#they're an animal we have no idea what moral compass they have if any

[the-golden-ghost]

I'm still scared of dolphins honestly

[klerothesnowman]

The Sith are Nazis and it's never been subtle

This one ended up being really long. I spliced in some images when I could to break it up easier.

One of the things that causes the most friction in the world is the idea of morality. I know, that's the most water is wet statement ever said but I think people really miss just how much the nuance of morality goes over people's heads. Subjective, objective, relative, from a baseline we understand that there are different types of morality but I don't think people really grasp how much a persons personal morality can be wildly different to any another given person's, especially among people who share spaces like fandoms. Morality is shaped by personal experiences, there are personal experiences that are 99% ubiquitous among humanity like "Pain" that form the basis of everyone's moral compass, then there are the major cultural touchstones that no matter what your morality will be affected by, religion, nation, race, all that what have you. Everyone has an opinion on the Christian Church and that opinion is informed by your morals. People who have been abused by members of a church will have a very different view of the morality of a religion compared to people who have been raised Catholic compared to someone who was raised agnostic compared to someone raised agnostic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer and is also rich and so on and so forth you get it.

Morality is not a binary thing, and it's not a nine point grid either D&D, it's more like one of those circle charts that Jojo Stands get ranked on. You know the ones that always seem to show up in anime? I don't know what they're called. Except instead of a circle it's more like a ball, and everyone has this horrible looking 3D balls covered in bumps and spikes and dips and holes.

Why am I opening this ramble with a ramble about morality and religion? Because I'm on tumblr. When I decide I want to ramble about something I read the tags and see what the vibe is, see what people are saying about things. I'm not part of the "Fandom", I don't know the discourses, I see that there's Anti-Jedi and Pro-Jedi and "Stanikins" and all of these different labels and battlelines, and then I read about how people on either side are feeling attacked and harassed by people on other sides. I have no idea how real this is, I have no idea what kind of minefield I'm about to walk into. I'm just rambling about my thoughts and feelings about Star Wars because I like it and I'm a little extra aware that this one is going to ruffle feathers.

Because people are fuckin' worked up about Jedi. There are people who are making it part of their identity that they are anti-Jedi. And it's been happening for years, decades even. Because the experiences and trends of nerd culture has been pushing against systems and religion since I was a baby. Nerds being obnoxious atheists and smugly telling people "God isn't real" was basically the norm when I was a teenager, and before I was born nerds were dealing with being called evil and satanic. Nothing I'm rambling about here is new, in fact using D&D as a touchstone I think the current trend for nerddom's interaction with religion is ambivalence, despite faith and divine power being such an important part of D&D, there's basically zero interaction with divinities in 5e, and when there is it's hostile and has an asterisk against it. I'll do a ramble about this one day too

But the Jedi stuff is interesting to me, because there's a lot of directions people come at for it.

There's people who argue against just Jedi because they're a religion. There's people who argue the Jedi are slavers or kidnap children. People think Jedi are super beings who lord over everyone with their power. People think the Jedi force people to suppress their emotions and personhood. There are people who think Jedi are moral supremacists who silence and kill anyone who thinks about the Force differently from them.

I have some "Pro-Jedi" arguments to make but I'll save them for a different ramble, because this one's supposed to be about another group of people.

The people who think, from their point of view, the Jedi are evil.

The reason I rambled on so much about people being Anti-Jedi is because very often, these people end up being Pro-Sith. It's an obvious leap, if the Jedi are the problem then the people opposed to the Jedi might have the right idea. If your issue with the Jedi is that they disallow "Attachment", then here's the Sith who are all about Attachment. If your issue with the Jedi is that they suppress their emotions then here's the Sith who are always tapping into their emotions. There is an immediate appeal there.

Then there's the Sith Code, let's give it a read.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.

Pretty sweet, Passion is pretty positive, breaking chains and freedom. I can get behind that. The rest of Sith Philosophy is pretty swell too. It's about improvement through conflict. Your struggles make you stronger, makes you better, removes your shackles and lets you be free, but also recognizes that you will have to do whatever it takes to do so. The Jedi seek to wipe out the dark knowledge you attain, so you must sequester yourself and hide when you must hide, and strike when you must strike. It's stance could be summed up as something like... "The sacred mission of a Sith is to preserve the Sith Order's most valuable elements as you raise yourself to a dominant position, and all who do not are chaff."

There are people who are really into this. Like, really, really into this. They talk about how they apply this mentality to their real life. They describe themselves as Sith. There are also people who are only kind of into this, they think about positive Sith characters and make headcanons about the good things Sith do.

I need to stress, for those people, that what I am about to say is not hyperbole. I will provide sources.

The Sith Code and Philosophy is Nazi Propaganda. It is literally lifted from Mein Kampf. That quote I used to sum it up is a paraphrased quote from Britannica.com. That's Hitler.

The Sith Code was invented to be in opposition to the Jedi Code, its purpose is to twist a preexisting code to make you think the alternative isn't so bad and it uses codephrases to do so.

Passion, Strength, Victory, Chains, being Free, these are words that we have presubscribed meanings for, but what do they mean in the Sith Code? What IS Passion? What IS Strength? What IS Victory?

Most people I interact with see Passion as Love, passionate, exciting love, the exact thing the Jedi reject. But that can't be it, where's Palpatine's love? Where's Maul's? Where's Vader's?

Passion is obsession. The kind of obsession that will lead you to burning everything down if you don't get what you want. It's not letting anything stand between you and your goal, even if that thing is your goal itself.

Let's break the code down here.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. We start with the obvious twist on the Jedi code, an immediate refutation of the Jedi's first line. It stands in opposition.

Through passion, I gain strength. We've already done Passion, it's a nice little dressing up of "Being a raging psycho"

Through strength, I gain power. Strength is often intermingled with power, but it's often spoken of interchangably with being able to set aside morals. The Sith isn't an amoral monster who just killed a bunch of kids, he's just STRONG enough to do what needed to be done

Through power, I gain victory. Power isn't a code word. Power is Power, Power is what it's all about and there's no hiding it. In the Sith way the only thing that matters is that you are powerful enough to kill your rivals and stand on top.

Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me. I think the notions of breaking chains and being Free is the cleverest part of the Sith Code's propaganda kit. It's still seeing use in The Acolyte and it's still convincing people that the Sith are right, even when the guy who's calling for freedom mercs a child then and there.

The Sith are not misunderstood heroes. They're Nazis. They're facist might makes right would be autocrats trying to convince you they're right so you'll validate them and prove them right.

Sith Philosophy is self defeating. Following the Sith Code means you need to define yourself on your conflict, meaning your conflict can never end. For all its claims of being free and breaking chains you can never be free of what drives you or you will lose the strength it gives you. To break your chains you need to hold onto them tight, and you can never let them go.

[hoelandah]

This will probably be my most controversial Homelander take:

As a black woman, TV!Homelander is accidentally the most "black man" coded white male character I've ever seen.

My reasoning and analysis is under the cut.

Let me preface that I'm aware that the subtext and mirroring I'm about to explain is likely not intentional in any way, shape, or form. Take this for the speculation and art analysis it is. This is also not Homelander apologia.

Warning: includes discussion of racial violence and SA.

Okay so. I'm one of those people who thinks that the Trump comparisons aren't correct. It's dead wrong. It's the writers and marketing clumsily trying to advertise the show by lampooning the conservatives. So, just leave the Homelander = Trump shit at the door.

1. His Dehumanization

It's no secret how much violence and dehumanization minorities go through. I'm going to elaborate on the specific markers of black male dehumanization.

Throughout European history the depiction and treatment of the black man has been "animal" and all the connotations that come with that word.

Violent. Stud. Low intelligence.

Black men were literally seen as not human. The idea of a black man having personhood would have genuinely been laughable to consider to whites in earlier history. They were no better than bulls.

Made to work. Made to breed. Made to be owned.

Homelander, like black men, never got the keys to "humanity." He was dehumanized before he was even a thought. A product of a "bull" that was so called "good stock" (Soldier Boy).

He was raised in isolation and abused by his owners to be ready to make his owners profit. His body was never his own. He's an asset. A product.

2. False/Conditional Privilege

Cut now to him debuting as The Homelander. Homelander is shallowly privileged by his looks and celebrity the same way black performers, particularly athletes, are: as long as they do the job. "Shut up and play, boy."

These teams are usually "owned" by rich white men. The black athlete should never do anything else but what they're paid to do. If they just do their job they get the conditional keys to "white male privilege." But only if they perform and never cause a stir or "take a knee."

During this time Homelander is groomed, intentionally and unintentionally, into what he is by everyone around him who only see him as a tool. And Homelander tries to always be "valued" in the public because what else does he have?

3. The Predatory Black Man Trope and "Jeromes" and "Tyrones"

Note: this section is likely reaching a little, take it with lots of salt.

This next section discusses the whole Becca thing.

Let the record show that I know and understand that Becca was raped. Full stop. I have some thoughts as to how much Homelander is aware of the gravity of what he did since he's a giant toddler whose moral compass has been made to point straight down to hell but it's obvious he does not care about how much he hurt her.

The show just puts some weird ass ambiguity around the whole incident. They don't really go into the specifics, we can only guess his motivations based on other women he's "been" with. And considering he legit didn't understand that Stillwell felt nothing but fear for him and he has no understanding of relationships or boundaries and his love for dominance due to deep insecurity he could totally think, in his fucked up mind, that he didn't do anything wrong.

"She's just a human, who cares? They use me, I use them." - Homelander, probably.

I just want it clear that I'm not exonerating him or minimizing Becca's hurt in this next section.

Anyway, this Becca situation loosely mirrors the "black men, "Jeromes" or "Tyrones" as some racists call them, are predators that prey on or seduce white women and give their husbands mixed babies" stereotype. And Butcher's hatred for Homelander never seems to be for Becca's sake. It's selfish, singly focused and possibly includes guilt and a sore ego.

It's also bigoted.

Superpowers or not supes are kind of minority coded like the X-Men. Think of them as an intersectional category like minorities that are rich or people with disabilities that need less support than people with more severe disabilities. Like sure, they'll like fair better in the current system but

The rich minority is still a minority.

The disabled person with less support needs is still disabled.

Vought (the elites) more or less run supes and they are assets. Many of them were injected with compound V as children by greedy or hopeful parents coerced by capitalism so it's a systemic issue.

It speaks to Butcher's character that Becca ran to Vought of all places and didn't tell her husband. He hates supes that much.

Homelander is then kept from that son like black men have been separated from their families, even after black men were no longer forcibly taken as away as slaves they were forced away by welfare policy that would only support black women if they weren't married. It was more feasible to never marry your man and tell welfare you were single because he didn't earn enough to take care of the family.

And likely Vought would have continued the cycle of violence with Ryan if Homelander had not found him. Vought wasn't gonna keep Becca and Ryan safe for free, I assure you.

4. He'll Never Be A "Real Man"

Homelander also occupies that "never quite a man" category that black men are put in. They're painted as dangerous and virile. They're "men" when they're a threat. Yet also belittled and never afforded real manhood. A "boy" when they're being looked down on. "Boy" is a touchy word for black men for this reason. It has as much history and hurt to them as more obvious slurs.

Homelander is lied to and belittled by Vought ofc. He's denied true manhood like them but is made to perform it to a cartoonish degree that I would argue he's actually not happy with. If Vought exists, he will never be free and will never live in genuine peace because his crimes will follow him. Ruling the world would be his only option and that would only "fix" so much.

They made sure he has no real tools or skills to actually run things effectively (he's confused during board meetings and doesn't understand shit). He was purposely made too intellectually incurious and emotionally stunted to truly learn (he deflects and gets angry). He's actually surprisingly inept in some ways. His only skill is that he's scary and dangerous.

High intelligence and manipulation are usually put down as his skills and like sure, he's far from dumb and he's really sneaky. Everyone around him is the most morally fucked liar to ever exist...but I'm gonna be real: his manipulation is not that impressive. Most of it is just intimidation. Folks don't wanna get lasered.

So, he substitutes this denied agency and lack applied skills with hyper violence, materialism, flashiness, cockiness, etc.

A "thug," basically.

"Thugs" are usually just young black men clamoring for real manhood in a world that will never give it to them so they sometimes turn to these things in disenfranchisement. Sometimes they become cops for the same reason.

5. "The Boys," as A Phrase Makes Me Think of Lynch Mobs

This one is pretty subjective so take it with salt as well.

"The boys" is harkening to calling for one's group. And due to Butcher's hard on for killing supes because of his hatred with his group it kind of puts me in the mind of posses of white men that would be informally gathered (sometimes even aided by law enforcement) to enact "retribution" on black men and boys "who have stepped out of line." See Emmet Till.

"Round up the boys, we're gonna hang us a..."

You know the rest.

If Butcher was fully depicted as the morally fucked protag he is in the comics this wouldn't bother me, thematically it would fit. But they hedge on Butcher's morality a little, making him less of a genuine bastard and more like someone with lapsed judgment or faculties who's the "lesser of two evils" so it's just uncomfortable.

Anyway, that's it. I'm just fascinated by the unintentional mirroring. This is likely why, even though Homelander is who he is, women, queer people and POC have a complex love/fascination for him. The only thing that makes him so hard to sympathize with is that his crimes are particularly abhorrent and physically he's more powerful than anyone else and a genuine threat.

I've never been so afraid to hit "Post" in my LIFE.

[pissthena]

Crowley is not a demon

My favourite headcanon is that Crowley isn't a demon, as mentioned in my character post. So I'll expand it a bit and explain more! (Feel free to correct me or add on!) @bending-sickle, a tag just for you <3 I hope it explains it in a way that makes sense haha

I really love the idea of Crowley not being a demon. Is it because I love my favourite characters being special and cool? Yes. But there's a bit more to it, since I always thought he was too odd as a demon. Too much didn't add up. Crowley hates Hell, Demons and everything near that, hate's being there kind of hates talking about it. He almost made Hell less Hell. We are all aware of this and it doesn't necessarily mean he's not a demon, but I like to also bring it into consideration. Reasons he could be something else: -He survives everything, the little cockroach. He even faked being burnt up by Castiel and I have no clue how they visually accomplished that, but it might just have been angel powers. -His smoke is red as the only demon where it isn't black. Even Knights of Hell have black smoke, he's a special baby. -He has more compassion than any other demon (yet he's still not a good guy. Morally dark grey lol). I know the human blood did it to him, but even before that, I think he had just a bit in it. -He can possess animals. I may be wrong, but I believe he's the only one we ever see do that. I think if demons could generally do it, they'd use it to spy way more. But demons are dumb. Which brings me to: -He's not stupid. Not all demons are idiots, but man, most of them are by far. I think Crowley is the smartest (which is why he took over Hell). This is a weak argument, but I like it along with the rest. -When he possessed Linda Tran he used his own voice in her body. Which made me realize two things: 1. I don't think we've seen other demons do so, but I'm very unsure about that. We might have. 2. The voice we hear Crowley use must be Fergus' voice and not his vessels. Unless he can somehow carry over his vessel's voice to another vessel. -Mark Sheppard also had this theory, but apparently people disregard it after we saw his demon eyes. I HAVEN'T LET IT GO. ME AND MARK ARE RIGHT.

Now, what might Crowley be if not a demon? I have no fucking clue. Someone who's real good at mythology might have some cool ideas, but I'm at a loss. The closest I had was a Kitsune, as they're known for sometimes taking form as humans and tricking people. They think highly of themselves and are very powerful. But we do have Kitsunes in the show (I hate how dirty they did them...) and a lot doesn't really fit. So please, if anyone has ideas!

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

do you have any specific theory regarding kunikida’s backstory? i honestly never thought about how he might have met fukuzawa when he was much younger, always assumed it happened after he dropped out of uni, but this makes much more sense tbh. i’m huge on the idea of him coming from a military family (would explain how he could’ve met fukuzawa and why on earth he knows how to operate every fire arm in existence)

I have so many ideas about Kunikida! The idea of him coming from a military family is definitely interesting - it fits with the author irl and would explain a lot of his mannerisms. I'm partial to him having an estranged relationship with his family in general, because it's mentioned in Kunikida and Katai's Magnificent Days that eventually Kunikida grew to spend more time around Katai than he did his family, and because most of the ADA don't really seem to have family outside each other. No one they worry about being pulled into things when they're accused of terrorism or targeted by the Port Mafia back when they were still antagonists, etc. With Ranpo, Atsushi, and Kyouka we know their parents are dead; with Yosano, Dazai, the Tanizakis and Kenji we know that even if they're not dead they're not really involved in their kids lives enough to matter much at all. I'm inclined to think Kunikida's are similar; we know they exist, but I don't think he has a good relationship with them, if they're still alive (they could have died after he met Katai).

In terms of his past, I definitely think Kunikida had a violent past. Man is way too down with casually throttling people - between that and his extensive knowledge of weapons, as well as how good he is hand to hand combat wise, it makes me think he must have had a tumulus past.

I saw a fanfiction once where he was a child solider in the Great War alongside Yosano, making weapons for the army - while I don't think it's canon, or else it probably would have been mentioned when her backstory was, I think the idea of Kunikida being somehow trained as a child solider definitely has merit. Given how people with Abilities tend to be weaponized in the BSD-verse, how strict Kunikida is despite having a hatred of authority and a tendency to violence, it makes sense to me. It's canon he dropped out of college, but he was also working with the Agency by age 18/19 at a maximum, so I think it's possible he joined college while working there and dropped out.

Another option is him having been in some sort of high school gang. Blonde hair in anime is often used to denote delinquency - so I think it's a given Kunikida was a delinquent as a teenager (especially given his attitude). In this case, his familiarity with violence would probably come via brawls with other gangs and such. I've also seen ideas of him being something of a teen vigilante, which is also definitely possible - teenage Kunikida without a sense of direction for his moral compass, I could see going that route.

Either way, I think he met Fukuzawa young. I've theorized at age 15, to mirror how Chuuya met Mori at 15, but I definitely think he met him before adulthood. I think Fukuzawa was the one who gave him his Ideals notebook, both the physical thing and the direction Kunikida needed to develop that sense of morality and desire to save people we see in canon. I think Fukuzawa had to be instrumental for him - like, why would Kunikida, who dislikes authority and is rude to basically everyone, respect and defer to Fukuzawa so much? Why is Fukuzawa one of the first people we see him use honorifics for? What would cause that type of a relationship?

So yes, I think meeting Fukuzawa was a huge turning point for Kunikida, however it may have been. Maybe he gave him a sense of direction and a way to harness his idealism via the Agency; maybe Fukuzawa was the one who taught him how to help people with his abilities all together. Either way, I can't see someone like Kunikida having such a deep deference and respect for Fukuzawa without him being deeply linked to who Kunikida is as a person, at age 22.

I also wonder if however Kunikida and Fukuzawa met, if it was originally negative or antagonistic. By the time Dazai's Entrance Exam rolls around, Kunikida clearly knows well what Fukuzawa is talking about when he mentions testing Dazai, so Dazai's clearly not the first one to go through that. Given we know neither Yosano nor Ranpo had to pass an entrance exam to join the Agency, our choices are down to either Kunikida or Katai as the first people to take one, which... if it was Kunikida, why would Fukuzawa want that? Why would he want to make sure this guy, specifically, was a good fit for the Agency morally, given Kunikida's such a moral character? What was it that made Fukuzawa want to test Kunikida, if that was what happened?

[amethystfairy1]

hello internet stranger,

i am in love. you've infected both me and my sister with your brainrot and captivating fics, we've talked about it non-stop the past few days, so naturally we have some questions.

But first, i want to ask what your boundaries are w/ fanart and writing. i've already drawn a couple pieces, are you alright with me posting them, and what should i tag them with? Also, i'm feeling very inspired to write more zed and tango for the travelling thieves au, is that alright if i take your ideas and just yoink them? Im not planning to post whatever i write at this point :P

anyways, moving on, i have a few world-building questions for you, starting w/ traveling thieves:

how does the mercenary guild and hits system work? Can anyone put a hit out on anyone, or do they have to be a wanted criminal? also, how does gem choose her targets? i like to believe she has some sort of moral compass in picking, but knowing the world they live in, i can't be certain

this is less of a question, but i don't see how the world can be resolved. For ttsbc, the obvious solution to the undercity folk living freely is that they overthrow the overcity government or just remove the laws keeping them banned. Sure, it'd be difficult, but from what we've seen, most people don't actually have strong prejudices against the undercity, they just vaguely believe they're evil, which can be very easily disproved. For traveling thieves, it's completely different, because not only is the discrimination in the government, it's in the people themselves; merely changing the laws would not change how people see hybrids, so how can that be fixed? My best solution to them all getting a happy ending is that they run away and found their own civilization where all hybrids can be free, but it doesnt seem like a likely scenario

again, not really a question, but I'm so so so happy in the latest fh piece that they looted the bodies of their attackers. the first time i read it through, i was practically screaming at the screen, telling them to grab the loot and weapons before they continued

next, ttsbc:

4. how do the mobs work? do they act like any normal animal, in that they just kinda exist and happen to be very hostile, or do they follow minecraft mob mechanics and spawn into existence from nothing when the conditions are right? could they theoretically all be exterminated? do all of them dislike light, like the zombies in the cleo bdubs fic? if they do, why are they making their way to the overcity?

5. how did the undercity become a thing? Was it just always there, or was it manmade? did hybrids and mutants always live underground? are the pits really bottomless? and if so, is the world a globe, or is it flat? i understand you might not have thought very deeply about these things before jumping in, but my sister and i were theorizing about different answers. i figured the undercity isnt manmade just like the grand canyon isnt manmade, it just came about through natural processes, and mutants and hybrids just evolved(?) seperately from humans, underground, which is a whole other can of worms with the science behind that. an idea about the "bottomless" pits has to do with physics. at the center of the earth (if it were hollow), you wouldn't feel gravity because it would pull on you equally in all directions. so maybe the bottomless pit really just leads to the center of the earth, and you're not really falling forever, you're just suspended in the center forever lol. not falling, but not hitting the bottom, either

anyways, this was a really long ask (i hope thats ok), and i still have more to say, but i'll leave it there for now. again, i love the angst, and have a wonderful day. im gonna try to get some work done, but it probs wont happen with all the brainrot XD

Hello hello! ✨

I'm so honored that you and your sister are enjoying my AUs and fics so much! That you've been talking about them and theorizing over them is so awesome to hear! Knowing that they've become something fueling discussion is super cool!

I LOVE IT ALL! Fanart/fanworks/fanfic I wanna see all of it! I would absolutely love it if you would post your fanart! Please use either the (#traveling thieves au) or (#through the sky blue cracks) depending on which AU it is for and mention me in the post (@amethystfairy1) so I can see it! And of course you are welcome to write fics based in my AU or using my characterizations, in fact I'd love it if you did! It's the best thing to hear that my writing has inspired someone else to get creative! I know you said you had no intentions of posting it, but if you ever do, please use the same hashtags here if on tumblr, or if you use A03 list the appropriate fic/series as inspiration and please credit me in the notes if you don't mind! I'm looking forward to seeing anything either fanart/fanfic related that you've created!

ONTO THE QUESTIONS 🏃‍♀️

The mercenary guild is basically like the underground/illegal version of the adventurer guild, and they'll take any jobs that the adventurer guild won't. Blackmail, assassination, smuggling, you name it. Gem has something of a moral compass, but it isn't exactly the strictest thing in the world. We learn when she meets Mumbo in Grian's wing preening fic that she is on her way to assassinate a noblemans son, and while that is a bit of a wink wink nudge nudge if you can figure out who that son is, exactly, it's still Gem agreeing to kill a teenager who is guilty of little more than pissing off the wrong person. Cruel world and all.

Perhaps that's exactly point? 😌 With Traveling Thieves, I did not set out to make a world that could be resolved or escaped from...the whole point is that it is cruel and inescapable, and the best you can do is continue to protect yourself and those you care about...and even then, you might fail to do that. You might be set up to fail in a sick system that would never give you a chance in the first place. And the best you can do is try to put the pieces back together in the aftermath. I don't want Traveling Thieves to resolve in any traditional sense of the word...for where that'll lead all our various characters, well, you'll have to wait and see. 🤔

Loot that body LOOT THAT BODY NOW 💃

They're like your typical minecraft mobs, they spawn in places with low light levels! We've also got some homebrew monsters that I've come up with, such as the bird-men, that we will be meeting as time goes on. Certain monsters such as zombies do avoid light, but there are plenty of monsters will go above bedrock just like certain monsters in minecraft can survive in the sun, like creepers and endermen. No, they can never be exterminated because of how they spawn!

The pits aren't bottomless, we've seen the bottom after all, where Pearl, Jimmy, and Grian were in the Depths! It is a natural chasm beneath the bedrock, and the various caves and tunnels stretch are incredibly huge and diverse, so while everything connects back to the main cavern of the under-city that's so huge, there are also other caves and tunnels where other groups live that we will be learning about eventually, such as the blaze-born pyres or where Cub is from in the Deep Dark!

It is completely totally 100% ok! I love getting long asks like this that give me the chance to develop and worldbuild the AUs and mention some details that might never really show up within the fics themselves! So by all means send more questions and thoughts! And I'd also love to see the fanarts you mentioned if you still are up to posting them, I can't draw so anything anyone draws that has anything to do with my AUs makes me incredibly happy! 😆

Thanks so much for coming by! 💖

[thetallowman]

Some analysis and predictions for the trio, now that I'm through the first bit

Lucy: what I would call the group's moral compass. (Not in the sense that the others are lacking morals, but in that she's the only one pointing somewhere.) She wants to do things right, not just morally but practically as well - the kind of person who likes to have a plan, who is invested in the process just as much as the results. She started out focused on the mystery, on solving the case, but the encounter with John shook her, and now she's worried about the local Others as well. Her mother actually seems like a decent parent (in a Wildbow story: shocking), and her friendship with Verona is firmly established. There's definitely s some sort of trauma packed away in there that we haven't seen yet, but I'd say she's the most stable of the three - at least insofar as the whole magical girl detectives thing isn't a direct improvement to her life. Probably the most likely to actually solve the case.

My assumption is that each of the three will pick up either an implement, a familiar, or a demesne first. (Practically, due to diverging interests, and narratively/metaphysically, for reasons of balance and cohesion - the trio of witches, each with a different defining feature, etc.) My prediction is that Lucy will get her implement first - something straightforward, physical, capable of directly influencing the world around her, shift it from what it is towards how it should be. My initial guess was a sword, but the ring somewhat fills that role - so a tool of some kind? Something versatile, like a multitool? (I'm thinking back to the awakening ritual, and the emphasis she placed on adaptability and self-sufficiency. She's suited to something that can cover multiple bases.)

Avery: the odd one out. Less interested in the magic than in the friends that come with it. (A package deal.) She's got issues with self-esteem, with being overlooked; she's happy to follow there others' lead, but she wants to be recognized for her contributions. Wants to not be left behind again. Her parents seem nice - they're failing her in some important ways, but not out of malice. (They've got what I would call too many kids.) There's a line earlier, where Avery's thinking about a sandwich, which feels like it sums up her role amongst her siblings: "She couldn't help but feel like any one ingredient could be changed out for something similar and it would make the sandwich ten times as good."

My guess is that Avery will be first to find a familiar. Might be some level of wishful thinking - could go a long way to resolving the self-esteem problem. (It worked for Blake, at least: isolation and alienation are no match for the power of a cute animal companion.) Could be something from the Forest Trail she was given - remains to be seen.

Verona: very relatable. If a magical creature had approached me, as a callow youth, and offered the chance to trade a life of magical adventures for the "normality" of college, taxes, and a 9-to-5 - I'd be taking that deal, guaranteed, common sense be damned. (Heck, I'd probably do the same tomorrow, given the chance.) She's in it for the escapism, essentially. There's a murder to solve, and her best friend's along for the ride, but magic itself is the main selling point. Under normal circumstances, whatever she does she can't win - the things she cares about aren't "important," she doesn't care about the "important" things, and even when she puts in the effort it isn't seen as good enough. Her dad sucks - I won't belabor the point - but it's true amongst her classmates as well, with sports and the app and so on. She's happier investigating the "eat your own fingers" ritual than doing yardwork, which makes perfect sense.

Verona's going to get a demesne. No idea what that will look like, but of the three, it fits the most. Having a place other than her house - somewhere that she controls, gets to make the rules for - should go a long way. (In some ways, I'm reminded of Blake - though her definition of freedom seems less about what she can do, and more about what she doesn't have to do.)

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think one of the biggest reasons i refuse to take anything LL presents to me in good faith morality-wise is that just, everything about the vatborn--completely leaving aside the trueborn or mogadorians as a whole--is a hundred percent on par with what happened to lorien for sheer scale and depth of tragedy and horror. in very different ways, yes--apples to oranges, i'm not going to say one is worse--but on par.

and not only do neither the heroes or the narrative ever acknowledge this. they act like it's a good thing.

[cw: genocide, war crimes, racism, fascism, slavery, torture, child abuse, dehumanization, apologia for all of it after the cut. basically, the usual lmao]

or at least, a totally neutral and casual one (although they will still never call it what it is by name). the vatborn, who are universally abused, beaten, tortured, brainwashed child soldiers and actual fucking chattel slaves, aren't people. they are subhuman. their suffering doesn't matter. they can't be rehabilitated for any kind of peaceful life. they are barely more than mindless animals. they are vermin to be disposed of without a thought, while their actual slavers get far more mercy, compassion, and humanization than they do (which holy shit is saying something).

the only, ONLY person in the entire series who thinks it matters that they're people; that it's fucked up to have been taught that killing them in front of him as a small child was unremarkable; who feels uncomfortable with ordering them around and is worried about getting one of them in trouble; who questions the ideology he grew up in that said otherwise; is a deluded, naive, easily-manipulated, selfish race traitor who is treated with rabid murderous hatred for it for the rest of his life.

they and their culture--yes, culture, we see that they have developed some of their own under the trueborns' noses--are eradicated from existence because they 'didn't know any better,' and no one bats an eyelash before or after. it's fine because without their extinction they'd eradicate everyone else. and the method of their creation, both knowledge and resources, is lost.

there will never be another living vatborn again.

all of this is true, say the writers. all of this is fine. and to that i say: does any of that rhetoric sound familiar?

like. honestly, there are some REALLY strong foils and parallels to be made between the loric and the vatborn, right down to the scars versus the tattoos:

(which, of course, no one has jack shit to say about. in the slightest. then or ever. 🙃)

what they should have done--and i don't mean 'here's a way they might have handled it,' i mean the only thing they could have done, period--to make any of the protagonists actually decent people would have been to make them have a massive group-wide crisis the INSTANT they found out what the vatborn are. that should have been one of THE central conflicts in the series from that point forward. 'we are having to slaughter child soldier slaves, who have no choice in the matter, en masse in self-defense. we have no idea how to make it stop without letting ourselves be overrun. we have been doing this for a long time and we never even knew. fuck. jesus fuck' should absolutely fucking haunt a good majority of your protagonists, even if it takes until after the war when survival mode disengages for it to hit, or else you have a cast full of just plain evil cunts and i am not going to root for them no matter how many planets they save. fuck that.

like. for all the writers and characters hammer on about how ~we're not like them uwu,~ they ARE. the perspective we're meant to sympathize with IS the mogadorians, just reskinned with craft-beer-and-brick-pizza-ovens-appreciate-nature-uwu neoliberal fascism instead of ham-handed right-wing stereotypes.

(which, the 'respect for the planet and nature' thing? bullshit. the entity colonizes and terraforms the ENTIRE EARTH. it does this without asking a single ass human if they're okay with it; marina even points this out, which is immediately dismissed lol. the entity destroys pretty much the entire fossil record of the earth, all the way down. the writers don't give a fuck about respecting or preserving nature. it's just a cover for the sky-high platter of genocidal ecofascism they're trying to push through.)

one of the central themes of lorien legacies is supposed to be 'mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living.' and one of, again, the central conflicts of the series from RoS onward should have been the moral dilemma of realizing that the vatborn are some of the living to fight like hell for, and having no fucking idea how to do that without giving everything else up for lost. instead the moral becomes 'fight like hell for the living, as long as they look enough like me and aren't Icky and i don't have any personal baggage about them, and also as long as they came out of a vagina.'

and like. the really insidious thing about how they frame the mogs versus everyone else--how they try to excuse and distract you from the evil shit the protagonists and their buddies say and do--is that they go 'well i mean sure, they're racist and ableist and genocidal and [laundry list of awful], and have less than no basic fucking decency or compassion toward the Acceptable Group of People, but also they're kind and caring and heroic and nice to other people!' whereas the mogs read as the authors having looked up a Traits of Fascist Societies checklist to hammer into their story without actually understanding how fascism works.

actual fascist societies aren't cartoonishly hateful, joyless, loveless, and sadistically rubbing their hands together over their Evil Plotting on every level of society, every day, with everyone around them. like. it doesn't fucking happen. i don't care how cultish it is, i don't care how rabidly hateful you can whip a movement up to be, you can fuck a society and its norms up horrifically but you CANNOT do that with 99% total success rate on that scale. you know what happens with actual fascism? with hate groups, with colonialism, with genocide?

most of them are, in some aspects of their lives, 'good people.' they pet puppies, they're loving spouses and parents, they're kind and respected members of their community. i'm nice, they think. i'm a Good Person. i care.

and they are completely caught off guard when they are held accountable for the other things they did with their lives, because it doesn't fucking matter how many puppies you pet when you make yourself complicit in genocide. you extend basic human decency to your family and people you happen to find likeable and acceptable, and none of whom you have emotional baggage toward as a group? cool motive, still a war criminal, still blood on your hands.

which, by the way, is another vile thing they try to push through here. 'i'm racist because muh war trauma so i get a blank check to commit atrocities, cut me some slack' is, y'know. famously not a justification used for any horrific mass war crimes in countries invaded by, say, the U.S. in the last few decades alone. vietnam? iraq? are those some kind of chopped liver?

and the fact that they try to hide this shit behind 'well they're genocide survivors and teenagers, you can't expect them to be mature about their war trauma 🥺' is just contrived bullshit to get away with this rhetoric, which is even more obvious when every now and then they try to act like the characters are in their mid-20s or something instead of, you know. 15-18. teenagers are not the ones making these calls irl, pal. they're not the ones devising war tactics or taking out tons of people by themselves in one go. they're not the ones making legislation about what to do with the enemies after the war. are there garde who have to wear a bikini for their photosynthesis legacy too, by any chance

(this is an ESPECIALLY bad look in the context of the vietnam war in particular, considering how frighteningly, violently, genocidally racist these books are toward every fucking east asian country in their line of sight lmao. like holy shit dude it's BAD and this is just another shit in the bucket)

(ETA: HOLY SHIT WOW THE VIETNAM PARALLEL MAKES THE THING WITH JOHN CATCHING A LARGE CONCENTRATION OF MOGS OFF GUARD TO INCINERATE THEM ALL WITH HIS FLAMETHROWER POWERS--BECAUSE 'NOW THEY KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE CAUGHT BY SURPRISE,' NO LESS--SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE EL EM AY OH)

anyway yeah, despite supposedly being a critique of fascism these books are fascist as shit, and it is impossible for me to look at the protagonists being Caring and Compassionate, and Fighting for Peace and Justice and Preservation of All Things Good in the World, without just seeing this:

as usual i have many, many more thoughts about this, and as usual they are for other posts because this one is hella long already, but tl;dr the vatborn deserved better and are pretty much the perfect distillation of why my approach to this series' authors and what they are trying to communicate with their story is 'stay back slut' lmao

[panlight]

Okay so in canon vampires have favorite animals to eat, like Edward's favorite being Mountain Lion and Emmett's being bears. What do you think the other cullens/vegetarian vampires have a taste for? I kind of wonder if Carlise doesn't have a favorite because, at least I personal imagine that he doesn't like to kill anything, even animals? While Jasper may not be able to tell the difference to any one creature? But I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this subject!

I'm pretty much on the same page re: Carlisle and Jasper. Jasper has A LOT more experience with drinking human blood than any of the other Cullens so he "knows what he is missing" more than the rest and I'm sure all animals are just 'meh' to him. Emmett and Edward raving about bears and mountain lions sounds like someone being like "Of all the lowfat vegan gluten free veggie burgers, this one is the best" and Jasper's like, "but I like steak."

I don't think Carlisle has moral angst about killing animals--he realized pretty quickly it was humans or animals and there was nothing in his worldview at the time that forbade it--but it's not like, his favorite thing to do in the world because he does feel compassion for them. He kills quickly and cleanly and wouldn't play with his food like Emmett does. I think he's less likely to 'treat himself' to predators, too because it's just a means to an end to him, especially in the present day, just a chore he has to do. But if he had to choose a favorite he might say deer, not because it tastes the best (it doesn't) but it was that first 'meal' of deer that showed him he could live without human blood.

With Rosalie, it's complicated. Obviously she doesn't like being a vampire, but I think she's with Carlisle in seeing that eat animals isn't "wrong" because humans do it too. It's a human thing. But I don't know that she's like super enthused about it either. It might just be a chore, although it probably is a good release for her anger and frustration. We could go along with Rosalie and Edward actually being very similar and have her favorite be some other type of big cat. Or maybe they actually like the same but Edward insists on calling it a "Mountain Lion" and Rosalie insists on "Puma" or "Cougar" so they can pretend it's ~different.

I don't know that Esme cares terribly, I could see her having that Mom vibe of "oh I don't mind, whatever you want, I'm not fussy," or whatever. Predators do taste better but it's fine, really, whatever you're having. Maybe she actually likes wolves but now feels awkward about it.

The other thing Edward suggests is that their hunting style is similar to the animal they prefer, so maybe Alice likes something smaller and quicker, more crafty and clever. Maybe she likes foxes?

IDK about Bella, but I guess SM would assign something cool and badass to her. Or else it's mountain lions like her soulmate I guess.

No idea about the Denalis. They're probably more like Jasper, with centuries of human blood in their memory, so it's all pretty blah but maybe one or more of them actually really likes polar bears and that's one reason they're still in Alaska.

[bacon-sandwich-of-dionysus]

Here is an intentionally incomplete list of what pasta will be what celtic monster in this shitshow I'm cooking up :))

Eyeless Jack (Real name: Jack Nichols): Joint-Eater.

Joint-Eaters are a type of fae (fairy) who pretty much just eat half your food. They're really all about harmless mischief and that's it. However, seeing as this is creepypasta and I found out how to do something a little clever, EJ is going to be a Joint-Eater with a sinister twist. You see, like the original fae he's based on, Jack must eat half of what you own in order to gain any nutritional value from it and survive... and when I say half of anything, I mean anything. When Jack was first turned after a botched ritual, his more monstrous inclinations came to the forefront and he got by with eating one, and only one, of a person's kidneys as a means of satiating his hunger. Nowadays, though, he's managed to work out how to get around this need to thieve others' meals without others becoming his meals, and he's back on track to becoming a working man. Determined to do something with the knowledge he gained from medschool before becoming a monster, Jack is hellbent on finding others like him and protecting them from powers that may not take too kindly to anomalous entities.

I always got the impression Jack was a clever creature and one that sort of wanted to cause as little harm as he could- kind of like "just get the job done" type personality. In his initial story, he pretty much just nicked a kidney and slunk away, which kind of set him apart from others who were all a bit more elaborate in their horror.

Jeff the Killer (Jeffrey Allan Woods): Werewolf/ Skin-Changer.

"Uh oh, Bacon Sandwich, what are you doing..."

Hush, my friend, hear me out. Jeff, especially in the Banning K version, seemed to have this urge to kill stemming from his anger rather than just popping up randomly. And the fandom seems to think that Jeff is basically a feral gremlin with severe authority issues. So I had an idea :D...

I also want to note that Jeff in the Banning K version seems to also manage to get by without infection to his burn wound across his face which led me to having this idea that what if he's got some kind of superhuman abilities he's not entirely aware of....

Going back to the anger and the fact that everyone has delegated Jeff the role of "feral little shit", I always thought that gave him a wolfish vibe. Now I know in celtic mythology there are variations of the werewolf, in Ireland, for example, they were pretty much a clan of people cursed by St. Patrick who also became a line of strong warriors. For me, though, I decided to go the English route. Werewolves have changed drastically over time but I've always liked to play with the idea of the cursed man... that and werewolves were often used as a metaphor for male puberty and *cackles evilly* this gives me opportunities to make things worse >:).

Does that mean Jeff is just gonna have his head in his hands as he wallows in regret? Not at all. He's gonna have a little ✨arc✨. I think Jeff will probably undergo the most growth, maybe aside from Jack too, as he tries to figure out his own moral compass, which may not align with what most people deem moral, but Banning K's adaptation, I think we see the emergings of some sort of moral code. Jeff will also get a better grip on his anger and how to hone it so he doesn't become a complete animal... yes, I'm gonna amp up the body horror, folks!

Also being a werewolf probably explains why he's so irresistible to the ladies 😉!

BEN DROWNED: Will-o'-the-wisp.

Will-o'-the-wisps, sometimes considered a fae, were said to lead you to your fate and if you have read the whole story of BEN, then you'd know he's a bit of an oracle as well as a ghost haunting an already creepy game.

Wisps aren't really confirmed to be something specific but they were said to be spirits which is great because that fits quite nicely with BEN. So, I've decided he's going to be a wisp trapped within the realm of cyberspace, who aids our other two protagonists by using his power of foresight to make predictions and tinker with technology... who needs Nord VPN when you have a mischievous little ghostie.

BEN is going to be childish in this because that's what he is in his own story and will probably be the 'little brother' of the group. I think BEN, though he misses being in the material world, comes to find he enjoys and values the company of others more. He may never get rid of what has been taken from him, but he's got a new family now that cares for and uplifts him and that's what matters. He'd never want to change that.

Smile.dog (or smiledog.jpg): The Gytrash.

Gytrashes, similar to the Grimm, were ghostly dogs you could encounter randomly on the Yorkshire Moors. However, encountering one meant certain doom.

Smile clearly is an entity that likes to toy with their prey and enjoys the infamy. I get a very ambivalent vibe from them: on one hand, they'd probably help, intentionally crossing paths with you, but at the cost of your luck. Smile.dog will help the boys but also help those working against them too.

Perhaps, the demon dog will also play with their minds, live off their fear until they get bored and move onto someone else. Perhaps, they find an easy target in those who have survived tragedy. Who knows!

The Bean-Sidhe (pronounced "Banshee")

Another fae, I'll leave these mostly a mystery but I'll say a few things about them.

These guys are an all female elite mobile task force used to capture humanoid anomalies connected to certain eldritch entity... ;).

They're engineered perfectly to secure and detain entities like Jack and Jeff, so you can imagine they're going to cause a couple of problems.

Proxies: The Sluagh

The Sluagh, sometimes seen as fae but sometimes not, in Scottish mythology are unforgiven dead who can't move on. They can make more of them and roam the forests aimlessly, mourning their eternal damnation.

I always viewed proxies, especially after watching Marble Hornets as semi-hollow shells, as essentially just mouthpieces for the Slenderman. They may have some vague memories of who they once were and act and behave seemingly human enough... but when they fear they or their master is in danger, they snap.

After watching Marble Hornets and seeing how Tim (Masky) would just break into a sprint on all fours, hang from the ceiling in the corner and cling to the walls kind of like a human daddy longlegs, I always got this animalistic feel from him.

I feel like the proxies run almost purely on instinct and planning, they're intelligence only dependent on their master and its will. Slenderman dictates how much thought they're capable of.

That's all I'll say for now, hope you folks enjoy!

Edit: Fuck me... People are liking this :0

[papirouge]

the absolute Irony of seeing rightoid Christian/Antis bitching about how brainwashed leftists are by popular culture when they're doing the same, but on the opposite spectrum???

All that frenzy about civil war, rebellion, overturning government, survival stick.. Do you think it came from a vaccuum? Don't you realize these too have been pushed by Hollywood, pop culture, Netflix, video game industry, etc. for decades? None of you are above this shit, you just think you *are* on the right side, that's all.

But for the most part, you ALL watch the same shitty movies, stupid degenerate paganist anime, play the same shitty games funded with American military money to make war cool & exciting. And also dehumanizing the ennemy. Unsurprisingly the zombie apocalypse genre has become very popular lately.... it's no coincidence.

Civil war is ugly guys. It's very obvious that Western millennials and zoomers have been so pampered to the point they do not grasp how awful it can be. I lost family members to civil war. So it's unbearable for me to see American or Western European twats getting a hard on while talking about getting rid of leftists and unbelievers during some phantasmagorical "retribution day". This is chaos. There won't be any right or left, patriots or government, right or wrong. Only violence. Lots of you have no idea of what you're talking about/calling into existence.

Everyday I'm seeing "Christian" foaming at the mouth at the thought of a civil war to kill leftists. Do you think it's healthy as Christian to entertain this energy? Don't you realize there's a demon behind this nasty spirit? Do you think God doesn't love these people? We were ALL sinners. If God was as righteous as you think you are (to the point of feeling entitled death to God creatures), He would have killed US before we had the opportunity to repent (arguing the lot of you did, which I'm getting highly doubtful)

When Jesus said to love our neighbor, do you think he only talked about people we liked? The Bible warns us there is NO POINT in showing love & compassion only the people we appreciate:

Matthew 5:43-48

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

You make me ashamed to share the same label of "Christian". Everyday cussing and mocking and running your foul mouth. Lots of pagans behave much better than you do.

Yes we can be angry, yes words can override our thoughts, but some you made an entire mood and personality of cussing and mocking and entertaining toxicity. For what purpose? Do you actually PRAY for these people? Do you actually pray for PEACE? Or do you want to exercise your weird moral superiority complex of being Christian? We really need to inspect our ways before grabbing out keyboard and ask ourselves : is it really honoring God or my ego? Would you do or say the same thing if Jesus was sitting next to you?

I know some you have this black and white like of thought consisting of antagonizing anyone who doesn't think/live like you (leftists, pro vaccine, LGBT, communist, unbelievers, feminists, BLM, etc.) but the thing is...none of it will matter when shit hits the fan. Civil war is the definition of chaos. Your own family, comrade will snitch & turn on you to have you killed. You are all children with a big mouth, you wouldn't survive facing all this crap IRL, trust me.

This is not the Retribution Day some you imagine to be. We will ALL be victims of this. It's really irresponsible of you to entertain this toxic energy and almost call for it. None of it stands right to God. And you will have to give accountability for that on Judgement Day.

You might have all the guns in the world, but none of them wil save your life because you cannot save you soul with guns ; "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword". Learn to get right before God to get His protection rather than through worldly demonic means. These won't save you if God decides to make you die because of your rebelliousness.

Walk with the light of the Christ, not the flaming torch of satan.

[seoafin]

tbh,, i havent read the raws of the interview yet, only the translated ver from fan-translator and b4 i start, i think that this will be just me talking in circle and in no particular order AND a real mess (my brain does weird things after exams) but uhh here we go

gojou collects talented people, and by doing so he finds the people he can most probably relate to, except that he can't, not really, because something in the universe shifted when he was born. and it makes me think of how he's always known it, that he is special, and he's proven it, time and time again— he wants to take in talented ppl and he does, but there rly isn't much he can do for them. for they are talented, more talented than the world can understand,,

but they aren't gojou satoru

gojou took in megumi, bc he knew megumi was strong, and would grow up to be someone even stronger, but gojou can't facilitate or encourage his growth, bc for all they're similar, they are so fundamentally different. ALSO,, while geto was in his life, gojou rly judged everything according to his understanding of geto’s moral compass. gojou wears a human suit and geto is how he learnt to wear it well 🏃

the dragonfly analogy regarding to geto’s response to gojo, who was shown wearing a dragonfly patterned yukata in HI arc,, i’m trying to not think abt the fact that dragonfly symbolized victory in jpn....pain. i quoted from a web here for more explanation : In Japan the dragonfly is known as the "victory insect", or kachimushi, because of its hunting prowess and also because it is known to never retreat. Dragonflies are agile and fast fliers and can even hover, but never fly backwards

and bringing this up again, matricide and patricide are 2 of the 5 worst act to commit in buddhism, and it was said that if u commit one of those act u’re going to spend a real long time in the deepest pit of hell before continuing the samsaric cycle (higher chances to be born as an animal after that probs)— this might be geto’s divine retribution. held no power over his own body and could be considered that he’s the same as those “monkeys” 💀

ALSO the fact that sukuna's interest is "eating" rly drives home his hedonistic philosophy of seeking pleasure for himself. and he’s a cannibal...makes me think if he’ll just chomp on ppl with the mouth on his stomach

randomly, to date i think he hasn't really called himself a human, shaman, or a curse, and has held himself apart from all 3, and we've also the intro of the cursed wombs so i wonder if he’s trying to become, or is, a different entity altogether

so onmyoji got mentioned in the interview and what they practice is called onmyodo and abe no seimei and kano no yasunori were the notable practitioners,, and the kamo in jjk is the same as irl who served the imperial court back then

maybe i was right when i said that the relation between the govt. and jujutsu elders are similar to how the shogunate and imperial court work (ie, the former holds the actual power) but... lets see later,,

and i cant believe that i actually nailed it on the analogy of jujutsu practices by religion,,, so mahayana buddhism, shintoism, and taoism is present in jjk along with their respective jujutsu practices...but between the 3, it shld (?) be taoism > shintoism > mahayana buddhism (which could took a path to pure land buddhism)

it’s weird that the number of curses are supposedly higher in jpn comparable to other countries when taoism was brought from china....tengen sus

so the zenin family tree is sth like :

brothers: [toji's dad] ; naobito ; ougi

so toji, naoya, and maki & mai are cousins of the same generation

[toji's dad] → jinichi (probs) ; toji → megumi

naobito → other brothers, naoya

ougi → maki, mai

but yea i’d call anyone who’s within/close or below my age range as cousins and others above 30 as uncles/ aunts LMFAO,, i dont rly memorize my own family tree 😭😭 especially since most call the other by honorifics instead of names : aunt, uncles etc or attaching said honorifics at the end of a name for an older sibling figure/ older cousins [but like ppl in my country also call the other who are older with sibling honorific even if we’re strangers,,, rly similar to korea’s hyung/oppa—eonnie(unnie)/noona but some uses more genderless honorific] (1)

tw // topic of incest, mentions of abuse

if anyone got the wrong idea when reading this : i am not glorifying/ romanticising incest(uous themes),, i’m looking at this with absolutely no lenses of bias even tho im rly against it

初恋 = literally : first love, or puppy love

恋 = romantic love/ deep longing

i literally don't know how else to put this...🧍and with language barrier...using a western interpretation of the eng word "love" to explain a jpnese term is not quite that simple, unfortunately

that thread omg,, i rly do understand how exactly someone could associated kindness with love bc of my upbringing, it was when i was slightly older that i was just...oh so its not like that orz,,, so the most plausible explanation would be that

but the problem is that,, akutami never specify when exactly she had a crush on them,, and when megumi answered todo’s question she had a “♡” reaction 😶,, uhmmm there’s rly no way to look past this if its this way or be in denial

i’ve seen some of "why wouldn't mai react that way after hearing megumi say he'd like someone who's compassionate when she's surrounded by men like naoya",, well I MEAN,,, that, but also mai probs admires that megumi grew up so well out of the clan, regardless of the fact that he had the foundation (10 shadows) to do so. imo she seems happy for him the way she can't be for maki, bc maki ultimately had to leave her behind

hate to say it but yea,, the 3 clans most likely still practice inbreeding in order to preserve their power and presumably their wealth too 😀

i had an idle thought abt it at first but i filed it deep in the back of my mind asap,, bc i ont wanna jump to conclusion abt this out of all things too early. it’s probably not even in jjk, but all those elite clans in other ani/mangas that produce powerful heirs and whatnot also do the same,,, but this way of (my personal) thinking was influenced when i first got into tsukihime (type-moon),,, i read abt the nanaya family background and found out that they practice that in order to keep their bloodline “pure” (to keep it short : they have an optical power),, and i had this kind of assumption ever since so there’s that

i’m,, convinced the zenins' inbreeding made it more difficult for them to get powerful shamans bc they got 2 jujutsu technique-less children with heavenly restrictions in the same generation: toji & maki

even more convinced that maki might be a bit stronger than toji bc toji could see curses without aid while maki can't so the pay-off must be higher,,, SJJASN IDK ,,, plus naoya sort of implies his older brothers are nothing compared to him, and idk if we should take that as his arrogance or that his older brothers rly are weak/powerless. it would make sense as to why naobito had a lot of sons, ig, as head of clan

i feel so bad that if one of the factors that can caused heavenly restriction is inbreeding,, toji and maki and mai had no say in how they wanted to be born but are scorned for it,, typical asian families projecting their traumas and ideals onto their kids but get mad when they realize that those ideals are ugly...😁😁😁

since the zenin are conservative,, i wonder if they still hold onto old jpnese dining traditions. where in ancient jpn, hierarchical relationships were made readily apparent even within families. a dining table where everybody sat down and ate as equals would be unheard of. rather, each individual is given their own table that indicates their status,,, someone who is not considered “strong” according to the zenin’s views most likely have no place at the table, and probs eat when those who are “strong” finished/ serve them when they are eating

if toji was tossed into a swarm of curses,, i dont think abuse during said time is below them,,,

the zenin clan was already great, but they further amassed power and strength by, what i assume to be, marrying and adopting powerful individuals into the clan 🤔 ,,, i imagine they're like the hiiragi but without doing what they did to shinya (ons reference)

BUT after all that, i like to think that since akutami’s a big horror fan, jjk might be an outlet to explore said topics or even darker ones, so i wouldnt be that surpised abt it. given that there’s more than enough “red flags” before this was dropped : a reference to “tale of hikaru genji” when a grown woman asked for gojou’s number in HI arc (out of all things); granny who transformed into the man’s daughter, sat on his lap and man just touched her waist; mei mei and ui ui ; and...this (incestous theme is in the novel btw)

lets not start with whatever the fuck in kubo’s head in the interview otherwise i’m writing paragraphs with every curse words possible,, those big 3 mangakas are so— UGH,, a planet w out (cis) men like him sounds real good rn 😌 if one of yall out there decide to do it,, pls hmu rly cant do this shit anymore

akutami said i like my men pretty and i like women who will step on my neck and spit in my face (I REMEMBERED TATSUKI FUJIMOTO’S INTERVIEW WHEN HE WAS ASKED ABT MAKIMA AND IT WAS SO 😭😭😭😭) but ykw,, love that for both of them <3

when i said 3 : one piece, bleach, naruto. aside from the blatant depiction/ characterize of women in those 3,, idk if some ppl arent aware yet but oda is friends with two (2) convicted pedos,, man...the major disappointment and disgust when i first find out abt it

anyways this is just my 2 cents (which i think rightfully belong to the trash can) so pls just take this w a lil to no grain of salt - 🐱

YEAH THE ♡ LMFAO I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A “good answer ♡“ heart BUT NOW IM RE-EXAMINING?????

honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if the three clans practiced inbreeding. but ik people are going to be  😡😡😡😡😡 about it when the queen of fucking england is literally married to her (something) cousin. i’m not justifying it but like....love the double standards, just as always with the west 😍

DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT FUCKING PED* LIST THEY SHOULD ALL BE IN JAIL. JAILLLLL. it’s all so gross. that’s why i fucking hate when people look towards manga for positive representation because the chances of that are super slim to zero, especially since the industry is saturated with misogyny and ped******* and a lot of other gross stuff.

i think ppl forget jjk is a horror manga LOL so obviously it’s going to confront darker themes. the question is whether it’s going to be done tastefully or not......