#this is not NECESSARILY a good or bad thing. it's just a thing.

[elumish]

@cuteykitsune asked in a reply: How do you show religion in your story? Prayer? Chuch? Holidays? Traditions?

I wanted to actually give a full response to this, because I think it's a great question.

Religions consist of a few things:

Stories

Beliefs/creeds

Rules/norms

Traditions

These aren't quite collectively exhaustive, and they're certainly not mutually exclusive (they are closely tied to each other), but they encompass the vast majority of what makes up a religion.

Stories are probably the simplest part of a religion: the written or oral tales passed down in the religion that tie to its beliefs, teachings, and/or origins. The Bible, the Torah, the Quran, stories about pantheons, creation stories, etc. all serve to both explain the world and provide guidance on how to live a proper religious life. These stories don't need to be part of the official canon of the religion and can be about historical figures tied to the religion (e.g., Catholic saints).

In stories, this may show by through people telling or referencing stories, through art or architecture depicting those stories, or through references to holy books, as some examples.

Beliefs are about the shared ideological viewpoints of the religion. These are often documented in the religious stories, but don't necessarily have to be. They can be as formal as the Nicene Creed or as informal as just a general shared understanding.

Theism is a major belief for the vast majority of religions, though it is not necessary. It also includes belief in what is sacred, what is acceptable, whether there is an afterlife, what good or bad traits are, etc.

If the religion is a theistic one, this belief would also include one about how the god(s) engage with the world and with people. Do they believe there is direct physical engagement (see: Zeus and the many mortal women he sleeps with) or that guidance is provided spiritually? Do they believe that there may be intervention in times of crisis? Do they believe that the god(s)'s hands are shaping the world constantly or that they created the world and then stopped? Do they believe that the god(s) listen to direct prayer from anyone or that specific locations, objects, rituals, or qualifications are required? Are the god(s) benevolent? Omniscient? Omnipresent? Do they care about humans?

In stories, this can show up any way you show the character thinking about the religion or gods. Do they think that the god(s) support their actions or if their actions follow their religious teachings? Do they care if that's the case? Do they always wash their hands carefully because their religion teaches cleanliness is important? Do they believe that certain things are good or evil?

Rules/Norms cover the institution/enforcement of those beliefs. These may be strict laws outlined in religious texts or by religious institutions (e.g., dietary restrictions) or general norms (e.g., dressing up for church). This may dictate how someone can engage with the religion or how religious people can engage with the broader world.

This is also where two religions or sects with similar beliefs really start to differentiate from each other. One might explicitly disallow something that a different one begrudgingly tolerates, even if both believe that it's bad

The structure of the religion also starts to come into play here. If a religion says only men can serve certain roles, for example, men will then be the ones playing those roles in the religious institution.

In stories, this is shown the same way any other rules or norms are.

Traditions, in my view, cover a wide range of things, from big societal traditions like holidays or rest days to small personal traditions like prayer. This is what you do as part of a religion--the actual actions taken by individuals or groups to participate in the religion.

Do people go to a physical location on a regular basis? Are all locations equal or can a person only go to certain ones? Is there someone who leads services? If people congregate for worship or other religious practice, how often? What does it look like?

Do people pray individually? What does that look like? Do houses have shrines or other dedicated areas for worship, or is it only conducted in congregate areas?

Do religious practices include specific rituals? Specific objects? Specific clothing?

This is also where the structure of the organization really shows up. Is there an organized structure (a la the Catholic Church) or is it religional? Local? Individual?

In stories, this can look like any physical practice of the religion.

Some of the biggest fantasy worldbuilding fails that I see, in no particular order

Gods without religion. The Gods are real and a known historical fact, but virtually nobody is religious.

Cultural racism/discrimination without structural racism/discrimination. Discrimination that exists only in microagressions or mean comments, without existing in any sort of structural way.

Secret history with no clear reason for it to be secret and no clear method for maintaining that secrecy. Major parts of the world's history are kept entirely secret, even though there's not an obvious reason to do so and even when history has shown this is virtually impossible to enforce (especially in a world with any movement or communication across borders).

Large, homogeneous countries. Even without immigration, virtually no country larger than the Vatican will be fully homogeneous in terms of culture, dialect, beliefs, traditions, etc., much less a large one with limited communication technology as is often seen in fantasy. The Planet of Hats problem.

[nerdbabee]

NATAL PLACEMENTS OBSERVATIONS —NERDBABEEE

NOTE: these are my own observations i’ve experienced with these placements/people this is not necessarily true for everyone so take what resonates & leave what doesn’t.

Mars in the 12th + Scorpio moon

i’ve noticed these placements are often susceptible to bad things happening to them almost immediately, I had a friend with these placements & i often consider these placements together as karma, with scorpio moon usually having a rough upbringing or experience a lot of criticism in their younger years these people often grow up to be just a critiquing to others as well, in return they experience bad luck in the areas they are criticizing (eg. my past friend would always critique others beauty & appearance & in return it would flip back on her, this also resulted in her crushes or boyfriends liking or falling for the women she would critique as well as if she critiqued another’s woman’s weight then her partners & boyfriends would easily be drawn into liking that part of whomever she’s criticizing yet it be result in the opposite for her)

Eg. she would critique someone’s weight i’ve also noticed her partners or people around her would then start to criticize hers as well*

NOTE: these are just observations based on both placements in the same chart, this can be different from everyone else ! this specifically applies to my mars in the 12th house people as y’all are very offended by everything i say.. unfortunately i don’t really have anything utterly good to say about you guys based on my experience with this placement.. i don’t dislike this placement i’ve just had bad experiences with them.

Gemini Rising + Sagittarius Sun

these people are quite sociable yet flaky, i’ve noticed with this pair they can be easily liked by others & socially accepted, it’s rare to see these people alone. the bad part of this pair if that they can’t function alone, one of my past friends had this placement & she was very insecure in terms of standing firm by herself, it’s almost like she never felt safe but ultimately these people are usually well liked and popular😭 they are fun asf too, very spontaneous & funny asf i absolutely adored this aspect of her as a friend she was literally the best person to be around literally.

sagittarius moon + sagittarius mars

these people are quick to call out somebody’s bullshit. When they see some unjust hanging around somewhere they will be speaking up about it. The people around them see them as a strong-willed people, someone who is never going to let anyone walk right over them. they are loyal to themselves and their friends, and if any of the people they care about gets harmed they always know that revenge is going to be bittersweet. they are people that others look up to, even those people you don’t believe ever would do. They wish they had the balls that these people seem to possess as long as they know them (for many of you this obviously isn’t true, you have learned to become like this, or forced to become like this)

Saturn in the 9th

When they are young they often experience many types of injustices that make them question the authorities. They may feel that good people are the worst off, they may feel separated by their way of seeing things, their attitude, their race, sexual orientation and even gender, and this gradually makes them lose faith in humanity. I have this placement & i also noticed others try to “prove me wrong” in regards to my knowledge as well, although they often end up being the wrong one it’s a frustrating experience

3rd house ruler in the 7th house

These natives may have many partners before getting married. And precisely because of these experiences many can perceive them as “counselors of love.”, i have this placement & i often found myself giving my friends relationship advice A LOT!, If the ruler is badly aspected, this placement may have a bad relationship with their brothers, while if it is well aspected, they can enjoy a harmonious relationship with them, (eg. me and my brother no longer speak to one another & we are always arguing) & lastly these people can show interest in issues such as law and justice, they have very defined criteria and they will always do their best to defend those who are discriminated against or treated unfairly. (Eg. I’m a social science + Pre law major)

Pisces Sun + Capricorn mars + Saturn in 5th house

these natives are undeniably the most loyal & dedicated partners anyone can ask for, with their pisces influence they are very compassionate & standout to be the ideal partner for any romantic suitor interested in pursuing a connection with them. these people usually go through trials and tribulations regarding love but ultimately they end up with someone just as committed as they are, their partners tend to adore them & spoil them with a lot of gifts i’ve noticed, with the saturn in 5th house influence these people are disciplined and as they grow older become wiser in terms of love, these people deeply understand the meaning of love and how to express to their partners (note, i had the sweetest homegirl with this placement & she would constantly get hurt in love due to this Saturn in the 5th house influence but ultimately she ended up with someone who values her presence whole)

Aquarius Sun in 4th house + Scorpio Rising

These people are often quiet & very private. Usually their home life & romantic life are usually clandestine & hidden from the general public, often times with this placement lineup even their own friends & family see them as secretive & are often trying to discover more about their lives. These people are introverted with a tendency to retreat in the comfort in their own homes, they are often “homebodies” & prioritizing making their home their special sanctuary. these people can be interested in writing, psychology & cooking

ok , i’m done

[seriousbrat]

how can lily be a good person if she married a bully?

I'm going to break this down because it does legitimately seem to be an issue for so many people. I received quite a few asks about this a few days ago so I'm just going to address it generally here. Apologies for the length of this, I tried to cover everything I could think of. Let's get two things out of the way first:

Firstly, if you truly believe James was an abuser, and you're seriously asking how a woman could ever marry an abusive man, this is indicative of a fundamental lack of understanding about how abuse works. This is victim-blaming rhetoric. Abusers are predatory, manipulative, and often extremely charming, and they have a specific methodology for ensnaring their victims. I highly recommend Lundy Bancroft's book Why Does He Do That for further reading on how abuse works. The reality is that women marry abusive men all the time, and it doesn't make them bad people. If you believe otherwise we simply have nothing to talk about here.

Second, the question of whether or not James ACTUALLY changed his behaviour is irrelevant here, so I'm not going to directly address it either way. The main thing is that Lily BELIEVED that he had changed, whether or not he actually did, and we know this from Harry's conversation with Remus and Sirius. We also know she wasn't aware of the full extent of the bullying, as she didn't know the details about the prank.

For the purposes of this I'm going to adopt the perspective that James never changed, had 0 character development, and was secretly a terrible person the whole time. To be clear this isn't what I believe-- but I think it's helpful to start from a similar place.

Onto the main points:

An overly forgiving nature can be a flaw, but it doesn't make someone a bad person.

Nor does it make them selfish. Even if I concede that James was irredeemably evil as a person, the fact that Lily believed him to be better than he was, even if she was wrong, makes her at worst naive, not selfish. In fact, I'd argue that it's a sign of empathising with someone too much, which is sort of the opposite of selfishness. We know that Lily had an overly-forgiving nature, because she demonstrates that with Severus when she's willing to overlook his associations with the worst people of all time. And as we know from the fact that her friends were openly critical of it, and that she suffered as a result of it, her friendship with Sev was hardly 'convenient' for her. That she forgave him and overlooked his behaviour, and defended him, despite the fact that it was actively inconvenient for her, indicates empathy (and probably too much of it) not selfishness. Being overly forgiving is an established character trait of Lily's, as she tells us she "made excuses for [Sev] for years." Making excuses for someone you love is a flaw, but not one necessarily rooted in selfishness. Again, it was actively inconvenient for Lily to make excuses for Sev. It's also a very human flaw, not one that makes her a bad person-- especially when you consider that Lily's capacity for forgiveness had its limits, as she demonstrated with Snape.

To forgive is an act of compassion... it's not done because people deserve it, it's done because they need it.

anyway with that buffy quote out of the way, lets move on

Lily owes Snape nothing.

I'm sure people will disagree, but, objectively, she just doesn't. They are not friends at this point. He has demonstrated consistently that he doesn't have enough consideration for her to stop rubbing shoulders with people who literally want to murder her, including a boy who attacked her housemate. So why is Lily expected to take into account his feelings and his history with James? Which leads right into:

It's a massive double-standard for Lily to be blamed for marrying James when Snape isn't afforded the same for associating with Death Eaters.

I mean, think what you want, but to me being a mass murderer intent on exterminating an entire subset of the population (talking about Voldemort and other DEs here, not Snape) is like, maybe, a tiny bit worse than being a bully in school. But what do I know. Snape willingly joined up with such people, knowing perfectly well what they wanted to do to Lily, the woman he loved, and everyone like her. If Lily's choice in husband makes her a selfish person, then by your own logic Snape is completely irredeemable and you should probably delete your blog about how misunderstood and babygirl he is.

Sometimes people marry or befriend terrible people.

Similar to the first point, lack of judgement is a flaw but not one that directly indicates selfishness. Again, remember, Lily believed James to have changed. She believed, whether or not she was wrong, that redemption is possible. It's extremely common for women to date and marry terrible men, unfortunately, and to be blinded to their flaws. There are many possible reasons for this. I guess you can argue that the desire to be loved is inherently selfish, but that still wouldn't make Lily notably selfish at all, rather just a normal human. Plenty of people have had the experience of dating someone who is terrible or being friends with someone who is terrible at some point in their lives, and it doesn't automatically make them terrible themselves. People make mistakes and have poor judgment occasionally. Her actions in SWM suggest she would not have tolerated nor validated any cruelty from James towards others, had she been aware of it. Anyway, once again if you're holding Lily responsible for James's actions you need to also hold Snape responsible for the actions of his buddies. If it's selfish for Lily to associate with a bully (who she believed to have reformed) it's straight up devoid of any humanity whatsoever for Snape to KNOWINGLY associate with people like Mulciber, Voldemort, and Bellatrix. I don't actually believe this btw, I'm just following the logic through.

Furthermore, it's completely unfair to blame Lily for, in particular, the past actions of her husband.

As we clearly see in SWM, she did NOT tolerate his behaviour during the years before they started dating. James's behaviour is simply not Lily's responsibility, and neither is Snape's. It's not her job to fix them nor pay for their mistakes, nor should she have to investigate and tally up all their past wrongdoings when making her own choices. If James was actively being a menace and Lily was just watching going 'teehee' I'd understand this more, but again, she was NOT aware. Based on her behaviour in SWM, this would be out of character for Lily.

Someone having a moral stance you personally disagree with doesn't automatically make them a bad person.

If your moral stance is that James's past actions are completely unforgivable, and you could not personally date someone who did what he did, no matter how he evolved as a person, that's perfectly fine. As I've established, Lily was not aware of any continuing wrongdoing, nor would she have validated or supported it had she been aware. Lily's belief was that the person she was currently dating was a good person. She believed in redemption and second chances. If you personally do not believe in redemption or second chances, I'd question why you even like Snape, but ultimately that's your prerogative. However, believing otherwise doesn't make Lily a bad person nor selfish, even if you personally disagree or think she was wrong. People are allowed to be mistaken.

Snape was probably less relevant to their lives than you think.

Like to be quite honest, they were fighting a war and priorities had shifted, as they often do in adulthood. Lily ended her friendship with Sev, and after Hogwarts James and Lily almost certainly had no association with him whatsoever. Is Lily expected to continually self-flagellate over Snape for the rest of her life? Is she expected to take him into account in every decision she makes, forever? Believe it or not James and Lily existed separately to Snape, rather than as extensions of his character. They moved on. Snape didn't, that's what makes him beautiful-- and yes there's a reason why Snape couldn't move on, but, again, that is not Lily's responsibility. It seems reasonable to me that, particularly given the extreme nature of her circumstances, Lily would take into account first and foremost the actions she observed from James in the present, rather than what he did in the past. See above re: Lily owes Snape nothing.

Being selfless, kind, or a good person doesn't make one perfect.

When I say Lily was selfless, I do NOT mean that she was flawless. If this is your takeaway I worry for you. Also, enough about the Virgin Mary lol. Anyway, humans are complex, and selfless people are capable of selfishness on occasion. Everyone is. A certain amount of selfishness is not only normal, it can be a good thing and necessary for protecting yourself. When Lily ended her friendship with Sev, it was something she was doing for herself, so in the most technical sense (and it's still a huge stretch) it can be viewed as selfish. Nobody is or should be 100% selfless all the time. So even were I to concede that she was selfish in marrying James (which I don't) it doesn't preclude her being a selfless person in general.

Being selfless, kind, or a good person doesn't make a female character 'unrealistic.'

What even is this argument, honestly. Like do you just not believe in the existence of good women irl? Suspicious. I would gently suggest that if you find it unrealistic (or boring) for a woman to be a good person, that's maybe something you should take a closer look at. If your automatic assumption about a woman is that she must have married a man for his money, I would also interrogate that belief.

idk she was a teenage girl, pls develop some empathy

once you come down from your podium in the unholy tribunal, it might be worth considering female characters (and women in general) as human, and not just avatars who simply react to the emotional turmoil of men. At absolute worst you could assume that she was tricked by James (which I still disagree with, but it's a slightly more generous reading) or was blind and naive. All of which are more understandable than, for some reason, assuming she was a conniving bitch who wanted to hurt Snape and selfishly marry into wealth. Ultimately her decision to marry James probably had nothing to do with Snape at all. She was 21 when she died. Bad judgment is common at that age, and it's not necessarily a product of selfishness at all. Look, I'd understand this whole thing more if everyone was in their 30s. But is it not the teenage girl experience of all time to date an asshole? Do you have no empathy for that situation? Like I said, I'm arguing this based on the idea that James was completely irredeemable; would an abuser not abuse his girlfriend too? Would someone who is evil and cruel in all respects not also display cruelty to his wife? Can you not summon up an ounce of empathy for a 17 year old who might have thought, as many young girls do, 'I can fix him?'

To conclude, I think that the idea that Lily marrying a bully makes her a bad person is just rooted in lack of empathy for her as a character. Despite spending hours dissecting every last thought process a man might have had, there's no attempt at all to try and understand Lily's motives, rather they're considered exclusively from the perspective of Snape's emotions. This is unfair.

I don't doubt that it hurt Snape's feelings for Lily to date and marry James. But Snape's feelings are no longer her concern. She owes him nothing. Sev called his best friend a slur publicly and joined an organisation that wanted to murder her, with no respect for her feelings at all. They are no longer friends, and he has no right whatsoever to expect her to consider his own emotional needs anymore, and her choices no longer have anything to do with him. Nor should they have.

Whether or not you think it was a mistake for Lily to marry James, that's Lily's problem. Not Snape's. If you truly believe James was a monster, logically it's Lily you should be feeling sorry for. The fact that there's no empathy for her to be found, and that people revert so quickly to the Top 100 Misogyny Classic of 'she must be a gold digger' speaks for itself.

[elodieunderglass]

I also want to say something about “authenticity,” I.e. as someone said upthread, “at least I know I’m me” with their baked-in idea that “there is a real self and unreal self” and that the “real��� self is superior.

But I suspect that people who are struggling with that sort of thing are also struggling with things like depression, and a key thing about those struggles is that they destroy your good judgment. So this isn’t a go at anyone personally, and is behind a cut.

“The real self” is a sort of Sesame Street version of “authenticity.” Authenticity is a great piece of character-building, because “becoming a person with a strong character” is the only realistic, practical, mature ambition humans can have. You don’t have a huge amount of control over your career, achievements, relationships, or nation - you can only do the best you can with how you are in relation to them. You do not control luck or war or the economy or the hearts of others, so the best thing you can do is build character. Your life’s project is to become someone who does their best in relationships, has good judgment, manages luck (bad and good), and lives up to their values and principles. Authenticity is useful for determining your values and principles; for understanding not necessarily who you are, but what sustaining principles you’ll always follow when who you are changes. The courage and bravery of authenticity and “the real self” aren’t “whatever shit I’m randomly doing right now.” That’s not identity, that’s just Saturday. The courage and bravery of authenticity come from choosing values and principles and expressions that might be different to society’s, and sticking to them despite challenge. What parts of you would you refuse to compromise? If you experience a change in your material circumstances - if tomorrow you are a displaced refugee, or suddenly marry a prince, or if you are forced by torture to recant - will you still hold your core beliefs? What of You would always you be brave enough to keep? And - if one of your principles is the belief in change - will you be brave enough to change, when you’re ready to grow?

identity is not fixed but shifting like water, and authenticity is not about “being me” or “wallowing in dirt.” They are instead, as Oriah Mountain Dreamer says: “what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.”

Thus, an authentic and real and courageous choice I’ve just seen someone make. One of their core values, something fundamental to their identity, is being a kind and attentive parent. When they realised their poor mental health was impacting their children - they lost patience quickly and became shouty - they decided to seek help, and accepted the offer of antidepressants. That is because their real self is a person who does not harm children. They had already decided that - as a real, powerful, important person with a strong, mature, real character - and the rest is just weather and window dressing - moods and Saturdays; and sometimes your brain chemistry is Kiki and sometimes it’s Bouba; but ultimately you do actually have an identity, all your own, entirely separate from medicine, politics, the motions of clouds, and whatever the hell your glands are doing that moment.

And even if it wasn’t - if your identity was somehow contained in the chemicals, and not what the chemicals do to help you live - then my goodness! How terribly dreary! How hideously defined by the weather! How wretchedly inconvenient, to sacrifice “good judgment” for a randomly generated chemical state! What if we wanted something a bit better for ourselves? Maybe - maybe if the identity is simultaneously “in the chemicals” and ALSO the real self is not an especially pleasant person and ALSO the real self isn’t doing much at the moment - maybe it’s okay to try a new identity, one in which different chemicals take a hand, and we may emerge a more pleasant bundle of chemicals - since we’re not doing anything else and have nothing to lose, the “real self” apparently being just a half-metabolised serotonin molecule anyway, and therefore worth about £0.000001, if this is what you believe. If this is what you believe, that identity is nothing more than chemicals, and changing them changes your identity, then surely you ought to be in favour of having the best possible chemicals!

I also just saw @queeranarchism say something really relevant:

The idea that your sexuality of gender is your 'identity' that must be expressed to everyone you know in order to be 'authentic' fits within a culture in which we think first and foremost in individuals as separate brains-in-a-jar that must achieve ultimate self-expression. It doesn't fit well within cultures that focus more on the relationship between people and in the community they form as the point of focus.

Which is to say that there’s a lot to develop further in the Sesame Street idea of real selves/authenticity in the first place. Some of it is “is this specifically a capitalist marketing construct, where the self-as-a-unique-identity posits a universe of rivals in consumption?”

And some of it is, “ok, so ‘I’m Proud of Being Free, It’s Real to be So Me’ is an excellent song and a fantastic lesson, but it is very much a song by a Muppet to encourage three-year-olds to feel proud of their natural hair texture; we should definitely take that in! And then as adults we are encouraged to grow beyond that, building on our preschool foundations, and start folding in additional things!”

In conclusion, “ah, but My Real Self” is not actually a tool to bother other people with on their posts. It is worth reflecting on and taking care of , but it isn’t an argument, let alone an anti-medication one.

90s movies: Psychopharmacology is as good as a lobotomy. If you take pills to treat your mental illness it will literally murder your imaginary friends and you will become a boring, lotus-eating conformist drone.

Me after taking my meds: drives the scenic route home to see if there are any geese on the pond and does a little dance in line at the grocery store and comes home to throw everything​ in my fridge into a stew pot because I can finally taste food again while singing songs at my birds in which I replace all the instances of "she" with "Cheese" and doing a Dolly Parton impression on the phone to my sister

[andreilslovechild]

A Study on Aaron Minyard and Hatred

I've been in this fandom for years now. somewhere around 5 years or so. and since I've been here there's always been a distinct theme in how people talk about the brother of our beloved main love interest. see people speak about aaron in two ways mainly. the first way is, of course, labeling him as hateful and homophobic and disliking him because he dislikes Neil. the second way is building on his more personable characteristics and having him paired with someone else like Katelyn or Kevin to mellow him out. both of those are all well and good, everyone is entitled to their opinions and all, but I've never quite seen people look at both of those sides at the same time so I want to try and consolidate my thoughts on the matter.

first of all, I personally rarely consider aaron inherently hateful in my own understanding of him. annoyed or disgusted sure, but not necessarily hateful. mainly that hate is focused on three people from what the fandom talks about: Neil, Andrew, and Nicky. I'm using hate a broad term for dislike just for the ease of things right now so don't yell at me, but I think it fair to say the fandom typically pits these three up against aaron in a way that makes aaron look like the bad guy a lot of the time.

if I'm honest, I never really felt he hated Neil more than just didn't care much. at least until he found out about him and Andrew and gave him his version of the shovel talk. maybe a bit when Neil used Katelyn against him. but overall I never quite got it when people said he hated Neil, let alone hated him for "no reason". like id be annoyed too if a guy waltzed onto my college sports team while im studying premed, and turned out to be the long-lost son of a serial killer with a mouth so big it was a wonder hes still alive. plus he was super shady before all that was revealed too, but aaron was still pretty neutral when Andrew brought Neil into the monsters. he even spoke back to the upperclassmen when they freaked out about Neil sitting with the monsters. if you all need me to get the quotes I will, but it's currently like 2am, and I just can't be asked right now lmao. either way, the only time aaron really hates Neil in the books is when he uses Kate against him to get him to go to therapy. which was done for his own good in the long run, and I doubt aaron stayed upset about it for too long. plus we always have to be careful here because we are seeing things from Neil's perspective, someone who is inherently an unreliable narrator in the story.

in Nicky's case, there's a lot to consider. aaron definitely does and says some things (again not finding specifics rn because it's 2am) that are hurtful to him, or offensive. I certainly don't really blame people for reading it as homophobic on a surface level. but that's exactly what it is. surface level. his feelings about Nicky are probably the second most complex in this instance. because Nicky is his cousin, caregiver, friend, whatever you want to call him. They're close, they mean something to each other. but aaron also grew up with Tilda, probably talking with his family over the phone every few months, seeing them maybe once a year or two. when aaron moved to South Carolina he was 13. Nicky would have been 17. aaron probably spent a lot of time with him at first to avoid being alone before he made friends himself. used him as an excuse to get out of being around Tilda alone. which undoubtedly left him susceptible to Luther's preaching. I could make a whole other post on this alone. Still, he would have known Nicky was gay and that it was "wrong". He likely saw only his mask, not the depression inside because Nicky would have wanted to be happy with his cousin. he probably was around when Nicky went to Germany and then came back loud and proud, telling him about a man named Erik and finally standing up to his parents. to us, it's inspirational, exciting even, but for aaron it was like Nicky was abandoning him. He had gotten through Nicky being gone with drugs and staying out of the house as much as possible, but now knowing Nicky was leaving him there alone with his mom for what he assumed would be forever would have hit him hard. he never hated Nicky for being gay. he was angry he had left him, and he had grown up surrounded by the ideals Luther preached and likely his mom did too. with that, plus how uncomfortable it would be to have your cousin being openly sexual around you to an extreme extent like Nicky, I don't blame him really for how he reacted. he was disgusted by the thought of his cousin having sex, not who it was with. I can't remember if his disliking Erik is a canon or fanon thing. Still, he disliked him for taking Nicky away, not because he was a guy. Long story short I don't think aaron ever truly hated Nicky or was truly homophobic. I think he was just a scared kid who learned the wrong words and didn't know how to be vulnerable.

Andrew. good old Andrew. the most complicated relationship in Aaron's life save maybe his mom. I think we all know aaron doesn't hate Andrew. just like Andrew doesn't hate aaron. it's impossible for them to hate each other because they are so irrevocably tangled up and tied to each other's lives. from the second they found out about each other, everything they've done has been for the other in some way. mostly on Andrew's end sure but aaron has also done his share. see out of everyone here I think Andrew is the person that aaron thought he hated the most. he was angry about Tilda, about the drugs, about how Andrew refused to look at him. but deep down he knew he couldn't really hate Andrew. if he truly hated him he wouldn't have stuck around him this long to try and form a relationship with him. he wouldn't have bothered renewing their deal after graduating high school. he may have been stubborn and confusing and made aaron want to pull his hair out in frustration, but I don't think hatred for Andrew truly existed in him. For certain actions maybe, but him overall? definitely not.

Aaron Minyard may have been complicated, cranky, and annoyed for the majority of the times we see him, but he never truly hated anyone. not in the way people seem to think at least. and certainly, never the three people hes accused of hating the most.

[flightfoot]

Okay so NORMALLY when a character's being crushed by grief like Mark is, their emotional arc centers around them accepting that the person they're missing is gone, and learning to live life again despite that. Normally the writers don't give that person back, because most of the time when someone's gone in real life, they're not coming back. Unfortunately, this does lead to a lot of fridged wives who only exist to be plot devices for their widower husbands.

And I thought that was going to be the case with Gemma as well! But then season 2, episode 7 happened and... there's no way they can do that plot now. The "accepting grief and moving on" plot doesn't work when the character who's being grieved over is a fully fleshed out character in her own right who we're supposed to care about for her own sake, and who's very much alive and actively trying to claw her way out of hell. ESPECIALLY when her captors are using the lie of "your husband's moved on and has a new wife and a kid now" to try and break her.

Instead, I think the "Mark grieving" plot, the message that the show's going for, ties back to Severance itself. He used the procedure to try and make a version of himself that could escape the pain of Gemma's death for part of the day. But as Petey told him, it didn't actually make the pain of her death vanish completely, it just meant he couldn't identify the cause. And because he was severed, he wasn't able to recognize when his wife was right in front of him.

Lumon appears to be using Gemma to try and make a version of the Severance chip that switches an Innie on whenever you are having an unpleasant experience, so you can force that onto someone else. I'm guessing the message with Mark is that hiding from the unpleasant parts of life is the wrong way to go about things, and that it's better to fully experience and remember all of it, the good and the bad.

The important part of Mark's grievance character arc isn't that he necessarily gets over his grief and moves on from it, it's that he accepts the negative, unpleasant emotions and continues moving forwards despite them, instead of trying to escape them.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Do you think that we are getting book 8 that will focus on Grim since we almost are on the end of book 7? And how do you feel if that what happened and we get book 8 that focus on Grim and Yuu like why are they here all of that? Do you want to see a specific thing that wasn't mentioned in the main story?

Last question how do you feel about twst ending? Would you stay in the fandom or find another interest? I'm not ready for that like if twst ended I will move to twst fanfics 🥲

But to be honest with how they are using the 3D animation as inspiration too now for the new events I have hope that even if the main story ended we will still have plenty of new events coming plus we have the anime coming too and manga chapters still going. I don't want this fandom to die as soon as main story end.

Honestly I don't mind if the game kept going forever 😂 not necessarily the main story but with events and talk about the world.

Imagine something like twst: The New NRC Generation like they did with many animes XD

Okay I talked so much sorry for the rambling.

As I have stated in the FAQ section of my pinned post (I kindly ask that people check that first before sending asks because I have been asked some variant of “what do you think about a potential book 8”/“how do you want book 7 to end” dozens of times; I don’t answer them because the answer is already out there but overlooked, but I feel bad for ignoring so many people 😅):

"I want to actually see Yuu going home and the current students moving on to the next year of schooling. We could focus on how the guys have grown and are growing, how these more mature versions of the characters interact with the incoming freshmen/first years, or the long-term consequences of their OBs (particularly Malleus's, which probably caused an international crisis). It would also be cool to learn more about RSA students after book 7, but I don’t want them to rehash the OB formula."

"As for a potential book 8, I don’t know if there’s enough evidence for it? Book 7 is cramming a lot in right now so it’s possible that all the loose ends will be tied up there. Book 8 also implies a strong focus on Ramhackle, which… I know we love Yuusonas and all, but the game cannot canonically fill in their backstory a ton or it will ruin player self-inserting/projection. That means we’d have to rely on Grim and Grim alone to be the emotional crux that somehow transcends even Malleus’s chapter. I think that’d be hard to pull off, especially since we'd be expecting book 8 to be even LONGER than the 290+ book 7 is. If there's a book 8 at all, it might have to be closer to prologue length...? Because even if they push the Mickey stuff and revealing Crowley's motives to a theoretical book 8, I can't imagine this would take up more parts than book 7 already has 💦"

Secondly, I don’t think “Twst ending” is… the best phrasing? It’s not like the game is going to shut down as soon as book 7 finishes. Live service games close when they’re no longer financially viable, not because they finished a main story arc. Several of these kinds of games continue the main story into a new arc—and while we don’t have any official confirmation of this for Twst, it would be just silly for a money and merch machine to be shut down for an arbitrary reason. If it's not broken, then don't axe it. I would be genuinely shocked if Twst just left the main story untouched after book 7, though it may take some time before new main story stuff comes out, as the writers would have to... you know, write. Running the servers based on events alone, especially when we are not guaranteed new story events every month, doesn't sound sustainable in the long term. There's still going to be new Twst stuff coming out for a long time between the manga, anime, and light novels too. That's at least a good couple of years.

dyugaoydaswqyb Anyway, I'll be staying in the fandom even once book 7 finished; it's very near and dear to my heart ^^ Like I said, I think Twst will probably continue its service for a while. And it's not like you can only have one interest at a time, right??

[brownlupine]

Here is a little story information, so that you guys know why I will draw some things as I do in this wolfynized version. Also an appetizer. And don’t complain, you asked for this XDDD

The pups were created during the Recluse time of Vanilla. Both Nilla and Smilk had a knack that something could happen during these times when their beings became one and the same, but not necessarily that it would come to fruition.

Sometime after their battle in the breaking spire and their separation, Smilk learns of his two little problems, as his normally fast healing is stagnating massively. He finds out that he has to choose: The girls (yes, he knows there are two and they are both girls) or his health. He has quite the mental battle (and, away from Candy Apple's and Black Sapphire's prying eyes, also a breakdown) over what he should choose.

In the end, he realizes that having them would mean he wouldn't be alone anymore, so he decides to keep going with this endeavour.

But it has a bad side effect: To keep the girls alive, his health not only stagnates in a tired and wounded state but gets worse and worse by the day.

In the end, it is Candy Apple in her dedication to her master - and the desperation and fear to lose him - who runs off to Crispia and seeks out Vanilla, Gingerbrave and the others and begs under tears to save her master's life as he isn’t willing to let the children go.

The others are shocked but of course, they go on to retrieve the beast. Especially Nilla who has missed his friend…and basically his other half of his being… is eager to do everything in his power to save the jester.

Smilk of course thinks that his loyal servants betrayed him and that Nilla came to steal the pups from him once they are born.

Not a good time to push the beast into an absolute panic attack.

A lot of drama, some brushings with death (but no one dies, just almost), and a slow burn, healing story ensues

(The story is still evolving. If there are questions, feel free to ask)

[cherryblossms]

once angel let him in on the little fact that strawberries were his favorite, garam didn't even want to tell him what they were for. he already felt bad with the worries and anxiety he felt with how angel might see him after the two of them hooked up, he didn't want to give the other more of a reason to see him as some sex crazed monster. he looked up to angel with worry in his eyes as he sort of frowned, "no, you can't eat them." he almost whined. "not yet anyways, they're for something special." the corners of his mouth lifted as he finished speaking. it was something he'd only ever tried once with a girl he casually dated in college, not with strawberries but with raspberries. the two made a mess but he had fun and he wanted to try it out on angel to see if he would enjoy it just as much. when they made it down to the parking garage, garam tensed up a little bit, fearing his ex's presence. he wanted to look around to be sure that the man wasn't there waiting but he kept his eyes forward, not wanting to look paranoid. garam was almost too preoccupied to notice angel opening the passenger door for him, only catching the gesture once the door was open. he looked to angel and smiled warmly, though he wanted to say something, he kept his lips sealed, wanting to wait until they were both in the car. he pulled his phone out of his pocket, opening up the camera app to check his appearance before angel slipped into the driver's seat. "can we just go to the mall? there's so many stores to check out so i'll know i'll be able to get everything i need and not have to make any unnecessary trips out." that wasn't the only reason, though. garam was sure the mall would be full of people so their presence would go completely unnoticed if axel had decided to skip work just to follow them around. they could easily ditch him in crowds of people if that were the case. "and if we're there long enough and we get hungry, we can just go to the food court." garam looked down at the other's hand squeezing his thigh, truly unable to stop himself from smiling. and trust that he put in a lot of effort to keep a straight face but the corners of his lips were destined to stretch ear to ear. even when things were going good with garam and axel, the man never treated him as nicely as angel did. there was no car doors being opened. there was no opening doors, period. nor did he ever remind garam to fasten his seatbelt, axel typically peeled out before garam had the chance to even touch his seatbelt.. as nice as it was to see how caring somebody could be towards him, it only made him feel worse because of how blind he was to angel's feelings. he chose to stay with somebody that never actually made him feel loved instead of picking somebody that showed him just how loved he was whenever they were together. he was slow and precise as he pulled the seatbelt across his body, only looking over to angel once he was locked in. "you're too nice to me, it makes me want to do bad things to you." not bad, necessarily. not the actions, themselves. what he wanted to do was naughty and what was bad was their currently location. the fact that it didn't matter where they were, garam would stop dead in his tracks to jump on angel the first chance he got. it was like he felt the undeniable desire to reward somebody's kindness with free use of his body. "maybe not bad," he clarified, his voice was softer, "but things i shouldn't be wanting to do in public."

Angel watched Garam as he stood up, his heart racing a little. There was something about the way Garam moved, the light in his eyes, that always made Angel feel a rush of warmth. He brushed a hand through his hair, trying to tame the messy strands that fell across his forehead, and felt a flutter of excitement at Garam’s compliment “Thanks,” he replied, his voice slightly shy as he caught Garam’s gaze. “You look pretty good yourself, even if you just rolled out of bed.” Garam’s teasing boop on the nose made Angel laugh, a bright sound that echoed in the room. He felt a surge of affection for the man in front of him. It was moments like these that made him forget the worries that sometimes crept into his mind—like the jealousy that bubbled up when Garam talked about unsolicited messages. It was silly, he knew that, but the thought of someone else trying to get Garam's attention made him feel a little possessive. “Okay, ice cream it is,” Angel said, following Garam as he tugged him along. “But you’re going to have to tell me what those strawberries and whipped cream are for later.” He shot Garam a playful look, a hint of mischief dancing in his own eyes. As they reached the front door, Angel grabbed his keys from the small dish on the table. He turned to Garam, a grin spreading across his face. “I can drive. Just tell me where to go.” He loved driving, especially when it was with Garam. The way they would banter back and forth during the ride, the comfortable silence that sometimes fell between them, all of it made him feel at home. “Just so you know,” he added, a teasing lilt to his voice, “strawberries are my favorite. Might have to eat them before we get home” he winked at the man with a squeeze to his hand. As they made their exit of the apartment Angel locked up leading Garam down to the parking garage. The taller man didn’t drive his car much. His all black honda civic sat in the parking spot with the matching number to their now shared apartment. He headed straight toward the passengers side and pulled it open for Garam. Hr smiled as he watched the ma climb in still in disbelief of their dynamic right now. He closed the door and climbed into the driver side. “Where to first?” Angel asked as he started the car and glanced over at Garam, “Seat belt baby” he said his town lowering showing how serious he was. Angel’s hand found its way to Garam thigh giving it a slight squeeze before pulling off from the parking spot.

[monstersinthecosmos]

kacy i need ur thoughts on marius and dom drop

Oh! My friend! I have several. 🤗

I have a lot to say and I’m not sure how to organize myself so be patient with me. But !

I think a lot about both the in-universe/non-diegetic kink in VC but also Marius’s own admittance that he lies to himself, and what that says about both his role as a dom and what it means, and his ego as a defense mechanism and what it means to his actual level of self-assuredness.

Like the short answer here is like: I LOVE thinking about a soggy Mawwius who feels really bad and goes back to his lair at sunrise feeling like a nervous wreck because there wasn’t enough time for aftercare LOL. I think it ties in really nicely to his hatred of anger/the humiliation around identifying with anger, and I wonder like in a moment of dom drop does it feel too much like he was being an aggressive brute, and does he lose sight of the fact that Amadeo (or whomstever) was into it?

Is he so ashamed of himself that he doesn’t even ALLOW himself aftercare? He takes the shame with him to be alone and punish himself, maybe! :D

WHAT A BARBARIAN!

And like I know I bring this up from time to time but the whole idea of non-diegetic kink/DOYLIST KINK IF YOU WILL, is that it’s kinky to the reader, on purpose, but not necessarily following “good” BDSM rules in the text, right? Like the whipping scenes in TVA are intended to be kink to the reader, but they’re not negotiated. So I wonder like, what does a dom role mean to him if he’s not slipping into it in a traditional/realistic way? If they exist in a world where negotiation isn’t warranted, how much aftercare do they need? And speaking to dom drop—there’s aftercare in both whipping scenes in TVA, but they’re focused on Armand, not Marius.

In some ways that feels appropriate, too, like, I don’t know man! What’s the etiquette when one of you is inhuman and there’s a 1500 year age gap? In real life we’d see BDSM as a consensual roleplay where the sub might want to check in, too, and is just as responsible, but in a situation like this, is it Armand’s job to take care of him after?

That’s the tricky thing about the non-diegetic setup that I’m getting at. As the reader, the EXTREME power imbalance is supposed to be tropey and entertaining and titillating, and it’s interesting trying to tease that out from like, how sincerely we take the actions on the page. (ie: the timeless discourse about whether or not the BDSM in TVA is abuse blah blah). So like, we can chose not to worry about it and write it off as Not That Deep, or we can say like, maybe it wasn’t Amadeo’s fucking job to care for the ancient creature that just beat the shit out of him lmao.

We have to ask, does proper etiquette exist/matter in this universe? (Either answer still works, it’s just like, what are we focusing on for this particular moment, like is it for meta or a fic or what, your mileage may vary). And like on that note, what was the BDSM etiquette in the 1490s, anyway? LOL Like does anyone give a fuck anyway? (This might be an ask for YOU, apoptoses!!!)

So it’s kind of interesting to think about this.

I mean!

Like, Marius can still have dom drop, whether or not Amadeo (or anyone else) cares to aftercare him. And that kinda feels appropriate with the no-rules non negotiated scenes in the first place. It’s appropriately messy if he’s torn up about it and then just goes back to his lair and stews and panics about it. Love that for him lol.

It also occurs to me like, if AMADEO also needs more aftercare, if Marius knows that but has to leave, I wonder how guilty that makes him feel. Like, I remember you and I talked about this LOL because I wrote this into Gallows Bird, that he woke up Riccardo to go sleep with Amadeo so he wouldn’t be alone, and you were gonna write some Riccardo/Amadeo about it!!! Like, how often did that happen?

We can say if there’s no negotiation and shit poor BDSM etiquette in universe, maybe he just left Amadeo to fend for himself at sunrise and that was that LOL and it layers into the extreme way it’s built for the sake of the story and exaggerated for the sake of the reader, but as always, I know that you and me both as fic writers like to think about this stuff on the ground floor because we try to envision more of a 360° view of what these scenes looked like from the inside and I simply have to ask all these questions to develop my understanding !!

And I have to ask how purposeful these scenes & roleplays are within the universe: is he slipping into the dom/disciplinarian role with intention? It asks that question like, what does this person need and how does the BDSM role help them? We can say that Amadeo is a brat, and that by necessity Marius must become a disciplinarian to take care of him. But is that something Marius would choose for himself? For Marius I can only imagine him thriving as a dom in the sense that it feels good to have control, but it’s an odd thing to need to express in the Venice era in particular where he is so very in control anyway. Is his paterfamilias/daddy kink already served just by their 24/7 dynamic and his control of the palazzo, and does he still need to top it off with impact play? There’s so many options here!

Option A is like, he’s basically service domming for Amadeo’s pleasure, and the dom drop is going to come from the idea that he’s so completely self-loathing as a monster!  People give Louis credit for being like the OG Self Loathing Vampire but Marius has him so so beat, imo. God he hates that shit. He has such bad vampire dysphoria constantly, he feels like a monster, he uses his powers sparingly to feel like a person, every time he grows a new strength he’s disgusted by it. He hates the idea of violence and anger!

Option B is that it’s therapeutic for him to exercise these powers with someone who appreciates them? Does it feel nice to indulge in his violent nature for a little while in a space where he knows he’s not hurting anybody for real? And like, for all the ways he has control in Venice – Amadeo will grow up and leave, the boys will leave, Vincenzo will die soon, he cannot keep them, he cannot join society in the way he wants. I think when you break it down, most trauma comes down to “a time I did not have control” and it’s natural for people to want to play with control to unwind, but for Marius in particular, his turning was SO traumatic and fucked up and I think really set the tone for his entire life. Not just being turned against his will but the way it was prolonged, that he did everything he could while he was alive to rebel against Roman society and maintain personal freedom, only to have that taken away for a YEAR! Being held captive is so fucking dehumanizing, and I wonder if he never really got over it.

Option C is that it just genuinely also gets him off and he’s playing with his food because taking little sips from Amadeo for years is giving him insane blue balls lmao

I also would be remiss not to mention my sincerely held belief that Marius is more of a sub on the inside, too, and so roleplaying as a dom or being so stressed that he needs to control SOMETHING is not natural for him. If he rose up to be a dom by necessity here—whether to meet Amadeo’s needs or because he’s become so violent and inhuman and needs to relieve stress—I can definitely see him having dom drop after and struggling to reconcile it when he’s lying awake in his sarcophagus panicking about it.

Everything in Venice is designed to be the exact opposite of his experience in Gaul. He spoils Amadeo with gifts, gives him a beautiful place to live, all the food he wants, wants him to have a worldly education, encourages him to go out and experience the city and meet people and have sex and take advantage of everything the modern world has to offer. And I think he likes that Amadeo sees him as a savior and not a captor. He even knows pretty quickly that he loves Amadeo too much to go through with turning him, anyway, and is willing to let him live.

So it’s interesting to me like, this is actually something I’ve tackled in Sheith fics LOL but like how to overcome trauma in a way that allows you to be violent for fun again, and how to find it cathartic and safe when your instinct is that it isn’t, or when the idea of it feels triggering. We don’t know about Marius having any other relationships like this before Venice, but he’s rejoining society for a while and finding a healthy outlet for his hunger, perhaps.

Especially off the heels of his thing for Bianca and Botticelli, and how he knew he’d kill them if he didn’t distract himself. The entire reason he HAS Amadeo at all is as a plaything and a distraction/rebound, so it’s interesting that controlled violence plays into what they do together, and how Marius loves him.

What’s interesting about it too is that like, again in the sense of it being the actual text—it seems like after both whipping scenes that they both have sort of emotional breakthroughs and can be more honest with each other. We know that Marius is a person who keeps his feelings inside until he explodes, and this is how that looks when he’s with Amadeo. He comes away from it with a sense of catharsis that he needed. No matter how they get here, it does seem like it’s something he needs.

But yeah anyway. This was all over the place LOL but those are some of the angles I consider when I think about this topic. I genuinely can’t imagine a version of Marius where he DOESN’T experience dom drop, honestly, it’s just that I think there’s a very different routes of how we get there. In the end, no matter how intentional the roleplays are, I think he’s going to go isolate himself after and go “what the fuck why did I do that oh my god” and the curse of their interspecies relationship is that he has to leave in the morning and they can’t cuddle their way through it until it feels better.

[mogruith]

BG3 Virtual Photography Tutorial #0: Brief Overview

At least a couple people seemed interested in how this process works, so... here's to you folks!

So first, I want to lay out how my process generally works without getting too bogged down in the tools just so readers can see if this is something they want to spend their time doing.

Just for giggles, here's one of the very first few shots I took with Otis Inf Camer Tools - the focus is off and there's framing issues, but honestly as a scrub, it's not bad! You can get there too!

Keep in mind, you won't necessarily need ALL these tools I mention, but they're all pretty good tools, so try to get what you can.

First, I use a tool called Otis Inf Camera Tools. I inject it into the game and that enables me to move the camera around, zoom in, change FoV, rotate, etc. among other things.

I combine it with ReShade to change some visual aspects: color, warmth, sharpness, blur, etc. The IGCS addon also allow you to create a custom Depth of Field, which can add bokeh, softness to hair, soften the background, etc.

Next, I pick a scene that I want to shoot. I will take existing scenes and replace their actors. To do this, I modify and copy-paste some code into the Script Extender Debug Console.

Today I learned that Wyll's romance scene in Act 3 can end in a cuddle and I wanted to see that but with my couple (sorry Wyll, I can't help it - I didn't get a romance scene with Minthara as a good Tav so I must steal others!)

Here's what those commands look like, color coded in my note-taking software to highlight the components that I must modify before I stick it into the Script Extender Debug Console.

Green is boilerplate

Red is Wyll's Act 3 cutscene name and ID

Blue is my Tav (taking Wyll's place in the cutscene because they have the same bodytype)

Purple is Minthara's name and ID.

There's some more green boilerplate throughout and after that.

I will go into how you find the names and IDs another day. Once you paste this into the console, the cutscene will play. There's certain "rules" to get it to play right but I'll get into that another day.

I play the scene, get a pose that I like, and then use the Camera Tools to pause the game, move the camera and set up a shot. I use ReShade and an Add On to add Depth of Field to make the stars nice soft round bubbles (sadly the moon as well - that can be edited to be sharp in post)

The end result is a cutscene that was originally meant to have Wyll being replaced with my Tav and Minthara instead of Tav in Wyll's scene.

I hope that gives you some idea of how the process works before I start getting into the tools and their details. It may be a little intimidating to see all these tools together, but we'll tackle them one at a time.

Tagging @graciescribbles @arach-tinilith and @lutethebodies for their interest in my post getting feelers for this.

[abusivelittlebunny]

Omg thats sounds so... i can't even find a word for it.

I had this thought though, and while i don't like liam he's eh to me, what would be worse is if horner was actually a dick to most people who aren't max (max doesn't see that side of him much if at all) and liam explains to carlos after sex one reason he's been trying to get horners child in him is so he's not booted out of his seat for an alpha cause sex with horner doesn't really do it for liam and his ditzy act is just that, liam tells him the second reason stating how he can't have his seat if he doesn't have sex with horner regularly as it states in his contract while also saying that he'd rather be with an alpha that actually cares for him and that if he had horners child he could atleast stop having sex with him for a while, liam also feels bad for doing this behind max's back but he doesn't really have a choice if he doesn't want to be used as a breeding mare for the rest of the redbull team.

Anyway sorry, i just find the au your building to be fascinating and i wanted to add to it, you don't actually make this a thing in it.

–🍑

Further yapping with spoilers below the cut!

This is a very interesting addition and I'll definitely take it into consideration because I also do want Liam to want to get married to Horner to keep his RB seat.

I don't think Horner is necessarily bad in bed but he makes it clear to Liam that he's just a good lay to him, nothing more, and Liam is very much hurt by it because yeah he does want to be loved and cherished, another thing he envies about Max who has multiple alphas devoted to him.

It is an utter punch to the gut when he tells Carlos he's pregnant and Carlos tells him to get rid of it (while looking away, unable to face Liam even if he wants to harden himself more than anything, he can't help it, maybe his father was right and he's too soft for this world, catching affection for any omega he takes to bed and immediately wanting to claim his offspring with pride and joy). It's not the reaction he expected at all and it breaks him.

Liam can't drive to the clinic. He just can't. He's too scared, too beaten down and Carlos grabs him by the elbow and drags him to the car, throwing him in the passenger seat and driving there himself. His frustration comes from within, he's mad at himself for not wanting Liam to get rid of the kid despite how this was the reason why he did all this in the first place. He is so full of tension he's ready to burst at any minute while Liam is sobbing next to him, clutching at his tummy. He's only two months ahead, but during that time Carlos has been fucking him almost every day even after his heat ended, barely letting Liam out of bed and even then it was just to feed him, which always ended with fucking Liam on the kitchen counter or against the wall or over the table or on the couch or the floor- at one point Carlos broke the bedframe and barely even thought about it, fucking another load into Liam before carrying him to the guest room to continue.

Sure, Carlos started out mean, downright evil when he first cornered Liam in the factory and barely pulled his race-suit off to wreck him against the nearest wall before taking him home with himself, but that was only in the beginning. Carlos had a tender side to him, one that kissed his forehead and pet his hair while Liam laid down on top of him, exhausted and drenched in sweat, knot stretching his full cunt, and one that took his time and effort when it came to giving him nice relaxing baths and washing Liam's hair and feeding him regularly delicious meals.

Carlos couldn't possibly convince him that he was heartless with the beautiful nursery set up right next to the guest room where his children slept when Carlos could have them stay over. Liam looked at the amount of effort he put into furnishing the room, the decoration and pictures all speaking for themselves; he was so proud of all of his children and had their birthdays all marked in the calendar displayed in large on the wall with specific toys each favored in separate cabinets and he kept a journal of their development and updated it daily.

Liam flipped through it secretly while Carlos was cooking him something delicious inbetween rounds, giggling and kicking his feet in fascination as he learned more and more about the alpha that never even looked in his direction previously.

He now knew the twin alpha boys he had with Max were most partial to a plush lion and plush tiger each. He knew that the alpha daughter he had with George was partial to jazz and could be instantly cheered up from crying when he sang to her and rocked her in his arms in a silly dance. He knew that Oscar's omega daughter fell asleep in the car almost as soon as she was put in it and that she rarely ever cried but was just as stubborn as her mother. He knew Franco's alpha son preferred yelling over crying like he was already questioning his authority and how Carlos can't help giving in and spoiling him which is a little embarrassing but he doesn't like to see him in distress so he can't help it.

He knew how much Lando cried to him until he was finally able to keep the fetus and how much it meant to the both of them. He knew how beautiful he found Logan when he was breastfeeding their alpha son and how he loved that he inherited Logan's beautiful green eyes but Carlos' dark curls but he didn't dare to tell him that. He knew of the regret Carlos felt for hurting Charles by impregnating his younger brother but how much he looked forward to driving Arthur to his ultrasound appointments and how it looked like they would have an omega girl.

He knew that while Carlos couldn't ever move on from all the hurt has they have caused each other with Charles, he couldn't possibly endure the divorce finalizing one day and how he wasn't able to let go of his hand when Charles was in labor, feeling his pain through the bond making it the most personal and wonderful experience of his life and how he wants to experience it again and again, give their beautiful alpha son Jules many more younger siblings and end this god-awful separation that is killing them both.

Carlos was a giver, even if he pretended not to be. He was a good alpha and a good father and a good man. He couldn't hide that soft side with Liam glued to his side almost constantly.

He did take Liam back to his own place eventually but his stay there was brief. Liam knew when Carlos kissed him goodbye in the doorway (after pounding him again for good measure in said doorway) that he couldn't possibly let this be a one time thing that they could pretend never happened. The next day he packed his things and drove back to Carlos' place on his own and he didn't even need to say a word before Carlos picked him up and carried him to the couch for round 2. And he made him pancakes after.

A man like that asking him to get rid of their child, however unplanned it was, seemed impossible. Even when they reached the parking lot of the clinic, Liam just couldn't believe it. He begged him amongst tears, promised he'd never bother Carlos again, not make him take responsibility just please, please-

"Go." Was all Carlos said to him, not even looking in his direction, just staring out his window and clutching at the steering wheel with an iron grip.

It shocked Liam into silence and after a couple minutes of slowing his breathing, he did.

He numbly opened the car door and walked into the clinic, feeling like his head was under water as he walked up to the receptionist. He knew he was being asked questions and had been given a form to fill out but he couldn't really understand it. He wasn't able to answer anything, pen slack in his hand and the paper too wet to write on. Wet? Ah, he was crying again, he didn't even notice.

What he noticed however was the front door busting open with the volume of a gunshot, and he turned in time as Carlos near tackled him to the ground with the force of how he ran into him. He thought for a brief second that he was in trouble but Carlos had his arms around him, picking him up and squeezing him so tight to himself it left bruises.

But the pain meant nothing when all Liam could hear was Carlos' breathless chanting of: "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please don't, please don't do it, please, please, I'm sorry, I want it, I want our baby, I want you to keep it, please don't go through with this, I'm so sorry-," right against his neck.

Carlos fucking ran to the car, still carrying Liam as if he was afraid that Liam might bolt the moment he lets him go and the sex they had on the backseat was nothing short of a complete rebirth of their affair. It was as if a wall has been broken down, Carlos couldn't stop saying how perfect and gorgeous Liam was as he kissed him all over, how he couldn't wait to see what a beautiful baby he'd birth for him and how he would have Liam move in with him permanently as soon as possible and he doesn't care what Max will say, he can't let him get rid of his baby, he can't, he will protect Liam and their child with his life-

And it suddenly clicked to Liam.

Max.

Max was the reason why Carlos was at the factory. Max told Carlos to make a move on him when he was on the brink of heat. Max was the reason why Carlos treated him so rough in the beginning, hurting him and calling him mean things while now he was his pure adoring self worshipping him in the backseat while the rain hammered down outside.

Max wanted him to get knocked up and then force him to abort it to hurt him.

Liam clawed at Carlos' rain soaked shirt until he ripped it clean off his back and cried out as he pushed his perfect cock back into Liam's cunt where it belonged.

He kissed the praises right out of Carlos' mouth and rocked back against his thrusts, begging him to fuck him harder and harder and harder and never ever let him go again.

Oh how he was going to make Max regret to have ever been born.

[fantastic-nonsense]

took a peek into Harry Potter fanfic for the first time in years and y'all this is a fundamentally different fandom from the one I read/wrote fic for in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I'm not even talking about the difference in shipping preferences or whatever, the entire understanding of the world, characters, and relationships is sooooooooo different

[frankierotwinkdeath]

Y’all want Taylor Swift to be gay so bad but you won’t even write femslash about her

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Actual Ultimate Classpecting Guide

For real this time.

Buckle up, this is a really long one. For everything that's posited, I can provide textual evidence; that being said, I'm not going to be including the textual evidence within the essay itself, because it's already long enough as-is. As such, please feel free to ask for clarification or sources on any assertion, and I'll do my best to provide.

Before we begin, there's some things to discuss about how we're going to be approaching classpect in the following essay. In numbered list form for our short attention spans:

1. There is a concept Hussie talks about multiple times in his book commentary, "personality alchemy" - the idea that there are these "platonic ideals" of certain characters, which can be mixed and matched with others, in order to create new characters. The examples he gives are of how Eridan was a proto-Caliborn, how Kanaya has shades of Jade, how Nepeta was a proto-Calliope, and how Sollux and Eridan have shades of Dave in them. Classpecting is fundamentally a form of this personality alchemy:

2. Class describes the character's arc and emotional hurdles, while Aspect describes the character's base personality traits by which this arc is experienced.

3. For example, all three Seers struggle with hubris: Rose's need to be the smartest person in the room led to her being manipulated by Doc Scratch, Terezi's obsession with meting justice led to her engineering a situation where the only option was to kill Vriska, and Kankri's desire to be seen as a spiritual leader amongst his friends led to him furthering their divisions and harming them.

Then, when their pride is shattered, they cope by inflicting willful self-blindness: Rose turns to drinking herself stupid (the opposite of Light's sway over knowledge), Terezi gets down with the clown (the opposite of meting out Mind's justice, as it's a Gamzee W), Kankri goes celibate (Blood L) despite his clear romantic feelings for certain teammates.

4. As for Aspect: note how all three Life players share the personality traits of optimism, stubbornness, and obstinacy. All three Breath players share an immaturity and naïvety, and are quite frankly irresistible to people for some reason. All three Light players share a need for the spotlight and a tendency toward long-windedness and persnicketiness. So on and so forth.

What's interesting is, if you start analyzing characters that share Classes and Aspects, these specific types of similarity crop up over and over - all our Knights struggle with insecurities and facades, both our Bards have a crisis of faith. All three Breath players have an aspect of immaturity and childishness to their characters, and all three Light players are deeply concerned with appearing intelligent and feeling important.

5. As a result, this guide is NOT intended for classpecting real life people, because we are complicated, we contain multitudes, and we don't have arcs. This is primarily an analysis of what Class and Aspect mean in Homestuck based on textual evidence, because I genuinely believe that you can basically figure it out if you read carefully.

6. Duality, and the idea of "equal and opposite," are major themes within Homestuck - Prospit and Derse, Skaia (described as a crucible of birth and creativity) and the Furthest Ring (the literal afterlife). Which classes are involved in an Active/Passive split, and opposing Aspects, are the same way. This is the primary method I used to determine the Active/Passive pairings and opposing Aspects. After all, as Callie describes, both Thieves and Rogues are classes "who steal" - so, too, do I try to unify Classes by a common theme, even if they diverge wildly in how that theme is expressed (as Thieves and Rogues do). In the same way as the opposite of "up" is not "apple," but "down", because "up" and "down" are both fundamentally concerned with relative vertical position, so too can be defined concepts like Breath and Blood, Hope and Rage, Light and Void - as well as the reasoning behind Class pairings like Heir and Page, Maid and Knight, and Seer and Mage.

7. Descriptions for both Class and Aspect are left deliberately vague and up to interpretation within the comic itself, and this is by design: the actual manifestations of an Aspect can vary wildly given the Class, and even individual person, that it's tied to. Calliope even makes note of the fact that, under the right circumstances, someone can manifest effects that appear to be the opposite of their aspect. She's also careful to couch her language in "may" and "can" - because these concepts are intentionally somewhat nebulous and malleable. As such, while this guide certainly lays down what can be gleaned and inferred from the text, do note that Homestuck runs on a soft magic system, and as such, nothing stated is firm, 100%, must-always-be-this-way - just an overview of what we've seen.

8. There is often great overlap between Aspects, Classes, and Classpects - which Calliope herself notes. Heart and Blood are one of the most salient, as they both have a fixation on relationships, and Calliope mentions that under the right circumstances, a Classpect may even be able to manifest what appears to be the opposite of their Aspect. Again, Homestuck operates on a soft magic system, so this is a feature, not a bug.

ASPECT

There's a little less to say about Aspect, not because it's less complicated, but because "base personality traits" are much more nebulous compared to Class's sway over character arc. Still, Aspect represents the fundamental way a character is, and thus, color every interaction that character has. There's a reason Ultimate Selfhood is sought through Aspect, not Class - Aspect is the core of the character's being, what makes that person that person.

That all being said, Class has major sway over how an Aspect manifests, and certain classes can even invert the Aspect and even the character's role in the party. As such, these descriptions must be parsed carefully in relation to Class. Moreover, due to the soft magic system, there is at times overlap between unrelated Aspects, which can also be exacerbated by Class - Heart and Blood being the most obvious in this regard. Still, overall, you'll find the Aspects to be fairly distinct from one another.

Please also note that every Aspect can deal with its literal counterpart by default - Light players can wield lasers, Breath players can wield the breeze, et cetera. Because this kind of goes without saying, and because the non-literal stuff is more interesting to discuss, I'm not really going to go into too much detail about the literal qualities.

Finally, something interesting to note is that nearly every Aspect follows its own Hero's Journey cycle - full actualization for each one usually means reaching around to its opposite Aspect, and taking lessons from them - for example, Breath players need to learn maturity and responsibility, while Blood players need to learn relaxation and whimsy. Thus, an Aspect at its worst manifests in two ways - either a toxic overabundance of the Aspect's worst traits, or such a dearth of the aspect that it begins to resemble its opposite. Only by reaching into the opposite, however, can the player be tempered and reach full maturity - can they become more of who they are.

SPACE / TIME

Space and Time are both concerned with physical reality, goals, and the way one approaches them.

Space is associated with "the big picture" - with recycling, reproduction, and the interconnectivity of all things. The aspect also presides over the enjoyment of the journey over the destination - Space players serve as reminders that the present moment is as important as the end goal. Space is often a more passive Aspect, being the stage upon which the story is set. They're the hosts of the party, and the one who marks the ending.

Its players reflect these tendencies, often being feminine, with penchants for life-giving acts such as gardening. Their personalities tend towards frivolity and silliness, finding it difficult to stay on-topic or bring full gravitas to serious situations. Perhaps a better word would be "distractable;" when the aspect is so concerned with all things in connection with each other, it's easy to lose track of details, and it's easy to enjoy things simply as they come. Space players tend to be kind, patient, and forgiving, which is a strength as much as it is a flaw; it's easy for malicious actors to take advantage of this compassion, or for the Space player to find themselves in a poor situation by being overly permissive. They can easily be painted over by stronger personalities, and tend to struggle with romantic relationships, as they attract many with their kind and giving natures, and few are naturally so considerate of the Space player in turn.

"Passive" is a good word to use; at a toxic overabundance of their Aspect, Space players are trampled underfoot. They become enablers, servants to dark forces, or so lost in their own worlds that they neglect the one they live in. With their Aspect "inverted," a Space player becomes a demon of poor prioritization. Distracting not just themselves from their true purpose, but others, too, the Space player will wreak havoc by overemphasizing unimportant topics and ignoring important tasks. This superficially resembles Time, in that the Space player will become fanatically dedicated to their task, but note that the poor prioritization is still Space-esque at its core.

Still, within this nadir is a valuable lesson: the strength of self-assertion, and the determination to see a goal through. These will allow the Space player to weed their garden, separating good from bad, allowing it to flourish like never before.

Time, in contrast, is associated with "the little things" - with details, minutiae, and processes. Time presides over the struggle toward something greater, the endurance of hardship with an eye on the prize - the destination over the journey. Time players are the ones keeping track of the tasklist, marking off each item as it reaches completion; they are the tireless workers keeping the whole engine running.

Time players, thus, are ones whose lives are marked by struggle. They are highly goal-oriented; in contrast to how Space players can easily move from goal to goal, task to task, Time players feel bound to see things through to the end, finding satisfaction only when they've achieved their desired result - and only until they come across the next goal in their journey. A Time player isn't happy without a goal to work towards, a craft to polish, a prize to win - but this driven nature can easily be its own downfall, as it leaves little room for the player to admit to their own shortcomings, or ask for help from others. Moreover, their focus on minutiae can leave them blinded to the bigger picture, and it's easy for a time player to fall to despair, able to do nothing more but spin their wheels. They're prone to directionless anguish, frustration, and resentment towards the seeming futility of their actions, becoming destructive and defiant even when it doesn't serve them to do so.

At a toxic overabundance of their Aspect, Time players become explosively destructive. The ultimate "goal" of all things is death, with which Time is associated, and accordingly, Time players have a penchant for aligning themselves with futility and entropy, struggling so hard that their thrashing leaves a trail of annihilation in their wake. With their Aspect "inverted," Time players detach entirely - they can become so fed up with struggle that they simply opt to lay their weapons down and let the end take them. It's very easy for them to come to the conclusions that either everything matters, or nothing matters. This superficially resembles Space and its big picture thinking, but note that its framework of struggle, and whether or not a goal needs to be pursued, makes it a Time concern.

But the inherent meaninglessness of existence is, in itself, an important realization to make - that whether or not anything "matters" in the grand scheme, things can still be worth doing, worth caring about, and worth investing in. This realization allows the Time player to attack their goals with renewed vigor and greater clarity, which in turn means that the party becomes an efficient, well-oiled machine.

BREATH / BLOOD

Breath and Blood are both concerned with directionality, interpersonal relationships, and autonomy.

Breath is the Aspect governing freedom, liberty, and independence; it is a force that breaks shackles, clears out social norms, and refutes "the rules," whatever those rules may be. Breath players can't be tied down, whether by physical bonds, societal rules, or even the ineffable forces of the narrative itself. They are leaders of example, pioneers, and trailblazers, opening new paths for their teammates to follow.

Breath players are goofy and gullible, often with hearts full of childlike whimsy, naivety, and even immaturity. They are friendly and well-meaning, fond of simpler things, and easily swayed by others. They approach the world with a sincere and innocent good-naturedness, like a baby animal before it learns to be fearful of danger. Something about this sincerity seems to make Breath players irresistible to others, and they often find themselves the subject of romantic attraction. However, in this childishness is also the great pitfall of many Breath players - their natures are naturally conflict-averse, and egotistical the way a child can be, failing to see beyond themselves. They can be incredibly callous when not considering the consequences of their actions, or the viewpoints of others.

At their worst, Breath players are irresponsible and callous. They'll shirk the consequences of their actions, blaming anybody but themselves, or simply choose not to care who they hurt in order to get what they want. They may even choose to stop making choices for themselves, leading to the "inversion" of their Aspect - a voluntary loss of freedom and independence, derived from an Breath-like aversion to responsibility, which superficially resembles the bondage of Blood.

But if they are able to overcome these tendencies, a Breath player will learn what true responsibility looks like - responsibility for themselves, their choices, and the effect they have on others. Armed with this, a Breath player's ability to break bonds can be focused into a clear force for good, clearing away all obstacles and harmful societal standards, leading the charge into something new and beautiful.

Blood, in sharp contrast, is the aspect that governs bondage, contracts, and interdependence. It is a force that binds. Under Blood's sway are not only romantic entanglements, but familial, friendly, and societal ones as well. This aspect sees overlap with Heart, but the division is this: Heart concerns itself with feelings, and Blood concerns itself with compatibility. Blood players are diplomats, forces that remind us all that we are more similar than we are different, and that that similarity should bring us together when we are on the verge of pulling apart.

Blood players, reflective of their Aspect's association with bonds, tend to be neurotic and obsessive. They have a tendency to over-examine and overthink, constantly fretting over the infinite and infinitesimal variables that influence the shape of society and interpersonal relationships. However, this judgmental nature stems from a deep well of idealism and empathy; Blood players can't help but care about others and wish for the best for them. In a way, this makes them one of the most mature members of the team, being concerned with its overall well-being. Unfortunately, their prowess does not extend inwards, and their assessment of themselves is usually direly incorrect - all the worse because Blood players always feel responsible for those around them. Blood, being the Aspect concerned with interdependence, is the weakest one when all alone.

Thus, it's easy for the Blood player to wind up controlling - desperate to make sure everyone is moving according to their vision, they'll become iron-fisted dictators, with a "my way or the highway" approach to social interactions. It's easy for them to wind up pariahs of their own making, becoming so critical of others, or so adamant about enforcing their own will, that they inadvertantly sever their ties - something that superficially resembles Breath's independence, but is truly a result of Blood's neuroticism.

But with that space and separation can come great clarity. Blood players must learn to relax their grip, and allow people room to breathe - including themselves. Once able to grasp that sometimes bonds must be forged with a soft touch, Blood players' natural empathy shines through, allowing them to build something so much kinder and greater than the sum of its parts.

LIGHT / VOID

Light and Void are both concerned with knowledge, ontology, and "narrative relevance".

Light (as well as its counterpart) are perhaps best understood through the lens of "narrative" - this idea that, of all things that do and don't exist, and all events that do and don't happen, only the ones put to page are "relevant". Thus, Light is associated with knowledge and luck - that is to say, it's associated with the knowable, the objective, and the concrete, and the ability to determine "important" events. Light players have read the book they're participating in, and able to serve as luminary guides from one plot point to another, lighting the lampposts for others to follow.

Light players, naturally, are erudite and educated, possessing keen intellects and cunning minds. They are fond of knowledge itself, of markers of status and prestige - whether that's wealth, the adulation of the masses, or a massive library. They harbor a desire to be important, to be seen, to be acknowledged, and are happiest when they are looked up to. Conversely, they deal poorly with being looked down upon. Their confidence transmutes easily into hubris, and they struggle with having that pride challenged. As such, they tend to be volatile and unpredictable, quick to retaliate against those who threaten their egos, or obsequious to those whose acknowledgement they desire.

Their desire for the limelight can quickly spell disaster - they can become incredibly cruel, harsh, and egotistical in their pursuit of narrative significance. They forget, in their obsession, that they, too, are fallible and flawed, and the inevitable reminder can come very harshly. Light players struggle with moderation, and as such, when they feel shame, they'll often take drastic measures to cope with it - deliberately darkening their own influence or intellects, removing themselves from the "story" entirely - something which superficially resembles Void's penchant for the background, but which is firmly rooted in Light's obsessive need for drama.

But in experimenting with narrative insignificance, Light players can reach an epiphany - in their absence, others may shine, and that can be a wonderful thing. Light players, then, can learn to shine not just for their own sakes, but for the sake of others, allowing them to weave a story even more brilliant than any that can be weaved alone.

Void, in contrast, is the blank spaces between the words. That which is secret, subjective, unknowable - these are Void's domain. It's associated with taboos and hidden things, sexuality and pleasure. It's also associated with the empty canvas - the blank space before creation, and the oblivion to which creation is eventually destined for. Thus, it stands for infinite possibility, though the collapse of those possibilities into a reality removes that reality from Void's domain.

Thus are Void players ever cosigned to the background, though this generally suits them fine. Void players are very self-possessed. Where Light players tend to exaggerate and complicate, Void players are honest and simple, preferring straightforward solutions. They don't tend to think very hard, instead letting intuition and emotion guide them to where they want to be - which makes them one of the more stable personalities on a team. However, this simplistic, feelings-driven approach often leads to pleasure-seeking behavior, poor impulse control, and overindulgence in vice, and from there, to irrelevance, with which Void is so closely interlinked.

Void players are especially prone to vice, and at their worst, will become so drunk on pleasurable activities that they pursue them to the active detriment of the party's goals or the Void player's self-improvement - making them the ultimate irrelevant character. They can also very easily drag others into their mélange, with a forcefulness that resembles Light's illuminating guidance, but which is ultimately rooted in Void's pursuit of personal pleasure.

But there's a lesson to be learned in Light's domain: how to bring themselves into relevance and greatness. A Void player, once they learn to pursue not just personal pleasure, but a greater satisfaction for the collective whole, can drag the Void behind them, kicking and screaming, to where it'll be of use.

MIND / HEART

Mind and Heart are concerned with what it means to be a sentient being, with identity, and with why we do what we do.

Mind is the Aspect associated with logic, rationality, karma, ethics, and justice. To a Mind player, they "are" because they "think". They are keenly aware of the consequences of every action, and well-versed in cognition and behavior, such to the point of manipulating others with ease. Deeply concerned with the "effect" of cause-and-effect, Mind players are always cognizant of debts and credits, where justice is owed and where it has been over-meted, and their subtle machinations culminate, like well-placed dominoes, in grand and explosive finales.

Mind players are schemers - it's in their nature. They have a tendency to view the world as a puzzle or game, with themselves and the people around them as pieces on a board, and set as their standard rules the laws of ethics and karma - owed debts and overhanging credit - guilty and innocent. Mind players are wickedly cunning, and have an high success rate with every scheme they commit themselves to, but the grand downfall of all these tendencies is that they tend to lack in a sense of identity, and have a poor grasp on their own emotions or desires. While they may know how to provoke a desired reaction, they don't know how to change someone's mind. They often find themselves grappling very painfully with their own selfhood, with feelings of emptiness, inadequacy, or uncertainty.

Thus, a Mind player at the worst zenith of their Aspect is heartless and cruel. Leaving no space for empathy or even personal feelings in their plans, the Mind player will plot for an ending as heartless as they are. But a Mind player is never truly without emotion, and ignoring their own feelings causes them to manifest in terrible ways - Mind players have a tendency to seek toxic, codependent relationships, hoping to find external validation, subjecting themselves to the wishes of others, which can appear like Heart's fixation on feelings and desire.

But in recognizing their own need for emotional validation, and the importance of their own feelings, a Mind player can realize that there's an entire dimension to the game they've been playing that they've been ignorant of. When a Mind player learns to temper their schemes with empathy, compassion, and kindness, how much more success they'll see - and how much happier that grand finale will be!

Heart, then, is associated with feelings, motivations, intuition, the soul, and the self. To a Heart player, they "are" because they "feel" like they are - and they're keenly aware of the multitudes that are contained within themselves. Deeply concerned with the "cause" of cause-and-effect, they're drawn to desires, those of themselves and of others, especially where strong feelings are concerned. Heart players are gifted with an intuitive understanding of those around them, both their good and bad qualities, and are tasked with the grand task of bringing out the best.

It stands to reason, then, that Heart players have a firm grasp on who they are and what they want. For the same reasons, it's difficult for a Heart player to truly hate or condemn another person, because they are so adept at understanding them. However, this understanding comes with a price - because the Heart player is so aware of themselves, they can't escape their own worst traits - nobody self-loathes as accurately as a Heart player can. Nor can they ever truly be untruthful with another, making them poor manipulators. Capable of presenting a different facet of themselves as the situation calls for it, certainly, but just as it's impossible to lie to a Heart player, who always knows how someone really feels, it's impossible for a Heart player to lie to themselves.

With this sincerity comes vulnerability. Heart players wear theirs on their sleeves, and at their worst, this can make them demanding, needy, and sensitive - so eager to connect with others emotionally that they'll cramp themselves to fit others' desires. But they can't ever keep this up for long; Heart players have a tendency to withdraw from others after being hurt too often, finding it easier to be alone and silent about their feelings than to deal with the pain of rejection. They may even work to manipulate others, preying on their emotions and desires to force them to act in their worst interests. This superficially resembles Mind's cold logic, but unlike Mind's cool rationality, Heart's aloofness is a mask, an attempt to avoid pain by pulling away.

But this isn't purely a negative, because a Heart player can learn a healthier form of detachment, and separate out healthy and helpful desires from harmful and detrimental ones. Given this clarity, the Heart player becomes the team's emotional core, able to raise up each teammate's best qualities, while helping them deal with their worst, enabling everyone to be the best possible version of themselves - which the Heart player knew them to be all along.

LIFE / DOOM

Life and Doom are concerned with outlook, with journeys, and with trials and tribulations.

Life is an aspect concerned with healing, growing, and improving. It is associated with beginnings, optimism, and positive emotions. The very essence of Life lies in its healing abilities, in this idea of overcoming the odds and triumphing over hardship and difficulty. Life is action, movement, and motion, and its players can scarcely hold still. Life will find a way - and Life players harbor the same immutable belief; they are the most stubborn weeds in the garden, the cockroach that survives the apocalypse, and the beating heart that refuses to stop.

Life players tend to be optimistic and confident. They are self-assured individuals, with a stubborn belief that good things are on their way, and any hardship they face is not only temporary, but something that can be overcome. They can find the silver lining in any cloud, and enjoy themselves under any circumstance. They love to nurture, to care for others, though this love has a tendency to be one-sided. Indeed, Life's stubborn nature is its players' greatest pitfall; their persistence easily becomes obstinacy, and their confidence can become condescension. Their self-assured nature easily becomes egotism, and they can have great difficulty grappling with those who don't share their views - even coming to oppose those who bring emotional pain and suffering that can't be easily fixed.

It's very easy for a Life player to decide another person isn't worth their attention, and opt to leave them behind - after all, Life has to move forward, no matter what it tramples in the process. At their worst, they're stubborn to the point of not listening to anyone but themselves, confidence becoming blockheadedness. This focus on forward progress without looking back can even cause Life players to become harmful to others, so focused they are on their own growth that they don't notice that they're choking everyone else out. This may resemble Doom's death in its worst case - arresting everything else, eventually blocking even their own path with unruly, out-of-control fecundity.

Thus, a Life player needs to learn to more gracefully accept Doom's influence - to pause, slow down, and consider viewpoints that are negative, unpleasant, or difficult. A Life player, endowed with moderation, will be able to cultivate a bountiful garden, rather than an unruly jungle - a place for all to flourish and live in plenty, never wanting for anything.

Doom, then, is the aspect concerned with death, with rest, and with endings. Doom is associated with suffering and with negative emotions, with peace, with sleep, and with dreams. Doom players have a natural penchant for prophecy, and are often dual dreamers, able to take advantage of both Skaia's oracular clouds and the Horrorterrors' voices over Derse. All things must eventually come to an end, and not all times will be good; in these troubling times, Doom players shine, as they are the guides who call the murk home, and know best how to navigate rough waters, course-correcting until the storm passes.

Doom players tend to be deeply pessimistic. They experience, to a much more magnified degree than others, negative feelings and impulses, and it's difficult for them to see the world without seeing its flaws, first and foremost. They are not healers, but commiserators, those who understand greatest that sometimes there's no way to deal with tragedy but to simply sit with it and wait for it to pass. The counterpoint to Life's insistence on breathless positivity, Doom is a reminder that pain, grief, sadness, shame, and guilt are not unnecessary things - in fact, excising them can lead to terrible consequences. Doom players are the universe's martyrs, often taking it upon themselves to course-correct, to sacrifice themselves in order to give others a chance to continue on, to avert a terrible fate.

Unfortunately, this tendency also brings with it a tendency for Doom players to wallow in misfortune, or worse, to take themselves out of the picture, giving up entirely on seeing a better ending. As if energized by their own sense of futility, a Doom player at the "inverse" of their aspect may seem to echo a Life player's focus on forward progress and motion, actively spurring their team on towards an untimely demise.

A Doom player must learn to harness this sense of progress for good, rather than harm. A Doom player, once able to grasp the joy of life even in the greatest depths of despair, will be able to fill even the darkest hours with peace, meaning, and hope.

HOPE / RAGE

Hope and Rage are concerned with permission, and are the lens by which we define reality.

Hope is described by Hussie in the book commentary as being "framed as the most powerful aspect" because it is, literally, an aspect that defines reality. Its specific ability is lies in reducing the "fakeness attribute" of something, thus making it "real". Hope is associated with convictions, with idealism, with faith, order, holiness, and, of course, with magic - which Hope turns real. Hope is permission itself - a reality-breaking ability to look at the world and decree that it must be another way, a way in which the Hope player believes it ought to be.

Thus, Hope players tend to be hard-headed zealots, with no self-awareness whatsoever. Their inclination towards powerful beliefs makes them very difficult to dissuade from a path they've set their minds to, and their specific suite of abilities makes them terrifyingly likely to make their vision come true. Hope players are usually not particularly cunning, nor particularly intelligent, nor even particularly empathetic. Given the Aspect's focus on conviction and faith, it's usually very difficult for Hope players to notice anything occurring beyond their own minds and feelings. Thus are Hope players hopeless optimists, hopeless romantics, and hopeless in general - often great sources of embarrassment to their teams, as their naked sincerity is painful to witness. However, their ability to define reality does not leave them when their beliefs are faulty (which they often are, given Hope players are not particularly introspective, either), which is what makes a Hope player so dangerous.

A Hope player can easily be set on the wrong path - as convicted as they are, and as difficult to shake from that conviction as they can be, Hope players can easily march down a path of destruction, if not persuaded with a deft touch and gentle guidance. In the event that their faith is broken, Hope players easily become despondent and lost, floundering and wishy-washy, which superficially resembles Rage's self-consciousness, but is truly just a lack of direction.

But Rage has a powerful lesson to teach Hope players - that of questioning themselves, interrogating their own beliefs. Once their convictions have gone through rigorous scrutiny, revised into the best, brightest versions of themselves they can be, a Hope player is a worker of miracles - speaking into existence a beautiful future on faith alone, proclaiming that how they see the world is how the world shall be.

Rage, then, is the power of denial. If Hope reduces the "fakness" of a thing, then Rage reduces its "realness". Rage, too, is a means of defining reality, in this case taking a torch to the aspects of reality that it rejects. In more passive Classes, this works in subtler ways, stoking others towards destructive fury. Rage is associated with anarchy, chaos, revolution, destruction, anger, and nihilism. A Rage player will not suffer a world that does not satisfy them, breaking it to pieces, such that something new can take its place.

Therefore, Rage players are prone to harboring anger and resentment, discontentment with the status quo, and faith only in that what currently exists must somehow be dismantled. However, unlike Hope players, who can't help but be pathetically sincere, Rage players are incredibly self-conscious, and often try to mask and hide their embitterment and anger. This, ironically, leads to further ostracization, as others can tell they're being inauthentic. This only further compounds their sense of alienation, and drives them further into smoldering resentment. This makes Rage players sound volatile and dangerous, and they are - but the same fury that moves them is the fury that ignites revolts and tears down oppressive regimes, a necessary and vital well of energy and momentum. It takes careful handling to ensure that the team's Rage player can channel this energy towards righteous causes, rather than marking all as a target for their destructive ire.

In the worst-case scenario, the Rage player turns that rage out indiscriminately, deciding that there is nothing worth fighting for - only unpleasant things to be brought to ruin. This is Rage at its toxic overabundance. Conversely, a Rage player can retreat so harshly into their mask that they allow others to dictate their beliefs, taking them to heart - an action motivated by Rage's destruction (this time, turned inwards) that superficially resembles Hope's convictions and faith.

The true path for a Rage player is a healthy balance - to allow themselves some of Hope's sincerity, and by doing so, to become more sincere and true. This will let them release the pressure of their mounting ire, such that it can be converted into productive, rather than destructive, energy - the heralds of a revolution, razing away the faulty, corrupt old systems such that something better and new can take their place.

CLASS

As previously stated, Class governs a character's character arc - the character's starting circumstances, whether their conflict is primarily internal or external, and what major aspect of their Aspect becomes a hurdle for them to overcome.

In the same way an Aspect's sways tie into the character's base personality, the character's Class abilities tie into the kinds of struggles they face, and have great influence on how their Aspects manifest.

That being said, a character - and their Class - are always subject to their Aspect, as their Aspect is tied fundamentally into who they are. Thus, it can be said that a Light player will always have an affinity for knowledge and provide Seer-esque guidance even when not in a Seer role, a Doom player will always have prophetic abilities even with a non-prophetic class (note that Mituna, an Heir, still had prophetic visions, despite those generally being the realm of Mages and Seers), and a Life player will always have a penchant for healing, even paired with a destructive Class like Prince or Thief (the Condesce, after all, could still extend life; a Prince of Life would likely manifest not as one who causes plants to wither and die (this would actually suit a Prince of Doom), but one who destroys in the way of nature overtaking an abandoned shack, or a forest breaking down a body).

This means that when a character's Classpect inverts their Aspect, it doesn't mean that they suddenly become a hero of the opposing Aspect - rather, it means that, at their very worst - at the nadirs of their character arcs - they will lean so much into their Aspect's worst traits that it will superficially appear as the opposite, when all it really is is an absence of themselves. Dave, a Time player, usually so attentive to detail (despite his disaffected facade, he's always paying rapt attention to Karkat's rants, and noticing all the clues pointing to his destiny of defeating LE), at his lowest emotional point (arguing with Grimbark Jade after sobbing about his lost childhood whimsy), states that he doesn't think Lord English is that big a deal, and never even did anything directly bad to him or his friends - when he was literally directly haunted by LE via Cal his entire childhood. Similarly, Rose drinks herself stupid in order to cope with her mother's death.

Note how, superficially, this almost appears to be an invocation of Space's "big picture thinking," its passivity and permissibility, or how Rose's case appears to be Void's tendency to indulge in vices and pleasure - but they're not. Time's worst traits superficially resemble Space, Light's resemble Void, and vice versa - Grimbark Jade is the Condesce's taskmaster, and Porrim at her worst was as much of a nag as Kankri, trying to do a Time player's managerial job. Horuss and Equius at their worst won't shut up and won't stop talking over their partners. So on and so forth.

Finally, Calliope tells us a couple things about Active/Passive pairings. The first is that Calliope introduces the idea of paired classes with the idea that both Rogues and Thieves "steal" (and later, that both Princes and Bards "destroy"). This presents the idea that both classes can be roughly summed up with the idea that every pairing can be summed up with a common theme.

The second is her description of what makes a Class Active versus Passive - that Active Classes move their Aspect to benefit themselves, whereas Passive Classes allow their Aspect to be moved in order for others to benefit. In a way, they're like active and passive voice in grammar (to tie in with the way Classes and Aspects are so tied to ideas of narrative and character arc) - an Active Class performs their Aspect, and a Passive Class allows the Aspect to be performed "by others" (the famous piece of advice regarding telling the two apart being that a sentence written in passive voice can have "by zombies" tacked to the end of it - eg, John is attacked "by zombies", as compared to active voice - John attacks).

Thus, the Class pairings, along with their basic themes, are as follows:

KNIGHT - / MAID +

"One who controls."

Knights and Maids are paired together through two key factors: the first is that they both hold leadership or managerial roles; the second is that both classes carry the connotation of serving a Lord. Fittingly, they are both struggle with the control of malicious forces - Knights with prophecies indicating their role as heroes, Maids with direct usurpation by malicious forces.

PAGE - / HEIR +

"One who inherits."

Pages and Heirs are paired together because they both fundamentally deal with the great inheritances placed before them. Pages can come into incredible, limitless power - but they must struggle and work hard for it; Heirs begin the game in societal comfort and wealth, and must learn to defect from their decadence.

THIEF - / ROGUE +

"One who steals."

Thieves and Rogues are highly adaptable, as Thieves are capable of fantastic on-the-fly adaptation, whereas Rogues have an infinite toolbox at their disposal. They are both provocateurs, shakers of the status quo, though the Thief does so for personal gain, while the Rogue does so to right injustice.

MAGE - / SEER +

"One who guides."

Mages and Seers are tied together by the gift of prophecy and future sight. Seers are privy to the endless branching paths that the future may take, while Mages are gifted with the ability to outright determine a future that will certainly happen, appearing to be prophecy.

WITCH - / SYLPH +

"One who changes."

Witches and Sylphs are individuals blessed with great magic, but poor judgement. Sylphs heal and nurture, but are drawn to those with strong desires, and enable them to cause great harm; Witches, meanwhile, possess strong emotions, which they often use as moral guidance, for better or worse.

PRINCE - / BARD +

"One who destroys."

Princes and Bards are representatives of society - the one who determines its course, and the one who recounts its passing. Princes suffer from a toxic overabundance of Aspect, and are prone to spectacular meltdowns, whereas Bards are always poised for a crisis of faith. Both are responsible for catastrophic failures - but also breathless victories.

INDIVIDUAL CLASSES

KNIGHT

"One who controls [Aspect] or controls using [Aspect]."

Knights are frontline warriors, rallying points behind which the party falls into line. Although they are often leaders, just as often, they are logistical planners, strategists, or simply the team's beating heart. They are almost always thrust into positions of narrative significance, often carrying grand destinies or even outright heroic prophecies on their shoulders. The are the party's rallying force, its center, and a guiding light - the one to lead the charge, behind which the party will follow.

The primary character struggle a Knight will have is with crippling insecurity. Knights are prone to self-loathing and imposter syndrome, and will often adopt a façade in direct opposition to their aspect (ie, their fundamental personality) in order to cope with their feelings of inadequacy. Thus, their relationship with their aspect becomes love/hate - though they're naturally drawn to their aspect, and even naturally skilled at utilizing it, they have a tendency to become their own worst enemy, as their insecurities make them push their façades, and their façades distance them from their aspect.

"Controlling their Aspect" means that the Knight has easy access to their Aspect, wielding it like a tool or weapon - for good or for ill; "controlling using their Aspect" is what grants Knights their leadership abilities, able to dictate how others ought to act in accordance with the Knight's Aspect - whether their understanding of their Aspect is high or low, whether their advice is good or bad.

Therefore, at their worst, a Knight will fall prey to their insecurities, retreating into their facades, rejecting their Aspect, which will allow disharmony or misuse of it to proliferate throughout the team. They may even wind up deliberately twisting their Aspect's presence within the team so that they never have to be confronted by it; these distortions ripple outwards and eventually culminate in major catastrophes, all on account of the Knight's negligence.

But at their best, a Knight is a shining beacon and guiding light; when they come to terms with themselves, and allow themselves to be comfortable in their own skin - when they no longer allow themselves to be ruled by their insecurities and anxieties - they ensure that their aspect is harmonious wherever it appears throughout their party, and can wield it expertly as a weapon, as if it were their own flesh and blood.

MAID

"One who allows control through [Aspect] or allows [Aspect] to be controlled."

Unlike Knights, which take positions of frontline prominence, a Maid is a managerial presence in the backlines, though no less crucial for the smooth functioning of a party. Just as the invisible hands of the hired help keep a household running, the Maid will be called upon to provide vital services to keep the game stable, even if those services are more noticeable by their absence than their presence. Maids are often the party's unsung heroes or even shadow leaders, tugging at invisible strings, fingers on the pulse.

A Maid's primary character struggle will be that of escaping oppression. Maids tend to start the game in positions of subjugation or subservience, especially to malicious forces, and their abilities often end up being exploited to serve their masters' ends. Therefore, one may even have the impression that a Maid is ruled by their aspect, held prisoner and slave - at least until they're able turn the tables.

"Allowing their Aspect to be controlled" means that Maids are capable of directly dispensing their aspect unto others - a Maid of Time can dispense time unto foes, pausing them in their tracks; a Maid of Life can grant so much life that they can revive the dead. Their boons are great and direct, straightforward in a similar manner to Knights. "Allowing control through their Aspect" grants them their uncanny managerial abilities, as their aspect dictates the realm in which nothing occurs without the Maid's knowledge or permission, a realm made available to whomever the Maid's allegiance lies with.

Thus, at their worst, the Maid becomes a saboteur. Exploited by malign forces, their abilities to allow control over others through their aspect, or control of their aspect, makes them perfect vehicles by which their aspect can be hijacked or usurped, and made to turn against the party, and they often find themselves placed into these positions through no fault of their own. It takes the party banding together to shake off the forces that would keep a Maid in bondage.

However, at their best, Maids ensure that the party can never go too far off the rails. There is a place for everything, and everything will be in its place; a Maid is a supply line, a safe haven, and a promise that everything will be neat and tidy when the party returns from war. When the Maid belongs to themselves, their homestead becomes a fortress, and nothing occurs under the Maid's watchful eye without their express permission.

PAGE

"One who works to inherit [Aspect] or inherits [Aspect] for themselves."

Pages are a class defined by promise. As the name suggests, a Page begins weak, but has the great potential to develop into one of the most powerful players in the game. The exact nature of a Page's powers are vague, not because they are insignificant, but because they are so great that it's difficult to encompass them all. At the apex of their arcs, Pages are capable of miraculous feats, overpowering even Lords and Muses - if only they could reach that point and stay there.

A Page begins the game weakest of all, reflective of their long journey of growth. Where most classes only fall into deficit of their Aspect at their lowest emotional points, Pages begin their arcs in deficit - exhibiting character traits opposite to those their Aspect normally encompasses. Moreso than any other class, a Page must learn to grow into their Aspect. Weak-willed, naive, and easily hurt, Pages require careful nurturing if they're to come into their own.

"Working to inherit their Aspect" describes the endless journey of growth the Page must undertake - one with many missteps, backslides, and setbacks along the way. Still, they "inherit their aspect," meaning that their full potential, when realized, is overwhelmingly great - practically becoming their Aspect in humanoid form, capable of utilizing it to its glorious full potential.

However, their nature defeats them, and even if they can attain this state, the Page usually can't stay there for long. At their very worst, the Page's deficit of their Aspect's better qualities can turn the Page into a gravitic well of misfortune - an albatross about the party's neck, the centerpoint, if not inciting incident, of a massive disaster, as their team is sucked in by the Page's natural weakness.

But this is only true as it contrasts to a Page at their best - having grappled and won with the greatest of all weakness, a Page is poised to come into the greatest of all strength. Shown kindness, compassion, and support, a Page at full power reflects a party at their best. A Page at full strength is breathtaking to behold, an unstoppable force of nature, their Aspect made manifest.

HEIR

"One whom [Aspect] grants inheritance or inherits [Aspect] for others."

Heirs, in contrast to Pages, start the game strong. They usually belong to the upper echelons of their respective societies, a position of great wealth, leisure, and comfort, and are set to be inheritors of even greater wealth. Similarly, their Aspect comes to them as if of its own will - it is powerful, but difficult for the Heir to control, reflecting the wealth and status they've enjoyed as birthright.

An Heir's main challenge is that of examining their privilege, and learning where they wish to spread the gift they've been given. Because of their positions of sheltered comfort, Heirs are not particularly world-wise, and often harbor massive blind spots to the suffering of others and the ills of society. As such, they tend to be fairly aimless, given great power but no strong motivations, and have a tendency to simply indulge in their Aspect without contributing great help or hindrance to their team at all.

The Heir's Aspect is practically an independent entity. Being one whom "their Aspect grants them inheritance" refers to how the Heir starts powerful, able to summon their Aspect to perform great, miraculous acts. However, it is highly intuitive and difficult to control. The Heir's challenge lies not in attaining great power, but in attaining control over, and the ability to direct, their existing abilities. Once they do, they can "inherit their Aspect for others" - Heirs become a conduit through which their party can experience their Aspect, making it a usable pool of wealth for them all to draw from. However, because of their comfortable positions, many Heirs end up dallying, finding no pressing need to do so.

But this dallying hides a ticking clock. An Heir's inheritance will come to them, one way or another, and if they aren't ready to receive the great responsibilities that come with such great power, then the power will eventually consume them. An Heir with no clear direction will eventually become lost to their Aspect, entirely removing both from play. Like how wealthy inheritors simply become part of the status quo, so, too, does an Heir disappear into their Aspect, fixing it in place.

Thus, Heirs must learn where they have been blind, where they have been foolish, and what it means to be underprivileged. Then, once they turn their energies towards addressing those injustices - to taking responsibility for building a better future - when their wealth comes to them, they'll be able to distribute it where it's needed most. An Heir, fully-realized, brings their Aspect to heel, and makes it a resource available to their entire team, as if welcoming them all into the family.

THIEF

"One who steals [Aspect] or steals using [Aspect]."

Thieves are, as the name suggests, greedy - much of their arc revolves around a desire to amass wealth, though what's considered "wealth" varies based on the Thief and especially their Aspect. They tend to be callous people by nature, capable of ignoring or trampling over the feelings of others in order to take what they want, in the hopes of filling an emotional void the Thief may not even be fully aware of.

The Thief's playstyle is one of careful resource management. Reflecting a natural tendency to take "wealth" from others, Thieves are unable to use their Aspect without first "stealing" it - a subtractive act which leaves the victim bereft of the Aspect, weakening them in the process. Because of the finicky nature of these abilities, it takes great cunning to be a Thief, and the Class both demands and requires the player to be adaptable, flexible, and quick on their feet, able to effect complicated schemes and engineer the perfect situations for their powers to have the greatest effect. Thieves aren't necessarily strong, but they have a very high victory ratio, because they're experts at turning a situation to their own advantage.

"Stealing their Aspect" refers to the fundamental way in which the Thief class is played, this resource management game; "stealing using their Aspect" reflects how the Thief often becomes a malignant force within the party, viewing their own teammates as caches of wealth to plunder. Thieves are naturally prone to hurting others for their own purposes, craving drama and attention, and being of such callous dispositions that they're able to perform extreme acts of cruelty given the right motivations.

Thieves often become a target of ire within the party, disruptive forces whose quest for personal wealth and fulfillment comes at the cost of those around them. At their worst, they can bring so much heat down upon their own shoulders that the party feels the need to treat them like an enemy, which is disastrous for party harmony. Moreover, it's disastrous for the Thieves themselves, as Thieves seek wealth to compensate for some emotional emptiness, and making enemies of their friends only serves to deepen their ennui.

Thus, a Thief must be taught that true happiness and fulfillment doesn't come from the struggle for wealth, but from the building of something better with those they care about. A Thief, thus turned to heroic purposes, becomes the party's pinch hitter - an adaptable spy, an unpredictable maverick, an element of surprise - and above all, a reliable ally, capable of turning any tide in the party's favor.

ROGUE

"One who steals from [Aspect] or steals [Aspect] for others."

Rogues, on the other hand, call to mind such figures as Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to distribute to the poor. Rogues are at their best when they're agents of a well-planned heist, as they possess an unlimited toolbox - their own Aspect - to play with. Their Aspect is a treasure trove, just waiting for the Rogue to plunder it and share its riches - if only the Rogue can figure out how.

Rogues are forces of revolution. They naturally carry a rebellious spirit, one which bristles at injustice, takes a stand against authority, and questions the status quo. Their ideas are unfocused, however; they know they must rebel, but usually don't start with a clear idea of against who or what. They know that their society is injust, but they don't know how to address that injustice. They know there are villains, and may even know these villains' identity, but they don't know how best to defy them. In a similar way, they're often lost as to how to utilize their Aspect beyond its most basic applications, and usually require external assistance in order to bring out its full potential.

Rogues' true potential lies in "stealing from their Aspect" - an additive act, rather than a subtractive one, as a Thief's stealing is. Rogues are capable of removing their own Aspect's sway over another entity, allowing it to exhibit the characteristics of the opposite Aspect; a Rogue of Void can create things out of nothing, a Rogue of Heart can tease out behaviors and actions. They can also "steal their Aspect for others," allowing them access to their own Aspect's suite of abilities as well. This allows the Rogue incomparable flexibility, their abilities - like their dispositions - rebellious and subversive.

But their rebellious spirit, coupled with their lack of understanding as to who their real enemies are, is dangerous when left unchecked. Rogues often suffer from a failure to start, giving up on trying to understand the deeper implications of their abilities, and of the society they can't seem to find contentment in - but they can also suffer from a worse fate: rebellion without a cause. Rogues' free spirits can lead to them bucking the status quo in ways that actively harm others, performing acts of taboo or poor taste just because that rebellious energy needs to be put to use somewhere. These can have disastrous knock-on consequences, as some things are taboo for good reason.

Thus, Rogues need to be guided - to make connections with others, and come to a greater understanding of the world at large. Once they know their target, and what needs to be done, the Rogue makes sure there are no obstacles along the way - no safe is uncrackable, no prison inescapable, and no problem unsolvable, so long as the Rogue is there to work their magic.

MAGE

"One who guides [Aspect] or guides [Aspect] for themselves."

Mages are prophets, of the "always correct" variety - or so it seems. In actuality, Mages don't "predict" the future, they "choose" it - in a setting where the future is mutable, the Mage's ability is to speak into existence a future they desire, to tip the scales of causality and collapse possibilities into a single definite course. Their Aspect is the lens through which their "prophecy" occurs, a realm in which they command the fabric of reality itself.

As if to karmically balance this incredible power, Mages are afflicted by deep and terrible sadness. They start the game miserable, having been subjected to the greatest injustices their Aspect can offer, tormented by guilt, shame, and self-loathing. Their worldview has been shadowed with a lens of suffering and anguish, and so, too, is their view of the future. Mages usually begin the game having already set several prophecies into motion, and these early prophecies are usually obstacles that the party must overcome.

Mages "guide their Aspect" - this refers to the way their prophecies, that is, their chosen futures, always come true. Their visions may be limited to the sway of their Aspect, but it remains a powerful ability nonetheless. "Guiding their Aspect for themselves," then, outlines the Class's Active nature - the futures the Mage picks must be ones the Mage believes will come to pass.

Unfortunately, Mages have a tendency to pick ugly futures. This isn't out of malice or anger; this is because Mages start the game sad, and without intervention, grow sadder. They're prone to spirals of negativity, self-loathing, and depression, and as their outlook dims, so, too, do their forecasts. Mages suffer, but even suffering can grow familiar - can even appear comfortable or desirable, if the Mage suffers long enough. It's easy for them to grow so accustomed to misery that misery is the only outcome they can see - spelling doom for the rest of the party, one prediction at a time.

But a Mage whose party shows them kindness and forgiveness, compassion and empathy, can pull them out of their misery. How beautiful, then, the future appears! A Mage who believes in a brighter future is a force to be reckoned with. When a Mage can bring themselves to say, "and everyone lived happily ever after," you had better believe they did.

SEER

"One who who is guided by [Aspect] or guides [Aspect] for others."

Seers, meanwhile, are the true future-sighted, able to see the myriad paths the future could take. Like Mages, their Aspect serves as the lens by which their vision is colored; the Seer can sense, with fine accuracy, which paths are closest to the sway of their aspect, and which paths will take them further away. As if gifted with a guide to the game, their intuition is tied directly to the mechanics of SBURB, and they serve as the party's guides, a role indispensable in a game with so many moving parts.

Seers will struggle with blindness, first by hubris and ego, and then by self-harm. Seers begin the game quite full of themselves, proud of their prowess in their Aspect - usually arrogantly so. When this pride is inevitably shattered, Seers have a tendency to deal with their feelings of shame and guilt with willful, self-induced blindness - as if flipping a switch, they become ashamed of the pride they once placed in their Aspect, and seek to place as much distance between it and themselves as possible. There's comfort in ignorance, even if it renders the Seer useless.

Seers are "guided by their Aspect" - able to sense its presence, they gravitate toward it, and towards futures with it in abundance. And, in the same way, they "guide their Aspect for others," lighting the way for others down the path of greatest reward. Seers truly love their Aspect, no matter how much they may misplace their faith in it, and seeking it out is a great joy for them.

This is why a Seer at their worst is so tragic. By inducing intentional blindness within themselves, they are functionally deadening the strongest part of their soul. No matter the temporary relief this brings to the sharp, jagged pain of shame, it invariably deepens the Seer's suffering, as they deny themselves not only their own joy, but their ability to help others - another act which inherently delights them.

Thus, a Seer needs to be made to deal with their shattered ego head-on, to accept their own shortcomings, to become at ease with the idea that they don't have all the answers. Once their vision becomes clear, and their view becomes honest, the party nevermore has to fear becoming lost or straying from the path - the Seer will see to that.

WITCH

"One who changes [Aspect] or changes [Aspect] in others."

Witches are the winds of change, tweaking reality all around them until it suits their desires. A Witch is presence that commands both fear and respect, and their Aspect bows down before them, reduced to a mere minion in the Witch's presence, ready to attend to all their needs. In a way, the Witch's powers are straightforward - they can manipulate their Aspect as they desire, changing its qualities as they see fit. "How they see fit," then, is where the issue lies.

Witches are usually of "outsider" status, never truly being part of the society from which the rest of the party descends. Free from the same rules and common sense that govern the others on their team, Witches instead operate on a value system heavily reliant on their own emotions. What a Witch deems to be correct, to be true, or to be righteous, are often based not in any objective measure, but in subjective, emotional bias - and they're emotional creatures, indeed. Prone to fits of great anger, Witches can be benevolent one second and malicious the next, and their abilities let them imprint, to a greater degree than any other Class, their desires onto the world that comes after them.

Witches "change their Aspect," as in, the crux of their abilities lies in manipulating the qualities of their Aspect in their surroundings - extending, shortening, magnifying, shrinking, growing, removing… so on and so forth. It's a fearsome power. They also "change their Aspect for themselves" - their Aspect is hapless but to obey their desires; Witches change the world to suit themselves, and their feelings of how things "should" be often become how things "are" in short order.

Thus, a Witch who has been swayed toward evil entities and nefarious ends is a truly dangerous opponent - and it is unfortunately easy for this to happen. Witches' social isolation means they tend to trust their emotions, and a force that flatters these emotions can easily win a Witch's trust. By the same token, those that fail to flatter the Witch are often considered enemies, even if they're benevolent forces. A Witch's morality can thus become warped and topsy-turvy, which has grave consequences for the world that the Witch then shapes.

Therefore, a Witch's struggle lies in learning to see beyond their own emotions, to take in the opinions and assistance of others even when it seems superficially unpleasant, to move beyond the childlike rejection of that which is uncomfortable. Once able to see a more nuanced form of right and wrong, once able to tell evil from good, Witches can build even utopia.

SYLPH

"One who allows [Aspect] to change others or changes [Aspect] for others."

Sylphs are nurturers and healers; they bring to mind fey folk whose very footsteps cause plants to grow. Wherever they go, whatever they touch, all becomes suffused with the Sylph's Aspect, which flourishes under their careful cultivation. Sylphs adore their Aspect, and their Aspect adores them; Sylphs generally feel at peace with themselves, surrounding themselves with what they like.

A Sylph's main challenge - or rather, the main challenge that Sylphs wind up posing the rest of the party - is that Sylphs are enablers. They're attracted to those with strong wills and extreme dispositions, amused by the havoc they wreak and pleased by their attention. Sylphs love to pick out favorites and lavish them with care and attention, excusing any wrongdoing on their behalf and shielding them from consequences. At the same time, those who don't strike the Sylph's capricious fancy find themselves discarded in the Sylph's mind, shut out from the boons the Sylph can provide.

A Sylph is "one who allows their Aspect to change others" - this almost always manifests as healing, as it's an additive ability (that is to say, the Sylph can grant more of their Aspect to someone). "Changing their Aspect for others," on the other hand, explains this enabling nature of theirs - the Sylph will intervene to make the world into a playground for their favored individuals, even to the point of turning other, less "interesting" teammates into playthings for the Sylph's beloved.

Thus, while the Sylph themself isn't particularly prone to wild mood swings and acts of malice, their influence can still cause disaster by allowing unscrupulous individuals to flourish - even encouraging their worst tendencies. A Sylph's touch is subtle, but that subtlety only lends it an insidious quality, as the Sylph quietly works against the good of the many for the cruel, selfish pleasures of the few. At their very worst, the Sylph can deem themselves their only favorite, and render everyone else a minor character in their one-man show.

Thus, Sylphs must be challenged. They must be made to reckon with the fact that favorable treatment is not necessarily kindness, and that bias can easily become harm. When a Sylph is able to grasp the difference between bias and doing good, and tune their approach toward that greater good, uncolored by bias and personal preference, then there is no place safer, kinder, and more conducive to growth than the Sylph's embrace.

PRINCE

"One who destroys [Aspect] or destroys using [Aspect]."

Princes are the most anxious, psychologically anguished members of a party. They suffer from a toxic overabundance of their Aspect - its traits are taken to an extreme, and not only the Prince, but those around them, are made to suffer for it. Princes are naturally set on a path of self-destruction, the culmination of their uncontrolled accumulation of their Aspect, and their meltdowns are spectacular, taking their Aspect - and whoever is unlucky enough to be in the same room - with them.

A Prince's challenge, therefore, is as simple to understand as it is difficult to overcome. The Prince needs to learn how to calm down, relax, and find inner peace. Princes are terribly prone to circular thinking and downward spirals. Their natural inclination is to feel anxious and responsible, like they carry the weight of the world, and this causes them to act out in extreme and aggressive ways. Eventually, others pull away, put off by the Prince's intensity. This only deepens the Prince's malaise, and Princes are - pushed by this hovering sense of urgency and catastrophe - willing to employ drastic, desperate measures to enforce compliance with their wills. They wake on their moons early, reflective of their driven natures. They're determined to a frightful degree, and no sacrifice is too great, no work too dirty, if it means achieving what they see as the greater good.

Princes "destroy their Aspect" in this way - by presenting their Aspect at its worst, they make others take distance, ruining it for everyone else. Their hard wills, intense emotions, and unshakeable drive to do what (they feel) needs to be done - at any cost - is their source of power. Thus, Princes "destroy using their Aspect" - their toxic overabundance of Aspect lets them channel it into a pure, annihilatory force; what they lack in the delicate utility of the other classes, they make up for in raw, ruinous power. Princes can easily deal the greatest damage in a combat scenario, their ability to destroy overriding nearly everything that would stand against it.

Thus is the problem with Princes. They're ticking time-bombs of anxiety and frustration; when they finally go off, they carve a path of destruction, before ultimately self-destructing, leaving no trace of their Aspect behind. Not only that, but it's very difficult to defuse the bomb early; Princes have finicky, aggressive, and complicated personalities, and tend to react poorly to straightforward attempts to calm them down and reason with them. They often appear to be their own worst enemies, marching inexorably toward their own destruction.

But Princes not only can be saved, but must be saved. They must be saved because kindness and compassion must exist for their own sake, and a Prince rescued from their own worst tendencies is living proof of the truth of that sentiment. A Prince, given the peace they need to reorient their priorities, will not rest until they see a brighter future realized. They will be the first to rise, and the last man standing, banishing - as if by royal decree - all obstacles, all enemies, all misfortune, and all ills.

BARD

"One who invites destruction through [Aspect] or allows [Aspect] to be destroyed."

Bards are the wild cards of a party, responsible for both improbable victories and catastrophic defeats - sometimes both in a single session. The methods by which a Bard works are a mystery to even the Bard themselves, which make it easy for the party to dismiss their powers - and, by extension, the Bard themselves. After all, who would expect there to be consequences for something so ridiculous as a Bard?

Bards are usually targets of abject ridicule by their teams. They can't help it - they're religious types, or at least types that hold great, lofty, ridiculous beliefs near and dear to their hearts. A Bard's primary struggle invariably winds up being a crisis of faith. Bards begin the game with a positive, "correct" faith in their Aspect; however, something will inevitably occur that shakes the Bard's faith in this viewpoint to its core. In this state, Bards are incredibly fragile, and it's very easy for them to succumb to whispers of cruelty and destruction, for their beliefs to warp, and for the Bard to come to serve the worst aspects of the society they represent.

A Bard "invites destruction through their Aspect" - their powers are subtle, but have catastrophic effects. Bards are instinctively drawn towards causing the first flap of a butterfly's wing, which cascades into a grand, impossible karmic backlash. They "allow their Aspect to be destroyed" by being the conduits for the forces of their faith - whatever faith they hold - to wreak unimaginable consequences across the game.

Thus, a Bard must not be allowed to fall into darkness. The cost is too great. They must be treated with kindness, patience, and sincerity, and given a chance to re-establish their faith in a better, brighter future. If this can be done, then at the party's direst moment - in their darkest hour - they will find that kindness paid back a thousandfold, as an innocuous act by the Bard that no one remembers balloons into a miracle.

[neverenoughmarauders]

Let's talk! So I agree with most of this!!!

However... there are a few things I would challenge, because this post is based on a lot of interpretation, which is consistent with canon but it is only one interpretation. And I love canon. I also love opening up everything that isn't canon to explore multiple universes and situations that could be true (and see how that has ripple effects for our understanding of the story).

We do not know when the war started, but we have a window from 1965-1975

While we do not know when the war started, there are a few pieces of evidence to suggest it started in 1970, which is a year before the Marauders started, not long before.

“You can’t blame them,” said Dumbledore gently. “We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.” [Nov 1981]

Now 'little to celebrate' doesn't necessarily equate with the war, either way. Things get bad before wars break out, and things can have gotten a whole lot worse a few years into the war. Yet this is one of the first pieces of information we get in the series, so it seems probable it is JKR giving us the time of the start of the war.

In fact, late 1960s/1970 seem like a strong marker to fit other anecdotal evidence. For example, we know that by the late 1960s (which is when Molly and Arthur married) things were clearly not that well in the wizarding world.

“Well, that’s not very long! I know why it’s happened, of course. It’s all this uncertainty with You-Know-Who coming back, people think they might be dead tomorrow, so they’re rushing all sorts of decisions they’d normally take time over. It was the same last time he was powerful, people eloping left, right, and center — ” “Including you and Dad,” said Ginny slyly. “Yes, well, your father and I were made for each other, what was the point in waiting?” said Mrs. Weasley.

Another piece of evidence we have for any sort of timeframe is that Voldemort returned to England after Dumbledore became Headmaster. We know Dumbledore was not Headmaster when Remus was bitten, in early 1965. While I am a firm believer that Voldemort made bad stuff happen before he returned to the UK, I doubt we can say that the war started before his return.

Finally, we know that Eugenia Jenkins was ousted in 1975 because she wasn't seen as sufficiently capable of handing the situation with Voldemort, so it feels unlikely the war started later than that.

In any case, it is my interpretation that the war started in 1970 because that's the most direct piece of evidence we have ('last eleven years') - and my key point is that the fandom isn't wrong for interpreting it as such or around the time the Marauders started school in 1971.

Lily and James as people who made chilling choices during the war

I keep seeing this interpretation that James and Lily murdered people, and while I agree with the idea that Harry does not have the full picture of his parents during the war, it is just this - an interpretation.

Here are some of the things I rarely see discussed in relation to Sirius' view of the war, and which I (again just interpretation) view as likely to be similar to James' own views, given how close they were:

'Well, times like that bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. Crouch’s principles might’ve been good in the beginning — I wouldn’t know. He rose quickly through the Ministry, and he started ordering very harsh measures against Voldemort’s supporters. The Aurors were given new powers — powers to kill rather than capture, for instance. And I wasn’t the only one who was handed straight to the dementors without trial. Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorised the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark Side. He had his supporters, mind you — plenty of people thought he was going about things the right way, and there were a lot of witches and wizards clamoring for him to take over as Minister of Magic.' 

'I’ll say this for Moody, though, he never killed if he could help it. Always brought people in alive where possible. He was tough, but he never descended to the level of the Death Eaters. Crouch, though ... he’s a different matter ...'

To me, it seems clear that Sirius does not view himself in the same boat as Crouch. 'Crouch fought violence with violence' 'he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the dark side'. At no point does Sirius say 'and so did the rest of us Harry.' In fact, this is very much part of Sirius' 'she’s got the measure of Crouch better than you have, Ron' speech to the trio.

Moody, on the other hand, Sirius seems to want to exonerate by pointing out that he never killed if he could help it. As Sirius puts it, Crouch, though... he is a different matter.

Tangent... Sirius really appears to dislike dark magic. He doesn't like people who aspire to it, and he rates people who distance themselves from it.

'Snape’s always been fascinated by the Dark Arts, he was famous for it at school. Slimy, oily, greasy-haired kid, he was,'

'Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorised the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. '

'And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James — whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry — always hated the Dark Arts.'

Going back to the POA scene, I think it's an entirely merited interpretation that the fact that Sirius finally stops his plan to kill Peter, something he has been obsessed with, is because Harry is right. James wouldn't want them to become murderers.

“Get off me,” Harry spat, throwing Pettigrew’s hands off him in disgust. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it because — I don’t reckon my dad would’ve wanted them to become killers — just for you.” No one moved or made a sound except Pettigrew, whose breath was coming in wheezes as he clutched his chest. Black and Lupin were looking at each other. Then, with one movement, they lowered their wands.

I get the fun with interpreting it as them not having the heart to tell Harry that James would have been okay with murder, but it is again, an interpretation, and one which relies on interpreting how the circumstances of the war would have changed them, rather than relying on anything in canon that points to this being directly true of Lily and James. (In fact, Sirius' distaste for the unforgivable curses makes me think Harry goes further than Sirius and James by the end of the war, and that's also interesting to explore.)

In canon, we see a Lily who cries when Order members die, a Lily and James who are not at all prepared for Voldemort turning up at their doorsteps, a Sirius who still judges Crouch for using the unforgivables freely and murdering DEs unnecessarily, and a Lily and James (and Sirius) who trusts Peter with their lives (and we don't know if Lily or James ever suspected Remus). If anything, an equally valid interpretation of Lily and James is two people who grew up in war times and never let it change their values.

Hello! We need to talk about the marauders era war!

The war during the Marauders' time was far worse than most of the fandom portrays in fanfics. When Voldemort rose to power, long before the Marauders were even in their first year, it plunged the wizarding world into their version of a civil war. The Marauders grew up seeing headline after headline about the damage Purebloods (or muggles depending on your household) were inflicting on their world. They lived through supplies shortages, canceled Hogsmede trips, and saw Muggleborns hunted even in everyday spaces like Hogwarts’ halls.

At the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius and Remus wanting to kill Peter wasn’t just about revenge for betraying the Potters, though that certainly was part of it. The war had left them with trauma that Harry, only a third-year at the time of the Shrieking Shack events, couldn’t fully comprehend. It had left them with callousness, grief, and the knowledge that Harry didn’t have: James and Lily Potter would have 100% hunted down Peter and killed him themselves if they had survived Halloween.

Loyalty to the Potters—especially James—was everything. To Remus and Sirius, Peter wasn’t just a coward; he was a deserter, a double-crosser, and a murderer who had caused more death than just James and Lily’s. Peter’s spying had likely led to many of their friends dying—Remus and Sirius were smart enough to piece things together. Betrayal was the worst crime in their eyes, and they knew far more about Peter’s war crimes than Harry did. They had spent countless hours with the Order, hunting men like Peter, and knew now that Peter had ratted everyone they loved out to Voldemort.

Harry, on the other hand, grew up in a time of peace after Voldemort’s first fall. When Harry entered the wizarding world, everyone praised his parents. Everyone called them hero’s. James was brave and loyal, Lily was kind and courageous. Harry came to believe they were perfect, putting them on a pedestal and imagining they could never do anything as terrible as killing someone.

Harry told Remus and Sirius that he thought James and Lily would never want their friends to become killers. Harry told them to spare Peter’s life, in the name of his parent’s honor.

What Harry didn’t realize—at the time anyways—was that his parents had been raised by their experiences in the First Wizarding War. They, like the other marauders, had killed to protect themselves and fight for their friends. The Potter’s had defied Voldemort three times before turning 21, they were on the front lines. Although James and Lily were good people, they had to make tough choices during the war. With their lives and their loved ones’ lives at stake, their decisions weren’t always about what was “right,” but about survival.

The real difference between Harry's war and the Marauders' war wasn't just the time period in which they fought; it was how each group perceived the consequences of their surroundings and the outcomes that followed their responses to those circumstances.

For Harry, the war was about lost innocence and a chance to do things differently, to live up to his parents’ legacy. Harry’s belief that his parents would want mercy for Peter was noble, but it came from a completely different world and time.

For the marauders, the war taught them that surviving often meant making tough, sometimes chilling choices. Loyalty was everything, and betrayal at Peter’s level was something that couldn’t be forgiven. This is how the war shaped Sirius and Remus into a “loyalty or death” mentality that was shown in Prisoner of Azkaban.