#so deeply relevant to my interests

[superhousecat-once-again]

It’s all fun and games giving your game master little tidbits to torture your character and by extension you with until that actually starts happening

[dreadfuldevotee]

i am just...so profoundly tired of being me

[rooolt]

truly scouring the trailer for the next season of a show for my dear reoccurring character bestie who has never had a relevant plot line not including his childhood best friend and didn’t even get one of those last season. Is it too criminal to hope my king will do something?

[arolesbianism]

Funn oddity, both Ellie and Travaldo have the last name Jones. Idk if they're siblings or if it's just a coincidence, but a fun thing nonetheless

[bsotted]

"The subtext that undergirds this new anti-racist discourse—that Black-white relationships are inherently fraught and must be navigated with the help of professionals and technical experts—testifies to the impoverishment of our interracial imagination, not to its enrichment. More gravely, anti-color-blind etiquette treats Black Americans as exotic others, permanent strangers whose racial difference is so chasmic that it must be continually managed, whose mode of humanness is so foreign that it requires white people to adopt a special set of manners and 'race conscious' ritualistic practices to even have a simple conversation."*

*(emphasis mine)

By: Tyler Austin Harper

Published: Aug 14, 2023

The hotel was soulless, like all conference hotels. I had arrived a few hours before check-in, hoping to drop off my bags before I met a friend for lunch. The employees were clearly frazzled, overwhelmed by the sudden influx of several hundred impatient academics. When I asked where I could put my luggage, the guy at the front desk simply pointed to a nearby hallway. “Wait over there with her; he’s coming back.”

Who “he” was remained unclear, but I saw the woman he was referring to. She was white and about my age. She had a conference badge and a large suitcase that she was rolling back and forth in obvious exasperation. “Been waiting long?” I asked, taking up a position on the other side of the narrow hallway. “Very,” she replied. For a while, we stood in silence, minding our phones. Eventually, we began chatting.

The conversation was wide-ranging: the papers we were presenting, the bad A/V at the hotel, our favorite things to do in the city. At some point, we began talking about our jobs. She told me that—like so many academics—she was juggling a temporary teaching gig while also looking for a tenure-track position.

“It’s hard,” she said, “too many classes, too many students, too many papers to grade. No time for your own work. Barely any time to apply to real jobs.”

When I nodded sympathetically, she asked about my job and whether it was tenure-track. I admitted, a little sheepishly, that it was.

“I’d love to teach at a small college like that,” she said. “I feel like none of my students wants to learn. It’s exhausting.”

Then, out of nowhere, she said something that caught me completely off guard: “But I shouldn’t be complaining to you about this. I know how hard BIPOC faculty have it. You’re the last person I should be whining to.”

I was taken aback, but I shouldn’t have been. It was the kind of awkward comment I’ve grown used to over the past few years, as “anti-racism” has become the reigning ideology of progressive political culture. Until recently, calling attention to a stranger’s race in such a way would have been considered a social faux pas. That she made the remark without thinking twice—a remark, it should be noted, that assumes being a Black tenure-track professor is worse than being a marginally employed white one—shows how profoundly interracial social etiquette has changed since 2020’s “summer of racial reckoning.” That’s when anti-racism—focused on combating “color-blindness” in both policy and personal conduct—grabbed ahold of the liberal mainstream.

Though this “reckoning” brought increased public attention to the deep embeddedness of racism in supposedly color-blind American institutions, it also made instant celebrities of a number of race experts and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) consultants who believe that being anti-racist means undergoing a “journey” of radical personal transformation. In their righteous crusade against the bad color-blindness of policies such as race-neutral college admissions, these contemporary anti-racists have also jettisoned the kind of good color-blindness that holds that we are more than our race, and that we should conduct our social life according to that idealized principle. Rather than balance a critique of color-blind law and policy with a continuing embrace of interpersonal color-blindness as a social etiquette, contemporary anti-racists throw the baby out with the bathwater. In place of the old color-blind ideal, they have foisted upon well-meaning white liberals a successor social etiquette predicated on the necessity of foregrounding racial difference rather than minimizing it.

As a Black guy who grew up in a politically purple area—where being a good person meant adhering to the kind of civil-rights-era color-blindness that is now passé—I find this emergent anti-racist culture jarring. Many of my liberal friends and acquaintances now seem to believe that being a good person means constantly reminding Black people that you are aware of their Blackness. Difference, no longer to be politely ignored, is insisted upon at all times under the guise of acknowledging “positionality.” Though I am rarely made to feel excessively aware of my race when hanging out with more conservative friends or visiting my hometown, in the more liberal social circles in which I typically travel, my race is constantly invoked—“acknowledged” and “centered”—by well-intentioned anti-racist “allies.”

This “acknowledgement” tends to take one of two forms. The first is the song and dance in which white people not-so-subtly let you know that they know that race and racism exist. This includes finding ways to interject discussion of some (bad) news item about race or racism into casual conversation, apologizing for having problems while white (“You’re the last person I should be whining to”), or inversely, offering “support” by attributing any normal human problem you have to racism.

The second way good white liberals often “center” racial difference in everyday interactions with minorities is by trying, always clumsily, to ensure that their “marginalized” friends and familiars are “culturally” comfortable. My favorite personal experiences of this include an acquaintance who invariably steers dinner or lunch meetups to Black-owned restaurants, and the time that a friend of a friend invited me over to go swimming in their pool before apologizing for assuming that I know how to swim (“I know that’s a culturally specific thing”). It is a peculiar quirk of the 2020s’ racial discourse that this kind of “acknowledgement” and “centering” is viewed as progress.

My point is not that conservatives have better racial politics—they do not—but rather that something about current progressive racial discourse has become warped and distorted. The anti-racist culture that is ascendant seems to me to have little to do with combatting structural racism or cultivating better relationships between white and Black Americans. And its rejection of color-blindness as a social ethos is not a new frontier of radical political action.

No, at the core of today’s anti-racism is little more than a vibe shift—a soft matrix of conciliatory gestures and hip phraseology that give adherents the feeling that there has been a cultural change, when in fact we have merely put carpet over the rotting floorboards. Although this push to center rather than sidestep racial difference in our interpersonal relationships comes from a good place, it tends to rest on a troubling, even racist subtext: that white and Black Americans are so radically different that interracial relationships require careful management, constant eggshell-walking, and even expert guidance from professional anti-racists. Rather than producing racial harmony, this new ethos frequently has the opposite effect, making white-Black interactions stressful, unpleasant, or, perhaps most often, simply weird.

Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, progressive anti-racism has centered on two concepts that helped Americans make sense of his senseless death: “structural racism” and “implicit bias.” The first of these is a sociopolitical concept that highlights how certain institutions—maternity wards, police barracks, lending companies, housing authorities, etc.—produce and replicate racial inequalities, such as the disproportionate killing of Black men by the cops. The second is a psychologicalconcept that describes the way that all individuals—from bleeding-heart liberals to murderers such as Derek Chauvin—harbor varying degrees of subconscious racial prejudice.

Though “structural racism” and “implicit bias” target different scales of the social order—institutions on the one hand, individuals on the other—underlying both of these ideas is a critique of so-called color-blind ideology, or what the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “color-blind racism”: the idea that policies, interactions, and rhetoric can be explicitly race-neutral but implicitly racist. As concepts, both “structural racism” and “implicit bias” rest on the presupposition that racism is an enduring feature of institutional and social life, and that so-called race neutrality is a covertly racist myth that perpetuates inequality. Some anti-racist scholars such as Uma Mazyck Jayakumar and Ibram X. Kendi have put this even more bluntly: “‘Race neutral’ is the new “separate but equal.’” Yet, although anti-racist academics and activists are right to argue that race-neutral policies can’t solve racial inequities—that supposedly color-blind laws and policies are often anything but—over the past few years, this line of criticism has also been bizarrely extended to color-blindness as a personal ethos governing behavior at the individual level.

The most famous proponent of dismantling color-blindness in everyday interactions is Robin DiAngelo, who has made an entire (very condescending) career out of asserting that if white people are not uncomfortable, anti-racism is not happening. “White comfort maintains the racial status quo, so discomfort is necessary and important,” the corporate anti-racist guru advises. Over the past three years, this kind of anti-color-blind, pro-discomfort rhetoric has become the norm in anti-racist discourse. On the final day of the 28-day challenge in Layla Saad’s viral Me and White Supremacy, budding anti-racists are tasked with taking “out-of-your-comfort-zone actions,” such as apologizing to people of color in their life and having “uncomfortable conversations.” Frederick Joseph’s best-selling book The Black Friend takes a similar tack. The problem with color-blindness, Joseph counsels, is it allows “white people to continue to be comfortable.” The NFL analyst Emmanuel Acho wrote an entire book, simply called Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, that admonishes readers to “stop celebrating color-blindness.” And, of course, there are endless how-to guides for having these “uncomfortable conversations” with your Black friends.

Once the dominant progressive ideology, professing “I don’t see color” is now viewed as a kind of dog whistle that papers over implicit bias. Instead, current anti-racist wisdom holds that we must acknowledge racial difference in our interactions with others, rather than assume that race needn’t be at the center of every interracial conversation or encounter. Coming to grips with the transition we have undergone over the past decade—color-blind etiquette’s swing from de rigueur to racist—requires a longer view of an American cultural transition. Civil-rights-era color-blindness was replaced with an individualistic, corporatized anti-racism, one focused on the purification of white psyches through racial discomfort, guilt, and “doing the work” as a road to self-improvement.

Writing in 1959, the social critic Philip Rieff argued that postwar America was transforming from a religious and economic culture—one oriented around common institutions such as the church and the market—to a psychological culture, one oriented around the self and its emotional fulfillment. By the 1960s, Rieff had given this shift a name: “the triumph of the therapeutic,” which he defined as an emergent worldview according to which the “self, improved, is the ultimate concern of modern culture.” Yet, even as he diagnosed our culture with self-obsession, Rieff also noticed something peculiar and even paradoxical. Therapeutic culture demanded that we reflect our self-actualization outward. Sharing our innermost selves with the world—good, bad, and ugly—became a new social mandate under the guise that authenticity and open self-expression are necessary for social cohesion.

Recent anti-racist mantras like “White silence is violence” reflect this same sentiment: exhibitionist displays of “racist” guilt are viewed as a necessary precursor to racial healing and community building. In this way, today’s attacks on interpersonal color-blindness—and progressives’ growing fixation on implicit bias, public confession, and race-conscious social etiquette—are only the most recent manifestations of the cultural shift Rieff described. Indeed, the seeds of the current backlash against color-blindness began decades ago, with the application of a New Age, therapeutic outlook to race relations: so-called racial-sensitivity training, the forefather of today’s equally spurious DEI programming.

In her 2001 book, Race Experts, the historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn painstakingly details how racial-sensitivity training emerged from the 1960s’ human-potential movement and its infamous “encounter groups.” As she explains, what began as a more or less countercultural phenomenon was later corporatized in the form of the anemic, pointless workshops controversially lampooned on The Office. Not surprisingly, this shift reflected the ebb and flow of corporate interests: Whereas early workplace training emphasized compliance with the newly minted Civil Rights Act of 1964, later incarnations would focus on improving employee relations and, later still, leveraging diversity to secure better business outcomes.

If there is something distinctive about the anti-color-blind racial etiquette that has emerged since George Floyd’s death, it is that these sites of encounter have shifted from official institutional spaces to more intimate ones where white people and minorities interact as friends, neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances. Racial-awareness raising is a dynamic no longer quarantined to formalized, compulsory settings like the boardroom or freshman orientation. Instead, every interracial interaction is a potential scene of (one-way) racial edification and supplication, encounters in which good white liberals are expected to be transparent about their “positionality,” confront their “whiteness,” and—if the situation calls for it—confess their “implicit bias.”

In a vacuum, many of the prescriptions advocated by the anti-color-blind crowd are reasonable: We should all think more about our privileges and our place in the world. An uncomfortable conversation or an honest look in the mirror can be precursors to personal growth. We all carry around harmful, implicit biases and we do need to examine the subconscious assumptions and prejudices that underlie the actions we take and the things we say. My objection is not to these ideas themselves, which are sensible enough. No, my objection is that anti-racism offers little more than a Marie Kondo–ism for the white soul, promising to declutter racial baggage and clear a way to white fulfillment without doing anything meaningful to combat structural racism. As Lasch-Quinn correctly foresaw, “Casting interracial problems as issues of etiquette [puts] a premium on superficial symbols of good intentions and good motivations as well as on style and appearance rather than on the substance of change.”

Yet the problem with the therapeutics of contemporary anti-racism is not just that they are politically sterile. When anti-color-blindness and its ideology of insistent “race consciousness” are translated into the sphere of private life—to the domain of friendships, block parties, and backyard barbecues—they assault the very idea of a multiracial society, producing new forms of racism in the process. The fact that our media environment is inundated with an endless stream of books, articles, and social-media tutorials that promise to teach white people how to simply interact with the Black people in their life is not a sign of anti-racist progress, but of profound regression.

The subtext that undergirds this new anti-racist discourse—that Black-white relationships are inherently fraught and must be navigated with the help of professionals and technical experts—testifies to the impoverishment of our interracial imagination, not to its enrichment. More gravely, anti-color-blind etiquette treats Black Americans as exotic others, permanent strangers whose racial difference is so chasmic that it must be continually managed, whose mode of humanness is so foreign that it requires white people to adopt a special set of manners and “race conscious” ritualistic practices to even have a simple conversation.

If we are going to find a way out of the racial discord that has defined American life post-Trump and post-Charlottesville and post-Floyd, we have to begin with a more sophisticated understanding of color-blindness, one that rejects the bad color-blindness on offer from the Republican Party and its partisans, as well as the anti-color-blindness of the anti-racist consultants. Instead, we should embrace the good color-blindness of not too long ago. At the heart of that color-blindness was a radical claim, one imperfectly realized but perfect as an ideal: that despite the weight of a racist past that isn’t even past, we can imagine a world, or at least an interaction between two people, where racial difference doesn’t make a difference.

[ Via: https://archive.today/8zfvc ]

[nothorses]

"the public education system is intently evil and all teachers are abusive because it was the worst experience ever for me personally"

guys, look, I'm legitimately sorry that happened to you. that's fucked up. it shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen again to you or anyone else. I'm sorry.

public school was hard for me too, at times, and I'm still suffering the consequences for the harsh grading, the arbitrary deadlines, the hours of completely useless-to-me homework. I could name a few teachers who have been pretty fucking terrible. the fact that nobody considered getting me evaluated for ADHD has had an impact on my self image and academic success that I can't erase.

and also.

I grew up in an area where education, in particular, is incredibly progressive-leaning. educators are working really hard to create and try out education philosophies and practices that prioritize kids and their learning, rather than teachers and what they think kids should learn.

My sex ed was comprehensive, and came entirely from school. My gay sixth grade teacher taught me about HIV/AIDs in a useful, accurate way. In high school, I learned about the way orgasms work & I was prepared not to feel shame for normal stuff.

I learned that Communism was not what the USSR actually practiced, and what it really means. I learned about atrocities and, specifically, the genocide of indigenous people committed in/by the US. I learned about the military industrial complex, the school-to-prison pipeline, and I learned about manifestations of racism specific to my local area. I learned about Stonewall, and the intersection of the civil rights movement with gay rights and disability justice.

My creative writing teacher taught us about LSD, and the real reasons we shouldn't do it, after a hilariously ineffective assembly run by some local cops. He spoke gently, carefully, and emphatically about his friends and his own experiences. Later in the semester, he read us a story he wrote about two gay men finding each other in a deeply homophobic environment.

My sci-fi teacher made me feel safe & seen as a kid with "weird" interests. My US History teacher helped me research and put together a 10-page paper on the modern relevance and mission of Feminism. My government teacher made me feel appreciated for the work I put into the class, and the thought I put into what I said in it, even though he disagreed with a lot of it. My sixth grade teacher bought me books to read with his personal money, whichever ones I asked for. My third grade teacher made me feel safe. My science teacher in middle school made me excited for and passionate about science, and saw and nurtured the effort I put into her class.

A lot of stuff sucks, absolutely. But I am seeing new teaching methods being tried out all the time, and I am watching teachers get really excited when I teach their students about the roots of modern graffiti in US black history & to question property laws, and just...

There's hope. there are so many people doing so much work to make things better. so many people agree with you on what education should be, and are trying so fucking hard to put that into action, and so many public schools- not just teachers, but whole schools and even districts- are really doing that work. so much is getting better.

I had more to say, about necessary childcare and trusted adults and outside contacts and time away from abusive family. But like. Please just sit down and listen to more people on this, and please talk to educators and education professionals about what's really going on in this big huge world of philosophy, science, and practice.

[tossawary]

I don't have a solid plot attached to this idea, I don't currently really have the desire to drop everything to go write "The Hobbit" fanfiction, but for a while I've had the idea of *gestures vaguely" some post-canon story (probably some form of fix-it) taking place before, during, and after a grand dwarven opera performance in Erebor.

Because I am absolutely certain that the Lonely Mountain had an absolutely stunningly beautiful Royal Opera House (and plenty of other, less grand performance halls) that, at the city's height, was putting at least one show every single day. Orchestral symphonies, operas and operettas, dramatic plays, dance performances... you name it, they had it and more. The various cultures of Middle Earth evidently ADORE music, dwarves absolutely included. The Company all bring instruments to Bag End to play and sing themselves off before their quest!

Also, beyond the music side of things, with how dwarves are named as master crafters? Smiths and toymakers and magicians? No way that they did not have some of the most gorgeous costumes, sets, and effects on the planet. Dwarves would go WILD with their articulated stage puppets, I know it.

One of my biggest issues with the film trilogy is that it failed to deeply explore the Company as people who had lost their home, beauty and culture included. Smaug not only killed countless people, entire families, and leave many of the survivors poor and desperate, the dragon went on to hoard their heirlooms and life's work and leave these priceless gold treasures UNUSED. It is an additional heartbreak to imagine Smaug tearing through Erebor neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house, so that he could tear out every gemstone in, say, mosaic made by someone's grandmother that sat above the breakfast table every morning. To think that Smaug in the aftermath tore magical lanterns off the walls, the sort that might have been decorated with animals or flowers, to make some daycare walkway just a little more cheery for the children, and in his greed left a dead city in the dark.

The live-action movies put both Smaug and the Balrog in these... absolutely enormous chambers that serve somewhat unclear purposes. The king's treasure vault and a former marketplace, I think? (Moria has been raised by goblins, I can forgive the emptiness.) It's a quick visual depiction of Thror's uncontrollable gold lust to give him a Scrooge McDuck room, sure, instead of anything with an actual organizational system (normally, I assume dwarves are big on sorting their vaults if they have one). Super big columns and hallways and staircases do somewhat effectively communicate the "lost glory" of Moria (I am very fond of these movies!!!), even if I also think it's not as interesting as it could have been. And the other obvious purpose of big, open warehouse-like spaces is 1) it's easier to animate the big creatures moving around in them generally and 2) it allows the films to show off the full-bodied visual spectacle of their big creatures.

But I think it would have also kicked ass to put Smaug in Erebor's former Royal Opera House or something, some enormous theatre decorated across generations. That could be big! The ART (statues, fountains, banners, windows, general architecture) that you could put on the exterior, which has had its face ripped open for the dragon to get inside? The ART that you could put INSIDE (mosaics, murals, and more) as Bilbo sneaks inside? Ohhh, you could include so many potential lore references with thematic relevance!

Also, Bilbo could get jump-scared by old articulated stage puppets or something. IT'S THE DRAGON-! Oh, no, it's some old opera prop. (Yes, we're talking more about an actual adaptation of "The Hobbit" rather than fanfiction concepts now.)

Sure, there's raw material treasure and coins hoarded here in this place, but there would also be musical instruments and toys and household tools and cookware and fancy dishes, wedding jewelry and anniversary gifts and family shrines and festival costumes, fountain statues and street lamps and mailboxes and business signs, and other evidence that people really LIVED here. These are all ordinary objects that Bilbo recognizes from the Shire.

We could tie these objects directly back to objects we saw featured in Bilbo's home early in this adaptation, which he was trying to "protect" from the dwarves during their "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" song. There are half-burned portraits of people's late parents here too. Did he think that there weren't any dwarves who made doilies or handkerchiefs embroidered with flowers? Of course they made things like that too.

It's perfectly symbolic to, say, place Smaug's bed in an area like the king's throne room. The dragon is now the King Under The Mountain. But I think it would be deliciously haunting to have the throne room of Erebor be empty, the throne half-broken, the silver stripped from the walls and moved elsewhere, because Smaug doesn't care about Thror's old audience chamber. What's a dwarf king to a dragon? He burns the same as all the others. The dragon has instead made his bed in a beautiful public place of art and culture that was for the people, by the people, surrounded by the lovingly crafted belongings of the ordinary people he killed. Gold is gold to a dragon whether it's in a coin or a candlestick.

I think if you really want to sell one of the key messages of "The Hobbit", which in my opinion is: "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." then you ought to throw yourself behind EREBOR being a place where food and cheer and song had value, not just the Shire. Thorin isn't lost at the end because he's a dwarf and dwarves don't value such things, but because he as a specific person who makes the mistake of weighing pride and gold over people, and he comes to regret that on his deathbed.

So, back to the fanfiction idea, I think that Erebor had music again in it as soon as dwarves started living in it again. It will take decades and decades before the Royal Opera House is half as splendid as it was before, and there is a performance there with beautiful costumes and puppets and sets comparable to those that came before, some traditional historical show that is part of specific seasonal holiday for dwarves. But that very first winter, when the future still looked grim, I think the dwarves cleared out a small stage and cast the roles of this traditional musical retelling of their history among them, based on who knew the parts best, because they aren't just miners and smiths and soldiers, and there was music again in Erebor that winter despite all the damage that the dragon did.

[anarchotolkienist]

you’re attacking that neopagan kind of birthstone post about druid plants, but could you please elaborate or at least clarify the explicit trope that is being used that has been historically weaponized?

I used to spend about a good third of my time on this godforsaken website attacking that idea, but sure, I'll do it again. This will be a bit of an effortpost, so I'll stick it under the readmore

There is a notion of 'celts' or Gaels as being magicial and somehow deeply in touch with nature and connected to pre-Christian worldviews that the people who decided to make up the "Celtic tree astrology" used. This is also why Buffy used Irish Gaelic as the language of the demons, why Warhammer uses Gaelic as Elvish, why garbled Scottish Gaelic is used by Wiccans as the basis for their new religious construct, why people call themselves Druids to go an say chants in bad Welsh in Stonehenge, or Tursachan Chalanais, or wherever, etc etc. This stuff is everywhere in popular culture today, by far the dominant view of Celtic language speaking peoples. Made up neopagan nonsense is the only thing you find if you go looking for Gaelic folklore, unless you know where to look, and so on and so on. I could multiply examples Endless, and in fact have throughout the lifespan of this blog, and probably will continue to.

To make a long history extremely brief (you can ask me for sources on specifics, or ask me to expand if you're interested), this is directly rooted in a mediaeval legalistic discussion in Catholic justifications for the expansionist policies of the Normans, especially in Ireland, who against the vigourous protestation of the Church in Ireland claimed that the Gaelic Irish were practically Pagan in practice and that conquest against fellow Christians was justified to bring them in like with the Church. That this was nonsense I hope I don't need to state. Similar discourses about the Gaels in Scotland exist at the same time, as is clear from the earliest sources we have postdating the Gaelic kingdom of Alba becoming Scotland discussing the 'coastal Scots' - who speak Ynglis (early Scots) and are civilised - and the 'forest Scots' (who speak 'Scottis' (Middle Gaelic) and have all the hallmarks of barbarity. This discourse of Gaelic savagery remains in place fairly unchanged as the Scottish and then British crowns try various methods for integrating Gaeldom under the developing early state, provoking constant conflict and unrest, support certain clans and chiefs against others and generally massively upset and destabilise life among the Gaels both in Scotland and Ireland. This campaign, which is material in root but has a superstructure of Gaelic savagery and threat justifying it develops through attempts at assimilation, more or less failed colonial schemes in Leòdhas and Ìle, the splitting of the Gaelic Irish from the Gaelic Scots through legal means and the genocide of the Irish Gaels in Ulster, eventually culminates in the total ban on Gaelic culture, ethnic cleansing and permanent military occupation of large swathes of Northern Scotland, and the destruction of the clan system and therefore of Gaelic independence from the Scottish and British state, following the last rising in 1745-6.

What's relevant here is that the attitude of Gaelic barbarity, standing lower on the civilisational ladder than the Anglo Saxons of the Lowlands and of England, was continuously present as a justification for all these things. This package included associations with the natural world, with paganisms, with emotion, and etc. This set of things then become picked up on by the developing antiquarian movement and early national romantics of the 18th century, when the Gaels stop being a serious military threat to the comfortable lives of the Anglo nobility and developing bourgeoise who ran the state following the ethnic cleansing after Culloden and permanent occupation of the Highlands (again, ongoing to this day). They could then, as happened with other colonised peoples, be picked up on and romanticised instead, made into a noble savage, these perceived traits which before had made them undesirable now making them a sad but romantic relic of an inexorably disappearing past. It is no surprise that Sir Walter Scott (a curse upon him and all his kin) could make Gaels the romantic leads of his pseudohistorical epics at the exact same time that Gaels were being driven from their traditional lands in their millions and lost all traditional land rights. These moves are related. This tradition is what's picked up on by Gardner when he decides to use mangled versions of Gaelic Catholic practice (primarily) as collected by the Gaelic folklorist Alasdair MacIlleMhìcheil as the coating for Wicca, the most influential neo-pagan "religion" to claim a 'Celtic' root and the base of a lot of oncoming nonsense like that Celtic Tree Astrology horseshit that started this whole thing, and give it a pagan coat of paint while also adding some half-understood Dharmic concepts (three-fold law anyone?) and a spice of deeply racist Western Esotericism to the mix. That's why shit like that is directly harmful, not just historically but in the present total blotting out of actually existing culture of Celtic language speakers and their extremely precarious communities today.

If you want to read more, I especially recommend Dr. Silke Stroh's work Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imaginary, Dr. Aonghas MacCoinnich's book Plantation and Civility in the North-Atlantic World, the edited collection Mio-rún Mór nan Gall on Lowland-Highland divide, the Gaelic writer known in English as Ian Crichton Smith's essay A real people in a real place on these impacts on Gaelic speaking communities in the 20th century, Dr. Donnchadh Sneddons essay on Gaelic racial ideas present in Howard and Lovecrafts writings, and Dr. James Hunter's The Making of the Crofting Community for a focus on the clearings of Gaels after the land thefts of the late 18th and early 19th century.

@grimdr an do chaill mi dad cudromach, an canadh tu?

[pointlesschairjokes]

A Needlessly In depth Analysis of the Hypnos Subplot thus far

So, the new update is out and my sleepy boy has gotten his own story moment. I have... concerns. Going purely off of dialog I'm worried the subplot is going to simply be comic relief. The joke set-up has been obvious. Mel thinks Hypnos is wise and powerful, everyone else is being sarcastic because they know he's a lazy goof. Hypnos wakes up, Mel's image of him is shattered, cue laughter. On the one hand, I would personally find that resolution disappointing because I'd like to see more done with his character, but on the other, I hold out hope because a purely comedic subplot just wouldn't make sense. I've seen comments here and there saying Hypnos must just be conked out cause Hades and Nyx aren't there to scold him, and if this were to be pure comedy that'd probably be the case. But, if there is one thing Hades 1 makes clear, even if you interpret Hypos' character in the shallowest possible way, he cares very deeply for those he loves. When he drops his cheerful tone to ask Than to spend more time with him, it is distinct, and he nearly tears up calling Zag his best friend. I simply do not buy that he would choose to sleep for years when it means being separated from his friends and family. But then again, the first games treatment of him was just a bit odd. The only time him being the god of sleep is relevant is a single line of flashback narration where we learn he's able to put the entire house, including Hades, to sleep. For the rest of the game no character acknowledges that it makes sense for the god of sleep to be sleepy, and his keepsake, the coin purse, has nothing to do with his aspect or his character. I really hope the subplot goes in a direction of addressing that disconnect. So as to what we actually have so far: the dream scene. A lot of what we see is fairly easy to interpret, Than is there resting close to Hypnos, Hypnos is surrounded by massive stacks of work with an angry Hades looming in the background. Now this is a bit interesting, as in the first game Hypnos appears oblivious to Hades anger in his interactions with him. Perhaps this is evidence that some of that cheeriness is a defense mechanism, its hard to say, but its clear that Hypnos feels overworked. I feel its also important that Mel remarks how unusual it is that he is still asleep inside the dream. Given that, and given that there's a craftable item involved, I suspect that the scenery of the dream is going to be different each time Mel uses the dream vapors. There may even be a puzzle involving the character cutouts. As for why Hypnos is asleep, its still unclear. Could it be exhaustion due to overwork? Possibly, although it wouldn't be the most satisfying answer. I'm actually a bit reluctant to say its Chronos' doing. None of his magic seems to operate in a way that would make sense in Hypnos' case. I'll throw out one wild theory though, that its actually the Fates who have put him to sleep. We know from the prophecy list that Mel is going to locate them at some point in the story, and thus far its completely unclear how. If she can communicate with them in dreams however... What could be a better ace in the hole than a god who not only is underestimated by everyone, but who's also in an 'eternal' slumber?

[k-tarotz]

PICK A CARD; Your & Your F/O’s Dynamic

PILE ONE PILE TWO PILE THREE

hii and welcome to this pick a card! 🫶🏻 it will be a reading related to your fictional other! if that’s not your thing remember to not judge, everyone has different interests. that being said, if you are unsure how to pick a pile take a deep breath and choose the one your eyes first landed on, or the one you feel most drawn to. have fun and thank you for participating.

F/o reading | Kpop reading | personal reading | masterlist

PILE ONE

the sun, nine of pentacles, six of pentacles

so right of the bat this is someone who genuinely adores you a lot. they love the way you laugh, dress and carry yourself. they have a deep sense of love and adoration for you! not a single thing they don’t like about you.

they see you as the sun. the brightest, best thing in their life that they cannot live without. it doesn’t matter it you are a gloomy person, or not as positive as you could be. they will see only the good in you, never focus on your faults. they have a really high sense of love and adoration for you and nothing can change that. in their eyes you can do no harm, and that stays like that, most probably forever.

they would also most probably love to spoil you rotten, whatever you want is yours because they will get it for you in a heartbeat. they won’t accept a no. for some of you, your f/o could be really rich so they have no problem spending money on you. for another half of the group this is someone who doesn’t have a lot but is an insanely hardworking person and will do anything to provide you comfort.

they love you too much to just sit and watch you daydream about the things you could have. they are very action oriented and it will show in your relationship. there is also a possibility they aren’t good with words but they for sure will love you so much EVERYONE will know it. even strangers.

they love you dearly and would never ask for anyone else in their life, to them you are like a sweet summer song on a warm night under the stars. something that is impossible to forget.

this dynamic mainly sun x moon, but there is also a really strong power dynamic here. neither one of you less than the other but both having different roles. i don’t think theres a specific name for this one but the vibe is ‘would give up the world for them x not used to affection but secretly loving it’

some of you might be very shy receiving so much love and affection because you aren’t used to it or have never been loved this way before but this would only motivate your person further to love you deeply and show it to you everyday, let that be with big or small actions.

channeled messages: “ I love you, my dearest “, “ I wouldn’t mind dying in your arms”, “Do you love me like I love you?”, “Catch me before I fall”, “Wether you are 20 or a 200 years old I love you regardless”, “Summer Time Sadness”

other things that might be relevant:

ice, distance, natto?, orange, laces, black, aesthetics, gold, music/singing, fashion, pool (pool parties for some), king

PILE TWO

judgment, hermit, the world

this one is soooo cute! with all due respect, each pile is insanely cute, but this one is especially sweet. your f/o could be a person that has a hard time opening up to people and could be labeled as a cold person even if they are not. so, ultimately a misunderstood person.

regardless of that they do have a hard time with affection, as i have already said~ they could push people away on purpose and hurting them before getting hurt themselves. now with you this would change. no matter what happens and what they do you just keep loving them without needing a specific reason. you just love them for themselves without any bad intentions and it’s so new to them and they love it so much they just want to be around you all the time and they get so overwhelmed with this feeling they aren’t quite sure how to react to it but before they realise it they fell in love already.

you fell first, they fell harder. way harder. they love you so much they feel like their heart can jump out of their chest at any minute.

since we have the hermit & the world card together it is also very possible that you are their first and last love. (even if they are written to have romantic interest in the show.. it does not matter.)

however don’t be mistaken though, they do have a very ‘fuck it, i am going to love you on purpose’ energy. they want you to know that they love you, are in love with you and that it’s not because of some accident or uncontrollable force but they adore you for the person you are. for the things you do, for the way you talk and because you are you. they love everything about you, even your habits. they find it very endearing.

once they are comfortable accepting the fact that they are in love with you they will be very affectionate with you. let that be cuddling, holding you on their lap (or vise versa, whatever you prefer), kissing you, defending you even when they know you are wrong but correcting you in private, helping you cook, doing the things you have no energy for or whatever makes you feel loved they will do it. you won’t have to tell them. they are attentive and always pay attention to you. they adore you more than you could ever imagine.

channeled messages: “Please don’t cry for me”, “I love you the most”, “Don’t take your eyes of me”, “Theres a million worlds where I love you and I would destroy each one where I don’t if I had the power”

other things that might be relevant:

white cat, car, hell (??), tent, snake, help, healing crystals (?), bites, tags (?), spices, red, power

PILE THREE

queen of swords, nine of swords, four of pentacles

alright so for your person you are someone very healing, maybe not intentionally but you heal them in ways no one could ever do before and they adore you so much for it. you give them more perspective in life and teach them things they wouldn’t have been able to think about before. this could be views on life or specific things. definitely related to how different you two are as people, but in a good way.

do you know that saying? “i can change them” well you actually can, and it’s really cute.

they could be someone that is known as a powerful but morally not correct character, or perhaps just have a personal growth arc. well, with you they would have this not only faster but better. i am not saving that you would be their saviour and they cannot live without you, but that’s kind of the energy here.

maybe at first you wouldn’t be willing to get together or like them? either way, they would want your approval a lot, straight from the get go. they look up to you like to no other and want to be someone you approve of. they have this deep desire for your love. so they would naturally change themselves for the better.

i know some people look at change as a negative thing so i would like to say: they wouldn’t force their personality or anything of the sort to change, but rather their morals/principles and the way they view life. ultimately they would have more understanding and love in their heart because of you. they would want to see the world from your eyes, understanding what you think and why you do the things you do.

they view you as someone deserving of their love, their trust and such. you would be one of, if not the only, people they show their vulnerable side to. you are a diamond in a rough in their eyes.

you are also someone they wish to protect with all their might and will, they could be very possessive over you. (though not in a toxic way.)

channeled messages: “come with me”, “kiss me just one time”, “they might leave but i will never leave you”, “ i understand, you don’t have to say a word”

things that might be relevant:

royal, river, tenten (?), kelp, yoyo, yagami (death note), bandages, fire torches, silver, rings, sunlight

thank you for participating

- Candy

[224bbaker]

So, hypothetically speaking, if someone had never been interested in Sherlock Holmes before but wanted to get into it because of Fawx & Stallion... Where should they start?

Oh my GOD, anon, so upset we didn't see this until now because what a great question and also, our show inspiring someone to go check out Sherlock Holmes?? Deeply upsetting for our characters but SO exciting for us!

Hopefully since you sent this you've just dived in to the stories--because, honestly, that's how both of our writers got into them as kids, and also because despite what roughly 40 contradicting scholars will try to tell you, the timeline is nonsense and Watson's continuity doesn't make sense (we have made our own peace with this and addressed it in-universe because we didn't want to go on deep-dives to decide what puns we were allowed to use for the place we're at in the timeline it's fine, we're fine).

However, just a quick sidebar before we jump into The Stories--if you would rather start with an adaptation than the original ACD stories themselves, there are two options we'd recommend as starting points that are pretty true to canon while remaining engaging in and of themselves:

The Granada TV series with Jeremy Brett and David Burke/Edward Hardwicke: It rules, and most of it's on YouTube! Highly recommend their Solitary Cyclist, Speckled Band, Scandal in Bohemia, and Blue Carbuncle (we may be biased towards the early, David-Burke-Watson entries). These actors and sets are what we picture when we read Holmes.

For an audio adaptation, the 1989 Bert Coules radio adaptation, which you can get for a single credit on Audible in full and has basically the whole canon! Incredible dramatization work that preserves the stories and really deepens the character work in a way that we're obsessed with. Big fans!

If you're liking the vibe of these, you'll probably like the stories themselves! In which case, there are also awesome online book clubs like Letters from Watson that have great communities here on Tumblr (just peruse the tag, it's super fun!), and also over on Discord.

SO. If you're still here and looking for our direction on the stories:

If you just want to start with what is/will be relevant to Fawx & Stallion, we recommend:

Our goal is that our audience doesn't NEED to have read any Sherlock Holmes to understand anything in F&S. We'll hopefully lay things out or give context clues. However, we do have little jokes for the fans, and in season 2, some subtext may be a bit clearer, or have a bit more weight, if you've read some of the stories.

A Study In Scarlet: I know, I know I know I know, Holmes fans, the Utah Mormon stuff, I get it, BUT. Holmes and Watson meet in this one, and it's incredible. The first few chapters of them meeting, starting to live together, going from roommates with a mutual fascination to, through Watson's unintentional insult of Holmes's writing and a fateful invitation to a crime scene, actual friends, are electric. It's a crime (pun intended) that we have so few dramatizations of this in the canon era (we're trying to fix that), we love it so so much. Sacrilege, but, wikipedia the stuff in the middle, enjoy the fantastic meet cute that bookends the thing.

Hound of the Baskervilles: Happening during the events of Fawx & Stallion season 1. I don't need to tell you this one is a banger, we all know this. Less Holmes content than you expect, but a GREAT setting, mood, and roster of suspects, and a thrilling, well-paced mystery with some great Watson.

The Final Problem: Occurs right before the events of season 2, and though you again don't need to have read it, some stuff might hit better if you have, particularly in the back half of the season. High recommend. On the same note, The Beryl Coronet is also mentioned a few times, which is the case right before this one.

Ok, with that out of the way, we highly recommend:

The "Jump Around To Whatever Short Story or Novel Sounds Cool" Approach

This is the move, in my opinion. As I've said before, the timelines are nonsense, you CAN try to get into the weeds of continuity as we have and there is delightful madness to that, but would I recommend it as an intro? No. They're short stories! They're serialized! Treat it like a TBS rerun series at 1 AM and just pick one that is on/sounds cool!

Now, if you want our PREFERENCE? There are different genres of Holmes mysteries, different types of mysteries for different preferences, but we're going to recommend one particular sub-genre of Holmes mysteries that we find particularly fun/unique: The "It's Not Necessarily A Crime Yet But the Vibes Are There" Mystery.

We love these. They're the best. Not depressing or gruesome off the bat, usually starting with some whimsy at Baker Street, these stories usually begin with a client coming to Holmes and the following interaction happens

CLIENT: Um, hi. Honestly it's pretty silly that i'm even here. It's probably just a Weird Thing, you probably don't-- HOLMES: No no no please tell me I love Weird Things. CLIENT: Ok. Well. My boss/guardian/brother/[insert-person-who-has-power-over-them] has been doing this Thing where he [insert extremely weird thing that again, is not a Crime, but the vibes are there]. It's kinda weird. HOLMES: Yeah, super fucking weird. CLIENT: I know! But it's not a crime, so I don't know, you're probably not interested, I'm just a [not rich not male not high class not privileged identity] so there's really no point in checking that out-- HOLMES: No girl (gn), we are DEFINITELY checking that shit out there's a crime in there somewhere and we're gonna find it!

And we're off! If this sounds interesting to you (and it SHOULD), check out: The Solitary Cyclist, The Red Headed League, The Copper Beeches, The Greek Interpreter, The Speckled Band, The Stockbroker's Clerk, The Musgrave Ritual, The Resident Patient, and honestly probably some others we're missing because it's REALLY common.

Other fun Holmes bangers:

Holmes overworks himself and Watson takes him to the country to rest, only to solve ANOTHER FUCKING MYSTERY: The Reigate Squires

The Christmas One!: The Blue Carbuncle

The Dancing Men: I don't have a fun little thing for this one it's just a banger and the Granada Adaptation rules!

The One Where Sherlock Holmes does NOT fall in love with Irene Adler but does get completely owned because 1) he thinks women don't get up early, and 2) he wanted to have a sleepover with Watson: A Scandal in Bohemia

There are a ton, and hopefully you'll find one that you like and just jump in!

[oh-allie]

and then i go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like...

dr ratio x fem!reader

(sorry if hes ooc i didnt know how to bring out his assholeyness on a first date withour having the reader standing up and leaving his ass)

pt. 2 of then afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two

four days before the date.

you made veritas feel icky. his sweaty palms disgusted him, his jumbled thoughts made him feel like hiding in his study and never leaving, and the way even thinking of you made his heart race made him feel like a fool.

so he did what he does best, and he studied. he worked his ass off. researched breathing exercises and studied the human mind. the feelings he'd read about before, ones he swore he'd never stoop so low to feeling, were now what he seeked to bottle up. not completely, for he is still a man. just enough to not feel like such an idiot.

for the next four days before you two planned to meet, he practiced. in front of mirrors, lying in bed thinking of you; he worked day and night to get back to his normal self. he even suppressed his giddiness and raging thoughts about you enough to get two good days of work in.

7 hours before the date.

ratio is a methodical man. he plans and he executes.

he did not plan to wake up at 3 in the morning the day of your date. and he can’t get back to sleep. he's done his calming breathing exercises, he’s focused his muscle groups, hes counted sheep. he is NOT getting any more rest.

so now hes sitting on the edge of his bed, head in his hands like that one picture of shinji. a plethora of thoughts are racing through his head,

“what if i look like shit later today?

...i’ll need to wear concealer with my eyeliner today…

...i’m so fucking tired.”

but it's mainly you. what if he messes up, what if he's too rude or snarky? what if you don't really like who he is, like everyone else?

3 hours before the date.

you know how in films the dorky loser main character practices in front of the mirror before talking to their crush? veritas seemed to take it to heart, as he's standing here, leaning on his sink counter, staring at his own reflection (which he spent the last four hours on) and practicing what he’ll do.

his mind is organized and going over what he’ll do (although he's heavily suppressing the jumbled nervous thoughts that are running rampant in the back of his head) but it’s okay! ‘cause this doctor has a plan..!

talk about her outfit

ask her why she was interested in you

… the weather ?

surely the conversation will flourish from there. yeah. he’s totally prepared.

30 minutes before the date.

of course he’s 30 minutes early. if you’re early, you’re on time. if you're on time, you're late. and if you’re late? don’t bother showing up. that's his philosophy. although he's kinda hoping you don’t show up early too. his deep breathing exercises will take at least another 20 minut-

29 minutes before the date.

shit.

he watches as you enter the cafe, nodding to the barista and looking for a table. he notices you noticing him. your eyes light up and you sent a quick wave as you hurry over. but- wait, just a second- he’s not ready! he hasn't even started his affirmatio-

“hey! i guess we had the same idea, huh?” you chuckle, situating yourself and your bag onto your chair.

uh-oh, he’s just staring at you again. well, that's actually completely and totally 100% your fault! he was in the middle of DEEP-BREATHING. don’t interrupt a guy when he's breathing deeply.

“yes. we did. my philosophy on punctuality is that if you’re early, you’re on time. if you're on time, you're late. and if you’re late? don’t bother showing up.” he manages to get out. did that sound too snobbish?

“exactly! if you’re going somewhere, go with a purpose. even if that purpose is to get out as soon as possible, y’know?” you rest your head on your hand and make some relevant motion with the other one.

that's good! that's really good. he just had a conversation with you, just like he wanted. okay, okay. what now? what were his points?... outfit, interest, weather. outfit, interest, weather. outfit…

“are you going to order, veritas?” the sound of his own name from your tongue draws him back to reality. he’d like to hear that again.

“pardon me. yes, i’ll just take a black coffee.” he’s curt and in the back of his mind he's still deciding which point to bring up.

“sooo…. you look lovely. although i almost didn't recognize you without your alabaster head. i like it though.” you say, making small talk. he didn't mind it with you.

‘FUCK she beat me to it’ is what he’s thinking.

“thank you. you look beautiful, as always.” oooo he got you blushing and kicking your feet.

you let out a curt giggle at that, “so, why do you wear that? the alabaster head.” you cock your head to the side a little. you cutie patootie.

“i can’t bear to see idiots. of course, they wouldn't want to see me either.” he replies, matter of factly.

“they’re surely an idiot if they don't want to see you.”

haaah. veritas’ collar feels tighter and his head's getting hot. how's he supposed to react to that? do you have no shame?

and then he implodes because of your overwhelming beauty

okay guys i gotta be honest i have no idea how to conclude rhis ....so idk and then you guys bone or whatever you want ☺️

a/n - i'm so sorry about rhe ending gang but i quite literally could not think of any way to end this and ive been putting it off for weeks so i knew it wasnt getting finished.... whoops! 🤗

dedicated to 🌸 anon <3

(sorry for making you wait so long ml....... 😞)

[lizzybeeee]

DATV Mini-Rant about the lack of Lyrium Potions in this Game

A small thing that immediately made my stomach drop when playing DATV was the fact that there are no lyrium potions.

I did an elective on game design in university and chose Origins as my game of choice for my final essay because I always loved how much the game incorporated the world/lore in its game mechanics! Call it pathetic or sad (I won't blame you lmao) but this series was the first video game that engaged me so deeply with its story-telling that I wanted to dissect it. That's why I'm focusing on the lack of magical cocaine in a fantasy game series.

Lyrium is a substance that serves as a game mechanic and a major lore/world-building element. It's use is essential if you play the game as a mage or have party members that are mages - it replenishes mana in game, its use is central to being a mage within the story (harrowing, rituals, etc...), and it's a major export/plot relevant resource that is important to the world at large.

So imagine my surprise when I boot up DATV for the first time and there's no lyrium potions as a mage character. My main interest in the game series was for its lore and story (RIP) so I didn't look too hard into developer interviews or videos about the combat itself - it would either be good or bad, but that wasn't my main draw to the game. I kept playing, wondering if I would ever unlock another slot for potions, perhaps, but then it was abundantly clear that it wasn't the case.

It's a small thing, but popping a lyrium potion mid-combat has the same effect that hearing people say 'Maker's breath' and 'Thank the Maker' does. It's this little bit of world-building that reminds me that I'm playing a Dragon Age game. It's not just a 'mana potion' or some other glowy blue magic vial...it's this substance that's important to the world and that has a reason to be there beyond rejuvenating my mage.

It's the major export of Orzammar -> the pillar of its economy.

It's the substance that allows waking mages to enter the Fade -> it allowed me to save Connor Guerrin with the aid of other mages.

It's the substance that the Chantry uses to leash it's templars through addiction -> an addiction I encouraged Cullen to overcome in DAI.

It's the substance used in the Rite of TRANQUILITY.

It's the substance that allows my warrior character to take on the templar specialization in each game -> Alistair and Ser both talk about lyrium and its relevance to training (in DA2 you just do it lmao)

It's the substance burned into Fenris's skin by Danarius.

It's the literal blood of the Titans -> lyrium veins are literal veins (such a cool design choice in DAI to make them look like blood capillaries!)

And all the time in DAO, DA2, and DAI my mage characters were downing this substance like there was no tomorrow.

Even though the combat changed in DA2 and DAI they still kept lyrium potions for mages. Even though they simplified herbalism from DAO in the next two games, they still required the player to interact with the world and find the ingredients for these potions. It was this gameplay mechanic that linked the player to the world -> I know that I need blood lotus to set shit on fire, elfroot for healing potions/lyrium potions, etc... It was cool game design, having game mechanics and lore interconnected like this.

(Not saying that picking up dozens of elfroots was fun or the best game design, btw -> but it's just an example of how they linked the world and game mechanics together, and I like the intent behind it! Cool design does not equal effective design lmao)

What do we get in DATV? No lyrium, whatsoever, just healing potions.

Potions we don't even have to work to find or get crafted! Just break some green shit and there it is! We don't pick up ingredients or discover unique flora to each of these Northern Areas for our own use. We don't loot potions or ingredients from corpses, sacks, boxes, chests (etc...) to replenish our own stock. A healing potion in this game is not a potion you craft, made from ingredients you found, it's a button I press on my controller. It's lost that immersive link - especially when your companions can toss another one at you while being effectively immortal in combat.

The only new flora we hear of is Broma's Bloom which I did like the lore behind! It's used in dye to colour the Warden's armour and its growth is a sign that the damage of the Blight is lessening. I love that! That's a cool bit of lore! Especially since it's named after Andraste's mother in a land that is supposed to be extremely religious. Geographically unique flora and fauna (biodiversity) is just as important as architectural design when designing an area - DAI did this amazingly well with the different creatures and plants we could run into in each area!

The first time we meaningfully talk about lyrium is when we go to Kal Sharok for the first time - a decent amount of game time since the beginning of the game, depending how fast you play. And then, when we get there, the lyrium looks like a bunch of crystals from a 'grow your own lyrium' kit. The absence of lyrium from the game world and mechanics is something that was very hard for me to overlook considering its importance to every previous entry. Especially since in this game we address the fucking Titan's and what the fuck happened to them.

Just...imagine playing a mage in Dragon Age and not using lyrium?

This game is a death of a thousand cuts - so many small, meaningful world-building elements and mechanics brushed off - before fucking godzilla comes along and nukes it all with the handling of the main story/lore.

[dinsbeskar]

To Have and To Hold; To Corrupt and Defile (Sauron/F!Reader)

After you discover his identity, Sauron's master throws a wrench into your happily ever after; or:

You're living in Gondolin before it falls; Sauron currently has you fooled, but his plans are falling apart, and the end of the First Age draws closer.

Sequel to The Number of the Beast // AO3 Link

Soundtrack: Never Let Me Go by Florence + the Machine, Don't Let Me Go by RAIGN, Say You’ll Haunt Me by Stone Sour

Warnings: Angst! Plot heavy, no smut this time!! I know, who am I??

A/N: so we've messed around with the timelines a little, I've alluded to some of the major events of the War of the Jewels, especially Lúthien's victory over Morgoth, and Eärendil's subsequent taking of the recovered Silmaril to the Valar. There is so much to cover, frankly too much, so I'm keeping the references to my favourite stories; a lot of it frankly isn't relevant to our Reader. If Amazon can mess with the timeline, so can I 😂

Word Count: 3.4k!

When you'd returned to your tiny village, eons ago, hand in hand with your new husband, the resulting impromptu celebrations had gone on all day and night. No-one thought to question the sudden appearance of this beautiful stranger, as your kin were so overjoyed for your new love, and still as yet so innocent to the evils of the world.

The subsequent years of being without him so often were only eased by their rallying around you, keeping you occupied to stave off your loneliness. It didn't ease the yearning late at night when all were abed and you were left alone to crave him, but you were used to it by now; which only made his visits all the sweeter.

You woke up today to find your husband stretched out next to you, a pleasant surprise that he must have instantly regretted as you threw yourself on him with a squeak.

"I didn't know you were coming! I'd have prepared for you," you say, your tone faltering as you survey the mess in your cosy rooms with a crease in your brow.

He shakes his head fondly; sometimes the lack of order would set his teeth on edge, but today he was just content to be by your side once more.

He murmurs sweet nothings into your hair as he nestles you closer, wrapping you up and refusing to allow to leave your bed this morning.

The city was growing prosperous, becoming the heart of Elvendom in Middle Earth, and your small abode was so different to the humble beginnings of your kin. Your people were finding strength in numbers, building great cities to fortify against the Enemy.

He cannot visit as often as either of you would like, busy with the war in the north, and now you understand why. His confessions about Morgoth threw you, made you doubt everything you knew, but your soul sang for him regardless, so you pressed it to the back of your mind, your heart and your mind fighting a losing battle. He promised you it was simply too late for him to change sides, that his master's wrath was better fought within his service than without. How could you refuse him?

You had asked him long ago if you could visit him instead, perhaps even pack up your life and move to be with him. His face grew dark, and he refused to even consider it. Now that you knew in whose service he toiled, you understood, and didn't press the issue again.

So you had become increasingly interested in the martial affairs of Gondolin, always hoping to hear nothing of Sauron, for no news was good news.

Your kin ask after him often; you tell them the truth where you can. That he is fighting the war in the north, that his brief respites are spent with you in private. Sometimes, you wish you could show him off to the world; it gets lonely surrounded by your family and friends, happily coupled and deeply in love, whilst you await your beloved for what feels like a lifetime.

When he visits, he crosses the borders of your kingdom with relative ease. Even entering the Hidden City, after centuries of being married to you, they greet him as one of their own, something which now plagues you with guilt; though not enough to keep you apart.

You are unfortunately not the only one, as many of your friends wait for their husbands too, who are also away fighting. The siege of Angband has taken much out of you all, and the number of half-souls wandering Gondolin grows day by day as more Elves are called away to bolster the beleaguered armies.

It is the knowing he is out there, yearning for you as much as you for him, that makes it a little easier. When the war is over, he says, you will be together, nothing will keep you apart. So you pray for his master's downfall any chance you get.

Unfortunately for you, it's not as if Sauron has to worry about any other's affections stealing you away; perhaps if he did, you might see him more often. Binding yourself to another soul changes the way you are perceived, a glimmer of the unseen world breaking into the everyday, in a way that to any other creature is imperceptible. But Sauron takes great pleasure in the knowledge that you are his, and no-one else's, that no-one would even think of touching you, not that you would let them. That possessive streak is something that you'd have thought would repulse you; instead it is deeply and mutually returned, the pair of you wrapped up in each other, blind to any others who might have tried their luck.

~

He's deep in thought, sketching long black lines on his paper, but every so often his eyes flicker to you watching his every move.

You love to see him hard at work, it lets you see what makes him tick, what gives him his boundless energy. You worry that you annoy him with your incessant questions, but any time you falter, he encourages you to ask, so you figure he must like the attention.

Today he is sat working on something very important, something that cannot be rushed. And you're sat at his side, head in your hand, thinking idly of everything and nothing, as his hand races across the paper.

"You haven't said a word," he looks over at you with a small smile, "something the matter, my love?"

"No, darling," you sigh, stretching your arms above your head and pulling yourself closer into his side. "Don't want to disturb you."

"You could never, I've told you so many times." He reaches out with his left hand and squeezes your knee, strokes the side of your face, then presses on with his task, one-handed as he commits to holding your hand.

You hum in assent, leaning your head on his shoulder. You feel him relax into your touch and you fear that perhaps you've ruined his industrious streak.

He puts down his pencil and pulls you close, chin resting on the crown of your head. You feel his heart flutter in his chest, and yours can't help but mirror it.

You enjoy his embrace a moment before disrupting the peace. "So what are you working on?"

He snorts, a noise you don't hear very often from him, usually so composed, and it makes you giggle, pulling away and looking up at his affectionate gaze.

"Not a moment's peace," he chuckles, rubbing the small of your back whilst reaching for his discarded sketches.

He rolls them out and watches for your reaction; yours is the only opinion he would deign to heed.

The long black strokes, the angular shape of it, it looks nothing like you expect. Twisted and wicked, it doesn't match the man sitting at your side.

"Is that... is it some kind headpiece?" You stutter a little under his intense stare; he wants the truth even if he dislikes what you have to say.

He raises his eyebrows a little and nods at you to continue your line of thought.

"Not a helmet. No, too many holes, frankly it would be useless as a helm, there's a great hole in the centre of it-" he can't help but laugh at your rambling, joking at his expense. If only you knew what happens to anyone else who would dare to.

"-Oh! A crown? Who needs a crown?" You finally get there, and you take the scroll from him, holding it up and scrutinising every detail.

"Who, indeed?" His tone is suddenly solemn; you've reminded him of what awaits him when he leaves you.

Morgoth in his crazed stupor, lusting constantly for the star-bright jewels that he already possesses, jealously guarded with a ferocity he hasn't seen in an age.

Your face drops and you pull him to you.

"I'm sorry, love, I didn't think." You know very well his trials and tribulations at his master's hands, but were somehow foolish enough to allude to him. You thought He already had a crown, and you remark as much in your naivety.

He traces your neck and kisses your palm. "It's quite alright, love, I know how... faraway my troubles must seem."

A cold sweat breaks down your spine.

"No, my darling, your troubles are mine, I would carry your burdens if only you were to share them with me." You plead softly; how could you be so naive, spoiling a sweet moment that is not so easily stolen now that he is so busy with the war.

He doesn't speak for a long time, and tears prick your eyes, almost painful in your efforts to hold them back. It is his pain you should focus on, not your own selfish regret.

You lean your head on his shoulder, hoping perhaps that he will open up to you for once, tell you of his torment in the north at the hands of the enemy, the part he plays as an unwilling accomplice to Morgoth's destruction.

As if he can hear your thoughts, he interrupts them softly.

"It is a crown. A conduit, for a power over flesh." He licks his lips nervously, avoiding your gaze.

"What could He need of such power?" You ask, before realising that of course, such power would ensure His victory.

He doesn't answer that question, preferring not to lie to you; you don't need to know exactly who it is for.

"I'd prefer something smaller, more elegant-" he begins to explain before you interrupt.

"Like a ring." You muse, meeting his eye. He raises his brow and looks past you, seemingly intrigued, and you can't help the pride that wells within you, happy to have pleased him so.

He looks back to you, smile fading quickly as he is reminded of what he came to tell you today.

"Speaking of my master, I-" he swallows thickly, the words refusing to cooperate with his tongue. "I have news. Concerning you and I."

His eyes are suddenly dark, and his expression sombre, and all at once you feel an all-encompassing dread that makes you press your hands to his mouth.

"No. Don't tell me. Not now. Please, love, I cannot bear any tale of Him while I worry for you." That much is true, you are too concerned about your lover to hear anything of the Enemy right now; but a tiny part of you simply never wants to hear about Morgoth, never wants to think about the evil your husband has been forced to wreak upon Middle Earth, so hard you have worked to forgive and forget, and you have had your fill now for one day.

"It is important, sweetness," he cups your chin and turns your face to look at him, the dread in your soul seemingly shared if his expression is anything to go by.

"Tell me." You nod reluctantly, anxiously awaiting whatever horror you will have to face together.

~

The fortress is always so hot, fiercely dry like a blazing desert heat, scorching his skin. It is nothing like his golden days with you, dappled sunshine on your skin, a cool breeze on his face.

He has been summoned by his master, which can only be an ill omen. Ever since the fiasco involving the lost Silmaril, and his defeat at the hands of Lúthien and her hound, Sauron had suffered nothing but wrath every time he returned to Morgoth; blaming him for the loss of a jewel from His crown, since he had not been there to defend his master from Lúthien's sweet song. The jewel was now set in the sky by the Valar, a constant reminder of his failure.

For you, as much as it pained you to see him suffer, it was a blessing; more precious time spent with your beloved as he avoids the fortress entirely.

Had it been a shock, when your husband appeared to you as a wolf, gravely injured and desperate for you? Of course. Was his betrayal forgiven and forgotten? Absolutely not. But he was so sincere, so sweet, that every time he told you his servitude to Morgoth was in service of a greater purpose, you believed him. Of course, he wanted only to heal Middle Earth; of course, he was working to lead all free peoples to a greater future; of course.

He was not forgiven, but you were so desperately, blindly in love with him, the dark half of your soul, that you might take him any which way he comes. And he had promised you that the greater good was all he worked for, that he was the salvation of Middle Earth, and how could you not believe him?

So when he told you he'd be gone a while, gone to see his master in the North, you were hardly beside yourself with joy.

"How long?" You entwine your fingers with his, studying every contour of his face, in case it is a lifetime, not a day.

"He did not say." There is trepidation in his tone, and you squeeze his hand in reassurance.

"You are his most valuable servant. All will be well." You cannot say that for certain, but you try to sound convincing.

He exhales slowly, pressing his face into your neck, his flaming hair tumbling across your skin as you lie folded into one another, unwilling to be parted a moment earlier than necessary.

~~~

His blood runs cold as his master's words ring in his ears.

Bring her to me, and let's see how worthy of my favourite servant she is.

He paces his forge, cursing and railing, his plans to keep you secret now gone so horribly awry.

He had been so careful, slipping from the fortress seemingly unnoticed by all but the wolves, whom he easily placated with just his word, perhaps a bone thrown in their midst for good measure.

In fact it was not his absence at all that gave you away.

It was your light, seeping into his fëa and glimmering like the northern star in a pitch black night. Morgoth had noticed this straight away, of course; but rather than punish him inmediately, he chose to toy with him, leading him to believe his great deception was successful.

If she does not come to me, I will be forced to name her, Mairon.

He could not have that, could not let his master's power touch you in any way. You were his, and his alone, and the idea of Morgoth even setting eyes on you made him seethe.

And so he began to plot; too little, too late.

~

"What do you mean, my love? You're scaring me, what do you mean, named?" Your voice shakes as he grips your fingers so tightly, you fear he might pull them off.

"He gave you a title I cannot take back, it is beyond my power to do so." Now it is his turn to tremor before you; you have never seen your husband in such terror, the sight brings you to your knees and you lean your forehead against his.

"Whatever has happened, darling, we can fix it. You and I, we are one, are we not?" You try to smile reassuringly, but he shakes his head and puts a finger to your lips.

"You know the importance of names, love." Of course you do; your kind receive many names over the course of your long lives, names from your father and mother, names for your great deeds, or traits your loved ones find admirable. You already had two, you hardly need another, let alone from his master. Never mind the power of words woven into spells and songs, the unbreakable kind your husband seems now to fear.

"When a being such as Melkor uses his power to bestow a name-" his voice breaks and he swallows thickly, buying himself time before the dam breaks.

"He bestows a name, and so a fate with it."

You raise your eyebrows quizzically, but as his words sink in, you gasp and pull away. What fate could the Great Enemy possibly have in store for you? You were nothing and no-one; why would he elect to use even a tiny morsel of power on you?

"I don't want to know." Your words surprise you both.

He draws back, regarding you, brow furrowed.

"You must, my love, you know I cannot break his will-"

"I don't care." You draw yourself up, taking a deep breath. "I forgave you your sins when you came to me with the truth. I have kept your secret from everyone I know and love. You promised me Morgoth would never discover us. This is your doing, and I will have no part in it."

His heart sinks, wrenches in pain, as the gravity of your words hits him, as you refuse to allow him to brush away the tears streaming down your face. Do you not understand? He cannot unsing the will of his master, it might as well have been written in stone, if the fabric of the universe were not hardier.

You jump to your feet, anger bubbling in your stomach, and you pace and curse Morgoth and all he stands for, Sauron wincing every time your lips twist to make the ugly sound of the Enemy's name.

"Amarië-" At hearing your name, you round on him, your eyes blazing with a fire he has only ever seen in himself, and though your anger is directed at him, it thrills him, the hair on the nape of his neck standing on end, and he has to fight every instinct to take you and hold you and ravish the wrath from your being.

"Will it help? If I know my fate? I cannot change it even when you tell me, so perhaps I should live in blissful ignorance, as I did before you revealed yourself?" Your tone is so sharp, it cuts him like no sword could; he recoils from the heat of your words, the furnace blast that emanates from your anger, trepidation and admiration combining in a heady mix that makes his heart sing for you.

You feel a pang of guilt; you hate these new emotions, these feelings you'd never experienced before meeting him. Anger, sadness, betrayal; these had all been alien notions before Mairon, no, Sauron, had walked into your forest.

He has worked his expression into something more impassive, but you know he is hurt; sighing softly, you kneel and take his hand, still gripped with rage but mollified a little by your husband’s remorse. He has worked so hard to make it up to you, to show you how he is not the Enemy that your kin believe him to be.

"Will it make you feel better if I know?" You ask, searching his eyes for an answer. Please say no, please say you'll bear this burden alone... Your heart cannot take more sorrow, more betrayal; and to know would be to worry about something you cannot change.

"Eglandis." If your Elf ears were not so sensitive, you might not have heard him, how quietly he admits your doom.

Your blood runs cold, sweat breaks in uncomfortable waves down your back, as you realise the horrible truth, why your husband is so often absent, and why he was so terrified of your reaction.

"Forsaken one." You pause, thinking a moment, your heart beating out of your chest. "No, forsaken bride."

Doomed to live without your husband, this was the fate Morgoth had chosen for you. To punish Sauron for choosing a bride at all, for weakening himself in the pleasures of the flesh, he had also punished you. Had you not suffered enough? Forced to keep your love a secret from your kin, now you feared losing him forever.

"That is a cruel fate." You mutter, nose to nose with him as he seeks to comfort you.

"I am not going anywhere." He takes your hands in his once more, thumbs rubbing small circles in your palms.

"I swear to you, you will never be rid of me, no matter how hard fate pulls us apart, I will always be with you." He presses a kiss to your lips, trying to reassure you that he is here, that nothing will take you from him, but you can't move, can't breathe, as a crushing wave of grief overtakes you.

As you curl into his chest, he sweeps his sketches out of the way; it would be a shame to crumple that which is of the utmost importance to him, your crown to match his.

[goblinhoursinsomniaramblings]

I Know Those Eyes, Part 3

i said i was continuing this and i meant it. dramatic reveals and misunderstandings are like snacks for my anime kid soul, and i have desperately snacky urges today

***

Lex Luthor was a dangerous man.

Batman had known this for a very long time. It was likely the only other member of the Justice League to have known for as long was Superman himself. Yet, he had let his guard down.

And Damian had paid the price.

When had Luthor taken an interest in the Lazarus pits? How had he been able to locate a source of them without involving the League of Assassins? What, exactly, had he been trying to do? Batman had been willing to lay the matter to rest with Luthor and Damian–but now both of them were unearthed, and so would the questions he had hoped to never need to answer.

By every account, it was as though Lex had just divined the answer. Which was ridiculous. Until Batman took a harder look at the timeline of Lex’s ‘mental break’.

That base took time to construct. Time that roughly aligned with a couple of weeks before he began openly calling his own company’s name stupid and agitating for a change. It could have finished construction that very same day. And as soon as he had sequestered himself… Damian received the letter that sent him–

Batman breathed deeply, regaining his focus. He could not afford to get lost. Relevant details only.

So. Something had happened in that narrow window to point Luthor in the direction of Lazarus water and the Al Ghuls without tipping his hand.

He still had the files taken from Luthor’s systems in the wake of the incident. He combed through them now, arranging them onto a timeline. There, fifteen days before he went into isolation, a change between projects. One had been attempting to technologically replicate some forms of magic, which had stuttered out in failure. Immediately after… leylines?

That was… logical to follow, actually. Ambient magic supposedly flowed along leylines in the earth, like blood through veins in the body. Luthor must have been trying to tap into one to fuel his ‘arcanotech’ prototypes. There’s even a small device he claims he will use as a ‘thaumic tap’ to drain the magic like maple syrup from a tree.

All files cease after that. Something happened with that device. A tap for magic…

He remembered John Constantine complaining, incessantly, about the many ways magic could screw someone over. One of them was… where you got a lot of magic, causality stopped behaving quite the same.

Had Luthor seen the future?

The timing. The ability to evade the League of Assassins while harnessing enough Lazarus water to blow up a bunker. Whatever instructions had been in that letter to allow him to extract Damian from what had otherwise looked like an attempt to–

Relevant details only. The timing was too phenomenally close. The slightest misstep and Luthor and Damian would have been in their reach.

Luthor had had a vision to do whatever it was he had done.

The powers he had displayed could have been a side effect, but what if they were the point? What type of power did he channel with concentrated Lazarus water?

… he would need to consult Justice League Dark on this. But a horrifying new theory was taking shape.

Lex Luthor may have opened a door to one of the many lands of the dead.

And something may have given him power in exchange for doing so.

If Luthor had been dangerous before… he was a monster now.

***

Vlad glared out the window of the GAV, down at the frozen wasteland below, intense displeasure radiating out from the several layers of clothes he’d been forced to bundle himself in just to get this close. He had to stay in human form or risk getting frozen solid as a ghost.

“Y’know, glaring at it isn’t gonna suddenly make it any warmer, Mr. Super Delicate Fire Core,” said Danny, smirking, as he piloted.

“I swear they make it colder when I come here on purpose.”

“Frostbite is way more direct than that.”

“Yes. I remember.”

How could he forget barely managing to talk his way out of getting flung off the Far Frozen’s edge, when he’d helped Daniel get here four years ago? And they made it very clear that if he screwed it up, that was not just a threat, it was a standing offer.

That said… there was a term used, here in the Infinite Realms. The closest definition they had managed to find after four years was “family without condition”. Where one formed a family group that could shift their familial roles and dynamics for each other as needed, and thus were assumed to be needed. They had barely managed to reach that status the previous time around, but they had reached it. Like all of them were tuned to the same wavelength, and could adjust when the signal weakened somewhere.

In human terms, they were horrifically codependent in a way that could stop when they were apart, but pick right back up the second they got near each other. Luckily, ghosts and half-ghosts weren’t nearly so vulnerable to the psychological problems that a human would face. That codependence would cause anxiety and stress in a human.

For ghosts? Easy power-ups. Especially necessary at the time for Daniel, who not only hosted two weakened cores at the time, but was forming his own core simultaneously. Vlad had taken care not to provoke the people of the Far Frozen and threaten any of the three in their recovery.

He wouldn’t call his relationship with the yetis friendly, but he was at least recognized as kin to the Great One. And Vlad returned the favor by recognizing they would find a way to end him if he took advantage of Daniel or their kindness.

As the GAV finally landed, the door opened to an absolutely frigid wind that just made his badger snicker as he strolled off the vehicle, rings of light leaving him in his ice-immune ghost form. Still, Vlad followed, deeply unhappy.

Until the door to Frostbite’s home opened.

“Daddy!!!” came an excited squeal, and a small, black and white blur shot out to cling to him, instantly banishing the chill.

It was only barely an exaggeration–the little girl, roughly between three and four years of age, was his little princess Daniela. The joy and love they both felt on seeing each other gave him the boost to help protect his core from the ice of the Far Frozen. He reached up to hug her back, getting her to snuggle into his many layers of coat.

“Aw, nothing for mama?” asked Daniel, jokingly

“Mama’s not got puffy coats,” mumbled the small, glowing girl.

Daniel already had Dante in his arms, who was bolstering himself from Daniel’s quieter feelings in the same way Vlad had done. He’d likely never known the cold here to be truly cold. He had short sleeves, but didn’t even seem to notice, resting his head with his messy black hair against Daniel’s shoulder, blinking sleepily in the wind and cold.

Co-parenting with Daniel had been awkward at first, but they had agreed both had wanted to parent the children and give them the same chance they’d both gotten to live a new life from day one. Just. Better. So much better. No assassins, no neglect, no threats, no lies. And since it had been Vlad’s desperate decisions that gave the kids both their genetics, he had to concede that Daniel would have to be parentally involved. Daniel had modeled what he had wished his mother the second time around had been, to the point he didn’t even blink when he had been called mama.

And Vlad… he had always wanted to be a father. Lex had squandered his chances with the clones, just as Vlad had the first time around, but he refused to do anything less than his best for his children.

So, co-parents. It was much easier in the Infinite Realms than it would have been on earth with its infinite ways to ask the exact wrong questions, which had given them time to figure out the dynamic between them again as they regained ghostly power. They had landed on ‘family that are far too much alike and should be kept separate to prevent problems’.

In other words… partners in crime. Although in this case it was less crime than… no, actually the crime was in at least equal parts to everything else in the plan. They needed to be on equal footing to set proper boundaries as co-parents, but they also needed some form of safe connection. Causing chaos together seemed to be that connection.

He would have to remember to discuss with Daniel later how he wanted to handle discussing these things with others. Would he want to make up some explanation easier for humans to understand? Or did he want to lean in and cause Bruce Wayne’s brain to break a little at the ‘obvious’ explanation to his having grandchildren? Vlad was predominantly powered by the desire to make up for things taken from others, and the sheer lack of fun in Daniel’s childhood seemed to make him want to mess with everyone around them to amuse him.

Daniela mumbled wordlessly, sleepily, into his coats, and Vlad decided that could wait for later. For now it was worth the cold and the many, many decisions they had to make about their return to earth, to walk back to the GAV with his family, feeling them all, practically glowing with the soft pink of a well-fed obsession for familial love.

***

reveal this chapter: Batman managed to deduce almost everything about becoming a half-ghost in the worst possible way, and is about to tell the goddamn Hellblazer someone used necromantic resurrection juice to punch a hole between planes and got powers out of it. given his canon history with summonings, holy shit is that going to be a bad time

-just to make it clear, Vlad and Danny are not romantic in any way in this story. nor will they be. don’t get me wrong, i ship it, but it’s going to be funnier if they aren’t and ghost zone norms means they don’t even think about how they look from the outside most of the time

-real monster there, Brucie. love-powered family man who knows he can get folded by the family’s doctor

-surprised i updated again so soon? got inspired making up a ghost zone explanation for Vlad seeing Danny as his son or equivalent-generation family member AND being able to co-parent with him without their brains freaking out on them from the implications and imagining how that’s gonna play out

-Vlad is totally going to forget to ask Danny about it, so when the batfam learn there’s grandbats afoot, Danny isn’t even going to be thinking about how it looks, and Vlad is going to answer any questions about it with the most confusing or enraging answers he can think up on the spot, because he may be redeemed, but he is always going to desire fucking with Superman and everyone else in the Justice League

-it would not make Batman feel ANY better to know Vlad with kids is, in fact, incredibly dangerous to a degree rarely seen by mortal eyes. he will also not feel any better to learn it's because Vlad's core has similarities to a Violet Power Ring and becomes massively powerful and destructive the more love you feed it

@hinari , @blankliferain , @grimdarling69

[lakesbian]

i have had like 10 friends rec worm to me but nobody’s given me a good like, gist of its vibe and what its abt because ‘its best blind’, could u please give a like brief summary and vibe check of it 😭 it’s so long i dont wanna try and invest that much time without knowing much abt it

so, worm is a 1.7 million word long webserial written in 2010. 1.7 million words seems like a lot, but it was also written over a relatively short period of time, which means the writing style is very easy to parse--the ideas aren't without complexity, but the language itself isn't intimidatingly dense. you can get through it at a very decent pace. i agree with your friends that there are vast portions of worm that hit best when you're unspoiled, but the thing is that worm is long enough that giving you the basic plot pitch is in no way spoilers for any of the things that i wouldn't want to see spoiled for someone. i'm actually kind of baffled they're not telling you Any Thing, because it is in my estimation one of the best books i've ever read, but it also Needs a briefing before you get into it for like five different reasons. which i will now provide. i swear to god this is brief by my standards it's just that i am very thorough

worm is a story about superheroes and supervillains, set in a world where superpowers are traumagenic--rather than appearing randomly or innately, some people gain powers after a traumatizing event happens to them. the protagonist is taylor hebert, a 15yo girl who has the power to control insects and desperately wants to be a superhero. and then accidentally finds herself scouted by a team of teenage villains instead. who's to say how she's going to react to all that!

one of the most compelling things about worm is that the superpowers in it serve as visceral, hyper-literal metaphors for the trauma and traumatized coping mechanisms of the characters with those powers. each power is incredibly specific and thematically relevant to the person who has it, and it's incredibly interesting and evocative. it feels so natural and well-done that it comes off like how superpowers are just meant to be written.

the fact that superpowers stem from trauma also means that worm is fundamentally a narrative about trauma. specifically, about traumatized teenagers and the relationships they form as they cling together while struggling through growing up traumatized & mutually coping with an increasingly intriguing, intense, and far-reaching escalating plot. worm's depictions of trauma + mental illness--including unpalatable trauma responses, including traumatized characters who are allowed to be complicated and nuanced and messy while still receiving narrative respect--are deeply real-feeling and impactful, and they're placed in the context of a well-spun + engaging story.

i really do have to stress how excellent the character writing is. worm is fully deserving of being as long as it is. over the course of 1.7 million words of character development, the average reader's reaction to the main characters goes from "sorta interesting" to "okay, i want to see where this goes" to "augh...really likable" to "i am now on hands and knees crying and these characters are going to stick around in my brain forever." wildbow has incredible talent for efficiently conveying complicated, real-feeling, and viscerally evocative characterization. many of the interlude chapters (chapters written from the perspective of different characters other than taylor) are so interesting, fleshed-out, and emotionally affecting that they make you wish you could read an entire novel about just the side character being featured. with that level of characterization for just the side cast, it's not surprising that taylor (& co) are genuinely just downright iconic. and i do not say that lightly--taylor is truly one of the best-written protagonists i've seen in anything. ever.

the other main pitch-point for worm is that it's a fascinating deconstruction/reconstruction/examination of the conceits of the superhero genre. it answers the question of--what would the world have to be like, for people with superpowers to act the way they do in classic cape media? and it does this well enough that it's interesting even if you have only a passing familiarity with cape media. i am not a big superhero media fan, but worm addresses virtually every aspect of cape media that was under the sun around 2010 in a way that's so interesting i still find it incredibly engaging. the approach it takes makes the narrative very accessible even to people who aren't usually cape media fans.

and speaking of the narrative: the end of the story is coherent and satisfying and deeply thematically resonant*. the way worm follows through on all of its main mysteries & plot threads is excellent. you don't have to worry about getting thru 1.7 million words and being dissatisfied by the author shitting the bed at the end, or anything like that. he does an amazing job of weaving together plot events in a way that makes each successive one feel rationally, thematically, and emotionally connected to what came before. there's really only one part where i feel the story stumbles a bit, but i think it was the best option he had for the narrative, and it's by no means a dealbreaker. it's in fact really impressive how cohesive and satisfying worm is for such a long webserial released over such a brief period of time.

*this is subjective ive seen some people who didnt love it but ive never seen anyone who downright Hated it who didnt also demonstrate egregious misunderstanding of literally everything worm is about. so thats a good sign

as for the downsides of worm/things that might put you off:

there is a very long list of trigger warnings for it. if you have any trigger warnings you want you should ask your friends to let you know about the relevant parts, because the fact that it's About Trauma (& about typical cape media circumstances presented very seriously) means that traumatic and violent things & their realistic aftermath are constantly happening and/or being discussed. i would not classify worm as needlessly dark or spiteful to the audience by any means, but it is intense and covers a lot of heavy topics. i do assume if your friends are all recommending it to you, they think none of the material would be too much for you, though!

worm was written in 2010 by a white cishet guy from canada. it's typical levels of 2010-era bigoted, it has a deeply lesbophobic stereotype character, it has some atrociously racist stereotype characters, the author really hates addicts, It's Got Blind Spots. i think worm is generally fully worth reading despite these, but very fair warning that it can get bad. i think what exacerbates this is that worm is generally extremely nuanced & sympathetic regarding ideas such as "crime is a result of systematic circumstance vs people just being inherently evil" and "mentally ill people who are traumatized in unpalatable ways are still deserving of fundamental respect as human beings" and so on and so forth, so it's extra noticeable and insufferable when you get to a topic the author has unexamined biases on and all that nuance drops out. the worst part is that a lot of this is most concentrated in the early arcs, so you have to get through them without being super attached to any of the characters yet. it is worth it though.

worm like. Does have a central straight relationship in it. and it's a very well written straight relationship for the most part and i like it quite a lot. but worm also passes the bechdel test with such flying colors that it enters 'unintentionally homoerotic' territory. which means a lot of people were shipping the main character ms taylor hebert with her female friends while the story was being released. which caused the author to get so mad he 1. posted a word of god to a forum loudly insisting that all of the girls are straight and 2. inserted a few deeply awkward and obvious and out of character scenes where he finds an excuse for the girls to more or less turn to the camera and go "i'm not gay, btw. this is platonic." This is fucking insufferable, and will piss you off immensely, but then you will get to any of the number of deeply emotionally affecting scenes between them, and at that point you will be too busy sniffling piteously and perhaps crytyping an analysis post on tumblr to be mad about all that other shit. also they're only a couple tiny portions out of an entire overall fantastic novel

overall: if those points don't sound like dealbreakers (i hope they aren't they're really massively outstripped by the amount of devastatingly good moments in worm, worm still has a thriving fandom over a decade later for a reason), you should absolutely give it a shot and see what you think. my final note is that you have to read up until the end of arc 8 to really see where what makes worm Worm kicks in, so aim for at least there to see how you feel about it if you're just thinking about dipping your toes in vs fully committing. i hope that was helpful and not too long :)

oh and don't go in the comments section on wordpress if you don't want spoilers. or anywhere else in the fandom at all. you will be spoiled. quite possibly for things you could not even have imagined were topics to be spoiled on.