#the concept of not being used. not needing to imitate and shift and change to suit sb.

[snowangeldotmp3]

hi! uhh would you be willing to talk more about sacred spaces? lol im really interested if you want to talk about it!

anon. i would love nothing more. i broke out my old books and articles that i had to use in my sacred space class (aka the reason i am the way i am now) just for this. i'm not totally sure how long this is going to get, so bear with me. i will also have sources.

so the first question we really need to answer is: what is sacred space?

we tend to think of sacred spaces as one of two things. 1.) religious space 2.) solemn places (like monuments, for example--more on this later!)

either way, a sacred space tends to do one major thing: it evokes an emotion. a feeling. you know when you step into a sacred space, how the air around you shifts. but why? what is so special about church? or the cemetery? or a memorial? what defines a sacred space?

short answer: depends.

long answer: well...

so one of the main books that i'm pulling from is called The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade (who is, btw, one of my favorite authors on the topic--as well as the first academically. it is not an easy read. it's confusing and dense, don't let the page count fool you. it's a short book with a lot packed into it.) ANYWAY. eliade introduces the concept of "sacred time." he defines sacred time as thus: "by its very nature sacred time is reversible in the sense that, properly speaking, it is a primordial mythical time made present. every religious festival, any liturgical time, represents the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, 'in the beginning.'" it is also important to note here the definition of a liminal space. a liminal space is, by definition(!), a transitional space; a threshold. it is a space that when you enter, you are different when it comes time for you to exit. something happens in that liminal space that changes you. so sacred time--the return to a mythical past--is marked by one especially important thing: repetition.

part of this sacred time is what eliade calls the "time of origin" and is defined as the "ritual repetition of the gods' creative act." religious festivals are held the same time of year, every year. (this, of course, can vary depending on religion--example: easter is not the same date every year, but the easter sunday service is essentially the same every year.) this is known as imitatio dei. an imitation of god, trying to return to this mythical past or origin or miracle or something. sacred space is marked by repeated ritual--our sacred time

but this is only part of our answer.

eliade also introduces the concept of the axis mundi, which translates literally into 'world axis' or 'center of the world', but in the terms that eliade presents us with, it refers to any place that connects the human and the divine. for example, the altar in a church would be considered the axis mundi.

it doesn't always have to be religious, though. in sacred space, it often is religious, but it doesn't have to be. example: think about how a home is set up. older homes have a fireplace, because this is where families would gather around. this has shifted over the years to become the tv. either way, it's often the center of the room, or where people gather around the most. (one of the papers i wrote in this class was on the fact that the disney parks often have an icon and this is what would be considered the axis mundi of each park)

speaking of not always being religious; back to monuments!

i don't have enough time to really dive into it, but the book Shadowed Ground by Kenneth Foote delves really deep into (specifically) america's monuments and how they have become sacred spaces over time and what makes them sacred. i'll have to find it, because i apparently did Not have this article on hand so i have to search for it once again but! there's an academic article about how monument mall is set up in washington d.c. to specifically evoke these feelings of solemnity etc etc. it's in the very design of it.

tl;dr - sacred space is often created through the repetition of rituals, religious or secular, there is often a liminal space or threshold that we cross, and, sometimes, sacred spaces are intentionally created to evoke the feeling without the ritual--as is the case with a lot of memorials or monuments.

anyway! this got a little too long, but i hope this answered some things!! i love talking about sacred space and religion and religious history in general so i would be. thrilled to answer any that u have!!

[advancemanagementsolutionsllc]

How Coaching And Mentorship In Recruitment And Staffing: A Deep Dive Into Transformative Practices

It is important to assess that recruitment and staffing processes are being subjected to a rapidly growing change in today’s highly competitive job market. Among the most significant contributors to this shift is the realization and adoption of coaching and mentorship in recruitment and staffing procedures. They are also an effective way of developing the skills of recruiters while also improving the efficiency of the workforce. Coaching and mentorship are valuable assets for increasing recruitment in particular for an RPO company in USA. This blog is going to explain how these practices are changing the recruiting industry and why they are crucial for sustainable business.

The Role of Coaching in Recruitment and Staffing

Recruitment and staffing coaching means that professionals are coached in their specific field of recruitment, and concentrate on individual further development. As a result, the organizations get to develop better skills for attracting the right personnel, communication, and efficient hiring.

For instance, the coaching programs usually involve the enhancement of the interview skills of a recruiter, enhancing skills of identifying the candidates, and enhancing the skills of matching human capital to organizational ethos. The targeted recommendations are crucial for an RPO company in USA, particularly given the heightened pressure on the firm to satisfy client needs. Coaching guarantees that recruiters are equipped with the resources and the zeal to handle giant opportunities in staffing.

In addition, it has also been found that coaching may result in an increased employee turnover. It makes sense that, when recruiters are encouraged to look beyond the abilities to perform certain tasks and consider the prospective employee's compatibility with organizational culture, they are likely to secure better performers for the organization in the long run. This becomes valuable at a time in which turnover is costly, thus positioning the firm as a severe competitor.

Mentorship and Its Long-Term Impact

As we have seen coaching addresses specific skills development needs in the short run while mentoring has a long term perspective. With regards to recruitment and staffing, therefore, the concept of mentorship created a general outlook for progress as well as career advancement within an organization.

A mentor is usually more experienced and helps an employee decide on the career path, leadership, or other issues within an organization. On the part of recruiters, they indicated that having a role model is all about accessing knowledge from someone who has done the job and has overcome the odds. This relationship is very useful in an RPO company in USA where staffing requirements and trends change frequently.

In matters of recruitment and staffing, the role of a mentor is also vital since it can help to enhance learning as a continuous process. It also has its advantages for the specific recruiters and the organization in general. Since the junior recruiters work under the senior recruiters, they acquire strategies through imitation on how to deal with intricate situations in the hiring process as well as enhancing the overall team performance.

Transforming Recruitment Practices Through Coaching and Mentorship

The impact of coaching and mentorship on recruitment and staffing has been seen to be very vigorous. Such practices contribute to the formation of a higher level of skills, flexibility, and motivation in a team of recruiters. Hiring goals, specifically when a recruitment team is geared towards the development of short term skills and long term career growth, can always be pointed to a higher level than what has already been set.

Coaching and mentorship in recruitment and staffing, as the need and requirement of pressure, is not an option for any RPO company in the United States of America. Since the recruitment demands continue to grow and clients’ expectations are rising, these practices must be adopted by organizations. Coaching helps enhance recruiters’ ability to carry out their responsibilities in their line of work, whereas mentorship provides recruiters with the necessary encouragement and motivation to enable them to succeed in the long run as food industry recruiters.

The Competitive Advantage of Coaching and Mentorship

The utilization of coaching and mentoring in the process of recruitment and staffing provides a competitive advantage to organizations. It assists the practitioners in the recruiter job market to improve on their skills, and logical thinking as well as embrace change. Most importantly, every work carried out creates a culture of improvement, which is so critical nowadays in the highly competitive recruitment environment.

An RPO company that practices these elements in the USA will put itself in a good position concerning contemporary staffing challenges. Thus, it will not only get the best employees but also strengthen connections with its clients due to the constant supply of high-quality candidates.

Conclusion

Overall, it can be stated that coaching and mentorship in recruitment and staffing have become revolutionary activities that help recruiters and staffing officers succeed. Therefore, investment in such strategies is necessary for the companies and the particular RPO company in USA to remain relevant and provide sustainable growth. Addressing recruitment teams’ development will lead to the enhancement of hiring results, cultivate learning organization culture, and consequently, create a better future.

[cagemasterfantasy]

Dnd Monsters Explained Hill Giants

Hill Giants are selfish dimwitted brutes that hunt forage and raid in constant search of food. They blunder through hills and forests devouring what they can bullying smaller creatures into feeding them. Their laziness and dullness would long ago have spelled their end if not for their formidable size and strength.

Hill giants dwell in hills and mountain valleys across the world congregating in steadings built of rough timber or in clusters of well defended mud and wattle huts. Their skins are tan from lives spent lumbering up and down the hilly slopes and dozing beneath the sun. Their weapons are uprooted trees and rocks pulled from the earth. The sweat of their bodies adds to the reek of the crude animal skins they wear poorly stitched together with hair and leather thongs.

In a hill giant's world humanoids and animals are easy prey that can be hunted with impunity. Creatures such as dragons and other giants are tough adversaries. Hill Giants equate size with power.

Hill giants don't realize they follow an ordning. They know only that other giants are larger and stronger than they are, which means they are to be obeyed. A Hill giant tribe's chief is usually the tallest and fattest giant that can still move about. Only on rare occasions does a Hill giant with more brains than bulk use its cunning to gain the favor of giants of higher status, cleverly subverting the social order.

With nothing else to occupy them Hill giants eat as often as possible. A Hill giant hunts and forages alone or with a Dire wolf companion so as to not have to share with other tribe members. The giant eats anything that isn't obviously deadly, such as creatures known to be poisonous. Rotten meat is fair game though as are decaying plants and even mud.

Farmers fear and loathe Hill giants. Where a predator such as an Ankheg might burrow through fields and consume a cow or 2 before being driven off a Hill giant will consume a whole herd of cattle before moving on to sheep goats and chickens then tearing into fruits vegetables and grain. If a farm family is at hand the giant might snack on them too.

The hill giants ability to digest nearly anything has allowed them to survive for eons as savages eating and breeding in the hills like animals. They have never needed to adapt and change so their minds and emotions remain simple and undeveloped.

With no culture of their own Hill giants ape the traditions of creatures they manage to observe for a time before eating them. They don't think about their own size and strength however. Tribes of Hill giants attempting to imitate elves have been known to topple entire forests by trying to live in trees. Others attempting to take over humanoid towns or villages get only as far as the doors and windows of a building taking out its walls and roof as they attempt to enter.

In conversation Hill giants are blunt and direct and they have little concept of deception. A hill giant might be fooled into running from another giant if a number of villagers cover themselves in blankets and stand on one another's shoulders holding a giant painted pumpkin head. Reasoning with a Hill giant is futile although clever creatures can sometimes encourage a giant to take actions that benefit them.

A hill giant that feels as though it has been deceived insulted or made into a fool vents its terrible wrath on anything it encounters. Even after smashing those who offended it into pulp the giant rampages until its rage abates, it notices something more interesting, or it grows hungry.

If a hill giant proclaims itself king over a territory where other humanoids live it rules strictly by terror and tyranny. Its decisions shift with its mood and if it forgets the title bestowed upon itself it might eat its subjects on a whim.

[thuyduongiuoi]

Week 6: Digital Citizenship Case Study: Social Media Influencers and the Slow Fashion Movement

The fashion industry's social and ecological impact has been extensively researched and well-documented in recent years. In 2017, Europeans bought 6.4 million tons of new clothes. Research indicates that from 1996 to 2012, each person increased their purchases of new clothes by 40%, resulting in a larger ecological impact on the fashion industry (Domingos, Vale & Faria 2022). According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans generate an average of 16 million tons of textile and apparel waste annually, with only 15% being recycled (Chi et al. 2021). As consumers and other interested parties become more aware of the negative environmental effects of our disposable clothing culture, there is a growing demand for companies to change their practices in order to reduce their impact on the environment. Studies indicate that increased awareness of unsustainable business practices can influence consumer behavior and perceptions.

Informed consumers are now focusing on the long-term well-being of both people and the planet, leading to the emergence of a new trend named Slow Fashion. The concept of slow fashion draws inspiration from the slow food movement, initiated by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986, which emphasizes the connection between enjoyment and food, while also promoting consciousness and accountability. Slow fashion is characterized by the shift towards sustainable practices and a reevaluation of fundamental principles within the fashion industry. This involves a focus on creating longer-lasting products using traditional production methods or design concepts that are not tied to specific seasons, with an emphasis on quality to promote sustainability. The movement promotes a business philosophy that prioritizes quality over speed, with an emphasis on slower production, ethical practices, and the creation of well-crafted, enduring products.

Slow fashion advocates for a more deliberate, consistent, and sustainable approach by using sustainable raw materials such as lotus, banana, and orange fiber. It also encourages the use of vintage or second-hand clothing, as well as the upcycling of old materials (Kapu 2023). Nevertheless, the slow fashion movement is confronted with a challenging task due to the widespread availability of cheap, imitation designs in a market driven by growing consumer demand. As a result, government policies need to be implemented, supply chains to be reoriented, and consumers to be more informed and involved to create fair competition between fast and slow fashion (Brewer 2019).

Social media has become an integral part of the daily lives of most consumers. One significant impact of regular social media usage is the behavioral changes that occur as a result of observing others online. The argument surrounding social media influencers revolves around whether their posts aim to educate their audience on sustainability or to promote consumption. The concepts of sustainability and fashion are often seen as contradictory. Furthermore, there are individuals who contend that sustainable influencers promote consumption and endorse unethical or greenwashing brands, thus perpetuating a misleading concept of sustainability. It appears that the concept of sustainability promoted by influential advocates is increasingly being used more as a marketing strategy for brands, rather than a genuine goal.

Shein is one of the largest fast-fashion companies in the world. It maintains a strong connection with its loyal Gen Z customer base by dominating various social media platforms. Otherwise, sustainable products are usually consumed at slower rates and in smaller quantities, while fashion is focused on fast production and large consumption.

“How can you pretend to care about the environment or labour issues when you support this? Shein is the worst of the worst disposable fashion companies,” one Twitter user wrote, addressing InStyle. “Shein is one of the most unethical fashion brands,” wrote another on the Instagram account of Khloe Kardashian, one of the judges on the show.

In Japan, like in other regions, there is a growing enthusiasm for slow fashion, with an increasing demand for handmade, inherited, and recycled clothing. Scholar Milhaupt observed that the increasing fascination with the kimono during the 1980s and 1990s retro-boom might be linked to a desire for a slower, more traditional way of life that was no longer feasible in the high-growth, bubble economy of the 1980s (Hall 2017). Pagong Kamedatomi Co. Ltd is one of the most famous Kimono fabric manufacturers known for their emphasis on high-quality garments that are designed to last for a long time, in addition to their small-scale production. The design and production of the kimono robe prioritize the reduction of waste during the cutting and sewing process. Kimono fabric is typically produced in bolts of standard width, approximately 34–40 centimeters, with each bolt containing enough material, approximately 11–12 meters, to create one adult-sized kimono. When creating a kimono, there is very little cutting and hardly any fabric is wasted. Then, Kimonos had a longer lifespan compared to most Western clothing due to their structure, which meant that overall styles did not change as frequently. That’s why one size could fit all, allowing kimonos to be passed down through successive generations. 

I have trans to slow fashion for some years, like a shirt could be washed 100 times.

Reference: 

Brewer, MK 2019, “Slow Fashion in a Fast Fashion World: Promoting Sustainability and Responsibility,” Laws, vol. 8, no. 4, MDPI AG, p. 24, accessed <http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/laws8040024>.

Chi, T, Gerard, J, Yu, Y & Wang, Y 2021, “A study of U.S. consumers’ intention to purchase slow fashion apparel: understanding the key determinants,” International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, vol. 14, no. 1, Informa UK Limited, pp. 101–112, accessed &lt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2021.1872714>. 

Domingos, M, Vale, VT & Faria, S 2022, “Slow Fashion Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review,” Sustainability, vol. 14, no. 5, MDPI AG, p. 2860, accessed &lt;http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su14052860>.

Hall, J 2017, “Digital Kimono: Fast Fashion, Slow Fashion?,” Fashion Theory, vol. 22, no. 3, Informa UK Limited, pp. 283–307, accessed &lt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1362704x.2017.1319175>.

Kapu, N 2023, “Fast Fashion Vs Slow Fashion: A Case Study,” Fashionnovation, accessed February 21, 2024, &lt;https://www.fashionnovation.com/a-case-study-on-fast-fashion-vs-slow-fashion/#google_vignette>.

[gender-buddies]

Phase Seven artist commentary under the cut!

Genderqueer: I like the idea of a Buddy that breaks convention, which is the very core of the genderqueer experience. This design uses three different elements, technically - Fire/Plant is the Buddy’s element and it usually lives in places where the Ice element is prominent. I remember playing Breath of the Wild and being impressed that hot peppers grow in cold climates in that game, so I incorporated that idea into this design. I made it a pitcher plant with some Venus flytrap inspiration to give it an edgy design.

Multigender: Originally, I wanted this to be a dragon with a glass-like belly with storm clouds inside it, but I always have dragons. This whole project is dragons and space, pretty much. Plus, this is a basic Buddy and I needed it to be something more simple. I think when I make Storm creatures, I focus too much on thunder and lightning and intensity. This design pulls it back a little to focus on a simple Storm aspect - just rain. It’s frog-like but has some features that make it sort of salamander-like. But maybe it’s also just a weird amphibious dragon. Who knows? Usually, my higher-level Buddies have a special gimmick. If this has been a rare Buddy, I would have included the variants mentioned in its bio (Another Buddy that has variations is Libragender, which comes in two colors.)

Anthrogender: Going off of the name quite literally, I needed an Earth animal. I wanted to give it antlers, but Transgender is already a rabbit with antlers. Instead, it’s just a simple rabbit design with some flower incorporated into it. A lot of the time, my Earth designs have something to do with rocks or mud, but it was nice to make something earthy using a plant aesthetic. This Buddy could easily be a Plant elemental though.

Unlabeled: This is one of my favorite concepts and a risky one, because I gave a very common Buddy an incredibly rare gimmick - no element at all. I think if someone is going to be unlabeled, I wouldn’t want to represent them in a way that’s boring. That’s no fun for a project like this. Plus, with all of these Buddies being based off of labels, I think it’s nice to recognize those without any labels. The design isn’t too plain and is based on a number of animal features - you might recognize some features or it might seem more ambiguous. It doesn’t fly or seem to have any sort of elemental ability, but that just makes it all the more unique. I focused its bio on personality aspects rather than on anything elemental. It also has natural animal-like colors rather than colors from the unlabeled flag - but some of the colors of the stuffed rabbit are from the flag!

Juxera: Probably another favorite of mine. This one went through a ton of changes to get to this point because it was original going to be a scaly-foot snail (whose “scales” would have been in the shape of the pentagon shape on the original juxera flag) and then I had trouble making the cuttlefish design look good. It’s weird to work with a creature mimicking another creature. If you’ve noticed, it’s mimicking the Girl Buddy from a while back, with its tentacles imitating the “ears” and the arms imitating the shape of the face. It would normally be in the colors of the four-stripes juxera flag but its colors are shifted to match what it’s mimicking. Juxera is similar to girl, but exists on its own plane. A cuttlefish is similar to a gastropod in some ways, but exists on its own within the mollusk family (closer to a squid than a slug.)

Proxvir: I decided to make something that was similar to Gendervir, but a different animal with slightly differently coloration. It maintains the leaves and the spots on the body while having its own unique design. It fits with the narrative of proxvir being similar to male but on its own plane, and it acts like a sort of counterpart to Juxera without being too similar.

Rosboy and Azurgirl: A pair similar to Cenrell and Faesari, where the first piece shows both Buddies in one imagine. I wanted to work with the idea of supposedly opposing forces that get along well. Plus, Azurgirl's wings look like a bow when it lands on Rosboy which was an interesting piece of imagery. Both are types of dragons - Rosboy is a lindorm and Azurgirl is a wyvern. I've always enjoyed giving some designs a little twist.

Xenofluid: All of the xenic identities are being made into apace creatures of some sort, so this one fits in the same way. I wanted something flowy and long to emphasize fluidity, but I wish I'd given it more tendrils and frills and stuff. I do enjoy the face though. Very ball python in shape. The body took FOREVER because I just couldn't figure out how I wanted it to loop and twist.

Salmacian: I really wanted to give this design some extra care because I could have easily made something offensive. Originally, I wanted to do a salamander but I wanted to look more into it first. I read about the salmacian label and where the word comes from. I looked at the mythology of Aphroditus and his parents. I just couldn't find a way to represent this in a good way, so I decided to go with sexual dimorphism as a theme. This is a little dinosaur with some drab coloration, but it chooses to add colorful feathers to its own body to feel more euphoric. I like the idea of the salmacian experience being a variable pick-and-choose sort of experience. We often build our own identities from whatever pieces make us the most happy. I think this design conveys that idea well. I just wish I'd figured out a more flashy and intricate design, seeing as it's a level 4 Buddy.

Pocket Gender: This idea came from the concept of a "pocket mouse" but in a more literal sense. It was going to be based on a dust bunny and be fluffy, but I thought a plush mouse would be even better. Pocket genders are niche and we collect them and adapt them to our needs, much like using one or more patches to patch up an old doll. If you've seen the trend of people creating beautiful patches for holes in their jeans, you'll know where my line of thinking was.

Gendercreative: A blank canvas that itself looks doodled, with a crayon texture to make it very personalized. The design of the head is inspired, but drawn in crayon as if even further derivative. This was fun and took the least amount of time to make because it has no shading or highlights. I decided on a vaguely chinchilla-like shape to the green body parts, which look added on in the same way a gendercreative individual may create their own pieces to their gender.

[ariajonesstyle]

THE BEST DAD OUTFITS FROM THE 1990S

In the last ten years, contemporary men's fashion has gotten a little bland. There is very little innovation with the standard t-shirt and jeans outfits, which may be the result of a societal shift or simply a generational issue. Thankfully, the popularity of 90s dad fashion is changing things once more in exciting ways.

Everything that was fashionable just few decades ago will eventually become popular again, it is frequently remarked that fashion is a loop. Exactly this is what we are presently witnessing. This transition had already occurred for a while, but after the epidemic everyone started to dress in sweatsuits as a matter of course.

People are much more willing to experiment and express themselves through their wardrobe now that the globe is starting to open up again after a two-year break. What better technique to accomplish this purpose than by utilizing the most intriguing, suspenders-loving fashions? But what precisely is the nineties dad look, and how can you recreate it in the world of modern fashion? Let us investigate.

WHAT KIND OF DAD OUTFIT IS DORKY? The simplest definition of a dorky dad attire is a look popular among middle-aged men in the 1990s. Wearing dad clothes from the latter decade of the 20th century is just one aspect of the contemporary dad style fad, though. In other words, rather than accurately replicating it, this approach focuses more on imitating it.

However, the trademark dorky dad outfits are still a significant component. The key distinction is that dads in the 1990s wore these clothes on a regular basis. When the twenty-first century arrived, the younger generation described those costumes as odd and ungainly. Now, donning the Harington jacket-topped star clothes of that era while acknowledging that they are not "normal" and a little out there is all part of the present nineties look.

HOW DOES A DAD APPEAR? A dad appearance is essentially anything that is comfy and functional. With all forms of 90s dad attire, you will see this concept often used. For instance, nothing even comes close to the popularity of balancing shoes in the realm of footwear. Dads may spend the entire day on their feet without experiencing foot pain thanks to these running shoes, which makes them ideal for dads.

A teen could consider a pair of shorts uncool if they are worn with running shoes and sparkly white socks. But because this outfit is both useful and comfy, the man who is wearing them will continue to do so. So, when creating your nineties dad style clothing, keep this "rule" in mind. This is another reason why items like skinny jeans are not considered dad fashion as many people find them to be quite uncomfortable.

COOL DAD STYLE TRANSFORMATION We have spoken a lot so far about nineties dad fashion, which was regarded to be uncool for the younger generation, and how it is currently in style at the pinnacle of men's fashion. However, parents of the 1990s also wore a lot of clothing that is still fashionable now.

Outerwear was the apex of these fashionable products. Dad jackets from the 1990s still hold the same prominence in men's fashion as they had more than 20 years ago.

THE ART OF GETTING THE DAD LOOK

Confidence is all you need to effectively pull off the nineties dad looks. Although it may sound cliche, this is the reality. Younger people have always criticized the dad appearance as being "lame" and "embarrassing," and the same is true with modern dad clothes, vests, and all. Why do dads still dress that way, then? Why don't they forgo their casual sense of style in favor of the newest flamboyant clothes and fashion trends? because they feel good about the clothes they are wearing.

LAST WORDS: Most of these trends had been entirely dropped by the turn of the twenty-first century. The 1990s were a treasure mine of bizarre yet classic fashion fads. But because of the cycle that is the fashion industry, trends will eventually return. The dad outfits from the 1990s are experiencing something similar, but with a twist.

Young people are now adopting that sense of style instead of middle-aged males. Additionally, the contemporary reinterpretation of this fashion is designed to embrace all of i ts eccentric and distinctive features just as they were during a twenty-year period.

[starflake-burning]

Alien AU Species Glossary

Contains minor spoilers

Link to series on ao3: How to Make Friends With Aliens: a Multistep Guide

Long post. This list will be updated as I write more of this story, it is currently incomplete. 

Athokin

Tubbo

Bee-like aliens with antennae, translucent wings, striped fuzzy fur, a fuzzy ruff around their necks that extends to their hair, retractable claw-like stingers, and clear blood. 

Can fly/hover using wings. 

Can stun or poison with stingers.

Has three genders, drone, worker, and the queen.

Can claim a bondmate, which can be either a mating partner or a best friend. 

Claiming a bondmate is equal to marriage. 

Poly-normative society. Only bondmates are exclusive, mating partners are not. 

Avian

Philza Quackity

Bird-like aliens with feathered wings, feathers on their faces and in their hair, taloned feet and hands, slit pupils, movable feathers for ears, and a feathered tail similar to a bird’s. 

Usually have one partner whom they mate with for life. 

Children are raised with the philosophy that they must learn independence. Very hands-off parenting style after they leave the nest. 

Guardians of families are extremely protective. Their species survives by making sure their children are protected. 

Blastborn

Sam

Tall aliens with fully black eyes, short mottled green fur, four arms with four fingers on each hand, hooked claws, and a gunpowder reactant organ that emits smoke when they breathe. 

Rare, reclusive species. 

Blazeborn

Jack

Dark-halo

BadBoyHalo Mumza (not in the series, but she certainly exists in this au)

Beings made of a dark mist/smoke with white lights for a face.

Their bodies can be spread out or condensed. 

Widely known as planet consuming behemoths. 

Dreamon

Dream/DreamXD (same person in this au)

Shapeshifters that can imitate almost any species perfectly.

They cannot change their eye color or stop smiling. 

They cannot imitate a species's internal organs. 

No matter what form they take, they do not have true bones. They are always slightly squishy. 

Natural/true form is a small blob with a simple smiley face. 

Some can achieve a heightened form that rivals the power of a Dark-halo.  

Bite to show affection.

Pure Dreamons are rare as they are a parasitic species that has evolved to easily hybridize with other species. 

Weakness to electricity. 

Will revert back to natural form if tired out from shifting or hit by a electrical current. 

They have green blood. 

Enderian

Ranboo

Relatively tall species with either black or white skin, red or green eyes, short horns, pointed movable ears, large clawed hands, and a tufted tail.

Long legs meant for sprinting. 

Can teleport if on a steady diet of chorus fruit.

Are burned by water. 

Solitary species.

Reproduces asexually. 

They do not have a concept of gender or romance. 

Felinid

Antfrost

Tall cat-like alien covered in fur with long claws and two sets of ears. 

Fieron

Sapnap

Gemling

Skeppy

Beings made almost completely of gem-like material.

Does not need to breathe air, only does so to speak. 

Cannot be crushed by extreme pressure. 

Forms as a result of radiation from supernovas. 

Human

Tommy

You know what a human is.

Merling

Niki/Niachu

Mooshroom

George

Cow/mushroom-like alien with two sets of horns, one that curls up and one that curls back, long floppy ears, short fur on their entire body with spotted patches, longer hair on their heads that extends into a mane down their necks, large wet nose, long tufted tail, hoofed feet, three fingered hands tipped with hooves. 

Body is mostly fungus, they can only be killed fully by fire or acid. 

Mushrooms grow sporadically along their bodies. 

They can breathe out stunning spores that cause temporary paralysis. 

Almost fully colorblind. 

Males are aggressive and territorial. They fight by locking horns and shoving until one gives in. 

Paraxis

Purpled

Purple skin, eyes, and hair. Four arms, four eyes, and two short antennae. 

Gecko-like hands and feet allow them to cling to vertical surfaces. 

Piglin

Technoblade

Pig-like aliens with large bulky frames, mostly like upright boars but with three sets of tusks, red eyes, and three fingered hands tipped with hooves. 

Very neat species that values cleanliness. 

Familial oriented society. 

Guardians of the family are essential to the species’s survival. 

Phantling

Wilbur Soot

Elusive, mysterious aliens with blue skin and hair, gray eyes, long ears, spiny sail that extends from the tops of their heads down their backs, and a long tail with a sail-like membrane. 

They glow blue when experiencing extreme emotions. 

They come from a planet completely shrouded in darkness, and as such are very sensitive to light. 

Also very sensitive to most other sensory stimuli. 

Slime (???)

Slimecicle

Viscous alien made of a green goo and small black dots for eyes. 

No one really knows what this species is. There is only one known member.

Starborn

Smajor/Scott Ponk

Humanoid aliens with glowing eyes, and galaxy-like glowing hair and some patches of skin. 

Emit heatless sparks almost constantly. 

Produces a glowing power called luminance that forms patterns on their skin and can be used to heal or incinerate depending on the force. 

Luminance is powered by exposure to stars. 

They have extremely long life spans and reincarnate in supernova-like explosions. 

There are a limited amount of Starborn, they simply reform into new individuals after their lives end. 

Vulpi

Fundy

Hybrids

Dreamon-gemling

Foolish

He can only shift his height. 

He has gold skin and emeralds for eyes. 

He can be harmed by extreme pressure. 

He needs to breathe air. 

Dreamon-starborn

Karl Jacobs

Is the only known hybrid of this type

Can shift into a humanoid blob-like form. However is is colorful and has a swirl pattern. It is also larger than a pure Dreamon’s natural form would be. 

He has retained the memories of his past life, however he is still a new individual with a new personality. 

He stopped physically aging after a certain point. 

Darkside Enderian/Lightside Enderian

Ranboo again

Enderians reproduce by forming clones of themselves that pinch off and form genetically identical individuals. 

Ranboo was formed by taking two of these clone from different species while they were still in development and mashing them together. 

This was an effort to create genetic diversity.

He has one green eye and one red eye, doubled earlobes, doubled horns, twin tails, and split coloration. 

He also does not desire a solitary life. 

He has slight memory problems. 

Vulpi-merling

Fundy again

He has the ability to breathe water, however that is the only merling trait he inherited. 

[dailycharacteroption]

Dandy (Ranger Archetype)

 No doubt readers have at least heard the term “dandy” at least in passing, calling the image of a nonchalant fellow in fancy clothes. But what is it that makes a dandy?

Historically, a dandy was a man who, despite not being noble-born or extremely wealthy, dressed and behaved as someone far above their station, peppered with a nonchalant charm. These individuals put a surprising amount of focus on their own appearances despite their lack of power, and used that persona to worm their way into high society. However, they did more than simply imitate high society, they actually influenced it, their extravagant dress setting fashion trends.

With their focus on their appearance and defiance of class and convention, dandies as a concept are still alive to this day, even if the term itself is no longer used. Trendsetters, celebrities, and cultural icons come to mind. Hell, though the term was used to refer to men, there are and were plenty of women that also filled a similar niche as well, to say nothing of other genders.

So with that in mind, why is the dandy a ranger archetype? To me, the parallel is drawn by how they work hard to stay at the forefront of high society as it develops and changes, hunting rumor and threads of social jockeying the way their contemporaries hunt game. Makeup becomes their camouflage, words and the occasional duelist’s rapier their weapon, and so on.

There are many ways to be a dandy as well, from the rugged but clean gentleman to the fop, and anywhere in between, but there is no denying that a good dandy keeps the next great social play and fashion trend in their sights, even, and especially if they have to go out and make them happen themselves.

 As one might expect, the dandy sports a skill set more attuned with the cutthroat world of high society, and that attunement goes further thanks to their extensive knowledge of a handful of cultures, including their social mores and decorum, to better work and live among the elite therein.

As social climbers, dandies have a knack for recognizing the power of hearsay, and are adept at shifting rumors to be more positive and negative, though doing so takes time, and is more difficult the more people they have to influence.

Naturally, they are very at home in the cities of the world, becoming especially adept within them.

Not one for exotic pets (at least, not ones as large and dangerous as animal companions tend to be), these socialites bond with their companions, and can even help them out in the social sphere by making introductions and smoothing over relations.

Rather than the traditional nature magic of the ranger class, dandies instead favor the magic associated with bards, which is not surprising given their overlapping focus. However, they still remain minor casters, unable of casting more powerful spells.

Though it may be hard to believe, there are sometimes situations where the dandy and their compatriots are NOT invited to social gatherings (gasp The Nerve!), but that doesn’t stop a determined socialite, whether they have to secure an invitation letter, find a socialite in need of a plus one, or simply find a servant willing to look the other way, dandies can find a way to crash a party, though this is obviously limited to actual social affair, with truly secretive exclusive meetings and gatherings requiring more… adventurous methods.

Interested in playing a ranger or martial socialite, but not wanting to play a bard? This archetype certainly has you covered, granting all sorts of bonuses in social spheres without compromising the offensive power of the class. You won’t get favored enemy though, so be sure to pick up some buff spells from the bard list as well. As for fighting style, a good idea would be to pick one based on the combat style favored by nobility and the wealthy in the character’s home region, such as deceptive or faithful (Cayden Caylien) for those feint and weapon finesse combatants with a rapier or other light weapon, and so on.

 Though this archetype might have the name dandy, you shouldn’t let that prevent you from using the word to describe your character if it fits, nor should that prevent you from playing a charismatic socialite in general. After all, there are plenty of classes and archetypes that cater to that as well anyway.

  Senjo the Rake is a rarity among the courts of the nation of Shen, a man who dares to reach beyond his station, and while nobody takes him seriously yet, they find him interesting enough to allow him to attend the imperial court. There is one who is not laughing, however, an imperial courtier and rokurokubi in disguise. Very soon, she will tire of his antics and threat to her plans.

 Many humans assume that halflings have no courts or noble parties, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Landed gentlemen and gentleladies attend humble but comparatively vibrant parties wearing brightly dyed fashions. Even the humbler folk get involved, eager to impress with hand-crafted outfits of their own.

 In a dress white as snow, the princess has attended the gala alongside the party as her trusted bodyguard, however, she chafes under such strict watch, and so does an eager young dandy who would love to hold her attention for a while.

[inkbyajm]

Something Brewing

pairing: C.H. x fem!reader

category: fluff

warnings: anxiety attack

word count: 1.5k

notes: felt like angst, felt like sobbing uncontrollably, but my body wouldn’t cooperate, so imagining it will do for now. this was supposed to be a one-shot, but i didn’t realise how much i had written. now i’m splitting it into two parts. next part will definitely be more angst than fluff, so stay tuned for the terrifying sight that is angry corpse :) (p.s. don’t mind the occasional use of british english, it’s my default lmao)

next >

A peculiar thing it was, the concept of love. It was very personal and feelings about it varied from person to person. For some, it had existed since the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve first walked the Earth, when the Almighty willed his beloved humans to lead their own lives with him in their hearts. For others, it is a feeling to long for, to crave, a feeling they found themselves daydreaming about often. And for the rest, love is a tool of ruin, potentially driving people who cared for one another away from each other, instilling at least a smidge of repulsion in each one of them. However, humans are social creatures after all, and sometimes, attraction was unavoidable no matter how much one tried. And try he did.

━

Living in California could get hard and stressful at times, but at least Corpse didn’t live at the heart of the city of anxiety-inducing social interactions and constant chaos that was Los Angeles. Sure, it meant that he didn’t live close to his friends, but he wasn’t far away from her, and that was enough for him.

A few soft grunts and sounds of slippers landing on the hardwood floor echoed from the kitchen of (Y/N)’s apartment. He got up from the couch in her living room and decided to investigate the source of the noise. Coming into the room, he saw her jumping to reach the highest shelf in one of the cupboards. Looking at it, he noticed her favourite mug sitting at the edge of said shelf and, afraid she would knock it over whilst attempting to grab it, he effortlessly got it for her. “Thank you. God, I was about to grow a foot taller trying to reach for this thing.” she sighed, eliciting a deep chuckle from him, “See, this is exactly why you’re my favourite friend.” Friend? Well, yes, of course a friend, what else would he be? Corpse felt an uncomfortable tug at his heart, and he couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why he was feeling that way, so he brushed it aside. “Why was it that high up if you can’t even reach it?” (Y/N) wasn’t a short person, she was perfectly average, and he himself wasn’t that tall of a guy either. But when it came to situations of this kind, he couldn’t help but feel good about his being taller. “It usually isn’t, but I let (F/N) use it once the other day because she refused to drink out of any of the other mugs, that stubborn bitch.” she replied, pouring her homemade Italian hot chocolate into the acquired cup. (F/N) was also taller than (Y/N), so it was only natural for her to be putting things in higher places. It was done out of habit.

(Y/N) and Corpse walked back to the living room to once again settle into the couch. He glanced at her as she sat with her legs crossed, concentrated on blowing on her moderately hot beverage, while the light from the moon peeked through the curtains of the balcony door, illuminating her face ever so slightly. Since when did he start noticing these things? Looking away to set his eyes on the TV in front of them, he sensed his heart beating at an usual rhythm, palpitating, and along with it came slight lightheadedness. Was he having a heart attack? Were these signs of atrial fibrillation? Or was this simply the start of an anxiety attack? Surely any of these would be more...recognisable, to say the least. The only situation he could think of with similar reactions was when one would develop a crush. A fucking crush? At his age? How old was he, ten? “Earth to Corpse? Please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who sleep with their eyes open, that’s fucking creepy.” Her finger snaps pulled him out of whatever trance he was in. “Sorry, were you saying something?” “I asked you if you had watched Bly Manor like three times. You were very far away.” she answered, emitting a few giggles. “Sorry, I uh- I was thinking of something, but it’s stupid. And no, I haven’t, I’ve been meaning to, though.” And just like that, they settled on the show they were going to watch for the next couple of weeks.

━

“NOOOOOOO,” (Y/N) yelled, voicing her defeat “WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF LUCK IS THIS.” Corpse lay on the floor, slamming his palm down onto it out of hysterical laughter. They had been playing Unmatched for the past hour, this being their third round, and after many cards and a level of tension that could only be cut through with a saw, his Robin Hood had finally defeated her Alice. It was Corpse’s first time playing, so to say that his winning of all three games was a crushing moment for her was an understatement. “This is not normal, you lied saying you’ve never played before!” she pouted, putting everything back into the box, “I’m usually really good at this game.”

He wiped the tears from his eyes, struggling to keep a good composure. “I’m sorry, I guess I’ve found my talent,” he joked, but he did feel bad for stealing her thunder, “Would it make you feel better if I said that my Robin Hood is, like, extremely hurt right now? You have a fucking gigantic knife as a weapon, I only have, like, a bow and arrow. That’s kind of unfair.” (Y/N) bit her lip in hesitation, then picked up her figurine and lightly tapped it along the table to approach his. Putting Alice at a slight angle, she made a kissing sound as to imitate her character smooching his. “There, a kiss to make it better. I promise not to hurt you too much if you let me win next time.” 

The same strange feeling he had experienced for the first time two months ago, when they were sitting on the couch of her living room, and many more times after that, had come back. He would’ve blamed it on heartburn, except it was nothing like it. It wasn’t anything he was used to. “Hey, you alright?” (Y/N) furrowed her brows in concern “You’ve been doing that a lot lately, rubbing your chest like that.” Fuck. He had never noticed the habit he had developed. “I’m fine, just me and my heart problems, nothing unusual.” Filthy liar. Brows still furrowed, she moved closer to him and, with her legs tucked under her, she put her hand above his heart to check. “Jesus, Corpse, your heart is going a million miles per hour! Are you sure you’re okay?”

Looking up at him, she noticed how red he had suddenly become, and this worried her even more. “Bubs, you’re literally changing colours.” How did she expect him not to when she was doing this? (Y/N) further inspected his condition and put the back of her hand on his forehead, then his cheeks, to check his temperature. Expectedly, he was getting warmer. She stopped for a second and listened intently, only to hear his shallow breathing fill the silence. She then glanced down at his left hand resting on his thigh, and surely enough, found it trembling. “Alright, Corpse? Hey, can you hear me?”

His breathing only picked up its pace as the seconds went by. On the spur of the moment, (Y/N) placed herself in front of him, her legs on either side, and gently cradled his head. “Corpse, darling, I’m gonna need you to look at me, okay? Focus on me, focus on my breathing, mm?” He forced himself to tear his gaze away from the ground and did as he was told, eyes darting around, analysing her expression. He’s never found himself having an attack in her presence, it was surprising how well she was handling it.

Wait- darling? Bubs? “Now, can you name four things that you see? Can you do that for me?” He briefly scanned the room for answers, his mind still cluttered. “The fridge, the couch, the light and-” Did she mean to call him that? It was probably nothing, she could be using it with any of her friends for all he knew. He wasn’t special. “and the game, the board game. On the table.” “Good, now can you name three things you hear?” This one took a lot of concentration, there weren’t many obvious sounds for him to point out. “The motorcycle outside, your hands rubbing against my skin, uh-” What the fuck else? Was he losing his mind? The task was simple enough, why was he having so much trouble with it? “I’m sorry, I- I don’t hear anything else.” “No, it’s okay. You’re doing splendid, see? Your breathing is much more stable.” she reassured him, squeezing his upper arms.

“Lastly, can you give me two things you can smell?” Nodding, he closed his eyes. “The coffee you drank earlier.” It took him a moment to come up with something else, and just as she was about to get off of his lap, figuring he had done a good enough job, she heard him mumble “your perfume”. Scared he’d get another attack, Corpse avoided looking into her eyes, which he could feel the gaze of. He only picked up on the scent from her shifting closer in the last second. “That’s funny, I had forgotten to put perfume on this morning.” 

[jazzythursday]

My Take on The Loki Series, And All The Things I Would Change About/Add To It If I Could (in vaguely chronological order)

Small disclaimer: This is just a compilation of all the ideas I had for ways the Loki Series could have gone, expanding on the main premise. It doesn’t cover everything, simply the aspects of the plot that I felt compelled to diverge from specifically. It’s not meant as an overly harsh critique of the show, just alternate possibilities. A… variant of the show if you will (It’s also egregiously long and yet I had to stop myself from saying more).

The series opens in the TVA with a display of the branching timeline that Loki created. We don’t meet any characters yet or see anyone’s faces, only hearing readings of codes and tracking of the Loki ‘variant’ before switching to Loki.

After traveling with the Tesseract, he takes in his surroundings (it can be the Gobi Desert but the thing with the Mongolians does not happen) but before he can get too far the TVA shows up.

I think it would be interesting to have a sequence of Loki evading them in different environments. Teleporting to different areas/planets and using different forms/disguises (maybe we see a Lady Loki in a restaurant, our Loki, and a few other outfits), however the TVA finds him every time no matter where or what form.

Eventually he gets fed up of running and confronts them directly. This should be an actual fight, i.e. magic and a Loki who is committed to not being taken down again. Ultimately through use of magic dampening technology or other means (but for the love of god not whatever that punch was), he is apprehended and taken into the TVA.

I think the TVA should have been a lot more crowded. They control/ monitor all of time, so we should have seen tons of variants of all shapes/colors/styles/species, maybe even a few characters we recognize (like in the concept art for the show). Show us that Loki is not special here, he is just another variant to be processed and done with, like all the others.

Loki will have already noticed and felt a lack of magic at the TVA, maybe he tried to use it already so by the time we get to the judge his main concern is talking his way out—Putting his ‘silver tongue’ to use. (Lack of magic in the TVA would be referenced later as well when Loki goes to summon a knife or use magic, only to remember that he can’t there).

This is a very small point but if the TVA knows him as Laufeyson, he absolutely would take offense to that. It’s been one year since he found out about and killed his birth father, I’d assume wants nothing to do with the title. Of course the TVA wouldn’t care, and we’d probably get something like:

“I am Loki, of Asgard, and you will address me as such.”

“I think you’ll find out things work a little differently here at the TVA, Mr. Laufeyson.”

Before he’s able to be pruned we have Mobius step in and plead his case.

If the show wants to portray Mobius as a friend we’ll see him have sympathy and conflicts about the TVA from the beginning. He doesn’t quite fit in, he’s bored of the monotony of the place and he has remorse for what they’re doing, but knows it’s not his place to question it. I like the idea of him being somewhat of a fan of Loki (they did mention this in the show but then proceeded to have him belittle Loki every time he opened his mouth which is uh… a choice). Mobius needs Loki’s help but he also has the desire to help Loki. He’s seen how his life plays out and understands that there’s more in him than his worst decisions. I think that Mobius secretly/ subconscious wants a bit of chaos, that he’s intrigued by Loki and as an analyst has an interest in understanding him.

Loki vs B15 would ideally happen before Loki returns to the time theater with the Tesseract instead of after. It would not be so easy for her to physically overpower him as even without magic he still has enhanced strength. (The minutemen show no signs of being genetically much stronger than humans, so arguably without use of their technology it’s obvious he could take one in a fight.

Back in the time theater after Loki’s watched the reel of his life, much of the conversation happens the same albeit with a greater emphasis on Loki’s true motivations and his feelings of powerlessness in his role. A bit about Thanos too (realistically vague). Perhaps he thought at the time he was doing what he wanted, but is starting to realize he doesn’t know anymore. Then we see a version of:

“I can’t promise you salvation, but maybe I can offer you something better.”

“A proposition, I see you have done your research. So tell me, agent, what would you have me do?”

Mobius explains why they need him to track down a variant of himself, and they shake on it. It’s clear that neither of them trust each other yet, but there is a mutual understanding that they will work together anyway.

Their friendship should grow naturally, slowly gaining each other’s trust until they see each other as true allies. In this there are more episodes than in the actual show (I’ll say 8 instead of 6). Give them a few more adventures and a bit more time for splitting up to hurt.

In Roxxcart, we see more use of magic. He dries himself off, maybe shape shifts into/imitates B15 or a minuteman. Loki uses illusions in the fight against the variant. He tries to reason with and understand what they are doing and why. The fight is somewhat matched although Loki is still holding back, fighting with misdirection as the variant fights using possession. Neither of them are showing themselves, and in an attempt to make the variant stop hiding, Loki disperses all the doubles and asks them to do the same. He takes a chance and this is how the variant gets the upper hand, setting off the branches and then revealing herself as Sylvie.

(Side note: In the concept art for the show, Loki changes into his Asgardian outfit by the time he and Sylvie are on Lementis. I definitely could see that working either when the fight begins/during it, or when he goes through the time door. In either case I think it would be somewhat of a gesture to Sylvie that he is not truly aligned with the TVA, thus setting them both apart/ in opposition to it.)

Instead of romance, Sylvie and Loki forge a bond through seeing themselves in each other throughout the series. They talk about the differences in their past and how they got there. They bicker and make each other laugh and rather than Sylvie just insulting Loki, it’s a mutual rapport. Loki gives just as good as he gets and they find they can work better together than apart.

On Lementis, Loki easily gets them into the train by impersonating a guard (or by conjuring tickets).

They talk about magic. How Sylvie is untrained but self taught and doesn’t understand hers very well. Loki can talk about how he views magic/his magic (we can maybe pull a few things from Norse beliefs about seiðr here). Does he view it as a part of himself? Something honed and precise? I want magic to be portrayed as an artful practice, and I want him to help Sylvie understand hers.

Loki gets drunk and they’re kicked out of the train. This reads as funny because Loki will have been sharp and competent throughout the show so far, so him losing his cool and failing the plan is unexpected.

Instead of the Tempad breaking for absolutely no reason, they argue over where to go/ how to use it. This leads to them both having a hand at accidentally destroying it because of self interest and refusing to work together. It illustrates again that they are stronger together but in conflict they are their own worst enemy (much like Loki in general which ties into a bigger metaphor for all his shortcomings).

Expanding on the magic thing, Sylvie and Loki through the series learn from each other. Loki can teach her some of his magic, and Slyvie can teach him enchantment (which he’s read about but never really mastered, although he approaches learning it like any other spell).

Loki could show her an illusion of Asgard as he remembers it. And in doing so we see that both of them long for it. Because for all Loki has claimed to renounce it, he misses home, and he and the audience see the same thing in Sylvie.

I think it would be interesting for Sylvie to let him enchant her, and we can see one of her memories. Maybe it’s when she was taken, maybe it’s on the run, maybe it’s a happy place, but it gives us insight into her character and past. I’m on the fence if Slyvie should enchant Loki, but if she did I’d pick them accidentally going back to the day Odin took him (which is how we deal with the icy blue elephant in the room that the writers refuse to tackle). Let Loki be conflicted and angry and unsure how he feels about it. This could once again be a moment where Loki and Sylvie connect because it’s (I’m assuming) where both their stories began. It’s a mirror of both of their origins, and she helps him see some good in that.

In the void (which is renamed something else so as to not get confused with the void™ that Loki fell into in Thor 2011) Loki learns from and connects with his other variants. They all have a point to being there, and he starts to reflect on what makes him him and what role he wants to play now.

When Sylvie and Mobius show up they agree on the plan to kill Aliyoth, either because it will stop anyone else from being killed by the TVA, or because they think he is guarding the entrance to whoever is behind everything.

Loki later asks Sylvie if she had a Thor. She did but probably doesn’t remember him much. What she does remember, she tells him. Through talking to both Classic Loki and Sylvie it’s recognized that he does miss his brother, that all Loki’s do, and that they are constants meant to aid each other and fight and suffer but always be brothers in any universe.

When they finally fight Aliyoth Loki summons new armor/his helm. Along with Kid Loki giving him Laevateinn, each Loki also gives him something to remember them or aid in their quest (yay Loki solidarity!). When I say this I mean daggers! Daggers dear gods have one of them give him daggers, boy needs some knives.

When they realize they can’t kill him, Sylvie has the idea to use enchantment. Like in the show, Sylvie can’t do it on her own and so they join hands and combine their powers together, revealing the Citadel beyond. They look at each other and agree that they have to move forward.

“Do we trust each other?”

“We do.”

Inside the Citadel we have Kang himself make the offer to give them what they wish. Sylvie can get the life that was stolen from her. Loki could be offered a Throne, he could be offered to be the first born, or to be a true Æsir, or kill Thanos, but ultimately he denies. He’s realized throughout the show that he’d rather be different, he’d rather be him, and he won’t settle for a fantasy world that isn’t real.

The message is about choice, about free will, chaos. Every choice you make directly results in who you become, every action changes how your story goes, and Loki understands that no one has the right to limit that.

In this it is Sylvie though, who is tempted. She has been on a quest for revenge her whole life, she never had a home, doesn’t remember feeling loved, and in the end it is a fight against temptation, and Loki knows all about that.

They fight each other, and break their vow of trust because ultimately they are each other but they are also different. They clash until Loki is able to talk her down, to relate to her, to show that he “just wants her to be okay” and reaffirms her goal. Kang of course continues to be self assured in his predictions. I’d imagine here is where we could get a declarative sort of speech like “I am Loki, God of Mischief,” They join hands “and no one tells our story” or… something to that affect.

Loki and Sylvie fight to destroy Kang together, and here we discover that if he is killed the multiverse opens, and the war of his variants will begin anew. We see flashbacks of Kang’s past and variants played out, and how he came to be at the citadel. Sylvie can talk about why it’s better to have chaos than to sanitize history and kill in the name of the greater good.

The show ends with the death of Kang and the splintering of the timelines. With Sylvie and Loki looking out the window into the fracturing strands of time.

Other changes and thoughts

Tone: the tone I’d imagine this would take on is possibly a bit more serious than the canon show. While it’s still comedy, it would be much less cartoonish, and generally fit in with the rest of the MCU a little easier.

In relation to Mobius:

Mobius’s crisis of faith would be a long time coming. Throughout the show we see him hesitate more and more to do as the TVA asks, and have an increasingly harder time justifying their actions. Learning that the whole thing is a lie is simply the tipping point that drives him to act.

In his confrontation with Renslayer he’d be a lot more driven/succinct. If he wants the TVA to burn then he wants the TVA to burn. He sees the wrongness in it’s entirety and attempts to convince Renslayer the same thing. When it’s clear that she is unreachable/ still sure of her mission, they come to an impasse. They each threaten to prune the other, parallel and matched on opposite sides of their belief. Ultimately though, neither can go through with it, and (if we’re sticking mostly with the canon ending) she leaves through a time door to who knows when to search for who knows what and Mobius and B15 regroup.

In relation to the other Loki’s:

I’m still on the fence how many Loki’s would be played by Tom, but I think the answer is, if not almost all, then at least more than we got.

Each Loki should read as distinctly Loki in essence. Less comic easter eggs and more focus on understanding the established canon character. Even greater in this scene though is the focus on the theme of choice. If there’s time we could learn what choices led up to each variant being apprehended, and see just a bit of how they feel about it. It’s about how our choices dictate who we become, rather than pre-set paths of completely separate realities and lives to our Loki’s.

I love Classic Loki’s speech about how it’s their destiny to play a certain part and if they try and change it the TVA stops them. I’d like our Loki, while conflicted about if he can truly change, to be motivated to try and finally brake the chains that have always restricted him (first his father, then Thanos, now the TVA). I also think here is where we could talk about how abrupt their end is ‘meant’ to be. That he was working on being better, that he had apparently helped his people and reconciled with his brother. That not only was his life cut short, but that the finality of that conclusion wasn’t truly the only way, but simply decided for him.

In relation to themes:

“What makes a Loki a Loki?” Is a question that should loom in the background of the whole series. Starting with Mobius’s interrogation when he’ll begin questioning his place in the universe and his understanding of himself, and ending with the finale confrontation with Kang where he’ll answer it.

“No one bad is ever truly bad, and no one good is ever truly good.” Is similarly something I think should have been a continued focus. Loki is considered a morally grey character and a chaos god, and thus none of his actions are black and white. Others may try and decide who he is at his core, but fundamentally the conclusion is not about deciding to be a hero, but deciding to be true to yourself and doing better.

“The banality of evil” in relation to the TVA. It’s clear from the first ten minutes of the actual show that the TVA is corrupt, unjust, and unnatural in their cleansing of the multiverse… so lean into it! I’m not necessary talking about changing much here, just that the narrative framing displays their actions as deplorable as they are.

“Glorious Purpose” is um… not something I think needed to be the main focus here. I might be biased because I buy into the theory that “you were made to be ruled” “freedom is life’s greatest lie” and “I am burdened with glorious purpose” are messages that have been somewhat impressed upon him rather than beliefs he came to realize on his own, but I do think it was somewhat oversimplified and overused in the series.

You are the writer of your own story. This is the message I expected the show to end with, and it’s what I’m personally trying to convey through these musings. This story ends with Loki taking back his destiny, forging a new one, connecting with himself and others and helping to free the timelines. He’s not the worst things he’s ever done, he’s not a villain, he’s not a benevolent hero. Loki is just Loki, Sylvie is just Sylvie, and you are just you, whoever we decide to be (that was cheesy I’m sorry).

[lurkerwithcomputer]

WIP Monday?

So I know it's not Wednesday but I don't care. I churned this out for a healer!Monoma fic and I'm proud of it.

"Is it a wise choice to attract the ire of what is left of the Commission, with your current act of defiance?"

His girlfriend isn't wrong, of course - bless Yanagi Reiko. And yet, his defiance has always been part of him. To become a Hero despite his Quirk, which can't do anything without someone else. That only works by taking. A ghostly echo, pale as his face without the makeup he once wore.

"Wise? Absolutely not. Something I have to do, because it will haunt me forever if I don't? Absolutely yes."

"Then, Neito, my love, how do I help you get away with being foolish and defiant?"

He contemplates that for a moment. Reiko has a varied and versatile array of skills, after all. Infiltration, extraction, stealth. Ranged combat, diversion tactics. A limited but generally sufficient knowledge of sedatives, Quirk-suppressant drugs, and other poisons. Telekinesis is a good way to silently deliver a loaded dart, or pick locks without being seen crouching at a door, or pick pockets without ever being near someone.

But no. What he needs is plausible deniability for this. It won't do for a Hero student to be seen sneaking off to rub shoulders with questionable people in questionable neighborhoods. More specifically, it won't do for him, who has given the League of Villain a helping hand before - and nobody in a seat of power cares that it was under duress - to be seen sneaking off to places where villains may dwell.

"How do you feel about being my alibi, Reiko?"

"I'd do it gladly, but please elaborate."

"Someone is very sick, and I have just the Quirk in my cache of copies to heal them up. I just need to appear to have never left the campus. If I look like you, and you've been here the whole time, I have cover, however flimsy."

"In short, the only downsides I'll suffer is having my blood drawn and being forced to socialize? Acceptable. Please take me out for dinner this week."

He bends to kiss her hand with a flourish.

"But of course. And I will be, ahem, 'asleep in my room' tonight," he says, winking as he looks up and meets her eyes.

Reiko changes into a simple, casual and practical outfit, but still one she would be willing to wear while out on the town, as it were. It's best that their outfits match, after all - to go all in with their body-double act.

He swabs alcohol on her arm, snaps on the rubber band, slides the needle in. Swallows the vial while it's still warm, savoring the salt-sweet and iron tang as it slides down his throat. He runs his fingers over a bracelet of blonde 'thread' - or that's what he pretends it is. He wonders if he owes liking the taste of Reiko's blood to the power that flows from the hair into his skin.

It's only fitting that this gift will help him save the donor of the hair, he muses, as his flesh roils and twists, and hot-cold goosebumps squirm up and down his spine. He shifts his stance to accommodate for his new distribution of weight - for all that he now has a lower center-of-mass, he's also unused to balancing Reiko's ample chest.

A sling backpack that belongs to Reiko is thrown over his disguise - complete with fake clothes. In it is a change of Neito's own clothing, a first aid kit, a surprisingly reliable amateur-medicine manual, a weighty bottle of water and a pack of Reiko's favorite cookies.

He leaves Reiko's room after a farewell kiss, soft and almost chaste, if it weren't moist and on the lips.

Determination boils in his borrowed veins, lights a fire in his borrowed chest as he slips between the trees to the place where UA's vaunted, government-funded security is weakest, the defenses and surveillance thinnest. Defiance, breaking the law, and something borrowed - Neito's never related to Midoriya more than this moment.

Himself, determined to be a hero even with a Quirk that can only ever be a pale imitation of someone else, and an equally pale face, that polite society won't accept without makeup.

Midoriya, reckless and determined to be a Hero, even with an ancient hand-me-down power that must be passed along before it kills him, burning the candle at both ends. Midoriya, with his unapologetically visible scarring that eyes and cameras shy away from.

The train ride is slow and the train ancient, jerking and jolting over every nick and dent in the rails. It sways like a ship at sea, and it's not difficult to imagine a dark night and stormy swells beyond the windows. He takes in the graffiti that litters the inside of the car - lovers' initials carved into metal, glass or plastic. Nicknames in marker. A few "I want you in my pants" or "Call this number for a good time" here and there.

A train car in which he can feel life and living, so removed from UA's polished halls.

His stop, too, has a lived-in station, perhaps somewhat literally. Gum-pocked, stained tile and cracked brick. Buskers in patched and mismatched clothing, plucking the strings of fifth and sixth-hand guitars. Neito lightens his wallet as he passes each one. He'd stay and listen, if the clock on his borrowed flesh wasn't ticking ever onwards like the clack-clack-clack of shoes on tile.

The doorbell is cracked, but he hears the chime from within.

"Nurse copycat!" he announces himself.

"You don't look like yourself today," snarks a familiar voice.

He meets the red eyes of a familiar death, as the door opens. The reaper's white hair frames eyes pinched around the edges with worry and a neck scratched and scabby. Neito can hear the sound of retching from further into the dumpy apartment.

"I needed a disguise and she was willing," he replies, "More to the point, is there an empty room to change? I need this guise to last while I'm out."

"Use my room," says one Shigaraki Tomura - and the entire concept is like an electric jolt.

Shigaraki Tomura just offered his personal space so that Neito can change clothes. He pointedly tries not to look at the room itself, energy drink cans and news clippings and bags of trash, as his body gives shuddery twists and needling tingles, and his borrowed skin melts off him.

He steps out as himself, medical supplies, manual, and water bottle in hand.

[avery-allyss]

I guess this could be worse.

The assignment was to create a design based off of one or more creation myths. I have little hints of several because copying something too closely seems redundant. Yes it a bit of a confusing jumble and you need to stretch a lil to pick up all the references, but I like it that way.

Egg shape is from several myths, mainly because my favorite myth is the Finnish creation myth, which is also the source of the duck. I'll get more into that further down in the reflective portion of this post.

The yin/yang base for the devision of the egg is from Asia. The concept is more into the description of the energies, the yang being masculine firey intenseness of light, and the yin being the quite coolness of darkness.

The volcano ang glacier are derived from Norse mythology, and I played with the idea of making some sort of root system in the line separating the two to represent the beginning of yggdrasil.

The reeds and cat are from the native American myth. Something about a Reed carrying the founders through worlds, and loosing a war to cat people? It stuck in my mind.

This is the second time I've ever done print making, the first was over ten years ago and stamping a smaller design on an extra large Tshirt I still use as pjs.

The entire process was a mess.

We had one linoleum panel to work with. We had to carve away each color we wanted to keep.

I started slow because the white and yellow layers were so complicated.

I miss measured the paper size so the back of all four copies are a mess.

I made four copies, and every one had a different mystake. The one showed was the only one that the cat showed up on.

I fucked up carving alot, I just got good at covering it up.

The duck has no bill. I tried to make up for it by giving them an intentional halo, it didn't quite work.

The reeds are too short. This actually gives off a slightly more organic vibe than I was going for. I'm not quite sure if I like it.

One of the sun swirls is broken up a bit because my hand sliped.

The blue layer was off and ended up giving the volcano some highlight. It pops a little until you realize it's out of place, so I don't like it.

Printed red through black in one day, my entire arm hates me still. I had my entire arm tensed to prevent slip ups. It's not so bad right now because my mom told me which med to take today, but I couldn't sleep on that side or my back very well last night. At least I didn't break skin when I stabed myself! I need to lay off crocheting, but that's how I decompress...

I will repost with individual pictures of each copy and the drawing on Monday, that's when the crit is anyway.

What I would do differently

Smaller egg, let the corners interact with each other a bit.

I would play with the idea of white clouds, or white with black highlights.

I would make the sun swirls part of the red gradient. I would also simplify their shape to make them easier to carve.

I would look at different ways to portray the cat. Maybe I would play with the idea of red eyes on the cat. Red claws to represent violence? Cause I'm not going to ever go all in on a horrific portrayal, hints have to do for kitty.

Multi colored and more consistent pebble bed. Maybe mossy rocks or sand with grasses growing in? Seeds? Arthropods to pull in yet another creation myth?

Duck would have a bill and a halo or some sort. There plenty of methods to imitate and explore.

I would play with the idea of defining individual rock structure on the volcano and the small waterfall.

Gemstones on the volcano?

Maybe not even do a volcano, and just make a black dragon on a mountain? Chinese style to keep up with the theme of creation?

Shade the reeds in gradients, maybe make thin red lines to imitate their texture?

Dragonflies by the reeds?

Green layer to add moss and lichen, as well as springtime pigments for the reeds as opposed to fall, can you even marble shades effectively in print making? Green detailing on the cat would start getting Erie.

Yggdrasil roots in the division, multi color highlights on yellow, tiny branch coming around to poke out by the sun?

Grey to black gradient instead of straight black for the outline?

Use a digital painting software instead of actualy carving it all. That's the only way I will play with this image again.

The Finnish Godess of Creaton

Luonnotar

Once the universe was comprised of three things.

There was nothingness, a vast unmeasurable abyss where not even a single star shone. The power of stillness was held in the dark expanse.

There was a river, a mysterious flow of swirling posability. The power and movement of the universe was held in the 'waters'.

And lastly, there was a girl. Luonntar was the daughter of the stillness of the abyss and the power of movement. She was alone, and there was nothing for her to do, no way to express herself, or to release energy, or even just simply enrich her life. She did not know companionship, so she did not know to be lonely. She did not sleep, nor did she truly live. She only felt emptiness. There was no pain to be felt, nor was there joy to be had.

Something changed. Something tightened in Luonntar's chest, as though her heart was hurting. Over another eternity she came to recognize the pain as desire. Into her emptiness had flowed a blind longing. She wanted something but she did not know what there even was to want. She wanted change, but because she never experienced anything but the same river and the same darkness, she had no idea what it was she wanted.

Slowly (as everything so far had), an idea budded in Luonntar's mind, the first idea ever in the universe. She jumped into the river and swam. She did not sink, but floated on the surface, looking back up to the darkness she had left from. This action permanently altered the universe, though seeing how took some more time (of corse). In the meantime the girl relaxed as she drifted through the river.

Then came a duck ((grapes are not involved in this myth stahp)) swimming up to Luonntar. A duck, in a universe where there had only ever been one being, now there were two! With Luonntar's change and wish, she changed the entire universe and a new world was created in which the duck could exist too.

The curious bird swam around the girl looking at the strange other being, the girl laying very still as she did the same. The duck climbed up onto Luonntar's warm knee and sat. Then something else happened, something so beautiful that Luonntar could not believe her eyes.

The duck layed three eggs there upon the goddess' knee because it was the only warm dry place in the entire universe, and the only place the future could hatch.

Luonntar kept so very still, anxious of the fragile life prched upon her knee. The duck warmed her clutch as they grew hotter and hotter as the future drew near.

Luonntar yearned for that future like she had never yearned before, bringing back the dull pain from before. She ignored it.

The eggs grew uncomfortably hot, the ducks featherstickled her, and the bebed feet left tiny scratches on her. She ignored it all.

Suddenly the duck shifted, her feathers tickling Luonntar and she couldn't help but to twitch reflexively. She did not mean to but it was enough. She watched horrified as the eggs tumbled into the river. She berated herself, fearing for the eggs. Would they sink forever out of sight? Would the future be lost?

Instead the eggs broke open. Marvels poured forth. The yolks joined into the sun and rose up into the abyss. The whites became a silver moon, rising as well. The tiny bits of the shells became the stars, scattered disjointed with the rest of the remains of the three eggs. In a world where only darkness had existed, light was born. It was magic.

Luonntar was changed by the magic, as she dove beneath the surface. Something was calling to her from the depths. It was the mud at the bottom. She grabbed handfuls and swam back to the surface. She molded a cone from the mud upon her belly and placed it on the surface of the river. It rose into the sky and became a mountain.

She dived again and again, returning to the surface to mold more new landscapes. She carved veins of rivers through the land, scooping out lakes. The stars watched in fascination. Inspired, they rearranged themselves into designs. The moon learned out to show its changing face to the earth.

As Luonntar built the land, life burst forth. Plants grew, creatures came to be. All life was the children of the new earth. When the goddess rested at long last and looked at the bright sky, the green foliage, and the lively children, she knew it was good.

((Adlibed from "Wild Girls" by Patricia Monaghan))

[advancemanagementsolutionsllc]

How Coaching And Mentorship In Recruitment And Staffing: A Deep Dive Into Transformative Practices

It is important to assess that recruitment and staffing processes are being subjected to a rapidly growing change in today’s highly competitive job market. Among the most significant contributors to this shift is the realization and adoption of coaching and mentorship in recruitment and staffing procedures. They are also an effective way of developing the skills of recruiters while also improving the efficiency of the workforce. Coaching and mentorship are valuable assets for increasing recruitment in particular for an RPO company in USA. This blog is going to explain how these practices are changing the recruiting industry and why they are crucial for sustainable business.

The Role of Coaching in Recruitment and Staffing

Recruitment and staffing coaching means that professionals are coached in their specific field of recruitment, and concentrate on individual further development. As a result, the organizations get to develop better skills for attracting the right personnel, communication, and efficient hiring.

For instance, the coaching programs usually involve the enhancement of the interview skills of a recruiter, enhancing skills of identifying the candidates, and enhancing the skills of matching human capital to organizational ethos. The targeted recommendations are crucial for an RPO company in USA, particularly given the heightened pressure on the firm to satisfy client needs. Coaching guarantees that recruiters are equipped with the resources and the zeal to handle giant opportunities in staffing.

In addition, it has also been found that coaching may result in an increased employee turnover. It makes sense that, when recruiters are encouraged to look beyond the abilities to perform certain tasks and consider the prospective employee's compatibility with organizational culture, they are likely to secure better performers for the organization in the long run. This becomes valuable at a time in which turnover is costly, thus positioning the firm as a severe competitor.

Mentorship and Its Long-Term Impact

As we have seen coaching addresses specific skills development needs in the short run while mentoring has a long term perspective. With regards to recruitment and staffing, therefore, the concept of mentorship created a general outlook for progress as well as career advancement within an organization.

A mentor is usually more experienced and helps an employee decide on the career path, leadership, or other issues within an organization. On the part of recruiters, they indicated that having a role model is all about accessing knowledge from someone who has done the job and has overcome the odds. This relationship is very useful in an RPO company in USA where staffing requirements and trends change frequently.

In matters of recruitment and staffing, the role of a mentor is also vital since it can help to enhance learning as a continuous process. It also has its advantages for the specific recruiters and the organization in general. Since the junior recruiters work under the senior recruiters, they acquire strategies through imitation on how to deal with intricate situations in the hiring process as well as enhancing the overall team performance.

Transforming Recruitment Practices Through Coaching and Mentorship

The impact of coaching and mentorship on recruitment and staffing has been seen to be very vigorous. Such practices contribute to the formation of a higher level of skills, flexibility, and motivation in a team of recruiters. Hiring goals, specifically when a recruitment team is geared towards the development of short term skills and long term career growth, can always be pointed to a higher level than what has already been set.

Coaching and mentorship in recruitment and staffing, as the need and requirement of pressure, is not an option for any RPO company in the United States of America. Since the recruitment demands continue to grow and clients’ expectations are rising, these practices must be adopted by organizations. Coaching helps enhance recruiters’ ability to carry out their responsibilities in their line of work, whereas mentorship provides recruiters with the necessary encouragement and motivation to enable them to succeed in the long run as food industry recruiters.

The Competitive Advantage of Coaching and Mentorship

The utilization of coaching and mentoring in the process of recruitment and staffing provides a competitive advantage to organizations. It assists the practitioners in the recruiter job market to improve on their skills, and logical thinking as well as embrace change. Most importantly, every work carried out creates a culture of improvement, which is so critical nowadays in the highly competitive recruitment environment.

An RPO company that practices these elements in the USA will put itself in a good position concerning contemporary staffing challenges. Thus, it will not only get the best employees but also strengthen connections with its clients due to the constant supply of high-quality candidates.

Conclusion

Overall, it can be stated that coaching and mentorship in recruitment and staffing have become revolutionary activities that help recruiters and staffing officers succeed. Therefore, investment in such strategies is necessary for the companies and the particular RPO company in USA to remain relevant and provide sustainable growth. Addressing recruitment teams’ development will lead to the enhancement of hiring results, cultivate learning organization culture, and consequently, create a better future.

[flock-of-feral-plague-doctors]

World of Kohm Worldbuilding: Changelings

Oquids, more colloquially known as changelings, are a reptilian species of unknown origin. They are well known for their intrinsic ability to change into the forms of various other species. In fact, most changelings will spend large portions of their lives using the forms other other species.

Appearance: Changelings can range in height anywhere from human sized to orc sized, and they tend to be quite a bit lighter than they appear. They will typically have white scales with black markings, pale colored eyes and black manes, although this is subject to individual differences. Their tails tend to be long and will have a tuft of fur at the end in the same color as their mane. They are mostly bipedal but can walk on all fours if they choose to. They can typically move faster on four legs than two. Oftentimes, changelings will take on traits similar to whatever species they imitate the most, though it is unknown whether this is a natural process or a subconscious application of their shapeshifting abilities. For example, a changeling who usually takes the form of a species with horns will eventually grow similar horns in their base form.

Diet: Changelings are primarily carnivores, although they can derive nutrition from other sorts of foods and can go short periods of time without meat if they need to.

Innate magic: The shapeshifting powers of the changelings are magical in nature. They are completely able to change their outward appearance. There are also minor alterations they can make to their internal structure too, but this tends to be much harder to pull off. Their ability to alter their appearance and structure is made much easier if they have consumed the DNA of their target species in the past, but this is not a requirement. They also have very mild psychic abilities that allow them to share memories with each other.

Origin: Completely unknown. Not even the changelings know where they come from, and they are so widely ingrained into the galactic culture that it has become impossible to track their spread. There are theories of course, but none have been proven so far. The most widespread theory is that they evolved in the space lanes rather than planetside due massive spikes in life magic. Said spikes in life magic were the result of a massive population boom just before the rise of Vortex Entertainment Corp. However, the lack of information about this time period makes this theory difficult to prove.

Reproduction: In their true form, changelings actually do not have a reproductive system. They must shift into the form of another species to be able to reproduce. However, as a result of this, they are sexually compatible with a higher number of any species than anyone else due to the fact that they shapeshift to gain that level of compatibility. If a changeling has a child with a member of another species, there is a 50/50 chance of the child also being a changeling. It is believed that this is how they get around the fact that two species with different numbers of chromosomes typically produce sterile offspring.

Culture: Despite being very widespread, there are large aspects of changeling culture that tend to be relatively standard, giving credence to the idea that they're a much younger species than most others. They tend to put a lot of stock in the concept of identity and will wear several different identities over the course of their lives. Some of these identities will only be used once or twice, while others may be used many times and be a large part of a changeling's life. In many places, changelings will even share identities between multiple individuals, which is likely why they developed the ability to share memories. Their true selves are typically something they keep very dear to themselves, only letting those they trust see them in their base form. Slightly less common but still widely practiced is the act of also only giving their real name to someone they really trust as well. Despite this, most changelings are very open about the fact that they are changelings, unless they have a reason to hide. The act of sharing memories is considered to be very intimate, and changelings who share identities with each other are usually very close. However, in some places, there is also the practice of having a communal identity that anyone can use for various reasons. Typically a communal identity will be set up for a purpose of some sort. In that case, an object will be designated to hold all of the memories that changelings have gathered together while using that specific identity so that anyone who takes the identity will be able to know what has previously happened to that identity. Interestingly, communal changeling identities seems to be the source of a lot of stories about various species living long past their expected lifespan, as communal identities are typically only abandoned if there is a reason to. There is one group of changelings living on a space station near galactic center that claim to have been maintaining one specific identity for well over 1000 years, although records are not able to back up this claim.

[gascon-en-exil]

Who Can Say if I've Been Changed For the Better?: Ferdibert Does Wicked

This concept has been a bit in building. It started from a much-loved cover by Hubert and Ferdinand’s VAs inspired by their support line and the broad observation that these two are a musicals couple who absolutely would sing their feelings in all manner of theatrical AUs. It continued through my later observation that there’s ample material to carry that idea even further, albeit with a shift outside of Crimson Flower for a better tonal match. Still, I’m not quite sure what to call this project; it’s not really a headcanon nor is it fanfic by any means. I’ve written a handful of longform character/narrative explorations before, although when it comes to FE I’ve previously been inspired to do so only for Jugdral characters. That setting is somehow both underdeveloped and deceptively dense - and I suppose in a way you could say the same of Three Houses as well, insofar as it’s been incredibly popular for fan content of all sorts.

Regardless of what this post is in terms of my fandom output, the following isn’t exactly a Wicked AU as such. Rather, it’s how I would envision a hypothetical blend of the non-CF routes of FE16 centering around the Eagles trio and set to the structure and songs of the musical as organically as possible. There are no 1:1 analogues with characters and plotlines from Wicked, because few if any would exist without a lot of tweaking; to use the VA cover example, Ferdinand might be a decent proxy for G(a)linda, but the mere presence of Edelgard substantially complicates Hubert’s claim to the Elphaba role. The similarities only unravel further from there, but I did my best.

Writing this out gave me the opportunity to play around with Edelgard’s character as a way of addressing what I and many others in my circle have long considered to be some of the major problems with her canon presentation. For Ferdibert meanwhile I got to make use of my headcanons for how their relationship would develop outside of their support line, in a way that mostly preserves Hubert’s delightful evil wickedness. Add some ruminations on how one would splice together the non-CF routes in a dramatically satisfying fashion, some snark directed at the non-character of Byleth, and a bit of background Dimidue/Lions OT5 for spice and that just about sums it up. Enjoy this…whatever this is.

Act I

“No One Mourns the Wicked”

The show opens on the citizens of Adrestia celebrating the death of their emperor and the end of her bloody war. Ferdinand rides in, resplendent on his steed, and is hailed as the new Duke Aegir as he relates to the crowd the news of Edelgard’s death at the hands of the combined army of liberators. The “Are people born wicked?” flashback sequence is replaced with a summary mostly in pantomime of Edelgard’s backstory: the Insurrection, her being taken to Faerghus and then returning, and then being experimented on by the Agarthans before agreeing to work with them. Notably Hubert is not named or referenced anywhere in this song, appearing only as a boy at Edelgard’s side at appropriate times during the flashback.

“Dear Old Shiz”

Someone in the crowd finally brings up Hubert, the emperor’s vile and murderous minister, and accuses Ferdinand of having been his friend. With Ferdinand even more flustered than Glinda since his “It depends on what you mean by friend” definitely carries sexual undertones, so begins the flashback to Part 1. There’s an equivalent intro of Garreg Mach, so one may feel free to insert any headcanons for school songs here. The following dialogue scene establishes the student body in general and the dynamic of the Eagles trio in particular: Ferdinand pompous and eager to one-up Edelgard at any opportunity, and Edelgard and Hubert cold and dismissive toward his antics and just about everyone else for that matter. Edelgard is instantly enamored of the quiet new professor, of course. Because the room assignment conflict doesn’t make a lot of sense with the monastery’s setup, instead Ferdinand is incensed that Edelgard is chosen as the Eagles’ house leader over him even though it’s been ages since a Hresvelg has attended. Neither Nessarose nor Morrible has an exact equivalent (although Seteth can act in Morrible’s role as the academy’s main authority figure), so the segue into the next song ends there.

“The Wizard and I”

Now alone together, Edelgard and Hubert have a brief dialogue outlining their villainous plans for the school year. This establishes Hubert’s hypercompetency but also how detached and professional Edelgard is around him. Then comes the song, now “My Lady and I,” which serves as Hubert’s character introduction. In tones more sinister than Elphaba ever reaches - you know he’d have fun with “When people see me they will scream” - he outlines his history with his lady, that he delights in serving her because she validates his work ethic and gives him an outlet for his ruthlessness and cruelty. Where Elphaba fantasizes about the Wizard removing her green skin, Hubert instead goes full Nice Guy, believing that once he’s given Edelgard her continental empire and crushed all her enemies she’ll be so grateful that of course she’ll put out for him.

“What Is This Feeling?”

You could rip the tone of this one directly from the Ferdibert C support and change nothing - homoerotic subtext included. I like the thought of Hubert replacing Elphaba’s deadpan one-word summation of Galinda with a mocking imitation of Ferdinand's most memetic line: "He is Ferdinand von Aegir!". The chorus can be made up of any number of other students excluding Edelgard, who’d happily agree that Hubert is ugly, creepy, and downright unpleasant.

“Something Bad”

The content of this song and surrounding scenes would have to be completely altered, but they work as a necessary reminder that the plot of Part 1 is still going on in the background of all the school drama. Seteth runs through the major events up to Chapter 9 of the game, including the bandit threat, Flayn’s kidnapping, and the experiments on the Remire villagers. The audience/accompaniment for this exposition dump ought to be Dimitri and Claude with Byleth as a silent observer (more on them later), with Edelgard brushing off the news and eventually being the one to shut down the song as Morrible does. There could be some small side character moments in here as well particularly involving the Lions and Deer since they get so little focus in this story.

“Dancing Through Life”

Speaking of which, this was an awkward sequence to place. It matches up chronologically with the ball in Chapter 9 and the main part, Fiyero’s, is a dead ringer for Sylvain and his flirty, hedonistic nihilism (“Nothing matters / but knowing nothing matters!”), but it’s hard to tie into what’s going on with the Eagles trio particularly with the Ferdibert timeframe preserved, i.e. unlike Elphaba and Galinda they don’t become closer until after the timeskip.

As such I see this song as an opportunity for little vignettes with the other students: Dimitri angry over how Dedue’s talked about and hoping they can share a dance (fitting contrast with the coldness of Edelbert), Felix prickly between Dimitri’s recent outbursts and Sylvain’s showboating, Claude hinting toward the bigger picture with Hilda flitting between her excitement over the dance and knowing more than she's letting on, Dorothea casually taking note of Edelgard’s fascination with Byleth (see just below), Bernadetta as a wallflower who doesn’t want to be disturbed (a setup for Act II), etc. Thanks to one of the Forging Bonds events in Heroes I had the thought that the "You/we deserve each other" through line that later gets attached to Nessarose can become one for Dimitri's relationships, with Felix initially throwing it out at him and Dedue and the two of them then turning "We deserve each other" into a romantic line...and then an ironic one and finally a triumphant one come Act II, by that point with Felix et al included as well.

I’m not sure that the following scene of Galinda and Elphaba bonding on the dance floor really needs an equivalent, although it could be altered to something Edeleth-related. In any case Ferdinand ought to get a dance scene of some nature, so he can try to show up Edelgard as he brags about in canon.

“Popular”

It would be a travesty to have a musical starring FE16’s cast and not give Dorothea and/or Manuela a solo. This song works quite well for the former, and it doesn’t intrude on the Ferdibert development with the aforementioned timeframe and how the lightly sapphic vibe doesn’t translate well to two guys. Dorothea has taken note of her good friend Edie’s crush on their mysteriously wooden professor, and she senses the opportunity for a makeover. Not as exaggerated as Dorothea trying to make over Hubert, naturally, but I still think this works out well. Also, Galinda’s observation on leaders, “Did they have brains or knowledge? / Don’t make me laugh! They were popular!”, is darkly comedic when said to Edelgard.

“I’m Not That Girl”

This song comes with preceding dialogue scenes for setup, so those first. Edelgard emerges fresh from her makeover (given her general hot for teacher fixation, I’m thinking she’d lean pretty hard on the naughty schoolgirl look) to Byleth silently grieving Jeralt’s death - bad timing there. She’s as callous about it as she is in canon, only now with more clumsy flirting, and while it’s impossible as always to tell if Byleth notices or cares Hubert most certainly does. The scene segues into the Eagles trio together, with Edelgard alluding to the upcoming events in the Sealed Forest and indicating that Hubert should meet up with her later for some more villainous scheming after he’s ditched Ferdinand. Ferdinand, indignant about being left out of the loop as he is in canon, grumpily points out that he was a much more splendid dancer at the ball than Edelgard, makeover or not. To his utter surprise, Hubert acknowledges that this is true before leaving. This leads into the actual song, altered from homoerotic via triangulation of desire to an outright sexual awakening for Ferdinand. He realizes that part of his jealousy toward Edelgard is that he wishes Hubert were devoted to him instead, and tells himself not to get his hopes up because he’s, well, not that girl or even a girl. We shall of course leave aside how anyone could be attracted to someone as repulsive as Hubert; that’s part of the inherent comedy of this pairing.

“One Short Day”

This was the hardest song to place in this whole project. The touristy trip to the Emerald City just doesn’t have an analogue in the story of Three Houses, especially not late in Part 1 when tension is mounting toward the upcoming reveal and war. It took me a while to realize that it works wonderfully as an Edeleth piece: Edelgard invites Byleth to Enbarr for her coronation, but that scene is left offscreen in favor of a light romp through the city that further highlights Edelgard’s crush as well as her emotional immaturity in spite of everything she’s about to do. She just wants to have a fun day out and take in the sights and eat sweets with her beloved teacher, and it’s all very “Edge of Dawn”-esque where Edelgard knows she’s about to do terrible things that will change everything forever and hopes to prolong the time until she has to take that step. Adjustments to the lyrics could even work in reference to that song to make the similarities more apparent. An awkward/funny issue here is that I envision Byleth to be totally silent throughout this musical with no sung or spoken parts, which would naturally make them having a duet impossible and make Edelgard’s fascination with them even weirder. Even their gender should be left ambiguous throughout, somehow never confirmed if it’s m!Byleth or f!Byleth. It would take a lot of reworking, but I can see the value in it.

“A Sentimental Man”

The core of the Wizard’s character is not all that different from Rhea’s. Both were thrust unexpectedly into positions of authority that required them to enact a large-scale deception to maintain their power/safety, and both are driven somewhat by parental feelings. The tone of the Wizard’s songs doesn’t align well with Rhea, but once you cut out the vaudeville and do some rewording I could see this one working as Rhea addressing her child (among other things) Byleth at the Holy Tomb just before the Flame Emperor reveal. Of course the dramatic irony hits differently; Rhea knows who and what Byleth is whereas the Wizard doesn’t learn about Elphaba until the end of the show. Nonetheless this would still establish Rhea’s character and motivations as well as set the stage for the impending betrayal.

“Defying Gravity”

Said betrayal being Byleth’s, who decides to stand by Rhea and condemn Edelgard as the Flame Emperor when she arrives with her army. This is another song in parts that would need to be broken up. Edelgard gets the bulk of it, but the middle sections between Elphaba and Glinda could work as a kind of separated duet with Edelgard and Hubert attempting to convince Byleth and Ferdinand respectively to join them. Because of Byleth’s silence only Ferdinand can reply in song; only he and Edelgard add the “my friend” bit to the end of this segment, to illustrate the unevenness of Edeleth and Ferdibert at this point in the story. Then things turn to full bombast, albeit darker than in Wicked proper. Edelgard does the belting, Hubert’s sinister laughter reverberates below her (would it be too tasteless for him to be leering up her skirt the whole time?), Ferdinand has Glinda’s mournful “I hope you’re happy!” toward Hubert, and through this and the reprise of “No One Mourns the Wicked” the major events of the timeskip are enacted in pantomime or silhouette. Byleth tumbles off a cliff, Rhea is taken captive as is Dimitri but Dedue rushes after him, and Claude makes a tactical retreat. Side note: “And if I’m flying solo, / at least I’m flying free” is classic Edelgard fixating on Byleth and forgetting that Hubert exists.

Act II

“Thank Goodness”

A surprisingly tough one here. The core of the song, pivoting around the double meaning of “I couldn’t be happier,” suits early Part 2 Ferdinand perfectly, second-guessing his choice and, outside of CF, melancholy about fighting his homeland. In terms of plot it’s an easy translation too, with the crowd announcing the terrible things the Empire has been doing to win its war - persecuting believers, abducting civilians and turning them into Demonic beasts, consorting with inhuman shadowy figures who can disguise themselves as ordinary people - and the assembly working as a way to bring together the leads of the three routes: Byleth, Dimitri (who had Dedue always at his side and thus never had a full psychotic break), Claude, and Seteth, with Ferdinand representing the Adrestian resistance. It’s only the wedding announcement that’s hard to pin down, and I toyed with a number of ideas including Dimidue making yet another public declaration of devotion to one another or Ferdinand planning to follow through with his arranged marriage to Bernadetta they have in their supports (which makes more sense in light of the following sequence). In the end though I don’t think the marriage element is strictly necessary, leaving the song as a means of catching up with the cast five years later and seeing them united against Edelgard - with Ferdinand’s private regrets the only sour note.

“Wicked Witch of the East”

More a dialogue than a song, but still important. Bernadetta is arguably the Eagle other than Hubert most comfortable supporting Edelgard, because all Edelgard has to do is put Count Varley under house arrest for Bernadetta to sing the emperor’s praises. I can also see her as the same sort of self-centered, negligent ruler that Nessarose becomes in Wicked, not because of an unrequited attraction but because of her reclusive desire to be left alone. I see this scene playing out as Hubert surprising Bernadetta at her estate, angry about rumors that she may be helping the rebels and/or engaged to Ferdinand if going with that plot point after Edelgard has done her the favor of locking up her father. He’s fully prepared to, ahem, “persuade” Bernadetta, but before he can break out the torture implements Ferdinand arrives asking for her to support the rebels’ cause.

Farcical, sure, but it gets the two of them together again after five years and underscores how strong their UST has become in their time apart, with Hubert too flabbergasted to attack a known enemy and Ferdinand expressing how happy he is to see Hubert again despite everything. Each learns that the other isn’t as happy about his chosen path as he’d hoped, in Hubert’s case because his lady has grown ever more distant from him as the war has dragged on. Bernadetta cuts through the tension by bringing things back to the song (sort of) and blurting out that she knows both sides are marshalling their forces near Gronder Field. Ferdinand is too caught up in the fraught romance angle to do more than leave with this new information, but Hubert recovers enough to condemn Bernadetta for her flagrant misrule (venting by inference his frustrations toward Edelgard in the process) and resolve to set her on fire for her treachery.

“I’m Not That Girl (Reprise)”

The Gronder rematch happened offscreen - and Bernadetta was indeed set on fire - and on the Imperial side Edelgard is left increasingly frustrated over her losses and hurt that Byleth still refuses to listen to her and continues to fight her regime. You may notice that I’ve shuffled around the middle of Act II, necessary at this point in order to better line up with FE16’s story and Hubert and Edelgard’s separate narrative climaxes while also ensuring that those climaxes don’t overlap too much. This song is only a brief reprise, but it’s a significant one; Hubert finally realizes that Edelgard will never love him. It’s also kept gender-neutral, because Byleth.

“As Long as You’re Mine”

That segues naturally into this moment. Ferdinand sneaks into Enbarr using his unexpected stealth powers (I usually talk about Dedue having them, but Ferdinand shows he’s no slouch in his Mercedes supports) and encounters Hubert. Their UST boils over in a furor of awkward, impassioned sex and also this song. I like the idea of rewording some of Fiyero's lines to incorporate Hubert's acidic snark: “Maybe you’re brainless, / maybe you’re wise.” It’s all very desperate and sensual, ending with Ferdinand taking Elphaba’s line about feeling wicked for the first time - which will have a dark reverberation two songs from now.

“Wonderful”

Again, axe the vaudeville and it’s a solid Rhea song. There’s just the small problem of Rhea being captured at this point in the plot; I thought about moving this number toward the very end at first before reconsidering. While Hubert and Ferdinand are rolling in the sheets, a distraught Edelgard confronts Rhea in prison. Rhea responds to Edelgard’s frustrations with Byleth with her backstory in song, much more somber than the Wizard but, like him, still willing to rehabilitate her estranged listener. The bits of this song about the nature of history are especially relevant to what Edelgard falsely believes about the church and what she views as her own legacy, so I could see this as an interesting character study on what Edelgard actually wanted with her war apart from dragon genocide. There’s a lot that could be done here in the dialogue surrounding those revelations.

“No Good Deed”

However the interrogation of Rhea turns out, Edelgard takes a leaf out of SS Dimitri’s book and visits Byleth alone at the monastery, only to be as harshly rebuffed as is possible to be without the rebuffer speaking. Then comes this song, which was incidentally the one where I realized that Edelgard would need a major role in FE16-does-Wicked even with the Ferdibert focus. Hubert fully embraced his evil wickedness long ago and wouldn’t think twice about being wicked or being perceived as such, but Edelgard is a different matter. Here she breaks down, admitting that her good intentions were largely selfish and that she regrets that her war has cost her any relationship she could have had with Byleth (continuing the joke at his expense, Hubert goes unmentioned when Edelgard names the people she’s lost/failed). It ends with a foreshadowing of her Hegemon form, the sign that she’s abandoned all pretense of goodness and become truly wicked.

“March of the Witch Hunters”

Another ensemble/vignette piece, checking in with the various members of Byleth’s army as they prepare to storm Enbarr. Dimitri hopes for the chance to forgive his stepsister, Claude has big plans for the continent and wants to remove the threat Edelgard poses, Seteth is desperate to find Rhea, and Byleth…is there. As in many of the songs, the self-righteousness of the crowd here rings more sincere and less hypocritical than in Wicked given Three Houses has actual villains, but it still works.

“For Good”

The song that inspired this whole thing, now with many paragraphs of context to set it up instead of only some fluff based on the Ferdibert A+ support. Ferdinand sneaks into Enbarr (again) ahead of the battle, and their second love ballad is more somber as they resign themselves to their fates. As in the VA cover, Hubert refuses to ask forgiveness for anything and Ferdinand is fine with that.

“Finale”

Wicked reduces the final battle from The Wizard of Oz to silhouettes backed by sections of “No One Mourns the Wicked,” and that’s what comes here: Ferdinand and Hubert facing each other in battle, Edelgard becoming the Hegemon before being defeated and then dying as in AM’s final cutscene, and Dimitri taking the throne with Dedue at his side and proclaiming his intention to do all he can to restore both the Kingdom and Duscur - and that his first act as king is to announce that he and Dedue have decided to open their marriage up. This is met with much manly cheering and stripping and someone (Ashe?) saying incredulously that he didn’t even know they were married. End silhouettes.

The final scene with the Wizard and Morrible becomes Claude, Seteth, and Byleth rescuing Rhea. Rhea names Byleth her successor as leader of the church and says that she will go into quiet seclusion and do what she can to correct her mistakes. This all suits Claude just fine, who tells everyone that he’s off to take care of some other business and that Byleth will make a great archbishop - and also they can have the Alliance, no big deal. As with the King of Faerghus’s gay orgies, the King of Almyra’s grand ambitions are too large for this story to do more than allude to.

Next, Ferdibert does a version of the Elphaba/Fiyero scene, with Ferdinand revealing that he had Hubert spared on the condition that he help root out any remaining Agarthans and that he remain under house arrest at the Aegir estate. Ferdinand was also required to assume governance of the Empire, because Dimitri wasn’t getting that dumped on him as well. They can be together, but the general population can’t know that Hubert survived lest Ferdinand’s reputation and basic ethics be compromised…which in a darkly funny hypocritical twist then segues to Ferdinand pontificating before the crowd at the beginning of the show, reprising “For Good” with Hubert until they’re drowned out by “No One Mourns the Wicked.” Thus the story concludes on one of my favorite things about Ferdibert: perhaps even in this non-CF continuity Ferdinand wasn’t changed for the better by falling in love with the Most Wicked Man in Fódlan, but they’ve both been changed….

[notbang]

the pursuit of happiness

or, an examination of happiness and the chase as recurring motifs in the character development of Rebecca Bunch and Nathaniel Plimpton

rethaniel appreciation week day 2 → pursuit

I could write a small novel cataloguing the endless parallels between these two—I have, in fact, thought about attempting it many times—but honestly the list is so long and varied and sprouts off in so many different directions that I’ve yet to think of a logical way to go about it. Which is why for the time being, I’m choosing to focus instead—in some degree of detail—on this particular mirrored thread between them.

As our protagonist, Rebecca functions as a major catalyst for change in West Covina, and just as surely as she stumbles along in her journey we see the (for the most part) positive effects of her friendship on those around her. With perhaps the sole exception of White Josh, all of the characters end the show as happier and healthier iterations of themselves, with many of the major aspects of their growth traceable to their involvement with Rebecca in some way. Nathaniel is no exception to this rule; arguably, his development, more so than any other character’s, is directly tied to Rebecca’s influence on his life. The main difference here lies in the fact that he moves to town good a season and half after her—putting him that much further behind in his inevitable development.

One of the major, ongoing setbacks Rebecca faces over the course of the show is her tendency to conflate happiness, or personal fulfilment, with romantic love, and more specifically, for the first half of the series at least, conflating it with a single person. Nathaniel, by comparison, at the time of our introduction to him, has little interest in the concept at all, something Rebecca is quick to sympathise with in 2x09—‘You know Nathaniel, I used to be a lot like you. Ruthless. But then one day I was crying a lot, and I decided to flip things around. Decided to put happiness before success. And when I did that, the world rewarded me with true happiness.’ Nathaniel doesn’t verbally dismiss the sentiment, but the wealth of facial expressions he supplies in response suggest what he thinks of that: happiness is frivolous, and he doesn’t have space for it in his busy schedule.

Nathaniel, probably: Sounds fake but okay.

In the season two theme Rebecca declares that as a girl in love, she can’t be held responsible for her actions, and the sweeping duet Nothing Is Ever Anyone’s Fault follows a similar thread of eschewing culpability. While this certainly works to help dismiss a season’s worth of questionable behaviour from the two of them—including, but not limited to, infidelity and conspiracy to murder—I’m not convinced the touted concept behind the song—that Nathaniel has learned the wrong lesson from being in love with her, as explained in post-finale interviews at the time—flies in the face of our understanding of Nathaniel’s character thus far. As a rich, straight, white, cis male whose privilege the show has only made clumsy attempts at dismantling, a disregard of consequence seems a lot less like something he needed to be taught by anybody and a little more like something that was probably ingrained in him at birth.

If we want to talk about misguided takeaways within their relationship, though, their relationship to happiness is the perfect place to start. Nathaniel begins the show with no concept of the pursuit of happiness, so it makes sense that when he does adopt an interest in it, he takes a page right out of the book of the person that introduced him and pins it all in the one place. Unlike Rebecca, though, Nathaniel’s preoccupation seems to be less wilful delusion and more of a case of ignorance being bliss—being with her feels good, so why change anything or interrogate the situation any further? For all his earlier talk, he is quick to give up the thrill of the chase under the hedonistic guise of contentment. Unfortunately, what he lacks is the emotional intelligence to navigate the implications of Rebecca’s disorder, highlighted by his belief that the mere fact that he and Josh are two vastly different people is reason enough for him to be able to dismiss her obsessive behaviour as ‘cute’ and ‘flattering’. Rebecca’s recent breakdown and consequential suicide attempt can’t exist as warning signs in their (what he perceives as superior) relationship because he isn’t planning on leaving Rebecca at the altar; he isn’t privy to the realisation that it ‘wasn’t about Josh, and maybe it never was’.

Nathaniel: I don’t want to get in the way of your therapy thing, but isn’t the point of all this to be happy? We’re happy. That’s what matters.

It’s a shame because despite there being so much more going on with Rebecca than Nathaniel is capable of comprehending at this point in time, he actually, perhaps entirely by accident, manages to get a few things right—he checks in with her about her therapy when her appearing on his doorstep contradicts the information she’d given him earlier (even if he is, at this point, all too easy to convince), counters her suggestion that they play hooky at Raging Waters with the compromise of a more sensibly scheduled dinner they’ll both enjoy, and, when they do come in to conflict over her obsessive behaviours, takes some time for himself before having a serious conversation with her. Though it’s certainly naive of him to think it’s a problem as easily solved as getting Rebecca to promise she’ll never do anything like this again, it suggests the capacity exists (given, with great guidance) for him to approach Rebecca’s mental illness within their relationship in a thoughtful way.

(This of course completely ignores the inherent issues in their boss/employee relationship, which come to a questionable forefront when Rebecca makes the decision to return to work after having broken things off, but we’re starting to get a little off-track from the intended scope of this discussion.)

The idea of romantic love as a chase—if not already sold to us by Rebecca literally moving across the country in pursuit of Josh—is hammered home most effectively in episode 2x11, but Nathaniel actually brings it up in the episode prior; before Rebecca and Josh leave for New York, at the same time as setting up the whole ‘man of my dreams’ idea that also carries on into the next episode, a sweaty Nathaniel beseeches Rebecca to imitate a land-based predator so he can amp up his workout under the threat of chase. Within this alignment, Josh, who ends up proposing to Rebecca at the end of 2x10, becomes even more clearly representative of an end goal—love, marriage, and, as an expected by-product, ultimate happiness. Nathaniel, by contrast for the time being, is all about the chase that comes before. After his speech at the beginning of 2x11 boasting of his dogged approach when securing clients, his passionate buzz words begin to permeate Rebecca’s subconscious, with ‘pursuit’ in particular going so far as to in an echo in a similar way that ‘happy’ does in the pilot. Such is the effect of his words on her that she parrots them back to Josh when she tells him she’s moved up their wedding—‘Finally, it’s coming to an end. The pursuit is over and I just want to celebrate that’. The title of the episode title may pose the question Josh is the man of my dreams, right? but in the most literal sense, the star of her dreams becomes Nathaniel, along with his personal brand of terminology.

Where Nathaniel thinks life is all about playing the hunter, Rebecca insists she doesn’t care for the chase, which makes sense—she doesn’t want to be chasing Josh, and furthermore, admitting that she’s chasing him would only be contradictory to her belief that they belong together. She wants her happy ending. She wants to arrive at her final destination—her destiny—because thus far all her journeys (which have in actuality been more of a kind of stagnation) have been left her unfulfilled. However obsessing over an idealised future only postpones her happiness with her inability to focus on the present. Ironically, the point at which she makes an active choice to begin shifting that focus—in 3x07, when Dr Shin encourages her to live in the messy in-between—is right around the time Nathaniel starts buying into her idealisation himself.

In a similar way to Rebecca, regardless of his purported love of the pursuit, Nathaniel’s infatuation is seemingly tied to the concept of a destination—several times quite literally. In 3x04 he’s ready to whisk her away to Rome to evade any obstacles to their being together, and in 4x01 proposes a similar escape to Hawaii, causing him to lash out when Rebecca turns him down—‘I want us to just be happy and be together. That’s what I want. You just said you love me, right? So can you just do that for me? Can you just stop overthinking everything? …seems like every time we’re happy, you try to ruin it.’ He sees their shared happiness as a nirvana state he’s caught a glimpse of that Rebecca is now determined to deny him access to, to the point that he seeks to make their version of a love bubble a physical one, where no outside interference (or, more accurately, internal reflection from Rebecca) can keep them apart. Still degrees behind Rebecca in the parallel arcs of their development, he’s stuck in the mindset that them being happy and in love is the only thing that matters. His behaviour is far from flattering, but with a quick review of his history of being on the continual receiving end of her rejection, it’s not entirely difficult to see where he’s coming from.

(As an aside, Rebecca’s relationship with the destination versus the journey as it pertains to the mural on her wall is something I’ve already discussed in a previous meta.)

When she breaks up with him at the beginning of 3x09, Rebecca responds to Nathaniel’s protest of ‘but we’re happy!’ with the qualifier that she’s ‘happy, but it isn’t real’, which probably isn’t the most pleasant thing to be told, even before you factor in Nathaniel’s implied inexperience with serious relationships. While her behaviour prior to this definitely calls for some self reflection, it’s an interesting backflip from extreme infatuation to sudden dismissal, and while it does align with the black and white thinking associated with BPD, it’s easy to see why Nathaniel feels blindsided and, consequently, spurned. She begged him not to break up with her not only to then turn around do exactly that, but to also (presumably unintentionally) throw in the humiliating implication he cared more than she did.

Dr Akopian: Maybe now you can see that your father’s behaviour in the past has set a pattern for you, seeking the love of men who don’t fully love you back. Who you have to pursue. Men who are taken or emotionally unavailable. Like your father. Like Josh. Like Greg. Like other men, I’m sure.

Nathaniel is an outlier amongst the three main love interests in that, for all his grandstanding about humans being hunters by nature, he’s the one constantly falling over himself to win Rebecca’s affection rather than the other way around; it’s ironic that the love interest that asserts himself as being all about the chase is the one that ends up later having to assign himself the title of ‘king of declarations’ based on his ongoing habit of blurting out to Rebecca how he feels, never achieving the level of emotional standoffishness he hopes to exude. Nathaniel’s unavailability—and subsequent cementing as one of the types of men Dr Akopian calls Rebecca out on being predisposed to pursuing—comes only when he enters into a relationship with Mona, and Rebecca, who supposedly ‘never cared for the chase’, with interest reignited finds a skewed sense of security afforded by the romantic roadblock, something Nathaniel seems to understand on some unspoken level, as hinted at by his eagerness to maintain the fragile status quo of their morally questionable arrangement.

As a result of this subversion of power dynamics within Rebecca and Nathaniel’s relationship, in amongst the many other parallels between them that only serve to support this, it starts to become apparent that, narratively speaking, Nathaniel is to Rebecca as Rebecca is to Josh, something that is visually co-signed by the show during 4x03, when we see the same golden glow of romantic epiphany crest behind Rebecca in the church during her speech at Heather and Hector’s wedding that suffuses across Josh when Rebecca encounters him in the streets of New York.

Nathaniel’s takeaway from Rebecca’s speech is that because he loves her, he should do everything within his power to get her back, which of course leads to his (frankly embarrassing) attempts to manipulate her and win her over in 4x04. (Fittingly enough to this discussion, the opening line of the Slumbered quote he plagiarises is ‘you are the only thing that makes me happy’. The irony of his failed use of her teenage diary to win her over is that I honestly do believe the speech is an accurate summation of how he sees Rebecca, and had he only chosen to put it in his own words, that final scene between them might have played out a little differently.) The part he probably should have focused on, though, is the part Rebecca is currently pouring all her professional energy into (and not so coincidentally, it’s right there in the episode title)—love (and therefore happiness) being about finding your own path.

Rebecca: I don’t believe in destiny anymore. I just believe in taking responsibility for your own happiness.

This is not the first time Nathaniel makes the decision to actively pursue Rebecca while her attention lies firmly fixed elsewhere. In 3x03 and 3x04, he is forced to grapple with his feelings alone when a distracted Rebecca eventually goes where he cannot follow, putting an abrupt end to any potential for chase when she flees back to New York in 3x05. Consequently, Nathaniel embarks on a mini-arc of struggling to accept the idea that Rebecca may never come back—initially incomprehensible to him, owing to the fact that she bears importance to him, personally—to conceding that his (thus far relatively unexamined) need for her to be in his life is secondary to her own wellbeing, something that acts as a precursor to a major thread in Nathaniel’s (often one step forward, two clumsily-written steps back) character development in the back end of the series.

Nathaniel: I just hope wherever she is, she’s happy.

In 4x11, Nathaniel’s dream world amalgamation of Maya and Rebecca begs him to let her be happy, and as the former fades into the latter we get another callback to the pilot—an echo of 'happy, happy, happy…’ reminiscent of the empty shell of New York Rebecca latching onto Josh’s description of laid-back West Covina. Unlike its instance in the 1x01, however, this is a wake up call of an entirely different kind—it is not the blossoming of a brand new delusion but the sobering dissolution of one. And unlike the speech a radiant Rebecca gave at Heather’s wedding about finding the one you love and holding on tight, this particular iteration is here to impart the contradictory wisdom ‘if you really love me, you have to let me go’.

Nathaniel: I want you to be happy, I do.

This moment is arguably the true beginning of Nathaniel’s lesson that his happiness isn’t necessarily (or in this case, due to the current circumstances, can no longer be) inextricably linked to Rebecca—she has the opportunity to find happiness independently of him and that in itself is something that should make him happy, as someone that loves and cares for her. His assertion to dream Rebecca that he wants her to be happy manifests in his concession to Rebecca in the real world—‘I’m glad you’re happy. I really am. And it makes me happy too’—an exchange that echoes two similar moments between them back in season three, during which Rebecca expresses the same sentiment regarding his relationship with Mona, first following the cool down from their 3x10 conflict, and again in the aftermath of their ended affair in 3x13: 

Rebecca: I’m happy that you found someone else. Mona seems lovely.

Rebecca: I’m happy for you… I want you to be happy.

The more interesting callback here though, of course, is to Rebecca’s conversation with Greg at the duck pond way back in 2x02. After finally tracking down an AWOL Greg with the intention of breaking the news of her involvement with Josh, Greg makes peace with the situation by way of reassuring them both that everything worked out fine as long as Rebecca is happy. ‘You and Josh—you should be happy together. You’re happy, right? And he treats you well?’ Rebecca responds to this in the affirmative, though her expression—and the context of the episode—belies her answer. In contrast, her exchange with Nathaniel goes a little differently:

Nathaniel: Because you’re happy, right? You’re happy with Greg. Rebecca: I mean, I don’t know. I’m not there yet. But I could possibly be, yeah.

The evolution of Rebecca’s response is of course evidence of her development as a character and her own understanding of her relationship to happiness, but what I find most noteworthy is not that she lies in 2x02, but that in 4x11 she chooses to tell an unusual truth. She could just have easily have said yes the second time around and it would have functioned as a clear enough juxtaposition of what she considers close enough to happiness; after all, at the time of 4x11 she and Greg believe they are approaching their relationship in a mature and thoughtful fashion, they are warm and affectionate towards one another and, unlike in 2x02, she is not having to compete for her partner’s attention. She would, by all accounts, be completely justified in giving what could be considered the normal response to being posed such a question—that yes, she is happy with Greg. So even though it’s encouraging to hear Rebecca verbalising her newfound knowledge that happiness is so much more than such a simple dichotomy of yes and no, it feels significant that Nathaniel, as a person currently knee-deep in untangling his own complicated relationship with happiness, is the one that gets to be privy to this particular brand of truth.

And while it can be argued that all the strides Nathaniel makes in 4x11 are undone over the course of the following episodes, setting aside the very real fact that human emotions are fickle, and we can’t always stick as completely to our guns as we’d like, his blessing here still comes with a telling caveat: ‘I’ve got to let you go… because you’re happy’. And who shows up on Nathaniel’s doorstep during 4x12 to poke holes in that perceived state of happiness between her and Greg? None other than Rebecca herself.

Rebecca: You just want me to be happy, which is what I want too, and god, Greg… Greg doesn’t know what happiness is.

Such is the shared significance of this concept of happiness between them that the second Rebecca alludes to their conversation in the foyer, Nathaniel’s previously good-natured, albeit slightly confused, response to her drunken presence in his apartment quickly and very clearly dissolves into alarm bells and he eventually sends her on her way. Though he could easily have wielded Rebecca’s visit as a weapon to create dissonance between her and Greg in 4x13, he merely probes for clues by way of a convoluted metaphor, resigning himself to the fact that the issue has been resolved, while Greg, in actuality, is at this point none the wiser. It’s only once Greg himself tells Nathaniel that it is over between him and Rebecca that Nathaniel returns to entertaining his feelings for her.

Though we the viewers are all too aware (and at this point, probably screaming at the TV!) that Rebecca’s happiness is not, contrary to recurring belief, a vacant role that she needs someone to fill; unlike us, the characters have not had the good fortune of being able to watch the show Crazy Ex Girlfriend on the CW network. Nathaniel is still a fledgling in terms of self enlightenment, and it makes total sense for him to be nudged towards into pursuing her again once the clearest obstacle to her affections—her relationship with Greg—is no longer an issue.

When she breaks the news of her decision to Nathaniel in the finale, Rebecca is quick to assure Nathaniel that ‘the times that [they’ve] spent together have been some of the best of [her] life’, which is an interestingly bold statement all on its own, but it feels somewhat satisfyingly like finally giving Nathaniel a real-life answer to the ‘we’ve had such happy moments, you and I, haven’t we?’ that he throws at his Maya-shaped projection of Rebecca in 4x11; affirmation that contrary to what she says in 3x08, something in there between them was real.

‘You only get one life,’ he tells her in return. ‘And you’ve got to live that the way you want.’

Neither of them uses the word ‘happy’ in this exchange, but as we fast forward in time, we get:

Nathaniel: Happy to be here.

Rebecca: For the first time in my life, I am truly happy.

Nathaniel (who in an amusing reflection in 2x09, reveals that he, in a roundabout way, moved to West Covina because of Rebecca—‘it’s kind of your fault that I’m here’) has finally made the actual change that Rebecca taunted him with on their first meeting. And unlike Rebecca, he’s had a chance to interrogate what happiness for himself, removed from another person, might look like before he does so. Rather than starting with a life-altering change, he gets to make incremental changes along the way—which very much are tied to his entanglement to Rebecca—in order to make a more meaningful and deliberate life change for himself later on.

“When you find someone that melts the iceberg that is your heart…” - 3x03

“Provoking me, and zinging me, and challenging my world view. And warming my heart.” - 3x04

“You make me feel like I can be a different kind of person.” - 3x08

“You’ve awakened my heart and unlocked my soul.” - 4x04

“You’ve changed my whole life. Who I am, who I can be.” - 4x11

Rebecca describes her moving to West Covina in Nathaniel’s first episode as ‘[deciding] to flip things around. [Deciding] to put happiness before success. And when I did that, the world rewarded me with true happiness.’ In the finale, she tells the audience how he, by comparison, ‘upended [his] life’—‘You changed everything. But unlike me, you did it for the right reasons. And I am in awe of you.’ Alongside the nice progression from her proclamation in 2x09 that she ‘came to West Covina to search for happiness’ to her more self-aware announcement at the open mic that ‘for the first time in my life, [she is] truly happy’, (which feels like a subversive callback to a certain infamous butter commercial) we also get a reiteration of the sentiment— ‘I came to this town to find love. And I did. I love every person in this room’—that conflates happiness with love in what is now a healthy and satisfying way. It’s the perfect twist that she’s rewarded with the thing she was searching for all along just as soon as she realises she was looking in all the wrong places, and that the place itself still gets to play such a large part in that. And she is able to see Nathaniel’s journey as all the more meaningful in light of her own missteps along the way.

While I have my reservations on the bow they tied Nathaniel’s arc in for the finale (because despite Rebecca’s realisation that there is no such thing as ‘ending up’, there is in the sense of the scope of this series) being a well thought out resolution as opposed to leaning on a previous gag without laying any actual groundwork, the truth is it’s unclear what the true nature of Nathaniel’s sabbatical is/was/will be—mere extended vacation, permanent new career path, or just the initial spark of inspiration in some extended self discovery. That being said, much like Rebecca evolving towards a point where she can appreciate the interconnectedness of love and happiness in a less troublesome way, it is neat that Nathaniel’s resolution follows on from his tendency to want to escape to far-off destinations in an attempt to control his desired status quo. Though his fleeing town is still inextricably linked to having his heart broken by Rebecca, Guatemala, for once, isn’t about transposing his current circumstance to another place in order to cling to something, but rather a carefully selected, specific site for welcomed change.

Independent of any potential that may or may not exist between them as the show closes out—romantic or otherwise—it’s undeniable that these two characters have left indelible marks on each other, and without their respective involvement in each other’s lives, their journeys—and resulting transformations—would not have been the same.