#this is more of a meta than anything else LMFAO

[bl4sphemy-archived]

let me make it up to you .

𝖛𝖆𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝖚𝖓𝖘𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖘𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘 . . .

              It's very rare that anything really gets under Samael's skin     ——    he's usually pretty damn good at regulating his emotions, it's come with years of therapy and hard work... It's hard to piss Samael off. So, as he stands at the mess of his guitar, the one he's had since before his fame, his eye twitches. It was a gift from his aunt, to celebrate his joining her band, and he can still remember how happy he was to accept it. How it had been the first real gift anyone had ever given him... And now, it's broken into pieces at his feet. Samael feels hot rage bubble up inside him, his hands trembling as they curl into fists at his sides. 

              It doesn't help that his aunt is gone, too. Died not too long ago in a hospital, Samael at her side from a canceled tour with her old, withered hand in his as he wept for her... There's no way he can replace the guitar.

              He takes a deep breath through his nose, trying his best to calm himself down. There's a stinging in his eyes as tears begin to prickle his vision, and he has to look away from the mess before he bursts into tears. Summer's words make him sigh, and he grits his teeth as he rubs over his eyes, scrubbing the moisture away. He shakes his head, turning away from both Summer and the guitar.     ❛❛   I need some space.   ❜❜     Comes his clipped reply, murmured out, lacking the amused inflection he usually pours into his responses. 

              He's not mad at Summer... Frustrated, yes, but he's moreover mourning the loss of one of the only physical things he actually gives a shit about... Summer doesn't know the semblance behind the instrument. He probably thinks it's just something Samael can easily replace... Samael knows it's not right to take his feelings out on Summer     ——    no one deserves to be yelled at the way Samael did when he was a child     ——     so, he wordlessly heads to his room, and the second he shuts the door, he's sliding down it and crying into his hands.

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

I think fans want Jason to be a good person or be becoming one. To have a character that is well meaning and compassionate but decided murder is ok and to stand against main heroes who’s beliefs and actions go against the people he cares about and wants in his life. It’s confusing for people. People want their fav characters to be happy. But Jason can’t have his family’s support and follow his moral code. He’s cares about people and Gotham, and he’s an asshole who kills. It’s messy. It’s not black and white. I don’t even think Jason cares about being a good person or in the right anymore. I think he cares about what will save the most people instead.

Oh my goodness gracious I’ve been bamboozled

Batman’s definition of Good is not synonymous with absolute good/right no matter how much dc insists it is. Torture, battery/assault, surveillance, those are all condemnable actions too. I won’t get into the exhausting and frankly dumb debate of comic book morality wrt killing because I’ve already reblogged plenty of posts from other people who explained my thoughts on the matter far better than I ever have the patience to sit down and articulate. I also just think the notion that there’s something to be done about fictional characters who kill nazis and senseless murderers is stupid. Jason’s point is that the “main” heroes’ sanitized definition of right has its unaddressed holes and flaws which ultimately result in more preventable fatalities, and that he’ll work to correct those missing spots.

He doesn’t not care about doing what’s right. What he doesn’t care about (at least during his Winick characterization) is whether Batman thinks he’s right or wrong, because he sees the flaws in Batman’s methodology (and since he has a mind of his own). Batman’s methods alone cannot address Arkham’s revolving door and the rogues that come and go through those doors who have no intention (or capability from the doylist pov) of ever changing or undergoing redemption. Jason knows that he’s minimizing the number of preventable deaths by killing his targets, typically Characters Who Simply Do Fucked Up Shit Just Because, Why The Fuck Not?

Secondly, Jason is compassionate … to a fault. That was his fatal flaw. If he wasn’t so hell-bent on saving his potential birth mother he just met from that bomb despite everything she did to him prior, he could have protected himself instead, however slim his odds of survival were. What about his relationship with his other parents? He was a caregiver during his early childhood years for Catherine, until her death. Even mature adults who are financially stable find being a caregiver to a dying parent to be extremely burdensome on their bodies and minds, but he never complained about it or resented Catherine for being unable to care for him. Despite how none of his parents have really been what he needed them to be, he doesn’t blame them for their failings, and even continues to think highly of them (Bruce included).

And post-death? Enter Lost Days. Despite being dead set on plotting his revenge on Bruce, he constantly sidelines this in order to save other victims who are helpless like he once was. His own anger, trauma, and mission don’t remain his priority. (Sound familiar? Something something my own trauma above my son’s, mission above all else, etc.). Why would he waste precious time and risk his own life to do this if he wasn’t empathetic towards these victims or didn’t care about doing the right thing. He is simultaneously horribly traumatized and full of rage, and also incapable of ignoring what’s happening to victims around him (even as he claims that it’s indeed not his priority). And in that same vein, the entire premise of his rebirth outlaws run was that he doesn’t care if the public views him as a villain, an outlaw, so long as he can protect Gotham. And anyway where is this portrayal of him not caring about being in the right anymore. Almost every modern Jason story is about him grappling with where he stands with Bruce/Batman. During the early 2000s was probably the last time he did not care (hello, tentatodd??).

Jason has very evidently been portrayed as a kind and compassionate character. He is also simultaneously a calculated killer who doesn’t hesitate to kill when he deems necessary, and does so without remorse. It’s called being a Complex Character With An Edge™ that as you said, people so often claim to love. However when he fulfills that latter part, that seems to upset people because “killing bad”, and they then try to shave off and round out all his edges and claim he shouldn’t be that angry. In that case I guess you should just stick to liking traditional one-dimensional characters instead of claiming to like Jason but then encouraging his character assassination attempt by dc. Lol.

Lastly, who said anything about the batfam making Jason happy? Just because he’s written nowadays to want acceptance from Bruce (a shoddy attempt at forcing a non-existent nuclear batfamily), doesn’t mean that it’s a sound decision or that it does his character justice. I certainly don’t empathize with the idea that Jason needs the family’s approval or acceptance to be happy. (And anyway he has enough outlets for angst and pain aside from the batfam hello explore his other sources of trauma and do more deep dives into how he thinks when he’s alone). I don’t want them to magically make up and become one big happy family. This is not disney Lol. Besides, there are plenty of stories from dc that have that type of “wholesome” (hate that word utilization) characterization for Jason (Li’l Gotham, Tiny Titans, wfa, and even new stuff like the brave and the bold mini) and that is sufficient imo. Jason fans who are invested in the character deserve accurate, nuanced characterization and well-written stories, whether they be from his robin days (e.g., Batman: The Cult) or as red hood.

[sparring-spirals]

normally i can process these big moments and sad moments by churning out like fifteen incoherent metas but im uh. not sure i have much. knowledge. or right to do that right now lmfao. HOWEVER. SORRY. bc i.

i really. i just. fcg with all their fears about going wrong, about being made wrong and never escaping that. an internal switch that means they always run the risk of hurting those they love.

they chose a god of choice, of chance, or change. They were so scared of things they couldnt control. so worried they'd never be anything more than what they were made for.

Made for destruction. Made for rage.

But they flip a coin one last time- made for destruction. Made for damage. Made for devastating damage from where you least expect it.

Maybe so. Maybe so.

So much of them that was made for destruction. So they grip a coin and choose, to make that a form of love too.

(Im mad they wanted so badly to martyr. im mad that it worked. im mad about clerics and suffering as value and i think there's so much to untangle- about being made and running from it, about striving for purpose, about bigger causes and about hopeless fights and about. if you have one last thing. if all options are bad.

if you love your friends, so much-

ooh im mad about it. mad at this fucking tin can full of magic and love and who might have had a ticking time bomb in their core, and chose to detonate whatever was in him anyway, because it would give everyone else a chance.

god. dammit.)

[carlyraejepsans]

i feel like uty improves on things undertale did but it doesnt have the same strong foundation as the original. like all the qol tweaks and secret shit and meta flowey are all super impressive but as a whole i agree i didnt find it cohesive or consistent

eh, sorry but i don't really think UTY "improves" much of... anything from Undertale? you can make an argument for the visuals, which are more detailed and certainly better animated, but i would argue right back that undertale's rougher, retro, "kinda ugly" graphics are a deliberate design choice on Toby's part that he stuck to for a reason. not to mention, even in their ugliness, the original main cast managed to display more variety in shape language and size than the entire UTY one, which seemed unable to break past the "tall, skinny, anime proportioned humanoid" figure for anyone beyond the occasional side NPC (which, credit where it is due, DID have some really creative designs).

the secret shit is part of my critiques, actually! while conceptually cool, i don't think they appropriately distributed their story and lore at all. i feel like if we got to the end of the pacifist run and were wholly confused as to why dalv was even a character in the story, the whole "human attack" backstory was... not delivered properly. now, there's no problem with having secret lore, gaster is right there. but if you DO have it then it shouldn't be... yknow... tied to the main backstory conflict that literally set the story in motion? lol? it felt like a game with dataminers in mind, rather than players. which was unavoidably detrimental to its storytelling.

the bullet patterns and attack designs were very visually creative but what they improved from the original in their cleverness they tanked with their execution. WAYYY too unfair, counting too much on memorization and giving you no time to accustom yourself to the mechanics (shout-out to the gun tutorial that... didn't teach us how to shoot. at all. we figured it out on our own in the axis fight LMFAO)

the meta flowey stuff was a fun idea that only really delivered in the neutral run and didn't amount to enough anywhere else to justify his presence in the game imo. like, i lost my shit during his fight too, don't get me wrong, i like when fan stories let him be a little FREAK. but everything else was just so... wasted? i almost didn't see the neutral ending at all because the way pacifist handled flowey disappointed me so much.

uhhhhh running was a good addition and the music fucked hard. can't say anything against those two, nossir. not sure it'd go so far as to call them improvements tho, just nice touches

[brittlebutch]

Oh no need to apologize lmao i'm about to make this post even longer <3

I think a lot about the fact that Brian and Jay - who seem to be the characters who are the most "on the outskirts" of MH, more 'passive' in contrast to characters like Tim and Alex - are really the ones who actually do so much to shape the narrative of the series and alter the way the action unfolds without making a lot of Visible moves on camera.

I've posted before about how Jay's editing of Season One potentially does a lot to alter the audience's perception of Alex; but there's even more to be said about Brian's impact on Alex's character. Really, most if not all of the "Alex is evil and lying" interpretation of events is based off of the totheark videos constantly asserting that this is the case. totheark claims that Alex manipulated the footage to tell a certain story, they insist that Alex was deliberately culpable for the events that unfolded, that Alex is still actively watching Jay and ready to do it all over again - but despite what he claims, Brian doesn't actually know as much as he thinks he does. The reveal about Tim's character and the fact that Brian was the one caught most off guard about it is proof enough of that.

I've also posted about how I think Jay's stalking behavior does a lot to push Alex to the brink - actions that go entirely minimized by the series because Jay is the one who can edit months of daily stalking down into a 20 second clip or a brief title card. Jay's own paranoid striving for answers is to me a big proponent of why Season Two devolves the way it does, but one still has to wonder if he would have been so suspicious of Alex if totheark hadn't been repeatedly insisting that Alex was guilty. Even if you disregard the potential that Alex wasn't lying, it still feels pretty obvious that Jay's stalking is what causes the sudden, rapid devolution of the final part of Season 2 - would he have been more willing to give Alex the benefit of the doubt if he hadn't internalized totheark's bias?

Of course, this all said without even getting into the reality that "getting help" in Marble Hornets is an essentially fruitless endeavor, given that nothing we see in canon does anything to Prove that there are tangible ways to Defeat or Overcome the Operator's influence. Even if Alex had acted "appropriately" scared or guilty or whatever it was other characters wanted from him, there's no indication that things would have turned out different, let alone Better, than they did. Ultimately, Marble Hornets is a series where everyone Thinks they're doing the Right Thing, that they're the only one making the Right Move, but in actuality none of them are making good decisions because they simply don't have any of the information that would inform their ability to make the Right Choice. Or, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern put it "there is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means."

actually it's kind of funny how people will say Alex's fatal flaw is that he 'doesn't ask for help' and that it's his determination to handle things on his own that leads to his deterioration and eventual death when his whole introduction to the present-day timeline was a very literal cry for help that simply went ignored

[autobot-ratchet]

earthspark episode 9+10!

hfgdjs I love how they've been building up ghost as this super skeevy morally grey organization that's using the autobots to further their anti-con agenda but they're all just cringefail losers, including that one dude from earlier who was hunting Twitch

"it's been 30 years! well, 15 for you." okay so I'm completely justified in feeling weird about everyone being so cool with Megatron lmfAO he was absolutely doing decepticon shit on earth within recent memory

THE BUMBLEBEE SUIT........

I love how we're slowly but surely playing with the idea of gender-swapping more and more bots (in particular, swapping from male to female since yknow. there's like 1000 male bots and like maybe 20 females if you really scrape for the obscure ones lmfAO)

I barely have anything to say about this scene, this is just some good, good action lmAO

as much as I poke fun at Dr. Mandroid, I am immediately interested in his villainous angle here, especially in tandem with ghost's deal and Optimus and Megatron's moral dilemma, I'm seeing the overarching themes, I am the noticer

fhdsjak come on Op you gotta pinky-swear

aw I'm glad Optimus arranged things so that he can still go with the Terrans, I was fully prepared for him to have to be like "eermmm sorry, I know I pinky-swore, but actually I gotta go do ghost things you know how it is." also more Megatron-Dorothy time hell yes I'm so ready

oh I LOOOOOOOOVE how Dorothy holds onto Megatron's leg as he walks, like it's a practiced motion they've done a thousand times oughgjdsfgu I forgot how much I love human/bot relationships my fucking neurons are ACTIVATED

oh shit these spider droid things can do it all

GET HIS ASS DOROTHY

ooh tell me the LORE mandroid, he hates literally all parties involved and I wanna know why, spill the teeeeaaaaaa

there's that spidery symbol again (edit: I was playing Earth Wars and saw that symbol again in that game, it's Quintus Prime's crest lmAO I kinda thought it was gonna be Tarantulas-related since I know his ass is in this show somewhere)

"go ahead, kids, you got the touch." and the fuckin synth music kicking in shut uuuUUUPPP

the ember stone, huh? I did call it a matrix rock before but it looks absolutely nothing like the matrix lmAO so yeah that's fair that it's an entirely different object

I love that they wrote Alex to just. have transformers as a special interest, I love how it works in both canon and meta, I love transformers lore lmAO

once again crossing my fingers and praying for the cyber sleeves to equip the human children with weapons to protect themselves

uhhhgfhdsj I'll come back and edit this post with what the cybertronian writing says later, I wanna watch right now lmAO besides I'm willing to bet it says the same thing the wall did, "in times of need, help shall rise to your call," that fits for this situation (edit: it does not lmfAO it says "Evolution of hope.")

OH NEW GUYS, THAT ONE'S NIGHTSHADE RIGHT THAT'S MY FELLOW THEY/THEM USER HIIIIIIII

oh shit they actually caused a cave-in

happy birthday kids, now escape mortal peril lmAO

oh of course Nightshade's a little fruity with it lmfAO also I gotta say, I'm pleasantly surprised by the masculine voice, usually when an agender individual shows up in a piece of mainstream media, they're very clearly feminine/afab since the general cis population thinks that agender people are just weird and quirky women and have a hard time grasping the concept of amab folks being anything other than Male so I'm happy to see this

I love that everyone else in the show also just calls this dude Mandroid lmfAO like even during serious scenes, they're not even dunking on him like I am, he really did just fuck up his introduction forever

"he or she just doesn't fit who I am" oh it warms my heart to hear that in a mainstream transformers cartoon aaaAAAAAHHHH..... and I was afraid they'd handle that in a really clunky way, especially when I heard that a character literally says the words "Nightshade's pronouns are they/them" in the script, but that felt natural enough in its canon context. also I do feel a tiny bit of vindictive glee at them specifically saying "he or she" is not correct, cannot TELL you how many times I've seen people use "he or she" to refer to a group of people when "they" would've worked just fine, just REALLY letting me know you think there's only two options

ohhh hearing Optimus prime respect someone's they/them pronouns has my heart soaring lmAO it feels like my veins are filled with liquid sunshine, feels good feels right feels organic!!! literally every time I start doubting my gender and thinking I should just go back to presenting as cis, I hear someone refer to someone else with they/them pronouns just casually like it's not even an issue and the gender euphoria goes DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!!! and like truly what choice do I have but to be more of a they/them than ever lmAO

I said it before but I love how involved Dorothy is with the action in this show. It always made me happy that June got to be part of the team in transformers prime but she was a doctor, not a fighter. I am specifically glad that Dorothy is fucking shit up in this cartoon lmAO it rules

ooh interesting, his base moves??? or is it invisible, I know he's got that kind of tech

aww Alex...

omgdhfasjk the seven billion text messages...

I am a fucking sucker, that whole "the color purple" thing got me good lmAO

fghsdjksa good fake accent, Hashtag

DFGADHJSFDGHDJSF THE SPARKLY ANIME YURI FLASHBACK..... purple is apparently also the color of lesbian airplanes, first Slipstream now Skywarp lmfAO

this man's lips are so fucking dry y'all gotta stop zooming in on them

OH THE BASE DOES IN FACT JUST FUCKING MOVE LMAO

oh hell yeah, love the heart-shaped explosions while they kiss lmAO

oh my god Mandroid really does have history and beef with EVERYONE, how the FUCK does he know Alex???

Twitch is just collecting dads like it's a hobby

ooh shit we got spilled energon

girl you better know what the fuck you're doing, I actually like you you better not die

YEAAAHHHH FUCK HIS WHOLE DAY UP

"is every day like this for you?" FOR REAL LIKE Y'ALL HAVE BEEN ALIVE FOR HALF A DAY AND ALREADY YOU'VE SEEN ALL THIS SHIT

aww I'm glad Optimus finally got a dub, he's been getting yelled at this whole dang show and now we finally got some tangible progress on the kind of thing he's trying to achieve, good for him, good for everybody

[darlingpoppet]

What inspired you to start Where The Dead Forget? Also can you tell us some more about your PZA Dreamers AU? (e.g. what your favourite thing to write has been so far, things you look forward to or struggle with, or anything else you like). Thanks!

As for WTDF, honestly it pretty much all started with this tweet where I expressed interest in the concept of Patroclus Hadesgame losing his memories. I had seen such fanarts already so I was curious if there were fics out there too (there are of course! I have since found some, lol!) But a friend in the comments was encouraging to the notion of me writing one myself and I pretty much immediately began spiraling from there (I tweeted this the same day I posted Once More and also about a week before I posted Upon A Lazy Bed, so at the time my brain was on fire and I was constantly brimming with ideas!) The entire story from beginning to end pretty much came to me immediately and I’ve been expanding on it ever since! A lot of my inspiration has been fueled by the experience of consuming every depiction of Achilles & Patroclus I could get my hands on, as well as countless academic writings with various analyses on the characters. Also just the entire meta tradition of storytelling with folklore characters in general, where there’s no one “definitive version”, and thinking about how that might work in-universe where things like memories, bias, human fallibility, etc make objective truth difficult or impossible to obtain. Films such as Rashomon and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind that explore similar concepts to WTDF also inspired me!

As for the PZA Dreamers AU!! I can’t remember if I’ve ever properly explained the concept in a public post but for anyone curious: the whole thing was born out of me seeing a parallel/synergy between the themes of the film The Dreamers and certain interpretations of the Iliad (the Homeric version itself ofc but also particularly Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida.) The characters in these stories exist in this symbolic & narrative liminal space where they’re shutting themselves off from the outside world so they can Live Laugh Love—and in all the stories, reality catches up with them eventually, usually in tragic ways. I’m making it a modern AU (a vaguely 2010s period piece?) because as a millennial I also see parallels to my generation (& Gen Z) where as a whole our own lives also seem to be stuck in a figurative liminal space academically, economically, socially (especially in the era of covid where we were all shut-up in our houses finding there was more to life than The Grind, simultaneously reveling in simple pleasures & also going insane from the ambiguity of it all until we were all forced back out again) And at the same time our generations have this fascination with liminal spaces as an Internet meme (including vaporwave which also coincidentally appropriates classical Greco-Roman imagery in its aesthetics.) I’m reading serious non-fiction books like Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher and Retromania by Simon Reynolds in service of what at the end of the day is just a horny fanfic LMFAO.

Because getting back on track to what you actually asked me: I’m not gonna lie, my favorite parts of writing this story so far have been the sex scenes, haha. Like the whole vibe of the story is supposed to be just this completely unfettered dreamy indulgence, and even things like sex have a liminal quality to me (where time seems to stand still and people are joined together transitioning through several physical states) hopefully I’ll be able to pull the whole thing off the way I’m envisioning it! The fact that it’s a modern AU is probably what makes this both easier and harder to write—things like dialogue can have a more modern sensibility but it’s probably the more flowery prose that’s giving WTDF its own dreamy, liminal quality so it’s tricky figuring out how to balance it. I’m also having a hard time deciding whether I want to dump this entire high-concept, novella-length story as a one-shot (or at least split up into 2-3 parts that are published all at once) or if I should stick to a more traditional (for fanfic) serialized publication schedule ahahaha. I guess if anyone reading this has any preferences or insight feel free to let me know your thoughts!

Oh and as for the PZA of it all: writing Closest To My Heart was probably what reminded me of the existence of The Dreamers in the first place (I had seen it years and years ago) because I realized that film has a similar dynamic of an “outsider” falling into an erotic triangle with a pair who are essentially soulmates, and ends up biting off a little more than he can chew in keeping up with the two of them… I decided I wasn’t quite done exploring that dynamic and I wanted to write about it more! Though don’t worry, I don’t think this story is gonna be quite as dark as Closest (uh oh wait this might be a lie actually), and also Patrochilles are MUCH nicer to Zag in this story ;)

(Also I didn’t even mention Hadesgame itself where the entire underworld is a liminal space Zagreus passes through to reach the surface/self-actualization and how he is constantly dying/resurrecting… Zagreus is a very liminal character! But this is already an ETA so I shall leave my thoughts there for now, lol.)

Hopefully all that answers your questions, anon! Thanks so much for the ask <3

[vonkarma2]

Writing Crow Armitage meta IKR I’m contributing to the problem. God as my witness I will write meta about Kaleela or someone next. But I do think it’s interesting. So with Crow something I think is interesting about his character is two seemingly  very contradictory aspects, which is his excessive humility vs his egotism like ok. He is simeltaneously convinced he can’t do anything and needs external guidance and has a low opinion of himself relative to humanity (and to the people he ranks below ie basically just Dashwood he probably does think he’s better than Hollyhock lmao) + that his own thoughts and feelings don’t matter. But at the same time. He views himself as carrying out an important purpose as part of an important legacy and is condescending to others who don’t share his views, most especially to werewolves of course but also often unintentionally to humans as well. Both above and beneath everyone else.

 I think the layers are like as a child he thought he needed to do something important to help his family. He wasn‘t malicious or anything, but he did have a very high opinion of himself at the time. Thought it was cool that he was nobility, thought he was deserving of praise for his own abilities. And I think he does still carry this to some extent to this day, even though it has been greatly complicated. I think his faith in his own control over transformation + over any dangerous situation he gets into in general can be traced back not just to his success in battle over the years, but also to this time, when he was like 15 and had the overconfidence of a high school boy lmfao. Just genuinely sincerely thought he knew better than everyone else, and had a very high opinion of both his knowledge and his ability. What a fucking loser.

Now as an adult he wants his agency taken away, as we’ve stated before, because he can’t trust himself, because if he does he’ll know he’s made a huge mistake. He is at least generally aware, even if he’s not sure why, that the initial decision to leave his family was wrong. And honestly on some level he probably *does* know specifically that what he’s doing is wrong, because of the regret he would have felt as a teenager the first time he got sent to fucking murder someone with his bare hands. He was canonically very distressed by this, he didn’t actually want to hurt anyone, they had to do a lot of heavy lifting to convince him it was justified both before and after the fact. So it’s the regret from that and the recognition of the initial decision to take the aconite in the first place as where it kind of all went wrong that he started his classic strategy of compensating for internal doubt by quadrupling down on what other people are telling him.

So that’s where you see the start of ignoring his own thoughts and beliefs and actively playing into the ideology as a way to cope with the reality of his situation. The ideology says he’s beneath humans, he’s an extension of the Equipoise’s will, he has to take orders from the Prime Gardener because he’s the one who knows what’s best to protect humanity. So of course he does, he genuinely believes in all of this, starts thinking that not only his own beliefs but also straight up his life is not valuable except with regards to being a tool of lycanthropy.

But that’s not all that other people are telling him, right. Part of the manipulation is kind of stroking his ego a little, or more so, like, exaggerating his importance. The outside world is full of heretics full of killers you’re the only thing standing between humanity and the total violence most werewolves are either actively perpetuating or want to. This idea of his own importance contributes to his conviction, right, because it adds a sense of urgency and necessity, and it also associates that with being above other werewolves. 

The commitment to all of this where the contradiction comes in, right. Because he is so completely devoted to the ideology as a way to cover up his own doubts, he can’t let other people question it or go against it either, so in a way it is like he is believing his judgment to be above questioning whereas theirs is not. He is above questioning because he’s replaced his own thoughts with other peoples’, and he sure as hell isn’t going to question them. He becomes like very condescending and very adamant about the points of view others have given him.

So it’s like both sides of the coin. He’s so convinced he’s right about everything because he knows he’s horribly wrong. 

Tangent that’s only semi-related: Another thing with him that’s kind of funny is that because he has not successfully repressed every single thought and desire he has, he becomes very adherent to the letter and not the spirit of the law, right, which you can see in the main story with taking Lennox with him on one of his missions just because he wanted to impress him, thus putting him directly in danger. He doesn’t see a problem with this because the Sanctum can’t take issue with it as long as they never find out, so he isn’t violating any orders :). This makes him a massive fucking hypocrite and an even worse person, but it’s also very funny. Do not take my word for this last paragraph though because I’m not 100% sure on all the details here. The spirit of what Im saying is correct he is a hypocritical bitch for sure

[kafus]

Hopefully I'm first to the scene so I can ask the obvious option: KAFU!

you were not the first to ask but you WERE the first to send in kafu so congratulationsdfjsdfk

favorite song: oh lord that's a tough one i have a kafu playlist with over 2000 songs in it. what am i supposed to do here SDFJKFSD there's a lot of songs i like, but i have to say that mikito-p's song Who are is really high up there. i'm biased because i love mikito-p more than i love myself but it's just so good

ships: i want you to take a wild guess (lighthearted joke) no but really the obvious answer is kaf/u. i should really go on a whole rant sometime about how i got into this ship and why but in general i've always been a mirror image shipping enjoyer (rinlen was like the only not-wlw ship i cared about as a kid lol etc) and i got into kaf as an interest intertwined with kafu, like i found out who kaf was by hearing one of kafu's demo songs and looking up her voice provider and being like "oh why are their names so similar and why do they look similar" so i just kinda... developed my interest in both alongside each other and as kamitsubaki kept putting out official art that was looking extremely gay and then COVERS (lord i need more real-person-duets-with-vsynth songs) i could not resist. there are so many things i love about this ship both within my fan interpretation of them and like. in the context of the "meta" of how kamitsubaki interacts with vsynth culture but this paragraph is already getting way too long.

stuff i don't Actively Ship but still enjoy is kafu/rime (kaf/rim parallels lmao) and kafu/miku. also kafu/rei but that's more of a crackship just because i really like adachi rei and i want my robot girls together. because kafu is a robot in my mind

favorite part of design: i love kafu's design a Lot but i am obsessed with her hair... diamond... things. in my AU that i'm really attached to they're mics/atmospheric temperature sensors but just in general i think they're cool and really stand out. kafu looks wrong/naked without them lmfao. and i like how they can be interpreted in different ways/used in art in different ways - both stuff like... the yellow triangle can be used as a symbol, but also whatever the fuck this is. whatever this gay shit is going on here!! official art btw!! the wires aren't even canon to her design kisumi rei just made that up and thank god they did

random headcanon: (talking about my android AU here) even once the option is presented to her to upgrade her body and make herself appear more human, kafu chooses to stay in her prototype body because she's become attached to it over time and would feel wrong in anything else. (of course kaf loves her as she is)

i have a lot of kafu headcanons because i have a whole AU with more plot and world development than some of my own ocs oops

[pluviophile-imagines]

Could I ask what your sexuality headcanons are? I love comparing mine with other peoples’!

Ok second half of this; this is just like. non-students who i Actually have thought about HJBAFV not at all a comprehensive list. Again disclaimer i write all these chars as bi in my fics, also i am bi myself so the vast majority are also bi, and also leaving a lot of these vague so u can imagine ur favorite ship or urself or w/ever

ok lets start this off with Aizawa. I think....... hes another one who's rlly unlabelled, doesnt super care to think it through and define it, but calls himself gay bc his interest in women is very, very rare and it's just way easier to say than explain all that. Definitely do buy into the idea that he had a crush on Oboro in hs but i do NOT buy into the easermic agenda sorry. Definitely not someone who goes looking for dates, but doesn't say no if someone asks him and hes interested (also im not gonna give her a whole section but i saw a hc a while back that the Ms. Joke stuff is literally that shes a lesbian and hes gay and shes fucking with him and i love that so much i just wanted to put it out there)

on the topic of the erasermic agenda: Hizashi's pan and knew it before HS, had a sudden & intense crush on Aizawa for the first month they knew each other and then immediately got over it in favor of a similar sudden, intense, and then immediately fading crush on Midnight. Hizashi and Aizawa r just rlly good friends imo; maybe they messed around for a bit in their twenties but it never went anywhere serious. He dates around a lot, not even necessarily to settle down just to have some fun

Midnight is aro/ace but does get in qprs & gravitates towards women wrt that. Most people dont read vigilantes but theres a woman in that, Kazuho, who i imagine she's been in a long-term qpr with; her relationship with aizawa and hizashi leans a little more towards a qpr than a normal friendship, too, but it's not rlly defined that way

All Might is married to justice queer but v much not interested in relationships. He and that one guy from the first movie are ABSOLUTELY exes and i won't hear otherwise; it's the only relationship he's ever had, and they broke up bc he had to go back to japan. He was heartbroken but did eventually get over him; his lack of romance afterwards is from genuine disinterest and not being hung up on his past. I can see him finding someone else in his later years, after he's retired. Definitely feels like he's not worthy of it tho

Hawks is bi but unfortunately didn't get to figure that out until like Now in the timeline...... if youll let my dabihawks history shine through i think dabi was the reason JHBASFGJHB he was basically brainwashed by the commission to become a hero so he didnt have time to Figure That Shit Out; he knew he was into women bc that was easy & what the commission expected from him but then he started this undercover assignment and met dabi and realized Oh...... Fuck. Hawks is hard tbh, bc i think between the control that the commission has over him and his own convictions as a hero he doesn't pursue any romance (tho he does get crushes or find people attractive) and most of his flings are done to keep up his prettyboy act, not out of genuine interest in being a fuckboy. Can't imagine him having a relationship until well after canon but I do see him being interested eventually

Onto the villains, Shigaraki is unlabelled but probably would call himself queer if asked. Definitely admires women more but isn't very interested in romance; AFO actively encourages him to pursue the things interested in so imo if he were he'd talk abt it more lmfao. I kinda see him as demi as well, not the type to fall immediately but requiring a friendship beforehand; tho unlike Bakugo as i said in my last post I dont think it happens suddenly but rather slowly. Y'all know im a big fan of shigaraki being absolutely whipped for his s/o so i do thing hes a big piner, tho he's also pretty bold and unashamed of his affections. I'm a big fan of him falling for a member of the league or a civilian; definitely can't see him falling for a hero unless the hero was already halfway to turning sides already. I think he's also attracted to intelligence and someone who pushes him to think more abt his ideology...... maybe im just projecting at this point JSHDFBVAJKSHD but my point is that the gender of his partner is definitely the least of what he considers/notices

Dabi is bi and, here's my bold take, demisexual; not interested in sex unless its with someone he loves. Absolutely doesn't even think abt romance for most of the years where he's on his own. He's got revenge to plan. By the time he joins the league that hasn't changed much, and he's demi so he's not interested in sleeping around, plus he rlly denies any attachment to people at all. As I said in that other ask tho I do rlly like the idea of him with Magne, so I think they have a fling for a bit before her death :( it's one of the things that leads him to isolate himself further, unfortunately, even from Jin and the other League members with whom his relationships aren't romantic. I can see him dating someone post-canon bc i think hes gonna be redeemed lol. It could be someone he knew before but they probably didnt date again bc he was v guarded; i think magne was rlly the only person he dated

Magne is pan and heres the kicker: I think shes t4t, which led to a little moment just before she and dabi got together where he was like "she wouldnt be into me :/" but she was into him anyway so all was good. She got around in her circles, mostly casual stuff tho she yearned for something more serious.

Spinner's bi & trends towards women but does occasionally get things for men and they're almost always intense. He thought he was straight for a while even once he joined the league and then suddenly got a crush on Shigaraki (around the time of MVA) and realized otherwise LMFAO he's definitely a hopeless romantic type, the whole mutant prejudice thing makes it rlly hard for him and i can see him being rlly happy with another mutant-type; i feel like as he matures he starts to gravitate towards them

Toga is canonically pan to my understanding, iirc her interest in Uraraka and Deku is the same (and romantic) in canon tho i might be wrong. Poor girl just needs therapy. I like the idea of the two of them becoming her friends over her being involved with them but i totally can get behind her having a thing with Uraraka (and maybe Tsu) at some point post-canon (presuming she gets redeemed), tho I think a qpr between the two/three of them would be longer lasting. And again presuming she gets therapy i can see her settling down with someone, gender irrelevant

Jin is unlabelled bc he hasn't much thought abt it, definitely had a thing for dabi and for hawks which does make me sad on both counts. I think he likes women slightly more abstractly/aesthetically and gets crushes more on men,. The dabi thing fades as they get closer and start to view each other as brothers. In his later years he doesn't rlly care about romance, I think he enjoys the experience of crushing but doesnt like dating people; his found family in the League is far more important to him. But i can see him falling head-over-heels for someone quite suddenly and having a bit of a whirlwind romance. Also someone for whom gender isn't much of a factor

Mr Compress is also queer and also hasn't rlly thought abt it. Definitely leans more towards women; he's like 30 but i like to think he also goes for older partners, 10 or 15 years his senior KJBADSJFHB idk he just has that Vibe with the way he calls himself an old man etc. A lot of the league i cant see sleeping or dating around much, i feel like they prioritize each other, but I do think mr compress gets around more than the others. i can see him having a bit of a fuckbuddy who he catches feelings for

Kurogiri is fun; as Oboro I do think Aizawa's crush was reciprocated, tho he wasn't around long enough for them to act on it :( he's bi, tho kurogiri isn't supposed to have personal interests. I like to imagine the brainwashing isnt as good as AFO wants it to be tho so I like the idea of him falling for someone anyway. I also like the idea of the heroes managing to undo the nomufication and I 100% can see him, aizawa, and someone else (someone he was involved with as Kurogiri) ending up in a triad as a result of aizawa and the third partner helping him through the aftermath of all that shit

Lady Nagant is a manga-only minor character but im in love with her so imma talk abt it. Shes bi and leans VERY heavily towards women, probably spent years questioning whether she was rlly bi or a lesbian before finally having a fling with a guy that she genuinely enjoyed. Has only ever been in long-term relationships with women and I v much think she has a gf at home who stayed even when she was arrested 🥺

Finally imma talk abt Natsuo bc i love that boy. He's one of the few unmarried chars with a love interest and he canonically has a gf. I do see him as IDing straight in canon ngl, but the kind of straight where he might actually be bi but his preference leans so heavily towards women and he grew up in a bad home so he just doesnt rlly think abt it bc hes v happy with women anyway. In shiganatsu thoughts shigaraki is the first man he has a thing for; i rlly can see the two of them in a triad with a woman specifically, who helps the two of them find each other and is the one who initiates bc its definitely a weird situation for natsuo

[firelxdykatara]

ok but the problem isn’t that katara was a healer in lok--it’s that a healer is all she was allowed to be (and not a very successful one, at that, since the worf affect hit her hard throughout the series). that’s what we mean when we say she was ‘reduced to nothing but a healer’--because she was! she wasn’t allowed to be anything else! if you watched lok and had never seen atla, you’d never even know she was a fierce fighter and revolutionary warrior in her own right. you’d certainly never have any reason to believe it, since lipservice is paid to how she trained two avatars in waterbending but details are never given and she never demonstrates anything approaching genuine skill or passion for the art.

katara wanting to settle down as a healer in the SWT in her old age isn’t the problem--katara sitting on her ass and not lifting a finger to protect the people she loves when her entire family is in danger from zealots planning to kill them all? that is a problem. katara letting her people tear each other and themselves apart from the inside out without so much as raising her voice to make herself heard as an allegedly respected matriarch of the tribe? that is a problem. and her age isn’t an excuse, nor is the fact that lok wasn’t about the gaang, because the old ass men in the white lotus in atla were allowed to kick ass and take names when the situation warranted it!

even toph and zuko, who are just as old as katara and are also grandparents with families and lives outside of fighting (and who also had their share of fighting in their youths), are allowed to fight to protect their families (or at least fly off on a huge ass dragon to go do exactly that) while katara is... what, too old and frail to protect her children?

how could you claim to love katara in the original series and then think that she’d grow up to sit around while other people saved her loved ones from mortal peril? or that she’d watch her own people about to descend into civil war and not say a word about it? or that she wouldn’t bother attending the most important ceremony in her granddaughter’s life--the first air master ceremony to be performed since her own son’s????

people’s interests, passions, and inclinations can change over time, but you will never convince me that the katara i know and love from the OG series would grow up into someone who wouldn’t bother to lift a finger to fight when her own family and her own people were the ones in danger. maybe she didn’t want to fight in wars anymore, but this wasn’t a war--this was her entire family being directly threatened by a group of zealots who were prepared to kill them. katara could have at least tried to save them and still have been a healer who preferred a quiet life at the end of the day, but lok refused to let her.

that’s why people have a problem with katara being ‘just a healer’ in lok. because she wasn’t allowed to be anything else, even when the situation would absolutely have warranted it. (and even the things she allegedly accomplished are barely talked about, let alone at all relevant, in the show proper.)

the idea that katara was "reduced down" to just a healer in tlok is so sexist. she is old. she is a grandmother. she's had her share of fighting in her youth and now she's handed that to the next generation. she's always been motherly and she's always been a healer, even if not primarily, so who's to say she wouldn't want to settle down as a healer in the southern water tribe in her old age? people's interests, passions and inclinations can change over time, and it's perfectly in character for katara to want to be a healer. you guys just don't see a woman as strong if she doesn't go off fighting wars

[theomnicode]

Love is in the air

I can't believe I didn't notice this before. Thanks twitter for waking me up.

Saitama's not extremely giddy because he sees a big clam. I mean honestly, why would he? It's just a clam, calm down. You don't even have a pot yet.

Or a big dog. Which got all happy and cuddly with him and it still didn't induce this kind of reaction.

No, he's this giddy because he sees Genos. Being cute.

Saitama has a thing for cute stuff. Genos wears a pink apron for crying out loud, he loves little kids and he likes cats and dogs and then he has a little cutesy giraffe keychain too. He even called the big chinned kid not cute at all.

This is what happens when you get struck by dose of dopamine when you see a person you love. It triggers a dopamine release into the brain.

In essence, Saitama is acting like a lovestruck fool and that's why he doesn't notice anything else important that is happening around him. Parts of the brain that regulate critical thinking, self-awareness, and rational behavior, including parts of the prefrontal cortex, get turned off when feeling love. In short, he's being bit of a dummy. He's not very articulate either, he's literally repeating himself too.

Genos is basically the best antidepressant. And the worst possible distraction, can't forget that love turns brain into mush.

More meta below the cut.

Dopamine, produced by the hypothalamus, is a particularly well-publicized player in the brain’s reward pathway – it’s released when we do things that feel good to us. In this case, these things include spending time with loved ones and having sex. High levels of dopamine and a related hormone, norepinephrine, are released during attraction. These chemicals make us giddy, energetic, and euphoric, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia – which means you actually can be so “in love” that you can’t eat and can’t sleep.

Dopamine is the brain's reward system that Saitama's brain seems to be sorely lacking because he displays a lot of typical adhd symptoms and one of them is the poor connection between the parts of the brain that connect dopamine and reward system with emotions and regulation, prefrontal cortex and the amygdala and other parts of the brain, creating deficiency in dopamine and thus depression and other stuff.

This guy explains the neuroscience better than I do. I don't actually have any kind of clue lmfao this stuff flies above my head, I'm not smart enough to be a neuroscientist. But now that he is apparently getting his actual dopamine fix, it would seem that the connection between his brain parts has become better.

Important because he has cognitive powers yea? Brain stuff is important. We had depiction of the brain during psykos too. There's separate Lobster example from Jordan Peterson bout serotonin, low social status and reference in Orochi's lobster back body being correlated as well. One of the reasons monsters tend to posture so much I suppose.

Petting a dog also releases serotonin and dopamine, two feel-good chemicals that can improve your mood. Serotonin and dopamine levels are often low in people who suffer from depression, so having a dog can help improve symptoms in depression sufferers.

I heavily suspect this change has occured because the areas of the brain, temporal lobe, got neuron activated and stimulated on the moon, where he experienced deja vu that I've made a meta about.

Most specifically, the amygdala, which controls memory, decision making and emotional responses.

In one study, electrical stimulations of the right amygdala induced negative emotions, especially fear and sadness. In contrast, stimulation of the left amygdala was able to induce either pleasant (happiness) or unpleasant (fear, anxiety, sadness) emotions.[10] Other evidence suggests that the left amygdala plays a role in the brain's reward system.

This is why Psykorochi's form is inspired by the neuron and why divine power appears in thunderstorms and there's a lot of electric crackles going on whenever someone uses divine power.

The amygdala is also involved in the modulation of memory consolidation. Following any learning event, the long-term memory for the event is not formed instantaneously. Rather, information regarding the event is slowly assimilated into long-term (potentially lifelong) storage over time, possibly via long-term potentiation. Recent studies suggest that the amygdala regulates memory consolidation in other brain regions. Also, fear conditioning, a type of memory that is impaired following amygdala damage, is mediated in part by long-term potentiation. During the consolidation period, the memory can be modulated. In particular, it appears that emotional arousal following the learning event influences the strength of the subsequent memory for that event. Greater emotional arousal following a learning event enhances a person's retention of that event. Experiments have shown that administration of stress hormones to mice immediately after they learn something enhances their retention when they are tested two days later. In rats, DNA damage was found to increase in the amygdala immediately after exposure to stress.[47] Stress was induced by 30 minutes of restraint or by forced swimming. By seven days after exposure to these stresses, increased DNA damage was no longer detectable in the amygdala, probably because of DNA repair. Buddhist monks who do compassion meditation have been shown to modulate their amygdala, along with their temporoparietal junction and insula, during their practice.[48] In an fMRI study, more intensive insula activity was found in expert meditators than in novices.

UVA light, which is what I suspect Saitama's harmful divine power is depicted as, has the capacity to harm DNA of living organisms and there are multiple references to that it is UVA light, for instance Carnage Kabuto can see it because beetles can detect UV light.

So after a week, his amygdala had repaired itself from the harm done by his own divine power to himself, because he used far too much power at once and his temporal lobe was having a seizure.

(Ergo its not healthy)

Basically, now that it has been a week after they got let out of Metal Knight's care, after his amygdala got highly stimulated and activated by his divine power, he's starting to remember something. More than likely, the fear of Genos death is going to be resurfacing soon, but so are the emotions that he experienced on the moon for Genos.

(if I understood that correctly)

Animal studies have shown that stimulating the amygdala appears to increase both sexual and aggressive behavior. Likewise, studies using brain lesions have shown that harm to the amygdala may produce the opposite effect. Thus, it appears that this part of the brain may play a role in the display and modulation of aggression.

That giddy, euphoric excitement you feel when spending time with the person you love (or seeing them across the room, or hearing their name)? You can trace this entirely normal effect of falling in love back to the neurotransmitter dopamine. Your brain’s reward system relies on this important chemical to reinforce pleasurable behaviors, including: eating listening to music having sex seeing people you love Simply thinking about the object of your affections is enough to trigger dopamine release, making you feel excited and eager to do whatever it takes to see them. Then, when you actually do see them, your brain “rewards��� you with more dopamine, which you experience as intense pleasure.

In short, Saitama is now a free real estate for emotions. And he's already responding very well to dopamine triggers.

Such as actually feeling the emotions associated with feeling love for someone when he sees Genos.

Familial love? Or will it evolve into romantic attraction? We're bout to find out, soon tm.

(Feel free to eat well, Saigenos fans)

[deripmaver]

laurent is a good person - book 1 meta

one of the most amazing things about captive prince is how the reveals in book 3 recontextualize all of the scenes leading up to them, including about laurent himself. in book one, all we see is damen pov as he’s being abused and humiliated by this supposedly spoiled, vile ice prince. when the regent comes to damen and subtly (and not so subtly) insults laurent, calling him unfit to rule - well, why would he think anything different? laurent has insulted him, had him whipped within an inch of his life, and even attempted to (and later successfully lmfao) have him raped while drugged out of his mind. 

after book 3 we can reread most if not all of book 1 as a very traumatized boy who has finally been confronted with the man who killed his brother, leaving him alone with his abusive uncle, and who he clearly has made into a complete monster in his own mind. damen of course sees him as a complete bitch, but there’s textual/subtextual evidence that laurent is well liked, and that his behavior during book 1 was actually pretty out of character for him. i’d like to provide some examples of that now!!!!

“Laurent had stopped dead the moment he had seen Damen, his face turning white as though in reaction to a slap, or an insult. Damen’s view, half-truncated by the short chain at this neck, had been enough to see that. But Laurent’s expression had shuttered quickly.” Captive Prince, Chapter One

i couldn’t resist adding this one in hehe. laurent recognizes damen!! he’s come down, knowing his uncle has devised another truly horrendous and triggering “gift” and that he’ll lose support if he calls it our for what it truly is, only to find out that it’s fucking damianos of akielos sent to him as a sex slave. a jab at laurent’s trauma about auguste and also a jab at laurent’s frigid sexuality - which ofc is completely the regent’s fault. fuck that guy so much lmfao 

“‘It’s so rare to see you at these entertainments, Your Highness,’ said Vannes.” Captive Prince, Chapter Two.

this is right before the fight between govart and damen in the ring, of course. damen sees laurent as depraved and vile as the sexual sadism on display by the veretian court, and considers him to be a willing purveyor of it. this is wrong, of course, as said by vannes here. laurent has only shown up because he wants to humiliate damen lmfao.

“He did remember being supported by two of the guards, here, in this room, while Radel stared athis back in horror. ‘The Prince really . . . did this.’ ‘Who else?’ Damen said. Radel had stepped forward, and slapped Damen across the face; it was a hard slap, and the man wore three rings on each finger. ‘What did you do to him?’ Radel demanded.” Captive Prince, Chapter Four

this scene, to me, was the most telling lmfao. it’s right after damen is whipped. you could argue that radel is just a servant in the employ of the royal household, so is of course going to be loyal to the prince, but he seems genuinely surprised of the prince’s cruelty towards damen. not only that, but he slaps him and immediately assumes damen must have done something. which - i mean, technically he did lmao. not necessarily enough to deserve having the skin flayed from his back, but you know. if laurent was in the habit of torturing pets and slaves, why would the overseer react this way?

“The men guarding him were the Prince’s Guard, and had no affiliation with the Regent whatsoever. It surprised Damen how loyal they were to their Prince, and how diligent in his service, airing none of the grudges and complaints that he might have expected, considering Laurent’s noxious personality. Laurent’s feud with his uncle they took up wholeheartedly; there were deep schisms and rivalries between the Prince’s Guard and the Regent’s Guard, apparently.” Captive Prince, Chapter Four

laurents relationships with his guards are also some of the biggest indicators that he isn’t just a spoiled brat, but can insire a deep loyalty in his men. even if they do all want to fuck him. ah, sexual harassment. it’s also hilarious that damen immediately assumes they’re loyal to him because they want to fuck him - nice projection there, dude. we know a bit more about laurent and his guards thanks to green but for a season, but this little bit here is interesting.

“Laurent was indeed good at talking. He accepted sympathy gracefully. He put his position rationally. He stopped the flow of talk when it became dangerously critical of his uncle. He said nothing that could be taken as an open slight on the Regency. Yet no one who talked to him could have any doubt that his uncle was behaving at best misguidedly and at worst treasonously.”  Captive Prince, Chapter Five

idek what to say here. laurent my beloved <3333

“‘When someone doesn’t like you very much, it isn’t a good idea to let them know that you care about something,’ said Laurent. Damen felt himself turn ashen, as the threat sank in. ‘Would it hurt worse than a lashing for me to cut down someone you care for?’ said Laurent.” Captive Prince, Chapter Seven

this isn’t really relevant to my thesis lmfao i just love this exchange bc it gives SO MUCH information about laurent and his uncle in just three lines of dialogue. what has the regent done, who did he cut down just to hurt laurent? when and how did laurent learn that? p a i n 

“Laurent’s fussy horse began acting out again, and he leaned forward in the saddle, murmuring something as he stroked her neck in an uncharacteristically gentle gesture to quiet her.” Captive Prince, Chapter Nine. 

HORSEY NO- lmfao this scene just hurts so badly on the reread. especially later on, in book 3 i think, where laurent says something like “i provoked my uncle.” he’s really blaming himself for his uncle KILLING HIS HORSE, his horse that his murdered brother trained, one of the only living connections to auguste... all because his uncle could not let a single miniscule plan laurent had set go through without some kind of repercussion. literally all laurent did was do something to stop an innocent group of people from being abused, nothing to undermine his uncle’s rule, but because the regent is VILE he could not let laurent have even this. he’s so good with her, too. he must have known by this point and also known that there was no way to stop this. P A I N

“‘I know that you have somehow arranged this,’ said Erasmus. He was incapable of hiding what he felt, and just seemed to radiate embarrassed happiness. ‘You kept your promise. You and your master. I told you he was kind,’ Erasmus said. ‘You did,’ said Damen. He was pleased to see Erasmus happy. Whatever Erasmus believed about Laurent, Damen wasn’t going to dissuade him. ‘He’s even nicer in person. Did you know he came and talked to me?’ said Erasmus. ‘—He did?’ said Damen. It was something he couldn’t imagine. ‘He asked about . . . what happened in the gardens. Then he warned me. About last night.’ ‘He warned you,’ said Damen. ‘He said that Nicaise would make me perform before the court and it would be awful, but that if I was brave, something good might come at the end of it.’ Erasmus looked up at Damen curiously. ‘Why do you look surprised?’ ‘I don’t know. I shouldn’t be. He likes to plan things in advance,’ said Damen.” Captive Prince, Chapter 9.

this is the first in-text confirmation we have that laurent has a good heart beneath his layers and layers of trauma-induced lashing out. book one often skeeves people out because of its graphic and, honestly, yes, kind of sexualized depiction of rape, slavery, and depravity, but beneath it all you meet these two protagonists who are going to have all of their most deeply held views about each other challenged. laurent from very early on is shaken to his core when damen refuses to rape nicaise in the ring - it cracks the very foundations of the person he’d built up in his head as this horrible monster who killed his brother in cold blood. and damen keeps defying laurents expectations by being a good person through and through. on the other hand, laurent spends the first part of the book taking out years of anger on damen, but here for the first time we see him do something just because its the kind thing to do. yes, torveld is an ally against his uncle, but laurent has clearly been scheming with him for a while now, and he’s now overlooking his hatred of damen and working with him just because none of the slaves deserve whats happened to them. it’s such a sweet moment.

“One of the other men, eyeing them, approached a moment later. ‘Don’t mind Jean. He’s in a foul mood. He was the one had to stick a sword through the mare’s throat and put her down. The Prince tore strips off him for not doing it fast enough.’” Captive Prince, Chapter Nine.

HORSEY NO- pt 2. this is just another really sweet and sad detail - laurent being so upset that the horse’s death could have been more painless. it must have hurt so much to see her in pain, and to know that the only way for that pain to end was being put down as quickly as possible. i wuv him. im sad

that’s it, though there are still a few more chapters left in the book. this isn’t providing any new information, of course, the path of the three books is to show that laurent isnt the man we meet in book one, that he’s actually sweet, and earnest, and he’s been fighting his own battle practically alone against his abuser since he was fifteen years old. also, the reveal that laurent knew who damianos was from the start makes it clear imo that all of his violence in book 1 was supposed vengence, not... him being evil. he apologizes explicitly in-text, and also, all of the acts of violence he commits cause serious problems for him in terms of his future alliance which he then needs to fix. i just love how layered these books are, how there’s so much information in them that makes rereading almost more fun than reading them for the very first time!

[tolkien-feels]

Okay, so, I've watched the movies and I've read The Big Three, though I'm still a little shaky on my Silmarillion lore if I'm being honest. Where do I go from here if I want to read more Tolkien? Is there a commonly followed reading order? Should I just go by publication date? (Yes I am motivated to get into deeper lore because of your blog, that's why I'm asking you lmfao)

Oh hey! Happy to see my blog dragging people deeper down into the black hole of increasingly obscure Tolkien works!

I actually have a friend reading the Silm for the first time and I'm already making my little evil plans that can be summed up by "If she doesn't hate it, what can I tempt her to read next?" So I've been giving it a lot of thought lately, actually! Which is why this post ended up, uh, long.

I've taken the liberty of adapting this answer a little bit just in case I have any followers who have read fewer books than you have and find this useful. Hope you don't mind it!

The best way to read Tolkien depends a lot on what you enjoy. If you thought The Hobbit was too childish, don't read his stories for children. If your eyes glazed over when poems came up in LotR, don't pick a poetry book. If The Silmarillion drove you to tears, maybe wait before you get into the more scholarly works.

Availability is also something to consider. Maybe your local library has a few titles already, or you happen to find a good copy of something in a used bookstore, or there's a deal that saves you a lot of money. Alternatively, maybe you're set on reading something but can't find it. You might also fall in love with a story through fandom and want More Of It, or see a pretty edition that you just Must Own. These are all okay! See, the thing about Tolkien is that generally speaking, you can read his works in almost any order, so be open to changing your plans as stuff comes up in your life. I'd be willing to take a bet that the minority of fans read his stuff in any way that makes any sense lol

Personally, I think it makes sense to read in this sequence:

Read these first

The core stuff

The Hobbit

The Lord of the Rings

The Silmarillion

These are the Big Three, and you should probably get to them before you get to anything else.

The Silmarillion might take a couple of attempts to get through depending on how comfortable you are with the style, and I personally had to read it from cover to cover twice before I felt like I had a good grasp on it. @askmiddlearth has a pretty good guide that my friend who's reading it is finding really helpful.

Stories you already know: now with 200% more detail

Most other books won't be Silm levels of difficult, btw! But many assume you're familiar with it, simply because Hobbit-LotR-Silm are usually the ones most people read. So even if I otherwise follow a generally "easiest to hardest" logic, the Silm belongs here.

As an addendum, I would say the LotR appendices are a good bridge, stylistically speaking, to the Silmarillion.

The books in this category can be read in any order you feel like - you already know how they fit together.

Unfinished Tales

The Great Tales of Middle Earth, which is a series containing the following standalone books:

The Children of Hurin

Beren and Luthien

The Fall of Gondolin

Here you'll find mostly unfinished, often contradictory versions of stories you already know - but with lots of awesome detail that fandom tends to consider canon as much as we can.

These are books which contain both stories by Tolkien and commentary by his son Christopher, explaining his father's creative process and taking educated guesses as to how stories connect together and so on. It's a gentle introduction to more hardcore scholarship and if you can handle long tumblr meta I'm sure you can handle these.

Oh, and of these four books, Children of Hurin is the easiest to read by far, so maybe begin from that one. You might even read it before The Silmarillion and possibly before The Lord of the Rings (especially if you've watched the movies) - it's a pretty straightforward novel.

Read these in any order you want

I'm listing them in the order I think makes the most sense, but if you've read the books above you can just pick any section here according to your interest

Fairy tale essays, short poems, short stories and such things

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book

Farmer Giles of Ham

Tree and Leaf

Smith of Wootton Major

The Father Christmas Letters

Mr Bliss

Roverandom

Tales from the Perilous Realm

These aren't technically legendarium relevant but are delightful if you like fantasy. A lot (but not all) of these are very light reading and excellent to read to children who aren't ready for the actual legendarium yet, or to turn to as a break from heavier material.

I really wanted to make separate sections for children's literature and things that just happen to be fairy tales but immediately noticed I had no idea when a fairy tale becomes too grown up to be children's literature, so a single section it is

The Deep Lore™️

You know when Frodo inherits Bilbo's papers (and then Sam inherits Frodo's) and they have to make sense of it? That's what it's like reading HoME.

The History of Middle Earth series, or HoME for short.

(There are 12 books in this series. It's probably a terrible idea to read them out of order, so I won't even list them here)

Basically, these are nearly all the scraps of paper by Tolkien that could be found at the time, put together chronologically and presented with commentary. Here you can find answers to like 80% of the questions you might have after reading the other books, and then answers to a million other questions you didn't actually have.

This feels more like reading a library than a book series - whether this makes you want to read it more or less depends on your taste.

Also! Last year they released The Nature of Middle Earth, which is in the same vein as these but I haven't read it yet so I don't feel quite comfortable saying "Oh yeah this is when you should read it!"

Tolkien as a person: biography, letters and essays

JRR Tolkien: A Biography (by Humphrey Carpenter)

The Letters of JRR Tolkien

The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

I'm not the best person to ask about studying Tolkien as a person, but these are probably the most famous (and important) books.

The Letters also contain a lot of info about Middle Earth, so they might be worth taking a look even if you, like me, don't feel like reading tons of biographies.

For fans of all things medieval

The Fall of Arthur

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell

Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

The Story of Kullervo

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo

The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

These are all translations, commentaries or deliberate imitations of actual medieval texts, as opposed to the ahistorical quasimedieval thing the legendarium has got going on. You probably shouldn't touch these if poetry scares you, though.

And that's it...?

Not really, no. There are other publications if you're a completist, but these are the major ones in every category I can think of. There should be some 30-40 books here anyway, so this should keep you busy for a while!

Note that I won't revisit this post to update it every time a new book is released, so for more recent books, use your best judgment!

[saintnoname2]

Spoilery thoughts on the series finale of Arthur:

The entire season was a nice little love note to the show, with lots of callbacks and continuity nods.

The meta savagery of Arthur's mom buying him the same sweater he was wearing and him being like, "People will think I wear the same thing every day."

RIP Bubbe and RIP to some of my plans for my middle school longfic lmfao, I was gonna tackle that plotline o_o

I'm happy Patrick was in the last episode, even if he didn't get any lines.

Apparently every kid in Elwood City is going to be way more successful by 28 than I was.

I'm really glad that the dynamics between all of them as adults was one of friendship and they didn't pair anyone off. I suspected this would be the case, but with all the times the show has played at Arthur and Francine ending up together, I couldn't be sure.

All that being said, the adult reunion between DW and Bud was straight out of a romantic comedy.

I'll make another post if I think of anything else.

[aerltarg]

1, 3, 7, 14, 19 + asoiaf 👀 (go off queen 🔥)

1. What OTPs in your fandom do you just not get?

oh boi where to begin 😭

ok i really don't understand what's up w shipping your absolute fave w someone you don't like or straight up hate. bonus points if canonically these characters are not just indifferent to each other but hate the type like the other / is very dismissive towards the other. so you can't even get the love/hate spice from there lmfao, it's literally so bland and sad 😭 also the amount of twisting both characters need to endure to make this at least seem to work out!! what's the point even if in the end of such “ship” you get basically ocs w the names of canon characters?

and what's the point in such “shipping” if you only use the other one (literally the half of said pairing) to prop up your fave? does it really bring ppl joy to turn the whole fucking well-written character into someone else's accessory? relationship goals?? especially in cases when you just know they just have an agenda and want to hide another case of mischaracterizing of certain character.

literally who these ppl are lying to 😭 the funniest shit is that i can get the aggressive hetero shippers more than the ones who hide behind their faux activism shield. the first ones are at least not as hypocritical lmao

there also are some personal pet peeves of mine like smth from the kind of torturer x victim. tho funnily enough enjoyers of such problematic stuff more oft than not are actually very aware of this and are very chill. so while i don't ship this myself i am very cool w their shippers and don't feel any need to wage a holy war on them or smth lol. the same can't be said abt the certain crackshippers who feel the need to drag through dirt any possible “rival” to their *cough*very crack and very straight*cough* otp to “prove” the ~canonicity~ of the said ship. so in the end of the day i think the attitude of real ppl towards other real ppl matter more. i might not ship many things in this fandom and not get maybe as many but i am honestly so okay w them until they are self-aware and stay in their lane.

3. Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

in the fandom like this one? jfc of course 😭💀 it was mostly in the beginning though, now i know better and just don't hit follow button until i'm really, like 100% sure it's worth it lol. this fandom is the best in giving the trust issues i'm afraid

7. Is there anything you used to like but can't stand now?

i used to be a total stark stan and then a martell stan lmao 💀 yes, i confess my sins. back in these dark days when i was young and delusional i enjoyed stark/martell supremacy iirc. what i think of this now? embarrassing 😭 i mean i still have enough warm feelings for canon starks and martells, i've just become extremely allergic to the ~northern independence~ and ~revenge power fantasies~ and all this stuff. bless their unhinged fanbases for scaring me off so fast w their anti dany sentiments (whom i've always dearly loved) and f&b for turning me into complete targ stan lol

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

the distinction between two sides is truly hilarious. there are many different subfandoms ofc but generally it boils down to having certain opinions abt certain characters, the main ones and the ones fandom made more relevant than they canonically are. and these opinions are really so, SO opposite that's it's just killing me 😭 how can two ppl look at the same page and see two completely opposite things? when one person is like 97% right and the other is SO TOTALLY WRONG ZERO READING COMPREHENSION DETECTED LMFAO

imho, meta culture has done unrepairable damage there. you realize this when you see some random ppl using quotes from mf fanfiction as canon proof in a discussion abt canon having NO IDEA it's literally non-existent in the books. yeah, bc they had read somewhere on quora or reddit or tumblr some “analysis” and never once fact checked. you also realize this when you see some total, like absolutely ridiculous crack posted as serious (or in some really lost causes “almost canon”) “theory” and taken as such by other ppl simply bc it looked like a serious essay. ppl buy into this confident tone and quotes in between (but still don't check these quotes even if they don't remember them in canon since they're so blissfully naive abt the certain parts of the fandom that absolutely and shamelessly can change canon quotes just to spread their agenda lol), ppl see bnfs blogs getting asks abt even tiniest details and these bnfs answering oh so confident as if they were grrm himself abt smth that can't even be taken as analysis simply bc of the lack of canon material on the issue. they step on the territory of pure fanon and headcanons but never change the tone and some ppl take this bullshit for granted without blinking.

so yeah my unpopular opinion. for such serious, interesting and complex book series, asoiaf fandom is fucking dumb and deranged and, unfortunately, many really smart ppl have left leaving us w this lot that refuses to use their own brains and that prefers to read some biased “metas” online than actual books and the hypocrites who boost their egos in this dead fandom, freaking out every time anyone tries to challenge them.

special cry out for those who still make this fandom bearable aka content creators whose gifs, edits, arts, metas (i mean real honest metas, not whatever bullshit clown colleges are eager to reblog lmao). despite being paid dust from local pretentious bitches, who forget who is the real customer there all the time, you are still w us and thank you so much for keeping this fandom alive!!! once you leave we will have only satansas' hallucinations posed as smth canon related and unfunny lame jokes 😭

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

hypocrisy and double standards. they're literally everywhere lmfao, can't even count. also some really weird shit like harassing real life pocs over headcanons abt fanon pocs lolol, but that's a whole another conversation lmao. but most of all i hate the lack of basic human decency. some ppl there can doxx, gaslight, lie, go running like cockroaches caught in 4k doing this all but never once apologize to the ppl they harassed and lied abt and still be cool for some fandom places while others will be automatically cancelled for shipping the wrong ship or stanning the wrong character. bc apparently for asoiaf fandom opinions on fiction matter more than the treatment of very fucking real human beings 🤡 how glad am i for seeing which ppl have their priorities straight istg

play with me in the salty ask game!