this was probably too long to put in an ask so i just made a post. If you end up using these, great, if not, that’s cool too. But if you do use them, lmk, not because I care about credit or anything but because I would enjoy seeing someone else’s interpretation.

[kukuandkookie]

Sinophobes are a fun batch of people because they will write shit like this and completely mean it. 🤣

They always refer to the Red Guard and the evil CCP and how badly it destroyed Chinese culture and tradition, but they never want to address the fact that there’s a historical domino effect for why China rejected tradition for a bit (if you get stomped on by colonizers for a lengthy period of time, you’re naturally going to feel like you didn’t modernize fast enough to fight back against said colonizers).

These sinophobes also never want to address the fact that so much of Chinese tradition and culture is actually alive and well in China! It still exists—meaning you can literally fucking wear a hanfu on the street or eat some traditional food or go to a fucking museum or read a traditional poem or look at some traditional art. And what even is the Chinese tradition and culture they’re referring to, anyway?

China is so big and diverse with such a long history, are you going to say the other ethnicities don’t count as part of China’s cultural identity? Like on China destroying culture, does that mean the Qing dynasty doesn’t count as Chinese because it had Manchu leaders and influence? Are we really going to act like Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia can encapsulate all of China’s complex history and culture when a) it is so complex and b) they have their own fucking cultures and histories???

Like I’m pretty sure if you told a Taiwanese person or a Thai person that the place they’re from is an embodiment of China, they’d be pissed off at you.

Even with how contentious Taiwan is, whether you’re pro- or anti-China, you’re not going to bring up the history of Qinshihuang and the terracotta warriors or the Great Wall etc as being part of Taiwanese history. So why would you expect to find the major aspects of Chinese culture and tradition in Taiwan? Especially when I thought we were supposed to see Taiwan as its own thing!!!

Comments like this one just fascinate me because they’re obviously wrong, yet they’re so happy being wrong since they come from this stubborn prejudice that doesn’t fucking care that China actually does still have its historical traditions and cultures and that they’re actually pretty decently intact for a nation with a history as long and as chaotic as China’s. But this comment fascinates me all the more because it feels like they went so anti-China they got confused by their own messaging, because why does it sound like you don’t see Taiwan and Singapore and even Thailand and Malaysia as having their own unique identities and cultures? 😂

This is also why bad faith comments like this become amusing after a while:

People like this don’t believe that there can be anything good about China. They pretend to be all civil and tell you to “just focus on the good of China,” but they don’t mean it lmao. Because as soon as you post something about China that is positive, such as praising its greener energy efforts or its high speed rail or what have you, these people will tell you it’s fake or ask, “But at what cost?”

It’s just ironic, and in multiple ways.

It’s not okay to run accounts and channels hating on the US but it’s okay running accounts and channels hating on China like China Uncensored or that one David Zhang guy who I swear to fucking God I wish YouTube would stop recommending to me when I search up “China vlog”—?

But most of all, it’s ironic because Chinese people can and do “sell the beauty of China,” but sinophobes have their ears and eyes closed to shit like that. What can you do, am I right? ;P

Which is why more and more Chinese people are becoming pro-China, and then sinophobes wonder why Chinese people are so brainwashed.

It was literally just a few weeks ago that someone praised a video on Chongqing because it showed the city in a more mundane light rather than painting it as a cyberpunk city, and when people disagreed with them, they said this:

The answer to their last question is obviously “the sinophobia here stems from you immediately doubting anything positive about China as propaganda and then assuming anyone who disagrees with you is a CCP shill while also insisting that China itself must be a dystopia in reality” (also, Chongqing went viral because of tourists on TikTok, and no, you can bet they weren’t paid by the Chinese government, so how exactly is it propaganda again?).

People like this wonder why there are so many “CCP shills” out there to the point they feel the need to call them the “CCP Junior Kids’ League” without realizing they’re contributing to the creation of these “CCP Junior Kids’ League” members.

Because oh, I don’t know, buddy—maybe antagonizing an entire nation doesn’t always endear you to that nation’s citizens?? I know I for one became more pro-China after being surrounded by sinophobia online, and I’m a Canadian-born Chinese who never even really felt Chinese growing up.

And the funny thing about sinophobia is that it’s just this quiet, increasingly acceptable aspect of western society. It’s not a hate that’s outwardly violent or brutal, so it’s not as big of a deal. It’s almost mundane and banal. That’s why I always feel weird discussing it, like I should be putting disclaimers everywhere that emphasize I’m western, I’m educated, I’m critical of nationalism and patriotism, because if I didn’t, I’d just be another “member of the CCP Junior Kids’ League.”

And now I feel guilty discussing it because sinophobia can’t be easily compared to other forms of racism that manifest in far more brutal ways, especially in this current day when Israel is committing literal genocide with such cruel, fully dehumanizing, hate-filled, racist roots.

But whenever I do discuss sinophobia, it’s stuff that’s built up over weeks and weeks and weeks. I do curate my spaces and I do ignore prejudice when I have to (eg I learned the hard way to NEVER search up “中国🇨🇳” on Twitter because you will get a lot of racism against China from Japanese users). It’s only when it gets to a point that I’m exasperated and rolling my eyes that I vent on Tumblr.

I will admit though that the more time passes and the more sinophobia becomes normalized, the more my exasperation also turns into mild amusement. They hate China so much, man. They will literally never change their minds. They will always be this ignorant. Isn’t that wild? 😂

And although, when I do think deeper about it, I do admit I think it’s a pity that people can walk the streets and think of what are essentially my people (ancestrally speaking, anyway) in such a degrading, delusional fashion and be so wrong about China, yet it’s just a fact of life. It’s pretty normalized and not something that will likely be challenged because it’s “not wrong morally” to hate on China as long as you emphasize “I hate the government.” So I can only be exasperatedly amused by their ignorance.