#obviously your mileage may vary but those are my headcanons!

[thus-spoke-lo]

Like I need one of them ( Mihawk Zoro or Doffy) to grip my hair while he’s behind me 😤

☀️🌙

I don’t incorporate hair-pulling into fics as much as I’d like since I try to keep reader’s appearance pretty vague but… damn I do love hair-pulling. Mm and I definitely think all three would be into it, maybe all a little differently.

I can see Mihawk braiding leather or ribbon into your hair to make it sturdier to tug on from behind, caring for your comfort just as much as he cares about your pleasure. Doffy would put it in pigtails and use them like handles. Zoro I can see just grabbing a fistful at the back of your head and tugging it backwards.

🫠

[writingwithcolor]

Jewish character as adoptive parent/patriarch of a found-family that ostensibly contains children from xtian backgrounds?

@lymanjosh asked:

tl;dr: how to approach Jewish character as adoptive parent/patriarch of a family that ostensibly contains children from xtian backgrounds?

(this is about fandom but i take it fairly seriously and want to do it right!)

so i’m not jewish, and i portray/hc a (relatively important/main) character A as a Jewish man. character A is at the center of a large found-family network, and he has a number of children adopted + otherwise who come from a variety of backgrounds and who are variously headcanoned by other fandom members.

a lot of the time (mostly in a roleplay context, where other people have equal control over the storyline) i’ll be faced with the assumption that the family would operate by the xtian norms dominant in a us context (particularly regarding xmas.)

id like to push back against this, but i hesitate to portray character A as asking his children to share in his own customs; i don’t think it would be in character, since he is very very reserved + rarely speaks about his birth family in the source material, but even if that were something he did i don’t have much interest in writing about it, nor do i think it would be my place.

what’s a realistic way for this kind of family to navigate the holidays? i’ve done some reading about adoption of children from oppressed groups by white/gentile families, in which it’s generally best to preserve the child’s connection with their culture, but i’m not sure if it would be different in this context? i worry about implying that A has to let xtian norms into his home to some degree in order to properly parent his children. 

Hi! OK, so when I first read this ask I completely read it as Magneto and was all set to give a complex and thorough Magneto answer, and then I realized I was jumping to conclusions and asked and I was VERY wrong – this is Batman! Which is also awesome. I’m not as familiar with DC but I still enjoy this premise.

So the question becomes: how does Jewish Batman handle the holidays if Robin and whoever those other found-family kids are, are Christian. How do we give them a Christmas without having to “do” Christmas ourselves? If I were in Batman’s Bat Shoes here, I’d ask the kids what it was they wanted. In other words, what part of Christmas would they need in order to feel like they weren’t missing out. And then I’d find a way to make sure they were getting to experience it. If they wanted to go to Midnight Mass, I’d ask if (Christian?) Alfred was okay taking them, or Commissioner Gordon, or some other gentile character. If all they wanted was Christmas cookies and everyone baking as a family, I’d orchestrate that without feeling uncomfortable. If they wanted to watch a movie it would depend on how overtly Christian it was vs. something like A Muppet Christmas Carol. (Note: this is going to be a big “your mileage may vary” here because of our varying discomfort with having to participate in Christmas, so I am definitely not saying all of us are comfy with secular Christmas movies.) If they wanted a Christmas tree, remember this is Wayne Manor so there’s gonna be room for there to be a Christmas tree or even a whole Christmas room that doesn’t have to be my space or my room. If I’m Batman. (Did I really just type that sentence?

Batman is so Alone TM that this post makes me lonely for him to have other Jewish characters to do his own holidays with. But. The whole time I was in grad school I was in a situation where I was celebrating all my holidays with all gentiles, and I basically did my own thing and taught them what I was doing and why, and then had movie parties. Like for Passover we had a “deconstructed seder” where I made all the seder foods as party foods and watched Ten Commandments. That way I got to feel like I wasn’t missing out. That would be a sort of secular way that the BatFam could participate in stuff like Passover without having to actually sign up to practice a different religion.

–Shira

I only have a couple minor things to add. Firstly OP, definitely pay attention to the ‘mileage may vary’ point and, as we’ve mentioned before, listen  to many Jewish experiences of Christmas from those who engage to those who are neutral to people who have negative associations and memories about Christmas. The examples Shira gave all work, as long as they fit with Batman’s wider Jewish identity and you’re aware that whatever option you go with, many Jews will feel completely differently to your character and that’s OK too.

Similarly, Shira’s suggestions for Jewish holidays like Passover are great, but this would again depend on Batman’s denomination and personal preferences. An Orthodox seder still has plenty of room to make it your own, but with a lot more do’s and don'ts. For example, (this obviously didn’t happen in 2020 but) my dad usually heads down to the local Jewish retirement home on first night Passover and leads a kind of 'highlights of the seder’ for the residents. All the songs they will remember from childhood, but shorter; all the food, but made a bit more palatable, as Shira also said; and all condensed into about 45 minutes. Your Batman might do something similar for his kids if they show interest in Passover. However, when my dad gets home he will still make sure he does seder night, even if he is by himself if the rest of the family are with my mum. It will depend on Batman’s denomination and beliefs as to whether he sees a condensed or modified seder as having fulfilled his religious obligation. 

–Shoshi

[jaelijn]

Trans!Vila - what’s up with that?

1. Introduction

It’s been a while since I posted a meta, hasn’t it? It’s probably not a good idea to start off again with a meta that it in many ways not typical - which I will get into. So, for reference, this is my usual approach for meta:

I tend to analyse and interpret close to the canon text, which in this case includes only the show (no expanded universe, no actor/writer etc. statements). Obviously, my reading of the canon text is not universal - your mileage, of course, may vary; see also: there is no such thing as “the canon” - but I tend to make it clear when I approach something from a specific perspective rather than just my general perspective on the show, and I try to clarify the line between what’s evidenced in the text and what is speculative. So, sometimes I do use a specific lens, but I rarely start off my meta with a coloured lens, aka I don’t usually (not that I have never, but usually) write metas that have prerequisite assumptions/ideas etc. about the canon without which the meta itself would be pointless. Even when I talked about asexual or autistic Avon, for example, I explained what in the text can support those readings; I didn’t go into the analysis assuming that Avon was (for example) asexual and explored the canon from there, or at least I tried not to. I started with the text and explored its evidence for that interpretative possibility, not the other way around.

That’s what I usually do. This meta is different.

It starts off with the premise that Vila is a FTM trans man (or possibly a F-T-male-aligned nonbinary person, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s not go into that), regardless of whether or not the text supports this. While I certainly explore the ways in the canon slots into the headcanon, I don’t intend to use the canon text to show the evidence for Vila possibly being trans. It may be that I’m implying a functional difference between my “Vila is trans” headcanon and “Avon is ace” headcanon (for example) in doing so here, which isn’t necessarily wholly intentional - they are both interpretations or headcanons, if you prefer, in the end - but I do think that the canon text supports both the ace and the autistic Avon reading in ways that it doesn’t do for a trans reading - any trans reading, really. That is not to say that the text can’t fit a trans!Vila in, simply that I think there are way less (however unintentional) clues for such a possibility than there are for my other “identity” headcanons.

That said, I did want to talk more about trans!Vila in a non-fiction setting, explore what makes it work for me, what made me think of it, what Vila being trans may imply for the story world / for him as character. So I’m not going to do a Trans 101 (or trans-folk-in-fiction 101), I’m not going to pick through the whole text for evidence, to point to lines that could say “Vila is trans!”, but I am going to expand on this headcanon of mine. Without further ado...

2. The Meta

There are three big topics I want to get into regarding Vila:

Vila’s name, naming conventions in B7 and names in a trans context

Vila’s chameleonic nature

the performative flavour to Vila’s masculinity

I’ll explain what I mean by these below. Afterwards, I will also briefly speculate more broadly how being trans may play out in the Federation.

2.1 What’s in a name?

While it is generally worth remembering, particularly also for this meta, that we know extremely little about Vila, one of the “oddities” that have in the past been pointed out about him is that while every single other male character whose first and last name we know is referred to by their last name, even Gan, Vila, clearly, isn’t.

The general speculation seems to be that it’s a grade thing, but by extension it also seems to be a sexism/gender thing, as all women (whose first and last name we know) are referred to by their first name. There are less female characters to draw on for comparison, but it holds true at least for both Dayna and Jenna.

If, for the women, the reason is gender, is it really sensible to assume that, in Vila’s case, the reason is something else entirely? Would it not be reasonable to assume that one reason applies to both?

Generally, my go-to one reason tends to be that it’s a matter of personal preference, as I tend to be less interested in exploring the Federation society (and by extension also our crew) as fundamentally sexist or as classist, but this is where I first started thinking: If the reason for Dayna and Jenna is gender, why could it not also be gender in Vila’s case?

Now, I am emphatically NOT saying that Vila, if he is a trans man, is “not really a man”/”actually a woman” and that is why he is referred to by female naming conventions. Aside from the idea of “just pretending” being a transphobic concept in the first place, that is not what I think, which brings me back to my go-to reason of personal choice:

Assuming Vila was assigned female at birth (afab), he may have become used to being called by his first name. The name “Vila” itself, with its -a ending, also has a slightly more feminine alignment (like Dayna, Anna, Jenna...), though this is perhaps less strong in English than it is in other languages. 

Now, for the majority of trans people, changing their name is a major step towards living as their actual gender, rather than their gender assigned at birth. It doesn’t always mean choosing a new name that is clearly gendered in a different way, but divorcing oneself from the birth name, which generally reflects the gender assigned at birth, is common. Leaving aside the question of how the (fictional) name of “Vila” is gendered, which is impossible to answer, we have a few possibilities:

Given Vila’s criminal background, it’s highly likely that “Vila Restal” is not his birth name anyway, which would make the whole thing a chosen name - but if it is a chosen name, Vila would also have chosen to (continue to) be referred to by his first name, despite transitioning, even though he could easily have switched to the male conventions while switching his name.

If it isn‘t an alias, aka Vila Restal was always “Vila Restal” as person afab, then possibly Vila never felt the need to divorce himself from his birth name, female-gendered or not, including the convention of being called “Vila” as opposed to “Restal”. Perhaps “Vila” is gender neutral anyway, perhaps Vila was simply never bothered by his name.

Or perhaps “Vila” was his former last name, and it’s his personal insider joke.

It’s fair to assume, at least, that Vila isn’t as adamant about presenting whole male when it comes to his name, always assuming that the first-name-naming convention is a gender thing. This may be indicative of changing attitudes towards being trans, to gendered names, or simply of Vila’s own preferences - but if he is trans, he may be not bothered by being not entirely male gender conforming and/or not bothered by people possible catching on that he is trans. In fact, if he chose the naming convention himself, rather than simply sticking with it out of habit, it almost does read like a deliberate joke - and that wouldn’t be totally unlike Vila, after all.

(Now, we could also speculated that this is a hint at actually-female-and-crossdressing Vila, which is interesting in itself, but not the subject here.)

Either way, this little “oddity” of Vila’s name was what first made me go “hmmmm....”. 

2.2 Vila’s nature

Once again: we know very little about Vila. There have been discussions before on how sometimes he has a genuine menacing edge, where the career criminal really comes out as well as his cleverness, while at other times he can be (or play at being) a complete buffoon, to mention just two extremes.

I have said before that I think Vila heavily adapts his behaviour to his surroundings to the point of play-acting. Compare, for instance, Vila in “The Keeper” to Vila in “Killer” - in “The Keeper”, he pretends to be the funny but harmless jester in response to a dangerous situation, hiding his cleverness almost entirely, in “Killer” he is more outspoken and tough than usual in response to Tynus’s dismissiveness and, frankly, the tension in the situation, even when he’s alone with Avon. The two almost don’t seem like the same person.

While I tend to think that the real Vila falls somewhere in the middle, but probably closer to the one on “Killer”, the point of this is that Vila is, by nature, highly chameleonic, adapting to the environment for his own safety.

Again, I’m NOT saying Vila is only playing at being a man, what I AM saying is that it is not inconceivable that a young Vila would have experimented extensively with gender alongside all kinds of other roles, and in the course of this would have found that, actually, being male worked, being male fit, being male was what he was, and he then took that realisation and ran with it.

Perhaps it was, initially, a mere crossdressing/fitting in where “as a woman” he wouldn’t, but because Vila is so extremely chameleonic, I think he also is very careful in what he picks for being and remaining part of his actual, core self rather than part of a (protective) shtick. These parts, he clings to all the more tightly, sometimes to the exclusion of other opportunities - such as his identity as a thief vs his possible future with Kerril. And he certainly seems to stick with being male more than he sticks with being a coward or many, many other pieces of his performing nature.

2.3 Performing masculinity

Following on from that, another thing that makes me think there is more to Vila’s gender (and sexuality, really) than appears is that when he does posture as strictly cis het male, it feels, again, performative.

Now, in this I am also NOT saying that Vila isn’t “properly male” or that his maleness is “fake” (again, hello transphobic talking points), but that he has picked up on the fact that ALL masculinity, particularly as it is commonly (or should I say, normatively) understood and performed, is exactly that: a performance. So while Vila is (trans) male, he also seems to be more aware of masculinity as a construct, as something that he may dial up in performance, or dial it down, respectively, which is something that doesn’t seem to come naturally to the majority of cis people - and none of the other characters seem to do it.

I don’t think Vila, as trans man, is interesting in presenting hyper-masculine - he has settled on his level of masculinity, with a flexibility and possibly amount of self-referential humour in his position as trans man, see his name. He isn’t in any way “imperfectly male”, nor does he generally seem insecure about his gender the way he presents it. Beyond that, however, he also seems to know all of the talking points of “proper cis het male”, or of normative (and possibly toxic) masculinity, which will lead me to citing some things from the show below at last, but first a final thought: This awareness of gender as performance is what strikes me here, rather some notion of Vila performing “imperfectly”. As in, all of the male characters in the show perform masculinity in one way or another (even outside of a certain BS episode), but Vila strikes me as the only one who is aware of the performance, which he sometimes leans into, but never with full seriousness:

He occasionally leers, but never really pursues it - we have talked before about how Vila rarely even touches one of his female crewmates (or anyone, really) without them touching him first.

Sarcophagus, for example:

VILA [...] Thanks, Cally. [He looks at their still-linked hands.] I never realized you felt this way about me.

Also, his most “disgusting” (Dayna’s words, not mine) is in Stardrive, when it is, textually, a complete and utter pretense:

VILA [enters] Hello there! Anyone for a party? I'm afraid you'll have to bring your own booze 'cause I've already drunk my own. Anyone got any booze? Huh? [stumbles slightly as he crosses to the station next to Soolin] And how about my cold, calculating Soolin? I'd like to see you unbend [Soolin moves to a different station] just a little before we're all ... all ...

DAYNA Sometimes, Vila, you can be quite disgusting.

VILA Not so, my lovely. I can be disgusting all the time. It's easy. Easy as colliding with an asteroid, eh, Avon?

In fact, that is all but an admittance of play-acting at the more toxic aspects of masculinity. Even his reaction in “Moloch”, which is entirely saved by MK’s performance and just from the script could have gone very differently, hints more at playing up to the cishetnormativity for chameleonic safety reasons than to actually adhering to it.

Vila occasionally dreams about hetero(cis)normative life goals, but never with full seriousness, like dreaming of having kids (but not a partner!) in “Harvest of Kairos”, or his “Royal Mounties” in “Orbit”, both of which are wistful, over-the-top fantasies:

VILA 'Course I may settle down, you know, have kids. What do you think, Cally?

CALLY What do I think of what?

VILA The lakeside of Gardinos. We could go swimming by the light of three moons.

DAYNA Who could? You and Cally?

VILA No, me and the kids.

CALLY [to Vila] But you haven't got any children.

VILA Not yet, I haven't.

TARRANT Vila, you're dreaming. Two weeks of that, and you'd be looking for something to break into.

(And as a matter of fact, he gives up on Kerril.)

VILA I'll have an imperial palace with solid diamond floors, and a bodyguard of a thousand handpicked virgins in red fur uniforms. Vila's Royal Mounties.

AVON You're dreaming again.

Again, this isn’t to say that Vila fails at being a “proper (cis) man”, but that he seems to be more conscious of the fact that all gender (and sexuality) is just that, performances, than is perhaps average.

There is even his little remark to Avon, following on from Pinder calling him (Avon) “Ma’am”, which is perhaps the closest the show ever gets to overt slippage in gender:

AVON I was thinking about Pinder, and the way he said "pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am".

VILA Is that worrying you?  Listen, if it'll set your mind at rest, I never thought you were a woman. 

While not being about Vila himself, this hints at an awareness of a flexibility of gender that is perhaps not immediately available to someone who never considered the subject for personal reasons, so it does feel fitting as a trans guy’s joke to me. (It also feels fitting as a gay/bi/pan guy’s joke, for that matter, but gender identity and sexual orientation, while separate, are not easily separated, if that makes sense, aka being trans is also generally being queer, even if one is strictly heterosexual.)

2.4 Summary

In sum, these are perhaps the three main reasons/lines of thought that make trans!Vila worked in my head. There are other, smaller things that I take more or less seriously (male pattern baldness, hehehe), but these are the big, essential ones, which really boils down to this:

Vila strikes me as someone who deliberately chooses his identity at any given moment - and we acknowledge that he does adapt in this way, why should he have stopped at questioning his gender beyond what he was assigned at birth? And, perhaps more importantly, if he does adapt to these extreme levels, what he doesn’t shift (anymore) is all the more telling, especially since he also seems to have the awareness that it can be adjusted. That is, that he sticks with being male in the way he presents is indicative of him having already made it to a point where he wants his gender / its representation to be, and refusing to go back. 

3. Speculation: Being Trans in the Federation

To close this, I want to highlight some areas of speculation regarding being trans in the Federation more broadly, without really going into any of them in depth.

Medically transitioning: I didn’t really go into this, but I do think Vila medically transitioned, at least in taking hormones, if not necessarily surgery. Depending on the advances of medicine and/or trans healthcare, his transition may however have looked differently than it would today, and may have different long-term implications, such as a permanent hormone change replacing the need for taking them etc.

Societal attitudes: This is particularly interesting, as in some ways Federation society strikes me as fairly equal in terms of binary genders, while also sexist in others, and of course there would be a follow-on effect on transgender people. There is also the question of general attitudes towards LGBTQIA+ folk.

Prison environments/criminal environments: As Jenna demonstrates, female criminals aren’t unheard of, but as Jenna also demonstrates, there are gender-related difficulties to being anything other than (cis) male in those kinds of environments. Whether this would have influenced Vila’s transition is another question, really, but it may certainly have been part of his earlier explorations, with a certain blurring between crossdressing/gender-nonconformity and being trans.

Gender constructs/concepts: I have, in this meta, very much drawn on contemporary gender concepts, but it’s also entirely possible that the perspective on gender would shift entirely - perhaps being trans would be normalised to a point where nobody would remark upon it, or gender generally would become more flexible, or something else entirely would happen, particularly given potential contact with non-Earth intelligent species with potentially even more diverse sexes, never mind genders. I don’t think the canon text necessarily supports that, but it is also 40 years old and reflective of its own time - whereas we may well go far further with the scifi speculations!

And this, really, is the thought I want to leave this on. Perhaps there is too little textual evidence to call this headcanon an interpretation or an actual reading of the text, but does that really matter? Why not just run with it? Trans people do exist, after all.

[saintjimmeh]

So I’ve been getting back into FNAF lore, and I figured I should get my thoughts out on a few things. (Note: I’ll be using only the games that I’ve played, as those are the only ones I'm knowledgeable enough about to consider fully canon. So FNAF 1-4, Sister Location, Pizzeria Simulator, and UCN. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on what you consider canon. Also some of my ideas may have been confirmed or debunked by the novels; I’ve only read the first. This is all just speculation.)

First off, my idea of a possible timeline, from earliest to latest:

-FNAF 4 -FNAF 2 -Sister Location -FNAF 1 -FNAF 3 -Pizzeria Simulator -UCN

Explanations will be under the cut, as this is going to be really long. (Seriously, it’s nearly 4 pages in a google doc.)

FNAF 4 takes place the earliest, in 1983. I’m pretty sure that’s actually confirmed by Scott, but either way, it’s pretty well shoved in your face that that’s the year it takes place. Now, I’ve heard pretty good arguments for the player character being either the crying child or the older brother. I’m not ruling out the latter, but my personal headcanon is that you’re playing as the younger brother, and the nights are occurring after each minigame one at a time. The child is terrified of the party at Fredbear’s that he knows he’ll be forced to attend, which is giving him night terrors. Of course, his older brother isn’t helping. And by the way, just who are these two brothers? Well, this also explains the reason they’re at Fredbear’s so often: they are both William Afton’s children. The older brother is Michael, and the younger is his unnamed, youngest son. Elizabeth also appears as the little girl in the night 3 minigame (and also seems to be following in Michael’s footsteps of tormenting her little brother by telling him the animatronics come to life at night and no one would find his body if they killed him). I feel like at this point in time, there were few hints as to William’s true character, except to his own children. I feel like he was more neglectful than abusive towards them, though he was kind of an asshole parent, which Michael and Elizabeth took after. The night 5 minigame depicts the Bite of ‘83. There was no Bite of ‘87, as I’ll explain below for FNAF 2. But the event took place basically how Phone Guy described the Bite of ‘87: kid’s head was crushed by Fredbear so badly that it caused permanent damage to his frontal lobe. He survived in a vegetative state for a while before eventually dying. This event led to Michael’s complete turnaround as a person; he was so full of guilt for causing his brother’s death that he actively tried to better himself; this led to him taking a job at the new pizzeria in FNAF 2. This is also the most likely time for the springlock suits to have been in use. We see William putting an employee into the Spring Bonnie suit (and Spring Bonnie is also mentioned by a child in the night 3 minigame), as well as a person inside the Fredbear suit (which for shits and giggles I’m going to say is Phone Guy). I’d say around this same time at least one of the springlock suits failed and killed someone. Fredbear’s Family Diner was shut down for investigations; William was cleared but probably sold the diner to pay legal fees. Now, I don’t think he specifically designed the springlock suits to kill people, but they gave him the idea that he could use his animatronics for that purpose.

As I said, in FNAF 2 you play as Michael, working for his dad during the summer. I’ll admit, the one thing throwing that theory off is the fact that the player is named Jeremy Fitzgerald/Fritz Smith. Y’know what, I’m just going to say fuck it and that Jeremy is actually Phone guy and you’re looking at his cheque. Anyway. Much of my speculation on this game comes from hints in Phone Guy’s calls: “I want you to forget anything you may have heard about the old location… some people still have a somewhat negative impression… that old restaurant was kind of left to rot for quite a while.” It’s only been about 4 years since Fredbear’s shut down, and people are obviously still skeptical about a place where multiple people died due to negligence. “I'm sure you've noticed the older models sitting in the back room. Uh, those are from the previous location. We just use them for parts now.” William likely saw an opportunity to keep the old springlock suits around for “parts.” Everything the Phone Guy says about the animatronics’ facial recognition and not having a proper night mode is true. For the first few nights, the murders haven’t taken place yet, and therefore the animatronics aren’t possessed yet, they just have glitchy programming. At least, none are possessed… except for one. Prior to night 1, William made his first kill: Charlotte, whose spirit possessed the Puppet. While the animatronics were only connected to a criminal database, which obviously wouldn’t have had William at this point, either they witnessed the murder or the Puppet somehow gave her knowledge to them, and they saw him as a threat… and who might bear a familial resemblance to William? Michael. Hence their attempts to attack him. “I wanted to ease your mind about any rumors you might have heard lately… whatever is going on out there, and however tragic it may be, has nothing to do with our establishment.” Obviously people are going to talk about a little girl found murdered outside of a children’s pizzeria linked to another where deaths have occurred. Authorities haven’t connected them to William yet, but you know how rumors spread. The 5 child murders took place between nights 3 and 4. In the night 4 phone call, Phone Guy mentions that the animatronics are now acting abnormal around all adults, rather than just Michael. Phone Guy also mentions an investigation, which may either be for Charlotte’s murder or the missing children. After night 4 things really start to go to shit, with the building being on lockdown night 5 and the restaurant closed down on night 6. It seems like there are a few leads by night 6: “Someone used one of the suits. We had a spare in the back, a yellow one, someone used it…” so authorities and staff are aware of one of the suits being used to lure children… by the way, the only yellow suits seen at this point? Fredbear and Spring Bonnie. Now we see the real reason William saved these two. Judging from the animatronics’ AI in game, I’d guess that the childrens’ bodies were hidden in the withered animatronics.  Especially after night 3, they are much more aggressive than the toy animatronics, and they give you a much shorter time window to pull down the Freddy mask. The toys are victims of malfunctioning facial recognition, while the withered animatronics are actively hunting you down. At this point I’d like to mention that I don’t think Phone Guy and William are the same person. Phone guy sounds legitimately freaked out during the night 6 phone call and overall doesn’t sound like he fully understands what’s going on with the murders. He’s also probably been traumatized from this event as well as the deaths from Fredbear’s, and so by FNAF 1 his own timeline of events is messed up. It’s canon that FNAF 2 is set in 1987, and I believe that Phone Guy has gotten the dates of the bite and the murders all jumbled, hence mistakenly referring to the Bite of ‘87 rather than ‘83.

Sister Location… hoo boy, Sister Location… there is a lot to work with here. For starters, this is the last game in which you see any of the Aftons alive. Between FNAF 2 and this game is when William really starts to experiment with gaining immortality, as well as even more gruesome ways to kill children (note that at least one of the springlock suits is here). This is why Circus Baby's Pizza World is in an underground bunker - the restaurant is actually a front for William’s laboratory. Anyway, we all know what happened to Elizabeth prior to the start of the game. Even though William is a monster, he did show that he really loved his daughter and tried to unsuccessfully keep her away from Baby. Elizabeth’s death gave him a lot of guilt, and caused him to become more distant from people - he didn’t seem to take an active role in running the restaurant, and also stopped caring about Michael. Aside from Baby, none of the animatronics are actually possessed. William designed them to be murder machines; they kill when they catch a person alone, and since you’re alone on the night shift… yeah. As for Baby/Elizabeth, there’s some dissonance from the innocent little girl heard before each night and the murderous one found in Baby. Before her death, Elizabeth had mellowed out in the 5-odd years since her little brother’s death, likely from both growing up and guilt at how she treated her brother. Then something in Baby’s programming corrupted her. I’ll actually talk more about this in another post I’m working on, about the animatronics’ personalities, but basically the Elizabeth and Baby personalities are clashing with each other. The “bad” ending is confirmed as the canon ending. Michael’s insides are scooped out and well, that tends to kill people. Ennard wears his skin to escape into the outside world, but the inevitable happens from wearing a literal rotting corpse, and so Ennard ditches the body and hides… somewhere for the next few decades. (And by the way, Ennard is really just Baby in a different form - remember that she’s the only sentient animatronic in this game. Which makes it really weird when you think Elizabeth and Michael’s souls were sharing a body for a while.) Elizabeth’s soul takes Ennard, while Michael re-possesses his own corpse due to something called “remnant”. I’ll admit I don’t know much about what that stuff is, but iirc it’s a substance that allows souls to bind with inanimate objects. Some of it inevitably rubbed off from Ennard.

Now we’re up to FNAF 1, which I’m guessing is set somewhere between ‘95-’97. Despite being the first game in the series, there’s actually not a whole lot to add here lore-wise aside from massive speculation. William has gone into hiding and has nothing to do with this pizzeria; it’s a franchise location. You play as Michael (but since you’re supposed to be dead, you use a fake name, hence why the name on the paycheque is Mike Schmidt. That also explains “odor” being one of the explanations for getting fired). The Golden Freddy cutscene in Sister Location reveals why he is here: “I found it… it was right where you said it would be. They were all there. They didn’t recognise me at first, but then… they thought I was you.” He was looking for the children, probably trying to find a way to free them, and right the wrongs his father had done. But they couldn’t tell Michael apart from William, hence why they try to kill you.

30 years later, most of the people involved in any of the horrors of Fazbear Entertainment have moved on, leaving the original restaurants nothing but a chilling memory. It’s been long enough that a theme park attraction isn’t even in bad taste. Once again, Michael is back to try and fix what his father did, as well as try and confront William. I’d also guess that some remnants of the children are in the attraction. The animatronics themselves are no longer whole, but you can find several of their heads scattered throughout the attraction… now remember in the good and bad endings, you see only the heads. That’s where the children are. Now, there’s a bit of gameplay-story segregation going on here. While the player has to do all the secret minigames to free the childrens’ souls, Michael has a much easier method: set the place on fire. After he was sure that the children and his father were for sure inside Fazbear’s Fright, he burned it to the ground, using the faulty wiring as an out. But… notice how in the Bad Ending screen there is a fifth head that isn’t there in the Good Ending, and Springtrap is revealed to have survived the fire. So William, the fifth child, and Elizabeth are still out there, bringing us to…

Pizzeria Simulator. The mastermind behind this game is Charlotte’s father, Henry, finally enacting his revenge against William. It doesn’t seem like he intended for Michael to take his job offer, but he did anyway, knowing somehow that the others would come to this pizzeria. And they do… Molten Freddy/the rest of Ennard: the fifth child; Scraptrap: William Afton; Baby (who was expelled from Ennard): Elizabeth; and Lefty: Charlotte. Henry is more successful in releasing their souls; he intentionally designed the place with no exit for the animatronics, no way to escape the fire that would destroy them for good and release their souls. Unfortunately, or more likely fortunately, this killed Michael as well (“although there was a way out planned for you, I have a feeling that that’s not what you want. I have a feeling that you are… right where you want to be.”) This was the true end for the tragedies that started all the way back from Fazbear’s Family Diner. They’re all dead for good this time.

As for Ultimate Custom Night… William’s in hell, forced to relive the nightmare he created, night after night.

[thedistantdusk]

since u wont answer my ask about which fics u don't like....what are some fics you LOVE that no one else likes??? hehehe

Ha! Damn straight, I won’t answer that question! Opinions are dangerous things in some circles... and as it turns out, this is one of those circles! ;)

That being said, there are a few fics I absolutely adore that others don’t like as much -- and honestly, that’s fine too! I hate this notion that we should all like the exact same content and offer the same boiler-plate, glowing praise. I don’t think I could exist in a community that wasn’t focused on concrit and improvement versus everyone being into the exact same things 100% of the time. Variety is the spice of life, as they say! :D

So that being said... here is my totally just-for-fun, not-from-a-place-of-authority, not-in-any-particular order list of fics I like that other people usually don’t. Obviously, your mileage may (and should) vary... I’m just giving what is strictly my opinion based on what I’ve heard around the interwebs!  

For starters, @jenoramaca and I love Things You Shouldn’t Do at Christmas by a kissinacrisis, but almost everyone else I’ve recommended it to disagrees for some reason or other. I think this fic very realistically conveys what a young couple might go through, especially if said couple was forced into a huge responsibility/the enormity of a lifelong relationship at age 17. 

In that vein, I looooove Compromise: A Love Story by femmenerd. It features one of my all-time favorite depictions of Ginny and it’s inspired a lot of my headcanons. However... I’ve been told point-blank I’m wrong for liking this fic (?) because Ginny would “obviously” want to get married right away and because Harry would never be an auror. (And don’t get me started on that topic. Just don’t.)

By now, it should also be no surprise that I’m obsessed with the Tea Time series by frombluetored. In particular, I lurrrrve Set Fire to Our Homes, but some wrong people think it’s too long. And to these wrong people, here is what I say: I’m far from an expert, but I’ve been reading Harry Potter fanfiction for almost 20 years of my life. Believe me when I tell you that I’ve absolutely never cared about OCs as much as I care about the ones in this series. It’s legitimately baffling that anyone could walk away from someone as adorable and damaged as Caden Rowle, but what can I say? We can’t all be perfect!

Ok, this last rec usually gets a lot of hate... but I’ve been building to it for a reason. I’ve defended this fic on almost every corner of the internet -- and if this is the hill I die on, so be it, world!

My favorite fic ever is Buried Treasure and Transmogrify by Rienna Hawkes. Some wrong people think it’s too sexually graphic and that it features too much Snape and wahhhhh, but I... don’t actually care? Like, you’re absolutely entitled to think that and it’s your opinion, but I will vehemently disagree, because I effing love everyone in this story and it’s beautiful and perfect and I can’t.

Annnyway, outside of @floreatcastellumposts (and a few others), there just aren’t many authors who check every single box for me in terms of aligning with my headcanon. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of authors I love — and a lot of authors I’m happy to call myself friendly with! It’s just rare for me to find someone who syncs with me 100% of the time. And I’m sure many of you don’t agree with my headcanons, either, which is a-ok! I’m just explaining that this fic matches for me!

So yeah, for me, BT&T is one of those rare unicorns. (And if you’ve read it, you will understand why I’m chortling like a child over the word unicorn.) I first read BT&T when it came out in the mid-2000s (on Checkmated, no less!), and when I got back into fanfic a couple of years ago, I was beyond pleased that it was still available. 

I’m not sure if that rambling was clear enough, so please allow me to explain the depth of my insanity when it comes to Buried Treasure and Transmogrify.

I love this fic so much that I’ve memorized entire passages. I love it so much that I regularly (and fruitlessly) message the author... who has not existed on the internet in almost four years. It’s a legitimate tragedy that the sequel, Heroes for Ghosts, has not been updated since September 2015. Imo, we will forever be without the “true” story of how Harry was made, because to me, this series is so achingly beautiful that (with very few exceptions) it’s how I envision Marauder canon. 

I’m not exaggerating when I say this fic taught me how to write romance novels. I’m also not exaggerating when I say that I used to sneak out of my planning block in high school to read it in the library because I’m old and computers didn’t have profanity filters back then. 

So yeah. There is a certain degree of sentimental attachment... but truly, I adore this one. Your headcanon might totally disagree with how the characters are portrayed, but you still have to appreciate the depth of research that went into this fic. It’s a work of art. 

Soooooo. There is tonight’s edition of overshare, folks! Thank you for coming to my TED Talk!  😬😬😬

ETA: Y’all know I’m joking when I say you’re wrong, right? Cause that was the whole point of this post... No one is wrong when it comes to stories they love! ❤️

[enricodandolo]

Can we please stop reading Wagner's operas as complete sausage fests?

(Cross-posting from /r/opera for the five people browsing the #opera tag on tumblr)

Inflammatory title, check. Typing this fresh out of the shower inflamed with righteous indignation, check. References to YouTube comments, check. That's right, it's rant-time (or, as Wagner calls it, "act 2").

So this is something that has been on my mind a lot but that I've never really bothered to write down. I don't think this will come as a surprise to most of the people on here, so this is gonna be somewhat self-indulgent. Obviously, big shout-out to the 2005 Copenhagen Ring, which was my first introduction to Wagner.

In a lot of the literature, and certainly in the popular imagination (hello there, angry YouTube commentors), Wagner is all about the men. *Meistersinger* productions almost always hinge on the director's perspective on Hans Sachs and what a cad he is. The *Ring* is usually told as either the story of Wotan, whether he be a visionary master manipulator or a villain in disguise. *Tannhäuser* is about Heinrich dithering about for three hours like a latter-day Hamlet who can't decide between Betty and Veronica (wait, what?). This is not to say Wagner's big female characters -- Brünnhilde and Kundry being the prime examples -- don't receive attention in those productions or analyses. But they're usually ancillaries of the men, in some way or another, and not the focal points of the action.

But that's not at all what we can see in the libretti themselves, let alone the music! If anything, I'd argue that in all of Wagner's mature works -- Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Meistersinger, the Ring and probably Parsifal -- it's the women that drive the plot, and the women that make the most use of their agency.

I think the best example for this is probably Walküre, and in fact listening to the first two acts this morning brought this on. When the Copenhagen Ring had Sieglinde pull Nothung from the ash tree rather than Siegmund, I saw a lot of reviewers tut-tutting. According to a not very scientific study of the comments on the YouTube upload, that seems to be a point of more contention than the deaths of Loge and Alberich in that production, or Hunding getting away scots-free. I note that the Met Ring has the twins pull out Nothung together, hand in hand, which is cute and doesn't seem to arouse nearly as much dissension.

But in fact, Sieglinde is far from the helpless damsel in distress that some people seem to want to paint her as. Hell, her very first line goes: "A stranger -- him, I must ask." The clear implication that she has some sort of plan in mind -- which, though never spelled out, becomes pretty clear over the course of the first act -- doesn't exactly characterise her as helpless victim waiting for her saviour. It is Sieglinde who, at risk to her own safety, forces Hunding to grant Siegmund shelter by literally calling him a coward. Later, it is Sieglinde who -- on her own initiative -- drugs Hunding and directs Siegmund to the sword, not just to save him but also herself. Rather than Siegmund saving Sieglinde, this is a transaction between equals: Sieglinde gives Siegmund the means to defend himself from certain death at Hunding's hands, and in return Siegmund bodily protects Sieglinde from her abusive husband.

Throughout the act, the equality between the twins is emphasised. In part, of course, that's for foreshadowing that sweet, sweet twincest, but one line always gives me pause:

HUNDING Wie gleicht er dem Weibe! Der gleißende Wurm glänzt auch ihm aus dem Auge.

I've seen some pretty bizarre translations of that (that deceitful serpent, really?), but I think this might be the most literal:

How like to the woman is he! The same gleaming (radiant? bright? searing?) worm (almost definitely: dragon rather than earthworm, cf. Fafner) shines in his eye.

I don't really think you can get much clearer on what kind of temperament Wagner had in mind for both Wälsung twins than comparing them to a freaking dragon.

Later on, too, it's Sieglinde who first realises just who this dashingly handsome stranger is and goes "eh, fuck it" and proceeds to basically spell it out to her brother. By this point, we've seen Sieglinde pretty much run the first act, directing events to her advantage from a position of supreme weakness. No matter which of the twins draws Nothung from the tree, I think it's pretty clear that the first act is Sieglinde's self-actualisation and emancipation more than anything else.

The theme continues in acts 2 and 3, in my opinion. Sieglinde takes the backseat here as the overarching mythological plot dominates the action, and the focus shifts to two other female characters: Fricka and Brünnhilde. Now Fricka seems to be positioned perfectly to be played under the "shrewish, overbearing wife" trope who just doesn't understand Wotan's greatness and is keeping him down, man. Wotan and Brünnhilde certainly seem to share that opinion in how they talk about her. But regardless of how she is portrayed on stage, Fricka completely dominates the confrontation with Wotan despite the supposed master-manipulator and patriarch's sweet romantic ideas on how to deal with the Wälsung twins. This is one sharp lady, and she doesn't waste a second before reminding Wotan that he's bound to enforce the divine law she set down. Musically, too, Fricka's sharp soprano lines seem to easily overpower Wotan's explanations in all the recordings I've heard, another common theme.

Brünnhilde of course is the poster-child for any feminist reading of the Ring for obvious reasons. Not only is she, apparently, her mother's equal in wisdom and magic (so says Erda, at least -- later on Brünnhilde bitterly mocks her lack of wisdom, so your mileage may vary). Over the course of the three operas she's in, she

wilfully defies Wotan's orders despite being literally created as his instrument in attempting to save Siegmund

convinces Sieglinde to live and (on the day of his conception, most likely) bestows a seriously programmatic name on her son, with the clear implication that she's doing this as her own way of fixing Wotan's broken master plan

transforms her punishment into an unishment by tricking Wotan into letting her set the conditions for her spouse-to-be, and it's pretty clear from the swelling Siegfried motif just whom she has in mind

musically overpowers brash Siegfried not once, but twice (the love duet and the oath scene in Götterdämmerung) -- I don't think it's a coincidence that Brünnhilde enters Siegfried fresh and ready to shatter every glass pane from Walhall to Niflheim while Siegfried himself has something like three hours of intensive singing behind him

hands out magic items and boons to a departing Siegfried like a mellow dungeon master just before a big-ass boss fight

after being forced into marrying Gunther, immediately turns around and moves to take down Siegfried hard, including by making alliances of convenience with her direct personal enemies Gunther and Hagen. No lovesick puppy here.

burns down the fucking world and kills all the gods

So much for the Ring (haven't touched on Gutrune and Waltraute, who I also think get a bad rap as an uninvolved accessory to her brothers' plot respectively a walking flying plot device). It's not that different in Wagner's other operas, but I'll run through them more curtly.

Tannhäuser: Elisabeth shuts down a mob of angry men about to lynch Heinrich, then cleverly leverages her reputation for piety to give him a way out that will, at the very least, save his life and has a chance of restoring him to the court's good graces. By contrast, Heinrich himself doesn't really *do* all that much.

Lohengrin: Ortrud runs the whole show here, and she would have gotten away with it too if not for those meddling grail knights! Telramund is something of a tool by comparison who doesn't even seem to be aware his wife is manipulating him. Elsa comes off as something of an ingenue, but she's got a will of her own and I like to headcanon that much of her behaviour in act 1 is deliberately performing saintlyhood and Christian mysticism as a legal defense strategy. Sure, a grail knight does come along, but if he hadn't there are worse ways to be perceived by the audience than a consumptive martyr. Big shoutout to Carolyn Walker Bynum's Holy Feast and Holy Fast here, aka the grossest book about medieval Christianity I've had the pleasure to read.

Tristan: sheesh, it's Tristan. Nothing much happens but what little plot there is is set in motion by Isolde deciding to avenge her late husband and kill herself to avoid to unwelcome marriage to a political and dynastic enemy. (Then the date rape drugs come out.)

Meistersinger: Obviously Hans Sachs gets most of the credit for plotting, but really, most of what he does seems to be prompted by Eva at least in part. Realising that her father has gone insane, she uses her limited agency to make the best of a bad situation by first trying to make Walther a Meistersinger (roping in Lene and David) despite his eminent incompetence and psychopathic temperament, then settle for a friend if not a lover by encouraging Hans Sachs to woo her instead. She also manages to keep Walther from murdering anyone on-stage which is quite a feat.

Parsifal: Like with Tristan, there isn't too much plot in the traditional sense, and the characters are hyperstylised archetypes -- excepting Kundry, who is of course one of the most multilayered and complex characters in all of opera (which ... isn't saying much, but still). While Kundry doesn't do all that much to drive the action on-stage, it seems to me she's expressing her agency by helping the grail knights as an attempt at restitution and trying hard to subvert Klingsor's magically-binding orders to the end of her own redemption.

So, yeah. Wagner may have had a massive thing for muscular pretty boys with big swords, but it's really the women who drive the plots and tell the muscular pretty boys what to do, and I wish more directors / reviewers / etc. would pay closer attention to that. Rant over.

TL,DR: just because Wagner was an antisemitic shithead, that doesn't mean he wasn't a crypto-proto-feminist!

[wlwkiryuu]

nanami is a closeted lesbian

this was a theory of mine i used to have just minor evidence for, but after i tried to search up that evidence to compile i realized i actually have a LOT more than i bargained for! so heres ALL the evidence i have so far under the cut :’)

(also please note that i am adding my own personal experiences as a lesbian to this to derive this headcanon, so as they say: your mileage may vary! this is just for fun although i certainly wouldn’t put it past ikuhara + the producers of the show to hint that nanami isn’t straight.) 

OK first off nanami seems to have a crush on miki waaayyy back in the sunlit garden prelude, when he's first introduced. but then she gets jealous when it turns out he’s too busy crushing on anthy.

she then decides to do everything she can in that one episode (snails. garter snake. octopus. you know the one) to get anthy out of the picture, 

but then eventually it turns into her getting obsessed with utena and anthy themselves rather than getting them out of the way between her and miki.

compare nanami trying to humiliate anthy in front of miki vs her trying to ardently spy on utena and anthy to the point where she knows their schedules in order to sneak that curry into their class. it’s because of her own personal vendetta against them at this point. and THEN compare THAT to nanami trying to warn utena about akio in season 3 near the series finale even though there was literally nothing that required her to do that.

what's even more interesting is that nanami’s repeatedly been said to be one who never gets her own hands dirty when she’s up to no good; and yet in regards to utena and anthy?

she’s DEFINITELY more than willing to get her hands dirty. these two are just that special enough for her to be worthy of her attention.

(and even after touga is out of the picture—that is, once he’s basically revealed himself as the manipulative asshole that he was towards his sister all along—utena’s still deemed worthy of attention by nanami, who goes so far as to warn her about akio, which is...hmm! interesting!)

and what's even more worth mentioning on top of this is that whenever nanami humiliates someone? she usually succeeds in it! a prime example would be keiko in her black rose episode. even at the end, she just comes crawling back to nanami. but utena and anthy...they really end up testing nanami to the bone. and of course, that’s what makes their dynamics with nanami so interesting!

 but more on that later. the main point here is that this is one of the first (if not the first) times nanami’s bullying has ended up hurting her rather than her victims. and it consequently opens up nanami’s eyes. she begins to regard these girls in a whole other way, on her own footing. which is kind of a major step in her making tensions with her brother reach a peak, until the season 3 arc comes crashing down on her. this makes her eventually realize she will never be able to see touga in/be with touga in the same way ever again, causing her to resolve to cut ties with one of the only men she has a eminent relationship with.

buuut back to the miki episode. notice nanami’s word choice when she praises miki! pride of the school. almost like she's inclined to like/settle for miki because of this, because she considers herself a pride of the school as well. she focuses more on his status and supposed superiority than anything; that’s the kind of thing nanami’s after/the kind of status she thinks makes her better than others as well. and you know who else she/the rest of the student body considers a pride of the school...?

yep! this asshole! and obviously she can't fulfill being loved that way with her brother bc a) she’s explicitly screamed and shoved him away when he tried to make an advance on her because she knows that kind of relationship is not right and b) her devotion to him to the point where she completely ignores other guys is a product of her idealization of men + compulsory heterosexuality.

(for clarification: touga is saying the top half after nanami pushes him away when he tries to advance on her, and nanami is saying the bottom half).

and here we have obvious proof that nanami does NOT want him as a partner and NEVER wanted him like that all along. so what am i trying to get at here? that she KNOWS touga kiryuu is unattainable. a significant aspect of compulsory heterosexuality is getting crushes on/idolizing guys who are idealized/unattainable. you can't get the guy anyways, so it's both “proof” that you're straight, and no one can say you never acted on that “crush” because getting that guy is impossible anyways.

this matches the theme in revolutionary girl utena surrounding the generalization/idealization of men by women forced into compulsory hetereosexuality perfectly (i mean miki’s literally called a “prince” because he has all these “ideal” noble qualities: rich, kind, good-looking, honest, talented, good grades/prodigy) and honestly provides a great parallel to utena and her “prince” (i say “prince” and not simply akio because touga toys with this idea as well in order to make utena lose her duel with him in episode 11!)

you know that scene where anthy’s wearing the dress nanami gave her and she watches it get wet and tear away at anthy’s clothes? you know, the classic introductory oh shit, nanami’s actually a huge asshole moment? 

yeah, so upon rewatching that scene i realized the entire scene PLUS the part where utena rescues anthy and starts dancing with her is cut in between in various places by nanami’s commentary:

so its safe to say this whole scene is from nanami’s point of view.

...yeah. NANAMI’S point of view. and its ALSO worth mentioning that this is the first time nanami’s ever seen or heard of utena at all. thus begins our closeted disaster femme icon’s first taste of lesbianism.

oh and of course, the iconic scene from nanami’s egg where this happens.

ok WOW lots of good stuff here. yes, on the surface level, of course, the specific moment in context is where nanami confuses preferring to have a girl as a child to preferring girls romantically. but then again, it’s not like nanami actually laid an egg. revolutionary girl utena’s metaphor soup! there’s more to things than just face value.

what i’ve seen as the most universally accepted interpretation of this episode is that it’s about puberty, and specifically, the taboos involving menstruation. and of course, this completely makes sense! egg motif? check. tsuwabuki literally mentioning that nanami has to attend a health class? check. the episode starting out with a dream where nanami is a child, then paralleled throughout the rest of the episode with current, teenager nanami? check. touga talking about “eggs” disparagingly? check. the episode is about puberty, maturation of feelings, and adolescence, meaning that discussing sexuality is really not too far of a stretch in an episode that pretty much covers puberty in general! it totally matches the whole “coming of age” theme in both this episode AND the series (albeit it’s done in more serious undertones in the non-nanami bits of the show).

and you know what’s even more interesting? when touga hints that nanami liking girls is wrong, she doesn’t immediately jump to the fact that she likes guys as her defense. rather, she jumps to her specifically loving touga as her defense. and as i pointed out earlier, she knows she doesn’t want touga romantically. miki whom?

not to mention this gem:

...yeah. nanami’s first time seeing the “eggs” in question being put to use is by guys, and she’s visibly disgusted/horrified by it. not subtle at ALL, ikuhara.

and what’s MORE that i realized just from this one iconic episode? the alien motif. 

ah, nanami’s incredibly absurd imagine spots. gotta love those! and they all fit a particular theme: alienation. and it’s honestly really odd to think about how nanami has this constant fear of alienation throughout this episode (and arguably throughout the series); she’s rich, popular, and consequently has the whole student body in the palm of her hand. and yet she STILL believes she’s not normal. really kind of parallels being closeted/”hiding something,” doesn’t it? and it’s cleverly referred to again upon nanami’s big arc in season 3, when her entire world comes crashing down as she believes her and touga aren’t actually siblings.

(the scene in question is right when keiko slaps nanami because she tells touga that “he shouldn’t go out with a girl like her [keiko].”)

ostracism/fear of ostracism seems to be a popular theme for nanami throughout the series.

so in this episode, nanami soon transitions from imagining being alienated to being behind her peers instead. 

it’s constantly established that nanami only has eyes for her brother; the “only one she loves” is him. she’s never shown interest for any other guy, which is paralleled especially well in keiko’s black rose episode; nanami’s vicious attitude towards keiko manifests because keiko turns out to have eyes for the only one nanami has eyes for. 

keiko’s the one acting “normally”; nanami’s the one seen as overtly possessive.

and, of course, knowing the nature of nanami’s character, her idolization of her brother is painted to such absurd extremes that she essentially shows she absolutely refuses to find another relationship. she’s in a “fairy-tale world”; she refuses to grow up, which even her brother admits at times.

another common aspect among closeted lesbians is the feeling that we’re “late bloomers” for failing to find any sort of interest in men. and so, thus, the line mentioned earlier that describes nanami’s fear, “being late compared to most people,” could very easily fit into this context.

and regarding tsuwabuki? yeah, this just sums it up perfectly.

miki’s so brutal in this episode, i love him. brutal but accurate!

and then, of course, we get that sweet, sweet confirmation again:

immediately followed by miki spitting out the truth yet again.

oh and interestingly enough, even with tsuwabuki, where she blatantly treats him like her personal servant, she still doesn’t want to let him go; particularly, she doesn’t want to let him go to other girls.

even with a (give or take) 10/11 year old child, nanami refuses to acknowledge him interacting with another girl. simply because he’s a guy.

an extremely common and integral part of nanami’s character is her constant desire for acceptance (lots of episodes showcase this! namely nanami’s egg and cowbell of happiness). she’s a “late bloomer” who shows no romantic desire for men whatsoever; therefore, she fulfills this criteria for “normalcy” by having literally every other relationship with guys except for romantic, as shown with touga, tsuwabuki, and even saionji and miki to some extent. but for the most part —it’s shown with touga and tsuwabuki, simply because they’re the most obvious examples of non-romantic relationships: siblings and a literal elementary schooler. it’s kind of funny, almost; it’s like nanami thinks “having relationships with guys” is just one of many things she’s obligated to cross off on her checklist for societal acceptance, and literally goes in the most roundabout way to achieve it without realizing what it even means (i.e., romantic relationships with a guy, not just a relationship in general), and completely failing. 

and all of this leads me, of course, to the final aspect to analyze: nanami’s relationship with utena.

yeah, it’s pretty safe to say they don’t get along on the best of terms at first. nanami even tried to kill utena during their first duel!

so it’s incredibly interesting to see their relationship evolve after the events of that skirmish.

regarding their first duel in particular, the duel lyrics have a LOT in them to unpack.

My eternal self The eternal stranger Two relations Two births Scales of mystery Human constellation

“my eternal self” versus “the eternal stranger” brings up some interesting parallels. touga seems to be the eternal stranger, with whom nanami believes she is closer to than anyone else, and yet she seems completely unable to figure out his inner workings and who he really is as a person. no matter what she’d like to or not like to admit, touga is and always has been a complete mystery to her. this “human constellation” can thus never be truly connected. but you know who else is a mystery to nanami?

yep! the boy-girl of ohtori herself. you have to consider this isn’t only a duel provoked by touga; it’s a duel with utena. a duel between nanami and utena. their relationship is bound to be mentioned in the song as well. which is exactly why i believe nanami says this right after utena technically “wins” the duel by slicing nanami’s rose off.

nanami’s essentially setting herself up for a long, long rivalry spanning the rest of the series with those five words. it seems like nanami’s more interested in seeing what makes utena tick than her own brother, whom she claims to be the “only one she loves.” simply challenging utena isn’t enough; she has to understand her in order to defeat her. and this ideology is called back to later in nanami’s second duel with utena!

nanami ends up giving one hell of a fight the second time around. despite only fighting her once prior, she ends up knowing all of utena’s moves beforehand and dodging them. that’s how well she knows utena’s fighting techniques.

now lets look at the nature of the duel itself. what exactly makes nanami want to challenge utena a second time?

individuality! distinction! that’s what nanami wants. she dreads the thought of being “one more fly in the swarm.” now that she’s discovered her relationship with touga’s been lying on top of a foundation of lies the whole time, her world comes crashing down. she doesn’t want to adore her brother anymore. she wants to surpass him, and so, essentially, escape her problems. and so, in a sort of roundabout way since utena was the reason behind nanami’s meddling and tensions with her brother, she believes defeating utena will be the key to defeating all of her problems.

and, spoiler alert: it isn’t. the fact that nanami isn’t able to win this duel is especially important. even after she’s able to jump the hurdle of her brother, she fails to jump the hurdle of utena. she wants to “surpass everything,” that is, leave the old her behind. and at first it seems like she’s succeeding to leave everything behind...except for utena.

touga serves as the last link nanami has towards any sort of affection towards a guy. and in this duel, she straight up BREAKS it by admitting there was nothing between them at all. 

and THEN utena asks if nanami feels better. even though she, like...literally just lost the duel. given utena’s character it’s probably just her naivete showing through, but given the underlying messages this series is ridden with, it probably refers to how nanami “defeating” touga was FAR more important than her actually defeating utena—that is, she never needed to defeat utena in the first place to feel better.

so, what we get from this is: a) nanami succeeds in breaking her bond towards touga, but b) fails to break that bond with utena. 

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

and of course the lyrics here in this dueling song as well:

You, me, our nature Our nature, our nature Free will and existence

who’s it about? the nature of the kiryuu siblings? the nature of nanami and utena as they act as foils? the ambiguity of the song is what really makes it interesting. not to mention—free will and existence. nanami wants out of this oppressive system. and she believes utena is the key to it (and, well, she’s not wrong!). take of that what you will symbolically, metaphorically, ikuharaesquely, etc.

and that free will and existence line just leads me to believe that nanami’s a foil to anthy in regards to utena, since free will and existence is essentially what utena fights for anthy to achieve in the end, and what anthy desperately desires: autonomy. and, so, given that these two are foils in regards to utena...well, we all know what anthy is in regards to utena.

...yeah. exactly. imagery/parallelism they didn’t absolutely HAVE to do, but did regardless.

and, so, by the end, even nanami’s seemed to have caught that inescapable sense of fondness for utena. she comes entirely out of good will on her own accord to warn utena of akio, and doesn’t even consider giving up when utena brushes her advice aside.

she’s insistent on drilling into utena’s head that she should get out of that house—even though doing so wouldn’t benefit nanami at all. utena promptly points out how uncharacteristic of nanami this is:

to which nanami immediately snaps back with:

nanami’s essentially admitting that utena’s the one who’s permanently altered her character and made her much less of a selfish brat (although she still has a loooonnggg way to go, obviously) than she was prior to the series canon. utena’s the cause for everything, direct or indirect: clashing with touga, getting over her brief crush on miki, developing a sense of empathy while transitioning from a desire for social acceptance to a desire for social independence...it’s all been catalyzed by utena at some point.

so, in brief?

utena revolutionized nanami’s world (see, i can’t even look at that sentence without thinking about how gay it sounds).

OKAY, so first off: thank you so so much for reading this far! i want to get into my last point of contention now, which is a super subtle conversation between utena and nanami near the end of the series but speaks VOLUMES, but before i do, i just wanna show two marginally interesting screencaps that fit this theory suspiciously well because i really want to save the best part for last.

exhibit a:

nanami + physical contact’s only ever been shown in regards to her brother. and yet the second utena comes into the mix...well, despite how trivial this scene is, the reaction is pretty satisfying.

exhibit b: nanami’s reaction to juri in the video game.

just tattoo i love women onto your forehead next time, nanami.

now on to what is possibly my favorite exchange in the entire series—that’s how much i love the underlying subtleties in this scene. utena brings up having “blood type-B” when talking to nanami in said scene. why? because just a few episodes earlier...

nanami finds out touga’s blood type never correlated genetically with her family’s. 

which, later on in the episode, she ends up telling utena (and the fact that at this point she’s trusting utena enough to even marginally tell her what this whole mess is about is gratifying in itself). 

so basically, the importance of this conversation?

(for clarification: utena’s saying the first half, and nanami’s saying the dialogue on the bottom-most screencap).

it shows the COMPLETE 180 nanami and utena’s relationship has gone through. misunderstandings and petty arguments and hostilities into something that’s blossomed through adversity to a relationship of mutual understanding. and, it feels like, for the first time in either of their lives, they’re actually in the loop on something, rather than being hopelessly confused in a maze of the bells and whistles of student council, the mystery behind the eternity duelists seek at the arena, the end of the world, the complete enigma that is touga kiryuu, and can finally just interact in this sort of liberating way that shows both of them at their best with one another. 

and what i love about this is that nanami doesn’t get mad at utena. she doesn’t snap about how she spoke too soon about the whole incident. it’s questionable if she even cares about the whole incident now, considering the ties she broke off with touga at the climax of her second duel. rather, she knows what utena’s jokingly pointing at, and the two are in a mutual understanding of how much they’ve been through together in the hellscape that is ohtori academy.

but, the BEST part of this entire exchange? the part that shows probably the first time nanami’s ever gotten actual happiness from someone, something that shows that she’s finally past the superficial happiness from her unwitting adoration of touga that’s essentially been crumbled to dust by the end of her character arc, allowing her to finally set aside pleasing others and end up potentially discovering herself, far from when she first met utena?

nanami’s final reaction to her.

[yoolee]

On experience, consent, and writing fanfiction

Like a thousand years ago I made a post acknowledging that I tend to write the SLBP MC as somewhat inexperienced about physical shenanigans. I HAD MORE THOUGHTS an entire 7 page friggen 3700 word discourse on this subject – aka, experience, consent, writing and fiction and our influences, enjoying what we enjoy, etc.

I literally don’t expect anyone to read or respond to this, it was mostly an exercise in explaining my thoughts to myself (I am a TEXTBOOK INTP y’all, and all that stuff about “people with the INTP personality type tend to share thoughts that are not fully developed, using others as a sounding board for ideas and theories in a debate against themselves rather than as actual conversation partners.” ME.)

And it’s gonna come across weird probably BUT IT WAS USEFUL to me in clarifying stuff in my head and I’m posting it mostly because I can. I know y’all come here for the fics not the thought process and I’m 100% cool with that. Wrote this for my own brain, you can read or wait for the next fic TOTALLY COOL EITHER WAY. ABBREVIATED VERSION:

People have different life experiences and levels of interest and they are all okay! (and Voltage? Maybe mix it up a little XD)

People have different levels of confidence with different people at different times in their lives, and this is all okay!

You deserve to be with someone who goes out of their way to help you feel confident and excited!

You should also do your best to make your partner feel confident and excited, if and when you choose to have one!

GET AND GIVE CONSENT! Always! Multiple times during the process if you sense or hear ANYTHING resembling ‘no’, ‘stop’, or ‘wait’!

USE PROTECTION! When appropriate!

We write, read, and enjoy what we know and what comes easily!

That does not always mean it reflects what would be safe and healthy in the real world, and I think that is 100% okay if you recognize and acknowledge that and don’t normalize it with your writing!

All of this factors in to how yoolee writes MCs and fics in her random-as-hell rambly way of doing things!

·         ALSO I LOVE YOU ALL, carry on.

A LOT OF THOUGHTS ON THE SUBJECT:

Writing this with fem!MC because that’s all I have written so far, mileage may vary as that changes. Except on consent, all of the consent, everywhere!

On Experience, and the MC not having much

1.)    It’s something I think is character-specific, and for whatever reason I just tend to write for the ones that this seems more likely for even though it’s not my headcanon for all of them Let’s take Saizo, for example. His POV’s are littered with references to MC’s innocence. Can you be innocent and experienced—YES, YOU CAN, but I’m a lazy writer and also see point 5 below if you want which will explain more about his particular case.  With Yukimura, it’s just funnier if MC is (almost) as clueless as he obviously is and you’ll actually see that I flip around with Shigezane if I ever post my next fic with him, because I can see him with MCs all across the experience/comfort spectrum. And—pro tip—you can slide on that spectrum, folks. You can be inexperienced and confident, experienced and confident, experienced and not confident, and also next time be a little less or more confident, maybe it’s a bad time of week, idk, it depends on your mood and how people have treated you and hormones and other factors. Now, Kojuro’s MC, she feels confident to me and I love that. She is absolutely, in my headcanons, going to pull him into a linen closet, have her way, and not blush overmuch about it. Regardless of her experience level when they start, which is still probably going to be less than his just from an age-and-time-to-get-experience perspective, she is going to throw herself in with enthusiasm and catch up with confidence.  Yasu’s I picture as somewhere in the middle, and, like Yukkin, he and MC are going to be similar in that respect. He’s going to want to initiate sometimes and sometimes he’s going to just need some affection and sweetness and same is true for MC and they are going to muddle the hell of their way through. Inuchiyo’s MC? Inexperienced but not going to be embarrassed about it. If anything, she’s going to tell him he doesn’t tell her she’s pretty often enough. We all know he thinks she is the most gorgeous creature on earth without hyperbole bless you Toshiie you do not get enough love in this fandom some of that may be that REALLY BAD MOMENT in your story and some iffy writing choices all around in that route that I’ll get to on point 3 but I appreciate you recognize what you did and try really, really really hard to make up for it which is why I love you anyway And then we have Masa who I feel like is a very occasional thing. The physical is a small detail in a greater emotional connection, and if I wrote them, the focus would definitely be emotion (Shingen, conversely, would be physical, with emotional highlights either before or after but less pertinent during).

On the idea of experience situated in context:

2.)    It’s also world/story-specific – what I feel like works in SLBP-verse drives me friggin insane in modern-based apps I would NOT write Liar!’s MC the way I write SLBP’s. And I friggin love Liar’s! MC. I SO APPRECIATE when our modern MC’s are not quite as, er, flutteringly virginal?  MC being so works in SLBP for me, in part because—especially as an outsider to Japanese history, to my regret—it feels like fairy-tale and legend and myth to me, and the one-love destiny narrative fits my culturally-indoctrinated feelings about those kinds of stories (thaaaanks Disney). This thing that I write and see in SLBP stories, that sort of makes me feel soft and aww, drives me batshit crazy in games like KBTBB, MLFK, OTBS, BUM, etc etc. Like, real world, modern women have a much wider variety of experience and inexperience than, everyone’s-still-a-virg-by-their-first-real-job. Are some folks? Yes. Are ALL folks? No. Is one better than the other? OF COURSE NOT, I just like variety. THAT SAID I know players of the games skew on the younger side and when I remember that I’m much more okay with keeping MC innocent >>   Speaking of, in general, I tend to picture the SLBP MC as young. Not inappropriately so, but 18-20 (YES, that is YOUNG for the kind of relationship depth we see in these stories) and writing that age being a little insecure and a lot inexperienced is important for yoolee’s sanity and legality.

On consent 3.) SUPER IMPORTANT OLD AUNTIE LEE ADVICE FOLKS, K? (this is where we get a little preachy but hang with me please, I love you) Youngins, the whole 18+ thing is really, truly, not people just trying to be arbitrarily prudish. Please believe me on this. Both the reading-of and the act, there is legitimate and genuine science backing reasons to wait, and you are going to have your whole life to have fun with that if and when you so choose. And regardless, when and if you do choose to do so, it had better be with someone who is 100% willing to wait until you are comfortable, ready, enthusiastic and excited. You deserve that. Anyone who is not, anyone who makes you feel like it’s a condition to your relationship is not good enough for you period and end of story.  AND this goes both ways – don’t pressure your partner, don’t assume based on what media or movie bias tells you is ‘the norm’, and communication is important. If things seem to be headed in that direction and you’re ready, just, check-in and make sure they are too. It’s as simple as ‘are you up for (more/this/etc)’?

If you read my stuff, I hope that you notice that in every fic where the MC says stop, her partner stops. And sometimes even when she doesn’t say it, but expresses some visible or nonverbal hesitation (ie, what is implied to have happened pre-Compliments) there is still a timeout in that moment on the part of her partner. And if you don’t notice that, hopefully it’s because it feels like such a natural and normal part of the flow that it didn’t disrupt your thought process on what you were reading. Why? Because a partner saying ‘stop’ is a clear sign you need to stop and reconfirm consent (yes, you get to change your mind mid-act! Yes, you get to change your mind about something you were comfortable with yesterday and aren’t feeling today! And so does your partner, so you should both be understanding and accepting if there is a ‘stop’ involved or needed) and my feelings that stopping to double-check when you hear stop SHOULD be normal and expected comes out in this sense. What happens in most of my writing? MC gets her moment, decides she’s okay, and they continue. And she deserves that moment. And if she didn’t decide she was okay, fic would have ended.

Is it a little subtle sometimes in my writing? Yes. Saizo in particular will stop but generally doesn’t follow up with verbal affirmation. But I do write with undertones of checking for mutually understood nonverbal signals – verbal is always better, but I do think people (/characters) who have an already committed, longterm and physical relationship are quicker to catch nonverbal go/no-go’s—the consent is still there, just not as loudly spelled out for the reader.

Ironically, the piece of mine where this is most the case is Heights and that is a) my least favorite—and of course it’s my most popular, snrk—and b) one of those cases where I’m writing them as quite a bit of time into this, so there are consent checks, just not straight yes/no questions, BUT DON’T ASSUME IN REAL LIFE OKAY.

Compare Heights (implied, longterm physical and emotional history) with AKoaDK (where it’s clearly spelled out this is definitely a first for a lot of things). In the latter, I think the MC gives consent—nonverbal nodding to questions or requests, or actually explicitly giving a verbal yes or okay—at least FIVE times that I remember off the top of my head in 2000+ words, and that affirmation is important EVERY. TIME. Did you notice? Were you distracted by it? I dunno. Whether you did or were or not, it was there intentionally, and hopefully naturally, because it is that easy to weave in.

On fanfiction and the source material being, well, fiction:

4.)    That said, my preference for how I write is not a dictate on how I think others should, nor is it even 100% relevant to what I, personally, like to read. In other words – I feel like the responsibilities as a CONSUMER of content and a CREATOR of content are different. I have a frankly very guilty fondness for some of the fighting-ends-in-a-bed-or-against-a-wall-with-dubious-consent romance novel storylines, and my actual, personal reading preferences tend to skew to rough and straight up problematic themes. And I’m generally pretty comfortable with saying never feel guilty for the stories you want to read, or the stories you want to tell – fiction is a much safer, healthier way of exploring things that in the real world would not be safe, acceptable, healthy, or okay if it were happening to us or others.

I am also not young and not inexperienced XD soooo I have some perspective going into these stories. I also recognize I, personally, have control issues, and see ‘safe exploration’ above. I do think there is some truth, however, to putting what we want to see in the world into the world as content creators.

And I do think that, when we are inexperienced, what we read does shape our perceptions, even knowing that it’s fluffy escapism. And as much as I may personally enjoy some questionable fiction—and write it, depending on your tastes—which probably comes, in some extent, from the media I consumed and was introduced to before I was personally experienced, in which these behaviors were normalized, I like the idea of adding some content into our small little fandom world that helps, subtly or obviously, normalize stop-means-stop and consent as an easy, casual part of the process. My stories where this is less true I probably won’t put out into the world because even though I know where I’m coming from….meh. Just, I’d rather stick to what I put into the world being the way it is. More on the why of that below.

Even doing this, I’m grateful for writers with different tastes, experiences, perspectives and preferences. The rich variety in this fandom is one of the reasons I love it, and I LOVE seeing these other takes on relationships. It would be boring as heck if everyone wrote like me.

On Lee and her life and how that plays into how she writes MC:

5.)    Some real-world perspective (aka, we write what we know) – getting back to MC degree of confidence I am, overall, incredibly comfy in my body. I’m exactly average for an American girl weight-wise circa 2010, if not distribution-wise, which means quite a bit heavier than your international average.  And I wear a bikini with cheerful and enthusiastic pride, and I’m an ex-ballerina, so I have thought nothing of stripping to my skivvies in thirty seconds with sixteen stagehands around, or getting changed in semi-public places with my 501st friends who are a grab bag of ages and genders. As long as everyone around is 18 or older, I operate on a ‘it’s nothing they haven’t seen before’ scale and I have found that if you don’t make a big deal out of your body and not having clothes on it temporarily, and what it looks like in this state, literally no one else will either. It’s a nasty catch-22 that if you are nervous and fidgety about your muffin-top, and you go out of your way to not draw attention to it, that’s probably exactly what you’re going to do. Own it with confidence and don’t think about it and no one else will either. Not 100% there yet? Fake it until you make it, as they say, and I think you’ll find I’m right, in this case.  Another super cool aspect of that? It’s contagious. I don’t know about guys because I’m not one, but I will never forget being 14 in a bikini for the first time and being nervous and my best friend cussing for the first time saying eff it, let’s do this, I like how we look, and I felt like I owned the world. When you see someone enjoying themselves, not caring what others think, sometimes it’s easier for you to do the same – so hey, you can be an inspiration.

NOW WE GET TO TMI TIME FOLKS . I REALLY, REALLY MEAN THAT. I am literally about to allude to my personal sex life, folks, so move along, ye of younger eyes and/or uninclined to want to know about these things. SO. One very, happily, body-positive, confident yoolee, right?  Right! And yet! I still to this day get nervy as hell being n with my much-taller than and also much more fit than I boyfriend. It’s a little less each time, but still. Now, my body was like this when we started dating, and remains true, so it’s not like my body being what it is could be any kind of surprise to either of us. And nevermind that he tells me I’m beautiful, and amazing (he does, we actually have a rule he is not allowed to compliment me more than three times in a row because it’s embarrassing—yes, he is super sweet and I am insanely lucky) and has from day one, there’s just something about it that frazzles me. I suspect because, day to day, it’s about making myself happy and I have no problem doing that, but when I’m in a relationship, I want him to be happy too, and him saying he is isn’t the same as me KNOWING I am.

Does that make sense?  So yes, I do tend to color MC’s experience with mine here, particularly with some of my character favorites, and there’s some self-insertion here and the canon textual clues to support this always feel like they jump out at me in those stories, even when I blatantly ignore them in others—see Kojuro, above. Also worth noting, boy and I have been together a long time and we still check in, per my last paragraph in the last section. And I’ve said no sometimes, and he has too to certain things. And it’s nbd, we just cuddle and turn on Avengers or something. Life is good with communication, friends.

Triggery stuff And yes, as you can probably infer from my tendency to word vomit on the subject, I have experienced, personally, consent boundary issues on two occasions that ended in nonconsensual encounters. One of them was my first kiss, and some disturbing touching, which was taken from me when I was 13 but a stranger in his forties who followed me at a public event I was volunteering at for four hours, telling me he loved me and how tragic his life was, and was taken in exchange for not stalking me further. The other was jail-time and court-worthy though it didn’t come to that (because of course it didn’t, for other reasons) and the defense offered was directly tied to a perpetuation of media myth (playing hard-to-get, never give up on the dream girl, she’ll love you by the end of the movie, but you were nice to me so I thought) so if it seems like I am putting way too much thought into this, YES. I TOTALLY, COMPLETELY AM but—it does shape how I view this sort of thing—and, specifically, my role in potentially perpetuating ideas in fiction rather more strongly and with more depth than it may have otherwise.

I recognize that both of those encounters, perversely, contribute to the fiction I enjoy in some weird psychological attempt at normalizing what happened in a potentially unhealthy way – I’m sure I’m a textbook case. Because I recognize that, I’m not hard on myself for my preferences. ANYWAY.

These  encounters were also, I want to be clear, blips in my life that have not diminished my present health or happiness in any way—they just shape my perspective rather more immediately than it might have been without them.

OKAY IF YOU SKIPPED YOU CAN COME BACK NOW for a sidenote – I am not a professional writer. What you see on this blog is it. I don’t write for anything else unless it’s for work, and that’s not fiction, it’s training on leadership skills and stuff. I have not written fanfiction since like, the fifth Harry Potter book came out. The BOOK, not the movie. That was 2003. That was eighth grade for me. Good lord. And haven’t written fiction in general since one intro to creative writing class sophomore year of undergrad. I got a chemistry degree, folks, I wrote lab reports not romances (okay that would be such a good blog tagline tho) So I DO lean on that ‘what comes easy to me is what I know’ thing. What I don’t know, I google the heck and a half out of, but that’s much easier with the technical than the emotional. Good writers can summon up believable emotion they have not experienced or doesn’t casually interest them enough to imagine, and I still absolutely need practice with that. This is good for me in that sense, but you will notice that for all my talk of variety up above, I tend to write all emotion experienced in these situations pretty similarly. Gonna work on that.

…………………some day I will learn to express my thoughts succinctly. I have a lot of strong feelings about consent and confidence okay.  OH THAT REMINDS ME.

On BC:

6.)    BIRTH CONTROL  TOO, OKAY?

Okay, this is important and yet I don’t write about it much. BUT USE IT EVEN IF I DON’T WRITE ABOUT IT. Except with Saizo, if Iga can make truth serums they can make BC, fight me on that, and of all the samurai I firmly believe he is the one who will not risk MC get with child without a lot of coming to terms with things first, and if you see the MC drinking anything in my writing with him you can safely assume there’s an important powder in there, and if I don’t write it, IT HAPPENS ANYWAY, Little One being the…ironically obvious exception, but my point is that would not have been an accident, but a very, very calculated decision that he is still probably always worried about.

I also don’t think it has as much place in this narrative and story, because, legitimacy issues aside, preventing one, to me, doesn’t feel like it would be as much of a priority for these characters in a we-are-in-a-warzone-and-I-may-never-see-you-again time and place as it would for, say, the Scandal in the Spotlight protags, who reasonably have regular and easy access to modern, easy prevention and a vested reason for using it, namely that they have a lot going on without screaming babies adding to it.  SO I may not always write it in but you can generally assume that if I write anything modern, there’s some kind of BC whether that’s chemical or an off-screen.

If a couple is in a long-time, monogamous relationship and they are comfortable with and prepared for, financially, emotionally, etc for the possibility of offspring, different story. Otherwise – prevention, peeps. PREVEEEEENTION.

Okay.

I think that’s it.

This has been a stupidly long PSA from someone who overthinks this fanfiction stuff.