#pun intended because his children?? CONSIDER THEM BORN

[wildsaltair]

y’all don’t understand I need to BITE his ribcage

[greenaswildfire]

Guys, guys, I have a theory, certainly is a bit (a bit???) of a stretch, but we're here to have fun, so here's my "bat"shitcrazy (no pun intended haha) take on the matter. TG will laugh with me, TB probably curse me, but oh well.

Careful, for the comment is long and full of spoilers. I haven't read the books, so my comment relies mostly on what I could find on wiki and some discussion topics I found on reddit when I was unsure of an info.

A mutual shared with us a theory of hers about the possibility of Aemond and Alys being linked to the origins of House Whent, aka, Catelyn's mother House. I was curious so I watched it and let me tell you: last time I was this invested in researching something I was in my teenage years investigating all the refs in Saint Seiya.

So, I share with you the comment I made (with some more info I remembered at the last minute here) haha!

1-What do we know about Alys's ancestry: Alys is a Strong bastard, House Strong is said to exist since the Age of Heroes among other houses like Stark, Gardener, or Blackwood. Stark is known for their link to direwolves, House Gardener's patriarch was said to make land flourish, so I see high potential for special genes in House Strong as well, despite not knowing about any memorable Strong of this period.

2-The dance of the dragons: the Dance happens between 129 - 131 AC. Aemond dies in 130, but we do not know what happens to Alys after she claims, in 132, that the child she presents to the new government is Aemond's son. After all, Winter Fever strikes Westeros in that same year brought by, apparently, foreigners of Ib. We don't know what happened to them, but considering the stories about "the witch queen of Harrenhal" I don't doubt they've survived, magic people seem to be more difficult to get sick I think. Melisandre is there to prove it after all, not even cold or poison destroy this woman! haha

3-Info about House Whent: first I traced back its origin to see what I could find. House Whent of Harrenhal was born from a hedge knight in 233 AC who was given the castle by Maekar I, as prize for his help. The castle at that time belonged to House Lothston of Harrenhal. House Lothston exists as 'family name' since the time of Maegor I with Guy Lothston, but the title of the House as Lords of Harrenhal was given after the Dance, in 151, when Master-of-Arms Ser Lucas Lothston was ordered to marry Aegon IV's first mistress, Falena Stokeworth to remove her from Court. Aegon IV has consistently visited Harrenhal to see his mistresses: Falena and her daughter Jeyne Lothston (some people even think she's another bastard of Aegon passed off as Lothston). These meetings might have resulted in many bastards, with a new injection of special genes (and mad genes as well caused by !ncest, in Jeyne's case) but we have no info about children from any of these women after they are expelled from the Court because of pox acquired from Aegon IV.

4-More info about Lothston: In terms of Lothstons's future generations, we have Manfred Lothston who was part of the first Blackfyre rebellion and said to have betrayed Daemon Blackfyre. Then, Mad Danelle Lothston who answered Bloodraven's call to smash the second Blackfyre rebelion. However, the rumors of Mad Danelle making use of dark arts were spreading like wildfire and disturbing the peace in Westeros, which made King Maekar I take action and cause her downfall in 233 AC, in this fight, the Whent hedge knight rebels against Lothston and he's named the new Lord of Harrenhal. Important to note that on wiki they don't give the exact year of House Whent's founding year, because Martin apparently didn't tell it. Curious, very curious.

5-Whent and Lothston sigils: It's also curious, though, that House Whent's kept some elements of Lothston sigil: House Lothston was a huge bat upon a field of silver and gold. House Whent is 7 bats upon a golden field. If they're different houses, why the similarities? House Karstark for example, is a branch of House Stark and their sigil is different. The extinct House Greystark though, was the same sigil of House Stark, the colors being the only difference. What I'm trying to say is that House Whent could have picked something totally different from the previous House because they were nothing to each other, right? But they kept some things. Why? I imagine both houses were connected either by friendship or blood. But thinking better now, I believe blood is the most plausible answer, we all know that power or lands corrupt people and in Westeros this kind of thing is most likely to happen. Let's remember that the only Lothston alive was a single woman who was known for fiercely riding into battle with a black armor and we are not told about Danelle interested in marriage or something, she wasn't ladylike apparently, but was considered a vampire and we know that rumors and gossip are common weapon to try to sabotage women of power who were single. The fact that Maekar I named Whent the new lord of the place instead of, idk, any other house of the riverlands makes me think that this happens precisely because as secondary branch of the Lothston, the Whent hedge knight was chosen and rewarded for being loyal to the realm instead of joining forces with Lothston.

6-So, to wrap things up: We know that House Lothston already existed before Aemond, but considering we have zero info about Jeyne Lothston's or even Falena's descendants, now I imagine it's possible that Alys bastard child (or her grandchild, or her great-grandchild or whatever) was paired up with some unknown descendant of Jeyne Lothston or Falena Lothston, originating the Whents as a branch of Lothston.

If Alysmond descendant marries a Falena's descendant, nothing unusual here. But if Alysmond descendant marries a Jeyne's descendant, it would essentialy means the union between the greens and the blacks (if the rumors of Jeyne being actually another Aegon IV's daughter are to be trusted).

Do I believe it? Well... It's not impossible, imho. We all know how Martin loves to create intricate plots and family trees, it matches his gardener style of writing. The more complicated, the more likely is for Martin to come up with something like this, even more considering that we were never given a definitive founding year for House Whent. Like vampires, you are never sure how old is House Whent.

The info has a vital role, it's so important that Martin opted to let the info vague so he could have space to work better on the idea, he's a gardener yeah, but not everything he hints it's a seed, there's also foreshadowing and I guess that's the case with the link Whent-Lothston and alysmond. Let's remember that Cat, a POV character, was half Whent, so it has to be something important, if not for her character, for others like Littlefinger and Sansa.

And now talking about the TV show: who are the ones who end up monarchs in the end? Cat's descendants, Bran and Sansa! lol I know D&D ruined the show in many aspects, but I admit I laugh so much thinking about it now, the guys simplified everything in the most trashy way possible and even so, we were able to come up with a theory to fix their mess haha That's why Sansa didn't like Daenerys: Aemond genes were warning her about Rhaenyra's descendant lmao

If we think about it now:

-Rhaenyra's descendant does not survive;

-2 alysmond descendants become monarchs;

-1 alysmond descendant robbed Rhaenyra's descendants of their azor ahai role thanks to D&D; Woah thanks a lot Hess and Condal, you've tried to tone down Rhaenyra's ambition, by creating this Aegon prophecy thing, but in the end it meant nothing.

-the only dragon alive (that despite Condall and Hess fanservice we all know it was a dreamfyre egg) is actually a green dragon;

-and the last targaryen of Rhaenyra's bloodline is a Snow that will never rise against his siblings.

Woah... we have a lot to learn from the patient old men of Oldtown in terms of "fight a war without saying you're fighting a war".

Anyway, thanks Jessie Bear for the theory that sparked my interest for this madness, I went full obsessed mode this afternoon because of that and it was so much fun! XD

[kogarashi-art]

Saw a post cross my dash recently that got me thinking about this. It still remains arguably the most frustrating interaction I’ve had regarding insurance of some sort in my life, though I also admit I haven’t had too many negative interactions overall (I’ve been lucky).

Behind a cut to keep this from getting long on others’ dashboards, but the only real trigger warning (I think) is insurance frustration.

For some necessary background, I have a congenital heart defect (meaning I was born with it) called a “bicuspid aortic valve.” This means the valve on my aorta has two flaps instead of three, because two of them fused together when my heart formed in utero. Due to this defect, the valve doesn’t close all the way when the heart pumps, causing a heart murmur as some blood flows backward with each pump. [Side note: it’s actually amusing the number of doctors who’ve asked to hear it once I mention it, such as two different pediatricians for my children, and an assistant in the office I recently went to for a general health checkup.] When I was five years old, my pediatrician heard the murmur and referred my parents to a cardiologist, who then proceeded to monitor my defect throughout my childhood.

It’s important to note that my childhood cardiologist stressed above all else to my parents that I was still a normal child and should be raised as such, no big fuss over the heart defect. I knew I had it, but aside from taking antibiotics before dental procedures (a recommendation that has since been relaxed sometime in the early 2000s, I believe) and going in for echocardiograms (basically an ultrasound of my heart) periodically, it wasn’t a big thing.

Fast forward many years. I went off to college. Got married. Had a couple children. Moved states twice. Realized I’d lapsed on cardiology visits since I’d become an adult and was responsible for my own healthcare (this is my bad, I own that). I decided to rectify that and scheduled a visit with a cardiologist in our area, got my echo done, everything still looked fine.

Then my husband and I decided we should get life insurance on both of us, just in case. His application went fine. Mine...well.

Apparently, the life insurance company saw the heart defect in my paperwork, cross-checked their repository of medical information, and then declared that I was a higher-risk customer than someone with a terminal cancer diagnosis, and therefore I should be paying the absolute highest premiums they charged. My husband asked why, given this was the first time my heart defect had ever been considered a problem by someone. According to their in-house doctors and their own information, people with my heart defect had a 35-year life expectancy, and since I was 31, I was close enough to that deadline (pun absolutely intended) that they were expecting to have to pay out sooner than they’d like.

I would like to point out that their in-house doctors had never met me. I never had a home visit. They never spoke to my own health team. They just looked at my paperwork, compared it against their notes, and went, “Well, we think she’s going to drop dead in about four years.”

Of course, I was confused. I’d never heard this from any of my own doctors. I went back to the cardiologist I’d only just seen a couple months prior so I could ask about this whole life expectancy thing, and she was just as confused as I. She looked again at my echo results, and pointed out where it looks like the aorta is a bit enlarged (a common result of this particular valve defect) and that’s probably what the insurance doctor saw. But the way she saw it, I might need a valve replacement in my 40s, but there was no way I was more risky than a cancer patient, and the only reason she could figure that the insurance company’s paperwork implied a 35-year life expectancy was because the medical community had only really been aware of and studying this kind of heart defect for 35 years, and it’s not one that’s commonly discovered in adults (likely because adults often get fewer checkups than children, and may not be referred for a heart murmur).

That’s it. 35 years of information somehow equated to “people tend to die at 35” (at our best guess; the insurance doctor never explained their reasoning beyond the excuse given my husband, after all).

Unfortunately, there was nothing the cardiologist could fill out that would convince the insurance company otherwise. She agreed it was stupid, but her hands were tied.

We ended up sticking with it for a year because, if I recall correctly, we didn’t have better options, and possibly because we’d already paid for that year and wouldn’t get a refund if we left early. But we did cancel once the year was up and went with a different life insurance provider that didn’t take into consideration “pre-existing” conditions like congenital heart defects.

We also ended up moving once more after that event, and my cardiologist in our new area didn’t even see any enlarging on my aorta, so...who knows?

This was eleven years ago, by the way. I’m seven years past my “expiration date,” and I’m pretty sure I’m not dead yet.

[saintmeghanmarkle]

What are H&Ms future ? by u/Comicalacimoc

What are H&Ms future ? A couple of additional ruminations I had on H&M's decision to leave the BRF and if they would consider coming back after they fail at their money-making endeavors in the US.First, we know Megsie won't come back under any circumstances. Second, I noticed something that Harry said that stuck with me for awhile now. He said (I'm paraphrasing here) that he did miss the events and his family, and his friends, but that he was doing this for his CHILDREN, so that they wouldn't have to grow up in the same system, having photos taken by the British media, stories written by the tabloids, having to partake in the relationship back and forth with the media etc. They wouldn't have to be born into working in the family, with few other options of work. This is Harry saying this - we all know that other BRF members DO work and have been productive outside of the royal engagements. But that's his belief, that he was trapped in that system, and while maybe he'd be better off in it at this point, his kids will be better off if they live in the US and have the opportunity to do other things. He took deals and jobs he really wasn't interested in because he thought it would help him to this goal.Because of his belief that it's better for his kids in the US, Harry will be extremely stubborn and probably never ever go back (even if they wanted him back, which they probably don't), even if he becomes destitute. He will probably think that Meg truly loves him and will stay with him even if they are not successful at all, and are living in a 2 bedroom cottage in a middle-class town. The problem is that Megsie sought out someone like him for the status and money. SHE cares about having the finer things in life. She cares about nice clothes, and being adored. There's no way that Megsie will go along living a happy understated life with Harry if all of their projects fail. She will not work a regular job, and her acting options have dried up (unfortunately it's hard for a woman over 40 to get regular gigs in Hollywood, especially if their brand was based on sex). So I can't see this working out for them unless one of their projects really takes off - and there's no indication of that at all. So I ask, what is the most likely future for them? Divorce. And Harry wants his kids to grow up outside the RF so he may be content for her to raise the kids in California, and for him to either go back himself to the UK and participate in the RF again (that way he gets his wish that his kids are spared, pun intended), or he will move to some ordinary apartment, and while away his days playing video games and living on the remnants of a past fortune, much like many old money folks who don't have the skills of their forefathers.What do you think is the most likely 5 or 10 year future for these two? If you think divorce, how specifically will that play out (where will they live and support themselves)? post link: https://ift.tt/z8ODSV9 author: Comicalacimoc submitted: June 26, 2023 at 11:18PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[motownfiction]

🖊 + sam ☺️

what can i say about sam that i feel like i haven't already said? he isn't necessarily my favorite character (if i don't like lucy the best, no one will, pun intended), but he might be the most important character i have in this universe. i cannot wait for people to accuse me of having sam fulfill the "bury your gays" trope despite there being like 93 other queer characters here ... but i know his death hits hard, in large part because he's the only character we see die in the narrative.

one thing i really love about sam is how all of the main characters are very connected to him in a way they are not necessarily connected to anyone else. this isn't to say that the other characters aren't close to each other, but it's perhaps more important to define themselves in relationship to sam than it is for those other relationships. they all have uniquely special connections with him, which is both a very true memory and a very altered one. they all have special connections with each other, but after sam's death, they really put a lot of emphasis on what they had with sam -- their way of making up for the fact that they'll never get to know what would have happened next. but i do love playing with those relationships: the unique love he and will share, the way he and lucy see eye to eye in a way they don't with anyone else, his unending pull toward steph, his respect for daniel, his promise to take care of charlie, and his general everything with sadie in their twinship ... i love it all. they all come together because they all love sam. and they all come together again after they lose him because without him to hold everything together effortlessly, they will need to work twice as hard ... to keep his memory alive, but also, to keep their own connections with each other alive in all these different places. unlike what is now the majority of readers on this blog, you know where sam got started. and while the whole "he brought them together" thing was somewhat speculative in that context, i'm glad i kept it here!

there are times, as i know i've mentioned, where i really wonder if i was right to kill off sam. i mean, i decided to do it because i needed some sort of conflict in the first story in this universe i ever wrote (a 30k-word piece about daniel and charlie on christmas even in 2004), and from there, it just stuck. sometimes i feel bad about it because i know how likable he is. i know how popular he would be in a larger fandom. he's the character i get the most asks about from new readers, after all. but i think sam being born into the narrative just to die is ... kind of the point and kind of a good one at that. he was born to bring everybody together, and he dies to bring everybody together in a very new, very different way. if sam had not died, there would be no veronica. there would also be no judy or jenny armstrong (irony of ironies, considering they're his daughters born after his death!), and there would be no marriage between steph and katie. sam's death is also the best way to ensure that he never dies at all. i'm of course referring to veronica here 🥺 veronica is the hub of all of these people: she is charlie's daughter, lucy and will's granddaughter, and sadie, sam, and daniel's niece. she is the evidence that sam will always bring everybody together, and they are blood! as long as there is a veronica o'connor, there is a sam doyle because she is the culmination of everything he worked for ... everything he wanted for these people he loved so, so much.

this is also why i think sam never married or had children in his lifetime: his child would never unite the group in the same way veronica can and does. sam's kid would just be sam's kid. veronica is their kid, in so many different ways. every time i remember that they never got to meet, i cry a little. he would have loved her. she would have loved him.

i also just really love that sam is a genius. if we take into consideration the place where he started, this is extra funny. it's just really great not to have to pull back with his dialogue or act like i'm covering something up. he's just that smart, and he doesn't really care if you know it ... so long as you don't put pressure on him to do something he doesn't care about. sam is passion, and passion is sam.

i have no idea if any of this makes sense or if i've said anything new/different about sam as a character. i just know that i adore him, and i like to find ways to write scenes where he's still alive. he makes the narrative come to life.

[robininthelabyrinth]

All this trans!Nie Mingjue really makes me want some trans!Jiang Cheng, and if you want too, maybe him ending out pregnant instead of his core being melted, because if I remember correctly Wen Zhuli was honorable, so if Jiāng Cheng did get raped by one of his subordinates, I feel he’d try too limit Jiang Cheng’s suffering.

“It’s not that I’m especially opposed to an alliance by marriage, but who were you planning on having marry in?” Nie Mingjue asked Jiang Fengmian and Madame Yu politely.

They blinked at him.

“I think,” Madame Yu said dryly, after a few minutes, “that we were planning on A-Cheng marrying in. Women usually do.”

“But your son isn’t a woman,” Nie Mingjue said, which he thought was quite reasonable.

“I don’t have a son,” Jiang Fengmian said. “Only two daughters.”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “You have an older daughter and a younger son. Hasn’t he told you?”

“Ah, you mean – by Qinghe standards,” Jiang Fengmian said. He sounded uncomfortable with the idea, which made Nie Mingjue’s eyes narrow and Jiang Fengmian immediately drop the notion of saying something more along those lines. After all, Nie Mingjue himself was a man ‘by Qinghe standards’, as the other sect leader put it, and starting trouble with Qinghe wasn’t on the agenda for today. “Sect Leader Nie, I appreciate your concern, but my daughter –”

“Son.”

“My daughter is a woman. We don’t practice Qinghe ways here.”

“It doesn’t really matter what you practice in the Lotus Pier,” Nie Mingjue said. He was wearing his best pleasant smile, which most people said looked like he was about to start chopping people into pieces. It was, at the moment, a fair description. “From my perspective, with my Qinghe ways, you have a son, who is a man. However you wish to treat him or raise him is up to you, of course, and I’m still willing to arrange a marriage between him and Huaisang, to be maintained or cancelled at their will when they’re older, including a marriage in which Jiang Cheng marries into the Unclean Realm. But what I will not tolerate is Huaisang getting confused by being told on one hand that he has a wife and the other a husband. He’s very fragile after our father’s death; I’m sure you understand.”

Jiang Fengmian, who’d been about to protest, shut his mouth, his desire for Nie Mingjue not to bring up, yet again, the fact of his father’s murder at the hands of Wen Ruohan – a murder that would need to be answered for, one day – outweighing his desire to argue back.

It was a petty move, but Nie Mingjue was aware that he had very few cards to play against the older and more influential man, and that meant he had to use them all no matter how petty to get what he wanted.

Mostly, in this case, for Jiang Cheng to be treated the way he so obviously identified. The damage that could be done by people who didn’t understand this sort of thing was incalculable – it was worth sticking his nose into another family’s business, no matter how rude, to try to make a difference if he could.

There were long few minutes of silence, in which Nie Mingjue stood his (tenuous) ground and Jiang Fengmian considered possible responses that would result in even more awkwardness.

Just at the point that it was getting intolerable, Madame Yu snorted, a surprisingly inelegant sound for such a refined woman.

“Let him be a son and a husband, then,” she said, her voice a little waspish. “If he changes his mind later, he can resume being a daughter, and there will be no loss.”

It wasn’t exactly how Nie Mingjue had intended on settling Nie Huaisang’s marriage, but it seemed a worthwhile conclusion, even if Jiang Fengmian was clearly not entirely on board.

“Very well,” he said. “Are we agreed?”

The marriage was unofficially dissolved when the boys were twelve, if by ‘dissolved’ one meant that the entire Jiang sect had entirely forgotten that their young master had ever been a young mistress, even Jiang Fengmian. A casual comment to Madame Yu that she ought to consider finding someone to marry in to their sect so that the heir could be officially confirmed, rather than wasting him on a cutsleeve marriage out, was more than enough for the entire concept to be permanently misplaced.  

(Not that he thought they would make a bad pair, but if that was the case they could always figure it out for themselves later on.)

As far as Nie Mingjue was concerned, that was the end of it.

And yet, years later, it was at Nie Mingjue’s tent in Heijan that Jiang Cheng came, a twisted expression on his face.

“I have a problem,” he said, and touched his stomach lightly in a place a little too far down to suggest a stomachache. “I don’t know what to do about it, and – when I was younger, Huaisang said – well. I thought you might have some insight.”

Nie Mingjue let Jiang Cheng into the tent and put up a silencing array behind him, the sort used to protect news delivered by the most important spies.

“I’m not sure what you want me to tell you,” he said honestly. “It’s not a problem I’ve encountered on a personal basis, if you understand my meaning. Do you want to keep it or not?”

Jiang Cheng settled down where Nie Mingjue led him, still grimacing. “I don’t know,” he said. “The idea of bearing a child for any one of them disgusts me beyond telling. But on the other hand, what did the child have to do with it? It seems unfair not to give it a chance to live.”

“It’s not a child yet,” Nie Mingjue pointed out. He could do math, and the fall of the Lotus Pier wasn’t that long ago. “There’s no way that it’s quickened this soon after. Right now, it’s a problem that can be eliminated with a bowl of medicine, if that’s what you want.”

“I know,” Jiang Cheng said. “I’m considering it. It’s only…on one hand, even if it’s not a child yet, it could be a child, if I let it. A Jiang child, with me as its father, and obviously my Jiang sect could use as many new members as possible, no matter what the other half of their biological origin. But on the other hand – wouldn’t it be irresponsible to carry a child now? I’m leading the Jiang sect’s efforts against the Wens, trying to avenge what they did to me, to my parents, to my sect, and a child would be a distraction from that…and Wei Wuxian, who might have helped me out, is still missing.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t comment on Wei Wuxian, even though he itched, as he often did, to remind Jiang Cheng that no matter how atrociously Jiang Fengmian had behaved – and no matter what the condition of his birth had been, legitimate and incorrectly categorized – he was the son and heir of the Jiang clan.

Not the child Jiang Fengmian had brought in and treated as if he’d been the son he’d never had.

(Really, Nie Mingjue didn’t understand places like Yunmeng. What was the point of not recognizing misaligned reincarnations like theirs? It wouldn’t make it any less true.)

“Depending on the way it affects you, you could be out in the fields for months still,” he said reasonably. “Certainly plenty of mothers in Qinghe don’t go into isolation until there’s only a few weeks left. And even if you aren’t, I can take charge on the battlefield while you consult on strategy from the backend, the same way you would if you’d been taken out of the field because of an injury – Lan Xichen is doing much the same thing, when he’s not acting as courier, and he’s doing it because he’s a terrible general rather than any logistical reason.”

“But it’s not an injury.”

Nie Mingjue frowned at him. “You’re making it very difficult to resist making some sort of pun about the Wen sect’s swords, Sect Leader Jiang, and I don’t even like that sort of crude humor.”

Jiang Cheng took a second to get it, then snorted. “I supposed you could say I got ‘stabbed’ a few times, yes.”

“Only a few times? They really are worthless dogs.”

And now Jiang Cheng was laughing, even though he was trying to stop himself. “That’s terrible, stop it…you know, I suppose, if you look at it from a certain perspective, I really am just suffering from – from post-stabbing complications.”

“Seems reasonable enough to me.” Nie Mingjue poured Jiang Cheng a cup of the tea that had already been cooling on his desk – a little rude, but better than wasting time making a new pot. “If you do decide to keep it, you can leave the child with Nie Huaisang once it’s born, if you like. He’s always liked children, and it’s not as if I’m going to let him get anywhere near a battlefield, now or ever.”

“Are you sure he’s not a woman?” Jiang Cheng asked. He sounded almost wistful, which suggested that the arranged marriage they’d set up so many years ago might even have a chance of resurrecting; Nie Mingjue would have to slip Nie Huaisang a hint. “With the fans and the birds and the pretty things –”

“He says he isn’t, and so he isn’t,” Nie Mingjue said with a sigh. “I admit it’d make it easier if he was. No one outside of Qinghe would question his below-average talent or his love of frivolities if he was a woman, however unfair that might be, and it’d make things easier for him.”

“You’d still yell at him to practice his saber.”

“Of course. What does saber have to do with gender?”

Jiang Cheng smiled and shook his head. “Thank you,” he said. “I still haven’t decided one way or another, but…it’s good to know there’s a way to do it, if I want, that doesn’t mean that – I’m not as brave as you. I don’t want people to know.”

“It’s not a matter of bravery,” Nie Mingjue said. “It’s common etiquette. Anyone who spends time thinking about another person’s genitals that isn’t planning on courting them is wasting their time.”

Jiang Cheng snickered. “No, I mean – people know about you, that you’re misaligned. You’ve never been shy about it.”

Nie Mingjue was pretty sure Jiang Cheng was thinking about the incident during a discussion conference some years back when he’d been shouting at Jin Guangshan over something or another – loud enough to be audible across half the city, it seemed, based on the number of people who talked about it afterwards – and ended the rant by telling the other sect leader to suck his non-existent dick.

“I’m not really a shy person,” he said dryly, and Jiang Cheng pressed his lips together in an evident attempt to avoid descending into giggles – he’s definitely thinking about the suck-my-dick comment. “Also, Qinghe is a bit more open about these things; it makes it easier, not having to explain exactly what it means or doesn’t mean. Don’t be too hard yourself.”

Jiang Cheng didn’t seem convinced, but nodded anyway.

“It’s not just that,” he said, though obviously it was, in some large part, that. Jiang Cheng’s complicated relationship with Wei Wuxian was proof of it, if nothing else. “It’s also – people can do math. I don’t want people thinking I’m weak, or a pushover.”

“No one who has seen you wield Zidian is likely to make that mistake,” Nie Mingjue said, but he could tell from the set of Jiang Cheng’s shoulders that that wasn’t enough. “It isn’t weakness, you know. Anyone can be captured, anyone can be tortured – some people will have to live without a leg or an arm, after what they suffered, and that’s the lucky ones that didn’t die. That’s all it ever is in war – just luck, good or bad. If I walked into a Wen ambush next week, I’d be as liable to complications from a Wen ‘stab’ as you, but it wouldn’t be because my strength wasn’t enough.”

“I guess,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s just – if I kept the child, people would have to know, wouldn’t they?”

“Says who? If you retire from the battlefield due to complications from an injury for a few months, then the assumption will be that you found out that you got some poor girl pregnant and took on the child once you knew. If you do want people to know that you carried it, well, children come and go at their own speed.” Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Let some gossip overhear you talking about how you were already carrying the Lotus Pier’s next heir before any Wen set a foot on Yunmeng soil, and everyone will put together the rest. You know how it goes.”

“I suppose I do, at that.”

“Huaisang could probably put together a convincing story,” Nie Mingjue said. “He’s really very good at identifying every possible point in time and place where someone could be having sex, even if the actual personalities involved make it highly unlikely. And then he illustrates it, usually.”

Jiang Cheng was smiling, and his shoulders were straight again – his burdens lifted, however temporarily.

Good.

“Let me know what you decide,” Nie Mingjue said. “I know just enough about medicine to be able to mix you up what you need using just the medicine I already keep in my general collection, so no one would need to know, if that’s what you choose. And if you choose the other way, well, I have the medicines to help support that, too.”

“You keep that much medicine?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve heard about the tendency of the Qinghe Nie towards qi deviations –” Of course he had. Everyone had. “– but we have a habit of keeping an awful lot of medicine on hand.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jiang Cheng said, and he was frowning a little, thoughtful, but not as stressed as he’d been earlier. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Nie Mingjue said. “Really, don’t. If I let it get out that I give advice, every misaligned sonofabitch that wants to get a promotion will start showing up at my door with problems that are really just an excuse to get a chat in with the sect leader, and then where will my troubles end?”

Jiang Cheng, who was dealing with similar problems, smirked. “That doesn’t seem like my problem. At least people know better than to ask anything of me.”

“That can change,” Nie Mingjue said threateningly. “I’ll get Huaisang on it; see what happens to your reputation then.”

Jiang Cheng held up his hands in surrender as he retreated.

Nie Mingjue wondered for a moment which way he’d pick, but then remembered that it wasn’t his business and also that there was a war on that needed his attention a bit more.

Personal problems could wait.

[chibimyumi]

how would you describe ciel’s and sebastian’s relationship? like yes literally it’s contractor and the one who agrees to the contract. but like their day to day relationship with eachother. i dont ship them but i love how they interact with one another but don’t know how to characterize their relationship.

Dear Anon,

O!Ciel and Sebastian’s relationship is not something I could fit into any inter-human relationship categories. This is because theirs is simply something that seems very unlikely for humans to have in our society. However, that is exactly what makes this master-servant duo interesting.

Most clinically, O!Ciel and Sebastian are indeed master and servant, child and adult. Though surely very rare, child-employers with adult-employees might exist in our world. What makes O!Ciel and Sebastian’s relationship unique is by no means limited to this ‘subversion’ of child-adult dynamic. Let us unpack this master-servant bond category by category, layer by layer.

1. Child vs Adult – Age Dynamic

A unique characteristic of O!Ciel and Sebastian’s relationship is how they do not behave like any child vs adult would. Sebas treats O!Ciel like a child, but he does not see his master as a child. And by ‘child’, I mean more specifically ‘a less-than-adult’ person. To Sebastian who is centuries old, a human who is 13 is as inexperienced and foolish as a 30 or 60 year old human. Instead, it seems like Sebas treats O!Ciel like a child only because it gets on his master’s nerves and it is entertaining.

We must remember that humans are cattle to Sebas, and that O!Ciel is no exception. For analogy’s sake, let us imagine a pig. Humans usually don’t have a higher regard or respect for adult pigs than they have for piglets. We don’t take adult pigs more seriously than we do piglets.

2. Master vs Servant – Power Dynamic

The most unique part in O!Ciel and Sebas’ relationship is not that a child is the employer of an adult, omnipotent demon. The uniqueness is in the detail that this specific employer has absolute command over Sebastian, and can even use the demon’s powers against him at will. We see in the Werewolf Arc for example, how O!Ciel has practically already broken his end of the contract. Sebastian was in full right to claim his payment for his service and return home. But since the contract was technically not over yet, O!Ciel stopped the demon from exerting his right with just one simple phrase: “it’s an order.”

Sebastian may seem all-powerful, but if O!Ciel wishes to make Sebas do something against his will, O!Ciel merely needs to use the binding magical term “it’s an order”. This binding term is so powerful it can infringe all of Sebastian’s personal autonomy, and it would be ““legal””. What if Sebas doesn’t want to be touched? “It’s an order, let person X touch you and get away without harm.” What if Sebas doesn’t want to expose himself to lethal danger? “It’s an order, do it anyway.”

This is the reason why SebaCiel could never work (even if O!Ciel were an adult!), simply because the power balance is inherently tipped way too much to O!Ciel’s side. A romantic and/or sexual relationship cannot work as long as the power balance is off, and true consent cannot be given on all sides. Consent that can be coerced, or cannot be withdrawn freely, is not true consent, after all.

3. Master vs Servant - Bickering

There is a lot of back-and-forth bickering between O!Ciel and Sebastian, which is very uncharacteristic of employer-employee relationships (No way I’m going to bicker against my boss!) Sometimes the bickering is light-hearted and comical, and I surmise this is part of the reason people might have the illusion that their power-dynamic is not completely off (as described above).

This light-hearted bickering is a great appeal, and it makes the master not behave like a full master, and the servant not like a full servant. On surface their contract bears semblance to a friendly relationship wherein both parties also fulfil their respective roles in this employment. This is a powerful ingredient in their usually fantastic cooperation during their missions! O!Ciel allows Sebas some freedom (when he sees fit), while Sebas returns this ‘kind gesture’ with helpful initiatives (when he sees fit). I dare say that many if not most ‘Kuroshitsuji’ fans are here exactly for this reason. Regardless of how fantastic this cooperation might be however, at core their relationship is still ‘employment’.

On the darker side however, this bickering is also one of the fruits born from insidious manipulation. In this post I discussed how Sebastian stretches his arms and legs as WIDELY as possible within his tiny constraints. To a certain extent, O!Ciel turns a blind eye (pun not intended) to it. Why though?

Of course O!Ciel is not a complete tyrant towards Sebastian, but this is the result that Sebastian managed to fight and win for himself. All the way back in chapter 138 Sebas didn’t even know O!Ciel yet, and yet he already made very clear that:

He should not try to exert too much control over him

That if he does try to do so, he should be careful with words

That if he is not careful, Sebas will take any opportunity to punish him for careless word-choice

In this small incident O!Ciel learned that if his demon misbehaves, he’d have himself to blame. THIS is the silent lesson Sebas instilled into the boy; that if Sebas mistreats O!Ciel, it is not Sebas who crossed boundaries, but that O!Ciel didn’t set the boundaries right. “O!Ciel had it coming”. This lesson taught by Sebas leans dangerously close to – if not downright within – the category of victim-blaming. (Sebas you trashy Trash Demon™, I love you.)

3.1. Circus Arc

So far in the manga, the most obvious example of this victim-blaming dynamic is the incident with the snakes in the Circus Arc. Sebas very clearly reminded O!Ciel that he is not above allowing his master to get hurt semi-mortally. O!Ciel was seething when he found out, and justly so. But did Sebas show any remorse? Of course not. Instead he blamed O!Ciel for:

Not being careful enough with his commands

Being too boring to see the ‘fun’ in this game

3.2. Jack the Ripper Arc

Far more dramatically, this same victim-blaming dynamic can found in the Jack the Ripper Arc, and this one arguably even dictated how O!Ciel is going to become as a person.

In the Ripper Arc Sebas also obeyed O!Ciel’s order to the T. But that’s it; only to the T and nothing more. Because the demon deliberately withheld information from his master necessary for the investigation, more victims fell while the case was still in O!Ciel’s hands. Who gets the blame? Jack the Ripper obviously. But who is made to bear the guilt? O!Ciel is; through the victim-blaming Sebastian made him internalise.

O!Ciel is still O!Ciel, so he probably didn’t really lose any sleep over the deaths of 5 people. But had he not been him, then surely this guilt would have been mind-crippling. However, we need to bear in mind that O!Ciel was not unaffected; had Sebas not withheld information, then O!Ciel would have stopped the murders earlier, and presented a scapegoat to the Queen. Let’s be fair, had Madam been arrested then she’d still be awaiting capital punishment. But as the Watchdog, O!Ciel pulls some strings. He would have tried VERY hard not to lose his aunt too.

As it is however, the enormous guilt about the death of his own aunt is what Sebas made O!Ciel suffer through slow and insidious manipulation. Sebas never gave O!Ciel the time to mourn his aunt, and instead pressured the boy into admitting that he ‘callously sacrificed Madam as a pawn’. He made him mentally TAKE the blame for the murder that Grell committed, and Sebas could have helped prevent.

As we can see in chapter 13, O!Ciel was desperately trying to externalise the blame, coming up with excuse after excuse, justification after justification. None however, works. Good seasoning skills, Sebas, amazing food-prep.

I am fairly certain that O!Ciel doesn’t even realise how much he’s being emotionally manipulated by his butler throughout the years. This insight about emotional manipulation and psychological abuse is something that requires a level of abstract comprehension we cannot expect from most people, let alone a 13 year old child (however smart they may be.)

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, both Sebas and O!Ciel exist in this relationship rather amicably on surface level, but they are inherently toxic to each other. Sebas is continuously manipulating and emotionally abusing O!Ciel, while O!Ciel holds the absolute power to infringe all of Sebastian’s autonomy.

This ⇊ illustration by Yana is the perfect symbolisation of their bond.

We can attach adjectives like “f*cking toxic” and “fascinating” to this relationship, but we can’t find a category of inter-human relationship to fit O!Ciel and Sebastian into. In real life there are no children who can wield magical command to strip someone entirely of their autonomy. Likewise, there are very few adults who would not consider a child as ‘less-than-adult’. Should we try to shoe-horn O!Ciel and Sebas into a human category, then we risk over-simplifying this relationship. Over-simplification of this relationship can be very harmful, because the subverted formula of “child-master and adult-servant” SEEMS to compensate for the inherent power imbalance.

Yana however, managed to write this relationship SO brilliantly complex, that Sebas will always remain the servant who is at O!Ciel’s mercy, while O!Ciel suffers continuous mental abuse despite holding the ultimate ace card against a demon. This complex relationship is the ultimate evidence that even the most toxic relationships can look functional on surface level, and I love hating it!

I hope this helps give some insight!

[shijiujun]

Hope everyone is partying (by yourself, spiritually, or with people, all are totally fine) well into the Christmas weekend! I am back with even more recs (I’ll prolly give it a rest at the 10th one sorry for the spam guys)! This one I just finished a few days ago, because CHINA BOOKSTORE PUBLISHED THIS ON CHRISTMAS WITH MANY GOODIES!! And I was like oh cute long-hair dude, let me read this.

Anyway this is a fengshui + supernatural + body-switching type of novel, with a heavy focus on fengshui! I don’t know if everyone knows what fengshui is (I will prolly do a list for Chinese New Year) and I am no expert, but it’s basically like Chinese geomancy where you can calculate a person’s fate, wealth, marriage suitability etc. with things in an individual’s environment. 

So a lot of Chinese people, for example businessmen when they have new offices or when couples renovate their homes, they may get a feng shui master to arrange furniture and add crystals or talismans or whatever to increase wealth/prosperity/happiness or harmonize bad energy etc., just an example. When you want to check the compatibility of yourself and your SO, some people do go to the fengshui master and calculate their 八字 (day, hour, time they were born + other things) to see when is an auspicious day to marry etc. 

My ex-editor really believes in feng shui masters because hers really predicted a year that her husband got into hugeee trouble like almost to the day itself apparently. And she always wear an accessory with a snake on it because the master said

Written by the same author (Xi Zi Xu) who wrote Kaleidoscope of Death!

- Part of Min’s ‘Why You Should Read’ Series -

Summary:

This book is set in the normal, regular, law-abiding modern city world where fengshui is heavily believed in, and skilled masters can see spirits, bad energies. Where dogs can be reincarnated as humans, and there are demonic pets that humans can keep, and paper dolls can come to life basically.

Zhou Jia Yu is a government office worker who dies in a car accident one day, and wakes up in the body of another Zhou Jia Yu - a handsome man whose name is the same as his. He’s brought back by this spirit bird in his head called Ji Ba (pun not intended), who says that Zhou Jia Yu is fated to save Lin Zhu Shui, the young, blind fengshui master who has caught him.

Unfortunately, this second Zhou Jia Yu is a con-artist who has cheated the money of several families via fraudulent fengshui schemes, and his scams have led to the death of several children in the process. Legendary fengshui master Lin Zhu Shui and his disciples have caught/imprisoned this Zhou Jia Yu, not knowing that original conman Zhou Jia Yu has died (and therefore his soul is gone), leaving good citizen Zhou Jia Yu in the body of a conman.

Lin Zhu Shui intends to kill conman Zhou Jia Yu (not really kill, kill but probably will do something to his soul, considering there are laws against murder you know) when good citizen Zhou Jia Yu wakes up in this body, but because he has come back from the dead, his body and soul is considered an extremely yin (cold) body, which allows him to attract more bad spirits and energy, giving him an extraordinary, gifted ability to excel in the fengshui line. Of course, being the master that he is, Lin Zhu Shui also realizes that this Zhou Jia Yu (and his soul, in particular) is not the one he caught, and as he has an extremely yang (hot) body, the both of them are compatible with each other. Lin Zhuo Shui realizes that he can train Zho Jia Yu and then takes him on as his disciple.

Cue Zhou Jia Yu being tossed into a dangerous fengshui competition as he figures out just what Ji Ba wants him to do about Lin Zhu Shui. In the meanwhile, he falls in love with amazingly handsome, cool and aloof Lin Zhu Shui (who threatens to murder him if he doesn’t come out first in the competition), who keeps him warm when he gets unbearably cold due to his body condition. They also have to deal with an evil person working behind the scenes, and how Zhou Jia Yu eventually returns back into his own body at the end.

Read:

Novel (Online) | Novel (Print) - Dec 2020 Print | Novel Translations 

Characters:

1. 周嘉鱼 Zhou Jia Yu (third from right) - A really cute government office worker whose soul was pulled into a conman’s body, who has the same name as he, when he got into a car accident. Has an extremely yin (cold) body which attracts spirits (good and bad), and allows him to see, smell or hear them more clearly than everyone else except for Lin Zhu Shui. He cooks extremely well too and is considered a treasure in the household by Lin Zhu Shui’s other disciples because none of them can cook for shit. They don’t initially know that this Zhou Jia Yu is not conman Zhou Jia Yu, although they suspect it, and once they fall in love with his cooking no one doubts him anymore HAHAHA.

He gets a feng shui tattoo personally done by Lin Zhu Shui who already knows that his soul was switched, a tattoo which is supposed to help him in feng shui matters. Gets a paper doll son halfway through the story, who he calls Xiao Zhi (little paper), which calls him Dad (and calls Lin Zhu Shui Big Dad - da baba) ;-; It’s the cutest shit ever.

There’s a mystical creature in the back of his head that speaks to him and helps him out on certain feng shui things, and helps him to explain what he’s seeing, but aside from telling Jia Yu that he’s supposed to save Lin Zhu Shui, the mystical bird thing is unable to tell him anything else. Within a few weeks of him waking up in this body, he’s sent by Lin Zhu Shui on an international feng shui competition without having any sort of basic knowledge, only innate talent, much to his panic XD As Lin Zhu Shui continues to protect him, teach him and tease/smile at him, Jia Yu, who is certified gay af, falls totally in love with the seemingly aloof and strict feng shui master.

They probably would have continued like this if not for Jia Yu’s body deteriorating because his body is technically not his and not compatible with his soul, and Lin Zhu Shui tries to find a way to save him, after seeing the future where Jia Yu’s body is rotting as he dies slowly over months and begging Lin Zhu Shui to kill him and let him die.

2. 林逐水 Lin Zhu Shui (third from left, right next to Jia Yu) - Long-haired, wears changshan perpetually and is blind, but can see more clearly than most people. He knows where everyone’s positions are exactly, and can see spirits etc. very well despite being blind. Considered a genius of the feng shui world and is the patriarch of one of the big feng shui families in the world - the Lin family. He’s a master at drawing talismans, carving crystals/gems and feng shui tattooing.

He’s so well-known that everyone wants to be his disciple, everyone wants to get a talisman/crystal/tattoo from him, everyone wants him to come and look at their houses, but he can’t be bothered with most people. He’s also super handsome? So a lot of girls (and guys) are always drooling over him.

He has an extremely yang (hot) body, which is supposed to naturally help to repel spirits and what not, but because of this he suffers a lot in the summer. His body condition is very rare and when he was younger, others said he would not live past 18 years old, and his parents gave up their lives to change his fate so he would survive. The feng shui master also predicted that Lin Zhu Shui would experience another calamity when he was 30 (thereabout), and that year, thankfully he has Jia Yu as his entire house caught on fire in the summer while he was in it (and cooling talismans and the house item placements meant to keep the house entirely cool in the summer were no longer working). Jia Yu helped him to cool down with his incredibly yin body.

Knows right off the bat that this is a different Jia Yu, and starts teaching him as one of his disciples. Can only eat the food hat Jia Yu cooks because his yin qualities transfer to the food he cooks as well, and Lin Zhu Shui usually cannot eat anything else that’s cooked outside. Gives Jia Yu a carved jade pendant he made himself that’s apparently worth thousands of dollars to keep him safe, and is a dumbass when it comes to confessing to Jia Yu hahahaha (although he’s successful at the end!)

3. 沈一穷 Shen Yi Qiong (second from right, dark skin tone) - Lin Zhu Shui’s youngest disciple and also Jia Yu’s best friend, technically. Brash but smart, and is always thirsting openly after his shifu Lin Zhu Shui, it’s hilarious! He’s a little jealous in the beginning because his shifu is showering Jia Yu with so much attention when he’s only been around for a week etc., but quickly gets used to it and supports Jia Yu. Jia Yu always makes fun of his tanned skin, then makes fun of his singlehood HAHA, while Shen Yi Qiong provides emotional support to Jia Yu, and by emotional support I mean when Jia Yu asks him what will happen to him if he loses the feng shui competition, Shen Yi Qiong pats him on the shoulder and asks him to choose a vase/pot pattern (like a ceramic pot where you put cremated ashes) = shifu will kill him if he loses the competition, so gets Jia Yu to choose a pot he likes so Shen Yi Qiong can help him put his ashes in HAHAHAHA. He is the last one to find a significant other, but the one he finds is like a legendary mystical creature who half deceives him into promising to marry him and then keeps chasing after Shen Yi Qiong so he can marry him XD

4. 林珏 Lin Jue (first from left) - Lin Zhu Shui’s cousin but technically his older sister because she brought him up after his parents died. Spends most of the novel being sad about her past lover who died because of an illness, and is wooed a few years later by a legendary golden dragon.

5. 小纸 Xiao Zhi (that little cute white thing on top of Jia Yu’s head) - A paper doll who’s given to Jia Yu after he helps out at the paper doll village/tribe, and grows up with Jia Yu and Lin Zhu Shui taking care of him. Is the cutest little shit ever, can speak, and calls Jia Yu ‘baba’ and Lin Zhu Shui ‘da baba’ i.e. dad and big dad. Very strong, and can protect Jia Yu very well.

Other Things I Like in the Novel:

Jia Yu basically goes to the feng shui competition and destroys everyone else because he’s just gifted in this aspect - When he wakes up, and in the days leading up to the competition, he doesn’t have a cellphone (Lin Zhu Shui and his disciples live in a remote part of town, a traditional-type house, one with nature) and after he wins the competition, other people want his phone number to contact him and he’s too embarrassed to say that he’s basically too poor to have a phone after rising from the dead, so he bluffs everyone and says “My shifu says that handphone signals and radiation will interfere with advanced feng shui readings so I don’t have one” and LITERALLY half of the feng shui training population gets rid of their phones on that day, gullible af

Everytime Jia Yu runs cold, he has to drink some of Lin Zhu Shui’s blood mixed with water/milk, and the man’s yang blood warms him up immediately

Jia Yu has to deal with four of Lin Zhu Shui’s disciples, all who are really suspicious of him because they think he’s the conman, and Jia Yu doesn’t realize they already know it’s not him until they defend him in front of other people, and he’s so touched

Shen Yi Qiong gets his marriage fortune told during one of the cases by accident. He asks when he’ll get married, and the thing replies “Seven Three” AND HE’S SO DEPRESSED BECAUSE he thinks that it means he’ll only get married when he’s 73. It’s a source of jokes between him, his other shixiongs and Jia Yu, but then towards the end he realizes what it means - His supposed match, a legendary mystical male weasel who’s 73 years old XD

Jia Yu keeps thirsting after Lin Zhu Shui, fully aware that he’s very gay himself, and he’s confessed to while he’s stuck in the haze of a high fever, so he thinks it’s a dream. Lin Zhu Shui doesn’t realize he forgot/thinks it’s a dream and is pissed that he’s rejected HAHAHA and then Lin Jue reminds him to not be a dumbass and confess properly, and so he does so again in an empty amusement park, after summoning evil spirits so they can fly in the air and make a heart shape just for Jia Yu while they’re on the ferris wheel XDDDD

[victory-red]

why tōya being the oldest todoroki sibling makes no (or very little) sense.

Warning: Manga spoilers. Long post ahead - big paragraphs, lots of reading, and at least one (1) rabbit trail.

So I know this is old news, but I’ve been meaning to make a post about it for a little while now. I know a lot of people already headcanoned that Tōya was the oldest Todoroki sibling even before it was officially confirmed, but it just never really made sense to me, particularly in regard to Enji’s timeline. And then, after Chapter 291 came out, it made even less sense.

(A couple of quick disclaimers, before I continue: I’m not trying to pass anything off as fact. My conclusions are simply opinions based on observations I’ve made. I’ll also note that there are definitely gaps in what information we do officially have, so there is still a chance that what seems to me like a fairly significant plothole will eventually be explained.)

I’ll start with Enji - more specifically, his current confirmed age in relation to Fuyumi’s, who is the oldest Todoroki sibling whose age we do officially know. As of the current manga arc, Enji is 46 years old, and Fuyumi is 23. Since Enji’s birthday is in early August and Fuyumi’s in early December, that means that Enji was a little over 23 years old when he and Rei had Fuyumi.

From what we know of Enji’s history and personality, that seems like a reasonable age for him to have started having kids. He said in Ch. 165 that he became Number Two at age 20, at which point he immediately realized that he wasn’t ever going to be able to surpass All Might on his own. He said that it was because of this realization that he passed the torch (no pun intended) to Shōto. But, Shōto wouldn’t be born until a decade later. So, it makes sense to me that this would be the point that Enji decided it would be best to instead try having a child that could surpass All Might. In other words, it makes sense that this would be the catalyst that led to Shōto’s birth.

The most recent information we got regarding Enji and Rei’s relationship in Ch. 291 seems to be just a bit conflicting with how Shōto had described things back in Ch. 31 - unlike Shōto’s account, Ch. 291 sort of implied that Enji did care for Rei to some capacity, at least early in their marriage. (How he’s been portrayed in flashbacks recently is actually very conflicting with flashbacks from earlier chapters, and even with his entire personality in earlier chapters. But I won’t get into that - we’ll just make the assumption that Shōto’s story was biased, because it probably was.)

Since he essentially bought Rei’s family off, it only makes sense that he would have to grow to care for her over a period of time - you know, maybe like a year or two. I’m not sure how long the entire Quirk Marriage process took, but factoring in the 9 or so months Rei had to carry Fuyumi before she was born, it makes sense that after Enji’s realization upon attaining the Number Two title, the entire process of creating the plan of having hyper-powerful children, finding a suitable partner, buying her family off, marrying her, and having their first child would take anywhere between two to three years. That would mean that he was 20 when the process started, 22 when Rei got pregnant, and 23 when Fuyumi was born. Boom.

(Frankly, even that timeframe seems a bit compressed to me, but since Enji’s and Fuyumi’s ages are both canonically set in stone, I have no choice but to work with it.)

Tōya canonically being older than Fuyumi begins to screw a lot with the timeline - especially taking into consideration what the implied age gap between them is. I unfortunately can’t find where (or if) this is explicitly stated in the manga, but the wiki says that most Quirks develop around the age of 4. Now, it’s entirely possible that Tōya was born with his Quirk, but given Rei’s constitution, I highly suspect that there would have been severe complications with both her pregnancy and Tōya’s birth. It also makes sense that if he had developed his Quirk at an exceptionally young age, there would have been some note made of it. But since neither of those things are mentioned to have happened, we’ll just assume he was between 3 and 4½ years old when his Quirk manifested.

I don’t know how long afterward it took for Enji and Rei to decide to have another baby, but I can’t imagine that the decision took any longer than several months. I’ll be conservative and say that they decided no longer than a few months after Tōya’s Quirk developed, because remember - Enji literally, canonically cannot be any older than 23 when Fuyumi was born. Jumping 9 months forward from that time, Tōya would most likely have been between 4 and 5 years old when Fuyumi was born.

Now I will note that in the top panel, Tōya looks to me to be between 4 and 6 years old, which was presented as being before Fuyumi’s birth. But in the lower one, where he’s crawling over to look at baby Fuyumi (or at least I think that’s what’s happening? It’s a bit dark to tell for certain), he looks a lot younger - in fact, he doesn’t even look to have the white streak in his hair yet. But given how it’s explained that Enji and Rei even came to the decision to have Fuyumi at all, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense contextually. But, I’ll let it be and just assume that the manga didn’t present those panels chronologically. It could also be the zoomed-out view that makes Tōya seem smaller. Either way, I’m overanalyzing, and that’s sort of off-topic, anyway.

Okay, I think that’s all the setup I need to finally get to the meat of my argument, which I will start with this: If Tōya is anywhere between 4 and 5 years older than Fuyumi, that means that Enji was anywhere between 18 and 19 years old when Tōya was born.

In any other situation, that might make sense, but here’s the thing: it’s already been established, or at least very heavily implied, that Enji didn’t even consider the possibility of having children to surpass All Might until he attained his Number Two status, which as I’ve already mentioned happened when he was 20. Even if Tōya was only 3 years older than Fuyumi, which doesn’t make much sense because he would then have had to develop his Quirk at age 2 or younger, that still would mean that he was conceived before Enji even became Number Two.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, think of it this way: If Enji was between 18 and 20 years old when Tōya was born, that would mean that Tōya would have been conceived when Enji was 17 at the youngest - still a student, unless he graduated early. Regardless, that also implies he would have had to create his elaborate plan to beat All Might, as well as find and marry Rei, before he even graduated secondary school. Given what information we have from canon, that just does not make any semblance of sense.

As compelling that argument alone may or may not be, there are others to support it as well. Let’s consider what that implies for the age gaps between Tōya and the other Todoroki siblings. If he’s 3-5 years older than Fuyumi, that means he’s roughly 7-9 years older than Natsuo and 10-12 years older than Shōto. That would mean, if Shōto were between 5 and 6 years old in the following panels, Tōya would be anywhere between 15 and 18 years old. Fuyumi would be between 10 and 13, and Natsuo would be between 8 and 11.

While I understand that Tōya inherited Rei’s slight constitution, puberty usually begins for boys around 12 or 13 years old (although to my understanding it often starts later in Asian boys), so Tōya would likely have already begun to go through his growth spurt by this age. Even assuming that Natsuo had started going through his own growth spurt, Tōya still has 7-9 years on him - so the chances that Natsuo had this much height and mass on him are pretty slim. I might be able to buy Tōya being 15 years old in those panels, but I find even that a bit of a stretch.

And finally, let’s talk about how old Tōya was when he “died.”

Assuming that the second panel is the most recent (halfway decent) photo the Todorokis have of Tōya before his “death,” I’m inclined to agree with the people who have pointed out that his clothes resembled a junior high school uniform, similar to what Midoriya and Bakugō were seen wearing in the story’s earliest chapters and episodes. Junior high school in Japan is attended by students between the ages of 12 and 15, roughly - so it’s safe to assume that Tōya was no older than 15 years old when he “died.” However, I will note that given how Horikoshi draws most of the 15-year-old male characters in the story, he does look younger than that to me. I am keeping in mind that Tōya was mentioned to have had a slight build - even as Dabi, he still does - so there is the possibility that my conclusions there aren’t accurate.

If Tōya was 12 when he “died,” Shōto would probably not have any memories of him at all - at the time of his “death,” he would have been anywhere between 2 years old and a newborn. It’s implied in the manga and the anime that Tōya disappeared sometime after Rei burned Shōto’s face, which undoubtedly happened after Enji had begun to train him - so, likely well after he had turned 5. In the somewhat unlikely event that his face was burned while he was still 5 years old, Tōya would have been between 15 and 18 years old, as mentioned above. If it had happened when Shōto was 7, he would have been between 17 and 20, and so on. Going with the junior high school uniform theory, which honestly seems rather plausible, he essentially cannot have “died” after age 15 - so, more than likely, he would have been gone before Shōto even began his training. Obviously, this is disproven by the soccer panel in Ch. 39.

Honestly, I don’t know how else to say it - no matter how I angle it, it just does not make sense to me, canonically, that Tōya is the eldest Todoroki sibling. There’s a lot of information stacked up against it, and though I’ve mulled over it for a bit now, I can’t actually think of a scenario in which it actually is a logical conclusion.

TL;DR: Tōya being the oldest Todoroki doesn’t make sense in light of information we have regarding Enji’s timeline as well as previous images we’ve seen in the manga and anime.

[sanguinecharm]

“  does such a thing as the fatal flaw, that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature ? i used to think it didn't. now i think it does. and i think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. ”  

                                                                                      —— the secret history , donna tartt

ooc introduction ;

hello hi there ! my name is shannon , i use she / they pronouns && i’m from the not-so-good old united kingdom : and this is my trademark morally questionable son of a bitch , florence villiers-whiteley ! the moment i saw a ‘ murdered their partner for money & for their true love ’ concept i was basically like * eminem voice * THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR ME so i hope you love her as much as i do.

aesthetics ;

getaway cars , lists with names underlined & the dazzling milieu of company she never dreamed of ; blood money counted into the bank and onto the dresser , the sound of it scarcely reminding her of what she has done . the co-existing dark and light academia ; shining eyes and a retained ambition to be what her teenage self pleaded she’d become , but knowing that innocence is lost . but there was no blood , so she is spared of being lady macbeth scrubbing her hands clean .

silk-kissed skin and the adoration of her true beloved ; a secret buried six feet under , but the ever-present knowledge regardless : it is only certain that three can keep a secret when two of them are dead , but oh . . . she still has love and a beating heart . some women are not made to be mothers , and some women are not made to be daughters : she was not made to be either . look like the innocent flower , but be the serpent under’t .

reputation by taylor swift. lay all your love on me && money, money, money by ABBA. the secret history by donna tartt. sharp objects by gillian flynn. anna karenina by leo tolstoy. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ( 2004 ) dir. michael gondry. townie by mitski. sweet but psycho by ava max. 

basics ;

NAME : Florence Cordelia Villiers-Whiteley

NAME MEANING : “blossoming” / “daughter of the sea god”

AGE : Forty ( born 21 March , 1980 — Elmerton , Florida )

GENDER : Female ( cisgender )

ORIENTATIONS : Bisexual && biromantic ( moderate preference for women )

RELATIONSHIP STATUS : Engaged ( previously widowed )

CURRENT RESIDENCE : Elmerton , Florida

NATIONALITY : American-British

LANGUAGES SPOKEN : English && French && Italian && Russian && German

OCCUPATION : Boutique owner , fashion designer , mother

TIME IN ELMERTON : Forty years ( whole life. )

personality ;

florence villiers-whiteley is an idyllic picture of a woman. always has been. 

even when she was struggling she’d never admitted it : it is often those with the most to hide that curate themselves like this , but those envious of their station rarely consider this. since she’s got her hands on her late husband’s fortune & connections — ah, the power of sympathy — and made a success of the boutique , she uses her comfort to do as she would be expected to : aid the community where needed , donate to charities her husband cared for , etcetera . . . 

it’s frighteningly easy to hide behind a smiling face. 

MBTI : ENTJ-A ( The Commander ) — 68% Extraverted && 62% Intuitive && 81% Thinking && 64% Judging && 74% Assertive .

ENNEAGRAM : Eight , with a Seven wing

ASTROLOGICAL PLACEMENTS : Aries sun && Gemini moon && Sagittarius rising

HOGWARTS HOUSE : Slytherin

MORAL ALIGNMENT : Neutral Evil

THEME SONG : Lay All Your Love On Me by ABBA

LANGUAGE OF LOVE : Receiving Gifts 

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS : Atheist

appearance ;

it’s often noted that she resembles her british father , who abandoned his homeland to be with his first wife : not florence’s mother , it must be noted. the whiteleys have a way of ending up in a handful of marriages , which is humorously put down to descent from one henry viii ( through a bastard line , albeit , but . . . )

FACECLAIM : Keira Knightley

HEIGHT : 5 ft 10 in

HAIR COLOUR : Brown

EYE COLOUR : Brown

COMPLEXION : Fair

FASHION : Highly variant.

familial ;

MOTHER : Brooklyn Whiteley née Davis

FATHER : Philip Whiteley

SIBLINGS : Francis Whiteley ( elder brother , 43 ) ; Diana Whiteley ( younger sister , 30 )

PAST PARTNERS : Roman Villiers ( m. 2002 , died 2014 )

CHILDREN : Georgiana Villiers-Whiteley ( age 7 )

reference ;

SUBPLOT #1 ( muse BB ) : What I Did For Love ( I would give my soul for someone to bring the other half of the secretive duo and make it the sapphic ship of my dreams. Or just my unconditional love and support , whichever one you want. )

SUBPLOT #2 ( muse AN ) : The Devils Wear Prada… And Occasional Chanel ( Florence has a fashion frenemy ; don’t step too far in insulting them , because that’s her prerogative. Britney Spears pun intended. )

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Nuts and Dolts Fic Rec List

The other day, @im-the-king-of-the-ocean asked for fic recs that involve the ship Nuts and Dolts, otherwise known as Mechanical Rose and breaking-my-heart-in-vol-3-and-giving-it-back-in-vol-7. All of these were written prior to Volume 7.

Pinocchio's Lament by dogtit: Penny is combat ready and about as immortal as anyone or anything can get. Oneshot.

Ruby Spends Too Much Time In the Hospital by faraandmera: Modern AU in which Yang, Penny, and Pyrrha are all in the hospital. In addition to being Nuts and Dolts this is also Victory Rose; both ships are very minor though. Oneshot.

A Searching Hand by Adaurora: Intimacy in which Ruby is asleep. Oneshot.

one hundred beats per second by colloquialrhapsodist: One day, Penny asks to feel Ruby's heartbeat. Oneshot.

The Real Girl by Lamia of the Dark (VisceraNight): Everyone is born with a clear jewel in the middle of their forehead which, upon meeting their soulmate, will turn the color of their soulmate's eyes. How can a robot have a soulmate if she doesn't have a soul? Oneshot.

A Parent's Darkest Fear by yurImperial: Penny was once a real girl. TW for terminal illness in children. Oneshot.

Machinations Rag by colloquialrhapsodist: Penny sneaks out to see Ruby. Torchwick notices. Oneshot.

how you know inside me by poisonedapple: Soulmate AU with one chapter focused on each of the members of Team RWBY; all of them have nontraditional soulmate dynamics. Complete with other fics.

quasi by orphan_account: Penny and Pyrrha talk after their respective deaths. Oneshot.

Not Just Nuts And Dolts by Flexor: So you know how there was that one theory that Penny wouldn’t remember Ruby after being rebuilt? Yeah, this oneshot is that.

Will I Dream (of Her)? by Interdimensionalmeatpie: A look into Penny's final moments. Oneshot.

Androids Don’t Dream (And so have no requiems for them) by im_ashamed: To die, to sleep, perchance to dream... Penny’s last moments in her first body. Oneshot.

Electric Sheep by yashkonu: It was a small patch, in so far as an update to a full artificial intelligence could be considered small.

The three times she was too late [The three lies they told her.] by Buttercup_ghost: Three women who left Ruby. TW for self harm and canonical character death.

Pretty Hate Machine II by thesecretsix: So this one isn’t actually a Nuts and Dolts fic in the romantic sense, but the main relationship in this fic is Ruby & Penny. It’s extremely canon divergent and kind of dark. Oneshot.

Also, I’d be remiss to not mention the fanfic FADE: Legacy by @fandompariah (AO3) (FFN). It’s a next-generation fanfic that takes place after his fanfic The Downward Spiral (though knowledge that fic is not needed for the ability to read this one). The Nuts and Dolts is mild in this one, since the focus is on the OC’s. It does contain gore, smut, violence, and maybe more because I am incredibly behind on this ongoing fic. (Also I suggest Our Happy Ever After, a Mechanical Rose centric oneshot set in that universe.)

and to save my fave for last...

Miracles of Modern Engineering by thesecretsix: In which Ruby Rose is a clone of Summer Rose and the world doesn't yet realize just how fucking saved it's going to be. WIP (last updated October 2016). This fic is really imaginative when it comes to the mechanics of this au... no pun intended.

[kpoptimeout]

My Top 10 K-Dramas of 2020 - What’s Yours?

2020 has ended after feeling like it was never ending and K-Dramaland has once again brought us so many goodies this year. As per our blog’s tradition [For 2019 faves click here], below are my Top 10 favs of the year (my faves in alphabetical order so it might not be yours so please don’t judge). (For our blog’s 2020 music ratings, click here!)

My only specific criteria is that the show must have had started in 2020 to be considered a 2020 series but like last year, I have allowed one drama starting very late in 2019 to make the list.

Without further ado, check the list below!

Crash Landing On You (tvN/Netflix)

While it started in December 2019, “Crash Landing On You” is certainly the Rom-Com of the year that swept the world by storm. It was possibly the K-Drama most people knew about and everyone rejoiced when the leads Hyun Bin and Son Yejin admitted to being a couple on 1 January 2021. 

One might say “Crash Landing On You” has generic plot - two people from vastly different worlds meeting through a crazy accident and developing feelings as a result, the choice of using North and South Korea as the two worlds provided unique social commentary and the opportunity for lots of interesting shenanigans. This is not the first series to feature a romance between a North and South Korean lead (see 2012’s “The King 2 Hearts”, which was also stellar), but it is definitely a more light-hearted take which is fun to watch. Additionally, the series is filled with fleshed out and lovable side characters.

While North Korean refugees interviewed by media outlets point out that the typical North Korean captain would not have the looks of Hyun Bin, most of them agree that the production team did their research as the everyday life of typical North Koreans were recreated quite accurately - from the types of furniture and household appliances they use, to the type of K-Dramas they watch in secret.

If you enjoy a good Rom-Com and an interesting premise, this is the K-Drama for you!

Extracurricular (Netflix)

Being a Netflix only series with no counterpart on Korean television, “Extracurricular” was able to explore the dark side of South Korean youth life which is not discussed on traditional South Korean media platforms. We are thrown into the life of a nerdy high school student played by Kim Dong Hee, who is actually effectively abandoned by his family and making ends meet secretly as an illegal prostitution ring mastermind.

The story unravels as the star student played by So Minhee discovers the schemes of Kim Dong Hee’s character and begins to blackmail him. Not to give too many spoilers, but it will prove difficult to balance his double life and the whole journey is captured superbly by the main cast’s stellar acting.

If you are a fan of dark and realistic teen dramas, this is the series for you!

Hospital Playlist (tvN/Netflix)

The team behind the “Reply” series and “Prison Playbook” returns with a few familiar faces so we all knew when the trailers dropped that we were in for a treat. As expected, the fabulous acting of the main cast, the wonderful storylines and also medically accurate procedures (according to my doctor friends), combined to make “Hospital Playlist” one of the most endearing dramas of the year.

Set in the fictional Yulje Medical Centre, we follow the lives of 5 doctors who met in college and their respective medical teams. Jo Jung-suk acts as a prankster and fun dad who is also a genius doctor. Yoo Yeon-seok plays a pediatric surgeon who is dead set on becoming a priest. Jung Kyung-ho acts as a cardiologist who seems cold-hearted (pun intended), but of course isn’t really. Kim Dae-myung plays a gynaecologist who is a mummy’s boy and has family drama galore. And finally Jeon Mi-do completes the set as a neurosurgeon who is lowkey the only adult in the friend group and who everyone wants to be when they grow up.

The drama throws us into the day to day runnings in the hospital without too much introductions and it actually made the characters all the more real because it was like we were just casually witnessing their everyday lives. The realisms of the show is furthered by the fact that even side characters like nurses and medical students have meaningful storylines of their own. We honestly cannot wait for Season 2 to air in May 2021!

Itaewon Class (JTBC/Netflix)

A remake of a popular Webtoon, “Itaewon Class” is a feel-good David and Goliath story where the male lead played by Park Seojun goes on a journey to avenge his father and chooses to do so without bending his morals at any point in time and making many friends along the way.

This series stood out by providing very diverse lead characters including a sociopath, a former convict, a trans woman, an illegitimate son and a Blasian trying to find acceptance in South Korea. All their stories highlight the different social issues and the stigmas many face navigating through life and is touching and relatable in many ways.

If you love a show with a positive social message, this is the show for you!

Sweet Home (Netflix)

Another webtoon remake by Netflix, “Sweet Home” follows a group of survivors in an apartment complex after all hell breaks loose in South Korea, as people begin to transform into monsters based on their greatest fears and regrets. 

Every character has interesting backstories that are slowly revealed as they try to survive together, while battling monsters that are generated by the team behind many Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbusters. The main cast led by Song Kang, Lee Jin Wook, Lee Siyoung and Lee Dohyun also acted extremely well, with Lee Siyoung grabbing a lot of attention with her ripped superhero physique. Kim Namhee also had a breakout performance as the survivor who favours a Korean sword and hopefully would continue to get more roles following years playing minor characters.

If you enjoy apocalypse thrillers that explore human nature, you would love “Sweet Home”!

The Uncanny Counter (OCN/Netflix)

Okay, Netflix is really funding all the webtoon adaptions because “The Uncanny Counter” is yet another one. Currently the highest rated OCN drama in the cable channel’s history, this webtoon adaption follows a disabled orphaned teenage boy who gains superpowers and joins a demon-banishing team of other super-powered beings (who own a noodle shop on the side) called the Counters, while the mystery of his parents’ death plays a key role in the story.

This somewhat cliché set-up is done in a fun and enjoyable way and it is great to see the talented Jo Byung Gyu finally cast as a male lead! Kim Sejeong has also further improved in her acting and is a loveable badass in this series. 

If you love a ghost/spirit busting mystery and just the superhero genre in general, you would enjoy “The Uncanny Counter”!

VIP (SBS)

“VIP” is a drama following a luxury brand’s VIP service team. While it has office drama, intrigue and power plays in almost every episode, it is arguably more of a drama about womanhood than anything else. With 4 female leads, 3 of whom are in their late 30s, the series accurately depicts the concerns women face reaching that age, whether they are married or unmarried, with children or not. 

Jang Nara plays a successful business woman and a co-worker to her husband played by Lee Sang Yoon. Born in a privileged background with a seemingly loving husband, all seems well until she has suspicions of her husband having an affair. This drives her to investigate and through her findings, she instead uncovers more stories of her other female co-workers, like the rumour-tainted but very cool section chief played by Lee Chungah and the stressed and depressed mother of two played by Kwak Sunyoung.

If you want a spicy office drama that also has meaningful discussions about working women in South Korea, VIP is the best drama for that!

The World of the Married (JTBC)

Overtaking JTBC’s “Sky Castle” to be highest rated cable TV K-Drama of all time, this 2020 production also by JTBC is a remake of BBC series “Doctor Foster” but highly localised to fit the Korean narrative.

Kim Hee-ae plays a successful doctor with a film director husband and a teenage son. Her life seems picture perfect until she discovers her husband’s infidelity. But unlike in “VIP”, where the female lead actually bonds with other women along the way, Kim Hee-ae’s character would quickly learn that she was in fact betrayed by everyone around her - they all knew her husband was cheating and have been pretty supportive of this whole affair.

While highly dramatised, the suspicions of the husband’s infidelity, the discovery, the subsequent divorce and schemes for revenge are all done tastefully and is a reason why it struck a chord with the general public, especially married women watching the show.

If you love mess and chaos and seeing douchebags destroyed, “World of the Married” is the perfect drama for you!

18 Again (JTBC)

JTBC really has a knack for remakes. This remake of the movie “17 Again” starring Zac Efron is also adapted seamlessly to fit Korean culture and social issues e.g. teen pregnancy, divorce, women’s careers after being a parent and parent-child relations. 

Kim Haneul and Yoon Sanghyun truly acted out the energy of a long-married couple and Lee Dohyun did extremely well in encapsulating Yoon Sanghyun’s mannerism as his de-aged counterpart. This boy is truly on a roll this year (he is also in “Sweet Home”). Also, the younger cast of this show were also very likeable and well flesh-outed and by the end of the series you are rooting for all of them to do well.

If you love a slice of life drama with a little fantastical element, you would love “18 Again”!

365: Repeat the Year (MBC)

Based on the Japanese novel “Repeat” by Kurumi Inui, “365 Days: Repeat the Year” follows this social experiment where 10 individuals are given the opportunity to travel 1 year back in time. As all 10 individuals try to remedy their mistakes and become better people, the experiment takes a sinister turn as the time-travellers begin to die one after another.

The veteran detective played by Lee Joohyuk and the mystery webtoon artist played by Nam Jihyun team up together with other time travellers to uncover the secrets behind travelling back in time and learn about the past lives of everyone chosen for the project.

If you enjoy a well-thought out time-travelling series that involves some alternate reality battle royale shenanigans, this is the series for you!

Honourable Mentions:

Kingdom (Season 2) (Netflix): The ancient zombie drama is back and still as strong as ever - one of the best zombie series on air right now.

Start-Up (tvN/Netflix): Loveable rom-com set in the start-up world in South Korea with one of the most hotly debated love triangles in this year’s K-Drama world.

Hi Bye, Mama! (tvN/Netflix): When a woman reincarnates to meet her husband and child again 5 years after her tragic death, only to find he has since remarried.

What’s your Top 10 K-Dramas of the Year? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below and may the drama sharing begin (and the road to more excuse for holiday procrastination!)

Also, if you want to check out underrated K-Pop songs of 2020, here are the lists for idol songs and artist songs. 

[ofsirensongs]

      “ her beauty disarms you. it takes away your weapons and your guard, and you won’t even fucking realize it until it’s too late. until she’s baring her teeth and dragging you under the waves, and devouring you whole... she’s siren, and pirate, and god, all in one. ”  

      [ minka kelly / cisfemale / 40 ] ❛ from over the ocean far [ lyric loveday ] has come from [ mermaid’s return / captain ] to sail upon the fortuna. LYRIC is known as the [ siren ] on board, fitting considering they are quite [ captivating & ruthless ]. supposedly that’s why the captain chose HER to be her [ gunner ]. ❜ 

      hey guys ! i’m medusa & i’ll be playing yer local two-faced cutie, miss lyric loveday, herself. she’s a new muse so pls bear w/ me <3

biography:

in lyric’s world, no good man exists. merely a bad man with a good mask. 

born helga krader on a stormy night in cape town, south africa to two british colonists researchers, the girl is beloved from the moment she takes her first breath. she’s the light of their lives and the heart of their world. an angel in the flesh.

tw illness, death: she’s 7 years old when she contracts a deadly illness. though she puts up a hearty fight, her frail body finally succumbs to it. her parents mourn, angry with god and fate and death, itself. and guilty, blaming their wrongdoings for the outcome. 

it’s through a tribe they discover a supposedly magical, healing pond in the midst of the (newlands) forest. as the tale goes, the girl’s parents, so desperate to reverse the finality, took the girl’s body to the pond late in the night and dipped her into the waters. nothing would occur, and they would fall asleep at the edge, sorrowful. 

only to witness a miracle the next morning. when, to their shock, their dear daughter woke them from their slumber. wondering where they were, and how they’d gotten there. 

at first, it was a blessing. a promise that their prayers had been answered. but when the weeks went by and the girl’s hair turned pale and white, they had to wonder. was it a blessing or a curse they had bestowed upon her? had they defied fate by their actions? what would now be the take to the give? 

tw death: their answer would come in three years’ time. they became sick like their daughter had. despite their best doctors and healers, the two would pass from the illness. having heard the tale about the pond, the 10 year old girl would manage a trip to it (somehow, and perhaps w/ help) with her parents’ bodies. she dipped them into the waters and slept beside its edge. hoping. praying. begging. but the next morning would promise her no relief. her parents were still gone. she deemed the ‘magical’ pond a lie and swore to never believe in child’s tales again.

the girl is shipped off to a seaside town in england, where she would live with her unknown uncle and his family. the minute she arrives in the country, she is sure that her troubles have only just begun. but she holds out on some hope. her uncle and his family treat her as an outsider from the start. they regard the ‘witch child’ with disdain, merely keeping her for her parents’ wealth. while she remains soft spoken and gentle, they look and act like the offspring of cursed gods. 

tw abuse: she becomes the source of all their problems. the burden, the disease. the one to blame whenever a chair breaks or a trinket is stolen from the market, by aunt and uncle and cousins. they brand her ‘hideous’ every time they scold her. ‘rotten, ignorant, worthless.’ and she grows bitter deep in her heart because of it. 

tw murder: she’s in her teens when her town is raided by pirates. they take and take, and when there’s nothing left to offer, she’s shoved forward by her aunt and uncle. ‘take the girl. we don’t want her.’ no, they never did. but she’s shocked. however, fate would change course that day. the pirate captain, struck silent by the act and the girl’s intriguing appearance, decided to test her. he handed her a dagger and then he pushed her family to their knees. ‘kill them, here and now, and i’ll take you. but not as my prisoner, as one of my own.’ resentment fueled, the girl grabs the dagger and splits throats. her first taste of power and revenge at life’s cruelties, and it feels good. 

it’s safe to say she changes from that day on. said captain of mermaid’s return, richard loveday, adopts the girl as his own child. throwing away her ‘old burdens’ and renaming her lyric loveday - the siren of the seven seas. she becomes a myth in the pirate world. claims are made that she is a siren. that she was born underwater, locked away in an atlantis, that with one dulcet tone of her voice she can sing an army into the depths of the ocean. but as much as her singing voice is heavenly, these remain tales told by pirates and sailors. she entertains and humors them. so long as no one knows the real story. 

when richard dies, the ship is handed to lyric. no one fights her for the title, because they’re loyal and they know what happens when someone challenges the silver haired woman. they wind up swimming with the fishes, after unpleasant tortures. lyric is merciless when it comes to opposition and enemies. she’ll make an example out of you, and it won’t matter the details or the begging or the crime. 

not that she’s always horrible. or that she’s disliked. in fact, her crew prize/d her as the best. with the decisive and hard hand of a leader, the perception and cleverness of a politician, and the playful and adventurous ways of a pirate. she is the beloved lady of the ship. the one every member hopes to prove something to, without realizing it. 

lyric knows of captain biyu. she knows of the ‘myths of the world.’ like the very pond she’d been taken to as a child. she’d sworn them off, though, hadn’t she? and yet... when the captain offered a contract to find lost treasure beyond their wildest dreams, lyric considered. and then she accepted the terms. there’s a part of her that still wonders. had the pond been selective with its choosing? was there more out there than coin and gems and crowns? if there was, maybe she was destined in some way to uncover it (narcissism, vanity, and ego at its finest). 

her crew may have been forced to go with, or may have been asked. depends on who! so they could be irritated by the change or they could be honored / as curious as their captain is about this adventure. perhaps some (or all) conspiring to overthrow biyu, fortuna’s crew, and the former ships/crews once the treasure is in hand. after all, that’s lyric’s goal. use your resources, then snuff out the competition. even if she does admire the latter. 

details: 

is of english descent. has a mixed english/south african accent. 

as for languages, lyric is known for studying them intensely. in fact, if she weren’t a pirate, she’d be a translator of texts. grants certain crew members double their winnings after raids if they teach her a new language. master fluency: english, afrikaans, french, hindi, persian, arabic, indonesian (sundanese dialect). average fluency: italian, punjabi, indonesian (javanese dialect), spanish, mandarin. basic fluency: greek, portuguese. 

she is bisexual, biromantic (tends to lean towards women for romance). she doesn’t typically go into serious or long-term relationships. has maybe once or twice before. most of her ‘relationships’ are open-ended and considered flings / fwb sort of deals. 

looks like a cinnamon roll, but could actually kill you type. a sinnamon roll, if you will. 

has a soft spot for children, especially ones ‘outcasted’ for looks or traits, etc. naturally, she sees herself in them and she believes they’re capable of so much more. 

is not exactly happy she’s demoted to basic gunner. but then again, she sees the logic in biyu’s decision. she plays nicely because of it, at least on the outside. 

is still very soft in mannerisms and vocal tone, very gentle in physical contact. you’d think she was an angel, if it weren’t for the reputation she’s received. still, her ways trick people because they have the habit of forgetting in her company. or thinking themselves special, and out of reach. 

is ambidextrous and it’s come in handy. pun intended. 

[ohcapitans]

get to know ERIC CAPITAN. 

The Capitan family holds a long legacy of providing goods to the people of Corona. Holding control over the imports and exports of their home island was always an important task, and his father often boasted life on this island wouldn’t be the same without their work. Eric had always understood the merits of what they did and how important it was, but he never thought it as big a deal as his father made it out to be. More importantly, he never understood why he had to be the one who’d one day be in charge of it all. 

He wouldn’t call himself rebellious, but if the shoe fits you know? From a very young age Eric finds himself the bane of his parents and their butler, Grimsby’s, existence. There’s too many stories that end with the adults in his life looking away for one second only to turn back and find his little self running towards danger curiously, or climbing the top of a book shelf to get to the swords his father displayed on the wall in his study. His mother would always sweep him up into their arms, smiling sweetly and laughing at their little adventurer. Eric always considered himself lucky that he had a mother that encouraged his behavior, setting limits for his safety but still allowing him the freedom to explore in his youth. 

He was by far closer to his mother than he was his father. His mother was as adventurous and curious as her son. She’d been born rich, because the Capitan family wouldn’t allow someone who wasn’t of worth into their bloodline, but she’d spent her entire life resenting the golden cage her world had put her in. He was unaware of it at the time but that desire for freedom would one day prove to be his mother’s undoing. But in the meantime, he’d enjoy every second he could get with his mother. She’d tell him stories of far off islands and cities, of people who held lives entirely different than his own, and encouraged him to never believe that life was only what the world presented him with at the moment. He has a large collection of books that he inherits from her. Some are the children’s story books she’d read him to sleep, and others are thick texts of foreign world and concepts that he hopes to one day be able to explore.

!!!!!  DEATH TRIGGER WARNING !!!! 

He’s ten years old when his mom decides she can’t bare a caged life any longer. She sneaks into his room and gives her son one last kiss on the forehead, assures him that she’ll come back for him when the time is right. And her sad, crying face is the last memory he has of her. His mother plans to leave, aware that she may never get a chance to come back, but her freedom is more important than the little boy that needs her and sometimes Eric thinks he understands that. 

His father is not pleased, to say the least. The entire manor is rushing and scrambling, worrying over how exactly they will deal with this and more importantly, how to break this news to the rest of the island. Appearance is as important to The Capitans as duty, and his father bellows and booms about how her actions have embarrassed them all. His father crumbles up the note she left him and storms out of the house to work. Eric doesn’t ever tell his father this but he steals the letter before anyone notices, and late that night he reads it. In it his mother chronicles how unhappy she is, how unhappy she’s always been, and that their relationship had always been nothing more than a responsibility rather a choice. 

Months later, they get the news that her mother has tragically passed away. Eric finds himself not only grieving the loss of one of the only people in this house who understood him, but the opportunities to travel and explore that she promised him that they’ll never have now. 

His dad becomes a lot more strict about making sure Eric has his head on straight. There’s less room for adventure and curiosity now, less epic tales and lessons of how to helm a ship. Now, there’s only room for learning the ins and outs of the family business. Eric doesn’t necessarily hate wrapping his brain around finances and learning how to talk his way in and out of business deals. It’s just, you know, not his first choice. 

Eric likes to keep a pretty chill demeanor. He’s calm, cool and collected and not much really phases him. He, no pun intended, just rides the wave as best he can. What’s the use in an overreaction? It won’t change anything. His mother watched him cry as she left, and it didn’t convince her to come back. The universe watched him openly long for her return, and instead it took her away from him.

Eric tries his best to keep his dad happy, but also won’t sit quietly and watch his life sink away into the unknown. He remains adventurous and rebellious, whisking away for fun with friends away from the judgemental eyes of his father and Grimsby. He returns home for sit ins on conference calls promptly and with a smile. And it’s enough to keep his father content. That’s all that matters to Eric, the freedom of choice. 

His father expects him to marry the right kind of girl. Someone well mannered, polite, beautiful and most importantly -- will add to the family name. And well, let’s just say Eric has little to no interest in doing that unless his heart is actually in it. He saw how much a burden of a relationship pained his mother, and he wasn’t even sure his father cared all that much when she died. Eric decided long ago, even if he didn’t really know what love is, it wasn’t that and he didn’t want that for himself. 

He’s a hopeless romantic, duh. He expects love to hit him like a brick to the face, just hopefully a lot less painful. He’s read all the sonnets and listened to all the songs, and unlike most boys his age he is unafraid to admit that he wants that feeling and longs for a partner to cherish and spoil. Whether that partner will be deemed acceptable to his father, that’s another story. But he thinks, if the love is real, he’d be willing to put up with whatever hell dad rains on him. 

When it comes time for college he knows what he wants to study -- nothing holds more hidden truths than the ocean! But he knows his father would never allow it, so he compromises on a double major. Business to please dad, marine biology to keep himself sane. Is he drowning in work? Oh yeah. Does he care? Nah, he’s happy. Dad’s kind of happy -- it all worked out in the end. 

Reckless and stupid he went sailing with some friends and a storm hit. I mean y’all saw the movie. Our son was brave and tried to make sure everyone got ok safely. He still sometimes isn’t the easiest to deal with around storms and his father was livid when he found out about it. But Eric just kind of shrugged and asked “but did i die tho”. 

He’s such a good he will quite literally go out of his way to help any and everyone. Catch him helping a baby bird with a broken wing, or releasing dolphins and turtles trapped in nets and plastic soda can wrapper thingamabobs. Also dude, DON’T LITTER THE OCEAN AROUND HIM HE’LL FLIP THE FUCK OUT. 

He loves the environment and i’m already annoyed about it. He will sign any petition, he’ll make a sign and a chant on the spot and lead a protest. He’s very passionate and all in about the things he cares about, 

Dog person, duh. Max is his childhood pet, and he hardly ever goes anywhere without the sheepdog tagging along. He trusts Max’s judgement -- dogs are the best judge of character -- and if his good boy won’t stop barking at you then maybe you suck and that’s not his fault. Eric is sorry about it though, but like stay away from us ok. 

He’s really smart!!! He loves history and science, and commits a lot of random facts to mind. He’s not going to be annoying and spit them out when not a soul asked, but he got a brain, and you know what nice to finally know a boy with more than wet noodles for brains.

WANTED CONNECTIONS. 

he’s a hopeless romantic so some exes and crushes is always nice and fun 

ADVENTURE FRIENDS!!!

rich friends who he either doesn’t fit in with entirely or he gets along great with

other eco-minded folks. 

[lo-lynx]

Lost manhood: analysing the eunuch’s masculinity in A Song of Ice and Fire

Note: This is a partly rewritten paper that I wrote for a university course. I’m quite happy with it to be honest, and I thought more ASOIAF fans might enjoy it. I’ve attempted to make the language slightly more accessible and removed some of the parts of the explanations of the story because I here assume that people have read the novels. I’ve previously written a similar analysis about eunuchs in ASOIAF, but this one goes much deeper. So, hang on, this is quite a long one (puns not intended).

 “No one loves a eunuch.” (Martin 2011a, 609). So states Varys the eunuch, in A Game of Thrones. The five (as of yet published) books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series tell a story of war, love, and power and are set in a mostly medieval world. A medieval world which also happens to contain dragons and magic. But as Shiloh Carroll writes in her analysis of medievalism in the novels: “(...) A Song of Ice and Fire examines contemporary concerns or anxieties while placing them in a far-distant past, allowing the reader to consider them at a distance.” (Carroll 2018, 7). This can, for instance, be seen in how George RR Martin has said that he believes that most people of the Middle Ages were not very different from people of today when it comes to love, sex, and sexuality (ibid, 83). While scholars and students of gender and sexuality would most likely disagree (see my previous text, or just later in this one), Martin’s statement seems in line with the idea of looking at contemporary concerns through another lens. Based on the novels, it is also clear that Martin has been influenced by several different historical and cultural contexts, from Celtic history to Mediterranean Mythology and beyond (ibid 109). Fans of the books have also compiled several more of Martin’s stated historical influences from Scottish history, to Alexander the Great, the Mongols, and the Vietnam war (glass_table_girl 2014).With this amalgamation of different historical perspectives, it is interesting to look at how one aspect of the power dynamics in this series is portrayed: namely gender power dynamics, and more specifically masculinity.

 The world of A Song of Ice and Fire is a deeply patriarchal one, with most of the people in power being men (Carroll 2018, 56). But throughout the series, it is also clear that not all men in this world are equal, just as in our own. In this paper, I want to analyze how one of the men who are not as highly regarded in the series is portrayed, namely the eunuchVarys, mentioned above. (It should be noted that in this context, eunuch seems to mean someone who has had both their penis and testicles removed. On one occasion Varys mentions being cut “root and stem” (Martin 2011b, 584).) Varys holds the position of Master of Whispers in the Seven Kingdoms, a position that entails keeping a network of spies through the kingdom and beyond (Martin 2011a, 166). Because of this web of informants, he is also often called the Spider. The Seven Kingdoms encompasses the continent of Westeros and might be said to be a parallel to the United Kingdom of our world, or Europe generally (Carroll 2018, 109). Varys, however, comes from the city-state of Lys in the continent Essos. Essos seems to be inspired by different parts of Asia, and the Westerosi perspective on it is similar to the European perception of “the Orient” (Carroll 2018, 109). As both a foreigner, a eunuch, and a Master of Spies Varys is mistrusted by most characters in the novels (for example: Martin 2011a, 246).  By a close reading of three different scenes where Varys is present, I want to analyze how his gender is perceived by other characters and what that can tell us about how masculinity is constructed in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.

 In analyzing Varys, I will use several theoretical perspectives that I will present here. Firstly, I will look at how eunuchs have been viewed in our world historically. Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos writes that Greek writers of the classical period often viewed eunuchs with contempt (2008, 232). Oftentimes eunuchs were associated with Eastern cultures, such as Persia. They were generally seen as feminine, submissive, and sexually available yet also sexually passive. That might sound counterintuitive, but what it means is that according to the sexual conventions of the time, a eunuch could participate in intercourse but not be the active part. As Nikoloutus writes of the norms of sexuality during that time:

In fifth- and fourth-century Athenian literature, sex is discussed in connection with the issue of age, class, gender, and power. In our male-authored texts, sexual intercourse is perceived as an act that reflects (or should reflect) the hierarchical structure of society; as such, it involves a penetrator (i.e. an adult male citizen) and a penetrated other who could be a woman, a slave, a metic (i.e. a non-citizen resident), a prostitute, or a kinaidos (i.e. an effeminate man who preferred the passive role in sexual intercourse). According to the moralizing discourses of ancient Athenians, a freeborn man who wished to retain his claim to full masculine status should always seek to play the active/insertive role while having sex with other men. (Nikoloutus 2008, 230)

By being assigned the passive role in sexual intercourse the eunuch is therefore seen as less of a man. The eunuch could also be seen as a liminal figure, neither man nor woman, neither Western nor Eastern. In a way he inhabited a third gender space. By inhabiting this transgressive role, he was also able to move between female and male spaces (Llewellyn-Jones 2002, 37). This could make him useful at court, as he became privy to the intrigue of the private female sphere and could pass on that information to the public male sphere. Other authors have noted how in many societies, while eunuchs were useful figures at court, they were outsiders as well in the sense that they often had a different ethnicity (Tougher 2002, 149). For instance, in the late Roman empire eunuchs were not allowed to be created in the empire, but allowance was made for “importation of castrated barbarians” (ibid, 144). The eunuch is here constructed as something “other” than the own population, the “us” part of the “us vs them” equation. This association with what was consider the ethnic “other” (particularly the Eastern other) with femininity and sexual promiscuity and/or deviance has striking similarities with orientalism. The term orientalism describes how western cultures have traditionally described the people of “the Orient” as emasculated, lesser, savage, barbaric, sexually depraved, etc. (Carroll 2018, 107, 119 & 121). Dehumanization of people who are considered “other” can be seen with other groups of people who transgress societal borders as well, such as trans people. Susan Stryker writes that transsexual people are often seen as monstrous, similar to for instance Frankenstein’s monster (1994). Eva Hayward compares the trans experience with that of the spider, partly because they are both looked upon with both curiosity and distrust (2010). But she also writes that similarly to the spider’s web, transsexuality can be seen as a creating a home of one’s own body. Making a home where one is not intended to exist, but that becomes a home nonetheless.

 In modern time the role of the penis in the construction of masculinity, that can be seen with eunuchs of more ancient times, persists. Anne Fausto-Sterling writes that even though medical professionals are often aware of the fact that it is possible for children to be born with sex characteristics that fall outside of the male/female binary, these so-called intersex children will often be “corrected” by surgery (1995, 130). It should be noted that a lot of activists oppose these types of surgeries (for example: Amnesty 2017). Fausto-Sterling further analyses how in medical literature a so-called normal penis is often considered crucial for boys (1995, 130). When a child is born, if that child’s penis is considered too small the penis will often be turned into a clitoris, and a vagina will be created. The child will then be raised as girl. The existence of a phallus that is large enough is seen as crucial for boyhood and manhood:

All this surgical activity goes on to ensure a congruous and certain sex of assignment and sex of rearing. During childhood, the medical literature insists, boys must have a phallus large enough to permit them to pee standing up, thus allowing them to “feel normal” when they play in little boys’ peeing contests. In adulthood, the penis must become large enough for vaginal penetration during intercourse. (...) At birth then, masculinity becomes a social phenomenon. For proper masculine socialization to occur, the little boy must have a sufficiently large penis. (Fausto-Sterling 1995, 131)

Here again, the existence of a penis is connected not only to masculinity but also sexuality. Having penetrative sex (and being the one penetrating) is linked to proper manhood. Similarly, Karioros and Allan write that the testicles are often linked to masculinity (for example by phrases like “grow a pair”), but also virility (2017).  They also write that because of this, castration is often linked with a fear of losing one's masculinity. Here we can see a connection between masculinity, sexuality, and fatherhood as well. Other authors have also noted this link, for instance in regards to how the inability to father children might feel like a threat to one’s masculinity (Thorsby & Gill 2004).

 The theme of sexuality and masculinity is one that Stephen Whitehead also writes about when he analyses masculine embodiment (2002). Whitehead writes that is that what is considered to male not just determined by biology but is also dependent on the discourse around sex/gender (ibid, 186). What he means by that is that how a “male body” should look and behave is not just innate, it depends on how expectations from society. Furthermore, the way that the masculine subject experiences their own body depends on what is generally expected of the male body, mainly for it be strong, tough and in control of physical space (ibid, 189). This can be seen as a contrast of the expected feminine embodiment, which is generally expected to be timid, careful, and restricted. Whitehead further describes how bodies (regardless of gender) are regulated through the panoptic gaze (ibid, 194). He borrows this term from Foucault to describe how we in modern society are constantly under surveillance, to the degree that we subconsciously regulate our own behavior.  Whitehead then goes on to show how this panoptic gaze can be extra harsh on some bodies (such as for people of color), subverted by some (such as gay men), and be different during the lifespan. Regarding aging male bodies he writes that with age many cannot live up to the ideal of having a strong and active body, and many lose sexual confidence at this time as well (ibid, 200). Here we once again see the theme of connecting masculinity to an active sexuality.  

 The analysis of the scenes with Varys from A Song of Ice and Fire will be presented below in a thematic fashion, but for context I will provide a brief overview of them here. The first scene is from the first novel, A Game of Thrones, from the point of view of Catelyn Stark when she arrives in Kings Landing (Martin 2011a, 165-169). There she meets the Master of Coin Petyr Baelish as well as Varys himself. This is the first time Varys appears on page, even though he has been mentioned before. The second scene occurs later in the same book, from the point of view of Hand of the King Eddard “Ned” Stark who has been imprisoned, accused of treason (Martin 2011a, 608-613). Varys shows up in his cell, disguised as a gaoler, and they discuss the future. The third scene is in the next book, A Clash of Kings, where the new Hand of the King Tyrion Lannister and Varys discuss politics and power (Martin 2011b, 117-122). This scene is from Tyrion’s point of view.

 In the first scene where the reader sees Varys he is described thusly:

The man who stepped through the door was plump, perfumed, powered, and as hairless as an egg. He wore a vest of woven gold thread over a loose gown of purple silk, and on his feet were pointed slippers of soft velvet. (...) His flesh was soft and moist, and his breath smelled of lilacs. (Martin 2011a, 167)

In the scene with Tyrion in A Clash with Kings he is described similarly, this time as having flowing lavender colored robes and smelling of lavender (Martin 2011b, 117). In both these occasions his appearance seems somewhat feminine, with flowing robes and flower scents. It is also interesting to note how his mannerisms are described. In the scene from A Game of Thrones it is described how he “giggled like a little girl” (Martin 2011a, 168). Later he handles a knife “with exaggerated delicacy” and when he still cuts himself on it, he lets out a squeal (ibid). In the scene from A Clash with Kings he is described first as “gliding into the hall”, and then he “tittered nervously” when questioned by Tyrion (Martin 2011b, 117). Later he is also described as giggling nervously (ibid, 121). Throughout this scene his reactions and speech generally seem exaggeratedly emotional, almost theatrical. One example is when Tyrion confronts him about not telling him about Tyrion’s sister’s involvement in the killing of the former king Robert’s bastard children:

‘Your own sweet sister,’ Varys said, so grief-stricken that he looked close to tears. ‘It is a hard thing to tell a man, my lord, I was fearful how you might take it. Can you forgive me?’ (Martin 2011b, 117)

His mannerisms throughout these two scenes seem careful, delicate, and emotional. This is somewhat of a contrast to how he is described in the scene with Eddard Stark from A Game of Thrones. Here some of the same language is present; Varys is described as speaking sadly and sighing (Martin 2011a, 609-610). But Eddard also notes how he seems blunter than usual. His appearance is the most different though, here he has disguised himself:

The eunuch’s plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the course hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. (Martin 2011a, 609)

Here Eddard sees how Varys has changed himself from his usual plump and feminine self, into an unwashed gruff gaelor. Seeing this disguise might hint that Varys usual appearance, with his theatrics, is a disguise as well. I will return to this notion later.

 From these scenes we can see that Varys usually seems to dress in a slightly feminine manner. His mannerisms seem feminine too, if one considers what Whitehead writes about feminine and masculine embodiment (2002, 189). Feminine embodiment is described there as timid and more restricted, while masculine embodiment is described as tough and in control of physical space. With his nervous tittering, exaggerated delicacy etc., Varys most definitely appears more feminine than masculine. All of this also seems in line with how eunuchs were described being feminine and submissive in antiquity (Nikoloutus 2008). Varys’ clothing is also interesting from this point of view; having a loose silk gown, a golden vest, and pointed slippers he fits in well with the idea of the eunuch from as an “Eastern” figure. This, of course, also makes sense since he comes from the continent of Essos that seems inspired by such real-life cultures. Based on his appearance one can then see how he is both perceived as feminine and “Eastern”, which was how eunuchs were seen in for example ancient Greece. However, it is also worth noting how this is similar to the orientalist view of men from “the Orient” as being emasculated/effeminate (Carroll 2018, 107).

 Another way Varys can be considered to be emasculated is of course in regard to his lack of genitalia. In all of the scenes I am analyzing it is mentioned that he is a eunuch, which makes it seem like this is central in people’s perception of him (Martin 2011a, 166 & 609; Martin 2011b, 120). In the scene with Eddard, Varys says that he swears upon his lost manhood that he is telling the truth (Martin 2011a, 613). This is an interesting turn of phrase since it directly links the removal of his genitalia with masculinity. However, it is in the scene with Tyrion that this issue is discussed most thoroughly. Tyrion says:

‘People have called me halfman too, yet I think the gods have been kinder to me. I am small, my legs are twisted, and women do not look upon me with any great yearning… yet I’m still a man. Shae is not the first to grace my bed, and one day I may take a wife and sire a son. (...) You have no such hope to sustain you. Dwarfs are a jape of the gods… but men make eunuchs.’ (Martin 2011b, 120)

Here Tyrion explicitly links having a penis with being a man. He seems to specifically connect being a man to having sex with women and fathering children. This is in line with what Fausto-Sterling writes about how having a large enough penis is considered crucial for masculine socialization, partly so the man can have penetrative sex with women (1995). It is also similar to the view of Ancient Greece, where being the penetrator in sexual intercourse was very important for one’s masculinity. However, unlike those times it seems that in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire it also important for one’s sexual partner to specifically be a woman, not simply any person below oneself in social standing. One can also note how fatherhood seems important to masculinity, which Thorsby and Gill write about as well (2004). That losing one’s manhood means losing one’s masculinity makes sense in relation to Karioris and Allen’s article, where they write that the testicles is seen as the seat of masculinity (2017). They also note how the testicles are connected to virality. All in all, it seems clear that partly why the penis and testicles are important to masculinity both in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire and our own is because of their perceived necessity for (penetrative) heterosexual sex and fatherhood. For someone to be counted as a real man they apparently have to take part in those practices. This is why Tyrion claims that he is still a man, and that Varys is not. Tyrion’s comparison of himself and Varys is furthermore interesting in other ways. It is clear when Tyrion refers to himself as a “halfman” he believes that his disability is an obstacle to him completely inhabiting a masculine subject position. As Whitehead writes, masculine embodiment is often expected to mean toughness and being in control of physical space. Tyrion describes himself as small and with twisted legs, and one can assume that this makes harder for him to live up to those ideals. However, since he can still have heterosexual sex and father children, he counts himself as a man. This emphasizes how important sexuality and virality is in the construction of masculinity.

 The last theme that I want to touch upon is how Varys seems to be mistrusted and ill liked. In Catelyn’s chapter in A Game of Thrones she reflects on how she does not trust him, and how Varys’ ability to find out information disconcerts her (Martin 2011a, 167-168). In Eddard’s chapter later in the novel Varys points out himself how “no one loves a eunuch” (ibid, 609). However, he then says that “A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my lord.” (ibid 610). This provides somewhat of an insight into his political strategy, while also making it seem wise to mistrust him. In the chapter with Tyrion in A Clash of Kings Varys makes a similar statement: “Spiders and informers are seldom loved, my lord.” (Martin 2011b, 120.) So, as a eunuch and a spy Varys is mistrusted and unloved. That he occupies the role of a spy is interesting in relation to what Llewellyn-Jones writes about the role eunuchs historically could have at court (2002). Those eunuchs could move between the private (feminine) sphere and the public (masculine) sphere, and therefore inform those in powers of courtly intrigue. This seems similar to what Varys does. A reoccurring theme for him, then, seems to be the transgression of borders. From private/feminine to public/masculine spaces, from feminine to masculine embodiment, from East to West. Perhaps, similarly to how eunuchs were regarded with contempt in Ancient Greece because of their transgressive position, this explains part of the reason why Varys is disliked. The fact that he is called “the Spider” also hints to him not quite being considered human. This is similar to how both Stryker and Hayward describe the way trans people are often perceived (1994; 2010). Similarly to how Hayward describes how the spider is looked upon with both curiosity and disgust, this seems to be how Varys the spider is seen. Furthermore, similarly to Hayward’s description Varys seems to create a place for himself through his spider web. However, there are some complications to simply reading him as a trans character. For one, it is very unclear how Varys considers his gender himself, the reader only gets descriptions of him from other characters’ points of view. But while it is unclear how he identifies; the way other characters see him seems similar to attitudes trans people might face. His, in their eyes, unclear gender and sex makes him seem slippery and unlikable. This ties back to the idea of eunuchs being seen with contempt because of their liminal character.

 Perhaps one strategy that Varys uses to counter the disadvantage of his position as a eunuch is to play into it. Earlier I noted that his feminine mannerisms seemed almost theatrical, and if he can disguise himself as a goalor, then perhaps his usual appearance is a disguise as well. As a spymaster he is most likely aware of how one’s every move might be watched, similarly to the panoptic gaze that Whitehead describes. This might have made him realize how important it is to control his own appearance etc. Varys might do something similar to how Whitehead writes that gay men might sometimes subvert the panoptic gaze on male bodies, by not conforming to the expectations of their embodiment (2002, 198). Varys seemingly conforms to the way eunuchs are expected to inhabit their bodies, but the reader cannot be sure if this is his “true” appearance or if he even has one. In this way he might be said to subvert the panoptic gaze by not simply conforming to the role of the effeminate and weak eunuch that his appearance might indicate but use this to his advantage. Furthermore, it seems useful for his position at court to both be able to move between different spaces with different disguises, and to use the idea of a eunuch as effeminate to seem less threatening in a patriarchal society.

 In conclusion then, Varys is considered less of a man because of his lack of “manhood”. In a world where sexuality and virality is intimately connected to masculinity, his perceived lack of those makes him no true man. Furthermore, his appearance and mannerisms seem more feminine than masculine. This, however, might be a strategy of his to seem less threatening in his position of Master of Spies. As he says himself, eunuchs and informants are seldom loved, so it might be beneficial for him to play into the role of the weak effeminate eunuch. Perhaps this also makes him able to move between differently gendered spaces, similarly to the eunuchs of antiquity. However, being the effeminate eunuch also seems part of what makes people distrust him. Him inhabiting the liminal space between borders of gender/sexuality and ethnicity, both spatially and with his embodiment, makes people vary of him. Is he a man or woman? Western or Eastern? Neither? But by destabilizing such borders, he also makes them visible. When the characters deem him less of a man for appearing feminine and lacking the body parts that would make him a man, it becomes clearer what requirements there are to be a man. Those seem to include a certain amount of toughness, active sexuality, and virality. Lacking both the set of genitalia that is deemed necessary to perform those actions and having the gendered perceptions of his ethnicity working against him, Varys cannot be perceived as a true man. But ultimately, this says more about how the society he lives in views masculinity.

 References

Amnesty International. (2017). “First, do no harm: ensuring the rights of children born intersex.” Accessed 1 December, 2019. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/05/intersex-rights/

 Carroll, Shiloh. 2018. Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer

 glass_table_girl. 2014. “(Spoilers All) A List of Things that GRRM Has Cited as Influences or Sources of Enjoyment”. Reddit, August 31, 2014.

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2f3wz9/spoilers_all_a_list_of_things_that_grrm_has_cited/

 Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1995. “How to build a man”, in Constructing Masculinity, eds. Berger, Maurice, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson, 127-134. New York: Routledge.

 Hayward, Eva. 2010. “Spider city sex”, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 20(3):225-251

 Karioris, Frank G. and Jonathan A. Allan. 2017. “Grow a Pair! Critically Analyzing Masculinity and the Testicles.” Journal of Men’s Studies, 24(3): 245-261.

 Martin, George RR. 2011a. A Game of Thrones. London: Harper Voyager.

 Martin, George RR. 2011b. A Clash of Kings. London: Harper Voyager.

 Nikoloutsos, Konstantinos P. 2008. ”The Alexander Bromance: Male Desire and Gender Fluidity in Oliver Stone’s Historical Epic.” Helios, (35)2: 223-251

 Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2002. “Eunuchs and the royal harem in Achaemenid Persia (559-331 BC)”, in Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond, ed. Tougher, Shaun, 19-50. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

 Stryker, Susan. 1994. “My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage” GLQ 1(3): 237-254

 Throsby, Karen & Rosalind Gill. 2004. ”It’s Different for Men: Masculinity and IVF.” Men and Masculinities, (6)4: 330-348

Tougher, Shaun. 2002. “In or out? Origins of court eunuchs.” in Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond, ed. Tougher, Shaun, 143-160. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

 Whitehead, Stephen M. 2002. Men and Masculinities, Cambridge and Malden: Polity.

[baneofloslorien5384]

A (hopefully) Unique Robcina Headcanon

As some of you may be aware, I am very much a fan of the M!RobinxLucina pairing from Fire Emblem Awakening. Have been since I was reading spoilers in fanfics before I even played the game. Bad Bane, bad! Anyhow, I’ve seen Robcina fics in all shapes and sizes, but one factor that’s largely absent is this: how would things be affected if Lucina’s present day counterpart, the one who’s born just before your first brouhaha with Valm, knows and understands just who her counterpart from the future is? Well, here is my interpretation. Enjoy!

-          At times, living with her younger self could prove quite confounding when Lucina tries to say…well, anything, really. For instance, when regarding her then-infant younger self, she would start by saying “Isn’t she” and then fumble before beginning again by saying “I mean, me, adorable?”.

-          Robin, who’s never one to let such an opportunity for a good laugh go to waste, slyly replies “Yes, you really are cute, Lucina”. This prompts the older Lucina to blush adorably and run out of the room in embarrassment, all the while trying to convince herself that her younger self giggling is just a mildly sinister coincidence.

-          Robin, who’s much easier to slap with a “Guilty” verdict, then slips Little Lucina a cup of tasty fruit juice, saying “Here’s my end of the deal”.

-          Lucina is not the only one to end up confounded when talking about this subject. When Robin encourages Lucina to spend time with her younger self, he gets discombobulated in midsentence as he splutters out “You were…are…is…a cute kid?”.

-          Following the end of the Valmese War, when the Shepherds regrouped at Ylisse prior to heading to Plegia, Lucina was more-or-less gang pressed into spending time with her younger self. Eerily, Little Lucina did not seem at all nervous when confronted with a stranger and even seemed to get fussy if Lucina tried to leave the room while Little Lucina was still awake.

-          As Lucina has stated several times, her original plan is to leave Ylisse once Grima is vanquished. This goal becomes increasingly difficult to follow-through on as she falls in love with Robin and reconnects with her parents, but hints are dropped that she still intends to go through with it.

-          Though Robin would resign from the Shepherds in a heartbeat if he had to choose between that and Lucina, he rather dislikes having to make such a choice at all, especially since he can see how kinda-sorta having her family back has helped Lucina to open up and become happier.

-          Deciding that this dilemma calls for not the tipping of the scales, but for the scales to be tipped over and smashed into itty bitty pieces, Robin goes to Chrom, tells him of the situation, and suggests that the Exalt “do something ham-fisted”.

-          Chrom apparently obliges…and handily. For, within days, the story of the Warriors from the Future leaks out. With the public now aware of Big Lucina’s true origins, which are backed up by her Brand and the existence of a second Falchion, her plans to leave are rendered utterly pointless.

-          After Lucina shoots Robin and Chrom any array of blistering and yet strangely ineffective death glares, she resigns herself to her secret being out and ponders how her life will proceed from here. Ultimately, she takes the post of Captain of the Castle Guard (to be clear, Frederick is Chrom and the royal family’s personal bodyguard…slash-unofficial-butler, while Lucina handles the security of the castle) while Robin becomes Chrom’s chief advisor.

-          As Little Lucina grows from a baby to a toddler, she picks up on Big Lucina’s true identity with downright creepy speed, and promptly develops a unique blend of hero worship and self-aggrandizing.

-          Ascribing to the, technically correct, belief that the two of them are the same person, Little Lucina greets Big Lucina by saying “Hello, Me”. Big Lucina, who just can’t ignore that particular bait, replies “You are not me and I am not you. You are you, and I am me”.

-          Little Lucina, who still isn’t deterred after, literally, hearing this at least once a day, minimum, always answers “You were me, and I will be you”.

-          Considering how much Big Lucina does NOT want Little Lucina growing up like she did, combined with her tendency to take things too literally, Big Lucina finds this assertion annoying at best and outright alarming at worst.

-          For a time, Big Lucina was kept much too busy to agonize over her younger self’s unique quest for an identity, given that she now had to police the castle on top of being a good wife to Robin and a good mother to Morgan.

-          Of course, even that doesn’t go off without a hitch since, when Lucina is fitted with new armor to denote her rank, Robin’s belting out “HOLY CRAAAAAAP!!!!” is heard echoing through the castle, causing everyone who can fight to come running…only to discover Robin’s amazement that Lucina isn’t flat after all, but wore bindings over her chest to make her masculine disguise more convincing.

-          In a rare show of volatile temper, Lucina loses it and, in order to get back into her good graces, Robin must brave the direst of perils, venture into the darkest depths, and steel his nerves against abominations that defy explanation even as they turn the stomach and scar the soul…by which, I mean he has to go to the boutique and splurge on the clothing that Lucina prefers.

-          After getting over the sheer weirdness of there being two Princess Lucinas, one of which is supervising her own home security, the castle guard grows quite fond of their unlikely captain, even following her unspoken orders to treat her like their captain rather than their princess.

-          During one particularly memorable instance, Big Lucina was marching through the castle on an inspection of the guard and the castle’s defenses, straight and brisk, hand on hilt, shoulders squared, and back straight. Much to her surprise, she realizes that everyone was snickering at her when they thought she was out of earshot. Only after nearly an hour did Big Lucina realize that this was because Little Lucina was marching alongside her, mimicking her marching style flawlessly.

-          Robin treats Little Lucina much the same way as he, later, treats Little Morgan. That is, like a daughter or a favorite niece. When Big Lucina was elsewhere, and Chrom and Sumia were busy, Robin would read stories to Little Lucina, play Hide-and-Seek with her, and such.

-          At first, Robin is bewildered that Big Lucina seems so alarmed by these seemingly harmless moments…until he realizes that Big Lucina and Little Lucina have a very important commonality: both of them grew up having a crush on Robin.

-          This is illustrated by, for example, Robin taking a day off to have a family picnic with Big Lucina, only for Little Lucina to snatch his hand and ask him to play with her. This leads to a tug-a-war between the two Lucinas while Robin contemplates the existential weirdness of not only having the same woman on either arm but the impact that a nigh-literal duplicate of oneself can have upon one’s sense of uniqueness in the universe…okay, he instead contemplates how many terrible puns he can make about “having arguments with yourself” he can milk out of this situation. So, sue me!

-          Though Robin never, EVER passes up the chance to rile up Chrom after he becomes the world’s youngest grandpa, his ability to be mean is actually rather limited. Thus, he is constantly hard pressed to do anything other than melt submissively in the face of Little Lucina’s adorable smile and ten syllable version of the word “Please”.

-          The matter is not helped when Little Lucina decides that, since she and Big Lucina are technically the same person, that that makes Robin THEIR husband. Being the softy that he is, Robin does too little to disabuse her of the notion whereas Big Lucina, upon hearing Little Lucina ask that Robin address her as “my little bluebird” (Robin’s nickname to Big Lucina), straight up loses it.

-          Robin has to talk fast, and mightily strain his thinking muscles, in order to convince Big Lucina that he isn’t going to trade her in for a younger model somewhere down the line. And, though she eventually comes around, tensions between her and Little Lucina persist.

-          Morgan, being Morgan, merrily pours gas on this particular bonfire by greeting Little Lucina with “Hi, Mom!” And Little Lucina, not to be outdone, replies by saying “When I grow up, I’m going to have you!”

-          Robin then makes the truly grave mistake of dissecting that particular statement. If he were to abandon all sense of fidelity, morality, decency, common sense, self-preservation, and proper hero archetypes, and did, in fact, have a baby with Little Lucina, then would that child essentially be a third Morgan? For that matter, when Little Lucina does grow up and marry (hopefully) someone else and have children, then would those children be half-siblings to Morgan and…Morgan? And, just how would that look on a genealogy chart? Would Big Lucina and Little Lucina share an entry line they’re technically the same person? If so, how would the genealogist get across that these are two ladies from different points in time rather than one woman with two husbands? How could the genealogist illustrate that Big Lucina’s children and Little Lucina’s children are half-siblings, assuming that’s the case. And…and Robin decides he could really use a drink right about now.

-          Despite Morgan’s insistence on addressing Little Lucina as “Mom” whenever she thinks it’s funny, she typically treats her more like a little sister or a favorite niece and the two become fast friends. Later, Morgan begins instructing Little Lucina in the fine art of pranking.

-          As Little Lucina is still quite young, most of these pranks involve myriad ways to get out of taking her afternoon naps. These include, but are not limited to, arranging stuffed animals beneath the sheets to create the appearance that she’s under the covers, mixing up smoke bombs to distract the guards, setting up buckets of round nuts to trip people up, ropes and pulleys arranged to bury entire rooms in flower petals, and other brain aneurysm-inducing nonsense.

-          Big Lucina, who’s near to a tantrum over these shenanigans, adamantly and hotly insists that she was nothing like that as a child and takes Morgan to task for meddling with the “purity” of her younger self.

-          Morgan, characteristically, begins to gush about how maternal Big Lucina sounds when giving a scolding, which causes Big Lucina to relent a little…until Morgan tells her that Little Lucina is a “brilliant prodigy of pranking who comes up with brilliant pranks”, and that nearly all of Little Lucina’s shenanigans were ones she thought of herself. At this, Big Lucina loses it and lets out one of those she-could-break-glass screams, which has Chrom and half the castle guard breaking down her door before they realize it’s a false alarm.

-          A horrified castle functionary (i.e. useless bureaucrat) then sees the damage and, after a long moment of abject horror, says that that door was over six hundred years old. This triggers an amusing, and irreverent, discussion about just who the hell keeps track of those sorts of things.

-          Robin, being Robin, is about to throw his bit of gasoline on the bonfire by saying that Big Lucina puts a whole new spin on the phrase “you’re too hard on yourself”. When he notices that Big Lucina looks like she’ll dismember and eat him alive if he tries it, he instead asks if she’d like a trip to the Bathrealm.

-          Although Little Lucina’s prankishness tapers off enough that the castle is not poised to explode, her nursemaids and governesses, even years later, will insist that Morgan and Little Lucina’s pranks were the stuff of legends. And that they have the gastric ulcers to prove it.

-          Given that Robin has dodged many of Morgan’s pitfalls and snares, sometimes by tricking her into setting them off herself, it’s no surprise that Robin is sometimes called in to diffuse suspected traps set by Morgan and Little Lucina.

-          Since Morgan is well aware that Robin is her toughest quarry to prank, she, Little Lucina, and sometimes Lissa and Big Cynthia as well, will sometimes arrange massive arrays of double-bluffs. Or triple-bluffs, quadruple-bluffs, quintuple-bluffs, sextuple-bluffs (and, yes, that’s a real word), etc.

-          In these instances, lots and lots and lots of pitfalls, snares, etc. would be laid out in the hopes that Robin, in his efforts to avoid as many of them as he could, would get got simply by virtue of the law of averages. Remarkably, this strategy did not work…because other people, including the pranksters themselves, got caught in them before Robin even arrived. This explains the forest of people dangling by their ankles all pointing, in a very disgruntled manner, in Morgan’s general direction. It also explains the cardiac arrythmia Frederick has at such hazardous untidiness and the urge Chrom has to buy a wyvern when people start complaining to him about his granddaughter.

-          Curiously, Morgan hardly ever pranks Big Lucina, partly because Big Lucina is quick to learn the fine art of maternal scolding and partly because, due to Morgan’s memories of Big Lucina being so fractured and hazy, Morgan is worried about turning what memories she does have of her mother into bad ones. Little Lucina, by contrast, will prank Big Lucina at the drop of a hat, usually to get her older counterpart to loosen up and have fun. As with more than a few convoluted concepts, Big Lucina finds this quite baffling.

-          At some point, either consciously or otherwise, Big Lucina finds herself laughing at Little Lucina’s shenanigans, prompting the latter to, literally, jump for joy and give Big Lucina an impressive tackle hug. Knowing her original plan to leave Little Lucina to live her own life, and that staying with her is throwing that life out of whack, but also knowing she’d long since stopped wanted to leave her younger self, Lucina says aloud “Sometimes, I just don’t understand myself.”

-          Robin, being Robin, gets a kick out of this choice of words and, since seeing Big Lucina smile is one of his greatest, and hardest fought, pleasures in life, promptly adds Little Lucina to his arsenal of “secret weapons”.

-          Big Lucina, who we already know is quite capable of envying herself, gradually finds it becoming harder and harder to watch her younger self have the childhood she lost, from such things as Chrom reading Little Lucina a story to Sumia giving her a simple run down of how to bake. Big Lucina’s own recollections of these are few, distant, and tarnished since, even back then, Grima was known to be lurking on the horizon. Watching Little Lucina live the life Big Lucina wanted her to live thus, paradoxically, heals one old wound and creates a new one for Big Lucina.

-          Jealousy, in this case, works both ways, as Little Lucina clearly sees that Robin doesn’t look at her the way he looks at Big Lucina. And, this is further accentuated by Big Lucina being bigger, stronger, and prettier than Little Lucina.

-          Though Chrom is definitely not as bright as Robin, he’s no dolt. He can clearly sense that something is very wrong with his daughter…his two daughters…his two Lucinas…whatever. And, having about as much subtlety as Ike when someone is serving vegan cuisine, he decides upon a ham-fisted intervention (i.e. tricking them into going the same room, locking them in, and waiting until they make up before letting them back out).

-          After a rather lengthy period of trying to break the door down, yelling at each other, and then ignoring each other, the ice begins to crack. Eventually, recalling her chat with Severa at the Bathrealm, Big Lucina tells Little Lucina her reasons for not wanting her to grow up the same way Big Lucina did. ALL of them.

-          Hearing that Big Lucina’s being such a strong warrior came at the cost of her parents, her home, and most of her countrymen, Little Lucina is able to put much of Big Lucina’s reactions into context. The two also have a more civilized conversation about their reasons for envying each other.

-          Little Lucina, quite possibly recalling something she overheard between Big Lucina and Robin (or even acting on something Robin told her) tells her that she knows Big Lucina is just as welcome to spend time with her…their…whatever…parents as Little Lucina is. She even relays how proud Chrom is of how strong and brave Big Lucina is, and how much Sumia’s face lit up when Big Lucina was cooing over a Pegasus foal.

-          One thing that astonishes Little Lucina is that Big Lucina envies the former’s time with her tutors. Being a little kid, Little Lucina finds this utterly incomprehensible…until Big Lucina admits that her own education (reading, writing, maths, dancing, etiquette, etc.) was cut short by the rise of Grima. Indeed, Big Lucina can barely read and hasn’t written since before her parents’ deaths. This resonates with Little Lucina, since she loves reading, not-so-coincidentally because it’s one of her favorite pastimes with Chrom and Robin (she might leave out that second one).

-          Little Lucina, in turn, admits that even though she’s happy enough being a princess and all that entails, she wants to be strong enough to keep her people safe, especially her family, which is something Big Lucina can’t readily ignore.

-          Ultimately, the two reach an accord: Big Lucina will teach Little Lucina how to fight and Little Lucina will teach Big Lucina the same lessons Little Lucina herself is learning from her tutors.

-          After Chrom the Ham-Fisted lets them out, it quickly becomes apparent that the two have reconciled their differences. In one particular instance, Little Lucina, upon hearing that Big Lucina wanted to learn how to dance in time for her and Robin’s wedding anniversary, decides to teach Big Lucina the waltz. Given the height differences, however, some…out-of-the-box teaching techniques were called for.

-          By that same token, Big Lucina allowed Little Lucina to accompany her on her inspections in order to learn the layout of the castle, as well as the names and faces of the guards, since a would-be intruder just might be wearing the same armor as them.

-          Though Robin didn’t say anything, it wasn’t hard for him to guess that Big Lucina could barely read. He did, however, step in it when he discovered, the hard way, that Big Lucina’s handwriting hadn’t changed much from her childhood dabblings, right down to how she used the Brand of the Exalt to dot the i in her name. When he saw some of Big Lucina’s attempts to write out some “homework”, he assumed that the author was Little Lucina…which led to some awkwardness.

-          At both Robin and Little Lucina’s insistence, Big Lucina puts her penmanship lessons into practice by writing letters to Robin that he can read when he’s busy and/or away. She would tell him about her day, ask how he’s been, and, somewhat unconsciously, allow a clearer view into her thoughts and feelings than most are likely to get from her in-person.

-          BIg Lucina’s handwriting improves quickly and, although Robin sometimes misses the cuteness of his wife’s childlike handwriting, he does manage to talk her into continuing to dot the i in her name with the Brand.

-          As Big Lucina’s reading improves, she, Robin, and Morgan make a point of reading together late at night. When Little Morgan comes along, Big Lucina is seemingly chomping at the bit to read the baby a story before bed.

-          Robin, who discovered how exploitable time travel is for those fond of puns, would often use this to jerk around certain people, such as Both Lucinas’ governess and/or Chrom. For example, when asked where Lucina was, Robin would answer “She’s playing with herself”. This would prompt a mad dash to quash lewd and lascivious behavior unbecoming of a princess…only to discover that Big Lucina and Little Lucina are playing chess. This, in turn, led to a mad dash after Robin, who hadn’t counted on his pursuer(s) having ready access to hammers.

-          As a new family tradition to underscore that Big Lucina is considered as much a part of the Ylissean royal family as Little Lucina, Chrom and/or Robin (there’s an ongoing debate about which of them came up with the idea first) have the two Lucinas celebrate their birthdays on the same day, right down to sharing a big cake with ‘Happy Birthday LucinaS’ written on it in icing and with the two Lucinas trying – sometimes successfully, sometimes not – to cut their respective first slices in unison.

-          Although the gifts for each Lucina underscore how the two are similar and yet different, such as Big Lucina getting an eye-melting yukata while Little Lucina gets a similarly hideous hair ribbon, someone (usually Robin) sometimes gets them matching jewelry or other accessories.

-          The two Lucinas also get gifts for each other. In one particularly cute instance, Big Lucina got Little Lucina a rare first edition of the chronicles of the Hero King Marth’s exploits while Little Lucina got Big Lucina an exact duplicate of the butterfly mask she wore while traveling as Marth.

-          As the years go by, Big Lucina and Little Lucina begin to develop more divergent personalities. Big Lucina’s fashion sense is still atrocious whereas Little Lucina’s taste in clothing is much more normal…but she compensates by being fond of terribly gaudy accessories, such as hair ribbons with zebra patterns and jeweled hairpins which are bright enough to act as a substitute for flash grenades. Further, while Big Lucina can sometimes be tightly wound and over-serious, Little Lucina seems able to move from decorous to rambunctious in a heartbeat.

-          Although Big Lucina does not want to rule Ylisse, as she believes that to be Little Lucina’s right, she reluctantly consents to being named third in line for the throne, in the event that Chrom, Sumia, Little Lucina, and Little Cynthia all predecease her.

-          When Big Lucina becomes pregnant with Little Morgan, Little Lucina is delighted. Although by then she no longer considers Little Morgan her daughter simply by virtue of her and Big Lucina being “the same person”, she is nonetheless keen to help her older self.

-          Aside from reining in Sumia, who’s a little too excited at her and Big Lucina being pregnant together, Little Lucina is keen to make sure Big Lucina gets her bed rest, helps read to the unborn baby, and generally proving weirdly effective as a pregnancy coach.

-          In as much as health permits, Big Lucina continues her duties as Captain of the Castle Guard during her pregnancy…I mean, come on, can you picture Owain doing it? Or Cynthia? Or Noire? Or Brady? Or…well, suffice to say, none of the future children are management material.

-          Eventually, swollen ankles force Big Lucina to stop her regular patrols. That and some found her hard to take seriously when she was squeezing a baby bump under her armor. At that point, she not-so-voluntarily assumed the administrative duties of her post while the actual patrolling, inspections, and drills were divvied up between Big Morgan and Little Lucina.

-          At some point into the pregnancy, Little Lucina, and the Big Lucina, sense that Big Morgan, despite putting on airs, is somewhat leery at the prospect of her younger self’s birth. Deciding to play the Big Sister…I mean Mother…I mean…I don’t know what I mean, but Little Lucina tries to talk to Big Morgan, ultimately gleaning that Big Morgan is worried that she’ll be replaced by Little Morgan.

-          After pushing Big Morgan to talk to Big Lucina about her problems, Big Lucina gets some good practice in helping to reassure a child who is in distress. In fact, Big Lucina is uniquely qualified to deal with Big Morgan’s fear of being replaced by…well, herself. Chrom and Sumia promptly join in and, between the three of them, relay some of their interactions and how, when they sensed how out of place Big Lucina felt in this timeline, they MADE a place for her.

-          When Little Morgan is born, Big Morgan and Little Lucina are tripping over each other, and/or tripping each other, to get in the queue to hold her.

-          Even though Little Lucina knows she’s much too young to have much of a shot at being Little Morgan’s godsmother, she says she’ll so be in the running once Robin and Big Lucina have a few more kids. Proving that at least some of her impishness is here to stay, she times this assertion to coincide with Robin and Big Lucina taking a long pull of their drinks.

-          Aside from pranking others, Big Morgan tries to teach Little Lucina a variety of other bad habits, including Taguel torture, dressing like Big Lucina, circularly dramatic speech (i.e. “My Super Genius Plan of Genius Planning!”) and eating like a starving wolf…in terms of both quantity of food eaten and table manners.

-          Most of these “lessons” don’t take. Little Lucina likes rabbits too much to pull on Yarne’s ears (and certainly knows better than to pull Panne’s), prefers to melt people’s eyes with her accessories rather than her clothes, can talk dramatically but not circularly enough, and nyxs the eating bit because, though she’s not above messiness, Big Morgan’s brand is a bit much and she also learns, the hard way, that she shares neither Big Morgan’s immunity to stomachaches nor her imperviousness to sudden upticks in dress size.

-          Though Little Lucina will always have a soft spot in her heart for Robin, she does eventually get over her crush. She does, however, insist that, when she does find someone she loves, that Robin and Big Lucina will come to the wedding. Naturally, there are no objections.

-          Little Lucina does, eventually, fall in love with Raphael, the Prince of Warriors.

-          Who is Raphael, the Prince of Warriors, you ask? He is one of the sons of Priam and Say’ri. In fact, Robin, the two Lucinas, and several veterans of the Shepherds visited Chon’sin to celebrate his birth.

-          Some were startled when Big Lucina, upon seeing then-baby Raphael suddenly seemed quite overcome and then left the room, crying uncontrollably. Though it was well known that Big Lucina adored babies, not the smallest reason being how rare they were in her timeline, even those who knew her best thought her reaction a bit extreme.

-          Robin, being Robin, managed to track her down and get the truth out of her. Much to Robin’s amazement, Big Lucina reported that she’d actually met Priam in the future, as she and the other children were making their escape to the past. Though Priam proved a valiant warrior, and was instrumental in their escape, she distinctly remembered how melancholy he was, as he knew his time was ending and that there were none to inherit Ragnell or to carry on the legacy of the Radiant Hero. Seeing Priam, married and with children, acted as a particularly overwhelming sign that she truly had changed history for the better.

-          Robin, being Robin, took the opportunity to tease Big Lucina about how much of a sentimental softy she could be…which must’ve been especially galling since Big Lucina actually resorted to inviting the ever-present Tharja to join their little chat.

-          Though Little Lucina loves lording her Little Lord role over the other younger counterparts to the children from the future, perhaps developing a liking for telling people what to do like her father, Robin, and Big Lucina, people begin to notice that Raphael is much harder to boss around.

-          Aside from being born handsome, enough so that Little Lucina sometimes has a hard time keeping her words straight when talking to him, Raphael is an independent thinker who is not impressed by fancy titles, honorifics, or pretty words. Raphael, much like his father, respects strength and bravery, but he also respects wisdom and conviction, owing to his mother.

-          Though copious translation was needed, Miriel and Laurent posited the theory that, although Little Lucina was becoming her own person rather than considering herself to be nigh-predestined to become a second Big Lucina, she did retain the subconscious psychological belief that there would be a certain area of overlap, namely that Little Lucina would also be judged worthy of respect and deference by all who knew her. Robin had a much simpler explanation: Little Lucina had a crush on Raphael, and was galled at how he seemed to find her unimpressive.

-          Little Lucina, rather like Big Lucina, is not one to take such sleights lightly. Sensing that getting Raphael’s respect is best done with feats of strength, Little Lucina makes several attempts to prove that she can play with the big boys.

-          In doing so, Little Lucina learns, the hard way, that it’s hard for a young woman to develop Ike-esque biceps. Later, much like Big Lucina did in her still-wanting-for-a-proper-explanation fight with Chrom in Arena Ferox, Little Lucina learns that fighting strength-for-strength against someone who’s much, MUCH stronger than you tends to end badly.

-          Much like Big Lucina did, Little Lucina decides that, in order to overcome this aggravation, she needs to evolve. She studies many fighting styles, including several Chon’sinese styles, and devises her own fighting style which can be adapted to numerous opponents and tactical situations.

-          Little Lucina was eager to use these new talents to put Raphael in his place…but, much to her surprise, this did not go to plan. Rather than fight, Raphael insisted that they meditate, after which Raphael made some rather pointed comments on how Little Lucina’s chi, and priorities, were a bit out of whack. The dedication Little Lucina showed in her efforts was impressive, but it was done out of jealousy, pride, and a unique perception of entitlement, rather than the good she could do with what she’d created.

-          Flummoxed, Little Lucina reflects on her motives and, not-so-coincidentally, both the original and subsequent motives of Robin and Big Lucina. Granted, both of them found different reasons for fighting as time went on, but the consistent part of it all was that they were fighting to protect the people and land they both loved. Fame, recognition, respect, and such had never factored into it.

-          With this fresh perspective, and with her persistently wounded ego no longer acting as a distraction, Little Lucina challenged Raphael to three (non-lethal) duels, the stakes being that, if Little Lucina won at least once, Raphael would take her on a date. Raphael lost. Well, sort of. He later came to very much enjoy Little Lucina’s company.

-          Ultimately, Little Lucina and Raphael get married. As promised, Robin and Big Lucina attended the wedding.

-          Despite being a prince of Chon’sin and a distant relation of the Crimean royal family (IkexElincia; I am SO PISSED that it wasn’t even an option, let alone a thing!) Raphael simply does not do decorum, and he has a rather selective adherence to tradition.

-          In a rather jarring example, when it came time to carry Little Lucina off, rather than carrying her bridal style, he simply slipped one hand under her rear end and lifted her up, forcing her to stay balanced upon his palm.

-          In truth, Little Lucina’s combat training with Big Lucina made keeping her balance an easy, but fun, feat. She nonetheless made a good show of swaying in place, flailing her arms madly, and making all sorts of I’m-about-to-fall noises in order to cause the wedding guests to have infarctions. It worked too.

-          When Raphael was informed that he was supposed to carry his bride using both hands, he, demonstrating that he had the combined candor of Priam and Ike, asked “Why? She’s not as heavy as she looks.”

-          After this remark caused several more guests to have infarctions, Little Lucina gave a credible imitation of a scandalized gasp and whacked her groom on the head, which caused several more guests to have infarctions.

-          Halfway to the door, someone (probably Robin) remarked that Little Lucina was having too easy a time keeping her balance. Raphael responded by saying “Well, like I always say, let the women work too!” and then began to flex his wrist and walk in a weaving pattern, thus making things more fun (but hardly more difficult) for Little Lucina. Needless to say, the guests and their flimsy cardiovascular systems gave the castle’s healers quite a workout.

-          While Big Lucina was experiencing a truly unique case of being embarrassed at herself, Robin was taking the display in the spirit with which is was intended; namely by laughing his ass off. He then remarked that he fully expected to die laughing and Big Lucina, who still had some tone deafness when it came to idioms, took his words literally, scooped him up, and raced towards the nearest healers, trampling several important persons in her path.

-          Many years later, Raphael and Little Lucina’s son, Greil XXXVIII (VERY popular name amongst Ike’s progeny) was introduced to Robin and Big Lucina’s youngest daughter, Elena.

-          Just to be clear, Elena is not Little Morgan. Little Morgan’s name is…well, Morgan. Much like Big Lucina and Little Lucina are both named Lucina.

-          …and, somewhere in Ylisse Castle, the Royal Genealogist just has a heart attack. But I digress.

-          Greil XXXVIII, who is clearly going to inherit the family biceps when he grows up, keeps Elena entertained by performing feats of strength that would be tricky for boys twice his size. Needless to say, Elena comes away quite impressed.

-          Despite already sensing that Greil and Elena will stay “just friends”, Robin simply can’t resist and ponders aloud as to whether a relationship between the two could be considered incestuous, since Greil XXXVIII and Elena, technically, have the same mother.

-          The response to this wiseassery is the Ylissean royal family delivering a syncopated and very well practiced chorus of “Robin, shut up”.

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