#the answer is no bc he’s a very complex character with a deep desire to live but that would be much more easily achieved

[watcherglowcloud]

daniel molloy really went to the house of someone who could very easily and with little hesitation kill him. and then just decided to be a bitch to him the entire time. goals

[eddiediazismyhusband]

Sorry if this has been asked before but thoughts on ace and/or aro spec Eddie? Because it is near and dear to my heart. Especially with everything we’ve gotten both on screen and in interviews from Ryan.

I have not gotten this question before!

I would like to preface this by saying that I am not aro/ace so I am speaking in what my understanding of the asexuality spectrum is from my ace friends, so i apologize if I misspeak or say something that is not entirely accurate to the experience of ace/aro people.

Obviously, everyone is entitled to their own interpretations of fictional characters, and I am never going to tell someone they are right or wrong for their interpretation of a character’s actions. However, I personally don’t view Eddie as aromantic, and if I were to place him on the asexuality scale, I would place him more towards demi-sexual than completely asexual. We know Eddie enjoys sex, but he still has a very complicated relationship with it when it comes to the women he has been with, and that could be for a myriad of reasons.

Of course one of these reasons could be that Eddie simply thinks he enjoys sex bc he grew up in a repressive religious environment where he was probably to scared to feel any other way, meaning he could very well be asexual and his seeming enjoyment of sex could be an act he puts on to ignore the part of him that he is repressing.

As a gay eddie truther, I believe this idea partly bc I believe he is trying to convince himself he is into women because that’s what he grew up to be taught that men should be attracted to women. However, I could see this being a pathway for Eddie to be introduced as somewhere on the asexuality spectrum, my personal belief being that he would lie more towards the demi end.

As far as him being aromantic, i personally don’t see this. I think we have seen plenty of times from Eddie that he craves that connection with someone but he actively sacrifices his own desires because he thinks he has some obligation to finding a mother for chris. I feel like what Kim said to Eddie in 7x9 about Eddie having too much love to give is true because he so badly wants to be in love with someone for himself, but he has convinced himself he can’t gave that because he views Christopher needing a mother figure as the more important quality in his romantic partners.

All of this to say, these are just my own thoughts and observations. I am obviously biased as a gay person who relates deeply to eddie for many reasons, and so my interpretation of his actions/words are through that lense. It’s hard for me to really see him as anything else, but just because that is my interpretation does not mean it is the only interpretation or even the right or wrong one. Until we get some form of confirmation from canon that Eddie is queer (which i think is very very very likely to happen this season) all we can do is speculate and theorize based on our own personal interpretations of him as a character— and i think that goes along with Ryan’s quote about how much he loves that such a wide range of people can see themselves in Eddie; and i think that no matter what, he is such a powerful and complex character that no matter what sexuality he ends up being confirmed as in canon so many fans of different sexualities and gender identities will still be able to find that deep connection with him and that is so beautiful to me.

I hope this answered your question! I love getting to have these kind of deep talks that dive into the complexities of human sexuality and all the nuances that come along with it (which is why i almost love the idea of them making Eddie unlabeled even though I personally perceive him as gay!)

I hope you have a lovely morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you are! and thank you again for the ask 💕💕

(again, apologies if anything i said misrepresents/misunderstands the aro/ace spectrum, it is not my intention to say anything that is incorrect, but I am not well-versed in the aro/ace spectrum aside from my ace friends)

[vacantgodling]

🐐 Goat - is your character artistic? do they create? how is their sense of fashion? 🐉 Dragon - is your character lucky? do they believe in luck or fate?

for anyone from red death :3

~ @void-botanist

oooo thank you!! time to do this for the main trio :3

🐐Goat - is your character artistic? do they create? how is their sense of fashion?

RED -> cannot be artistically creative to save her life, which is really funny considering what her powers are/curse is—which tbh i should actually explain. so, red’s curse is that she can create anything but anything she creates cannot be undone. it sounds great in theory, but it means that: let’s say she creates a tree because she wants shade. that tree can never not exist now. someone could try and cut it down and they couldn’t, someone could try and uproot it and it’s impossible, it is now a permanent fixture of the world and it cannot be undone. red has a small “hack” around this which is — to a certain extent she can create “nothingness” to sort of reverse engineer stuff she creates but creating functioning air molecules in place of what she’s made gets very difficult the larger and more complex something she makes is. so, tbh red doesn’t use her curse often because it is a hassle. she has only, since discovering it by accident, used it three times for very specific reasons. and by the time the book ends she will use it a fourth time in a very massive way 👀 but i’m getting ahead of myself this is off topic. AHEM. she can be… creative in means of death if that makes sense, but she doesn’t really view it that way—she views herself as being very straightforward even if most people wouldn’t think that way. i can’t think of a good example but she is very much likely to suggest full body dismemberment to deal with a problem tm.

fashion wise, red hasn’t allowed herself any luxuries for years and when she meets hel the only thing she owns that looks nice is her red cloak that she wears. the rest of her clothes are dirty and tattered (bc if you hadn’t guessed, one of the things she’s created is that cloak so it’s impervious to the elements, to burning, wear and tear etc. same can’t be said for everything else of what little she owns).

HEL -> can be a creative person with incentive. he does scribble down his thoughts or visions he has, but he doesn’t feel like a deep seated desire to create like how you and i perhaps feel about writing. however he does enjoy looking nice, well groomed and put together. he gets very uncomfortable if he hasn’t bathed or has worn the same clothes for long periods of time so this whole “traveling on the road” thing isn’t really his Thing.

ARDEN -> used to be a musical child when he was young and before the wolf queen killed his father; despite all the gambling, his father always praised him for his voice because it was sweet and strong like his mother’s but arden’s out of practice now. he thinks swordplay in itself can be artistic and remembers seeing sword dancers at traveling circuses in his youth, but there’s no entertainment that goes through their kingdom anymore. fashion wise even without being in hiding he’s always preferred function to frills and would rather have a hearty pair of leather boots than a silk shirt any day.

🐉 Dragon - is your character lucky? do they believe in luck or fate?

RED -> she’s too disillusioned to believe in luck or fate, and if she did, she’d curse it because it seems her very existence is a curse upon all who are with her. (not to be melodramatic but).

HEL -> because he can see and know the answers to anything (being the oracle) he doesn’t believe in luck because he’s cheated luck with his curse. however, he does believe in fate and believes himself to be an instrument of fate and so a lot of how he acts while it main seem shady to those on the outside, is actually to preserve a sense of free will without mettling too much into people’s destinies.

ARDEN -> all his life people have been preaching to him about destiny. he was destined to be king, until the wolf queen, and now he’s destined to defeat her. he isn’t sure if he quite believes in fate but he does certainly think that he has luck on his side more often than not; there’s no reason he should still be alive if he didn’t.

[vermillioncrown]

eh, it doesn't really read as sanctimonious. makes sense. do you do anything in particular to develop the internal worldview of characters and how they "tick", besides writing interactions? do you keep character profiles or anything of the like? have a good day, and thanks for answering the first ask :)

okay good, it might have sounded a little "touch grass" for a minute there...

=

hmm...i don't do formal "character building exercises" or the like. even those character questions tire me out.

but yeah i keep notes. example of older notes that have little points of character development or relevant parts of them popping up per chapter, vs the overall notes above the timeline (tim and jason were harder to nail down so i needed notes vs dick):

or as @rozaceous has laughed at me... tallies and excel sheets, but those are so spoilery it's not even funny, but it'll be very funny to show when we get there bc. yeah.

not organized like a profile, but the main drive to write is something about this character sticks out at you (if fandom-related), thus let yourself imagine whatever scenario about that character with that salient point as a start.

example: dick grayson accidental child acquisition bc he's the one nice enough for a "child" to approach + looks old enough + plausible reason to be away from oversight -> build out connection to his job, history, where he is in canon, current connections. and i didn't figure out everything since ch 1; it's like peeling an onion lol. and as long as you don't overdo what you depict, you always have room to reveal and develop more

(example, i didn't think too hard on his relationship w bruce, tim, and jason until i had to. but the room i left in how it was only about his interactions with korvin + him being someone mission focused out of necessity and habit means you don't have to constantly sadboi introspect)

(another thing is...people usually don't introspect too deep if they're decisive and take action a lot. they can't afford to. and people don't completely know themselves, so it's okay to be wrong, as long as their wrong answer leads to a logical wrong conclusion)

(or you're writing someone completely bonkers and loose, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but they still have their internal logic)

i balance between "lol wouldn't it be funny/sad/emotional if..." and vetting for the blorbo in question to connect it back to their canon. because the first part drives the desire to write, and the second makes the what-if have impact imo.

(you can kinda see that process happen simultaneously when i answer au what-ifs--unless something got posed where the central conceit was too far removed from the original point of the divergence)

when i don't need to iron out details i usually don't note it down, because i can always refer back to my previous bits or it's very obvious to me from the canon. if it's a difficult aspect to nail down, i take notes and keep them as an example to refer to.

i also walk a fine line between depicting idiosyncrasies vs flanderization. people are creatures of habit, right? but it's too easy to use that as a way to easily make characters distinguishable that it's like an overwrought performance rather than one of many traits in a complex individual. i keep habits in mind bc they're usually easy enough to remember by the time i'm writing out a whole thing vs note taking.

e.g. i wonder if you notice that in dick in my chapters doesn't swear much until he's under duress? he's very controlled, very practiced in keeping the mood light, such that it's just part of his internal narration.

Vs. babs, i have her more readily to be sharp and swear bc that's indicative of someone who's less outward facing on the daily compared to dick (she's only 2-3 years out from her injury and becoming oracle, and you need to imagine how someone who used to be so able as to be batgirl would feel to lose use of her legs. even if she does eventually accept her new state of being, it still sucks to say the least)

he's also an adult with a job (haha real life example), so his immediate concerns are very different from tim's as a comparison point.

=

there's not a hard formula. just take notes as you think (notepad, phone, computer), use the fun of blorbos and fandom to motivate you, and don't be afraid to revise and correct yourself. and don't let organization paralyze you (don't let perfect be the enemy of good).

uh...the easiest things for me to keep in mind are: vocab (internal and external voice), initiative (active/reactive or passive person), and mindset focus (do they introspect more or spend more time observing others)? -> and then i build out from there

and when you finally write something, read it out loud to yourself. make different voices. it's pretty easy to find when someone will say a thing vs if no one on their life would say that vs only an anime character would say that

[tavina-writes]

Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks....

This is a difficult one! I've loved a LOT of characters over the years even if the current blorbo of interest is NHS from MDZS/CQL bc he's just such a fun little guy BUT lets see if I can try to do this chronologically and not in like, any character ranking fashion:

1 & 2: these two characters are absolutely the rulers of my heart: Huang Rong and her father, Huang Yaoshi from Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong. I just love my beloved spoiled conwoman princess and her insane evil wuxia version Maes Hughes dad so much. I could write so many essays about the Huangs and how they mean so much to each other and also to me. I'm always insane about family members who have complex relationships with each other and that's super evident with them.

3. Uchiha Madara from Naruto. Now, people who have known me for a long time know that I am a Naruto girlie, and that I skipped all the way to "Sasuke's Insane and Sad Pathetic Ancestor" on the character likes list. I love insane murder men and Madara is an insane murder man! He's also very sad. What's there not to like about him truly.

4. Mirasol from Chalice by Robin McKinley. I have a deep love for beauty and the beast narratives and this one ALSO had magic bees. I love Mirasol for her kindness and her devotion even in the wake of massive change and I have a special fondness for the entire story of Chalice both for the lovely worldbuilding and also Mirasol herself.

5&6. Sansa Stark and Cersei Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire. I really really love both of these characters for entirely opposing but also really similar reasons! I love them for their flaws. For being stuck in their positions in a world that's really just! not! kind to them! and how they take that and go in such different directions.

7. Sheng Rulan from The Story of Minglan. I have such a soft spot for Rulan. She's petty, she's spoiled, she has so much love and holds onto her principles and her dreams so tightly, she's her father's least favorite child despite also being a legitimate daughter, she finds love, she's so cute, she's the clearest sighted of all four of the Sheng sisters, she's got such a growth arc to her, I love her SO SO MUCH. (I love all three of her sisters too don't get me wrong, Rulan is just my favorite.)

8. Wei Yingluo from The Story of Yanxi Palace. Yingluo! My girl! Never have I ever seen a female lead with so much pent up rage and desire to get even in a story that does not judge her for her hard edges and her propensity for violence. I love that about her. I love how kindness and cruelty and how her quest for vengeance never destroys her ability to love and care for others and recognize other people's genuine kindness and the difficulties other people face in life. I love her shrewdness and her determination to survive too! I'm just! So fond of her!

9. Jaskier from The Witcher (TV). I RARELY TALK ABOUT. MY UNAGING BARD BLORBO. BUT I LOVE HIM. I love the messy relationship Jaskier, Geralt and Yennefer have in the Witcher TV show and I REALLY love the way that Jaskier is portrayed. I don't know anything about the games but! I just! I love! This annoying kind of foppish man because annoying foppish male characters are another beloved character archetype for me, see below.

10. Nie Huaisang from The Untamed/Modao Zushi. Beloved Blorbo. Little crimes man. Unfilial and spoiled. Beloved for being SO jiggly and full of trauma and his tragedy is writ large to me because it! powers! the plot! without his tragedy there is no plot! he burns down his social circle because he loves his brother! There's just so much in here that's like, oh god. I love that he's an annoying foppish dandy and that he loves his pets and creature comforts and that he doesn't enjoy working hard and has so many problems. This too is life. I love this little guy I want to rotate him for a good long time.

[transsexualhamlet]

I feel like Exposing Myself online today so here's a completely unasked for, in depth bulleted list explanation of why I kin which bsd characters. the short answer is i am very mentally ill feel free to come into my asks and roast me bc of this

NIKOLAI

first of all thats my gender sir. i wish to dress and present myself like him

superiority and individuality complexes to the extreme

would kill/die/commit heinous acts for my good sir fyodor dostoyevsky (and anyone else I cared about)

if i think about society too hard i want to murder everyone and am filled with existential horror and disgust

that good old deep set desire to make everyone i love despise me so they'll know who i truly am

"I am completely sane /neg"

if anyone slightly normal likes anything about me i need to change it immediately

every torment i experience is entirely on purpose and my fucking fault

every single way i am perceived is wrong yet please i need to be perceived objectively because i as a human cannot see myself from all angles

DAZAI

called the FUCK out by irl dazai's works

strong desire to fuck around and find out as in "if i am reckless and put myself into dangerous places and situations then I might gain calvin+hobbes style 'character' and my own feelings will then be valid"

acting silly and speaking of serious issues like jokes to distract from Constant Internal Crisis

my one true love, unhealthy coping mechanisms

no filter and no idea of what is socially acceptable

generally just kind of a shitty person who says "i'm gonna change" and keeps doing the same goddamn thing because they can't be bothered to go through the emotional pain so has just decided that they are a Bad Person and not do actually put effort into becoming better

"i hate pain" as an oxymoron

goes through elaborate hoops to make sure people don't think of them highly

hasn't managed to keep any friends from more than 4 years ago (for understandable reasons)

the mortifying ordeal of being known

deep emotional need for people to call me slurs so i feel special<3

RANPO

lists off the entire autism diagnostic criteria and related symptoms

i like literally every single thing i could think of that i kin him is related to neurodivergency ie:

his blunt style of speech, sounding rude, knowledge in academic areas but deficient in social, always a complete mess, different way of thinking about Everything, age under/overestimated etc etc etc

oh also i love his awful style he is wearing his tie backwards me too buddy

praise praise praise praise praise gimme gimme gimme gimme

takes any criticism absolutely HORRIBLY aka rejection sensitive dysphoria

POE

GENDER GENDER GENDER GENDER

desire to always have my hair entirely covering my face

spending insane amounts of money on people i care about

remembering people for years as a huge impact on my life and having them not remember me at all

trying to be "mysterious" and ending up just a huge nerd

always carrying around giant stack of books

literally always writing and a large amount if not all of my writing is to please those few people who understand me

KYUU/Q

kyuu is. not an important character and has not appeared since the guild arc. there is not much to go off of however i think it's very important

gender. i rest my case

i am not god's strongest soldier if subjected to any amount of pain i will scream and murder anyone i can to get rid of it

there is so much rage there is So Much Rage pent up in that tiny fucking body and if anyone underestimates me or provokes me they're getting the goddamn electric chair

i am just a little guy do not do this to me please sir im just a little guy and it's my birthday

hey besties if i were given the nuclear launch codes we would all be dead

horrible distaste for any medical professional and Extreme Problems with giving anyone especially said medical professionals access to my body or any knowledge thereof

objectively someone should probably lock me up

FYODOR

hey he's got stand up and pass out immediately disease same he is a frail young lad

give me my blood back it is falling out

hyperempathy and low empathy working together manifests as "we should all just die" disease which is objectively not true and never something you should base your political views on but it sits there in my brain it sure does

as like with nikolai society and living within it and the way it is structured ie capitalism makes me want to enter jeff bezos's house and start my life of crime right then and there

ROMANTICIZE ROTTING INTO THE GROUND WITH YOUR LOVED ONES BY GOD

not to be that guy but if i was in any way capable of helping i would so join the DOA excluding fukuchi fukuchi doesnt exist fyodor runs the doa and anything about fukuchi is a mass hallucination /j

and of course CHUUYA

I feel like there are many chuuya kinnies who have much more claim to him than me and I will cede that however have you considered short overpowered trans man who is always feeling 73 emotions and 60 of them are variations on anger

feeling alienated/like i'm an imposter at being human (although this is a theme of the whole series and nearly everyone in it)

i bite and kill medical professionals<3 (you can sense a theme here)

i always get adopted into friend groups and then they fucking Leave (thankfully not by dying in my situation. as far as i know)

i had my newly out transmasc era too chuuya *points at picture of 15 chuuya's outfit and haircut and general demeanor*

i know i have said this on nearly all of them but by god his gender

concluding this you can tell i am an on fire garbage can

[thebibliosphere]

Hi bibmum, I tried to start watching the witcher because its all ive been seeing on my dash lately but i could barely get through the first episode. The witcher character telling a rape victim that she's the bad guy for killing her rapists? The "if i have to choose between a greater and a lesser evil, i refuse to choose"? Just. So nasty. But you seem to really love it so im just wondering if it gets better bc the first episode sucks.

I’d need to watch it again cause I don’t remember that particular line with Renfri (not doubting you, I just don’t remember how bad it is), but I think one of the key things about understanding Geralt’s character dynamic is that you’re not actually supposed to like him as he is at the start. 

He’s someone carrying a lot of trauma and with that a whole heaping side of depersonalization which can often come off as inexcusably cruel and callous from the outside, and we really don’t get into the whole “being a Witcher has something like a 99.999% fatality rate and that’s just how many die as children in training” thing for quite a while yet. 

The whole “witchers have no emotions” thing isn’t just some throwaway line meant to make them seem “othered” from humans or the “strong flawed silent” type we often have for heroes in popular fantasy media. He’s legitimately been conditioned to have zero emotions by his training, and part of his survival instinct is to maintain that facade by ignoring his own emotions because the thing about trauma is once you open that box and start trying to unpack it all, it’s impossible to put it back. And in Geralt’s case, opening up to things and becoming attached and caring is going to get him killed. (Not to even mention all the people that will die if he’s not around to slay monsters.) 

That doesn’t make any of the shitty things he says or does right, but as someone who deals with depersonalization as part of my own trauma, I thought the show actually handled his development quite well as the episodes progressed. You see him coming to terms with the fact that, shit, he can’t be impersonal anymore, he can’t stick to just his training because his training isn’t enough. His training got that girl killed. His training makes him the monster. And he knows that. And he’s determined to never let it happen again.

Thus begins his arc of growth, showing that Geralt is someone who does care, he does have profound compassion for those around him (if not always empathy) and he wants to help people so badly, but other than being a brute for hire, he’s not sure how to do that.* 

And then because fate is nothing if not a laughing trickster, Geralt suddenly finds himself flung into things that demand more emotional energy and depth than a  teaspoon and oh boy, does it never rain but it pours. Like the shiny, shiny bard who is basically ten people’s worth of emotions in one body and is determined, nay, decided to be friends and keeps following Geralt around like a lost puppy singing that fucking song. Or the witch who is seemingly hell-bent on her own destruction in the pursuit of what looks like power, but is actually just a desire to be in control of her own life after centuries of abuse, gaslighting and manipulation (and who, like Geralt, doesn’t know how to be “normal” and perpetuates the cycle of her own abuse because control and manipulation is all she’s ever known). Or the child who by the law of surprise is suddenly his. He is for all intents and purposes a father now, the one thing Witchers are never supposed to be, and just what the fuck is he supposed to do with a child? 

So he does the whole “run away thing” for as long as possible, because Christ, that’s a lot of scary emotions right there. That’s more emotions in the span of about 10-20 years than he’s dealt with in the some near 100 years he’s been alive. But he can’t keep running, he knows that. Destiny is an active force in this universe, and it will come to find him. It will hold his feet over the fire and hold him accountable for his actions, and worse yet, it will go after the people he loves if he doesn’t. 

So yeah. There are lots of things all the characters in the Witcher say and do that are Problematic. No one is an unproblematic fave, everyone is messy, ugly, broken and sometimes just outright cruel. Some parts of the show made me deeply uncomfortable (I’m thinking of the orgy scene with Yen in Episode 5 which is big yikes for a lot of us, though I have more thoughts on that than I have room for on this post) but there were other parts that made me realize that if the writing keeps up as it is, and we get to move beyond the “meet the characters” stage we’re currently in, this show has the potential to be phenomenal. 

So to finally answer your question? Yes, it does get better as the episodes go on. But there will still be moments that raise the yikes meter, but those moments are, I believe, intentional. The show wants you to have strong reactions to things and to throw your hands up and go “come on man! do better!” because we know they do get better. We know from all the other source material we have, that what we are seeing in the show right now is just the messy beginnings of a very complex story. 

And also just because the hero says or does something in the narrative, doesn’t mean the show is promoting the bad things as “right”. If anything it wants you to question it more because it’s the hero doing the thing, and heroes are supposed to be better than that. And we know they do, because deep down at its core, the Witcher is a story about a trained monster killer, who goes out of his way to help the monsters. Sometimes he can’t help them and death is the only option. But we’re all faced with things we’d rather not sometimes. Including the reality of our own actions, and Geralt is someone who is wading knee-deep in them.

(*As an aside: we see him at his best when he’s dealing with monsters and animals because they’re not complicated in the way humans are. He talks to his horses because he’s able to show Roach love and affection and care, and it just comes off as good horsemanship, and likely wouldn’t have been discouraged during his Witcher training. And he’s able to help monsters, because, well, he likely sees himself in them.)

[echodrops]

I’m obviously late to the tumble party... but I stumbled across your Notagami Essays posts and they are absolutely Fabulous! Love your writing and the amount of detail you go into :)

So I figured you may be a good person to ask - if you just had to guess (bc as far as I know it’s never been officially confirmed?) but if you had to take a guess or give a rough estimate, how old do you think Yato was when he first met Sakura? We know he’s estimated to be at least a thousand years old, we know he’s - from the start of the series to present - estimated to be somewhere between 18 and his early 20s (physically)... but I can’t find a single thing/discussion/post/stickynote/whatever where it talks about how old he might have been when he first met Sakura - let alone the emotional/psychological effects of Sakura coming into his life and introducing healthy mindset/morals/maternal-influence etc. etc. (obviously no mom and Father’s neglect played a big role in him not knowing how inappropriate it was for him to ‘accidentally touch’ and yell “boobs!” but you can also just say he was so young he didn’t know how inappropriate that was?) My point is: how old do you think Yato was (physically anyway) at the time of their meeting? and Do you know of any discussions or care to share your opinion on how being the no more than the age of blank affected his mental/emotional understanding of Sakura teaching him a new narrative?

Sorry this is a random out of the blue ask 😅😓 if I rambled on and you don’t feel like answering, I get it, just figured it was worth asking :)

I fell down a serious rabbit hole trying to see if I could figure out the answer to this question about Yato’s age but unfortunately I’m mostly coming up empty-handed.

The answer to this question actually depends on two different pieces of information which--as far as I can remember--we’ve never actually been given for certain.

1) We would need to know when Yato was actually born.

The manga has kind of hinted at a total (not physical) age for Yato in the flashbacks which showed him as a young child during the Heian era (putting him somewhere in the vicinity of a little over 1000 years old) and Father not making masks before ~1100 years ago, but the problem is we still don’t know how many years might have passed between this scene (the youngest we’ve ever seen Yato):

And the next flashback scene, where Yato meets Nora:

If gods age normally when they are children, these two scenes might be only a handful of years apart. But if gods don’t age normally, then these two scenes could be decades or centuries apart, which leads to the other missing piece of information (under the read more to save people’s dashes):

2) We would need to know the aging process for gods who are just born/reincarnate.

Up to this point in the manga, we’ve only seen two gods reincarnate--Ebisu (who reincarnated too recently to really help answer this question) and Takemikazuchi. The implication of Takemikazuchi’s backstory is that his shinki forced him to reincarnate and then hid his reincarnation from all of Heaven. The only way they could have kept other gods from noticing that Takemikazuchi had reincarnated would have been by not allowing him to go out at all until he had grown enough to match his previous reincarnation in appearance. This seems to suggest that gods probably do age normally when they are children--hiding Takemikazuchi away for ~20 years seems a lot more likely than being able to hide him away for centuries, after all... (I also feel like I have very vague recollection of some scene in the manga where someone comments on Takemikazuchi not having been around for a “few years,” but it’s been so long since I reread I can’t recall if this is a real moment from the manga or just me misremembering.) 

Overall, however, based on what we’ve seen in the manga, my guess would be that when they’re young, after just being born or being reincarnated, gods age pretty normally. This would suggest that, for the first few years at least, the physical and mental ages of reincarnated/newly born gods actually overlap; baby Ebisu acts like a little kid because he is, in fact, both mentally and physically a little kid.

That would mean that, for all intents and purposes, Yato’s physical and mental ages lined up when he was young and meeting Sakura, and he acted like a little kid because he really was just a little kid, god or not.

(Detour for a second though: 

This line always struck me as interesting in that it might, just might, give us a more specific timeframe for Yato’s “birth”: although the constellations, of course, are visible in the sky every single year, this particular combination of concepts (kanoto-tori, yin metal rooster) is known much more commonly as one of the sixty years on the cyclical Chinese calendar, also used in Japan. Counting back on the calendar, 961 A.D. was a yin metal rooster year and would align just about right for what we know about the timeframe in which Yato later met Sakura (~970ish). Just referencing constellations doesn’t mean Adachitoka was pointing to a specific year, but it might have been another hint as to the timeframe of the flashbacks.

Okay, detour over.)

Anyway, without 100% confirmation on either of those pieces of information--when Yato was born and whether gods age at the same rate as humans after reincarnating--I don’t think it’s really possible to pin down Yato’s “real” age (physically or mentally) at the time he met Sakura. We mostly just have to estimate. 

Personally, based on his size and behavior at the time, I’d put him somewhere between seven and maybe up to ten, but the way Adachitoka draws characters kind of makes it impossible to judge their ages by appearance; Yato is about the same size as Nora when he meets Sakura, implying that he and Nora were around the same physical “age” at that time; meanwhile, Nora is later portrayed as being roughly the same age as Yukine, suggesting she was maybe 12-13ish years old when she died. So, despite being drawn tiny, it’s possible Yato was meant to be anywhere from a little kiddo (6-7) to all the way up to Nora’s age by the time he met Sakura.

But all that said, I think what you were really asking about was more the mental state Yato would have been in when he met Sakura and how his young age would have impacted his ability to change his world views, right? The answer to that is... complicated and could be approached a lot of ways. Coming from a background of working with and educating social work students, there are several common psychological theories of child development that might apply here, for example. 

I’d recommend checking out Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development, though. 

(Pulled from here.)

I don’t have time to explain the entire theory with the complexity it might deserve, but the basic idea is that, as children develop, they experience a series of crises or challenges that they must overcome. Successfully overcoming each challenge results in successful psychological and social development; failing to overcome a challenge in childhood will result in long-term negative impacts later in the child’s life. (There are plenty critiques of this theory too, so don’t take this as gospel or anything--just a theory worth thinking about!)  

Given Father’s lack of interest in teaching Yato basic concepts of humanity, I would put Yato at approximately the “Initiative vs. Guilt” stage when he met Sakura. At this level of Erikson’s theory, children struggle with asserting themselves and developing a healthy sense of how their personal desires might conflict with the expectations and rules set out by others. In this stage, giving a child positive feedback for their actions teaches the child that those actions are “right,” while giving negative feedback teaching the child that their actions are wrong. In order to overcome this particular challenge, children need to begin taking initiative and aligning their actions with social standards; the child acts, and the parental figure reacts--through this process, children learn “I can do X thing but I cannot do Y thing.” 

When you hear things like “Children are cruel,” most often what people are referring to is that it takes time for children to learn empathy and to experience guilt when they cause harm to others; children do not natively understand the repercussions of their actions. It’s only through a process of testing the boundaries, of receiving praise or punishment, that children define what is “right” versus “wrong,” and begin to feel bad when they do something deemed wrong.

And this is pretty much word-for-word what we see Sakura teaching Yato.

If they have healthy role models and caretakers during this phase, children develop successfully. Successful children in this phase get their first taste of personal responsibility; unsuccessful children are (supposedly) plagued for years afterward by a sense of guilt and shame when their actions produce disapproval from everyone around them.

Yato... doesn’t exactly make it through this development stage unscathed, because he receives conflicting definitions of right and wrong from his Father an Sakura:

Which ultimately results in, years later, the Yato we know and love who still does his Father’s bidding to kill humans even though it fills him with a horrific sense of guilt:

Through his time with Sakura, I think it could also be argued that Yato moves into the next stage of Erikson’s theory as well, getting into the “Industry versus Inferiority” crises. 

Meeting Sakura brings out Yato’s true, deep down desire as a god: to help people. (I think it’s important to note that this isn’t something Sakura teaches him--it’s a quality Yato already possessed; it was explicitly Yato’s desire to please people that led to him murdering in his father’s name.)

Once he learns what makes people happy, Yato immediately pursues that with intense focus:

The primary goal of this phase of psychosocial development is to experience a sense of confidence in one’s actions. When children practice their skills, pursue areas where they are praised, and gain new skills and aptitudes through mentoring from healthy role models, they gain confidence in their ability to excel, to fit in with peers their age, and to create meaningful things. By encouraging Yato to pursue positive behaviors--playing peacefully with other children, appreciating natural beauty, and creating useful things like boots for the needy--Sakura moved Yato toward successfully completing this phase and developing a sense of confidence in his actions and his ability to achieve positive things in the world. 

Of course, Father cannot have that (because confident children with a sense of self-worth are much more difficult to abuse), so he puts an immediate end to Sakura’s influence over Yato in the most insidious way possible: although he clearly manipulated the situation to achieve Sakura’s death, out loud, he blames Yato, implying that Sakura’s death was all Yato’s fault, the results of Yato taking unwanted action “industry” and yet failing--creating a sense of “inferiority” instead.

This, of course, haunts Yato all the way to the present, as he--again and again and again--blames himself for things outside his control or failing to live up to expectations that no one in his situation (still being manipulated) could possibly hope to get “right.” 

Finally, you could say that Sakura’s presence is Yato’s life is ultimately what sows the seeds of the manga’s main plot up to this point, with Yato’s quest to create an entirely new identity for himself as a god of fortune instead of a god of calamity. Personally, I would say that Yato is currently still in this phase of development, still working out how to define himself and who he will ultimately become once he is finally free to decide on his own path in life. It was Sakura’s gentle influence--his desire to become the kind of god who could make her smile--that eventually sparked his conflict and finally led Yato to the brink of catastrophe. If he wishes to become the god Sakura told him he could be, he can no longer suffer his father to live.

So, long story longer, I think it can be argued that Yato meeting Sakura at such a young age is EXACTLY what made it possible for him to change, and exactly what has led to his crisis in identifying himself and redefining his sense of right and wrong. 

Uhhhh... I hope that answers your question!

[teamjacobthot]

so how r u going to write emily in your leah fic? salty, nuanced, or just leah's general feelings about her. whatever u choose i'm still gonna read, but i like when people treat her as a more complex character. yes what she did was really fucked up but she's also a person who's not completely horrible. she has layers, she has feelings, she has hobbies

first let me just say thank you SO much for sending this ask! ik I’m taking a long ass time to write enough of the story that I wanna share, and I really appreciate you for still being interested and voicing this question. writing takes me a while bc I work full time and I’m always tired and also the chapters are like really long rn and I also really want the writing to be good enough for my fandom friends to enjoy (not to mention that I have two very very busy betas to run this through). but tysm for your interest, it helps me keep going. now to answer your question…….

ngl I feel like I’ve accidentally developed the twins WAY more than emily at this point in the writing process but anyways

honestly this story isn’t like an emily punching bag or anything, and she’s not an antagonist. the imprinting thing is still gonna happen ofc, which is messy and also integral to leah’s origin story, but at the end of the day emily is still just a teenage girl like leah is, and leah is by no means some flawless angel here. I will say that emily’s not MY favorite character to write (and she never has been lbr) but she has hobbies and desires and values and drama of her own, and she’s not there to be a horrible person or like… ruin leah’s life. things just get fucked up.

that being said tho I’m taking the popular approach where em’s had some pretty shitty experiences w teen boys, but she’s overall nurturing and pretty corny in romantic relationships and has always wanted somebody like sam in her life bc he never folded on leah (until he has to). maybe deep down on her bad days emily wishes, in some way that wouldn’t harm leah, that a “sam” could step into her life. regular teenage jealously, ya know. so when sam + supernatural devotion to her step in, she eventually accepts the imprint, but not without feeling bad abt it at first. she loves romance and dating but she loves leah too.

at the same time, by the time the imprint happens leah already feels a lil betrayed/very stressed out on a couple of other fronts, and bc the story is in the limited third person pov and we only know how she’s feeling the whole time, we’ll know that she’s prone to reacting pretty quickly to things, not necessarily thinking them all the way through (like I’m building up a whole thing, you’ll just have to see lol).

overall tho, in my story, leah isn’t like the poor defenseless angel protagonist whose evil bitch of a cousin stole her bf after planning on it. things just get fucked up when ppl start phasing lmao

ty for the ask boo!

[natsunoomoi]

So sometimes I check wikis to like look things up about a show or series that I don’t have time to read or watch the whole thing fully cuz that’s a time investment I just don’t have but I have questions I just want a quick answer to.

The problem is, wikis are of course, made by like regular people with varying levels of biases and also sometimes selective memory of events. As can be seen in my more recent posts with SVSSS and MXTX’s works I’ve been on those wikis, but sometimes the explanations of plot points and a bunch of other stuff are really confusing and circular. SVSSS’s is being more cleaned up recently, but it still has some things that it says happened, that I couldn’t find at all when reading the book and I’m just like, where did they find that info to put on the wiki?

Like one of my earlier posts when I started reading SVSSS at the beginning, I mentioned how I read that original Luo Binghe got killed by his harem eventually and I thought that made sense cuz ultimately no one in that original plotline made choices that made them genuinely happy. But when I read the book, I didn’t see any mention of that anywhere...? I think last time I went to go look at BC Novels they had one chapter left to translate. Is it in there?

Then at other times, I wonder if there’s an inconsistency because there’s a limitation between the translation I read and like something in the original Chinese text like there’s a typo, which obviously there’s a mistake then. But then other times, I’m wondering if people read a different thing, but most of the people with a different interpretation don’t seem to be able to read Chinese and are reading the same translation as me, but I’m confused where they got certain details from?

Like for instance, there’s another part on the wiki where it says Airplane originally planned for PIDW to be a BL from the beginning, but I’ve literally been trying to find where that was stated because I don’t remember that and I don’t see that anywhere and the chapter citation that is listed on the wiki goes to a chapter that doesn’t talk about that at all. Airplane/Qinghua does say that he made changes to Qingqiu’s character that were originally more complex to make him a trash human and he did that to make a living, but I can’t find where it says he originally wanted it to be a BL theme to begin with. In the chapter they cite it says that Qinghua had designed Binghe to have an appearance in a way that appealed more to a female audience and be more of a pretty boy. That doesn’t mean that he meant his entire book to be a BL it just means you make your main character look a certain way partly for internal logic because that look is really popular with women so the in-story women would probably find him attractive and in a meta sense any females who happen to also read a stallion novel like some women read shounen manga would find him hot in real life. A successful story does things like that to reach people outside of its target audience and that’s kind of a lot of the reason why a lot of Shounen Jump manga are really popular with women too even though a lot of the stories have the male perspective in mind. The chapter it cites only talks about the actual physical appearance design choice he made for Binghe vs Mobei-Jun. He just says that Mobei-Jun was made for the kind of male character he prefers to think about, but Binghe was just designed with the idea of what would make him more popular and also could kind of be like a self-insert-ish for his desire to beat on people for funsies. It doesn’t talk at all about what the genre he planned for the book to be and interpreting the text to that much is really stretching the context to wishful thinking levels. I don’t even actually care either way what kind of novel PIDW was because it’s not actually that important to enjoying the story of SVSSS, but I don’t know if it’s the Ravenclaw in me or what, but it just bugs me when there’s something that seems *wrong* printed on a thing that is supposed to inform other people. I’m literally reading chapters at the same time as trying to write this post to find where I think maybe it was said, but it sure as hell wasn’t the chapter the wiki cites.

The other day I re-read the chapter when Qinghua taunts SY with Qingqiu’s real memories, and he doesn’t even say it then. ATM, I’m trying to look through the last chapter because there’s that one part when Qinghua shows up right at the end and talks with SY at the celebration, but even at the start at the chapter, SY talks about how Qingqiu was super straight to him. SY is an unreliable narrator, but given the context of Qingqiu’s life events that makes sense. His personal trauma because of Qiu Jianluo also pushed him away from any amount of closeness he could have with other men other than ones he already trusted to some degree. He had a lot of problems forming new relationships of any kind with other men because of deep-seated trust issues. Not that he didn’t have any, but meaningful ones were pretty absent. One only because of a very sad misunderstanding and lack of communication and explanation, but the others just tough.

But like also there’s like that SJ slept in the Warm Red Pavilion and he went there just for comfort rather than more lascivious reasons. Yeah, it’s true that he didn’t go there for those intentions, but like it’s still in the environment so it’s not like he’s unaware of what happens there. I mentioned it in the previous post about his search for means to grow his cultivation, but only to say he’s probably not that innocent and there may be some truth to him wanting to do something to Ning Yingying out of desperation to make up for his low cultivation foundation. Like he’s aware of those kinds of things and he probably came across something that said that was a way he could grow his cultivation. Desperation and this motivation I think is probably the only reason why he would be so tempted to cross that line with Yingying because he otherwise treats women rather well. She is his favorite too, so if a person who usually treats females well for some reason wants to do something that would be hurtful to their favorite person, there has to be a much deeper motivation behind that. The only thing that is a canonically greater obsession I think would have to be his cultivation level. He has a number of self-esteem issues and such a well, but his greatest pride and greatest concern is his cultivation. He is proud of his abilities, but also he laments and regrets the version of him he couldn’t become so much I can foresee that if there was a suggestion that he could overcome his late start in some way by using someone female, I think he’d at least think about it and also consider who he knows could be a viable candidate should he want to act on it and that is how that part of PIDW happened. Pain and desperation make people do things that are uncharacteristic, so it has to be something that really bothers him more than in a moment of weakness that idea is there.

Which is another point I have an issue with on the wiki because it says his low cultivation is “logically” because he started late and spent so much time with a fake master. It’s not logically. It’s factually. It’s mentioned several times especially in the extras chapters from Shen Jiu’s point of view where he talks about how he is specifically behind because of wasting time with Qiu Jianluo and Wu Yanzi and also that he was the last to form a golden core. If it was coming out of SY or someone else’s mouth as an explanation, maybe you can say “logically”, but if it’s coming from SJ’s point of view chapter it sure as hell is not. That *IS* his motivation. He states it himself.

Also, I think some people don’t understand what it means to have a low cultivation foundation. Cultivation from what I gather according to the rules of this world is like a lot of talents we have in our world where you need to start young to be good at it. There’s a few skills that you can learn that if you don’t start at a specific time you lose the optimal window to develop your talent for it because of the way the brain functions and basically purges off skillsets you’re not using in your environment. 

Learning a language is one such skill. When a baby is born, it has the capability to learn how to speak every language in the world, but as it gets older its brain purges out the sounds that it doesn’t hear from its environment and this keeps going into older childhood as well. The taxi driver I talked to the other day about this said you have to start before you’re 10, which sounds about right. The phoneme purging in your brain starts quite early though so that’s why my company has classes for Moms and their 1 or 2 year old so that they can speak to them in English to try to keep English sounds in their environment so that they can have perfect pronunciation when they grow up. If you try to learn a new language when you’re older that’s how you have accents. You don’t have the phonemes to speak the language perfectly so your brain is imitating the sounds with the ones you do have. Plus it’s a constant use skill. I used to be able to speak Cantonese with no accent up until my teens, but I haven’t spoken it in so long that slowly I started to have an accent and now I can’t say the words properly anymore. I don’t know that much Cantonese to begin with that aren’t baby words, but I used to be able to say them properly.

Music is another one and that one has an even more narrow window. Kids with parents hoping that they will be music prodigies usually start them on music VERY young like 3 or 4. It’s not that it’s impossible for someone to pick up an instrument later in life, but there’s a type of sense to music and hearing the scale and developing that skill that if you don’t start kids on it at that time, their musical ear will not be as good.

And it’s that “not as good” thing that Qingqiu is chasing. He is exceptionally powerful and talented which is why despite starting late he became favored. He is very capable and good at what he does, but he is not as good as what he could have been. Even though he is so good, he is only haunted by how much better he would have been if he had started on time and had proper instruction. A musician who maybe wants to be a concert violinist but took up the instrument late may struggle to get a good seat in an orchestra because despite any talent they have, their ear is not as developed as someone else. Such a musician would be vexed and lament that they hadn’t discovered their love for the instrument sooner just as Qingqiu is vexed and laments that he didn’t start proper cultivation development earlier.

And I’m griping about SVSSS more because I read that book so I have more points of reference to go on. But like the wikis for MDZS and TGCF aren’t much better. MDZS is maybe a little more coherent and easier to follow, but TGCF confused the hell out of me and it took me awhile to understand what was going on. I really needed it though cuz I was watching the donghua and like I think the way they present some of the scenes is like slightly out of order for like foreshadowing and other like film reasons, so I checked the wiki while watching to try to get more context cuz I don’t have much time right now to pick up another book at the moment. I was so confused though cuz like...it seems like the logic in the entries is so circular and I’m trying to keep track of all the characters and what’s happening. I hope it’s better now but at the time I was watching it I was so confused and struggling to make sense of what’s happening.

And like maybe you’re wondering why if I read the book, would I bother checking a wiki. Mostly out of laziness because I’m thinking of something and I don’t want to go find the exact chapter to help me flesh out my thought and reference point. I end up getting more frustrated sometimes depending on what I’m looking up because of the above things.

Plus again I’m like a bit mystified as to why Qingqiu’s look seems to appeal to me. It’s not just him though and like other characters with a similar style in some of the games I play. I think there’s some imprint from some very old childhood memory that I only vaguely remember. Like it’s a look that seems familiar, but I can’t put my finger on where it’s from and I can’t figure it out, so I keep just going to check images to see if it will make me remember. I think it’s a movie I saw with my Dad as a young child, but I can’t remember it at all. I remember there was one Jet Li movie I watched with my Dad once and I ended up watching all the time cuz I thought Jet Li was really cute in that movie (I was also 3 so I don’t know why I’m thinking that way, but whatever), but like Jet Li was bald in that movie because it was about a Shaolin Temple. I think at the time my Dad showed me that movie I already showed an interest in movies from my own heritage, so that’s why he showed me that. But like I can’t remember anything else. I suppose it could have been something my grandpa watched because sometimes he’d watch a Chinese movie when I was playing in the living room and I’d stop to watch too and then he’d fast-forward through the intimacy scenes, but because I’d just look over at something he was already watching I have no idea what any of those were.

[swashbucklery]

hey, I've been meaning to watch Legends of Tomorrow for AGES, and obviously your deep and abiding love for the show showing up constantly on my dash has only added to this desire, but I remember hearing not great things about season one when it was on. Would you recommend starting there anyway? Should I be completionist about this, or will it put me off the rest of the show? Thanks!

Um, first of all you should DEFINITELY watch Legends of Tomorrow, you’d legit love it and the themes of found family and the way it gently takes down the myth that someone can “be a failure” and gives people who have lived awful pasts a chance to find a home? ::chef finger kiss::

I am always torn about how to answer this question because as much as season one is not good, I also love it? Allow me to explain.

Season 1 of Legends of Tomorrow is, in essence, a season belonging to a very different show compared to Season 4.

Like, the casting alone has seen huge turnover: only three of the “original” Legends team from S1 are still series regulars. I struggle with saying that the new characters are “better,” because I love a lot of the S1 originals and I know that for “practical reasons” or “time constraints” you can’t have a core cast of like 25 people but my heart wants all the Legends to stay forever.

However, I will say: S2 sees the addition of Amaya, and starts to shift the momentum away from Men Screaming Important Things At Each other and provide more woman-driven storylines and this only continues improving as the seasons progress. S4 has six core characters (not all regulars) who are women and they’re all fantastic and that’s abouuut the right balance for me lol.

(I struggle also with being like. THIS SHOW ADDED WOMEN OF COLOUR as a proxy marker for it being good, because honestly the shift was more that they added those women and then let them have narrative space and wrote bettermaterial for them.)

(There is also, fair warning, one episode in early S2 and one in early S3 where the show tries to tackle Complex Issues Related To Non-White Cultures and it ends up going very poorly bc the show is Not Qualified For That Type Of Social Commentary. We as a collective just pretend these don’t exist but if you would like a heads-up let me know.)

I love Season 1 specifically because of a lot of the things that people criticized, to be honest. Like yes a lot of the narrative driving force is just Arthur Darvill jumping up and down and screaming utter nonsense rules about how time travel works, half of which they break in the following episode, but I find that truly excellent and hilarious to watch so maybe you will too?

(I will say that a lot of my soft spot for S1 comes specifically from the characters; I love Sara’s arc and I love love love love Kendra and she’s only in S1. I rewatch their best episodes from S1 all the time because their friendship was really lovely and I think is a big part of what I appreciate from the early seasons of the show.)

A lot of my affection also comes from the sheer dumbness of it - like they were really figuring themselves out, but a lot of the things that led to enduring show tropes (ie, the annual cowboy episode) did have their roots in season one and there’s something about the sheer madcap audacity of it all that’s really charming.

I will also say that like. If you are the type of person who likes when A Man Is Sad Because His Family Has Died And He Needs To Avenge Them Or Whatever, you will probably like S1. Rip Hunter’s feelings are largely lost on me, alas.

If you were going to skip the first season, I would recommend going back to it after you’ve fallen for some of the characters, and seeing if you like it more? I’m having trouble bc my instinct is to be like NO EVERYONE MUST SIT THROUGH SEASON ONE, WHEN TIME WAS LIKE PUDDING AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY. But also I’m not the TV police, if you need to skip stuff to enjoy the thing then you should!!

If you do want to watch S1, it also relies somewhat on viewers understanding previous CWverse canon. You may have picked this up by osmosis at this point, and you don’t need to watch anything to follow S1!. However if you’re feeling truly completionist, here is my post of episodes you could watch to get background for S1.

Hypothetically if you were going to skip ahead, the season to start on depends on what types of characters you like. I really love S2, mostly for very obvious Sara Lance related reasons. They dial way back on the screaming about time rules bit, and the dynamic between Sara and Amaya is truly magical, and I forget what else happens but Sara has probably her best hair of the series and she wears a lot of great tank tops and sweaters.

If you are more interested in the show post-Zari, she doesn’t enter until S3. Adding her into the team was a really wonderful thing, and the balance of Zari and Amaya and Sara are when the show really started to hit its stride. I’d recommend watching at least S3 and S4 if you wanted to catch up to prep for S5. S3 is also when Sara starts to get a serious core love interest, and the way the show writes that is absolutely beautiful.

If you are really just interested in diving into the present, S4 does stand pretty well on its own, but I feel like it benefits from viewers who already know and love the Legends as they are in an intangible sort of way. 

Anyway. The moral of the story is: watch Legends how you want, but I think you’d love it, pal.

[golden-witch]

I wrote an incredibly long character study for Sayo for an RP group. I am deciding to share because some fans have difficultly figuring her out because of Ryukishi’s writing style, which is honestly understandable. I hope y’all enjoy! I have some other writings about Sayo you could also check out. More under read-more.

Sayo was once a happy girl whose suffering transformed her into a woman with a polarized personality and a warped sense of justice. She has suffered emotional abuse at the hands of the Ushiromiya family and their associates. Born an orphan, she grew up neglected and without friends that weren’t imaginary. Daydreaming was a means of entertainment and escapism for Sayo. She created her own mental safe space called the Golden Land in order to cope with her miserable life. This would develop into a spiritual way of thinking and ultimately become the land of the dead in Sayo’s conceptualization of religion. 

It was always Sayo’s desire to blend fantasy with reality. Even as a little girl, she tried to bring her imagination to life by inventing the Golden Witch, a supposed ghost who haunted the halls of the mansion where she worked. Sayo would use this as a means to empower herself. Beatrice was a persona she assumed, and under her name, Sayo would pull pranks and cause mischief for the inhabitants of Rokkenjima both to enhance the veracity of the witch’s legend and to vent her anger towards the staff and her family for mistreating her. 

Sayo’s more vindictive personality traits would increase as she grew older. Although she had begun to impersonate the witch for fun, it became a power fantasy for her, and her acting would become dangerous. Sayo’s fear of abandonment caused her to cling to Battler Ushiromiya, and when he left the island, the hateful side of her began to fester. She anxiously waited for his return and blamed him for tragedies which befell her during their separation because he promised to save her from Rokkenjima. She became vengeful towards Battler and chose him as the target of her murder-suicide game, an ultimate act of retribution for leaving her to suffer.

The knowledge Sayo uncovered during Battler’s absence radically transformed the way she viewed herself. She was never satisfied with herself and had many suspicions about her body but learning the truth about her background was catastrophic. She considers herself deeply undeserving of other’s affection out of disgust towards herself-- largely affected by the circumstances of her birth;  she is an illegitimate child and a product of incest with disfigured sex organs due to an accident she sustained. Personal difficulty with discerning her gender causes her to suffer from an identity crisis so severe that she doesn’t view herself as human. This complex results in Sayo calling herself “furniture”, a being below humans whose sole purpose is servitute. Furniture can never know love, but they can still dream of what it feels like to love and be loved-- a torturous existence where all romantic endeavors end in tragedy. 

Love is a very important concept to Sayo. She has troubles with introversion and as a result forms bonds so deep that they are integral parts of her being.  She values relationships over material things and feels so strongly about connecting to others that she will go to great lengths to solidify relationships. While endearing, it has more dangerous side effects including possessiveness; once Sayo has become close to someone, she does everything in her power to avoid abandonment. This goes to extreme lengths in the story, where Sayo prefers to commit murder and suicide in order to prevent her loved ones from abandoning her.

Sayo is extremely sensitive towards the prospect of people discovering the state of her body and mind. She seeks to fulfill other’s desires before her own and is terrified of traits which displease them. She pushes these left over thoughts and feelings onto a series of personas to categorize them. They are Shannon, Kanon, and the witch, Beatrice. It should be noted that Sayo does not have DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), rather she establishes characters to roleplay and does so convincingly.

‘Shannon’ is the work name Sayo wears while serving the Ushiromiya family as a maid. She has been developed into a persona, an idealized form of femininity. Shannon is a demure, heartfelt girl whose desire is to retire to domestic life with her husband and children. She is meant to fulfill Sayo’s fantasy of becoming a woman and a wife. Her concept of womanhood is limited and very gendered, bordering on stereotypical. 

‘Kanon’ is a male alter-ego (once an imaginary friend) who Sayo adopted due to her struggle with gender identity because of her unclear biological sex. He is her vision of what a boy should be like; crass, cold and impersonal, a protective persona meant to shield Shannon’s vulnerabilities. He is especially resentful of love and magic because of Sayo’s partial realization that her fantasies have a dark side. The traits Sayo gave to Shannon and Kanon are very polarizing, and the two often debate in her daydreams as she considers who she wants to be and what steps she must take to achieve that. Kanon opposes the massacre and wishes for life on Rokkenjima to continue as normal so that he can fulfill his relationship with Jessica, in part, and because he tries to be satisfied with his lot in life. When Sayo realizes that this is impossible due to the discoveries about her background, Kanon advocates for suicide rather than murder. He fails to convince Sayo because he is ultimately more passive and less dominant that the Shannon persona. This also causes Kanon to die during the duel.

‘Beatrice’ is the character Sayo play-acts as to fulfill a power fantasy. Beatrice represents the sadistic, vindictive side of Sayo’s psyche, traits she rarely displays in Shannon or Kanon. While operating under her Beatrice persona, Sayo channels her mischievous side into ‘magic’, pranks which vary from harmless to murderous. Beatrice embodies lost hopes and dreams for Sayo; for example, her voluptuous form, her sexual prowess, and her role as the family head are all impossible for Sayo to have. Beatrice is an unreachable ideal for Sayo. An interesting aspect I have noticed about Beatrice is her behavior, which is neither overly feminine (like Shannon) or masculine (like Kanon). Sayo blended these traits to create a woman who didn’t fit neatly into the two boxes of gender stereotypes. 

It is in this persona that Sayo commits her murder-suicide plot; Beatrice is the judge, juror, and executioner sent to cleanse the sins of Rokkenjima. She will kill the family and taken them with her to the Golden Land. She is almost godly, sent to Rokkenjima to enact divine justice.

The Golden Land and magic are religious concepts to Sayo which she has developed extensively over the years. She has a bit of a god-complex over the island as its master and believes, with conviction, that killing herself and her loved ones will transport them to this private heaven. Sayo will act on any means to actualize this dream and has no qualms with manipulating or hurting others to see her plans to fruition. She has decided this is the only way she can ever be happy. This includes grooming a child into a cult following with Beatrice as a sort of religious figure. While it began as an innocent game, Sayo warped Beatrice’s lore to brainwash Maria into believing that death was the only way to end her mother’s abuse instead of acting in Maria’s best interest and trying to intervene. She is incredibly passive and waits for miracles to change fate, miracles which would unfortunately never occur. At the end of the series, she realizes that she could have been more proactive in changing her life and others.

Sayo becomes a changed person after the events of Episode 6. She has finally accepted her mistakes and realized what she could have done to avoid Rokkenjima’s tragedy. In the Episode 8 manga, which I HIGHLY recommend reading (bc its better than the vn lol), she is able to confront a hysterical Ange and convince her that suicide and self destruction is not the answer to anyone’s problems. Sayo fully forgives the family for their actions and is able to move on, finally achieving peace in the afterlife where she exists happily with Battler.

You can find more writings about Sayo in my writings page.

[marimopeace]

Shigure anon again. The reason why it seemed to me like he only loved Akito because of the dream is because of the words he uses in chapter 111. Why did the author specifically have to harken back to the dream and use that word? Why not just have Shigure simply say "I wish I could've fallen for someone like you" to Tohru, why use the word dream specifically if she was just trying to have Shigure say that he wished he could have fallen in love with someone kinder?

hi again anon!

thankfully for everyone this question requires a lot less rambling to answer:

1. always be aware of what you’re reading

so i can’t actually answer your first question at all tbh bc it’s not up to me to explain the author’s actions (since a reader of any series can only interpret things according to their own opinion) and your question is kind of invalid since the specific words you read were not exactly what the author wrote.

whether you were reading scanlations or the official tokyopop furuba manga, you can’t rely on the words on the page to provide such minute analysis into the story. it’s not the same thing as when you’re consuming in your own native language and can rely on quotes to support persuasive arguments (i.e. seeing captain america say his closing quote to falcon and getting the subtle nuance that sam will be the next cap--yes i’m a nerd i’m sorry this was the fastest example that came to mind lol). 

don’t get too hung up on specific words to dig deeper when the piece has been passed through so many channels. this applies to furuba especially since you’ll never quite get the “exact” meaning of everything (you get close enough but it’s not to the point where you can pick apart individual words and sentences like you want) and also since it’s a shoujo series aimed at younger girls. takaya (the author) did create a series that has darker conflicts and psychological themes but i doubt (and this is just a personal opinion) she would rely on tools such as wordplay or double meanings since that’s not shown in her writing style (compared to a series such as monogatari, which is rich in specific references).

2. context is your friend, don’t forget that!

i’m not trying to dictate the “proper” interpretation of shigure’s character or the events of chapter 111 here, since i am just a normal reader who has had no control over the creation of a series that we both enjoy, but i do want to lessen your confusion anon! your other asks made it seem like you weren’t trying to contest my opinion, but that you were curious to hear my thoughts and were confused by my explanation, so i want to help you get the clarification you want, which seems to be primarily focused on shigure in chapter 111 specifically.

similar to how the mechanics (grammar, word choice, quotes) of translated writing should be approached with an open mind, so should plot details.

you seem to be very focused on understanding shigure’s remarks to tohru about tohru/the dream. remember that the words he says in that moment are an expression of his intentions, but not what they’re built off of, his long-term motivations of the whole series have been built on his personality (a driven individual who is cunning and resourceful, read: manipulative), and his personal experiences (his past with akito yada yada yada). a few panels from one page of a single chapter can be used to try to guess what a character’s about, but you need more than that.

in the same chapter you referenced, shigure has a conversation with hatori that ends with a discussion of kindness, and shigure remarks that his scheming has made for a lonely time, and then the scene closes with him pondering something along the lines of “what it would have been like to have dreamed of a kind soul” (compared to the warped akito who the two had been conversing about previously). this is followed by a bunch of other things, and then the up pops the moment you’ve been referring to where shigure says his thing to tohru. this is an example of looking at whole plot details to understand why a scene happens the way it does, rather than relying on a single moment.

and then if there’s ever still confusion about how something should be understood, look at the other details you the reader have been provided by the author to understand their characters.

so in this specific case:

-have there been previous events to tie into shigure’s words at tohru? has he ever expressed romantic interest in previous plot points to warrant that kind of regret? no. but there have been many focused on hatori’s back and forth dance with akito--shigure admitting that part of him “hates” her (i think it’s actually referenced in the chapter you were looking at too), their sex game with kureno and ren, hatori checking in on his childhood friend if akito is really what he wants, etc etc--so maybe we can think of the regret in his words being more aimed at the underlying question: “what would life be like if i [shigure] never desired her”

-as the author has been building up her characters, has she hinted at bits of shigure’s personality that would warrant an interest in tohru? no, we have seen through the characters’ various antics that shigure is naturally the goofy teasing family figure who also has a stoic caring side for kyo, yuki, and tohru. so what do we know about shigure then? i’ll cut out a lot of things but we do know that shigure is the type to brood on his own about his aspirations. he’s had deep convos with his best bud hatori about his feelings and his underhanded means. we’ve also seen his dedicated love (there are many words to describe his feelings but this it the most general one) to akito, and can guess that it would be odd for him to suddenly throw away his long-term goals.

i’m trying to walk you through my own approach on things anon but truthfully your ask this time is more focused on semantics since you can only read so much from a single line of dialogue in these circumstances (takuya doesn’t pull tricks with dialogue and isn’t a complex writer).

again if there’s still any confusion, always feel free to send in an ask!

happy furuba consuming!

[aspoonofsugar]

Hi, I was wondering if maybe you had a method, or an experience, anything actually, to advise on this, because you seem really, really knowledgeable on everything touching fiction and construction of it around characters' arc. But above all, do not force yourself to answer if you don't want to bc I don't want to bother you! It's been a while, since I'm a child, that I've characters in mind for a fiction. I often daydreaming of them, especially since I tried to create a plot and an universe.

But it isn’t deep enough (the MC miss a real stake so oc, the end doesn’t exist, just subsidiary things that can make arcs but not a guideline for articulate all the work), and even though it’s pleasant to ‘rave’ about potentials scenes, I wish to write this one day but can’t even give a proper direction like that. It’s possibly getting on a fantasia universe, but at the same time even if I wish to have a personal universe I don’t want it to be a repetition of every declination

of fantasy models universe as it’s often the case with this kind of projects. So maybe it’s just going to be a SF in real word idk… anyway, if you have an idea of smth to advise in this case for creating a universe even if the process is supposed to be the opposite process (universe - plot- chara) I would really appreciate it very much. Sorry to have bothered you, if you don’t have don’t worry, you’re not obliged to answer. At worst I would find this by myself one day! Wishing you a good day!            

Hello anon!

Thank you for your kind words, I feel really flattered :)!

When it comes to your ask, I will try to answer it, but you should consider that I will talk generically since I don’t know much about your idea. In other words my suggestions might sound too generic and you might not know how to immediately apply them to your story. However, I hope they can be of some help.

From what you say, it seems to me that right now you should not really worry about the worldbuilding, but rather you should try to develop what you already have aka the characters and (I guess) some themes linked to them. As a matter of fact it seems to me that it is in these elements that your main idea lies.

I will try to explain myself better. A story is made of many elements (characters, themes, the world, the conflict and so on). All these elements are interconnected and the more they are coherent with each other and intertwined the more the story itself becomes cohesive and thightly written. What is more, among the above-mentioned elements, conflict is probably the most important one since the main conflict of a story defines the kind of story you are gonna tell.

In summary, we can say two things.

1) All the elements of a story are (idealistically) intertwined.

2) The main conflict of the story should be decided early on.

Now, every story is born by a simple idea which is then developed in something more complex and sometimes this idea is transformed to the point that it becomes difficult to recognize the original inspiration. However, a first and primitive idea is always needed. This first idea is about (at least) a specific narrative element. For example, it can be about a world with special attributes or about a specific theme the story wants to explore. In order to develop this idea it can be useful to understand the different possible conflicts it can give birth to, to choose one which is interesting and to determine the other elements of the narration in a way which is coherent with the initial idea.

Your basic idea is about the characters and since you have some ideas about the arc you want your main character to have you probably also know what this character must convey thematically. In other words you may also have some ideas about the themes of your narration. You should now try to shape these elements in an interesting conflict which is the struggle your character will go through.

You mentioned you are not convinced about your current draft because the stakes are not high enough for your character. A way to try and have a best result might be to give your character a different objective from the one they have right now.

TRY TAMPERING WITH YOUR CHARACTERS’ FLAWS AND OBJECTIVES

Generally speaking, characters are defined by a flaw and by something they want aka an objective. Usually their flaw goes in the way of their objective.

Let’s also highlight that to be more precise characters usually have two objectives which are one internal and the other external. The relationship between the internal and the external objective can give birth to different arcs structurally speaking.

For example, I mentioned in this ask that Kogami from Psycho Pass has the external objective not overlapping with the internal one. In other words, it is a case of what you need and what you want.

Kogami’s internal objective is to become a detective and to stop living like a hunting dog. This is what he needs.

However, his external objective is to kill Makishima. This is what he wants.

It is obvious that if Kogami wants to realize his internal objective he must give up his external one and vice versa. On one hand if he gives in to his flaw (his desire for revenge and his most instinctual pulsions) he will be successful in his external objective, but fail his internal one. On the other hand if he overcomes his flaw he will fail his external objective, but be successful in his internal one and change, so becoming the protagonist of an arc of transformation.

I will now make an example of how a narrative can be structured starting from defining a specific character. My objective is to show that just by thinking deeply about things like a flaw, an external objective and the way a transformation can happen many different stories (well at least many ideas for many different stories) can be born.

I will talk about Elen from Requiem of the Phantom. It is not necessary for you to truly know the series because I will simply discuss some aspects very generically.

Elen’s character has an arc of transformation and is also the character who lives the most important conflict in the series. She starts as a person who has no will of her own and her internal objective is to develop one. These two aspects are her flaw (lack of will) and her internal objective (developing a will of her own). Now, it is obvious that said like this they can seem very abstract elements. However, it is from developing and specifying these two elements that a more defined character and story can be born.

First of all, once it has been established that her flaw is a lack of will, one must come up with some reasons for it. Why does a person lack a will? Different answers can be given and from each different answer a different character will be born. In Elen’s case the answer is that she has been caught by a criminal organization and transformed into an assassin. Because of this, she has developed a very frail sense of self. In short her lack of will is the result of a specific coping mechanism she developed to survive.

Secondly, there is the problem of how to convey the fact that by the end Elen has a will of her own. In other words her internal conflict needs to be given an external representation. This must happen because we are in a story and stories show conflicts and do not simply tell them. So how can you show an internal transformation like the one Elen must go through? The answer the series gives is to create the character of the Scythe Master aka the main antagonist. Elen’s internal conflict is conveyed through her conflict with Scythe who wants to control her. In order to make the story more cohesive Scythe is not only the character who wants to control Elen in the story itself, but also the one who is responsible for her abuse and so for her initial situation.

A situation where a character must fight another who wants to control them is a good conflict to talk about themes like freedom and self-affirmation (and this is also why you find it in many stories). What is more, it is a conflict with the potential of being very dynamic and it can be used to write many different stories by changing some elements like the character’s personality (e.g. Ash in Banana Fish lives a similar conflict, but his personality is the opposite of Elen and so he has a different flaw which lets the narrative develop in a different way).

Finally, let’s also highlight that other than choosing a flaw and an objective you must come up with a situation which kicks off the character’s change. How is it possible that this character changes? In Requiem for the Phantom the answer is that Elen changes because she meets Reiji aka a person who is put in a situation very similar to her, but that reacts differently and in this way shows her a different path. Once again, this is not the only possible answer.

For example, in BF Ash is challenged not because he meets a person in a similar situation as him, but because he meets Eiji aka a person who comes from a completely different background and who makes him experience a different reality.

Let’s also highlight that in BF there is a dynamic where a character is challenged by another who has had a similar upbringing to his, but is reacting to said situation in a different way. It is the case of YL and Ash. Yut Lung is shown by Ash that there are other ways to react to a specific situation, but YL, differently from Elen, develops jealousy and is almost self-destroyed by his flaw until he meets another person (Sing) who helps him out.

Let’s now try to give other possible answers to the question: “How can Elen change?”.

For example, she might find herself without Scythe Master. Being removed from him might force her to start acting on her own. So now the question becomes “how is she removed from him?”.

He might die and leave her a last mission to complete. Elen who is lost without orders could choose to follow this post-mortuous order, but might come to realize throughout this last mission that she is her own person and she might choose to act against her orders and to use what she knows to go against Scythe’s last will. As you can see the plot becomes completely different from the one of the series. In this version the external conflict is determined by what is Elen’s last mission and it is obvious that she will have to face situations during the completion of this mission which will challenge her.

Elen might be removed from Scythe also for some external tampering. For example, she might be kidnapped by a rival organization. And we could also add some supernatural element. This rival organization has developed a technology which lets two people swap bodies. They might be wiling to send a person to spy the criminal organization Elen is a part of and she might find herself in another body and far away from Scythe. In this new environment she might meet situations which will let her grow. For example, the organization which kidnapped her is actually made of a bunch of misfits who live emarginated from society, but try to use their skills to fight criminality and have targeted Inferno (Elen’s group). In a healthieir environment Elen might feel accepted and grow.

I have added this last example to start discussing about worldbuilding and fantastic elements. As a matter of fact the body-swapping technology is a fantastic element and if it were to be added would modify the genre of the narration and add some supernatural aspects. Such a choice needs to be developed. For example, how does this body-swapping device work? If we choose to introduce it, then it would be a waste not to develop it further which means that it would be great if it added more conflict and more thematic meaning to the whole story.

It could be done this way. The device might still be a prototype and so, it works only if at least one of the two people involved in the swapping has a very weak will. This might also be the reason why Elen is chosen as a target.

This could be interesting because Elen’s external objective might become the one of going back to her own body, so that she can keep obeying her master’s orders. However, her internal objective is to develop a will and to affirm who she is, so in the end she might very well choose to fight her master and not to go back to her body. In short, her external objective is to go back to be herself physically, but in the end she becomes herself in a psychological sense. What is more, since her arc is about developing her own will, she is going to do so gradually and this means that ironically the more she develops the less chances she has to go back to her own body because the device only works if one of the two people involved has an enough weak will. This could lead to a series of minor conflicts between Elen herself and the members of the group which swapped her. On one hand they might start to develop a relationship with her, but on the other hand they might be worried about the person in Elen’s body who will found themselves stuck if Elen develops.

Finally, body-swapping is a trope which can be easily used to develop themes linked to empathy since it lets a person be in another one’s shoes, quite literally. So, we could use it to develop this theme as well in relation to the character who swapped with Elen. This character may have a personal grudge against Inferno and may initially despise Elen. However, after seeing how she is usually treated by the Scythe Master they might develop sympathy for her and they may wish to help her escape.

Let’s also underline that this body switch device might very well become something Scythe Master himself grows interested in and he might want to take it for himself because, if coupled with people like Elen who lack a will (and he is good at creating them), assassinations will become easier.

Now these are just random ideas and it is not important that they are good or bad ones. My aim is simply to show that by modifying some elements different kinds of conflicts are born and in this way different possible plots.

Because of this, it might be useful for you to tamper with these elements as well. You might realize that the external conflict you are thinking of might be more interesting if coupled with a character with a different flaw (e.g. a scared character will struggle more if coupled with a conflict which challenges them to be brave, rather than with one which challenges them to be generous). You may also have to think of an external objective which creates a more interesting conflict. In this case, remember that this objective must show in a concrete way what your character is going through in their interiority. Moreover, if you think about an objective which is important for your character, then the stakes will automatically get higher. In order to do so you might have to rethink or to elaborate on some details of the character’s background. As a matter of fact, the more specific and personal the objective you come up with is the easier will be to better characterize your character and to build the story.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON WORLDBUILDING

You specifically asked about worldbuilding, so I will make some very general considerations.

First of all, worldbuilding is an element present in all narrations and not only in stories with a fantastic setting.

Secondly, in all stories it should do at least two things.

1) Add to the conflict.

2) Add to the themes.

Let’s consider once again Requime for the Phantom because it has a realistic setting, but its worldbuilding fulfills the two conditions above.

As mentioned above, in Requiem for the Phantom there is a criminal organization called Inferno who forces Elen and the other protagonist Reiji to work as assassins.

This organization is pretty realistic in how it works, but it still has a thematic meaning. As a matter of fact it is the physical hell the characters must escape from. What is more, it is made by traitors from other organizations and in this way it is linked to the theme of betrayal which is present in the series as a whole.

Moreover, the organization itself and how it is structured contributes to the conflict. As a matter of fact many of the conflicts which interest the protagonists are born because of other characters wanting to obtain more power within the organization itself.

When it comes to your story, you must come up with a setting which is coherent with your conflict and with your major themes. Consider that it is something which might come naturally later on once you have developed the story more. That said, you must see if a fantastic world is necessary for the story you want to tell or if it better works in a more realistic setting. Be it one way or the other you will still have to create a universe which is good for your story.

If you choose a realistic setting you might have to research some aspects of it (for example, if you set it in a hospital you might want to research how hospitals work; this could also help you with the plot because you might discover unexpected things which might come in handy to create interesting situations).

If you choose a fantastic setting you will have to establish how that world works. What is more, the fantastic elements should not appear in the story just because, but should have an important role.

Idealistically the world you set your story in is the only world where your story can be told. This means that if you change some aspects of it another story will be possible, but not yours.

In short, the choice of the setting should be useful to your story as a whole and not be simply something extra.

For example, if you want to write a story about a skater who becomes better and better in her own discipline it doesn’t make much sense to set it in a hospital. The world you are gonna explore is gonna be the one of professional skating with all its dynamics and rules.

It is not that you can’t have a story with a skater in a hospital, but it will have to be about something different than her becoming a champion. It could be about her having to solve a criminal case which involves her roommate for example. And in the end she will solve it because of something she has learnt in her skating days (because if her being a skater is not important for the story, then why should she be?).

The same goes for fantastic worlds. If you are gonna put your story in one, you should think why putting it in such a world is necessary and as you do you will create a specific fantastical world with attributes which are original and functional to your story.

For example, you might choose that your character’s objective is to find a magical object to solve a certain problem. You must then establish the problem which might be linked to your character’s flaw. let’s say your character is a coward, so he chooses to go find an object not to be a coward anymore. Of course through his journey he overcomes his flaw without the need of a magic object (this is the idea behind the Wizard of Oz after all). Another hypothesis is that your character has a problem, finds an object which seems able to fix it, but it turns out that an even bigger problem is created and so your protagonist has to fix it. Another possible structure is that your character has a curse (which might very well be linked to themes or their character flaw) and their objective becomes freeing themselves from said curse.

As I am sure you have noticed these are all common structures you can find in many different stories. They work and the stories which have them are all different because of how they are declined. Which kind of curse fits my character best? A character who puts a lot of importance on physical looks will be challenged by being changed in a horrible monster. Who cursed them? A jealous witch? Or maybe in a comic twist it might be the person who must marry them who found the way they looked previously disgusting. Such a premise could very well be used to explore themes like how beauty is relative to an extent or how it is wrong to try and change one’s own partner. Then how can the curse be lifted? Maybe the character will have to overcome some trials. Or maybe they must pass the curse to other five people and so the MC will have to select their targets. If they are a good person, they might not really be willing to do so and they might feel guilty about it, so they might choose to find people who “deserve” it and so on.

I hope I gave you a general idea.

To summarize:

- It is not really important the order you follow when you plan your story, but it is useful to start with one or two elements you have ideas about.

- These elements will help you shape your conflict (which can also be the element you start with).

- It can be useful to build the other elements in a way that they are coherent with your original idea. In other words, what you want to convey can help you in thinking about which kind of elements you have to introduce.

Finally, this way of planning might seem a little too rigid, so I want to make one thing clear. These are instruments and not strict rules. The one I talked about is simply a method to approach and plan a story and it is useless if one has not an idea they want to convey.

From what you say, I think that you clearly want to convey something and you are clearly very passionate about it since it is a story which has been with you since you were a child and you have even been dreaming your characters. Looking at it with these instruments (even if it might be strange at first) might help you better realize what you want to say and you might even discover you have more than what you thought and that you simply need to organize it differently. You might also be able to come up with a plot you like more by simply changing a small element. In short, this method is simply a way to look at your story from a different perspective and it might be helpful.

Another way to go at it is to talk about your story with someone you trust. This person might tell you what they like about it and which are the aspects they find more interesting. By starting from these aspects you might be able to develop these ideas more and you might make progress.

I hope I was of some help and good luck with your story!

[verobatto]

"Break the jar, and do it again." The slow construction of Canon Destiel

Ok people the hiatus is gone and the new chapter aired so we have now time for interesting thoughts…

This is another Destiel meta, sorry again if anyone already talked about this ideas, you can share your opinions here!

We want Destiel become canon. That's law. But how you get together two characters with such defectives inner issues? Like Cas and Dean? Are they ready to be together? I know we are just NEAR to... But we need just a little big step for that...

Before we start to break things here... I want to discuss about one of the most important tool used by Supernatural writers... And bc I like symbolic titles... I'm gonna title it like this...

Supernatural and the Phoenix Complex

Spn must be the most mortal series, and we have memes of our beloved characters's taste for dying over and over again throughout the entire series and reliving in the same season or in the next.

Like the Phoenix, they reborn from their ashes renewed. And that's the meaning from this.: "I'm giving you this so many chances to change your point of view, so you can see with new eyes."

Is the same concept with the breaking point trough lost, pain and tragedy.

Moving this idea to the slow construction of Canon Destiel, we had witnessed how they broke Cas and Dean over and over again, just to develop their characters into a renewed and healthy ones, only in this way, they'd be able to love each other in a plenty way.

So .. let's keep the concept about "breaking the defective jar, to make the jar again." A new one, a better one...

We need new Cas and new Dean, loving themselves, growing in self acceptance and learning about communication.

Ok .. now we're ready for the jam here...

... Let's brake some jars ...

1) Breaking Castiel

Well... We have this millennial Supernatural been with a very hard to break settings. A program that every angel have: Obedience, castity, submission and complete the mission. How do you break a program like that? We need a really good hacker... Maybe one with green eyes? 😹

Godstiel.

Godstiel was the result from a desperate decisions coming from Cas to protect Dean from another Apocalypse. Cas couldn't manage the immensely of having thousands of souls and the hug power corrupted him.

But this traumatic experience didn't help Cas to improve. This experience gave us a depressing Castiel for the following two seasons. So this... Just depressed him deeply.

Human!Cas

Human!Cas was the breaking point for the character. This was the improvement he needed. Being human guide him to a brand new Cas. Changing his perspective about humanity and make him fell more in love with it 😉 if you know what I mean. This was the remarkable, tragic, but blessed situation that brought him to the bottom of himself. Yes. He was broken but still learning and growing. This was good for the character.

Empty!Cas and AUCastiel

Empty!Cas was another very important impulse for the character, at the beginning of the s13, where Cas talking with the Empty, was like "looking himself in the mirror" but not really, was more the meaning of it. Cas faces himself, his fears and feelings, he embraced all of that, and knowing he already was saved, he came back with his family. Closing this meaning by the end of the same season when he faces now AUCastiel, another "looking himself in the mirror" and he embraces his family, the Winchesters. Knowing AUCastiel helped Cas to reconciling with himself. And the meaning of killing that part of him, big development of the character. Cas killed all that lack of emotion, lack of fee will. Now he knows he don't regret chose Dean, humanity, and fell for it. That was huge for him, and prepared us to close his character issues. Now that he can love himself, he could freely love Dean.

But... We still have that miscommunication factor that is the last step. Aaaand the little, tiny big detail that he already confessed his love to Dean and he felt rejected? Well yes... That's bad...

Mourning!Cas

Mourning!Cas, the actual arc, came to sell the character giving him the last lesson trough pain and loose. How this Cas, whom tasted corruption, depression, redemption, humanity, reacts now facing AUMichael!Dean. Facing lost. Facing this "bond in pause" as I mentioned in my other meta, as Dean faced it in s13 with Castiel's death. Well I'm not very sure about if he is into a soldier mode? Or depressing mode? I'm gonna choose the second one... When he talks with Jack and said WE ARE GONNS FIGHT AND GET DEAN BACK AND KILL AU MICHAEL and etc, etc... He is talking with himself, and he is almost in tears... Emotional... He looks more human in his facial expressions. So yes .. Cas is being very human... He miss Dean... The bond is in pause.... Sigh... I hope he become more determined and aggressive to get Dean back... Let's wait and see... But this episode 1 Cas sounded me like... "I just wait here, then" please come back Dean. 🤷 I'm clueless...

2) Breaking Dean

Dean had always the height from being the first born, the obedient son, carrying on his shoulders with the oppressive idea of a toxic masculinity, the responsibility for being the older brother, toxic codependency and last, but not less important, fighting against his repressed feelings and desires. This whole defective jar needs a lot of breaking.

His years in Hell

Well, we have a very heavy past here, Dean have been trough so many traumatic experiences, he had suffer the lost from his father and Sam. The pressure of being responsible of his father death and not being able to save his brother, consumed him I'm despair, and that led him to make that deal with the cross road demon.

Once in hell he breaks... And when he come back, he just talked about it once with Sam. And that's it. Bc Dean .. and here is the big growing up impediment of the character... He's the Master of Disguise.

(And we have symbolism here again, bc Dean loves disguise, we had seen him in many chapters playing with it... He use disguise as an scape for fun... And for self protection. We could said he disguise his body and his feelings... And that's it)

So he pushes all those feelings again deep down his soul. This feelings and trauma doesn't' exist if I don't look at them. I'll be just fine!

So Hell was a traumatic experience, but it didn't improve the character for good. He remains as constipated emotionally as when he started. So... Not good.

Purgatory

I had already talked about how Dean facing his pure and true feelings in this place. This traumatic experience was positive for the character, bc how I said before, in Purgatory Dean realizes that he is in love with Cas when in his soul remains just what was pure in him (without others humans necessities). Maybe he wouldn't use the 'L' word here, he used the "Need" word as a love confession, then he felt rejected by Cas and decided locking his feelings again, but yes... Now he knows.

Yes... Season 8 was good... 😏

The mark of Cain and Demon!Dean

This was very traumatic for Dean and for us! Dean become a monster. Literally. He hit bottom here... A very good breaking point! But again... He continued doing the same "put down the feelings, and everything will be just fine".

The only good thing here was this inner realization...

This is what Dean learns going through that traumatic experience.

Cas showed him that he knew him very well, and even so, he accepted him. That was scary for Dean. That's a feeling he wasn't used to manage.

Something is growing up slowly in his mind, the idea of sharing his life with someone else...

Gif from @veryamooseing blog

I like that seed that was planted and become to release a little bud...

And this idea is settled when Dean felt he was about to change and die. He was a monster that was about to kill his own brother. When he become in what he hated and hunted all his life, he breaks again and in that huge situation, he become to reorder his priorities. Love, family, retirement? Settled down with a hunter? Building Dean' cave and watch movies with Cas?

Mourning!Dean

Dabb's era brought us a recurring fact: Dean goes crazy when Cas isn't in the bunker or don't answer the phone.

We thought wen Cas come back Dean would be able to recognize his feelings for him and maybe... Tell him??? Or change a little about it? But no. What we get after all this mourning was again, the pushing down emotions and more fear. Yes... A disaster! Dean keeps locked into this emotional prison and he can't get out himself for it. He doesn't advance. He is stuck. And now that he's afraid of loosing people he loves (Castiel) and now that he realizes he's in love with Cas... Well more and more fear... Sigh...

Michael!Dean

Well this is so interesting plot and opportunity for Dean's character development. We have AUMichael talking with two people about LOVE, PEACE, PURITY AND SAVE THE WORLD. If this isn not a mirror for Empty!Cas then idk what it is... And yes .. this is AUMichael talking indirectly to Dean...

"You think you want peace? But you bring war all the time with your actions... You think you want Love? But you lock it down and ignore it. You think you have purity in your heart? But you are just lies. You think you save the world? But you can't even save you from your own hate for yourself.

Yes, this is a huge opportunity for Dean to begin once for all to grow up in self acceptance and in love for himself, facing as it was in Purgatory, the purity that remains in his heart and soul. He can reach peace enjoying retirement with Cas and Sam. He can love Cas romantically and he can love his family in a healthy way.

This is the new Dean we are expecting to find through S14. This is the kind of breaking point, phoenix complex, new and improved jar, we were waiting for Dean. Let's see what happens.

So slow, slow, slowly but with sure steps we hope the construction of Destiel Canon wait for us at the end of this journey.

Sorry... This is so large!! Did you really read this mess? I really sorry... But if you did, please feel free to discuss.

I'm tagging for debate...

@magnificent-winged-beast @sactownbrowns3 @lovemesomecas94 @naruhearts @thedogsled @dimples-of-discontent @lykanyouko @mrsaquaman187 @evvvissticante @agusvedder @navajolovesdestiel @destielhoneybee @castiellover20

And everyone who want to discuss!

[velvet-tread]

so revisiting octavia blake (especially after what we’ve seen of her in s5e06 tonight)... what’s your understanding of octavia blake, in relation to bloodreina and also as one of the most disliked characters in the fandom?

 TW – there follows some discussion of abuse so if that is one of your sensitivities, I wish you well and recommend caution with what follows. Are you asking if I still stan Octavia now she’s Blodreina? Because the answer to that is complicated but basically yes. For clarity: stanning, to me, doesn’t involve nailing my colours to the mast and then contorting myself into ever more unlikely shapes to justify every single thing my fave has ever done. It’s possible to love and emphathise with a character, while also acknowledging the terrible things they’ve done or are. Maybe I don’t need to tell you this, but maybe others need to hear it: don’t let ANYONE shame you for loving Octavia. And by that I mean if someone tries, just tune them tf out. They don’t get it, they never will. They aren’t worth your time and energy. Let that truth set you free. So yeah, I still love Octavia, with all her flaws and her sharp edges. I can’t love Blodreina, but while Blodreina is certainly Octavia, Octavia is not Blodreina. Blodreina is the very worst of Octavia. Spoiled, demanding, hard, judgemental, imperious, unyielding, cold, unempathetic and very, very violent. She is the culmination of the story of a non-person, disempowered and locked up under the floor, coming into being and being handed a sword. And power. So much power. She is a product of necessity. She is an amalgamation of Jaha’s lessons, Indra and Kane’s guidance, Kara’s support and Gaia’s teachings. She has a god complex which, imo, can only go the way of Mount Weather. By which I mean it will probably consume everything in its path before blowing to smithereens and taking at least one of our faves down with it. But while Blodreina is certainly real, let’s not get carried away with OCTAVIA IS REVEALED AS FOR THE MONSTER SHE’S BEEN ALL ALONG. Deep breaths everyone, and maybe a sip of water. Blodreina is a persona who enables Octavia to carry out the most monstrous of deeds (hi Jaha!) and live with it. Has Octavia drunk the Blodreina Koolaid? Most certainly. But Octavia embracing her worst is not the same has Octavia being the worst. Also see: Bellamy season 1 and season 3a. Would you look at that A PARALLEL WE LOVE PARALLELS. Blodreina serves a purpose for Octavia-of-the-butterflies too. Because this show is this show and we are never more than a few monologues away from “love is weakness”, Blodreina is also a protective casing that locks away Octavia’s grief, her pain and her misery, her loneliness and self-loathing, along with her vulnerability and empathy. It seems super obvious to me that Octavia’s personal journey this season, apart from trying and presumably failing to keep Wonkru intact, will be about disassociating herself from Blodreina. And that, probably, won’t come without falling spectacularly from grace and facing her pain, and reckoning with the things she’s done. Also see: Bellamy seasons 1-4. Huh. What happens when the exoskeleton crumbles? What’s underneath? What will Octavia-who-washed-Lincoln’s-wounds, come to think about Blodreina and the things she’s done in the name of her people? How will she confront the agony of being Octavia Blake, naked, piteous and vulnerable, the girl under the floor who was denied existence?

I want these things for Octavia. I want the narrative to subject her to the most abject moral scrutiny because that is what you should want for the characters you love. It’s what makes them interesting. It’s what makes them matter. ALSO SEE BELLAMY FOREVER. Now I’ve been in this fandom long enough not to expect many others to see it this way. We are balls deep in moral monochrome here in the Bellarke fandom, and while that gives me pause for a sip of tea and a short prayer to the patron saints of patience, it’s not a situation that anyone can change, least of all me. And why would I? People are free to engage with the show how they want, as long as they stay in their lane.

And look, I get why some people can’t see past some of her sins. I, too, have characters that I dislike with varying degrees of rationality. But objectively, Octavia’s level of moral turpitude is at about the same level as any of the main characters. That’s just a fact. People’s personal preferences, while as valid as any other preference, are just that: subjective opinions. Where I start to sip my tea and raise my eyes to the heavens is when people start presenting their subjective opinions as objective FUCK YOU AND YOUR INBOX truth and thanks but no. It seems to be fanon lore now that Octavia is unempathetic and…it just makes no sense. This is the girl who was filled with wonder at Earth, who refused to let Jasper die even when everyone in camp wanted him to. She saw the humanity in Lincoln when Bellamy, Clarke and Raven could not. She saw the humanity in humanity when all anyone wanted to do was kill each other until they burned in Praimfaya. Wonkru exists because Octavia inspired them with her faith in them. The only way it begins to make sense is when you consider Octavia’s actions through the prism of Bellamy’s experience – which 8/10 is how the BC fandom at least views the show. (Also valid btw. I also project onto my faves! Bellamy among them! But see above for subjective opinion vs objective fact.) With Bellamy, the lack of empathy is real. Octavia, or at least the Octavia of seasons 1-4 high key struggled to see Bellamy as a fully realised person with desires and feelings of his own. But, while this sucks for Bellamy, from Octavia’s perspective it is entirely understandable. No matter how young Bellamy seems to us, to Octavia he is her parent figure. How many of the people on here haven’t put their parents through hell from time to time? I shouldn’t have to point out the bleeding obvious here, which is that teenagers who care deeply about animal welfare, trans rights, LGBTQA+ rights, poverty and climate change can also go through phases of being absolutely fucking awful to their parents. Often, that’s because in our world, teens are subjected to an unholy amount of pressure with which they struggle to cope, and the overspill of that hurt lands on the people responsible for them. It doesn’t make them bad people. And, yes, that can, occasionally, tip over into emotional and, more rarely, physical abuse but we don’t usually call it that. We call that “teenagers being fucking awful” and I am 100% sure that this is the context the writers room is working from. Do I think it’s acceptable, or justified? Hell no. But it’s important to take these narrative threads in the context of the real-world understanding of the people who develop them. This show isn’t created in a vacuum. Now work the scenario I outlined above into a post-apocalyptic landscape with 2x traumatised victims of systemic injustice, one of whom was locked up by the other because of that injustice. Yeah. What is so interesting to me is that the blind spot Octavia has wrt Bellamy – the blind spot that denied him access to the empathy she showed everyone else - has come into play again now she’s Blodreina, but in a different way. After 6 years of having everyone kowtow to her, and after vowing not to love, suddenly Octavia is making concession after concession for her brother at huge personal risk to herself.  It might not seem like that to us, or to Bellamy (and legit! I get why, from Bellamy’s POV), but to Octavia it must seem like she’s trying SO HARD to give him what he wants within the framework of what she thinks is achievable. Consider love is weakness. Consider that she throws herself into his arms on sight, in full view of all of her people. Consider being the arbiter of life and death for 6 years. Now consider Bellamy asking her to trust him. She does and is rewarded with a sonic blast. Bellamy delivers her an ultimatum about Echo, and she concedes. She fucking concedes! When has she ever willingly conceded on anything and ESPECIALLY NOW SHE HOLDS THE POWER OF AN EMPEROR? It’s fairly obvious from the Blake siblings sparring session that Bellamy was the symbolic winner. He got through to her. Octavia NEVER forgives. But she offers Echo – the woman whose sins Octavia will never forget - a way out. When Echo and Bellamy refuse, does she banish Echo? She could do. She’s Blodreina. She’s used to doing whatever the fuck she wants. But, no. She accepts the alternative, and even helps Echo on her way. Yes, it’s brutal and Blodreina-y and serves a double purpose but still, she helps her. She’s not doing that for Echo.  She’s doing it for Bellamy. No, she’s not doing it with a winning smile and a cuddle, but that’s not Blodreina’s style. She tries to thank him for saving them, in the only way she knows how. She reaches out, and he lashes out with cold anger. And perhaps it’s deserved. No, it’s definitely deserved, but GODDAMMIT that was a “you’re dead to me” level of cruelty. Can I just roll back a second and talk about how co-dependent the Blake sibs are? Cool. A friend (I can’t remember who, sorry) once said that Bellamy and Octavia carried their cage back down to Earth with them. And for seasons 1-4 that is absolutely what happened. They are spectacularly co-dependent. Bellamy depends on her to give him purpose, and a direction and reason to live. Octavia depends on him to absorb the overspill of her hurt, to push against, to take the blame for all of the ills in her life. It sucks for them both, and they’re TRAPPED, so terribly trapped, and neither is the other’s jailer but neither can walk away either. And just, what strikes me about the interactions we saw in the sneak peek for 507 is that maybe, FINALLY, Bellamy has broken free of their co-dependent relationship.  He may not even realise it yet, but he has completely re-centred his world around Spacekru now. And I think, that if push comes to shove, he will prioritise Spacekru above Octavia, even if it hurts them both.  It doesn’t mean he loves Octavia any less, but after 6 years of love and support and peace and quiet, Bellamy has broken out of the cage. Bellamy is free. Excuse me while I cry tears of joy. But Octavia isn’t free. Octavia hasn’t had 6 years of peace and support and love. Octavia’s life has been marked by trauma from the moment of her birth, and the trauma hasn’t let up for a single goddamned second it just keeps coming and coming and coming until all she has is her walls and an alter-ego and the hope that she can keep Wonkru together and her brother by her side. Believe me when I say that Octavia is still very much trapped inside the cage which Bellamy has now vacated. IT IS ALL VERY HEARTBREAKING OKAY. IT HURTS. So yes, I still love Octavia and I am ready to see her again when Blodreina falls.