#probably. putting that there pre-emptively

[heartsburst]

god don't you hate when your disability is disabling, like who could have seen that coming :(

[dykealloy]

Trafalgar Law and Faith

Pre-emptive warning this is going to be another LONG metapost/analysis. There’s a lot I could talk about here but for the sake of structure I’m going to split this into three sections, i.e. the main ‘faith transitions’ that Law has gone through in the narrative thus far: 1. Flevance (catalyst for loss of religious faith), 2. Corasan (martyr that figuratively and literally saves law by giving him something to live for, introducing the will of D.), and 3. Luffy (cementing faith in this new belief system and regaining trust in the goodness of humanity through the living embodiment of everything Corasan believed in).

Before we get into all that though, let’s establish that Christianity is a thing in one piece. Speedrunning through some visual examples that come to mind; the Flevance church and nun (holding a celtic cross - censored in the anime version), a nun literally praying to God right before Marineford, Vinsmoke Sora’s grave marked with a cross (is op Christianity a northern thing?), Usopp and Chopper having crucifixes and holy water whenever ghostly stuff is brought up, Kuma and his trusty bible, the religious symbols on Kikoku’s hilt (could instead be more a reference to the Red Cross/symbol of humanitarian and medical aid as a doctor) and especially in whatever Mihawk’s got going on (though this could just be a Japanese cultural thing with Christianity being a minority religion or Oda just finding that some of the iconography, y’know. looks cool). There are also many other references to other religions e.g. hinduism, shintoism, buddhism, etc. Whether op forms of religion are the same as the real-world ones is debatable, and yes, Law being canonically raised as a devout catholic schoolboy with all the religious trauma associated with that is comical, but let’s take it all unironically for a hot minute. For fun. 

1. Flevance

Law’s birthplace (Flevance) is described as being, at one point, “a very wealthy country with an unearthly beauty about it, with pure white soil and plants, like some kind of snow kingdom in a fairy tale.” The country’s wealth came from the very bedrock it sits on — white lead, which could be used to make various high quality products like tableware, cosmetics, weapons etc. When the wider world heard about this everyone wanted a piece of Flevance (the World Government also getting involved with distribution), and very quickly white lead became a “bottomless well of money”. So, hooray. Law gets to grow up in a rich city in a big house with educated doctor parents and probably gets to go to private school on weekdays and festivals with his family on weekends. One problem. In their greed, the Government and royalty have been knowingly hiding the truth about this supposed goldmine from the beginning. White lead is a toxic poison. Mining it from the ground over the last century and putting it in so many everyday products has resulted in it accumulating in the citizens’ bodies and leading to amber lead sickness, shortening their life-span with each successive generation – with the children of Law’s generation fated to die out before they reach adulthood.

In the bible (especially in the old testament), God often inflicted these insanely disastrous events upon humanity, usually as some kind of punishment for their wrongdoings or as a test of their faith. Some events of which include (but are not limited to): famine, outbreaks of disease and natural disasters (e.g. hail, wildfire, earthquakes, floods). Historically, these stories played a key role in how humanity interpreted meaning from horrible disasters (e.g. assuming bubonic plague was sent as a punishment by god). Fire imagery is very common among these disasters as a representation for hell, which is clearly reflected in the destruction of Flevance.

Sometimes these disasters had sole survivors act as messengers for God. With that context, let’s put ourselves back in the shoes of a ten-year old Law. Raised religious, freshly traumatised from losing his home, his devout family, all the comforts of his life, and having the outside world completely abandon him, this kind of event is likely going to be processed as some form of divine punishment. Law stumbles through hell, finds all his dead classmates, and the last words of sister nun echo through to him here. Merciful and salvation are huge catholic buzzwords – promises of holy compassion, deliverance and hope – and all of it fire and smoke and riddled with bullet holes before him. A genocide funded, perpetuated and covered up by the same body Law was promised was there to save them. And the only reason Law hadn’t died with them was because he wanted to stay with his little sister Lami, who was on her deathbed, and his parents, who were themselves trying to help the afflicted citizens, Law’s own father (before he was shot and killed alongside his mother) begging for more doctors, fresh blood, anything the world can offer, and asking “Why doesn’t the government announce to everyone that white lead is not infectious?”

Oftentimes (and in the case of Law), when there’s a promise of heavenly intervention or some miracle that doesn’t follow through, it results in an ultimate feeling of betrayal and anger. Unfortunately a lot of Catholic teachings also use a lot of guilt, essentially teaching people that the bad things that happen to you are your fault and there needs to be some sort of penance (queue Law’s survivor’s guilt that carries on down the road). But also, if this was supposed to be some divine punishment, for what exactly? For the town being blinded by the incredible wealth they were sitting on? Being lied to? Continuing to extract their livelihood, ignorant of its dangers? Punishment for who? His parents? His innocent little sister? For ten year-old Law? These people who believed in God, who were good people? That’s fucking stupid. None of these people suffered and died for any reason at all — certainly not for a sacred one. God hadn’t saved a single one of them. Law had to crawl out of hell himself by sneaking over the border under a mound of corpses.

Given everything that happened here, Law has every reason to fall into nihilism, and you can see how his upbringing would’ve bred a lot of the feelings of guilt, anger and resentment that you still see in Law (which would suggest that though this is where he likely cuts ties with the religious/Catholic component of his faith, growing up with these teachings in his formative years would definitely influence underlying beliefs about how the world works, and how Law behaves and subconsciously processes information), but at the same time, there’s usually some form of redemption and changes to how these patterns of behaviour can be approached later down the line.

2. Corasan

Fresh off witnessing his whole world burning down around him, Law meets Corazon at the very bottom of this pit of self-destructive rage and unprocessed grief. Rosinante himself mentions to Sengoku that the hatred in Law at this time reminded him of his brother, but beyond the anger, harsh pessimism, vengefulness, I think you have to reach to find similarities between them. You can see some fragments of Doffy in Law down the line at times, with Law seeming to enjoy violence (especially against the navy, but given what they did to Flevance, it’s some well-deserved retribution for Law imo), but I’m not so sure it’s the cruelty so much as it is the high he gets off his own flavour of justice. Doctor’s Hippocratic oath maybe, but never once does Law like seeing others die (even at this point, he’s in tears next to a dead body, even though he’s the one holding the knife), and later on in Wano he makes it explicitly clear to Zoro that he’d rather see the mission fail than have any of them end up dead.  

Little Law wanted to destroy the world and everything in it, but thinking rationally, what other choice did this kid have? He had no remaining family, was doomed to die before he hit puberty due to a terminal illness, was perceived as an infectious subhuman that most doctors would’ve sooner tried to exterminate than help. To Law, the world had turned its back on him – considering him a monster for simply surviving. He has all this hatred and pain boiling away with him with no tangible target to direct it towards. And this is the first clear cut rejection of faith that we see in Law. Any concept of a merciful God had just died. What God would allow this? Why is Law alive (a question that he repeats to himself throughout his life), why are these scumbags alive, why is the world going on spinning as if nothing has happened when his whole world had gone up in flames, why does anyone at all get to be here when everything I loved is gone? And it’s far easier to fall into a despondent nihilistic stupor than it is to work through any of that, and what’s the point in trying to process and move on from it, when there’s no hope for a future for Law anyway? When the only thing waiting ahead is more pain? What was this, if not a punishment? He’s supposed to be some messenger for God? How about fuck God, or whatever entity that exists that made him suffer this. Law’s not going to be a messenger for shit, thanks, he’d rather be their monster, he’d rather watch the world burn.

Corazon survives Law’s stabbing and doesn’t rat the little shit out (to Law’s confusion). It’s business as usual for another two years, then, one day Rosinante overhears his true name - Trafalgar “D” Water Law, and everything changes. On the back of his own beliefs, Rosinante dedicates himself to making sure Law a) lives and b) doesn’t become his brother. Law’s relatively short six month stint with Corasan forms the basis of Law’s new creed going forward, and all it took was a bit of kindness, love and humanity when the rest of the world had abandoned him. In the end Rosinante doesn’t save Law for the will of D. and the storm he’s predicted to bring in the future (as Law suspects), but he certainly believes in it, and the strength of Corasan’s conviction transfers right over to Law when he forces the ope ope fruit down the kid’s throat to heal him, tells Law he loves him, then sacrifices himself to set Law free.

Law clings to that love he was given, he takes all these fundamental teachings and ways of thinking in regards to faith that were drilled into him during his youth, rejects the religion element and applies just about everything else to Corasan. He holds onto the last shreds of what Corasan leaves him with. Corasan becomes his “benefactor” (he gave my my heart), his saviour, his martyr. 

And the crazy thing is, Rosinante was never really this saint Law makes him out to be. Law hated the clutz when they first met (mostly on account of Corazon throwing him through a glass window down at least two stories and into a pile of scrap). Corazon initially showed nothing but contempt for his presence (to ward him and the other children away from the Donquixote family, but these are still extreme measures). And it wasn’t until after learning Law’s name that Rosinante dragged him kicking, crying and screaming from hospital to burning hospital (not very saintlike in of itself), even after Law begged him to stop. Rosinante became Law’s saviour partly because of his belief in the will of D., and probably due to some guilt being a Donquixote, but mostly because he has always had a bleeding heart and he pitied (and had very quickly come to love) this angry, sick, deeply lost little kid. All this to say that Law’s faith in Corasan – this saintlike figure Law upholds him as in the future and the lengths he’s willing to go to avenge him/fulfil Rosinante’s purpose reflects the strength of the absolute beliefs Law would’ve been raised with in regards to God.  

Whether it be out of survivor’s guilt (just one more body to heap on top of the Flevance pile), his love for Corasan, or for the sake of taking vengeance on the man that took away the one good thing he’d been able to regain in his miserable life, Law adopts Corasan’s will, the will of D. (which in of itself seems divine in nature), incorporates it into his new belief system, actively takes on the role of the divine punisher/justiciar and dedicates his life to bringing down Doflamingo.

3. Luffy

Catholicism dictates that the entirety of someone’s beliefs should be dedicated to one true cause (that cause being God) and expects people to ride on that, letting it carry them through life, give them hope, purpose, etc. But a lot of former Catholics choose instead to find that through something else. Corasan ignited the spark in Law’s faith around the will of D., but it’s not until he meets Luffy that this really becomes something that feels tangible and real for Law.

When Law saved Luffy in Marineford (putting the heart crew in danger for a stranger he met once), he said he did so “on a whim”, but that seems incredibly ooc for Law — this man that pretty much planned out how the rest of his life would go after the dust of Corasan’s death settled and he came to terms with the fact he wasn’t going to die at age thirteen like he’d originally thought. Circling back to the concept of Law being a sole survivor/messenger for God, it is interesting that Law is the one to seek out Luffy (given that Luffy is usually always the one either being abandoned by people or recruiting his crewmates), and Law is ultimately the catalyst for pulling him towards Dressrosa and Wano. There must be a REASON that led to Law deciding Luffy to be the most viable option out of the Worst Generation for an alliance (beyond blind trust in an unhinged captain that just so happens to also bear the initial D, and Luffy being one of the few captains crazy enough to go along with what Law was cooking up). 

Law undoubtedly would’ve kept a peripheral eye on Luffy for some time before officially meeting him due to him being a rising competitor pirate and another “D” (I imagine the news of his utterly insane exploits would’ve made good reading material, too). The first time Law lays eyes on Luffy in Sabaody though, he still blows all expectations out of the water — crashing headfirst into the crowd of a slave auction and immediately committing a felony against a member of the most powerful upper one percent.

The world nobles are at an “untouchable God” tier in terms of class standing and believe it’s only natural for them to be entitled to whatever and whoever they want in this world that’s beneath them – the same kind of self-aggrandizing false divinity that Law has a a lot of repressed rage towards and that the will of D. is fated to oppose, so this, understandably, is a highly compelling first encounter, but it’s really only an initiating factor for what ultimately draws Law to Luffy. From their very first meeting (and probably before then, in the news stories and rumours Law likely picked up on), it’s made abundantly clear that Luffy does what he wants without a second’s hesitation, no matter the consequences, simply because he feels it is the right thing to do. Some call this an iron will, Law would be more inclined to call it willful stupidity and trouble, but time after time Luffy somehow manages to pull off what Law would best describe as “miracles”. And Law believes the straw hats just might be the ones to drum up another one for him.

Luffy’s also got a lot of passing resemblances to Corasan going for him, e.g. inherently kind, compassionate liberators with big dumb hearts and wide goofy smiles in spite of everything they’ve been through, treating Law as nakama and saving his life despite his protests etc. All of which I’m sure Law hasn’t been completely unaffected by despite the high walls he puts up. And the more Law learned about Luffy the more it probably became clear that he is the antithesis to Doflamingo, i.e. what makes Luffy so goddamn dangerous and terrifying beyond his physical power is his ability to make friends with a simple kind of unconditional love that gets reciprocated enough so that these friends are willing to die for him.

Luffy agrees to the alliance, they successfully blow up Caesar’s base, and head off to Dressrosa. Now’s the time I should bring up that it’s taught in Catholicism that self sacrifice is the ultimate heavenly deed, and here Law is undoubtedly prepared to be a martyr for his cause. Law sends away his crew to Zou before Punk Hazard with the expectations that he’d never see them. He cultivates a fierce emotional detachment against Luffy’s willingness to bring him into the fold of the straw hats, and is resolute in that when the time comes, he will handle this himself, he will carry out Corasan’s will, and if he has to die for it, he will die with Corazon’s name plastered on his back. (Note here that Christianity is contradictory in that Law being this ready to die here is a sin, because revenge and suicide are highly discouraged, so you could say that by avenging and dying for his saviour, Law would be committing both the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate sin).  

Things get very dicey for Law in Dressrosa, to put it lightly. Doflamingo reveals that he was a celestial dragon (linking back into the will of D. “enemy of the Gods” notion), puts Law on the backfoot and gives him a thorough beating before shooting Law with a couple dozen white lead bullets in front of Luffy (because even when he’s winning Doffy loves to be a cunt about it). By the time Doflamingo is cuffing Law to the heart seat, it’s all looking pretty grim, and it’s very apparent when Luffy shows up to save him, that he is ready to die. 

Law here has given up. He spent years planning his revenge for Corasan, but he lost, and he has very little left in the tank (physically, emotionally, spiritually). But Luffy doesn’t listen. Luffy who doesn’t think, doesn’t care, who trampled all over Law’s carefully laid out plan from the get-go and who is willing to take on Doflamingo single handedly for the simple slight that he dared to harm Luffy’s friend Law. Law will never find peace in his own demise because Luffy doesn’t do peaceful. He does loud and unashamed and open with no rhyme or reason other than the excruciatingly simply fact that he loves people and he thinks the people he loves deserve to have good lives. Luffy chucks Law over his shoulder and drags an injured Law across the city despite his protests (sound familiar?) and in the process inspires the fighting spirit in Law again.

When Law confronts Doflamingo again with Luffy in tow, Law’s faith in Luffy confounds him. The last Doflamingo remembers of Law is this beautifully moldable dark pit of grief and rage who’d given up on believing, period – who wanted the world destroyed. Not so long ago, Law had been a candidate for Doflamingo’s next protégé. Now?

THIS is the action (grinning, staring down the barrel of a gun, flipping Doffy off as he tells him in not so many words that he may kill Law but he will never beat Luffy), Law’s unshakeable faith in the face of his own death is what has Doflamingo realising he will never regain control of Law again – is what incites Doflamingo to go from breaking Law down so he can build him back up again, to conceding defeat and outright killing him. 

The trust that Luffy inspires in Law and the way he talks about Luffy (Luffy being this powerful, miracle-inducing liberator that Law can’t comprehend but follows anyway, Law laying down his hopes on him, weaponizing the will of D. to try and provoke fear from Doffy), is very reminiscent of the awe and faith talked about in scripture. Law discovers the feelings of comfort and hope that Catholicism was supposed to give him in Luffy, but Law’s belief in Luffy is a direct rejection of those teachings. Rejection by believing in a real life person as opposed to the divinity he was taught about. He’s also cementing his belief in the will of D., thus rejecting Doflamingo and all the people that embody the sort of “all powerful” divinity that he abhors (i.e. celestial dragons, Kaido, the Gorōsei/five elders) for the embodiment of hope and humanity. 

When Law survives (again), he expresses he’d rather see Luffy beat Doflamingo with his own eyes or die with Luffy if he loses than leave. Then he watches, after all this talk of miracles, looking up in reverence as Luffy delivers, bright as the sun, haloed by the bars of a cage that’s haunted him for over a decade, Corasan’s words echoing at the back of his mind. God had never saved or freed Law, but Corasan was there for him, the heart crew was there, Luffy was there. And this is Law’s biggest, clearest rejection of religion – this newfound faith in humanity. 

This faith in Luffy is put to the test again in Wano when Luffy is struck down by Kaido, but Law never truly stops believing that he’ll make a comeback. Even when the straw hats doubt whether he’s alive or not, something tells him Luffy’s not dead, and he holds onto that hope. 

We also have the whole nika/joyboy backstory which really only reinforces all of this imagery/god-fearing looks of awe from Law and this idea of Luffy who is this perfect juxtaposition of empathetic and kind to incredibly fearsome fire and brimstone fighter. And regardless of whether you’re into the ship or not this is the impetus of Law’s relationship with Luffy for me, because here’s Luffy who has every right to have a chip on his shoulder and be downtrodden about all the injustices against him, here’s this little guy who against all odds, in the darkest of places, embodies light and hope and kindness and proves to Law that there will be hard times but there IS a happy ending at the end of the tunnel, despite it all. And everytime Luffy rises to the insurmountable challenge and wins, it just further cements that the will of D. is alive, that Corasan was right, that there's something redeemable in Law, a reason why he was worth saving, even if Law doesn’t understand it quite yet. 

[dragonmuse]

How to be a Dirtbag Fic Writer

I got to do some talking about writing today and I couldn’t stop thinking about it so here are my full thoughts on the matter of being a dirtbag fic writer.

Being the disorganized thoughts of someone two and a half decades into the beautiful mess that is writing fanfic (and a few non-fanfic things too).

What is a dirtbag fic writer? 

 I am talking about someone who is not cleaning up anything. We show up filthy, fresh out of rooting around in the garden of our imaginations. We probably smell a little from work. We will hand you our hard grown fruits, but we have not washed them and we carried them in the bottom upturned parts of our t-shirts. The fruit is a little bruised. It’s not cut up or put in a bowl yet. But we got it in the house! It’s here. Someone can eat it.  

Why dirtbag it? Because the fruit gets in the house. If you’re hemming and hawing, if the idea you want to do seems to be big or you want it perfect and shiny. If you’re imagining a ten thousand step process, so you’re not taking the first step? Dirtbag it. 

How do I dirtbag? 

That’s the best part. You just write. Sit down. One word after the other. No outline, no plan, no destination. No thought of editing. Just word vomit. Every word is a good word. It’a word that wasn’t there before. Grammar sucks? Who cares. Can’t think of the perfect word? Fuck it, put in the simplest version of what you mean. 

Write the idea that you love. The one thing you want to say. Has it been done 3000000 times? WHO CARES human history is long, every idea has been done, probably more than twice. YOU have never written it before. It’s your grubby potato that you clawed out of the ground and guess what someone can still make it into delicious french fries. 

Now here’s the critical part. Write as much as you can squeeze out of your brain. One word in front of the other. 

And then I challenge you this: at most, read it over once and then put it into the world. Just as it is. AND THIS IS IMPORTANT: DO IT WITHOUT APOLOGY OR CAVEAT.  I challenge you, beautiful dirtbag to not pre-emptively apologize. Do not make your work lesser. THAT IS YOUR POTATO! It has eyes and roots and dirt clinging to it because that is what happens.  We are dirtbagging it today. Hell really confused people at do #dirtbagwriter on it.  

Dirtbag writes id, base, lizard brain. Dig in the fertile garden of your imagination. What is the story you tell yourself before you fall asleep? What’s your anxiety this week? Your fantasy? What is going well? What do you wish things looked like? Who is the feral imaginary character you’ve been crafting to take your frustrations and joys out on? 

But, VEE, I wish to have an editor and an outline, use a cool software like scrivener instead of retching up onto a google doc and making it look NICE and PRETTY!

COOL! DO THAT THEN! IF YOU’RE ACTUALLY DOING IT! You should have a process! That’s cool and healthy and necessary for sustainable writing. But if you’re not writing because all of that seems too much? THEN DON’T. 

Did you know fic is free? That we do this from love? From sheer desire? For the love of the game? If you have a process, and the words are flowing, amazing, I love that for you, you don’t need this essay.  If you don’t, let us continue. 

What does dirtbag writing look like? 

It’s messy. It’s a little raw and tatty around the edges sometimes. It’s weird.  It’s someone else’s first draft. Maybe it winds up being your first draft, Idek, that’s your business. 

It’s jokes that make YOU laugh. It’s drama that would make YOU cry if you read it. You are your first commenter. You are your first audience (and possibly continuing pleasure! If you don’t go back and reread your own work sometimes, you might be missing out on one of your favorite authors cause you wrote it for you! Wait until you’re not so close to it. Years sometimes. Then hey, maybe some of this is pretty dang good actually.) 

It has mistakes. 

Dirtbags make mistakes, but dirtbags have published pieces. They have things other people can read out there. 

What if I don’t get good feedback? 

Look, the most likely outcome of any new, untried fic writer (and even established writers trying something new-ish)  is that you get no feedback. That’s real. Silence. It’s eerie, it’s terrible, it sucks. I don’t want to pretend it doesn’t. But nothing is not negative. It’s a big fic-y ocean out there and we are all wee itty-bitty-sometimes-with-titty fishes.  

You should still do it all over again. And again. And again. You get better at writing by writing. You just do. Nothing else replaces it. If your well is dry? Fill it with new things. Go do something new, read a new kind of book, watch a new film,  (libraries have so much good shit, you don’t even have to spend money for so many things if you have a library card), just go for a walk in a new direction. Stimulate yourself. Got a cup of something hot and eavesdrop on conversations. Refill yourself with newness. 

And hey, speaking of, do you leave comments? Because you get what you give. You can build relationships with people by commenting and that builds community and community means places to get feedback in the end. Comments are gold. They are all we are paid in. Tip your writers with ‘extra kudos’ or ‘this made me laugh’. And hey, when you go back for a re-read so you can tell them your favorite part? Ask yourself how they made that favorite part? What do you like about it?  Tone? Metaphor? The structure? Reading teaches us how to write too! 

BUT, okay. Sometimes. Sometimes there is actual bad feedback and people suck. 

You know the best part about being a dirtbag? Unrepentant block, delete, goodbye. You don’t own anyone with a shitty opinion any of your precious time on this earth. You did it for free, you gave them your dirty, but still delicious fruit and they went ‘ew, this is a dirty strawberry, how could you not make a clean tomato?”  Because you didn’t plant fucking tomatoes, did you? Don’t fight, don’t engage. Block. Delete. Goodbye. 

If someone in person, looked you in the eye when you brought them a plate of food to share at a party and they said “Why didn’t you bring me MY favorite? This isn’t cooked well at all.” You would probably write up a Reddit AiTA question about it just to hear five thousand people say they were an asshole.   Fic is no different 

And hey, when you dirtbag it? You know you did. It’s not your most cleaned up perfect version. So who cares what they think? You might make it more shiny and polished next time! You might NOT. 

Ok, but what if I don’t finish it? 

Fuck it, post it anyway. 

What if it’s bad? 

Fuck it, post it anyway. 

What if it doesn’t make sense? 

That’s ART, baby. Fuck it, post it anyway. 

What if what I want to write doesn’t work with current fandom norms? 

Then someone out there probably needs it!  And what the hell is this? The western canon? FUCK IT POST IT ANYWAY* 

*Basic human decency is not a ‘fandom norm’. Don’t be racist, sexist, ableist, fat shaming, classist or shitty about anyone's identity on main, okay? Dirtbag writers are KIND first and foremost. Someone saying you are stepping into shit about their identity is not the same as unsolicited crappy feedback about pairings. In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut: "God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

You’re being very flippant about something that’s scary. 

I know. I know I am. I know it can be scary. But no risk, no reward and hell, you aren’t using your goddamn legal name on the internet are you? (please for the love of fuck do not be using your legal name to write fic) You’ve got on a mask. You’re a superhero. With dirt on your cape. 

That niche thing that you think no one cares about? Guaranteed you will find someone else in the world who wants it. Maybe they won’t find it right away. Maybe they will be too shy to comment or even hit a button. But your dirty potato will stick with them. They will make french fries in their head.

You have an audience. But they can’t find you if you have nothing out there. 

Go forth. Make. 

You have some errors in this essay. 

PROBABLY CAUSE I DIRTBAGGED IT.  But I picked this strawberry for you out of my brain, so I hope you run it under some cold water and find the good bits and have a nice snack. Or throw it away. Or use it to plant more strawberries (I know that’s not how strawberries work, metaphors break when stretched).  

#dirtbagwriter 

Go forth and MAKE

[bonefall]

It's certainly a writing choice to make a book about a mother's grief while ignoring her relationship with her remaining daughter. Alas, Occam's razor strikes again. Do you think they're going to suddenly give Thriftear more relevance in Star? I'm looking forward to seeing how you flesh her out, I've always loved how much care you put into family dynamics no matter how small they are in the grander scheme of things.

I'm honestly quite cynical on this front. We probably won't get a lot of Thrifty in Star. I think what's going to happen to Canon!Thriftear from this point out is that she is going to lose any personality traits that really make her unique as she transitions into becoming Moonpaw's mother.

She will be a mild-mannered, kind woman who is neither too harsh or too permissive. Any personality flaws she retains will just be related to what the plot requires Moonpaw to feel negative about. If we're all right and Moonie is a weirdgirl, then Thriftear will be a Mom Who Just Doesn't Understand.

I hope I'm proven wrong, but call it a hunch based on the detail we DID get from Ivypool's Heart; "Compared to her interesting siblings who are too neat and too messy, Thriftear cleans her den in the most normal way." Goldilocks middle child.

In any case,

I find family dynamics to be one of the most important aspects of BB, so anything I adapt that involves Ivypool is gonna involve Thriftear too and that is a PROMISE.

In BB, Ivypool is the adopted child of Lionblaze and Cinderheart. It was only revealed in BB!ASC that she is the forbidden child of Jayfeather and Poppyfrost.

This means she is fiercely Firekin. Squilf has always been her grandmother-- BB!Lionblaze was adamant about that, when Brambleclaw disowned him.

Fernsong is an ex-kittypet, and the primary parent of the kittens. Their "Mi."

This fixed Moonpaw's parentage problems pre-emptively. Bayshine and Thriftear are NOT cousins in BB

HOWEVER I STILL SAID NO.

It's still a little up in the air, but I'm leaning HEAVILY towards Bayshine and FLIPCLAW being the parents of Moonpaw. Two very silly dads and their weird child.

If the dynamic between Moonpaw and her parents ends up being more distant or unhealthy though-- it'll probably be Thriftear and Plumstone.

BB!Thriftear has a VERY strong personality in my mind. She's Firekin and proud. Bristlefrost is gone and she is dedicated to carrying on her strength and ambition in her place.

Since they were young, they both planned on doing big things in the Clan. Thriftear is serious and a bit sarcastic, intense personality.

Plumstone has just as much raw ambition, but in a sort of laid-back, authoritative way.

As a couple, they're fantastic at "Good Cop/Bad Cop" plays. It doesn't matter how hard it looks like the two of them are fighting-- it's a trap!

They will ALWAYS end up turning a united front on you. They are terrifyingly good at working as a team.

So, bottom line is, I'm not giving this up to accommodate canon unless they end up giving me something REAL interesting. I'm very fond of the BB!Ivykin family!

[vashtijoy]

Hi! Pre-emptive sorry for the long ask- I don't know if you've answered this before but I was scrolling through your blog and in one of your posts you note that the brief bit we see of Akira's hometown has high rise buildings, which implies it's a city. I could've sworn there was in game dialogue calling him a country boy though or referencing him being from a rural area? Is there something in the Japanese text to suggest these are meant to be taken as jokes (I.E. protag is from a city, but it's not as big as Tokyo so he's playfully considered 'rural') or is this a case of the game devs simply not considering what buildings they had in the background of that scene?

Hello! First of all, I think it's insanely unlikely that the game devs just forgot Joker was meant to be from a shack on top of a mountain and accidentally put him in a city. Maybe they didn't have time to design a farm and shoved him in a random cityscape instead? Well, maybe. I would at least have pasted in a couple more trees.

So what do we know about this?

Sojiro calls Joker 田舎もん inakamon, short for 田舎者 inakamono—someone from the countryside; someone provincial. This is what's translated as "country boy", or "country bumpkin". Chihaya uses it about herself, and Chihaya I think is certainly meant to be very rural. The Adorable Woman and Rural Young Man in Shibuya Station use inaka a lot:

His name did not originally use inakamono or similar, by the way—he's the 上京してきた青年 joukyou shite kita seinen, "the young man who's moved to Tokyo". Note the moving-up kanji there, 上, lol—this is not a sideways move, it's a definite move up.

so what is the inaka?

In short, the inaka can be the remote countryside—but it can also just be your hometown, of any description. It can be legit anywhere that isn't Tokyo. Here's Tofugu:

My mouth was hanging open and I know I was being rude, but it was really hard to pull myself together. The woman I was speaking with was from one of the top Japanese Universities. She has had international relationships, traveled the world, and done work that most foreign anime fans would kill to see. Someone with her experiences, to me, should be open-minded about other cultures and lifestyles. Just the same, I can't help but to be bothered by what she said: "I feel like anything outside Tokyo's 23 wards is inaka." [...] Often, people usually just use what they read in the dictionary, but I learned fast that "countryside" in American English is much different than in Japanese English. For me, countryside means farms. Countryside is driving to see your closest neighbor, riding tractors for work and pleasure, and being able to immediately tell who's from your town just by looking at them. When I say this to Japanese people and ask them to explain inaka, the joke is always the same: "Inaka is anything outside of Tokyo." Osaka and Kyoto, for many, aren't inaka, but Sapporo, which is one of the few parts of the country where this legendary thing called "insulated housing" exists, is inaka. [...] So you might be wondering how "bad" it really is out here. Truthfully, I'm living in a city, at least by American standards. Great bus and train systems, tons of malls and movie theaters, some of the major stores people visit Tokyo to see, game centers, golfing… and a few rice paddies. Not many, but there are some. Imagine a fashionable mall, famous manga store, well-respected school with a strong baseball team, and major supermarket, all within walking distance, with maybe one field of rice. Honestly, the place is so city that I don't think I would willingly eat any rice that grew in that field. I swear, it's in front of a bus stop.

So, tl;dr: if you aren't in Tokyo, Osaka or Kyoto, you're probably in the inaka—at least to someone's mind. You can be somewhere that looks to us in every way like a city, and be in the inaka. And if you pick up sticks and move to Tokyo? Then you have a good chance of being jibed about being a "country boy".

so what is joker's inaka like?

[Joker] 田舎に帰りたい inaka ni kaeritai I miss the country... [lit. I want to go back to the inaka.] Ryuji ハハ、都会の洗礼ってか? haha, tokai no senrei tte ka? Hah. Not used to the big city yet, huh? [lit. Haha, so this is your first time in the city?]

We don't get a huge amount of detail in-game about Joker's home. Besides Sojiro's "country boy", Ryuji has a couple of comments. Here's another:

Ryuji あれ? お前ン家ってわりと田舎? are? omae n uchi tte wari to inaka? Wait a sec, your hometown isn't near the countryside, is it? [lit. isn't your place relatively countrified?] Ryuji いや、大自然でランニング練習とか気持ち良さそうだなーって。 iya, daishizen de ranningu renshuu to ka kimochi yasasou da naa tte I was just thinkin' it'd be great to run an' train somewhere out where it's all big, naturey open space. [lit. no, I thought it seemed like it'd feel great to train in the great outdoors and stuff.]

(I think something may be off here with that translation of daishizen, which seems to connote "the great outdoors", "a vast wilderness", etc, as well as just meaning "nature" (the sort you get out into) more generally". The word has been split up as if Ryuji was just saying "big nature" for some reason, like if you thought "the great outdoors" meant "the outdoors is great :D".)

But we can see from Ryuji's statement that Joker's home is wari to inaka, "relatively countrified", "kind of countrified"—it's more the country than Tokyo is, but it's probably not the ass end of nowhere, either. It's somewhere Ryuji pictures getting out into nature—but even if that's accurate and not just in Ryuji's city-boy head, that again doesn't connote "ass end of nowhere"; a lot of very built-up places are startlingly close to farmland or to nature, as with the putative rice field at the bus stop that we read about earlier.

the artbook picture

There is, of course, a picture of Joker's home in the artbook:

That doesn't scream "rural" to me—though it's also not the built-up area we see him in with Shido. It backs onto a cliff, it's very green. It's clearly a row of houses on a street, maybe in a fancy suburb on the edge of the city?

It's a nice house, at any rate. Joker moving into Sojiro's attic, with his clothes in a box, will have been a harsh step down.

Another detail from this image before we move on:

Look at this board. We can make out what it says. We can even, just possibly, make out a town name there...

日立自治会 掲示板 hitachi jichikai keijiban Hitachi Neighbourhood Association noticeboard

自治会 jichikai—neighbourhood associations. As you'd expect, they tend to be organised at the very local level—so Hitachi is likely to be a small district within a larger city, rather than (say) the city of Hitachi in Ibaraki Prefecture.

his city has a name guys i can't believe it lmao

the coup de grace

But there's one question I think really puts the nail in the coffin here: WTF was Shido doing in the middle of nowhere?

It's totally plausible that Joker came from a remote farm in the country, or a tiny village in far northern Honshu. But what is there in that to attract Shido? Like... Shido seems kind of an indoor guy, y'know?

He goes where his business is. He goes where the money is. It's difficult for me to picture him going to random rural areas with nobody to schmooze, with what I'm sure he'd consider to be poor facilities and shitty hotels.

Even if he did stoop to visit somewhere like that, by the time he was on his off hours getting pissed (in both senses) and attacking women, wouldn't he have gone back to civilisation?—back to the city?

conclusion??

This place Joker is wandering after dark doesn't look like The Country. It looks quite built up. I'd say it's the centre of a regional city or large town—with those nice houses we just looked at set off in suburbs along its edge. Look at this place:

It really does look like a less cramped version of Yongen-jaya, down to the trees. I don't think they spent too long on this area, but I also don't think it's inaccurate.

By the way, that "Hometown Neighbourhood" was originally 実家近くの住宅地 jikka chikaku no juutakuchi—"residential area near home". So this is not where Joker lived with his parents; it's an area close by. Like he says, he's on his way home late.

Where was he? We never find out. He has what looks like a school bag, well before his nasty crime days. Maybe he was visiting a friend we never hear about again. Maybe he was at cram school. But he's gone to this built-up part of town to do something there.

My guess would be that he lived in some prefectural capital or other. That's why Shido is there. I'd also guess that it's one of the Kanto prefectures, since the further you go from Tokyo, the less likely it becomes that Joker would have been sent to Tokyo for his probation, whether Sojiro was a friend of a friend or not.

As ever, all of this is for information only, and if you want to do something else superior in every way, you definitely should. At the end of the day Joker's a silent protagonist player insert, who can be from absolutely anywhere and as gay as you like. Let a thousand Jokers bloom.

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2024/01/17)—first posted.

[nothorses]

What is your opinion on terf blocklists, where every one on there at the time had clear and intentional radfem beliefs pushing shitty ideas about trans people and easily identifiable as to what exactly they believe via what they say and circulate and who they constantly reblog shitty things about trans people from?

I promise this is a genuine good faith question; I want to understand if the thing I've been taught be others to do with the purported intention of eliminating platforms for terfs to protect ourselves and others is actually helpful or if that also has far reaching consequences I hadn't considered before. I'm trying to think about it but struggling with the idea I got taught to do them/follow them (blocklists) for being to identify correctly and block, not harass. But do the harms of encouraging that approach actually outweigh the benefits and that doesn't change even if the blocklist is for actual bigots?

Again, genuine question. Trying to learn.

I think the problem here is less in how a blocklist is constructed; it's not hard to imagine that a list can be made under strict enough criteria, with enough careful vetting, to contain only Genuinely Bad People- or at least people who would not object to being placed in the category of that list. It's also not hard to come up with categories of people that feel morally reprehensible enough, and unattached from any marginalized identity enough, to be "safe" to target: it would be absurd to argue against a "Nazi blocklist" that contains only self-proclaimed Nazis.

The problem also isn't really in how blocklists are intended to be used; it's pretty fair that someone might want a list of people to block pre-emptively in order to avoid harassment, particularly when that harassment is bigoted. It's not hard to imagine that someone making such a list is doing so with the intent that it only be used for blocking, and that they might even make an effort to say as much in the post. And at that point, is it really their fault if someone goes against their clearly-stated wishes?

The problem is that a blocklist is, by fundamental design, "free research". It's put forth entirely so other people do not have to do their own research, which means the entire premise discourages people from doing that research.

You aren't offering up a list of people that others should go look into and form their own opinion about, you're offering up a list of people you already did the research on so people can copy/paste and be done with it. It would be counterproductive- and frankly silly- to post a blocklist with some "but make sure to double check these yourself!" disclaimer, because like, that's not the point of the list. Nobody is going to do that. Even if they did, they're looking into these people under the assumption that there is something to find; everything is going to look suspicious in a way it never would have without that framing.

The question isn't whether a blocklist can be made with good intentions and due diligence; the question is whether it can be made with ill intent or sloppy execution, whether anyone can tell the difference, how likely they are to actually check, what you're doing with that list, and what impact your choices have.

If I make a list, the message I send is, "you can trust me. I did the research, I did it right, and this is a Good Blocklist. If you trust me, you should trust this list."

If I reblog a blocklist, the message I send is, "I trust this list. I may have even checked it myself. This is a Good Blocklist. If you trust me, you should trust this list."

The majority of the people who follow me probably believe they can trust me to some extent; oftentimes, people just trust that whatever is on their dashboard is trustworthy, because someone they follow put it there. Those are their friends, and their friends are trustworthy!

This should make you nervous. You should not be comfortable with this. People make mistakes all the time, and even if they did do the research (it's so much more likely that they did not, especially if they're not the original creator), someone else's standards of what kind of person "deserves" to be on a list like that are very likely different from your's. Are you going to double check every single name on that list yourself?

Well, if the accusation is bad enough, probably not. Especially if the accusation is something like "Nazi" or "TERF". And if you do start checking, how likely are you to check every single name? If the first 3 or 5 seem to check out, will you bother with the other 50 on the list?

What if OP hid someone in that list who doesn't belong there; someone they just have a personal grudge against? What if OP defines "TERF" to mean "anyone I assume doesn't think trans women are the most oppressed", and after the first 15 actual TERFs, the list is just a bunch of transmascs- many of whom don't even disagree with OP in the first place? What if they define "TERF" to include anyone who has ever been a TERF, and one of the people on that list is a trans person that has been rumored- without any foundation or grain of truth whatsoever- to have once been a TERF?

Will you know? Will you check? Even if someone you trust reblogs it? Even if someone you trust made it?

A blocklist may not have the same kind of obviously punitive intent as a callout post does, but it's a tool from the same toolbox. People think callout posts are about "safety", too. Lots of people also think that about the criminal justice system, about prisons, about the death penalty.

The question is not whether that could be true, or whether there could be a world in which justice is administered correctly with these tools. The question is whether it could fail, and who it hurts when it does.

Who can abuse this system? How easy is it to do so? Who is most likely to be hurt; is it the intended target, or people who are already disempowered by our systems and society?

What is the best way to go about this?

Even done correctly, a blocklist is not the most effective tool here: people can remake their blogs, change urls, and often have sockpuppets ready to go anyway. The list is rendered useless and inert as soon as enough people change their strategies to evade it. A more effective tool is education; teaching people how to recognize a TERF, or TERF ideology, on their own. Teaching them why those ideas are problematic. Encouraging them to block and disengage, and teaching them why engaging is harmful and counterproductive. Talking about de-radicalization, cult recruitment and radicalization tactics, and how to fight this epidemic.

Telling people what to think does not solve the problem, but teaching them how to be critical might.

[nigrit]

'The War of the Districts, or the Flight of Marat…'

Part 1 (of 5)

Some years ago I photographed a fantastic, satirical poem from a compendium of French Revolutionary verse in the BnF (réserve). It’s been gathering virtual dust ever since. But no more! It’s a witty take on a key moment from early in the Revolution, when the Paris authorities pitted themselves against the radical Cordeliers district (under Danton’s leadership). With help from @anotherhumaninthisworld (merci encore!), we managed to produce a rough translation, which I revised, added some footnotes (to clarify the more obscure references) and added this brief intro to put it in context. While the translation is a literal one, I’ve tried to preserve some of the rhyming spirit of the original where possible. So boil the kettle, get a brew on and settle down to an epic account of Maranton vs Neckerette…

In the early hours of 22 January 1790, General Lafayette, commander of the National Guard, authorized a large military force to arrest the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat, following a request from Sylvain Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, to provide the Chatelet with sufficient armed force [“main-forte’] to enable its bailiff to enforce the warrant.[1] Bailly’s request was in response to the outrage caused by the publication, four days earlier, of Marat’s 78-page Denunciation of the finance minister, Jacques Necker.[2] Marat had moved into the district the Cordeliers district in December to seek its declared protection against arbitrary prosecution.

His best-selling pamphlet denounced Necker – probably the most popular man in France after the King in July 1789 – of covertly supporting the Ancien Régime and working to undermine the Revolution. His accusations included plotting to dissolve the National Assembly and remove the royal family to Metz on 5 October, colluding in grain hoarding and speculation, and generally compromising the King’s honour. The charges were intended to reveal a cumulative (and damning) pattern of behaviour since Necker’s reappointment in July 1788, and again in July 1789. Bearing his Rousseau-derived epigraph, Vitam impendere vero (‘To devote one’s life to the truth’) – now used as a kind of personal branding, Marat adopted the role of “avocat” to ‘try’ Necker before the court of public opinion.[3] Its general tone came in the context of a wider distrust of international capitalism, with which Necker was closely associated, and which appearted to violate many traditional values.[4] For those interested in the nitty gritty, here’s a footnote explaining why Marat had completely lost faith in Necker.[5]

It caused such a sensation that the first print-run sold out in 24 hours. Most of the radical press hailed Marat’s audacity in challenging Necker’s ‘virtuous’ reputation, while providing invaluable publicity for his pamphlet. The legal pursuit of Marat was largely prompted by the rigid adherence of the Chatelet to Ancien Régime values against the offence of libel (attacking a person in print).[6] I suspect that Marat was hoping a high-profile campaign against Necker would help to establish his name in the public eye by provoking a strong response. However, this was one of the rare occasions when Necker delegated his defence to ‘hired’ pens, providing Marat with valuable extra publicity.

If libel was the main reason for going after Marat, the impetus for pursuit was further motivated by wider political concerns over the extreme volatility that had gripped Paris since mid-December. After pre-emptive popular action in July and October against perceived counter-revolutionary plotting, a new wave of similar rumours was seen by many as a signal that the thermometer was about to explode again. The arrest of the marquis de Favras on Christmas Eve, for allegedly conspiring to raise a force to whisk the King away to safety, assassinate revolutionary leaders, and put his master, Monsieur (the King’s middle brother) on the throne as regent, only served to intensify popular fears. This, combined with the continuing failure to prosecute any royal officers, including the baron de Besenval, commander of the King’s troops around Paris during 12-14 July – who would be acquitted on 29 January for ‘counter-revolutionary’ actions – led to large crowds milling daily outside the Palais de Justice, as the legal action against both men dragged on through January.[7] On the 7th January, a bread riot in Versailles led to the declaration of martial law; on the 10th, a large march on the Hotel de Ville had been stopped in its tracks by Lafayette; on the 11th, there was an unruly 10,000-strong demonstration, screaming death-threats against defendants and judges, in the worst disturbances to public order since the October Days march on Versailles (and the most severe for another year); and on the 13th, tensions were further exacerbated by a threatened mutiny amongst disgruntled National Guards, which was efficiently snuffed out by Lafayette.[8] As a result, Marat’s Denunciation, and earlier attacks on Boucher d’Argis, the trial’s presiding judge, were seen as encouraging a dangerous distrust towards the authorities. Hence the pressing need to set an example of him.

So much for the background. Do we know anything about the poem’s authorship? it appeared around the same time (July/August) as Louis de Champcenetz & Antoine Rivarol’s sarcastic Petit dictionnaire des grands hommes de la Révolution, par un citoyen actif, ci-devant Rien(July/Aug 1790), which featured a brief entry on how Marat had eluded the attention of 5000 National Guardsmen and hid in southern France, disguised as a deserter. These figures would become the subject of wildly varying estimates, depending on who was reporting the ‘Affair’ – all, technically, primary sources! The higher the number of soldiers, the greater the degree of ridicule.[9] Contemporary accounts ranged from 400 to 12,000, although the latter exaggerated figure, included the extensive reserves positioned outside the district.[10] Since the poem also suggests around 5000 men, this similarity of numbers, alongside other literary and satirical clues, such as both men’s involvement in the Actes des apôtres, and the Petit dictionnaire’s targeting of Mme de Stael, suggest a possible common authorship.[11] While the poem took delight in mocking the ineptitude of the Paris Commune, the lattertook aim at the pretensions of the new class of revolutionary. While it is impossible to estimate the public reception of this poem, its cheap cover price of 15 sols suggests it was aimed at a wide audience. It was also republished under at least two different titles, sometimes alongside other counter-revolutionary pamphlets.[12]

Both act as important markers of Marat’s growing celebrity, just six months after the storming of the Bastille. A celebrity that reached far beyond the confines of his district (now section) and readership (which peaked at around 3000).[13] Marat was no longer being spoken of as just a malignant slanderer [“calomniateur”] but as the embodiment of a certain revolutionary stereotype. While he lacked the dedicated ‘fan base’ of a true celebrity, such as a Rousseau, a Voltaire or (even) a Necker, he did not lack for public curiosity, which was satisfied in his absence by a mediatized presence in pamphlets, poems, and the new lexicology.[14] For example, Marat would earn nine, separate entries in Pierre-Nicolas Chantreau’s Dictionnaire national et anecdotique (Aug 1790), the first in a series of dictionaries to capitalize on the Revolution��s fluid redefinition of language.

There seems little doubt that Marat’s Denunciation was intended to provoke the authorities into a strong reaction, and create “quelque sensation”, of which this mock-heroic poem forms one small part.[15] It would prove a pivotal moment in his revolutionary career, transforming him from the failed savant of 1789 to a vigorous symbol of press freedom and independence in 1790. Who knows what might have happened, if, as one royalist later remarked, the authorities had simply ignored this scribbling “dwarf”, whose only weapon was his pen.[16]

I'll post the 3 parts of the poem under #la fuite de Marat. enjoy!

[1] The Chatelet represented legal authority within Paris.

[2] Dénonciation faite au tribunal public par M. Marat, l’Ami du Peuple, contre M. Necker, premier ministre des finances (18 Jan 1790).

[3] The slogan was borrowed from Rousseau’s Lettre à d’Alembert, itself a misquote from Juvenal’s Satires (Vitam inpendere vero = ‘To sacrifice one’s life for the truth’).

[4] See Steven Kaplan’s excellent analysis of the mechanisms of famine plots and popular beliefs in the collusion between state and grain merchants. In part, this reflected a lack of transparency and poor PR in the state’s dealings with the public. During 1789-1790, when anxieties over grain supply were the main cause of rumours and popular tension, Necker made little effort to explain government policies. The Famine Plot Persuasion in Eighteenth-Century France (1982).

[5] As a rule, the King, and his ministers, did not consider the workings of government to be anyone’s business, and was not accountable to the public. However, in 1781, Necker undermined this precedent by publishing his Compte-rendu – a transparent snapshot of the royal finances – yet on his return in 1788, he failed to promote equivalent transparency over grain provision. In consequence, local administrators suffered from a lack of reliable information. Given the underlying food insecurity that followed the poor harvest of 1788, any rumours only unsettled the public. The most dramatic example of this came in the summer of 1789, when rumours of large-scale movements of brigands & beggars created the violent, rural panic known as ‘The Great Fear’. It was Necker’s continuing silence on these matters that lost Marat’s trust.

[6] Necker had a history of published interventions defending himself before the tribunal of public opinion, confessing that a thirst for gloire (renown) had motivated his continual courting of PO, then dismissing it as a fickle creature after it turned against him in 1790. eg Sur l’Administration de M. Necker (1791). For the best demonstration of continuity with Ancien Régime values after 1789, see Charles Walton, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution (2009).

[7] The erosion of Necker’s popularity began on 30 July after he asked the Commune to grant amnesty to all political prisoners, including Besenval.

[8] While the evidence was slight, Favras’ sentence to be hanged on 18 February made him a convenient scapegoat, allowing Besenval and Monsieur to escape further action. See Barry M. Shapiro, Revolutionary Justice in Paris, 1789-1790 (1993).

[9] The most likely figure appears 300-500. See Eugène Babut, ‘Une journée au district des Cordeliers etc’, in Revue historique (1903), p.287 (fn); Olivier Coquard, Marat (1996), pp.251-55; and Jacques de Cock & Charlotte Goetz, eds., Oeuvres Politiques de Marat (1995), i:130*-197*.

[10] For example, figures cited, included 400 in the Révolutions de Paris (16-23 Jan); 600 (with canon) in Mercure de France (30 Jan), repeated in a letter by Thomas Lindet (22 Jan); 2000 in a fake Ami du peuple (28 March); 3000 in Grande motion etc. (March); 4000 in Révolutions de France; 6000 (with canon) in Montjoie’s Histoire de la conjuration etc. (1796), pp.157-58; 10,000 in Parisian clair-voyant; 12,000 in Marat’s Appel à la Nation (Feb), repeated in AdP (23 July), reduced to 4000 in AdP (9 Feb 1791), but restored to 12,000 inPubliciste de la République française (24 April 1793).

[11] “Five to six large battalions/Followed by two squadrons” = approximately 5000 men (4800 + 300). A royalist journal edited and published by Jean-Gabriel Peltier, who also appears the most likely publisher of this poem.

[12] For example, Crimes envers le Roi, et envers la nation. Ou Confession patriotique (n.d., n.p,) & Le Triumvirat, ou messieurs Necker, Bailly et Lafayette, poème comique en trois chants (n.d., n.p.). Note the unusual use of ‘triumvirate’ at a time when this generally applied to the trio of Antoine Barnave, Alexandre Lameth and Adrien Duport.

[13] By the time the poem appeared, the Cordeliers district had been renamed section Théåtre-français, following the administrative redivision of Paris from 60 districts to 48 sections on 21 May 1790.

[14] For the growth of mediatized celebrity, see Antoine Lilti, Figures publiques (2014).

[15] As Marat explained in a footnote (‘Profession de foi’) at the end of his Denunciation, “Comme ma plume a fait quelque sensation, les ennemis publics qui sont les miens ont répandu dans le monde qu’elle était vendue…”

[16] Felix Galart de Montjoie, Histoire de la conjuration de Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans (1796), pp.157-58.

[rpgchoices]

What are the main theories about the Old Gods/Archdemons?

I am not a DA lore person but I keep thinking about the Blight and the archdemon and I AM CONFUSED

The elements I have are:

Solas dislikes the Warden and thinks pre-emptively killing the archdemons might make things worse (but he is not TOO panicky about it)

Mythal wants to preserve the soul of one of these archdemons

The Old Gods taught humans magic and used to speak with them (if it was them)

Old Gods are dragons, and we know dragons are partially resistant to the Blight

The Old Gods went silent after the magisters entered the fade

The Old Gods call to the Darkspawn (or the Darkspawn are the only ones who hear them) in a song

I think for now the three theories I had seen/could think of could be divided in:

1- The Old Gods are the trapped Evanuris in the Fade (7 of them). This could explain why the Magisters heard their voices in their sleep (Fade), and why they were led to entering the Fade (an attempt to free the Evanuris), but somehow this failed. Still, it does not explain why the Old Gods taught humans magic, and why they went silent (given that the Evanuris were not freed). It also confuses (for me) Mythal's desire to recover the soul of an Old God given she is not the biggest fan of the other Elven gods. Solas is also pretty anti-Warden and disagree with the idea that killing the dragons before the next Blight would make things better (I think he says that it might make things worse).

2- Another theory related to this is that the Evanuris stored into dragons part of their essence/magic, so the Old Gods were some kind of pets/slaves. This is a mid-way between theory 1 and 3, as it implies that the Old Gods could have been like the titans, pre-existing powerful creatures who have been defeated and enslaved by the Evanuris. If they rebelled against the Evanuris, it would make sense for them to teach humans magic and communicate with them (and the Evanuris could have hijacked their communications through the Fade to tempt the Magisters to enter the Fade, especially if the Old Gods were not too communicative).

If the Evanuris tricked the Magisters, it could mean that entering the Fade was just a way to release the Blight as a way to kill the Old Gods. The Archdemons' souls leave their bodies after their death, could it be that that part of their soul/part of whatever the Evanuris stored in them returnt to the Evanuris? This could explain why Mythal wanted to intercept a soul, and why Solas thinks that killing the archdemons would make things worse (making the Evanuris more powerful). This would explain the Blight as a bioweapon conveniently redirected to infect the Old Gods, and led them to fight and die.

3- The Old Gods are unrelated with the Evanuris, they are some ancient dragon gods who have nothing to do with elven lore. I think this is probably the most unsatisfying version for me mainly because of the silence of the Old Gods after the magisters enter the Fade. It could be that the Old Gods were silent for a much longer time, and Tevinter simply re-interpreted spirits from the Fade as them?

In general, what I am mostly curious about is why does the Darkspawn hear the song of the Old Gods? Did the old Magisters also hear a song when the Old Gods spoke, or just words? And in this case does it mean that the taint is necessary to fully hear the Old Gods in song form?

a- Why would the Old Gods call for the Darkspawn with their song? Do they want to be corrupted by the Blight? Option 2 would explain this, as in the Old Gods are put to slumber and the song is not actually them, but whatever magic in them was part of the Evanuris. Otherwise the only thing I could think of is that the Old Gods are simply "calling", but the only ones who are answering are the Darkspawn and they are corrupting them as a result. Blight is a different form of magic from the Fade, so could it be that the Old Gods are connected to the same magic?

b- Why would Mythal wait so long to try and capture the soul of an Old God if the Old Gods were Evanuris or connected to them? She surely knew how to do it, before - or has she done it before? She was around for 5 Blights.

c- Why only one Archdemon at a time? Is it that the Old Gods are buried in such difficult places and so deeply that the Darkspawn happens to only find one once in a while and it is unlikely to find two at the same time (given it would require a higher amount of Darkspawn). And if so, who or what put them there?

d- What is it about dragon blood and the Blight? I think in DA:I you find out that dragons are resistant to the Blight, but if this is the case how can the Darkspawn corrupt the Old Gods? Unless this is just a tale and the Old Gods are already "archdemon" and the Darkspawn is just freeing them? So the Archdemons do not go mad with the taint, but are acting as they would normally act. (Would this explain why Fiona was cured? If Alistair has dragon blood, and Fiona was cured, could it be that Alistair absorbed her corruption? And normally he would have not become a Grey Warden but he was already so full of corruption that it worked). Still, do Dragons happen to be naturally resistant to the Blight because originating from the same place? The Wardens' Joining also includes Archdemon's blood (dragon's blood), but clearly dragon's blood is not the only ingredient in the cure for the Blight, as it seems improbable that no one has drunk a lot of it before (especially given there are specializations that includes drinking dragon blood).

I think these are all my questions! As you can see I am mainly curious about the Old Gods connection to the Blight,

[myuntoldstory]

HP prompt request(James/Lily AU where they live): “how was Harry’s first day in kindergarten?”

don't lose the way that you dance

doing a "two birds, one stone" type of thing by, finally, answering this ask. my sincerest apologies, anon, for the grossly late reply. things happened between when you sent this and now, and things have been tough.

and also, putting this in for @jilytoberfest's 31 prompts 2024. seeing my fic on their bingo card gave me a burst of inspiration big enough to finally finish this story and contribute.

and finally, i'm, posting this to celebrate your love thawed out being so close to 100 kudos. really cool. thank you to everyone who've read and gave it some love, i really do appreciate it.

Prompt 6: Making food together | Prompt 27: "what if it doesn't work" "what if it does work" (sorry, i know the 27th is 2 or 3 days away but i'm doing a pre-emptive thing; knowing myself if i hold onto it for too long it won't ever go out)

Death never fazed James, especially not during the war. But little does he know it has different faces—that loss is not just about losing life but also about living it. Within the landscape of grief are winding paths and forked roads. No, James has never feared losing his life—but losing Harry... losing what was once was to make way for what will be, for what is supposed to be, well… That fucking terrifies him.

A short story set after "your love thawed out". James and Lily accompany Harry for his first day of kindergarten and reflect on this new stage of their lives.

Based on Taylor Swift's song "Never Grow Up".

read on ao3 or under the cut

warnings: a loose interpretation of the prompts

“Out cold, Macdonald.”

“Hmm.”

Sirius approaches as Mary pulls a blanket over Harry’s prone form, tucking him in as he dozes off. He watches her remove his glasses, folding them and placing them on the coffee table. The gentleness in her touch is obvious as she brushes messy locks of hair from his eyes.

“Crashed about, what, five minutes of playing?” she murmurs playfully.

Sirius snorts, nudging her with his foot. “Join us when you’re done.”

“Yep—don’t frost everything without me.”

“Never.”

With a parting grin, he makes his way to the kitchen, where James and Lily stand by the island. Plates of naked cupcakes, bowls of frosting, and piping bags filled with different-coloured frosting cover the surface. Little containers of toppings, from candied fruit to lollies, fill what space is left. Lily pipes a gradient of red and yellow icing in a perfect swirling pattern on top of a cupcake before passing it to James, who decorates it with the toppings.

“So,” Sirius drawls, taking a cupcake and piping bag filled with solid Ravenclaw-blue frosting. “How was Harry’s first day of class?”

“Oh—”

Sirius focuses on piping, fully expecting James to answer without even looking up. He patiently waits, shooting furtive looks at Lily to try and copy what she’s doing. He squeezes, and an amorphous blob comes out. His brow twitches in annoyance before trying again, this time mindful of the pressure he puts in—what comes out instead is a fat dollop. Sighing in irritation, he glances up expectantly when James takes too long. His best mate hastily schools his expression to that of overly bright optimism.

“It’s…”

 · · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

How long have they been standing there?

Seconds ago, it was bright— too bright. And noisy. So cacophonous that every sound had solidified; it no longer bounced around in echoes but absorbed… somewhere. Children everywhere—each unique in shape and size, but all with the same loudness, the same jittering excitement, anxiety, and curiosity. Parents everywhere, too, all wrapped up in goodbyes—warning teachers, giving hugs and kisses. The emotions on display fit a varied spectrum from excited to devastated—but all proud. All of them relieved—probably because they’ve gained some independence back.

Against the wall, James sighs—against his chest, Lily breathes in shakily. Her shoulders shake. He glances at the top of her head, combing his fingers through her tresses. Safe to say they are on the “devastated” end of the spectrum. He tips his head and stares at the ceiling. The cool fluorescent light burns into his retinas, but he barely notices. He sinks into his thoughts.

They’ve been preparing for this moment for years. That it’s over in an instant is almost insulting—more so when he realises they’re still ill-equipped for it.

A door creaks open. He senses movement before seeing it. He straightens, holding Lily closer and bringing his arm higher around her head to hide her away from the view of whichever curious onlooker decides to barge in on them. Laughter and chatter spill from the gap, filling the hallway with brightness and echoes. He realises then that the door leads to a classroom. A woman pokes her head out, gazing at them with polite but wary curiosity. James smiles tightly. The silence in the hallway tenses, but he doesn’t deign to break it. The woman hesitates, realisation dawning on her expression.

“Er…” she says, breaking the ice, voice lacking any real authority. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” James answers, smile turning more sheepish. “Yes—sorry, we just dropped our son off, so...”

Wary curiosity melts into sympathy. “Oh, I see.”

“We’ll be on our way soon.”

“No, no, please. Take your time.”

With a warmer smile, the woman pulls back and closes the door.

Silence again.

James blows out a heavy sigh, his cheeks puffing, thumping his head against the wall. He squeezes Lily, rubbing her back to get her to look at him. A hairline fracture runs across his heart. Seeing Lily is like dropping weight on it, causing it to branch and score deeper. His wife is all redness and tears, though, somehow, still practically glowing—from the rims of her eyes to the tip of her nose and the arch of her cupid’s bow.

With a sad scoff, she pouts miserably. The corners of his lips can’t help tugging up. He allows the smile, but it’s tinted with sympathy and understanding. He kisses her forehead and pets her hair.

“Come along, Mrs Potter.” He lets go, except for her hand. “Playground’s at the back.”

“Playground?” Lily sniffles, wiping the tears away.

“Harry’s waiting.”

He leads the way, and she follows easily.

The playground is like any other. It has the typical equipment: a jungle gym, slide, swings, seesaw, spinners, and climbers. A giant sandbox sits at the centre. A garden of herbs, vegetables, and flowers sits closer to the classrooms. Benches dot the area, covered by a canopy of branches from the trees around it. James barely notices all of this as he leads Lily toward the swings. There’s a subtle poke, a niggling at the back of his neck. He looks towards the building, at the glass double doors, and the scores across his heart almost splinter apart.

Harry.

His little face and hands pressed against the pane, all red the same way as Lily—eyes, nose, and cupid’s bow. There is a suspicious shine to his gaze, but no tears have fallen—yet. Not like before. Before, it was like a waterfall when he realised they had to leave him.

James remembers how each drop is a stab in his gut, in his soul. No matter how much he wiped them away, they kept coming and coming until they pulled the most heart-wrenching wails out of his son’s mouth. The force of it pushed Harry’s little arms out, clutching at him and Lily, tiny hands gripping with all his strength. James didn’t want to let go—wanted to hold his son close and take him home. With his wife. Together as a family.

But he couldn’t.

The memory fades. James waves it goodbye as he waves his son hello.

Harry sniffles, eyes becoming dangerously wetter.

“God, look at his face.”

Lily’s wavering voice is a welcome distraction, but not by much. He holds his breath and glances at her, seeing her wave at Harry, too. Her eyes are glassy again, her chin and lower lip trembling as he leads her to sit on the swing. He sits beside her, never looking away, breathing easier again as her eyes take on a more solid shine and her chin and lips steady. Her breathing evens.

James feels safe looking away and turning his attention back to Harry. He’s still plastered against the glass, pressing himself so hard he can stumble through it if he really wants. With magic manifesting in weird and wonderful ways during childhood, the thought makes him worry. Just their luck if their son exposes himself on his first day. The corner of James’ lip quirks up, and he chuckles as Harry’s bottom lip juts out in a pout. He waves again.

“All right?” he says, holding onto the chains.

Lily sighs deeply. “I will be.”

“Okay.”

“Hey.”

Their gazes meet. She reaches out, curling her hand around his.

James smiles, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “I will be too.”

Silence falls, occasionally broken by the creak and grind of metal. They swing idly, hands clasped tightly, legs gently pushing them to and fro. James’ thumb caresses the back of Lily’s hand in comforting strokes. His attention returns to Harry, and never leaves. The teacher successfully pulls him away, but even as he obeys and sits with the class, he continues looking at them.

James makes sure to wave each time, not missing the anxious look on his son’s face—because it’s his. Harry looking exactly like James is like a conduit to his son’s emotions—a mirror and a trip to the past at the same time. Because he recognises it; he’s seen it before on himself. It’s as helpful as it is heartbreaking, especially during times like these when he would rather Harry wear a happier face.

“We spoil him too much.”

James turns to Lily, sees her stop mid-wave.

“He spoils us too,” he squeezes her hand. “Look at us.”

Lily chuckles and smiles defeatedly at him. The amused sparkle in her eyes is a relief. She squeezes back, smile fading as she looks to the classroom again. James’ hazel eyes trace the line of her profile. The redness has begun to fade, leaving behind her natural colouring—a gentle sort of rose-pink, gradating into her skin. A gentle breeze blows by, carrying threads of her hair into the air, glinting fire into the morning light.

“He hasn’t left our side since he was born,” she muses, voice low.

He nods slowly. “We’ve left him alone plenty.”

“No—I mean, yeah, with family and friends…” she trails off into contemplative silence before breaking it with a sharp sigh. She meets his eyes. The amusement has vanished, replaced by a much more concerned glint. “But we’re leaving him with strangers. That’s different—we barely know these people.”

“True.” Not helpful, something Lily doesn’t want to hear.

But he can’t lie to her—he doesn’t want to.

“They don’t know him like we do.”

“They will… eventually.”

Her brows draw together. “What if they get it wrong?”

“He will tell them.” James pauses. Sighs. “We will. They’ll learn.”

“And if he gets hurt?”

There’s an insistent note in her voice. Suddenly, anything he says will bear a lot of weight. It’s not that he’s been careless, but he senses the challenge, the bait appealing to his arrogance, his need to have an answer for everything—to be right in everything. It reminds him of when they were younger, back when they were rivals, and everything was a source of annoyance and challenge—well, for Lily, anyway. Half of the time, James just did things to get a rise out of her because he found her cute. 

“Then he gets hurt—Lily,” he adds hurriedly at his wife’s incredulous, affronted look. He squeezes her hands to get her to stop and listen. Her hackles calm, and she watches him with narrowed eyes. “Lily, love, we got hurt. Our parents were in this position once—they still are. You know they wished for the same things; still, none of us got away unscathed.

Lily huffs a sigh, but she blinks in acknowledgement—and displeasure.

“I know, love, I’m sorry… but this is how it will be from now on.”

Lily still looks unhappy, but that’s not what James is trying to do anyway.

“We will be here for him—all of us. Always,” he continues, taking the challenge with certainty he doesn’t feel right now but knows will be as inevitable as today, as any other days like this in the future. “He will be okay.”

“... But it won’t be that easy.”

“No…”

He rises from the swing and kneels in front of her. Lily’s hands rest in a tight ball on her lap, and he covers them with his own, holding them firmly. He looks up, gazing into her eyes. They’re as vivid as the greenery surrounding them but deeper, revealing an endless depth only reserved for Harry and their family. She meets his gaze, searching desperately, no longer challenging him to be right but hoping he is.

He squeezes her hand, asking for that trust, asking for a chance, as he always does, because when has he ever been wrong before?

“This is how it’s always been,” he murmurs, nodding. “It’s life.”

Lily hesitates and nods in return, looking down at their hands. “I know.”

“It’s… terrifying. Horrifying. We—” he hesitates, swallowing hard, “—we know that better than most.”

Lily audibly swallows hard. James knows that in that instant, the same memories flicker in her mind—barely adults waging a war that wasn’t theirs yet dumped unceremoniously on their doorstep. Children had to make choices that weren’t their own. Shattered innocence still hoping for a brighter future. Lily’s back carried the weight of survival, while James carried the weight of protection. Determination did not push them to stay alive every day—it was this. Exactly this. That hope was like a hearth in their hearts, keeping the fire ablaze and angry.

Now Harry carries that hope, that fire.

He’s even more precious now, making them feel even more wretched about letting go.

“But,” he continues, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles to bring her back to him. She looks into his eyes again, darker and more haunted. Seeing him brings back their usual colour—the forest under a cloudless day. He smiles, brilliant and handsome. “It’s beautiful too. Kind. Lovely. Like you.”

Lily’s shoulders sag, and her eyes soften. The corners of her lips tug up in a warm, gentle smile before they set in a more permanent, wry slant. She rolls her eyes. He can tell she’s trying not to be swept away by his compliment. He grins, smug and pleased with himself. He kisses the backs of her hands, her soft chuckle filling him with warmth.

“Look, I wish that’s all he’ll ever know.” James leans away and looks back up at Lily. This time, she’s the one nodding. “I want him happy all the time. God, I want nothing more, and I know we’ll do our best to make it so… but life. He’ll learn that, just like we did.”

“... I know.” Lily bites her lip and looks away, avoiding his piercing look as she finally admits: “I just… I’m so scared it won’t work out for him. That something will go horribly wrong.”

“I know, love. It’s paralysing, I get it. But that won’t happen, yeah? Life will work out fine for Harry—again if it doesn’t, we’re here.” Another squeeze, as if to prove the truth of his words—ensure that they are alive, and so is Harry. Though apart now, he’s only a short distance away—they’re never truly gone from each other. “We will be here. For him. To help. To guide. Comfort. Love—”

“And that’s enough.”

James pauses before sighing in relief, beaming at Lily’s addition. “Yes.”

Lily meets his eyes, smiling back. “Better than if we weren’t here.”

“That’s right.”

“At least it’s not the war anymore.”

“Precisely.”

With a sigh, he kisses her hands again. He takes on a more comfortable position, crossing his legs but still staying by his wife’s feet. He senses the change in her mood, the return of her usual light. When it was time to let go of Harry, she had been so inconsolable that he worried about whether she’d be okay. But he should’ve known he never had to worry; Lily’s resilience is unmatched, a fact he had gotten to know intimately in school and during the war. But when the weight of everything became too much, he made sure to be there—to hold her up. To keep the light shining in her eyes, he’ll carry the weight of the world for her.

“That’s my girl.” He smiles wider at her chuckle.

Silence again. James glances towards the classroom, half of him expecting Harry plastered against the glass again—but no. He remains with his class. James catches his eyes, though. Anxiety flashes across Harry’s face for a second. James waves, smile softening in relief when Harry waves back this time, albeit reluctantly.

It’s only now, separated by glass, that James realises just how much his son has grown up—how much time has passed. He remembers when Lily gave birth, how that was the singularly most terrifying thing he’s ever experienced. Because of that, his family has been his life for years. He swallows hard, a lump forming in his throat as a strange, overwhelming sense of loss washes over him.

For a time, it seemed that Harry would remain a baby forever—that the days of him being so small, so chubby, so theirs would go on for eternity. But he turned one. He grew out of so many clothes, each outgrown outfit marking a moment of change—quicker than they could even keep up with buying replacements. Parts of him took on more shape; the greens of his eyes started looking familiar, reminding James of a forest under a cloudless day. Every day, James sees the mirror of him growing before his eyes until one unexpected moment, he realises that his own expressions are no longer his, but Harry’s.

But… still. Still a baby. Still theirs. They were all he knew, all he ever called upon—kept them at night, gave them his firsts and received theirs. The world belonged to them, their lives inextricably theirs. But he turned two. He shot up and lost all the chubbiness. More clothes to discard, but now containing versions of him, changing old parts for new ones. Within the ever-deepening green of his eyes, awareness and consciousness lit up like something inside him flicked it on. Harry manifesting as himself. It was like meeting him for the first time all over again.

It never stopped. Another year. Another version—more Harry than their son. He saw more of the world and saw less of theirs. He made friends, liked things, didn’t like things, loved some, and hated others. Spilling from his lips were words and sounds that sounded like them but painted with his colours. In his unique way, he let them know who he was—Harry as himself but still so painfully theirs in some sparkling moments. In their cottage, they lived a dual life: raising a child who came from them, while also raising the person he was meant to become.

And it was wonderful.

But also alarming.

Death never fazed James, especially not during the war. But little does he know it has different faces—that loss is not just about losing life but also about living it. Within the landscape of grief are winding paths and forked roads. No, James has never feared losing his life—but losing Harry… losing what was once was to make way for what will be, for what is supposed to be, well…

That fucking terrifies him.

“It just feels so fast.”

Lily’s soft voice grounds him. He realises his heart is racing, trying to run from a reality they can’t escape. James swallows hard and turns from the classroom to his wife. He caresses her hands, trying to assure her and himself.

“I know.” His voice cracks.

Lily smiles at him tightly. “The past few weeks, my mind’s been on a loop about how one day… he’ll be gone.”

“Lily.” He squeezes her hands again. “He’ll come back to us—”

“No, I know—”

“By law, he has to.”

Lily snorts. Within the next few seconds, her expression shifts and twitches in an obvious effort not to laugh. But she snorts again, and something breaks. Full-bodied laughter bubbles from her lips—beautiful, like her, and so lovely. It’s lighter than the breeze blowing by, dancing with her fiery hair; within the trilling notes are hints of Harry’s laughter. James can’t help joining in—his is a little lower, slightly sombre, but still full of love and amusement.

He tapers off first, watching her ride the wave of her joy. The darker red of her lashes glints copper in the sunlight as little gems of unshed tears cling on, making them sparkle. James isn’t sure if they’re from laughter or more grief, but he doesn’t push anything about it. His wife is laughing, and for now, that’s enough.

“Well… one day he won’t.” Though she continues to smile, she gives him a pointed look.

“Then we go to him just like our parents do now.”

“James.”

He shrugs—always, always, he has an answer ready for her. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as he doesn’t leave her hanging. Lily knows that—it’s evident from how her smile becomes indulgent and longsuffering, but the edges remain soft and loving. Her shoulders sag defeatedly in such an obvious way it’s like she’s been fighting a battle all this time. James laughs when she makes a show of sighing.

“All right, you persistent prat,” she concedes. “You win—as always.”

“It’s going to be okay, Lily, I promise,” James grins. “It’s change.”

“I know.”

Lily leans in. James quickly rises on his knees to meet her halfway, happily receiving the kiss she presses on his lips. They linger, reluctant to break the bubble of comfort and assurance around them—James more than Lily. He cups her cheek with one hand, holding her in place as he deepens the kiss a little—mindful that they’re in a preschool and not in the privacy of their home. He breaks it eventually, but Lily doesn’t move away.

“Change is fine, I suppose,” she mumbles against his lips. “As long as it’s with you.”

He chuckles, pressing another kiss. “You’re never getting rid of me.”

“No, suppose not.”

Another chuckle. One last kiss. And James on his feet. As he does so, his gaze turns to the classroom—and a smile lights up.

“Look,” he breathes.

He doesn’t check to make sure she’s looking—it’s obvious from her happy gasp. The class seems to be doing an activity now. Harry sits at a table next to another child. They’re talking and shyly sharing crayons as they scribble. James watches, pride filling him to the brim, elation fluttering like butterflies in his body as he sees the delicate confidence in how Harry holds himself, the concentration on his face, and the tentative way he moves around his new friend.

This must be what his parents felt when he was going off on his own. And here he is now. Hope whispers, assuring him Harry will be okay. Eventually, that hope morphs into a quiet wish that Harry would glance back for reassurance, just one more time. But he doesn’t. Along the flutter of happiness within James is now the sting of melancholy and disappointment.

Yet, his smile widens, and he shakes his head at himself. He looks at Lily just as she looks at him. It doesn’t surprise him that the same disappointed but happy smile graces her beautiful face. Raising his brows inquisitively, he inclines his head towards the exit. She nods. He offers his hand, and she takes it. With one last look at Harry, James and Lily start making their way out.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

“—Fine,” Lily says at last.

Sirius blinks and glances at her. She doesn’t offer any more, too casually keeping her attention to the cupcakes. She hands the freshly frosted cupcake to James, who takes it, reaching for the toppings and focusing on decoration as if it’s the most important thing he’s ever done. Eventually, Lily looks up to acknowledge Sirius’s scrutinising stare.

“It was fine,” she insists with a tight smile.

Sirius grins slowly. “You cried, didn’t you?”

Lily immediately looks indignant and opens her mouth to retort—

James sighs affectionately. “As much as Harry did—”

“Oi!” Lily picks up the spatula from one of the bowls and smears frosting on his cheek. “So did you!”

“Whoa—hey!”

He takes Lily’s spatula and covers her left cheek with one firm swipe. And then, it’s like a free-for-all. Noise erupts, followed by chaos—frosting flying, laughter and yelps filling the kitchen. It’s like being back in that preschool. Mary walks in, sees the chaos, and tries to slip out unnoticed. It doesn’t escape their notice. Sirius, the closest to her, drags her into the fray. Lily and James scoop frosting from the bowls as Mary struggles, but with Sirius holding her firmly, resistance is pointless.

“No, no, no—!”

She stops protesting the moment the frosting lands. With a sigh, she sags against Sirius, hands raised in surrender. Her eyes squeeze shut as she takes the impromptu make-over from her friends: Lily drawing a heart on her cheek, James adding more on her forehead, and Sirius finishing off with his signature amorphous blob on her nose.

“Great,” Mary deadpans, nodding with a conceding expression. She opens her eyes and sees the three looking very pleased with themselves. “Perfect. Thank you, very lovely.”

Sirius winks. “We believe in equal frosting opportunities, Macdonald.”

At that, they all laugh, including Mary, but she sobers up quickly with a hastily put-together disapproving look.

“Well, I’m here to frost some cupcakes.”

“Oh, shit, right,” Lily gasps.

Covered in frosting, they return to the island, which remains clean. Lily and James go back to what they were doing while Sirius picks up a cupcake from the plate and hands it to Mary after she picks up a bag of frosting. With a murmured word of thanks, she takes the cupcake and starts to frost it—perfectly. Sirius’ eyes can’t help twitching at that.

“Why are we doing this again?” Mary mumbles.

“Gideon’s coming around with his nephews tomorrow,” James answers.

“Oh, nice!”

[tobiasdrake]

Y'all, I have no idea how Mystique has gone 11 years since leaving to join Magneto's crew without ever killing anyone.

Mystique gets an introductory fight where she beats up Stryker, who is continuing to put in various cameos in every film he's not dead yet for because he's the best villain the brand has and they know it.

She beats the shit out of Stryker's entire force and then tries to choke him to death.

However, before she can pre-emptively thwart the entire Weapon X program and the suffering of countless mutants, Havok stops her.

Havok blasts Stryker across the fucking room with a kinetic blast that probably should have killed him anyway, to stop Mystique from definitely killing him. Thus ensuring that the horrific events of the Weapon X program in Origins and X2 can still come to pass, while also deadnaming Mystique for good measure.

The fucking X-Men, y'all.

But the thing that gets me is that. Like. Mystique shows zero hesitation in going in for the kill here. How has she been doing this for 11 years with zero moral reservations about the sanctity of life or whatever, but never once killed one of these yahoos before? Not even accidentally, in the heat of the fight?

[alvivaarts]

Me: Don't scorpions molt?

Also Me: Oh crap, don't give them more fuel for angst....now I want to write it.

(Edit: hOLY FUCK IF YOU WROTE IT I WOULD AAAA!! (In the good way) Scorpions do in fact molt! Which means Leon and Ashley also molt! It's something that affects the whole body and probably looks something like this:

I was going to cover it in the master post about their mutations, but I’ll share my ideas and a sketch here pre-emptively ;)

I imagine shedding for them is quite an event. Neither have shed yet in the canon storyline (unless shedding dead skin from their initial mutations counts).

Considering their size, it happens once a year around the spring as the weather gets warmer (usually indicated by their skin/chitin starting to go grey and dull), and it can take from three days to a week.

I'll go into more details about the process below!

It starts with a 'sunburn' like reaction on their 'human' skin and along the points of their carapaces. Usually their 'human' skin sheds first and peels like a sunburn, but it doesn't hurt unless they pull it off. Moving from the face down over the following few days, the carapaces shed the thickest amounts and can even retain their shape. (They'll likely have to burn it).

Though it doesn't really hurt, it is a very physically taxing process. It's like a flip is switched, they'll instinctively find a comfy place to lay down and sort of just 'shiver' big sections off until they get too tired to even shiver. After that, it's lots of sleeping and eating, and then a repeat. They might also soak in warm baths or shallow bodies of water to help speed the process up and let others help scrub it off without it hurting as much. Usually they can help take care of each other, but the more helping hands the merrier!

Directly after though, they're very shiny! Each shed causes their carapaces to grow darker (I think you can see it in some drawings I've put out, but Leon already has darker shells than Ashley because he's older!) and their 'junebug' stripes are much brighter! Leon also has a fresh iridescent sheen (woo for dimorphism). Their chitin also feels a little sturdier, and their human skin is pretty soft and dewey looking. I'll likely post some proper drawings of that too!

[altschmerzes]

oh i'm FASCINATED to hear what your thoughts on lost are so far

FAIR WARNING this is probably not going to be very nice to the show so if you're a big lost enjoyer and don't wanna see that this would be the time to keep scrolling. sorry for the delay also. guy who has been typing his thoughts and then getting distracted on a loop for several days.

basically: i don't know why, but i have been deeply compelled to watch the show lost recently. like, i genuinely don't have an explanation. i know i'd seen like, half of season one about a million years ago and have no memory of any of it so this is functionally my first go through it.

in short: i think it has its strengths and its weaknesses. to me, more weaknesses than strengths. i know opinion degraded as time went on but even just where i am now, i do not know why this thing has the like 'one of the best shows of all time' reputation that it has. i really, truly don't. like, it's fine, sometimes it's even good, but like. why do people talk about this like it is the pinnacle of television. it is however like, almost hypnotically watchable, and i keep going through like, handfuls of episodes at once.

more under the cut.

in long: so i'm on the early early episodes of season 2 and i already know that most of this show is mystery boxes inside mystery boxes half of which never really have a payoff that's satisfying and so i'm pre-emptively frustrated by that. it's like.... i would love to be excited by the mysteries that come up, but instead of getting to excitedly wonder 'oh wow i wonder what the explanation for that will be!' i'm instead sitting here thinking 'gee i hope that's one of the ones we get an answer to.' it's not a great feeling, and mostly i'm like. man why do they keep giving jj abrams creative authority over things. he's a good director, why do they keep ruining that by letting him WRITE too.

also there is so much weird racism and misogyny in here lmao. gd.

anyways. moving on to specifics.

i will confess i am a sucker for disaster survival scenarios. it's half the appeal of any apocalyptic thing to me, and this delivers. i'm enjoying the mystery boxes when i can put aside the fact that i might not get to see inside them at all, depending. i think the flashbacks are well structured and sprinkled in with effective timing and degrees of revealed information. i think one of my fave parts is how much of like... the Weird Shit in the flashbacks is just. not clear about whether or not it's related to the island? were the numbers hurley used to win the lottery actually cursed? does disaster and death follow walt around or is his former stepdad just an asshole and it's all a coincidence? what was up with the fucking psychic claire talked to? etc. that's one of the ones where i'd be fully comfortable with that question never being answered. it's satisfying as hell just to wonder.

characters! the extent to which i do not give a single fuck about jack, kate, and sawyer is amazing. like. they're all so resoundingly uninteresting to me. i actively think everyone here would be better off if sawyer was dead, because even for me (noted asshole with a heart of gold enjoyer, I KNOW, I KNOW) he is A Bit Fucking Much. if he does not ease up soon it's gonna be Bad. i mean it's already bad but. lmao. his best moments so far were telling jack about what jack's dad said to him in the bar and saving michael after the raft is destroyed. kate is just... everything about her is so overwrought and i'm just bored and a little embarrassed every time we have something focusing on her. i do like that she's abjectly doing shady shit sometimes, they should lean into that more. gaslight gatekeep girlboss etc. jack is so nothing it's amazing. he is baymax to me. he is not even baymax, baymax had more of a personality. why is he the protagonist of this show, he is such a generic white dude audience insert character.

i really love sun, hurley, charlie, claire, michael, walt, and - when he is not YELLING AT HIS WIFE - jin is okay too. i also really enjoy sayid and i have to say that like. i think they have massively fucked it up with his writing in several points, it's like. stereotypical and almost comically racist at times but i also have to like... idk, i do have a significant degree of legitimate respect for the swing they took with him in the first place, to be honest. it's like. idk. this was a show that aired in 2004, written and filmed before that, and i know his character made a lot of people Big Fucking Mad to have in a show about a plane crash as an unambiguously sympathetic and positively depicted character, missteps in his writing and all. it doesn't excuse the mistakes made with him obviously but the context in which he was written makes me like. idk. appreciate the fact that he exists, and kinda tip my hat to like. you guys Tried saying something here. i gotta respect that.

jin and michael's odd-couple friendship is extremely charming to me. hurley is the sweetie of all time and i really love how he just... is willing to interact with people on a straightforward level no matter who they are or what's going on? locke cracks me the fuck up. like all his magic healing disability and general premonition shit aside, it's extremely funny to me to watch grandpa survivalist finally get to LARP his dreams of being a hardcore jungle man. he is fucking insane gd blass.

i will say um. the less said about shannon and boone the better. eugh. literally why would you do that. like... it throws me so much every time someone finds out about That Whole Mess and literally does not react at all. before somebody screams and whines and cries about how IT'S FINE TO EXPLORE TABOO SUBJECTS IN FICTION STOP BEING A PURITAN YOURE BEING A FAN COP WAAAAAAA i'm not saying you can never write this sort of thing just like. literally why is the entire narrative framing of it a tragic starcrossed lover thing. why is nobody reacting like this is as nasty and weird as it is. lmao.

anyways.

here's some clips from my watching it, mostly based in how fucking funny i think jack's whole Situation is.

[copperbadge]

Hi, Sam! Hoping for some insight as an adult-y, job-experience-having person. Do you think it's possible to get a job as a front desk receptionist with zero real work experience, other than some art commissions in the past, and some time in college but no degree? Or am I better off setting my sights on entry level food/retail jobs to start off with?

So much of it depends on what experience you do have and what you're willing to put on your resume or like...I don't want to say lie, but let's say...gently obfuscate about.

But also, por que no los dos? You can apply for both at the same time. I used to apply for a variety of jobs, and I just had a set resume and a form letter of interest that I'd slightly alter based on what was requested in the job listing.

The real question is whether you have the skillset to work front desk, and whether you can demonstrate somehow on paper that you do. Do you have experience answering phones, working in a call center? Do you know your way around Office suite? (You don't have to prove how, you just have to say you do and then have the most basic of chops to back it up.) Do you have customer service experience? Etc. etc. etc.

Most front desk positions require a college degree, which is frankly ludicrous, so you may find yourself facing a lot of applications that want you to list your degree information. If you can get through with just listing your college experience, I'd do that. But remember, apply for any job where you have even a hope of getting to the interview stage. If you have 60% of what they're asking for, I'd apply.

So here are some questions to ask when building up a resume and a portfolio of your skill sets for any job: Have you ever worked a volunteer job? (You don't have to mark it as volunteer on your resume.) Did you do any kind of workstudy job while you were in college? (This is real work and really counts!) Ever worked for a family business, or done work for a friend, or have you done reasonably extensive beta-reading/editing for fanfic? That's freelance, baby!

So more important than "should I apply to this" is "How do I apply to this reasonably". Applying for any single specific job once you've found one shouldn't take that long, an hour at most; I've got more about that here under the "cover letters and resumes" section. Especially for jobs like front desk, a good cover letter is super important; it's basically a writing sample that tells them a lot about your ability to communicate, your drive, and your intelligence, whether or not that's fair. Remember to emphasize your skills and never, ever mention or excuse your deficiencies; you want to tell them why you're good for the job, not pre-emptively argue with them about why you're not.

I do also recommend, if at all possible, you sit down with your college transcripts and work out how many credits you have. College credits are usually pretty transferrable, and it's worth your time, if you're able, to find a way to complete a degree -- an Associate's degree, particularly through an accredited community or online college, often only takes two years and if you come in with existing credits, probably even less. Studies indicate that having any degree of any kind increases your chances of being hired and also of earning more over your lifetime. I know not everyone has the ability to attend or complete college, and I don't think everyone should, but if you can, even if it's just one course a semester and the degree's a long way off, do consider it.

Good luck, Anon! And hey, if you do end up finding that retail/food customer service is where you're getting offers, there's no shame in that, that's good solid skilled work that will give you more to put on your resume when you're ready to move on.

[suzannahnatters]

Okay. Look. I'm willing to grant that late-eighteenth-century utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham may have had some ideas that weren't entirely bad. He certainly seems to be influential in the history of English thought. But I will never be able to take the man seriously. This is because I was introduced to him at university during a criminology unit which informed me that he thought people who might be likely to commit crimes should definitely be pre-emptively imprisoned. I didn't think you could come up with a more fat-headed notion if you tried your entire life...but Jeremy Bentham tried very hard, and I have to admit, he nearly outdid himself...

You see, for very serious philosophical reasons, Bentham decided that he didn't want to be buried or cremated decently, like a normal person. Oh, no - he wanted to be mummified and put on display so that nobody would ever forget him. He also wanted his head to be specially preserved according to mummification techniques practiced by the Maori people of New Zealand, and studied so that future generations would have the benefit of knowing all the secrets of his prodigious intellect. It's quite an understandable megalomaniacal impulse that you may recall from Egyptian pharaohs and Communist dictators, except that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin never asked for his corpse to be wheeled out to join his friends at parties. Trouble arose almost at once when the head was detached from the body and the mummification process began. Bentham had stipulated Maori mummification techniques, but he made the rather basic error of not asking an actual Maori person to do the work. The result went a bit awry and turned out something so disturbing that nobody could imagine wanting it at a party. So a wax head was commissioned and attached to the corpse instead. Then the whole thing was put on display at the University College of London.  Sometimes the real, not-quite-right head was put on display too, at the corpse's feet, where you really had to get close in order to see it. If you happen to spot Jeremy Bentham on a visit to London today, however, you'll notice that the original head is no longer there. And it's not, as you might think, so that people can have their lunches undisturbed. The real reason is much sillier. You see, University College has a rival institution, King's College, and in 1975 some King's College students got together and kidnapped the head as a prank. They subsequently held it to ransom for 100 pounds and rumour even has it that before it was returned to UCL they even played football with the mummified relic. I'm very sad to say that this is probably not true, because the head is probably too fragile to last long on the playing-field. But I don't think it could possibly have happened to a better person.

I'm really annoyed that this silly historical fact completely slipped my mind at the time that I was writing Dark Clouds, my 1890s gaslamp fantasy heist romp which is set partly at the University College. Maybe someday Miss Dark and her larcenous crew will have to pay Jeremy Bentham a visit...

[coldgoldlazarus]

I got a message and I might finally get my Metroid Prime remaster game soon!! I'm curious though and i wanted to ask. What do you think is the best time of the day to play Metroid Prime 1 ?

I remember when i talked about playing Metroid Fusion at night you said that it was the best way to play it and same for Metroid Prime : Echoes. So what about Metroid Prime I ? Is it better to play it at day or night? (also on the big screen or little screen? Probably on the big screen but since I'm on the switch and i don't have access to the tv for my switch this weekend idk if I'll be able to play it on the big screen and i dun wanna wait any longer T__T )

Oh, sweet! :D

Prime 1, hmm. There's an intro section that's definitely best at night, as with a very lategame area. But on the whole, the rest of the time it's pretty good during the day. ^.^

Big screen is definitely recommended if and when available, especially on the remaster, but it's still pretty enjoyable in handheld mode (or tabletop with the kickstand, depending on the control scheme you use) too.

On that note, a couple other things maybe worth knowing going in, though I'll put them under a readmore so you can take or leave them as you wish:

The Remaster version specifically has four different control scheme options you can try out, depending on what you're going for. (And a bunch of adjustable settings within those, not quite full button remapping but still close.) One that's close to the gamecube original, one that uses gyro to emulate the Wii Trilogy release's motion controls, one that uses standard first-person-shooter dual-stick, and one that somehow hybridizes the latter two in some way I'll admit I'm not entirely clear on?

The gamecube option is probably best for an authentic-ish feel for how it played in 2002, but is also kinda limited. I personally swear by the Trilogy controls, and while the gyro is slightly clunkier, (needs frequent manual recentering due to the lack of an IR sensor to do that automatically, and due to the detatched joycons needs a table to set up at) I've still been having a really good time playing through using that. But I know a lot of people are used to the twin-stick setup, so if you don't vibe with motion controls, that might be your best bet?

Similarly, the game has a hint system (sorta like Fusion's waypoint markers where it tells you where to go without saying how to get there, just as a pop-up from the suit instead) but while it is on by default, it is optional in Prime, and can be turned off and on in the menu. It is very handy for if you get lost, but I at least find that it tends to pop up pre-emptively well before that point, so even back during my first-time playthrough on Trilogy I turned it off after a while, and only temporarily turned it back on once or twice for a clue when I was genuinely not sure where to go. Once again up to you either way, but I figured I'd let you know first so you can make an informed decision of whether you want it or not.

Finally, unlike the 2D games this one doesn't have any rewards tied to completion time, so there's no need to rush yourself here. Unless you want to anyway, I guess. XD But it does show an extra after-credits scene if you get 100% item completion, so that's something to keep in mind later, if you want to go for that.

[birchbow]

How exactly do moirails work? I keep getting confused between what constitutes a matespiritship and moirailegence. I know that moirails are able to help sooth and calm but I feel that there is way more to moirails than just that and I’m having a hard time understanding.

Ahhh, well, this is one of those things that's really only defined in-comic in a fairly skeletal way, and the form it takes in fics is always going to be like 50% headcanon, minimum. And in my case probably more because I've been fascinated by the concept of non-sexual romance/intimacy for a long time and so I've written a LOT of pale content lol. SO here's some rambling about moiraillegiance, which I'm pre-emptively putting under a cut because I know myself.

First, a brief review. Pale-related things we get in the canon, at a quick top-of-my-head scan, are basically:

some trolls are a more emotionally unstable/violent and will find somebody who complements their personality and helps keep them from murderously flying off the handle.*

of the four quadrants of relationships trolls are expected to have, this is not a concupiscient (sexual) one** but it is a (positive emotions toward your partner) one, which Karkat and the narration frame as "pity" (see "****")

At one point, a scene that appears to be setting up for a death-match is defused by one party shh-ing the other one and patting their face until they calm down, from which fandom took 'shooshing" and 'papping' as terms, from the sound effects in those panels.***

talking about your thoughts and emotions is mentioned several times in the context of pale relationships****, and I believe at one point called a feelings jam although I don't have it in me to dig back and see if that one is canon

that is the canon stuff that occurs off the top of my head

*how much of the part where the narrative explains quadrants is biased (because of what a shitshow Alternia is) is up for debate **fandom interpretation varies on this from "having sex with your moirail is a huge taboo" to "it's totally fine, it's just not one of the quadrants the drones demand contributions for". ***And also where I (and quite a few other people I would guess) started thinking about trolls having separate, alien instincts and responses to stimuli that humans would find relatively unremarkable, like having their face patted or having somebody shush them ****Alternia aggressively punishes perceived weakness to the point that seeing another troll being vulnerable and not killing them for it is narrated as "pity" which is the closest we seem to get to an Alternian-culture concept of "love". ANYWAY that probably has a finger on the needle RE: how exclusive it is to ONLY talk to your moirail about your feelings, because they're in a relationship with you and therefore hopefully won't cull you for it.

Things that are NOT canon include: most of it lmao. If you wanted an itemized list of things in my Troll Society writing that were made up almost entirely whole cloth, we would be here all day. Moving on!

When it comes to writing pale vs flushed, I mostly go by vibes, tbh lol. I suppose if I had to organize my criteria a little bit,,, I am going to spitball. Bear with me.

Pale looks at its partner and goes "I see the things wrong with you, and instead of culling you for them, we are going to fix them" and also "the place where we both are is a place we're both steady and safe" (passive/steadying/protective),

and flush is more like. "I see the things wrong with you, and instead of culling you for them I'm suffering them with you" and also "the place where we both are is a place where we Want More" (active/passionate/aggressive I guess??? Can't find the word).

or to rephrase

pale->unpicking feelings, controlling violent impulse, steadying emotional state, physical touch to invite a sort of subspace-adjacent hazy alien-arousal-that's-not-arousal.

flush->passionate, intense, active attraction, sometimes kind of violent! sometimes too passionate for its own good! Physical touch to work each other up and drive each other higher in a positive way (hopefully) (mostly) (trolls are violent assholes tbh)

I DON'T KNOW DUDE there's no guide for this stuff lol. As evidenced above, canon basically has just like a skeleton framework, so we are all out here putting these lines down ourselves.

Making this more complicated: regardless of what the author of any given fic headcanons as the social norm, it also makes sense to me that there are variations in trolls just like in humans. I usually don't write my pale pairings fucking, but it seems reasonable and inevitable to me that some trolls would be into that! Or trolls who were attracted to concupiscient quads but didn't want to bone down, although that's dangerous and untenable for reasons mentioned in previous asks.

fig 1: Meenah and Kurloz's swinging back and forth² from the (hate+fucking) quadrant to the (love/pity+no fucking³) quadrant in PoF felt like it came naturally as I was writing, because what else are two of the oldest, most powerful trolls in the universe going to do, when each of them is the only person around who comes close to actually knowing the other enough to hate/pity?

²Switching back and forth between quadrants is actually called "vacillating" and seems to be a fairly common event in troll society and media--the blurring/combining pale and pitch that they're doing is the more scandalous part, according to general fanon ³I have always preferred to write pale relationships with a lot of the traits my culture associates with sexual relationships (nudity, intimacy, an industrial porn complex lol) but to cut the sex and leave the rest and play with that contrast. How much of that is because I'm personally not sexually attracted to people, and I'm deeply Emotions about a society recognizing that kind of relationship as crucial and desirable??? I mean idk boss y'all don't pay me for introspection lol.

ANYWAY that also means the boundaries of what any given troll defines as "too much intimacy not to be pale" or "the feelings you're talking to me about are too personal for this not to be pale" or "you're touching me in a way that seems pale (or flushed)" are going to be different, which makes this extra hard to answer. Example!!

When I write Kurloz, I write him with an old-fashioned and strict view of what quadrants entail, but also being too old and above too many laws and social norms to give much of a shit about whether he blurs those lines or not most of the time. The little nods to things like it being slutty In His Time to wear your hair short and show off the roots of your horns hopefully bring across some of the cranky old man vibes lmao.

VERSUS when I write Karkat, I'm writing a much younger guy who spends a ton of time thinking about relationships and watching romcoms, synthesizing his own very in-depth thesis of What Feelings Are--and also just coming from a much younger generation. He's not nearly as comfortable blurring the lines, but he also places those lines in very different spots than Kurloz does.

TBH follow your heart haha it's just an alien sandbox and we're all just slapping sand around.