#their relationship is funny but also i can never quite decide on an interpretation for it hmmm

[witchspeka]

I do think Shou genuinely doesn't know Mob's name, like why would he?? He never properly introduced himself, their only "proper" interaction was Mob saving him and one (1) singular line of dialogue at the end of S1

But if Shou were to pick up on anybody's naming convention it would be Ritsus... who doesn't really call Mob by name anyway...

So this was just a long winded way to say that one day Shou will slip up and accidentally call Mob "nii-san" the way you accidentally call your teacher "mom"

[msbunnat]

I'm quite new to the story of Ganymede and you look like the type of person who is very well written with it. What's his whole thing with Zeus?

I am... I love Ganymede and I have look on a lot of things about him, but I'm not any type of scholar or a specialist, I just love him and want to use him for also my art, as a tool for me to explore a lot of personal things too.

But, lets go!

In resume, Ganymede's myth is: He was a prince of Troy and his beauty was so stuning that the gods decided to take him from the mortal realm and he became the cupbeard of Zeus. He become imortal and have eternal youth.

Now, most versions say it was Zeus that choose him, other say it was like a colective decision and the reason can be two: He cant be in the mortal realm because he is to beautiful or the gods just wanted a new cupbeard and he just stand out at the moment. After that we have versions saying that Zeus was the one that Kidnapping him, or his eagle Aetos (but some we just dont know who took Ganymede). Not long after there re a lot of versions saying that Zeus fell for him, and their relationship is based on pederasty. Some more 'recent' mentions rape and there re a lot of artists exploring Ganymede suffering in the aspect that he was probably a child (12 - 18 years).

The end of the myth is really blurry... Some say he just stayed as a cupbeard, others he became the aquarius constelation. His family have a big role on the myth, as they re so sad and obviosly pissed for losting his son and brother, that some versions metion as the constelation was a way to Zeus calm them to know that his son is ok (but will never come back), when its not the constelation, Zeus give them magical horses (probably sons of poseidon or hermes - not sure). I have found one saying the family 'recive' both the constelation and the horses. There re also metions of Ganymede turning into a god of homo love, and he join Eros 'love army' the erotes.

Zeus have his fame, and dosent matter the version, Ganymede was kidnnaped, so we have some easy conclusions of abuse if they have a relationship. Basicaly there is not a set answer for their relationship, its a open field to a lot of things.

This myth is intrestily short and kinda obscure. But its well know as the myth of the only male lover of Zeus. (Plato was a big shippes of them kkkkk - just remember it was a different time and the social rules didnt see an adult and a teen have relations as bad as today).

Some funny things: Ganymede is pratically the only mortal non hero that goes to Olympus and kinda became god. His family is one of the only that recive a 'satisfaction' from the gods - like most kidnapped victims just come back or they desapear/die and the family dont have any information after (this makes me interpret this myth as one of the firsts ways to soft the lost of a young son to death, saying he actually was taken by the gods and not by death). And the cupbeard job was one of the highest, like, Zeus is almost always with a comitive (?) of six/five gods that serve him, and serving food is so important for Xenia and a trust job cause you can poison someone so high rancking.

I really like all that can come from this myth. I like the suffering view, the death of young beauty interpretation, the body horror of becaming immortal, explore Zeus and Hera with his 'lover' so close, explore abuse, expore others sides of Zeus (thanks to some rage comments, I end up learning so much about him, its a shame how he is descharacterized)... But mostly I love when Ganymede have a personality (this is the thing I care most and am affraid to do a terrible job in the comic kkkk) this boy is like a blanck page with so many mistery as we know almost nothing about him, just his family and his beauty... (ok, we have some mentions of him playing with Eros and him on the trojan war asking Zeus to help the trojans, but its SO LITTLE! I NEED MORE!!).

*sorry about my english, I'm tired to correct any word for now... -w-

Edit: I think its good to say that myths, tales, all this little stories are mean to be vague and metaphorical. That is why we cant say anything as a fact, but as the most stablished storyline. That is also why we can mold it to our taste and propuse, by that I mean all takes/fanfics/reimaginations wahtever, all of them re valid ways to explore and mantain our human culture alive.

[rey-jake-therapist]

This isn't my opinion but damn these weird lorebros sure love to rationalize anything remotely haladriel just to try to invalidate it lmao. The only part I agree with is the first sentence: 'I think we have different ideas of 'canon'. Canon is something that is canonically, visually or verbally, conveyed to the audience. Like, the idea that Halbrand made Galadriel's armour? It's fanon. Especially since there was an actual queen who had command over the smith's guild, had been having these discussions with Galadriel about going to war and is an elf-friend. Even more so, we know that to an extent (despite his manipulation) Sauron was expressing real emotions at the time. He was still struggling with his desire of wanting to be left alone and not be pushed to reclaim his crown, to which he knew he was susceptible. He even felt used. To say that he made Galadriel's armour is to suggest that his emotions were pretent and by extent that he was using her even earlier than the writers have suggested.' It's funny when these lorebros like to flip between 'sauron didnt want to get tempted by power but she kept pushing him and 'sauron was using her all along to get back his power like, OK lil bro? Which one is it? Cause you going back and forth. I guess whichever version of the narrative fits the best frame to invalidate a ship that you personally dislike? XD

Not only the lore-bros do that tbh. There are all sorts of people that will discredit a ship, especially a romance like this one, because it doesn't match with their binary vision of the world. These people are often very young, or just have a very narrow vision of the world where people are either very very bad, or very very good, and very very good people don't fall in love with very very evil people. Also they're still stuck on Peter Jackson's version of Sauron, a stupid super evil floating eye with no heart, and cannot fathom that the Sauron we see in TROP isn't quite there yet. They want so bad Sauron to be a cardboard cut character that I'm thankful they'll never approach the writing team.

I think "we have different ideas of canon" can mean that canon, in certain circumstances, can be interpreted differently because it's mostly subtext. Some will find the relationship Halbrand/Galadriel romantic, some will say the contrary. Some will find the Elrond/Galadriel kiss platonic, while others like me will disagree, etc. There's no definitive "truth" as long as it hasn't been confirmed in the text. If at some point Galadriel says she was in love with Halbrand and acknowledges it means she also loves Sauron, then it will no longer be free of interpretation. If Elrond never shows any romantic inclination towards Galadriel, it will mean the kiss was purely platonic and strategic, etc.

To take your example of the armor : you see Sauron forging Galadriel's armor as the proof that he pretended to be mad at her, but I strongly disagree personally. Ultimately, he decided to follow Galadriel in the Southlands, but we didn't see them reconciliate. When they met on the ship, they looked.... very close again, as if they had finally resolved all their issues on the forge table. Seriously, they looked like they were going on a wedding trip and not to war (though tbh a good war against Orcs would probably be the perfect honey moon for them 🤣), but when did they get engaged?

So some reconciliation necessarily happened between their last discussion and their departure for the Southlands.

Forging an armor for her could have been Sauron's reconciliation gift, his way to say he forgave her, and also to ask for her forgiveness; he was about to screw her up, after all. This trip to the Southlands was basically his Deception tour and I think he felt shitty, like he did when Celebrimbor told him he felt better mentally then ever, while he was actually at his lowest because of Sauron's mind tricks.

He's not a sadist, he doesn't enjoy lying, manipulating and torturing people he likes (and he liked Galadriel very much...), but he believes it's necessary and justified by his ultimate goal, which is to "heal Middle Earth". Because people won't just do what he wants if he doesn't trick them into doing it. All that to say that forging an armor for Galadriel could have had several meanings for him : reconciliation (it would parallel the scene when he gives her Finrod's dagger), and guilt.

Of course any smith in Numenor could have forged it, but then why keeping it a mystery? They could have just said it, when they evoked the armor at the Con. Imho they wanted at the very least the audience to speculate it was a gift from Saurbrand.

Regarding Sauron's sincerity, it's always "he was totally sincere, didn't want to leave Numenor and it's Galadriel who deluded herself" or "he manipulated her from the beginning like a puppet and lied about everything". There rarely seems to be a middle ground, while it's exactly where the truth is ! Sauron was conflicted for most of the Numenor arc. He wanted Galadriel to have this army for him, but also he wanted to stay in Numenor. He wanted to fix the damages he did when he was with Morgoth, but he also wanted peace. He wanted Galadriel to get away from him because he knew he'd eventually hurt her and be cast out by her when she'd learn the truth, but he also wanted to be near her. He was upset that she used him to get her army, but he also knew she was right when she said it could be argued that HE used her, because indeed, he did... Etc. Sauron really knew what he wanted only when he came back to take the pouch with the armory. I thought it was pretty clear that he made up his mind only at that precise moment, and yet now I keep seeing "he did it for the audience" bs, as if it was possible.

There was no one to watch him in this scene, meaning he was truly hesitating to keep playing along or not. It's not a case where he's an omniscient narrator who knows there's an audience watching and lies to them to make a "gotcha !" revelation at the end. What we see of him in these few moments of privacy is the real him.

Even Charlie mentioned that in a pre season 2 interview : that in season 1 we didn't get to see much of his true feelings because the story wasn't told from his POV, but that season 2 would be fun in this regard because we'd get to see his true self much more. If we're supposed to believe as some claim, that "Sauron deceived everybody in plain sight even the audience!", then there can't be no "real him" to watch. Meaning Charlie doesn't know what he's talking about. Sorry, but I choose to believe the actor who played Sauron for two seasons over the Reddit bro or the Tumblr girlie who believe they figured him out, because they're so smart.

Imho claiming that he was either "all innocent" or "pure evil", is in both cases denying the complexity of the character. Just like, no offense anon, it is denying it to claim that he can't have forged the armor for Galadriel because it would prove he was not really upset at her and was faking it all. The world of Sauron is not black and white yet, at least in season 1 it wasn't.

[diezmil10000]

what was your dave hc for that davekat comic? just curious

okay so. two things. first of all a content warning for discussing homophobia and child abuse (i mention child sexual abuse but don’t go into detail). second of all, i read homestuck for the first time last month and i’ve never read any analysis of dave’s character, so i have no idea of what the general opinion is!

this is insanely long so it’s all under the cut, sorry if you didn’t expect this wall of text anon

i think it's pretty much explicitly canon that dave has a complicated relationship with his attraction to men, both because of internalised homophobia and because of the abuse he suffered as a child from his bro. as someone who didn’t pay much attention to dave until later pages, i want to say that his first meeting with dirk was the only moment in all homestuck that made me cry and left me with my heart stinging. i had to stop reading for a while

my comic was the result of days of thinking of how dave is a deeply repressed and traumatised boy who left earth thinking being gay is a joke, only to fall for another boy whose entire species is bisexual by default. i like to interpret dave as someone who is simultaneously uncomfortable with and yearning for intimacy – he is kinda okay with having a partner, with casually making out, but he freaks out the moment he has to talk about his feelings or take things a step further. the fact that he (as davesprite) suddenly breaks up with jade, unable to put his feelings into words for a proper explanation; the way he (pre-retcon) describes his relationship with terezi on the meteor as “a thing” and refuses to talk to karkat (or anyone) about it; the whole goddamn conversation between him and karkat and john in the final arc… this poor kid has gone through a lot

a lot of the abuse he’s suffered because of his bro is very explicit, like being denied privacy, but a lot of it is also left implied. he’s weirdly fixated on dirk being gay, not only because he wants to know how he came out, but also because learning about it made him have a realization about his bro that he refuses to even bring up in the conversation. the first though i had was that he went through some kind of sexual abuse, not necessarily involving physical touch (though it could be) but strong enough to damage his perception towards his own body. even for a headcanon in which that doesn’t happen, dave says his bro never truly loved him, and i can imagine him having never received any kind of genuine physical affection

we also have to take into account that dave’s last sight of earth was 2009’s earth. we’re in 2023 as i’m writing this and men all over the world still have a complicated relationship with affection and feelings, especially straight men towards other men. dave grew up in a time in which gay marriage wasn’t legal in the united states, in which a lot of feminist ideas were outright discarded as crazy, and he never had to question lgbt issues because all of his crushes before karkat were girls. so he left earth being not exactly homophobic but finding jokes about gay people funny, and then he was forced to live with aliens that don’t understand heteronormativity because they quite literally don’t care about gender. and on top of that, the only other human in the meteor who happens to be his sister is suddenly a lesbian, and he feels like he’s the only one who can’t come to terms with his own sexuality

as much as it’s tempting to think that dave and rose had some conversations about the topic on the meteor, to me it is much more interesting to think that they haven’t. rose is another can of worms, and i personally love that the way she sorted her feelings out is 100% up to interpretation (i have dozens of explicitly repressed lesbians to read about in other media) – however, in every possible scenario i imagine dave dying to ask her personal questions, but ultimately deciding against it because it would put him in a vulnerable position. he isn't alone, but he's been taught to believe he is

so, finally coming back to how i envisioned my davekat comic: they have made out more than once but they have never talked about how they feel about it. karkat is afraid to death of hurting dave because he apparently can’t stop hurting his loved ones! but he guesses that at this point they are both on the same page and they should take it a step further and maybe dave just needs someone else to silently take the initiative? which isn't entirely wrong (they are horny teenagers physically craving for touch), but the sudden skin-to-skin contact is too much for dave, who isn’t mentally prepared for this. and he won’t be prepared until he talks about it, but he will eventually. because he will learn that he isn't alone and he will never be

honestly, out of all things i didn’t expect when i read homestuck, the last one was a well written teenager coming to terms with the fact that he’s bisexual. i really don’t want to hear any debate about this topic, because i was genuinely touched by how human dave’s development felt and that’s the emotion i want to remember. i too have been a lgbt teenager with no words to describe my experiences, afraid of coming out to my friends, and it was very nice to read that two of the four main protagonists of homestuck are explicitly lgbt. sorry if the wording isn’t the most pleasing, i know that literally almost every homestuck character is explicitly lgbt (you could argue that all kids are), but i guess that rose and dave being *inarguably* lgbt while being so important to the story makes my heart warm. we don’t usually get stories like this that get so insanely popular. also, i hope this hasn’t come across as me reducing dave to his insecurities and sexuality, it was after all a reply to a specific question!!

thank you for the interest anon, and thank you for reading all of this to anyone who has :)

[call-me-a-simp]

Heal My Wounds

At Finn's (Part 23)

Rhea Ripley x Reader

Tw: physical and sexual abuse, toxic relationship, selfharm, eating disorder

Summary: You are in a toxic relationship with an abusive man but manage to run away. A tall, black haired woman picks you up from the streets just in time so your ex doesn't get you. But who is she and why does she seem so familiar to you? As you get to know each other you start to notice weird feelings you never had before whenever she's around.

You wake up to an empty bed next to you. Hm, maybe she's already in the kitchen making breakfast, not that it would be anything new. You think.

But as you walk into the kitchen it's also empty. You search the whole apartment for your girlfriend but she's nowhere to be seen.

Strange, she usually doesn't leave without letting me know. Even if I'm asleep.

You decide to call her but she doesn't respond. You try Dominik's number but again, just the mailbox.

Ugh I hate you guys. You make your way back into the kitchen and prepare a bowl of cereal to eat on the couch.

After you're done, you decide to try Damian's number.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is y/n who am I speaking to?"

"Oh sorry, here's Finn, Damian's not there right now"

"Why d'you have his phone?"

"Funny story, but after we dropped you two off yesterday we decided to stay at my place"

"Hmm okay, is Dom nearby?"

"Nope, also out"

You sigh, "can you come pick me up then? I don't know where everyone is and it kinda makes me a little uncomfortable"

"Sure, give me fifteen minutes" Finn responds and hangs up.

Great, the only one to pick up was Finn. It's better than no one but you two never talked really much so you barely knew him.

You take a quick shower and are about to do your hair when the doorbell rings. You quickly finish your look and open the door for Finn.

"Hey, glad you're here" you say with a relieved smile. "Sure, no problem. Do you want to stay here or come to my place? We could play some video games there to pass time" he shrugs.

"Ye let's do that" you say, put on some shoes and follow him to the car. You get in on the passengers side and it's actually just a ten minute drive.

You arrive at his flat, it's bigger than Rhea's, with a beautiful front garden. You follow him to the door which he holds open for you to step in.

"Get comfy" Finn says and points to, what you suppose is, the living room. "Do you want anything to drink?" "No thanks, I'm good" you reply and shyly smile at him.

"Ok then" he shrugs and leads you over to the couch with a huge flat screen and a playstation in front. "Have you ever played WWE 2k23?" he asks.

"Nope, never heard of it" you shake your head and sit down. "Alright, then you're gonna learn it now" he says and hands you a controller.

You play for a while until you decide to ask him again about Rhea and the others. "Do you really not know where they went? Rhea told me yesterday she would have a surprise for me in the evening"

Finn chuckles "Actually I do know but I'm not allowed to tell you" you huff "How mean" and act like you're offended.

He just laughs and you punch his arm "Hey" he laughs even more. "Ugh you're such an idiot, you know that?" "I'm the only one who can keep promises that why I needed to stay here with you" he shrugs.

"oh boy, okay.. Can I use the restroom real quick? " you randomly throw in. You needed some alone time now. "sure, down the hallway, second door on the right. But you aren't mad at me now, are you?" Finn asks a little concerned.

"no, no its fine I just.. Nevermind" you quickly respond and walk away. You lock the bathroom door behind you and sink to the ground with your back against the door.

You call Rhea again and to your surprise she actually answers this time.

"hey sweetie, what's up? Sorry for just leaving you without saying goodbye"

You can tell by her voice that she really is sorry.

"hey, I don't know, can't quite interpret my feelings right now"

"oh honey I'm so sorry, I really should have told you. How is it with Finn? Everything alright?"

"ye it's okay.. I miss you.."

"i miss you too but I promise my surprise is worth the wait"

Although you can't see her you're sure she smirked while saying that.

"when will you come back?"

"at around seven, but I gotta hang up now, still some things left to do"

"okay, love you, bye"

"byee, love you more"

You lean your head back against the door and smile at her words.

"you okay in there?" you hear Finn knock and ask. "ye I'm fine, be right back" you reply and get up to actually use the toilet before returning.

---------------------------------------------------

Okay guys, I'm sorry, you gotta wait for part 24 to see the surprise. But I promise it'll be there this time!

Taglist:@babybatlover @legit9thlunaticwarrior @thatonepansexual2000 @nox-fire

[utilitycaster]

Regarding your tags: do you mind elaborating on the Rumblecusp thing? I caught up to streams during the Aeor arc and didn't really see fandom stuff earlier, so I'm a bit curious what you meant by that? Thanks in advance!

(in reference to this post)

Not at all! Basically, during the Rumblecusp arc, there was a lot of back and forth of who was Ackshually Supportive of Jester And Her Choices, and, with the admission that I myself am not a neutral person in these discussions, they all conveniently aligned with the decisions of the character they most shipped with Jester:

Caleb generally let her do whatever and stayed out of it, which was interpreted by people who shipped him and Jester as him supporting her (because he lets her do whatever), but leaves out the context of Caleb's whole canonical deal of feeling he cannot judge other people or tell them what to do in their own personal matters because he feels he has no moral position to do so; ie, this is not explicit support of Jester but rather how Caleb interacts with basically anything in which he is not directly involved. Do note also: Caleb tries but fails to have Cat's Claw grab Jester when she holds on to Artagan; there is, clearly, a point where he will oppose her choices.

Beau was pretty against Artagan the entire time. Honestly I think Beau punching him was very funny and she did, to her credit, ask permission first, but anyway, this was interpreted as Beau protecting Jester from The Traveler's malice. And, to be clear, he did bring them to Memory Loss Island on purpose, and while he promised Jester he'd have helped her, it's fair to have concerns about that. But Beau - understandably, since she frankly doesn't have good relationships that date back to early childhood the way Jester does - never quite seems to grasp how important Artagan is to her, and that you can be frustrated with him (hell, Jester is) and worried about Jester while still acknowledging that cutting off Artagan entirely will never be on the table. (Given Beau's mechanics, she is unable really to interfere with Jester being pulled up into the sky so I can't judge her on that).

Fjord ends up in the middle. Jester specifically seeks out his opinion, and he essentially says "look, we will support you as long as you're not being forced to change yourself to suit Artagan." He and Beau also agree to intervene with the Traveler as needed. When Jester is being taken, he goes up there with her and tells her to please let go and that the party will catch her. Eventually, Artagan takes the choice away and kicks Jester (and Fjord) off.

Now for what it's worth, I do think talking through these three approaches is interesting! All three characters are, canonically, people who care about Jester and harbor romantic feelings, and all three are approaching this in real and interesting ways consistent with their characterization. The reason why the discussion was eyerollingly stupid to me is not that it existed; it was that first, it really only centered around those three and either ignored or excused non-romantic faves (Caduceus is very suspicious of Artagan and the judgiest man to ever exist (affectionate), but people arguing in favor of Caleb's laissez-faire attitude who liked Caduceus often gave Cad's judgment a pass while calling Fjord and Beau awful. They also largely ignored Yasha and Veth, who both had imo approaches not dissimilar to Fjord's, though more subtly borne out in that they did not explicitly talk to her about it.)

Second, and more obviously, it was all "what does Jester want" until she decided she wanted to kiss someone they didn't want her to, and then suddenly she's a dumb bitch and her choices are bad, so, you know, was it ever about respecting her choices, or was it a constantly shifting goalpost of what supports the ship. (sidebar: if the goalpost is constantly shifting for your ship? does not bode well for the ship, typically.)

Anyway the two points I'm getting at here are:

I think you can love someone unconditionally in that you care about them as a person regardless of what they do, but that doesn't mean you can't judge them or encourage them to make different choices. It's like a twist on the old saying: if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you follow them? Except it's "if your friend was going to jump off a bridge, and it was their choice, would you stop them?" or "If your friend were going to push a ton of innocent people off a bridge, would you stop them?" There is a difference between "I want you to have agency in your life and be happy" and "I'd rather let you destroy yourself or others than push back even a little on your choices". There's something selfish, in being so scared to lose someone before the fact that you risk losing them far more permanently; and something deeper and more selfless in saying "I love you so much that I'd rather you hate me and live, than that you die or commit atrocities." Like, you should be there for them, but you don't need to validate things you believe are harmful just to support them.

The core principle of literary analysis is basically "any interpretation is valid provided it is evidenced by the text." You can watch through the lenses of shipping goggles and enjoy yourself; but often those are not supported by the text. And that's fine! I know I tend to sound condescending towards this and I will admit it's because I see absolutely no appeal in it, but if you want blorbo 1 and blorbo 2 to kiss and want to watch a show that seems to be driving to that end point regardless of canon, then that is your right and I am not going to stop you. However, no one else is under any obligation to find validity, let alone agree with that interpretation. Indeed, just as it's valid for you to watch with shipping goggles, it's valid for other people to vocally disagree (provided they're not harassing you and are doing so in a place you can choose to block out), particularly if it outright conflicts with canon or is hypocritical in the context of your other interpretations.

[idkaguyorsomething]

Doctor Who Fic Recs

¡The specials are nigh upon us (or maybe the first one will already be out by the time I finish writing this, who knows)! Over the course of 60 years, there’s been quite a few absolute gems that some anonymous, talented souls have put out for our enjoyment. So here’s some of the highlights, scraped together from various corners of the internet:

This one is centered around Nine, after his regeneration. He has to confront his trauma as he goes on a journey through his past, traveling through his memories and meeting his past selves. It goes really deep into a lot of lore surrounding the daleks and Classic Who, so if you don’t know a lot about that this probably isn’t for you. It also came out before the 50th anniversary special, so there’s no War Doctor, and it has its own interpretation of the last moments of the Time War. But if that’s not a dealbreaker, definitely check this one out, because it’s got a fantastic story about regret and identity.

This story is a prequel to both series set on Gallifrey, with some rare Doctor/Master/Rani shipping, a very eldritch approach to Time Lord society, and a really interesting fusion of TARDISes with daemons. If you’re not familiar with the concept of daemons, this story really isn’t a good starting point, plus there are some references to the Big Finish audio stories that are rather important. It’s not exactly a story as much as it is a bunch of fragments set in the same universe exploring a lot of the ideas it introduces. A must-read if you enjoy Doctor Nyarlathotep.

A personal favorite of mine, centering around the unexpected pairing of Martha Jones and Lucy Saxon. It deals with the fallout of a certain couple of Time Lord’s actions during The Year That Never Was and is very short, but manages to squeeze in a lot of emotions. It will make you understand how this pairing could work while doing justice to Martha’s character.

Drop whatever it is you’re doing. Go read this. Now. It is one of the most well-written fics you will ever find, period, and probably the best Academy Era fanfic out there. The author has an excellent grasp on how an unlikely friendship would develop into something more and then break down, making it one of the most compelling and believable explorations of the Doctor and the Master’s relationship before they were the Doctor and the Master. It can get pretty dark (we’re talking self-inflicted regeneration) but if you can stomach those topics then you’ll find something amazingly well-written.

¿Do you wish that we could’ve seen tiny Amelia as a child companion on the TARDIS instead of her adult self? ¿Are you a fan of platonic fluff? ¿Are you in the mood to have your heart explode from a cuteness overload? ¡Then check this one out! The only possible complaint is that it’s too short.

Wherein Rose decides to haul around the dalek from Van Statten’s bunker instead of Adam. ¡Very funny and enjoyable and underrated! It has a dalek named Pedro and Nine being enjoyably grumpy until he decides he can make an exception against hating all daleks just this once. ¿What more could you possibly want?

This one is a short piece about Martha and Ten going to watch a supernova, but what makes it extra special is that it’s a real supernova and the fic was written by an irl astronomer. Their passion for their work really bleeds through into their writing, and it helps to emphasize the sense of wonder and exploration that Doctor Who at its best can bring.

¿Remember Jethro from Midnight? ¿The guy who looked like Merlin? ¿No? You will after reading this.

Mostly crack that doesn’t take itself too seriously and isn’t afraid to poke fun at some of the classic sci-fi setting fanfic cliches. ¡¡Number one shipper TARDIS, sex pollen, and Martha Jones having a good time abound (¿have you figured out which companion is my favorite yet?)!!

https://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=53318 Set during the Day of the Doctor, this little oneshot is just a slight au where we get to see every Doctor (up to that point) play their part in saving Gallifrey. Obviously they couldn’t have done anything like that in the show itself without resorting to dubious CGI necromancy bullshit, but man does it make you wish they could’ve had something similar.

And last but not least, ¡some classic Donna and the Doctor friendship! This is pretty much the distilled essence of everything everyone loved about their dynamic, being sweet, silly, and sad. It leans more on emotions than action or humor, but with the upcoming specials it is well worth a read just to remind yourself of everything they went through.

[kaylor]

I was today years old when I came across a post and finally realised that the stans have convinced themselves that any mention of Taylor not wanting the whole marriage thing is a reference to Calvin cuz of course she wants to marry joe so hence obviously Taylor isn’t even talking about their obsession with her impending marriage with joe cuz they could never do something that Taylor dislikes to the point of including it in a song. Truthfully I had wondered how hardcore stans felt about those mentions cuz I haven’t been exposed to any of these opinions since the release cuz I’m not following anybody that posts stuff like that so I genuinely froze for a minute straight after reading this 😂😂😂

I hope you don’t mind this ask, I just found it funny and interesting so I thought I could share it with you

it's really funny and interesting how swifties will ascribe any recent song that doesn't match up with their idea of taylor and joe's perfect relationship to an event or relationship from the past, regardless of how far fetched. any song that seems "sad" is immediately about 2016 obviously because that's when she was sad and now she is the happiest she has ever been. any recent song about any tension in a relationship is obviously about a fight she had with joe that has since been resolved because they're sooo in love, or about a previous relationship because that guy obviously sucked and she was so unhappy with him, unlike now!! or it's just entirely fictional of course!

it's become almost farcical how no one seems to want to acknowledge the profound sadness and grief that is so apparent in every album since lover. this of course isn't to say i think she's Unhappy as a static permanent state of being, but i also find it extremely grating to see people straight up dismiss or gloss over or laugh off as quirky things that would otherwise be considered actually quite concerning. for example if my friend said they woke up at 4pm and don't get any sleep at night i would be concerned. if my friend told me they don't feel like a real person and that there is something really wrong with them, i would be concerned. and yeah how much of it is just Being Famous and how much of it is just the continuation of her broadcasting her life experiences (including her trauma) in the form of songs, performances, and interviews. like how much do you decide to read into it all, when joking about depression is very in vogue with the youths. i don't know the answer to any of this.

um anyway. more to the actual point you were making - there is absolutely a super weird feedback loop going on with swifties being loud about certain things, taylor responding to that in the only way she can, and swifties being like i wonder who that sign is for? rinse and repeat. to the point she had to explicitly tell people to stop with the scarf speculation. or, maybe, burning down that fucking house on tour every night (but that is open to interpretation). maybe more pertinent is the anti hero tour visuals where you see Normal Taylor screaming for attention while Sparkly Taylor is distracting from the version of herself who just wants to be seen, noticed, understood, and who eventually walks away defeated. every night.

[annabtg]

Hello, if you don’t mind for the director’s cut ask:

“D’you know that there’s a war going on?” he asked eventually.

Petunia’s brow furrowed. “What kind of war?”

“The real kind. With battles, and casualties, waged against people like your sister who have the misfortune to have no magical background other than what they were born with.”

His voice was even, colourless, despite the atrocities he was talking about. A chill ran down Petunia’s spine. “Why are you telling me this? Lily has never said anything about it.”

“So you didn’t know?”

“No.” She scooted further away from him, head suddenly dizzy, but eyes steady on him. “Why would I know? Why would I care?”

——The Chaperone

I feel as though Lily never told her parents about the truth (in fear of being pulled out from school) but it never occurred to me that she also kept it from Petunia. So when I read this part, I thought maybe she’ll have a change of heart but sadly Petunia is still bitter towards Lily (except for the ending of this fic l, that was nice on her behalf). I really liked the way that Sirius defends Lily, that warmed my heart.

Ask me for director's commentary here!

A wonderful choice! So much to say about this scene! This is a story that had me put a lot of thought into relationships and characterizations so it's wonderful to receive asks for it! ❤️ Thank you, Nena!

Under the cut for length.

From a story-telling viewpoint, there needed to be a "culmination" in Petunia and Sirius's conversation - something that would somehow convince Petunia not to be such a bitch and advocate for Lily to their father. I went back and forth re: touching the war issue or not, but eventually I figured that the fic had already some tension and wasn't the entirely funny romcom I'd initially visualized, so I decided it worked.

I believe that, if Lily didn't tell her parents about the war, she sure as hell didn't tell Petunia. There was nothing to be gained from this, their relationship is already not good enough as to justify seeking comfort in her, and frankly Lily here knows her status as a witch and how her family is detached from the magical society give her a sort of edge that she fully takes advantage of, sometimes even in dickish ways.

In this fic, I tried to lean more into an interpretation that wasn't full-on hate between the sisters - sibling relationships are such a goldmine of complicated feelings, and I think it's not canonically impossible that Petunia's feelings were a different sort of negative.

Petunia is the oldest daughter of a conservative family (see: her father's views on dating), and that often comes with very rigid worldviews - and young people are even less forgiving than older people like her parents may be. She naturally assumes the role of taking care of her little sister and keeping her in line, so when the little sister strays and gets a mind and life of her own, it's a shock to her system she can't quite shake. She has internalized being a good daughter and a proper lady as the highest standards she can achieve, and Lily not caring about that is offensive to her whole worldview. She doesn't hate Lily, but she sees in black and white: there's a correct and a wrong way to do life, and Lily is not doing the correct one. There may also be some deeply hidden jealousy, but Petunia will never get to the bottom of her feelings when it's so easy to just blame it all on Lily for being the wrong sort of person. So her not caring is not lack of love; it's resentment towards Lily, for not listening to her, making all the wrong choices and that, apparently, leading her down a dangerous path - but what can Petunia do other than say I told you so?

(And in case it's not painfully clear? I am the oldest daughter of a conservative family, so I definitely drew from experience to channel Petunia here.)

In the end, what happens is really Petunia deferring to her father and answering his own question. Her dad doesn't mind the magic; all he wants is a good, honest boy who will treat his daughter well and take care of her, and Petunia can tell that James is that sort of person.

Now, the fact that part of the reason she can say it is that Sirius convinced her, is a whole other conversation... 😏

[rooftopvibes]

Books I read in January

Franz Kafka / Complete stories 🏢

This year it’s the 100 anniversary of Kafka‘s death so I decided to start this year with a book which contains all his short stories 💓 I‘m obviously not going to talk about every singe one of them because there are so many so I picked a few I liked a lot and the longer ones.

What I really like about Kafka is that there are so many ways to interpret his work, you can even find a new way to interpret it and you always make your own work out of it in a sense that it can be about your life and your feelings and you feel understood by it because it describes how you‘ve been feeling all these years, you just never found the right words for it. So it speaks to you in a very special way since it’s not only talking to you but it is what you make it. Maybe I just feel that way because I read Kafka’s biography/letters and I feel very connected to him so I don’t know how people experience it who don’t relate to him as a person/his letters that much.

• Resolutions

I swear I had this short story on my mind all day, every day! I read it some months ago but I think I didn’t quite understand it well and I always came back to it and read it so many times and it found its way into my heart! It describes so well how I feel and what I‘ve been doing for years, it also made me quite sad. For me this story is about always getting up, always finding your way out of a terrible state (which is relatively easy) yet you are pretending and deep down you still feel miserable. So the only way to break this circle is to not only accept your misery, but also „throttle down whatever ghostly life is remained, that is, to enlarge the ultimate peace of the graveyard and let nothing else exist besides that.“ and not even get better, not even try because it’s not worth the effort and you are tired. You finally just want to feel peace and stop this war within yourself.

• A Report to an Academy

I liked this story a lot and it also made me feel understood. It feels like such a deep story but on the surface it’s a very funny one, it’s about an ape who becomes human-like since he is forced to live among humans and is being dragged away from his real home. Especially the feeling of isolation and never feeling any sense of belonging, like there is something inherently different/wrong about you but you have no choice but to adapt to a society that just doesn’t fit to your world, that came through to me. You don’t adapt, you are going to die but believe me you still have to suffer, even if you function in this society, you will always be different deep down. But it’s also about identity and the animal part in us humans. I read it more like the ape was just a metaphor for a human who is very different from everyone else. I know my 12 year old self would have loved the story and would have felt so understood, so I‘m sad that I didn’t find it earlier.

• The Judgement

You get to know a lot about Kafka himself when reading this story since it’s about a father and son relationship and marriage (a topic which he always feared and avoided). It’s very tragic and while reading it makes me so angry at the father and i‘m just in disbelief. You have to consider that Kafka wrote this story in one night and you have to imagine what he felt. It was also one of the first stories he wrote, so one of his first experiences what literature can do for you and that it is a place to let out anger and find relief, that it is a place where everything can happen. I think you can feel what he felt while writing it also the fact that he wrote it in one session really comes through.

•The Burrow

The burrow is such an interesting story, for me it’s all about paranoia, loneliness yet longing for others and always this vague anxiety. The protagonist (an animal) is very paranoid because he always hears this noise and is afraid someone will take over his burrow. I feel like it resembles Kafka‘s relationships with woman, he is scared to let someone into his burrow, he is scared to get out of it to go into the real world. I also felt like the burrow pictures his mind and his work with it‘s many floors and the mindset that it has to be perfect yet being very anxious about it, about what if it’s broken, what if there is something wrong with my burrow (me and my mind?). So I won’t let anyone in it. There is also this part of the protagonist wanting to drown in his work, not wanting to be part of the outside world. I think you can interpret this work in many different ways and that’s just how I personally feel about it. Also it ends in the middle of the sentence and you don’t know who will win, the threat (the noise) or the protagonist. Kafka wrote this story at the end of his life so it can be also interpreted like the noise (the threat) is coming from inside the animal and is the illness that’s slowly killing him yet always getting louder. I think it’s such a good metaphor because when you‘re ill it feels like there is always this noise in the background that gets louder and louder and will eventually kill you. Also in his other short story „Advocates“ there is this loud noise and I see them in a connection.

•The Metamorphosis

It’s what Kafka is known for, the bug became a symbol even though he wrote to a publisher that the bug can’t be on the cover because „it can’t be drawn, it can’t even be shown from a distance.“ It was very painful to read and you could feel the despair, the shame and the guilt. It left me with a very painful and uncomfortable feeling when Gregor had the apple stuck in his back even when I think about it now I feel very uncomfortable. I see that this is so legendary because at the time it was written it was new and there was nothing like this. Still today there is nothing like this work and it is as legendary as it was back then. I think it’s very easy to understand and to relate to so I understand why so many people love this work. There are already so many interpretations on this work so I‘ll just leave it for now.

• A Hunger Artist

A Hunger Artist who’s talent it is to not eat loses slowly the recognition of society. This story goes hand in hand with Josephine the Singer since in both of them the protagonist is an artist and they are both about the life of an artist and their relationship to the public, their struggles and their uselessness, they worked themselves to death for nothing, they didn’t even get the recognition they longed for. Even though it is written with a lot of irony, it has something very true to it since artists often struggle to survive in this society and often don’t get the recognition they deserve even though they destroy themselves by working so hard and dedicate their whole life to their work.

•Josephine the Singer

Josephine the Singer always whistles and is ordinary yet the people come and listen to her voice. This is Kafka’s last work he wrote and it resembles the state he was in, very ill, seeing death coming but also looking at it with some kind of peace. At the beginning I was kind of confused and didn’t understand the story, so I think it is important to know that this was his last work in order to understand it better. It gave me a feeling that Kafka was still anxious that his work isn’t good enough and he will be forgotten.

• The Penal Colony

A gruesome machine which exists to kill the condemned is the protagonist in the Penal Colony. The other characters seem like nothing more than a role, a solider, a officer, a visiter and a condemned. When Kafka read this story publicly (one of his very few public readings) it was a very big scandal, it is said that people were passing out and running out of the place because the story is so nauseating. The Penal Colony was written during the first world war so it can be seen as a reflection and comment of those times where brutal tortures were common.

The first time I read it I had a very different experience then when I read it now. All I remember from the first time I read it is that it was making me feel very nauseas and I was shocked by the brutality. When I read it now it didn’t have that shocking effect because I already knew what is going to happen (yet it is still nauseating of course!) Now I felt a lot of satisfaction while reading because this immense pain one can feel isn’t just something vague in your body, it becomes something logical and solid (the machine). What’s within you becomes material out of your body so you’re just letting it out. It might sound very masochistic to say it like that but I think you can find a lot of relief in the Penal Colony.

Stephen Chbosky / The Perks of being a Wallflower 🪻

„You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.“ I didn‘t know that other people thought things about me. I didn’t know that they looked.“

Charlie starts his first year of highschool and is quite anxious about it so he writes anonymous letters to a stranger (a person he just heard about). We watch him try to „participate“ more in life, like his english teacher Bill told him to. He finds friends, loves, tries drugs and makes some mistakes. Throughout the letters we get to hear a lot about his Aunt Hellen who died in a car crash. It begins and ends with this mysterious figure, where we, by the end of the novel, get a clear picture about.

I read this novel the first time 1,5 years ago and it inspired my writing a lot, there are many quotes in it which I still think about today. Also it is my comfort book. I felt terrible and decided to read it again. It’s easy to read and it has so many nice moments. I also love the characters! By the end it made me cry so much i don’t know why. Finishing the book is really the worst part because it’s my comfort and then when I’m finished I don’t have any comfort anymore so I read it very slowly. Also it made me realize how I don’t participate in life at all and don’t even attempt to do that and that just made me sad. I felt it so much when Carlie thought there was something off about him and when he felt panic when Sam touched him :(( It will always be one of my favorite books and i know it’s always there to comfort me so I‘m a little sad that it’s so short even though I think it shouldn’t be longer. Also the movie is actually really good because the writer of the novel is also the director of the movie but some of my favorite parts are missing in the movie. I watched the movie before I read the book and I feel kind of sad about that because I already had a clear picture of the character and the place in my head before even reading it.

Hermann Hesse / Narcissus & Goldmund 💒

Goldmund, an artist meets Narcissus, a soon becoming monk at the cloister school. They teach each other important things about life and lead each other on the path that is meant for them. You see Goldmund grow and find himself throughout the novel while he goes on long hikes, doesn’t have a home and meets many many lovers but also other people who become friends or enemies. It’s a lot about longing and desire but also about finding one‘s path. Narcissus and Goldmund are so different yet they are bond for life.

I didn’t know what the novel was about so I read it with zero expectations but I definitely didn’t expect it to be a gay romance novel so I was surprised. I mean you can’t make me believe that Narcissus isn’t totally in love with Goldmund. So my expectations were high after the first chapter, not only because of the characters but also because the way nature was described is very beautiful and I loved the whole atmosphere at the cloister. I could imagine it so well as I had to study cloisters the time I read the novel I could imagine it even better and was in the mood for it. When Goldmund leaves the cloister and is going wild for girls I was getting a little bit bored, it’s just not a topic I‘m interested in and it made me kind of uncomfortable to read. But then the part of him being an artist and finding himself are great and there are very beautiful passages in every chapter. The end was really beautiful again and I definitely think this novel makes you think and can teach you some things but I feel like not everyone will like the language or relate to the characters. So I‘m really unsure about this novel because I loved the beginning and the end but the middle part wasn’t so interesting to me. I haven’t read a book like this so it’s really special, I’m just unsure what to think about it. At times it touched parts of me that remained untouched and i also enjoyed reading it but sometimes it just made me feel weird. Overall it’s very beautiful, it creates a special atmosphere but there is something about it that makes me feel weird and uncomfortable even though it can be comforting at times. Maybe it’s just that the novel leaves me kind of empty and clueless, I can’t really say what’s bothering me. But I will still read other works by Hesse. Since this was my first one I shouldn’t judge too hard, maybe I just need some time and read some more works to get a greater understanding of his language.

[midnightrings]

Writing Analysis: River Song (Part One: Silence of the Library/Forest of the Dead)

[Note: Some time ago, when I decided to rewatch Doctor Who to catch up (which has been a while ago, I keep getting distracted lmao) I’ve had the idea to pay some close attention to how River Song’s character arc and storyline evolve throughout the show. Mainly out of personal interest (and also because I’m still working on a River/Doctor multichapter fanfiction), I’ve started taking some notes during her appearances to somewhat analyse her character and writing.

I’ve always found her writing quite interesting because a) she was written out of order, and b) she only appeared in a handful of episodes/stories. Yet, I still completely fell in love with her character (and her relationship with the Doctor), never feeling like she or her arc were not fully developed.

I have not really shared many analyses/interpretations/etc. for a while now (mainly because I’m not that active in most fandom spaces anymore cause … well, they can be rather exhausting), though I always enjoy it and told myself I will start sharing them more often, just in case someone is interested in reading them. This will obviously be in several parts (that I have not finished yet, so I don’t know how long this will take). I will also keep it quite general throughout (so this won't be a deep dive analysis of her) as the focus lays more on how her character and relationship with the Doctor evolve, rather than trying to analyse every single frame. ]

River’s character

This two-parter introduces us to her character and we already learn quite a lot about her. The episodes show that she is clearly smart and intelligent - besides the fact that she is an archeology professor, she also shows technical knowledge and can easily follow the Doctor’s thoughts and instructions. She has a mind of her own and can be quite stubborn as well – not signing Lux’s agreement, not listening to the Doctor when she believes him to be in the wrong, taking charge herself. On top of that, she also displays a lot of compassion: she cares about her team’s wellbeing, obviously about the Doctor too, and later sacrifices herself to save everyone else. Essentially, she clearly shows a lot of character traits you would usually see in the Doctor’s companions, and perhaps even beyond that, as she appears equal to the Doctor in both, intelligence and agency.

“Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together, you knew I was coming here.”

This also introduces us to her theme of time (and time travel, obviously). She coins the term spoilers here, due to not being able to tell the Doctor anything about his future, despite his attempts to find out more. It also shows that she is responsible about time travel, as once she realizes the Doctor has never met her before, she tries to keep any possible spoilers to herself. She also prevents him from killing himself, keeping the timeline in tact (though this was probably majorly due to more selfish reasons, as she obviously did not want to eliminate their time together). This also makes her appear as rather mysterious, though I would not necessarily describe her as a generally secretive person, as she does not hide her emotions or thoughts as showcased by her conversations with and about the Doctor. She does not choose to be secretive, she simply has to be.

Relationship with the Doctor

“He hasn't met me yet. I sent him a message but it went wrong. It arrived too early. This is the Doctor in the days before he knew me. And he looks at me - he looks right through me - and it shouldn't kill me, but it does.”

The nature of their relationship (at least out of River’s perspective at this point) becomes pretty clear throughout the story. Messaging him via his psychic paper, the conversations (or, I’d rather say monologues) she has with her team and Donna in regards to the Doctor as well as her death speech show the close connection she has with him. The slight flirting (specifically in the beginning of the first episode, before she realizes he does not know her yet) also let’s us know exactly what type of connection that is, as well as her heartbreak upon realizing he has not met her before.

In this context, we also get the theme of trust. The Doctor is clearly wary of her, and when she uses a screwdriver (which a future version of the Doctor has given to her) – while it shows us even more how close they would be in the future – it makes him even more suspicious of her. This then prompts River to tell him his name in order for him to trust her. With his name representing such a huge secret and mystery, it is clear now that she is someone extremely special to him, and it becomes clear to the Doctor as well, turning his caution into trust (to some extent, at least). It also creates an interesting relationship between Ten and River for the rest of the episode, as – while he does not know her yet – he is aware that she will be important to him in the future, in the end saving her for his future self’s sake.

“Doctor, one day I'm going to be someone that you trust, completely. But I can't wait for you to find that out. So I'm going to prove it to you. And I'm sorry. I'm really very sorry.“

Of course, the theme of time plays an important role in their relationship here as well. River’s diary, which consists of their future together, becomes a symbol for their relationship, not just in this story, but throughout their episodes. River breaking the spoilers-rule by telling the Doctor that she knows his true name lays the aforementioned basis of trust they would not otherwise have. The screwdriver – though we won’t see it again until River’s last episode – also turns into another symbol, allowing the Doctor through his future self to save her, initially creating a paradox. And then, of course, her death: the Doctor, being forced to watch her die, before even knowing her, represents – despite the otherwise somewhat (twisted) happy ending – the tragedy of their relationship.

Mystery

Now, for a good part of her storyline, the mystery surrounding her character and her relationship with the Doctor is also a prominent theme. I’ve decided to make this a separate category instead of a continuous theme, as it obviously does not occupy her entire storyline but it is an interesting aspect to look at, and see how – in terms of writing – that mystery evolves.

At this point, the mystery consists of only one question: who is she in relation to the Doctor? Of course, River’s interactions with him throughout this two-parter, her final speech and the knowledge of his name strongly hint at the fact that she is in a romantic relationship with him (or will be in the future, out of his perspective). It is never completely revealed, of course but made as apparent as it could be without directly stating it. So the mystery at this point is more whether we will see her again and see her story with the Doctor unfold or not.

Misc. thoughts

I find it quite interesting that the term ‘spoilers’ was first used at the beginning of this story by the Doctor and Donna. While later on, it definitely becomes River’s term (almost like a catchphrase) and is primarily centered around their relationship, at this point it was clearly meant as a theme for the episode that they later reused for River’s entire arc.

General/Final thoughts

What I believe to be very interesting about this two-parter is that, obviously, no one knew whether River would return or not, and as such, she is written like a one-time character. Thankfully, she returned for future episodes, but the story did not need further episodes to back up her character arc. She has been created and written for this story and was as such an already fleshed-out character as we finish the two-parter. And I believe that this really helped her character writing. Had they already known she would return, I have no doubt she would’ve been left rather ambiguous, to allow to shape her character more as the story progresses and to create a bigger mystery (as is done later). Her character arc is already well rounded at this point, and all of the future storylines essentially simply add onto that and use this story as a basis for her character, basically functioning as an outline for her future story arc.

[sithisreadingcorner]

Hi Sithi, how are you ? I'm Sab :) 🦆 You did a reading few years ago which was pretty accurate (omg time flies 😭😭) so I'm here today to ask you if I may have one please. My dob is still 11/10/1995. I don't have a particular question however I'm seeking a guidance regarding my upcoming year if you don't mind. Thank you for it and I do wish you a nice day 👀👁️

Hello Sab and welcome back! Thank you im good, I hope the same for you as well Time really flies huh?! Im so glad that the reading was helpful back then, I do remember it. One of the first ones on the blog. You know what is funny... I get lawyers, especially those who are just about to finish studies/start their career, literally all the time. An almost disproportionate amount. Maybe it's my fate to help budding lawyers along the way 😂

Although you technically sent this for September, since your birthday is coming up soon I thought I would make this more detailed than usual as an early gift 🥰

queen of swords. deconsecration wheel of fortune. death (sowing) XIII. DEATH "Death is the card of becoming. It signifies an imminent and difficult transition – the conclusion of one phase of life and the beginning of another. Inevitably, something gets lost during the transformation, but something else will rise and take its place." IDIOT: "Permanently reduce your intelligence by 1d4+1. You can draw one additional card beyond your declared draws." [Practice the art of persuasion. Enjoy rigorous intellectual discourse.] RHETORIC

Based on the cards, what I think is that you are kinda at a point in life right now where you are more or less satisfied with how things are going, or at least you are complacent about it. Not everything is going the best way it could, but your place either feels comfortable, or you feel like it would be too much work to get them in order, so you just kinda let them be as they are. You are in a maintenance mode, basically. And this is generally speaking completely okay, you don't have to do literally the most every day of every month. But it would be really good for you right now to "tighten the ship" so to speak.

There will be some really big changes coming into your future, that I interpret as immensely positive, but they are also quite drastic and you can only really take advantage of them if you are prepared for them beforehand. I think several areas of your life could benefit from a more organized approach, but that is probably a lot to change at once and it's my understanding that the area where this would benefit you the most is at work (though I'm not completely sure, so if you feel like this resonates differently you are probably right). Let me say an example. I don't know if THIS WILL happen but I feel like it's at least a realistic example of the kind of thing that MAY happen. Your boss is considering promoting someone at work to an extremely advantageous position, and they are thinking between you and another person, trying to decide. You would be the preferred candidate, and you WOULD be great for this position in theory, but your boss would like you to demonstrate that you have the organizational skills for such a leadership position as well. They dont tell you that though directly, they just kinda keep an eye on you, and you are just kinda coasting by at work at this moment, just straight up bing chilling. And to be honest, if you got the position today, you wouldn't be prepared for it either. So the other person gets promoted, and you will probably never even know that you were considered. But if you got your shit together a little, even if it's not perfect, your boss could see that you are trying and improving, and would eventually choose you.

Now, mind, I still want you to have a healthy relationship with your job situation, and get enough rest, and so on. What you need to do, is work smarter, not harder. Try to get your things in order, and make them more efficient. Change your routine today, and you will have plenty of time to get used to it and grow from it. The only thing that there is to it is that you gotta sow those seeds today so that you can enjoy the harvest at a later time. I don't think I can say anything more specific than that, but I will say one thing. The changes, though they will be drastic, what they will NOT be, is sudden. I think that the signs are gonna be there well beforehand, even if subtle. So keep your eyes peeled, pay attention to details, and especially to those things that people hint at but don't say. The information you gain will be quite helpful to you later. 👀

september readings (7 of 8)

tips? 💗

[writerfae]

Hi! So I had an angsty idea. I am sorry!

We all know that baby Aiden used to be sick a lot. What would happen if a few months after Henry left, Aiden gets sick. Really sick... and he kinda doesn't get better (i am sorry)

Would Henry find out? How would he find out? What would he do once he did?

Also, I am sending this in the same ask, or else I will forget again: Can you tell us more about Aiden's dad? You seem to be really fond of him, but I also remember him hitting Henry(or at least that's how I remember interpreting Henry's character spotlight/intro).

Me sipping tea and eating biscuits with you in a fancy castle in a puffy dress:I need the details of the family drama!

Noooo this is so sad 😭 great angst idea though!

The saddest thing is that Henry probably wouldn’t even find out? I mean, he never dared to come back and he was quite literally a world (well, a realm) away

Though maybe he’d learn about it through Kara, Aiden’s crow, if I decide for the version where she’s actually sent by Henry to look after Aiden for him and give him updates (not sure yet if that’s canon tho)

If that would be the case, he’d drop everything to run to Aiden. He’d bring a ton of healer too, to try and help him. Or he’d just be there for him. All fears and regrets be damned, if Aiden would let him, he wouldn’t leave his side till he gets better or doesn’t

(You know, Aiden getting sick like that would be pretty possible, he had quite some people in his village that died of the flu or something similar. And with his weak immune system due to his early birth and minor heart problems he’s at a higher risk than others.)

It is true that I am very fond of Aiden’s father. I gladly tell you more about him! (Putting this under a cut cause it will be spoiler-y and probably VERY long)

Milan is eldest child of a pretty old and well adored family in their home village. They’re the village’s hunters, have been for generations.

Milan learned the craft from his father (who in turn had learned it from his own) and passed down the family’s generation old knowledge about hunting to both Henry and Aiden.

He is (or rather was) a very talented hunter, who liked his job and absolutely loved spending time in the woods.

But he loved spending time with people, too. Usually, he is an outgoing, friendly and warm-hearted person. The villagers adored him.

He was charming and funny and polite, and there were quite a lot people disappointed that he married an outsider instead of one of their daughters xD

Growing up he loved archery and fairytales and spending hours in the woods. He adored joking and fooling around.

You could say that he was a little bit childish, even as a grown man. But he could be serious and responsible too, having to take responsibility at a pretty young age.

You see, Milan has experienced many losses in his youth. His little brother died as a toddler. His grandmother passed away when Milan was still a child and both his parents died of the flu when he was sixteen.

All family he had left then was his younger sister, who he has a very good relationship too and who he took care of for nearly four years before she left the city to marry a merchant she fell in love with.

After that, he adopted a cat to fill the silence in his house.

At twenty he then received a great honor due to his archery skills and his honoring of the old ways: he was allowed to go to the faerie realm and join the wild hunt for their yearly great hunt.

At that festival he met Ranva and they fell in love. Like I said, he was very charming and nice and handsome so he caught her eye.

That’s how their story began and it soon led to Milan taking Ranva home with him and marrying her. And he was very happy about it.

He loved her very much, she was everything to him. He was a good husband to her. And he was (is) a good father.

I know it may not sound like it, given the fact that you are indeed right, he did hit Henry once. Which was really really bad and wrong, but you have to keep in mind that up until his wife’s death, he did everything for his boys. And he still loves them, he just can’t show it that much anymore.

You know by now that Henry is not Milan’s biological son. Milan knew that all along but he was like fuck that, I’m gonna love this kid to death anyway.

And he did. Really. For him, Henry was his son, as much as Aiden was.

He made him toys and taught him all kinds of things, he dried his tears and sang him songs and gifted him the fairytale book that he once got from his own father.

He was very happy when Aiden was born, but he never treated him any better just because he was his biological son.

Henry and Aiden had happy childhoods. They both love their father. Aiden grew up to look a lot like him, just that his hair wasn’t as curly and his features sharper.

And a lot of values both him and Henry have were shaped by Milan, because he has always been a good man.

Losing his beloved wife however, broke him. Like I said, he was no stranger to loss. (Only a year or so before Ranva died, his best friend Levin had passed away. And with him and Ranva dead, Milan had lost two people who he loved dearly.)

You see, Milan isn’t really himself anymore. Part of him died with Ranva, they were soulmates after all. He never got out of that grief, completely withdrawing himself.

There are days where he’s completely lost in his mind. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t speak.

He has mental breakdowns out of nowhere when suddenly reminded of Ranva. There are good, more clear days too, where he’s almost back to normal. But not quite.

To put it simple, his heart is broken and he lost himself when losing his wife. Sadly, it meant that he was lost to the boys, too, in a way.

Instead of him caring for them, like he would’ve done if he wouldn’t be prisoner to his own grief, they had (in Aiden’s case: have) to care for him.

To come back to him and Henry, the problem was that there’s been some sort of tension in their relationship since Ranva’s death… well, not really tension, but they had a hard time being around each other.

Because while Aiden looked like his father, Henry looked like his mother. And he reminded Milan of her like nothing else in that house full of memories and it made him miserable. And Henry hated to see his father like that. Sometimes, on bad days, they would argue.

What triggered Milan hitting Henry, which luckily was a one time thing btw (even though one time is one time too much already) was when Aiden broke their mother’s favorite cup and Henry said it was him.

Milan was furious when he found out (cause he kept holding on to everything that was Ranva - every day he sits in her armchair) and that’s when he lost control over himself. It’s his biggest regret.

I’m not gonna excuse his behavior in that situation and if you only know that about him I’d understand if people don’t really like him.

But he’s really not a bad person once you learn more about him. He’s what becomes of a good man when tragedy strikes one too many times.

What I really like too is his relationship to Aiden. I loved letting them interact with each other in chapter one, cause you can see how despite everything Milan loves Aiden a lot.

When Henry left, it was the first time Milan lost a person and it was his own fault and he knows that. And since everyone else he loved is gone too, he’s horrified of possibly losing Aiden as well, even if he can’t show it.

[what-have-i-unleashed]

so murder is reaper's favorite mortal because of his relationship with death itself. doesn't matter that murder is literally a, well, murderer. to the god of horrible painful deaths, murder's propensity to killing and dying makes him somewhat a familiar presence in reaper's job. and his treatment of the the people he kills is quite respectful in a way, so reaper finds that fascinating and endearing.

and reaper has his own symbolic animal - crows. and murder is a crow whisperer, a gift from the death god. having the weird little critters as his company makes him less alone somewhat, but that doesn't fully alleviate his problems.

and here comes crow - birdtale sans that is. i think his universe is a multiverse station, so there are quite a lot of visitors and the residents are all familiar with the multiverse to some degrees. crow is, as being part the symbolic animal of reaper, able to see the death god. and crow is a messenger of sort. i think it would be funny if he's part of core frisk's usps gang (another crack creation of mine lol). as one of the few mortals able to see the death god, crow is mostly reaper's way of communicating with mortals, sending messages and stuff and such. and so, reaper delivers his physical gifts to murder via crow.

and of course, as mortals with somewhat the same standards of morality, crow and murder are not really hitting it off at first. birdtale is very peaceful, and dusttale is a tragedy in the making. crow is mostly like "welp, this is messed up, but i gotta do my job" and murder has been wondering if crow is another hallucination of his for a long time. and, like, crow drops off his deliveries to murder and tells him they're from his "secret admirer", and the gifts would often be letters and jewelry and the like (traditional courting gifts basically). murder would often discard them, as they would just disappear once the next loop starts anyway. but over time, he receives more and more gifts, and maybe also a reset-resistant box where he could just store his stuff so he can finally put his gifts in there without them disappearing in the next loop. and like, i think reaper gives him that because the god notices that murder never wears his gifts and he's super bummed out about it lol

and of course reaper also tips his little messenger with gemstones and other shiny things. just a tip, he says, but crow is so conflicted/flustered about it. because he knows reaper is interested in murder, but also his bird brain is interpreting all these gifts from reaper as courting gifts. and he quite likes the death god too but he doesn't want to be a homewrecker. and ooooh the drama!!!

and then as time goes on, crow is like "what does reaper even see in murder" in like a semi-jealous way and so he just stays behind a little bit more on his errands to dusttale. and he gets to watch murder being super nice to the crows reaper gave him. and crow is now double conflicted because he's starting to pity and feel for murder and his universe. he doesn't know much about the circumstances but he can infer enough information from what he's seen. and so he tries to talk to the reclusive monster but murder is totally closed off to him. unless when it comes to the birds that is, because then murder will just have to bite his tongue and ask crow about how to care for them. and so slowly they bond over birds. and now crow has crushes on two people he's so sure are in a relationship (they're not in a relationship anyway - murder is still deciding whether reaper and crow are real or not, but he's pretty devoted to the idea of the death god like some sort of devout follower).

and when reaper sees that crow also has gifts for murder, the god is like "oh my favorite mortal and my little messenger would make such a good couple :]" (in a very greek god wing-man kind of way). and so he innocently asks crow to do favors for him whenever he visits dusttale. like "oh send my mortal a kiss" or "give him a hug for me and relay this message". totally innocuous stuff. and crow is so mortified. like, he can decline those requests, but also he's like "wow now i have a legitimate reason to kiss murder". and it's all so embarrassing, because now murder thinks (correctly) that crow has a thing for him and lies about the kisses being from reaper, but also murder thinks crow is just too good for him because he's just emo and angsty and thinks no one deserves to put up with his problems and bullshit. something something gay people drama something something these idiots cannot communicate like normal people (i love them)

i'm going to yap about the carrion trio and you guys are gonna LISTEN

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[fromdustwecome]

Greetings @doyouknowhowtowaltz !

"Jeez, here was some really creepy and weird shit for a children's show", my friend said after I showed him OTGW. "Do you really like that horned dude? His voice send shivers down my ass! And I'm glad that there was like three minutes of this pumpkinhead guy, he scares the freak out of me! How can you ever like them so much?"

"I can show you the way", I answered mysteriously, opening your profile on AO3...

So... We spent most of the day reading (rereading in my case) almost all of your OTGW fiction :D

We were astonished and impressed, we laughed and cried together, we were arguing until we were hoarse - that was quite an experience, if I may say!

We ended by making kind of rating table of it and then we eventually decide to share it with you like some sort of summarizing response or review to your works!

We read ~60 of your fics that included Enoch and the Beast (except Human AUs and Role Swap ones) and ended up with 40 (+1 bonus) in our table (we didn't include works we have completely different opinions about).

Hope that you will not find this insulting or something; hope that the fact that two goofballs once sat and dove headlong into your works, arguing and discussing, will make you smile a little :)

(By the way, sorry for all possible grammar mistakes that I've made, for that is not our native language :D)

Behold: our ratings of FromAnonymousToZ's fanfiction!

Amazing Worldbuilding

1. Of Swords, Ravens, and Alliances

2. Come in to My Parlor Said the Spider to the Fly

3. Winter's Warden

4. Hunger

Amazing Narration

1. Curiosity and the Cat

2. Old Wooden Fence

3.Accords To Last An Eternity

4. Kittenskin

5. Play With Fire

Amazing AUs

1. Scheherazade’s Gambit

2. The Ties that Bind

3. Collateral

Small and Sweet

1. Blooming

2. A Small Kindness

3. Fondness

4. The Name of Death

Funny and Sweet

1. Chasing The Flavor Across Your Lips

2. Innuendos

3. Wedding Band

4. Sweet Nothings

5. Candle Lit Schemes

Lovely and Sweet

1. Migration of the Moth

2. Willfully Distracted

3. Serene Saltation

4. Eternity Ahead

Sweet AF

1. I Offer At Your Altar

2. Doomed To Repeat the Future

3. Solstice Cookies

Romantic

1. Now Kiss

2. Patient is the Maypole

3. Untill the Stars Fall From the Sky

4. Serenade

Intimate AF

1. A Great and Terrible Union

2. Lo! and Behold

3. Just A Taste

Bittersweet

1. Once More

2. Hemlock Bowl

3. Rooted Deeply (Rooted Sweetly)

HEARTBREAKING

1. The Fleeting Eternal

2. Mourning A Monster

Not-beastnoch-bonus:

Disturbing and sweet

Blood is Thicker than Water

SPECIAL AWARDS

"Showing the Way" - to "Hunger": first one of OTGW fics of yours (in your AO3 at least). Immediately setting the mood to newbie reader; we never met something like this before and now we are intrigued and ready for exploring!

 "Godlike Fantasy" - to "Come in to My Parlor Said the Spider to the Fly": for fantastic description of deities of the Unknown

"I Take it for the Truth" - to "I Offer At Your Altar": for the brilliant (and sweetest) interpretation of Beast's tasks from the cartoon

"Pure Epicness" - to "Of Swords, Ravens, and Alliances": it's just Epic. Can you top something that epic? Also - one and only work, where the Beast is really in strong/dominant position compared to Enoch, and he is beautiful in his actions.

"We Take a Step Deeper" - to "Just A Taste": it is unexpected, it is choking, it is intoxicating. We love it.

"On the Edge of a Cliff " - to "Scheherazade’s Gambit": truly amazing AU with Enoch-who-has-not-forgotten-his-Warlord-past, but what a cruel cliffhanger!

"Sweet as Cookies" - to "Solstice Cookies": a pinch of tease, a pinch of laught and a whole handful of love

"Master of Words" - to "Old Wooden Fence": your skill of playing with words is unbelievable!

"Whirlpool of Emotions" - to "Once More" : how can you fit sadness, pain, acceptance, hope and love in 1k words? That's how!

"I Feel It in the Air" - to "Now Kiss": ...and they said that relationship between a walking tree and a maypole can't be romantic at all!

"Drowning in It and Loving It " - to "Curiosity and the Cat": truly masterpiece of narration! And unique point of view - Lorna's vision of Enoch, that was outstanding!

"Do You Want Me on My Knees" - to "Lo! and Behold": ...and they said that relationship between a walking tree and a maypole can't be erotic and hot as depth of Hell!

"Poetry of Bleeding Heart" - to "Doomed To Repeat the Future" and "The Fleeting Eternal": obviously it wasn't meant to be a dilogy, but... The Beast is accidentally traveling through Time to meet Enoch in the past, giving him a chance to see the Love of his life for the first time, and than doing it again, giving Enoch a chance to hold him for the last time? If this is not Absolute Heartbreaking, we don't know what is!

It is clear for us that you have changed your characters and preferences through time a lot and you don't like some of themes or even fics anymore, but we beg you to not delete them (like some other authors do), because it is real history now and someone there deeply fond of it!

We wish you tons of inspiration! Looking forward to your next work!

Sincerely, Nathalie and Alexander :)