#so I didn't include it even if it's like. part of the thesis of the story

[archliches]

everything immediately proceeding and following the part of "the last days of judas iscariot" where judas spits in jesus' face, btw. if you even care.

[dexteri0us]

i know i haven't been perfect, but give it some time; 'cause not a single day goes by where you don't cross my mind

pairing: dexter morgan x f!reader

warnings: fluff, injuries (burns and cuts), louis greene, and you know... dexter's dark passenger

summary: requested: "dexter being super protective of you and when he finds out someone hurt you he immediately starts hunting him to kill him"

w/c: 5.5k

a/n: spoiler alert? it made me sad that dexter didn't get to kill louis, so here we go.

Louis is taking me to the hospital. Don’t freak out. Lab mishap.

You pressed send and the text appeared in a blue bubble, under it, there was a Delivered sign that quickly turned into Read.

Which hospital?

Jackson Memorial.

I’m on my way.

You didn’t really like it when people fussed over you. It felt unnecessary and only brought you discomfort most of the time. But this time, you couldn’t deny the relief knowing Dexter would meet you at the hospital.

“Who are you texting?” Came the voice from the driver’s seat.

You cleared your throat and shifted uncomfortably in your seat. “My boyfriend.”

“Dexter?” Louis asked with a feigned curiosity.

You couldn’t stand him anymore; he was such a fake asshole it was physically hurting you. And today was honestly the last straw.

You’d spent the better part of your morning setting up your experiment, testing your final samples. The data was supposed to solidify your findings and allow you to finish your thesis.

Everything was in place, your samples loaded into the centrifuge as you triple-checked everything. Everything. The protocol, the settings on the centrifuge, spinning the rotor with your hand, ensuring that it was balanced and the lid was closed tight.

Louis had been hovering all the fucking time. You had tried to ignore him, but you couldn’t exactly tell him to go fuck himself. The lab at your school was a shared space.

“You really think you’re going to finish today?” He’d mocked you. But that didn’t throw you off. You knew you were, because you were prepared.

But then you stepped away from the centrifuge for just five seconds to retrieve your laptop. When you returned, you put the laptop next to the machine and pressed the start button on the centrifuge, causing it to whir to life, the rotor spinning faster and faster. Then suddenly, a sharp, metallic clunk echoed in the room, followed by a horrific screech. The centrifuge rattled violently and the lid flew open. Glass shards and liquid shot out like shrapnel and you barely had time to shield your face with your arm.

The pain was instant. A jagged piece of glass sliced across your forearm, and a burning sensation spread where the liquid splashed onto your skin.

“Shit!” Louis exclaimed, rushing forward with exaggerated concern. “Are you okay?”

You just clutched your arm, blood seeping between your fingers. The burn on your forearm throbbed, angry red splotches already forming. Your vision suddenly became blurred with tears of pain and frustration combined, but you held them back. You were not going to cry in school.

The commotion drew others into the lab, including your supervisor. And of course, Louis was quick to throw you under the bus. And, okay, you weren't wearing your lab coat, but nobody really was if they did something as simple as loading samples into a centrifuge.

Your supervisor sent you to the nurse, telling Louis to escort you in case you got dizzy. The nurse bandaged your arm and sent you to a hospital for further treatment. Louis chimed in, playing the part of a kind and worried colleague, and driving you there himself.

“Yes; Dexter. He’s on his way, so you can just drop me off and head back to the lab.”

“Nonsense. I can't have anything else happen to you.”

Bullshit. He wouldn’t even blink if the shards had hit your carotid artery and you bled out right there. Who knows, maybe that had been his plan all along. Louis had it out for you and Dexter, his petty vendetta against you couldn't be more transparent.

“Louis, please.” You closed your eyes in exasperation, your eyes still burning from the tears that tried to push their way through. “I know that you messed with the centrifuge. I don’t have proof, so don’t worry. I’m not gonna do anything. But at least have the decency to stop pretending that you’re innocent.”

You saw his jaw flex and his knuckles get white from how he clutched the steering wheel, but he didn’t say anything. Frankly, you were getting uncomfortable being alone with Louis in the car, but luckily, the hospital came into view.

You tried to convince Louis to go, but he wouldn’t budge. He knew you hated his presence, and he reveled in the feeling that he was making you uncomfortable. You also had a hunch he waited for Dexter so he could provoke him too. He was like a lurking predator, leaning against the far wall, as the nurse gave you a sympathetic smile, adjusting the bandage on your arm. The burn cream was cool against your skin, but the sting of the injury sent vibrations through your whole arm.

The door opened, and your muscles finally relaxed. Dexter stepped in, his focused gaze sweeping the room. His eyes landed on you first, taking in the bandage on your arm and the nurse’s careful work. Then, his gaze flicked towards Louis.

Louis straightened up, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Dexter, hey! Don’t worry, YN’s alright. I made sure she got here safe.”

Dexter ignored him. If he hadn’t, he might have done something… nobody here needed to see. There was going to be time for that to do it right. Instead, he made his way straight to you.

“Hey,” you said with a tired smile.

His hand reached out to cup your head, his thumb brushing your temple and over the edge of your eyebrow in a soothing manner as his other hand hovered over your injured arm, as if to make sure it was still attached. His brows were furrowed, his shoulders and chest stiff as if he was holding his breath.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Getting burned by an oven hurts more.” You tried to lighten the mood, but humor wasn't exactly his way of coping.

“What’s he still doing here?”

“I think he wants to steal you away from me.”

“YN…”

“I don’t know, Dex. He’s a fucking vulture, you know that. I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t.”

You weren't even joking anymore; it wouldn’t surprise you if Louis had done this to get Dexter’s attention. Or get back at you for having Dexter’s attention. Louis had probably been obsessed with him long before you started coming to the Miami Metro’s forensics lab to work on your thesis. Louis, as a graduate and now a lab tech at your university as well as a senior intern at Miami Metro, was supposed to be your guide, to help you acclimate.

You had known Louis from school, and ever since he’d started working at Miami Metro, his ego had been bursting through the roof, so you hadn’t been so psyched when you’d found out you’d have to share a working space, but hey, what could you do. At least, he was genuinely eager to assist, proudly showcasing his knowledge of the lab’s high-tech equipment and Miami Metro’s most famous cases. But his favorite thing to do was name-dropping Dexter. Louis had never said it in those words, but Dexter was like a god to him.

“He’s a genius. Everyone here knows it. Stick with me, and you might even learn enough to impress him.”

You’d fought the urge to roll your eyes. “I’m here to work on my thesis, Louis. Not to waste my time.”

Louis had always been too loud, too close and most importantly, too self-important for your liking, and you’d thought back then already, that his admiration for Dexter bordered with obsession.

And when you finally met the famous Dexter Morgan, you were surprised how underwhelming it was. You actually expected another loud and arrogant scientist, but he was the exact opposite.

One morning, while you were struggling with the calibration of a piece of equipment, a calm and monotone voice spoke behind you.

“You’re off by a millimeter.”

You jumped out of your skin, closing your eyes to regain composure before turning around and finding Dexter with his hands in his pockets, just standing there. You hadn’t met, but you knew what he looked like.

“Fuck, thanks. Were you trying to give me a heart attack to keep me from using it? Jesus Christ.” You were still shaking off the jumpscare you just received.

“Sorry.”

“You’re good. Dexter, right? The guy who specializes in puddles.”

“Blood spatter analyst,” he corrected with a nod, and for a moment, you were taken aback by the lack of reaction to your joke. You introduced yourself and shook his hand, before he left without another word.

To him, you were just another in a parade of visiting academics, someone he’d forget as soon as your project ended.

Well, apparently, you liked to talk, making it hard for him to ignore you. It's not like you were targeting him specifically, you were just a naturally friendly person.

Vince's attention wasn't exactly hard to earn, especially if you were a woman, but Dexter noticed how you laughed even with Angel. Not that Angel was a touch-me-not, but it was still surprising to see you navigate the station with such ease, like a newcomer staking a claim in unfamiliar territory. You didn't force yourself into conversations; you didn't even have to. You had your own gravity around you, and people were magnetized to it.

“If you need something, Louis is your liaison.” He tried to brush you off one time, gesturing vaguely towards the open lab door.

“Oh, I know,” you replied, undeterred. “But Louis is busy explaining to someone how he’s basically the second coming of Einstein, so I figured I’d ask the real expert.”

But you didn’t wait for him to respond, taking the hint and leaving him alone. For now anyway. It made the corner of Dexter’s mouth twitch, but he caught himself and got back to his work. He thought about it for a moment before deciding that it would be suspicious if he was the only one ignoring you.

Over the next few weeks, you made a habit of dropping by his desk. At first, he found your presence… perplexing. You asked too many questions – some of them genuinely insightful, others just… so absurd. You often hovered just enough to be noticeable, but not enough to be intrusive. And your sense of humor seemed to exist solely to see how far you could push him before he reacted. And to create a bond with his sister.

You and Deb shared that bark, and he didn’t know what to make of it. The sarcasm often rang through the breakroom, and while he wasn’t one to eavesdrop, one time he heard a mention of his name.

“Does your brother ever smile?” you asked Deb, leaning against the counter.

“Well, you know, occasionally.”

“Yeah, what’s the occasion? Winning the lottery? Accidentally putting sugar in his coffee instead of salt?”

His brows furrowed in confusion. Why would I put salt in my coffee? But unlike him, Deb laughed.

“More like when someone's bleeding out somewhere. You don’t even wanna see that, it’s creepy as hell.”

“He’s fascinating actually,” you said when you stopped laughing, taking another sip of your coffee.

Fascinating. Most people called him odd, socially awkward, or at best, smart. His victims called him sick or a freak. But fascinating was new. And unsettling. He didn’t particularly like being noticed, but he found himself not minding your attention. Dexter realized that when he came in on Louis scolding you for talking him.

“He’s not your friend or your assistant, okay?” Louis snapped at you, his voice rising in frustration. “I am. So, stop bothering him and do some actual work.”

Before you could respond, Dexter stepped in, his voice firm. “Woah, Louis. Thanks, but I think I can handle myself.”

“I’m just saying, she’s supposed to focus on her thesis—”

“And she is. I also don’t mind helping her.” He turned to you then. “At least, when she ends up working here, she’ll already know the ropes.”

Dexter wasn’t serious, he didn’t even know if you ever wanted to work in forensics. But to Louis, the words felt like a slap. For months, he’d bent over backward to gain Dexter’s respect, but he’d never earned more than a dismissive glance. And you just waltzed in, cracked a couple of jokes, and suddenly, you were like Dexter's personal pet.

It was clear he didn’t like how Dexter responded to you. You noticed how his behavior changed, becoming petty even at your university lab. It was like he was waiting for you to make a mistake while his jokes grew meaner, more passive-aggressive

However, Louis was still essentially a random guy. He wasn't your superior, so you didn’t let him scare you off. If he wanted to report you to your school, you had Vince's backing, and now Dexter's too, you hoped. You believed you hadn't done anything wrong, you still got your work done, so there was no reason to feel guilty.

That meant that you never limited yout contact with Dexter, who also grew more responsive over the time. You figured out that most of his laughter stemmed in ridicule, with his brows furrowed and looking at you like you were an alien which made a smile grow on your face, so you decided to lean into it. Did it make you look dumb? Yes. Did it make Dexter laugh? Yes in capital letters.

Deb was the one who finally pointed out what you had been trying to make painfully obvious for weeks.

“Jesus Christ, Dexter,” she said incredulously, smiling at him as if asking are you serious? “Are you blind, or just stupid?”

He looked up from the folder, his expression blank. “What are you talking about?”

“YN. The girl from the lab. She’s been flirting with you nonstop, and you’ve been staring at her like she’s a new blood sample. Do you even know how to human?”

His whole face scrunched up, going over your past interactions in his head. “She hasn’t been flirting. She’s just… talkative.”

Deb rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle she didn’t sprain something. “Oh my God. You’re hopeless. She’s into you, Dex. And honestly? I think she’s kind of awesome. She’s smart, funny, and she’s got this great thing where she acts like an airhead just to see your face do that confused frown thing. It’s hilarious.”

Dexter’s frown deepened. “She does that on purpose?”

“Yeah, dumbass. Seriously, ask her out before she gets bored and moves on to someone who actually knows how to crack a smile.”

Weeks passed, and to Deb’s disdain, Dexter completely ignored her amazing advice. But she wasn’t one to sit idly by and she had had enough.

One afternoon, as you were bent over a microscope in the lab, Deb stormed in with an unyielding grip on Dexter’s arm.

“Hey, YN!” she said, her voice unnaturally cheerful.

“Uh… hey, Deb. What’s going on?”

She didn’t waste any time, her hold on Dexter's arm tightening as she shoved him into the room.

“Dexter has something he wants to ask you,” she announced, crossing her arms and giving Dexter an expectant look.

Fiddling with the pen in your hand, your eyes darted warily to Dexter, not really sure what was going on. And from the looks of it, Dexter didn’t know either. He looked genuinely confused, his eyes wide and his mouth opening and closing as if trying to form words, but nothing came out.

“Uh…”

“For fuck’s sake,” Deb groaned. “He wants to take you out. On a date. There. It’s done. The cat’s out of the bag.”

You blinked, momentarily caught off guard. A warmth surged through you, a small flicker of happiness bubbling up, but then you saw the horrified look on Dexter’s face, and it fizzled just as quickly. You turned back to Deb.

“Wow, Debra. I didn’t know you moonlighted as a matchmaker.”

“I don’t. But someone has to get the ball rolling.”

“And the first step is holding someone hostage?”

“Hosta– are you fucking kidding me?” She turned to her brother, jabbing a finger into his ribs, making him flinch. “Dexter, tell her!”

But before he could say a word, you got up from your chair and headed for the door.

“I appreciate the effort, Deb, but can we discuss this later? I need to bring these to Louis before he has a meltdown.”

“Yeah, well, fuck him,” Deb said as she watched you leave.

“I’d rather not,” you quipped with a smirk, closing the door behind you.

But maybe Deb had a point.

Maybe he should ask you out.

It had been a while since he’d had a girlfriend, and perhaps it was time to change that. Saying no to you outright might be suspicious, and blending in was a cornerstone of his life. Besides, you weren’t so bad. Being around you wasn’t unpleasant. It made sense.

That's actually what he said when he finally asked you out: it makes sense. No fumbling over words or overly rehearsed lines. And you actually liked his reasoning. It was honest in its own way and you appreciated the lack of pretense.

That was one thing you’d learned about Dexter during your time at Miami Metro: he liked a logical approach, unlike most people who responded to emotion, whose actions were driven by feelings. He felt things, sure, just not in the same way, and he rarely expressed them outwardly.

It wasn’t like you were absolutely positive that it could turn into something meaningful or that a relationship with Dexter would last, but his way of interacting with the world was so unconventional that you simply felt drawn to it.

Dexter never really offered grand romantic gestures or gush over your presence in his life. But he noticed things you liked and made small accommodations for them. He listened with the intent to understand. And while he wasn’t exactly overflowing with emotion, you saw the quiet ways he cared.

You’d once mentioned in passing how receiving gifts made you uncomfortable, the pressure to perform gratitude leaving you uneasy. So when you joked that a specific brand of coffee was your lifeblood, he didn’t hand it to you wrapped in a bow. Instead, the next week, it simply appeared in the breakroom.

He wasn’t selfish about it, like most people were when they insisted on seeing your reaction. No, he just wanted to make you happy. And with that, he scored a double.

However, ever since you started going on dates, for the lack of a better word, because neither of you ever labeled it that way, he started second-guessing himself. He became more careful, often overthinking and calculating his answers. You suspected that Deb might have been partly to blame. She was too blunt sometimes, too quick to get into his head. But you made sure to let him know that he was more likely to scare you off by saying nothing rather than saying the wrong thing.

“You’re more confident about that than I am.”

You'd told him that he was the living embodiment of having a wall up. And not any wall. It was as if someone else had built it for him, and he was struggling to climb over it.

“You’re not even bad at climbing. You’re just trying to figure out where to put your hands.”

It was a strange way for your to put it, but you managed to create a whole think tank in his head which often left him with a dull ache between his eyes. He found himself admiring your honesty, the way you refused to put on a mask just to please the people around you or conform to societal expectations.

It’s not like you outright spilled your deepest, darkest secrets, but you gave him glimpses. You hinted at your own traumas that had shaped you, so matter-of-fact and so human.

It stirred something within him. For days, he debated whether to share his own scars, until he finally did, one night during a quiet walk along the beach. It felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from his chest when he told you about his mother, the blood, the screams everything. Well, almost everything. He expected recoil, but it never came. You didn’t judge, it didn’t scare you away; you just looked at him with the same attentiveness, maybe a joke on your tongue about how that explained his line of work, because that's how you coped. And somehow, knowing he knew that made it easier for him to breathe.

And that night was also the night he kissed you for the first time. He didn’t plan for it. He just simply looked at you and the moonlight twinkling in your eyes, and for the first time in a long time, he felt a different kind of urge. One he didn’t have to fight or wait to satisfy it. He let himself feel.

Later that evening, you also invited him to spend the night at your place.

He’d be lying if he said that he regretted a single second spent with you. Yeah, you never seemed to stop talking, never seemed to stop moving.

“It’s like you’re daring your neurons to keep up,” he’d said to you one day.

“Well, I need to keep my synaptic connections in shape, right?”

But still, you made the chaos seem… manageable. You were a walking paradox, bringing a strange sense of order to his life, a balance. He started to think that this was his final and definitive chance at happiness. And he wasn’t going to screw it up. Nobody was going to take you away from him. Nobody, and it was in his control.

Before you could discuss it further, the nurse came back with a new bandage.

“Your boyfriend, I presume?” she asked with a warm smile, glancing between the two of you. But Dexter barely looked at her, his focus was entirely on you.

“Was it him?” He tilted his head toward Louis, his voice low enough that only you could hear, but you saw the nurse make her way to you to apply the bandage.

“Not here,” you murmured, darting a glance toward Louis, who was still lingering near the door.

The nurse, oblivious to the tension, spoke up. “She’s going to be fine. The burn isn’t deep, and the cuts didn’t hit anything major. Could’ve been worse. You might’ve earned yourself a Nobel Prize for dedication to science, though.”

She smiled, and you saw Dexter’s lips twitch into a grimace that was supposed to look like a smile.

“What chemicals?” he asked.

“Phenol and chloroform mix,” you replied, and the nurse followed up.

“Not ideal for skin, but we got to it quickly. Keep the bandage clean and dry, and she’ll be good as new.”

“Thanks,” Dexter said shortly. Then, turning back to you, he added, “I’ll be right back.”

“Dex…” you began, knowing very well where his mind had taken him. And honestly, a part of you didn’t even want to stop him, because you wanted Louis to leave you alone.

“I said I'll be right back,” he repeated, his voice stern.

Dexter straightened to his full height and walked toward Louis, a predator closing in on its prey.

“So? How is she?” Louis asked as soon as Dexter approached him.

“How do you think, Louis? I suggest you stop fucking around or I’ll make your life really difficult.”

“What?” Louis laughed with faux confusion. “I was just trying to help.”

“Yeah, and I think you’ve done enough. You can leave now. And if I find out you had anything to do with this, anything at all, you’ll wish it was you sitting on that hospital bed. Do you understand?”

“Geez, Dexter, are you –”

Dexter took a step closer without raising suspicion from other people.

“I’m serious, Louis. Do you understand?”

Louis nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat.

“Good. Now get out of my sight.”

Louis turned on his heel, but before making his exit, he turned to Dexter one more time. “Well… Catch you at work.”

Dexter ground his teeth, closing his eyes as he tried to suppress his need to protect you from Louis right then and there. He’d started seeing crimson the moment you texted him about Louis taking you to the hospital. Now, it was spilling everywhere, the red taking over his body, causing it to shake and ring in his ears. He wanted to fucking kill him. Louis had been trying to provoke him for quite some time, but he just crossed a line. Nobody will ever hurt you without consequences.

“Are you okay?” A soft voice brought him back to the present, your hand lightly brushing over his back as you tried to comfort him, ground him.

“No. I think I’ll kill him.”

You snorted. “Okay, drama queen,” you said, and hooked your arm around his, making your way out of the hospital.

Dexter hadn’t said a word during the drive, not a single one.

He’d even turned on his marching music, which he rarely did when you were with him. That was a signal in itself. He was thinking. Hard.

Once you reached his apartment, he tossed his keys onto the counter with an unusual force, and without a word, he headed straight for the first aid kit.

“Dex, I just got it bandaged. You don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do. I want to see for myself.”

You weren’t entirely sure if this had something to do with the whole I don’t trust nurses thing or just general paranoia, but you decided not to argue.

“I know this isn’t your fault, but you should’ve worn your coat,” he said, his voice almost shaking as he held back from lashing out.

“I know.”

Dexter gestured for you to sit on the couch, taking a seat himself on the low table in front of you. He gently reached for your hand and began unwrapping the bandage.

“Tell me what happened.”

You described the incident in detail, including your suspicions that Louis might have been involved. Dexter gave you that Kubrick stare as his jaw tightened at the mention of Louis’ name.

When he uncovered the burn ringed by shallow cuts, he muttered a quiet Jesus.

“Once it starts blistering, you can’t scratch it, okay? It could get infected.”

“Yes, doctor,” you teased lightly, a small smile tugging at your lips. “That’s what the nurse said.”

It made his head twitch as he gave you a look. But he didn’t comment, instead gently placing your hand in his lap as he prepared a fresh bandage.

“Do you have any other samples left?” he asked, and it warmed your heart knowing that he cared about your lab work, too.

“Yeah, I should have some stored at the station,” you said. “Unless Louis decided to get rid of them too.”

“I’ll head back and check on them for you.”

“Well, I’m coming too. I need to get back to the lab, it’s not like I’m incapable of running the experiment again.”

That was a hard no. He didn't even have to think about it.

He didn’t like the idea of you being back at the lab, not when Louis was going to be there. But he also knew he couldn’t keep you away from the lab for long, so he needed to do this fast. He convinced you to stay at his place until the next day, at least. After all, you did feel tired from the burning pain and the pills that started to kick in. As Dexter stood to leave, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead, before kissing you on the lips, anchoring himself to you before heading back to work. And to take care of Louis once and for all.

It was easy. Louis was obsessed with serial killers, but he still lacked the skillset Dexter’s usual victims challenged him with. Now, he was going to give him the full-time experience.

He broke into his apartment and waited until Louis got home. A sharp prick to the neck and strapping him to a chair. Not his usual routine, but this wasn’t really to satisfy his urges. This was to protect you.

Once he was all tied up, Dexter broke a capsule of smelling salt under his nose and Louis' eyes shot open. Dexter wasn’t going to waste much time here, but he brought something to make it more enjoyable for himself.

“Wakey-wakey,” Dexter’s voice broke through the fog of Louis’s confusion.

He blinked, before he started thrashing against the rope. “What the hell?!” he shouted, panic rising in his voice. “What is this?!”

Dexter stepped closer to him, a faint curl of a smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. In his right hand, he held a bunch of vials filled with liquid.

“Do you know what chemical burn feels like, Louis?”

“What?” he asked, confused at first, but then it dawned on him. “Wait, wait, wait! I didn’t do anything! I was just looking out for her. A-Accidents happen! Labs are dangerous places if you’re not careful, you know that!” Louis rambled, making Dexter watch him with an amused smile.

“Accidents don’t usually involve sabotage,” Dexter said evenly.

“Sabotage? Jesus, Dexter, you're blowing this way out of proportion. You're doing all this for some chick? Does her pussy feel that good?"

Dexter lurched forward, his fist connecting with Louis's face before he could react, the chair creaking against the floor as it moved with Dexter's strength. He leaned down to Louis’ eye-level, pointing a finger at his face. Louis squeezed his eyes shut, his bloody face scrunching in fear.

“Don't push it, Louis,” he said through his teeth. Dexter was quick to recover, his calm mask slipping back into place. “Let's talk about the fact that accidents always seem to happen when you’re around.”

Louis coughed, spitting blood onto the plastic-covered floor.

“You’ve got a pretty vivid imagination.”

Dexter’s lips twitched. He rose to his full height and backed away just to put down one of the vials and take a piece of cloth instead. He poured the chemical on it as he talked.

“It’s called pattern recognition,” he said, coming around the chair to stand behind Louis. “You should be familiar with that by now.” And with that, he stuffed the wet rug into his mouth. Louis twitched and thrashed, but Dexter was stronger. He made sure the cloth didn’t fall out, that Louis got the exact taste of what you’d gone through.

“How is it, Louis? You have my full attention now! The only time I’m willing to listen to your bullshit!”

He tortured him some more, before pulling the cloth out. As soon as Louis’ mouth was free, he started coughing. Then, Dexter poured some of the prepared solution on his glove.

“Did I get the concentration right, or was it too strong?” Dexter asked, rubbing his covered fingers together, the rubber shining under the kitchen light. Louis’ breathing quickened.

“Please. I won’t go near her again. I swear!” Louis cried out.

Dexter leaned in close again, his face inches from Louis’.

“You’re right. You won’t.”

And without further explanation, he pressed the gloved hand against Louis’ arm, holding it there long enough for the sting to start. Before Louis’ scream got too loud, Dexter stuffed his mouth with the rug again as he writhed in pain, the burning sensation spreading.

“That’s just a fraction of what she felt. And you’re lucky I’m in a forgiving mood tonight. Otherwise, I would pour it right into your fucking eyes, your mouth, I would cut your skin open and fill it up before stitching it back together.” Dexter put his still wet hand on a different part of Louis’ arm, watching him squirm. “I would make you fucking drown in it.”

Dexter stepped back, watching Louis’ chest rise and fall with his heavy breathing, some tears sliding down his cheeks, mixing with his blood. Dexter closed his eyes, bathing in that satisfactory feeling as he breathed in, the smell of chemicals and sweat and fear tickling his nostrils. He made his way to the counter where his knives were splayed out, taking the sharpest one and making his way behind Louis again.

“Goodnight, Louis.”

And with that, he sliced his neck, blood spilling onto the plastic underneath the chair.

When he came home that night, he found you still on his couch. Safe and sound. Your bandaged arm rested on the book you were reading, and when you looked at him, you greeted him with that casual smile of yours.

It was so genuine, so automatic. Like it had been waiting just for him. He couldn’t let himself be the reason you’d ever lose it, couldn’t let his or anyone else's world dim yours.

Without saying a word, he approached you, pinched your chin between his fingers and tilted your head to kiss that smile, because he knew it would only make you grin wider, and that’s what he wanted. He was making a silent promise, to you and to himself, to keep it safe, because seeing you light up like that, illuminating his dark world was everything he needed. And he wanted it to last.

[aprillikesthings]

So this is somewhat of a continuation of my "you could headcanon Catra as demisexual based on canon" post, but I wanted to write a new post for this.

So there’s a fascinating conversation to be had about why, in fics where Catra and Adora aren't together (yet), so many of us have written Adora as…not a prude per se, but far less likely to hook up with other people—and have written Catra doing that, instead. (I mean, I have an unpublished WIP that includes that; I'm not throwing stones at glass houses here.)

And I do think some of it is that Adora is awkward in that way that’s so often some combo of a sheltered upbringing/ADHD/autism; whereas Catra is in fact more openly flirtatious.

(Disclaimer: In this post I'm using "slutty" in a neutral-to-positive sense.)

But the irony is that One, plenty of people who share those qualities with Adora are in fact hella slutty*; and Two, Catra clearly doesn’t intend to follow through on all that flirting.

ANYWAY time for my actual thesis of this post:

The real reasons, IMHO, that it's easier to see Adora as less slutty than Catra:

Adora is so visibly uncomfortable in her skin, and Catra is not

Adora doesn't even realize when she's attracted to other people

Catra however is aware of when people find her attractive (and changes how she interacts with them based on that)

The tweets aren't connected; they weren't part of the same thread. But ND's made no secret of the fact that he gave Adora a bunch of his own traits**, and it was after s5 that he started coming out as trans--which isn't to say Adora is intended to be read as dysphoric. But the way Adora never thinks of herself or what she wants carried over into not thinking about her physical body as anything other than a tool, and not feeling comfortable in her body, and not feeling like she owned it. (Which....is probably related to ND's religious trauma, considering how many conservative/fundie Christians straight-up tell women and girls their body doesn't belong to them. In those words. Literally.)

And I think that's part of why Adora reads as so awkward. The idea of someone wanting her and finding her attractive is just bizarre to her to the point that she doesn't even see it.

She does clearly find other people attractive! But I don't think she realizes she's doing it--she reminds me a bit of when I was 15 and stared at women in bikinis on the beach and tripped over my own feet because I was looking at them and not where I was going lol, and had literally zero idea I was doing it until my best friend told me about it later.

Adora didn't even know she wanted to kiss Catra until just before it happened--if Glimmer had pulled Adora aside in the Crimson Waste and said "lol you want Huntara so bad," Adora would've been genuinely confused!

And that's all before you get into the whole She-Ra thing, and you could write a long-ass essay about Adora's sense of identity and the degree to which she sees She-Ra as herself or not. But the fact is that She-Ra has a different body than Adora! Taller, stronger, a lot more hair lol. And the people around her clearly value She-Ra differently than they do Adora. So that's a whole. Thing.

Meanwhile: Catra just feels comfier in her body. She does try to tamp down her cat-like qualities to some degree, especially in s4, but a lot of it was just that her ears and tail tended to give away her emotions, and she was trying to hide them. She stops suppressing that at some point after Save the Cat. (And then the Universe gave her a mood ring alien cat, lol.) Catra's got her own pile of Issues, but her body is just not one of them.

There’s a scene at the end of The Coronation (s4ep1) where Catra is in her s4 outfit for the first time, and she basically does the “I’m in charge now” thing at Hordak, and I’m sorry but it’s...not NOT sexually charged, even leaving aside that her new outfit has thigh slits and a boob window. She’s sitting in his throne and purring (loudly!) and then purrs out a "Hey, Hordak."

She basically forces him to his knees, taunts him, and then we see from his POV as she sits back in that throne and crosses her legs. If she’d done that in a scene with literally any non-male character it would be seen as ship-bait!

Is she intentionally flirting with Hordak? Lol no.

But you'll notice: She doesn't do it with Scorpia, when she's mean to Scorpia. With Scorpia she's just...biting and cruel. So she clearly has some idea what she's doing when she taunts people, enough that she knows Scorpia would take it differently. She knows Scorpia finds her attractive and is trying to push Scorpia away.

Catra also doesn't do it with Double Trouble! Double Trouble flirts with Catra, but Catra gives none of it back, and as noted in my previous post, is even visibly uncomfortable with it at times.

Which isn't to say Adora never does the "flirtatious taunting" thing:

But like, where. Where do you think she learned it from.

(this post is once again relevant)

EDIT: another example of Adora learning it from Catra, taken from a "She-Ra Crack" video:

(*Me. In my 20’s. Just remember kids, lots of neurodivergent nerds are hella slutty.) (**iirc that's how he got diagnosed with ADHD. Everyone just like "hey is Adora intentional ADHD rep" and he was like "no, I wrote her like me?? ...oh. shit.")

(Lastly: anyone reblogging this to shame people for writing/hc'ing/shipping whatever they want will get blocked. I'm not even sure I hc Catra as demi and I wrote a whole post about it lol.)

[mayasaura]

sorry if this has been answered before or if there's a post about this, but I've been seeing a lot of posts labeling harrow as schizophrenic and/or having trouble recognizing reality, including the one you just made about crux as harrow's caretaker and reality-indicator.

I realize that these interpretations come from htn, but I'm curious as why people feel that it's always been a trait of harrow's instead of a side effect of the lobotomy?

I was under the impression that she created the reality problems as an excuse to cover the blocks in her memory, especially since we know that wake/the sleeper didn't possess her until after gtn and most of her confusion happens in the river bubble.

even the "hallucinations" of the body don't really impact her perception of reality, and it's actually alecto's soul not a real hallucination. the only questionable moment I can remember is when she sees cytheria under the bed and ianthe says there's nothing there, but we know ianthe is a duplicitous legend so I read it as ianthe lying to harrow lol

long story short, I was wondering if there was scenes in gtn, ntn, or post-realization htn that indicate harrow has had these reality problems pre-lobotomy? or if you know of a post analyzing it further? sorry to throw this at you, I just haven't seen any analysis of it but I saw your post so I was hoping you would have more info :) I really adore all of your tlt analysis posts!

Hi! Yeah, if you go into my '#harrow's schizophrenia' tag, I've made several posts about it, and other people have added on to a few of them with further elaboration.

But I don't think I've ever laid it out fully like a thesis. And I have several stressful things I should be doing right now, so I can't think of a better time to get into it.

When Harrow's brain is editing Gideon out, there's an effect a little like a record skip. Her memory snags on something, very briefly, and then quickly moves on. Or she'll make an assumption or say something that doesn't actually make sense without Gideon in the picture, but she won't notice. The most prominent example is the details in chapter 3 surrounding her opening of the Tomb:

Just ellipsis "found out" ellipsis to skim over the very large part Gideon had to play in those events. If she were to interrogate the memory, it would be strange that she doesn't remember how her parents found out, but doing so would make her brain bleed. She would black out, and most likely forget what she was trying to remember.

And an example from the same chapter of a statement that doesn't make sense, unless you know about Gideon:

Two things are important about these examples, the first being that they don't upset Harrow. She doesn't think they're strange, because she barely thinks about them, which was sort of the point of the lobotomy in the first place. The second is that they can be immediately explained by plugging Gideon into the Gideon-shaped hole in Harrow's memory. If you know about Gideon, and what Harrow's done, there's no mystery remaining.

In contrast, there are other details in chapter 3 about Harrow's childhood that Harrow did, and does, find strange and upsetting.

Gideon didn't attend services, and she most definitely didn't participate in chants. Putting Gideon back in the picture does nothing to explain the "weird, thuddering beat" Harrow finds disruptive. But it does sound an awful lot like an auditory hallucination, as does hearing doors open and close where no doors were opening and closing.

Maybe we could try to explain the doors by supposing she was hearing Gideon coming and going without remembering the source, but that doesn't really track with how we know her mind processes the missing pieces. If Harrow were papering Gideon over in her memory, it wouldn't be important who was or wasn't opening doors and where. The focus of her memory would quickly shift, just like it did when trying to remember how her parents found out about the Tomb, in order to avoid looking at what she's hidden from herself.

Then there's the next paragraph:

Again, plugging Gideon into this memory does nothing to explain it. Even if Gideon had been in the habit of sneaking up behind Harrow and attempting to choke her out—which, yikes—Harrow has already seamlessly blocked out the memory of one attempted strangulation. Then there are the phantom ropes she sees, her parents' method of suicide haunting her.

The forgetting where she was, losing time, and false memories do seem at first glance like they could be explained by the lobotomy, seeing as that is sort of the whole purpose and effect. But I'm pretty sure even these are real memories. Again, because of the focus of her attention. She's remembering having forgotten, while the lobotomy make her forget to remember.

Then there's Harrow's overall behavior. Her reactions to her hallucinations, especially in the River bubble, which imply that not all of this is new to her. She isn't shocked, or caught off-guard. She has coping mechanisms. She's figured out what evidence she can probably rely on to rule out hallucinations, and what's more likely to be suspect. A lobotomy, even a necromantic lobotomy, doesn't come with built-in tools for coping with its effects. Her memory of her past without Gideon in it is fractured and incomplete, not an entirely new life story with new life lessons.

Finally, from Nona the Ninth, some evidence that Harrow's problems with reality definitely predate the lobotomy:

Crux remembers them.

[queer-reader-07]

you know what i think really gets me as a good omens fan who also grew up catholic? the very human approach it takes to morality.

i can’t speak for every denomination of christianity, but i can speak to catholicism. i grew up in the church, i went to catholic school, i was confirmed for fuck’s sake. i know the catholic church. the ways in which it eats away at your self esteem. the ways in which it makes you feel like you are a terrible person because you’ve sinned in one way or another. the way you’re taught the concept of original sin as though it isn’t deeply unsettling to believe that all humans are born corrupt. you’re taught that you were born tainted by satan, you as a baby you as a child you who doesn’t even know your place in this world yet. you are sinful because you are human.

there is no room for shades of grey in catholicism. you have either sinned or you haven’t. you are either good or you are bad. you are either going to heaven or you are cursed to damnation. (yeah yeah purgatory and all that but if i’m being honest the diocese i was a part of never really talked about it)

we all know the church is corrupt. every catholic knows that, but whether or not we ever admitted it to ourselves and accepted it as truth is another story. you cannot deny the staggering statistics regarding catholic priests assaulting and molesting children. you cannot deny the financial corruption that has been present in the institution for centuries. but you can ignore it. you can ignore it and pretend like the church is perfect and good because if you allow yourself to admit it’s issues, you admit that maybe your entire world view is flawed. that maybe the idea of morality as being black and white is wrong.

that's what i grew up with. with these contradictory beliefs. these adults in power telling me i was inherently sinful because i was human while also being told that God loves me. that God will save me from myself. so i grew up thinking someone else could fix me. because if i was inherently bad i couldn't fix myself.

but of course, the truth is, i don't need fixing. i'm not broken or bad. i'm human.

when aziraphale described adam as "human incarnate" i got EXTREMELY emotional. because to be human incarnate is to be not good or bad. it's to just be. be whoever it is you are. make the best choices you can. will they all be perfect? of course not. but will you be trying your damndest? yes.

good omens is a breath of fresh air for me and my religious trauma because the thesis of the story is that black and white thinking is unproductive at best and actively harmful at worst. you cannot live a fulfilling life while also believing there is only Bad and Good, and that Bad and Good are inherent.

good omens is a comfort because it reminds me in more ways than one that i'm worthy of love. i'm worthy of life. i don't have to be perfect, far from it. i'm allowed to be messy and make mistakes, but none of that means i don't deserve to be here. none of that means i'm a Bad Person. i'm just, A Person.

i'm trying. i've always tried. tried to love the best i can, tried to be the best person i can be, tried to live my life to the fullest, tried to cultivate joy for myself.

my brain is a mess. and 15 years, give or take, of being fully immersed in the catholic church (including 7 years of catholic school) definitely didn't help. i am still riddled with catholic guilt and toxic mental frameworks because of the time i spent in the church.

but good omens helps me work through it just that little bit more. it's there in its corner of my heart saying "hey. you're human. you're not Bad or Good, you're You. and you're trying."

it's... comforting. yeah, i think that's the right word.

[maryloohoo]

Live-action Hiccup as a reflection of neurodivergent childhood: a soliloquy

I really wanted to write this post like an essay, with a thesis supported by points, but every time I tried to do it like that, it came out wrong. This point is better explained as a journey of discovery - observations made, thoughts had, and revelations that made everything click into place. So, that's how we're doing it. Strap in, gang.

(Also, it should be noted, this is largely a cleaned-up and slightly-augmented transcription of a verbal spiel I went on the other day. It's not an exact one-to-one, but if anyone would prefer this in audio format, hit me up. And also this is gonna read like a stream-of-consciousness speech. Because it is. :P )

A bit of context just regarding me and where I'm coming from: The animated movie has been my favorite movie since 2010 when I first saw it. I can recite it almost from memory. I have seen the live-action movie twice (and I plan on seeing it as many more times as I can before it leaves theaters). Also I have ADHD.

ALSO ALSO. This is not about headcanoning either version of Hiccup as neurodivergent. This is about how Hiccup's experiences in the live-action HTTYD greatly resemble things that a lot of undiagnosed neurodivergent kids go through. He does not, himself, have to be neurodivergent for that to be the case (however, I totally believe that he is and I will pop off with the headcanons about it if anyone gives me attention and probably even if they don't :P). Alright. Here we go.

SO, watching the live-action movie, Hiccup felt different, obviously, in a lot of ways. And some of it was, at first, a little bit disappointing, I'm not gonna lie. Hiccup's snarkiness is sort of one of his defining features in a lot of ways, and since there was less of it, I was like, "oh, that's sad", you know? Even knowing that a lot of it was just Jay Baruchel improvising, so it's not like Mason Thames could have done it, 'cause it was somebody else's improv. Like, he got to keep in the "Thank you for nothing, you useless reptile" line, 'cause he suggested it, but like the "Excuse me, barmaid, I'm afraid you brought me the wrong offspring!!!" and all of that stuff, I'm pretty sure that was Jay improvising, so Mason didn't do it in this movie.

But, as I watched, even if it wasn't exactly the same Hiccup that I remembered, there was still a congruity to all of Mason's choices that made me love him just as much, and made me go "Oh, that's still Hiccup. Like, that's very Hiccup." And the point where I was like "Oh yeah, that's Hiccup! Definitely!" was sort of closer to the end. There was a confidence in the way he was speaking, and a charisma, and, you know, a sort of leaderly quality that I recognized from, honestly, not as much the first HTTYD, but from all of the later installments in the franchise, including the TV shows. And I remember the second time I watched the movie, noting a specific point, and going "Oh, wow, look at that! That's where it starts." There's a moment after Romantic Flight when Hiccup and Astrid are on Toothless, and she's like, "Oh, what are you gonna do? you have to kill [a dragon] tomorrow". And he replies something like "Well, you kind of blew our escape plan, so I'm gonna need a minute." And the way he said that, particularly the "I'm gonna need a minute" part, was so much more confident than he really said anything else up to that point (like, to another human being). There was an edge to his voice, not mean, not harsh, just firm, that hadn't been there before. And I was like "Oh, look at this confident boy, where did he come from?" And then I was like, "Oh, it's 'cause, you know, he's the one in control of the situation. He's on a dragon. And he knows that Astrid is now on his side, so he can have that confidence as he's speaking." And then, even later on, when Toothless wasn't there anymore and he was speaking to the rest of the teenagers [the scene as they're all about to head into the arena grab the dragons so they can go save help the adults], the confidence was back, the leaderly quality was back, all of that nonsense. And I was like, "Oh, it's because Astrid's on his side still, so he can carry the confidence off of the dragon." And I remember thinking that that's really weird and interesting. That's what makes this Hiccup different, in this movie, is that you actually see his confidence grow over the course of the movie, whereas animated Hiccup, he's confident [or at least visibly projecting an air of confidence, but I still think that more of it is true than just a projection] right from the beginning. And then I watched an interview with Mason Thames, who plays Hiccup (and Nico Parker who plays Astrid). And they were talking about differences between Jay Baruchel's performance and Mason's, and Mason says this:

"Me and Dean had a lot of time to talk about new things we wanted to explore, like a darker side of Hiccup, and sadder, lonelier side. Because, his whole village despises him. His father is not proud of him. And, you know, the amount of stress, and, kind of, what that would do to a kid, you know?"

And that made something click in my brain. The sadder, lonelier side is definitely visible in the way that Mason plays everything. And it makes sense. This Hiccup is a lot more...beaten down, I suppose, by the circumstances of his existence pre-Toothless. And so, then, watching that journey of him going from being very, very not confident, watching the confidence grow as he goes along in the movie, makes sense, because of how different he is in the beginning. There are other examples that I really, really like in terms of the acting choices that Mason made and other actors made that show it even more, that lonelier, sadder side of Hiccup. You might think, well, how does that even work? It's almost exactly the same script. How do they do that?

Hiccup is less snarky. That's just how it is. He's less snarky when he responds to people; he's less snarky with Gobber, which is very interesting. In the animated movie, Gobber snarks at Hiccup, Hiccup snarks right back. In live-action, Gobber's actually a lot more...gentle with him. He is, like, visibly saddened by a lot of Hiccup's behavioral responses to things. There's the part where Hiccup says "I just wanna be one of you guys" and then goes inside his house, leaving Gobber outside. And after Hiccup's closed the door, Gobber just says, very quietly and sadly to himself, "I know you do". It's very much like he can tell that Hiccup is internally beating himself up for not being like everybody else. The way that Hiccup interacts with people around him is a lot less confident and a lot more like...not nervous, but there's definitely something apologetic, like a "Oh, I'm so sorry. I know I suck, believe me, I know" underpinning his words. There's a part that he has, a new scene where he's talking to Astrid, that animated Hiccup does not have, where he says something like "You're the kid [my dad] always wanted. Instead he got stuck with all this." And it's all very "Yeah, I suck", and it's all played very sincere. And that's...not really an attitude that animated Hiccup ever had? Animated Hiccup knew what he was, knew what he was capable of, and knew how he could use that to be a Viking; to do all of the things that his dad and his village wanted him to do. They just wouldn't let him. Nobody would listen to him, and because it wasn't the way things were done, he couldn't do it.

But in all of that, narratively, that's a problem with society. That's not something wrong with Hiccup, and Hiccup did not act like there was something that wrong with him, you know? [To clarify what I meant by this; there's a difference between thinking that you're a square peg in a round hole, and thinking that you're a stripped screw. One just needs a different environment to flourish, the other is ultimately useless any way you slice it]. He was like, yeah, I know I'm small, but look at all this stuff I can do. I know it's not really a Viking way to do things, but like, it can be used to do Vikingy things. I could kill a dragon with this frickin like ballista or whatever. The bolas launcher.

That's animated Hiccup, and he's very different from live-action Hiccup. And animated Hiccup, as much as I love him, does not really allow for the same sort of reflection of a very neurodivergent experience as live-action Hiccup. Not that he doesn't at all. There is certainly an element of that, as there always is in stories where it's something about somebody being othered. And I mean, you know, you've also got Stoick saying that whole bit about like "from the time he was born, he's been different", "I take him fishing and he goes hunting for trolls", "he has the attention span of a sparrow", etc. and everybody points and goes "ADHD!" and, like...valid of them, but you know. It's different, obviously, saying "Oh, this seems like a character has ADHD" and "Oh, the thing that this character experiences in this movie is very, very reflective of the autistic or ADHD experience".

The thing that made it all click and made me go, "Oohhhhhh; that's why that makes sense", is that the thing that is making Hiccup so ✨different✨ changes from animated to live-action. That was explained in an interview with Dean DeBlois, who was the director of the original animated movie and also this live action one. And he said this:

"Hiccup was designed to be a pipsqueak in his world. And so, production design-wise, in the animated film, we made everything larger than life, you know. The buildings, the trees, the people. Everything just seemed to outsize little Hiccup. But, I think as we were narrowing in on our casting of Hiccup, and we realized, like, Mason, though he's 15, is not a pipsqueak. He's an average kid at 15. That meant we didn't have to lean into, as heavily, this idea that he's a tiny, a tiny kid in an oversized world. We, we leaned more into his otherness, like, he is a misfit. He doesn't follow the Viking creed. He's not- he's just always thinking differently, and therefore is treated as somebody who is very different."

And that is what makes live-action Hiccup representation of a neurodivergent experience in the way that animated Hiccup is not, and [knowing explicitly where the director was coming from] makes it very easy to read it in a lot of Mason's acting, too. Like, animated Hiccup is different because he's small. That's not something he can change; that's just how he is, and it's really, really annoying that his society doesn't like that, but it's also not something that he has any control over. So, naturally, he responds to all of the dislike and the derision and all that stuff with like "Ugh. Come on." Like, when somebody says, "Stop being all of this", and he says, "You just gestured to all of me", he sounds annoyed about it. He's like, "Really? Like, all? There's not one part of my body- Okay, sure. Fine. Whatever." Whereas, with Mason's Hiccup, whatever is wrong with him is not something that you can see, and it's not something that he thinks he can't change. If it's something in the way that he's thinking, and something in the way that he's responding to the world around him that's different than everybody else, then, naturally, the next step would be to think, "Oh, if it's all in my brain, I can fix that. I should be able to fix that". But he can't, and so he beats himself up, and that's, I think, why Gobber treats him the way that he does. He knows that Hiccup is beating himself up, because Hiccup knows that it's something internal, that he should be able to fix, but he can't. And that's why, you know, Hiccup lacks so much confidence in the beginning of the movie where animated Hiccup doesn't, is because he thinks that there's something wrong with him. Because he doesn't think like everybody else, and that's the part that's important to all the Vikings, and that's why they deride him so, is because he doesn't think like them as opposed to him just not looking like them or being as physically capable as them. And that is so, so, so, so much what it's like to be young and neurodivergent and not diagnosed.

And it's summed up really, really well at the end right as Hiccup gets on Toothless and they are about to go up to fight the Red Death and Stoick says "I'm proud to call you my son". Animated Hiccup says "Thanks, Dad", because animated Hiccup has always known who he was and what he was capable of. He just needed someone to hear him. Live-action Hiccup says, "That's all I need". And after taking a minute, too; like he, honestly, Mason's acting, 10 out of 10; he looks like he's about to start crying for a second. He has to, like, take a second so he doesn't cry, so his voice won't crack the second he opens his mouth, and then he says "That's all I need", because live-action Hiccup really needed to know from the people around him that they are proud of him. That he's not...there's not something wrong with him on the inside that means he's never going to be enough. And that is that is the autistic and/or ADHD experience.

That is pretty much the end of the original spiel. There's other stuff I could get into to further my assertions (a variety of body types present among the live-action Vikings hammering home the idea that Hiccup's biggest differences are all internal ones, Mason delivering the line "I'm really extra sure that I won't [kill dragons]" less like Jay's declaration and more like he's admitting to a personal failing being more evidence for the way live-action Hiccup views himself differently to his animated counterpart, etc.) but it's been about a week since I last saw the live-action movie and I don't want to make points based on faulty recollection.

I do want to add, though, that I know that my experiences as a child/teen with undiagnosed ADHD are in no way universal. There are probably a lot of people who responded completely differently than I did to everything, and people whose experiences look like animated Hiccup's, and in the grand scheme of things, these are variations of the exact same character and any experiences connected to one can very likely be read in the other.

But at the same time....

There's something that live-action Hiccup has that his animated counterpart doesn't, for me. I look at live-action Hiccup - his sadness, his shame & stress, his struggles to connect, his uncertainty, his self-reproach, his need for someone to be proud of him, his slowly-growing confidence as more and more people show that they value him as he is and not as he or they feel that he should be - and there's something that I recognize. I look at him, and I see myself.

Well, myself at his age, anyway. 12 years and one diagnosis later, I'd like to think that I'm a little more confident in myself and the way that I think. Doesn't stop me from tearing up every time someone says that they're proud of me, though. :P And to have an experience that's so familiar & difficult be so visible, and in the character who was already tied for my favorite fictional character of all time to boot. It means a lot.

So yeah. That's about all I've got. If you've made it this far, congratulations on being just as weird about HTTYD as I am. I hope you liked reading this. See you around!

[yall-batman-fanfic]

The Dark Side of Academia | Bruce Wayne/Batman x OC!Magician ft. Poison Ivy

Synopsis: Inspired by Harley Quinn Season 5 Episode 2. Vivian crosses paths with  Poison Ivy when she was brought to Gotham University by an ambitious scientist to be part of their research as Dr. Pamela Isley. In their time there, Poison Ivy comes across a man who Vivian shares a disdain towards.

There are three things that Vivian would welcome as a surprise when she comes to work. 

Her adopted children, who would always drop by at her place of work whenever they could. 

Her husband, who would try to join her for lunch at the cafeteria despite her telling him how impractical it was for him to drive all the way from Wayne Enterprise to see her. But she loved the effort anyway and would make the time to go to his place of work too.

And crime. Gotham crime. 

As a tenured professor at GU and as a tenured Gothamite---yes, she's earned that title now too---finding some costumed criminals or a crime organization taking over GU for their personal agenda is normal.

Quite a high bar, if she was asked. But when she came to Metropolis University, the bars of her encountering any of those, especially the last one, was slim, so when she saw Gotham's notorious eco-terrorist walking the halls of the campus, Vivian couldn't help but hide behind the wall and hope that Poison Ivy did not notice her.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

She needs to call Bruce!

Shit, she forgot. He's off-world now.

Shit!

“Professor Vivian Pryor, what a surprise!” Vivian jumped at the sudden greeting of Lena Luthor.

“Ms. Luthor, hi,” Vivian greeted, fixing herself. “I wasn't… I wasn't expecting you here.”

“But I just saw you just now, I was about to call for you but then you hid behind the wall,” said Lena.

“Right. Sorry, but I thought I saw a familiar face, that's all. I needed to be sure,” Vivian laughed, making up an excuse. 

“Oh, I think I know who it was you saw,” Lena reached to her side and pulled up the person that had Vivian panicking. “Professor Pryor, I'm sure you know Poison Ivy---also known as Dr. Pamela Isley.”

Vivian couldn't believe it, it was really Poison Ivy standing there, wearing clothes and not fern. Her red hair still had a couple of flowers, her skin green, but she looked more civil and non-lethal. But Vivian knew that Poison Ivy could still be dangerous, especially with the presence of plants. 

“Ivy, I'm sure you know one of Gotham's celebrities---Professor Vivian Pryor-Wayne,” said Lena.

Ivy folded her arms over her chest and fave Vivian a look that says she didn't like her one bit. “Yeah, I do.”

“And I've read so much about you, Dr. Isley,” Vivian added.

“It's Poison Ivy. I don't go by that anymore.”

“I see. Dr. Ivy, then?”

“Just Ivy. Why? Do you want me to keep calling you Professor?”

“No, Vivian's fine… but, you might want me to---never mind. It's nice to meet you here. In a place of academia, and not running from plants in Gotham.”

An awkward silence came between the two women and Lena stepped up to clear the air between them. “Professor Pryor was called here to consult on one of Metropolis University's studies on Alchemy---they're trying to decode some old journal---and who better to do that than the country's renowned Symbologiest and Iconologist, right?

“Really? I was in the impression that all you know are pictures and stories,” Ivy stated.

That struck a nerve. This time it was Vivian who crossed her arms over her chest, “There are alchemical symbols that never came to record. I studied runes, hieroglyphics, and---as stated in my resume---symbology. That includes alchemy. I even wrote my bachelor's thesis based on the unidentified and dead Alchemical symbols found on Strauss’ notebook---and translated it too.”

Another tense silence. 

Ah, the not-so-rivalry-rather-tension between STEM and HUMSS in academia. 

Self-important-bitch, Ivy thought.

Egotistical-assholes, Vivian didn't say but her face did.

“Right, well, I'll just give Ivy a tour of the campus. I do hope we could catch up later, Professor,” said Lena Luthor.

“We'll see. See you both around,” Vivian left.

~ * ~

“Say that again,” Dick said.

Right after running into Poison Ivy, Vivian went straight to the courtyard of the campus and made a call to the next person she could talk to whenever Batman was off-world with the Justice League. 

“Dick,” Vivian sighed. “I ran into Poison Ivy in MU. She was with Lena Luthor and I think they have this research, I don't know. Got anything about that? Anything fishy?”

“Can't say, Luthor's really not in our jurisdiction, you know… That's mainly the big S’ turf, but I'll look into it. Maybe Kara knows something. She tends to know something.”

“Thanks, kiddo.”

“How long are you going to be there?”

“How long is Bruce going to be on that research trip to the forest?”

“Can't say, but you can't seriously think about staying there until he gets back, right? Wouldn't want to lose you to shiny Metropolis, Viv,” he laughed.

“Don't worry, as much as I like seeing streets without blood or motor oil or whatever that is on Gotham's pavement that is a mix of vomit, piss, and shit… I'd rather spend a day locking my bullet-proof doors than have Superman use my car as a battering ram against some alien.”

“Glad to see that you'd prefer Gotham's crazy than Metropolis.”

“Yeah, well…” Vivin trailed off as she found Poison Ivy walking out of the building looking pale and shaken. “That's just the Gothamite in me, you know. Hey, kiddo, I gotta go. Call me back?”

“Sure thing. I'll also tell Tim about this too. Bye, Mama Bird.”

Ending the call, Vivian hid her phone before she approached Ivy who was pacing around the area, the plans were all growing wildly around her too.

“Ivy?” Vivian cautiously came close.

“Holy shit!” Ivy jumped and almost had vines attacking Vivian if it weren't for the woman realizing who it was. “Shit, shit, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to do that.”

“No, it's okay,” Vivian did not dare move as the sharp and thorned vines were near her neck and her arteries. “Do you want some coffee? I was about to get one myself and I saw you out here all… as much as people market it to amp you up all night, it calms my nerves actually.”

Ivy sighed and had the vines return to the plants around them. “Yeah… I guess coffee is a good idea.”

~ * ~

Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised that she was having coffee with Poison Ivy when Vivian did just share mimosas with Harley on a yacht to freaking Greece a couple of years ago. But she was. Poison Ivy has always been one of Batman’s recurring villains whose goals are not entirely evil but her plans to do it are considered to be. Even Swamp Thing thinks so to. The Swamp treasures all life, not just the Green.

As they sat in a more private place in the cafe drinking coffee and having slices of cakes, Vivian tried to look past through the many times Poison Ivy had Gotham hostaged into one of her plans—and almost had her trapped in her schemes—and see the person who was having a panic attack right after seeing something that spooked her.

Before she was Poison Ivy she was Dr. Pamela Isley, a scientist, and someone who was also in Academia. Just like her. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Vivian asked. “Or do you just want to have coffee and distract yourself from it…”

Ivy sighed. “Did you ever do something that you regretted? Not like buying some Prada shoes that you’d never wear, but really, really, regret it so much because it changed your life.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve regretted buying Prada, and I rarely buy from Prada. I like things in the department store that’s prices aren’t always three-to-four figures,” Vivian chuckled. “But yeah, I’ve done some things in my past that I really, really hate and I think things would have been different if I didn’t do it.”

“Like what? Moving to Gotham? I know that you lived in Liverpool and that you got into GU through the Martha Wayne Foundation. A long way from home if you ask me.”

“I have my reasons… I guess, yeah, if I hadn’t gone to Gotham my life would have been different. I wouldn’t be here, teaching, with a successful career. I wouldn’t have met my husband and I would have my family now. But that’s not what I was referring to.”

“What—got involved with your professor or something?” Ivy leaned back on her seat, her arms folded.

“I did but not that… It happened when I was much younger, before I came to Gotham. I was going through some things when I was a teenager, and something happened that almost drove me to insanity, and it drove me to leave Liverpool and start somewhere far away and where I can have a good start. I’d rather not say what it is, but I know what you mean… 

“If it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have this life now. I’m happy but there are things that I wonder if it didn’t happen, what now? Would I still have gone to Gotham or would I have just stayed in Liverpool and still be with that ex. But I have no regrets of going here, even if I’ve had more than my fair share of Gotham’s crazy.”

Ivy sighed. “I saw someone back there who… let’s just say was part of my “villain origin story”,” she rolled her eyes at that. “I was under his tutelage, and we were a thing. It was against every ethical shit there is, but we made it work. I looked up to him—fuck, I even loved him…

“He was about to lose his grant because he’s done nothing original and wasn’t doing anything at all for his career. Then he saw my work and he tried to steal it. Long story short, after I tried to beat the crap out of him, he locked me in a lab with poison from my own work, I had to resort to using my own formulas to save myself and turned myself to this.

“I tried telling everyone about that really happened, but he was right… no one listened. I lost my credibility, my career, and my life. I lost everything then.”

“I am so sorry, Ivy… I don’t think I can even imagine that. What happened to you is awful,” Vivian held her hand. “I never knew. All I knew about Dr. Pamela Isley from GU was that, she was a student there, then there’s this accident and now you’re a…”

“Eco-terrorist?” Ivy chuckled. “Yeah, I know.”

“If it’s okay, may I know who this man is?”

“I’m sure you’ve met him a couple of times now—actually, you did. You both were on that documentary on some plant that Harley got you and the Bats to go with her and get it.”

“Hold on, you don't mean…”

“Dr. Jason Woodrue.”

That fucker?

Vivian scoffed. “Why am I even surprised? But, fuck!”

Ivy raised a brow at her. She wasn’t expecting Ms. Goody-Two-Shoes Mrs. Wayne has a dirty mouth. “I guess you didn’t have a good experience with him?”

“He tries to get into every woman’s pants during that shoot. He’s a total creep,” Vivian said in a hush tone. “I know that I should have done something but there are things that even money or the Wayne name can’t do… I was just lucky that my husband is this hulking guy who kept him away from me between shoots. Academia isn’t always this pristine and non-political as it seems.”

“You have no idea,” Ivy laughed.

“Please don’t tell me that you're going to work here—I assume you’re here to work on something since you’re here with Lena Luthor.”

“Yeah, I’m going to do environmental-urban research under the Luthor Grant, but it also means I have to work with Jason Woodrue.”

“Why here? Why travel here and not at Gotham?”

This time Ivy raised a brow. “I don’t think the Wayne Foundation is going to give me a lab and freaking funding.”

“In our defense, you don’t really have a good track record lately…”

“And how about the fact that you’re also into deep shit with the Batman?” Ivy raised a brow. “I know, Harley told me about it. How you and the Bat are close, and that you have magic.”

Vivian sighed. Damn you, Harley. “She told you, huh.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s a good friend. Trust me. Like, a really, really good friend.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But really, Dr. Isley,  after talking to you now, I think we could give you a shot. It would mean me battling other members of the Wayne Foundation board but I’d try to get you that—as long as your plans don’t involve destroying human life.”

“No promises… Thanks for this, this really helps.”

“Does Harley know—is she here by the way?”

“She’s at our apartment—did you know that property tax here is freaking murder?”

“Please, the many times I’d hear Bruce and Lucius whine about the taxes that Wayne Tower has to pay, I could buy a freaking house in Gotham Central with those rates.”

Ivy laughed, really laughed. Vivian never thought she would ever see Ivy do something like that. “It’s nice, talking to someone who understands. I know that Harley is my girlfriend but Academia wasn’t really her thing, you know?”

“You don’t always have to forgive. You can just move on from something and never forgive them… I know how hard it is to ever forgive someone.”

Ivy frowned. “I know about the miscarriage and Two-Face. I’m not always a horrible person, so I’m sorry about that, Professor Pryor.”

Vivian smiled. Reaching for her locket–the one that Jason gave her–Vivian took out one of the flattened dandelions inside and gave it to Ivy. “This is from the garden where we buried my daughter. I keep a fresh one with me at all times. It help me remember that she wasn’t a tragedy. There was happiness. We were happy to know that there was a possibility.”

Ivy accepted the dried plant and brought it back to life and turned it to a dandelion flower again. “Thanks, I think I can face him now and we’ll see if this can work. If it doesn’t I can also have Harley bash his brains out.”

“Please don’t.”

~ * ~

She fucked up. Well, she thinks she fucked up.

The following day, Vivian was met by a newspaper headline saying: JASON WOODRUE DIES AFTER A FREAK ACCIDENT. Before she could even make a call, Dick was already calling her.

“You saw?” Dick asked her.

“I did. And I think I just fucked up.”

“How? I’m headed to Metropolis now with Damian.”

She told them about her talk with Ivy, who Jason Woodrue was to Dr. Pamela Isley, her origin story. But they already knew how she became Poison Ivy, just not the entire picture of it. “Then I told her that she doesn’t have to forgive him, that she can just move on.”

“So, her moving on means killing her toxic-ex?” Dick said.

“I DON’T KNOW!” Vivian sighed. “I feel kind of responsible, because maybe I should have told someone about this—but we were hitting off so well yesterday and I thought maybe I got through to her… shit, Bruce is going to kill me.”

“He’s not. Don’t worry about it… the whole thing about Batman is giving people a chance to change… well, that right after beating up criminals with his sledgehammer punches.”

“What am I going to do now?”

“Go to MU? Do what you usually do. We’ll be there in an hour.”

“And stay out of Ivy’s way, Mom!” Damian told her.

~ * ~

She was doing a good job in staying out of Poison Ivy’s way but then Harley came to campus, running, and yelling: “I’M COMING, IVY!”

Vivian choked on her coffee when she heard that, and she–like the others in the campus—went out of their labs and classes to see the commotion. Vivian excused herself from her colleagues and went to see what Harley was running around for and why it sounded like she was really about to come.

“Harley!” Vivian ran after her. 

“Ah! Professor Pryor! Hi, Ivy said you were here! Great, I need your help!” Harley filled her in with all the details she saw, Ivy was in her office, accessing the green, and she saw vines trying to kill Ivy. Then there was Frank–Ivy’s best-plant-friend–who told Ivy that Jason Woodrue turned to a plant and is trying to kill Ivy

“And the only way to save her is to kill Jason Woodrue!” Harley summarized.

Great. Easy peasy.

When they go to the place where Woodreu’s body was, Harley kicked down the door and started trying to cut down the plant-man. 

“Hey, Professor, wanna help out here?” Harley exclaimed.

“Move aside!” Vivian cursed under her head and placed a hand on Woodrue’s chest and—

Fire burst from her palms and she—as Harley said—burned the motherfucker and all the plants that were under his control. 

“Shit!” Vivian gasped as she looked down on the ashes of what was Woodrue—or what was left of him, which was a monster.

Did she just kill someone?

Is it considered killing if the man was already dead and what was left is this mutated being who was just a monster. The monster who was all that Woodrue was.

Right?

Batman’s going to kill her.

~ * ~

Bruce arrived at Vivian’s hotel just as the MCPD finished their interview with her. They greeted him as they left the place, and when he got in he saw Vivian sitting on the couch—where the interview was held—with Dick, Damian, and Lucius waiting there with her. 

“Welcome back,” Vivian greeted him and drank the remaining half-full glass of scotch. 

She’s really stressed out with what happened. 

Dick told him about it just as he was heading back to the Watchtower, and now he immediately had Cyborg open a Boomtube for him and he arrived at Gotham to change, then he got on his chopper to head to Metropolis. 

“How are you?” Bruce asked her. 

“I am better now. Dick and Damian got here just as MCPD took us from MU. I called Lucius before MCPD could question me. And he helped me out. Made sure that my name and the Wayne name is out of this because I just burned what remains of Dr. Jason Woodrue after Ivy killed him in a lab filled with poison.

“And–off the record—I think I coerced her to do it after we had a heart-to-heart of moving on and the shitty-side of Academia. I am completely fine.”

Silence came to the hotel room, the men and Damian looking at her as she poured another drink but drank from the bottle instead. Maybe that’s for Lucius. Yeah, it is for Lucius because she handed it to the man.

“She’s not fine,” Damian concluded.

Lucius accepted the drink. “Like I said, you wouldn’t have known.”

“But I should have at least told someone, right? Bruce, in your opinion, did I just kill someone?” 

Bruce sighed. “Well, according to the records that Dick sent me, there is nothing left that was Jason Woodrue. What was his consciousness, and I think there wouldn’t be any other way to defeat him than to burn the tree. Sometimes we can’t save everyone, Viv.”

“I just think this wouldn’t have happened if I told someone about Ivy and Woodrue’s history…”

“I don't think that's your fault,” Dick spoke up. “You gave Ivy a chance to move on from it, you didn’t think she would do it. And to be honest, after hearing about her history, I can respect what she did.”

Another sigh and Bruce went to sit beside his wife and hold her hand. “It’s okay. It was a leap of faith. That’s what all of us do, actually.”

Vivian leaned on her husband and hugged his arm. “He was an asshole–like, the biggest one out there. I’ve met and dealt with assholes in Academia and he’s one of the worse; and though I know that we don’t kill, but fuck—I’m glad that she got that out and dealt with the motherfucker.”

“Don’t worry, there are days when I also want to just end things to get rid of this world of one bad person, but I just keep reminding myself that if I do that then what makes Batman different from the rest of them.”

Bruce asked Dick and Damian to pack up Vivian’s things while he helped her calm down in the living room. She was lying on the couch, her head on Bruce’s lap so he could massage her scalp; and Bruce talking to Lucius to know what was going to happen next after this when they heard the knock on the door. 

Lucius got up to answer.

“Who is it, Lucius?” Bruce asked when the man hasn’t welcomed nor spoken anything.

“Hi!” Harley Quinn came in with Poison Ivy.

Vivian and Bruce jumped up at their entrance, and Dick and Damian were in fighting stances.

“Whoah, chill out,” Harley told them. “We just came to bring the Professor a little somethin’ for helping out my Ivy!” Harley walked up to Vivian, pushing past Bruce and handed her a potted plant.

“Thank you?” Vivian said.

“It’s from the dandelion you gave me,” said Ivy. And some other plants. I made a formula that would help with growing the flowers and keeping them fresh. You can add that to your daughter’s garden. I know that our talk didn’t go as you planned, but it helped.”

Vivian glanced at her husband then to Ivy. “Glad it helped?”

Bruce sighed in the background.

“And it seems that after killing Dr. Woodrue I won’t be keeping that Luthor Grant, so who knows when I’ll be back in Gotham.”

Vivian laughed. “I see what you’re doing, Dr. Isley.”

“Well, I wanna see if Waynes do live up to their word,” Ivy smirked. “Or are you all just talk for a good PR?”

“I told you, it would be a hard shot considering your track record. But give us a good proposal and we’ll see.”

“See what?” Bruce asked.

“A grant from the Wayne Foundation,” said Ivy.

“Viv, you didn’t,” Bruce massaged the bridge of his nose.

“No promises. We’ll see where your proposal takes you, Dr. Isley.”

“I’ll write up one that you nor that fancy-schmancy foundation of yours wouldn’t even think about saying no. Well, see you around! And say hi to Batman for us!”

With that Ivy and Harley left, leaving a room of confused men and Vivian admiring the flower in the pot.

“Is it just me or does this flower have eyes?” Vivian showed the pot to Bruce.

“If that think starts talking…” Dick started.

Bruce sat down on the couch and hung his head low. He was gone for sixty-four hours and so much has already happened. What the hell?

[meelkiewee]

Hello!

As a first post i wanted to share my favourite bubbies and since tumblr seems more text oriented than the other socials I have, I'd like to explain what was going on in my head while doing their character redesigns~ [BOOKS SPOILERS MENTIONED]

INTRODUCTION

These character designs were made back in winter 2022 for a sort of animation thesis. Many things didn't go according to plan in that school year so for lack of time and motivation I've never really finished the animatic but I will include a wip at the end of this post. The animatic was about my interpretation of their story, finding a person to call home while in a crude and terrible world.

XIE LIAN

Xie Lian is the first of the two I made, his character design was very clear in my mind since the start. It's not largely distant from your official usual XL but I thought it already fitted very well.

The three main colors for XL are white, black and golden yellow. The prevalence of black and white colors was inspired by two main factors:

I personally see XL as a heavily dichotomy based character, not only in the association to the White Clothed Calamity but also in the way he's described as pretty as a flower but skillful with the sword, following a chaste path but mingling with a ghost king, all kind smiles to others but struggling with his own hope, etcetera, etcetera. He is in a constant struggle to find a third option that is better than simply bad or good, mostly in his early God's days, and also later on with ‘not knowing whether to laugh or cry’. So in here, black and white represent the reality of human nature, where you have bad and good qualities alike, a concept I think XL struggled with a lot since he was brought up as the perfect and pure prince that can do no wrong.

According to my research of the meaning behind colors in the chinese culture I discovered black and white can symbolize many things, some of which I found quite fitting for where I wanted to go with my character design. Black can stand for sadness and bad luck. White represents brightness, purity and innocence. In some instances, however, white is also associated with death and is a color commonly worn at funerals. Moreover in my own culture black and white, along with deep blue, are very elegant colors to wear. Simple and elegant is what my XL wants to look like.

Another important part of my XL character design is his bamboo hat.

Following some good old christian imagery I used his hat as an halo. Most of the time I even ignored perspective to make sure his head is always framed in this golden saintly circle In my animatic storyline specifically it represents XL perfection. Soon the hat is lost in the mud and brought back later on by HC with a new meaning of finding yourself in a safe environment with safe people. 

For most of the other design choices I took decisions based on pure aesthetics such as giving him a very elegant mole under the eye, very long and lucious hair and a very very long hanfu with some very very long sleeves. Yes, I wanted him to be very very everything because I very very love him!

Here are some other very very outfits i drew him in for fun and didn’t need for the animatic:

_____________________________________

HUA CHENG

As a premise to my HC character design I want to say I am very amused at people’s different reactions to it. They are usually neatly split in two: either they hate it with a passion or just fall head over heels in love with it, no in between. I personally am in the ‘love it’ side (duh of course I am, I designed it lol) but I also understand if your first thought is “WHO TF IS THAT?”, so let me explain my thought process here.

Firstly, hot take: official HC character is made to be your perfect cool-hot-mysterious-boyfriend™ that has it more together than you do and we don’t like that in this household, at least not always. Yes he is XL’s most devoted believer, yes he is a very powerful supreme, yes he’s always there for his Gege but in the end he’s also a very traumatized person that has had a crush for a guy for 800+ years.

What I’m saying is I wanted him to be a little more relatable and goofy than what books show us so I integrated some of his personality hidden away in E’Ming. From here I got the puffy messy hair, the big round eye and the doubtful expression.

Next up let’s talk about the palette. He also has, like XL, three main colors:

Blue. Mostly of the time he spends around XL he does it in his true form, wich is the form of a dead person (even dead more than once;;). This is pretty self explanatory, when someone dies the hue of their skin goes to blue and also ghosts in general are frequently represented pale blue or white in color. As a little side note to this, I really enjoyed the blue demons HuaLian episode in donghua S2, it made me feel less alone in my smurf choice lol.

Red. This is canonically HC’s color and rightfully so! Red is widely recognized as China's color of good fortune, and in my culture, it is frequently used as a symbol of passion and the color of blood. There is really nothing better than red for Mr. Crimson Rain!

Lilac. Although I'm not sure about my research on this color in Chinese culture, I've read that it modernly represents love or romance. However, growing up in my hometown, purple (and all its shades) was always associated with ugliness and was thought to be a bad omen if worn. Whoever had the nerve to wear it was regarded as a distasteful and ominous weirdo. I think it fitted perfectly with how every other Heaven Official other than XL sees HC; someone who makes blood rain for fun and a potential and actual threat to the Heavenly Court.

As for XL, other choices I made serve a mostly aesthetic purpose. HC’s boxy build, pointy ears and the opened robe to see tiddies(🤩) are some of the notable ones.

HC would not be complete without E’Ming, obviously. After comparing some different blades and trying to integrate a butterfly in the design, I opted for keeping it simple and I ended up with this wobbly shaped hilt made to resemble HC’s bang. The fact that now E’Ming looks like it has a big nose is just an added charm honestly.

CONCLUSION

Thanks for reading until this point I hope you enjoyed my yap and make sure to have a nice day/night! <33

I'll leave the link to my animatic wip here, please note once again that it is not finished in the slightes and there are also some funky expressions that don't really fit the mood lol enjoyyy!

-Sole

[starsbook]

🧿| ORACLE (CYvn MC)

hehe finally drew my version of Oracle's Superhero Outfit from Criminally Yours vn.

Small lore details , wip thoughts , alt wip ss , some imagines , ideas dump ,and theories if you squint under the cut:

💥👓💥👓💥👓💥👓💥👓💥👓💥👓💥👓

Starting with the design piece that I love : Eye shaped witch hat. I absolutely wanted that to be a part of this. Also making the oracle face mask black was due to this , I wanted to imitate the pupil of an eye. At the right angle this looks like a purple eye looking at you. Now imagine the city posters being a purple eye looming over you and the small time villains constantly checking over their shoulder to see if any purple eye is in sight (the posters end up jumpscaring them lol). RAD if I must say so myself.

I wanted the design to be very cryptid. sort of scary. But with the added pop of vibrant colours i didn't achieve that. Though the oracle mask only being glowing eye holes sort of feels disconnected from normal humans. Big reason why the mask is 'faceless' and 'expressionless'. Now imagine oracle looking down at you and all you see (in the right lighting and right angel) is a big purple eye (hat) with glowing pupils looking at you.... hehehe (these ideas are all going into my to be drawn list lolol)

Predicting the future is sort of considered a witchy practice so I think it's a neat detail.

I am kind of conflicted with how vibrant the cape colors turned out , i sort of like them for the reason I added them but I feel like they are a bit too bright . Maybe the lore reason would be to make oracle costume more distinct and hence more marketable. i do think that kids love oracle the hero and I want you to imagine civilian Mc going about their day and seeing random kids in a kid sized gradient cloaks. They would be proud of their work as a hero I think. I do managed to keep the cloak's color values stable so I do think that it would look better in night light. maybe it will look duller and darker in night scene... i need to test that out.... (tosses another idea into my to be drawn list)

NOW for the reason i made blue+red the color gradient is because...... *drum roll*..... i dreamt about it!! I had a dream where my oracle was wearing a hero outfit with a COMPLETE blue + red gradient as their color scheme. I HAD to include that it was destined in the fates.... i got an oracle about my oracle ... this is meant to be...

originally the cape wasn't even planned but after that dream I had a prophecy to fulfill LOLL

The colors coincidentally match with the two leads of CY!! I told you it's meant to be!! Blue being Chronos' color and red being associated with a Thesis so far. AND the mix of blue and red is purple.... Oracle's color.... coincidence? i think not. I color picked the gradient transition where it's purple to get 'Oracle's' purple and I love this concept sm.

I like to think that for lore reasons , since nik took the role of chronos because of oracle and wes is said to be a fan of oracle (basically they both greatly admire oracle) so they choosed their villain/hero costume colors based on oracle's. they match!!!!!

I wanted the reference sheet layout look like it was taken out of an artbook or a magazine . i kinda like the way it turned out . Adore the font effect used for 'Oracle', Its giving comic book style and i love it.

Originally I wanted the colour scheme to be more teal/peacock green. but in the end i scrapped the idea because the colors looked too busy. here's a wip ss:

I have no idea why I made the brown leather bag thingy around the thigh. It is too small to contain anything now that I look at it. At the time of making i thought "hmmm maybe it contains a button to call for backup" but I don't like that idea anymore. I am thinking of turning it into a 'hidden' insulin monitor.

How many eye motifs can you spot on the hero outfit? let's see! (take a look at the reference and guess before reading the following portion)

1) The eye witch hat hehe i love that one.

2) The brooch holding the cape around the neck of oracle .

3) The center of the peacock feather looks like an eye (more on this later).

4) The knee supports were to be shaped like an eye (golden sclera with purple iris) but i didn't commit to the bit rip. Its more visible on the left knee i think.

5) The cape is supposed to be eye shaped at some point but i think it wraps around so the shape isn't obvious. I'll let this one slide/silly

6) The glowing eyes on the mask.... no i am not cheating now LOLL /silly

Referencing to two already mentioned points (both including the word peacock) , I initially planned to make the color scheme more peacock color palette and use a lot of peacock motifs because 1) peacock is my favourite bird. 2) I wanted it to be kind of symbolic to how i associate Oracle with peacock and nik betraying Oracle's trust (hence acting like a snake) and how snake and peacock are natural enemies.... does anyone see the vision.... 3) one day i randomly remembered that OH! the center of the peacock feather is an eye!! eye symbols = oracle!! brain blast!!... But i didn't end up following with it because 1) the color palette looked too busy. 3) the repeated peacock feather looked busy AND very out of aesthetic with CY's world. imo it would have worked in a more fantasy setting. Still pondering on point 2) though... maybe I will make it more thematic rather than literal.

At one point I wanted to give this a futuristic color palette but that involved a lot of blues . maybe I'll try to design chronos' villain outfit in futuristic aesthetic for fun.

At one point I went into a rabbit hole of more fantasy esque / magical hero outfit references (I do have concept arts drawn from those references LOL , If someone asks about it I'll gladly share haha) but then i concluded CY is a bit more modern and non magical for that /pos. Though I think you can still see some influence seeping in in this design haha. It is magical in my heart/silly

If you asked Oracle what it is like being under the hero costume, they'll answer "Hot asf" and no they don't mean it in a sexy way XD. The costume gets WARM and not in a good way.

Do i think Oracle reused Mama oracle's old hero outfit? yes. But i think to better fit the decade's aesthetic the outfit is redesigned every so often. So it isn't the PROPER mama oracle outfit but there are influences. The witchy eye hat is definitely one of the classics. In my head that hat is now Oracle's brand and can't be replaced.

If you read this far then I love you <33 I hope my oracle always looks over you like a guardian angel. Thank you for reading this. I would love to read your thoughts and maybe your thoughts on *YOUR* oracle designs!!

[catboy-beckett]

One Internet Lady's Beef With Ray After Ending

Ray's route was by far my favourite route in Mystic Messenger and it's not even close. And then I paid 300 hourglasses for his After Ending, and... I had some problems with it. But I want to talk about one thing in particular that isn't necessarily an issue for everyone (and that not everyone will even agree is true) and explain why it gets under my skin. So here's my thesis statement/topic sentence/whatever you'd call it: I hate that the ending scene implies MC is dating Saeran and Saeyoung at the same time.

Now, I know this is some people's fantasy, and that's fine. I've seen enough MysMes discourse that basically boils down to "ewww why would anyone find this sexy/aspirational?" and while that's also a fine way to feel, including about stuff I like, it is not genuine criticism. There are plenty of aspects of the game that I'm not into and I just roll my eyes and ignore it. It's for someone else, not me, and that's fine. I didn't harp on this point to anyone before because I thought it might just be my personal preference. Maybe I was just disappointed that the ultimate ending for my favourite character and my favourite route didn't end up appealing to me.

But the more I think about it, the more I do think I have a genuine complaint, so come on this journey with me and decide for yourself whether I'm right or just biased~

Part 1: Am I interpreting this right?

I expect that not everyone will agree with me that the intended implication of this scene is MC dating both twins, so if you disagree there, that's fine. I still think a lot of my points line up regardless. But I do very much think they're supposed to all be dating (with room left for plausible deniability for people who don't like that premise).

Some of the dialogue feels romantic (the "we love you"/"And I especially love you" comes up in response to choosing the "Eat well!" dialogue option) and I would argue that if Saeyoung isn't part of the relationship, he's being massively oblivious to how hard he's third-wheeling here, but honestly the dialogue isn't the part I'm side-eyeing in the first place. I can come up with a platonic explanation for why Saeyoung is asking me if I've "dreamed about this from the beginning" but I have a much harder time explaining why he's sitting with me instead of his brother, or why he's holding a bouquet (flower symbolism sure, but why are they in a bouquet??), and frankly I don't think if I showed this CG to someone who didn't know anything about the game that they'd be able to identify which character the girl in the middle is dating.

Part 2: Spoilers for 2020 Unknown Birthday DLC (and Secret Story, but I assume you would already be prepared for that.)

Before I ever got to Ray After Ending, I bought every minor holiday/event DLC that had him in it. THIS one however, embedded itself in my brain. It kind of even ruined the Secret Story ending for me. Let me explain.

In this DLC, it is implied that MC is dating Saeyoung, and they do not know who Unknown is but somehow know he and Saeyoung have the same birthday. MC is bringing some of Saeyoung's birthday cake to Unknown as a gift/peace offering, and it is further implied that Unknown has a crush on MC. (Prior to the screenshots seen here, Unknown is very hostile to the RFA and hesitant to accept their offerings to include him in the celebration, but quickly changes his mind when he hears that MC will be the one making the delivery.)

Now, Unknown/Saeran/Ray has been my favourite character since back in Casual Story when I didn't even know his other names. Seeing him pining fruitlessly always breaks my heart. But there was something newly bothersome about the implication that he has feelings for her even in Saeyoung's route. It made me look at the Secret Story ending CG in a new way.

Look at Saeran here. He looks shy, isolated from everyone else, and a little miserable. Once again, he's not sitting with Saeyoung, but he's not close to MC either. He sits facing away from everyone else, with no one looking at him. When I first saw this, it still felt positive for him--he's recovering, after all! He's just not the focus here because this is after all, Saeyoung's ending. But after I saw that birthday DLC, I began to look at this with the assumption that Saeran has feelings for the girl sitting next to him, the one with his brother's arm around her, and she will most likely never even know. What a bittersweet-at-best ending for Saeran.

And then, much later, I saw the CG for Ray's Good Ending.

...and I couldn't help but think: how dare you. How DARE Saeyoung get to be happy and close to MC in both endings, while Saeran only gets one? How dare Saeyoung not even be a little shy about butting in to his brother's relationship? Even if you take the "awkward third wheel" interpretation, why is he inserting himself into Saeran's moment with his girlfriend? Does Saeran not get one thing for himself?

If Secret Story had ended with a similar throuple situation, it would feel less pointed. I realize that there are metanarrative reasons behind them being different (Secret Story was released long before Ray AE, Ray AE is supposed to be one of the definitive endings and therefore needs to be a more "perfect" outcome, etc.), but this doesn't change the fact that we ended up with "you can date Saeyoung or you can date Saeran AND Saeyoung", which makes it seem like Saeran isn't good enough on his own.

And he's my fucking favourite.

[ganondoodle]

Not gonna lie, the "It looks like a Divine Circle but is actually just hundreds of years of superstition & propaganda"-Concept is the coolest fucking thing I didn't know I needed until ten minutes ago. It's a super cool inversion of the classic trope, opens up a million possibilities for stories and arcs and on top of that, in game, you would obviously not know about it form the beginning but slowly have to collect clues and hints that things are not quite as everyone tells you.

So yeah, very cool concept!

Not directly related, but it's probably no surprise that my favorite Ganondorf line is the "I coveted that Wind"-line from the finale of Wind Waker. He doesn't even go into detail, cause he doesn't have to, this line alone instantly humanizes him. Like, its the end of the game, we are about to fight him, there is no way this will not end in a fight, and yet, at that point, that line, just goes so fucking hard. Because you instantly know what he's talking about, that he simply wanted a future for his people, which, you know, is a very human thing to do. It wont stop us from fighting him here and now, way too much has happened for that, but it reminds us, the audience, that he has motives and reasons and thoughts and is an actual character.

So yeah, in case it's not obvious yet, I too despise the extremely flat "I'm evil because evil, waaaaaaaaagh!" Ganondorf from TOTK. Why even include him if you cant be arsed to actually write him?

Anyways, last thing, I'll have to somewhat disagree on the Gameplay vs Story thing, at least partially because I work in the field and have had experiences with this problem myself. Not saying its impossible to have both, but its a lot more difficult than one would expect.

Towards your point, yes a good story can pull people through a game, but so can strong gameplay. Take the Doom games, I dont really care about their story, but the gameplay is great. On the other hand, the gameplay of the average Telltale game would be incredibly boring without the story behind it. There are hybrids, but even they tend to lean one way or the other: The Assassins Creed or Uncharted Series have solid and fun gameplay, but would probably get repetitive or boring if we didn't have strong characters and stories that keep us interested. And all of that is before you consider that there are different player types that gravitate to one or the other and it gets even more complicated. (There's more to this but I my thoughts on the topic could easily be a full bachelors Thesis, so I'll stop here.)

I should add that I dont think that the gameplay over story (or vice versa) argument can or should be used to defend games or design choices. Yes, Nintendo does prefer to focus on Gameplay over Story. Does that mean we shouldn't expect a good story, or are not allowed to criticize a bad one in their games? Hell no! (And if my previous ask sounded like I was doing that, I apologize, that was NOT what I meant to say! I'll happily critique all of TOTKs flaws, both in gameplay & story, otherwise how can we learn from it?)

This argument can be used to understand and analyze or interpret design decisions but it shouldn't ever be used to defend them. Just like the "just for kids" argument, by using such arguments, the person in question basically admits that they are aware of the weaknesses and faults in their story/game/whatever but didn't fix or improve them. So yeah, I do agree with you on that front 100%, hiding behind such arguments is a problem.

Anyway, sorry for leaving another wall of text in your inbox, hope you're having a nice day!

thank you! that 'cycle' concept is also what destiny (zelda comic) is based on, since it takes place before skyward sword you get to see the set up for it, and, in this story, the gods have been trying to achieve it countless times, throughout the story of it its supposed to slowly be revealed- like demise already knowing some parts since hes yet another 'failed' version of that plan (im reusing that concept for the totk rewrite as well bc i am very original wahoo)

oh you work in that field! thats cool!! yeah my opinion on this sort of thing is very much a thing i formed bc i play games, though i still dream of gamedev, i guess i understood your mention of it a little too much into the dismissive argument way (though not as an attack) and its been repeated so so many times i cant help but get a little >_> at it; the point i was trying to make was more like ... they need to find a balance with it, like you can make it all about gameplay, but then dont pretend you have the most epicest story that ever storied, maybe even do it less or more subtle, like the fromsoft game i feel like are very well balanced in that regard, bc their lore and story is very neat and intertwined, but you have to look and think to get it, and the gameplay is strong on its own so much so that it kinda ends up being both soemthing for people that dont care about lore and those that do, more than about the gameplay

zelda feels like it doesnt quite know what to do (even moreso modern zelda), bc they prioritize the gameplay but then still put in a story that they want understood .. so its like, babiefied? like there is a "simple" story and its few points are repeated into your face over and over and over so the people that dont care to read into soemthing GET IT but also annoy them, bc they dont care anyway, and the people who care about lore/story above gameplay are bored bc the narrative isnt engaging enough and they dont care as much about the gameplay

especially so with totk i think, its so weird, botw wasnt like that imo, it wasnt overly complicated either but at least it left you wondering, and let you think, the more you thought about the more interesting it was (at least to me) totk feels like the opposite, it doesnt want you to think, bc the more you think about it the more it falls apart and makes less sense

like theres types of games that focus HARD on one or the other (like slay the princess for example, its like an interactive audio book, there isnt much gameplay but it goes hard on narrative), so obviously the balance of gameplay and story isnt applicable to every game, but for zelda in particular they say they are one but then still want the other part just as much? like the lore in skyward sword isnt great, the characters are strong though, the gameplay isnt that engaging (to me, since that needs to be said) i got through it mostly just bc i wanted to see what comes next and liked the characters, in botw the freedom and world and gameplay were like nothign i ever experienced, exploring was addictive and the story took a bit of a backseat, but it was fitting for the game and lend itself so well to theorize, in totk they .. idk what the focus was, the .. glue? the toys to glue together? nothing fits together there and each part works against another instead of together, somehow, its so weird to me

the thing is, if you do gameplay over story, you need to roll with it? if thats what it is then let the story take a backseat, make it subtle and in the background or vague, dont stuff the game full of unskippable cutscenes where a character you dont care about explains you a thing you already figured out through the gameplay; like the zelda dragon point, let the design of the dragon and its music, what its carrying speak for itself, the way the deku tree is weirded out by the sword moving, maybe a quick subtle voice line once you get the sword fading away like the last parts of her soul being whispered away- but dont mention it in one of the first cutscenes, fail to bury it in 'thats illegal though and irreversible so nono dont you do it' (why mention it then huh) allude to it multiple times, and then just straight up show it (i get people like the scene but man, it would have been way cooler to figure it out yourself)

same goes for the fake zelda thing, the weird way she said the bloodmoon text already alluded to it, have her show up here and there but vanish before you (no "omg thats zelda omg what is she dooooing") , or go even harder and make her an NPC standing around the world interacting with you all nromally but animals react weirldy to her- make the midfight against her (maybe even that she isnt talking so you are unsure if its actually her but controlled by sth else, or talk all normally while literally going for your throat) and then have her dissolve into goop and woa the bloodmoon thing is without her now the zelda you have been talking to has been fake the whole time, its creepy!! leave out the stupid cutscenes of showing it multiple times!! stop monologing at me!!

ppl that dont care about it can go and do a fight and i can think about it! everyone wins yahoo!

(actually ... if you leave out all the cutscenes in totk i feel like it improves the game by alot ...)

(what my point in the previous thing was in the end that you can repeat the same old trope only so many times without changing anything before it gets boring as hell, like what you said here, and the series seems to really be setting itself on fire bc it just wants to do the trope of old so badly and at some point its gonna drag down even the best of gameplays like gameplay over story means (to me) gameplay is prioritized so whatever narrative there is is in the background, subtle and not overtly in your face with big cutscenes etc- but what i feel like its often supposed to mean is "its fine if theres a shitty story that makes no sense pasted on top bc they prioritize gameplay so stop complaining" like to me what it should mean is more gameplay, less story, a measure of quantity not of quality, but what i feel like it often means is better gameplay, bad story, a measure of quality, not quantity )

maybe my problem lies elsewhere and im just projecting it on gameplay > story, that could very much be the case, i could have a fundamental missunderstanding about this here, im still just a guy with opinions in the end and got no knowledge about anything other than i play games sometimes and these are the things i like and dislike and would do differently *puts my head in my hands*

idk if im making sense, im usually not very good at explaining how i feel or think :/ (or i THINK im bad at it, autism be damned)

(sorry this got so long again ......................)

[antarticoftheattic]

R. F kuang is a genius of dark academia and i can be mistaken but I think most of it comes from her experience

Sorry for grammar errors or if my writing don't seen easy to understand! English ain't my first language!

I haven't seen interviews of Rebecca neither know much of her life story but all I heard of her and from her information of her books is that she is an academic weapon,she dealt with problems with her identity as a Chinese woman and she captured perfectly how the academic environment feels like for people who fits and don't,

It eats you and spits you

All of her books include at least one aspect from dark academia (Yellow face don't but it complies to part of my thesis) and we have one thing in common the presence of a Chinese character who have to change who he are and cover his identity in pursue to be accepted at this environment, in The poppy war we see Rin a poor girl from the south with no opportunities to rise up if not by the academic success and when she finally makes to sinegard she is ostracized because of her speech, her customs, skin and origin, and by the Hesperians we see at a whole this aspect of an European people seeing them self's as superiors even though Rin is an academic weapon a genius she is still seen as uncivilized or uncultured, and her main motivation against the Hesperians is because they want to erase her erase her culture her people and the only characters who are from Nikan who barely are treated humanly are those who mimick the Hesperian way, like Babel, In Babel we see other character, also Chinese but raised in England into privilege and an academic life having to be grateful for being 'saved' by a man who didn't even saw him as a person, he didn't refused the parenthood of Robin or Griffin became he already was married but because he didn't saw Chinese people as people, he just had them as a "linguistic experiment", so he stripped Griffin and Robin from their homes, culture and costumes, forced them to act like Europeans, think like them and at some point there is a scene of Babel were Robin itself says that he had problems to recognize his own language, and the fact Griffin don't dream at Chinese anymore made Lovell just toss him away, Letty englobates this feeling perfectly she is an European privileged girl, she is a woman at old times and at an academic ambient but she always down the pain of the characters like the moment Victoire is speaking of how important some words are the " crioulo-haitiano" (at my language, I haven't read Babel in English and I don't know the translation for this word) and Letty just say her to stop being emotional and do it or the moment that ramy speaks of the racism and she just speaks "your skin is so beautiful" or something like that, I haven't read Babel in a time, and we can see she treats Robin into a different way than Victoire or Ramy and Ramy says at a moment "Robin is the only of us who pass as white" and that's why Letty never could understand them because she didn't saw then as people if they weren't mimicking an "civilized people", She didn't loved Ramy truly,it was just a defy for her, conquer a man who wanted nothing with her but she saw as unworthy of denying her, and at Yellow face we see things by the eye of the privileged by the eyes of a white person and for the first time into Her books the main character ain't the oppressed, she satirizes the frustration of the white people the person who envies the one who is a minority and can be better than them,an Author of my country (i forgot his name now) spoke one time " the privileged is angry for loosing the right of being mediocre' and Rebecca shows us that perfectly, how Juno has so much racist internalized thoughts mixed with envy and anger of her own mediocrity and then when the consequences of her action turn against her she fully victimizes herself

Rebecca had much access to academic ambients and she portrays perfectly the feeling of knowing you think like them you have a mind sharper like them but that you have to mimick what they seem as civilized to fit and how colonialism ain't just the one we learn from school but the one that changes a culture by itself per example here at Brazil Readings were Elitized at past, the writers mostly just wrote based on European books, hard words themes you had to know and when a writer wrote Macunaíma, a Brazilian book with Brazilian roots it was seen without seriousness, and until now even my own literature teacher said that "Macunaima is one of the worst books ever written".

Maybe my thoughts are to disorganized here but I guess you can understand the point 😀 love you allll, 😘ฅ bye 🐣🦅🐦🐌

[softantlers]

do you still like shaunamari after the finale?

Yeah, so I have a lot of complicated feelings and I'm going to answer more than just this question if that's okay!

Honestly, so let's fucking talk about Shauna Shipman! Uhhhh. Wow. What I'll say is that I had a particular view of her in season 2 and it was sort of my guiding view of her throughout the initial episodes of season 3 (which is also when I sort of began to ship her and Mari). I've noticed that a lot of Shauna stans are in the TRENCHES regarding the last few episodes of s3 and tbh I actually am very sympathetic to that because I think her character was treated in a way that was extremely disappointing this season.

My read on Shauna is that she does horrible terrible things but I don't think of her as an absolute evil bitch with no soul. I've always considered her to be profoundly maladjusted with a lot of internalized and externalized rage. Make no mistake: she hurts people, but she DOES have feelings about it. She was devastated by Jackie dying and Javi dying (and obviously her baby). Shauna's coping mechanism is to misplace the guilt and terrible feelings that come with those deaths, and while it's not an awesome quality, it's an understandable one for a teenager surviving profound trauma in the wilderness. Even with Lottie, it's clear she regretted beating her (but not an excuse, and doesn't make it less condemnable).

My read on Shauna is that she denies guilt and blame as a survival mechanism. She absolutely cannot be accountable or she WILL FUCKING DIE. It makes sense. She had some high school drama bullshit with her best friend and was too young and immature to realize how high the stakes were in the wilderness and the love of her fucking life died about it. Like Jesus Christ. How do you deal with that besides convincing yourself it wasn't your fault???

What I really didn't like about this season is that the writers went totally Wilderness Jigsaw with her and denied her the humanity of having fully realized feelings. I find it quite unbelievable that she would have done all the things she did this season without having at least SOME quickly repressed guilt. We honestly didn't need all that much to make her a fully realized character. Have her with a conflicted expression after she does some fuckshit. Have a scene where she looks upset but her features smooth out as she settles into her coping skill of "Not Being the Problem "

With regard to Mari's death I hated the scene because the person in the scene isn't really Shauna to me. First of all, this is the most profound violence the girls have seen, even including the plane crash. Their time in the wilderness did not make them immune to this shit. Also this is the first true YJ murder out there (one of THEM). Not even that but no one fucking knew about the pit. The Shauna in my head would have dodged behind a tree to puke her brains out because she is fundamentally a teenager and HOLY SHIT THINGS HAVE GOTTEN TOO REAL. Maybe she would have pulled herself together and pretended everything was okay, but... It wouldn't be. How could it be? And if her final thought is "we were having fun out there," let that be part of the cope too. It makes her so much more fucking interesting.

Instead, the writers denied her a soul and made her honestly fucking boring (ref intended). The same with Lottie, they struggled to give her nuance and failed their central thesis, "We can do horrible despicable things and still be human." Yeah, I guess not if you're Shauna Shipman?

So again, I have a lot of problems with Shauna this season but the most pressing is that I think she received a sort of character assassination and that's why I'm kind of sad for her stans because they are left defending a fully realized character when they got some absolute fuckshit instead and that REALLY sucks. Like she's not my favorite character at all but I'm even sad about it.

Soooo to answer your question... This iteration of Shauna? Tbh I don't ship her with anyone because she's just too blank of a canvas. In my head, I can ship a more authentic version of her with various people, possibly Mari, but I'm kind of struggling with it now with where they put her this season.

[veal-exe]

I would genuinely love to hear more of your thoughts on berserk if you're willing to share

Okay I'm back from doing laundry.

Here's my essay, it's titled 'Griffith from Berserk did nothing wrong' and I am only dubiously joking.

I'm only really going to discuss the Golden Era arc because this conversation started up again when I showed my wife the anime since she is currently reading the manga because I grabbed her with my Berserk Loving Rat Paws.

The good anime to be clear. Like, the old one.

I also do genuinely love Berserk, if I didn't I would not care nearly as much, Berserk is deeply important to me and fundamental to who I am as a person.

It's long so it's under a cut.

PART ONE: HOLY SHIT GUTS AND CASCA ARE A BAD PAIRING, AND MIURA WAS A GREAT ARTIST WHO COULD NOT WRITE HIS WAY OUT OF A WET PAPER BAG

First and foremost, I really, genuinely, with my full chest believe that the biggest victim in Berserk is Griffith. I was not kidding. Yes, that Griffith. And yes, I mean that fully seriously, not ironically, not as a bit. If you step back and look at the story without immediately plugging your emotions into the “hero good / villain bad” pipeline, what you see is that Griffith’s arc is one of the most horrifying, tragic downfalls I’ve ever seen. It’s devastating. It’s slow, it’s painful, and it’s not a clean, satisfying fall from grace, it’s messy and sad and deeply human.

When I say Griffith is the biggest victim, I’m not saying Femto did nothing wrong, I am going to separate Griffith from Femto, because to me they are literally entirely different characters, you know what, not even 'to me', I am making the argument that they are different characters. Fullstop.

So to be clear, we’re talking about Griffith, before the Eclipse. You could make an extremely strong case that he did less wrong than almost anyone else in Berserk, including Guts and Casca. He was a kid in a horrible world trying to survive the only way he knew how, and until everything falls apart, he’s actually frighteningly restrained. If we’re going to sit around and get on Griffith’s choices, we need to get on everyone’s choices. I’m here to point out that the way everyone else treats him is what sets the whole disaster into motion. And once you start seeing that, it gets really hard to unsee. Berserk is one of the most breathtaking pieces of visual storytelling ever created.

The art deserves all the praise in the world, Miura’s linework, his ability to capture emotion and scale and horror all at once, the sheer texture of his panels, it’s stunning. Absolutely historic. But. With love in my heart, and enormous respect for what he built, I also think Miura was a pretty terrible writer. And I mean that not in the “he had bad ideas” way, he had amazing ideas.

But in the sense that so often, you can feel what the story wants to say, and then watch in real-time as the actual events fail to deliver it. You can tell he had a powerful emotional thesis, but the way the plot unfolds, the way characters are handled, the way consequences ripple, they don’t line up with that thesis at all.

It’s like watching someone trying to sculpt a cathedral with their bare hands: the vision is brilliant, but the tools aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.

The result is still beautiful, still painful, but it's often beautiful and painful in the wrong ways.

Okay, back to my rent-lowering gunshot: Guts and Casca are a terrible pairing.

And not in the fun "angst but they're soulmates" way, either.

They are an absolute walking disaster.

Two deeply traumatized, frightened, isolated kids trying to hold onto something warm and human and in the process, ripping Griffith to absolute fucking confetti shreds.

That's an incredible story. It’s deeply compelling. It's one of the best parts of Berserk for me, because it’s so messy and honest about how love and trauma and violence can become tangled up beyond recognition. Or it would be if Miura intended that even a little bit.

But it makes me very skeptical, very wary, of anyone who looks at Guts and Casca and sees them as a "beautiful, good, meaningful" love story.

Because if you actually sit with what happens, the ways they fail each other, the ways they push Griffith aside and to breaking, the ways they each prioritize their own pain without understanding the ecosystem they’re inside of, you see two people who were never equipped to love each other safely and who don't care who they hurt in the process of achieving their own pleasure (physical, emotional) to the extent that they drive a man they claim to love to attempt suicide. TWICE!

And it’s important to sit with that. Not to condemn them entirely, they’re victims too. They’re just as trapped as Griffith in some ways.

But to pretend their relationship is some pure, shining beacon of hope is not only misunderstanding Berserk it’s misunderstanding human relationships.

If Miura intended them to be seen as some kind of idealized, tragic romance? Then it just loops back around to what I said earlier: he was a dogshit writer.

PART TWO: GRIFFITH DID NOTHING WRONG FOR REAL THIS TIME AND IF YOU READ CANON AS IS GUTS AND CASCA ARE TERRIBLE AWFUL GENUINELY VILLAINS OF PEOPLE AND EVEN WORSE FRIENDS

The core of this entire situation the thing that drives me up the wall every time I think about it, is how Guts and Casca just never communicate. Ever. Not once do any of them sit down and talk to Griffith about their fears, desires, and feelings. It’s all based on assumptions and observations from a distance, and that is what destroys everything. It’s infuriating. And you could argue those are purposeful character traits and if they are then cool that is FINE but it still makes them the villains of this tale.

Let’s break this down properly: Griffith, at his core, isn’t a guy who’s out there trying to manipulate his friends for the hell of it. His ambition? Sure, fine, power and control, but it’s also survival. His dream is the dream, he wanted a better world, that requires him to make some incredibly difficult decisions. Some of those decisions come across as cold and calculating, I guess, not really imho but sure let's make that argument, but none of it means or even implies he doesn’t care about Guts and Casca. He’s just inserted them cleanly into his vision of the future.

But no one, no one, actually sits down with him to ask what he really means when he makes these decisions.

Guts leaves Griffith in his a vulnerable moment without saying a word to him, without hearing him out, and decides that Griffith doesn’t need him anymore. But Griffith does need him, and he shows that. He tells Guts not to leave. He’s desperate. He's willing to fight Guts physically about it. And Guts? He hears only what he thinks Griffith is saying, not what Griffith is actually feeling. Because he overheard Griffith manipulating a princess once for political reasons and assumed that everything Griffith was saying to this person Guts KNOWS he has been manipulating/lying to, for political reasons, is just gospel truth.

If intentional canon: Guts is a fucking idiot to the point where it is malicious, there is a point where stupidity becomes Malice, and if this was an intentional writing choice then Guts crosses that line.

If unintentional: Guts is a fucking idiot to the point where it is malicious, there is a point where stupidity becomes Malice, and if this was an intentional writing choice then Guts crosses that line.

All so Guts can go on a spiritual fucking journey to learn 'yup, I do like swinging a big sword around' oh, my god, Oh My God, genuinely it's hard to even fucking type what I'm thinking out because what is there to say, dude comes back a year later and goes 'haha this was my family after all :)' damn, would have been cool if you had talked with Griffith ever, maybe sorted all that out in a meaningful way before you drove him to suicide via political outrage.

Back to Casca, who adores Griffith, to the point of seeing him as a god, who suddenly pulls away because Griffith’s not "free" to be with her, because to realize his dream he has to marry a Princess, something Griffith does not even want and knows it will not make him happy but it isn't about him being happy it's about Changing Things, presumably for the Better because up until the Eclipse and not including political shit that is basically necessary in the setting, Griffith is a pretty fucking nice guy for that world.

Casca sees how Griffith interacts with Charlotte, how Griffith was absolutely buttering her up for fully political reasons, and assumes that Griffith doesn’t care about her anymore. Convinced that Griffith’s fallen out of favor with her or whatever the fuck she thought was going on, and honestly, that’s the moment the whole thing starts to fall apart for me.

Like i think her character falling into Guts’ arms was genuine misogyny from Miura at work because she goes on a big monologue earlier about Griffith's nature and his support of her and then goes ‘welp since we can never marry i am so tragic so horny, I better fuck his best friend and talk about running away to fuck his best friend in front of him after his year of gruesome torture’

Let's talk about that! Griffith spends an entire year being tortured, physically and emotionally after you know, the suicide attempt via politics. It’s not just some "oh, he’s a little beat up" situation. It’s torture the kind that destroys everything he is, physically and mentally. And yet, when Guts and Casca return to save him, they’re tending to each other’s wounds right in his range of vision but not his, physical or mental. He’s right there, literally dying in front of them, and they don’t even meaningfully acknowledge him.

It’s heartbreaking. He literally NEEDS their help and support, but they’re too caught up in their own feelings to see him. The irony? He was never as cold or manipulative with them as they made him out to be. He was always the one who protected them. And yet, they never actually communicated with him. Ever.

Let’s talk about Casca again for a second, because I think this is where it gets particularly ugly. Griffith was the only one who ever really saw her, who trusted her with the responsibility of leading his army. He didn’t view her as just a woman, or some tool for his personal gain. He trusted her because of her strength. Griffith is the least misogynistic person to Casca, ever, Guts is regularly a misogynistic bastard towards her even, and she still falls into his arms. Which again, cool writing Miura, misogynistic as fuck, and to be clear I don't have issue with the in-universe misogyny, especially because it is used so well to show pointedly how Griffith is so much not like that.

And yet, when he’s tortured, when he’s physically destroyed, when he’s lying there, on the verge of death...

Casca just drops him. She abandons him emotionally and intends to do so literally physically because he's Not as Hot or Cool I Guess after being tortured. It’s not even about what he’s been through or the fact that he’s Griffith, that guy who they once followed with unwavering loyalty. No, it’s the aesthetic of it. The ugliness of it. And in that moment, it’s so clear that Casca’s fall into Guts’ arms is just gross, it's morally gross, I'm sorry but like, Guts and Casca are the villains of Berserk and the post torture scene is my biggest proof of it.

Like, Okay, Fine, Guts and Casca aren’t the only ones who fucked up in this story. Griffith isn’t some poor, entirely misunderstood meow meow angel. But the reality is that none of these characters ever take the time to communicate with each other. They act on assumptions, on misreadings, on their own internal struggles that they refuse to voice. Griffith, even in his darkest moment, isn’t the manipulative monster they think he is. He’s a man whose dreams, and whose pride, and whose sense of self have been entirely shattered. He’s a man who, even after everything, still wants more than anything for the people who are supposed to be by his side to be by his fucking side.

Instead of sitting down and talking about their fears, their worries, and their needs, Guts and Casca both allow their insecurities to fester. They turn away from Griffith at the exact moment he needs them the most, and that is what drives everything into the hell of the Eclipse.

Griffith did not cause the events of the Eclipse.

Guts and Casca caused the events of the Eclipse.

It’s insulting. It’s insulting because Griffith, for all his faults, never abandoned them. He may have been politically manipulative, but he also protected them, even when it cost him. Meanwhile, Guts and Casca just walk away, assume the worst, and then act like they have no idea why everything went wrong.

They never get it. They never see the reality of Griffith’s existence. They never see Griffith as a person. As far as the writing of Berserk goes as is, it's about two horny assholes who cause an apocalyptic event because one orgasm on a riverbank is more important to them than giving a shit about the person they claim to love, as far as the canon writing of Berserk goes, Casca and Guts are abusers even if they do not mean to be abusive which like, is fine honestly! It's a compelling story beat about how abuse victims can perpetuate the cycle of abuse, or it would be if the author intended that at all, but he didn't, so unfortunately, on accident, Casca and Guts are villains, end of story.

I am gonna level with everyone, I hate the Berserk Cuck Wagon more than almost any story beat on earth I hate it so fucking much it makes me want to eat my arms up to the elbow. I hate that in order to make the story move along Miura had to be king shit of misogyny mountain and have Casca jump on Guts' sword (his benis) right there in front of Griffith (not literally but sure as shit talking about it) who had, again, been tortured for a year.

'Well they didn't know he was watching!'

Even if he had been out of eye and earshot I would not, while someone I loved lay dying, talk about how I was going to abandon him for a nonexistent romance and some mid fucking dick and anyone who would do so is just a bad person who needs to get better soon thanks, point blank.

So, in the end, when it comes down to it:

Pre Eclipse: Casca did wrong. Guts did wrong. Griffith did nothing wrong.

Post Eclipse: Femto does a whole fuckload of wrong.

Thesis: Griffith is the victim of Berserk.

[o-uncle-newt]

I guess the only person who can really be trusted to describe the greatness of Agatha Christie is Dorothy L Sayers...?

A while back, the always-sharp @thesarahshay sent me an ask that caught me up on something that I'd carelessly written in some tags- I said that Agatha Christie was good at writing romance into her detective fiction, without really elaborating. I then spent multiple paragraphs attempting to elaborate, I'm not sure with how much success. Essentially, and you can click above to see for yourself, my thesis was that while Sayers was a much better literary stylist (and certainly better at writing romance) than Christie, when writing a detective novel, her seams show; Christie had a natural talent for knowing exactly what belongs in a detective story and creating and fitting all the right pieces together that create a seamless detective story, including motivations drawn by romance (though I think the actual romances are among the weaker elements- still MUCH better than those written by most of her peers, for the record).

I'd had trouble putting into words what I wanted to say (there was a convoluted metaphor about Barbies and Lego in there), and I'm not sure I was too convincing; but turns out that the person who said what I wanted to say the best was, in fact the great DLS herself.

There's a fabulous book that I 100% recommend called Taking Detective Stories Seriously, which is a compilation of about two years' worth of detective story reviews that Sayers wrote. I hadn't heard of most of the authors, and even when I had heard of the authors I'd rarely read the books, but it didn't matter, frankly. She's just such a great writer, so thoughtful and incisive and passionate about both the genre and good craftsmanship (not to mention good English), that everything she has to say including on novels that haven't been in print since the 30s is worth reading. She has generally great taste, though she has a much higher opinion of Margery Allingham than I do and doesn't like Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery as much as I'd thought she might (though the fact that a character in it insulted Unnatural Death may not have helped lol); but she also likes, to pick two very different writers who I too enjoy, HC Bailey and Mignon G Eberhart, and so she clearly has a good eye. (It's also entertaining to see her slowly force herself to admit that she likes Perry Mason...)

BUT ANYWAY.

She has three reviews of Agatha Christie books in the volume: Murder on the Orient Express, Why Didn't They Ask Evans, and Three Act Tragedy. She reviews all of them very positively, but it's her review of Three Act Tragedy (in my opinion, funnily enough, the weakest of the three) that she really gets to the core of Christie's genius. And it's actually fitting that it's for a book of hers that's on the more meh end of the scale- because it just shows how even meh Christie has an element of genius that other authors have to work hard for even in their best works.

She says:

Some time ago this column contained the statement that Hercule Poirot was "one of the few real detectives." It was a well-sounding phrase, and I have no quarrel with it, except that I am not quite clear what it meant. What I meant to write and what I thought I had written and what I now propose to write clearly with no mistake about it was and is this: Hercule Poirot is one of the few detectives with real charm. Plenty of authors assure us that their detectives are charming, but that is quite another thing. I don't know that Mrs Christie has ever said a word about the matter. She merely puts Poirot there, with all his little oddities and weaknesses, and there he is- a really charming person. And it is true, too, that he is "real," in the sense that we never stop to enquire whether his words and actions are suited to his character; they are his character, and we accept them as we accept the words and actions of any living person because they are a part of himself. Le style c'est l'homme. Indeed, when Mrs Christie is writing at the top of her form, as she is in Three Act Tragedy, all her characters have this reality. She does not postulate a character- retired actor, West End mannequin, family retainer- and put into its mouth sentiments appropriate to its station in life. She shows us character and behavior all of a piece. However surprising or enigmatic the behavior, we believe that everything took place just as she says it did, because we believe in the reality of the people. Poirot is charming, not because anybody says so, but because is is, and all her other people exist for us in the same objective manner. This is the great gift that distinguishes the novelist from the manufacturer of plots. Mrs Christie has given us an excellent plot, a clever mystery, and an exciting story, but her chief strength lies in this power to compel belief in these characters. [emphasis mine]

Sayers then proceeds to compare another author (or rather authors, the husband and wife pair GDH and M Cole) to Christie in this regard, moving on to another review. But in these three paragraphs she has, I think, said it better than anyone- that Christie's skill is in her naturalness, and how that naturalness compels us to believe in and immerse ourselves in her world. She is effortless and seamless.

To be clear, Sayers praises a lot of people in this book, and a lot of people's writing; but mostly she is praising their skill and ability to create what they have created. Here, she isn't quite praising that- she's praising the fact that the final product is so good that you can't even see the craftsmanship behind it, and that's, I think, what separates Christie from her peers. It's a power, and not one that can be broken down by a critic. She just has it.

I've said before that I don't think Sayers had this as a mystery writer, and I think she'd probably be the first to agree with that assessment; she certainly had a seemingly effortless skill as a prose writer (as these reviews show), but as a novelist she took construction seriously and wanted us to know this. That said, another person who I don't think has this, who I mention because he's someone who a lot of people compare Christie to (often negatively), is John Dickson Carr.

I've seen plenty of people say that Carr is a more sophisticated version of Christie, not just in mystery construction but in writing style, and equally prolific, creative, and versatile. I don't agree with this on most counts, but I think, honestly, that Carr is fine- but you can see the seams easily. He might have been prolific but his formulae are visible and his writing required intentionality on his part. By which I mean- Carr when he's trying to be funny is generally hilarious. Carr when he's trying to be scary is generally spine-tingling. But Carr when he's just trying to get to the next good bit is dull and mechanical. He needs to be paying attention and making an effort in order to be good, and we notice him doing this. Christie never has this problem; even when the actual stuff she's writing isn't high quality, she's never dull. Everything feels purposeful and organic, somehow.

Obviously, all of this is fundamentally subjective, and if there's one redeeming element it's that an incredibly smart lady agrees with me (by my interpretation, at least) and says it extremely well. But I'll be holding on to this one, if nothing else.

[becauseimanicequeen]

Because you like color related questions: What is your favorite color and what ql use it best?

Hi, Anon.

I love the question, but...

How can this artist who loves colors possibly choose a favorite among the things that give her life?

I know I'm crazy, but not that crazy! lol

So I'll just change the question a bit and steer this post in the direction I want (and give you more than you asked for). Okay? Okay!

I'm practically obsessed with one half of the traditional color wheel. And that's everything from purple, going into blue, and up to blue-green (or what most people call turquoise or teal, the latter which seems to have become really popular in the past few years). Throw some pink in there, preferably the neon/fluorescent kind, and black and you basically have my art, lol.

To summarize, though, my favorite colors are:

Purple

Blue

Blue-green (or what most people call turquoise or teal)

Pink

Black

With that said, let's move on to the second part of your question.

I can't remember if I've ever seen blue-green (turquoise/teal) in a QL (but my memory is fucked, so help me if you want).

When it comes to the other colors, I will share some moments from QLs where the colors are particularly beautiful (in my eyes), used in a great way in a particular scene, or when there's a color-coded character I like rather than focus on the use of a particular color throughout a whole series (the latter would turn into a thesis for each color, lol, and I just don't have the time or energy for that right now).

Let's start with black and then move through the others according to the color wheel.

I love black because it goes well with every other color. But I also love black because it's a color that can be used in shows/films without using it. And that's by filming night scenes.

I love night scenes in shows/films because it's many times used for the big emotional scenes, from confessions to breakups and everything in between.

The black might not be evident in all these particular images I've included below, but all these scenes play out in the dark of evening/night.

Like in To Be Continued when Ji practically confesses that he likes Achi but gets rejected (kind of):

When Zhou Shu Yi confesses his love for Gao Shi De in We Best Love: No. 1 For You:

Shu Yi is also one of my favorite QL characters, and he often wears black.

When Sailom confesses that he likes Namnuea in Wedding Plan:

Which I think has a deeper meaning since he can only ever truly be himself in the dark or in the company of Yiwa through a large part of the series.

Then there's Phat loosing his shit in La Pluie:

He finally got to unload some of the shit that had been weighing on him for so long, and I loved that scene so much.

And then there's My Stand-In that practically show a multitude of different emotions in their night scenes:

And Ming wears black a lot, which I've written about in this post about his clothes in particular, and in this one where I've also written about Joe's blue.

I could spend a whole post on night scenes, but I won't because I need to save some images for the other colors, lol.

So, moving on to pink!

For me, there are two characters/shows that stand out with the use of pink. The first one is Tankhun in KinnPorsche:

He's so ridiculous, such a drama queen, and that's exactly why I love him so much. And, he's constantly surrounded by pink.

Then there's Wandee Gooday. This series didn't just use pink, but neon pink, and I will forever and ever love this one for that:

The one above has some purple in it too, but the color on their skin, pillows, etc., has more red than blue in it, which (in my eyes) means it's verging more towards pink.

There's also this softer pink that's in contrast to the other images above. They're using different values, intensities, and hues of pink to create different moods/vibes in their scenes, and I love that.

Other honorable mentions (but I have to save on the images since tumblr only gives me 30... lol):

Tharn and Phaya's first (real) sex scene in The Sign (not the dreams). The neon pink is divine in that scene.

Maybe in Secret Crush on You as well. I can remember that there were neon lights. And, when there are neon lights, there has to be pink, right? (I will be rewatching this series for my Pride Month celebrations soon, so I might get to see how wrong I am, lol.)

The pink neon lights in Ai Di's club in Kiseki: Dear to Me were also divine.

Now, let's move on to purple.

I obviously have to mention Dee from Wandee Goodday here, because he just looks so good in purple:

Also, both Dee and Yak look good in purple:

Please, Wandee Goodday, give me more purple!

Other than this, I can't remember purple that well. So, let me share three examples that are a bit purple-ish. The first one is Kiseki: Dear to Me where the lights sometimes verge towards purple.

Then we have two different series where there are blueish and pinkish lights that, kind of, mix and create purple. The first one is this scene in KinnPorsche:

And the other one is this scene in Love in the Air:

They look really similar, don't they? And I absolutely love those colors together. That lighting is divine.

Next, we have blue.

Blue is used a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.

So I had to narrow it down a lot and choose a couple of blue characters and moments.

Let's start with this scene from Deep Night:

This is the scene where Pan and Ken start flirting with Seji like it's a competition. But what I love about this shot in particular (besides from the blue) is that Pan, who is the one who brings up poly, shows up between Seji and Ken in the shot (and in several scenes throughout the series). He's the one who brought all three of them together. And I love that he often stands in the middle. Also, he looks so good in blue.

Then there's Ji in To Be Continued who is surrounded by blue basically all the time because he's a blue character. And he looks really good in blue.

And then there's King from Bed Friend who is also gorgeous in all the blue hues:

Then I love this moment in Two Worlds:

These two got about 10 seconds in the finale, which was the highlight of this episode for me. Both of them practically propose to each other at the same time, both are dressed in blue and standing in front of those blueish pillars. I loved every single second of this scene as if each second was a whole hour long.

Then there's a whole series called Blue Boys, which meant I had to watch it as soon as I heard about it in April/May. The second part started yesterday with a new episode and I have to say that I really love this short series and its vibe (their chemistry is great, btw). And Nami's blue shirt:

That blue is gorgeous.

And then, last but not least, there's one of my favorite blue characters, and that's Saengtai in La Pluie:

I love this blue boy and his yellow boyfriend so much. They're one of my favorite couples in the QLs I've watched.

As an introvert (passing off as an extrovert, which makes me want to shut up and hide on purpose most of the time to protect my energy, lol) I can absolutely relate to Tai not wanting to socialize with everyone all the fucking time. He's chosen the people who get to drain energy from him (I wish I was that good at putting up boundaries, lol) so I'm not as annoyed by his silence as many others who watch this might be.

Yes, he hurt Phat's feelings. Yes, Phat had every right to run away when he was hurt. Yes, it was glorious to see Tai switching on his loyalty like never before when he realized how much he'd hurt Phat. And that whole episode of him searching for Phat and losing it when he found him healed parts of me I didn't even know were broken (lol).

If you haven't seen La Pluie, I recommend watching it.

Anyway...

There you have it, Anon. My favorite colors (because I can't choose one) and some of my favorite characters/moments including those colors.

Thank you for your ask.