#love & horrible moral ambiguity in a time of war

[firesofdainix]

spacetime continuum is such a cool concept! how did you even create the idea? and did you expect it to grow this much? Asking because I love it, back when you first started publishing them i checked the fwndom tag every day hoping youd uploaded a new one •-• its still my favorite series of fics in this fandom

Thank you so much for reading my stories! I admit I never quite expected people to love them much less be inspired, but here we are! March me would be so happy hearing this! So, there are three things that made me inspired to write Spacetime Continuum:

1. Broken AU and its impact in the Solarballs community, such as the Earth favoritism and evil Gas Giants

2. Earth's character being watered down to an innocent planet void of nothing wrong, which frustrates me greatly

3. The Ice Giants playing at most two roles in the Solarballs universes I had seen that time: being non existent, or being victims of the gas Giants.

For more information of the origins of this AU, click read more:

I mentioned that one of the biggest reasons I created this universe was because I had yet to see an AU where the Ice Giants are just as bad as the Gas Giants, and that they go with what the Gas Giants have for them without any coercion. Uranus' personality had been the very first thing I started writing and thinking about, hence my second work for Solarballs being about Uranus, when the paint dries. He was funny to flesh out, from being the insecure planet he is today to the prideful, boisterous and hot tempered character he'd been in the Proto Era. Jupiter and Saturn were the next to follow different tweaks of their character in canon, because my goal had been turning them into complicated and morally ambiguous characters. The Ice Giants are in POWER, IN CONTROL of their horrible actions (though you can make a case for Neptune being manipulated by Uranus, but it's clear he had no qualms killing the other giants and wiping out smaller bodies) in my universe, especially during the war for the position of Celestial Monarch.

The War had already been an integral part of the story, and it was mentioned in my first, now non-canon fic "Mars, god of war" along with hypothetical planets Antichton and Phaeton, plus their relationships with Venus and Mars. But during that, I didn't know what the war had been about, all I know is that Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune were all allies (to also combat the common fanon that Uranus is afraid of Jupiter) and their enemies are Saturn and Planet X. The character of Hades was born, and this drove me to write and flesh out the aforementioned Uranus fic linked earlier, with the earliest mentions of Jupiter accidentally killing Hades, and the animosity between Saturn and Jupiter/Uranus. I didn't expect myself to see the romantic tension between Jupiter and Uranus until now, so that was my fault LMAO

Since this is a series, and not a multi chapter fic, I didn't have to commit to a linear narrative and begin writing one shots about my universe, expanding the characters and the world revolving around the planets. My third fic I've uploaded was about Titan, aka "Saturn's moons hanging by a thread," and the two fics after it about the moons and how the elder Moons were affected by the war. It was an excuse to give the readers more details and clues about what happened before I immediately hit them with the Truth, which is why Saturn merely admonished his moons' actions against Titan in "moon eater." To set up Clues about WHY Jupiter killed Hades in the first place, but making it clear that the story Saturn told IS NOT the whole thing, as we see in "history is a story told by the winners of the fight," there were other factors at play, along with Uranus's ambitious motives (it'll be seen in a fic I'm uploading tonight!) it exposes Jupiter's mental stability and Hades's abuse towards his own older brother that drove him to kill him, even accidentally. And you have to take note this fic was written AFTER plot heavy and clue filled fics such as "after the battle," where Jupiter is written as a megalomaniac that finally got what he wanted; "you didn't know?" Where we are seeing the new personality of Jupiter, and the Ganymede fic, where Jupiter's actions are INEXCUSABLE and shitty. It's fun to see readers puzzling over what the hell happened in the last billion years.

However, since the series is built upon ideas that have taken a long time to consider and new ideas keep popping up, there are times when older fics contradict my new ones, such as changing Earth and Tierra from being the same person to different entities. But I hopefully usually keep my ideas and message consistent. I love having the creativity and using a show about talking planets as my muse and a sandbox for the different kinds of characters and themes which usually play out in the story. I know broken AU gets a whole lot of flack for being the main reason why Earth, Jupiter and Saturn's characters became damaged, but honestly I saw it as an opportunity. A way to integrate the "evil" gas Giants into my AU.

My goal is to keep everyone consistent, well-rounded, and having a defining set of goals and characteristics, including those who are used to drive the story or a character forward, such as Hades, Vulcan, Theia, Antichton and Phaeton, who already have SOME established depth to them other than being the partners of existing planets. I mean... Have you guys READ Antichton in "the consequences of our actions"? He was a bastard, as well-meaning POS who thought he was doing the best. And Hades, aka the planet I created to give Jupiter a character arc, only serving as a plot device? He STILL continues to haunt the narrative. He continues to make Jupiter uncomfortable at the mere mention of him. His murder is seen as Jupiter's power play and not retaliation. That's where I've been going.

Writing the characters who are alive with complex characteristics is something I enjoyed. I enjoyed writing Earth being an unapologetic, arrogant, insensitive asshole who gets on the nerves of other rocky planets. I enjoy writing Saturn as an unrepentant, vain, and self-centered planet who can't apologize without sounding like he forced it. I love writing Sun and how his favoritism, his greenhorn nature when he's been given his system led to the downfall of the solar system and cast permanent wounds to his Giants. And I enjoy writing Planet X, Tyche, Nemesis and Iris, who are up to no good.

The main themes or lessons in my series are as follows:

1. There is more sides to a story than what is given.

2. No one is right. No one is wrong. It all depends on what you're fighting for and the beliefs you have.

3. You need to learn responsibility. You are a born leader, use your talent to the utmost power. Don't play favorites, and discipline them when they go too far.

4. Revenge is a fickle thing: will it make you feel satisfied, or will it just fill your empty heart with negativity?

5. Immortality is sacred. One wrong move against those you love the most and you'll be dead.

6. Favoritism kills.

And a whole lot more I'm not getting into because they'd be spoilers, or they're not fully fleshed out as ideas yet! Thank you for enjoying spacetime continuum, and I hope to upload something about it soon! (Tonight lmao). I... Didn't think thisd get long but IT DID

[gravitasmalfunction]

Re-reading Look to Windward; it was the only Banks on the shelf at my local library when I was there the other day. [I drafted this post over a month ago and then didn't actually finish it, but my thoughts still stand.]

It's not my first choice for a re-read, and this time around I think it's because I read it quite early on during my personal Culture reading journey, and the bits that stand out to me now would have gone over my head during that initial reading. Which is ironic, because much of the book serves as almost a primer on the Culture mainstream - what it's like to live on an Orbital, the coddled Culture humans' penchant for thrill-seeking and extremes, the societal do-gooding and the individual frivolousness. Kabe the Homomdan "ambassador" and Ziller the Chelgrian celebrity composer are the alien foils for Culture, their outsider points of view accompany whole sections of untagged dialectic to reveal to the reader the Culture as concept. What are the umpteen-trillion inhabitants of this Orbital doing with their day? Well, some of them are doing the sorts of things we see people doing in this book. Like lava rafting. Because why not.

Also, compared to other Culture novels, there is such a dearth of central female characters, and for me personally that makes it more of a slog than any other random Culture novel. One could easily argue that Worosei is a classic case of fridging, except there's more going on than her death being Major ManPain Quilan's motivation. Not only did she die, her soul (her personality state as captured by her Soulkeeper device) was unable to be transferred to heaven (which is real, or rather digital, but is a place that demonstrably exists and was constructed for the purpose). Quilan loved her so much, and that comes through in his memories and flashbacks. She was the one who wanted to enlist, and he enlisted because of her. She was clever and brave and vibrant. To Quilan, she could do no wrong, but from the beginning we know and are told that she signed up to fight the civil war against the revolution. Her self-appointed mission during the war was to rescue the thousands of souls stored in an almost-forgotten archive. Saving souls is good! But they're the souls of old military personnel who volunteered to be revived if needed for war purposes. They're a military asset and a very conservative one to boot, and they're being retrieved to help the conservative side crush the revolution. That's bad. So, Worosei is complicated, flawed, morally ambiguous. She's driving a big part of the plot. She's also really, truly, irretrievably dead. Which is probably for the best, because then she can be idealised as a sort of heroic figure, whereas if the story had spent any more time with her in any other context, we might have seen her doing horrible things unprovoked to her social inferiors in her normal daily life, instead of just seeing her shoot the brains out of an enemy combatant on a battlefield, who just so happened to be her social inferior, but also her literal enemy because of the actual civil war going on.

All that irony was completely wasted on me in my earlier read-throughs.

Similarly, all the irony of the Culture's interfering with the Chelgrians in the first place was lost on me. The concept of the main civilisational sequence, and the mystery of Sublimation, is explored in more depth in other books but it's covered enough here that I ought to have seen the irony going on. The Culture is very clever, right, but in the case of Chel, they have been very, very stupid. And part of that is their massive, gaping blind spot where it comes to the Sublimed.

In other books the Culture is called out as an outlier, a perpetual adolescent of an advanced civilisation, because unlike other mature civs who have spent sufficient time being at the pinnacle of achievement, they have not decided to vacate the Real and their spot in the galactic meta-civilisation by Subliming. Usually a whole civ will decide to do the big ascending to godhood or whatever ineffable new and exciting plane of existence Sublimation takes you to, maybe leaving some remnants behind, but generally bowing out of the big sandbox that is the galaxy en masse. It's possible but rare for individuals to Sublime on their own, easier if the individual concerned is a super-advanced machine intelligence. Culture Minds have sublimed. If one were to make a "perfect" Al, the first thing it would do upon becoming conscious is Sublime. But instead of growing up and getting a real job Subliming, the Culture is determined to stay in this place of existence, meddling with other people's business to try and tip the great moral balance of the galaxy a little farther towards justice. This is why Chel, with its oppressive caste system, becomes a target for the Culture's little interventions.

But the Chelgrians are fucking weird and the Culture should have known better, because the only people who can blithely ignore the common wisdom of don't fuck with the Culture are the Sublimed.

Chel has the Chelgrian-Puen, the Gone-Before, which are the random little fraction of the Chelgrians who got raptured Sublimed way back before their civilisation had even begun to reach the technological peak, and decided to stay in touch with their un-Sublimed counterparts, teach them how to make Heaven, and so on. This makes the Chelgrians triple outliers: how they Sublimed (partially!), when they Sublimed (in their relative civilisational and technological infancy!), and the continuing involvement of their Sublimed counterparts with their source civilisation/species in the Real (basically unprecedented!).

On this one isolated metric, the Chelgrians could be considered even more advanced than the Culture.

What the case of the Chelgrian-Puen reveals is there is no moral perfection aspect to Subliming. The Gone-Before are perfectly content for their source society to continue to be markedly unequal, for the caste system to continue, for some Chelgrians to be allowed to exploit, maim and kill others merely because their social status was circumscribed even before birth to be entitled to such privilege.

It's interesting, then, to see that the Culture's excuse for their botched intervention in Chel is that the Chelgrians are a predator species, and the Culture claims to have failed to accurately accounted for that. I think the Culture is misdirecting through their teeth with this excuse - but that's another post.

[littleapocalypsekitten]

Funnily enough, I actually read on Medusa's infamous origin, whilst the Greeks and romans were definitely not progressive in regards to gender, Medusa's case is actually more case than we thought!

You see originally Medusa and her sisters were just horrible monsters and born monsters as their parents were also horrible monsters, but Medusa was the only one that was mortal.

She was also drawn as a hideous monster around this time and her behavior in the myth of Perseus depicted her as nothing more than a mindless monster that went around killing people for no particular reason.

Anyhow the greeks started drawing Medusa's originally hideous face as attractive as time went on and she started being depicted as more of a monster person, sapient enough to have carried out a consensual relationship with Poseidon.

More time goes by and the greek myths were so liked by the conquering romans that they ultimately take their mythology for their own.

Around this time, a famous Roman writer, Publius Ovidius Naso, better known as simply Ovid, whom had been banished from Rome by the emperor, started writing stories about the roman versions of the greek gods and other characters.

In Ovid's story of Perseus, it is related by Perseus that Medusa was once a human with her sisters removed from the time. Here Medusa was a priestess of Minerva (Athena), but was raped by Neptune (Poseidon) in Minerva's temple. Minerva punished Medusa for "Defiling" her temple by turning her into a horrific monster.

Ovid's Perseus agrees with his punishment, saying it was just punishment. However whilst the original version of Perseus was pretty righteous, even by modern standards, Ovid's Perseus is more morally ambiguous.

For example, Ovid's Perseus starts a war with his fiancee's former suitor and kills many people. One of these people is a young Indian boy named Athis. Perseus brutally kills Athis in a manner described in grotesque detail, right in front of Athis's male lover and brother.

When they try to attack Perseus, he kills them too. Whilst Perseus says this is righteous and the gods are on his side, there are several signs that we are meant to feel bad for Athis. The text goes into a long description of how Athis was just sixteen, a very handsome and fine smelling boy whom was beloved by his family. Similarly it goes into the grief of Athis's loved ones.

Ovid also wrote many stories where the gods, particularly Minerva, acted like completely jerks, such as in his version of the story of Arachne.

Given Ovid was exiled by the Emperor and Minerva was one of Rome's most beloved gods, he may have been criticizing the government and getting stress out by depicting their gods and heroes as corrupt rulers and tools of an unjust system.

So think of it like someone writing a fanfiction to make characters they dislike look bad and a villain they like be a more sympathetic character.

Oh, that's based!

[esther-dot]

I'm not even a Jon fan in particular, but as a Sansa and Dorne stan, Kit making twitter Targ stans lose what little was left of their pea-sized minds has been most pleasing to me. They really shouldn't have talked all that shit and karma is just coming back to bite as it always does with that fandom. I hope the Snow announcement comes soon and I hope we at least get a Sansa cameo in the show. However, if Kit is going to have his man pain over killing a genocidal tyrant be a main point in the show he can keep it lmao.

(Context: “Targ nation” was tweeting out revenge porn of Kit and making fun of his addiction and saying all sorts of horrible things about him and his wife after he recently defended Jon killing Dany. He used a lot of mitigating language, said he wished the characters had more time together, talked about how close his wife and Emilia are, but they were incensed.)

I try not to care too much about interviews because actors contradict themselves all the time. Kit said post s8 that supporting Dany made you “complicit” which means it’s possible he thinks that Jon was complicit too, that he might deal with that in the sequel, and that his show won’t glamorize Dany. So, I can simply take everything he says in interviews in the lead-up to his show as him trying not to estrange fans. Maybe Dany stans should be happy he still thinks they’re a gettable audience or he might be saying worse? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I mentioned the other day that I would enjoy a chance for Jon to deal with his trauma from dying, finding out about his parents, the wars he was involved in…I mean, there is a lot of stuff I would love for them to dig into which GoT totally neglected, but, grieving for a mass murderer is definitely not something I’m up for. Obviously, we don’t know for sure that’s where he’d take things, but there were quotes that seemed to point there. Or at least, that he thinks there’s still some question about the ethics of killing Dany. He said Ned wouldn’t approve since he didn’t approve of Jaime killing Aerys, but that ignores one tiny little detail. Ned didn’t know what Aerys wanted to do to KL, but Dany had already burned KL when Jon killed her. That kinda removes any moral ambiguity?

Furthermore, whatever code of honor Ned espoused and wanted to live by, he committed treason, betrayed his best friend and king, to protect an innocent life—Jon’s. To act like he would disapprove of Jon taking action to save thousands upon thousands of children, to save Winterfell, Ned’s daughters, to save Sansa, well, that’s just silly. I’m not saying he wouldn’t feel shame, Jon carries a lot of shame, but we can feel bad about having to take certain actions even if it is unequivocally the right thing to do. Not every choice is easy, and that’s certainly something Martin loves to explore. That could have been what Kit was trying to get at, who knows.

Anyway, I’m not sure which moral paradigm the sequel will be written from, and I’m not really looking forward to finding out 😂

[top-vi]

In regard to Rhaenyra/Harwin it was random and out of nowhere in the show as they didn’t develop one of the most important relationships Rhaenyra’s had.

There’s been a lot of debate as to why this was but I think the honest truth is: Harwin Strong is a massive character flaw on Rhaenyra’s end.

For all the writers’ talk of nuance and moral ambiguity that is far from the case. They’ve turned Aegon II into the comical love child of Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Snow, a sadist who likes to rape children and watch them fight to the death. On the other side is Rhaenyra who they intentionally brushed any flaws under the rug e.g. ordering Vaemond’s death and feeding his corpse to Syrax. Even when she demands for Aemond to be “sharply questioned” this is quickly overshadowed by Alicent’s dagger scene.

The writing in HotD is painfully black and white, no matter what they try to say:

Aegon II = evil child abuser.

Rhaenyra I = misunderstood heroine.

This version for Rhaenyra would’ve worked perfectly if it wasn’t for Harwin Strong. There is no way to justify having THREE sons with him, she handed Team Green the perfect legal grounds to take the throne on a silver platter. Team Black can try to jump through as many hoops as they want to justify it but there aren’t any, it was dumb decision.

Having children with a man who looks nothing like your husband makes for an interesting character. Through this relationship Rhaenyra’s arrogance is on full display, she genuinely sees herself as above the law. But whilst it makes her more interesting it doesn’t make her perfect.

So the writers response was to brush over it: Ryan Corr had 5 minutes screen time, and minus one or two lines in 1x07 Harwin is never mentioned again. I honestly believe if it wasn’t for the fact it’s such an important plot point that they couldn’t ignore JL&J would’ve been written to be Laenor’s kids.

i fear that this is like...incredibly dramatic.

look, i usually don't feel the need to cape for writers and showrunners, but both aegon and rhaenyra are much more complex than you are making them out to be. they will be even more fleshed out in s2 and beyond.

harwin and rhaenyra's relationship is underdeveloped, yes, but i believe that is more so a fault of the time jumps than anything else (sidenote: bring back 13-16 episode seasons please). its hard to show their dynamics when the entirety of their relationship was skipped over in the timeline.

its not that the writers didn't want to show rhaenyra's flaws or whatever lmfao. rhaenyra's relationship with harwin is a "flaw" in the sense that it is a horrible political decision, but rhaenyra is always striving for love. it is, imo, one of her more important character traits. it is what makes her enduring love for alicent a) more painful and b) make sense in general.

also, i'm not quite sure i understand your argument here. you complain that rhaenyra is being portrayed as perfect and aegon as evil......but then also complain about one of her very real character flaws. alicent literally calls this out by saying having joffery is an "insult".

the writers are only given so much space to work with, and seeing as harwin has to die before the war even begins, it makes sense to gloss over large portions of their relationship. they were also never going to make jace, luke, and joffery true-born velaryons, stop it.

finally, as much as it sucks to say, while harwin may have been one of rhaenyra's most important relationships personally, it is not even close to her most important relationship for the purposes of the show and the plot. her relationship with alicent, daemon, viserys, and even the velaryons take precedence in the story being told on a macro level.

her relationship with harwin doesn't need to be shown bc tbh it doesn't matter than much overall. only the fruits of it do, and thus the consequences. (the consequences of which, btw, are very important. everyone knows her kids are bastards which creates problems for her. it is like.......a large part of her and jace's characterization)

[autistic-puffin]

THANK YOU it is consuming my entire brain

amazing i cannot wait to see them

i did in fact find it thank you sadlkfjasklfasadfas

i feel like i have probably not had a single thought about this show that has not already been articulated better by someone else, but i will still say some of my thoughts

things i keep coming back to: jack/anne/max, the DECISIONS AND CHOICES, the inevitability related to all of them, and monstrousness

jack/anne/max: this is huge to me on multiple levels, partially because as individuals i adore all of them and they're all so ALIVE and compelling and complex and nuanced and like all of their outward presentations (of gender and of other things) and their ways of communicating and fighting and not fighting and all of the above are just so so so good and delicious and they fit together so fascinatingly and i love it. and also as a queer man in a long-term QPR with a woman, idk i felt so, seen? i loved how undefined jack and anne were beyond "partners" and i also love that max's importance to anne isn't diminished by jack's importance to her and how they all respect each other's significance to one another by the end. having encountered so many people that do not understand our relationship and want to make sense of it in terms of either romantic or platonic etc, seeing a relationship more similar to my own than possibly any other i've seen, a relationship that wasn't questioned or even properly defined or picked apart, it just IS and is given enormous weight in the story,,,, that is so much to me. and also all of them are very sexy and fun and that's cool too.

DECISIONS AND CHOICES: i mentioned this above but i am so so so so so so obsessed with allllll of the tought and challenging decisions and choices made in this show by the characters. and how much all of them MADE SENSE. even if you wouldn't have made that choice (though as flint says at the end of season 4, he doesn't honestly know what he would've done had he been in silver's position), you can completely understand WHY the character is doing what they're doing, even as you're going BESTIE PLEASE STOP. the characterizations are so well-established and developed over time throughout the show and it is just HHHHHHH *chef's kiss*. and they keep getting thrown into these awful dilemmas and debates and having to make awful choices. and i love it. i think this show does a really really good job of holding all of the moral ambiguity at once. and i think that freedom to not "justify" horrible actions really allows for so much INTERESTING storytelling as we explore the reasons behind all of these different actions.

inevitability: this is very much related to choices and the tragedy of knowing these characters will always make these decisions. eleanor will always choose nassau over max in that moment. flint cannot stop fighting his war. silver cannot lose madi. there is no other way for it to go forward because these characters will always make these decisions. and many of them are even aware of this!!!! the other inevitability is knowing the historical reality of this period and region. and knowing that no matter how hard they try, they will not win this war. the conclusion is already known and so we know all of this struggling will be to some extent in vain. and it is SOOOOOOO. so. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

monstrousness: i am a simple queer and trans person, i enjoy my fictional explorations of monstrousness as much as the next queer and trans person. when i read Susan Stryker's "My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix" 6-ish years ago it rearranged my brain forever. as expected, the discussions of monsters in this show were very YES THAT YES to me. both in being assigned monsters in order to fit the narrative of civilization and in deciding to become the monster. i think for me, watching this show in 2024, it was hitting on the whole "the more things change, the more they stay the same" thing. on how i as a trans person with my horomones and my surgery am one of the monsters that needs to be eradicated, how my queer relationship is hated by my partner's family, how all of my trans siblings are either demonized or infantilized and how we're targeted and fetishized and accused of being monsters. and to some extent this has always been a thing, we all know this. but in this particular moment in time, watching this show about this group of people deemed as too other and monstrous to be allowed into "polite society" and hearing about how these monsters are necessary to maintain the fiction that this oppressive empire is necessary,,,,,,idk i guess it just hits pretty hard.

show of all time and all that etc. also flint looks SO good covered in blood that i am like. mildly concerned for myself.

@autistic-puffin

WELCOME TO THE OTHER SIDE OF BLACK SAILS

it's so funny because literally yesterday i liked a whoooole bunch of black sails posts i'm about to queue up!

alas, my blog is in disuse, i ended up not posting as much as i would have if i just used this one, so i've started going back to here -- this was back when i was trying to wrangle my way out of being a multifandom space (lol can u imagine). BUT like i said... mre black sails being queued on this blog as we speak!

[notbecauseofvictories]

inablazeofglory replied to your post: �� + Harry Potter

I really kinda wanna hear more about dumbledore fucking over europe for his fascist boyfriend and hating himself about it… Thats an interesting take i hadnt thought of to explain his actions in the series… Any fanfic recs!?? (Things i like: treating morally complex characters as actually morally complex)

It’s really nothing more than a pet theory, not something I’ve read or even....terribly closely related to JK’s conception of the characters. Nevertheless, I just really like the idea that Dumbledore starts out by, like most Gryffindors, trusting his internal moral compass above all else. And that guides him through his mother’s death and his sister’s retreat and his brother’s own, relative disengagement from the world to tend goats and their sister. Albus hates all of it, being the Man of the House when the house is awful Dumbledore Manor at too young an age; he feels trapped and confined and miserable (his professors say he could be Supreme Mugwump! his friends owl all the time to ask why he isn’t at this club, or that salon!) but his sense of duty and loyalty carry him---even those first months of Gellert Grindlewald making his rounds through the neighborhood.

(PS, I would also pay a lot of money for an Evelyn Waugh-Nancy Mitford-Jules Feiffer-style riff on Godric’s Hollow and its particularly fetid, incestuous brand of society---@nimmieamee I know you’re into Riverdale now, but I love “Romance of the Age” an unholy amount, please come back to hp for a hot second and give me some great WWI homoeroticism pastiche.)

.............anyway, of course Albus Dumbledore is tempted away from pure duty and responsibility and pure virtuous care by something else: the intellectual, carnal, and fundamental temptation of Gellert Grindlewald. After all, Gellert isn’t just an intelligent young man, he and Albus share ideals, They have a sense of duty to the world---duty to enact their vision, and bring Good. Bring order, and reason, and logic. Together, they could build a truly shining empire, which is what Albus Dumbledore has always wanted, in his secret heart of hearts, this whole time. To destroy death, and misery, and bring about triumph. 

He doesn’t necessarily agree with Gellert’s perspective on Muggles, or non-wizarding species like werewolves or giants, but these seem lesser points of contention. He lets them pass by, unremarked-upon. (There is no place for his needy, clinging, hard-to-understand sister, or his unambitious, pathetic, perverse brother either, but these are even less significant than the other points of potential contention.)

Gellert is where Albus’ internal moral compass, honored above all else, seems to be pointing. He is happy, dreaming of that perfectly just world with Gellert.

Of course, correspondingly, there is a hugely traumatic and disastrous incident proving to Albus that he can’t trust that internal moral compass: Ariana’s death. When Ariana dies, by Gellert’s hand or Albus’ or Aberforth’s (none of them are ever quite sure) it is wrong, it flies in the face of the shining, idealistic world Albus and Gellert have built. It drags into question everything Albus thought he believed: Might Makes Right and power, and what will make Albus Dumbledore happy---The Greater Good, always the greater good. (He’s not selfish. He just also....is.) For Albus it’s the breaking point. It rattles him enough to let Gellert go, not to follow him to the Continent, not to become embroiled in a war.

(He spends the whole rest of his life punishing himself for this slip of conscience. He never trusts that internal compass again, and punishes too many people for it.)

But---all of this, though it shocks and horrifies him, doesn’t change Albus Dumbledore’s most closely-held beliefs. And sometimes, alone, he wonders if he’d followed, if he’d tempered some of Gellert’s fanaticism---if Albus had been there for the assault on Verdun, or the Plot for Bohemia---he might have corrected for the insanity and all-means-acceptable methods of Gellert. He was always the more cautious and wiser of the two of them. But only because he disagrees with the means, not the end.

The Ministry comes to him early on. They ask, but he rejects them---softly, since it is not even a war yet, not then. He has obligations at Hogwarts. He has papers to publish with Nicolas Flamel. (He does not want to see Gellert again. He is afraid to face him. He is not sure whether....he will capitulate and rush forward, catching Gellert’s face in his hands, or if he will remember Ariana’s face and hold back. He does not know.)

The French Assembly comes to him in the first part of the second century, ringing in the new year. It’s 1914 and then 1915, and Albus has been trying to ignore the news of the wizarding war and the Muggle war colliding, combining forces in their reign of destruction. Everything on the continent is chaos, and furor, and fury, and they are asking---

“I am sorry,” he says. His hand is very tight around the stem of the champagne saucer. “But I am needed here, in England. Happy New Year.”

(He toasts 1915 with strangers, feeling somewhat nauseated. Afterwards, he goes to the Hog’s Head and silently nurses a drink, watching Aberforth out of his eye. When he stares deeply enough into his mug, he can see Gellert’s pale, handsome face. Thinks of Gellert saying, We could. We could rule the world, you and I.)

The Germans and Ottomans he hears about before they come. It’s a particularly awkward week---trying to appease the Prussians and the Danish and also the Baghadi assembly, all of whom sent their own representatives to beg for Albus’ intervention with Grindlewald’s revolt. He remembers coming out of his offices one evening to find Tom Riddle sitting beside a Bulgarian ambassador, and having to tamp down on a lash of frantic terror. (The last thing Tom Riddle needed was friends beyond Britain’s borders; Albus strongly suspected he would use them ill.)

Once, when it is just the two of them in a private room at Albus’ club, Elphias says, “Can I ask...? You’ve kept yourself back from the front lines for so long...and I---a brilliant mind like you...”

Albus immediately makes some inadequate answer, out of terror that he might answer honestly---but it is a lie, what he tells Elphias. The answer is something more complicated, about how he would hare for Gellert’s side, fight beside him, if for a moment he could trust himself. He can’t, but. If he could. 

(The ghost of Ariana comes to him at night, sometimes. Just out of reach, pale-red as a flame through ice. If Albus ever thought that he could yield, he could give in to the longing to be with Gellert, to be for the Greater Good, Ariana comes to him, and reminds him that that way lies only grief.)

It’s Aberforth, in the end. 

Aberforth, who hasn’t spoken a whole sentence to Albus since the funeral (and even then it was a snarled, don’t speak to me, don’t owl me, I never want to see your face again, after he’d punched Albus in the teeth) says, “Stop being a damn coward.” Then he slams a pint down on the surface of the bar.

Albus drinks it slowly. Leaves a generous tip.

Forty-eight hours later, he is in the Rhine District, striding between tents and pretending not to hear how they gather and whisper in his wake. He does not want to be here. He does not think this is right. But his moral compass has been broken for almost twenty years, pointed due Gellert, For the Greater Good---he’s learned not to trust that ill-formed thing. He is here for Ariana, and for Aberforth. He is here for the dead, and to end this monstrous thing. To kill his love, and ambition, and sense of glory dead.

...........and Gellert, too.

[aspoonofsugar]

Being loved or hated by others have no relation to morality, if you talk about Eren being loved by Mikasa and Armin to lift his standings.

There are many villains who have good public image, doesn't mean it'd make them better person it's just the skill to build up false good reputation to use against others.

Also there are heroes with bad public image due to for example slander, doesn't mean the bad image can be used to demonize them.

Honestly perspective can be really skewed by bias, personal feelings, misinformation, etc. Not denying that Annie, Reiner and Bert were abused and brainwashed, and they're certainly not pure evil but that's the explanation (not excuse) and later Reiner and Annie changing for the better would mean they did wrong before but later redeemed.

And I don't know why SC is dubbed as intentionally attacking and declaring war on Liberio? Eren's the one who declared war to them and he collaborated with Zeke. The SC only go there to retain him, but they'd be thrown at the middle of battlefield. thus as normal humans they have to defend themselves from attacks. They'd minimize civilian death actually because they don't want to declare war but are thrown in middle of battlefield.

It's multiple time stated that Eren betrayed SC and exploited their trust.

Hello anon!

I am sorry, but as I have stated in your previous asks... Snk is built on the idea of grayness. Because of this, I am really zero interested in putting the characters in a scale of morality. For me that is not the point of the story... if anything it misses one of its major themes by a mile: everyone can potentially be both a hero and a monster.

Obviously in the real world the discussion about the characters' actions would be more complicated and painful, but snk is not real, it is a story with a specific framing. Its frame clearly wants you to empathize with both sides, to understand that by the end both sides have done horrible things, but also that people on both sides can still be heroes. Hence both Warriors and SC join forces in a last minute alliance to save the world. Like, the alliance is not just redemption for the Warriors, but for the SC as well because... you know... their actions played a role in causing the end of the world...

Moreover, your own judgement of the characters that you claim to be objective is not because you are clearly applying some specific principles and criterias and ignoring others...

For example, the Warriors being children when they commit the majority of their crimes is not just an explanation, but for several cultures and laws around the world it would be an extenuating circumstance...

Can you really be guilty of your actions if you are not mature enough to fully understand their consequences? Can you really be fully guilty of them if you are somehow threathened to commit them?

By the way, Snk's answer to this is that yes, you are still responsible. Hence why Reiner states he is to blame for what happened to Shiganshina.

This is also why the protagonists, even if they too have obvious extenuating circumstances, are still guilty for what happened at Liberio... and like... it is not that they try to refuse this truth. They take part in an organized attack in a city center. They know there will be civilian casualties, but accept this truth. Speaking strictly morally, if they wanted to stick to their ethics, they should have refused to take part in the attack, even if it would have killed Eren and condemned their island. After all, that is the right choice morally speaking, except it is not that easy, is it? Speaking of Liberio and minimizing civilian casualties, Jean shoots Falco to kill Pieck and he may have succeeded if Pieck had not saved the child. It is willingly left ambiguous.

All of this is not to demonize the SC. I actually love them and prefer them over the Warriors in general. However, stating that by the end they are somehow less compromised than the Warriors is clearly not what the story suggests. Sure, they keep being likable characters and more or less the moral center of the story. However, they too have committed their fair share of war crimes. Seeing them as good or bad people would mostly depend by one's own sense of morality, by the standards applied in the judgement and by one's own subjectivity. The parent of a child dead in Liberio might not give a fuck about our protagonists' reasons and might consider them fully responsible.

The same goes about the Rumbling. Sure, the protagonists thought Eren was only going to activate a small part of the Titans. However, this is partly what they themselves wanted to desperately believe... it is not as if Eren had told them so or that the rhetoric and propaganda in the Yeagersists was exactly open to mediation with the rest of the world. I think that unconsciously they all knew there was a risk of the Rumbling happening, but they still wanted to believe in their friend and unwillingly helped him activate the power.

Anyway, what I want it to pass is simply this: judging people's actions in a setting like snk is by nature extremely difficult and something I am really not that much interested in. You are free to do so and as I have already said, I don't think all characters are equally responsible or that everyone has the same responsibilities. However, it is important to recognize justice and morality are made by humans and not by a 100% unbiased alghorytm. So, in all their applications, be it in real life or in putting some fictional characters on a scale, different parameters can be applied, there is always a grade of subjectivity and disagreement is rather normal.

As for me, I am really uninterested in any further discussion that involves grading the characters or establishing who is better than who... really not my piece of cake, but have fun if you enjoy doing it!

Thank you for the ask!

[sweetbitterimpossiblecreature]

A Brief And Concise Summary Of Is Wrong With The ACOTAR Series

I think we can agree that a lot of ACOTAR is pretty iffy. Consider this a very brief refresher.

What's Wrong With Feyre/Rhysand (juxtaposed against Feyre/Tamlin)

Rhysand drugs and sexually assaults her in Book 1

This is "for her own good". Because he "has no choice". Despite the fact that, from what we know of the plot, Amarantha thinks that Clare Beddor was the one Rhysand was diddling, and is only interested in Feyre because Rhysand, "her" man male, has taken an interest in her.

If we extrapolate from this we can figure that Rhysand is the one directly putting her into danger.

Now, let's be clear: drugging someone is bad. Sexually assaulting someone is bad. One could argue there were extenuating circumstances. But if, in such a situation, what your mind goes to is "I know, I should assault this person... for their safety" I have questions about your moral qualities. There were a million things he could have done. He could have done whatever he did to Clare - that is, remove her ability to feel any pain - easily. He could have helped her escape. Under The Mountain, he - while still there unwillingly - has a lot of power, as Amarantha's side piece. Maybe this would have resulted in him being punished- however, he is hundreds of years old and a badass motherfucker, and she is a nineteen year old human girl.

Now, onto Tamlin. Obviously not a lot of people really ship F/T anymore after ACOMAF, because compared to F/R, it's boring. I read another person's post about it, which was very enlightening: they said that Feyre's personality is essentially a mirror. When she is with Rhysand, she's snarky and malicious- because she is "bouncing off" his energy. When she's with Mor she's super feminist and "in awe of her strength". On the other hand, Tamlin is kind of an empty character. He's a pretty boy with anger issues, which should be more interesting than it is. SJM manages to make him bland. Because Feyre has nothing to bounce off of, (a lot of this is from the person's post), she and Tamlin together is mainly just him introducing her to his world.

What Tamlin Does: prevents a skinny twenty year old from going on dangerous missions with him and combat-trained soldiers, accidentally blows up a room with her in it, and, at the end, prevents her from leaving the house.

This is not a Tamlin apologist post. Obviously it was really fucking gross of him to do that, and their relationship was toxic. However, a lot of his abuse stems from their inability to communicate, as well as own negligence. He does not knowingly and purposefully sexually assault her or rape her mind. And tbh, leaving a girl without combat training at home while he goes on missions with a bunch of muscled sentries is... kind of reasonable?

Again: not a Tamlin apologist post. It was abuse. However, if Rhysand is "allowed" to sexually assault, mind-rape, and drug Feyre "for her own safety", why is Tamlin demonized for preventing her from leaving his mansion "for her own safety"?

Another pertinent point: Rhys is never punished for sexually assaulting her. It is brushed off as part of his "mask" or that his hand was forced. Jesus Christ my dudes, his hand was not forced under her skirt. If he has to maintain his gross rapist abuser tyrant oppressor mask... why? Who did that benefit beside him? None of his actions remotely helped Prythian. They were done solely for his buddies - five people safe in a rich hidden city - and no one else, which is explicitly stated.

Finally, the power dynamic is fucked up. Feyre is less than twenty five years old. Rhysand is 500. There is a tendency in fantasy romance to romanticize a centuries year old man with a young girl, because the man does not show symptoms of age, and so it is easily ignorable. However, can we just briefly acknowledge how fucked up it is? Rhys is over five times older than Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and other known predators/abusers. She is twenty. That is really fucking gross. She is in a vulnerable position and he takes rampant advantage of that.

If he had wrinkles, liver problems, and erectile dysfunction, more people would acknowledge it.

Let's be clear: I'm not saying writing a book with an uneven power dynamic is automatically bad. For example, in The Locked Tomb series, which is in my opinion THE BEST FANTASY SERIES THAT HAS GRACED THIS EARTH (lol i'm starting fires), one main character Harrowhark Nonagesimus is in a position of power over Gideon Nav, the other main character. However, this is not glossed over or romanticized. Gideon resents Harrow for this- there is a relationship of mutual antagonism, fraught with unwilling familiarity and intimacy from growing up together. They are roughly the same age. While there is a certain power dynamic (in that world, there is a dynamic of necromancer and cavalier, i.e. sorcerer and sword) the "empowered" character (Harrow) emphatically respects her and does not abuse this power, although both would of course deny this, and she does make a show of threatening and being aloof. In short, while Gideon obeys her, Gideon also has power over Harrow, and the idea of what is essentially slavery is not romanticized.

Feyre Doesn't Face Any Consequences For Her Own Actions

Let me present a radical notion: a guy preventing you from leaving his house does not justify completely fucking ruining his country and harming the people inside it.

In other words: Tamlin does not deserve what she did to him.

I know that sounds iffy. We're conditioned to think that if someone is an abuser, then they are the scum of the earth, they deserve to die, torturing/murdering/doing anything to them is completely A-OK. However, here's another radical notion: someone harming you does not justify you doing worse.

Obviously, the effects of psychological abuse can cause you to hurt other people (see: Nesta), but Feyre deliberately and maliciously (oh, God, that insufferable POV of her in Spring Court; she reads like a cartoonish Disney villain) dismantles his country. She uses sexual manipulation (Lucien), torture (causing the sentry to be whipped), and mind-rape (who didn't she do this to? lol).

A summary of the entire first half of ACOWAR: "It smelled like roses. I hated roses. For this capital offense against my olfactory system, Tamlin and the entire Spring Court deserved to burn in hell. I knew exactly what I was doing. I smiled at him sweetly: no longer a doe, but a wolf. He didn't see my fangs.............." *aesthetic noises*

Man. I'm starting to think SJM had a horrible experience at a Bath & Body Works and took it out on the rest of us. Don't do it, Sarah!! I know Pink Chiffon and Triple Berry Martini are way too strong, but don't take it out on an innocent population!!

She steals from Summer Court (there are, yk, other solutions to theft. Like maybe asking politely) and ruins Spring Court. Her boyfriend - yeesh sorry, MATE - does nothing while a dozen Winter Court children are murdered.

Now: moral ambiguity is not automatically bad. Again using The Locked Tomb as an example, in the second book (spoiler alert), Harrowhark has a sort of moral ambiguity. She was raised from the beginning to worship the King Undying as God, and so she obeys him without question. Because of this, she commits a lot of crimes in His name: she "flips" - i.e. kills - the life force of planets, and she plots murder (albeit the murder of someone who tried to kill her first). There is no attempt to justify this. There is also no attempt to paint her as a virtuous and yet also badass Madonna figure. She is desperate, plagued with the "wreck of herself", and the book clearly displays her moral pitfalls. While her POV is of course colored by her mindset, it also is limited by her lack of information, and we as readers can acknowledge that.

BACK TO ACOTAR: Feyre is seen by everyone as gorgeous, formidable, and essentially perfect. Rhys sees her as flawless, "made for him", wonderful, beautiful, blah blah blah. (THEY ARE SO BAD FOR EACH OTHER; THEY EXCUSE AND GLORIFY EACH OTHER'S CRIMES, IT'S SO BAD, GUYYYS). Tamlin is insanely batshit in love with her, or whatever. To the Night Court she's the High Lady. In this way she personifies the Mary Sue character. (Excerpt from the TV Tropes page on Mary Sues: "She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal." Sound familiar?)

There is the Ourobous scene. And yet, paradoxically, while presented as an acknowledgment of her flaws, it is in fact a rejection of them. She sees her own brutality... and instead of recognizing that she has these deep, deep moral flaws and realizing that she needs to grow and be better, she in fact "accepts" them.

Guys: Self love means: "I'm important to me, so I'm going to get a massage today after work", or "heck, why not splurge on some expensive lotion, you only live once" or "you know what? I had a tough day today. I'm going to get that strawberry cupcake". SELF LOVE DOES NOT MEAN "oh, I accept all the war crimes I have done, I love myself". LOVING YOURSELF DOES NOT MEAN ABSOLVING YOURSELF OF ALL WRONGDOING.

It's this refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing that is so grating about ACOTAR. It's so goddamn one-sided. And you can tell that after Book 1, SJM decided to completely change the trajectory simply because of how jarring Book 2 reads compared to the first one.

Also: Feyre is a very, very young girl (compared to the other ruling fey) who did not know how to read for the majority of her life. She has no experience whatsoever in politics. Her being High Lady is not a win for feminism.

Rhysand: He Sucks

First, he is 500 years old. He should be written as such, not as some 20 year old virile frat boy feminist. Fantasy is all the more compelling for its elements of realism, which is a concept that SJM does not appear to grasp.

Second of all, his morals are absurd. He is written as the Second Coming of Christ, as someone who can do no wrong, ever, and his flaws only serve to make Feyre love him more. Anything shitty he does is written as part of his "mask" and she can See Beneath It and knows that it "hurts" him to maintain this "mask".

Fellas, WHY DOES HE HAVE TO MAINTAIN THIS MASK???? There is no reason for it. If A) he does not give a shit about Court of Nightmares (we'll get back to that), only about Velaris, and B) Velaris is hidden/protected from the world, what is he pretending for?

It would not hurt him politically to be seen as someone who cares about his country.

"Pretending" to be "Amarantha's whore" does not in any way shape or form benefit the macro-world that is Prythian. In Amarantha's name, he commits atrocities. He commits war crimes; he systemically oppresses entire societies. It doesn't even really benefit Velaris, because Velaris is already hidden.

Let me put this in a real-world perspective. This would be like if Donald Trump was suddenly like: "I know I was a shitty president but IT WAS ALL PART OF MY MASK, WHICH WAS TO PROTECT THIS MICROCOSM OF PRIVILEGED PEOPLE THAT I CARE ABOUT". Like: okay? Sorry, or whatever, but I don't actually give a shit. What about the parents of the children who died? What about Clare Beddor? What about the people who were held in slavery, murdered, tortured?

Rhysand: omg it sucks that my cousin Mor was oppressed by this toxic misogynistic culture from the Court of Nightmares.

Also Rhysand: lol whatever, who gives a shit about Court of Nightmares. They all suck. They meanie. Lol what did you say? That there might be other girls just like Mor who are oppressed by this system? Lol whatever. I can't do anything, I gotta maintain my Mask. I gotta sit on this throne and show the entire Court that not respecting women is completely okay.

In summary: by parading Feyre around as his "whore" (!!) he demonstrates by example that it is completely okay for the Court of Nightmares to abuse their women.

A good ruler cares about all his people. Rhysand cares about a tiny tiny fraction of his people: those who were fortunate enough to be born into Velaris.

God, I'm exhausted. Onto Nesta:

The only character who successfully breaks the Mary Sue effect Feyre exerts on her people is Nesta. Her POV for the first half is a joy to read.

Obviously it sucks that Nesta was a huge bitch to Feyre for the beginning of her childhood. However, it was wrong for Rhysand to threaten her- he is a man male with a huge insane amount of power, and it is not okay for him to threaten to bring the brunt of it down on a young girl because she was a bitch to his girlfriend.

I've seen a lot of discourse on the morality of F/R sending her out of Velaris. Here is my two cents:

It was okay for them to cut her off of their money. If they don't want to enable her self-harm, that is their choice. Again, it's their money, even if it wasn't fairly earned (Rhysand born into an enormous fortune).

It was not okay for them to banish her from Velaris with the implication that she was an embarrassment. Let me explain.

If Rhysand and Feyre are talking to her as sister/brother-in-law, then that is that. They have the complete right to express disapproval and try to help. However, they should not be using their royal privilege against her.

If they are talking to her as ruler to subject, then they have the power to banish her from the city. However, a ruler would not give a shit about a random subject getting drunk and having sex. So, they should not be talking her about her problems as a ruler to subject.

I've heard it compared to her being sent to rehab. However, rehab is a system designed to help people with certain problems. It has specialized medical centers and involves therapy. Nesta gets her life threatened multiple times. It is not rehab.

In summary: why did SJM inflict this upon us. Throne of Glass was actually good! GAHHH! After the first few books she completely whipped around and introduced the idea of males and mates and fey and that C is actually A and the quality took a huge nosedive. Sigh.

Final horrible but unmistakable truth: The entire ACOTAR series reads like a bad A/B/O fic. I hate to say it but it's true. We're lucky there were no heat cycles. OH WAIT

[itsclydebitches]

The Bad Batch: A Crosshair Analysis

Hello, Star Wars fandom! I have just completed watching—and loving—The Bad Batch, which you know means I now need to dump all my thoughts about the first season into the tumblr void. Specifically, thoughts on the complicated drama that is Crosshair. I have no doubt that the majority of what I’m about to say will be old news to anyone who watched the show when it came out (I’m slow...), but I’m writing it all out anyway. Largely for my own sanity enjoyment :D

I want to preface all of this by saying that the above is not an exaggeration. I love the show and I love the entire cast. My enjoyment in each of the characters is directly connected to my enjoyment of the season as a whole, which I say because I’m about to get pretty critical towards some of the characters’ choices and, to a lesser extent, the writing choices that surround those. Does this mean I secretly hate The Bad Batch? Quite the opposite. I’m invested, which is presumably just what Filoni wants. I’m just hoping that investment pays off. 

But enough of the disclaimers. Let’s start with the matter of the inhibitor chip. I’ve seen fans take some pretty hard stances on both sides: Crosshair is completely innocent because he’s definitely been under the chip’s control this whole time, no matter what he might say. Crosshair is completely guilty because he said the chip was removed a long time ago and he chose to do all this, no moral wiggle room allowed. However, the reality is that we don’t know enough to make a clear call either way. The audience, simply put, does not have all the necessary information. What we have instead is a couple of facts combined with claims that may or may not be reliable. Let’s lay them out:

Crosshair was definitely under the chip’s control at the start of the series.

He was able to resist it to a certain extent, resulting in a pressure to obey orders coupled with a primary loyalty to his squad. See: telling Hunter to follow the Empire’s commands—which includes killing kid Padawans—but not turning his team in as traitors when they did not. It’s an in-between space.

Crosshair’s chip was then amplified to an unknown extent. I’m never going to claim I’m a Star Wars aficionado—I’m a casual fan, friends. Please don’t yell at me over obscure lore lol—but within TBB’s canon, no one else is undergoing that experimentation. The effects of this are entirely unknown, which includes Crosshair’s free will, or lack thereof.

Crosshair then becomes a clear tool of the Empire, hunting down innocents, killing on a whim, the whole, evil shebang.

In “Reunion” he’s caught by the engine and suffers severe burns to his face. One leaves a scar that covers precisely the place where the chip would have been extracted.

Removing the chip leaves its own scar behind. If Crosshair’s was removed, we can’t see that scar due to the burn.

After these events Crosshair seems to mellow a bit. He does horrible things under the Empire’s orders—like shooting the senator—but is still loyal to his squad—killing his non-clone teammates to give TBB a chance, saving AZ and Omega, etc.

Crosshair claims that his chip has already been removed. However, Crosshair is arguably an unreliable source if he’s been lied to or if the chip is still there, encouraging him to manipulate the team.

Crosshair claims it was removed a long time ago, which is incredibly imprecise. As we can see from just some of the events listed above, precisely when the chip came out—if it came out—makes a huge difference.

Hunter realizes this and presses for clarification, but Crosshair dodges giving it. Again, a legitimate belief that it doesn’t matter, or evidence that he can’t say because something else is going on? We don’t know.

Hunter checks Crosshair’s head and finds the burn scar which proves… nothing. As stated above, they wouldn’t be able to see the surgery scar one way or another: its existence or its absence. It’s useless data, as Tech might say. I’ve seen a few fans claim that Hunter was also feeling for the chip with his enhanced senses, but 1. I didn’t catch any evidence of that in the scene and 2. Even if we assume Hunter did that anyway, the chips are notoriously hard to spot. Fives and AZ couldn’t find the chip at first when examining Tup. Ahsoka had to use the force to find it in Rex. TBB themselves couldn’t find it at first in Wrecker. If machinery consistently fails to find the chip on the first couple of tries—it’s meant to be a hidden implant, after all—why would we believe Hunter’s senses could pick it up instantly? Maybe he missed it, or maybe it wasn’t there at all. 

Crosshair appears to be struggling with a headache in the finale, just as he was at the beginning of the season and just like Wrecker was for the first half.

The point of listing all this out is to emphasize how ambiguous this whole situation is. I don’t want to use this post to argue one way or another about whether Crosshair’s chip is really out. I have my preferred theory (the chip’s still in, but only partially functional), but at the end of the day none of this is conclusive. The writing takes us in what I hope is deliberate circles. Crosshair says the chip is out? Crosshair is not a reliable source of information until we know if the chip is out. What other evidence is there that the chip is gone? A scar? We can’t see if there’s a scar. Hunter’s abilities? He only checked once for a canonically hard to find implant—if he actually checked at all. And why would the Empire want the chip out? Well, maybe it has to do with that push towards willing soldiers, but if that were the case, why leave Crosshair behind and have the “clones die together”? By that point he was one of the most willing, chip or not. Did they have to take it out because of the engine accident? Pure speculation. We just don’t know and THAT is the point I want to make.

Because it means the rest of the Bad Batch didn’t know either.

The core issue I have here is not whether the chip is in or out, or even how long it may have been in if it is out now. The issue is that TBB spent 99% of the first season believing that Crosshair was under the chip’s influence… and they didn’t try to do anything about that. They abandoned him. They left a man behind. Does this make them all horrible monsters? Of course not! This shit is complicated as hell, but I do think they made a very large mistake and that Crosshair has every right to be furious about it.

“But, Clyde, they couldn’t have gone back. It was too dangerous! Hunter had a duty to his whole team, not just Crosshair.” True enough and I’d buy this argument 100% if Hunter hadn’t spent the entire season throwing his team into dangerous, seemingly impossible situations to save other people. Crosshair became the exception, not a hard rule of something they had to avoid. They went back to Kamino for Omega, a kid they’d only had one lunch with, despite knowing how dangerous the Empire was. They went into the heart of an occupied planet to rescue not just a stranger, but one belonging to the Separatist government. They helped Sid when she asked and there was plenty of compassion for the criminal trying to take her place. Most significantly, there wasn’t the slightest hesitation to go rescue Hunter when he was under the Empire’s control, in precisely the same place. Every explanation I’ve seen fans come up with—Kamino is too fortified, they don’t know where Crosshair is, they can’t risk Omega being captured, etc.—also holds true for Hunter, yet there wasn’t a second of doubt about needing to at least try to help him. And his rescue was arguably far more dangerous given that TBB knew they were walking into a trap. Going after Crosshair would have at least had some element of surprise.

I think the problem with these justifications is most easily seen in “Rescue on Ryloth” and, later, “War-Mantle.” In the former, we do watch Hunter decide that going on a rescue mission is too much of a risk, only for Omega to talk him into considering it.

Hunter: “It’s a big galaxy. We can’t put ourselves on the line every time someone’s in trouble.”

Omega: “Why not? Isn’t that what soldiers do?”

Hunter: “It’s not worth the risk.”

Omega: “She’s trying to save her family, Hunter. I’d do the same for you.”

The arguments that sway him are ‘Soldiers should help people’ and ‘Soldiers should specifically help their family.’ So… what does that say about their feelings for Crosshair? They’re willing to put themselves on the line for the parents of a girl they met once at a drop site, but not their own brother? That’s the message the writing sends. “But, Clyde, the difference is that they had an advantage here. Hera’s knowledge of her home planet tipped the odds in their favor.” Yeah… and Crosshair is stationed on TBB’s home planet. Even more than them collectively having the same knowledge that Hera does, “Return to Kamino” reveals that Omega always had additional, insider knowledge of the base: she has access to a secret landing pad and the tunnels leading up into the city. That knowledge was given and used the second Hunter’s freedom was on the line, but it never once came up to use for Crosshair’s benefit. 

“War-Mantle’s” mission puts this problem in even sharper relief. Another claim I’ve seen a lot is that TBB only took risky rescue missions because they needed to be paid. The guys have got to eat after all. Yet Tech makes it clear that going after Gregor will lose them money. They’re meant to be on a mission for Sid and deviating for that won’t result in a payment. He explicitly says that if they decide to do this, they won’t eat. They do it anyway. No money, no intel, a huge risk “on a clone we don’t even know.” But that’s not what’s important, the show says. All that matters is that a brother is in trouble. This time it’s Echo pushing that message instead of Omega. When Hunter realizes that they’re about to try and infiltrate an entire facility and they don’t even know if this clone is still alive, Echo points out that they took that risk once before: for him. “If there’s a chance that trooper is being held against his will, we have to try and get him out.”

Yes! Exactly right! So why doesn’t that apply to Crosshair?

“Because he tried to kill them, Clyde!” No, that’s the easy, dismissive answer. A chipped Crosshair tried to kill them. AKA, a Crosshair entirely under the Empire’s control. The only difference between his enslavement and Gregor’s is that Gregor’s chains were physical while Crosshair’s were mental. And again, the point of everything at the start of this post is to show that no one knows when or even if that chip was removed. TBB definitely didn’t have any reason to suspect that Crosshair was working under his own power until Crosshair himself said as much. We might have been able to make that case at the start of the season, but “Battle Scars” removes any possible confusion. The entire team watched Rex reach for his blaster when he learned their chips were still in. The entire team watched Wrecker become a totally different person and attack them, just like Crosshair did. The entire team forgave him instantly and had their own chips removed. So why in the world didn’t anyone go, “Wow, Crosshair has a chip too. He was no more responsible for attacking us than Wrecker was. We need to try to get him out, no matter how hard that might be, just like we had to try for all these other people we’ve helped.”

But they didn’t. No one even considered rescuing Crosshair. They only went back for Hunter and, when they realized Crosshair was there too, they didn’t change their plans to try and rescue him as well. He’s treated as a particularly threatening inconvenience, not another team member in need of their help.

The problem I have with how this all went down is that the team treated Crosshair like an enemy despite all evidence to the contrary. Despite Omega outright saying that this isn’t his fault, it’s the chip, the group seems to decide that he’s gone crazy or something and that there’s nothing they can do. “It’s fine,” I thought. “They don’t really get what the chip is like yet. They don’t understand how thoroughly it controls someone.” But then “Battle Scars” arrives and Wrecker is treated with such compassion (which he deserves!) only for the group to continue acting like Crosshair is somehow different. It’s easy to say, “But Crosshair shot Wrecker” and ignore the easy pushback of, “and Wrecker nearly shot Omega.” Up until Crosshair’s own accusations and Omega’s ignored comments, TBB’s understanding of the chip’s influence and the lack of responsibility that accompanies mysteriously disappears when the show’s antagonist becomes the subject of conversation. This is seen most clearly in how Hunter tries to frame things during his talk with Crosshair:

“You tried to kill us. We didn’t have a choice.”

“Can’t you see that they’re using you? It’s that inhibitor chip in your head.”

“You really don’t get who we are, do you?”

Hunter mentions the chip, but he acts as if it’s Crosshair’s responsibility to overcome it: “Can’t you see…” Of course he can’t see, that’s the entire point of the chip, the thing he currently believes Crosshair still has stuck in his head. But Hunter and the others—with Omega as a wonderful exception—never seem to have accepted this like they did for Wrecker. When Crosshair “tried to kill us” it’s seen as a deliberate act that he chose, not something forced on him like with Wrecker. When Hunter talks about their ethics, he subconsciously separates the team from Crosshair: “You really don’t get who we are, do you?”, revealing a pretty ingrained divide between them. Even Wrecker gets in on the action, the one brother who truly understands how much the chip controls someone: “All that time, you didn’t even try to come back.” What part of he couldn’t try is not hitting home here? Again, for the purposes of this conversation it doesn’t matter whether Crosshair was chipped this whole time or not. The point is that TBB believed he was chipped… and yet still expected him to somehow, magically overcome that programming, writing him off when he failed to do that. He’s consistently held responsible for actions that they were told (and, through Wrecker, saw) were completely outside of his control. Even when we factor in his claim that the chip was removed, TBB has ignored all the evidence I listed at the start. No one, not even Omega, challenges this super vague and strange claim, or seeks out proof because they don’t want to believe that their brother could willingly do this. There’s just this... acceptance that of course Crosshair went bad. Why? Because he was an asshole sometimes? Taking it all as written, it doesn’t feel like the batch considered him a true part of the team. Certainly not like Wrecker or Hunter. As shown, the batch will go out of their way, risk anything, forgive anything, for them. They have a level of faith that was never shown to Crosshair. 

“Severe and unyielding,” Tech says and he’s absolutely right, but I’d seriously challenge this idea that any of the others would have automatically done better if the situations were reversed. It stood out to me that each batch member has a moment of doubt throughout the series, a brief glimpse into how they think the Empire isn’t that bad, at least when it comes to this particular thing. Basically, a moment that could lead to a very dangerous line of thinking without others to stomp it down. Wrecker announces that he’s happy working for whoever, provided they give him food and let him blow things up. Tech finds the chain codes to be an ingenious strategy and is clearly fascinated with their development. Hunter initially wants Omega to stay on Kamino, despite knowing that this Empire has already, systematically killed an entire group of people: the Jedi. Doesn’t matter. She’s still (supposedly) safer there than she would be running with the likes of them.

There’s absolutely no doubt that those three made the correct choice in defying the Empire, but I believe that their ability to make that choice is largely dependent on them having each other. They survive together, not apart, and it’s their unity that allows them to make the really hard calls, like setting out on their own and opposing such a formidable force. But if Tech’s chip had activated and he’d been left behind, would he have muscled through to escape somehow...or would he have gotten caught up in all the new technology the Empire offered him, succumbing to both his chip and the inevitability that if his squad no longer wanted him, why not stay? Would Wrecker have escaped, or been easily manipulated into a new life of exploding things? Would Hunter have been able to push through without his brothers, or would he have become devoted to a new team to lead? Obviously there’s no way to ever know, but it’s always easier to make the right decisions when you have support in doing so. Crosshair had no support. His team left him and yes, they had to in that specific moment, but the point is that they never came back. As far as we saw throughout the season, they never planned to come back. They all talk about loving the Crosshair who existed when life was easier, but they weren’t willing to fight for the Crosshair that most needed their help. When he says “You weren’t loyal to me,” he’s absolutely right. The same episode, “Return to Kamino,” gives Omega two powerful lines that the group rallies behind:

Omega: “[The danger] doesn’t matter. Saving Hunter is what matters.”

AZ: “You must leave.”

Omega: “Not without Hunter.”

The key word there is “Hunter.” Danger, stakes, risk, probability… none of that matters when Hunter needs help. Crosshair did not receive that same level of devotion.

Which creates a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The group is upset that Crosshair isn’t rejoining them, but they fail to realize that he has no reason to trust them anymore. He’s not joining the Empire because he’s inherently evil and that’s that, end of discussion. He’s joining it because above all Crosshair wants a place to belong… and TBB has made it clear—unintentionally—that he does not belong with them. The horrible actions that Crosshair took under his own free will (theoretically) came after he realized that doing bad things while under the Empire’s control was, apparently, unforgivable. If it wasn’t, his team would have come back to rescue him. They could have at least tried. But they didn’t, so Crosshair is left with the conclusion that either what he did under the Empire’s control is something the group can’t forgive him for, or they can forgive that (like with Wrecker) and he’s the problem here. He’s the one not worth that effort.

“The Empire will be fazing out clones next,” Hunter says. To which Crosshair responds, “Not the ones that matter.”

He wants to matter to someone and events show he no longer matters to his brothers. So why not stay with the Empire? I mean, we as the audience ABSOLUTELY know why not. Self-doubt and feelings of isolation aren’t excuses for joining the Super Evil Organization. Crosshair, if he is under his own control, is still 100% in the wrong for supporting them, no matter his reasons. So it’s not an excuse, but rather an explanation of that very human, flawed, fallible thinking. He needs to be useful. He needs to be wanted. Crosshair is an absolute dick to the regs and I have no doubt that a lot of that stems from the harassment TBB has experienced from them (with a side of his inflated ego), but I’d bet it’s also due to Crosshair’s intense desire to be valuable to someone. He keeps pointing out the regs’ supposed deficiencies because it highlights his own usefulness. When Crosshair fails to find Hera, the Admiral says that soon he’ll get someone who can, looking straight at Howzer at the door. It makes Crosshair seethe because his entire identity is based on being useful, yet no one seems to need him anymore. TBB seems to no longer want him. The Empire no longer wants clones. Now even regs are considered a better option than him, the “superior” soldier. Everywhere Crosshair turns he’s getting the message that he’s not wanted, but he’ll keep fighting to at least be needed in some capacity, no matter how small. Even if that means overlooking all the horrors the Empire commits.

“All you’ll ever be to [the Empire] is a number,” Hunter says and he’s absolutely right. But to TBB recently, Crosshair hasn’t even been that. He’s been nothing. Nobody worth coming back for. To his mind, at least being a number is something.

I hope that all of this resolves itself into a conclusion that is kind to each side (preferably without a Vader-style death redemption), especially given the still ambiguous state of the chip, but from a writing standpoint I’m admittedly a bit wary. We’re obviously meant to believe that the batch all love each other, but as established throughout this entirely too long post, this season did a terrible job imo of proving that they love Crosshair. Or, at least, proving that they love him as much as the others. If this was really meant to be just a matter of miscommunication, with Crosshair making terrible life choices because he only thinks he was abandoned, then we as the audience would have seen the batch trying and failing to get him out. Or at least establishing a very good reason why they couldn’t take that risk, hopefully with entirely different side-missions so the audience isn’t constantly going, “So you can risk everything for Gregor... but not Crosshair?” I’m VERY glad that Crosshair was allowed to air his grievances to the extent he did, but the end result of that—Hunter continually denying this, Omega walking away from him in their rooms, neither Tech nor Wrecker actually sticking up for him and acknowledging the chip’s influence during at least some of all this—is making things feel rather one-sided. It’s like we’re meant to take Crosshair at his word and accept that he’s this garden-variety antagonist who joins the Empire because yay being on the winning side… despite all these complications that clearly have a huge impact on how we read the situation. It doesn’t help that the show has already embraced an inconsistent manner of portraying chipped-clones. We know every clone has one, we know only a couple clones are aware of the chip’s existence (and can thus try to get it out), we know they enter a “Good soldiers follow orders” mindlessness once activated… yet towards the end we see a lot of side character clones thinking for themselves. Howzer decides that he’s no longer loyal to the Empire, giving a speech where a couple other clones throw down their weapons too. Gregor was arrested because he likewise realized how wrong this all was. But how is that possible? Do the chips completely control the clones, or not? Are these clones somehow exceptions? Are the chips beginning to fail? All of that has a bearing on how we read Crosshair—what were his own decisions, how much he was capable of overcoming the chip, whether that changed at all during certain points—but right now that remains really unclear.

It’s details like that which make me wonder if all these other questions will be answered. Will the story resolve all those ambiguous moments surrounding the chip, or brush them off with the belief that we should have just taken Crosshair at his equally ambiguous word? Will the story acknowledge Crosshair’s points through someone other than Crosshair, allowing it to exist as a legitimate criticism, rather than the presumed excuses of an antagonist? I’m… not sure. On the whole I’m very happy with TBB’s writing—despite what all this might imply lol. Until my brain picks over the season and discovers something else, my only other gripe is not allowing Omega to form a solid bond with Tech and Echo, instead putting all the focus on big brother!Wrecker and dad!Hunter. I think it’s a solid show that does a lot right, but I’m worried that, unless there’s a brilliant answer to all these questions and an intent to unpack both sides of the Hunter vs. Crosshair debate with respect—not just falling back on, “Well, Crosshair is with the Empire so everything he says is automatically bad and wrong” take���we’ve just gotten the setup for a somewhat messy, ethical story. For anyone here who also reads my RWBY metas, I’m pretty sure you’re not at all surprised that I’m invested in going, “Hey, you had one of the heroes suddenly become/join a dictatorship and do a lot of horrific things, but within a pretty complicated context. Can we please work through that carefully and with an acknowledgement of the nuance here, rather than throwing the ‘evil’ character to the proverbial wolves?”  

God knows TBB is leagues ahead of RWBY, but I hope things continue on in not just a good direction, but one that tackles the aspects of this situation that many fans—and Crosshair—have already pointed out. As much as I adore the cast—and I really, really do—it was discomforting to watch a found family show where 4/5th of that family so completely wrote off one of the members and crucially have, at least so far, refused to acknowledge that. I want complicated, flawed characters, but that’s only compelling when the storytelling admits to and grapples with those flaws. We have quite firmly established Crosshair’s flaws in Season One. I hope Season Two delves into the rest of the team’s too.

Aaaand with that meta-dump out of my system, I’m off to write TBB fic. Thanks for reading! :D

[theangelshavethephonebox]

Okay, just finished "The Missy Chronicles" time for a review! Some spoilers ahead, so read at your own peril. This one will be long, so buckle up...

1/6 part: "dismemberment" by James Goss. Directly after Missy regenerates, and everything was just so perfectly done and in character I loved it to bits! I cackled, I completely understood where Missy was coming from, some graphic depictions of violence but not too graphic because it was about 40 pages long. Loved it!

I also loved how some things were left a bit ambiguous. What happened to Saffron and her kids after the story? And where did Missy get the blood for her blood rain from? Read this if you like dishing out vengeance to horrible people (: she truly gave them a taste of their own medicine. Also, good links to the TV series! Grab an ☂️, because I think it's about to start raining...

2/6 part: "Lords and Masters". This is a story where the Time Lords hijack Missy's TARDIS. I did not expect to like it as much as I did- Missy's clear yet successful manipulation of Yayani, who I loved and wanted more of, but also I liked that she was killed. It just fit. Very gripping story by Cavan Scott!

3/6 part: "Teddy Sparkles Must Die!" The first audio of the "Missy" big finish series was based on this! This one was by Paul Magrs, and I really loved the way Missy had to inadvertently save the world. Ominous ending... Wink!

4/6: "The Liar, the Glitch, and the War Zone" by Peter Anghelides. This was the first ever appearance of 13 (after 12's regeneration scene, that is), before even The Woman Who Fell To Earth!!! Such a great story, loved the Doctor swooping in and cleaning up the mess that Missy leaves behind (rescuing Antonia). Great name for the story, too, plus some interesting new aliens and concepts introduced.

5/6: "Girl Power!" By Jacqueline Rayner. Undoubtedly my favourite of all the stories! Set during the Vault arc, I loved the format most of all, done all through requests and over the internet! The character development, the women through history I was introduced to, plus the shipping company constantly messing up and 12/Nardole's dynamic??? The entire thing was just so perfect. 12/10 (:

6/6: "Alit in Underland" by Richard Dinnick. Felt the writing was slightly sparse, liked the visual imagery, and really liked the characterisation of Alit from her POV! Really liked the struggle with morality Vs feeling like the Doctor has sort of brainwashed Missy. The toxicity of the whole relationship really comes through here, and I loved that! Especially loved all the little glimpses into Missy's genius, and into their lives during this time. Wonderful.

Whole book: conclusion. Definitely worth the read! My top three were Girl Power, Dismemberment, and Lords and Masters. The whole Mary Poppins vibe, plus the moral struggle, just made it all so perfect. The characterisation of Missy was incredibly on point, and I actually learned a lot because I had to look some stuff up, and now I know more about famous women throughout history! Girl Power! Was just perfect especially, the ridiculousness of it all. The shipping company causing more chaos than Missy herself? Amazing.

[icyxmischief]

Loki Ep 1 Pt 2

Blow by blow review, take 2: 

--The “sign this to verify that this is everything you’ve ever said” thing is genuinely hilarious.  I find it a little unlikely that he wouldn’t have ultra-suspiciously, with great characteristic paranoia, looked through every single page, and grilled the guy with the cat for info on where he was.  Little bit ooc for humor there, which is a major pet peeve of mine. 

--”Do a lot of people not know if they’re robots?” Okay this part was great bc it showcased Loki’s natural propensity to get into trouble because he’s such a curious cat and intellect, lol. 

--His scorn with “take a ticket” when only two variants are in the room is also very IC because Loki despises order without logical reason.  Order for its own sake is dangerous and oppressive and heyyyyy a lot like Thanos’s idea of a universe, ain’t it. 

--The All-Knowing Time-Keepers ended a timeline war, huh? H M m m m m M m m . They destroyed the capacity for nexus event and a multi-verse to exist huhhhhh? H M M M M M M M M .  Do I smell the potential for many Lokis from many Marvel canon verses, among other things? 

--

BITCH ME TOO, THE FUCK. 

--Okay I know everyone hates the logo but I kind of love how it is as fluid as Loki himself? A shape shifter? A master of magic and illusion? I’m sorry to all the graphic designers out there but I’m digging it for Conceptual Art reasons lol. 

--I’m sensing that if the French kid in 1549 thinks a horned devil caused a massacre in a church, this is evidence of Loki escaping the TVA to jump into the 1500s in France to cause mayhem. A bit predictable and I am hoping otherwise, but he IS Loki, “between damnation and redemption” at all hours.

--Owen Wilson’s character is strongly established as a good guy from the start.  

--”Madam, a god doesn’t plea.” Biiiiiiiiiitch yasssss.

--OHO he figured out the Avengers were time-traveling already, sharp. The reason why, he’s so far off that one must cringe for his fall from pride to come. 

--His laugh, that’s all. 

--”Hang on, everyone quiet, don’t rush me,” lol <3  Not a fan that once again he’s not allowed to use his full powers except within a contained system, but I’ll take it.  For now. 

--”You ridiculous bureaucrats will not dictate how my story ends.”   Wahoo if this series and character have a thesis statement, there it is.  Loki, God of Stories, forger of his own fate even when all tides run against it. 

--Loki doubting the reality of the TVA is an interesting hint into how much illusion was used to torture him as well as his own hyper reliance on illusion to protect himself. 

--Loki assuming Agent Mobius wants to kill him when Mobius is just showing him kindness is soooooooo revelatory of where Loki is psychologically right now.

--He still has his trademark swagger :D 

--”For the record this really does feel like a killing me kind of a room,” LOL, I love it, they’ve somehow kept his sense of humor spot-on! 

--”Trust is for children,” ahhhh kono kokoro. 

--”I live within whatever path I choose.” Ah, Loki, I wish you could, but is it so simple? 

--The fact that he tries to kill Mobius immediately and Mobius stops him while being fair and level-headed? I’m really liking Mobius. He’s the dare I say friend Loki has needed for a long time. 

--[Cooperation is] not my forte.” “Really, even when you’re wooing someone powerful you intend to betray?” Oho, okay Mobius, how long have you been serving as the metonymic stand-in for Loki’s fandom “army” and watching him grow and change  and self-sacrifice in the intended timeline? How well do you know him? You seem to know a lot, and that may be a good thing. You could be his advocate.

--”KING OF WHAT EXACTLY?” OH DAMN YES, MOBIUS, KEEP GOING.

--”WHY DOES SOMEONE WITH SO MUCH RANGE JUST WANNA RULE?” TFW A MARVEL CHARACTER HAS READ MY BLOG??????? YES?????? VINDICATION???????

--HE IS LITERALLY UNRAVELING THE TOXIC IDEOLOGY FORCED INTO LOKI UNDER THANOS???? ABOUT THE “LIE OF FREEDOM”?????? THIS IS AMAZING????

--”I don’t have to play this game. I’m a god.” Oh honey. Put the hackles down now, it’s okay.  You have far more heart than that, and far more accountability.

----Allowing Loki to see his entire “correct” (gulp) timeline (and God help us all if the end of this series involves him choosing to die in order to “fix the timeline,” I will RIOT if we get one more cheap “you’re only redeemed if you die horribly” growth arc for a morally ambiguous character) was the most important thing for me as a Loki fan of 10 years.  Allowing him to weep openly, to come to terms with the loss of his mother and the (too little too late, but at least extant) apology of his father, and, most of all, the potential to regain camaraderie with his brother, this was all that I wanted. A Loki allowed to flex his own muscles in his own limelight, no longer defined by what he lacks, but by what he can uniquely offer (even if in the “service” of an ethically dubious authority).  A Loki who KNOWS how much his brother has suffered and grieved but who still has his own freedom.I am admittedly optimistic.  The tone of the show is excellent.  My only fear at this point is a sacrificial death ending. Hopefully Loki will machinate a way to survive without breaking the universe with his divergent timelines, lol. Perhaps that’s the whole purpose of the plot going forward.

[a-person-who-is-not-you]

Some Dark Academia/DA adjacent media for people who don’t like the popular books/movies/plays

Rope directed by Alfred Hitchcock- Two college boys murder their classmate and invite his family, friends, and their former teacher for dinner. has intellectual murder, critique of classicism, homoeroticism, two mlm lead actors, cool camerawork

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov- cw child abuse/rape, the story of a professor who becomes sexually interested in a young girl and the slow destruction of both of their lives. unreliable intellectual narrator, beautifully written and has the EXACT opposite message that people think it does, emotionally difficult to read but worth it

Miss Julie- the woman of the house falls in love with a servant, but neither is as they seem. play by August Strindberg, also a 2014 movie that’s really good. Deals with ideas of class, romance, inherent good. Really good play. cw: animal death, suicide

Man and Superman- a romance dealing with the superiority of women. Play by George Bernard Shaw, it’s really long but worth it. Definitely comedic but discusses feminism, philosophy, politics, and has a really beautiful love story. There are audio versions of it. If you don’t want to read/listen to the whole thing, there is an abridged version called Don Juan in Hell which is just the fourth act

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Pierce- a man is about to be executed, but escapes and tries to flee. short story, also a Twilight Zone episode. Southern gothic with discussions about guilt, the post war atmosphere of the south, unreliable narrator

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner- poem mentioned in Frankenstein, about a sailor who commits a horrible act and has to suffer for it. Great imagery and fun tragedy stuff

Never the Sinner- two college friends attempt to commit the perfect crime as an intellectual excercise, and everything that follows after they get caught. play by John Logan, about the Leopold and Loeb case. Explicit lgbt relationship, discussions of philosophy, class critique, murder. Courtroom drama as well. Very similar to Rope

Rebecca- novel by Daphne du Maurier, films by Alfred Hitchcock and a more recent one by Netflix. About a poor woman who marries a rich man who lives in the English countryside, and falls into a world still controlled by his former wife, who died a year earlier. Homoeroticism, esp in the Hitchcock film, class critique, moral ambiguity

The Monster Variations by Daniel Kraus- more of a coming of age story akin to the Goldfinch, not a whole lot of academia stuff but very good. It’s a story about three boys growing up and it’s really creepy and sad and dangerous. Scowler by Daniel Kraus is also really good

Casefile True Crime: Silk Road- podcast summarising a real case of a man who creates a drug website on the deep web and the story of how he was caught.

Ghost Flower by Michelle Jaffe- a runaway who looks exactly like a missing heiress is hired to impersonate her by family in order to claim their fortune. Amazing murder mystery with a lot of great characters, twists, and reveals, her other books are really good too.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones- four men kill an elk on the elder’s section of the reservation and years later must pay the price. Not exactly DA but amazing horror novel wit great tension and characters.

The Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles- three plays about Oedipus and his family, and the hubris. Great Greek plays for someone new to Greek theatre, and while you probably already know the twist from Oedipus you might not be familiar with Antigone.

The Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus- the story of Agamemnon and his family when he returns from Troy. More great Greek plays, and definitely more morality questions than SOME popular DA books about the Greeks are willing to provide (not naming any names but y’all who hate Agamemnon are getting biased info).

Literally any other Shakespeare play but MacBeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Othello- please, for the love of god, check out some of the less well known shakespeare plays I’m begging you. The Henriad is GREAT and def worth reading, Titus Andronicus is very funny and gory and good, my personal favourite is Measure for Measure and the adaptation Off the Rails by Randy Reinholz. I’m so tired of only seeing Shakespeare memes of the most popular plays and I IMPLORE you to check out some of the other ones, there are great movie versions of most of them (this listing exempts the Two Noble Kinsmen, never mention that play to me again)

I know most of these can’t strictly be called DA, but they give the same vibes to me. Also I know this list is pretty eurocentric, so if anyone has suggestions that are less so please let me know! We need more diverse stories in this genre. I’ll also probably add to this list as time goes on because I have a lot of media that works for me in the way that some of the more popular books/movies don’t. Thanks for reading!

[marvel-starwarsfangirl]

Bad Batch ep. 15 “Return to Kamino” review (spoilers)

First off, I want to make something clear because I’ve been seeing it a lot on Tumblr and it needs to be addressed. People can like villains/morally ambiguous character without supporting their actions. If you don’t like a character because of their actions/choices, that is perfectly fine but don’t go around demonizing other people. And stans, don’t attack the people who dislike the character either. I like Crosshair because he has a cool design and ability. I also sympathize with him because he feels hurt and betrayed by his family. His feelings are valid. HOWEVER, I do not support his actions. They are horrific and I sincerely hope he leaves the Empire. If he chooses to stay, I do not support that decision because the Empire is evil. 

My favorite Star Wars character is Maul. Do I sympathize with him because he’s struggling and all alone? Yes. But do I cheer when he does heinous things like killing Satine? No. I hated watching that and my heart goes out to Obi-Wan. 

So folks, people can enjoy characters without supporting their actions. People like characters because they look cool or can do cool things. Maybe they are complex and have relatable issues. We all have our reasons but that doesn’t mean we cheer a character on if they do something bad.

I had to get that out of my system. Now, onto the review.

Spoilers below:

Amazing episode!!! 10/10. I cried a lot.

I really loved Hunter and Crossahir dynamic this episode. 

(and thank god hunter didn’t get turned into an imperial. I would’ve had a meltdown)

I felt that Crosshair opening up to Hunter was great. He felt hurt and betrayed; he as a right to express those feelings. I also love that Crosshair still deeply cares for his brothers. Even when it seemed like he would betray them, he still came through at the end. I just hope that he rejects the Empire because it is evil. I would be extremely disappointed if he went back. Like, I kinda can understand that he probably feels like he has a place there since his brothers left him but I hope he realizes how horrible the Empire is. That’s not a place where he should be at.

Hunter was also great as were the rest of the squad. Also, I really liked seeing a bit more Kamino and where Omega was born. She’s an awesome kid and she pulled on my heartstrings this episode. Also, my little buddy AZ is back! He’s so cute and overall a really great character.

Speaking of the chip, I still think Crosshair has it in only because he looked like his head hurt for a moment. And unless he hit his head offscreen, I have a feeling that it’s the chip. But only the final episode will confirm that. 

I also found it heartbreaking to see Tipoca City’s destruction. We spent a lot of time there in Clone Wars and seeing it go feels like the end of an era. No more clones. 

Also, I’m glad they didn’t leave Crosshair behind again. Thank you Dave for that.

Anyways, that’s all folks! See y’all next Friday for one last ride! 😊

[ithebookhoarder]

Hii! I've been reading a lot of your stuff lately and I'm so in love with your writing, it's sooooo good!!! I was hoping I could request Tommy Shelby with an assassin reader that's sent to kill him but they end up helping each other so she can leave that behind and they fall for each other? Please :) (if you want to of course)

All’s Fair In Love and War: (Tommy Shelby x Assassin!Reader)

A/N: Of course I want to!!! I literally gasped in excitement when I read this. This was so much fun to imagine, let alone write! Thanks for sending it in. I hope you like it! Your comment is so nice, as well. You sweetie!

Warnings: Swearing, smoking, references to violence, blood, mentioned nudity, implied smut, references to death (let me know if I missed anything)

Masterlist:

-----

If anyone had asked you years ago what you’d wanted to be when you grew up, you’d probably have said a writer. Or a poet. Or a princess. Or all three, even - you were an ambitious toddler. 

Never once had you ever considered the life you found yourself in now. After all, you didn’t know of many assassins, let alone female ones. Not in Birmingham, anyway. 

In that respect, you were unique. A one of a kind, which was why your boss had hired you in the first place, crafting and sculpting you into his own private hit-woman. 

You’d become rather adept at your job by now. There were very few marks, if any, that had been able to escape your clutches. Failure, after all, wasn’t an option. Not in your line of work and not when your boss had the temper of a toddler. 

You’d seen what happened to people who failed and it wasn’t an experience you particularly wanted to experience. 

No. You quite liked having all your limbs in tact. In fact, you kind of needed them to execute the tasks Sabini often gifted you. 

He had a lot of enemies, which wasn’t much of a surprise given his line of work, but you were surprised how often he called for their removal, rather than simply trying to reach some sort of agreement. Apparently, peace was overrated. It also would have meant your services wouldn’t have been required, which would have been a problem considering his wages were all that currently stood between you and starvation. 

It had been that way for some time. Actually, it was becoming hard to remember a time before you’d started working for Sabini, your brother having joined his ranks as soon as he could and dragging you in with him. You’d been about sixteen when your brother, Simon, had decided it was better to join the gangster’s ranks than starve in the streets of Birmingham. 

You had your reckless parents to thank for that predicament. Any money they’d once had, had been drunk, gambled and thrown away on stupid, pointless ventures that never worked out how either of them had expected. Now, with both of them dead, it had been up to you and Simon to make your own way in the world. 

And just to be clear, you’d never wanted to work for Sabini - even if he paid well. There were hundreds of other jobs out there, ones that were safer, and less morally ambiguous. Working as a librarian, for one, had been a memorable and enjoyable experience for the brief six months you’d held the position. Books had always been a favourite of yours, and spending time speaking to children and elders alike had been rewarding. 

But then Simon had been killed. 

You remembered that day with horrific clarity. How could you not? It haunted you, even now, to remember the way you’d come home to an empty house. That had been enough to tell you something was horribly wrong, as your brother was never late. Never. 

The shiny black car that pulled up outside an hour later had been your other clue, as had the man who stepped out of it and made his way to your front door. After all, Sabini rarely paid house calls. 

“He was a good man and a brave soldier,” he’d purred, looking like he’d rehearsed the speech one too many times for it to be genuine. He was too busy eyeing you in a manner that made your skin crawl to actually bother looking like he was even the least bit upset to be telling you this. “It’s a terrible shame the way things ended, but so is the world we live in, Miss L/N.”

You’d nodded slowly, staring at the glass of whiskey in your hand. “Thank you for telling me, Mr Sabini.”

“Darby, please,” he sighed, rising from his chair and prowling his way toward you. “After all, I think we could be good friends, Y/N, especially if you agree to my little offer and come work for me.”

“Work for you?”

“Yes,” he’d smirked, his body all too close to you for your liking. His hand rose to push a strand of hair off of your face and you had to bit your lip to refrain from slapping him. Hard. The bodyguard loitering in the doorway was the only reason you didn’t lash out in the way you wanted. He’d have shot you there and then before you’d had the chance. “I need someone like you, Y/N. Someone pretty. Someone innocent. Someone people think they can trust.”

“I… I don’t…”

“Men can be fools for a good pair of tits, Y/N,” Sabini had explained. “They let their guards down, which can often be advantageous to people like me. Advantageous enough that I’m willing to pay quite handsomely for the service.”

You wanted to be sick. 

Part of you had feared he wanted you as a whore, but you almost wished it was as simple as that. But no, he’d had more nefarious intentions than that. Ones that still required you to often seduce men, but with an alternative motive than pleasure. 

Fast forward six years, and here you were, Sabini’s prized assassin. A title that made you wish you had the courage to turn your tools on yourself. One bullet… one slip of a knife… one accidental tip of poison in your glass… and it would be all over - this nightmare you were trapped in. If only there was a way to ensure you saw the pearly gates if you ventured to the other side, then maybe you’d take the plunge. Otherwise, given the sheer volume of blood on your hands, you feared you’d see an all together different location. One that would be worse than the hell you already lived in. 

Still, that didn’t stop your wondering. Maybe that was what caused you to make the mistake that day - the mistake that would change your world forever. After all, it wasn’t supposed to be hard to pull a trigger. One squeeze. That was all, and the man you were currently staring down would be gone. 

But there was something about him… something in his icy blue eyes that haunted you as you stood there in that alleyway, the rain soaking you through to your core. 

“You gonna pull that, or what?”

You blinked at his resigned tone. 

His voice was softer than you’d imagined given what little you knew about him. About Tommy Shelby. 

“I… I can’t,” you whispered, unsure where your candour came from. Maybe it was the fact he had yet to run. To strike back at you. To do anything other than stare at you with a morbid sense of curiosity and … pity? “I don’t want to.” 

“Then why did you come here? It isn’t easy to get past my men,” he continued, reaching to remove the cigarette he had perched between his teeth. He hurled it to the floor, grinding it under his boot. “You must have gone to a lot of trouble to orchestrate this window of opportunity. That’s why Sabini pays you so much, eh? Because you’re talented.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“I know a lot of thing, Y/N L/N,” Tommy Shelby sighed. “I know Sabini put a hit out on me and I knew, given your previous record, you’d most likely be the one to come and collect. I didn’t expect you to be so pretty, though. Then again, I supposed that’s part of your charm, isn’t it? You lure men into thinking with their cocks, and when their guard’s down, you strike. Cut-throat, but effective, I’ll give you that.”

If you didn’t now better, that almost sounded like a compliment. 

The man you currently had a gun pointed at, was complimenting you? What was happening? 

He should have been begging you to let him go. Panicking and trying to escape. Or even plotting how to kill you before you had the chance to kill him. But this… this was new. Even for you. 

“Are you trying to flatter me into letting you live, Mr Shelby?” you pried, eyebrow raising in surprise. “I’ve heard a lot about you and your ability to convince people to do your bidding, but I didn’t think you’d try it on me.” 

“What can I say? I like to keep people on their toes.”

“So I gather. You’ve definitely been keeping Sabini on his toes. It isn’t often someone can outsmart him.”

“Now who’s complimenting who?”

You smirked. You couldn’t help it. It was just too surreal not to. 

Was he flirting? 

“Now, I’m flattered,” you murmured, “I’d almost think you wanted to meet me, if you knew I was coming and let me, Mr Shelby-”

“Tommy, please.”

A shiver ran down your spine and it wasn’t because of the cold rain. In fact, you felt rather warm as your heart raced and your cheeks began to heat in a flush. 

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he teased, giving you a smile that you knew would haunt you for the rest of your days. “I said, call me, Tommy. I think we’re at that point, Y/N. I don’t let just anyone point a gun at me, you know.”

“So why am I so special?”

“Because I think we could use each other, Y/N. We both have a mutual interest in removing Sabini from these streets.”

Ok. If you’d been surprised before, you were positively shaken to the core by his proposition. He wanted to hire you? To kill your own boss? Was he mad? There was no way in hell you’d be able to agree to something like that, not when you’d considered the possibility enough yourself to know it was nigh on impossible. 

It was suicide. 

“You… You want me to work for you?” you choked, finally lowering the gun and clicking the safety back into place. “He’s too strong, Tommy. I thought you would have seen that by now, even if you’ve been giving him a run for his money. He’s untouchable. You know that, otherwise you wouldn’t have come to me. You’d have killed him by now yourself.” 

Tommy shrugged. “You’re not wrong. And alone? Neither of us would stand a chance. He’d fucking have our heads on pikes before we got close. But together? Well, I think we’d stand the best fucking chance anyone is ever going to get to rid the world of that bastard. Isn’t that want, after all? To be free of him?”

“You don’t know me or what I want, Mr Shelby.”

“I know you didn’t want this life,” he continued slowly, as if approaching some kind of wounded animal and scared to spook it. “Your brother’s death was the only reason you gave up that job you loved so much, at the library? You did what anybody would do when faced with the choice between death and survival.”

“Tommy-“

“I’m offering you an opportunity to live, not just survive.”

“How?”

“If you do this for me, I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” He made it sound so simple. Like, some kind of genie from the stories you’d read as a kid. Maybe he was. How else did he know so much about you? “You’d never have to work again unless you wanted to. If you give me a chance, I can explain my plan to you and if you think it’s still madness, then you can walk away. I won’t stop you. You have my word.”

You blinked. “What?”

“Hear me out. That’s all I’m saying.”

He smiled, glancing up at you from beneath his cap as he drifted closer in the darkness. Your heart began to race, but not like it had before with Sabini. No, this wasn’t fear inside of you. It was anticipation. Exhilaration. Like staring at the drop off of a cliff and staring at the ocean below, waiting to swallow you whole. 

Whereas once, the waves had seemed cold and stormy, now? Now, they seemed as shiny and blue as the eyes staring at you intently. 

You took a breath. 

You reached out a hand. 

And before you knew it, you’d jumped in, headfirst. 

————

Blood had always been repugnant to you. 

There was always so much of it, gushing everywhere, hot and sticky as it stained everything in its path. You’d lost many a good dress or pair of shoes to bloodstains, unable to always remove every last trace of it from the fibres. However, your body and soul were not so easily cleansed or disposed of. 

It wasn’t like you could toss out your soul and start again, afresh, even if you longed to. It was something you’d resigned yourself to long ago, but tonight? Tonight felt different. 

The water, long since cold, felt restorative as it lapped against you in the small copper tub, doing its best to wash away your sins. 

You’d done it. You’d actually done it. You’d finally rid yourself of Sabini once and for all - with a little help, of course. After all, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for the man behind you, softly running his fingers along your damp skin. 

You’d come a long way since that night in the alley.  

Despite your efforts to the contrary, Tommy Shelby had somehow managed to carve himself a place in your darkened world. He’d managed to manoeuvre his way into your life and into your cold, empty heart, to the point where you could never envision returning to the solitary existence you’d once known. Not when he - and his eclectic family - had somehow permanently adopted you into theirs. 

All it had taken was Tommy introducing you, telling his brothers and aunt of your joint plan to remove Sabini, before they’d accepted you as one of their own. After all, family wasn’t always defined by the blood in your veins. It was also defined by the blood you were willing to spill, and spill Sabini’s you had. 

Even now, you could still feel traces lingering on your skin as you thought back to the moment you’d plunged the knife into his heart. His face had contorted in agony as the air left his lungs, the light in his eyes dwindling until it disappeared entirely. 

“For Simon,” you’d hissed, tears dripping down your cheeks as you watched the monster of a man collapse to the floor. 

You’d only been able to savour the sight for a mere moment though, before Tommy’s men had hurried into the room and removed his corpse to be disposed of elsewhere. Who knew where he was now? Cut up and dropped in the bottom of the Cut? Burned beyond recognition on a fire? Or buried in a unmarked grave somewhere, soon to be forgotten? 

Did it matter? No, was the honest answer to that. As long as he was never able to bother you again, he could have rotted in hell for all you cared, and rot he would. In fact, you could imagine his own little corner of Hell waiting for him, carved by all those innocent souls he’d wronged in his blood-soaked reign as king of Birmingham’s bookies. 

Well, even kings could fall. 

You’d seen to that much.

“Y/N, love,” Tommy murmured, his lips soft as he pressed them against your shoulder, his hands winding around your waist and holding you close. It was as if he knew your mind had wandered. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” he repeated firmly, “you did it. We’re free now. Free, as I promised we would be.”

You never had to take another life again. 

The thought was a dizzying one. Maybe that was why you were so quiet, so sedate, trying to process the earth shattering revelation of the world before you. As long as it included Tommy, you knew it was a good one. He was your world now. The man who had freed you, body and soul, causing you to fall utterly in love with him. 

“I love you, Tommy Shelby,” you whispered, as if trying to voice your thoughts aloud. The soft moan in your ear told you he’d heard you loud and clear. That, and the way his body pressed flush against your back, allowing you to feel exactly the affect you had on him. Who knew he could be so easily won? 

“I love you too, Y/N L/N.” 

“Then show me,” you purred, twisting in the tub so that your face was able to gaze back at his. The invitation was clear as your own hands began to wonder his damp skin, grounding yourself to him and this moment between you. The moment your new life began. “Show me how much you love me. Show me that I’m yours, now and always.”

Tommy grinned, sweeping you up into his arms and all but hurling you both out of the tub and towards the unmade bed. The lust in his voice sent shivers through you as you knew exactly what was about to happen. You knew how much he needed to feel you, just as you did him. It was all that had been keeping you going all night, the promise of losing yourself in your lover’s arms and knowing you’d never need to leave them again.

“You’re mine, Y/N, always… Always.”

[gameofdrarry]

Wizards Hearts Recs: Vampire!Fic

Wizards Hearts was a four-month-long Drarry reading fest. Players were given a playing deck of 52 tropes, and were asked to find 52 different fics to read and comment on to fill their decks. To prevent the same few fics from being read, fics were restricted to only being used for the game three times before being considered ineligible for further points. The tropes and submissions list can be found here.

Check out the masterlist of fics for this trope below the cut!

📜 The Art of Our Necessities by dcfg21 Rated:  Explicit Words:  52,682 Tags:  Vampire!Harry, Angst, Forced Bonding Summary:  After being Turned by a vampire, Harry descends into reckless and dangerous behavior. The Ministry and the Vampire Council devise a way to keep the former Savior on a leash, and his fangs to himself, by forcing him to take a Consort. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Catch Me Before You Fall by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill) Rated:  Explicit Words:  17357 Tags: Vampire Draco Malfoy, Biting, Blood Drinking, POV Second Person, POV Harry Potter, Hurt/Comfort, Clubbing, Nearly Omniscient Bartender, but aren't they all, Kissing, Dancing, mild jealousy, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Rimming, Hand Jobs, Draco Being a Git, Harry being oblivious, Draco being oblivious, Harry being thirsty, Draco being really actually thirsty, Switching, Community: daily_deviant Summary:  Draco, newly turned, shows up on Harry’s doorstep. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Palace of Eternity by gracerene Rated:  Explicit Words:  27909 Tags: Post-Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Future Fic, POV Harry Potter, Non-Linear Narrative, Harry Potter Partially Epilogue Compliant, Getting Together, Past Relationship(s), Getting Back Together, Creature Fic, Vampires, Vampire Draco Malfoy, Character Death, Wakes & Funerals, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Past Suicidal Thoughts, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Male Character, Gay Male Character, Bisexual Harry Potter, Gay Draco Malfoy, Accidental Bonding, Draco Malfoy Speaks French, France (Country), Auror Harry Potter, Ocean, Tattoos, Nipple Piercings, Drinking, Smoking, Romance, Endearments, Biting, Blood Drinking, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Rimming, Bottom Harry Potter, Top Draco Malfoy, Implied Switching, Dirty Talk, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Past Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Minor Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter, H/D Tropes Exchange Fest 2019 Summary:  It had been twelve years, five months, and six days since the last time Harry had laid eyes upon Draco. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Midnight in the City of a Hundred Spires by shiftylinguini Rated:  Explicit Words:  25418 Tags: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Drinking, Smoking, Sleep Paralysis Imagery, Vampires, Creature Fic, Vampire Draco Malfoy, Light Angst, Dark Humor, Mystery, Intrigue, Clubbing, Dreams, Blow Jobs, Grinding, First Time, Getting Together, Private Investigators, Private Investigator Draco Malfoy, Hopeful Ending, H/D Erised 2019 Summary:  Harry Potter is a missing person. Draco Malfoy is a vampire. They are the last two people one would expect to bump into each other in a Creature Bar in Prague, yet to Draco’s absolute shock that is definitely Harry fucking Potter sitting across from him. Even more surprising is that Potter may have a case for him. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Is Tu Fuil 'O Mo Chuislean by wench_fics (WeasleyWench) Rated:  Explicit Words:  12174 Tags: Violence, Vampire Sex, vampire, hp_vampfest entry, M/M Sex, OOC, artwork: mad1492, NSWF artwork Summary:  Harry becomes a vampire - and has to mate soon or be killed. His mate is none other than Draco Malfoy. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 In The Red by bixgirl1 Rated:  Explicit Words:  45629 Tags: Post Hogwarts, Powerful Harry, Creature Fic, Vampire Draco, Rentboy Draco, Angst, Pining, Bonding, cursebreaker harry, POV Alternating, Magical Theory, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Anal Fingering, Blowjobs, Frotting, Rimming, Semi-Public Sex, Just really lots of sex, no really, There's like 3k of plot in this, Vampire Sex, Blood Drinking, Roleplay, Gift Fic, Switching Summary:  When Harry goes looking for a vampire at a Creature club, the second-to-last thing Harry expects is to find Malfoy working there. The last thing he expects is to fall in love with him. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Draco Malfoy and the Secret Underground Vampire Bureaucracy by Lomonaaeren Rated:  Mature Words:  18429 Tags: Vampires, Humor, Bondage, Self-help, Romance, Bonding Summary:  In which there is an obsessed Potter, conspiracy theories, bonds, hormones, far too much self-help, and, of course, a secret underground vampire bureaucracy. None of which is as important as the fact that this is not Draco Malfoy’s fault. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Not Quite Like You Imagined by canis_lupus Rated:  Explicit Words:  10935 Tags: Vampire Harry, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, HP: EWE Summary:  The taste of blood always makes Harry horribly nauseous. Not a fortunate thing if one is a vampire. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Not Today by Kefalion Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  2985 Tags: Vampire AU, 18th Century Aristocracy AU, QLFC Summary:  It's the winter season. Parliament is in session and everyone of import is in London. Harry has joined them for the first time. He doesn't want to be part of any scandal, but the choice might not be his. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Harry Potter and the Inconvenient Condition by mirabella Rated:  Restricted Words:  ~20500 Tags: Relatively mild bloodplay, as close as I'm ever likely to get to consent issues Summary:  Harry comes back from vacation with an inconvenient case of vampirism and must learn to cope with blood, Malfoy, and recalcitrant secretaries. And if that doesn't tell you everything about the plot you need to know, you haven't read enough badfic. ❤️ Read on Dreamwidth

📜 For Thine Is The Kingdom by kedavranox Rated:  Explicit Words:  66928 Tags: Post-Hogwarts, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Self-Harm, Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Guns, Bonding, Soulmates, Mates, Flashbacks, Vampires, Creature Fic, Auror Draco Malfoy, Memory Loss, Memory Alteration, Legilimency, Occlumency, POV Alternating, Background Femslash, Background Slash, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Tattoos, Magical Tattoos, Blow Jobs, Telepathic Bond, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, brief spanking, Hung Draco Malfoy, Shower Sex, post-sex fingering, Rimming, brief breathplay, Dom/sub Undertones, Romance, Frottage, Sex Toys, Pansexual Harry Potter, Language Kink, Families of Choice, Family Issues, Near Death Experiences, Violence, H/D Erised 2018, Community: hd_erised, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Blatant Disregard for Traditional Vampire Lore Summary:  On a secret mission, Draco is Turned. With no memory of what happened, he learns that to save his missing Auror partner and regain what he’s lost, he must uncover the long-buried secrets of the vampire covens. To do that, Draco must open his mind and heart to what he has become, the new-found family that surrounds him, and the man who has remained steadfast at his side through it all. Harry spent five years avoiding the man he fell in love with, but when Draco needs his help, he cannot refuse. As they race against the clock to find Draco’s partner, Harry discovers that the bond they share is nothing to hide from, and that he'll never outrun the pace of his own heart. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Thirst by fluxweed Rated:  Explicit Words:  4448 Tags: Vampires, Vampire Sex, Vampire Harry Potter, Blood, so much blood, Blood Drinking, Biting, Explicit Sexual Content, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Drarry Discord Writers Corner Drabble Challenge, HP Kinktober 2020 Summary:  The path of Malfoy’s scent is obvious; Harry hasn’t fed for days, so his senses are sharp. Deadly. And Malfoy smells so good. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Business Meetings by Lomonaaeren Rated:  Mature Words:  31332 Tags: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Vampires Summary:  Draco leads a powerful group of vampires. Harry is their Ministry-appointed negotiator. Cue a series of once-monthly meetings where Harry and Draco argue about the various virtues of attacking the Ministry versus holding back from doing so, and, eventually, other things. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Hell Tastes Like Honey by alpha_exodus, chachisoo Rated:  Explicit Words:  16122 Tags: Vampire Draco Malfoy, Biting, Blood, Reckless Harry Potter, Teasing, Alcohol, Dancing, Voyeurism, Anal Sex Summary:  Malfoy is a vampire. Entirely unrelatedly, Harry wants to fuck him. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 For Services Rendered by dracogotgame Rated:  Mature Words:  4229 Tags: Mythical Beings & Creatures, Supernatural Elements, Vampires, vampire!Harry, Angst with a Happy Ending, Oneshot, canon? never heard of her, Drarropoly: Founders Edition - A Drarry Game/Fest, Smut, Minor Violence, Morally Ambiguous Character, Semi Healthy Relationships, Lucius Malfoy's A+ Parenting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, this is not fluff, idk what it is but fluff it is not Summary:  Draco has always given Father's 'business associates' a wide berth. But his fascination with the vampire may lead him down a dark and twisted path. ❤️ Read on AO3