#plus i think when you consider the age of the characters and the context

[dreamedfyre-a]

i hate the direction they went with that later but i think the dynamic between a.egon and a.emond in the conversation where they're like 'c: you can't go to battle brother you're the king. such a shame c:' 'what a shame you can't go either because you're needed to defend the city. tragic really' is so good peak petty rivalry behavior i want that and then for a.egon to trust a.emond and want him in his council and for a.emond to remain loyal and fight for his brother thanks

[imnotyetfound]

My take on Five/Lila - and why they were endgame

I’ve seen so many people say that Five and Lila didn’t make any sense, and I just disagree. I've tried to really motivate why, and also why I see them as endgame. Feel free to agree or disagree.

First of all, Five and Lila share a common background of being raised plus trained as survivors and weapons. Five was molded by his time in the apocalypse, the Commission and his ruthless upbringing within the Hargreeves family, while Lila was similarly trained and manipulated by the Handler. Both of them were forced into brutal, high-stakes environments from a young age, developing a sense of independence, ruthlessness, and survival instincts that the rest of the family can’t fully relate to. We see this especially in Five and Lila’s difficulties in showing emotional vulnerability and trusting others. This shared experience means they both understand the cost of their traumatic upbringings and can relate to each other’s emotional scars in ways others just won’t be able to. So already by this, they’re somewhat bonded from the start.

In other similarities both Five and Lila possess extraordinary intelligence and tactical thinking. They challenge each other in a way no one else does. This has been an ongoing thing between them, bouncing off each other and sometimes teaming up. It’s also what drew them to work on another mission together in S4, there has always been some kind of pull/push there. Personality-wise both Five and Lila have a dark sense of humor and a cynical outlook on the world. But despite the cynicism, they still manage to eventually relax and find humor in each other’s company. The lighter moments we’ve seen between them at times have been an interesting contrast to their otherwise serious and violent lifestyles. 

I do believe their shared backgrounds and personalities created a bond that was then further strengthened during the years they spent lost in the subway together. Isolated from the rest of the world, they literally only had each other for company. The intimacy and trust that grew between them was inevitable. When you have no one else to rely on, you’re going to develop a relationship stronger than under normal circumstances. So over those years, they must have grown close in ways that no one else could fully understand. Even though we didn't get to see every detail of how it unfolded (because the season was way too short), it’s not difficult to imagine.

I’d also say they naturally grew a bond stronger than with any other character at that time, except for the one between mother and child which is why Lila’s need to be with her children would always make her go home if given the chance. Five knew this and it’s the reason he kept the solution from her for months. 

Now, to my thoughts about their actions in regards to Diego as this is often brought up. The argument that Lila cheated on her husband with Five is understandable from a moral perspective, if we see it as just that without any context. But when you consider the circumstances it is way more nuanced. You have to look at not only the environment they found themselves in, but also the emotional and psychological journey they went through together. Their relationship was ultimately forged over a shared background and then several years of isolation. Then you add to the fact that Diego seems to have treated Lila like crap in the years leading up to the isolation, she said it herself he was always moping around and complaining while she sacrificed her life to stay at home and take care of the kids. She even told him she needed a break to reassess their relationship. I do believe her and Five had somewhat already begun an emotional affair before the isolation, the way they were sneaking off together and clearly wanted to keep their thing separate from Diego and the others. Yet they still didn’t get physical until they settled down, believing they weren’t gonna find a way back.

Also, it’s important to here consider the strength of the bond, as I mentioned earlier, that Five and Lila must have developed over those years. They knew each other better than anyone else by the end. Spending every day together in a survival situation with nothing else around would likely create an unparalleled level of intimacy and emotional closeness. This bond would probably transcend Lila’s previous relationship with Diego, and maybe even Five’s bond with his siblings. It’s been years since he returned to them and they had all grown in separate directions. Lila and Five however had recently experienced something life-changing together, and it is unfair to dismiss the strength of their connection as something unethical or out of character when their reality had shifted so drastically from when the show started.

Another important point here is how the relationship with Lila allowed Five to finally be "human" and emotionally open in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to be before. Five was obviously emotionally detached as a result of both his past trauma and the burden of being a hyper-intelligent man in the body of a boy. With Lila, he had the chance to just feel love and trust without worrying about anything else. So I do think this outweighs his “betrayal” against his brother as people claim.

Now on to how and why Five and Lila were endgame. I’m convinced that Lila did love Five despite her choice to leave their isolation. To me this was cemented as she didn’t deny her feelings when Diego asked her straight out. If she wanted to make Diego feel better she could have easily denied her feelings for Five to reassure him. Yet even when asked twice she couldn’t do it. There was also Lila’s look of relief when Five returned to them at the end. It was Five who Lila allowed to comfort her after she said goodbye to her family, trusting him in her most vulnerable moment instead of blipping back to Diego and the others. These events showed the deep trust and emotional intimacy that still existed between them after returning to “the real world”. Despite her saying it was over. I also want to add here that Lila took Five’s hand as they were dying, the look between them was for me at least silently saying they loved each other. 

So all in all I do believe that the connection and love between Five and Lila was authentic. It also made sense. They’re able to understand each other’s emotional complexities, including their darker tendencies, without needing to change who they are. Still their time together seemed to actually have softened them both when they finally had the chance to settle down, almost as if they were healing from past trauma together. This would forge a relationship that no one else could replicate without going through the same experience. Making Five and Lila a reasonable endgame, which they also were in my eyes considering they died holding hands.

----------------------

Summary:  Five and Lila's shared background of trauma, matched intelligence, and similar personalities means they make sense. They shared a bond that was only further strengthened during their years of isolation. For 7 years they only had each other to rely on. This inevitably created an intimacy and relationship that couldn’t be compared to what they had had with anyone else. Outweighing what they did to Diego when you consider all context. Lila and Five ended up being human and vulnerable with each other on a level they hadn’t been with anyone else. Ultimately Lila’s refusal to deny her feelings for Five, her relief when he returned, him comforting her as she sent her family away and then finally them dying hand-in-hand, showed that they were endgame.

[herefortheships]

Why do you think he fell in love with Lydia? see, it's much stronger than it was for Dolores, I'm not going to ask when because it would be complicated Bj and Lydia have such opposite personalities

Love this question! And to be honest, ever since I watched BJBJ I've been wondering about this. Because, to me, at least when I first watched the movie, I got to the conclusion that he must have fallen in love with her over the years; that he never had any true romantic inclinations towards Lydia in the first movie. So I had to wonder, what changed?

This answer got long... So I'll put a little summary, Tl;Dr answer here: I think there's an in-canon reason he fell for her and a meta reason why Tim Burton and co decided to make Betelgeuse be in love with Lydia in canon. The in-canon reason: Opposites attract. She is exactly his type: a dark, mysterious beauty. Plus her calm demeanor suits his unhinged nature. Their energies play nicely off each other, completing and balancing each other in a way no one else could, whether Lydia realizes it now or not. Lydia also never seemed to mind ugly, scary, dark things, and Betelgeuse is kind of all of that. At some point he grew fond of her and started needing this sweet, dark beauty in his (after)life. The meta reason: Lydia and Betelgeuse are a favorite "Burton Couple", almost right there with Jack and Sally, at least to a LOT of people.

Now to the long answer, because I totally always write a lot (below the read more cut bc this one got pretty long):

I think to properly answer why he fell in love with her, I do need to get into the when. And this is where I might have to put a "trigger warning" just in case, since I will touch upon how he felt towards Lydia in the first movie, when she was a teenager. Anyone uncomfortable with that needs to click away now. We're going to analyze this with the context and nuance of Betelgeuse's backstory. Context and nuance tend to be overlooked a LOT when the purity factions of fandom want to impose moral superiority upon other members of the fandom, so maybe placing the "trigger warning" may not be enough, but, anyway, you've been warned about the topics of this post.

The context and nuance: Betelgeuse, when alive, lived in the time of the bubonic plague, this means he was alive during the 1300s, presumably in Italy. At that time, marrying a 15-16 year old was socially acceptable and normal. Heck, even younger than that (as unacceptable as that seems to us today in our modern times). So it wasn't that strange as it is today. The reason is that people often didn't get to live past 30. The average, oldest age of death around the time was 60 years old. It was also common for men of the time (and where Betelgeuse lived in Italy, and Europe, as I’m reading in these articles) to marry much later than women, as in it was common for men in their 30s and 40s to marry a 14 year old (which I believe is even younger than Lydia was in that movie, not sure). All of that is in that article. That depends entirely on social ranking though; if he was lower class often people married for convenience and I'm not sure but I think age wasn't a factor to consider when people were struggling. In Europe even in the 1800s you'd see age gaps in marriages. //Edit: and America! For some reason my brain when I wrote this at midnight thought Poe was European 💀.// Edgar Allan Poe married a 13 year old when he was 27, for example (which I totally find super weird, personally, but at their time it wasn't a super weird thing as it is today, as far as I've read; it was also normal to marry a cousin around that time in the upper class and upper middle class, or so I've seen). Was Tim Burton aware? Who knows. But at least I'm putting this out there as the context why it isn't weird for Betelgeuse the character to see a teenager as someone of marrying age. We also know he didn't want to marry her in the first movie because he was in love with her; she was a means to an end, more than anything, regardless of any interest he had in her due to her looks etc.

Ok, so now that that's out of the way we can keep talking. Even though I joined the Beetlebabes fandom only after the second movie, and shipping these two characters never once crossed my mind throughout the years of me watching the first movie, after some thought and after rewatching the movie with the knowledge of where the story goes after the events of that movie, I can definitely see that Betelgeuse became interested in Lydia ever since the first movie, and also why he's head over heels for her in the present.

Even though I still think he fell in love over the years after the events of the first movie, I think he became smitten with her since the first movie. Here's why he fell for her: For starters, she is a dark and mysterious beauty, and that seems to be his type (look at Delores, also a dark beauty). We can actually see the moment he first shows interest in her in the first movie, when he saw her while in his snake form. She was the only one he did not hurt. He only stared at her, almost like he was taken aback by her. When Barbara banishes him back to the model, we have that little moment when he mentions he feels the only one he can make a deal with in that house is "Edgar Allan Poe's daughter", meaning Lydia. And we have the little horny joke, so if you wanna throw that one in there as evidence he became interested in her here, then sure you can. As this happens directly after he's seen Lydia face to face... Rember the context above before you want to call him a pdfler or something... please. He is Not.

Then later when she meets him in his real form, she doesn't seem startled or scared that she's in the presence of a demon/ghost. In fact, she just simply asks him "are you a ghost, too?" and that's when he starts making some conversation. He realizes she can see him and communicate with him. You can tell at this point he is intrigued by her. She is the only one he's shown a sort of sensitivity to in the entire movie. He asks her "why?" when she says she wants to go in to the after life (essentially, that she wants to di e). He doesn't try anything naughty with her; instead, next time he sees her when she asks for his help, he proposes the marriage.

Now, at the time I don't think he loved her or even cared much about her; at this time he just wanted out and here was an eligible woman, who was not only beautiful and available, she could also see him and needed his help, which he used as his way to try to get out of the afterlife. I think once they got rid of him, and he realized he could still connect with her over the years, his interest in her grew and he started really growing fond of her until inevitably he fell in love.

Lydia is physically his type, but there's also a calmness to her that plays against his unpredictable, unhinged personality. She's someone who can balance him, and he's someone she could hold on to; there's an energy in him that she can use. Of course Lydia doesn't yet see how she'd be compatible with someone like him, but from an outsider's perspective, they really compliment each other's personalities. She's calm and quiet; he's crazy and loud. She's reserved; he's outgoing. She's a dark cloud; he's high-energy, like sunshine. Etc. Opposites attract. 💚

Now finally, the meta reason: Lydia and Betelgeuse seem to be a favorite "Burton couple" not only to Tim Burton himself (and the cast of the movie themselves!) but also to a great number of people. There's people who grew up watching the Beetlejuice cartoon series and didn't even watch the first movie, who for years had the idea that these two characters actually adore each other. There were people who were going in to watch this movie with that context only. And there were even people who were going to watch the sequel as their introduction to Beetlejuice (like my mom's best friend, for example! She loved the sequel but has NEVER watched the first movie nor the cartoon. She also wanted Betelgeuse and Lydia to end up together after watching this one, by the way). From a meta perspective, Lydia and Betelgeuse are just a fan favorite couple and an inseparable pair. So partly the choice to make it canon that at least he is absolutely in love with her comes from this expectation that many people had for these two characters. It just feels natural; they're just an iconic Burton pair.

[ceasarslegion]

wait, now im really interested in the silica gel drama. how did hlrp sex ed lead to eating a gel packet?

This is going to require a novel's length of context.

To begin, I want to underline that this is not meant to be a callout post, and I will not be providing any identifying traits that could be used to single this person out. The most you will get out of that are she/her pronouns, and her age at the time this happened, which was years ago, and I will not specify what year. I genuinely do hope she got the help she needed after this, because LORD knows she needs it and didn't find it at home. This is also not meant to be a character assassination, nor should anybody who reads this post consider it to be a takedown of any sort, and if you try to find this person through me or any of our mutual friends, you will not be met with kind words. The only thing this is meant to be is a wild-ass story of some of the most off the wall experiences I personally had with this person from my specific side of the story, with a few no-username screenshots attached to prove I am not bullshitting you.

With that in mind, let's get started. This is going to be very long, so I'm throwing in a read more

Back when I was in uni, I joined a growing group of Half Life roleplay blogs. The whole idea of our group was that we each chose a character, canon or OC, and we would blog as if the pre-Black Mesa incident moment in the timeline was a workplace comedy a la The Office or Superstore. I played Barney, because I was already working night shift security at this point and thought it would be funny. Plus, it gave me something to do that wasn't staring at CCTV feeds all night tossing a ball against the wall. We played off of each other very well, yes-anding our way through funny little situations and plotlines we put together. At one point we had roleplayed enough that one of the scientist rpers created a discord server for us to talk as the actual people we are instead of through characters.

Great idea at the time. None of us saw the "Pandora's box" label on the tin before we opened it. Would I still join it if I knew what was about to transpire? Yes, because I met my boyfriend and many genuinely lovely friends through it. Would I hesitate for a second first, though, as the events that are about to transpire flashed before my eyes? Oh, abso-fucking-lutely.

We started off as many fandom servers do: chill for the most part, very loud minority of a few assholes who ruined it for the rest of us, but unlike most fandom servers, we actually won and it ended in them getting banned and the server itself surviving to this day. But the other two lunatics are not who you came here for. You want the christian lunatic.

Let's give her a nickname to make this easier. I have the Sylveon build a bear on my PC desk. Let's call her Syl.

Syl was not there for Half Life, she was there for Portal. She LOVED Portal, Half Life was just part of the same universe for her. Portal wasn't just a game for her, it was her entire personality. Which I didn't see much of an issue with at the time, because she said she was 15. Whatever, I thought; she'll learn to control her emotional attachment to things as she gets older. Syl also said that she was christian. I am a flaming atheist who doesn't even believe in the concept of a soul in comparison and I am NOT the biggest fan of christianity as an institution to put it mildly, but I'm not gonna like, be a dick to you for your personal religion if you are not a dick about my beliefs, so I didn't think much of it at the time.

It quickly became apparent that Syl looked up to me more than any of the other adults in the group the more I would talk about my life growing up as a third culture kid and moving out on my own at 19, working 2 jobs and going to a good university. She would ask me a lot about growing up and uni and moving out and yes, sex ed, and it became even more apparent that she didn't get any actual guidance from her parents or pastors or ANYBODY beyond bible studies and homeschooling, so I kinda stumbled into a mentorship role in her life. I wasn't cold, but I was aware of the age and maturity difference between us and established the appropriate boundaries with her and made it very clear that I am an internet friend, not an irl friend or an educator, but if no one else was going to give her information that wasn't actively harmful then fuck, I guess SOMEONE had to do it. I could not in good conscience watch some kid go through life with harmful inaccuracies about the world and basic human biology when I could have done something about it, y'know?

And the more things I taught her about the real world and how things actually work rather than how her republican bible-thumping rural town said they did, the more I realized she was born into a full-blown cult under the guise of a christian congregation. Oh goody, I had my work cut out for me. I will not get into the details of how messed up this group was because it will be a dead giveaway of where she lives and potentially who she is, but let's just say that one time I said that I appreciated the gesture of praying for me during a stressful week I was having but it didn't really do anything for my mental health because I was an atheist, and she sent me a bunch of bible verses begging me to start believing and said "I just don't want you to go to hell because you're so nice :((" EXCUSE ME??? Another time she said that death was only sad for non-christians because their loved ones were in hell and that proper christians deaths were a good thing because they were in heaven now. Hi, that's the most insensitive death cult shit I've ever heard in my goddamn life.

Okay, set up is done. All of these details will tie in like the world's worst reboot of Pulp Fiction, I prommy.

After a good long while learning about the world from me (which like... a uni kid working night shift security is not exactly an academic source but we take what we can get) and exposure to viewpoints outside of her in-group, Syl began that very painful journey of realizing that what the cult taught you was a lie. Except that she just wasn't grasping that unlearning things was an active process. She started to flip to the opposite side very quickly, but kept all the fundamental brainwashing of the cult that raised her. The concepts were all the same, just slapped a different label on them. This created a noticeable pull between two sides of the same personality: the cult personality, and the person beyond the cult who wanted to break free. Mix that with how fucking 15 years old every 15 year old is, and you have a LETHAL concoction just waiting to blow up at the first sign of a spark.

Remember how I said that Portal was her whole personality? Syl decided that she wanted to be a scientist, and go into an ivy league program like I was in (I was in a SOCIAL science, but sure). Problem was, she didn't have the grades or the ambition, really. I had told her that I still got into an ivy league when I failed math in high school, and she seemed to completely miss the part where I said that I also joined every extra-curricular, then worked for 2 gap years for recognized institutions, and wrote an essay about why my math grade is not relevant to my program. I did it with one bad grade, so she was justified in basically just slacking off and then excusing it with "but its haaarrrdd" when we'd tell her she needs to put the fucking work in NOW if that's what she wants to do.

It quickly derailed from here. Not only was she going to be a scientist, she was going to be like Cave Johnson. And she was going to... replace her body with robot parts so she could be like glados. I don't... think she actually knew what science is, because she would just publically fantasize about running unethical experiments on people in the name of "science," and talk about how one day she wants to basically establish aperture labs for real. All of us who were there kind of agree that we don't think she was joking based on what we knew about her and the cadence of her tone. Here's something she said at the time to give you an idea of what direction she was nosediving in:

This was after a session with her therapist where said therapist said that she definitely has some kind of personality disorder, after which she was weirdly proud of having one and treated it like a badge of honour.

Syl then made a separate group chat for all the best friends she made on the server. There was her, me, @false-pyre, and @imtheaura. She titled it "My Family," despite the fact that we were all adults and she was 15 and she only knew us over a discord half life server where one person in it stepped up to somewhat equip her for real life outside of a cult. Regardless though that GC was more the vibe of a group of friends sharing memes and chatting about the day than the wider server was at the time. The others began to also take on a sort of mentorship role towards her as well, because that's kind of inevitable when you get someone talking about teenager problems in a room full of adults who all made the same mistakes before in their own lives. Well, minus the cult.

And remember how I said that she didn't unlearn any of the cult shit? Well, there was a lot of proselytizing. She decided she wasn't christian for a spell, but still wanted us and everyone to know that jesus was the lord and savior and we had to accept him or we'd burn in hell. Usually said after we'd make some joke about satan being daddy or declaring ourselves god instead, because that is just the type of humor the others and i have with each other. She took it so personally whenever one of us would go "oh my god" "you called?" it was fucking annoying. I lost count of the amount of lectures she gave us, all of which I'd shut down and tell her to get a grip about because I have a big stupid mouth.

The others and I also like to talk about evolution, and speculate about where we're going from here. My fucking god, did she not like that. She bit our heads off about how evolution isn't real and god made everyone as we are and there's no scientific evidence or whatever the hell. Like yeah good luck getting into STEM with that mindset. Whenever we pointed out that she was objectively wrong about that, she'd have a big stupid meltdown about how much we're slandering god and how jesus died for us and we're spitting in his face or whatever. He should spit in MY face inste-*GUNSHOT*

Eventually, we were making some actual progress with her. She was still one fry short of a happy meal and going off about how much she wanted to put living subjects in test tubes in between knocking on our doors and reciting Hello from the Book of Mormon musical, but we were getting somewhere. And then she went back to in person school, and her favourite teacher got fired.

The schoolboard did not say why she got fired, but we all had our suspicions that it was because she openly supported queer rights in a cult town. She was coincidentally retired shortly after making a declaration that queer people are still welcome in god's kingdom. This teacher was the first in person adult Syl had for guidance, so that incident shook her to her core, and she fell right back into the extremism. Hook, line, and sinker, even more extreme than before.

She was WEIRD that week, man. Suddenly everything was about how great god was, how amazing jesus was. Suddenly she understood why her cult member parents "just wanted to protect her" from gay characters on disney+ originals. Suddenly no one could say "jesus christ lol" around her or she'd have a fit. I said "I hate cycle counts lmao i wanna kms" because my then-job (I had graduated at this point) made me do inventory management spontaneously and wouldn't let me go home until I had counted every product in the store, and she bit my head off accusing me of turning suicide into a joke.

It was that incident that made us tell her to knock it off already, that we understood it was a hard week for her and she was in a period of grief, but that is no excuse for how she had been acting towards everyone around her that wasnt christian, and that she was actively relapsing. I'll let the exchange speak for itself:

So uh. After years of helping Syl through this she goes and pulls this bullshit. And then has the fucking AUDACITY to act like nothing ever happened in the wider server. I am genuinely gobsmacked by the balls on her to act like it was all sunshine and rainbows in the wider server after sending this and immediately leaving the same GC SHE made and titled "My Family" just because we told her to stop acting like a goddamn Jonestown citizen after all the work we'd put in to get her out of that mentality at this point.

So I dragged her up in front of everyone and essentially said "no, nuh uh, you don't get to say that shit to the people who have lost sleep and asked for nothing in return trying to help you escape a cult over the last 2 years and then act like we're all buddy buddy to everybody else. You don't get to be that arrogant and self-righteous without any consequences. I don't give a fuck how young you are, you DON'T treat the people who have helped you this much like that, you selfish little shit. How dare you treat us like this after all we've done for you over the years."

Unfortunately, no one involved had surviving screenshots of this, but they can back me up on it if they so choose. And oh boy, DID she face the consequences of her own actions. The whole server basically turned their heads and went "what the FUCK is wrong with you, Syl??" and asked her to at least like, apologize. She proceeded to double down with the added audacity of "you guys taught me how to establish healthy boundaries, that's all I'm doing right now :(( oh woe is me :(((" like WOW, okay. Someone's really going for the persecution complex.

Here's her last goodbye to us all before the mass block fest occured:

Oh, boohoo. You're so hard done by. You spat in the faces of everyone who stayed up all night multiple times helping you through crises and spent the last 2 years teaching you about how the world really worked and then they asked you to apologize after you tried to escape accountability. You truly are god's strongest soldier, the most persecuted minority in the world. Let me play you an ode to how righteous and holy you are and how this was the most important hill to sacrifice all your outsider friendships on on the world's smallest violin.

Syl then went on to post on her roleplay blog that she "was banned because I spoke up for what was right, and they didn't like that" before deleting it. Truly no one has suffered as much as you.

Anyway, the day after that went down, I called in from work, bought this book, and read the whole thing purely out of spite:

It was greatly therapeutic. After that incident, I vowed to never sanitize my own atheistic beliefs for the benefit of others again. If they don't like them, they don't have to talk to me. But I am not changing them for other people or keeping them quiet just to spare your feelings anymore, I have as much a right to my beliefs as anyone else does, including the world's most persecuted minority here.

And well, the silica gel incident?

There was one incident, during the height of Syl's "I am the irl cave johnson and only want to get into STEM to conduct unethical experiments on people. follow jesus" era, the rest of us were joking about how silica gel packets are the ultimate forbidden snack, and said "haha would eating it make you see shrimp colours" knowing full well it can kill you.

Syl proceeded to actually eat a silica gel packet and then send in "it has a sandy texture and tastes bad" prompting the rest of us to go "WE WERE FUCKING JOKING FIND YOUR POISON CONTROL HOTLINE RIGHT NOW"

And because i didnt get this done until now, I'll tag everyone who said they wanted to read this or expressed interest: @captainjonnitkessler @formydarlingtoread @cra-zwizard @chasingnightrainbows

[voidedsoul5]

OKAY HERE WE GO, ANALYSIS AND THEORY TIME.

Spoilers for the new TMP episode (Ep 8)

NOT ONLY did we get my babygirl back (Who definitely has something going on with him but we'll go back to that later) we also got another hint about one of my other working theories about Celia and this universe... I am losing my mind rn and I need someone to talk to about this even if it's just screaming to the internet void. More below cut. Split it because it's a semi-long post.

I think Gertrude is for SURE coming back at some point, literally no reason for her not to especially considering I don't think TMP team is going to pull the 'But this time she's actually just an innocent old lady' thing. It's cheap, and she likely knows stuff that will come up later when (I believe) she still has worked at the institute before it burned down due to her age. Plus, someone had to have cleared out those files.

Gerry is happy and it makes sense. Gerry in TMA was trying to be a kind person, but he'd witnessed too much and seen too much to be able to do that. In this world, if the fears didn't exist Mary would've likely not been AS deranged. OR mary might not have existed at all given Gertrude claimed Gerry as his grandson. Removing Mary, Gerry really doesn't have a reason to be so reserved and abrasive. HOWEVER. I think there's a possibility that isn't his actual personality. The happiness (as mentioned in the unofficial transcript) is maybe a bit too played up. I wouldn't mind if this is just how he was, a slightly erratic messy artist. But pairing him specifically WITH gertrude in this universe stood out to me. So here's my mini theory.-I'm not saying it's drugs, or Gertrude is casting black magic or something, but I do think she's doing something to keep Gerry out of this 'mess'. Even if that's just living with him and helping him have a normal life as a painter. Gertrude has always had a soft spot for gerry in TMA, in this universe where she's probably not as battle-hardened, trying to keep him safe and out of it all isn't out of character. Mostly, this idea just came from the fact that she tried to brush it off, then seemed disappointed when Gerry spoke about the gifted kids program, despite him being well enough able to speak for himself. She probably doesn't want him involved. This however all relies on the context that Gertrude knows stuff. Honestly, she might just be his grandma that he now lives with either for rent reasons or because his parents might be dead. It could honestly be that simple, I just like rattling off ideas.

CELIA KEEPS DROPPING HINTS OF KNOWING SHIT. SHE KNOWS SOMETHING. SHE KNOWS THINGSSSS. I have another post about my TMA theory of these reoccurring characters from TMA beginning to remember things from the TMA world. Its so incredibly on the nose for her to immediately start asking questions about the 14 fears WE KNOW, ask about alternate universes, AND BE THE ONE WHO PUSHED SAM TO LOOK INTO MORE STUFF ABOUT THE PROGRAM (Sam said it was her idea at the end of Ep 8) I don't know exactly how thisll work, but I get more and more convinced each episode that this theory has some merit.

And this is a small one, but blah blah Norris reading a paper about loneliness, isolation, and hostile architecture blah blah blah metaphors symbolism blah blah you get the jist

I rlly just wanna talk about this show to anyone, I don't have friends who've seen TMA or TMP so my only option is talking about it here. PLS feel free to talk about your own opinions and ideas in reblogs and shit. I don't care if they counter mine I just wanna talk about this show I love it sm </3

[writing-for-life]

So, you mentioned something about Thessaly in a 90s context in one of your responses to another post, and I was wondering if you could expand on that. Because yeah, I have no problem with her *existing* as a character, because obviously she has a role in the narrative, but I highly suspect that her perceived role has changed a LOT in the intervening years since the initial writing.

As someone who first read Sandman in 2022, I figured that her character role was to get us to question what we think we know about Morpheus. Can we really trust that he's changed or improved, or that he's even all that likeable, if he's literally jumping into bed with this thoroughly unpleasant woman who likes violent murder *way* too much and also seems to be transphobic to boot?

At the same time, though, I got the uncomfortable sense that we were supposed to *like* Thessaly. In a sort of, "You go girl, be a #girlboss, let's show these boys we can be JUST as good at killing as them!" sort of way. Which I rationalized as "well, that probably was progressive in the 90s, but the idea of cold blooded violence and emphasis on the possession of a womb being feminist ideals has aged poorly."

So, yeah, I'm wondering if that is anywhere close to how she seemed in the "intended" context.

[As always: Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!]

This is such a good ask, and I feel there are a lot of bases to cover here. Not sure if I’ll do it justice, but here goes…

Disclaimer straightaway: I absolutely detest Thessaly and everything she’s done narratively, and I’m neither a Thessaly-apologist, nor someone who loves her as a character. But I think we need to discuss her with a bit more nuance than I see in lot of fandom spaces.

I think first of all, we need to look at:

Thessaly as a fictional character

As you already pointed out, she naturally has a role in the narrative. I also think parts of her role in said narrative are sometimes a bit misunderstood. One prime example would be the idea she never loved Morpheus. And yes, she absolutely always put herself and her own interests first, so from that angle, she loved herself more than she loved him. That doesn’t mean she never loved him at any point though. Many people quote her saying that she never did as proof that she didn’t. But what people say doesn’t always align with what they feel or do: She says at his wake she swore she’ll never cry over him again—and cries while she’s saying it. That tells us two things: She *did* cry because of him before. And she *does* cry now.

Again, she is a selfish, utterly horrid bitch, but she loved him at some point, and she was mad at him for neglecting her and not paying her enough attention. That’s when it turned sour (and we know how absolutely shit at communicating with women Morpheus is, so they’re both as bad as each other in that regard).

I see her as someone who is totally disconnected/dissociated from her emotions, to the extent that she probably really believes what she says, out of some deep-rooted fear of any kind of vulnerability. Why that is—we can only speculate, because Neil never went into it, hence nothing we assume will ever be canon.

What can be considered canon, however, is that Neil has confirmed the fact that she *did* love him at some point—most notably in the Sandman Companion:

Hy Bender: […] Of course, she’s lying when she says she never loved the Sandman.

Neil Gaiman: Of course; I think that’s made explicit by the final panel, where she says, `I swore I would never shed another tear for him’ while crying. But after he’s won her and then returned to his duties, he wasn’t enough for her anymore. She wanted attention; and when she wasn’t getting it, she said, “Right. We’re done,” and walked out on him.”

I’d also like to point out that the most trans-exclusionary prick in the whole of AGoY is actually George, just that he’s not a woman, and hence, no one ever seems to mention it (he’s actually the one egging Wanda on, not Thessaly). Plus, walking the moon road is maiden, mother and crone to a T, and consciously so. Foxglove is the maiden, Hazel is pregnant, and Thessaly is ancient. So Thessaly’s choice was also based on that, and the only one who Wanda really could have *potentially* replaced would have been Foxglove; she presumably never had penetrative sex, unlike Hazel (in the archaic definition of what penetration means, so we don’t need to argue about lesbian sex practices now). We don’t know that about Wanda, no matter if someone sees her as a man or a woman. I didn’t mean to get that explicit about maiden status, but I guess it *is* important in this context (although yes, of course Thessaly said Wanda is a man, and I’m not arguing that either, but I still think it was grounded in her belief how moon magic works).

Which brings me to a very important point: Thessaly is ancient. Culturally, we can’t compare her to someone who grew up in the 20th century, also with regard to her violent inclinations. She is thousands of years old. She’s seen it all. She has a fierce sense of self-preservation, maybe even rooted in some fears or trauma of her own. All not very nice character traits, no, but that’s not the yardstick, and probably was never supposed to be. I also remember Neil saying he consciously wanted to oppose neopaganism and the watered down, new wave witchcraft of the time (late 1980s/early 1990s, and that, I really remember), which was all about the “divine feminine”, female empowerment, tarot cards and incense sticks. I’m being a bit flippant now, but it isn’t far off. It was more of a trend than anything. He wanted to consciously oppose it with someone who would still act according to ancient, rather violent codes and rules. And Morpheus will have known those, and probably found them less surprising than we do (doesn’t necessarily mean he’d condone them either).

The fact whether Thessaly should make us question Morpheus in the comics is a tricky one. What she definitely *should* make us question is: Morpheus could have quite easily broken some rules in the Kindly Ones when Thessaly had set up the protection circle for Lyta, and the consequences probably would have been less disastrous than playing by said rules. And we can safely presume he knew. We are also supposed to question the same when he lets Nuala call in her boon and doesn’t just say: “This isn’t really a good time, can we do this later?” (and he absolutely COULD have done that), but actually follows through with going ,“Well, what gives, I basically grant you your boon now and leave the Dreaming, even though I know the potential consequences.” So yes, Thessaly is supposed to make us question Dream’s choices, but probably not the way we think. And for that, we perhaps should look deeper into…

Thessaly the TERF and Feminism in the late 1980s/early 1990s

This might get a bit longwinded, and I am showing my age here. I grew up at the intersection of second wave and third wave feminism, and as a bisexual woman, I made a lot of experiences during the early 90s that feel wholly aligned with the plot of AGoY (which was written during that time). I don’t want to write a whole essay about feminism here, but second wave feminism was on its way out in the late 80s. A lot of the bad associations some people have with feminism today stem from that time (not always justified, because a lot of good was achieved during that period. But parts of it in specific sub-communities—definitely problematic). Equality vs equity discussions within the feminist movement were dominating everything, and the divide between radfems and libfems was getting deeper. People like Audre Lorde IMHO rightly criticised that failing to understand that not all women start on equal footing, that not all women are the same, is problematic (so you could easily see how this is incorporated into the narrative of AGoY).

Second wave feminism wasn’t just about making sure women had rights. It was very much about “all of us can do everything men do, and we want the same a man gets”. It was all about the workspace (so often very white, CIS, middle class), not being at home with the kids etc (of course there were also other topics, but this one was really quite dominant). You could even see it fashion (massive shoulder pads etc). All the while, actually *being* a man was vilified (again, just in certain quarters).

So I feel you’re on to something with your #girlboss comment, only that I don’t think it was intentionally set up to like her, but rather as a criticism of what certain quarters of the feminist movement were like at the time.

Personal anecdote: I got that type of schtick from WITHIN the LGBT community at the time. Bi-erasure was big. And there were radfem lesbians that would actually tell you that being bi doesn’t exist, that you are basically a traitor to your “sisters” and just a lesbian who isn’t fully out. The same shite they used to criticise about men who would say you’re only a lesbian because you haven’t found the right guy yet. And here they went, telling you that you can’t be attracted to men if you’re also attracted to women.

Third wave feminism has a much stronger focus on the individual woman and what it means to be a woman to HER. This also included trans women, much more than during the second wave. Judith Butler’s work is actually exemplary for this (in essence, there is no such woman as “the” woman—we’re all different despite sharing common traits and problems. Trying to make us all the same will only harm us in the long run).

And with AGoY and Thessaly, we are exactly at the moment in time (in the comics) where that shift happens. I think Neil got it right for the time, and understood a lot of what was going on. Many people in queer communities felt really understood and seen, myself included. I absolutely see how that translates differently today. But it always saddens me when the historical context gets completely stripped away, and people don’t take the time a work of fiction was written into consideration and only measure it from today’s viewpoint. We can, and absolutely have to be critical if the TV shows fails to address these points and just translates everything 1-2-1. Which I am fairly certain won’t happen, because Thessaly has already been stripped off a lot of her obvious TERFiness in the Audible. I’m not even sure if we’ll get her in the show—we’ll hopefully find out.

Phew, that was long, I’m gonna lie down 😂

[rindragon-from-twewy]

Uh oh! Someone left me alone with my thoughts again! I don't see many people talking too deeply about pre-game stuff beyond "Number One was a terrible person" so I'm here to throw my own poorly explained hot take in to the ring-

I'm not really built for theory crafting and tend to miss or forget obvious details so consider this... an AU proposal more then anything. (Tbh I mostly just wanted to draw smol Yuma lmao-)

Spoiler warning ofc and enjoy this horrifically long and poorly explained ramble-

So... I don't really know much about the general fandom age headcannons on characters. I won't be going in to specifics right now about what I think all the character ages are cuz this isn't about that but for context, I pin Yuma around 15-16, on the early 18 side if you really wanna push it. Mainly cuz... it'd be kinda weird for Kurumi (a school student) to be one of his main love interests otherwise- For the sake of argument, I'll say 18.

So anyways-

Makoto's like... what? 3 or 4 years old? Forgive me for not re-watching chapter 5 just to get my timeline correct here but that's roughly right. Meaning that Number One would've been about 13 or 14 when he agreed to participate in the experiments at most. And sure, he's the smartest person in the world but anyone can be susceptible to lies or manipulations, especially someone that young.

But then of course we don't know how long Yuma had the Number One title for. Surely it would've had to have been at least a little while- I doubt the unified government would go after the blood of the newly appointed "smartest detective in the world" the second he got in to office. So who's to say exactly how much this literal child had been manipulated beforehand?

I'm imagining a sort of... Nagisa plus Kirigiri scenario (the danganronpa characters lol-) where they'd been set on a very specific academic path nearly their whole lives. Sure, Yuma probably had been born a genius and his strong moral code was most likely all his own but... no matter what way you spin it, there must have been some negligence to allow someone so young to become so cut off from the rest of society. It could've been intentional, it could've been accidental. Either way, why is someone like Yuma, who is obviously younger then most of his peers, who could easily pass as a trainee detective simply because of how smol he is, make it all the way to the top on his sheer intelligence alone?

This rambling's getting incoherent, sorry, it's late and I'm tired-

Makoto's pretty manipulative, sure, but he only got to the CEO position cuz of all the blackmail he had- Man had zero control over the city to the point he had to let outsiders get smuggled in just to help him fix it. Makoto (and by extension Number One) is book smart. Not street smart. They can build the rain machine, they can run multiple government conspiracies, etc etc. But if Number One was a kid at the time, it would've been pretty difficult for them to manipulate, mansplain, malewife his way in to office imo. A kid can't manipulate a dozens of adults in to being the leader of the whole WDO, no matter how naturally gifted they are. I mean it's no secret that the unified government and by extension the WDO are just as shady as Amaterasu so why wouldn't they take advantage of a young and impressionable kid when the opportunity arises?

We don't really know how Number One truly felt about anything. We know how Makoto views it, we know what Yuma thinks about it but we don't know if Number One really understood what the repercussions of the experiments could've been.

So let me just... break down what I'd interpret a vague timeline of events to be (in this hypothetical... Uh... AU I guess?)

- Yuma gets in to the WDO somehow. Very young, very impressionable. He may be really good at solving crimes but like any kid, he doesn't know anything that he isn't taught about. Being surrounded by mysteries and crimes, all while constantly being praised by adults as being "just soooo smart!" Is probably what taught him that he didn't need other people and so never learnt (or potentially was never even allowed to) make friends.

- Growing up surrounded by a combination of Yes-Men and people who let the obvious child labour/ exploitation slide because "This little genius is such a special case, we gotta let it slide this once!" Made it so he reached to the level of Number One far faster then anyone would expect. And that then came along with abandoning his old name and identity, isolating himself completely for his own protection. (I like to think he may not even remember his original name because he was so young at the time (for extra angst ^vO))

- And so a completely isolated pre-teen, who's entire life up until this point has entirely consisted of gory murder scenes and tragic crimes he was personally responsible for solving, was approached by the unified government. Who knows exactly how much detail they went in to with explaining their plan? Maybe they said that it probably wouldn't even work out, given all the past failures. Maybe they came begging for his help, like many people seeking justice would have done before them. Maybe they simply told him it was for the sake of peace? Maybe he was in his angsty emo phase and thought having a clone would be cool, who really knows? A pre-teen is a pree-teen, they all do dumb things- either way, he agreed.

- And so things played out like they said in the game, Makoto was created, escaped, saved the citizens of Kanai Ward via isolating them. He keeps them fed the only way he knows how - through the WDO; the only organisation he's ever been able to rely on (and thanks to his authority level, of course). Yuma starts getting suspicious while also simultaneously maturing enough to realise just how wrong everything about his life is, gets his new identity, makes the contract with Shinigami and heads off to start fixing his problems.

Additional Thoughts:

It's like that thing in the original beauty and the beast movie where everyone suddenly realised that the witch probably cursed a 9 year old for not letting a creepy stranger in to his home-

Maybe that's why he stuck with the name Yuma after everything. Cuz he didn't remember his original name to fall back on. He could've been Number One for as long as he could remember for all we know!

Maybe he was so busy trying to run the whole WDO that he didn't even pay much mind to the experiments? Could've just agreed to shut them up without knowing what he was getting in to. Makoto really drove it in to the mud how horrible of a person Number One was but how can we be sure that's an objective fact and not completely opinion driven?

I'm like actually really curious what other's perspectives on this could be. Again, I don't know much about the rain code fandom's age headcannons but it's pretty obvious to me at least that Yuma's on the younger end of the cast- (And by extension, Makoto too-)

Maybe I'll fact check myself when I have the time- either way, it's an interesting AU idea at the very least. I'll probably delete the writing portion of this post if it turns out I'm horrendously wrong-

Its probably gunna turn out that Yuma's in his mid 30s or 40s and suffers from baby face syndrome or something cringe fail like that lmfao-

So. Yeah. That's all just a theory (minus most of the fact checking) A GAME THEORY- Thanks for reading! :D

[katerinaaqu]

Is Eurybates supposed to be black? asking since afaik the words used to describe him are similar to those used when athena turns odysseus back into his true self. There are also a few africans in minoan art so maybe there's something there?

I can see why people say that because of the description or rather the words used in it μελανόχροος, οὐλοκάρηνος aka "dark skinned and wholly of hair" but I also think it is unlikely for him to be African given how as you said Odysseus described with the same words particularly the first and it indicates the tan under the sun which also implies someone's health and youth (as opposed to sickly pallidness that is linked to old age like isolation in the house, inability to work outside or illness and death)

We also have a roman mosaic I believe one of the Heralds taking Briseis was also mentioned as "Eurybates" (although I expect it could be one of the many interpretations. I gather it could be even Odysseus himself)

Given how we have other characters that clearly mention Africa such as Memnon the king of Ethiopia in the epics it doesn't seem the case here. If it was JUST Eurybates described as such in the Odyssey then I might as well have thought the same or at least consider it given also how Eurybates was also a servant and not of upper class and was accompanying Odysseus as his herald (of course there is also the question if Eurybates of Iliad and Eurybates of Odyssey are the one and the same person but that is another thing)

However as I said before in the Odyssey we have the same description for characters such as Odysseus so in this case the characterization seems to be more about the tan of the skin under the sun to indicate the youth and the health of that person plus the words ὅτι οἱ φρεσὶν ἄρτια ᾔδη. Aka "because they thought in a similar manner" so here Odysseus seems to be connecting Eurybates with himself to show their closeness. Which is why Odysseus uses the same or similar description for Eurybates as the description used on himself just toned down a bit (even the shoulders given how Odysseus was described with "wider shoulders than Agamemnon" while Eurybates is described with "round shoulders" aka "wide" in one way)

Odysseus is not Minoan he is Mycenean a civilization that lived after the Minoans but I definitely see what you mean and either case I believe you are referring to this frescoes that they named "Captain of the Blacks" right?

Although the exact nature of this frescoe is unknown given how fragmentary it is, it is hard to tell the social status of these guys in there so some hypothesis I see around is that they are soldiers in training but given the fragmentary state of this, it is just a hypothesis. Which is a shame given how interesting the finding is.

Either way Odysseus lived several hundred years after that frescoe was created and also Ithaca is not implied to be that powerful kingdom as to be a passage of all different ethnicities. They do seem to have commercial and importing of goods such as ivory (mentioned for the chair of Penelope) it doesn't seem to be such a powerful state that would allow a potential multi-ethnic society much less to have soldiers trained from other lands as well (otherwise Odysseus might as well have left with way more soldiers than his around 600). Which is why also Telemachus was so amazed at the cities they visited especially Sparta

Conclusion:

So to close this, if Eurybates was a unique description in the Odyssey without any other context I would consider this possibility more strongly especially given how Eurybates is not of the elite class so even logically it might have worked if his description was a unique case. However both the placement and the parallels with Odysseus gives me the vibes of Odysseus describing him in a similar way he himself was described to show how close they are and how close they think to each other (potentially be close to their age as well) and given how the term μελανόχροος as a term also indicates tanning (even in modern day greek we say μαυρίζω aka "turn black" if you put it literally as a substitute for tan and μαύρισμα when we speak on the tan itself) I should say here the term stands for "dark skinned" for greek standards aka tanned by the sun rather than "black of skin" aka "from Africa"

I hope this answers your question Anon. It is a very good observation but this is how it seems to me based on the rest of the parallels of the Odyssey and the continuation of Greek language. I hope this helps.

[by-glass-and-waves]

Waow is that some Restart AU?

Context (since I scarcely post Restart AU): New game plus with Narinder as the player character in a different timeline/universe because he doesn't want to rule his dying one

In this doodlecomic, Narinder gets temporarily cursed with blindness after defeating Leshy, almost as if to make him experience and reflect upon what his brother endured for years. Even if he's a different Narinder who experienced a different dynamic with his old timeline's siblings. And this happens with each Bishop he defeats. Imagine Narinder wanting to talk shit but coughing up blood. Or him getting jumpscared constantly since he can't hear anything. Or him [redacted for dark humor]. Turns out I posted some doodles/wrote things on the convo and idea ages ago too? gross old drawings

For those unable to see the pictures and in case my handwriting is too squished/it's unclear where it belongs in each panel, I've included the script below (and ah shit included a redone scriptsnippet of Narinder and Allani's first meeting in the new timeline):

1 Narinder: (kneeling on the ground as he holds his hands in front of his shocked face) My sight… 2 Narinder: (looks up sharply, ready to lash out) I hear you! Reveal yourself! 3 Allani (The Lamb): (holds up her hands as if to say 'calm down'; her brows are furrowed and she appears confused, maybe even concerned) It's just me, Death God. 4 Allani: (places hands on her hips and looks down at Narinder, still perplexed (?)) What are you doing on the ground? There are much better places to wallow in, you know. Narinder: (back to the reader as he looks down) Hmf! Insolent follower… 5 Narinder: (still kneeling, he leans forward, right hand planted on the ground, left hand pressed against his frustrated/displeased (?) face, mouth curled into a scowl) When I felled Leshy and feasted upon his treacherous heart… 6 Narinder: (looks away, almost pensive) …He inflicted one last insult—my vision is clouded. Perhaps this is what he experienced in the millenium (oops, I misspelled millennium) after my imprisonment. 7 Allani: (crosses arms, surprised by the event) So wait, the Bishop of Chaos blinded you? 8 Allani: (chuckles and glances away, amused) How ironic… Narinder: (from offscreen) SILENCE! 9 Narinder: (clenches left hand into a fist, looking aside with contempt) I refused to be deterred from my mission! I know not how long it may be until my eyes recover… 10 Narinder: (looks at reader with determination) But this is nothing. 11 Allani: (from the perspective from Narinder kneeling on the ground, her hand extended to him as she looks annoyed about his grandstanding) Well, if you're going to spend a while recovering from your injuries again, at least do it indoors, Death God. Grab my hand, I'm taking you back to your Temple. 12 Narinder: (irritated, unwilling to accept her assistance) Hmf! I do not need some damned disobedient lamb to— 13 Allani: (side view of her, frustrated, stomping off and dragging him by the hood; the Red Crown hovers in front of her, amused by the sight) Ugh! So stubborn! Narinder: (upset, grabbing his collar with both hands) UNHAND ME YOU DAMNED LAMB

An aside, the line "Reveal yourself!" might be a callback to their first meeting where she approaches from behind with a weapon? Or at least I like to think so:

Allani: (approaches Narinder from behind, spear pointed at his back) Stop! You intrude upon the soil blessed by The One Below. Who are you? Narinder: (wearing his hood) Hmf! I am no enemy. Allani: (presses spear into his back) How can I know when I can't even see your face? Reveal yourself! Narinder: (pulls back hood and looks over his shoulder at her) You gaze upon the God of Death, foolish lamb. Consider yourself fortunate that I feel merciful today. (he turns and pushes the spear away, drawing himself to his full height in an attempt to intimidate her) Allani: (laughs, incredulous of his claim) The God of Death? Hah! I see no Red Crown on your head! Only Master Ratau has been granted that privilege! Narinder: (his eyes narrow, irritated that she didn't bow to him immediately) Then take me to him, so that I may prove my authority! Only then will you regret your impudence, damned lamb! Allani: (unfazed) As if I'll be cowed by your pompous ass, Death God!

[skaruresonic]

Honestly, as fun as it was to go "Jesse what the fuck are you talking about" at the absurdity of fandom tourists who refused to engage with canon in good faith, it still felt like people explaining the nitty-gritty of how and why Freemance "didn't count" as pedophilia were giving the antis too much ground. Like they were implying there was a point that any given HL ship could be considered too problematic to defend.

As someone who ships Valhoun, which could arguably be considered more problematic than Freemance in this system of moral checks and balances by mere virtue of Barney actually being in his forties or so (although even that is debatable tbh), as opposed to Gordon's Schroedinger's Creepy Old Man Status, needless to say, I found the whole thing ridiculous.

To me it doesn't really matter even if Gordon was 47, because Half-Life exists in a context where real-life social mores don't apply as stringently. Humanity is on its last legs and Eli wants grandkids, yo. I have argued in the past that age gap squicks would likely lessen out of necessity following the Combine's breeding suppression. People need to procreate in order to repopulate the species, after all, and beggars can't be choosers. Kleiner said "get busy fuckin' or get busy dyin'" for a reason.

However, I'm not terribly keen on Freemance because Gordon's blank-slate status means I'd have to make up his characterization in my head, and it just doesn't seem worth the effort. I always feel like I'm shipping a dozen different versions of Gordon rather than Gordon himself. He also... just doesn't react to Alyx, making their chemistry incredibly lopsided. At least Barney goes "Eugh" when Alyx teases him about "not being an animal person"; Gordon just presumably stands there like :I when she cracks her Zombine joke.

Despite lifting somewhat in recent years, fandom has an ironclad "Barney is Alyx's uncle/big bro" fanon, which is just as annoying as "Shadria is incest" because it basically sprang out of nowhere. Canon seems to imply that Barney and Alyx are acquaintances at best, not terribly familiar with each other outside of their faintly overlapping social circles. Kleiner is honestly their only link. Barney, in fact, has less reason than most other older male characters to be considered one of Alyx's honorary uncles. At the very least Alyx suggests the possibility Gordon may have seen her once as a child; no such equivalent exists for Barney. The idea he babysat her is also hilarious considering he never even directly addresses Eli in HL2. On top of that, there's the issue of infantilizing Alyx, which I could rant about for hours. Yes, Valhoun may be just as "fanon" as Uncle Barney headcanons, but that doesn't mean I'm not thinking in terms of the series' overarching context. I view Valhoun as a sort of push-pull dynamic between Barney and Alyx, duty stifling love and placed inside a pressure-cooker of sexual repression. Hot. Plus, there's that forbidden fruit aspect of rebel/Metrocop lol. And while I would in a perfect world like to see the two be together, given HL's bleak world, realistically, I don't see it working out. Not even in an "Alyx dumps his ass for Gordon" kind of way, necessarily, but in a "they break up out of fear for each other's safety but there are still lingering feelings if they gaze in the other's wake for too long" kind of way. I have also argued that all three major HL ships bear imbalances. Valhoun does not suffer the experience gap that Freemance and Freehoun would; Barney and Alyx would have shared roughly the same life experiences under Combine rule that Gordon lacks.

[scarefox]

idk maybe we wait till the drama is over before we do the big judging?

Because so far the drama always played with social expectations vs reality AND we constantly get evaluations and realizations from Nont summing his opinions or change of opinions up in monologues (he is one of the characters kind of representing the popular opinions at first just to learn the other side!)

You have to look at the whole drama and characters developments. not just moments because they all go through good and bad (example) phases.

Let's see where the last 2 episodes go before swinging the hammer?

Reminder: Playboyy is NOT about how the ideal world would look like but it is about how it is right NOW (in Thailand especially). Of course our characters get punished for certain sexual behaviors because that IS how society reacts. Part of the characters even represent some of those stances now and then as example. And us audience feeling bad about it is the goal. Also I think it is very well established that Captain is an ass with the worst morals sometimes. Of course we are not supposed to take his opinions and actions as valid life lessons or message even. We are supposed to dislike him (literally the cast says he is annoying and hate-able).

PLUS very important, a misunderstanding I feel happens with some dramas interpretation: sex positivity does not mean to ignore issues that come with sex and pretend as if there were none... But is especially also about talking OPENLY about those things as well as sexual freedom. There are certain possible dangers of working in the sex industry or if you constantly sleep with different people you don't even know who they are.

(bear with me a lot of rambling ahead about topics I have seen here and there the past weeks)

Playboyy is literally about what Nont says in the fist minutes of episode 1

[..]

(* "can create problems" might be a better wording here in the context. basically "sex is more than just some nasty business" and "sex causes problems sometimes" are two things that coexist)

A lot of the plot is Nonts POV which so far had the theme of Nonts discovery of the variety of sex, human feelings and relationships. GOOD and BAD. As well as the dark side of the sex industry (+ drug and mafia connections). He knew nothing about this world and was / still is very judgy of certain things... like the whole doggo video was about him thinking it's murder when it was actually kink play at the end, which he never considered (that's what I mean with expectation vs reality). The treatment of sex worker (btw intentional of the drama that we see both sides here! Please DON'T ignore that in your judgement of what the drama is telling!), the harsh way he judges Nants drug addiction.

aaand all that combined with these 6 categories for each pairing they introduced via one of Nonts monologues as well:

"Mutualism, Protocooperation, Commensalism, Parasitism, Competition, Predation" (btw not set in stone, they can grow out of these)

Do you guys remember that "Y-Destiny" (same director) was based on the week days characteristics and superstition in Thailand? I feel like Playboyy is a bit similar to Y-Destiny just with these relationship categories.

--

Here just some of the things I remember characters said in response to the happenings in the drama or despite the things happening in the drama (which are mainly based on real life issues I remind you)

on the society AND some characters judging virginity:

(Nants downward spiral only happened because he got coerced into losing his virginity to strangers in an industry you shouldn't go in naive. Meaning he wasn't ready for it and stumbled into things just to prove it to his judgy friends)

ignorance in the LGBTq community (is a thing obviously, see trans & queer exclusionists as worst example)

(this statement was about their physical appearance and age. But is by the only 2 characters who wear support trans and 'fuck gender norms' message shirts)

sex as a taboo topic in society:

the whole sex tape issue:

We have Puen calling Captain out on his bs. We see everyone suffering the consequences of leaked sex tapes. As well as the victims of it but also Captain himself (boy just has no self reflection abilities). But also the question on WHY leaked sex tapes are such a big deal (sex as taboo topic) that someone loses their whole career over simply just bein caught having sex. Making sex tapes such a good blackmail tool as well...

the "sex worker get treated like trash" issue:

again, yes that's the point of showing something like this as real life issues. You can't take Captain, First or even Nonts statements as "this is the shows statement" when they are all portrayed as morally grey till morally twisted even. AND we still have this whole big plot point of Aob and Puen AND Phob constantly showing and talking about the issues they have to deal with as sex workers. (+ the Soong, Teena, Jump at the beginning saying it wouldn't be that bad of a job under better circumstances, if their boss wasn't so horrible. again not just a black and white image here). THIS TOO is part of the show and it's message, which weights way more than Nont calling Puen "that sex worker" or whatever (maybe he doesn't even know his name). Nont is pissy and biased of that whole topic and specifically about Playboyy employees because of his brothers death.

And First being a selfish sadistic prick to said sex workers, when they gave him basic consent is a similar issue he had with Soong in the beginning (him not realizing when Soong is not into it or too tired). He knows that he messed up here, he even admitted it to Soong. My guess is that First and Captain just don't want to admit to the others? That just because they got hurt, they can not hurt others (oh that's a recurring theme in the drama btw). And idk I got the feeling First & Captain being hurt wasn't about Zouey accused them of but them both having some issues which makes them act that way?

Because the following is such a weird thing to say in that context??? (is that their "every episode we remind you this may or may not be a fictional story" thing)

"You think of us as clowns or people who make yourself look like a better person." Spoken like someone who doesn't want to admit he may be not a good guy 🤷‍♂️ aka "Oh you think you are better than me just because I am worse. Everyone hates me because I am an ass" uhm yea.

Anyways Zouey is right about criticizing them for hurting others (not the part where he called them perverted. Look not even Zouey is perfect). And I bet everyone watching it agrees with him on that. It does suck that they made him apologize. But again, First and Captain are both not characters you get your life lessons from, especially not Captain. Also the way the whole apology went was weird with these word plays?? Pretty unserious and deliberate confusing:

Like wtf does that even say? Also we know he only apologizes to get them back to work with them on the case.

---

AND regarding BDSM representation: guys, we don't just have Soong x First on that topic! We have:

Prom x Nont / Nant as GOOD example: contract, consent, aftercare, negotiation, communication (regarding sex! not the case)

Jump x Porsche as BAD example: questionable consent, literal abuse cycle and they basically just vent on each other until they realize how shitty that is. While they do have a contract apparently... they don't really follow it. It's just really sad the creators didn't spend more on screen time with developing their change properly... (bruh they literally cut one scene of Porsche kissing sleeping Jump one morning after, it's in a BTS, they should have kept that to show that they do develop feelings for eo...)

Soong x First is a mix, they both have good traits with each other, but also have/had bad traits (Soong consent issue with Nant) and First DOES have a sex addiction since episode 1. That is one of the main issues Soong has in their relationship. And it then happened that First fell down the bad mental path after some people (+ society) treated him already like a monster (treating someone like something evil they will eventually believe it themselves) and then his support system (Soong) left him. He stopped caring since nobody seemed to care about him. The thing with his dad is that the show mislead us here once again (they love to do that but sometimes it's not well done tbh). His dad is not homophobic. But was just worried about the amount of sex and BDSM / kinks his son participates in (based on prejudice tho). Unfortunately he contributed into that self-fulfilling prophecy that way.

That:

VALID and NOT kink shaming!! Having sessions all the time is big effort and can be overwhelming and exhausting if you have that constantly (especially if Soong does the most work in a role that's maybe not his preference)

The key in those BDSM relationships here is to display that bad communication and bad treatment leads to bad outcome (breaking up, causing eo harm) while good treatment and communication leads to them getting together. Them having a bit less violent sex in between (there are more kinks than just rough sex, fam) doesn't mean they turned vanilla. Like Soong x First in ep12 had some food play again 🤷‍♂️ and idk if Jump x Porsche have sex at all atm and considering their circumstances it makes sense if they don't continue the rough path for now (they didn't even had rough sex all the time prior either. It was just that Porsche used power over Jump + one time switch, now they are probably equal). Even as weirdly uncanny it might feel seeing Prom all sappy and softy when he actually tries to get Nont into a relationship outside of their sex sessions. That's not unrealistic either. Most BDSM folks have more personality and interests than just being into BDSM.

While First had his little downfall we have this statement from Prom as well:

Aaaand I will end it here for now. I am at my picture limit for this post and have a migraine ✌

Bottom line is: wait till the finale is over AND view the whole drama together with all characters paths and statements.

I agree on that some parts are rushed, came too short, some bits appear a bit tone deaf (but that can also just be judged at the end since they still have a chance to come around). 14 main characters at once + all the topics they try to address + the different vibes for each pair + connecting all of that in a murder case somehow is definitely a whole ass mammoth project. It's really difficult to manage the storytelling of that and then also consider the limited time frame.

[miralyk]

love the drawings you've been making for desmond and alex, what's ghosts in the machine? first i see them crawling out of your screen and now everyone's angels devils or monsters, i don't know if i'm missing something!

ah man, think it's time to try to summarize everything and apologize LMAO;; ty for asking though, i should've made things less confusing! this will be a Pretty lengthy post for irl context/backstory and "actual au" info so be ready if you want to read everything!

(for starters, the title's just a pun on the philosophical phrase "ghost in the machine" interpreted Literally and taking inspiration from clay in ac revelations, since he Was a ghost in a machine and jokingly called "my guardian angel" by des, haha)

the short version: basically, "ghosts in the machine" is what i've called the au(?) where i just doodle silly "artist talking to her art muse(s)" stuff like these kinds of comics instead w me,, the ""art muse"" is whatever i'm hyperfixated on (currently desmond, the assassin brotherhood as a whole, and alex/prototype lmao):

the Full LONG version: when replaying prototype and ac awhile back, i also posted fanart on LOFTER (china’s local version of tumblr) and made a mainlander mutual/friend who drew fanart too, like her oc w the assassins in an animal shapeshifter 刺客信条乙女向 (assassin’s creed otome) au! as i’m vietnamese-american and she’s chinese, we use translators and send pictures/doodles to talk about the games and our days, and when i was replaying prototype, she started ac2 too and sent me this as commentary:

from there, whenever we’d text or send pics/art, it became a running joke of sorts to also include our ""game companions"" like that fanfiction thing of “author’s note where the author and fictional characters comment on the situation and/or talk to each other”, and my doodles also became us or our computers being accompanied by them LMAO;; that’s pretty much the origin and setting of the particular doodles; just the daily shenanigans and art struggles of an artist (me and her) talking to their art muses (characters from special interests) haunting them and their computers

as for the "supernatural" aspects, at some point desmond and alex got drawn an as angel and devil because i’ve had ridiculous “protected by a guardian angel” luck lately like surviving a car crash unharmed, they’re my favorites and associated with me, the motifs match the duo, etc, it's not really that deep and/or for a "Lore Reason";;

likewise, the brotherhood got drawn as ghosts to emphasize the “we/our computers are haunted by them” joke more, along with how my friend and i are both asian and used to like ghosts and ancestral worship casually being a part of our lives already LMAO (ig in the context of the au then, they’re basically desmond’s ancestral spirits disney-mulan-style that freeload off of his vietnamese protectee (me) for both spiritual veneration or "worship" like staying relevant in this modern age via fanart)

for example, i'm also considering drawing like altair, ezio, connor, and edward as the vietnamese four holy beasts just to play around, things like that! there's no special lore reason aside from just personal thoughts and "oh that'd be fun to draw", they just thematically fit well being four prominent “legends” and being desmond's ancestors, etc,, haha

at the end of the day, "ghosts in the machine" are just silly shenanigans of me drawing what's on my mind, from who/what i'm hyperfixated on (aka impromptu art muses for me), any thoughts/frustrations i have w daily life or drawing stuff,, and "hm this sounds cool, i could draw this design or Cool Thing" stuff. it's not really an au persay (plus i still really cringe and feel self-consciously wary about the embarrassing self-insert aspect of all this, help lmao), it’s just,, just silly personal scribblings that are kind of sharing an inside joke to everyone now, but i'm happy to know people still humor these silly drawings and are curious if there's more to it, thank you!

[chaotic-goodsir]

Good morning, might I interest anyone in some hyperfixated rambling re:

1) Me being wrong about Wilbur Cross and John Macnamara's canon ages.

2) The newly explained Mega Bastards SaF lore (I know it's just Actor Curt Mega's headcanon but it's canon to me now)

3) The implications for my hcs about Wilbur being the Spankoffski bros uncle and John being related to Curt?

Keeping it under a readmore so I don't annoy everyone about this, because I have a lot of thoughts.

*

So it turns out I misunderstood John and Wilbur's canon ages in Black Friday.

According to the wiki they're around 42 and around 44 respectively in 2019. I'd imagined them as being 10 years older than this and therefore in their early 30s back in 1998, but in fact they should have been only 21 and 23 in that Saf/Hatchetverse crossover fic I wrote a while ago, and they were only 28 and 30 when the portal incident happened.

The question of whether Wiley can physically age post-2005 makes this interesting, though. Was Wilbur 44 in 2005, making Wiley eternally 44? That would mean that pre-portal Wilbur was a whole 15 or 16 years older than John, which works well I guess for the canon mentor-mentee context but not so well for my own MacNaCross headcanons. I think such a big age difference would change their dynamic a lot, plus I prefer the idea of Wilbur having been promoted at a fairly young age for a PIEP colonel.

For those reasons I'm gonna go with Wilbur being 30 in 2005 and Wiley being technically 44 in Black Friday, whether or not he ages in a normal human way. The most tragic implication of this is of course that I can't call Wilbur/Wiley a boomer anymore, since being born in 1975 makes them definitely Gen X :(

But it would also make the age difference between Wil and Annie (a Hatchetfield OC of mine who is Wil's sister and Pete and Ted's mom) much larger. Ted was born in 1984, so Annie would have to be at least 10 years older than Wilbur.

Having a 10 year age difference between the Cross Siblings would be kinda cool (it parallels the Spankoffski bros age difference!!) but it does mean rethinking all my headcanons about their sibling dynamic. Plus it would make Wilbur less than 10 years older than Ted and an actual uncle since the age of 9.

- Implications for my headcanons about where the Uncle Wiley character/voice came from? Perhaps.

- Would Ted have known Wilbur better when he was growing up? Seems more likely, especially if Annie helped her younger sibling out when he left home.

- What about Ted and Wilbur knowing each other around the time of the Jenny incident and the portal? Or when Pete was born in 2002? Or Homeless Ted's reasons for queuing up in Black Friday?

MUCH to consider and perhaps draw or write about some time.

*

Anyway. On a different note:

Combining Actor Curt Mega's headcanon about Agent Curt Mega having several illegitimate children with John and Wilbur's canon ages, it's completely possible (if you like SaF/Hatchetverse crossovers) for John Macnamara to be Curt's grandson.

If John is around 42 in TGWDLM and Black Friday, then he was born around 1976. So his mother or father could easily have been born in the early fifties as one of the illegitimate children resulting from Curt's spy activities. And it's likely John wouldn't know this, if the truth was kept a secret from him - which it probably would be, if his grandmother's line of work/status was the kind where you end up being seduced for espionage reasons by the world's greatest spy.

Again: Much to think about.

[horizon-verizon]

https://www.tumblr.com/biwitchenergyz/749681633275297792/one-thing-i-find-interesting-about-team-black-vs?source=share

Aemond killed Luke knowing that it would provoke a war if he did so. Blood and cheese are just the consequences of his actions...

Let's reframe it: it's the karmic and narrative consequences of Aemond's actions (as well as Alicent and Otto's). Why? Because the killing of Jaehaerys was not only a political blow to the greens bc Jaehaerys was Aegon's de facto heir (as Lucerys provided the link to the Velaryons as heir to the Driftmark seat), it was also the beginning of the entire green line's demise that was caused by the child-harming ambition of both Alicent and Aemond. Alicent, bc she plotted against a 10 year old for years. And this war--that she, Otto, and Aemond all trigger--will claim the lives of literally thousands of children' in the riverlands, in Tumbleton, in Bitterbridge, and KL.

It is rumored that Aegon, in the bk, allowed his bastard kids to live in abject poverty and even fight each other to a gambling audience. Even if untrue, the narrative of the Dance--espe through Mysaria as hamliet points out HERE--explores the effects of an adult's total authority, when coupled with children raised as inheritors of their legacies and fortunes and resources to reinforce a family's power-- on that child's life's trajectory (beginning, middle, end).

Children are and become conduits or negligent devices of the adults around them to the point of it being exploitative and they become exposed to danger in various ways in the Dance narrative. Parents and grandparents, etc., all have a particular authority over their kids' lives that carries the definitive moments of a person's well-being, and in the sociopolitical context of feudalism and traditional patriarchy, it can get easily twisted up in bids for political domination or control, bc again, to ensure your family's power and your own claim(s) you need children to inherit your name and carry all that which is attached to it; the vassals, the oaths of loyalty, the accrued resources and wealth, land, serfs or peasants tied to the land, etc. It's the next stage of the silent commentary on "innocence (of fault)", protection from "adult business", and the "purity" we/these characters forget to credit to children (Alicent not thinking Rhaenyra's sons were worth mourning or being angry over bc they were supposedly bastards; Mysaria perhaps deciding to destroy the greens and blacks trough their kids, alicent trying to make Jaehaera kill Rhaenyra's Aegon just to get back at her beyond the grave and revenge for her own Aegon's death; Jaehaerys I and Saera, etc.), esp considering how Rhaenyra loses her mother at 7; Viserys makes her his heir at 8ish or 9; and again, Alicent sets herself against her from the age of 10. Which, coupled with how Jaehaera was also female, is why Jaehaera had to die for this story to make sense.

*EDIT (9/28/24)*

You may think of it like this. The bible's Pharaoh lost his eldest male child when for years he's used the slave labor of many children or killed Hebrew children AND refused to let the enslaved go when Moses demanded it, and so the last attack on the native Egyptian populace with the killing of the firstborn sons occurred. Plus, again, it has to be Jaehaera bc she is Aegon's only girl and was his only heir presumptive atp.

*END OF EDIT*

Yes, there's the obvious personal revenge element of Daemon seeing his stepson/Rhaenyra's son be murdered and saying "you kill my/our son, I take one of yours". But to ignore how it parallels and foreshadows the deaths of so many kids--including Maelor's and eventually Jaehaera's--when it all could have been prevented by the greens' just accepting Rhaenyra' s rule is pretty asinine. This is what we like to call "layers" people.

[mercyisms]

wld love for u to expand on your thoughts about asian jewish mercymorn?? my beloved hater girl

(:<<<< i was delighted to receive this ask and rolled it around in my brain for days and days, even though the real answer is "i'm silly and i like to have fun." to preamble: very, very generally, i think it can useful to have fun with white characters in works written by white novelists. i think it can be a lot of fun, too, to see a fancreator re-interpret a work into a culture they know a lot about and bring out different textures or tensions. but i also think it’s fun to reconsider specific characters (sometimes especially the ambiguously raced ones) and tease out tensions that might feel interesting or ones that somebody without cultural context may have overlooked. i like resisting the idea that whiteness is the default or a neutral default.

though! on the flip side and despite routinely joking that augustine being canonically blonde is a hate crime against me somehow, i also recognize that, for example, augustine’s whiteness (or presentation towards whiteness) seems intentional and is doing work in the text. (when i joke about john always having one six foot plus blonde around, it’s funny! but it’s also reflecting something the text is engaging with with regards to race.) so, anyway, that man can stay white. but to speak, at last, to our beloved hater girl. i think the first thing that opened the door for me is one of the initial descriptions we get of mercymorn.

The face beneath the icy parti-coloured hood was a prim, virginal oval; much in shape and feature like the shape of a saint’s face in a portrait, or a death mask. The nose and jaw and forehead were all carven and serene, and therefore had the same indifferent dullness of a well-formed statue.

i am fairly certain tamsyn is consciously trying to evoke one of the infinitely funny and also very beautiful medieval paintings or sculptures of the virgin mary (etc.) (divine conception: difficult mode, am I right, lads?). but for me, the refrain of mercy’s oval face is a great example of a descriptor that isn’t exclusive to whiteness. very practically, when i started looking for references to make humble sketches of mercymorn, i first turned to michelle dockery (expressive eyebrows! a face that can be cold and severe but then melts into heartbreaking, childish expression!) and then more and more to (an aged down!) kim seo hyung. (for the record, when i make stabs at augustine, i am usually drawing on a richard ii era fiona shaw, with dashes of young peter capaldi and perennially ancient jeremy irons. recently, my go-to for cytherea has been ophelia-era—of course—helena bonham carter.) but it’s rooted in more than just me dicking around in procreate. the idea of an asian mercymorn became more compelling to me when i considered how that would change the texture of her character. to try and be as brief as possible, there, as you may well be v familiar with yourself, are longstanding stereotypes of (largely east and south, but it all gets homogenized) asian immigrants being depicted as cold and unfeeling robots, as excelling only at rote memorization and lacking critical thinking or social skills, as being dangerous or suspicious or obnoxious over-achievers, and as, depending on the day, being too sexy or utterly sexless. (i am not claiming any of these are unique to the very broad category of ‘asian,’ just setting the table.) and i think mercymorn becomes really compelling reinterpretation and rebuke to expectations if she is asian. because she is so many of those things: overachieving med school graduate; someone who (though she seems to have excelled at the magicky part) gift comes from stubborn, rote memorization; someone deeply repressed; someone who is told and believes herself to be unfeeling and inhuman (”Every time you’ve said that I did not understand the human heart, that I was unfeeling, that I only knew worship without adoration”)—but is also a disaster of emotions, despite it all, and is driven by incredibly messy emotions and whose skills (the memorization, the drive to overachieve, even the repression) come from this vast and terrifying well of emotions that even she can’t really look at head-on. before mercymorn, i don’t know that i had seen these tropes reworked in exactly this way or thought to rethink these stereotypes in this way, and so that’s some of what mercymorn-as-asian does for me. (obviously caveat that i’m very strongly drawing from a north american context and i totally confess to not knowing what stereotypes are present in new zealand! but anecdotally through friends in australia and england, these stereotypes certainly seem present throughout the globe, and i would not be surprised if they were also present in nz. but just recognizing that!) i also, personally, find this a lot more satisfying than just going off tamsyn’s canon sheet and being like, yeah, got it, isaac is the one canonical east asian. that’s nice! that’s lovely! but it doesn’t really do anything for me or the narrative. i’m not upset about it! but the lyctors, those who lived pre-ressurection and lived closest to john and carry some of their biases with them, are people who have been shaped by a society where race is very present. vs. the younger 10,000 years out gen who ostensibly (though of course they are in a text written here and now) live in a “post-racial” society, at least from what we see within the house system. (i mean, i say this, but then i also feel like... have u met east asian christian converts. there is some eighth house energy there is all i will say. so, again, i just like to have fun.) re: the jewish thing, i am a hater girl myself and cannot like catholics have anything not ever (hashtag joking, tbc) and a) would love for a foot in and b) as myself and others have pointed out, mercymorn would love to kvetch, she’d be so good at it, she understands it implicitly and she deserves to have a community to kvetch with and c) as i think the inciting post for this ask pointed out she’d be so good at saying ‘oy vey’ and d) idk i just think it’s even funnier if a lapsed jewish woman and a nun walk into a bar and then kiss. in general, i also feel a vested interest in opening the door for mixed race readings of characters and one’s that, again, reinterpret or add to the texture of that character’s presence in text and are done in a thoughtful, fun, interesting way. i could possibly say more but i think this is enough for right now!! maybe!!! sorry this took me so long!! uhh but that’s a taste into my thought process, anyway, for how i like to interpret and reinterpret les lyctores and specifically best beloved hater mercymorn m. nolastname i love u. it is (obviously!) not the definitive or only interpretation, but is the one that currently speaks deepest to my soul. but i do love to see all kinds of interpretations and reinterpretations of our beloved necro-cast.

[my-maehem]

Ok 😅sorry . It's my fault . So rarely used word the taboo , i wrote wrongly . So , the Hogwarts Legacy now lot artists favorite now , painters/writers and i love it . Im reading a lot on AO3 and i dont understand why they why missing from every fanfiction the the "consequence of free love" . Realist , i know but would be huge turn in one story . Only Tamayula drawed Sebastian and Ominis as fathers . One guy shocked on me bec "they're minors" as he said.....yeah 😄they are who's kills , they do threesome or just traditionally (with MC) . They already wrote alrernative universes , same way they do everything...and there is the unspoken baby shield . The MC is a strong wich , only she can use anchient magic . Sebastian and Ominis too camed from strong / talented family . Their child could be more special , stronger bloodline . With the pregnancy whould came the interesting questions : Which one the father , when , how she'll hide from everyone in the 6th year, with illusion charm ? So thatswhy i asked ,why taboo the pregnancy subject for every artist if the "very detailed lovemaking" not shame ? 🥲

I never knew I couldn’t put community label on a ask… so… Warning: NSFW (talking smutty stuff)

You are perfectly fine! Thank you for more context, I think I understand your question more clearly now and oh boy— this is gonna be a long response

Now I wanna point out that I haven’t really read any actual full blown fanfics, at least ones that include underage smut as you’ve mentioned. The closet I’ve ever gotten was one shots and that’s it. I’m not a fanfic writer myself, I’ve only written some random head canons.

BUT! I have drawn somewhat naughty things, although not as smutty as what I’ve seen other artists do 👀 I do have a couple of… some… I guess you could call “teasing” artworks and I will do more but anyways that’s besides the point—

What I get from your ask is: Why don’t artists ever talk about the consequences after these smutty scenes? (Please correct me if I’m wrong)

Which is a fair question! You know if we are talking canon, this is late 1800’s we are talking about. They didn’t have a plan B or a healthy way to abort a pregnancy. But also there is the factor that there’s only a CHANCE you get pregnant. Now unless they’ve written in there fic like 6 smut scenes then yeah— it is a bit unrealistic unless the character is someone who actually can’t conceive any children (which would be so sad and angsty ngl)

Back then having intercourse before marriage was considered a sin, they believed that sex was gate kept by married people only. So… why not have one of the boys ask MC to marry her? Well you see… back then it was very common for young women and in this case girls to marry… but the man had to be 21 or older legally if they wanted to marry someone younger. So the boys can’t marry MC while they’re still in school.

Now, back to the question. Why don’t artists talk about the pregnancy? The truth is, it would probably impact the story in a negative way. Meaning that if MC has a child at 16, then she basically has a ball and chain on her ankle because she was seen as a widow (and many other words) which was seen as a HUGE red flag to others way back then. And the boys can’t do anything about her reputation… they basically just ruined it by making her pregnant before marriage.

““No sex before marriage!””

The thing is that back then it was taboo to talk about pregnancy and even sex for that matter. Specially when they’re young and not married. Those conversations were reserved for when they want to procreate.

Personally for me, I don’t think MC should be having a sex life at the age of 15 or 16. I mean don’t get me wrong, it can STILL happen, just because it wasn’t excepted back then doesn’t mean it never happened. I just don’t think teen mom really fits well with MC (or at least mine). Plus babies, although are cute, can be a huge pain in the ass while you are studying at Hogwarts while beating up poachers and killing trolls with the imperius curse

Now I do over analyze things you can thank my AP teach in hs for that. And this is only an opinion with a hint of research I did. You do not have to agree with me. As an artist I’m not ready to make that kind of content and this is just my way of thinking. I don’t speak for other artists, so if you want to write underage smut, and even a teen mom MC you do you! Don’t let my words dictate what’s right or wrong because in reality of it all, there is no right or wrong.

There can be other factors like:

Artists not feeling comfortable writing about pregnancy

Just wanting to write smut because they can

There might be hidden context that the artist is keeping secret until the right moment

They are literally writing in a AU where pregnancy can be avoided (modern AU for example)

We are talking about an AU where there are witches and wizards, there could easily be something that could prevent a pregnancy if you just make a HC

But I think it just all comes down to artists comfort level. I mean I’m comfortable with adults having kids because it makes sense… but at 15??? Unless they were married which is was very common for young females in the Victorian era, I don’t think MC having a child while still in school would be realistic in that time period. Honestly women going to school is unrealistic too but this is a different AU… things aren’t going to be realistic.

Just some random research I did because I love analyzing things: (this is based off of England)

A woman can get married at a very young age… BUT— the man has to be 21 or older if he wants to marry someone under the age of 21. Because in England of 1823, it was legal for a man and women to marry at the age of 21. Although it seems after 23 men could easily marry a female from 12 and up without parents consent (I know, sickening)

In the Victorian era, although it was common to see young women with older men, the average age a women would have a child is around the age 21-23

Females who got pregnant in their teens were actually punished for their “sins” and were actually forced to put their child up for adoption in some cases

It wasn’t common for people to have premarital sex until 1920