#she could be such good blorbo material

[nubs-mbee]

I kind of hope gwen won’t pull a TOTAL Lena… like yeah she’s hungry for prestige and power and she’s very ambitious, but I’d like for her to still have a bit of a conscience. Ideally I’d love for her to act all normal at work, but attempt to stop or sabotage one of the liaison outings she has to take (and get hurt in doing so, cause she has no idea what she’s doing of course). Idk I think I’d just like to see her character development take that route! I want to see her struggle between satisfying her need to preform/move upwards at work and not losing her humanity in the process. I don’t think I really want to see her become a villain

[whoishotteranimepolls]

Fandom Observation Funny tags: One Piece The Emperors & Crew

Due to character limits, the funny tags post has had to be broken up into multiple parts

This part contains the tags for the Red Hair Whitebeard, Blackbeard, Big Mom, and Beast Pirates. Plus Cross Guild. Enjoy because you guys really outdid yourself

The Red Hair Pirates

Benn Beckman: "Dilf," "retirement blorbo", "Benn Beckman is a religious experience", "to me? beckman is the character with the most sex appeal ever. raw sex appeal. I would [redacted] if I met this man. just sayin", "He can ruin my life any day of the week", "Also lest we forget pre TS Beck a++ quality right there I just want someone smart who will also hit a guy with a gun is that so much to ask for", "This p**** wants what she wants and its always going to be Benn “back breaker" Beckman", husband material, "men are like wine in order to get a good vintage you want the one that's aged", he had that sexy blind and reckless loyalty about him", "Beckman is a fine aged vintage of wine as men should be", "DEAR GOD the things I WOULD DO to that man LIKE [redacted] and [redacted] because [redacted] and [redacted]", "idk how to explain it but he's so wife", "benn beckman? more like benn breastman ok sorry yeah anyways. said it before and ill say it again beckman exudes raw sex appeal like jesus christ. why would you not want to fuck this man ive had lesbian friends who said he would be an exception to them which is so real his tits are big he loves his captain he STUBBED HIS CIGARETTE IN A MAN'S EYE UNDER THE GUISE OF DEFENDING HIS CAPTAIN so fucking sexy mwah mwah beckman my wife you are so hot SO HOT. in conclusion benn breastman you will forever be a top sexyguy in my head oh also forgot to add. he canonically gets bitches which is so real. he could get me any day", "Oh dear I just realised I have a thing for older men with grey hair and have substance abuse issues I choose to believe lung cancer does not exist in opu", "Live action Benn looks like that one uncle no one wants to invite to the family reunion but has to anyway because the grandparents insisted” “Benn Fine Fucking Vintage Beckman cannot believe OPLA boxed that fine ass wine what were they thinking I'd happily spend hundreds of dollars for Becky but no they had to pawn him off as a cheap $20 boxed wine probably powdered and needs to be reconstituted yes i am that bitter this was the only bad casting call they had in S1 never forgive never forget” “I honestly loved that they made beckman just some guy you could pass on the street and not look twice at in the live action but… he's definitely not hot” “really I think mid-40s is the sweet spot for Beckman#hair is kinda salt-and-peppery; not quite black but not quite silver I cast my vote for pre-ts bc I didn't think he'd get enough votes and I like the way he looks” “I bet he's hiding a Special kind of Sea King in his pants too” “DAMN RIGHT ! my man is PACKING !” “ He should demand child support from Rayleigh because if it weren't for him, Shanks probably would have ended up dead of his drunken stupidity a long time ago under his watch. He only lost one arm, and that's because Shanks ran off by himself and was left unsupervised for 5 minutes. That's not Benn's fault.” “

Shanks: Margaritaville Himbo, "Dilflicious", "the deadbeat malewife wifi user", "I am a whole lesbian but if there were a butch girl version of these men I would let shanks ruin my life", "favorite guy in the local frat" He's probably a walking STD risk but he's hot and I'm a slut that has a thing for red heads, "the unwashed bitch", "LOOK AT THAT SCRUFF ON SHANKS the three scars on his face that smile", "my Scrungle drunk bastard", I would volunteer to be his next baby mama you know shanks got a few a dozen red haired children all over the grand line tell me I'm wrong" “early shanks is perfect in my heart he's a rapscallion!!! he looks like he giggles,” “Post Time Skip Shanks is a daddy Live action shanks feels like a goofy dad/uncle,” “ In sorry but shanks looks like markiplier” “sorry shanks your ex husbands winning this one” “I think Shank's actor is WAY hotter as a brunette” “seriously though la shanks looks like a wet rat even more than his anime counter part” “I'm voting shanks he's just so… what a dream of a man. you know?” “shanks can’t be hot his good looks don’t make up for his personality” “shanks because he would make a good dad had his ass been able to keep kids” “Shanks having the least amount of votes is actually breaking my heart it's okay Shanks I love you” “confession i lowkey dislike shanks MOTHING AGAINST HIM PERSONALLY but like the fandom treatment of him he is EVERYWHERE and does NOTHING until the wano flashbacks (his most screentime untill egghead) i did not care about him sorry” “heh lol eat dirt Shanks (this user has nothing against Shanks except that he's always beating her faves)” “shanks sweep! idk anything about one piece other than i want to fuck him probably other stuff too” “why is shanks winning. basic ass website” “still going feral over shanks” “how many times must shanks make that cheap copy bite the dust” “after this weeks episode my hot for Shanks is at an all time high sooooo👀👀one arm daddy wins this time” “dejectedly picks shanks because at the end of the day i am a fag with problems i like my men horribly unwell” “He's the biggest fuckboy to ever whore about the grand line” “Shanks got absolutely everything from Rayleigh. Swordsmanship, haki mastery, a knack for epic entrances, ugly pants, bisexuality, and a slutty, slutty lifestyle across the Grand Line. Sorry to Roger, but the kid clearly took after the other father.” “'m shocked Beckman hasn't put that boy on a leash yet oh im damn sure beck has put that guy on a leash ifykwim” “Some of us are just complete sluts, and we're totally okay with that. I'm fully self-aware, and I totally would volunteer to be Shanks's baby mama. People have been talking about the implications of devil fruits in the bedroom. I want to know if Haki has bedroom misuses.” “I would volunteer to be the maid, especially if it comes with a cute slutty maid outfit. I bet Shanks would go feral for that, and again, I'm self-aware that I'm a total ho. Plus, I wouldn't care as long as I'm getting railed by the Daddy Emperor of the Sea every night” “Dorky Shanks my beloved” “HE CANONICALLY GETS BITCHES i genuinely think only cavendish has been shown to get a bigger amount of groupies (female that is) (sanji got the whole of the g5 but thats another story) anyway my point is shanks is the most fuckable one piece character and has been since day one he was raised by silvers fucking rayleigh what else could he have turned out to be” “least my failman Shanks came in second” “

Yasopp: “VOTE AGAINST YASOPP PLEASE cause that man deserves nothing... >_> if yasopp has no haters im dead”

Cross Guild

Buggy: Assigned clown at birth, walking disaster, "my pathetic sniveling wet clown", my Beloved, "he has blue hair and pronouns", Failboy, "the skrunkly clown", "my clown wife", "he has that fail boy cringe", "buggy has the stronger levels of foolishness and fumbling his way to success", "the cringefail clown extraordinaire buggy", "he is silly and pathetic like a bisexual divorced dad",“WHY? WHY ISN'T HE WINNING? nobody here understands anything” “ know the op poll guidelines say to be kind and now belittle others for their opinions but fucking seriously ARE Y'ALL BLIND y'all have no taste none whatsoever i am ashamed and appalled vote for buggy god damnit VOTE FOR THE CLOWN the VERY HOT IRRESISTIBLE BABY GIRL CLOWN” “buggy is prettier if that makes sense#look at those lashes!” “yall dont get buggy like i do i fear” “live action buggy is succhhh a freak hes so incredibly hot its almost distracting from his greatness” “voted live action but goddamn did impel down buggy make me confused it's the scruff and the gorgeous ponytail” “YEEEEESSS buggy the clown ImpelDown!Buggy HOTTEST BUGGY yes yes yes FUCK YEAH impel down buggy i wanna manhandle that stupid disillusioned cruel manaiacal idealist clown by his beautiful ponytail i would ruin that stupid clown your honor i love him” “Out the way flame boy I’m bout to get that clown cock” “watched 4 whole episodes of one piece for buggy” “BUUGGGGYYY sorry he makes me feral” “Buggy was robbed.” “Ok so Buggy is a wet pathetic loser who fails upwards and somehow gets exactly what he wants in the worst way possible” “He came the closest to killing Luffy before Kaido. He has so much negative rizz it circled around to most eligible bachelor. Crocodile and Mohawk use him as a punching bag. He's Shanks's The One That Got Away” “Oh and he can detach his dick (and hands, and head, and tongue…)” “i dont go here but why does everyone wanna fuck the clown i dont understand l” “where are my clownfuckers at buggy is hot as hell don’t let society tell you otherwise he is literally THE sexy gender-nonconforming loser with blue hair and pronouns” “

Crocodile: desert daddy, Babygirl, "He's like if tony soprano was trans", crocodaddy, crocomommy, Big titty mob boss, He's 8ft tall and I would let he ruin me,"Mr. Sandman", "the human sandcastle," "literally has sand in his britches", "son of a beach", "World's Most Expensive Sand Sculpture", "he's got 99 problems and his hook is one of them", "casino blorbo", "I would subject myself to sandburn any day for THE SIR FUCKING CROCODILE Anakin Skywalker don't go here because I WOULD love sand if it was like 8 feet tall and had a voice like that absolutely rabid he could stick his sand in so many places and I'd thank him crocodile is one of those guys i wanted to hate so bad and then went actually no i want this guy carnally Crocodile has some weird rizz goin on and i need to climb that sandcastle", "I'm so sorry but I need to eat crocodile's pussy", "With Sir Crocodile you can have Sex on the Beach. Literally. Plus he owns a casino so you could probably sip on the cocktail version too...while getting some cocktail.", "mafia vibes and style", "crocodile's got style. class. you will be wined and dined in the most exquisite way you can imagine", "He's got DADDY vibes", " One handsome mafia boss", "I love crocodile but also i wanna punch him and i feel like hes got the sandiest pussy/dick that shit will give me a rash", "my evilest baby boy", "Crocodile invented evil trans swag just saying", "im sorry az but crocodile was my dilf awakening", "in Crocodilf we trust", “i want crocodile to put that out on me” “those rings on his big fingers are the icing on the sandy cake for me” “You can throw me into horny jail all you want but Toei did not do Crocodile any justice, manga Croc is fine as hell, a handsome middle aged sonovabitch and I swear to god by the time I'm done with him that man will be pregnant again” “He's a trans desert king and I love him. I have no other defense” “What you would get is a 8'4" dom with a cool ass style(dude had a whole outift change in impel down just cause LOL). Anon is so right tho, he really is a bond villian type huh? That's a great description ngl 😂” “Big tall sexy transmasc, need I say More” “croc is my virgo king I MUST choose him” “Mr. Sandman is very handsome despite turning into beach herpes. Look if glitter is craft herpes then sand is beach herpes” “

Mihawk: The Vampire Pirate, Goth Dad, the sword father, Pirate Dracula, the big titty goth husband, "I think mihawk would treat you right. i want mihawk to treat me right", "I love his gay wine uncle energy", "I appreciate that he dresses Like That everywhere extra ass bitch", "hot vampire cowboy pirate", Morticia Addams, "Mihawk oozes 'step on me' energy", “ow wow i really don't like mihawk in the live action i mean he's great and funny and terribly camp and reminds me of snagglepuss so i guess he fits a tumblr hotbod to a t!” “mihawk has the most ridiculous moustache known to man” “live action Mihawk was so my type in looks it was like a personal attack” “see if it was a picture of his slutty pants i might have voted for mihawk” “queuecifer” “seeing them side by side. you gotta give credit to the live action. thats just the same dude” “sorry this time it's the la the mustache just looks so much more ridiculous in live action and i love that a man who deliberately and on purpose cuts his facial hair like that is someone i have GOT to bang immediately” “dracule EASY” “everybody likes the fucking twink the most” “see, for me the reason that mihawk is hot is because he'd totally be a pillow princess which means that i'd be able to either 1) ride his face till i pass out, 2) ride his dick till i cant walk, or 3) fuck him till i cant walk. he also has cute eyes and is 'working for' one of the stupidest men to ever sail the seas” “idk man what can i tell you. dracule mihawk vampire sexy” “mihawk my beloved ❤️” “ My autistic goth dad who doesn't know how to use an air fryer”

The Whitebeard Pirates

Ace: "Depressed sunshine orphan boy with daddy issues", "ace has that grungy line cook riz you know he lays legendary pipe", " he got goofy older brother swag", "Beautiful butch dyke wife", "Ace my greasy fire narcoleptic king", "The narcoleptic babygirl", the greasy crusty desert rat. "He would be worth the burn risk", "my favorite fire donut", "something about greasy alabasta ace hits so different", "with his riz he's probably a walking STD risk but it would be worth it. Just look at him probably also probably got a couple bastard kids running around the grand line", it's ok he's still greasy in my heart worlds most feral baby boy he looks like he eats dirt I could fix him (force him to bathe regularly)" “ace has to win every* time he’s LITERALLY FIRE *excluding cases where the opponent is a similar if not more incendiary material” “i am but a sheep i voted ace bc he is my cinnamon apple” “I mean, literally? Ace. Guy's literally made of fire, course he's the hottest.” “this is a trick question obviously it's Fire Fist Ace who can literally turn into fire” “Ace is automatically hottest because he's made of fire.” “ace brainrot is real rn I clicked him so fast” “pfffftt ace's about to be put six feet under again the way he has more votes than the rest combined” “freshly made donut straight from the fryer” “ace is so hot he melted a hole is his - i mean my - heart. he's so hot that he can touch lava and live- i mean he can touch lava. Once. ace is so hot that he turned into a funeral pyre!!!!! ace is so hot his brothers had to get burned just compete ace is so hot he took fire fist literally!!! he took that phrase right to the chest!!! ace is so hot his necklace melted right off of him. ace is so hot everybody just HAD to watched him get fisted on live television. snail vision? Idk okay im done now maybe” “Ace my special little greasy fucked up guy!!! traumatized twunk who may have rabies but it’s ok” “sorry i have to vote for my greasy rat husband ♡” “I see my guy. I vote for him. simple. anyways vote Ace” “ace obliterate this man” “greasy dumpster fire man gotta get the vote” “ace my love my darling my greasy stoner sweetiepie mi chacalito hermoso the light of my life and my blunts” “

Marco: Bird daddy "Mr. Dr. Emotionally-Stable Scrungles", "surfer hippy electric blue glasses wing flapper", "DR. MMMMM", Fineapple" “Marco my favourite little bird. (/∀＼)” “Marco, my love, my darling bird, you won't win - but that's okay, cause you'll always be my 1 <3 /blushes like some little school girl/ don't look at me right now I'm being lovey dovey” “Ah, my sweet bird, you're in a poll with a lot of really hot guys, but that was still an easy vote for me <3” “MARCOOOOOOOO he's a very mild “hear me out” but he's one of mine nonetheless” “Marco!!! everyone sleeps on my favorite old man birb but that’s ok I know the truth” “marco the phoenix also im losing my mind at his talons” “Oh I would be so grateful for some love for my well-toned and taloned retirement blorbo <3” “pls vote marco he's insanely hot” “

Izou: “the things I would do to get izou to shove his gun up my ass…” "Izo is absolutely my type.” “DUDEEEE IZOU PRETTIEST MAN ALIVE IZOU genuinely i would take izou over ace <- unpopular opinion but oughhhh. he. I” “

The Blackbeard Pirates

Blackbeard: “i find Blackbeard so fucking attractive for reasons not even i can explain” “The thing is, who's those 1 percentage that vote for Blackbeard like fr what did you see??😭” “blackbeard wins by virtue of being the sole bhm here. i know he did all those other things but its fine. its okay.” “

Catarina Devon: "my problematic lesbian sugar mommy”

The Big Mom Pirates

Amande: “lowkey obsessed w amande she was soooo cool for the seconds she was on-screen 🥲”

Big Mom: “kinda unfair that Linlin got a picture of her milf phase” “young big mom has to be cheating. voted for her anyway though” “young Linlin is fine as hell tho so she takes it” “you used a picture of YOUNG big mom so yeah it's her hot damn” “

Cracker: "if Cracker just let his hair down he'd be unstoppable i fear", "get wrecked cracker", "I am so curious about the people voting for cracker let me study you please", "cracker getting murdered as expected", "you can't do my biscuit husband like that", "i find cracker really hot"

Daifuku: “power dresser daifuku leads look at those padded shoulders”

Katakuri: "I'm a monsterfucker at heart", "Katakuri is literally so good man he's a family man #he's badass he's got a great sense of honour you know I had to go for the mochi man", "donut king", "KATAKURI MY MOCHI MONSTER TEETH KING CHAMPION HUSBAND THAT I WOULD CLIMB LIKE A MOUNTAIN #I'M ALWAYS ON MY CLIMBING AGENDA WITH MY ONE PIECE KINGS!", "i just know this man would treat me right we love kata", "Kata definitely ticks that hot box" “my giant self conscious doughnut loving beloved” “I could fix him I swear” “To clarify, Katakuri is sixteen feet, eight and a half inches tall. Let that sink in.” “I must defend the donut man” “

Perospero: ”lololol you guys are wrong like look at Perospero what that tongue do😏” “Perospero looks like a dog whose front teeth have been removed and I can't unsee that”

Praline: “ok everyone i'm gonna need a praline sweep RIGHT NOW shes simply perfect”

Smoothie: "ah...smoothie....or as i call her... one piece tsunade Imaoo", "ultimately my desire to be crushed by Smoothie's thighs won out", "SMOOTHIE. THANK YOU mommy long legs... gauhggfghgh......i want her to juice me pleeeeaaaseeeeeeeeeee /silly", “no lady in this poll is prettier than Smoothie. She's got them fine legs that go for days.” “SMOOTHIE MY GIRL U MAY NOT PULL THRU BUT YOULL ALWAYS BE MY FAV” “

The Beast Pirates

Black Maria: “i’m absolutely terrified of spiders but black maria EASILY”

Kaido: "beefcake beast of a man",

King: "King is literally the most beautiful OP character you can't change my mind", "Gotta chose the melanin yknow", "king is so ajdhjdjdjchjd bark bark bark bark", "I saw King and decided he is my blorbo", "king of my [REDACTED]", " I know he's like 20 ft tall and I'm probably the size of his d*** but it would be worth it. I would gladly choose death by snu snu for one night with him" “king is the source of the uhhh. govt weapon fuel source aint he i feel like that gives him hot dominion also: sexiest” “have y'all already forgotten how everyone's brains short-circuited when king's face was revealed shame on you” “its king. no contest no question. i am a slut for a brown man w long hair and i know this about myself” “im a lesbian but king honestly” “king cake IS my favorite kind of cake i'm very proud of that one” “honestly i think king might be the hottest guy oda's ever made” “I mean when king took off his mask for the first time I said out loud 'oh my god he's beautiful'. So.” “I think you’re forgetting that he’s a dark-skinned anime character. We don’t get a lot of those, so they get lapped up like an oasis in the desert” “he dick woudl rip me in half, and that is not something i am interested in’ COWARDICE” “my acearo ass would climb this man like a fucking tree” “Nahhhh this man is a delicious chocolate milkshake 🥵💕😍 I'd climb that 20 foot tree like my life depended on it. Yeah the dinosaur fruit is kind of 🤷‍♀️ but oh well!�� That skin, that hair them black fluffy wings are everything. He's so handsomee plussss I'd love to run my fingers through that long hair 😍💕” “His face is carved by the angels themselves” “I need king to **** ******* ****** ***** *** **** **** ** ****” “haha u funny. fire...anyway its King when u simp over someone from One Piece and find out theyre 20 ft tall” “right off the bat king is my fourth pick here. it's a three way time with the other three sorry king he's just. like he's very pretty yes but there's a difference between pretty and hot king is just pretty. ur not winnin today buddyboy” “

Solitaire: “SOLITAIREEEEE GUYS I SWEAR SHES SO FINE IM IN LOVE W HER SHE CAN CHOKE ME W THOSE 6 ARMS I MEAN WHOSAIDTHAT”

[sixth-light]

I've been thinking a lot lately* about how artistic works are so intimately products of their moment and in conversation with it, and how easy this is to overlook both in terms of discussing a work and in terms of anticipating or considering new additions to an older work.

The first is important because so many judgements that can be made about a work are only meaningful when you know what their context was. What readers need or want to see, particularly in terms of representation, is hugely mediated by what else is available to them at the time. Yeah this is about stuff like "Rocky Horror was progressive when it was created" but also it's about stuff like "the John Carter movie bombed because it was regarded as derivative", when in fact the source material originated a bunch of the 'derivative' scenes and tropes that were then used by better-known movies before a John Carter movie ever got made.

The second is important because...even if you come back to a work, as a creator, you can only make new parts of it as the person you are now, in conversation with the world and genre as it is now, not as it was when you started. Taking a mildly-infamous-among-fantasy-fans example, Melanie Rawn's unfinished Ambrai trilogy; she's often said that she can't finish it because her life has moved on and...as sad as I am it was never finished, I think that's probably smart! She could write a third book one day, maybe, but it never could or would be the third book she would have written in the 1990s. And even if she did manage that somehow, the genre has moved on in such a way that it would feel weird and probably quite offputting to read a book doing with gender and feminism what the Ambrai books were doing in the '90s, because they are/were inherently in conversation with an era of fantasy that is now past.

All of which is to say that:

as a reader (or watcher) I think it's good to hold in mind, when engaging with a work from a time and/or place unfamiliar to you, the extent of what you don't know about the context of the work

as a creator, I think it's good to be very realistic about what you're going to actually achieve when you are making something over a long time period or coming back to something you left unfinished. You can totally do that! It can be incredibly rewarding! But the thing you make now is not the thing you would have made then, probably not even the thing you imagined you were going to make then, and that's just the nature of art.

*The reason I have been thinking about this is partly books I have been reading (Mara of the Acoma, you are my blorbo) and partly a very fun podcast I have been listening to which has re-read The Ruins of Ambrai and done a lot of discussion about its context, finishing up with a great interview with Kate Elliott about writing fantasy in the '90s (and writing it now, as she is still writing great but different books!). Anyway go listen to the Hot Nuance Book Club, it's a good time.

[iliiuan]

Of Lois McMaster Bujold's work, the group I think best suited to live-action screen adaptation is the Chalion/Five Gods collection. It has a variety of storylines that lend themselves easily to a few movies and an episodic. The special effects would be dope. You've got classic nightmare sequences in The Hallowed Hunt, with smoke and apparitions running through the woods and everything. Then imagine the fun with Desdemona sometimes sharing Penric's face, sometimes his voice; her as a character inside his head; her as a manifestation only Pen can see ... Gods it would be so entertaining to watch. And then we get to see Cazaril, sopping wet cat of a man, blorbo material extraordinaire, face a God and save the world. I'm really surprised he's not a bigger deal on this webbed site, as much as you lot love a tortured man. And then. Then. We could enjoy Ista embracing life. She's so amazing. She's the middle-aged mother-turned-hero I needed in my life. I want the whole story to have her thoughts as voice overs. It would be so hilarious. She deserves to be a movie star, after everything she's been through. I'm afraid I'm starting to babble, but I just can see these stories onscreen so easily. I want them so much.

So why not the other catalogs, you ask?

Vorkosigan - There's no way Hollywood wouldn't fuck this up 100 ways. No thank you very much.

Spirit Ring - It could make a good movie, but then what?

Sharing Knife - I'd want this one animated. Don't have a great reason or justification.

In conclusion, the world needs Chalion on screen asap. Thanks for listening to my spiel.

[fumifooms]

do you think the succubus chilchuck sees is his wife, but blonde? he seems so upset when its dead

I think it’s a very strained theory. There are two layers to this: Chilchuck’s expression, and the succubi’s appearances. And notice the plural of appearances.

Chilchuck’s expression here is meant as comedic, we can assume because of the lashes and sparkle in his eyes, it gives shojo energy (which is intentional and heavily present at the very least with Marcille in the same chapter). It’s a type of dramatic sorrowful expression that I think Marcille with Hareus and Laios with scylla Marcille would have had the same, the type that Laios had when Marcille crushed the cool dragon familiar he made the type of face you make when a unicorn is killed in front of you. Chilchuck would have this face regardless of this being his wife, because regardless of it being his wife or not the succubi are still Chilchuck’s ideal form. It’s like having the blorbo you fantasize about brutally mauled inches away from your face, or a painting you love stained. Chilchuck wants the sirens to come for his life and is sad he lost the opportunity for it lol. But most importantly imo, if that was his wife, he would have had a face much more like genuine terror or horror (which would have been still both funny and understandable so it was a deliberate choice to pick this expression instead), like in his nightmare with his dead daughters.

Ok now onto appearances: Here are all of Chilchuck’s succubi we see.

The biggest thing against this theory for me is that yes, these are different women who are visibly different. There’s no denying he has a type, long wavy blonde hair, deepset light-colored eyes and sultry mouths, faces with a mature quality to them, but different women no less. It would be interesting to analyze what it would mean for Chilchuck to have only one of his succubi in a sea of succubi be his wife, but it would defeat the purpose of it I think. We see waves of women succubi throw themselves at him, and I think the intent is just that; for them to just be women, his ideal type materialized but sort of identity-less, a mass of them that isn’t really meant to be differentiated or individualized. If you believe that the nameless black-haired half-foot woman portrait is his wife, that shortens the conversation, but there are also arguments beyond it for why yes his wife would have black hair, and why she’d have deepset eyes and a face like this (because it’s a solid argument that his type would be at least influenced by her yes. I go into this topic in this post). If we go with the portrait chilwife theory, then it’s pretty straightforward that none of them truly closely look like her. If we go with another theory then we’re truly walking in the dark for how she looks like. How close is close enough to "be" ‘her except blonde’, anyways? It’s the sort of thing you can believe if you want to, but it creates more questions than answers, which albeit isn’t always bad. My interpretation of Chilchuck’s succubi makes me biased though of course, because it’s closely intertwined with my overall interpretation of Chilchuck and whatnot. I’ve talked about succubi in dungeon meshi and them in relation to Chilchuck a lot over time. I think them being faceless and varied rather than one single model of perfection is because he craves pleasure with no ties, something to feel good for a while and forget all his troubles, including his separation. I think that when Chilchuck reacts like that below, it’s because he feels some amount of guilt at it not being her, and again not wanting to think about painful things, but it could be interpreted to be "can you not, when you just blew her up" I suppose. I go into it here and here as well.

I don’t know Kui’s brain so like, this is just my thoughts, like you asked for, but yeah I don’t think that first succubus literally had his wife’s appearance.

[the-force-awakens]

Thinking about what a sweet, kind, silly and gentle hearted person Poe is until you piss him off and once that switch is flipped, he's a force to be reckoned with

Oh, did you mean? my most favorite? facet? of his character? that makes me lose my marbles? and also happens to be maybe my favorite character trope of all time? that? Okay I hope you were expecting an infodump because what-ho! that's what's happening, I have come prepared and with receipts, let's fucking go on how Poe Dameron is a goddamned force of nature and how the galaxy should be really fucking thankful his loyalty is first and foremost to the Resistance and to the Light, because if it wasn't...well, I'd dread to think, but it wouldn't be good for anyone else.

The fun thing for me, is that it has always been a part of Poe's character, right from The Force Awakens -- it's subtle, but it's there, hidden between the sassy quips in the face in danger and the professionality of Commander Dameron; little fleeting moments that tell you that Poe Dameron is not someone to be trifled with at all, including one of his very first scenes:

I'm 90% certain that Poe's gaze actually lands first on Tekka's body here, before lifting it up to glare at Ren - and that's more than just a defiant glare, that's a look of loathing. Which fits, considering that I do believe the Force Awakens novelization confirms that Poe rushes in without thinking, and acts on sheer anger/rage when he goes to shoot Ren after Ren kills Tekka.

(More lengthy thoughts under the cut, I was not kidding, I saved a dozen images for this).

And that look is far from the only moment in TFA that clearly goes "oh. yeah, Poe can be scary when he wants to be", there's this frankly delightful moment during the trench run when Poe sees a fellow pilot perish while covering him:

and then moments later, when Poe flies into the heart of Starkiller to destroy the oscillator, we get this shot:

that's far more than just determination/focus, he's angry. and he has every goddamned right to be - he was just held captive and tortured for (??) days, and this monstrosity just destroyed an entire fucking planetary system, and the very Republic that Poe has spent his entire adult life believing the inherent values of, that he thought could genuinely improve. Never mind the detail that Poe probably likely spent time on the Hosnian System, if he didn't live there temporarily during his time in the Defense Fleet.

But these shots makes it clear where the comic gets the idea from that the First Order might, y'know, actually be. A little bit terrified of Poe Dameron:

He's a serious threat, and ruthless when it comes to the First Order. People joke a lot about Poe being reckless, but I don't see a lot of recognition for the fact that he can be ruthless - he sees point b and dives straight at it, and he's absolutely relentless in his determination to take the First Order down.

The quickest possible way to enrage Poe is inaction or injustice. We see this clearly in the Last Jedi, when he believes Holdo is essentially leading them to their deaths and has thrown the Resistance away:

but we also see it as far back as Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka:

This conversation carries on for a page or so more, I think, with Poe arguing against the New Republic's decision to not act or investigate further (it's also what prompts him into going rogue to investigate on his own, which leads Leia into recruiting him for the Resistance).

And we've even seen it in material as recent as Free Fall, which means this is a character trait Poe has had his entire life:

(these do not paint my girl in a great light but like she's fucked up okay!! and being groomed into taking her mother's place it's fine, it's fine, she's my fucked up little blorbo)

anyway. so this is Poe when he's, probably about 16? 16 going on 17 here, and this is probably the angriest he's ever been considering how shocked he is about the chill in his own voice (which if you were ever curious why I say Poe's anger runs cold, it's because of this scene right here). He's so enraged by the injustice being carried out by Sotin, that he's genuinely - for the first time in the book - considering actually killing someone. And he gets into a screaming match about what the right decision is with Zorii.

(he also gets to punch Sotin later, by the way, if you even care. It's glorious. I love my favorite character who decides murder is okay if said murder is in question a guy who deals in the slave trade)

But also.

My favorite instance of this, ever, which rewrote my fucking goddamned brainchemistry in 2017 when I read it and made me have to step away from my computer and honest to god pace the length of my house to walk it off, is his confrontation with Terex in issue #13 of the Poe comics.

Because you know what?

This entire fucking exchange is personal, and almost/pretty much outright vindictive? Like at this point, Poe has solidly won this round - Terex has finally been defeated, and all Poe has to do is hand him over to the First Order. He knows, in doing so, Terex will likely be killed, and after who knows how long of Terex's bullshit meaning Poe couldn't trust his squadron, and the fact that L'ulo just died - well, Poe's not real broken up about it, which is fun in itself.

But then he asks Malarus if he can have a moment with Terex before he hands him over and Poe....uses that moment to gloat.

And y'all know me i don't use words like that for Poe but like. he kind of does? he asks a moment alone with terex specifically so that he can taunt Terex that he won, that Terex didn't beat him, and that in trying to take Poe down, Terex cost himself everything (a fact Poe happily rubs in his face), and even adds that "and when I give you to the First Order, I bet they'll take the rest."

So like. Yeah.

Poe knew full well they'd likely kill him, and spends the next few issues full heartedly believing that Terex was dead. And he taunts Terex with it here in this moment. It is TRULY glorious and honestly had 17 year old me's little head spinning because it was such a subversion of what I thought Poe would do -- but he did! He didn't try to figure out a way to spare Terex's life, and he used his final moments with Terex to make sure Terex knew that Poe was fully aware of what the choice he was making meant.

It's fucking DELICIOUS.

And I also love this panel from earlier into the issue:

Because again, it's a great illustration of how Poe can come off cold because of the art choices Phil Noto made here: look at the jacket. It's zipped up all the way to Poe's neck (a rarity for Poe), and just generally gives him this very closed off, cold appearance because he's at his wit's end in this issue, and he is angry about the circumstances Terex has forced him into.

So...yeah. Poe Dameron is a sweet, compassionate, silly guy who makes the worst fucking puns you've ever heard this side of the galaxy. He loves his droid, wears his mother's wedding ring with the intent to give it to the right partner someday, and loves all of his friends full heartedly and is generally the most tactile, affectionate person you will ever meet. He's pretty much everyone's best friend, because he has that kind of charisma and ability to make anyone feel like they're the most important person in the galaxy.

But Poe Dameron is also the man that the First Order seems genuinely intimidated/afraid of. He's the man that destroyed Starkiller base, and toppled the most powerful crime syndicate in the galaxy when he was just 17 years old. He is not someone you ever, ever want to piss off, because for all his warmth and love, Poe has an anger that runs cold, and when he hates something - it's just like when he loves something, he doesn't go half-way.

General Organa isn't the only Resistance general that can be absolutely terrifying in her own right as much as she can be gentle and loving. It's just that Leia's the only one anyone ever notices, because...well, Poe's silly and funny and usually kind of easy going.

And the fact that people underestimate him is what makes him that much more dangerous.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Likable vs Complex vs "Good"

EDIT: Couple people came up to me thinking of alternatives for category 3 "Good" and my favourite is Kimberly's suggestion of "effective". I think "effective" is great because it means well utilized. It's pretty much exactly what I was going for when writing the descriptions in this post.

I feel that when it comes to describing characters, there are strong differences between a

Likable character - Someone you enjoy watching, like to have on screen, might want to share a drink with. Most protagonists. Usually a blorbo with a mass fandom who says they were done wrong if theyre a side character.

Complex character - how many layers does this one have? how much do you have to talk about them to explain them? Do you see people defending them with massive text posts? Do you follow this blog? You have experience with complex characters.

"Good" character - I don't mean a good person. That is more of a "likable" characteristic. I mean, does this character serve a solid role in the story? Do they have a job, and do they perform it well? This can include minor characters you don't care for, and it can actually exclude complex characters if their motivations don't seem to make sense or have relevance to the story.

I think a "good" character can be further broken down into subcategories but it's impossible to define whether a character is good by a basic description for all series. It requires comprehension of the source material and what it's trying to do.

Allow me to illustrate this with some examples.

I was considering what show to use for this. Let's go with She-Ra for now because it's my current thing and I don't want to be roasting SU or Owl House, and I think Adventure Time is a bad fit due to how episodic it is. I'd have to categorise by season for each example. Let me know if you want me to talk about any specific characters.

Sea Hawk

Likable: Yes Complex: No Good: No

Sea Hawk is a side character in She-Ra who gets kinda sidelined. He hasn't got much to do with anything but he makes me smile when he shows up. I don't think Sea Hawk has a purpose other than to make chaotic background noise. I think that's fine? But he's not a good character and the show would lose almost nothing if he was gone.

Edit: I feel kinda bad for implying sea hawk is not a good character so remember that I mean he isn't used effectively, he doesn't have much involvement and presence. I think a key example is his absence from season 5 entirely when he could have been used more effectively and wasn't.

Light Hope

Likable: Not really Complex: Not really Good: YES

Light Hope is Adora's mentor as She-Ra who is actually manipulating her. Light Hope has a tragic story that adds to her complexity but she's deeply overshadowed by other characters in the story.

What makes her a good character is how strongly Light Hope ties to the themes of the story. Her reveal as being "actually evil" could have been shallow and bad in a different series (anyone else playing Halo recently?) but Light Hope having her agency stolen from her, just like Adora, makes it liberating and heartbreaking when she is destroyed alongside the Sword of Protection.

Light Hope represents the oppressive regime of the First Ones and the ways they would control Etheria, while being a victim herself. She heavily parallels Adora. She does not require being complex or likable to have an important impact on the story.

Micah

Likable: Yes Complex: Yes proportional to screentime Good: Not consistently

I really like Micah. He's one of my favourite side characters. So why can I not call him a good character?

It's because he only serves to drive the actions of others, and when he is onscreen as an actual character, the show doesn't know what to do with him.

Micah was "dead" for most of the show and his life and death drove the decisions of plenty of others. He learnt from Shadow Weaver and was an important part of her corruption arc, being better at magic than her but scared away by the dark magic, which ended up attacking her. His disappearance is why Angella and Glimmer's relationship is so strained, why Glimmer is so determined to prove herself, and when he was in the Portal World, both characters had to give up the "wrong future" with him to restore the world.

Micah has a character with way more depth than you'd expect from a dead dad. He has a funny likable personality and is a highly skilled mage with a variety of relationships, who has survived on an island for god knows how long.

However, this kind of speaks to him being the protagonist of his own story, and She-ra is so chock full of characters aiming to a specific goal. Micah actually being alive has very little to do with the story of season 5. He isn't part of the space mission. He has an episode with Frosta, another character who has little to do with anything, and then he gets chipped for the rest of the show.

The reason Micah ended up this way is because he's a complex character in a story that has no room to do anything with him. He's not the only victim of season 5's crunch time, far from it, but he never got any screentime or "arc" and his actions don't tie in to the show very much.

Glimmer

Likable: No Complex: Yes Good: Yes

Edit: I'm guessing this one was what got me flack? But Glimmer is easily in my top 3 favourite characters and imo she is the character i by far most greatly resemble. I used her here because I think she's a much more interesting example of a disliked yet very well written character than Catra for this post. But it's evident, if you look at the fandom behaviour, casual viewers don't like her much. People either love her for her everything or kind of hate her, and she's treated badly in a lot of fanfic. The reasons for this exist in the show's writing and framing and how people interpret her. She's far from the first blorbo of mine to exist in these conditions, i mean just look at PB from AT who is a thousand times more hated but also the best character.

So Glimmer's likability yoyos significantly across the series, she's far from the most offensive abrasive friend character, but she's one of the least likable characters in She-Ra. This is down to the show not having any particularly unlikable characters apart from Shadow Weaver, if I'm honest, and Glimmer's constant rubbing against other far more liked characters such as Adora, Bow, Catra, so on.

Glimmer is annoying as a bare minimum and nasty as shit at other times, going through challenges that turn her against her friends and make her seek power and lash out against others.

However, these are flaws the show is hyper aware of and has baked into her story. They are all part of what makes her Glimmer, they are all what makes her so memorable and interesting.

It is the push and pull of Glimmer's courage, her desire to be there for her friends, with her insecurities about being weak, her failure to protect her mother, that mean... When Glimmer is handed the powers of the moonstone and offered tutoring in magic, you're giving a powerless beaten down puppy a MACHINE GUN. Of course she's going to use that power ineffectively.

Complexity doesn't always make a good character. If you look at Steven Universe or even Adventure Time, you have a lot of complex characters in that series who fail to serve any strong role, or who zigzag in so many directions taht you can no longer make sense of their motivations.

However, Glimmer's motivations are not only internally consistent across the entire series, the show gives her a complete character arc where she goes from a powerless brat, to a responsible commander, to a brokenhearted powerhouse, to someone who understands where she fucked up and is trying very very hard to lead her friends into a hopeful future using the very same character traits that led her to go astray - Her love, courage, and rage.

There are a couple of weaknesses for Glimmer. I would say mainly that the show goes too far to make her snap at Adora in season 4. I don't think she needed to go that far, and it would've been fine if they dealt with it properly in season 5, but Adora and Glimmer's relationship is completely brushed over in season 5. Adora and Glimmer aren't the only victims of this - there is Micah, and season 5 is the difference between Scorpia being a good character vs an "ok" character - but it is a very very good story, and it's hard to say how it could've improved these characters with the timeframe that it had.

Entrapta

Likable: Yes Complex: No Good: Yes

What makes Entrapta different from Micah and Glimmer and Sea Hawk is that she's a very basic, likable character, but she has a severe impact on every single season on the show. Entrapta is second to Catra, in my opinion, in terms of making a "good" character in She-ra, but she doesn't require any of Catra or Glimmer's complexity to get there.

Entrapta's character does not change much, but she does have challenges, which tie strongly to the base themes of She-ra - understanding, acceptance and love. Entrapta is thrown around the plot like a pinball but her movements are being noticed by all the other characters. When she joins the Horde, it changes both the Horde and the Rebellion. She puts Hordak on his path to independence. She's a big reason Catra descended into desperation, going through a repeat of the cycle of abuse. She's also why Adora and Glimmer went into hardcore martyrdom, though that has less to do with Entrapta herself and more to do with how her "death" triggered their prior conditioning. She did the runestone experiment, and created the portal. And when Entrapta is removed from the equation, it is a major catalyst for other characters to step into the hole she left behind.

But while these feats are impressive, they don't say much about Entrapta herself. What makes her a good character and not just a plot device?

Well, Entrapta has an internal logic and a strong sense of personality that is present throughout the show. While other mad scientists might act randomly and not have much character going on, Entrapta has an entire arc that has less to do with science and is instead focused on her goal of connection. She has a deep love for science but also for friendship and she wants to connect those things together, she wants to express love through her science and be liked for who she is.

That's what makes her compelling and likable. It's not that deep but it ties in to everything she does. It's what connects her to the other characters.

That's why Entrapta can seamlessly work with the good guys, and the bad guys, and be ideologically opposed to the true big bad of the series just as the rest of the characters are, without having to change much as a person or to be that complex. The show moves her around where she is most effective at serving its story themes as her current self, and she never has a period of inactivity in the story even when absent. And she never has to do anything that contradicts her previous actions.

I have strong opinions on other series. I'm thinking a lot about SU, because it's full of complex characters who get discarded, but also I'm thinking about Princess Bubblegum. I think I'd rate Princess Bubblegum differently for every season of Adventure Time.

[kahluah]

Ok time for the rest of my part 5 volume 11 thoughts

________Spoilers of course________

So glad that Sigiswald got rekt. He deserved it 🥰

Adolphine being like "I never considered us a couple, I want that divorce". Heck yes girl! You tell him, and you go live your life much happier!

I knew the plan wouldn't go smoothly, but I could at least hope 🤡

But I do believe that as compensation for being someone who would act as intermediate between the gods and humans, a Zent/Zent candidate has a little bit of rights to be bitchy with the gods, because like they will drag you around by the gods whims 75% of the time.

I still stand by my assessment that Ferdinand is one of the gods blorbos, but that he is that one they like to fuck with. He is very good at weaseling his way out of things he doesn't want to do, which when it's directly against what the gods said or want, is very insolent. But even when they tell him that, he will just be stubborn and double down on not listening to them. Definitely material for a favorite mortal to hate.

Meanwhile I stand by the Myne being kind of like Lilo from Lilo and Stitch. She decided she likes Ferdinand and the gods are like "are you sure?". But overall I think they like how enthusiastic she is and that she is easy to bribe... Sad that she is currently banned from the library.

I really enjoyed the chapter from the fisherman. Everybody can agree Detlinde was nuts, and Myne is far superior, plus she likes salted fish.

As for Fermyne.... Rip Ferdinand. I'm so sorry that Myne is an idiot sometimes. Extra hilarious though that anyone with eyes can tell Myne has special regard for him even in comparison to her other family members(that they and Myne know of), so when they hear her casually rebuff him they just have so much pity that he fell for somebody so dense to her own feelings.

[polarisgreenley]

🌷Writer Interview Game 🌷

Thank you @galaxiasgreen, @gingerlegacy07 and @zetadraconis11 for the tags!

When did you start writing?

According to AO3, 2014.

It was for another fandom, and then disappeared for 7 years until 2021. But that one I'm at the limbo of leaving up or abandoning since I don't have plans on writing out the rest...

Hogwarts Legacy pulled me back in 2023 and still going decently strong 💪

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I have the opposite where I stay clear of any romance novels, but will eat up fanfiction pairings and am planning on including a romance subplot somewhere.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

If I could even have a morsel, a smidgen, a crumb of Agatha Christie's writing abilities...

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

80% of the time I write at my computer desk. Keyboard, dual monitor, speakers... a Maurauder's Map desk mat... there's usually at least one mug and a water tumbler. A few books on flowers, runes, D&D and CoC rulebooks, etc.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Rewatching or playing the source material, as well as daydreaming. Bouncing off ideas and expanding theories has proven fruitful as well.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Slow-burn. I haven't written enough for any other recurring themes, I think. Oh, and flowers. Lots and lots of flowers (and their language).

What is your reason for writing?

Creative outlet.

Is their any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

I love all of the comments that've been left (though only really started interacted the past year), but my favorites are those where I get to hear how the reader interpreted the writing. It's like seeing their thought process which is always lovely to get to know 😊

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Just a regular human like everyone writing out blorbos of something I enjoy and hope they enjoy it as well 😊

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I've been told I'm good at descriptive writing, but I'm still working on what I think of it is for myself.

How do you feel about your own writing?

It is what it is - some days it feels better than others. I want to cringe at what I wrote in the past, but they're still an important stepping stone and shows the progress (sort of).

No pressure tags (sorry if you've been tagged already - I took 1,500 years to do this 😅): @dom1re @thefeatherwrites @theladyofshalott1989

Credit to @lyworth for the new divider that she generously gifted for my birthday 🥹

[ravenkinnie]

For the character ranking thing, jinx, caitlyn, ellie, raven, cassandra cain

5 ellie - I loved the show I like the games but when I know a character first through my grilfriend I consider them a blorb9 in law, like claire redfield and alice liddell are also my blorbos in law. my girlfriend could take them in the divorce and for the rest of my life I would resent seeing any mention of these games because I'm a scorpio so that lowers ellies ranking

4 raven - I love raven, her and batman are my ogs, they both changed something permanently in my elementary school brain and it never recovered. however, i hate modern raven so much, like fellow mutual momo strongest raven fan warrior is able to keep up but I dont have her powerful autism so i only feel hate and i wish dc the worst for that. god i fucking hate bbrae too i would stage a coup at the hq just to fix raven. I wish somebody brought back the new teen titans design, keep the saris and keep everything, just make her desi, people will complain and get over it like they got over miles and we got spiderverse out of that so. take her out of the titans cause im sorry, I'm a titans fan but this is a sinking ship, every book is a heavier flop than the previous one, im going to save my girl. have her cameo in other shit and be like omg im on my own whatever and test her dynamic with other characters, find her a new place in dc universe and then i think you could have a banger team book on your hands because she does the best in teams. I do selfishly wish that place was more near magic users books because i think that would be so much more slay for her to show her powers than having her faint all the time because she could easily defeat a divorcee in spandex and we have 20 pages to fill

3 caitlyn - caitlyn is my OG main which you might not realise because in so jinxpilled these days but I played her through high school (never left bronze <3 still haven't left bronze <3). so you can only imagine my joy when they made her a 6'1 dyke with a tooth gap AND they kept her big boobs, I've been winning ever since. I think I'm one of like five caitlyn stans maybe tho, every caitvi shipper seems to either like vi more or want to fuck vi more and outside caitvi circles no one really likes caitlyn. which is fair because she's rich and a cop so i can't defend her but I like that she's always struggling because of her own stupidity and is constantly challenged. when someone says she's wrong and she does that frowny face, she's so sexy to me, I love a stubborn bitch. she's also autistic to me, I'm just saying it because no one ever has caitlyn headcanons. I also LOVE league caitlyn, i think league caitlyn is 80% of the reason why domme mommy caitlyn is so popular because she IS a domme mommy. fantastic legend of runeterra card too

2 jinx - i know its a travesty she's not #1 but the tea is, i just didnt like her in like 2014 dhshsj i don't like jokeresque characters usually, i think it's a noring iverused tropes that only pretends to be interesting with fake depth and quirky randomness, I'm sorry. but you CAN make it good and i think arcane gave her such a strong comeback for me, I'm fond of league jinx too now, like I've grown to appreciate her even if I dont find her OG release that good. jinx gets the best promo materials tho, maybe outside of KDA girlies. GREAT legends of runeterra card, i maxed out her skill in the path of champions and I've played with many other decks in this game so believe me when I say, level 3 jinx is so OP its baffling. play her path of champions before they nerf her cause they just nerfed her in league a lil shshjsis. I have to stop typing because i took an edible and i could talk about jinx all day like the way they balance her storyline perfectly, the fact that every storyline goes back to jinx, her energy like im biased but sorry she is a scene stealer. her potential, the way every single dynamic she has with every character could be so good BECAUSE she has those plot connections, also i think her voice lines and arcane dialogue are really good, she has a very distinct style of speaking. both voice acting in the game and the show are great (pls look up her death voicelines they are so funny) but ella purnell??? I had no clue who she was before arcane and now i watch everything she's in. get jinxed was made by djerv which is a GREAT band too

1 cassandra cain - she is forever my dc rising star like i see who you are, i see your potential and i will blow up dc headquarters for you. I'm keeping her at #1 cause she deserves it but I'm so sorry when I recommend you the solo and the art looks like that, in my head it doesn't, love is blind. PLEASE look up the batgirl vs joker issue drawn by bill sienkiewicz tho, she is so beautiful in it kiss kiss. she is literally just if batman served extreme levels of cunt in every move. her backstory is batshit, she is my favorite portrayal of suicidality because it proves you can write those themes without being corny as fuck, just like jinx she has great fascinating dynamics with every other character. unlike jinx, it's because she stands out, she's barely connected to other characters which I think makes her kind of cooler like she's this super weird shadowy being you're kind of friends or coworkers with. pure cuntress

and the thing that hurts the most is that if that solo launched with modern art now I think it would find a good market because hear me out. every comic book is cursed now because no one knows how to write dialogue or understand cinematography or design but they sure know how to write monologues so you lose eyesight trying to read a lot of words about nothing on tiny panels. which cass' solo does not do becauee the dialogue is quite minimal even later on, it relies on visually striking and easy to read panels which are fantastically shareable on social media to entice people to read the book. plus I just watched mad max furiosa in the cinema and I was thinking we really have a trend of feral young women with an older mentor figure that sucks as a person and cass. CASS HAS THREE. and a cunty as fuck mother. I know this shit would sell and if it found a good market maybe it wouldn't end so fucking badly

give me five ships, characters, or shows and I will rank them from my favorite to my least favorite.

[docholligay]

Shamash Day Points: Misc Nominations

The question was to pick any line of mine from a fic post whatever that was your favorite this year! Only five answers, which, on the one hand, OUCH, on the other hand, well, I gave each of you five points just for playing so suck it everyone else.

responses below! There is one person I can't tag so make sure you check.

Euri! (I don't know your tumblr name so you'll have to watch close in case you win, since I can't tag you.

"Ah see, so your little game of condescension was unnecessary after all . When you put it all your effort, still, you could not prevail. So perhaps we shall find ourselves learning something about our own arrogance, hm?"

Ah Michiru, how much fun you are to write. With no other character do I get the chance to really flex my actual knowledge of insane vocab and grammar bullshit because everyone else is a human person ahaha.

@seolh

You know I love your writing. Your descriptions and imagery are fantastic. I mean. "The flat darkness was turning to one she could feel, plush, soft, like one of Michiru’s winter dresses, or the pillows on the couch at the country club. Something so thick it could suffocate you in its luxury." Come ON who describes darkness that way? (More people should because it is evocative and legitimately sensory.)

But I am a slut for my blorbos and so: "but it was another thing to know that Angela had known Fareeha was the one when she, with military precision, had cupped a moth flying inside, and simply released it out an open window." MY HEART

I was SO HOPING you would read that. You know how I'm forever saying there are things you need to know about your characters, that your audience does not need to know, necessarily? I have known that Angela knew about Fareeha at this moment for PROBABLY FIVE YEARS AT LEAST. But there was never a reason to bring it up, because it's not material. But! When I'm me, in the story, I can just say that shit! That in this moment, Angela knew she was not only dedicated and detailed and reliable and all that shit, but under all of it, she was merciful to creatures she did not have to be. That she was not, exactly, tender or soft, but she was kind. Strong like a steel bridge, built to bear in the service of others. Not unlike Angela in some ways. Perfect for her.

@katrani

I'm still catching up on being away from the blogs I like so I don't have much! So nothing poignant but I love the idea you swung of Mustang and Hawkeye getting a call to confirm Ed's identity and denying it for the lulz. Absolutely, amazingly in-character for all you've seen them for maybe 30 minutes.

Roy and Hawkeye are my absolute favorite part of FMA so far and I probably never will given everything in my life including my real struggle with writing, but if I were going to write fanfiction ever it would be about them.

@automatuck9

From the May Choose Your Own Adventure: “ People didn’t take the power of belief seriously enough. If you could get people to believe something, anything could happen. You marched armies based on the power of belief, people died and killed for it. People love to believe, all you need to know is what they need to believe in.” I think it’s very nicely phrased, it’s great character stuff for Mina, and it’s a good opener for the connecting idea between the POV switches in the chapter.

On a less serious side I keep coming back and laughing to the FMA post when they first meet Tucker and hear his chimera died: "It turned out God could not suffer such a thing to live! Anyway, I've got some analogy study guides you'll want to work on for the exam"

I love Mina because she's in competition for Worst Person, and part of that is because she is so smart when it comes to people. People are her gift, and her tool, and she knows how to wield them. I think she's probably the most naturally manipulative character I write. Love that for her, love that for me.

And humor is totally allowed! The tonal break of that moment is so funny to me.

@madegeeky

"She was a red pen made flesh, and it was an unstoppable flaw, that she could not simply be kind. There always had to be a post-script to any kind word." I love this line for so many reasons. The imagery is great and it does such a good job describing a character. But the more I've thought about it, I also like it for how much it also describes Minako, but in a completely opposite way.

Both can't stop themselves from adding extra into the thing being said. But Fareeha adds to it at the end of her thought, a "but" disguised as a post-script, that changes the entire feel of what she's just stated. Minako, meanwhile, scatters her extra thoughts throughout the things she said, footnotes to her words, asides that are kept secret between her and her audience.

The meaning, the extra, the technically not needed, is there whether they want it to be or not.

And I keep thinking about how Fareeha's current situation, where she's trying to keep herself from writing that post-script, is a direct result of Minako losing her ability to keep her true thoughts in the footnotes, the asides suddenly heard by the entire rest of the cast.

Yes! The saving grace of Fareeha, if we're going to call it that, is that she is only as critical of other people as she is of herself. That being said, she is insane. And she KNOWS this, she KNOWS she is a hyper critical person, and she still cannot stop herself from pointing out where someone could stop fucking something up. She's the queen of saying, "I appreciate this/you did well/I care about you BUT, which, as you say, has a tendency to erase every word before it.

Fareeha is correcting, Minako is annotating.

[majorbaby]

What are your favourite things about Margaret Houlihan?

I like that she's a complex character with a very diverse arc. She's good and kind yes, she's also insufferable and cruel at times.

I personally liked her best as an antagonist, but I like when she's a hero to, and in that role, Loretta/Margaret could be villain and hero at the same time just by virtue of taking up so much space, despite the fact that Gelbart and Reynolds gave much of her MASH (1970) role to Frank Burns. Everyone knows it's Margaret calling the shots, and so the production reflects the plot and I love that shit - can we not almost immediately tell that Frank Burns will run his course, but Margaret Houlihan will go on to grow and continue to be a force in a new way?

so even though i love her as a villain, in this case, I place more value on what she and Loretta brought to primetime american television audiences than what I as an individual want. More on that some other time.

I like that she's self-aware, and the show is aware of that too. It makes the transition from early to late-seasons Margaret feel natural, rather than shoe-horned in. She knows she's changed. She reflects on her past relationships (Stars and Stripes) and her past selves (Comrades in Arms pt. 2).

I like that it makes so much fucking sense for her to have such dramatic character development because she's done it before: Lorraine Anderson remarks how much Margaret has changed when they're reunited. Are you Now, Margaret tells us that Margaret was apparently hanging out with young "undesirables" and perhaps even was one herself at some point, rubbing shoulders with communists and having car sex with her college boyfriend. And I like that she then grows up to be Frank Burns' sidechick, homewrecker, repressed hot mess... the poorest of poor little meow meows. A blorbo if I ever had one.

I like that she's kinky.

I like that she's a foil to Hawkeye but she's also his equal in loving without fear or reservation. I love that every time she does that, it blows up in her face, but it's still clear to us that she'll do it as many times as it takes to find the real thing. I like that just like Hawkeye, by the end of the show I'm confident that she's going to be just fine.

I like that whenever Margaret is on screen, it's clear to me that she wants something and she's going to do whatever she can in her power to get that thing. I especially like when that "thing" that she wants is something more for herself. That "wanting something and going for it" is what makes her main character material. I like that she's a main character and you kind of get that sense no matter how often she's relegated to supporting cast. She and Klinger are alike in that way.

I like that she fucks Hawkeye when she's still married to Donald. I like that she doesn't fuck Trapper even though she's attracted to him, because she loves Frank. I like that she fucks Frank outdoors, in supply, behind supply and in the x-ray room. I like that she fucks.

I like that she leaves. She leaves Frank, Donald and Scully. I like that it's easy to extrapolate her leaving a man who can't offer what she deserves in exchange for her loyalty, love and dedication, to her one day leaving the military.

I'd like to say I'd watch a whole show about Margaret, but because of her enormous, demanding presence on MASH, it feels as though I've already done that.

[bonefall]

One of the anons that’s rereading to TNP! Do you have any notes for Birchfall? He was the only TC kit that survived on the journey - do any other TC kits survive, and if not how does this affect his personality later on, or his relationship with the DF?

he’s my blorbo <3

[ID: BB!Birchfall, a stone-brown tabby with thin stripes and speckling. He has a face-plate marking, a stripe just below it, and amber eyes.]

People don't talk enough about how the cats don't seem to have lasting trauma about losing their home of a dozen generations; let alone that the first major events in Birchfall's life were the horrible deaths of almost his entire family.

Are his first memories the sound of his mother's tears? Or the roar of the chainsaws? Was he even large enough to take his own steps on the journey or was he carried into the unknown?

also he has big naturals.

Clanmew name: Pyachfewl (Downy Birch + Fell)

He is the only surviving ThunderClan kitten from the journey.

Hollykit and Larchkit died when he was really young, but he remembers Holly a little better.

Birch palled around with Spiderpaw during the Great Journey, as the apprentices bonded and made new foods and such. Like a little-brother-tag-a-long.

When he wasn't doing that, he became close with Tallpoppy's litter; Toadkit, Applekit, and Marshkit.

The Journey Generation is VERY strange. They had a formative part of their lives where the cats of all Clans needed to depend on each other; so politically they end up with some very unique opinions on cross-Clan friendships.

Toadkit dies in a snare, but Birch, Apple, and Marsh long for their old friendship.

Losing three siblings, his home, being forcefully separated from his friends, and then one of those friends dying horribly probably contributed to his Problems.

DOVEWING AND IVYPOOL are no longer his kits! He was Dovewing's beloved mentor!

In return, Spotfur and Duststripe (prev. sorrelstripe) are now his.

He has his dad Dustpelt's face-shield thing, and a couple of his mother's spots.

In terms of personality, Birch is playful but also kind of a hardass. Guy who will hoot and holler down a zipline but chew you out if you go down without a helmet.

Birchfall has PTSD. ANY human activity, like camping, hiking, or even just boating makes him very upset and can bring on anxiety and nightmares.

When he is stressed, this tends to come out as anger or protectiveness. He doesn't like being separated from his loved ones.

He was an anxious, overbearing father when Whitewing had Duststripe. They worked through it.

Whitewing is deaf! They speak through glyphs, lipreading, and they have a personal system of body language which, if polished, could be the basis for Clan signs.

But, they haven't quite had a chance to consider that... had Dovewing stayed longer, something might have come of it. A lost possibility.

He does remain close to his apprentice when she leaves though... he understands, more than most cats.

If Marshwing is still alive post-Great Battle, he often asks Dove to pass on news.

Stats: Patrol guy. Observant, good at gathering materials. Prefers operating in groups.

[marietheran-archived]

Coming in late, but how about Finnick, Jonathan Harker, Halt from Ranger's Apprentice, and Galadriel for the Character Bingo, please?

Thanks a lot for the ask! It's not late at all, in fact it's still open, haha. At your service:

Finnick:

Hmm... so, I like him, but while I know he's the Blorbo Ultimate for a lot of people, I don't think I would call him mine. I get why people adore him so much; he does share some characteristics with my favourite blorbos of all time.. maybe it's just that while I'm interested in the Hunger Games, I don't love this franchise as much as people seem to.

And, maybe I'm wrong, but I do feel like the fandom kind of reduces him to a pure sunshine boy™, and though there's nothing wrong with this kind of character, I don't think it's plausible to portray Finnick like that. He's had to win the Hunger Games somehow. He's killed people - at fourteen! - he's been forced to participate in this horror as a mentor - if he's got strong principles, his conscience must torment him. And then, of course, the prostitution thing. He's not 100% good cheer.

(I've heard about someone headcanoning him as Catholic - Irish name, etc - and I love this idea, but that would make him even more conflicted)

Of course, I have to add an obligatory expression of annoyance at the way he was killed. It made no sense and somehow the surrounding characters had zero emotional reaction to it.

If I'm allowed to have another quibble with the text I hate the way he was introduced. I get that the author wanted his actual good character to come as a surprise, but it was gross.

Jonathan:

I don't really have much to say except *general positive feelings*. (I feel like he might even qualify as a Blorbo!)

He's excellent husband material and he's never done anything wrong in his life - except, this applies to both those things - when he said he could become a vampire for Mina. Jonathan, no! I'm sure Mina would prefer you to have a strong moral backbone regardless of her own state.

Halt:

It feels very much a disservice to consider Halt (or anyone in these books) apart from the other characters. They're very much the most interesting together, especially when you consider the humour of the banter.

However, I will say I find his backstory incredibly cool actually. It seems like it got invented pretty late into the series, but actually I think his character fits someone who was raised as nobility (into the "noble" kind of noble, and not the "pampered" kind), but hasn't been leading this life for a while, and has experienced assassination attempts from close family members. I do wonder what his relationship with his sister was like.

I must admit I'm partial to the common headcanon of him as autistic, although, as always with this sort of thing, I'm a bit bothered by the fact that a character may have some autistic traits, but never the less "aesthetic" ones, so

Galadriel:

Tolkien characters, my beloveds! (with the very strong exception of the darksiders, of course)

Anyway, Galadriel/Artanis!

She's not my favourite out of all Legendarium figures (mostly because all of my blorbos come from there), but I like her a lot, especially when you take into account all the Silm stuff, and look at her role in LotR through that lens. It's tragic, to be honest. She's the only one left. Out of 15 grandchildren of Finwë. And she lives in this delightful (to consider - not to experience) state of being caught between homesickness and pride, ambition and regret.

I strongly dislike Tolkien's later attempts to smoothen her out, to make her so perfect - she never really struck me as a Marian figure; there are Marian figures in the legendarium, but Galadriel isn't one. Her Silm backstory is everything it should be.

I also dislike the theory that she was specifically banned from returning to Valinor. It's way more interesting when it's a "no" said in pride, in the wish to be a queen and not a subject, to be one of the most powerful and not one of the less - a "no" that she may come to halfway regret but believes is an irrevocable choice - or is hesitant to take back.

I find an interpretation that takes into account her more complicated characteristics like the fact that she is willing to cover for murderers really worthwhile. The fact that she starts off as the very skilled youngest child of a youngest child of a king, with ambitions and little way to be taken seriously until disaster strikes... chef's kiss.

I eternally loathe the movies' interpretation of her (and of the other elves, though it's most visible in her). Cate Blanchett seems so cold, even when she's trying to seem warm. They went for "otherworldly" and forgot elves are at the same time just as, if not more, grounded as men are.

Sorry if you expected a more LotR-centered take though, I'm afraid the Silm is firmly holding my mind hostage.

[forest-of-stories]

Throwback Thursday, Fandom Edition: Sidetrasked

This is a collection of Silver Age X-Men comics that I’ve now owned for over two decades, and brought to Fan Expo Boston (then Boston Comic Con) in August 2014, hoping that artist Neal Adams would sign it.  

And this is the reason why.

When I tell people about Larry Trask today, I sometimes refer to him as "Blorbo From My Comics."  He is one of my favorite villains in the X-Men universe, and, at least for a time, was one of my favorite characters overall.  He also, at least for a time, embodied the anti-mutant bigotry that has been part of that universe almost since its beginning.  I want to avoid going on a tangent about the morality of villain fandom, and I resent the social obligation to attach an "I Hereby Acknowledge That My Fave Is Problematic" disclaimer to an exploration of how and why I liked a fictional character, but I also want to give people who don’t want to engage with any kind of love for such characters a chance to stop reading.  If you’re not inclined toward sympathy for an antagonist who makes terrible, destructive choices based on a lack of information and for what he thinks are the right reasons, and later has a tragic and redemptive ending (which might not actually be an ending; more on that further on) once he realizes what is going on, then this is not the character or the post for you.  And that’s fine.

Otherwise, I hope you're interested in reading a pretty long post.

Bolivar Trask, who originally created the giant mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, appears in almost every media adaptation of the X-Men.  What none of those adaptations have shown thus far is that both of his children were mutants.  Tanya’s time-travel abilities eventually stranded her in the far future, where she became known as Madame Sanctity and entangled with the extremely convoluted Summers family tree.  Her brother Larry could see the future, but their father created a very ostentatious Silver Age medallion that suppressed Larry’s powers and scrambled his memories so that he didn’t even know he had them.  When Bolivar was killed in a battle between the X-Men and the Sentinels, Larry blamed mutants everywhere, not realizing that he was one at first, and made the extremely smart and good decision (she said sarcastically) to create a bunch of new giant robots.  

I first read those comics in the early 2000s, when I was already drawn to characters who couldn’t trust their own memories, and to stories in which parents or authority figures manipulated or outright mind-controlled the young people in their care.   So the Trask family backstory appealed to me immediately, especially when I read a flashback issue that explored it in more detail.  

I was fascinated by the dramatic irony of a villain who trusted, adored, and committed atrocities to avenge, a father who continuously deceived and gaslit him "for his own good" (and also for the good of their giant robot plans).  I knew that there was a lot of material for fanfic in there, one way or another.

At the time, a couple of other significant things were happening in my fannish life.  Firstly, I was working on the Wallglass series, aka the Writing Project That Ate My Adolescence, in which a lot of my creative choices amounted to "let’s throw in this ingredient and see what happens." My decision to include Larry, not as a villain but as an ordinary teenager and love interest for one of my original characters, was no exception.  Although I eventually incorporated his precognitive powers into the story, that wasn’t necessarily the plan at first.  (X-Men: Evolution, the canon in which my big project nominally took place, did introduce the Sentinels, albeit in a different context than the one I chose.  I was already writing an AU simply by virtue of my OCs’ presence, but past a certain point, I diverged from continuity completely. One of my biggest regrets, of the many regrets that I have about that project, was not making Larry an active antagonist in the final installment of my series.)

As in canon, Bolivar Trask plotted to block his son’s mutant powers and memories of same, but unlike in canon, he outsourced the actual mental meddling.

The second important thing that happened during this time was that I started communicating regularly with the author of one of my favorite XME fanfics, which featured our OTP of Lance and Kitty.  She was reading my fic as I was reading hers, and at some point, we moved on from leaving each other comments (or “reviews” as we called them on fanfiction.net) to exchanging emails about our writing projects, our feelings about the current season of XME, and other things that were close to our fannish hearts.  We subsequently friended each other on LiveJournal, and later Facebook, and have mailed each other gifts and attended a convention together and remained friends to this day.

Back then, as she got to know my version of Larry Trask, I encouraged her to seek out the comics in which he first appeared.  Although he wasn’t the catalyst for our friendship, he did become another one of our shared obsessions, fueled in part by my personal conviction that we were The Fans Who Understood And Cared About Him The Most.  We informed each other whenever we caught a glimpse of Larry in comics or in fic; we once stayed up past midnight, chatting online about the issues of Avengers in which he sacrificed his life to stop the Sentinels from destroying humanity; and we devoted many, many more email and IM exchanges to discussing his narrative potential (which we recognized even if the people writing and adapting the comics apparently didn’t) and how else we might explore it in our own writing. 

My attempts to do just that, post-Wallglass, mostly amounted to scribbled drafts or outlines in various notebooks.

Sometimes I tried to explore Larry’s upbringing or the period in his life after his Sentinel project fell apart and he was dealing with more amnesia and more lies from someone he trusted; sometimes I made overly ambitious plans to integrate him into the Ultimate universe or back into XME. 

Trying to write about Larry was often as frustrating as it was fun: as one of the Fans Who Understood Him The Most (which is how I wanted desperately to be known, even as I was thrilled every time another writer, including a BNF in the X-Men movie fandom, included him in their fic), I felt obligated to Do Him Justice somehow, and was unreasonably frustrated with myself when I didn't feel like I'd managed to do so.

The term “Blorbo” didn’t exist when I wrote those entries, and I kind of wish it had; the fact that I was throwing around phrases like “fictional preoccupations” shows how much we needed a word that meant, roughly, “character with whom I am obsessed even if I don't have a crush on them, or am not sure whether I do or not.” If nothing else, using a silly nonsense word might have helped me take my creative angst a little less seriously.

Although I haven’t followed the comic books in years, X-Men is one of my forever fandoms. And although my attachment to Larry Trask, Blorbo From My Comics, became less pronounced over time (which is probably a good thing), I don’t think I’ve ever detached from it completely.  I haven't wanted to write fic about him in a very long time, but when a podcast (like Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men or Graymalkin Lane) mentions him, or when blogs like @summerstrash post about him, I always sit up and take notice.  And when I met Neal Adams at that Fan Expo ten years ago, I made sure to tell him how much I loved the character he’d helped to create.  He signed my book, as well as one that I bought for my longtime fandom friend.  When I learned that Adams passed away in 2022, I was immeasurably grateful for that experience, and I still am.

And now, based upon recent comics news, it turns out that Larry’s story isn’t over after all.

[martianbugsbunny]

Locked In This Embrace (An Espionage Husbands Fic)

*Shapeshifts from being a filing cabinet* So funny story, this started out as like, a good old fashioned scene rewrite fic where I just thieved the dialogue from the show itself and added some inner monologue and of course my own twist at the end bc otherwise what's the point? and OF COURSE the scene I picked was the forehead touch scene between Nick and Talos, I'm obsessed with it. It was supposed to be basically just that scene plus a romantic end, real short and sweet.

It kind of got away from me and consumed several hours of my life. I analyzed the scene itself so a lot of the gestures Talos makes in the fic are actually what he was doing onscreen. His inner monologue is matched to the canon gestures/facial expressions and I swear on the ship it works so well he could actually be thinking that stuff in canon. At this point half or less of the fic is the actual scene rewrite, that's how much of my own material I added.

...and yes, the title is derived from a post I made earlier about this exact scene. It's maybe not the best title but that's my weak spot so that's how it is.

Here's my offering to the blorbo gods and the Espionage Husbands fandom, read on and enjoy!

“I am so sorry,” Fury said.

“Me too,” Talos replied, his voice low. He savored the feeling of Furys forehead pressed against his, sharing space, breathing the same air; he had lost one love, but the other lived, and the fact that Fury cared enough to meet him with a Skrull embrace rather than a Human one returned a bit of the warmth to his heart that he had lost when Soren died. “Soren loved you,” he said. It felt right to remind Fury of that—Fury, who had cared for her almost as much as Talos had.

“But she worried, mate,” he went on (he was never quite sure if he was using that word in the Human context of "friend" or in the Skrull one of "partner"), “That it would take something like this to bring you back to Earth.”

Fury pulled away to look Talos in the eyes. “I guess she was right,” Talos finished.

For a moment, Fury said nothing. Talos wondered if he knew that the word ‘Earth’ was never the one that he or Soren had used when worrying over Fury’s absence from their lives. Talos remembered her saying, only a few days before she died, “I’m afraid of what it will take to bring him back to us.”

But Fury didn’t know that.

He cupped his hands around Talos’s face for a brief moment; far too little time, yet so precious, and then let go and sighed heavily. “Tell me about Gravik,” he said, and Talos tried not to let it show in his face how horribly heartbroken he was that Fury could move on from such a personal moment so quickly. Fury was back for Earth, not for…well, now it was just him. Even if he did feel for Talos the way Talos did for him, which Talos had never been able to decipher or been bold enough to ask, there were more important things to do than trying to determine where the two of them stood.

And still…Talos was never one to let things go. “Let’s just talk about you first,” he suggested. “We’ve been helping you for all these years, to ensure that you kept your promise. But after the Blip…you were different.” Life during those five years had been a nightmare for Talos, even though he had survived. It was terribly complicated, being grateful that his wife and daughter had been spared, and yet grieving the loss of Nick like the loss of his soul. If he hadn’t had Soren to lean on, Talos hated to think of how completely the darkness would have enveloped him.

“You disappeared.” That was the final pang. After all the agony of the Blip, Fury had been returned to life and Talos had, for a moment, hoped he could finally ask, once and for all, where their relationship truly stood. And then—he was gone. Settled in space, almost as lost to Talos as he had been when he was dead.

“Carol Danvers disappeared,” Talos said. She, like Fury, was supposed to be helping the Skrulls find a home. He was less angry at her, though, because she wasn’t Fury. She didn’t occupy that same space in his heart. “And—so did G’iah.”

Fury turned to him. “Your daughter disappeared? To where?”

“She was young. Angry that our people still don’t have a home.” G’iah was the one person he loved more than Fury, and Talos didn’t hesitate to defend her to him, even though he was utterly disappointed in her decisions. But like he said, G’iah wasn’t evil. A lot of rebel Skrulls weren’t. Just angry.

“Many of them were upset. I got kicked off the Council, pushed into exile, but Gravik—Gravik, mate, he took your abandonment—” Talos couldn’t quite look Fury in the eyes where he said that word—“that much harder.”

When they went back downstairs so Maria Hill could brief Fury on the rebel Skrulls, Talos tried not to read too much into it that Fury sat next to her, on the complete opposite end of the table from himself. She was, after all, the closest friend Fury had.

He also hated that, as the only Skrull at the table, it was his job to break the news to Fury just how precarious the Gravik situation was. “We brought you here for a reason,” he said. A far heftier one than my broken heart, he reminded himself, realizing that it was probably about to get a lot more cracked. “If he succeeds…your species will cease to exist.”

Fury stood up abruptly, pushing his chair back from the table. “Shit,” he muttered. “I’m going for a walk.”

“You’re going for a walk—in Moscow, at night?—You’re gonna stand out.” Even if he couldn’t meet Fury’s gaze, Talos couldn’t resist the urge to warn him off from getting hurt.

And then just like that he was gone.

Talos stared at Maria across the table. He didn’t care that his expression was probably giving away how he was feeling—he wasn’t even sure what label to put on it, so why should he bother to hide it?

“He loves you, you know,” she said, after a drawn-out moment of silence. “When I told him I was calling at your request…well, his tone changed awful quickly.”

That was the call where not only had Fury been summoned back to Earth, he had also learned of Soren’s death. Talos had insisted Maria tell him; the wound was too fresh, and he hadn’t wanted the first time he saw Nick after all those years to be a moment for breaking bad news.

“I’m not so sure,” Talos answered. He got up to look through the fridge—he didn’t truly like a lot of human food, but there were some fruits that tasted nearly identical to Skrull produce, and he kept a stock of them whenever possible. He pulled out a half-eaten can of lychees and a fork from the silverware drawer. “He left.”

Maria followed him to the kitchen area, leaning against the small counter. “The Blip hurt everyone, Talos. The rest of the world may not think so, but you and I know that he’s only human. He needed the time away.”

“He could have spent it with us.” “Why are you so hung up on that? I know you missed him—”

“Missed him?” Talos shoved the can to the side and turned towards Maria. “If you can say that lungs would ‘miss’ oxygen or that veins would ‘miss’ blood, then yeah. I missed him.” He buried his head in his hands. “It wasn’t just those five years, Maria. For decades I’ve wondered if he loved me, always too afraid to hear that answer was no to even ask, always sure that if he felt so, he would tell me.”

“You could have told him how you felt,” Maria reminded him.

“I could have. And he could have. We wasted all that time and I just—I can’t help but believe that if he had been down here with us, like he should’ve been, maybe he could have done what I couldn’t. Maybe Soren would still be alive.”

He abandoned us, Talos wanted to say. It was what most Skrulls believed about Nick Fury, although Talos could’ve told them they had no idea what it was to be abandoned by him.

Soren had never made a secret of her affection for Fury; all those years locked away from her husband in Mar-Vell’s lab had taught her how precious love was, and how freely it should be expressed. Talos, on the other hand, feared rejection. Loneliness. Ages of being hunted by the Kree, mistrusted and reviled by other species, had taught him that. And yet…with Soren by his side, it was always clear that Fury had a home with them if he wanted it. And Fury had accepted that offer and lived with them from time to time, his nearness and his close relationship with Soren driving Talos mad.

Why did he give up that home when they needed so badly to see him alive and well after his death?

Suddenly Talos remembered something else Soren had said. They had been washing dishes together, while Fury was in the living room admiring some drawings that G’iah had made.

“You’re a stubborn man, Talos. And I love you for it. Anyone else might have given up on finding us again.” She handed him a plate to dry. “But…I wonder what it would take for you to take a leap of faith.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” (He did.)

“Hand him your heart, Talos, and trust him not to break it.”

Soren had been able to do it all that time, and it had never cost her. Yet even now, when he was finally reunited with Fury, Talos had only been able to give him Soren’s love, and not his own.

It was on him as much as it was on Fury that they had never determined what they were to each other. And it was his inability to protect Soren, not Fury’s absence from them, that had cost Soren her life, Talos decided.

When Fury finally returned from his walk (and a kidnapping, Talos was alarmed to hear) he informed them that he had set up a bug in an associate’s house and was expecting to get new intel on Gravik’s plans soon. Maria took charge of setting up their end of the surveillance equipment, and Talos determined to take his chance and do what Soren had advised him to do years ago.

“Fury, can I talk to you for a moment?” he asked. He noticed Maria smirking and wanted to sigh. “It’s….” Not information on which the fate of Earth or Humanity hung, but still….“Important.”

To Talos's surprise, Fury’s irritation with him had entirely dissipated, no doubt in light of the new information they were about to get. They went back up to the roof and stood looking out at the city together, the silence amiable.

Talos reached over and took Fury’s hand. His fingers were cold. “I’ve always loved you,” he said, staring straight ahead. “And I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”

Fury smiled. “I had guessed. Figured you would say it when you were ready—didn’t quite expect that to take three decades.” He pulled Talos close and repeated the Skrull forehead touch they had done earlier, their fingers still intertwined. A single tear slipped down Talos’s face. “I love you too.”