#there isn’t really any other points on the timeline where they intersect like this so it’s interesting…

[tinned-beef]

chat in the timeline poster ben (orange line) enters vietnam during the tail end of klaus’ time there (green line)

and in the teaser he’s seen grabbing a soldier and looks to be in a jungle?

vietnam returns??? i hope we get to see dave again 🥹

[saphronethaleph]

Visiting Time

The front door opened with a crash.

“Sonic!” a voice shouted. “You’re not getting away this time!”

Tails lifted his welding mask, and turned off the torch. Then he hopped out of his garage, and into the main living area of their house.

“Hi, Silver,” he said.

“Tails!” Silver replied, waving. “Great to see you again. Where’s Sonic? I’m here to pay him back for what he did!”

“He’s out at the moment, not sure where,” Tails replied, shrugging. “What did he do, exactly? There’s a lot of stuff it could be…”

“You mean he’s been doing a lot of stuff he needs to pay for?” Silver asked, going over to one of the sofas and sitting down.

Tails shrugged. “No, not really, but he’s done a lot of stuff, and a lot of that could get misinterpreted! That’s the way it usually works, like with the Iblis Trigger or when Shadow got mistaken for him.”

Silver frowned. “Iblis Trigger?”

“I don’t actually know myself, but my research turned up a note from myself!” Tails replied. “It was back last time we broke time… no, maybe the time before last time?”

He scratched his head, then shook it. “Anyway, Sonic isn’t the Iblis Trigger, I’m supposed to tell you that. How’s the future, by the way?”

“You know, same old, same old,” Silver said. “Hey, can I get a mug of cocoa?”

Tails blurred into the kitchen and began mixing some up. “So… post apocalypse?”

“That’s same old, same old, for you,” Silver concurred readily. “This time I guess it’s global warming?”

“Huh,” Tails frowned. “I was pretty sure my Ring Energy Generators would prevent that, by using clean energy instead of fossil fuels. Any specifics?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing to do with fossil fuels,” Silver shrugged. “When I said warming, I meant literally. Volcanic eruptions and lava and stuff.”

“Oh!” Tails said. “I guess we might need to talk to Chip and see if he knows what’s going on… so what do you think Sonic has done, exactly?”

Silver floated over the cocoa and took a sip. “Man, you’re good at that… anyway, he built a giant robot and was using it to attack people.”

Tails gave him a perplexed look.

“Okay, look,” Silver began. “I know that realistically speaking it was probably actually Eggman who did it. But you know Sonic, the best way to get him to help out is to challenge him to a battle and then work from there.”

“I have trouble arguing with that,” Tails said, flicking both his tails, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, hold on a minute! I have something I’ve been working on to try and help with this kind of thing!”

He scampered off into his workshop, and Silver shrugged before drinking some cocoa.

A minute or so later, Tails came back with an odd-looking contraption.

“This is a recent project!” Tails explained, flicking some switches, and a little generator thingummy began to spin faster and faster with an ascending whiiiiir sound. “Aaand… there we go!”

Silver leaned in to see what was going on.

“...so, what does it do, exactly?” he asked.

“It detects inconsistencies in the fabric of space and time!” Tails explained, both his namesake tails flicking back and forth. “I got the idea after Sonic told me about this one time where I never met him and I ended up making myself cyborg tails. And this other time where I was a pirate. And, well, all the other times we’ve messed with that kind of thing… anyway, it detects where parallel lines of time are resonating with our own timeline, and identifies the points where our own history is being driven off course, because a different world is leaking into our own through a micro-hole to a universe only a few picometres in the ana or kata direction.”

Silver frowned.

“I’m not exactly an expert on temporal mechanics, but that sounds extremely specific,” he said. “How could you possibly identify those?”

“Well, it was easy enough once I had a big enough sample set,” Tails shrugged. “Which took about a month. Anyway, uh… okay… there we go!”

He pointed to the screen. “See here? Your personal timeline intersects with Sonic’s timeline in about a week, and you’re carrying one of the Chaos Emeralds at the time. The… yellow one, I think.”

Silver rummaged in his quills, and brought out a blue Chaos Emerald. “The blue one, actually.”

“That must be it!” Tails declared. “You need to bring the yellow one instead, because otherwise you and Sonic are going to be trying to go Super with two blue Emeralds and no yellow one. Once you’ve done that, that should fix the timeline until the next time it breaks.”

“Huh,” Silver mused, draining the last of his cocoa. “I guess that makes sense… I’d better go and find the yellow one instead. And work out what to do with the few weeks I’ll get to enjoy being in a non post apocalypse.”

Tails gave him a thumbs-up. “No problem! This just shows the value of my P.L.O.T. hole detector!”

[brain-depositary]

I am seeing way too much of this on my timeline and this is not going to become a politics blog so I will only say this once:

1. “Invisibility”, or what we should probably call, “erasure and exploitation”, is a serious problem for transmasculine individuals. We can see it very often how in popular discourses when TERFs refer to us as “women and girls” this receives little to no pushback as the people they are talking about are assumed to be real women and girls. Our history is constantly erased to the point that we’re thought of as recently invented and because we are “new” and all the efforts to divide and conquer us we end up throwing our weight behind movements and individuals that do not have our best interest at heart for the hope of receiving scraps. We’re regularly left out of surveys and observational studies because there are “too few” of us to matter so our problems cannot be measured and when we don’t have numbers to cite our problems are considered not real. When bad things do happen to us, these bad things are used to ratchet up protections for people who are not us (often cis women). It’s an extremely vicious cycle, and while the hypervisibility of transfemmes has its own serious problems, it’s not an enviable position at all.

2. TERFs spend a lot of time talking about transmascs but because we are referred to as women and girls by them it’s completely overlooked as abuse directed at us even by other trans people. The vast majority of what people know about transmascs is from adult cis women who liked to climb trees at 10 years old so maybe think about where certain ideas about transmasculinity are coming from. Also, because of the “divide and conquer” strategies, some transmascs have thrown their lot in with these adult cis women when doing their own cost/benefit analysis. We know Caitlyn Jenner is full of shit when it comes to trans women in sports, so it’s reasonable to know that not all opinions from transmascs are created equally.

3. Many of the problems transmasculine individuals have are medical discrimination, mental health issues, and domestic violence and sexual assault. These are issues where awareness helps a lot, so if transmascs are screaming from rooftops about their issues that’s why. There’s a lot of intersection with race here as well, as in Black transmascs being greater targets for institutional violence BECAUSE they are masculine. Domestic violence and sexual assault are not just “things men do to women” and in the case of transmascs they often have pretty equal experience being assaulted by both men and women or sometimes even more by women than men. If they seem to complain more about female abusers than male this is likely actually borne out of their actual personal experience, like how the focus on male abusers is by many others.

4. It’s not correct to say that transfemmes “oppress” transmascs or even that transmascs “oppress” transfemmes. The amount of institutional power either of us have is so little as to be negligible tbh. However within trans communities there is a fuckload of LATERAL VIOLENCE, violence expressed between members of an oppressed group as an outlet for abuse received by an outside group. If you are trans and someone is pissing you off maybe think about this before engaging with them to think about if what you’re about to do is really worth it. I’ve found looking at lateral violence against male nurses to be very enlightening with the sort of thing many transmascs experience, though remember, if you’re a nurse you can quit your job, and transmascs have no such potential escape from this. What I’m trying to say is that someone engaging in this isn’t “punching up” at oppressors or “punching down” at the oppressed, they’re punching during a bar fight and generally being an asshole, and should be considered as such.

5. I’m not sure if any of you have been in an abusive household but there’s often the dynamic of one parent actively abusing you and one parent stepping aside and letting them do it. I think a lot of the perceived and actual bitterness from transmascs comes from the fact that many of us have actually been actively abused by TERF-adjacent women (often even targeted because we seemed unhappy with being girls) while the men in our lives sat back and did nothing. In point 3 I’ve noted that many transmasculine problems are more interpersonal in nature so I wouldn’t consider this to be irrelevant — however it’s important to note that someone with power over you choosing to do nothing while watching you be abused is complicit and not innocent.

6. Some things that are defined as male privilege are things we that can happen upon passing as male, like assumed competence with tech… however many things that are defined as male privilege are created by initiation into a “boys club” which most transmascs never receive. There is this bizarre idea that transmascs pass immediately upon taking testosterone, all immediately go stealth (as in move through the world as a cis person by remaking their appearance, history, and documents) and fit in perfectly into the world as cis men and receive all the male privilege, and therefore “abandon” the trans community a year after joining. I’m not sure how to explain how not true this is, it’s pretty much just “making up a guy to get mad at”. It can take years for transmascs to pass as male on testosterone, many cannot pass without surgery, and some will never pass at all, either due to how their bodies are, lack of access, or by choice. The reason transmascs leave trans communities is NOT because they suddenly blend into the world as a cis man but because many communities treat them poorly and the FIRST experience many have of transitioning is cutting oneself off from groups who claim to have their best interest in mind and be protecting them but are in reality treating them poorly for being themselves — women’s groups where, if not directly influenced by TERFs, at least see no reason to moderate out their abuse. Because of this, many transmascs who join trans groups decide that it’s better for them to go it alone, even as vulnerable trans people. It should also be noted that even in trans groups that aren’t overtly making their transmasculine members unwelcome may have zero resources for transmascs, making their stay pointless and leaving nothing for the transmasc members who come later, so it is a self-perpetuating issue that can’t be solved without effort. Groups that have some transmasculine leadership tend to be good at retaining transmasc membership but if you’re cycling through your transmasc leadership like socks maybe look at the points above (this was happening on the r/asktransgender subreddit a few years ago and it would have been comical how unaware the mods were if it weren’t so pathetic).

7. Claiming that this or that isn’t real feminism, like TERFism isn’t real feminism, is not helpful. The assertion that only good things are feminism and bad things aren’t feminism isn’t helpful. Feminism isn’t really a coherent movement and has gone through a LOT of different ideas, philosophies, and versions. The concept of “feminism is good, you need to be feminist to be good and anything bad isn’t REAL feminism”, is a No True Scotsman Fallacy and the same as people who claim the same about Christianity. The reason TERFs are using the aesthetics of the suffragette movement is BECAUSE of the fascist and racist elements that were in it, not despite it. You either need to accept this plurality of opinion and its consequences or work to actually throw those people out. Transmascs aren’t the first to find flaws in the feminism introduced to them and they won’t be the last. Our gendered categories in the west and that were exported are constructed not just by gender and reproductive organs but also by race, religion, eugenics, etc., and elevating the concept of “woman” that the whole thing is based upon above critique does us no favors.

Okay, that was probably too much and I’ll probably make myself very unpopular for this. But this is a Frankenstein blog and I’m not going to make the mistake of being ashamed of my hideous creation and hit send.

[labarch]

Attempt at a Witch Hat Atelier timeline

We are still missing a lot of backstory for our main cast, but I thought I’d try and write a timeline based on what we know so far, and explore where their storylines might intersect.

I am pulling these numbers out of my hat for convenience sake, but here are some approximate ages for the characters: at the start of the manga, let’s say Coco, Tetia and Agott are all 12, Riche is 11, and Qifrey and Olruggio are 28.

20-23 years ago: Olruggio leaves his birth town Godley and moves to the Great Hall, maybe as young as 5 years old.

While many witches are born in the Great Hall, Olruggio comes from a town called Godley in the North. Yet he doesn’t remember Utowin, who came from the same place. We know that young witches usually start their training between the age of 7 and 10, but since witch society is awfully elitist, Olruggio would have been sent there as soon as his talent for magic became apparent.

Being ripped from his home at an extremely young age could explain his fear of being unwanted and left behind: he overworks himself as a way to feel useful and validated, is defensive about his own feelings, and he gets agitated and sometimes aggressive whenever Qifrey hides things from him.

20 years ago: arrival of Qifrey at the Great Hall at age 8. Olruggio befriends him soon afterwards. The both of them start sneaking out at night to chase Brimhats.

8 year old Qifrey was one fierce little thing, you have to give him that. His abuse at the hands of the Brimhats was brutal enough to break a grown man, but he picks himself up and goes right after them like “Alright jerks, you’ve got some explaining to do and I want my eyeball back!”.

Also it cracks me up that Olruggio was carrying this massive book in their flashback. Gotta love that his reaction to Qifrey’s “Let’s go chase some terrorists!” was “Sure, let me just pack my homework =>”.

Finally, there might be a slightly more selfish motivation for Olruggio’s fast friendship and devotion to Qifrey. Olruggio’s self-esteem lies in his ability to help people, so he would naturally be drawn to someone helpless. It’s unclear how much of Qifrey’s memory was missing: apparently he didn’t know about birthdays. How many other basic concepts was he missing? Did he know how to read? Between that, his lack of knowledge about magic and his injury, he was probably completely dependent on Olruggio at the beginning. Given Olruggio’s wish that they go back to “the good old times” when they were always together, I am wondering whether some hidden part of him misses being essential to someone. It’s well-intentioned, but not entirely healthy, especially if he is using Qifrey as a coping mechanism for his own insecurities.

14 years ago: Olruggio and Qifrey make a pledge of (betrothal) friendship, exchange tassels and attempt the Librarian test at age 14. It is their last adventure together, but Qifrey will continue his investigations on his own, to Olruggio’s disappointment and betrayal. Qifrey starts wearing his half-tinted glasses.

In the pledge flashback, they are wearing their old tassels, but they have swapped them by the time they undertake the third test. Also, when he remembers that pledge, Olruggio says that Qifrey’s investigation “should have ended at the Tower of Books”. The tower is the last likely place where Qifrey could have found answers about his past and a non-forbidden way of getting his eye back. Olruggio probably made him promise that he would stop his search afterwards.

Beldaruit says that he thought Qifrey had given up on his search after the third test, but Olruggio tells a slightly different story. Apparently he thought Qifrey “finally stopped causing trouble” after taking in apprentices, which means he was still behaving suspiciously right up until he became a teacher. Alaira also comments on Qifrey’s interest in the Brimhats in the first volume, so clearly his investigations were common knowledge among his friends, even as an adult.

Olruggio’s anger whenever the Brimhats are mentioned would then be caused not just by his own fear of forbidden magic, but by the reminder that Qifrey broke his promise to him, and refused to leave his past behind. Naturally, Olruggio doesn’t know about Qifrey’s change in circumstances: he is no longer looking to retrieve what he lost, but trying to stop an impending threat.

Qifrey’s discoveries in the Tower of Books also seem to have renewed his disgust towards his own scar: he starts wearing glasses shortly afterwards, even though his eyesight hasn’t yet started deteriorating.

14-5 years ago: in that interval, Coco’s father dies of illness. Olruggio becomes more and more famous for his magical items, and is given the title “Shining Torch” / “Master of Lights”. His glowstone paths become widely popular, and are installed around the castle near Coco’s mom. Both Qifrey and Olruggio pass the fourth test and complete their training.

At this stage, I really doubt that Qifrey intended to become a teacher. Whatever information he found at the Tower of Books convinced him he had to stop the Brimhats’ plan. He was probably planning to complete his training and then go straight on to his quest, not really expecting to return alive.

There are also hints that this was a strained period for Qifrey and Olruggio: Olruggio mentions that he would like them to confide in each other “just like old times”, which implies that they grew more distant after the Librarian test. I’m suspecting that Qifrey was trying to slowly remove himself from Olruggio’s life, hoping Olruggio would be so famous and beloved by the time they graduated that he would forget about Qifrey and barely notice his disappearance. Qifrey’s self-esteem isn’t the best y’all.

5 years ago: Coco receives the magic picture book from Iguin at age 7 at the Silver Night Festival. The Brimhats stop showing signs of activity. Qifrey takes on his first apprentice (probably Tetia, age 7). He interrupts his investigation of the Brimhats and creates the atelier. Olruggio becomes his Watchful Eye.

We don’t know exactly how old Coco was when she got her book, but her tiny chubby face makes me think she was 6-7. Alaira also tells us in the first volume that the incident with Coco’s mother is the first sign of Brimhat activity in five years. I am thinking that after Iguin gave away the book, he instructed the other Brimhats to keep a low profile until his scheme could hatch.

I also wonder whether Coco getting her book might coincide with Qifrey becoming a teacher and creating his atelier. Given that Qifrey is probably tied to Iguin’s schemes, how coincidental is it that Qifrey wandered into Coco’s village and set her fate in motion? Perhaps Iguin contrived for them to live in the same area so that they would meet eventually. Either he somehow influenced Qifrey’s choice of location for his atelier, or he selected Coco as his “child of hope” because of her relative proximity as well as her love for magic.    

7 years old is when we could expect Tetia to have passed the first test. For now we know little about her backstory, but we can guess a few things: she is enthusiastic and ambitious, but gets easily side-tracked by pet projects and struggles to stick to the curriculum. She craves positive feedback and is worried her spells and interests will be condemned as frivolous. It makes me think that she passed her first test early, but was then mistreated by her first teachers for being too childish.

We’ve seen that Qifrey has a compulsive tendency to adopt children in distress. It would fit his character if he became a teacher on impulse. Maybe he had to pass the fifth test in a rush to be allowed to keep Tetia by his side. This also brought Olruggio back into his life, as he was the only one willing to follow him away from the atelier as Watchful Eye.

The complicity between Tetia and Qifrey, and Tetia taking on the role of a big sister for both Riche and Coco, also make me think she was Qifrey’s first apprentice. Tetia is often shown teasing Qifrey, quoting both Qifrey and Olruggio, and imitating Qifrey’s teaching style: I can totally see them as a little family of three at some point in the past.  

4 years ago: Riche starts training under her brother’s master, a creepy asshole, at age 7.

We actually have a clear timestamp for that one in chapter 25, woohoo! Riche’s old teacher can eat a brick.

3-2 years ago: Qifrey and Olruggio learn about Riche’s mistreatment in her old atelier and promptly adopt her. Beldaruit takes on Ririfin as an apprentice. Qifrey’s eyesight starts deteriorating. He adds the light protection glyph to his glasses.

Before that time, Qifrey might have intended to put his quest on hold until after Tetia’s graduation, but now his impending blindness puts him on a time limit. He can’t do a lot about it however, since the Brimhats have been keeping a low profile for years and are not leaving him any clue.

It’s unclear how long Riche stayed at her old atelier, and whether she joined Qifrey before or after Agott. I’m hoping she made it out as soon as possible.

2 years ago: Agott passes the first test at age 10. She gets accused of stealing someone else’s spell, is rejected from her prestigious family’s apprenticeship, and joins Qifrey’s atelier.

Agott has been treated harshly by her family for not being enough of a genius. She mentions passing the first test at 10, the upper end of the normal age range. She was probably given a hard time for starting her apprenticeship so “late”, which explains why she is now adamant about passing the other tests as quickly as possible.

I wonder whether she felt ambivalent about joining Qifrey’s atelier at first. On the one hand, Qifrey was taught by the Sage of Education himself and is clearly very powerful. On the other hand, he has only a couple students and lives in a weird little school in the middle of nowhere, a big fall from grace compared to her prestigious upbringing. I wonder whether Qifrey went to find her after he heard she was the object of nasty rumours (he knows a thing or two about those), and Agott didn’t feel like she had other options.

0 year ago: Coco and Qifrey meet. Iguin goes “F***ing finally, I thought I’d have to watch that humdrum one-eyed twink bake potatoes for another five years. It’s dragon-slaying time now baby!!!”  

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Ok just had a thought--so Loki kind of knows he can't go back and have the life he sees but doesn't fully believe it and that causes an interesting intersection of emotions especially because of where he is in the timeline

Loki is partially responding to what he sees as though they're really true for him, in the present. When he first sees his mother's death, he reacts very much with guilt and horror, having much the same response as he does in Thor TDW when he's told of what's happened. And when he comes back to the screen he cries for her as though she's really dead. But where he really breaks down is when Odin tells him he loves him. He then reacts with hope and tear-filled laughter when he sees himself and Thor as brothers, when he sees himself comfortable enough to say "I'm here" when offered a hug.

And if you think about where Loki is at this point in his life, it makes perfect sense why he's a mess. He never got to say goodbye to his mother--his father and brother were the only ones on the bridge. He hasn't seen her in so long, and has been through so much, and then suddenly his one source of comfort is gone and he's being told it's his fault, and he never got to say goodbye. (Some realities never change, do they?)

Also at this point, Loki fully believes his father hates him, or at the very least, does not love him. That was a large factor in why he let himself go. He had reached out desperately for some validation, anything, and was told, "No, Loki"--and this is nearly, if not literally, the first thing his father says to Loki after telling him that he wasn't truly his son, but a monster from another planet. And what does Odin say here? "I love you, my sons." This is what Loki has been desperate to hear for as long as he can remember, and it touches on all of the aspects of the raw pain that's been eating at him since Thor 1. Not only that, he can see how much it means to himself in the footage. The surprised and hopeful look his other self gives to Odin--he sees his own pain, how hungry he is for those words.

And Thor. His brother, who so rarely feels like his brother anymore...whom he'd just fought with, and had in fact fought on every occasion they'd seen each other since their conflict on Asgard. Who Loki never reconciled with. And there he is, saying to Loki that they'll always be side by side, that he--perhaps--is beginning to understand him, that he would even hug him. It feels like something hopeful, something healing, if it's true.

But the thing is, deep down, Loki knows it can't be true. Not for him. In fact, he may not ever see any of these people again. And they've never seen him; they've seen another Loki, but not him. So he cries for what could have been, would have been, will be--and what never can. What is happening, but isn't; healing that will never truly come, reconciliation that he'll never feel for himself. Loss that he feels all the same, because living or not, they are still gone.

He cries because he loves them. And they'll never know it.

[loldragoon-ffxiv]

May I ask (a lot) about Feldspar’s experience with the Echo?

Given that his iteration of the Echo shows him parts of other people’s dreams I was wondering to what extent does he have control over this and how often does he involuntarily witness a person’s dream? Do they have to be having the dream at the time?

What is the most disturbing dream he has witnessed? Did it make him concerned for the person having it? Or more concerned about the people around them?

Has he ever caught glimpses of his small children’s dreams and either been amused by their half-formed happy dreams of unicorns made of marshmallow or castles made of pink sugar - or realised they are having a nightmare and been able to go to soothe them?

And has he ever seen himself in other people’s dreams? Has this ever been particularly disturbing or hilarious or revealing?

In the case of Fennie’s dreams, given how in love they are and how beautiful Fennie thinks Feldspar is, has Feldspar ever caught a glimpse of a romantic or even erotic dream of Fennie’s in which he has featured and later gone on to surprise Fennie with an approximation of it?

I think i’ll start this answer with a general explanation of how his Echo dreams work. He doesn’t really have control over when they happen or whose dreams he ends up seeing, unless he’s used a drug of some kind, which he has done a few times (for research purposes). The Echo basically allows him to see (and OCCASIONALLY interact with) someone else’s dreams in his sleep. This has some limitations though:

1. He has to be thinking about that person on some subconscious level, or they need to be thinking about him.

2. They do both have to be asleep, and that person needs to be actively having the dream he sees. With the time travel this gets a little complicated because he has been known to hop into people’s dreams on other timelines as well, but it’s in the present of who he is thinking about or who is thinking about him. Basically it happens at the points where the timelines intersect only.

3. He isn’t able to interact in the dream with anyone unless he is already in the dream (like, they are dreaming of him) or if Fennie is with him (this is because of how Fennie’s Echo works, and they tend to trigger each other).

4. He is never 100% sure if something is his Echo or just a dream, unless he has an awkward conversation the next morning, which he does not really like to do. So he has been known to confuse Echo dreams with normal ones, and this has led to angsty misunderstandings where he’s conversely assumed his own nightmares are other people’s dreams.

5. The person whose dream he’s in, if he is interacting with them, technically can remember what happened, but they also are not 100% sure it wasn’t just a dream. This is used a lot in RP to communicate with people on other timelines and with Fennie’s family. Or in one case, he used it to communicate with his own father in the past, which could have technically created a time loop where he erased himself, but Haurchefant had no reason to think Feldspar was real and not his imagination given the circumstances

I’ll answer the rest under the cut because this is getting long lol

He absolutely has seen a lot of dark and disturbing things this way, mostly from people’s memories, that range from trauma that ended up giving him a bit of witness PTSD to people’s completely imaginary nightmares. His most disturbing Echo dreams are usually darker memories. It definitely has changed his relationships with a few people as a result.

He has jumped into the kids’ dreams before, and they are as saccharine as you’d expect. He had one where he basically just played with Chrys and it was delightful. They haven’t had any nightmares yet but we’ve (@scholarlostintime and I) talked about maybe writing the kids having nightmares about their past (before they were adopted) and having Feldspar witness that, possibly.

Finally, Considering that Feldspar can usually interact when he’s in the dream from the beginning, he usually plays along with the spicy dreams, and is it really a dream anymore at that point? (As if the boys need more places to be spicy 😂)

Hope that answers your questions! Thank you for the ask!

[veliseraptor]

So this is in NO WAY PRESSURING, get to this whenever you're bored and have nothing better to do, but I (have still not watched The Untamed) would love to hear any disorganized rambles around your fic 'Punitive Measures', like your thoughts while writing it, how you view Xue Yang's fight/flight/freeze instinct, and/or where you would take the plot if you ever came back to it (again, not pressuring, I'm not asking for a sequel, I'm asking for director's commentary. Also I know the mysterious flute was implying Wei Wuxian, I know that much and not much more.) It's a really fun, quick fic that I enjoy reading through while I keep circling around your longer, more intimidating stories. I aspire to write like you.

oh boy, well, I don't know that I ever have nothing to do but here I am answering this ask anyway, because I like talking about my fic even if I get self-conscious about it.

this entire fic falls solidly into the genre of fic I write that is legitimately just “I’m gonna fuck up this character I love because it’ll be fun and I love to do that” and then just kinda...went for it. actually harder than I was initially planning! my vague sense of what I was going to do with this fic didn’t have Xue Yang down an eye at the end of it.

but when inspiration strikes, what’s a girl to do, etc.

I actually thought recently about writing a sequel to this fic (or, well, continuing into the AU it started, more like) because the concept of Wei Wuxian and Xue Yang being bloodthirsty vengeance brethren is a very good one for me, personally, and at the point their paths would be intersecting in this AU a more plausible one than it would be at pretty much any other time (I would argue, at least in CQLverse). And that’s where I think this would be going. Because Xue Yang would see Wei Wuxian, in his bloodiest frame of mind, powered up with a gorgeous flute of bad vibes and go “fuck yes” even if he wasn’t in a place where he really needed the help.

The question I had was whether Wei Wuxian would be interested in accepting company, and I feel like Xue Yang on that front could be convincing. And the way that the latter would both enable and egg on all the former’s darkest fantasies and impulses...I’m just saying, Wen Chao and everyone he has ever known is in for a very bad time, possibly even worse than they already were.

I invite you to picture in this AU the part where Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji find not just darker and edgier Wei Wuxian at the end of their scavenger hunt but darker and edgier Wei Wuxian with a friend. A familiar friend! Now down an eye and practically picking his teeth with Wen Chao’s finger bones. :D

since you asked for disorganized rambling I went back to reread and I’ll give you some director’s commentary on a few things

And he’d kind of hoped Wen Ruohan would be too busy figuring out how to deal with his brewing war to dedicate much attention to looking for one absent retainer. And even if he did, Xue Yang had sort of figured that finding him would fall to Wen Chao, who’d probably struggle to find his own ass with two hands.

kicking off this director’s commentary with Xue Yang’s brutal assessment of the competency of Wen Chao.

tbh one of my favorite things about CQL’s involving Xue Yang in the whole Sunshot storyline, despite the merry hell it plays with timeline stuff later, is how obviously little regard Xue Yang has for the Wens, even when they’re at the height of their power. He shows Wen Ruohan himself very little respect, and I can’t imagine anyone else getting more (except maybe Wen Qing, because Wen Qing is competent and if nothing else Xue Yang can respect competency).

and he just like. ditches them. walks out! promises to deliver very powerful magical artifact, and then gets what he wants and is like “smell ya later, peace” and they never catch him.

that’s just a kind of gutsiness and casual disregard for very powerful people that I really both love and respect about Xue Yang. and also that he has in common with Xiao Xingchen, tbh. and Song Lan (though him I think to a slightly lesser degree, partly because he has a little more tact and sense of societal norms as something relevant to be thinking about)! they can all vibe on that.

They took Jiangzai. Well. One of the Wen disciples took Jiangzai in the stomach and Xue Yang didn’t get it back.

this isn’t an important line or anything. I just like it a lot.

Wen Chao gestured again and he went down in a hail of fists and feet. Xue Yang tucked his chin down to protect his throat, curled his hands into his chest, and drew up his knees to guard his stomach.

He knew how this worked. Sure, it’d been a while since someone had beat him like this, but the lessons stuck. It was almost boring, really. If Wen Chao was going to play torture games then he could at least do Xue Yang the favor of trying to be creative.

He checked out the part of his brain that registered pain as anything other than a thing that was happening and focused instead on opportunities. Weaknesses in his assailants. Escape routes. Getting away would be the first thing. Nice if he could take a piece of Wen Chao with him on the way out - arm, or maybe even a head - but the priority was freedom and survival.

okay, this I feel like cuts into some of what you were talking about regarding Xue Yang’s fight/flight instinct, and also a lot of what if, I was feeling pretentious, I feel like this fic is digging into on a level under “what if I just tortured Xue Yang a whole bunch,” which is something about the relationship Xue Yang has to (a) pain and (b) his own body. Specifically, the relative indifference he has toward both. Or...not indifference, exactly, because it’s not like he’s enjoying himself, it still hurts. It’s just...expected.

unremarkable.

which is a lot of what I was trying to convey with Xue Yang’s narration during the whole torture sequence, with the commentary on methodology and how things are mundane or boring, because the suffering itself is mundane! as far as Xue Yang is concerned that’s exactly what suffering is! other peoples’, for sure, which is part of why it doesn’t matter, but also his own.

the world hurts and that’s just how it is and you learn how to cope with that. pain as...a thing that [is] happening.

I also, since you mentioned the fight/flight instinct, think a lot about how Xue Yang is, while he’s very proud and very stubborn, absolutely not someone to pick fights (in general) that he knows he can’t win. Xue Yang will almost always be on the side of “run and come back another day” over “stand and fight when all is lost.” survival, first and foremost.

which feeds into the weird paradox that I kind of hint toward at the end of this fic about Xue Yang as someone who has a definite death drive, who is profoundly obsessed with his own death in a lot of ways, and simultaneously is attached to staying alive above pretty much all else.

“Snap and snarl all you want,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere. And the only part of you I need intact is your tongue, so you can tell me where you hid the Yin Metal you promised. Everything else is optional.”

A prickle of fear rolled down Xue Yang’s spine and he flicked it away, baring his teeth.

I actually do think that, even before they get around to hand-specific trauma, permanent mutilation is one of those things that still scares Xue Yang. which is a short list! there isn’t much that actually either gets to or scares him, but I think the prospect of (further) mutilation does, because I think Xue Yang is very...acutely aware of the fact that his physical capability is a major factor in what has kept him alive and what, in all likelihood, is going to keep him alive moving forward. anything that threatens that capability, that limits him in terms of strength or mobility or otherwise has a disabling effect, is consequently going to be a short road to death, and Xue Yang would much rather die painfully fighting than die as a consequence of not being able to take care of himself.

for Xue Yang, the idea of a return to the kind of helplessness that is tied to his trauma is one of the worst possible prospects to contemplate. in my head this is exacerbated further by the fact that I figure Xue Yang didn’t get much if any medical care post hand incident, meaning that the recovery period was absolutely nightmarish and a whole stretch of time beyond the event itself where Xue Yang was struggling to survive because he’d been damaged.

in some ways I think that period of time probably did more to shape Xue Yang than the moment itself.

Wen Chao grabbed one of the branding irons from a disciple’s belt and pressed it to his stomach. That hurt. More. He clamped his back teeth together so he didn’t make any sound, absorbed the burn, owned it. His. You only hurt if you were alive. And anything you survived made you stronger.

Not that this was actually going to make him stronger. It was probably just going to make him dead. But then again, the worse this went the more resentment he’d have built up. He could use that. Would.

Dead didn’t have to mean finished.

obviously this is pulled almost direct from what Wei Wuxian himself says to Wen Chao. deliberate echoes based on character parallels! we love those.

and yeah, again here about Xue Yang and his relationship to pain, but in a less mundane way this time where it’s about pain as a tool, pain as something he can use. which is another thing about coping, I think - when pain and suffering are a regular part of your life, one way to deal with that can be to convert it into having some kind of purpose or benefit.

which in this case it definitely can. Xue Yang is definitely someone who, I think, has thought a lot about trying to arrange it so he becomes a ghost after he dies. or at least has thought a lot about what he’d do after dying to the person who killed him. 

and when you’re a necromancer by trade death really isn’t the end of the line anymore, just the start of a something new. Xue Yang’s relationship to life itself: about as jacked up as his relationships in general.

He felt the snap of bone in his teeth. Pain shooting up the side of his hand, all the way to his wrist, and Xue Yang couldn’t keep himself still enough not to try to wrench himself away. He swallowed his scream and turned it into a laugh. It was funny, wasn’t it? Funny, that he was back here, again. It wasn’t as bad, though. He knew how to take pain, how to breathe it in, make it part of himself, later turn it outwards magnified tenfold. They were old friends. Practically lovers. 

two things here:

1. the thread throughout this fic of Xue Yang making things funny so he can deal with them, here brought to you by reliving trauma! because it’s funny! right? laugh about it! just fucking hilarious.

I have a thing about characters basically deciding for themselves to make very unfunny situations funny because it makes them less awful.

2. and look, now he can deal with it better this time! he’s Learned. :) :) :)

Everything splintered. Splintered like bones under a wheel, and first thing he tried to struggle to get away but that just hurt worse and then old old old instincts kicked in and he went still, limp, dead.

“Did he faint?”

Someone nudged him with their foot. One part of him roared to grab that foot and rip it off along with the leg it was attached to. Immediately the same thing that’d made him play dead told him to wait.

at an end point where fighting is impossible and running is also impossible, the only thing left to do is play dead and wait it out. this is very much, in my head, a reversion to a tactic Xue Yang hasn’t used in a very long time and does not want to be using now, because it is absolutely the recourse of the extraordinarily helpless with no way out.

which he has been! and is now, but he really really really doesn’t want to be. Xue Yang has built his life around not being that, ever again.

but here it’s not a move he makes planning to turn it around the way he does, not at first. he gets there, but when he first does it I think it is literally just instinct that goes enough is enough and shuts down.

Wen Chao, Wen Chao, Xue Yang thought. My body’s going to give out before I do.

someone should remind me at some point maybe (or not) to write something coherent about my Xue Yang vs. his own body thoughts. specifically the way that, while Xue Yang is very physical and very grounded, I think he has a somewhat antagonistic relationship with his own body, actually. not completely! he definitely respects what it can do for him! but I think he also treats it a little as a slightly separate entity that’s capable of betraying him rather than as a fully integrated part of himself.

not always! but it’s a little bit there. this idea that sometimes his body, and its capacity to be hurt or damaged, is a weakness that he’d like to be able to forgo entirely, if only it wouldn’t mean losing all the good things about having a body. and that’s present here in this line, for me, where he thinks about himself and his body as slightly separate, and his body as something weaker than its Xue Yang core.

[vagrantblvrd]

I’ve seen posts where people think Sebastian Stan should be cast as Luke for future space adventures? Which believe me, are amazing and I would 100% watch the hell out of?

But also please to consider this:

Din comes across this character played by Sebastian Stan who gives Din what is obviously a fake name. Because Antilles, right? One of the most common names around and he might as well have not given Din a name at all, but it’s not like he’s going to call the guy on it or anything, right?

Din’s out hunting down Imperial remnants that have anything to do with the experiments on Grogu and finds this Antilles guy in a cell at one of the bases. He’s clearly had a rough time of it if the look he gives Din when he opens the door to his cell is any indication.

Just this...shock and surprise and something like grief before he tucks it all way behind this oddly familiar smile.

Antilles has clearly been treated to Imperial “kindness”, in that he’s bruised all to hell and can’t walk on his own - almost falls when he insists he’s fine, no really - so Din gets to play human crutch. (Might have been there a while, because he’s all scruffy too, unkempt beard and hair, and anyway, he’s not had an easy time of things.)

Which is fine because Din dealt with most of the Imperials by the time he found Antilles, but! They hit an intersection while looking for the labs and a couple of stormtroopers coming from the opposite direction.

This moment where they all stare at one another in that uh, situation? kind of way but haven’t had the time to react just yet.

Thing is, Din and Antilles happened to trip over their feet just before the troopers walked up, are untangling themselves but Din’s not in a good position to draw his blasters or any of his other weapons. Is like of course this would happen now and resigned to using himself as a human shield, because Antilles is in rough shape and Din’s armor, and anyway.

Doesn’t matter in the end because he feels this tug at his hip and Antilles ducking under his arm and pew-pew-pew, down go the stormtroopers, felled by incredible aim and Din’s blaster and Antilles who gives him this little smirk that is also oddly familiar.

Antilles shrugs, says something about his dad teaching him to shoot or whatever and when Din gets them both back on their feet apologizes for grabbing his blaster. But since doing so just saved their lives, Din’s not all that bothered by it.

Anyway, they get to the labs and Din parks Antilles in a chair while he digs for anything helpful. Scrounges up some datasticks and destroys the rest and when he turns to collect Antilles on the way out - 

The guy’s got this look on his face. Complicated, because angry and wistful and a whole bunch of other things Din doesn’t have the time or luxury to unpack.

They get back to Din’s ship, and Din catches the - he doesn’t even know - expression on Antilles’ face when he sees it.

Some of the grief is back, and the wistful nostalgia and weirdly enough, Antilles pats the hull of the ship as Din gets them up the ramp and he swears he hears him say something like long time no see, old girl, and anyway. Din has stuff he needs to get back to Lu - to Skywalker to see if he or his New Republic friends can make sense of it.

He gets Antilles patched up and there’s clothes for him to wear - old bounties who didn’t need it anymore or gifts from people Din helped in the past an he didn’t know what to do with them and anyway.

Antilles looks better after he’s patched up and cleaned up, wearing this mishmash of clothes but he’s not complaining. Seems more grounded, settled, too, than he had earlier, like he’s had time to sort things out for himself.

Shaved his beard, but kept the mustache and just shrugs when Din notices it, just an observation on his part and doesn’t ask because it’s not like matters and anyway.

They run into some trouble getting back to Skywalker’s school, but Antilles isn’t useless. Knows how to fly, is a damn good shot - impressive, really - and knows his way around both jungle and desert in survival situations.

Because that trouble they run into and crashing and continuing to not die after the crashing is done because Imperials or other baddies, and anyway.

Antilles is far from useless and also snarky as hell and Din actually starts to like him.

Wonders a little at how sad he seems sometimes, the two of them sitting at the fire they’re cooking that night’s dinner over and Din looks over when Antilles isn’t expecting it.

Staring at the flames and sad, the kind that runs deep.

Din doesn’t ask, though, doesn’t think it would be appreciated because there’s something...brittle about Antilles in the right conditions and anyway, he doesn’t ask.

Antilles gives him little pieces of himself here and there, though. Mentions his parents, the one who taught him how to shoot, the one who taught him how to fight. Both of them arguing about who was going to teach him to fly until his aunt and uncle had enough of the pointlessness of it and taught him themselves.

(”I learned to fly on a freighter,” he tells Din, cutting through an asteroid field to avoid Imperial TIES after them like it’s nothing. “Corellian make, fastest thing around.”)

Apparently Antilles knows a whole lot of things besides all that, knows how to cheat at sabacc well enough Din almost doesn’t catch him at it. And when he does, the man gives him this wide-eyed look of innocence like who, him? cheat? he would never that is so painfully familiar Din has to look away because there’s a reason he’s out here on his own, isn’t there.

(All these inconvenient Feelings and no chance that Skywalker would ever return them, because Jedi and also look at Din, okay, kind of a mess of a human being and Luke is Luke.)

Anyway.

Eventually they make it to Luke’s school and Din can’t help but notice how quiet Antilles gets as they come in for the landing approach. Hands whit-knuckled in his lap, and he’s trying to look like everything’s fine but his jaw in clenched and he’s got that look in his eyes again and anyway.

Luke comes out to greet them with Grogu running ahead, and both of them stop short at the sight of Antilles.

“Din,” Skywalker says slowly, in such a way that Din realizes something is going on, “who’s your friend?”

Din explains meeting Antilles in the cell of an Imperial remnant base and their many adventures getting back to the school and so on.

The entire time Skywalker (and Grogu) are staring at Antilles, and Antilles is staring back at them, and Din is just like this is Force nonsense again, isn’t it.

And then Antilles is like, So I Have Something To Tell You.

At which point he tells them that he’s from the future - because of course - thanks to some doohickey in the ruins of a Jedi temple he was investigating - because of course it’s to do with Force nonsense - and also he’s here to set the timeline right after a sith or whoever got their first and meddled with the original timeline.

Because of course he is.

There’s a whole Thing in which Antilles and Skywalker go off to talk Jedi stuff.

(Oh, yeah, apparently Antilles is Force-sensitive, probably actually a Jedi himself and Din is like, of course he is because that’s his luck, isn’t it?)

Anyway, Din goes off to check on Luke’s students with Grogu and everyone’s happy to see him, pepper him with questions about what he did while he was gone and he tells them the parts that don’t involve killing people, because wow, no.

And then later on when everyone’s asleep or supposed to be asleep Skywalker finds him and they just kind of enjoy a moment of quiet, peace, while they can.

Comfortable the way things are around one another, and Din’s traitorous heart goes all soft and squishy when Skywalker gives him this warm smile as he catches Din up on happenings at the school while he was gone.

(How many frogs Grogu’s eaten - too many to count, honestly, I’m starting to worry - and so on.)

Din feels guilty at how much he enjoys these moments with Skywalker because they’re not something he gets to have, and anyway, yes.

Shenanigans in which Antilles is clearly in league with Skywalkers students and just about everyone in shoving Din and Skywalker together until finally one of them breaks and confessions concerning Feelings are had and convenient that they’re locked in a storage area because no one else to see when Din presses his forehead against Luke’s and they both do that breathy little laugh that’s all soft and surprised and only for them, and anyway!

Then the Serious Shenanigans happen in which the sith (or whtatever) Antilles was after pops up and does an Evil Monologue in which it’s revealed they were responsible for killing Antilles’ family in that original timeline and also ushering in a new era for the Empire and oethr bad stuff.

Oh, and also, Luke and Din are his parents because those experiments on Grogu and that time both Din and Luke got caught and had blood samples and the whatnot taken and anyway.

He’s cloned from them or something equally dramatic, idk how science works, and they rescued him and raised him as their own and the mustache of his should have been a bigger clue, really, it’s been staring them all in the face (literally) the whole time, what fools they’ve been not to realize!!1!

Emotional fallout and sacrifice plays with one of them being no, bad, don’t try that again or I’ll be Disappointed and the good guys winning the day as the timeline is set right, and all that good stuff.

Din, Luke, Grogu, and Antilles go to where the Jedi ruins are with the time travel doohickey to send Antilles - he still won’t tell them what his name is.

There’s emotional goodbyes all around and then poof, off he goes back to the future where he belongs Din and Luke and Grogu like wow, that was a thing, huh?

But also.

The thing where they’ve both been captured - together and separately - by Imperial remnants and had blood samples and the whatnot taken and Antilles could exist in their timeline right now.

Realize he never told them where they found him or how, and are like oh, no, because what if they don’t find him now? What if they never find him???

So of course Artoo trundles over and plays this little holomessage of Antilles.

Looks nervous as hell and that sadness they knew the reason for all over him, must have recorded this before he told them who he was, and anyway.

He doesn’t know where they found him exactly, just the name of the system and his best guess at when it happened, and then he gets this look on his face like. It’s too much like the one Luke gets sometimes, like Din’s when he’s in a bad place, and anyway.

They go looking where he told them and they find this kid, tiny, adorable, scared kid who can tap into the Force and he’s got Luke’s eyes and Din’s hair and other little small things and he’s just.

“Would have been helpful if he told us what we named him,” Luke says, but he’s kind of an emotional mess the way Din is, and anyway, yes.

(Also, though. Grogu is the worst influence on their kid, but an awesome big brother.)

[erazonpo3]

hey look ma i made a map (not to scale please and thank you)

This is something I had fun playing around with on Inkarnate and it’s still liable to change in some ways but I’m generally happy with it! The idea was to make a map that extends beyond Corona to include all sorts of named regions from disney properties (and some of my own), but also be compliant with TTS (for the most part. I’m not responsible for in-universe incongruences for one thing). 

Side note: I made a Spreadsheet with all of the named Disney kingdoms that appear in extended media (like books and comics n stuff) so that I could nab them and cry ‘it’s canon whatever mom’ but more so I didn’t have to come up with names. You’re welcome to peruse it and use it as a resource too! it’s all disney props

To go into a bit more detail; 

Canon stuff

A majority of the map is me trying to keep the S2 journey in mind, with stops like Lumbard’s Pass and the Forest of No Return being necessitated by mountain ridges etc that would make detours around them a huge pain in the ass. For instance, it’s faster to reach the spire from Corona by flying over Kresten Loch, so the spire needs to be positioned in a way that it would be a straight line from Corona but requires a trip through the FoNR by foot. 

In Freebird Rapunzel mentions the “cliffs of Koto” so I took that for them being either in Koto or adjacent to it. Then in King Pascal Eugene mentions the black rock path leads them to the water/ocean, so that necessitated this huge bight in the land where they can then get knocked off-course to Terapi Island. More mountains because why in the hell would they go through Lumbard’s Pass + The Great Tree if there was easy access any other way? And yeah they could go by ocean but I figure the caravan just isn’t meant for open sea travel for very long, and shipping a caravan across a long voyage is a steep price even for a Princess. 

I know this does make travel between Koto and Blavenia virtually impossible but whatever. There probably are plenty of travel paths but most of them require mules and you don’t take a caravan. Anyway then they reach Skoteníyi which is what I’ve named the Dark Kingdom (It’s based on a headcanon I won’t get into now), and then of course Rapunzel + co minus Cass fly back to Corona via hot air balloon. 

The obvious thing here is that technically the distance between Corona and the Dark Kingdom isn’t particularly far, but the terrain is awful to travel by foot/wagon which is why the S2 journey takes as long as it does. Extra notes are that Lost Lagoon lists Yultadore, Dionda and Antipe as kingdoms that lie on Corona’s border so I squeezed them in where I could. 

My touches to the map

Points where I’ve put my personal spin on things is largely in the geography of all the regions surrounding the S2 journey and how those mountain ranges might affect/inform the geopolitics etc. I put in some big mountains encircling Corona which makes the wall a very strong strategic piece of defensive infrastructure, which only makes sense if Yultadore + Bayangor + Dionda were historically its rivals. 

Bayangor has since allied itself with Corona but maybe doesn’t get as much help as it would like. As you’ll see in my 2nd pic of the map I’ve outlined the 7 Kingdom Alliance as per the named kingdoms in Beginnings, and notable exceptions to this alliance are Yultadore + Vakretta and Equis. So Yultadore + Vakretta get to be historic rivals of Corona, and Equis gets left out because nobody likes King Trevor. (I definitely wanted to have Equis on a peninsula that’s landlocked entirely by Corona to say that yeah, this kingdom does have sovereignty but only because Corona lets it exist and they all know it). 

The 7 Kingdom Alliance in this verse is necessitated, I imagine, by how god damn terrible travel is through the northern half of this region and if Corona (one of the strongest trade regions by dint of connecting the north to the south) wants to make a trade pact with you in return for some political pressure, then you’re sure as hell going to take it. Another fun tidbit is that the Dark Kingdom is so far across the continent from Corona and so difficult to reach it sort of does make sense why Corona just. Forgot about it. 

(Note also that while a lot of the land in Skoteiníyi is infertile, there are edges on the border that are free for the taking by its border friends. Have fun with that, Edmund.) Refugees probably headed south to Yuwabe and Zaria as less hostile/difficult regions and spread from there, which is why Adira and Hector can be found wandering the southern half of the continent in the CTA AU. 

I’ve also spoken about the region of Eltaire-Sère before as the region in which Ilione lives, and I’ve settled on it being in Dionda- which now places Dionda as Corona’s south-eastern rival. As you can see there’s mountains almost completely encircling the region so it’s nearly impossible to stage military battles there so it just gets passed back and forth in treaties, and as of current TTS the region belongs to Corona even though it’s actually outside the wall and looks like it should belong to Dionda. Culturally, the region is a pretty strong blend of both Corona and Dionda (probably leaning more towards Diondan) so Lio gets two for one. 

Cassandra’s (first) journey

I’ve mapped out Cass’ journey in blue and it’s not really set in stone because I care less about the where of where she’s going and more about what’s happening there, but nevertheless I wanted it to be visually distinct from the S2 journey which is why she travels south before making a stop at Terapi Isle (hello Lady Caine funny seeing you here) and finally catching up with Alphecca in her homeland of Vakretta. It’s also worth mentioning here that one of the upsides to being a Lich in this verse as opposed to a ghost is that there’s no limits on where Alphecca can physically travel, and she spends a lot of time wandering around which is why Cass first runs into her in Jeojin/Yirov.  

I haven’t figured out as much on the geography of the southern section of the continent because unlike the S2 journey I can do whatever the hell I want with it, so I have full creative control but also I don’t have any markers like “Cass HAS to pass through here so make a detour impossible”. Nevertheless I like that the southern part of the continent is largely flat; compared to the northern half travelling is a breeze, which means the timeline is simply up to however long I want Cassandra to spend in one place. 

I figure in her 2nd journey she heads up north towards our dear friends in Arendelle as she travels around Sídiros (Iron Kingdom) in what coincides with Varian’s journey, but I haven’t really figured out what that’d look like yet. 

Varian 7K stuff

Timeline-wise Varian’s journey doesn’t start until Cassandra gets back from her 1st journey. Nevertheless I’ve mapped it out because I like being able to visualise it, and it lets me work in the 7 Trial Kingdoms into the map and worldbuilding. 

Jeojin is the “Fire Kingdom”, Dovena is the “Water Kingdom”, and Ardhyewa is the Air Kingdom. I didn’t want Cass and Varian’s journey to completely overlap, but Cass does visit Jeojin on her way out of Dionda and she hits up Ardhyewa to give Nuru + Ara a cameo. Torres is actually one of the named disney properties but I figured it’d make a perfect “Earth Kingdom”. Varian then travels through Yuwabe to hit the Dark Kingdom and then Sídiros as the “Iron Kingdom”, and the outline never mentions how the hell they get back to Corona from there so I figure they probably double back to the Dark Kingdom in which an air balloon is waiting for them. Idk it’s not my problem. 

A fun fact is that Varian’s journey intersects with Cass’ 2nd journey in the Iron Kingdom/Sídiros, in Solanales- if you’re familiar, Solanales is where the Countess Violante rules. Cue Cass trying her damn hardest to shuffle these kids THE HELL out of dodge. Countess Violante is also one of Donella’s biggest rivals in terms of her crusade against the IK aristocracy, so Cass + Donella work together in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation, which is of course hilarious when Varian assumes Cass has turned evil again because she’s working with 'the bad guy’ of his journey. 

He thinks she’s evil again and she’s like do you want Violante to commit a genocide hello??? funny stuff

Conclusion

so anyway thats it i love talking geopolitics

[bedlamsbard]

I got a couple of different asks about Luke and Ahsoka in other side AU 10, so I guess I will just make it a regular post after all so I can answer all of them at once.

@slecnaztemnot: 

Okay i just read your latest other side chapter and I wanted to ask about Ahsoka and Luke dynamics. I wonder what exactly where their heretics disagreemts about the jedi doctrine? while i can guess some of the stuff like attachements i guess i mostly see ahsoka as nonjedi and therefore someone who should not be attached to doctrine about attachements (haha) so i am wondering how you see her. i would actually love your take on how their first meetings went. continued in next ask, 1/2

1/2 continuation since most people write them as Ashoka immediately spilling the beans about the whole Vader situation to Luke and yours Ahsoka didn't. So I am curious what do you think Ahsoka feels about it. I got of course lot of it from the fic itself so i am mostly asking about how did you base your interpretation, if that makes sense and what led you to the narrative choices to portray their relationship in such way.

@comentter:

I'm most interested in what Luke and Ahsoka know about each other. Luke doesn't know much about Ahsoka obviously, but does he have any idea why she seems to hate him? He must be desperate lol. And how much does Ahsoka know about what happened on the DS2? And how much does Kanan know about these events? What was Hera able to tell him and what else did Luke and Ahsoka tell him? I always figure that everyone but Luke and a few people he told (like Leia) think the Emperor and Vader from the DS2 explosion.

I now have this image in my head of Ahsoka spending time with Rex and her laughing as Rex does something like tell a joke or a specific gesture. Then Luke walks by, does the exact same thing and Ahsoka is like "Of course, you'd do this stupid thing, you idiot!" :D

I think shortly before I started writing this sequence I had seen some cute art of Luke and Ahsoka hugging, which is a pretty common art trope and which has never sat quite right with me.  I also have the tendency to want to do the opposite of common fanon, which I can’t leave out either.  I also wanted to logic out what the hell was going on with Ahsoka’s charaterization in her Mando episode on a Watsonian level rather than a Doylist one (which I did a few weeks ago), even if other side takes place well before Mando and doesn’t intersect with it in any meaningful way.

When it came to the Luke and Ahsoka relationship (or lack thereof), it came down to three questions for me:

Who knows what?

What do they know?

When do they know it?

I made the decision early on in the chapter to leave Leia out of this relationship entirely, since the new canon seems to at this point in time (within a year of RotJ) be keeping it relatively quiet that she and Luke are siblings, and it’s not something that Hera would have a reason to know.  (Note also that this entire sequence is told from Hera’s POV, which plays into the “who knows what when” angle.)

As per Rebels S4 (not the epilogue, because Mando’s thrown that out the window), Ahsoka knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, Sith Lord

Darth Vader was directly or indirectly responsible for the genocide of the Jedi Order and the deaths of any Jedi who survived the Purge (”you and your Inquisitors saw to that”)

Padme Amidala is dead

Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead (Obi-Wan was not dead, but she has no way to know this)

no Darksider can return to the Light side

At the end of RotJ (not taking into account anything that happened in the comics or ancillary novels, which I’m not up to date on), Luke knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker

everyone Anakin ever knew is dead, mostly because of him

Vader returned to being Anakin Skywalker at the end of his life

(Leia presumably also knows all of this, perhaps with a few more details based on things her parents might have told her, but her feelings about Darth Vader are: Bad, Do Not Want, to be glib about it.)

Now, there’s one other factor here, which is Rex.  Rex knew Anakin and knew Ahsoka and was in the Rebel Alliance -- we know that he was on Yavin IV prior to Luke’s arrival and we know that he fought in the Battle of Endor. (And turns up in a couple of scattered art panels from the comics.)  If we want to take his brief appearance in Galaxy of Adventures with Han Solo’s strike force as canon, then he may have also known Han and probably Luke -- certainly his ears would have pricked up at the name “Skywalker.”  (Okay, there’s one other factor, which is R2-D2, but Artoo never tells anyone anything despite knowing...everything. Or most things, anyway.)  Rex doesn’t seem to know that Anakin became Darth Vader (I believe there’s an interview somewhere where Dave or Pablo or someone says that a meeting between Rex and Vader would be “awkward,” but there’s no canonical reason to believe that he knew about the Anakin/Vader connection), but he probably found out at some point that the 501st was the battalion involved in the assault on the Jedi Temple.  He also, as of Rebels S3-4, assumes that Vader killed Ahsoka -- presumably Ezra would have told him as much as he could.  (And Ezra does know that Vader is Anakin, so he may have told Rex that as well.)  Rex also knows that Anakin Skywalker was having an affair with Padme Amidala, but presumably didn’t know about (a) the marriage or (b) the pregnancy, because how would he know?

Then we come to Ahsoka’s return and unfortunately the current canon gives us no time point for when it actually happened: presumably Ahsoka did not or could not return to the greater galaxy at the point she “left”, during the fight on Malachor (3 BBY), because as of Rebels S3-4 everyone still believes she’s dead.  Maybe she’s still stuck on Malachor without a way to get off, who knows; maybe after S4 Ezra grabbed her into the World Between Worlds she decided to stay on Malachor until she ~caught up with the main timeline, which...you then have to believe that Ahsoka is going to deliberately remove herself from the war, which I can get to, but is not something I’m totally comfortable with.  Or she pops out in the timeline at the same time that Ezra returns to the main timeline and is able to more or less immediately return to the main timeline narrative, plus or minus a few weeks.  (There are, after all, still a couple of Advanced TIE fighters parked in the Sith temple, even if they were potentially damaged in the temple collapse.  Ahsoka could have repaired them or used the comms systems to call for a pick-up -- this is, btw, what happens in Crown.)  We don’t know when the S2 finale scene/S4 WBW scene of Ahsoka walking back into the temple actually takes place in the timeline; it doesn’t have to be at the exact same time as the rest of the S2 finale sequence (since obvs Vader dragging himself out, Maul flying off, and the Rebels crew looking sad doesn’t all take place at the exact same time).

Other side AU is deliberately vague about when Ahsoka returns from the World Between Worlds/Malachor/to the Rebel Alliance; it’s not stated in the story, but I made the assumption that she came back shortly after the (non-epilogue) end of the Rebels finale, but was still deeply messed up from her Malachor revelations.  (Also, like, Sidious, I guess, but she was probably so messed up about Anakin/Vader that Sidious being around barely registered.)  Since she never seems to have held a formal position in the Rebel Alliance, I assumed that after she returned and let everyone know she was still alive, she then immediately took off to try and figure out what the hell happened with Anakin at the end of the Clone Wars, since she saw him like a week before he snapped and at the time he seemed fine.

The problem is that almost everyone involved is dead.

Now, at this point (shortly before Scarif and ANH), a few people are still alive who then die shortly, but whom Ahsoka may have no reason to believe were involved.  Bail Organa, for example, is still around, but aside from him being Padme’s friend Ahsoka doesn’t have a reason to know that Bail was there when Padme died -- and since they were in contact for the nineteen years preceding there’s no reason for her to assume now that he was keeping something for her.  Back in the comics (before I stopped reading them), Vader did some digging to figure out what was going on with Padme and his child; Ahsoka probably would have done the same digging (without having to torture anyone), but without necessarily knowing that Padme was pregnant.  Knowing the date of Padme’s death (same as the Republic, essentially), she may have had a previous assumption that Padme was assassinated on Palpatine’s orders, but knowing that Vader is Anakin probably moves that assumption closer to the truth, that Anakin was somehow involved in Padme’s death one way or another.  Sooner or later Ahsoka will turn up the fact that Padme was pregnant, come to the obvious conclusion that Anakin was the father, and possibly find out the same thing that Vader does in the comics -- that the child was born before Padme died.  (But also probably not that Padme was carrying twins, but even if she found that out, it wouldn’t make a difference.)

While Ahsoka is doing her digging (and there really isn’t much information out there to find), the events of Rogue One and ANH happen, and Ahsoka comes back to the Rebel Alliance to find out which of her friends are still alive.  (Maybe Rex is with her at this point, who knows.)

Everyone in the Rebel Alliance is talking about some young hotshot named Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker who has a very familiar lightsaber, who claims his father was Anakin Skywalker, and who had some kind of relationship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who turned up on the Death Star, fought Darth Vader, and died.

Ahsoka has just spent the past few months trying to figure out what happened with Anakin, and as best she can reassemble the facts it mostly comes down to “Anakin did something dumb for Padme, that something dumb was ‘turn to the Dark Side and kill literally everyone,’ and then Padme died, the Republic was overturned, and the Jedi Order was wiped out.”  Ahsoka presumably walks into a room, hears the name Luke Skywalker -- maybe sees him -- and is all at once face to face with the living evidence of just how badly Anakin fucked up.

This is just too much for Ahsoka to deal with at the moment, so she takes off again, and spends the next five years brushing in and out of the Rebel Alliance doing odd missions that can really only be done by a trained Force-user.  Rex, who seems to have a more stable position in the Alliance, is always going to side with Ahsoka over anyone else; if she tells him not to tell Luke that she knew Anakin, he won’t.  (And for that matter, he may have somewhat fraught feelings about Luke himself.)  She may have the odd interaction with Luke -- who has heard that there’s another Jedi in the Alliance and wants to be friends/get real training -- but Ahsoka just does not want any part of this. It’s irrational! She knows it’s irrational! But this is the living evidence of Anakin’s failure, Anakin who last she saw him TRIED TO KILL HER, who was at least partially responsible for the deaths of everyone she ever knew.  (And honestly, finding out that Vader topped it all off by killing Obi-Wan is not going to help.)

Ahsoka may also be feeling a certain amount of survivor’s guilt: if Ezra had not pulled her out of the Malachor temple at that exact moment, she came pretty close to bringing the temple down on both herself and Vader, and may have succeeded in killing him.  She did not do so, and who knows how many people died because of that in the years between Malachor and Yavin?  (Just because Tarkin was the one who gave the order doesn’t mean that Ahsoka may at least partially blame Alderaan’s destruction on Vader, if she knew he was on the Death Star then.) She knows he killed Obi-Wan.

The Yoda lineage is very good at going “yikes, I am going off to live alone and beat myself up over my failure for years” and Ahsoka is very much an example of that lineage.

She and Luke have a relationship of “Hi, I’m Luke Skywalker, do you want to talk?” and “I have to leave immediately,” maybe with the odd “please stop using that lightsaber grip it is physically painful for me to watch, do it like this instead, okay, bye.”  Luke probably told all of two other people about what happened with Vader on the Death Star, Leia and Han; he has no reason to tell anyone else about it because it won’t matter to them.  Why would he tell Ahsoka, whom he has no relationship with?  He doesn’t know that Ahsoka knew Anakin Skywalker and would only know if one of four people told him: Ahsoka herself (no), Rex (no), R2-D2 (maybe), or Admiral Ackbar (would never have occurred to Luke to ask, might have occurred to Ackbar to say).  (We also don’t know that Mon Mothma knew Ahsoka very well, or at all, for that matter; they never interacted in TCW.)

As for her swinging harder into overt Jedi-ness by Mando after her blatant “I am no Jedi” of Rebels, it reads to me as a response to the Anakin/Vader revelation (especially the attachment thing).  She had made certain assumptions in the TCW period (see her saving Rex in the TCW finale) and prior to Rebels; Kanan’s method of Jediness was something she could accept in the time period and in those circumstances; the Anakin/Vader revelation shattered all of that, followed immediately as it was by Kanan apparently going full Jedi self-sacrifice despite his attachments.  (Her reaction to Ezra being a trauma response about two very different circumstances.)  All of a sudden what she thought might have been mutable based on the circumstances became something that had to be adhered to in case of dangerous results, which she had just had brought home to her in extremely bad circumstances.

I made a crack somewhere about Mando’s central tension being between “being Mandalorian” and “being doing Mandalorianness”; I think in the post-OT period with Ahsoka and Luke we’re seeing something similar with “being Jedi” and “being doing Jediness.”  Even if Ahsoka isn’t actively claiming the title Jedi anymore (because what does that accomplish in most contexts?), she’s leaning far more into the tenets of the Jedi Order -- which Luke doesn’t know and doesn’t know he doesn’t know.

Thus the doctrinal dispute.

Ahsoka grew up in the Jedi Order.  That’s what she knows, that’s how she knows how to be a Jedi; for her being a Jedi is being part of the Jedi Order, whether or not the actions associated with performing Jediness are being actively practiced.  Luke doesn’t have that context.  For Luke, being a Jedi is...being doing Jediness.  (This is super awkward phrasing.)  Performing the actions of a Jedi.  Luke has a few holocrons, but I’m guessing that a lot of what is on those holocrons makes the assumption that whoever is opening with them has the context of being a part of the Jedi Order and doesn’t explain really basic stuff about the Order or what that means.  Luke’s Jedi Order is not going to be the Republic Jedi Order made anew; it’s going to be something that has a resemblance to it and is based on a similar view of the Force, even arguably its heir, but is just not going to be the same thing.  It can’t be.  Luke doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Kanan, of course, is coming into all of this from a similar context as Ahsoka: he grew up in the Jedi Order, it’s what he knows, it’s who he is.  Except Kanan never walked away from the Order, so while Ahsoka had been disconnected from her Jediness at the time of the Purge, he never lost his -- part of Ahsoka’s tension from TCW S7-Rebels was “I can’t be a Jedi because the Order is gone” and Kanan’s was “can I be a Jedi without the Jedi Order?”  (Ezra is a whole ‘nother thing but is somewhat outside the scope of this.)  The Jedi Order never factors in Luke’s Jediness at all.  (There’s some lineage doctrinal dispute here as well -- the Yoda lineage seems to be very closely connected to the Order as the font of Jediness, the Windu-Billaba lineage somewhat less so.  The Yoda lineage is like...the hardcore conservatives of the Jedi Order, though, and are probably not typical.)

Poor Kanan came back from the dead, after a week in another universe (which had its own problems; he’s been trying to very gently convince his counterpart that even after being an Inquisitor for months he can still be a Jedi), into Luke trying to build a new Jedi Order from scratch, Ahsoka firmly believing it couldn’t and shouldn’t be done and not wanting to be in the same room as Luke at all (not to mention that she really did not believe that they should have gone for “hey, let’s send Hera Syndulla to another universe” as even being an option), and both of them having essentially incompatible notions of being a Jedi at each other -- this is probably the most time Luke and Ahsoka ever spent in each other’s presence.  They’ve probably never articulated their problems at each other, just assumed that the other knew them.  And Kanan has his own “how to be a Jedi” approach, which is from a very different than either Ahsoka or Luke because despite originating from the same context as Ahsoka, he had a very different path to get to his present position.

As for what Kanan knows -- uh, pretty much only what Hera knew, and Hera knew very little?  She was friendly with Luke and Leia, but didn’t have much interaction with them -- she states that she had a tendency to avoid Luke because even if she would never say it to Luke’s face, she silently believes that if any Jedi should have been in the Rebel Alliance, it should have been Kanan and Ezra and not this relative newcomer.  If the Death Star 2 news about Vader and Palps was never common knowledge, then Hera wouldn’t have known it.  Kanan’s in a position of having to play catch-up, but also having a completely different priority (finding Ezra).  He sat through this meeting where after they’d finished grilling him on “you were in ANOTHER UNIVERSE and also you CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD?” they politely sniped at each other with a bunch of context he didn’t have and flat out decided that wow, he did not want to deal with this at all, whatsoever.

(This is also not stated in the story, but Luke and Ahsoka also disagreed about whether Jacen should be trained or not: Luke said, yeah, of course, when he’s a little older! and Ahsoka said nope, he’ll be fine, it will go away. Hera was just very “...I will deal with this later” about it since it wasn’t an urgent issue.)

[hopelikethemoon]

The Addition (Javier x Reader) {MTMF}

Title: The Addition  Rating: PG-13 Length: 3000 Warnings: None. Notes: You can find the Maybe Today, Maybe Forever Timeline here. Set in March 1997. This is the pupper. This is just a everything-and-the-kitchen-sink chapter.  Summary: Reader finally gets what she wants. 

Taglist:  @grapemama​  @seawhisperer​ @huliabitch​​ @pedropascalito​​ @rogrsnbarnes​​@thewallpapergoesorido​​ @twomoonstwosuns​​ @gooddaykate​​ @livasaurasrex​​ @ham4arrow​​@hiscyarika​​ @plexflexico​​ @readsalot73​​ @hdlynn​​ @lokiaddicted​​ @randomness501​​@fioccodineveautunnale​  @roxypeanut​​ @just-add-butter​​ @snivellusim​​@amarvelousmandalorian​​ @lukesrighthand​​ @historynerd04​​@mrsparknuts​@synystersilenceinblacknwhite​​ @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead​​@exrebelshocktrooper​​@awesomefandomsunited​​ @ah-callie​​ @swhiskeys​​ @lady-tano​​ @beskar-droids​​ @space-floozy @cable-kenobi​​ @longitud-de-onda​​ @cool-ultra-nerd​​ @himbopoes​​@findhimfives​​ @pedrosdoll​​

“You’re lucky I’m homebound,” You remarked as you settled into the chair beside Javier in the little doggie playroom. “I’d be here every day trying to adopt another one.” 

“We haven’t adopted this one yet.” 

“She’s perfect.” You looped your arm through his, leaning towards him to rest your cheek on his shoulder. “I hope she loves us.” 

“A little younger than we intended to get.” He pointed out, looking down at the little information card the man had given him to review while they got the dog ready to visit with them. “Two is still a puppy.” 

“Two is a full-grown dog.” You took the card from him and looked it over. “She’s supposed to be great with kids and calm.” 

“Two is still going to require exercise.” Javier gave you a look, a brow quirking upwards. 

“I can sit outside and drink my tea and let her run around the yard.” You waved your hand dismissively, “That’s the reason we have Josie. She can help her burn energy.”

“Is that why we have Josie?”

You nodded. “It was all a scheme to get a dog. Lance shot down the idea of getting one in Colombia so I went through a multi-year plan to have a baby with you, move to Florida, all so I could get a dog.” 

Javier snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past you.” He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, rubbing his hand over your shoulders. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” You knew he was worried, but he was slowly driving you crazy with asking you how you felt every thirty minutes. Pass out once and end up in the hospital… 

The door opened and the young man who had been helping the two of you entered with the beautiful dog at the end of a red leash. “We’ve been calling her Sasha, but she doesn’t really respond to it.” He explained to you.

The dog was a little skittish at first, keeping close to — you think his name was Owen — as she sniffed at the floor. 

“She’s beautiful.” You smiled, leaning forward and holding out your hand. “Any idea what she is?”

“Most likely a mutt.” He explained. “She was an owner surrender. They got reassigned out of the country.”

“Poor thing.” You clicked your tongue against your teeth. “Come here, sweetheart.”

Javier was watching you, his eyes flickering between you and the dog. “Looks like a mountain dog.”

“With some poodle, most likely.” Owen offered. “She won’t get much bigger. The vet’s checked her out and she’s done growing.”

“Good.” Javier, ran his hands over his legs before he shifted forward and held out his hand, much the same way you were.

The dog tugged at the lead, seeming far more keen now that both of you were interested in her. 

“Is she house trained?” Javier questioned. 

“And doesn’t pull when she goes on a walk.” Owen let go of the leash, letting her sniff her way closer to the pair of you. 

“Come here, girl.” You cooed, your smile broadening as she bounded towards you. She shoved her cool nose against your palm, licking at you curiously. 

Javier reached out and petted her back. “You’re a soft girl, aren't you?”

She wagged her tail, flopping onto her side and showing her belly to both of you.

“I think she likes you.” You teased, nudging Javier in the ribs. You looked up at Owen, grinning. “I think she’s the one.”

“Easy there,” Javier told you. “Isn’t there more we should do?”

Owen shook his head. “If you feel comfortable with her, we can start the outtake paperwork.”

You looked at Javier, pursing your lips. “Please? I mean, I’m coming back and getting her Monday even if you say ‘no’.”

“I am not going to say ‘no’.” He huffed, rolling his eyes with a shake of his head. “Like I’m about to deny a pregnant woman what she wants.” He muttered under his breath. 

“I’ll stay with her, if you want to start on the papers.” You told Javier with a grin. 

“Alicia will help you at the front desk.” Owen told Javier. 

The dog jumped up when Javier stopped petting her, propping herself up to rest her paws on his knees. 

“I’m screwed.” Javier laughed. “There’s three of you pulling this look now.”

You chuckled heartily. “Pretty soon you’ll be outnumbered four-to-one.”

“I was outnumbered when it was just you.” He kissed your cheek before he scooted the dog off his legs and got up. “Thanks.” Javier patted Owen on the shoulder as he walked past and headed out to the front desk.

“You’ve got yourself a new home, pretty girl.” You told the dog, scratching behind her ear. She was the absolute doppiest dog, lolling her head to the side with her tongue hanging out. 

“Any ideas on names?” Owen questioned you.

You glanced up, “Stevie.”

“Like Nicks?”

“Yeah, actually.” You laughed, looking back at the dog. “Are you a Stevie?”

She barked softly. 

“None of that.” You scrunched up your nose, rubbing at her head. “Javi will kill us both if you’re a barker.”

“Only when she gets excited.”

“We have an almost four-year-old who is much the same.” You laughed softly, patting your knees. 

Stevie jumped up and put her paws on your legs, leaning up to lick at your face. “You’re just so loving, aren't you?”

“When are you due?” Owen questioned. 

“Mid-to-late May.” You answered, glancing up at him. “I know it’s crazy to get a dog right before having a baby, but… I’m desperate.” 

“Is he not around a lot?” He nodded his head towards the door. 

“He’s around all the time,” You shrugged. “I just want a dog.” You scratched behind both of Stevie’s ears. “You’re going to be spoiled rotten.” 

“Ah, I see.” Owen leaned back against the wall, folding his arms across his chest. “I was going to suggest I could help you train her, if you were lonely.”

Your eyes snapped up. “Are you trying to come onto me?” Your head tilted back and you laughed — loudly. “Kid, he and I could find a dozen and a half ways to kill you with the dog toys in this room alone. I’m flattered, but no.” 

Color flooded his face. “I wasn’t… I’m sorry.” 

The door popped open and Javier emerged, “Well, baby. You’re the proud owner of a dog.” 

“Did you hear that, Stevie? You’re going home with us!” The dog barked again excitedly, her tail thumping against the floor. 

 —————

 Stevie alternated between being stretched out on the backseat of the Jeep and bouncing back and forth to look out the windows.

“Didn’t he say she was calm?”

“She’s been cooped up in a kennel for who knows how long, Javi. Let her be excited.” You rolled your eyes at him, laughing quietly. “He also tried to hit on me while you were gone.”

“Excuse me?” Javier cocked his head to the side as he stopped at a light. “He did what?”

“I’m impressed that this,” You gestured to your stomach. “isn’t an instant detractor.” 

“I keep telling you, you look good.” He reached over and gave your knee a squeeze, fingers playing little patterns there. Some things never changed. “What’d you say?”

You caught his hand, bringing it to your stomach to stop the patterns he was drawing on your leg. “I told him I could kill him a dozen different ways.” 

“Baby!” Javier laughed, pushing his sunglasses up his brow. “You can’t just threaten to kill people.” 

“Has it ever stopped me before?” You questioned, sliding his hand to the spot where the baby was kicking. “I also said you’d kill him. I find murder tends to distract from attempts to hit on someone.” 

Javier rubbed his thumb over your stomach. “Someone’s excited.” You quipped, keeping his hand there as he started through the intersection. “You know, baby.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I always thought your threats of violence were a turn on.” 

“Really?” You rolled your eyes. “That makes perfect sense with you, Javier.” You glanced over your shoulder to the backseat, pleased to see that Stevie had settled down. “I mean, we have established I’m a sadist.” 

“The truth comes out.” He reluctantly pulled his hand away so he could turn the corner. Once it was safe, he reached back over, letting you guide his hand back to the right spot. She had quieted a little, but that didn’t dissuade him from keeping his hand there. Just in case. 

“Thank you for agreeing to Stevie.” 

“You did get Josie in on the plan.” He quipped with a chuckle. “It’s all good, baby. After everything you’ve been through, you deserve a dog.” He gave her leg a squeeze, before gripping at the steering wheel. 

 ———

 “Like Uncle Steve?” Josie questioned as she laid on the floor, on her back, beside Stevie. You were pleased with how quickly the two had bonded with each other. One hour at home and Stevie was sprawled out on the floor beside her human-sibling. 

“Yep.” Javier confirmed with a nod as he cracked open a bottle of beer, taking a swig before he moved to join you on the sofa. “Just like Uncle Steve.”

“Technically, Stevie Nicks…” You corrected. “But mostly to torture Steve.” 

Monica laughed as she looked up from the book she was reading. “I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who named their dog to spite their best friend.” She looked at Javier pointedly.

“I don’t know what heinous lies the Murphys have fed you, but… I don’t know if I’d call him my best friend.” Javier protested with a roll of his eyes, sipping at his beer. 

“Ignore him.” You remarked, stretching out lengthwise on the sofa and stretching your legs over his. “We moved all the way to Miami just so he could hang out with Steve.” 

“Wait, really?” Monica’s brows rose upwards. “I don’t think you ever mentioned this in class.”

Javier dragged his hand over his face, before scratching at the back of his neck. “I knew it was a half-decent place to raise a family.” He squeezed your calf. “And I liked the prospect of Josie having a readymade friend in Olivia.”

“And Emily, daddy.” Josie reminded him, rolling onto her side to pet Stevie. She lifted her head, looking towards her. The dog sighed contentedly and shuffled on the floor closer to Josie. 

“Emily wasn’t here yet, Josie.” He took another swig of beer before he sat the bottle aside. “If I’d known Miami would be hot as fuck like Colombia—”

“Fuck!” Josie shouted, causing you to jerk upright, turning to stare at her. 

“Joséfina Selina Peña!” You raised your voice slightly and instantly regretted it when you saw Monica flinch in reaction to it. Stevie started barking, bouncing around confusedly as Josie scrambled towards the sofa.

“Mommy! I didn’t mean to say it.” Josie flashed you her best attempt at a charming grin. “I’m sorry mommy!” 

Javier picked her up and settled her onto the sofa between the two of you. “JoJo, you can’t be saying those words.”

She hid her face in shame. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey.” You played with her curls. “It’s okay, babydoll. I’m not mad. You just can’t be saying that.” 

“But daddy says it.”

You swatted him in the arm. “And he’s been told not to. Haven’t you, Javier?”

He rocked his jaw and sighed. “Yeah. Josie, you can’t say that, okay?”

“But why?”

“They’re grown-up words.”

“Like grown-up drinks?” She looked at you then. “Why don’t you drink grown-up drinks?”

“Because they’re bad for babies. Like you and your sister.” You rested your hand on your stomach. “I’m not mad at you, Josie. But we have a swear jar for a reason.”

“It sounded funny when daddy said it.” 

“Daddy shouldn’t have said it around you.” Javier sighed heavily and pulled Josie into his lap. “Try not to say it again, okay?” He kissed the top of her head.

“Okay.” Josie turned and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Can I please play with Stevie now?”

“Yes, baby. You can play with Stevie.” You leaned over and kissed her cheek, rubbing your nose against it. “Just watch your mouth.” 

She made a dramatic kissing sound as she returned the kiss. She wiggled out of Javier’s arms and moved to slide off the sofa. She crawled, on her hands and knees, towards Stevie who already seemed very amused. 

“You guys are good parents.” Monica remarked, looking between the two of you. “Josie and the baby are lucky to have perfect parents.”

Javier draped his arm around your shoulders, pulling you into his side. “We’re certainly not perfect.” He squeezed your shoulder three times.

“We’re just two people trying to do right by our kids.” 

“Which includes you.” Javier told Monica, letting go of you so he could grab his beer, taking a drink. He crossed his leg over his knee and rested the beer on his ankle as he sank back against the sofa. 

Monica’s brows furrowed, “What?”

You laughed softly, patting Javier’s leg. “I decided that we’ve unofficially adopted you. Your parents might have brought you into the world, but we’re going to make sure you thrive in it.” 

She stared at you. “I really don’t deserve that.”

“You’re a good kid, Monica.” You smiled at her. “You deserve a good life.” 

“Thank you.” Monica rubbed the sleeve of her sweatshirt under her nose. “You’re going to make me cry again.”

Stevie jumped up suddenly and started barking. 

“Hush!” Javier clapped his hands, sitting his beer aside as he got up off the sofa. “What is it?” He questioned, kneeling down in front of Stevie. She bounced a little, barking again as the doorbell sounded. 

“I’ll get it,” You sighed, peeling yourself off the sofa and making your way towards the front of the house. You peered through the window, looking to see who was at the door. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

Of course, it just had to be one of the moms from ballet. Javier was right, you were leaving that studio as soon as you got back out into the world. 

You pulled the door open, hands on your hips. “Can I help you Chelly?”

“Oh.” She laughed nervously, giving you a wary look. “I was just dropping off this beef casserole. Missy mentioned seeing Javier at the grocery store and I thought…” She tilted her head. “She made it sound like you weren’t up and about.”

You glared at the woman, “Missy is prone to overdramatizing situations.” 

“Baby, who is it?” Javier called out from the family room. Stevie was still barking and now, given from what you could hear, Josie had decided to join in. 

“Chelly.”

“Who?” He questioned. 

“From dance.” You called back to him, before you turned your attention back to the woman. God, these women needed a fucking hobby that was something other than chasing after Javier’s cock. “I appreciate the casserole, but Javier has dinner covered.” You fixed her with a faux-smile. “And I don’t eat beef.”

“You shouldn’t make him work so hard,” She told you with a tone that made you want to throttle her. “I’m sure he’d appreciate this casserole.” 

You pressed your tongue to the inside of your cheek, staring at her as you considered your plan of action here. You stepped out onto the brick stoop, pulling the door closed behind you. “I’m only going to say this one time, Chelly so listen. And you can take this back to your little friends and tell them what a horrid bitch I am.” You crossed your arms across your chest, “I know what you’re doing. You heard I was in the hospital — smelt blood in the water. This vulture act is going to stop. Now. If I catch another one of you sniffing around my family, I’m going to make you regret it.”

“It’s just a casserole—”

“It’s not.” You snapped, fingers curled into fists. “I’m not an idiot.” You narrowed your eyes. “I didn’t put up with six years of bullshit working for the DEA to put up with this shit from a bunch of high strung, horny, dance moms.” 

“I don’t—”

“I guess I should thank you,” You said snidely, a slight smirk playing over your lips. “Last time I saw you, you thought you were clever by insinuating that Javier was fucking his students.” Oh, the irony of the current situation. “It inspired a rather fun afternoon fuck for us. So thanks, Chelly.” 

She looked mortified and it really only seemed to fuel you. 

“So take your casserole and fuck off.” 

Chelly started to say something, but you were quick to cut her off. 

“I don’t want to hear your voice” You snapped, taking a step forward. The door opened behind you and you turned around to meet Javier’s eyes. “I have it handled.” 

“Alright, baby.” He said with a faint smile, before he closed the door back.

You looked back at Chelly. “Why are you still here?”

“I’m… so sorry.” 

“Yeah, it’s a little late for that.” Your brows rose upwards. “And tell your friends they can fuck off too.” With that you, headed back inside — nearly crashing into Javier who had been, unsurprisingly, waiting right on the other side of the door. “Hi.”

“You’re a fucking force, baby.” He grinned at you, that look of sheer adoration making your heart ache in the best of ways. 

“We don’t have to deal with them anymore.” You told him with a resolute nod. “Where are the kids?”

“Monica took Stevie and Josie out back.” He grinned at you, “Did you really just tell her to fuck off?”

“This door is surprisingly thin, apparently.” You laughed as you stepped towards him. You reached up, tracing your fingers over his cheek and the soft scruff there. “Yeah. I did. It was pretty spectacular. She might cry in her minivan.” 

Javier leaned down and kissed you. “I love you.” 

You brushed your nose against his. “Right back at you, babe.” 

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

More therapy thoughts part 1/?

Behavior Theory Frameworks/Conditioning and What the fuck does Master Chief talk about in therapy?

Ramblings below - like a lot, like I spent too much time writing this and you should not read this

Behavioral Theory could work well as a framework with rehabilitating Spartan IIs if the case worker focused on Operant Conditioning Theory and Cognitive Social Learning Theory, which I talked about in this ask because I think I’m funny and this blog is an archive of me applying human behavior theories to video games.

Spartans have always been taught the mission comes first! Always! The 2s are indoctrinated from age 6-14 and then have that reinforced the rest of their lives. From the beginning they are taught to push themselves to the limits, earn their food by winning, form bonds with teammates but be ready to sacrifice them for the mission. The whole lives wasted vs spent conversation between John and Mendez after the augmentation surgery!

What the UNSC/ONI wants comes before their lives, the lives of other soldiers, civilians, AI etc. This constant conditioning of expectations and rewards has created the norms cemented in their minds. This becomes standard operating procedure.

Spartans are also an entirely separated social group, other people have made really great posts on how they are Othered and have their own way of communicating with body language. ODSTs hate Spartans, marines see them as cyborgs or saviors, and while they’re allies, Spartans are not seen or treated as human, by literally everyone. They are a means to an end, with the original goal being to maintain the UNSC’s position of power and crush the insurrectionists in the outer colonies, but uh oh Aliens!

Maybe the 2s aren’t as expendable as the 3s but the mindset and reinforcement of “mission first, people second” being repeated their entire lives is going to stick. So is the constant mistreatment and abuse from their fellow soldiers and handlers. 

Addressing the cognitive distortions that come from their upbringing while also balancing the fact that Spartans are so fundamentally different from the way they developed to survive would be so much work, especially considering how much information on them is given to their therapist.  The main distortion I would apply is minimization, making large problems small and not properly dealing with them, and specifically for John, personification, accepting blame for negative events without sufficient evidence. 

Like these are grown ass super soldiers who can kill you in less than a second and calculate the amount of gravity in a room on the fly but then also can flounder when trying to comfort civilians or make small talk because their experiences and values are so alien to adults who had more developmentally “normal” lives. 

Literally applying therapy to Spartans would be like, what was done to you was wrong, the ends do not justify the means, you were children and the adults in your life failed to protect you. You are a human person who is fallible and did the best you could with what you had. And the Spartan would say, “sounds fake but okay, can I pass my psych eval and go back to war now please?”

Jumping back to Behavior Theory

Different approaches to therapy under the Behavior Theory umbrella help modify negative behaviors with treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical behavior therapy that teach individuals adaptive coping like emotional regulation, distress tolerance, cognitive distortions, and interpersonal communication. And that’s just one framework under the umbrella of human behavior theories.

Social work therapy is different from psych as it approaches individuals with heavily researched, evidence-based theories and frameworks in a holistic viewing of person-in-environment, instead of a strong focus on internal psychology. 

Social work looks at all the interacting systems, environment, history, and internal and external factors affecting an individual. One of the most useful frameworks is the Biopsychosocial-Spiritual Frameworks (BPSS) when helping a client. It helps with identifying all the intersecting factors, both risk and protective, that shapes a client’s lived experiences. The most important thing to remember is that the individual is an expert in their own life, they know their experiences best.

The hardest part is applying this to Spartans because they Are So Fucked, their lived experiences, their environments and systems and institutions interacting with them, and the amount of their personal information that is probably so classified.

BPSS is a tool to help social workers assess individuals and their situations by collecting info that is related to the presenting issues and current and past circumstances. Info like medical history, hospitalizations, substance abuse, mental illness, personal relationships, family history and background, culture and norms, education, legal history, spirituality and participation etc. is all under this framework. 

For Spartan 2s most of this info is lost or classified and helping someone who has repressed every negative emotion they've had for the sake of the mission would be so much to unpack but that’s also why you’re reading the mad ramblings over an over caffeinated nerd on the internet.

Life Course Theory which looks at developmental milestones and the individual’s experiences versus the socially expected markers, how do you apply that to children who were taken and have lived such different lives? 

While early adolescence is when “normal” development of thoughts of self and identity take place alongside the physical changes of puberty, Spartans were being turned into emotionless calculating weapons. Sorry John, no forming a sense of identity and peer bonds for you, go kill that Watts guy who betrayed us and joined the insurrectionists. 

And now that I’ve gone this insane and opened 2 whole textbooks up, let’s get to Master Chief thoughts. If you’ve read this far thank you, I swear I’m normal, 2020 has just been a weird year. 

Why the fuck did I think I could write a therapy fic on a guy with 20 minutes of actual dialogue across almost 2 decades of games?

I make fun of him and call him a himbo, but he’s smart, he knows he’s being used and there is resentment there that’s been building for years. 

There’s also decades of trauma and combat experience, physical, and emotional abuse, the lack of a support network,  lack of an identity, the biological factors and aftermath of the augmentations and injuries he’s received, a whole lot of grief and self-inflicted guilt. 

The loss of a third of his peer group with the augmentation surgery, Sam’s death, the loss of Reach (the only place he’s considered home), Keyes, the Pillar of Autumn crew, Miranda Keyes, Johnson, Cortana. He cares about the marines who fight with him!!!

He just stands there and takes it and rarely snaps, and even then it’s just small cracks on the surface with fissures running deep. The few details I will pull from Halo 5 are Blue Team’s reactions to John pushing himself so hard from the beginning of the game, and the literal crack in his armor from the fight with Locke. Like dude.  

John’s a leader and will get the mission done but he tugs on the leash. He’s earned enough of a reputation and uses it to get his way.

Halo 2’s “Permission to leave the station” with Mr. “I’m going to hand deliver a bomb to the fusion reactor of a covenant supercarrier and hope my friends catch me”. 

Halo 4 is when we see him say no to a superior officer and then 5 is him going AWOL. Palmer literally points out that no one is going to stop him.

Halo 5 kills me for many reasons but John bringing up Halsey and what she did to him and also pointing out that he knows Halo 5 Cortana is trying to manipulate him with psychological tactics hurts. 

He knows what’s been done to him!

I cannot remember which book it was but John isn’t used to working alone. He literally takes fire because he was expecting someone to have his back! 

He’s lost without Cortana! She was in his brain! Y’all! I played Halo Combat Evolved on the original xbox when I was like 8 and I knew these two were meant to be together. From the moment they met they had great chemistry and relied on each other! Cortana literally goes after people who have it out for John! John wants her approval and shows off for her in one of the books. 

I’ve already written too much here but like all of the games have John showing off for Cortana, making dry jokes, jumping out of things he shouldn’t. 

The whole point of this rambling is to try and get my thoughts about how to approach John’s character under control.

And that’s the thing. He’s lost control. He’s lost people, he’s losing his position and being phased out as an aging spartan, a relic. John’s used to following orders and making some decisions on the battlefield but it was always short term.

He has no identity beyond being a weapon. Complete the mission, clear the LZ, get put in cryo. Rinse, repeat. 

The timeline of the games are what I'm most familiar with but with the comics and books too it’s one long run from Halo 2 to Halo 4. Cairo station to the Dreadnought to the crash landing to Forward Unto Dawn to Requiem to “The Didact is Dead but not really but we’ll deal with him off-screen”.

I know Hood apparently gave John R&R orders before Halo 5 that he ignored and kept running himself into the ground. This is a man who has to keep moving and keep being useful. 

I imagine him giving in and seeking help as a last resort to fix any problems he has with performing his duties rather than helping himself be healthier. 

Any professional he sees is going to have to approach him like they’re approaching a self sacrificing feral cat, with lunch meat and quiet. This man needs to have his support network closer, set up long term goals, and do some serious, and most likely incredibly painful, self reflection on where he’s come from and where he wants to go. Get him out of that tin can and into therapy. I don’t have a nice neat ending because this was a ramble and also therapy is not neat and tidy. Thanks for reading my words about mr halo

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep21

Ciconia? In MY Higurashi??? It’s more likely than you’d think :)

Thoughts under the cut. Also apparently Ciconia spoiler stuff because that’s the world we live in now I guess lol

It’s kinda funny how over the course of Gou thus far I’ve seen people go from ‘there’s no way this is even going to reference Umineko, people are just reading into things’ to ‘wow I can’t believe Ryukishi’s going out of his way to tie literally all of his visual novel lore together in Gou :/’. It feels weirdly vindicating to see Gou just go the whole nine yards with bringing up unprecedented levels of When They Cry Lore [tm], lol. 

I know people basically thought [or hoped] that Ryukishi was just going to be trolling people who wanted this kind of lore stuff, but I always felt like it was going to be more straightforward and sincere than that, considering that he seems to genuinely enjoy this kind of writing, and I guess I ended up being right. If anything I underestimated just how explicit he’d be with this stuff.

Considering that they tweaked Featherine’s design a bit to be more Higurashi-y, and they avoided using that name for her, I figured they’d commit to having her fit more into the existing framework of Higurashi to avoid bringing up other When They Cry lore stuff, but then she literally just has the exact same personality as Featherine and immediately started talking about Ciconia stuff, so that was unexpected, lol.

The Umineko stuff is one thing, since we’re more or less dealing with a character who came from Umineko in the first place, but the Ciconia references throw like five different wrenches into things and make this way more confusing and interesting.

At the very least, I guess it cements the idea of Satoko being a Lambda expy, if not literally Lambda herself. It’s kinda hard to tell exactly where they’re going with this, in the grand scheme of things. If we’re going full Ciconia lore with this, then it’s possible that there’s basically just one original person who’s now a brain in a jar, and they’re basically being used as a ‘template’ for characters within simulations, which all end up looking similar to each other. 

It also raises the question of what this implies about how the timelines of the different VNs intersect, if Featherine is bringing up stuff from a story set in the future, but if we go with the whole simulation theory then they probably just all exist at the same time.

And on top of all the over-arching lore stuff that’s now being raised, this episode also gets into confusing time travel logic now that Satoko’s officially starting to do her own loops, and we all have to wrap our heads around how that meshes with Rika’s own powers and her personal timeline of events.

My best interpretation of the timeline here is that after the scene at the start of this episode, Featherine directly reset the timeline to an earlier point, rather than moving Satoko to a different fragment entirely. And because of that, the Matsuribayashi fragment played out like it did originally because Satoko was just sent back to an earlier point in that timeline, and Rika didn’t have her consciousness carry over because only Satoko got sent back, so the Rika in the next loop was basically just Matsuribayashi Rika again, and things just played out exactly the same with her.

We’ll have to see how the next episode goes, but since this loop ended with both Satoko and Rika dying, I think this will be where Rika’s consciousness also starts getting sent through the loops along with Satoko, although we know that until Nekodamashi she can’t remember how she died.

I’m really curious to see if Satoko and Rika immediately get thrown into the Onidamashi loop after that, or if there’ll be a whole series of loops that we haven’t seen yet before that. Satoko’s actions in the earlier arcs seem to imply that she has knowledge of how the original question arcs went that she shouldn’t have by this point in Gou, so maybe she spends some amount of time going through the same types of loops Rika did before Onidamashi happens, but it seems like from Rika’s perspective, she goes straight from this episode’s loop to Onidamashi, since she talked to Hanyuu about how the last thing she remembered was being at St. Lucia’s in 1988, and considering how this episode went, I don’t think Satoko would have allowed any loop after this to get to that point again in the first place. So if there’s any loops that happen between this and Onidamashi, they’d have to be ones that Rika retains no memory of. Or maybe her consciousness doesn’t start getting sent to those loops until Onidamashi.

Either way, it would imply that some sort of change might happen in the mechanics of Satoko’s looping. Which I could see happening, since she clearly doesn’t just keep repeating the same Matsuribayashi loop, so maybe at some point she also starts going to different fragments instead of just resetting the same one over and over again. Or maybe she just goes back early enough in the loop to completely change how things play out, but that’d basically just be the same thing as going to a different fragment.

I still think that Satoko’s exact motives and methods throughout the earlier Gou arcs changed over time, but this episode goes a long way to show how she’s already at the point of being willing to kill Rika. But at this point she’s only done it as a way to reset a failed loop, so I don’t think she’s progressed to the point we see in Nekodamashi where she’s literally torturing Rika as a way to try and convince her to stay in the village in the first place.

With just three episodes left [as far as we know, at least], I think we’re probably going to skim over the earlier Gou arcs to explain their individual mysteries before we go back to the end of Nekodamashi and see how that confrontation played out. One way or another it’d have to be pretty fast-paced to cover four arcs worth of answers, so they might just shove the answers all into the next episode and end it by going back to Nekodamashi.

It’d be kinda anti-climactic to spend such little time going over the answers to the earlier arcs, but at this point there probably isn’t much we need to know. We now know the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ of the mystery, so all that we need to be told is the ‘how’, and I think that’s going to end up being relatively simple. At the very least, I think Satoko used the same methods in basically every arc, so just going over one set of answers would solve most of the mysteries in each arc at the same time, and the individual mysteries in each arc would take less time to go over at that point.

Even at this point I’m still not entirely sure about a lot of this, mainly since there’s still the question of how much Satoko actually knows about the pre-Matsuribayashi loops, but I think the general answer to how she did basically everything in each arc was that she just raided the Irie Clinic to steal the syringe that makes people go L5, and then she just made people go L5 in the background of each arc.

In Onidamashi, I don’t think there’s even that much to answer. She presumably ended up doing a murder suicide with Rika at the end of the arc to reset the loop, and maybe she injected Rena with the syringe, but I still think that Rena could have easily just been doing all that without any interference from Satoko. Since that was the first Gou arc [unless there were other loops between this and Onidamashi], maybe Satoko hadn’t started injecting people yet, and only started doing that in later loops. The only other real mystery in this whole arc is what happened to Takano and Tomitake, and that was probably just them fleeing the village like we ended up seeing in Nekodamashi, which is also something that they might have done without any involvement from Satoko. I guess there’s also the question of what exactly made Takano abandon her goals, but that also might not really be directly caused by Satoko. My best guess is that, on the meta level, Lambda revoked her blessing from Takano, and she got given memories of Matsuribayashi, which ended up making her lose certainty in her goals, and choose to just give up and flee the village.

Watadamashi is still kinda confusing, but this might also just boil down to her having injected either Shion or Mion to trigger the same general scenario as Watanagashi. I don’t think it was her that killed Rika, but I think her suspicion of Keiichi was probably an act. Now that we know that by that point she was in the middle of her loops and knew exactly what was going on, I don’t think she’d genuinely suspect him of that, or that she’d even care that much. The Takano and Tomitake situation was probably just the same as all the other arcs, with them fleeing the village. I think a lot of the background stuff was basically just the same as Watanagashi, except for Mion ending up as more of a culprit this time. My biggest question about this arc is probably just why Satoko even bothered going to the Sonozaki estate at the end of the arc. Now that we know more about her motives and her level of meta knowledge, it just seems really weird that she’d bother doing that. If anything you’d think that she’d just immediately kill herself once she found out about Rika dying, since she’d have no reason to continue the loop after that.

I still like the idea that she ended up making Shion into her accomplice to help carry out a lot of the stuff she did in each loop, so that might play into the whole mystery of this arc. And maybe it’d explain why she bothered going to the Sonozaki estate.

Tataridamashi is still kinda strange and confusing, and more than the other arcs I think it really depends on how much she knows about the pre-Matsuribayashi loops. The whole situation of whether or not she was being abused by Teppei in this arc, and how much of an act she was putting on, is still pretty unclear. The stuff with Ooishi at the end of the arc is also still kinda strange. Maybe it was all intentional and she had basically just given up on that loop and used him to kill Rika, but I’m not sure. I kinda like the idea I’ve seen that maybe she was tempted by the idea of just letting the Tataridamashi timeline continue, and that she had genuinely come to some sort of peace with the events of that loop, but then Ooishi went crazy and forced her to reset the loop. Either way I feel like this arc is a turning point of some kind for Satoko, since it’s immediately after this point that her methods seem to get much more desperate and violent.

So I think that maybe she had basically ‘given up’ in Tataridamashi and was willing to just stay in that loop and let it play out, but Featherine decided that would be boring so she forced the game to keep going by making Ooishi go on a murder spree. And then Satoko realized that she’s just as trapped in this loop as Rika is, and is going to keep going through pain and misery until she can properly succeed with her original goal, and so she becomes much more desperate after that point. There’s also the fact that this is the point where Rika is also given the ability to remember her loops, so that might be another aspect of Featherine meddling with the game in order to keep it interesting.

I get the feeling that Satoko maybe ends up having another meeting with Featherine around this point, where she gets it spelled out to her face that she’s going to have to keep looping until Rika ‘loses’, whether Satoko likes it or not. For one thing, Satoko’s talked about how she became Oyashiro-sama’s new miko, but that didn’t really come up in this episode, so maybe she has another meeting with Featherine later on where that comes up. It’d also make sense if maybe Satoko gets told by Featherine at this point that Rika is also a looper who remembers each timeline, since the way that Satoko straight up starts murdering and torturing Rika seems kinda counter-intuitive to the idea of making her choose to stay in the village, but it’d make sense if she learned about Rika’s looping and changed her methods to ‘I’m going to torture her across multiple loops so that eventually I’ll get to a loop where she’s already chosen to give up and stay in the village’.

Maybe she could have found out about Rika’s looping as early as the end of Onidamashi, though, if Rika talked about it before the murder suicide. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t.

Either way, even once we eventually get back to Nekodamashi, I’m not really sure if we’ll get a happy ending or not, lol. It feels like the only way for this to end peacefully is for Satoko to just give up, but like I said above, I think Featherine is actively interfering with things, and is refusing to let Satoko give up before she wins. So I just don’t see that happening. This is also really feeling like an origin story for both Lambda and Bern, and their violently possessive relationship, so I kinda feel like the story might just commit to them going off the deep end and embracing their unhealthy desires. I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if Featherine gives Satoko the ability to become a witch in order to achieve her goal of staying with Rika forever.

There’s also the hanging plot thread of Satoshi still being alive, but with how singularly focused Satoko seems to be with Rika, I’m not even sure if finding out that he’s alive would go much to sway her if she can’t also get Rika to stay in the village. And, again, there’s the whole potential mess of Featherine wanting to be entertained no matter what.

Of course we also might get a whole second season or something, which would open up it’s own whole list of possibilities, lol. I’m not really convinced about it yet, and I’d rather keep my expectations low, but it really does feel more and more like there’s just not enough time to wrap everything up in just three more episodes. I know they can probably go over the answers for the previous arcs in like one more episode, but this whole extended flashback has been going on for way longer than I expected, and we haven’t even gotten to Onidamashi yet. I know that once we get back to Nekodamashi there might not even be that much more that needs to be done to wrap up the story now that everything’s laid out on the table, but it might still just feel kinda rushed to only get one or two episodes of content after that.

Though on the other hand, even though everything with Satoko is being laid out in a way that makes it feel like there’s not much more we need to do to wrap up the story, it’s possible that the story will just shift to having Featherine herself be the new antagonist, so to say. If I’m right about her not being willing to let Satoko just give up and make peace with Rika, then they might have to work together to stop her, but who knows. Maybe she’ll be willing to go along with a happy ending this time.

There’s also still the possibility that this is setting up for some sort of new Umineko anime, which at this point might have it’s own original story that continues on from Gou’s story in addition to Umineko’s, so that might sort of serve as a sequel to Gou in it’s own way, depending on how they spin it. It still feels like a pipe dream, but considering how bluntly this episode threw out references to WTC lore, it’s possible that this is going to be some kind of multi-part cinematic universe thing that’s going to go all the way with tying everything together across multiple new anime projects.

Also, before I forget, we finally got the visuals for the new ED, and I was right about them choosing to wait until now to show it because it had spoilers, lol. They’re more minor than I expected, but it still spoils the chandelier scene, and I guess it also shows Featherine, but in a very subtle way.

Either way, I think the visuals they went with were extremely good. I’m not sure if I like the song itself more than the first ED song since they’re both great, but I definitely prefer the visuals for this one over the visuals for the first ED. The art for them is both great, and they’re done by the same artist so they’re not that different to begin with, but the visuals for this ED feel way more dynamic in terms of their composition and editing. The first ED’s visuals were basically just a series of still images with some slow panning effects, but this one had way more complex images that were designed to feel like 3D panoramas being spun about. So there’s just a whole lot more going on with this one, so I really liked it.

Anyway, now I’m gonna go back to being sad that Ciconia Phase 2 got delayed, lol.

[sparkliingdust]

“God’s righteous man pretending you could live without a war.” A different take on Steve’s vision in Age of Ultron.

I was re-watching Avengers: Age of Ultron, because why not, and I was thinking about Steve’s vision. A lot of people, even myself have pointed out that it obviously reflects his PTSD – seeing the flashes of photography as you hear bullets and bombs in the background, wine spilt on a soldier like he’s been shot, couples dancing deliriously as if their lives depended on it, a mix of a bitter and strange victory amidst all of the bloodshed.

After Steve stops walking through the chaos, he takes a second to survey everyone around him. For a second, he looks helpless because a soldier, like him, facing everything he did would certainly feel helpless. But I wonder if everyone around him are the reflection of people he wanted to help but couldn’t. Almost like what Steve Trevor says to Diana in Wonder Woman, “We can’t save everyone in this war,” or what Steve says in The Avengers, “When I went under, the world was at war. I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost.” His vision is almost like putting faces to the things that were lost and wanting to do something for them, but obviously isn’t able to.

But then, Peggy comes along, and she provides an ultimatum of sorts. Because I listened to Hayley’s voice a little too much, it’s interesting how every line changes with the tone she uses.“Are you ready for our dance?” is a bit nightmarish and her appearance mixes in well with Thor’s part of the vision. “The war’s over Steve.” is a sterner declaration. “We could go home. Imagine it.” is much more softer, like she’s beckoning him to choose their dance. 

Steve’s surprised to see her but even more conflicted. He’s gonna have to give up everything around her to dance. He’s not wearing his Captain America uniform - it’s just regular military garb. He sees himself as a regular soldier. (We also have to remember Steve drops his CA helmet when Wanda entrances him too.) So she’s not asking Captain America. She’s asking Steve. As soon as the choice between going home and dancing or fighting and staying a soldier intersects, both options disappear in a second. He turns away from Peggy for a split second to an empty hall - all of the horrors of war and the people that couldn’t be saved as well as Peggy are gone in an instant. He stands by himself. 

But then his mind goes back to dancing with Peggy. A fleeting second when he could’ve taken her into his arms. He still wants to go home, but he can’t. He’s stuck where he is. He’s stuck in this new world of “I thought I could throw myself back in, follow orders, serve. It’s just not the same” as well as Sam saying “You could do anything you want to. What makes you happy? / Home is home you know.” A soldier's return to normalcy is not typically possible because they're haunted by their greatest nightmares of never going home to their loved ones and building the life for themselves they should've had before war beckoned them to leave. 

When Steve tries to wrangle his new team of agents and Nat in The Winter Soldier, he says to Fury “Soldiers trust each other. That's what makes it an army. Not a bunch of guys running around shooting guns” as well as “I can't lead a mission when the people I'm leading have missions of their own.” This is counteractive to Steve fighting with the Avengers, where they follow each others’ lead. The team wouldn’t work without one of them and helps them to be in sync. But when he’s outside of the Avengers, led to do Fury’s bidding, he’s not a soldier like he was with the Howling Commandos where they followed his command but it was a team effort, and everyone was on the same page. There was no compartmentalization or Steve having to lie to himself about who he is or who he is taking orders from in order to serve. Fighting for him now isn’t the same as it was then. As soon as the Avengers disassemble, so does the lasting remnants of Steve’s self-image as a soldier and as Captain America. Fighting, no matter who it’s with, is not going to be the same after that.

Captain America: Civil War reinforces this even more when Steve tells Tony he wishes he couldn’t help others, but then admits he doesn’t – because as Ultron said, who would Captain America be without a war? When Steve crashes the Red Skull’s plane into the ice, he’s drawing the line between sacrificing himself/being selfless, and choosing his own personal happiness. In fact, it’s the hope of going home and dancing with Peggy that gives him something to look forward to as he accepts plunging towards his death, or what they assume will be his death. Similarly, in the rest of the movies, Steve’s life comes down to personal happiness or being a soldier, but so much of what would give him a life outside of Avenging is non-existent – a family, home, stability. So he keeps making the sacrifice play and helping others.

I think, like a lot of fans have pointed out, Endgame was about Steve realizing he can finally put his personal happiness above fighting and serving. Steve is ultimately an allegory for all the men and women who served believing selflessness and sacrifice would save others and make the world a better place….only to wake up from the dream about a hopeful and stable future to realize that corruption and horrors of humankind still exists. His faith ultimately becomes, not about serving or defying the government, but about individuals who will step up to the plate with him. At the end of Age of Ultron, he says he’s home as you hear military chants in the background but the compound isn’t a military camp, it’s not Camp Lehigh. He’s thinking of it as Camp Lehigh and still thinks of himself as a soldier first. At the end of Civil War, he and the disavowed Avengers fight in the shadows. He’s still a soldier. A big part of Steve’s letter to Tony says “We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine. I've been on my own since I was 18. I never really fit in anywhere, even in the army. My faith's in people, I guess. Individuals. And I'm happy to say that, for the most part, they haven't let me down. So I can’t let them down either.” When you think of the people who gave Steve faith you have to think of the old and new worlds combined - Dr. Erskine, Peggy, Bucky, the Howling Commandos as well as Sam, T’Challa, Bucky, Nat, etc. His service to the world and everyone he would give his life for is what pushes him to stand alone against Thanos. But he must’ve also realized when the Portals opened, his faith in people still pays off. There were more than enough Avengers to protect Earth if he decided to leave it. He’s still a soldier, but he’s not the only one. If he can go home, why shouldn’t he - especially with the blessing that Sam, Bucky, Nat, Tony, etc. would want him to take advantage of.

It’s the second chance that ultimately matters in Endgame, that Steve couldn’t have possibly had before. He started to give himself permission to draw a line between fighting and living – probably the first time after he wanted to finish what Nat started with the Infinity Stones, and the second after Tony died to give everyone a second chance.  Steve, a soldier who survived two wars against robots and three world wars, finally goes home and feels safe in the arms of the woman who loved him before he became ‘the greatest soldier in history.’ He doesn’t have to pretend to live without a war. He can just live and face any upcoming wars as they come instead of depending on them for self-worth.

(I know people will be pissed about that last section because that opens up a can of worms about alternative timelines, what happens to Peggy’s career, etc. but please don’t reply or reblog/comment with that type of stuff – it’s been talked to death and nobody will ever agree on everything.)

[crossdressingdeath]

Just a reminder that if you have time and feel like writing that post you mentioned about how you would rewrite each DBH character’s story given unlimited runtime, it would be very cool to read.

Ah, right. Quick note that I don’t know much about Connor’s machine path or the violent revolution path or any ending to Kara’s story that doesn’t involve successfully getting past the border guard so I will be skimming those parts of the story. Also it’s going to be pretty vague because Details Are Hard. (Also I’m tired so this is probably not going to make a lot of sense or be in any sort of reasonable order.)

Okay, general points first. I feel like the three stories should intersect more, even if only in a “seeing the aftermath of their actions” way; maybe Connor and Hank are sent to investigate Zlatko’s death after Kara and Alice have gone through, for example. You’ve got three protagonists active at the same time and they barely interact! Come on, give us a little conversation. And of course the public opinion system needs to be used a lot more; it only effects two things in the whole game, come on! It doesn’t impact any of the major human characters, and that just feels wrong. I’ll. come back to this in Connor’s section because I feel like it would be best used there (since there really aren’t many humans in the story outside of his parts and the ones who do show up have reasons to side with or against the deviants outside of public opinion), but if nothing else I’d like it to lead to us seeing humans demonstrating/fighting with the deviants. Also I would like to see at least a few examples of androids deviating peacefully, like Connor does; I don’t believe for a second that there weren’t androids who deviated in a place where they were surrounded by people who were with them all the way.

So, first off: Markus. Mostly I’d just want to extend the timeline a bit and add some more Jericho missions, because oh my god you cannot join an organization of people with no weapons or resources of any kind, become their leader, and successfully change society in less than a week. So just... more evidence of Markus slowly winning Jericho over and helping them gather supplies and resources. Show him helping them set up actual supply lines! Rescuing deviants! Winning over allies! Including human ones, because the idea that there isn’t a single human working with Jericho when pretty much every major human character is in fact on the deviants’ side is... dumb. Also, individual missions with North, Simon and Josh; it would be good to spend more time getting to know them, since as it stands it’s... kind of hard to care all that much when they die. I might also add short scenes where we see Connor’s targets arriving in Jericho if they survive, just to add more connection between the stories (and also I like them and wish more had been done with them). And make Simon a love interest (because this is a choice-heavy game and so I should be able to make the choice to play exclusively as gay androids if that’s what I want), and make it easier to avoid having a love interest; let’s not create a situation where entering into a relationship less than a week after gaining emotions is all but mandatory, hm? Also, maybe Markus should meet Kamski one time? As the guy fulfilling Kamski’s deviant-related plans? Come on, one meeting. Maybe clear up Kamski’s motivations just a bit. And, crossing over with Connor’s story, maybe a bit of stuff them both being part of the RK line and how it went from a caregiver android to a detective android. Oh, and change it so that you’re not guaranteed to have fatalities on the violence path, because insisting that only pacifism can possibly end happily when fighting against oppression seems kind of... not great, all things considered. Frankly given the androids’ combat abilities it kind of makes more sense to have unavoidable deaths on the pacifism route, or alternately to have different unavoidable deaths on both routes, but being admittedly a softy I am very happy to have it be possible to have no deaths on either route. I don’t necessarily expect it to be easy to save everyone (it might make sense to add in missions where you make preparations to increase their odds of survival, or do something similar to Simon’s possible death in Stratford Tower where one of other protagonists’ actions has an effect on the sequence of events), but it would be nice to have it be possible.

On to Kara; I mentioned this before, but instead of her story being a cute-but-boring game-long escort mission where you have to protect a small child who is entirely useless I’d give her a story about uncovering how deviancy works and the history of it. Whether it really is just a glitch or something more, what rA9 actually is... all that fun stuff. No idea how that would actually go, but it would be more interesting than just running to Canada. If nothing else we could get more backstory on how the hell Kamski managed to create androids who are so realistic that that they can develop emotions. And if it is just a glitch there can be more discussion on whether or not simulated emotions are as real as actual emotions, because the fact that they brought up the concept of deviant emotions being a simulation and did nothing with it just feels like a massive waste of potential. And I’d add some more ways to live; from what I understand it’s really hard to keep everyone alive unless you maybe possibly condemn a couple and their baby to freeze to death or get killed by a revolution and keep things peaceful in Markus’s story. While I do want more interaction between the stories, I don’t think your choices in one story should automatically lock you out of getting the best ending for one of the other stories (with the obvious exception of the situations where that actually makes sense; can’t get the best ending for Connor and Hank if Markus nukes the city while Hank is in it, for example). At least with Kara; her story is so separate from Markus and Connor’s that it doesn’t make sense for Markus’s actions to lock her out of escaping to Canada! Also, it adds nothing to the story to have Alice turn out to be an android and robs Kara of her close human companion who has a massive impact on her life; yeah, there’s Rose, but she’s in... what, two missions? That’s less than Karl, who has the additional story impact of having been Markus’s father figure for (if memory serves) years before the start of the game, so there’s no dynamic to build; it’s already there. Keep Alice human! It’s a completely pointless twist! ...I recognise that this does mean that Connor can get a young human girl killed by succeeding in stopping a deviant, but it wouldn’t take much to rewrite his run-in with Kara to not involve a chase across a freeway. Again, I’ll come back to this when I get to Connor’s section. But imagine the impact of things like Todd’s abuse and Zlatko’s section if Alice is human; showing that these villains don’t necessarily see androids and humans as different, but in a negative sense this time. Also, I’d like a sort of prologue to her story featuring the incident that got her broken and led to her being repaired at the start of the game.

And of course now we get to Connor, the best boy who deserves the best. I’ll start with the things I said I’d come back to. First, the public opinion system: imagine if Hank’s thoughts on deviants (instead of just changing for no apparent reason beyond a handful of meetings with people who generally kick his ass and then run away or die with at most a bit of conversation) could be altered by public opinion of the deviants’ cause. Even better; by that and his relationship with Connor. Picture a situation where Hank doesn’t trust or like deviants at all due to them running around killing people but still helps them because he wants to help Connor. It would just be very good. Also, since Connor is the only character hanging out exclusively with humans (what with the station full of cops he’s working out of): imagine more missions taking place (or at least starting) in the precinct where Connor can interact with his sort of coworkers and how the conversations with them could change as time passes and public opinion changes. Also again the possibility for a conflict between dislike of deviants and fondness for this particular android, just for fun. And, also just for fun, maybe a bit of character development for Gavin where he’s still a dick (because honestly he’d be less fun if he wasn’t) but if public opinion is high he’ll pretend not to notice Connor sneaking into the evidence locker and fucking around in there for a while when he really definitely isn’t supposed to. Come on, if you’re going to have heroic cops you could at least do something with more than one of them. Also, more Captain Fowler. All we know is that he and Hank are old friends and he’s totally okay with Hank beating the shit out of Perkins; all in all I’d like to know a bit more about him. And with Kara and Alice: the freeway chase works, sure, but I would like the option for Connor to at least try to save Alice; by this point Connor is already showing signs of software instability, if we change it so that Alice is human him putting the mission aside to save a little girl makes sense and gives us a good sense of who he is as a person, and it fits neatly into steadily escalating refusal to complete his mission that eventually reaches full deviancy. If I’m remembering the order right it’s Ortiz’s android (who you can’t let escape), Kara (who you can let go based on Hank’s orders), Rupert (who you can let go to save Hank), the Tracis (who you can let go just because), and then Markus (who you have to deviate to spare); changing it so that you can let Kara go to save a little girl she’s protecting fits the escalation (you could easily argue that Connor has something in his programming about saving human lives, and as one of his earlier missions shows him being specifically trying to save a little girl it makes a great deal of sense that he wants to protect Alice. Also like. Imagine having the option to push Alice out of the way of a car at the cost of Connor’s life. It would be very effective, I think. Also it’s another opportunity to make Hank like you because he would for sure react well to you saving a small child from getting hit by a car.

Alright, moving on; I’d like some more assignments with Connor before he joins the DPD and gets partnered with Hank, showing him actually earning the title of deviant hunter? Also that way we aren’t stuck with the conclusion that CyberLife decided to send their prototype out into the world to partner with the police in investigations after one mission, which said prototype may well have failed to complete. And we could show more of Connor struggling with what he’s being ordered to do but having no way of stopping himself due to a complete lack of any interaction with anyone with functioning emotions, except for maybe CyberLife technicians. Actually, I’d also like to see what it’s like for Connor going to CyberLife for repairs and debriefing and such, because I doubt it’s fun. Other than that... well, Connor’s story is pretty good all things considered, but there are a couple tweaks I’d make. Aside from the previously mentioned exploration of what it means that he and Markus are both part of the RK line, I’d maybe cap off the added early story for him by adding him being hesitant about turning in Ortiz’s android if you’ve been pushing for more software instability and only going through with it when it becomes clear that if he doesn’t all he’ll achieve is getting himself caught not doing his job, which wouldn’t be a good look. I feel like the most effective way to do it might be if it’s not under player control; if his software instability is high enough he’ll be uncertain about it, and if he’s not he won’t be. And if he is uncertain you could add some options to the interrogation where he can win trust by telling the android he was scared of what would happen to him if he didn’t turn him in (followed by him immediately insisting that that was just a cunning ploy and in no way true when pressed on the matter if he did it out loud and not through an interface). Also: why wasn’t it Hank who pushed Connor to deviate. You spend Connor’s entire story with Hank! He is Connor’s tie to humanity! Why does Connor deviate in one conversation with a complete stranger and not his dearest friend! I desperately want a situation where Hank learns too much or something and Connor is ordered to shoot him and you can either go through with it (killing Hank) or deviate and shoot whoever gave you the order instead. Also then there could be hugs. And maybe forehead kisses because please. Connor deserves a little smooch honestly. He’s earned it. And then if your relationship with Hank is low enough that he’s already dead at this point you can have the conversation with Markus. Also, I would love an addition to the machine path where if you have a high relationship with Hank you can choose to deviate before fighting him (instead of just walking away despite that preventing Connor from finishing his mission quickly) or to deviate after fighting him when he’s got Hank hanging off the edge of the roof. Think about it; a moment of horrified realisation where Connor’s software is finally pushed to the breaking point by having to choose whether or not he will kill his only friend for the sake of his mission where he’s left desperately asking himself what the hell he’s doing? Like, if nothing else it would hammer home the fact that at this point Connor is choosing to remain a machine (assuming his software instability is high enough) to have to choose it twice even at the cost of Hank’s life. Actually three times, because the initial choice would be before this point. Also going that way it would be possible to play through the machine path up to the fight with Hank and still net Connor’s best ending, which would just be nice I think. Also, more hugs. Hugs are good.

...Okay, that’s all I can think of for now. Also it’s uh. almost 1 AM here and sleep is in fact important. So I’m going to wrap up here; maybe I’ll make some more posts later if I think of anything else.

[princessofgayskull]

ik this isn't she-ra related but ur main blogs asks aren't open 😳😳 n e wey, thoughts on folklore?? i wanna hear ur favorite songs, favorite lines, any parts that gave u chills, all the good stuff

Someone asking me about Taylor Swift? Someone asking my thoughts about Taylor Swift?! Someone actually wanting to hear what I have to say about Taylor Swift? I feel like Entrapta back in season one when she was asked about her theories about Etheria and was she excited to show everyone her model.

Before I dive in, I want to apologize that it took me so long to get this to ask. I’ve been swamped trying to keep up with summer classes and I wrote several versions of this post only to have tumblr delete it and make me start over before I had the bright idea to write it on a google doc first so I didn’t lose all my work and that is the draft you are reading now! But, for authenticity reasons, after I saw this ask I scrambled to write what I could remember from my first album listen that took place at exactly 11pm (after I watched and cried to the cardigan video, of course). Here there are in note form:

I cannot believe that in the darkest timeline that Taylor Alison Swift dropped a surprise album with sixteen songs in an entirely different genre (the heart attack I had when I learned folklore was a genre shift; I cannot believe I doubted the song writing legend herself). The album has been out for a week and I kid you not the only reason I know I didn’t make it up or dream it is because this album is far more beautiful than I could’ve ever come up with. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve listened to it. Everything about the album- the lyrics, the topics, the genre, the production- speaks my language fluently. Even during the first listen I felt that I had somehow known these songs my whole life despite their raw newness. 

This might read weird, but I think one of my favorite aspects about the album is how voyeuristic it feels to listen to. I don't mean sexually, but rather the way it feels like I don't have full permission to be looking at the lives of the people she is singing about. It's as if Taylor said, "I know you want to peek behind the curtain and see all my flaws" so she dives into these characters who are very flawed people and is so raw and honest as she takes their place saying almost "I will treat them like you treat me." 

Yet at the same time, it's her most grounded album. There's something so shiny about pop music (I'm not knocking it, I love pop music, life's too short not to) but this is as if Taylor's pop mentality was left out in the rain and rusted. There's something so real and familiar about it. Like you can reach out and hold it in your hand.

It's venturing too far into the forest and stepping into another dimension and living in it for sixteen songs. A dimension of mysticism, nihilism, magic, and mistakes.

Here is my track-by-track list of favorite things/ chill moments/ awestruck moments.

the 1- WHAT AN ALBUM OPENER. This song rips my heart out and stomps on it. "You know the greatest loves of all time are over now" Why does lyric make me wanna break down and have the most cathartic cry? The defeated acceptance of it all is gut wrenching. "In my defense I have none" Taylor's turn it phrase on this album is brilliant and I aspire to this level of word cleverness.

cardigan- the slow buildup of this song pure magic. If you don't scream "Cause I knew everything when I was young!" at the top of your lungs when listening to this song, are you really a cardigan stan?

the last great american dynasty- F. Scott Fitzgerald who? No, I only know Miss Taylor Swift. Seriously, this song isn't even four minutes long and it's better than any novel written about the American dream. Also, "and then it was bought by me" Taylor you cannot just drop that bombshell on me without letting me get emotionally prepared.

exile ft. bon iver- a song crafted in heaven. Somehow it makes me both depressed and provides me serotonin. I can't get enough of the lyric "I'm not your problem anymore/ so who am I offending?" FUCK THAT'S GOOD. THE SONG IS SO GOOD. SMASH THAT REPEAT BUTTON. I could drown in this song.

my tears ricochet- by far my favorite on the album, and my favorite number five track. I don’t think there’s another Taylor Swift I relate to as much as this one. This hits a very, very close to a personal place for me. Right at the center of an open wound. And god, the build up. It just makes the emotional experience that more poignant. “And I can anywhere I want, anywhere I want, just not home.” I got chills the first time I listened to that lyric, and it brings tears to my eyes. Needless to say, I’ve had some good cries to this song.

mirrorball- this track is about as cutting as they come. The Imposter Syndrome anthem. It’s the “everything that comes from me has to be perfect, to make up for the fact that it’s from me” song. It’s the sense that nothing you do is worth doing if there’s no audience, yet the audience is the biggest threat. “I’ve never been a natural, I’ll do is try, try, try.” Yeah. There’s a reason this is the TS album I relate to the most. 

seven- I keep saying these songs are so beautiful, but god, this one. Her vocals, the lyrics; in my opinion, a defining moment on the album. The driving home of the point that stories are important because we tell them. It’s a story plagued by a narrator who’s too young to understand and can only put the pieces together as she’s looking back. “And I’ve been meaning to tell you/ I think your house is haunted/ your dad is always mad and that must be why.” I almost can’t handle that. The loss of childhood innocence and the longing for it in just three minutes and twenty eight seconds.

august- “REMEMBER WHEN I PULLED UP AND SAID GET IN THE CAR AND THEN CANCELED MY PLANS JUST IN CASE YOU CALL/ BACK WHEN I WAS LIVING FOR THE HOPE OF IT ALL, FOR THE HOPE OF IT ALL/ MEET ME BEHIND THE MALL!” currently trying to learn this on guitar, which is fun because I’m not much of a singer. Also, I think that Betty and this girl should ditch James and date each other, if you’re of the interpretation that James is a cishet guy.

this is me trying- So I know that this is a song about a woman struggling with an alcohol addiction, but I really relate to this song because it just feels so much like my struggle with mental illnesses and the way my potential died so quickly because of that struggle. “I was so ahead of the curve/ the curve became a sphere/ fell behind all my classmates/ and I ended up here.” yep. that’s about it.

illicit affairs- again, the build up. “Don’t call me kid! Don’t call me baby! Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me!” Gotta scream that everytime. Also are we going to talk about the lines “Take the words for what they are/ a dwindling mercurial high/ a drug that only worked/ the first few hundred times” ? because I cannot stop thinking about it, or any of the lyrics for that matter.

invisible string-Joe Alwyn, do you know one of the most beautiful songs in history was written about you? I love the instrumental on this one. Also, it’s just flat out brilliant. “Bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to L.A” Holy shit.  Also, “cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart/ now I send their babies presents.” You know what that is? Growth.

mad woman-while my tears ricochet takes the spot as my favorite, this is the Taylor Swift song I claim above all others. “Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy/ what about that?” This song is at the intersection, however coincidental, of my identity as a mentally ill woman. It’s also extreme vindication the way she calls out women acting as double agents of the patriarchy. A scathing criticism of patriarchal socialization and the way women are punished for reacting to anything. 

epiphany- listen to this song after watching the news. lay down. assume fetal position. try not to cry. fail and sob. wash, rinse, repeat.

betty- the old taylor can’t come to the phone right now cause she’s chewing out james for cheating on betty. *wink* However, she will write a folksy banger that’s very old taylor where James takes accountability for their mistake. I love the wlw interpretations of the love triangle songs, and I also can totally see James as a he/him lesbian. 

peace-the disembodied feel of this song is so unique to Taylor’s sound but I totally dig it! This is the album of a woman in her thirties, and I hope it paves the way to more women being able to stay within the industry getting older. There’s a maturity here that is the result of having created so many albums and having found her voice.

hoax- Time to go scream off the edge of a cliff in solidarity. An open closer that rivals the defeatism of the opener, a slow descent into madness that has followed a trauma. “You know it still hurts from scars from when they pulled me apart/ but what you did was just as dark/ darling, this was just hard/ as when they pulled me apart.” Literally no words. I’m always left speechless. 

If you’ve ever thought “I like Taylor but I don’t like her music because she did country and now does pop” this is the album you need to take a chance on. I can only dream of one day possessing Taylor’s ability to tell stories and this album will stick with you in all the best ways. The reason Taylor Swift can genre jump the way she does so seamlessly is because of her unrivaled strength as a songwriter. Stream folklore on spotify!!!!!!!!!

This is probably much more than you asked for, but I hope it satisfies! Thank you for letting me gush about Taylor and this album!!!!!! Sorry it took me so freaking long! If you have thoughts, I would LOVE to hear them!