#like it was very in character for him. he’s a whole complicated mess of identity and strength

[lavenderjewels]

feel so validated it was confirmed gojo killed the higher ups because I loved the page turner shock in chapter 223 of seeing the higher ups slaughtered after Gojo lightly talking to Gakuganji

[asbestos-11]

on the note of prev, i'm not too keen on tmasc aven hcs cuz they kinda rub me the wrong way?? idk what it is about it but i just inherently don't like them.

now as for amab nb aventurine, i'll gobble that shit up no problem. like something about being beyond gender itself with a body that's masculine and feminine at the same time. mmmm delicious (idk amab nb aven fills me with a lot of gender euphoria)

that being said i think certain characters make so much more sense when looked through the lense of "oh yeah they're trans".

like to me blade and firefly are both trans, wherein both have a complicated relationship with their real self and the body they inhabit/ the monstrosity they seem to hold themselves as. blade shedding his previous life and identity by literally dying is so not cis of him and the ensuing dilemma of hating the body given to him and the immortality that came with it, is just so &#&*$!&!&

firefly when i untangle the mess in my brain over how you're so gender, oh how i will get to you (gotta re read the scene where she speaks to tb at dreams edge). but firefly being a tiny cute girl in a big huge mech is something that is incredibly gender and her whole thing where iirc she's wasting away in the real world, idk man not very cis. god hyv release her from the basement already i need to explode.

on that note i think ratio being trans adds to his chracter. man made genius, man made man or something. thinking about him building himself up from nothing into the person he is today (big muscly trans men give me that gender euphoria and yk what good for big muscly trans men for beating gender itself at it's own game).

also march transfemme real and you can't convince me otherwise, i mean she's literally colored like the trans flag, what's more obvious than that???

[inbarfink]

Okay, the thing is that I’ve seen some people speculate about the Winter King’s backstory and past assuming, like, that he’s always kinda been Like That. Like, that this version of Simon Petrikov has always been an evil heartless bastard or at least just a little less caring and loving than Mainworld Simon and that’s what led him down the path of the Winter King. 

But speaking personally… I think this is a less compelling story as it relates to Simon’s character arc. I think it’s a lot more interesting if the Winter King was indeed ‘once just like’ Mainverse Simon.

That he used to be that selfless, dedicated and loving man - and he still managed to stoop this low. I mean, well, Simon seems to have come to the conclusion that this version of him was just ‘messed up’

and that was mostly part of a trend of him in these last two episodes just kinda going

You know, like, I don’t think that the lesson he should’ve learned from his adventures in Winterworld is just “wow, that one specific alternative version of me sure does suck!”. Farmworld, via its version of Finn, was a reminder for Simon of just how much of a traumatic experience the Curse of the Magic Crown is. Winterworld should’ve reminded him of the torment and indignity he was trapped in and how often he was a danger to himself and others 

And of the truly fucked-up and terrible things he was capable of doing due to that torment and desperation of the Curse.

The Winter King is like a Whole New Exciting Way for Simon to lose his identity due to the Magic Crown, preserving his mind and memory by destroying the love and dedication and care that the Magic Crown never quite managed to fully burn away - his actual ‘immutable essence’. And this doesn’t work if the Winter King was always just Intrinsically a significantly different and worse person than Mainworld Simon, y’know?

And remember, we know the Winter King was in full on Ice King mode when he ‘conquered the crown’ (AKA cast that terrible spell to condemn Princess Bubblegum to the same terrible fate he’s been suffering). 

And Mainverse Ice King was absolutely capable of trying to perform some fucked-up mind-altering spells of his own. 

The only thing is that he was never quite that successful.

The main thing I am still unsure of with my favored reading/interpretation of how Winterworld Simon became the Winter King is…. There’s like, two different mutually-exclusive readings of what happened after the Curse was cast on Peebles and Simon regained his lucidity that are both very appealing to me from a thematic perspective. And I’m really not sure which one I like best.

Because the real issue was never ‘would Ice King be willing to cast such a horrible immoral spell?’, especially as one could easily imagine that whatever lucidity would allow Ice King to understand how his Crown is harming him and devise such a complicated spell would not necessarily extend to enough lucidity to fully understand the consequences of his actions. The issue is Winterworld Simon Petrikov, having regained his clarity of mind, choosing to maintain this spell for a hundred years. There's a reason why that's the thing Mainverse Simon fixated on when he figured out what's going on.

My first thought (and that’s something I went into more detail in a previous post) was this: Ice King’s madness was never wholly separated from Simon’s personality. Like, yeah, it was the Crown’s Magic that drove him so Mad and Sad - but it was also the trauma of losing Betty and surviving through the Mushroom War and feeling forced to abandon his beloved Marceline. 

And that Madness was based on Simon’s psyche. Ice King’s loneliness and romantic obsession and Princess-nappings are all based on how much he loves and misses Betty

And now, Princess Bubblegum has been forced into a mirrored recreation of them. 

The Candy Queen isn’t suffering from just the Magic Crown’s madness in general - but specifically from how it was shaped by Simon’s heart. And since you can’t actually separate this manifestation of Ice King’s Madness from Simon’s love for Betty - the Winter King ridding himself of one also rid himself of the other. 

And since so much of Ice King’s Madness was interwoven into Simon’s psyche and especially his love and his kindness - throwing away all of this Madness into someone else also decimated these aspects of his personality. Princess Bubblegum already paid the ultimate price for Winterworld Simon’s sanity - but in a way he also paid a grave cost as well; becoming an unrecognizably different person he would previously find morally disgusting - even morso than Ice King.

Because the lines between Simon Petrikov and Ice King are always going to be a bit blurry and messy, and because Simon can’t probably live a life totally free of his Madness and Sadness but he’s gonna have to accept it for an actual mostly happy and sane life as someone who is recognizably Simon Petrikov. 

Buuuut… that still basically means that casting of that Curse just kinda irrevocably transformed him into a Heartless Bastard. And that’s maybe not as compelling as if this change from kind and dorky Simon Petrikov into Evil Brian David Gilbert was done of his own free will

Hundreds of years of the Magic Crown eating away at his sanity and memories couldn’t truly destroy Simon Petrikov’s ‘immutable essence’. He still missed Betty more than anything even as this longing was twisted into something horrible, and still loved Marceline like a daughter even if he didn’t understand it. The one thing that could truly destroy this love that is so core to Simon’s being is him choosing to become selfish and cruel and uncaring. 

And since he was in Full Ice King Mode when he cast the spell… I dunno if I can actually call it a fully-conscious act of cruelty. Deeply fucked up? Yes. But it’s hard to say how much Winterworld Ice King actually understood what he was doing. And while I think it’s much more emotionally compelling if the Winter King started from the same place as our beloved Mainworld Simon. The only difference can’t just be the pure luck that Mainworld Ice King was just never lucid or focused enough to successfully cast a spell that would transform him into an equally terrible person. 

For this angle to work, this decision to continue doing the bad thing has to come from a lucid Simon who is still kinda recognizably Simon and still chose to continue perpetuating the Curse Ice King cast on Princess Bubblegum.

This might seem unthinkable, especially considering how obviously disgusted Mainworld Simon was at the Winter King’s actions. But you have to consider just how much Winterworld Simon would be desperate to not be Ice King again, Mainworld Simon was once willing to die then live the rest of eternity as IK. The fact that he’s so willing to throw away his sanity again now is so worrying because it shows just how badly he’s being doing - because at first, Simon was fighting so badly to avoid diving back into this pit of madness. And that Spell must've seen like the only chance he was gonna get.

And, yes, Simon Petrikov is a character full of kindness and love and selflessness - but that never meant he was the sort of Cinnamon Roll incapable of ever hurting anymore and especially not when he’s desperate or lashing out. That’s kinda the fallacy Simon himself fell into when he had that total identity crisis in the second episode. He just couldn’t find a way to join his previous identity as the patient and fatherly man who took care of Marceline 

With the fact he made a little girl cry. 

But yes, both we the audience and Simon himself have to face the fact that despite possessing such strong fatherly instinct and a desire to help children - Simon can also lash out in his trauma in a very cruel manner that goes against all of his own values.

And by the end of the fourth episode, he was tempted to let himself die - even though that will also utterly destroy a whole universe of sapient beings living in his head. It was brief thanks to Fionna knocking some sense into him and obviously the Literal Suicidal Depression involved was also seriously clouding his judgement. But that is still Simon nearly dooming a whole realm of other people  because he was feeling absolutely desperate.

Not to mention him kidnapping someone and forcing him into a terrible experiment for the sake of trying to summon GOLBetty.

A desperate attempt to reconnect with his lost love (and in a way, a missing part of his identity as Betty Grof’s other half). Which I mean, yeah, ‘it’s just Choose Goose’, but also last time GOLB was summoned it nearly fucked up all of Ooo and the only thing GOLBetty could do about that is get herself as far away from Simon as she can. And now Simon is gonna try and summon his Eldritch GF again in the middle of a major population center.  

And of course, Winterworld Simon and Mainworld Simon are never going to be fully exactly the same person because ‘Simon Petrikov’ is not some immutable unchanging concept and we know that they’ve had different experiences. It was really so sweet to see Mainverse Simon pay forwards the kindness he’s gotten from his loved ones when he was stuck as the Ice King towards the Candy Queen

But it also reminded me that the Winter King himself never got that sort of kindness and grace in the first place. The Curse was cast one hundred years ago. Back then, Marceline was still avoiding him because she couldn’t stand to see what he had become, Finn and Jake were not his friends on account of neither of them being born yet and… they also directly or indirectly helped him get his entire rest circle of friends.

So Mainworld Simon emerged from an Ice King who was not absolutely free from misery and loneliness… but has also experienced happiness and friends both from people who just loved him for who he was at the moment 

And grace and kindness from those concerned for his condition and honestly doing their best to make sure he’s doing his best in his current state and trying to bring out whatever of Simon was left in him. 

While Winterworld Simon emerged from Ice King at his worst and his most miserable. 

And while the Winter King’s callousness about Betty would kinda always be a worrying testament to how much Simonness he has lost - it is extra disturbing for the viewers and Mainworld Simon because they have seen Betty sacrifice her entire being for his sake. That would just reinforce his own love and dedication to her in his mind… not always in the healthiest of ways.

But the Winter King has experienced nothing of that sort. He was not freed in a self-sacrifice fueled by love that literally defied time itself. Wintdrworld Simon only regained his lucidity because of a deeply fucked up and selfish action he has taken as the Ice King. And as far as he knew, that was his only choice except death or the eternal despair of being the Ice King.

And so maybe Winterworld Simon managed to convince himself that he can stay like this for just one day. Just one day of enjoying both lucidity and Magic and then he’s going to undo it because obviously he knows that it’s terrible what the Ice King did! I mean, yeah, Princess Bubblegum and the rest of the Candy Kingdom are suffering but they’re also going to suffer when the Ice King comes back so it’s really a lateral move for them. For just one day!

And then by the next day, Winterworld Simon finds one more excuse why he can wait until tomorrow to bring everything back to normal. And day by day it becomes just a little bit easier to justify perpetuating something so terrible. Day by day he gives up a little bit more of his morals and his selflessness and his love. Until he finally finds out that he just doesn’t care anymore about being a selfish heartless bastard.

The same way the Magic Crown took his sanity and identity gradually - he’s now so desperate to cling to them that he chose to tear away at what was once the core most parts of himself

Until he became just as unrecognizable.

Both of these ideas are really compelling to me but they’re also kinda opposite. Maybe there’s a way to balance them both in a way that preserves what makes them so interesting for Simon’s character in the first place??

[sunderingstars]

Ooh can you explain ur thoughts on sampo and the songs breezeblocks, cha cha, and genius?

ʚ 💌 ɞ sure thing! beyond just liking the way they sound (i tend to associate upbeat, brain itchy, and overall ��quirky” songs with sampo), here are some reasons i like these in particular:

breezeblocks by alt-j

⟢ the main reason i chose this song is the repeating lines near the end: “please don’t go, please don’t go / i love you so, i love you so / please break my heart.” the phrase of “i’ll eat you whole” being repeated throughout also a nice touch.

⟢ i found this part of the lyrics pretty indicative of how i imagine sampo handling interpersonal relationships mentally (regardless of how he expresses it on the outside). with all the hate / love / betrayal motifs present throughout his character, it made sense to me that he would latch on tightly to those he feels he can truly trust, albeit in a slightly traumatized and conflicted way.

⟢ whatever past he may have gone through, it causes him to expect heartbreak, which is why he might associate pain and/or betrayal with love. additionally, a sampo with an unstable identity or experience (i.e. doll, emanator, aeon, etc.) would likely have a side of him that he’s afraid will hurt those he cares about. however, i don’t see that as stopping him from sticking around, but rather something that causes a complicated internal mess (like the push and pull of “please don’t go” and “i’ll eat you whole”).

⟢ i also think the other lyrics like “she may contain the urge to run away / but hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks” and “the fear has gripped me but here i go / my heart sinks as i jump up / your hand grips hand as my eyes shut” could convey sampo’s relationship with elation vs. belobog as well. he may feel trapped and in need of escape, yet is held down by certain aspects of his identity or path. belobog could be a sort of “trust fall” in this scenario, with his friends acting as a lifeline that, despite the fear he may feel, encourage him to take their hands and find better for himself.

⟢ (since doll!sampo has invaded my mind for months and refused to leave, i think “she bruises, coughs, she sputters pistol shots” is a nice touch too since it can link back to a sampo whose only purpose is to be hurt by others.)

cha cha by freddie dredd

⟢ i’ll be honest, this was a completely self-indulgent addition. i really like the way it sounds and thought the chorus especially hit that “brain buzz” i tend to associate with sampo.

⟢ however, i do like how the lyrics start out in a different language, flowing smoother and slower, before turning into the choppy, punchy beat of the chorus in english. similarly to in the dark and let me go, i feel this does a good job of conveying how i see sampo’s internal versus external world. externally, he can be quite chaotic and unpredictable, but internally, i believe he feels things deeply, especially fondness and protection for others.

⟢ the lyrics aid this, as the non-english lines speak of moonlight and stars and dancing, while the english lyrics establish emotional distance by acting flippant. again, i tend to think sampo feels love very deeply, which is mirrored by the soft, emotional beginning. however, his outward persona tends to be perceived by others as the more chaotic english sections of the song!

genius (feat. sia, diplo, and labrinth) by lsd

⟢ this one definitely leans into the more egotistical side of sampo, especially when considering “curio hacker” and how he may be paying a price to gain something later on. “i’m a genius” very much reads like sampo being confident in whatever his master plan is and indulging in feeling good about himself a little (as he should!).

⟢ i also think “do you think i’m stupid? / do you think i’m batshit crazy, having you on my mind? / do you think i’m helpless? / my algebra gon’ equal you every time” is a link to his feelings towards the elation / aha / the masked fools, especially any resentment implied by his themes of “hate” and “betrayal”.

⟢ sia’s part in the song actually pivots away from what i’ve been talking about though, and i tend to see her part as a more earnest depiction of how sampo might flirt with or feel about others he’s romantically interested in. when put in context with the rest of the song, i also read the whole piece as one long “flirt,” since i think sampo’s way of doing it would be very much as confident and forward as the song’s lyrics. (plus, he would probably spin dating as a “genius business decision” or something like that!)

🪐 .𖥔 ݁ ˖ asks are still open for anyone who wants to request songs :))

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

For those who are not aware, I have decided to run the gauntlet of @bengiyo’s Queer Cinema Syllabus and have officially started Unit 2: Race, Disability, and Class. The films in Unit 2 are: The Way He Looks (2014), Being 17 (2016), Naz and Maalik (2015), The Obituary of Tunde Johnson (2019), Margarita With a Straw (2014), My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Brother to Brother (2004), and Beautiful Thing (1996)

Today I will be writing about

Beautiful Thing (1996) dir. Hettie MacDonald

[Run Time: 1:31, Available on: tubi, Amazon Prime, YouTube rental, and Google play]

Summary: “Jamie is a shy teenager, often bullied at school. His neighbour Ste has a rough time at home, being beaten by his father and brother. This issues bring them together and they find that what they feel for each other is more than friendship.” from IMDB

Cast * Glen Berry as Jamie Gangel * Scott Neal as Ste Pearce * Linda Hentry as Sandra Gangel, Jamei’s mother * Tameka Empson as Leah, Jamie and Ste’s hot mess of a neighbor

___

Ok, I will be honest, this one did not get me to connect to it as emotionally as some of the other films in this Unit and there were a few scenes in the middle where I completely lost the plot and had difficulty understanding what exactly was going on. As a result, I don’t have as much to say about this film. But overall, I did enjoy Beautiful Things and I think my favorite aspect of it fully comes down to it’s depictions of community and family. And honestly, I feel a little bit bad, but I think Sandra Gangel, Jamie’s mother was probably the most interesting and compelling character for me in this whole film, followed closely by Leah. 

I don’t have as much to say about this film in part because I think that the other movies in this unit do a lot more with the intersections of identity, and have interesting things to say that require a bit more unpacking. But I do not think that is as much of the case here. It feels more akin to a coming of age film than the others in this unit. 

I love that Sandra is somewhat complicated and three dimensional, and also that she is ride or die for her son. I think it is so accurate and wonderful to have her yelling at Jamie for skipping school one second and then lying to the teacher about him having a stomach ache the next. I like that we get these insights in to her character, her background, the life she lived before she had a son, that help explain the relationship she has to raising Jamie and why their dynamic is the way that it is. I love that she isn’t fully mature, and that she is willing to throw hands with children when they are being gossipy little bitches spreading (mis)information. 

I did find it very interesting and pretty decent commentary that we never really learn the reason why Ste is abused by his father and his brother. Perhaps it is because they know something is different about Ste, but ultimately, we are not given a reason, and that is so much of abuse, right? Especially by having Ste’s brother be an abuser as well, is Ste’s brother abusive just to be abusive or is Ste’s brother abusive to keep himself out of harms way?

But as I said above, my favorite aspect of Beautiful Thing is the throughline of community and community care. Namely that Sandra knows that Ste is being abused by his father and brother and she takes him in to her home so he has a safe place to rest. This is shit that I have seen my own family members do in their small communities. People they have raised like their own because there was no one else around them who would keep them safe. 

I like that they don’t have to have Jamie come out explicitly and state how long he has known that he is queer, and yet I sensed The Knowing on him. I like that he calls out Ste’s own fear of being called queer, while admitting he might be afraid to be called that himself, but that I do not see shame in Jamie in the least. I like that we are spared from the bullying Jamie faces for being queer in school, and only see the aftermath of it. 

I think it is really important to show high school students who understand their own sexualities and are confident in them, and I think Jamie is a really killer example of that. 

For/By/About 

By and About. The playwright of the original story is queer. I’m thinking about whether or not it would behoove me to do away with this section of my reviews because my determinations for this are vibes based and the last few films when the identities have been intersectional are much harder to parse. On one hand, I think you could say that having these boys be happy and letting Jamie have an accepting parent could be for the queer community. But I just…did not connect to this as a queer story. For me, and perhaps it is by nature of having women who are written and performed as human beings, I found the story around Jamie and Ste’s connection to Sandra to be far more interesting, and only the last like…15 minutes of the film have anything to do with Sandra’s reaction to Jamie and Ste being queer. 

Favorite Quote 

“There’s an island in the Mediterranean named Lesbian and all it’s inhabitants are dykes”

I do not think this requires any explanation. 

Favorite Moment

gif by @bl-bam-beyond

Honestly, I am a really big fan of the dance at the very end of the film. I like how quickly and easily it shows Ste and Jamie’s acceptance and comfortability with their relationship. I like that Leah and Sandra joined in at the end, both establishing themselves as allies and normalizing two people of the same sex dancing together. While there were a few other moments that were more emotionally compelling, the dancing scene at the end is a joyous celebration and moment of visibility for queer people, and I think a little dance in the sun is the perfect way to close out Unit 2, as I head towards The Rough Units: Unit 3- Faith and Religion and then eventually Unit 4- Heartbreak Alley. 

Score

9/10

I think structurally and technically it was sound, it dipped in the middle, and I was overall less invested than other movies in the syllabus, but it was still very good.

__

And with that, I am done with Unit 2! On to Unit 3: Faith and Religion which I am sure is filled with nothing but upbeat, positive, happy stories..... (can you hear the sarcasm). Be warned as I have been warned that the next couple units are gonna be filled queer pain.

[frownyalfred]

Apologies for the extremely long ask.

Omegaverse as a concept is so complicated and interesting as to me as a trans person.

On the one hand, the writer in me is intrigued by the world building implications and the opportunity to explore gender roles/dynamics. The concept of having a secondary dynamic alongside your actual gender is also fascinating to me and it's something I typically would have expected to be in something like sci-fi before I actually got into fanfiction.

I especially love deep diving into pack dynamics. Admittedly, that's where most of my interest and attention is focused on when reading and writing Omegaverse. I just find the concept so fascinating and any opportunity to write characters with heightened instincts, alien or otherwise, is just so much fun.

But on the other hand, I'm also very aware of how Omegaverse came about because some Supernatural fans wanted to play around with the idea of pack roles/relationships based on a messy study of wolf hierarchies. I'm also aware that intentional or not, a lot of early Omegaverse fics and tropes leaned really heavy into more homophobic and transphobic stereotypes, especially between M/M pairings.

I do feel like this has changed a bit over the years, though. From what I recall, a lot of early Omegaverse fics just really over relied on the stereotypical "which guy is really the girl?" trope that you saw a lot in the early to mid 2000s when discussions of queer (but mostly gay) relationships were brought up. I feel like the discussion has become a lot more nuanced since then and I know there are other trans fic writers like me who enjoy writing Omegaverse simply because it provides an opportunity to explore concepts of gender, sexuality and identity in a relatively fun way.

Not all Omegaverse fics/tropes are created equal, though. And every trans person has a different reaction/feeling towards this AU. I definitely feel like the odd one out, though, sometimes since I mostly come to Omegaverse for pack dynamics, less so for the smut (although I have written some in the past for fun or for friends). But I also believe there's validity in writing smut just for the purpose of enjoying smut.

Overall, I think this AU has a lot of potential, but I also see why it could make people very comfortable. I do wanna say that your fics haven't made uncomfortable and I do enjoy your takes on this trope. And I especially appreciate your willingness to listen to other trans people and their thoughts on Omegaverse. It goes a long way.

Side tangent: I will always be amused by how this whole trope came about btw, but also because the original author of that study followed it up by saying his first paper was absolute bullshit actually and shouldn't be viewed as a factual study of wolf pack hierarchy. Man messed up his original study, but he's a dedicated scientist and I love him for debunking his own work. But also the fact that he had an unintended impact on fandom is such fucking gold to me. I love this man so much.

Thank you for putting my thoughts to words, anon! There's definitely a long history there, and I agree with you that the genre itself has changed a lot in recent years, I think for the better.

I don't begrudge anyone for not liking or wanting to read a/b/o fics at all. I think it's intriguing but has the potential to be deeply uncomfortable or even like you said, transphobic for some people. I try to tag everything very well here that mentions it, etc.

I think what I like most about recent changes is that the genre has shifted to be less about "how can we get these two characters to breed?" and more to discussing pack dynamics, the implications of designations and gender roles, and building interesting biological rules and intricacies in an author-unique universe.

[carriehobbs]

I saw you tagged Ellery Wiseman on that poem and am dropping into your inbox to ask for anything you'd like to share about your Button!! (Do you have more than one? Who do they romance? How is their relationship with Nick?) -wayhavenots

omg pd tysm for asking!! 💕💕 there is absolutely nothing in the world i love more than having an excuse to talk about my ocs

i (with some rare exceptions) am the kind of if player that makes a new oc for every romance route i play, so i actually have 5 buttons 🫣 (technically 6, rip elliot wiseman who was from my very first mind blind playthrough, when i just wanted to see if i liked the game. you were very depressed and never became a fully-realized button, but your sacrifice is remembered and your name is retired out of respect). i have a page with very, very brief details on my buttons (and also my detectives for wayhaven) and links to their tags here, but if you use tumblr mobile you've probably never had the opportunity to see it.

this got so very, very long, so the rest is under the cut

my 5 buttons are: ella, ellie, elle, ellis, and ellery (can you guess what naming convention i lifted from the game's default names? lol). what's universally true for all 5 of them (though with some nuance, they all have slightly different feelings about their relationships) is that they're as close as they can be with their parents (because i like john and hope as characters and i find "i really love these people but our relationship became incredibly complicated and we now have to find ways to reconcile our disappointment/anger/etc. with our love for them" to be really compelling. i love mess) and with nick (because i'm a middle child and i accidentally projected my feelings about my siblings (and especially my older sister) onto the button&nick relationship. i physically can't be mean to nick because i cried for about 45 minutes the first time i read the end of chapter 3/chapter 4 and for the first time really considered my sister's mortality, and that changes you).

for a (not really that brief, whoops) rundown of my buttons' whole deals:

ella: equally humorous and confident, very high insightful stat, romancing ambrose. she's independent, intelligent, ambitious, loyal, great at compartmentalizing, and, quite frankly, arrogant. she can be really abrasive sometimes (while she can be a kind and compassionate person, most people don't get to see that side of her and so she can come off as really rather unpleasant - think that know-it-all kid in your class that everyone kind of hates). ella naturally is rather funny/confident/intelligent/etc., but i think, after the incident with hope, she ended up amplifying these inherent traits of hers and making them into a sort of armour that keeps her safe, but also isolates her. i think she's afraid of showing weakness and i think she feels this subconscious need to prove to everyone (including herself) that she's capable. her relationship with nick is the worst out of all of my buttons (but is still incredibly high, think 160/170-ish approval), mainly because she and nick clash the most. she's very independent and knows what she wants and will pursue it (even if it's a boyfriend her brother doesn't like or a career her parents don't want for her) no matter what anyone else thinks, and nick can be a little hover-y (though this improves over the events of the game). she does really love nick (and does actually care about his approval, even if it won't stop her from doing things she knows he won't like), even if she finds him kind of annoying sometimes. she views the incident with hope as a horrible accident that wasn't anyone's fault, and i think she sees better than my other buttons how everyone in the family was affected by the fallout. fun fact: several years post-game, she and ambrose have identical twin girls (ella jokes that she wanted two kids so she and ambrose had twins because "we're efficient". they have girls because ambrose is a girl dad. i am not accepting notes) that share a birthday with nick (because i need ambrose to be forced to participate in a large yearly party that at least partially involves celebrating nick. do you know how many years nick rented a bouncy castle and then proceeded to bounce on the bouncy castle with the girls? it's every year until they decided they're too cool for it. nick's heart broke that day)

eleanor/ellie: more humorous than confident (with confident stat increasing through the game), but has a decent morbid stat too, very high insightful stat, romancing grayson. ellie fulfills my need in every if game/rpg i play to have at least one character who is so, so nice to everyone (my detective alina fulfills this need in wayhaven). she's kind, considerate, forgiving, has a strong sense of morals (except at work, where she's very expedient), and tends to blame herself when things go wrong. she really feels just unbearably guilty about most things: the incident with hope (if she'd acted differently, if she'd been different, etc., maybe it wouldn't have happened), nick's accident in chapter 3, nick having to take care of her through high school... she really struggled after the incident with hope because she needed nick and depended on him so much, but then hated herself for how much she needed him and feeling like she ruined his life (she did project this onto gray when he started hanging around, which is why she didn't like him at first, but over time she realized it wasn't his fault and moved on. and then she got goopy feelings for him). she's not blind to nick's faults, but she adores him (200 approval easily). i think a lot of her growth over the course of the game comes from learning to trust herself and to believe in herself. fun fact: she once made a joke to gray after they started dating (in front of nick and sally too 😬) without thinking about how there'd be "no kids or dog until we have a house". it was way too early in the relationship to be making a joke about having kids or a house. they didn't even live together yet. she's still a little mortified that she said that

elle: confident, very high insightful stat, romancing kent. i love elle because she's kind of relentlessly forward-thinking. she doesn't really dwell on the past except to figure out how to improve the future. she believes strongly that it's what someone does that matters. she's my button who's the most interested in trying to get herself into the npo program. like ella, i think she views the incident with hope as a horrible accident that isn't really anyone's fault, and i think she really makes an effort not to dwell on it or assign blame for what happened. she also has terminal foot-in-mouth disease (talking about bondage with kent in front of your brother, best friend, and instructor after revealing that you'll probably get tortured together, anyone?), which is the bane of her existence. while i think all my buttons struggled with some agoraphobia post-the incident with hope, i think elle really struggled with it: she loves dogs and used to volunteer at an animal shelter, but had to stop because she couldn't handle being outside of her home without sally or nick (she could go to school if she spent the entire day with sally, and then would go straight home) and it took several months for her to feel like she could go places without one or both of them again. once she was able to leave her home independently, she started volunteering at the animal shelter again, and is still there. fun fact: post-game and further into their relationship, she ends up accidentally moving in with kent. it starts by just spending a lot of time at his place because it's so close to nick's (i think a lot of her and kent's dates just involve hanging out together), then more and more of her stuff migrates over, until one day she realizes she's been there for two weeks and all of her clothes are in kent's laundry. she formally moves in after that. she's also my button who's most likely to elope!

ellis: humorous-morbid (slightly more morbid than humorous), tentatively more innovative than insightful (i keep swapping the stats), romancing sally. he's "just some guy" (affectionate) to me, if "just some guy" had gallows' humour. he's been kind of desperately in love with sally since he was 13 and figured out what love was. ellis is the kind of person who looks fine on the surface but really isn't. whereas elle doesn't dwell on the incident with hope because she wants to move forward with her life and not have this one event define her, ellis doesn't dwell on it because doing so will wreck him. he was the closest with hope growing up, since they shared a sense of humour and he felt that she really understood him, and it profoundly hurt when she started to pull away as he got older. he trusted her more than anyone growing up and it hurts a lot now to think about how the people he relies on most now are nick and sally instead. he's not as forward about the guilt he feels and how it affects him as ellie or ellery are, but it's still there. he's also very close with nick and really admires him: nick is ellis's model for what it means to "be a man" (more so than john, but i don't think ellis is really aware of this). ellis also views gray as a sort of quasi-older brother figure and is actually more likely to ask gray for relationship or life advice than nick (mainly because he'd feel a little awkward talking to nick about stuff like relationship advice - also look at nick's relationship track record, gray's probably the safer bet). fun fact: ellis is either the same height as nick or one inch shorter than nick (i can never remember), so if they're out together and the topic of height comes up, he tells people that he's at least two inches shorter than he actually is. this is because nick will lie about his height to make himself taller if given the chance, so ellis gets there first and forces nick to be 5ft9 for an evening (nick hates this).

ellery: humorous, higher insightful stat than interpersonal stat, romancing (m!)glitch. she's such a smartass. she's all jokes and has a quip ready for any situation, but, like ella, i think these are inherent characteristics of hers that get amplified as a defense mechanism. i think it's in chapter 1 of the demo that there's the line that says it's better to have people laughing with you than at you, and that really fits ellery. ellery blames herself for really everything to do with hope and nick, but if she brushes it off with a joke she can pretend to be fine (she's incredibly not - her guilt defines a lot of her relationships with other people and how she views herself). she's also incredibly devoted to her family (to the point where she can't listen to someone criticize them professionally because like. that's her dad. this sometimes causes issues in her and glitch's relationship, because glitch is unafraid to criticize unity when appropriate, but they figure out how to manage it over time). speaking of glitch: she is such a loverrrrrrr 💕💕💕 they really are intolerable together because they're that couple that's just all over each other. everyone around them hopes they'll tone it down after the honeymoon stage ends but they do not 💕 i imagine them moving in together incredibly quickly too. i don't know the exact timeline of the game so far, but even this early on, ellery knows that he's it for her. ellery makes me think the most about what it would actually be like to not only grow up with people who are able to hear your every thought but to never live with someone who can't read your mind. i always imagine ellery as being very comfortable communicating telepathically when she chooses to (she almost got held back from preschool because she didn't speak until she was 3/4 - not because she had speech or language delays, but because why would she speak out loud when she could communicate telepathically? eventually telepathic communication had to be (temporarily) banned in the house to get ellery to speak verbally, and once she did the ban was lifted). telepathic communication also means an entirely different way of communicating between people: visual jokes, jokes where the comedy isn't in the punchline but in the way the joke is constructed before it's been told, being able to rely on the person you're talking to picking up subtleties from your thoughts if you're having trouble expressing yourself in words, etc. and glitch is the first person she's ever lived with who can't read her mind (sometimes she'll be in another room half way through a conversation with glitch in her head and she'll ask him for his opinion on something she thought, only for him to have to remind her that he cannot hear her. luckily glitch finds this funny when it happens and lightly ribs her about it). she gets incredibly frustrated with herself sometimes because she doesn't know how to explain to him how much he means to her or how much she loves him. she tries, but she never feels like it really encompasses the depth of the feeling (it's the one time she wishes he was a ment, so he could hear it). fun fact: about a year into their relationship, ellery wrote glitch a really bad love poem to try and express her feelings for glitch in a way that's meaningful to him. glitch loved it and insisted that it was beautiful, but she thinks it's amateur and is kind of embarrassed about it because he quotes actual love poetry to her all the time. this poem does actually exist because i wrote it to try and get in her head space and figure out what she'd say, and it's mid at best (i am not a poet)

[cuephrase]

I cannot keep two words straight in my head smh. I meant the first wip and the third wip. No abandonment meant (though I would not be opposed to hearing about that one too 😅)

asjdfhjsd no worries haha!!

first wip/jigsaw: so although i personally enjoy jason being an anti-hero/being on (sort of?) better terms with the batfam i really like am so frustrated bummed that we don't really get to see how jason got there. however, i also think his current dynamic with the fam is very interesting bc idk, to me, it feels very delicate/fragile and like there's not a whole lot of trust? idk how to summarize all the nuance without giving you an essay you did not ask for, but basically, his current relationship with them is Complicated, yeah?

and i don't have a lot of interest in writing a fix-it/exploring a 'what if things had gone differently' scenario/trying to fill in that missing gap bc...idk. i just don't lmao. BUT!! a reconciliation fic still sounds like so much fun, bc like i like the idea of jason being part of the batfam right but like i don't want to erase all the drama from canon so BASICALLY-

tl;dr: i think jason's current relationship with the batfam is like a bone that broke but wasn't set properly so it needs to be re-broken to heal properly. so i want to start in a place where he's "comfortable" with them, then have him blow everything up. just stomp on all the eggshells. it would very much so be a Things Get Worse Before They Get Better type of reconciliation fic haha. i want it be messy and painful and full of missteps and misunderstandings- it would not be an 'X apologizes and magically everything is better' fic. (which is not shade to anyone who writes/enjoys those!!) i may also challenge myself to stick strictly in jason's pov to really lean into the Unreliable Narrator of it all.

this probably sounds like such a mess, omg *buries face in hands*

pretty bird: this one is a super dick-centric, kinda character study type fic somewhat focused on his sexual trauma, so mirage/catalina/liu, but also just kind of like exploring dick's relationship with himself and like...how he perceives himself? bc he is such a Performer, yk, and he is incredible at it. and he has all these close, meaningful relationships, but sometimes he can still feel so isolated to me in a way bc of how much he keeps to himself and idk i just really want to like get into his head.

also can't really articulate this one without an essay you didn't ask for haha, but it will be a very fun tonal challenge for myself bc i have a very specific vibe i want to achieve that'll require a very careful balancing act.

and then just for funsies, and bc it's also about dick haha,

abandonment: au (inspired by dan mora's black and white oneshot from batman: the brave and the bold) where bruce puts dick into foster care instead of keeping him, but they cross paths later when batman runs into dick and jason who are looking for their missing brother. at least a smidge of identity porn bc dick is willing to trust batman but won't trust bruce wayne. like i have this scene in my mind where batman offers to set the boys up with his friend bruce wayne and dick is like 'absolutely not' and batman is like ?? and then he realizes omg this is the kid i gave up omg.

just imagine dick trying to independently (with jason) try to hunt tim down with batman being like !!!! trying to assist but also not wanting to overstep and also trying not to get too attached (and failing) hehehe. complicated dick and bruce is just so fun, yk?

tysm for the ask, lily, (and for tagging me in this game to begin with!!), i hope you're having/had a beautiful day!!

[ilynpilled]

this is an incoherent and unedited stream of consciousness but what i also take away from the whole process of mythmaking in the series is that it is in dialogue with the meta in such an interesting way.

ofc the series itself is a ‘song’. it is about stories and their power. it is about seeking meaning in fantasy. thrones alluded to this with the ending but it fumbled pretty hilariously at it. but i think there is an interrogation of truth inside of this whole dialogue. like a false ideal presented in fiction vs ‘truth’ in fiction. propaganda vs meaningful humanistic existential depth etc. jaime is a very existential character. he wants to make himself into a story. he wants to make his life have meaning because he dreads his existence and himself as a human being. he has one of the most severe existential crises in the series. “why would the stars want to look down on such as me?” is that. the stump is about an empty space that he needs to fill. it is about severing a previous identity, it is a metaphor for so many things in his life. but he in particular has such a layered relationship with stories and how they function and what his role in them is. he hates lies. he hates songs and stories for lying to him. he hates the story that he became, it destroyed his identity. and yet after hope is rekindled he once again desperately grasps for an unachievable false ideal to redefine his existence so he can stop hating himself. i reiterate, a figure like “arthur dayne” is as much of a lie as “kingslayer.” like these are all lies or incomplete truths. there is no goldenhand the just either, just the ugliness of a stump, as he subconsciously concludes in the dream in affc. human beings are more complicated than myths. so i cannot help but think that the whole idea of legacy in jaime’s story is more about the eyes of the reader and himself and certain characters rather than the eyes of the world that he is in. that feels like such a rich metatextual mess that works so well thematically. deconstructing and reconstructing the knight from the stories. what i find interesting is that the songs and myths within asoiaf are also often about ‘dehumanizing’ the subjects, but the series itself at its foundation is about thoroughly humanizing its characters. the songs are about interpretation, and they are not meant to be defining or all encompassing. they can often present a false reality that upholds a status quo rather than depicting truth. but they can also hold some universal truth in their depths that humanity can thrive for. that feels like a very intentional conversation the text is having with itself and its genre.

anyways yeah he is deeply concerned with ‘legacy’ and what mark he will leave. what the whole point of his existence was. he wants to redefine his existence, and he is desperate to make that definition something redeemable. i generally view the whole process of redemption and reformation as something unanswered and continuous. being better is not something you just “become” to me. it is not about being a bad or good person deep down, i do not think that is at all how george views human beings, it is about choices you make and keep making. with a character like jaime it should not be something that clearly and straightforwardly concludes with a simple answer. being better is a choice that has to be made every day. i have said that i am not that fond of the redemptive heroic death thing because again that is not something he is afraid of in the text, it feels very straightforward, and it is something he craves because in some ways he thinks meaning lies in that, not even a heroic death but just death where he dies with a sword in his hand. and yeah it is easier for him because it is simpler than confrontation and the grueling untangling of knots. fighting things physically is easier. being defeated physically is less scary. but i do not necessarily mind it if he dies eventually after key confrontations and some form of meaningful atonement and a form of existential victory. i do certainly get the feeling from the text that his life is on a timer right now and he has to make do and atone with the time that he has left. he is an older generation character that is attempting to actually redefine his existence, not just make something out of it like many of the other protagonists dealing with identity. but i cannot help but really dig the idea that george could be subverting that aspect of his character and he might conclude with the open and difficult reality that redefinition and reformation and redemption is not as straightforward as just ending your story on a better note and leaving a decent legacy. it could be about having to live with your flawed humanity and what you are as a whole and continuing on an unending inconclusive path of change anyway. that is more difficult and real, and accepting that reality requires existential courage.

songs are songs. jaime hates being a dehumanized figure. the kingslayer is like a figure from a song. much of the core of his character is that he is a human being that was in many ways ruined by being turned into a larger than life figure and myth. he is the villain and monster in the songs and stories. and that is the role he fulfills in the series up until this point too. during asos he realizes he wants to be the hero again like he used to dream as a young boy (the dream was always lingering, that romantic soul never really goes away, much of the JC dynamic for him is rooted in that fantasy, this idea of creating a false ideal: a song, something that gives his existence meaning). he thinks these things have meaning again in a deeper and more conscious way. but the series is not simple like the songs in it, it goes inside of the heads of these figures and it contextualizes them. how you are remembered by history is ultimately out of your control. again, those songs are not really ‘truth’. jaime deals with this so much. he is trying to write a story right now: a story that he chooses. that is what the white book is about. but he explicitly says he would rather slash it into pieces than fill it with lies. he keeps repeating he is sick of lies, which is a loaded statement concerning so many things in his arc. and the white book page is meant to represent his existence. i would like it if the whole idea of how jaime is remembered is more about the meta rather than an in universe thing. i would not mind jaime leaving a “bad legacy”. i do not think it matters how the songs remember him. what matters is where he actually ends up as a human being and what paths he had taken. i like it more as a conversation between him and the reader primarily. maybe the “heroes will always be remembered: the best and the worst and a few who were a bit of both - one of us is like to live in song etc.” is more about the impression of the reader, and the song is the series itself. that whole passage is very unsubtly meta anyway, we are supposed to point at him as we are reading the page, just as he points at the kingmaker. i am sure he is gonna be a figure that lives in song within the text too, i just do not think that is really about truth or what is ultimately defining for his story. like i would find it poignant if his legacy is a mixed bag or even a not particularly good one in history, and if he is never contextualized or redefined in the eyes of his world, but that will not change the reality of his actual story that we get to witness through his eyes and the eyes of other key characters. it makes it more meaningful to me bc then it becomes about an internal existential battle rather than an external one. and we know it is deeper than that for him already: “he did not think the maesters were like to confuse him with Prince Aemon the Dragonknight when they wrote their histories. Still, he felt curiously content.” i think his existential victory should be internally driven rather than defined by an uncontrollable external lens that often falsifies reality anyways, and never understood the people that thought him regaining his “honor” in the lens of westeros is what his arc’s interrogation of redemption is about. affc deconstructs that for him. like that is what his story arc played with a lot already. and his atonement is more about specific relationships with specific characters, not the eyes of history. what history hates him for is one of the most heroic acts in the series, that is not what has to be addressed and reformed.

what is also apparent to me at this point is that asoiaf doesn’t really have concrete conclusions and all encompassing rigid answers concerning the concepts that it interrogates. like obviously the characters have a different view of things. there are distinct philosophies that can all be reasonable and can contradict each other. there is a certain amount of relativism that is inherent to the structure of the story. george is giving the reader a bunch of perspectives, and allows them to decide for themselves. he is not gonna hold your hand and give you a straightforward answer on most things. take for example the whole:

"Are you saying you are monsters?"

"I am saying we are human. You are not the only one with wounds, Lady Brienne. Some of my brothers were good men when this began. Some were ... less good, shall we say? Though there are those who say it does not matter how a man begins, but only how he ends.” (this one especially is very tied to Jaime considering who it is said to and where and when etc)

vs

“A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.”

and many many other statements made by different characters at different stages and said to different protagonists dealing with the same question.

what i am trying to say with all of this is that i do not really have a preferred concrete endgame in that sense nor do i expect george to give a clear answer to certain questions proposed in his arc, but i do have certain conceptual preferences. i do not want him to end up “rewarded” or absolved, i think a lot of people project that onto people arguing that his arc is about redemption and an interrogation of redemption. idk if i would really like his story ending with him dying and then history remembering him as an “honorable” man because a passage written in the white book by a person he saved like in the show. i guess it is not that bad because it was obviously not his intention or goal by the end, but still. the only thing i really want for him is a well written existential victory, which is not really about absolution to me. he has been in a state of existential defeat and cowardice for like 20 years, locking himself into moral nihilism and false fantasies as a result of the incoherent moral structures of his world and his trauma and dissociative tendencies and rage over how he is understood. i just do not want his story to end with that again. that is what i would view as cynical and “pointless” and cyclical in an empty way. like i am not sure i want key decisions that may lead to tragedy to be self sabotage either. i want it to be a choice with meaning to him. i think it would be along the lines of accepting and confronting truth and reality and not letting hope be defeated by it, and continuing to believe that choices hold meaning despite it all.

[bloodyentrails]

Also you didn't list Titans, but I wanna see your answers for Titans 🙏

i frequently forget titans exists and then you come and remind me!!! 😆😆😆 anyway, shows i have complicated relationships with for 100:

Favorite character

JASON!!! jaaaaason! jason my beloved. i watched the show for him, so, i mean.... what else is new. but he's really one of the best-characterised teens i have ever seen? i think because so much of that show is not ... my thing, it still confuses me so much that he exists on this whole other plane of character and he feels so real and human and curran walters is so good, and i wish i could tell him personally.

Second favorite character

that's a tough one. i'm going to go with gar i think? he feels so underwritten and they never seem to figure out what to do with him but he's so unendingly kind amongst so many characters who are so self-absorbed and often plain nasty and i want a show with just him and jason hanging out and maybe kon gets to be there too as a treat. gar teaching kon how to human was so fun! the show is so often lacking in fun!

Least favorite character

dick grayson??!! so much of what i dislike about characters in the show is sort of crystallised into a whole mess with him, the aforementioned self-absorption, the way he is so blind to his own hypocrisy. the lack of empathy or leadership, of heart? and i get to spend so much screen time with his ongoing identity crisis and i don't want to. get your shit together, dick!

The character I’m most like

probably also jason. very sensitive to bs, very sensitive about power dynamics, very sensitive to rejection. i have, however, you may be glad to know, not been involved in criminal activity on a larger scale. or i'd probably be gar the mom friend. i would make food for everyone, they eat so rarely. or sleep regularly. that's me.

Favorite pairing

jaytim. i know they aren't canon but fuck it, the chemistry is off the charts! second favourite pairing is sebkon because, christ the bdsm coffee date energy of it all!!! i think the canon pairings are mostly bland.

Least favorite pairing

hank and dove aka dank. i would like to wipe my memory of their existence.

Favorite moment

i love jason connecting with leslie in their session so much. it's been 2 1/2 seasons of people endlessly telling him how wrong he is, it's so good to have him connect with someone and be ok for a bit.

my other favourite moment, if i'm permitted 2, is seeing him again in season 4 feeling more relaxed and just so fucking playful! he' been playful all this time but had nobody to play with!!?? and here's tim and the ship that launched so many headcanons for me!

Rating out of 10

7/10? i think that is quite generous but i have watched it twice now and when it hits, it really does but also so often it doesn't? i'd watch it again mostly so i could get worked up about all the things that bother me but also there'd be things in it that i also hold very dear??!! what the show could have been. just imagine.

[hypexion]

Love Square Slander

Miraculous Ladybug manages to square the triangle and put its protagonists into a relationship shape that generates theoretically infinite amount of engagement. Everyone has a favourite side and in this post I will explain why each side is wrong. Prepare for some Very Serious Analysis.

Adrienette: We begin with what is clearly the most boring configuration because it has zero superheroes. After four and half seasons this one won by default while the other three sides were temporarily eliminated from reality. Also, Andre Icecream approves of this side, and he clearly has something wrong with him.

Ladynoir: The fun and flirty side. Except beneath the fun and flirty surface lies a pile of unresolved issues that still seems to be growing. Ladybug likes withholding vital information from Chat Noir for dubious reasons, while Chat once got seduced by a Sentibug. Only one of these problems would be fixed by them kissing.

Marichat: The side for people who believe in "true selves" theory, a reading of the text that gets shakier everytime a new Adrien transformation is introduced. And despite the individual characters being intelligent, when Marinette and Chat Noir are together, they have not a single brain cell between them.

Ladrien: Doesn't exist, in the sense that if you put all the canon Ladrien content together, you might not even be able to scrape together a full episode. Probably because this is the Easy Mode of the Love Square. The lack of canon content of course means its supporters are the most hardcore shippers and you shouldn't mess with them.

You would think that four relationships between the same two people would be the end of it, but no. Marinette has an additional superhero form and Adrien has two plus a villain form (fast forward boy doesn't count). This makes things much more complicated due to combinatorics.

Aspbug: The terrible hybrid of Ladynoir and Ladrien, constructed entirely from bad decisions. Around 25913 bad decisions, to be precise, which isn't funny because it's very worrying. Aspbug failed miserably and its success would have been even more miserable.

Ladywalker: It's like Ladynoir, but with everything that isn't emotional dysfunction removed! Adrien sands off what he thinks are the undesirable parts of his personality, a process heavily informed by what his father thinks, and it almost works. This collapsed instantly in canon because the status quo is only allowed to change in two-parters but it is theoretically stable, at the cost of the participant's long-term emotional health.

Multichat: This is just Marichat but more. More what is left to the reader, but it certainly isn't good decisions!

Snekmouse: Finally we reach a ship with a good name. Hypothetically, this situation contains a complex layering of secret identities due to each knowing, but not knowing the other knows, and they can't reveal they know because that would blow their main identity. In practice they'd just blurt out each other's real names in like ten seconds then put no thought into how they could know that information.

Aspnette: In this case Marinette is both aware enough of Aspik's identity and how very bad it would be for her to reveal that knowledge. There's like an 80% chance Marinette reveals her feelings during the panic and later Adrien is like "alas, if only she felt that way about me as me 😢".

Adrimouse: Not quite the previous reversed. Adrien is going to be much better at the whole "hello mouse hero I have never met before" deal, while Marinette not knowing Adrien knows supplies a shot of confidence. Thus, the whole thing ends up being more boring than Adrienette, somehow.

Mariwalker: Less a ship and more a torpedo pointed at the SS Ladywalker. One awkward balcony encounter will inevitably lead to Catwalker revealing to Marinette that he is either a) Chat Noir xor b) Adrien. This will rapidly accelerate the issues present in Ladywalker to new and emotionally destructive heights.

Mariblanc: Observational evidence suggests that most of the time, Mariblanc is just edgy Marichat, with Chat Blanc just being around in an otherwise normal Miraculous setting. This is deeply uninteresting. The rest of the time it's played for as much horror and emotional anguish the author can squeeze out of the situation. This version is surprisingly harrowing.

Ladyblanc: This one was technically canon for like five seconds before Paris and then the moon were destroyed. Tangentally, is there actually any evidence that Chat Blanc killed everyone on the planet? From the angle it doesn't look like the initial death orb gets outside of France, then most of the energy seems to be directed upwards for the Eclipse Cannon tribute act.

Multiblanc: Is this even a thing?

Adrigaminette: hey this isn't a side of the Lovesquare! It's a surface on the dreaded Love Octahedron. If we iterated all the possibilities Kagami adds to this mess, we would never finish! (don't even mention Lu-)

Toxigriffe: Thus we must accept that the best version of Lovesquare is the True Reverse Lovesquare. Sure they probably spent most of their time together before turning good trying to kill each other, but with all the identity shenanigans out of the way it's clean sailing for the heroes formally know as Shadybug and Claw Noir.

Well that's everything including the Mirror Universe so it's time to hit post and what do you mean "what about the selfships"? Fine but only the vanilla configurations.

Maribug: Look Ladybug might theoretically have the self-confidence for this but Marinette? I think not.

Adrichat: This one probably exists in-universe and whenever someone brings it up both Adrien and Gabriel grimace identically but for highly divergent reasons.

Now, that's everything. Do not join me next time for Constructing the Love Hypergraph because I literally just looked up if a hypergraph is a real thing and it is. Now interestingly a hypergraph could actually be used to encode a ship space with polyamorous ships, as it allows an edge to join an arbitary number of vertices, rather than just a pair. As graph theory is fairly easy to grasp, hypergraph theory is sure to take shipping by storm sooner or later. This is the most important conclusion we can gather from whatever non-maths stuff the rest of this post is about.

[hyperfixation-or-death]

Romane Berthauds aesthetics + demialterous flag colors

Fandom: Parallels (Disney, 2022) | Rating: G | Warnings: Implied character death, and a very brief romance mention | Prompt: N/A

@arospecfanworksweek

Demialterous flag colors: White, black, blue, gray.

(The aesthetics turned out way more angsty than I meant them to, just because it was kind of tricky to find images that fit both the character and the color scheme.)

A kind-of fic with major spoilers ahead - my headcanon is that Romane has a whole identity crisis after season one.

_____________________________

She isn't sure how she feels about Sam or Bilal anymore. It's technically been years since she'd thought about a relationship with anyone. She had liked Sam when she was younger, before everything went wrong, hadn't she?

(Now that she thought about it, had it really been that different from how she felt about Bilal? She loved Sam, and Bilal, and Victor. But with Victor, it was closer to how she felt about Camille. With Sam and Bilal, it was more confusing, but a similar type of confusing. She wouldn't have been opposed to dating either of them. But was that the same as wanting to date them?)

Then he and Bilal had been gone, and then they were back. And then came the revelation of a future she had never considered. Then Sam's telling her the things he never had a chance to. But any relationship between them is in her past now, and she's still trying to process her alternate future, and for a brief moment, she can almost forget the present in all the mental chaos.

The moment is brief. Romane is a realist, and the only real thing now is the present, and in the present, Victor is the one who needs her help.

Then everything goes right for once, and she's fourteen years old again. And she kisses Sam, and it's nice. Bilal and Victor are there, because it was always supposed to be the four of them, regardless of if any of them were dating.

(Was she dating Sam now? Nobody had said that, but that was what usually happened after you kissed one of your best friends, right?)

Then they get their memories back, and Romane has never been so confused. She's seventeen. She's fourteen. Sam and Bilal are dead. They're sitting across from her. It's been years. It's been days. It's been three-and-a-half seconds, and all she has to do is open her eyes. Did she ever like Sam like that? Did she ever like Bilal like that? Did she ever like anyone like that?

(She didn't date anyone in the four years they had been gone for. That was because she had been grieving, wasn't it? She hadn't had any crushes on anyone, either. She also hadn't had any friends at all besides Victor, who she only saw on school breaks, anyways. Was any of this even relevant?)

Nothing made sense. Except for Victor. Victor always made sense, he was like the one constant in the mess of inter-dimensional complications that was her life. He was still her best friend, still like a sibling to her, and- he knew that, right? After everything?

She should make sure he knew that.

So they talk, and it eases some of the anxiety over everything. And she could probably chalk up most of the confusion to the disorientation from the time travel. So life goes on as normal. She dates Sam for about two weeks. They decide to stop after determining that she's really not in the right state of mind for a relationship right now. And it's fine. They're still best friends, all of them.

(Honestly, there isn't really much of a difference between dating Sam and not-dating Sam. Was there supposed to be a difference? They still loved each other. People her age - whatever her age was, after all that - weren't usually in love, right?)

Maybe she's supposed to date Bilal, eventually? A version of her married him, after all.

(The thought of marriage is...weird. She doesn't really want to think about it.)

Then, a few months after she and Sam stop dating, Victor says he has something to tell them. Sam has clearly already been told, because his expression is fond instead of curious like hers and Bilal's. Victor is grinning wider than he has in weeks as he explains. Aromantic. Someone who doesn't feel romantic attraction. Victor is aromantic, and his excitement is contagious.

Victor is kind of rambling, but they're all happy for him, so they listen. Romane was familiar with the concept of people not being straight, but she hadn't really given much thought to specific identities.

Victor's expertise on the matter comes from one night of internet rabbit-trails, so it's not exactly flawless, but it's still a decent amount of information. And a lot of words. Grayromantic. Frayromantic. Demiromantic.

(The last one was interesting. But just because she hadn't had a crush on anyone who wasn't a close friend didn't mean she never would, right? Besides, she didn't really talk a lot with anyone who wasn't either family or one of her three close friends.)

Eventually, though, she starts wondering. She was...those had been crushes, right? She knew what she had felt. She just wasn't sure if that was what it was supposed to feel like. She loved Sam, and she wanted to spend time with him. The same went for Bilal. But it wasn't like she wanted to be around them more than she wanted to be around Victor. And when it came to the whole idea of dating, she mostly felt...neutral? She was fine with it, she was fine without it.

She briefly wondered if that was normal. Then she decided nothing about her life was normal. Then she decided to stop worrying about it.

This worked for about three weeks. Then she texted Victor, partially because he was the one who had googled this kind of thing, and partially because he was the only friend she had that she was absolutely certain she had no romantic feelings for.

Two people doing research was faster than one. Alterous attraction. That phrase seemed to fit, but it wasn't exactly an identity. They typed it into the search bar.

Apparently, people could be bialterous. She didn't think she was bi, though. Then again, she didn't really have any friends who were girls, so there hadn't really been any chance for her to develop feelings. She mentioned that to Victor. He looked thoughtful, and asked if she'd ever had a crush on an actress or anything.

She told him that the only time she had ever thought she had a crush was with Sam and Bilal, and apparently those hadn't even been fully romantic feelings.

They did more google searches, and clicked on more links. Demiromantic came up again, but that didn't fit now that she was pretty sure she didn't feel romantic attraction.

(Alterous attraction kept sounding better the more she thought about it.)

It took a while to find a word that fit.

Demialterous. Like demiromantic, but for alterous attraction. It made sense.

(She still wasn't sure if she was bi, though. But that wasn't too important right now; she had a word, and she had the people she cared about, and she had time.)

Romane smiled.

[thedarklordsnicklefritz]

Okay I finally started actually playing bg3 instead of just messing around with the character creator. Here's my thoughts on the game so far until I had to stop from headache:

- The character creator is really cool, and probably revolutionary. There's like 350 skin color options. I appreciate that your gender identity is separate from the body type you choose, and that you can select any of the genital options with any of the the body types.

But I was kind of underwhelmed with the face options (although good on them for the diversity range of the face options they had) and that they were locked to the body types. And the body types basically boiled down to small feminine, small masculine, big feminine and big masculine. And the feminine bodies came with boobs, nonoptional.

I do get that there's a lot of limitations like with the facial mapping and clothes and hardware etc, the whole game file is like 10x as big as the largest game I have on the switch. So I don't think it's unreasonable that they didn't work more on that. But still. It would be nice to not have to have tiddies without also having to have ManFace™️ and more mixing and matching of features in general.

-I spent an embarrassingly long time deciding what I wanted to play. (I took a nap rather than make a choice. Twice.) Hopefully I don't regret going with the custom background instead of dark urge.

-I haven't played a lot of current video games. Or even in general. So it's a really weird mix of familiar since everything is based on 5e, but also in a very unfamiliar way.

It doesn't help that I'm using a switch controller so the buttons are labeled different

- I was so caught up in the euphoria of effectively playing d&d without having to schedule it with other people, that for a moment I forgot I had to play in the Forgotten Realms

- I'm really tired of "fantasy racism". It's not interesting or compelling. It takes a complicated and layered real world issue and boils it down to a charicature that absolves people of any self-reflection. (This isn't necessarily unique to the Forgotten Realms, but they're definitely a big contributor to the whole "Elves hate dwarves!" being so popular in the genre.)

- I'm very proud of myself for freeing shadowheart in the tutorial level. It's great having a cleric in the party. But *gestures above*

- I decided on playing a bard (that seemed like the most conducive for vampire pegging, plus I like having skills! And it seemed like for a wizard playthrough it's better to play as gale since you'd get more wizard specific content) and I'm just running around in my silly little outfit. No strength or constitution to speak of, but rolling great so far

-except when some kid pickpocketed me.

And then I tried to gently intimidate him and Wyll is like WOW are you proud of yourself for (unsuccessfully) scaring a child asshole?

I wasn't actually going to feed him to a bear! I was just messing with him and trying to rile him up a bit. I don't see you getting our stuff back!

-Wyll is very cool.

Or at the very least he's a nice break from the girls constantly fighting.

-I've only died once so far which is some kind of miracle

-But also this is like the first map and I'm already lost and I have no idea what I'm doing

-The headaches are probably going to be a recurring thing I may have to figure out some different settings or something

[tolkien-feels]

Would you do Aredhel, Nerdanel, Amrod, Celegorm, Maglor, Amras Beren, Luthien, Namo, Sauron, Morgoth, Melian, Thingol, Daeron, and Mim for the ask game please? (I apologize for the laundry list; I'm just really curious about what you think about them!) (I'm not intending for them to be done all at once!)

That is quite a list. Okay, let's try to do this, but I apologize for the length. I've tried my best to be brief but if you follow me you know I don't know how to shut up. You can watch in real time how I manage to be concise for a little bit and then gradually derange into rambling

Already done: Ambarussa and Luthien

Aredhel

Sexuality Headcanon: Straight, allo, just very vanilla

Gender Headcanon: She's cis in both identity and presentation, but aggressively anti restrictive gender roles

A ship I have with said character: Lowkey Eol in a messed up way (exactly in what way they're messed up changes depending on my mood), but I'm generally uninterested in shipping Aredhel

A BROTP I have with said character: *gestures broadly at the Finwean family tree* All my shipping interest with this character went into family brotps I think! I'll just highlight a somewhat unusual relationship I'm really interested in: Curufin. Oh, and Idril.

A NOTP I have with said character: In terms of romantic, none. In terms of friendship - Aredhel & Galadriel. I have complex thoughts about their relationship but I actively dislike them as besties.

A random headcanon: I've spoken a little about this before, but you know the relationship Celegorm has with Orome? I headcanon Aredhel has something similar with Nessa

General Opinion over said character: I have no idea why I don't talk about her more often, because I find her super interesting. I'm very particular about fanon takes on her, but I'm very much into canon!Aredhel

Nerdanel

Sexuality Headcanon: I don't actually vibe with the Kinsey scale, but for the sake of simplicity: she's like a 1. I don't think she would label herself as anything more detailed than queer, though

Gender Headcanon: It's complicated. Other people might assume she's gnc, but she's cis. She's just... not very good at performing Valinorean gender, and generally interested in trying very hard to. But she very much identifies as female

A ship I have with said character: FEANOR!!! And that's it. But that's one of my favorite otps across all my fandoms

A BROTP I have with said character: ...also Feanor. Her children as well. MAHTAN. Aule. My completely made up post-Darkening friendship between Nerdanel and Manwe

A NOTP I have with said character: Anaire and/or Earwen. I'm not a huge fan of them as friends (I find it more interesting if they are not) and I'm definitely not into them as romantic ship(s)

A random headcanon: She has a pad and charcoal with her pretty much at all times and is semi-constantly taking down quick sketches of things that interest her. They're studies for future sculptures, but she favors abstract sculptures so very few people can see the relationship between sketches and final products

General Opinion over said character: Love of my life. Blorbo. I once worked myself up to tears just by thinking about her tragedy. Would kill and die for her.

Celegorm

Sexuality Headcanon: Pan but also poly (in the sense of polyamory), which is a major taboo in Valinor and messes him up quite a bit.

Gender Headcanon: I'm a huge fan of transmasc Celegorm tbh, I have a whole post about it

A ship I have with said character: None? Not in particular. I deeply enjoy the idea of Celegorm, in one of his creepiest moments, deciding if he ever can become Not Poly, it will be by loving Luthien, the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, who comes with a crown. But that's not a ship, that's a plot point headcanon, I wouldn't even want this plot point to last long.

A BROTP I have with said character: Other than his family? Orome, I guess. I will say, though, that I enjoy Celegorm getting along with his cousins more than other Feanorians do

A NOTP I have with said character: Aredhel. I like him seeing her as a little sister so much I genuinely forget this is a popular ship until I see it

A random headcanon: Adores children. Ever since childhood, he just loves everyone who's younger than him. And yes, he's fun and has unusual ideas about safety, but he's actually extremely protective and will never put a child in actual danger. He gives them the illusion of danger without ever actually endangering them

General Opinion over said character: I mean, my blog is like 90% Feanorians at some points, do you even have to ask? I love him. My own son, I love him

Maglor

Sexuality Headcanon: I have two answers for this. The actual headcanon is bi. The funny headcanon is that he's aroace but assumes he's pan because "equal amounts of attraction equals pan, right?" when the amount of attraction is actually zero. The reason why this is funny is because I always headcanon Maedhros as aroace, and I deeply enjoy the idea of the two of them having the same identity but having no clue of it until like, halfway through adulthood

Gender Headcanon: Very much cismale

A ship I have with said character: Daeron, but in a very specific way, and it's a ship I enjoy a lot, but not quite an otp

A BROTP I have with said character: As with all Finweans, his whole family. I have to mention kidnap fam, but I only enjoy it if it's messed up. Also - Daeron again

A NOTP I have with said character: His semi-canonical spouse. I never remember they exist and when I do, I just say "No, thanks."

A random headcanon: Absolutely deadly on the battlefield. He doesn't enjoy violence, but being ruthless won't keep him up at night. And mercy killings are kind of his thing.

General Opinion over said character: Same as Celegorm - my own son. But I feel like almost all the headcanons I have about Maglor are almost the opposite of the most popular fanons

Beren

Sexuality Headcanon: ...PTSD. No, just kidding. But kind of not. I headcanon Beren simply hasn't had the opportunity to even meet people he could conceivably be attracted to. I headcanon him as bi, but does he know that? Nope. As far as he's concerned, he's stayingalivesexual at first and then Luthiensexual later

Gender Headcanon: Cis, but after his first death, he generally stops caring and is curious enough about Luthien's weird, half-Maia gender to try out some minor gender presentation things. But it does nothing for him, really, he's just curious and after trying it once he pretty much loses interest. A case could be made for some flavor of enby.

A ship I have with said character: Luthien, of course. Daeron/Beren is a crackship that I take more seriously every time I joke about it and one of these days I'll end up unironically getting into it and crying over the tragedy of it all

A BROTP I have with said character: Barahir's outlaws as a group. Finrod and his elves, too. Thingol and Melian (trust me, I can make it work.) And I have many thoughts about him and Dior. As always, I gravitate around family groups. Oh, and I have an entire au in my head where he basically adopts Turin, and I love it

A NOTP I have with said character: Interestingly, Finrod. They have a lot of elements that usually would make them otp material for me, but somehow I can't get into it

A random headcanon: Could give some of the best archers in Tolkien a run for their money

General Opinion over said character: From my hyperspecific ramblings you can probably guess I'm always thinking about him. I love him both for who he is and for how he parallels ten thousand characters. Parallels make brain go brr

Namo

Sexuality Headcanon: Vala. I headcanon no Vala can feel attraction, romantic or sexual. They experience attraction rather in the way their roles in the Song are structured, and I can't wrap my mind around it

Gender Headcanon: Similar to the above. I headcanon the Valar only really started doing gender based on their understanding of how the Children of Iluvatar would be like, and they're all outside of the gender spectrum we could understand. No, they aren't agender, either. Nor xenogender. They're Something Else.

A ship I have with said character: Again, none. Vaire, I suppose, but that falls between ship and brotp

A BROTP I have with said character: See above on Vaire. Other relationships I enjoy are Lorien and Nienna, as well as Manwe

A NOTP I have with said character: Um... none? Nothing I can think of

A random headcanon: He's gentler with the dead than with the living. Not because he's awkward or anything. He's just conscious of the power he has over the dead and is more careful not to misuse it, while the living are free real estate to treat in any way he sees fit depending on the person

General Opinion over said character: I love the Valar in general, although they break my brain. Mandos is one of the ones I think the least often about, but whenever I do think about him I go "Oh he's fun, I should think about him more often!"

Sauron

Sexuality Headcanon: See Namo. I think Maiar can feel attraction, though, it's just extremely rare, and tends to be for other Maiar. I headcanon Sauron is one of those who has never felt any kind of non-Song-related attraction towards anyone, really. But he's keenly aware of how to be attractive and enjoys it, but from a power rush standpoint only

Gender Headcanon: See Namo again. But I think Sauron finds gender annoyingly messy (what do you mean each culture sees it differently? That's inefficient. No.) and struggles to commit to it in the way most other other Ainur do. Left to his own devices he nopes out of gender; when he's among people (eg Eregion, or Numenor) he performs gender perfectly while finding the whole thing absurd. He defaults to male gender exclusively because of the societal benefits; he would default to female in a matriarchal society, probably.

A ship I have with said character: None

A BROTP I have with said character: Um... Also none? I deeply enjoy the idea of Morgoth and Sauron being a twisted version of Manwe and Eonwe (which is a brotp I have) but it's not a brotp as much as a trainwreck dynamic. I also enjoy Sauron and Celebrimbor having messed up dynamics, but again, trainwreck. Aule and Sauron can be fun but I'm picky.

A NOTP I have with said character: I'm not at all into Sauron being actively in love with someone, so. All of them.

A random headcanon: Ironically for a crafter, he sort of. sucks. at creating realistic fanar for himself. He always ends up in uncanny valley territory due to compulsively wanting to have no flaws - he looks computer-generated, basically. He was better at this when the world was young, but the more he corrupts himself, the worst he becomes at it (while he still can change his fana, anyway)

General Opinion over said character: I wouldn't say I don't like Sauron, but I'm fairly uninterested in straight up villains, while being uninterested in making Sauron anything but the embodiment of a specific kind of evil (though that depends on when in the timeline we're talking about), so I tend not to give him too much thought. He's fun to play with, though, philosophically speaking

Morgoth

Sexuality Headcanon: Again. Vala. Does not apply.

Gender Headcanon: Vala. Does not apply. But he's a huge fan of how gender opens the door for comprehensive oppression in new and fresh ways. Up there with jewelry in the list of best things the elves came up with.

A ship I have with said character: Oh, none. I can crackship him and Gothmog exclusively because I think it'd be funny to ship an Angband ship that isn't Angbang, but that's just to laugh about, I wouldn't be interested in actually exploring it

A BROTP I have with said character: Like I said, Sauron, in a twisting of a Vala-Maia relationship. MANWE MANWE MANWE MANWE. Nienna. Recently, Indis. Hate-brotp with too many characters to count - I love people pissing Morgoth off

A NOTP I have with said character: None? All? I'm unlikely to either enjoy a Morgoth ship or hate it enough to run away

A random headcanon: He genuinely cannot feel love anymore, but he badly wants Manwe under his command because their connection is part of the fabric of the universe, and servitude is the only way Morgoth can conceptualize wanting Manwe near now he can't understand brotherhood anymore (actually I should make a post about this, I have many thoughts on this)

General Opinion over said character: Pretty much exactly the same opinion as what I said about Sauron, but I'll add Book of Lost Tales Melko entertains me a lot

Melian

Sexuality Headcanon: One of the rare Maiar who feels attraction, and the Ainur judge her for directing it at an elf. Having said that, Thingol is an anomaly, and she is attracted to no other being in the world, although she intellectually understands the concept of attraction better than most Ainur

Gender Headcanon: Maia. Does not apply, really, but she delights in something similar to elven womanhood. She would probably consider herself trans, though, because she's chasing a gender euphoria that she does not get with whatever is going on with the Ainur concept of gender

A ship I have with said character: Thingol. That's literally it.

A BROTP I have with said character: Essentially anyone who's ever stepped in Doriath, I kid you not. The instant someone steps in Doriath I start inventing a relationship they could have with Melian. Also, Yavanna and Orome

A NOTP I have with said character: Um... none? ...actually. Thingol/Melian done wrong. I nope out of a lot of portrayals of them as much as I get into portrayals of them I enjoy.

A random headcanon: Her voice is rather deep and quiet and creepily melodic. It's the clearest giveaway she's not actually an elf

General Opinion over said character: I have always enjoyed Melian, but the older I get, the more fond I become of her tbh. Not sure why but it's been a clear tendency for the past decade of my life

Thingol

Sexuality Headcanon: Uh... queer. Some flavor of. But I can't pin it down and I think he definitely wouldn't.

Gender Headcanon: Manflux, but on an elvish scale of time. He can occasionally spend a mortal lifetime without any changes to how he feels about his gender, for example

A ship I have with said character: Melian. Other than that, Finwe (sometimes including Miriel as an OT3, but I tend to headcanon Thingol/Miriel as qp)

A BROTP I have with said character: Same as Melian - everybody who's ever been in Doriath. Also his family (Thingol and Elwe in particular break my heart), and Finwe and Ingwe

A NOTP I have with said character: Same as Melian: Thingol/Melian done wrong. I don't know, I feel like there are some ships I'd consider notps, but none is coming to mind

A random headcanon: Local tall elf uses disturbing height to perfect the art of forehead kisses. No, really. Not many people get them but it's pretty unforgettable if you can manage to get one. (This goes hand-in-hand with my headcanon forehead kisses were the go-to way to wish someone well in Cuivienen, and that tradition stuck in most of Beleriand, though not in Aman.)

General Opinion over said character: I really like him! I mean, very flawed character who is doing his best but that's really inadequate for the situations he finds himself in? That's My Type. I can also be very protective of him because I think he has enough flaws without people bad-faith interpretations of every single thing he does. (But also he's a mess, don't make him perfect either. I'm picky.)

Daeron

Sexuality Headcanon: Demi

Gender Headcanon: You know what? This is the first time I'm thinking about Daeron's gender. I have no idea. Masc-presenting, I think, but there's something... unusual about how I picture his gender? Like, I would describe his gender as "boy" very comfortably, but "man" feels off, but I don't headcanon him as particularly childish, so I don't know. Something.

A ship I have with said character: When it's done in the particular way I like, Luthien. As I've mentioned, I might end up going for Daeron/Beren too. I've mentioned Daeron/Maglor, too. And I'm not sure whether to go on ship or on brotp but I have a friend who is trying to sell me on qp Beleg/Daeron and they're being successful

A BROTP I have with said character: LUTHIEN LUTHIEN LUTHIEN. Thingol and Melian. Occasionally, I get in a mood to explore Beleg and Mablung too. Oh, Maglor, too, in a specific way.

A NOTP I have with said character: None?

A random headcanon: There is not a person Daeron has ever met he cannot make laugh or at least smile given enough time

General Opinion over said character: I'M A PROUD MEMBER OF THE DAERON DEFENSE SQUAD. I'm just that meme of the samurai holding the cat, you know the one? I love him so much and people are so mean to him. Also, I draw a lot of my characterization for him by comparing the evolution of other Leithian characters through drafts, and considering how Daeron might have evolved if Tolkien gave him as much attention as I wish he had - and that's just intellectually fun

Mim

Are you part of the rock opera discord?

Sexuality & Gender Headcanon: Lumping these together because I'm so torn. I have headcanons about how dwarrow genders work but they're very... Durin line-centric. I'm not sure how much they'd apply to Mim's own culture, nor how he would relate to genders outside of his own culture. So um... I guess further worldbuilding is required for me to be able to answer this.

A ship I have with said character: SIGH. I hate my life, but. Mim/Finrod. Listen. It has potential. It has! The tragedy of it al!!!!! (Let this be a lesson that if you crackship something for long enough you'll end up really shipping it.) I could also, I think, ship Mim/Beleg but exclusively in the context of a mutually destructive ship where Mim is just taking out his Finrod issues on somebody else and Beleg..... no idea, I haven't thought that far. The ship has just now occurred to me, don't ask difficult questions.

A BROTP I have with said character: I very much enjoy his relationship with Turin and the rest of his crew, but it's very important that not a single person under Mim's roof behaves in a hinged way, so jot that down. (I also wish I spent more time thinking about his relationship with his sons, but I haven't really done that yet.)

A NOTP I have with said character: None. Listen, after Mim/Finrod I think it's been conclusively proved I will ship Mim with anyone given enough incentive

A random headcanon: He enjoys epic poetry/music as defined by his people. I feel very strongly about it. It's important to him, and the loss of the songs he's never learned grieves him.

General Opinion over said character: I've been looking forward to meeting him in my CoH re-read! I find him very tragic, and he always reminds me Norse mythology, which I used to love as a child. Also, I have to read his Complaint one of these days, if I can find a re-translation and the right mood to read it

[gallifreyborn]

[ quick & dirty guide to romana's canon (to this blog) connections to other dw characters.

the doctor — i've got a whole thing in more detail here. but the tldr is that they were besties until they weren't. lots of complicated feelings going on there.

k9 — the bestest boy. after travelling with the doctor, k9 mark ii chose to stay with the doctor. romana loves her special little dog-shaped computer. she's also been close to k9 mark i, due to him belonging to leela.

leela — romana's girlfriend bodyguard. another former companion of the doctor. despite a rough start, romana and leela become very close. leela is probably the person that romana cares about the most, and there is very little that she wouldn't do for her.

irving braxiatel — the doctor's brother, who also has a... complicated relationship with romana. it's a mess and not easily summarised. she cares about him a lot, but doesn't necessarily trust him (although, he was once the only person on gallifrey who she did trust).

ace mcshane — ace studied at the time lord academy after romana opened it to aliens, before becoming a member of the cia under romana. romana had a good (albeit professional) relationship with ace. romana comes to believe that ace has died in the time war, while in reality ace simply had her memories of gallifrey erased and was returned to her life on earth.

the master — romana enlisted the master's help during the time war, which is a mistake that she lived to regret. the master turned on gallifrey at the first chance, and threw leela into the time vortex, so that no one would know if she was alive or dead, to cause maximum pain. while romana eventually reunited with leela, she holds a grudge and hates this fucker so much.

river song — they've never canonically met, though river has stolen romana's identity at least a couple of times lol

general companions — romana keeps track of the doctor and his companions, prior to the time war. she likes to make sure that he's doing okay, and to make sure that none of her people are causing trouble for him and his friends. she's generally up to date with her knowledge of his companions (relative to her timeline), though there will be realistic gaps in her knowledge. like, she knows who sarah jane is, but not what her favourite tea is, you know?

[parachutingkitten]

Thoughts on the love square because I need to figure out why the flip isn't working for me:

So... we flipped. Which is cool and fun and all, but also I think that it happened in a way that misses the point, or at the very least some interesting potential.

The premise of this show is so good- and it has a clear resolution state. Each character thinks their in love with this idealized perfect version of their classmate, all while unknowingly rejecting that person's other identity. In order for these characters to get together, they first need to learn to love their other halves. And seemingly, that's what the square flip has done, but... idk. It's not playing for me. And maybe I know why? Idk.

My first assumption was that Chat and Mari were the more sincere versions of both these characters, where they have all their flaws and impulses on display, and so flipping the square would essentially prove that they'd fallen in love with all of each other. And while that might have been true at the beginning of the show, the relationships between these characters have deepened and complicated a lot, there’s not such a harsh split between the two personalities, and that statement just doesn't hold true anymore. So, no, it's not marrichat that'll solve the love square. As we've seen, it didn't really work out well, and I for one was very surprised at the dynamic it took on.

Idk, for me elation wasn't marichat, it was just a quick role reversal episode. It missed the whole appeal of marichat, at least for me. And I guess that's because the relationship I've always imagined marichat as, is like... healthy? Accidental? Real? The whole appeal was that they didn't have a crush on each other, so them falling in love that way was like, ironic. It requires that Mari and chat have a relationship that is established first and then developed into a romantic thing, not that they happen to have a crush on each other at the same time. And with that not being what we ended up with, it has recontextualized the problem for me.

The problem isn't that these different identities are getting in the way of their love like i previously assumed, it's that they don't actually love each other. Marinette likes Adrien in a celebrity high school crush capacity. Chat likes Ladybug in a hot girl at work capacity. These are not a solid basis for actual long term relationships. That's why marichat is appealing, because it's the only relationship between the two that's a blank slate, untouched by these obsessive crushes. But that's kinda a bust now. So... I'm not sure which side of the square I'm on. And the stragest part about this move is that it doesn't even really change much.

Marrinette is not only stupidly love struck around Chat now, but still clumsy around Adrien, and Adrien is a stupid soft boi around Mari still, he just blushes more. This isn't change or progression in their dynamic, it's just a shift of setting. The way these two develop crushes so quickly on new people is not healthy or nuanced. There's this deep sense of obsession that comes with them, and it's just not good. Not to mention it doesn't really makes sense. Adrien getting his mind out of 'she's just a friend' mode should take a little while. Marrinette's crush on chat should've been swamped with hesitancy for a long while before she comes to terms with it. These hyperfixating crushes are cute and all, but they're keeping our characters stuck at this surface level that prevents any real progression from happening.

It baffles me that Marinette rejecting her crush on Adrien doesn’t finally get us past her nervous train wreck energy when she's around him. Like maybe Adrien liking her would actually make sense if she was finally free of her crush, and so starting acting more natural and confident around him. Maybe it's now Adrien who is a scatter brained mess around her! That would actually be a fun dynamic reversal! It would be change! Progression! Reaction! How about have Adrien react to Mari having a crush on him for years? How about have ladybug react to chat finally having let go of his? How about have these characters feel like they actually know each other- because they do!

And hey, maybe that's the point the writers are going to make. These characters can't get together if they don't know each other's identities, because any way you slice it, they'd be dating half a person. Fine. But that doesn't mean them learning to like the different sides of this person separately shouldn't be framed as progress of some kind or another. The love should become more real the more sides of this person they learn to love, even in descreat parts, right?

This set up, by design, is a friends to lovers story. They think they're just friends, but it turns out they love each other. So why wouldn't you make it so that when they do fall in love, it progresses from friends to lovers- not that they happen to align their crushes with each other at the right moment, or maybe that their identities get revealed to each other, forcing them into it. Cuz really, those are the only options left at this point. Every set of romantic attractions has been explored, so we can't have their love evolve out of something that isn't an obsessive crush.

I just... I guess I was waiting for the relationship between these two to get more intimate in a platonic sense in order to allow for the actual romance to blossom. And I guess I'm still waiting...