#update: i posted that not contradictory post lets see how long it takes me to delete it
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onlythebravest · 3 months ago
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chimera-dog · 1 year ago
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im updating my introduction 🥏🐕
im sel, i use he/it pronouns and a bunch of neopronouns, im an agender trans man, i support non harmful identities/good faith identities and contradictory labels (i am crit-inclus), im a xenogender, neopronoun, furry fandom, therian/alterhuman and disabled user, i am mexican and i live here/have been always living in mexico (i speak spanish/español and english/inglés), i have a complex diagnostic (did, ocd, bpd, autism, adhd, psychosis, c-ptsd, depression and anxiety) and no tolerance for mocking or fakeclaiming, my psychiatrists know more than you fellow user, i support self-diagnosis after research and i again, wont tolerate any harassment towards people, also, as a traumagenic system, i will support every system, regardless of origin, its a cruel world for systems, so why make it harder.
queerness is a spectrum, there isnt a right or wrong way to be queer, stop telling people how to identify, we are here for each other, let ourselves be fluid and be free, we are here and we are queer 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
dont interact with me if youre a proshipper or any other similar term, also if you support or are p3do/z0o, pro-contact/neutral-contact/complex contact (i am okay with paraphilias as long as they are consensual between everyone involved, i am pro para, pro recovery and anti contact, i am not here to judge you), anti-recovery, anti sfw agere or petre, makes fun of other people, if you demonize all kinks (not all kinks are bad/harmful) or think that people with kinks should be ashamed (i am pro kink), transphobic, terf, radfem, transmed, truscum, homophobic, racist, antisemitic, ableist, right-wing, doesnt believe in non-binary identities, talks over minorities, anti xenogender/neopronouns, aphobic/anti aspec, radqueer, prat, safequeer, transrace, transabled, transid, anti alterhuman/therian/kin, syscourse (i will support you regardless of the system origin), hates furries or sees the community as gross, makes fun/mocks of species dysphoria, takes transandrophobia as a joke or as if its fake, anti mogai/liom, anti non harmful identities, anti contradictory labels, anti neopronouns.
my blog is sfw and while i may follow very few nsfw accounts i will never interact nor post about them (because this blog is supposed to be 16+), still, dont be weird with me, please.
thanks 🐕❗- sel
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heraldofzaun · 3 years ago
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Hi. We’re doing this again. I’ve already spoken a little bit (well, a great bit) about how old lore Viktor wasn’t a stereotypical evil villain, but I keep seeing this interesting trend crop up - especially in the comments of analyses on Viktor’s character - and so I’m going to write about it. That trend is the fact that people seem completely and utterly convinced that only old Viktor “augmented without consent” or “didn’t respect free will” or similar mad-scientist-adjacent claims. This isn't true. The inverse is true, actually.
What follows is the entirety of Viktor’s old lore (I’m using the first - the second variant is the one that snips out his going to the Institute of War, I’m not trying to pull a trick on you or anything), his lines upon release (which are still technically canonical, even if many people believe them to be outdated - whether that is due to Riot still believing that they’re accurate to his character or, more likely, Riot not caring to replace them, I don’t know), and the accompanying blurb to his release comic. I am also including Jayce’s second lore, the one which Riot wrote after Viktor fans pointed out that Jayce’s original lore was contradictory to Viktor’s character. (Which is mentioned in the post I linked above. TL;DR: Viktor fans made such a fuss that Jayce’s lore got changed to paint Viktor as less of a villain, which again points to the fact that old Viktor wasn’t necessarily perceived as villainous by his fans. Of course, fan perceptions can be wrong - but canon was changed, so...)
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This screenshot is missing his pick/ban quotes (“Join the Glorious Evolution.”/”Inferior constructs.” - ban quotes were added after his release, so they recycled one of his attack lines) and the quotes for Chaos Storm (“Obliterate!”/”Consume!”/”True power!”/”Behold!”). This is because it didn’t fit on my computer screen nicely.
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This was written alongside Viktor’s teaser comic. (I personally really like the teaser comic, even though I’m concerned about Viktor cutting a hole in his laboratory wall.) It is, technically, non-canon material as it was posted on the now-defunct forums rather than anywhere on the client, but as we’ve seen a recent trend of Rioters Word-of-God’ing facts about canon, I may as well include it. There may be more Word-of-God confirmations on those forums as well, but the backup site that they’re currently hosted on doesn’t allow for searches as the original site didn’t either. You can find this on the “Development” tab of Viktor’s wiki page, if you’re curious.
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Is there anything in here, besides “Submit to my designs.” and a few other of his voice lines, which should be taken with the context that they were a) written in 2011 and are thus not the highest examples of character-focused writing and b) written under the context of these being things he is saying to opponents on a battlefield, that says “Viktor augments people who are unwilling”? I don’t see it. He isn’t an angel, sure, because he wrecks Jayce’s lab after the man doesn’t want to work with him, but… He’s mostly alright, at least when it comes to the claims I’m investigating. (Also, note that his acolytes are not specified as being under his control or anything like that - they very well may just be people he’s helped, who don’t want a strange man smashing up the lab they were helped in.)
An interesting side-note: Jayce’s first lore does seem to imply that Viktor murdered people, as he “staged a deadly raid on Jayce’s laboratory”. This is concerning. There’s still somewhat of that implication in the second lore, considering the whole “incinerating the lab’s meager security force” line, but I’ve never seen anyone in fandom over the years use that as evidence for Viktor being a murderer, which is interesting. There’s actual textual evidence you can point to to say that Viktor’s a morally awful dude, and yet no one pointed to it when it was canon...I’ve never seen it cited in any character analyses for Viktor, nor have I ever seen anyone make the point that it’s people that Viktor’s incinerating. Food for thought, I guess. Anyways, my personal take is this: it’s security systems, not people. It doesn’t quite make sense, in-universe, for Viktor to murder a bunch of redshirt security guards but only blast Jayce aside - and leave him with no lasting injuries, obviously. Out-of-universe, you can say that it’s because Jayce is a champion, but still… It really doesn’t fit. Of course, I’m an old lore Viktor fan and this is entirely me trying to justify that he’s not a bad guy, so you can definitely take my words as biased. As we’ll see later, even if you take this as proof that old Viktor’s a killer, it doesn’t mean new Viktor is morally spotless.
Also, if you speak a language other than English and want to kill time, feel free to write in with what Jayce’s old lore says he did if you can find a translation of it. (If you go to the League wiki you can find other language versions of it, and from there you can poke around on Jayce’s page to see if it even has his older lore at all.) The Polish version apparently doesn’t imply people, but the Russian version uses “guards”... or so I think, my knowledge of Russian is pretty small so it was me and Wiktionary against the world. I think that League lore translations, especially from 2011, aren’t exactly the best material for textual evidence, but it’s an interesting curiosity. (I’m genuinely fascinated on how this was never a point of argument, and also to the fact that it was made much more ambiguous in Jayce’s post-outcry lore… but not removed.)
Anyways. Of course, you can take his lines and general character to a logical endpoint and say that it is implied that he doesn’t care much about whether or not people consent to the Glorious Evolution, but at that point you’re arguing interpretation and need to say as such. The cases I’ve seen in which people say that old lore Viktor was lopping people’s limbs off without consent or what-have-you just say that, without citing any textual evidence or saying that it is possibly implied by his character and lines. It’s pretty hard to take those claims seriously when there’s much more textual evidence that current-canon Viktor doesn’t seem too keen on respecting autonomy. Let’s begin with his own lore, which is written to favor his perspective.
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Please keep in mind that this Viktor got his start selling automative technology to businesses in Zaun. The Zaun that is full of corrupt chem-barons. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he only sold to good businesses. (Also, fascinating that a common complaint about old Viktor is that his status as a pioneer of his field is that he’s “unrealistically accomplished”, and that other people would have figured out the same technology - just as it seems to be the case in current lore, with the Church of the Glorious Evolved existing pre-Viktor (except that it probably didn’t at the time of this lore’s release, as there’s a paragraph later on in his lore that talks about a “quasi-religious cult” that is unnamed but… Who else would it be?) and augmentations being common on the NPCs on the Universe page. Yet someone who’s 19 having their inventions be commonly used in Zaun long enough for the term eventually to be used in reference to the next stage of their life is perfectly acceptable. Anyways…)
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What we see from this is clear: even if there is a “good” reason to control the divers, there is no mention of them consenting to the procedure. Considering the previous quotation, Viktor seems to deal more with the bosses than the workers and doesn’t seem to consider the potential job-removing impacts of his work (how many people lost jobs due to being rendered obsolete?), which doesn’t bode well for him caring much about what the workers think. But of course, this aside about dealing with bosses is all interpretation, so you can ignore it if you’d like. There still is, however, actual, textual evidence that new Viktor does not care about consent if he believes his idea is what’s best for you.
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Ignoring the writer misusing the term “psychotics” - par for the course in fiction unfortunately - here’s Viktor kidnapping people “for their own good”. Nothing is said in his lore if he’s contracted to do this, or if he’s just Zaun’s version of a Good Samaritan out and about chloroforming people. While I’m not saying that the moral choice is to not intervene, he is drugging people here and performing brain surgery on them. Please note the “in a manner of speaking”. What does that mean? Is it in reference to them having permanent brain damage? Or is it in reference to him being all well-and-ready to transfer their bodies into robots that presumably weren’t designed for them? (Speaking of, if Viktor can transfer the consciousnesses - or at least brains - of people… why is he still in a fleshy mortal body? Yes, it would require a VU to update him to be fully robotic, but none of his written media seems to imply that he’s on his way. His color story has him integrating technology directly into his arm, for example. Why aren’t you getting into the robot, Viktor?)
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Anyways, two options here: either the automatons had enough of their former programming to react to Viktor giving a kill command, or the consciousnesses of the people Viktor is “saving” are in these robots and are under his sway enough to commit murder. Either is bad (and negates any moral superiority over old Viktor’s maybe-implied-canonical-murder), but the second is horrifying. And, obviously, non-consensual. (Because the damage is reversing, I don’t believe there’s room for a justification of the second option in which these people are still violent and dangerous.)
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Anyways, last bit. It’s pretty bad when your ethics are panned in Zaun, the nation host to rampart corruption and also people like Singed. Let’s now move on to his color story, which is what a lot of fans point to as evidence for new Viktor having a heart or a moral compass.
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Yay! Moral win: your cyborg isn’t cutting off the head of a child without his consent. (Also, again, is this proof that Viktor can put brains or consciousnesses in robot bodies? Admittedly, he might be joking since this Viktor is a little softer than he is in his biography.)
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Moral… win… your cyborg is augmenting a child… Anyways, joking aside, this is unethical. How’s Naph supposed to consent to something like this? I know that we can’t expect fictional characters in a fantasy setting to abide by modern ethical standards, but I think we can critique them from an out-of-universe context. This is bad. Viktor gives very little context, could very well be lying (he isn’t, hopefully), and sends the kid off with his version of a pat on the back and tells him to come back if he wants more. (The “Oh yes” is also… creepy.) A kid’s decision-making abilities aren’t developed to the extent that they can be reasonably expected to understand or consent to a procedure that removes a pretty crucial emotion. If Naph comes back and wants his fear gone permanently, will Viktor oblige?
Also, fear is something that is very important to survival and judgment calls. Without fear, a kid in Zaun might take dangerous risks that could end up with them dead. I can’t really see how people interpret this as a morally sound decision - Viktor’s pretty much giving mood-altering drugs to a child and telling him to come back if he wants another hit. Just because he got Naph’s okay doesn’t mean that he got informed consent.
Let’s now turn to the black sheep of Viktor content: his Legends of Runeterra lines. There’s two of interest.
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Armed Gearhead’s card art is of a man whose only augmentation is his arm, which he says he broke in another line. (I suppose he didn’t want to wait for it to heal?)
Viktor is talking about messing with his head, here, because Armed Gearhead is… too emotive, I’d guess. He is “not yet complete”. A statement which Armed Gearhead seems rather apprehensive about, if you listen to his response.
I know that LoR Viktor is one of the more “comically villainous” depictions of Viktor we’ve seen, so if new Viktor fans would like to ignore his lines I have no issue with that. But these lines certainly seem to imply that what Viktor sees as Armed Gearhead’s end state isn’t necessarily what he sees as his, and should be considered if people want to take them as canonical.
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Not necessarily needed, but here’s Jayce’s present lore. One of them is definitely lying - Jayce’s lore says that he doesn’t strike until after Viktor gives the kill order, and Viktor’s says that he gave the kill order in response to Jayce smashing up the lab. Either way, Viktor is ordering automatons (that, in this version, are outright stated to be housing the brains of the people Viktor is trying to keep alive) to kill Jayce. Not a good look.
Viktor’s new lore gives significant textual evidence that he doesn’t care for whether others willingly consent to his ideas, so long as he believes that his ideas are for the greater good. This is in contrast to the vagueness of his original lore, meaning that any individual who speaks about how current Viktor is someone who cares for consent in contrast to the “unethical mad scientist”ness of old Viktor is unfortunately mistaken. I have to imagine that general fandom interpretation, combined with the fact that his bio and color story are very tonally different, have made it so people believe that this version of Viktor is much more ethical than he canonically is.
Interpreting Viktor as sympathetic and actually morally grey is fine, of course! Riot wrote his narrative very poorly when he was updated, which is why I’m still finding bones to pick with it in comparison to his original and more open-to-interpretation lore. The issue is stating that this is canonically the case, which it isn’t, and/or stating that the current iteration of Viktor has the moral high ground over his previous incarnation, which he doesn’t. I think that much more interesting character conversations can happen if people acknowledge that Viktor as he’s currently written is roundly unethical - how can that be improved upon for a more complex character, does that mean that Jayce’s behavior was right, etc. For all my dislike of new Viktor, I’d be genuinely curious to read a take that actively acknowledges his pre-college work in automation and how that affects his standing in Piltover and Zaun. (Is he well-known in industry? What do workers think about him? And so on…) And, well, on a personal note: I think that acknowledging current Viktor’s moral failings would be nice, because it would mean that people would stop using old Viktor as a strawman.
Anyways, I suppose that’s the post. Thank you for reading!
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captainkirkk · 5 years ago
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So this is a bit more serious question from one writer to another: How can you gain more traction on websites like Ao3 and tumblr? Thing is, I've been writing for years now and while I am no longer bothered by the fact that people mostly lurk (and that's ok, commenting can be its own kind of stressful) it's has become almost impossible to get people to notice I even wrote something new or updated. I update a story by 3 chapters in 1 haul, but barely anyone clicks on it or leaves kudos... (1/2)
(2/2) I wonder if it has to do with the fact that I only write gen or because I have very little reblogs on anything I post these days. I've been trying to link and connect my stuff, invited people to come talk with me on tumblr, but it's just me and some kind mutuals who like my stuff but almost never reblog. Is there any way I can let my voice be heard better in this infinite crushing void? Was there anything you actively did that helped you gain more traction on tumblr and Ao3?
I’m sorry you’re feeling disheartened, anon. Here are some tips, I have no idea if they will actually help though. 
Don’t upload multiple chapters at once if you can. I know it sounds like a good idea (more content = more comments, right?), but people are busy. They might not want to consume three updates at once. Also, it might skew your statistics. I know I’ve been hesitant to click on fics that upload multi-chapters at once, but have turned out to be awesome. It’s because I’m used to fics updating one chapter at a time and accruing kudos/comments slowly, so the kudos/chapter ratio seemed off. 
I know this sounds totally contradictory to my last point, but try longer word counts per chapter. People really love long chapters.
Uploading during peak-traffic hours. I don’t actually know when this is, which is terrible of me. This person seems to know? Not sure how accurate they are. Might need to have a quick search for this answer, but it’s a good thing to consider!
Write for big fandoms. Write things that big fandoms love. For example, my two biggest fandoms on ao3 were Marvel and BNHA, which are huge fandoms. My kudos count for my smaller fandoms are much, much lower. Pay attention to fandom trends too. You can’t go wrong with the classic, fandom favourites - eg. Dadzawa - but if you see a rise in a certain trend, or you see people on tumblr getting excited about an idea but there’s no one writing for it, then try your hand at it. Don’t force yourself to write something you don’t want. Write things you love. But if your loves overlap with popular fandoms and ideas, then steer yourself towards those. 
Tighten up your summary. If it’s too long or not long enough and doesn’t actually hook your reader, then no one will click the fic. Also try not to add unnecessary sentences that will deter readers. For example, writing, “Summaries are hard, just read it” will probably make people steer clear. We all want to write that, but we shouldn’t. 
Hopefully some of this helps?? Here’s a post that suggests some more advice.
I really hope you aren’t deterred from writing, anon! Feedback shouldn’t drive us as writers, but I know how disheartening it can be when you feel as though you’re not appreciated.
And a reminder to all the readers out there: Leave kudos and comments.
A good rule of thumb: if you’ve gotten to the end of a fic and you didn’t hate it, kudos it. You took the time to read it, you can take 0.2 seconds to tell the writer you were there, even if you don’t want to comment.
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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 4 years ago
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tuesday again
tuesday again no problem will be skipping next week, please update your calendars. i’ll also be on extremely sporadically and may or may not have my shit together enough to fill the queueueue. there was a time when i kept a ten-day backlog in the queueueue can u folks even fucking imagine that
listening i’ve had lofi hip hop radio open while reading things for work bc it helps me focus and i really love this little two-minute track Odyssey by Dontcry and Nokiaa. also a good thumbnail. lots of layers in this one, i love the beginning...synth chimes? i don’t know music words.
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reading HA. well. this has been a week and this week has not included reading things i want to admit to reading. it’s mostly genshin impact fanfic and various excel help guides. some fucking thing in our database is letting my boss output nested pie charts like the below but less readable and i want to stop her from doing that bc look at this shit! awful!
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watching part of how i got the job i had now was bc i waxed rhapsodic about how i love system and figuring out how they work (true) and how i love figuring out how video game systems break down (less true, i love poking holes in worldbuilding instead). anyway, the thing i actually love is watching people gleefully destroy video games by playing them extremely not as intended. moster actory only comes out every so often, and i don’t even like sports, but this golf video specifically in the Fumble Dimension series by ex-SB nation staffers made me fuckin cough-laugh through a very bad afternoon. fumble dimension. i know it’s an hour. i KNOW. i have adhd. i understand your concerns. i’m telling you this whole thing is thoroughly enjoyable. at one point one of the hosts gives up trying to explain what is happening on the screen and instead, still in a golf-commentator-voice, gives you his chicken soup recipe. which does sound very good and i might try it. lemon AND chiles sounds tasty as hell.
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playing i think i’m pretty done with genshin impact for now until the next area drops sometimes later this month/early january? my main team is almost maxed out, i genuinely don’t see how i can gain five more overall levels to unlock the crafting thing to get them maxed out bc i have done everything the game has presented to me. two-thirds of the areas are at 100% completion and the other three are at 94%. i might drop in and do the weeklies but idk if i’m gonna keep up with the dailies. v grateful for this free thing coming into my life when i was Super not doing well and also unemployed, but i’m really bumping up into the gacha game “pay money to make numbers go up” limits bc i still refuse to spend real money on this stupid big titty anime girl game.
i have no taste, am a wildly contradictory person, and contain multitudes.
making this thing for my sister is framed and mailed bc i coerced my landlord into taking it to the post office for me. started it in september, set it aside for a really long time, did 80% of it last month, set it aside for another three weeks bc i hate finishing and framing projects, but she’s fuckin done. i kind of want to make one for me, and i did order two frames, but again i despise the fiddly effort of framing things.
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yetanotherbuffyblog · 4 years ago
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There’s something about Anya...
[So I’m sorry I haven’t updated much. I told myself I would do more posts and watch more around the holidays, but then we got a free trial of HBO Max and I binged a lot of stuff on that instead.]
Basically, this episode is when Anya’s situation as a vengeance demon comes to a head. After deciding that she’s got to step up her game, in no small part because her loneliness after being dumped at the altar and her friend Halfrek pressuring her, she unleashes a spider demon on a fraternity house after a slighted college student wishes their hearts got ripped out. After killing the spider demon, and upon being told its source, Buffy resolves that she has to kill Anya.
Uh-oh.
She goes and fights Anya. It goes on for a while, all while Xander is trying to bring a stop to it. During this duel, Willow summons Anya’s boss D’Hoffryn, and asks him to fix this. He goes and interrupts Buffy and Anya’s fight, and Anya begs him to undo the slaughter she unleashed. He does, and lets her go, in exchange for the life and soul of a vengeance demon. Anya assumes he means her, and agrees knowing she’ll die. Except he doesn’t--he takes her friend Halfrek. 
Anya now feels like she has no one and nothing, and we end on another sad note.
Whoopie.
-Buffy does actually stab Anya with a sword, though it doesn’t kill her because vengeance demons don’t die that way. Which is fine, okay, but plenty of demons in the series get killed by fairly mundane means, and that always bugged me. I guess I shouldn’t complain that things are going the way I want, it’s just that it feels contradictory to what we’ve seen before.
-There’s a flashback where we see how Anya became a vengeance demon--she cursed her cheating husband into becoming a troll, and D’Hoffryn took notice and gave her a job. It’s unclear if he was actually cheating, or if Anya (or Aud, back then) just thought that he was, but D’Hoffryn doesn’t seem to care.
-Also how DO you just turn a human into a troll? Seems like big magic to me.
-The subtitles on Hulu claim that they’re speaking old Norse in that scene; I wonder if that’s actually true? Hang on…
Okay so TV Tropes claims that it’s actually really badly pronounced Swedish. The actors were told that their voices would be dubbed over with actual native-speakers, but that didn’t happen so it’s apparently nigh-incomprehensible to native Swedes.
-After seeing Anya’s origin story, it’s not really surprising that D’Hoffryn also took notice of Willow and seems willing to hire her if she ever strays too close to that side of herself again. Then again, Willow seemed a lot more powerful than the usual vengeance demon, at least in raw offensive power, so I imagine that would blow up in his face if it ever went through.
-“Never go for the kill when you can go for the pain,” D’Hoffryn says when he kills Halfrek, which sounds like a good demon motto, but we do see that he seems just fine with letting his vengeance demons go and kill a bunch of people instead of, y’know, going for the pain.
-Also the fact that he’s willing to casually throw away his employees’ lives makes me think that one day his employees would be happy to turn on him if he lets his guard down.
-Really the whole ‘vengeance demon’ racket feels like a stupid thing in the long term. Yeah, it seems like it’s a great way for women to show agency and gain power for themselves, but no matter how polite their boss is to them on the surface, they’re still under his thumb. Anya left, okay, but by going through a lot of pain and humiliation, and he punished her coworker for something she didn’t do. It’s a harsh patriarchy, just dressed up in ‘vengeance demon’ paint to make it appealing in order to trap women who are upset about legitimate grievances.
Anyway.
-There were only twelve guys in this fraternity? Is that all? Did the rest flee? That’s a pretty small fraternity. Then again, maybe Sunnydale’s college is just pretty small.
-I like that we’re not letting Xander off the hook for dumping Anya at the altar. Because we shouldn’t! That was a terrible thing to do! But I do like that he still very much cares what happens to her, and doesn’t want her to die. 
-But as Buffy points out, she did have to kill Angel. And it worked out but it very easily couldn’t have. For all she knew, he was permanently dead when she killed him that one time. But she knew that she had to do it.
-But as Xander points out, trying to talk Anya out of this is apparently not an option? I’m not saying that it isn’t understandable that killing Anya is on the table, it seems that Buffy jumps to it very quickly. Then again, unlike with Willow, it’s not as if Anya’s killing people who have murdered and kidnapped and attempted rape. Anya’s killing a group of fraternity boys for humiliating someone, but basically because someone asked. And not even that! That’s not really what the girl wanted! And Anya had twelve of them killed!
But she’s not thrilled with it, and if Buffy sat and talked with her maybe she would have realized that.
-Anya has a musical number, that’s fantasizing about how great it’ll be to be married to Xander. Which is… very sad, considering how that all turned out. Darn you, Joss, for making me feel things.
-“From beneath you, it devours.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, MAN?! TELL US ALREADY!!
[I’m kidding, I don’t mind this build-up.]
-In all seriousness though, it seems the reason he doesn’t kill Anya is because he thinks she’d die anyway in whatever is going to happen soon. Which isn’t encouraging.
-Are all the major demons connected? Do they talk at the water cooler about what’s going on in the demon dimensions?
-Apparently Anya’s has ALWAYS been like this. It isn’t a demon thing.
-Buffy finds out that Xander lied about what Willow told him before the fight with Angel, and this goes… nowhere. Hm.
-TV Tropes also claims that Sarah Michelle Gellar was getting married to Freddie Prinze Jr. around when this episode was filmed, so she didn’t have that many days to film for the episode. They’re still married as of this blog post, if you’re curious.
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redfoxwritesstuff · 5 years ago
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Of Dust and Ashes
Well, look at what happened after all. Hope everyone had a happy Holiday and is looking positively toward the new year. This is the last update for Of Dust and Ashes of 2019. Stay tuned for the January 1st post where I go over some stats for 2019- because holy hell have I written a lot of words. 
I’d like to take this chance to thank all of my readers. I’d like to take a moment to thank @winterisakiller for keeping the death count on this from being even higher. I’d also like to thank @tnystrk-exe for encouraging me to embrace the death count. Yes, I realize they are two contradictory forces but they are winged ones sitting on my shoulder. 
Check out the Masterlist for prior Chapters. I run on Coffee. 
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Chapter 19: The First Snowfall
Things were quiet as Thanksgiving came and went. It was only a few days after that the first snowfall hit the farmhouse, blanketing the ground in white fluff. Deanna was sitting across from Clint at the dinette and movement outside was what had caught her eye. Instantly, she tensed as she looked over but rather than some threat, she saw fat white snowflakes slowly falling from the sky.
At least, they looked white as they fell from where she sat. It had been a long time since Deanna had seen snow in person. Far longer than she would like to admit.
She told the kids that she and their father had settled in Southern California to get away from snow and winter weather in general. She had told them that she hated snow, hated driving on it and dealing with shoveling it.  
That wasn’t the complete truth. She had loved winter. She loved the sight of snow covered trees and the way the moon sparkled over the pure white ground. There were few things that gave her the same sense of peace as coming in from shoveling the drive and wrapping her hands around a hot mug of cocoa.  
It was true that she hated driving on the snow and ice. It was dangerous but what she hated more was the way her then husband would get angry about the cold. Looking back, perhaps that should have been a warning sign.  
He would get angry about having to clear it off his car, often only clearing the windshield and letting the wind clear the rest as he drove. Apparently, safety for other drivers be damned. When his hands and feet were cold, he got cranky. But there wasn’t anything she could do about that, she couldn’t change the weather.  
The only thing she could do was agree to move somewhere that didn’t get cold in the winter.  
Seeing those snowflakes falling brought back a childlike joy and displayed it across her face for Clint to admire. She wasted no time at all in rushing to the door, slipping her shoes on and dashing outside. Clint and Trust were both right behind her.  
The dog barked and danced in the yard, jumping up and catching flakes in his mouth. Clint watched as Deanna spun in the snow, leaning against the doorway with his cup of coffee in his hand. It was a sight he would gladly enjoy for as long as he could.  
He wasn’t sure if she noticed how the snow wasn’t as white as it should have been, as bright as it should have been. If she did, she didn’t seem to care. It was only the slightest tinging of gray that gave way a hint of what had happened.  
The sky and as a result, the rain, had begun to clear in the last few weeks. It was a small blessing, watching the water run clearer as each day passed. Life was moving on. The cycle was continuing. The world kept turning.  
With the rains and snows, perhaps the dust would stay settled. He hoped that would be the case. The plants seemed to thrive off of the dust and ashes and they both had spent time telling themselves that was a good thing.
And it was. Objectively, they each knew that. The plants needed all the help they could get. Especially food crops, the likes of which were dying at alarming rates all summer and fall. The worrying information had been passed to Clint from New York, where Nat and the remaining team worked. Their primary concern had shifted from rescue to preventing starvation but there was only so much they could do. People would starve to death this winter.  
The Avengers had invited Clint back, urged him to rejoin them. He continued to tell them he needed space. He was needed close to home. Sometimes he would say he was needed elsewhere. And he was, even if Deanna wouldn’t admit it yet.  
A snowball crashed into his face and she erupted into a fit of laughter. The snow left that grimy feeling behind as it melted but he ignored it. His face could be washed. That was the joy of being here, on his farm and behind his gates. It made it so that they could ignore the horrors of the world outside for a while.
“You’re Hawkeye, how could you let me catch you off guard like that?!” She yelled, squealing a bit as he took off after her.
“Maybe I don’t want to be Hawkeye anymore.” He said as his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her from her feet and spinning her around.
If not for the slight gray tinge to the snow, if not for the odd silence that still hung around them, the scene would have been at home in any of the Lifetime Christmas specials Deanna had so loved to watch.
“If you’re not Hawkeye than who are you?” She whispered as he turned her in his arms. Her hands rested against his chest as snow gathered and melted in their hair, leaving the grime behind.
“Just Clint Barton. Just a man, taking care of the ones he loves.” His voice was soft and she could feel him tense as he admitted. it.  
Love. They never defined what they were to each other, what the endgame of their relationship was. They never spoke about sex or love or marriage or becoming a family. But maybe in this new world, they didn’t need to. Maybe it was something that just happened when the time was right and you were not looking.  
“Love?” She whispered.  
“I mean- I-” He stammered and she smiled up at him. It was the warmth in that smile that helped him relax. She was curious and cautious, that much was plain to see. But she was also relaxed and hadn’t pulled away from him.  
“It’s okay.”
“I know- I know Laura hasn’t been gone long. And I do love her still. I think I always will-”
“You promised as much when you said your vows.” Dee offered. “It’s not like things stopped working or that you broke up. She was taken from you and that’s different. It’s okay to keep loving her. It’s okay to always love her. I’m not going to punish you for that. I’m not going to expect that you forget about her.”
“I love Trust.” He smiled and rested a hand on her cheek, cold fingers caressing soft skin. “And I also love you. I’m not sure how it happened, when or even why. I know- I know I don’t know you in so many ways and you don’t know me but…” He shrugged.  
“I think…” She bit her lip, looking away from him. He feared that he fucked it up. What they had going was good and he feared that she’d say she was going to leave him, leave his farmhouse and leave the home she’d made there. “I think we know what matters about each other. I think things work differently now. I think I love you too.”
It was too soon. Or at least it should have been. But things seemed to obey new and strange rules now. The very meaning of what it was to love someone seemed to have shifted and changed. It didn’t mean that she wanted a domestic life with him. To see him off to work and to kiss him and welcome him home. It wasn’t a love that made her long to mother his children. It didn’t likewise wasn’t a love that made him wish to see her belly swell with his child.  
It was a different kind of love but a love none the less. It meant that neither wished to see harm come to the other. It was a love that said they had each other’s backs. It was a love that said they would do anything to protect the other. It was a love that whispered in their hearts that they would maybe even kill for each other.  
But such were dark thoughts for another time. Now wasn’t the time to think of what falling in love in this ash covered world meant. It was the time for smiling and simple pleasures. It was the time for huddling together and staying warm while the dust settled.  
Clint’s lips found hers in a soft kiss. It was sweet and she could taste the dark bitter taste of his coffee when his tongue slipped into her mouth. Dirty snow fell around them as they clung to one another, arms winding tight and fingers digging into skin.  
Their breath came out in white puffs, warming their noses and cheeks. He held her close and she toyed with the ends of his hair. It was a sweet kiss, for all of it’s passion. There was a hunger simmering below the surface yet neither had made a move to take it farther. In that way, it was like so many of the kisses they had shared in their time together. It hinted at what they could have, what comfort they could give.
“It’s almost Christmas.” Deanna whispered as their lips pulled apart.
“I didn’t get you anything, Dee.” Clint’s soft voice washed over her. She loved that he called her that. Dee was the woman he saw when he looked at her. Dee was stronger than Deanna. She was a fierce woman who could keep going through the end of the world. She wanted to be Dee.  
“You don’t have to. I don’t have anything for you, either. Let’s just watch movies and be together?” They’d watched most of the movies between the farmhouse and what they had collected from in town. But that didn’t stop Clint from smiling softly.  
“I’d like that.”  
~~~~~<3
Clint and Dee had been doing laundry when the AI security system came to life. The voice of a woman rang out through the house. It scared the life out of Dee when it called out for “Agent Barton”, much to Clint’s amusement.  
“What is it?” He’d asked, once his laughing was under control. It didn’t feel like anything serious could touch them in their little bubble. The simple act of the system coming to life was enough to pop that bubble and send a ball of molten lead to settle in her belly.  
“A group of about fifty individuals are approaching the property. ETA at the gate- 30 minutes.”
“Armed?” There was something to his voice that she’d never heard before. Maybe she was hearing the ghost of Hawkeye in that moment.  
“Some, yes.”
“Pull up a video feed. Let’s take a look.”
In the living room, the large TV came to life on it’s own. The house was more automated that Dee had given it credit for. The screen filled with what appeared to be a remote camera feed. People moved up the road that would take them to the gate. They were pulling crates on trailers behind ATVs. Men had rifles over their shoulders.  
“Stay here. I’ll address this.”  
“No.” Deanna said, surprising herself. She swallowed back her fear. She didn’t want to be Deanna, scared of the world and what was outside the fence. She wanted to be Dee, strong and a partner to Clint. She wanted to pull her weight. She wanted to protect as much as she wanted to be protected. “I want to go with.”  
“It could be dangerous.” He didn’t say ‘no’ but his face was set, hard lines etching deep.
“I know. That’s why I want to go. I- I want to be able to help if things go wrong. And I’ve gotten better.”
“You have.”
“I can help.”
He signed and for a moment he looked everywhere but at her. He looked to the ceiling and the floor, the couch and the TV. Finally, he looked at her, long and hard. With a nod, he consented. “Stay back, away from the gate. We’re taking my Truck- the doors are bulletproofed and if they take those rifles off their backs- you get behind the doors.”
“You too.”
“I need you alive. I need you.” Clint said.
“I need you, too.”  
~~~~~<3
The sun glittered off the snow. If it wasn’t for the slight gray to the snow cover, it would have looked like any other winter day. There was a heavy tension to the air in the truck. Quivers full of arrows were sitting between the seats, next to bows. Resting on top of the weapons were two hands, clasped together. It had occurred to her as they loaded into the truck that it was the 24th of December. Christmas Eve.  
In the past she’d be building gingerbread houses and taking the children to parties. She’d see them off to bed and tell them at least four more times to go back to bed. And finally, when they were settled and well asleep, she would wrap the last minute gifts.  
Looking over at Clint, she wondered what he would have been doing today if their world hadn’t ended. Would he be busy being a father and husband? Did he cut down a fresh tree every year? Did they decorate a fake one? These questions and so many more danced on the tip of her tongue and she dared not ask them. Part of her wondered if just as Deanna had passed away, leaving Dee behind- did that man pass too from this world? Is that what he had meant by wanting to leave Hawkeye behind?
They pulled up close to the gate, nose of the truck within a few short feet of the metal. He had once told her that the lower part of the gate was not electrified, only the upper third. It served to protect animals that may wander into it or small creatures passing through it but kept anyone from climbing over. There were no signs warning of this and she wondered if that was legal.  
They left the truck running as they opened the doors. Ice and snow crunched under their boots. Her ankle was almost healed and for that, Dee was thankful. The last thing she needed was to fall. Still, there was a lingering stiffness to it.  
They stood, partially hidden behind the open doors of the truck and waited. They could see the group approaching. There was a moment of silence as they came to a stop right outside the gate. They sized each other up.  
She watched as eyes flicked from Clint to her and lingered. He cleared his throat and they looked again to him.  
“What do you want?” he asked, authority powering his voice in a way that she found so painfully attractive.  
“Let us in.” The man who seemed to be the leader, demanded. “It’s time you paid tax to King Jacob.”
Their eyes locked eyes at the name. They’d hoped that they wouldn’t hear of him again. In hindsight, that was far too much to ask for. Having a second run in with a group tied to King Jacob made Dee wonder about the state of things on the west coast. Was King Mason expanding his territory this winter as well?
“We owe no tax and have sworn no loyalty to any new King.”  
“This land is claimed by King Jacob.”
Clint began to speak over the man. “This land is ours and ours alone.”
Ours. Not his. Ours. The word sent butterflies into a fluttering fit in Dee’s stomach. She squashed them and for now, the remained squashed. Now wasn’t the time.  
“As the ruler of this land, King Jacob takes possession of three quarters of your supplies.” Clint snorted indigently. “We’re also gathering… vulnerable citizens to keep safe in the city.”
“And to do so you need them in cages?” Clint nodded his head to the side, toward where large wire kennels were placed on trailers. They were pulled behind ATVs. They had heavy tarps covering most of them.
Deanna hadn’t noticed before Clint drew attention to them but when she realized that there were people, women in the cages. Once she noticed them, it was hard to ignore what was right in front of her eyes.  
The women looked like there were naked and too thin. There wasn’t a scrap of cloth inside the crates, so far as she could see. Most of them huddled in the shadows, no doubt using the tarps covering their enclosures to protect themselves from the elements. The only thing they could use to keep warm was the body heat of one another.  
“It’s to keep them safe.” The man said. “You never know what could-”
“She doesn’t need you to protect her.” Clint glanced at Dee as he spoke. “I assure you, she is more than capable of taking care of herself and she’s got me to watch her back. That’s all she needs.”
“Ah but she is a woman.” The man pointed out as if that much wasn’t obvious. “Women need protection. It is King Jacob’s orders that the women and children of his lands be gathered in the city.”
“These are not his lands.” Clint challenged.  
“They are. And you’ll give your woman and your tax.”
“We’ll do no such thing.” Dee called out.  
“Help me.” A woman’s voice called timidly through the cold air. Her arm reached out from between the openings in the woven wire of the cage. “My baby- They left my baby. Help me.”  
“Shut up!” A man guarding the cages roared, breaking any sense of decorum the caravan had been aiming for. The man jabbed a long stick into the cage, striking the woman. She fell hard against the grate bottom.  
“Please.” She cried, words carried to them on the soft winter’s breeze. “Please, they- they left her. They left her!” The man jabbed her with a stick, again and again until all that they could hear was the woman’s broken sobs.  
“Where?” Clint demanded and when he didn’t receive an answer, he demanded a second time, louder. “Where is she?! Where did you leave her?!”  
“It doesn’t concern you.” The leader coolly spoke, as if a woman wasn’t being beaten through the crate behind him. “Bring your tax- her included- to Kansas City and present it to King Jacob within a week’s time. Prepare your camp for inspection after. Do not make us come for it.”  
They watched as the caravan turned and made their way down the dirt road. Dee’s eyes darted to Clint, taking in his tense form and locked jaw.  
“What now?” It was the sound of her voice that brought Clint’s eyes to her.  
“We find that baby.”
“How?”
“Try to cover as much ground as we can. Do you- Do you want to come or stay?”
“I want to go.”  
“Then let’s go.”
~~~~~<3
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dogcopter · 5 years ago
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Watermelon Mom
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This is a "Rose is Lion" post. Super long theory Steven Universe meta post. I originally did a brain dump of similar content (Rose Quartz Is Melon Mutt) with more images, if you need to see the scenes listed there are caps there. This is a more organized text version but the other one has more notes on the art. 
TL;DR: Lion is sometimes being possessed by the Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz character, and that that explains why he knows secrets Rose didn't tell anyone but also genuinely acts like a cat. At this point Rose “faking” her death twice is in fact more plausible than Lion being a 2-dimensional character or Rose having a secret confidant. Every other character in the series has concrete explanations for their behavior, so why wouldn't Lion. End theory. Below cut is a list of scenes and character design thoughts.
My hypothesis is: Lion's behavior is explained by being Rose (see below), AND it's also explained by being a normal (magical tame and cuddly) lion. 
-Based on what we've seen Steven do, a body swap is possible, in which case he could be both Lion and Rose at different times, and there's a reasonable in-universe explanation for all of his contradictory behavior together. 
-Lion is the only character of the main group who hasn't really had character development. 
-Rose has an unresolved character arc that dovetails nicely with Lion's existence (running from the past, hiding things, reinventing herself and leaving her old self behind, etc). 
-Lars and Lion have identical powers and there are things Lion knows that aren’t covered by Lars’ powers that also are characteristic of Rose.
I can’t fathom how it would literally play out in the story, but narratively it makes more sense for Rose to keep her own secrets than reveal them to another living soul, since we saw in A Single Pale Rose that she took pains to even make sure Pearl wouldn’t tell anyone about her past. Lion holds ALL of her secrets. His music is designed with hers. He’s been implicitly linked to her from the start. It also makes more sense that we simply haven’t seen Lion go through a character arc yet than that he is exactly what he seems, when Crewniverse put all this worldbuilding that includes almost every named character around Steven growing and changing in their independent lives. It fits. It fits for a post-Steven learning he is really 100% himself and always was show, even when Steven still has growing to do and personal challenges to face. 
While maybe totally bananas to contemplate right now, Rose appearing is no longer an emotional existential threat to the Crystal Gems because they’ve now grown as people and separated their identities from their relationships to her, even though it would still be bananas. IMHO.
I’m gonna just list points below. I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts on how one can interpret Lion as a character. It’s the only explanation that, to me, accounts for everything.
Lion bio
-Rose had several lions during Buddy's Book. Lion appears in the desert when Steven finds him a couple centuries later.
-She also had a secret place in the desert full of secrets that would compromise her secret identity, and Lion knew about it. 
-At some point Lion died and Rose revived him, but we don't know more than that. 
-Rose put many of her secrets into his mane, including Bismuth, the sword used to perform Pink Diamond's shattering, her Mr. Universe shirt, and whatever the hell was in that chest. 
-Only Steven can open the wormhole to enter Lion’s mane. (Presumably it’s a Pink Diamond thing and Rose would also have been able to when alive.
-Steven found Lion in the desert. Lion followed him home and started participating in Steven's life, although he comes and goes. Lion showed Steven things his mom left behind and started to fight alongside him and Connie. 
-When Steven went in Lion's mane for the first time, he found a tape addressed to him from his mom. 
-That tape is the first first-person appearance of Rose Quartz in the show. The only other one is a nearly-identical tape that appears much later.
-Lion continued to back up Steven and Connie and Stevonnie in fights and act like a housecat at home. Lion stayed behind when the gang went to Homeworld, but otherwise was present for most major group fights.
-(If Lion is in fact the melon dog, he was present for all of them)
Lion powers
Lion ages very slowly, can create warps, use a sonic boom kind of attack, and walk on water. His eyes and mane glow at times and Steven can enter his mane dimension to store objects. Lars and Lion have identical abilities. Steven can travel between them. Lion can run for hours without getting tired, as shown specifically in Lion 4: Alternate Ending, but does get tired out by using his warp magic too much, as seen both times he travels to the moon.
-Absent among Lars' abilities is the ability to locate Steven or intuit knowledge only Steven has. Steven has to bring him care packages and letters and updates for Lars to get the news, and Lars loses Stevonnie in Stranded until they’re able to send out a signal.
Lion travels to places (sometimes, only) Rose has been.
Recap of all of Lion’s travel in the series ep by ep below. 
Beach City warping blanket explanation: For now let’s assume both Rose and normal Lion would have reason to know their way around Beach City, Rose from Greg/living there for so long and Lion from hanging with Steven, although Lion likely hadn’t been there before the start of the series. I will be skipping teleportation around the boardwalk and nearby areas for that reason.
-In Steven's Lion, Lion warps independently from the desert to the beach house. None of the gems knew Rose had a lion, so it's unlikely that Lion had been there before, although not impossible.
-In Lion 2: The Movie, Lion brings Steven and Connie to Rose's armory. Pearl later in Rose's Scabbard tells Steven that this is a place only she and Rose knew about, and that it is a secret even from Garnet and Amethyst.
-In Rose's Scabbard, Lion quickly digs up Rose's lost scabbard from where it dropped after Pearl faked Pink’s death.
-At the end of Rose’s Scabbard, Lion also knows when Pearl has run off to the strawberry battlefield and takes Steven straight there, although they are still basically strangers at the time and a point is made of them not getting along in the episode.
-In Cry for Help, Lion takes the team to the Communication Hub, even though he wasn't there with them before in Coach Steven. However, it is shown on the screen of a computer in the moon base in It Could've Been Great, explicit evidence that Pink Diamond would know about it. (Implicitly, Rose was a Crystal Gem and could have known even were she not Pink. But she was.)
-In It Could've Been Great, Lion teleports to the moon base, which Pink Diamond would have been to. Only Rose and Pearl of the main cast had been there before at that point, and the galaxy warp was destroyed before the corruption, well before Lion was born.
-In Lion 4: Alternate Ending, Lion brings Steven to Rose's landfill, a location known to Rose and this time not known to Pearl.
Lion knows secrets Rose took pains to hide.
Thought: Rose repeatedly kept massive secrets even from her closest friends, tried to erase the past and ran from mistakes, right up until she made Steven. It doesn't track with established behavior that Rose would risk exposing secrets (or challenge herself) by telling someone else. Why does Lion know everything, and if he isn’t Rose, how did he find out?
In Lion 2: The Movie, Lion brings Steven and Connie to the armory that only Pearl knew about.
In Lion 3: Straight to Video, originally in Lion's mane are Bismuth, Rose's sword, the flag of the rebellion, the tape for Steven, the chest and the picture of Rose and Greg.
-Bismuth was betrayed by Rose and would upend her reputation among the Crystal Gems.
-The sword and Bismuth's knowledge would also be incriminating evidence in the faked shattering of Pink Diamond, which was covered up by Rose and Pearl.
-The tape explains exactly where Rose went after the rebellion.
Lion also summons Rose's sword in Lion 2, although he doesn't summon other items, with the exception of the landfill key coughed up in Lion 4. Steven claims Lion can’t get into his own mane; it’s true that only the PD gem can open the wormhole and others can’t enter on their own, including Lars and Lion, but we have seen Lion take the sword out at least.
-In Lion 4: Alternate Ending, Lion of course takes Steven to the landfill. This place also holds incriminating evidence.
-The Nora tape left there contains the same information about Rose Quartz giving up her form.
-The location is framed by the ruins of a PD structure and Pink Diamond's ship. Plus all of the junk. Any gem from Homeworld who found this place could piece the story together.
-Also relevant about the tape, as has been noted many times, Rose wouldn't have known whether the Steven or Nora tape was the correct one to leave for Steven until after she gave up her physical form. Greg says even Garnet couldn’t predict what would happen when Rose attempted what she did.
Lion is sentient and has relationships and tries to communicate. Therefore, he can be regarded as a character designed with personality.
Lion acts like a person in some episodes, particularly the Lion eps. He “talks” to Steven verbally in Steven's Lion, Lion 3, Can't Go Back, and It Could’ve Been Great, to name a few. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those instances are meant to be specific lines. He talks to Steven and Connie both in Lion 2. He responds directly to what Steven is saying in It Could've Been Great, Lion 2, Lion 3 and Lion 4 at minimum and takes battle commands from Steven, Connie, and Stevonnie. He takes Connie's side after Steven returns from Homeworld. He expresses affection and annoyance towards characters. He’s visibly grumpy when Steven hides his Thunderbird shirt in his mane. Et cetera, just watch a Lion episode.
Steven doesn't have a magic psychic destiny.
Confirmed in Lion 4. Rose wanted to make a child and she wanted that child to be loved, that's it. The rest of the plot was just the unfortunate coincidence of Rose's loose ends + mostly just Steven, like his decision to talk to Connie (aw) that set off many of the later events with Lapis and Homeworld.
How would Rose sometimes be possessing Lion logistically
I think Steven's powers have been established in a way that this is plausible. I also think sleep might be the trigger indicating a switch between Rose-as-Lion and Lion-Lion, like in the start of Steven's Lion. As a lion Lion sleeps a lot and Steven's astral projection type powers tend to come back to a change in his state of consciousness as well.
-Sidenote, in Know Your Fusion, Sardonyx says her room only exists for as long as she does. Rose’s room has never stopped existing.
Steven's "psychic ghost" powers & that dimension. (pay no attention to Ronaldo astral projecting by the stove)
-In Reunited, Steven sees people's consciousness and their bodies as separate constructions.
-The poofed gems don't have little psychic ghosts but their gemstones are there, for the others it shows their whole body dormant with their personality in miniature on top.
-Steven is able to reach the Diamonds emotionally in that space and get them to recognize his gem. He can communicate, albeit indirectly.
Thought: This could answer the question of "she's gone". After all,
-in Nora’s tape in Lion 4, one of the only lines that has changed in Rose’s speech is “We can’t both exist, but I won’t be gone.” This is one of the two times in the series we explicitly see Rose speak for herself and she uses the same words as Steven’s gem half.
Is it possible that Rose in “giving up her physical form” gave up her literal physical form - her gemstone - without destroying the “psychic ghost” part of her personality? We still don't know the ins and outs of the gem body/personality connection, but we know gems' minds and projected bodies are damaged differently by strong emotions vs. damage to the gemstone vs corruption, and we know they're capable of fusion, which causes an entirely new personality to emerge from two gems who are also their own people.
Steven and dreams
Seen in: Steven's Dream is about Steven having a Pink Diamond dream. Steven, while dreaming, spoke to Lapis in Chille Tid when she was inside Malachite. Steven traveled into Kiki's dreams and changed them in Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service. Steven also had various strange Pink Diamond memory dreams like the ones in Can't Go Back, Jungle Moon, and Together Alone. Steven demonstrably has some ability to get into people’s heads and leave his own, sometimes even affecting what’s in there. Technically he even stopped White by getting into her head ;-)
Body hijacking
-Steven occupies the bodies of two different Watermelon Stevens in Super Watermelon Island, and one in Escapism.
-He also took over Lars's body in The New Lars.
-He doesn't need to take his gem along, but he does need to be asleep in his own body.
-He can do so across great distances, as in Escapism he's in Homeworld at the time.
-Unlike a fusion it is not a new person or a combination of people occupying the same headspace, he takes over completely and behaves as himself but wearing another form.
-Lars doesn't have any memory of what his body has been doing when it is returned to him.
-Both Lars and the Watermelons are organic; we have NOT seen Steven take over a gem's body either like he does with Lars and the melons, or like White Diamond does.
This is where the watermelons come in.
-In Super Watermelon Island, the same melon dog finds Steven twice after he loses the first body he hijacked and appears to recognize him. Originally it comes to him right away, but later it finds him when he returns and is speaking in front of everyone in the cave.
-In Escapism, a different melon dog finds Steven immediately and follows him around.
There is one other character who behaved this way towards Steven when he first appeared - sought him out to act as an animal companion with no independent motivation or goal - and that character is Lion.
At the end of Escapism, the melon dog watches Steven float away while frowning. Steven runs into hazards on the sea, and eventually Lion shows up to rescue him.
I believe that PD-Rose-Lion is also the melon dogs (which also would act as precedent to the body swapping aspect of the Lion/Rose situation for future payoff) and that Lion found Steven on the open ocean because he saw the general direction and region he drifted off in. After all, unlike this rescue, every time he’s found Steven in the rest of the series, there’s an explanation, and Lars with his identical powers cannot find Steven.
But Lion is just a lion. He acts like a cat and eats lizards.
Even though Steven Universe is a cartoon, every character still behaves with an internal consistency even when they're very exaggerated. It's actually part of their cartoonishness that their core traits are emphasized? Only with Lion is there this duality of, sometimes he's more "cat", sometimes he's more "person". Maybe he is just a cat mascot but it feels contradictory to the thoughtful design of the rest of the cast if they chose to make this character totally static while everyone else from Peridot to Sour Cream is getting development and upending tropes and gender norms.
Conclusion: Lion is only sometimes Rose, and sometimes just her very tame immortal lion.
In Steven's Lion, they make a point of showing Lion's eyes glowing at certain points before he takes action in a more motivated way or responds to Steven. This also happens in Rose's Scabbard and It Could’ve Been Great. Across Lion’s episodes the glowing eyes are usually accompanied either by use of another magic power (mane) or by a switch from more catlike behavior to more characterlike behavior. I think this might be a body swap visual indicator.
Characters are designed with motivation for their behavior. There’s a reason for every design decision in the show.
So, ok, let’s say Lion's behavior is motivated by caring for Steven. But what about when he first found Steven, then? Was he just really loyal to Rose and grew to love Steven later? If he’s just Lion, why did Rose trust him with the secrets she hid from everyone else?
If we assume Crewniverse has an explanation for character motivations, even the animals (Pumpkin! She loved Steven but learned to fear death more. Now it has her. RIP) would the backstory around Lion’s death and revival explain his choice to protect Steven as, for example, out of devotion or a debt to Rose?
Would that explanation track with the other messages in the show, after the four main cast members have finally divested of Rose-dependent personal narratives? Wasn’t that kinda the whole point? If Lion really is just a mascot, do you think the show overlooked the obvious implications for the sake of having a cool magic animal, or might there be a reason he is the way he is?
Also, we see Lion’s personality. Does Lion really not have a character beyond his role in Steven's life? Is some connection to Steven's gem compelling Lion or inspiring magical animal affection? I can see that there are a lot of options but I don’t believe these explanations are thematically consistent in Steven Universe. It doesn’t quite track with the level of detail and lore put into everything else.
His episodes are all about Steven and Rose. His behavior is motivated by a) being a cat or b) being helpful to Steven and protecting and teaching him.
The only explanation for his behavior is that he was clearly connected to Rose and therefore he has some kind of magical connection to Steven and/or Rose and/or the gem itself.
If you think of Lion as a character, that means he's been helping Steven for a reason. What is the reason in this case? His knowledge and behavior tracks with what we know of Rose Quartz's character, and an alternative explanation tends to contradict it in equal measure. Rose is the other major character who is treated differently than most of the cast in terms of character arc. 
The most obvious explanation makes the most sense at this point. Also, this would really mess with Steven. It would dig up so many of the personal issues he has been pushing aside. And it sounds like that’s what we’ll be getting in Future so wouldn’t it fit? 
Link to sound clip It also struck me that in this podcast episode, when they answered questions about Lars and Lion they were excited and went into detail about the mechanics, except for when it came to the question about Lion finding Steven. I think that scene is important.
Idk, what do you think about Lion after all this time? What are the other possibilities, given what we know?
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nezumiismissing · 5 years ago
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Missing Character Analysis Pt.3
So we come to part 3 of this series, finally. For the uninitiated, this is where I talk about the characters that were included in the novels/manga but left out of the anime for any multitude of reasons, and how their omission affects the story as a whole (Part 1+Part 2). I won’t say it’s the last one, because there are a few more characters I want to talk about, but this will probably be the last long one, as the characters remaining are fairly minor and there isn’t quite as much to analyze. That being said, this monstrosity is over 3000 words, so if you do decide to read it, make sure you have the time. It’s kind of wild, things get a little conceptual/abstract, but it’s at least marginally coherent, and that’s all that really matters, right? 
So this time around we’re actually going to be talking about two characters, Fennec and lab coat man, not because they are too minor to deserve their own posts, but because they are too interconnected to focus on one without talking about the other. As the leaders of No.6 they hold a huge amount of power, and yet their dialogue occurs almost entirely between themselves. And while individually they are completely different people, what makes them strong characters is much more about the role they play as a single force within the city. Each one of them will get a section of their own, and then at the end we’ll move into the discussion of them as a “unit” and how their absence affects certain aspects of the anime. I'm going to start with lab coat man because, for me at least, Fennec is the far more interesting of the two, so I wanted to save him for last, as well as the fact that chronologically, he also makes the last appearance out of the two of them. Also I’m just going to call him Labcoat because he doesn’t have a name and that’s basically his only identifying feature.
Let’s actually start with that. The fact that he doesn’t have a name (even less so than the mayor) but still appears in the story is extremely odd. I’ve mentioned in the past that something I really like about the anime is the lack of any characters guiding No.6’s actions, which make it seem like a full character with a will of its own (I will touch on this later). But there’s something almost as creepy about knowing who the antagonist of the story is, having an in-depth understanding of his ideology (even if it’s bullshit), seeing him have full on one-on-one conversations with other important characters, and yet having no way to really identify who they are or how they ended up in this position. His character is overly vague and simplified, but to an extent that ends up being nearly as terrifying as him not existing at all. He’s the one that’s actually running No.6, making every major decision about what direction the city should move in up until the very end of the story, and yet his death happens without us seeing it, and without the intervention of any of the main characters. This functions not only as a way to show how insane he was or to what extent he isolated himself in order to do his work, but also reveals the fact that he is completely unnecessary. Not to the story of course, he’s very important to our understanding of No.6, but to No.6 itself, his existence was meaningless. No one outside of Fennec and Safu (the two people he is shown interacting with) ever make reference to his existence, and even after he dies, and the main characters find his body in the mayor’s office, he is only mentioned for a moment to explain what had happened to him. He seems perfectly happy with this arrangement, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. How did he become the most powerful man in No.6? Why did he do it? Was complete power always his intention, or was he an idealist in the beginning like everyone else? We’ll never know the answer to these questions, but at the same time, it doesn’t really matter why he did it. Labcoat is a character that is so integral to the story and its events that his motives and existence outside of his ideology become completely meaningless. Which almost seems contradictory, but is also maybe the point of his character. Rather than an actual character with a concrete purpose and role in the story, he is a stand-in for the ideology that drives No.6, similar to the way that Rashi acts as a personification of the sociopolitical status of the city (please read my obscenely long post about Rashi).
At the root of this ideology, and Labcoat’s character, is the overwhelming fear of failure and losing control. Scenes including him are centered on his progress updates, which immediately are recognizable as nothing but reassurances, that “it was only a small obstacle”, that “it should be under control now”. At no point are we under the illusion that he actually knows what he is doing, and with no information regarding what is actually going on until near the end of the story, we are left to watch him desperately struggle with something that is either impossible, or doesn’t exist at all, much like the concept of utopia itself. We already know that his ideology and rational thought process will not allow him to accept impossibilities or non-understandings however, and so it is at this moment that we fully become an active part of the story ourselves, not as simple observers or analysts, but instead as a driving force in the plot, here in the form of the source of Labcoat's paranoia. Within the story, there is no doubt in his mind that anything and everything can fall under his control, and to a point, he is right. Elyurias is ultimately able to defeat him and No.6, but only after severe damage has already been done and some control had been taken from her temporarily. By existing outside of the story, we exist fully outside of his realm of control, and in recognizing our existence, he must come face to face with the reality that certain things exist that cannot be rationalized (more thoughts on this concept another time). Again similar to Rashi, this realization causes the collapse of his ideology, and by extension, No.6. Because that ideology is the entirety of his character, there is no reason for him to remain a part of the story, and so he is killed, quite literally, by irrationality. 
Fennec is one of those characters that from the outset is obviously more complex than is let on. He's the undisputed mayor of No.6, wielding unprecedented power over every single character we meet in the story. But he doesn't really want any of it. And as I mentioned above, he doesn’t really have it either. Now whether he realizes that he is being used by Labcoat or not is unclear (up to a certain point), but it is obvious that he knows that he is not fully in control of the city. His only real job is to serve as the face of No.6 and its perceived ideals, keeping the general population from ever suspecting that anything may be wrong. However, even in this job he is unable to succeed, and ultimately only exacerbates the process by which citizens become suspicious of the city’s leadership. He is arguably the most ideologically pure character in the entire series, other than perhaps Karan, whose ideology is not fully developed over the course of the story, and Safu, whose purpose in the story does not even necessitate any kind of socio-political stance on her part. Despite what he has ended up doing and taking part in, I don’t think that he ever really moved away from dreaming of an ideal world, and while much of his uncertainty about his position certainly stems from being unsure of whether or not they are moving the city in the right direction, I believe that much of it is also part of working towards one of the questions that frames the entire series: “Is it even possible to create an ideal world?”. Without an answer to this question, he is unable to overcome his uncertainty about his own position in the city or move forward ideologically, and thus is easily used as a tool by others such as Labcoat to further their own agendas and ideological positions, rather than develop his own ideas and work towards his own goals of utopia.
While some of the other characters such as Labcoat, and to a certain extent Rashi, are very much a personified version of the city in its idealized authoritarian form, Fennec exists very much on the opposite side of the spectrum, and instead paints a picture of the political and ideological structure of No.6 as it actually is, and likely always has been. While Fennec, like everyone else in the Rebirth Project, went into the creation of No.6 with utopian ideals, he is also probably the first, if not only, one of them to realize that what they were attempting was likely impossible, at least in the way they were attempting to do it. With the information about him we are given, it seems safe to assume that he may have been suspicious from the start, and perhaps was pushed into the leadership position not only as a way for Labcoat to become the de facto ruler of the city, but also in order to convince him that the city was indeed possible, and that it could only happen with Fennec's help. This of course was never a good idea, and likely led to a good portion of the instability that allowed the story to happen in the first place, but by portraying a leader that is so uncertain not only of the concept of the city itself, but also in his ability to lead such a city, we are able to see just how unstable the situation has been from the very beginning. This makes Karan’s comments about Fennec much more interesting as well, as at face value these are obviously comments about the distrust of leadership in the city, and thus distrust in the city itself, but in seeing Fennec’s own insecurity, we are able to place these comments also within the context of a distrust of the self, and a recognition that the entire situation is really out of everyone’s control, making the stability that marks No.6 as the “Holy City” subject to collapse at any time and for basically any reason, which of course it ultimately does.
Basically every death in this story has immense impact, often resulting in significant character development or otherwise important shifts in the story, and Fennec’s death is no exception to this. Like Labcoat, his death occurs without being seen and without intervention, although this time the main characters are at least aware that it is happening, but nonetheless it shifts the tone of the moment. In my experiences reading this scene, it’s always been there to create a quiet, grounding moment for both us and the characters to come back to reality and start processing everything that has happened over the past 9 books. The entire last half of the series is incredibly dense with action scenes, sensory overload, and things that are so far separated from reality that it’s difficult to figure out exactly what their purpose is, and even before entering the Correctional Facility, peaceful scenes are few and far between. So in this brief moment at the end of the series, when we know for a fact that No.6 has finally fallen and the nightmare is (mostly) over, we are finally able to enjoy a single moment of certainty amidst what is otherwise complete chaos. In these moments we are able to see Fennec realize not that he had necessarily lost against Nezumi, Shion, and the protesters, as his actions were almost entirely a result of Labcoat’s manipulation, but that he had been manipulated in the first place, and that his own life had been taken over by the “idea” of No.6, rather than the reality of it. The death of Labcoat and the realization of what had truly transpired within the city results in a return of control to Fennec over his own life, as well as over the city. With his knowledge of the city’s truth, and newfound power over it, he must now make the choice of whether or not to justify everything that has happened up to this point. Manipulated or not, he recognizes his position as the symbol of the city, and therefore his role in its actions, and so in keeping with his utopian ideology, he does the only thing he feels is appropriate in order to avoid going against his ideals and once again relinquishing his self determination to a yet-undecided power. I can’t say whether or not that choice was the right one, and opinions are probably going to differ a lot between people, but it is at least an action that, unlike so much of the rest of the series, is not unexpected and can be rationalized outside of an authoritative framework.
I’ve already done some of this, but this last section is going to go into how these two function as the single unit running No.6, and thus how their lack of presence affects the structure of the anime. On their own of course neither one of them would be able to take on the position of leading the entire city, and although neither one really seems interested in being deeply involved with the other, they have become dependent on each other in order to remain individually stable, with Labcoat needing reassurance that he is indeed in charge, and Fennec needing reassurance that an ideal society can exist, despite neither of those things being entirely true. As a unit, they represent two sides of No.6 in reverse relation to their own positon within the city. That is, Labcoat represents the idealism and scientific superiority that characterizes the world’s perception of the city while remaining a highly secretive figure, while Fennec represents the frailty of the city that is kept hidden from the citizens, despite acting as the city’s public persona (I will be referring to them as a unit from now own because their function is collective rather than individual here). This unit itself is a highly isolated structure (relationship), interacting with only a few other characters within the story during important moments, but otherwise interacting only within itself. This is what allows this setup to work at all, as their isolation enables them to freely trade information and plans between themselves without involving others or worrying about the information finding its way out of the structure. While it is clearly highly manipulative on the part of Labcoat, this is unclear to Fennec as well as the citizens who watch the mayor speak, and so the unit is able to stay intact as it is without being questioned by those who may seek to oppose it. This does not free them from criticism, obviously, but instead makes it impossible to criticize only one or the other from the perspective of a citizen, because as far as they are concerned, they are the same person. The unit, in having two distinctly different personalities functionally taking the place of one, is able to efficiently complete tasks semi-publically that would otherwise be seen as unacceptable by publicly presenting itself, and in fact believing itself to be, an idealized system of leadership which works in the citizen’s favor. Labcoats’s mistakes are able to be rationalized as small obstacles through the lens of Fennec’s nonunderstanding, and Fennec’s paranoia of this nonunderstanding mitigated through Labcoat’s complete trust in scientific inquiry and methods.
Despite the omission of these characters and the unit entirely from the anime, the story is still able to work because the city itself is able to take the place of the unit as the primary actor in the events of the story. With no leadership being portrayed throughout the anime, we are left with the impression that the events are unfolding independently of any kind of governmental system, or at least the government that does exist is vague and devoid of ideology outside of “militant authoritarianism”. Instead these events are framed almost as a type of natural occurrence that likely could not be avoided without the formation of some kind of mediation system such as a government, and without such a system, the responsibility falls somewhere else: society as a whole (or more specifically No.6). With no visible government in the form of the Fennec/Labcoat unit to control and mediate the situation, the unit expands to include everyone, as they become collectively responsible for governing themselves and thus understanding and accepting to a certain extent what is happening throughout the story. It would be a significant understatement to say that the sociological implications of this are immense, and someday I will write that essay. But today is not that day, so we’re going to stay surface level.
I would like to point out that yes, obviously this is not actually how No.6 functions. It’s not an autonomous collective governed by the people. It’s not even kind of a democracy. My point isn’t so much to say that No.6 is or even approaches being either of those things, but rather that the structure of the story, by excluding certain details and characters, gives us a conceptualization of No.6 that is far different from the one portrayed in the novels, and thus may in certain instances be seen as ideologically distinct. In this instance, the omission of Fennec and Labcoat, both independently of each other and as a unit, serve to create the feeling of the situation in No.6 as being entirely out of control, not as a planned series of events or experiments, but rather as a spontaneous occurrence fed by unexplained impulses felt by certain members of society, here taking the form of those recognizable as government officials or soldiers. While the government is certainly mentioned in the anime, and clearly exists in some form that is able to exert that level of control over the citizens, it exists mainly because the way we live requires a government, and so any story that does not explicitly state otherwise is simply assumed to have one that functions in a way we can recognize and relate to. 
In the novels, although they are not the only ones in the government, Fennec and Labcoat occupy the highest position, and are able to confirm the existence of a structured government, and give insight into the background and current issues facing that government. Through them, the events taking place are to a certain extent demystified, and while not explained entirely, we are able to more accurately identify those events as being somewhat purposeful and directly related to the overarching story. Their absence in the anime, while useful in its own way for adapting the themes of the story and creating a sense of mystery in a visual medium, also result in a (perhaps unintended) ideological shift in the overall message of the story, leaving it unclear as to what exactly happened, or could happen in the future. Also, like most things that got left out of the anime, this seems to be at least partially a result of the time crunch of fitting 9 books into only 11 episodes, so while I may have (a lot of) issues with the overall result of this particular change, there also isn’t really much that could have been done about it outside of just making the show longer (which they should have done but I know that wasn’t really an option). Ultimately though, through Fennec and Labcoat, and their existence as a unit in the series, we are able to better contextualize the events of No.6’s story, understand how those events came to take place, and get a better sense of how No.6 as a city and a society really functions. With their omission, we not only lose those understandings, but the ideology portrayed and supported by the story also change, and while that change may not be important to the overall enjoyment of the story, the implications end up being quite significant, and not necessarily in the way you would want.
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nightqueendany · 6 years ago
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Leak Connections:
So I was just reading @adecila’s recent POST on her re-watch of the Friki leaks regarding Tyrion’s trial. I had just finished reading that post when I was made aware of the UPDATE to the FreeFolk 8x05 leaks page about Cleganebowl photos being “confirmation” of Mad!Dany.
And there are some things with both that I want to talk about that I noticed. These are in no particular order, under the cut.
1) Bran’s flashback. According to the old Friki leaks, Bran has a flashback (or maybe he just says the line) of Tyrion telling Catelyn back in his first ever trial from Season 1 (AGOT), “I never bet against my family.” Implying that Tyrion has been playing the long game and has been Team Cersei this entire time. Perhaps that’s not entirely what’s happened, but Friki claims this line will be used against Tyrion. Apparently GRRM’s book editor and the person who writes the comics also somehow support this information and that this line specifically was added to the comics of Book1 because it foreshadowed Tyrion’s end. So regardless of the “how”, Tyrion does betray everyone for his family.
2) Friki also claims that for sure we will get a scene (likely during the battle of King’s Landing) of people in front of a gate saying, “Open the gates.” Now, the “open the gates” lines and Tyrion’s betryal are not directly connected, as far as I can tell. It’s just speculation on Friki’s part. However, Friki says there is a scene with Jon, Davos, and Tyrion walking through the wreckage of King’s Landing at some point where Tyrion says the line, “What have I done?” So it could be possible Tyrion keeps gates closed in King’s Landing, or not. Still not sure what the connection here is but Tyrion apparently feels responsible for some of the destruction of the capital.
3) It appears two endings for Tyrion are possible however. Some leaks saying ‘Jon will kill Dany’ say Tyrion is still on trial and that Sansa has promised Tyrion they will rule together, only to betray him in the end to seize power for herself. Others just mention Tyrion’s trial with no details. Some have Tyrion freeing Jaime from Dany, Dany arresting him, and Tyrion somehow still being on trial with the Starks/Davos at the end. One has Tyrion listening for the surrender bells (that apparently set Dany off) but it’s not mentioned where Tyrion is, if he is with Jon and co or Dany or elsewhere. Also not said why bells signal surrender of Cersei’s armies). And others claim it’s not a trial at all, but a “Great Council” and Tyrion becomes one of Bran’s advisors because Bran becomes King.
All of these above “leakers” have some amount of credibility to the FreeFolk community but clearly, they can’t all be right. Someone has to be wrong or have partially incorrect information because much of that is contradictory.
So the Tyrion-Trial plot point in and of itself proves that there is false information floating around somewhere.
4) Arya during 8x05: Friki said that Arya is in King’s Landing when it goes up in flames and it’s possible the audience will think she’s dead by the end of 8x05 with all the destruction and what not. But, Friki also says that Arya is at Tyrion’s trial so in 8x06 we would see Arya escape. In the “Cleganebowl photo” “leaks”, something similar is mentioned. Arya is caught up in the destruction of the city and it looks like she’s dead. But then she gets up and leaves the city on a horse and this is possibly the end of 8x05, not somewhere in 8x06. So this seems likely. I’m guessing the leaks that say Arya is “useless” are referring to this because she doesn’t get to kill Cersei.
5) Highgarden. As we saw in last episode, Tyrion promises Bronn Highgarden. Friki says we see aerial shots of Highgarden. So this is perhaps why, because it now belongs to Bronn.
6) The 4Plebs leaks. I’ve noticed these circulating around the Jonerys fandom and investigated them myself. You can find the threads HERE. So the OP in this link gave us these spoilers:
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“Tyrion fucking dies, because he betrays Jon and Dany. That is the "bitter" part of the ending. The Sweet part is Dany and Jon survive and rule together, riding off into the sunset on a dragon. No joke. That fucking Spanish bitch got it all right. I Hate myself for reading the spoilers even though I thought they were fanfics. Also, White Walkers are killed by episode 4 and main focus is Cersei.”
This was posted on 4/14, the day of the season premiere. Now, anon here says these leaks come from Friki but I don’t believe Friki has ever said Jon and Dany fly off on a dragon together. I feel like I have seen this leak elsewhere about Jon and Dany flying off on a dragon but I can’t remember where. Further down in this thread we see these posts:
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They essentially make the same points about the latter half of the season: White Walkers are finished by 8x04 which is more or less correct, rest of the season is dedicated to defeating Cersei, Tyrion betrays Jon/Dany, with a few additional details in each - Jaime kills Cersei, Jon/Dany ride off into the sunset.
As far as I know, the first pic is the only one that outlines the ENTIRE season. All other leaks I have seen have only given details on one or two episodes at a time, aside from these two 1, 2, which both say Jon kills Dany. But even then, they include no details about the early episodes, just from 3/4 on. The pic above has every single episode, aside from Ep 1 which had just aired so that’s why it’s not included, and even then, the second link gets Dany and Cersei mixed up at first, initially saying Jon kills Cersei, not Dany.
7) Unsullied vs Lannisters. According to the Friki leaks mentioned on the Reddit master post, Friki said 7 months ago that there was, “Fake action scene between Unsullied and Lannister soldiers in the dragon pit as misdirection. Meant to deceive us and the action scene was never filmed.”
Many of the “Jon kills Dany” leaks mention the Unsullied fighting Lannister forces - the Lannisters start to surrender at the sound of “bells” but Grey Worm, either of his own volition or because he sees Dany continuing to burn the city, spears a Lannister who had surrendered and the fighting continues.
Now, I’ve pointed out before that this scenario already seemed odd for the simple reason that all these leaks keep saying “Lannister” and not “Golden Company” when the majority of Cersei’s forces should be the Golden Company. They’re the most featured in all the previews (and a Golden Company vs Unsullied fight has been pretty hyped).
There are shots in the 8x05 preview of men not in Golden Company uniform...but they’re not in Lannister uniform either:
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These are the typical Lannister uniforms:
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Everything about these guys outfits from 8x05 are different to the point where I don’t know who or what they are. They’re not Euron’s men. They’re not Golden Company men. And they’re not Lannisters, based on their outfits. But as they’re operating the scorpions in different locations of King’s Landing that have the Lannister lion on them (Euron’s scorpions look like a kraken), I guess they’re Lannisters? But regardless, they’re not ground troops. The Golden Company are the ground troops. The “Lannisters” seem to be either a) operating the scorpions or b) are archers on the castle walls as we saw in 8x04.
However, if Friki says the Unsullied vs Lannister stuff from the Dragonpit is fake, then perhaps this gives explanation to why many leaks mention it? If Friki is claiming HBO put out information to “misdirect” the audience - scenes that were never filmed - the Unsullied-attack-surrendering-Lannisters leaks could definitely be part of that.
8) One more thing I would like to point out is, aside from Friki’s leaks about 8x01, NO ONE has leaked details in their entirety. We keep getting small details: “Arya kills Night King”, “Jon kills Dany in throne room” “Tyrion betrays everyone”, etc. None of the information from the leaks seems to be connected in any way. We just have snippets of things.
And again, as I’ve pointed out twice above, it definitely appears that there are differing versions of things and HBO has put out false information at least potentially once. But if they’ve done it once, then what’s to say they haven’t done it more than that?
One source might have “Cleganebowl” pics, but if they haven’t seen the actual scene of Dany “going mad” or “Jon killing Dany” then it’s still in question as to whether those things actually happen. *Edit: FreeFolk also claims these leaks do not fit their particular standards for reliable leaks so take the Cleganebowl leaks with a grain of salt!:
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Also, why would extras be present in a scene where Jon kills Dany? Why would anyone superfluous be present for shooting such a scene? Only key people would likely be there for this because it would be SUCH a huge spoiler.
Anyway, you guys can take all this with a grain of salt. I unfortunately don’t work for HBO so I have no sources and have yet to see the episodes. But these are just dots I’ve connected. Let me know what you think.
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saintmachina · 6 years ago
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How did you decide what your "personal brand" was? I struggle because there are so many parts of me, so many contradictory characters I could become—how do you decide which ones to hold up to the light, and be the shining bits of you other people see?
Alright kids strap in because Momma has been philosophizing on this of late and she has some Hot Takes.
Cultural Context
Let me start by saying that “personal brand” is a concept that is being pushed hard right now on people, even very young ones. We live in a society where its not only possible but encouraged to curate your online presence into a recognizable essence, often with the unspoken aim of getting people to like and trust you so that someday they can invest in you financially or pick you out of the crowd for a job or project. This is not an inherently bad thing, and can be very fun and useful if leveraged in a healthy way, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you need to brand yourself to exist and that you need to live up to the color-coded, curated, narratively unified version of yourself that exists online.
Suggested Reading
Before I continue I want to direct you to two amazing video essays about this issue, Lindsay Ellis’ essay on  the way creators manufacture authenticity, and Natalie Wynn’s Ted Talk on how performing a hyper-stylized versions of different philosophical opinions on her Youtube channel have helped her protect herself from as much harm as possible. They’re both kind of heady but they’ve both been really helpful to me in A.) branding myself and B.) learning to see myself as separate from my “brand”. Let’s continue.
Creator Identity
I am a creator in the age of the internet. To be specific, I am a writer and a poet and occasionally a public theologian. For me, my ~aesthetic~ is yes, a way to express myself, but it’s also the way I let potential readers get to know me, my vibe, and my writing, so that when I announce I have a new book out, they already like and trust me enough to buy it. I hope this doesn’t sound callous; I have a very meaningful intimate relationship with my readers that I see as having spiritual value, but I also know what I’m doing when I post selfies or chat posts that go with the witch-saint-loving aunt thing I have going on here. And I think that people who aren’t trying to connect the right people with what they have to sell, artistically or in terms of services or otherwise, have to worry about branding a lot less. 
I’ve been maintaining a social media presence as a writer for almost ten years now, and my brand has become more streamlined as I have grown into myself as an adult woman. I love this woman and respect her enough to know that she may change tastes and change her voice as she ages, and that’s fine too, but one thing that I’ve been moving towards in my mid-twenties is having what I call a “partially opaque” brand.
Opacity
 A non-opaque brand is one of total messy off-the-cuff realness with almost no boundaries between creator and fan (Amanda Palmer does this well) and a totally opaque brand is put forward by a person who seems so unified, so separate, so enigmatic, that the lines between creator and fans are quite stark (think Donna Tartt). I used to have pretty much the same aesthetic that I have now but a brand that was almost entirely non-opaque; I posted my feelings and opinions on everything, talked openly about every single update to my religious, mental health, sex, and social life, and was 100% accessible at all times to readers. In an effort to protect my time, energy, privacy, and art as I’ve grown, I’ve learned to have more boundaries, but I still post selfies and life updates (generally with a bit of an ~aesthetic~ veneer but not always) and encourage people to ask me whatever questions they have because being warm and accessible and loving is important to me. 100% opacity is not right for me because I want to be able to show up at book cons and hug fans and answer life advice asks and be honest about things like burnout or spiritual doubt or personal branding (how’s that for meta). I think if you are a creator on the internet it is very important to decide from the get go how opaque you want your brand to be. 
For me, adding more opacity helped me distinguish my own life and value from what people on the internet thought of my work or my opinons, and it helped me to stop giving an excess of energy to places where I wasn’t getting it back. Being a bit more of a mystery at times has opened up space in my life for Sabbath and leasiure and getting back in touch with who I am when the lights go down and I am no longer on a virtual stage. 
The Fragmented Self
No one out here, not even the most deliriously aesthetic dark academia blogger with a watertight color scheme, is just one thing. When we brand ourselves (and yes it can be a holy act of connection and self-revelation when done right) we bring forward things about ourselves that are important to us and have narrative cohesion and present them in a beautiful way. When I do personal branding for small businesses like Fratres Dei spiritual direction, we do long self-exploratory sessions to determine which facets to bring into the light. But all of us contain multitudes and oftetimes our lives don’t have the sense of narrative cohesion the internet thrives on. Sometimes we can leverage that (I learned early on that there was no hiding my love of the Bible and of esoterica, my heavily religious life and my wildly doubtful faith. They were already so present in my writing that I stopped trying to hide it and Lo and behold I found the right readers, God bless them) and sometimes we can’t, and that’s okay.
I suggest locking on to the things about yourself that you feel are most essential and have the most vitality, and then putting them into conversation with each other and trying to find connections. If there are ones that don’t connect to the others, that’s lovely, that’s a holy thing, but it may not belong in your online personal branding. Maybe that’s a private thing for now to be enjoyed between you and loved ones, to germinate until it can find a place in your public life, or to stay blessedly secret.
My advice? Always leave a part of yourself at the end of the day for yourself. You don’t own this blue hellscape every ounce of you. 
Tl;dr A successful brand is an authentic version of yourself, just a little bit more tailored, and part of that success is deciding up front how much of yourself you want to share with others. 
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inawickedlittletown · 7 years ago
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Walking The Wire (52/?)
Summary: Tony Stark always knew about Peter Parker. He didn’t know that Peter was going to get superpowers and become Spider-Man, but he always knew about Peter because Peter was his son.
This will span from pre-Iron Man up through the rest of the MCU (eventually including Infinity War) and will be for the most part canon compliant except where I’ve taken some liberties and interpreted canon a certain way.
Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Tony/Steve (endgame), Tony/Mary (past)
A/N: If you want me to tag you when I post new chapters let me know. This fic is also on AO3
I used Collider’s MCU timeline to stay canon and the title of this fic is an Imagine Dragons song that is just so fitting for Peter and Tony
Masterpost
Chapter Fifty One
There seemed to be a lot going on inside Tony Stark’s workshop when Peter was allowed inside by Friday. There was music blaring -- something loud and hard that Peter was sure Uncle Ben had listened to and that made Peter wince because it was so loud. Thinking about Uncle Ben hurt a little, especially in light of Tony Stark being his father because Uncle Ben ad tried to tell him with his last words and when Peter didn’t let him he had never expected to ever find his father or even get to know him.
Mr. Stark was working on something to do with the Spider-Man suit, Peter realized as he stepped further inside. He was too busy to notice that Peter had entered but one of the bots did and wheeled over to him and Peter laughed because it was just a robot but it was cute and Peter reached out to touch it and then it was gone again and Peter watched as it grabbed what looked to be a blender cup and wheeled towards Mr. Stark.
“Dum-E, I am not hungry,” Mr. Stark said without even looking up, “put that back before I donate you to charity. Not sure any will take you, but there is a chance.”
Dum-E beeped and Peter thought the robot sounded a little sad as he rolled to set the blender cup down elsewhere. Whatever was inside didn’t really look appetizing so Peter understood why Mr. Stark didn’t want it.
“Mr. Stark,” Peter said, stepping closer.
Mr. Stark didn’t seem to hear him and Peter could tell that the man was in his element so Peter figured it was probably better to just let him work. Instead he looked around the workshop a little more. It really was an amazing space.  
Peter didn’t know if Mr. Stark had gone to bed at all the night before since he never saw or heard him leave the workshop. But, then, Peter had actually fallen asleep in the living room until he woke up in the middle of the night and Friday led him to one of the bedrooms and the most comfortable bed that Peter had ever slept on. Peter had woken up there a little confused just a few minutes earlier, but everything had flooded in and Peter found that he was feeling a little bit better about everything. He just still needed some more time to figure out what would come next. He pressed his hands against his ears as he walked around the workshop and wondered if Friday would lower the volume if he asked.
He ended up not having to ask because suddenly the music died down and Mr. Stark was looking up at a screen and a woman that Peter recognized as Pepper Potts appeared there. She wore a business suit, had her hair tied back and more put together than anyone that Peter had ever seen before.  
“Hey, Pep, what’s going on?” Mr. Stark asked.
“I did a bit of digging around. I’ll send you everything I managed to find on The Raft. I just don’t know how that’ll come in handy to you because you can’t do the rescuing yourself and currently we’re not going to get anywhere even if we get all of the SI lawyers on this.”
Mr. Stark sighed. “I think Steve will take care of the rescuing for us. I just hope that Ross isn’t trying to use The Raft as bait. I’ll have to get some of this to Steve and offer as much help as we can. I know where he is so I’ll find a way.”
“That sounds like you’ve thought this through. How are you with that? Are you--”
Mr. Stark cut her off. “I’m fine. I’m more than fine. Have you heard from Fury yet? He’s not returning my calls and Hill hasn’t answered my emails which is typical.”
Ms. Potts didn’t seem to care that Mr. Stark was brushing off her first question. “Maybe they’re more on Steve’s side than yours,” Ms. Potts said.
Mr. Stark laughed. “Wouldn’t put it past them, but we’ll need their help if we’re going to try and work around this mess. I did hear from Helen Cho. There’s really nothing more they can do. She’s going to personally oversee his transfer.”
Peter didn’t want to interrupt the conversation, but he felt bad about listening in on Mr. Stark’s conversation. It was just hard to move and try to get a word in to make Mr. Stark notice that he was there.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” Ms. Potts said.
“It shouldn’t have come to that,” Mr. Stark said and shook his head. “It just means I’ll have to fix it.”
“Have you spoken to Rhodey?”
“Not really. I don’t know what I would say--”
“And how’s Peter?” Ms. Potts asked.
Peter’s head snapped up at the sound of his name. He hadn’t expected for Mr. Stark to tell anyone about him. It made him wonder about who else might know. Did The Avengers know?
“According to Friday he’s fine. Slept well enough last night even though some of it was on a couch. I really -- I don’t know what I’m doing here. But, he’s great, Pep, he’s just so great. I always knew that but it’s different now I know him.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Ms. Potts said. “You always do and anyway, I think you’re doing well so far. I’ll call if I have anything else to add and keep me updated on Rhodey. Also, Peter’s just behind you so that seems like a good sign.” Then Ms. Potts was gone and Mr. Stark turned around, looking surprised.  
“Um, I’m sorry,” Peter said at once. “Friday let me in and then the music was too loud but you said I could come in here and--”
Mr.Stark grinned at him. “Don’t worry about it. You’re welcome in here any time unless it’s on lockdown. Anyway, Friday could have told me you were here when you walked in and she didn’t so really it’s on her.”
“Right,” Peter said and let out a breath. He had never felt so awkward in his life.
“I’ve been working on a few updates for your suit,” Tony said, turning back to his work.
“Oh,” Peter said.
It was mostly precautions. Protocols to protect Peter in any circumstance that Tony could think of because a part of him wanted to just take the suit away and tell Peter that he couldn’t go out as Spider-Man anymore. But Tony knew that it would be a contradictory message after taking him to Germany. In part, Tony could admit that it wasn’t even the dangerous aspect of what Peter did that was bothering him -- he was well aware of how capable Peter was and what his powers gave him -- it was that Tony wasn’t sure how low a profile Peter could keep.
“Does that mean -- am I keeping the suit?”
“Of course you’re keeping the suit,” Tony said and turned to look at him. “Kid, I made this for you. As much for my own peace of mind as it is because you’re not especially talented with a needle.”
“I tried my best,” Peter said.
Tony let himself smile a little. “Yeah, you probably did and I can admit that you weren’t doing too badly for yourself.” He stared at Peter for a long moment and frowned. “Did you have breakfast yet?”
“No. Just woke up,” Peter said and before he lost the courage to:  “I think I’m ready to talk about--” he waved his hands “--everything.”
“Sure, sure,” Tony said.
Peter took a deep breath. He didn’t really know how to explain himself. “I don’t -- I don’t really know what this means. I don’t know what you want from me, I guess? I wasn’t looking for my father. We were doing this project in school. Blood typing and punnett squares and I figured it out -- there was no way Richard Parker could be my father. I never thought I would ever figure out who it was and you’re the last person I thought it might be and now…”
Tony could see how nervous and unsure Peter was and yet he was trying not to let that show. Tony was a little surprised about the whole punnett square thing but then again Peter would be smart enough to figure it out that way. Tony was sure that if Peter had actually suspected that Tony and he were related that he would have also found a way to get Tony’s DNA and test it.
Peter seemed to be waiting for him to speak and Tony knew that he had to take everything a bit slower. Maybe he had thrown too much at Peter.
“I wanted you to know, Peter, because I didn’t want to keep that secret from you now that we’ve met,” Tony said and it hurt a little to not just shove all his emotion out at Peter and yet he was realizing that maybe Peter wasn’t ready to know the extent to which Tony cared for him.
“Okay,” Peter said and nodded.
Tony smiled at him. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time but it never worked out. Part of it was me being who I am -- being Iron Man. Your Uncle came up with the idea of the letters as a way to make it so we could have some contact with each other. He was a good man, Peter, and he always wanted the best for you.”
“He came up with the idea,” Peter whispered, surprised. “But that was years ago. Why couldn’t --”
“Peter, the circumstances made it very difficult and we didn’t want -- we didn’t want to tell you the truth if you and I couldn’t meet in person. Anyway, that was then and I’ve finally met you and you know the truth.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, but he was frowning a little and Tony didn’t know what to make of that, but he decided that he might as well finish with what he wanted to say.
“I know you’re not sure where this leaves us and I’m not much better. I don’t want to add any pressure on you. It’s the last thing you need on top of Spider-Man and everything else and I do understand that, Peter, and you can have as long as you want to decide what you want here -- if you want me in your life as more than just a weird eccentric mentor. But I want you to know I’m here for anything. It doesn’t matter the time, the place, or anything else, I’m here. For you, I will always be here whether it be Peter problems or Spider-Man problems. I just wanted you to know and it’s shocking and strange but it’s the truth and I’m game for whatever you want this to mean.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Peter said after a long silence.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Tony said and decided that it was probably better to just change the subject and let Peter think on all of that. “Now come on, you have to explain to me about why you thought it was smart to email me questions about spiders? I’ve been meaning to ask.”
Peter actually laughed and some of the worry seemed to fall off his shoulders. “I didn’t know who else to ask,” Peter said. “Also, I kind of wanted you to figure it out, I think, and anyway the idea came from Oscorp because they were working on it and they showed us a bit of it on that field trip and I would have asked even if I didn’t get bitten by a spider.”
“But you did get bitten and decided that you would still ask,” Tony said with a grin. This kid really was something else.
Peter shrugged.
Tony also suddenly realized that he had never looked into the whole spider bite thing. He hadn’t questioned Peter further on it or tried to make sure that he really was alright and that he wasn’t going to end up with some weird side effects.
“Mr. Stark?” Peter asked.
Tony shook his head. That would be something for later. “It did help,” Tony said, “once I was trying to figure out who Spider-Man was. I thought maybe you had found the webbing or seen Spider-Man. Bit of a surprise when it turned out that my son was Spider-Man, but I guess we’re not so different after all.”
Peter looked unsure again, but then he seemed to push past it. “My aunt always said that I was a lot like my father. I took it to be Richard but she knew he wasn’t my father so she was talking about you. She knew it was you.”
It felt almost like Peter was trying get confirmation that May and Ben did know -- although it had all been implied already -- and Tony figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it to him.
“They knew,” Tony said, “your mother must have told them. Mary made them your guardians in case anything happened to her and Richard and she must have told them about me as well at some point.”
“Oh,” Peter said. “She didn’t think you’d want to take me in if-- when they died?”
Tony shrugged. “I was a completely different person when your mother knew me. I wouldn’t have been good for you or any kid back then. I was a mess.”
“Right,” Peter nodded, and Tony hoped that Peter would never understand the extent to the mess that Tony had been back then.
“Anyway. Breakfast, come on. You’re a growing spider-boy.”
Chapter Fifty Three
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onlymorelove · 7 years ago
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fic:  Where Do You Go? (2/?)
Title: Where Do You Go? (2/?) Fandom: Teen Wolf Relationship: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken Characters: Theo Raeken, Liam Dunbar Summary:  Theo needs a shower.
(Takes place a few weeks after the Anuk-Ite is defeated.) Rating: T Tags: Post-canon, Character Study, Sharing Clothes, Touch Starvation Chapter Title: "but I was looking at his hand."
Tagging @candidamay at her request. If anyone wants to be tagged or untagged for updates, just let me know.
Read under the cut or on AO3.
[Part 1] or [Part 1 on AO3]
“Hmmm . . . Someone’s supposed to be in school. So why are you at home right now?”
Liam shrugged, and the side of his shoulder bumped up along Theo’s. “I felt like skipping bio.”
“Liam Dunbar played hooky?” Theo clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. “You juvenile delinquent, you. Someone’s been naughty.” He winked and shook a finger at Liam. “I like it. I'm almost impressed. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“What can I say?” A better man than Theo might not have noticed how broad Liam’s shoulders were as he spread his arms wide and shrugged in a questioning gesture. As it was, Theo knew he wasn’t a very good man at all. “I contain multitudes,” Liam said.
“Apparently,” Theo muttered under his breath.
“Now can we skip the witty banter and get to the point?”
He tried not to stare at Liam, really, he did, but the stupid navy shirt he wore drew Theo’s attention to his stupidly blue eyes like a magnet. “But I like the witty banter.”
“So do I. It’s kind of our thing, but . . .”
Before he could smother it, a spark of pleasure flared to life in Theo’s chest at Liam’s acknowledgment that he enjoyed their back and forth. Our thing, he’d said. Theo’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the sound of that a little more than he should.
A frown cut across Liam’s face. His fingers snapped a few scarce inches from Theo’s nose. “Cut the crap and focus on the issue.”
“Which is what?”
“I walk in and find you asleep in my kitchen, wearing the shirt I haven’t been able to find for weeks now. So what’s up, Goldilocks? Why are you here?”
A smirk plucked at Theo’s lips. “Well, baby bear”—he shouldn’t have called him that, but the temptation proved too strong for Theo to resist—“this chair isn’t too big or too small; it’s just right.”
In lieu of a reply, Liam rolled those stupidly blue eyes, balled up the empty potato chip bag, and beaned Theo square in the nose with it.
Before the impromptu missile could hit the floor, Theo laughed and caught it one-handed, and set it back on the table.
Thinking on his feet was second nature to Theo by now. The lies he might concoct to explain his presence in Liam’s house started to click and whirl within him. But his head felt like it was stuffed with an entire bag of cotton balls, and Liam stared at him, eyes clear and steady, pulse a metronome, waiting. Under that unflinching blue gaze, something in Theo unclenched. “I came here to take a shower,” he said. The words tumbled out with a sigh. He flicked at the chip packet. Weariness tugged at his bones, as inexorable a force as gravity. Sometimes the truth was the simplest answer.
“Why? What’s wrong with your shower?”
He steeled himself for the inevitable barrage of questions. “I don’t have one.”
“You don’t have a—” Liam’s words cut off, and his nose and eyebrows scrunched in an expression that was fifty percent deep thought, fifty percent constipation; a laugh bubbled up in Theo’s chest at the confusion drawn over his familiar features, but he swallowed it at the last moment.
Liam looked—adorable, his mind supplied; like something worth adoring—but Theo wasn’t in the habit of thinking that way about anyone, least of all this little wolf with eyes that rivaled the sky on a cloudless day, the Pacific and its salt-scented breezes, or some other patently sentimental bullshit.
Sentiment was worthless. Sentiment got you killed. Or worse, for there existed a plethora of things worse than outright death. These were lessons from the Dread Doctors’ Advanced Placement curriculum for living your best life, and Theo had learned them at their feet; at the pointy end of their carnival of surgical instruments.
Theo’s hand lifted. Reached toward Liam’s face. Stopped an inch away when he caught himself and consciously reasserted control. “Careful, Scooby Doo”—he circled his index finger in the air, indicating the vertical grooves between Liam’s drawn-together eyebrows—“if you do that often enough, your face’ll stay like that.” His eyes widened for dramatic effect. “Forever.”
“Shut up.” Liam’s hand pinched Theo’s sleeve and pushed his hand from his face. “And don’t call me that.”
“What? Scooby Doo?” Theo asked, voice lit with unassuming innocence, and waited to see if the arrow hit its mark. (He didn’t have to wait long; he rarely did.)
“Why are you such an idiot?”
“Takes one to know one, Scooby,” he taunted.
A scowl rippled across Liam’s face, and Theo didn’t bother to hide his grin. The scent of Liam’s irritation wafted to his nose, widening his grin. It was so irresistibly easy to dart in and lodge a barb under the other boy’s skin.
Theo’s forearm landed on the table, and Liam’s fingers slid down from his sleeve and snagged Theo’s wrist, fingers poised in a loose curl around the bones there. The smile faltered, then dropped from Theo’s face entirely, like a heavy curtain had fallen. Liam’s thumb stroked, slowly, only once, under the frayed cuff of the hoodie. Theo’s heart juddered in his chest; it was probably asking too much to hope Liam didn’t notice and wonder about its cause. Lady Luck rarely took his side. Maybe this one time ...
That touch, it didn’t mean anything. To Liam, it was merely a casual thing; a split-second glance at his face confirmed he likely didn’t even realize what he’d just done.
It doesn’t mean anything.
But it hurt Theo. It felt like blood rushing into limbs that had lost circulation, causing pins and needles. The pain zinged along Theo’s nerve pathways, lighting them up when they’d been dormant for what felt like eons. It hurt worse than the crunch of bone and cartilage that had nearly forced tears from his eyes when Liam had broken his nose three times at the old zoo.
Because this wasn’t a punch; a kick; a bullet; a claw; a scalpel.
Those things he could heal from.
This was Liam.
Liam, who didn’t know—couldn’t know—he wielded a weapon against Theo.
He was a weapon.
Skin skin skin.
Liam’s skin.
The torturous glide of it against Theo’s skin.
Bruising. Tearing. Ripping through Theo precisely because the pressure felt light, barely-there, natural and easy. Easy like the rise and fall of Liam’s smiles and frowns. The ones that flared and blinked like fireflies in Theo’s consciousness when he lay poised on the steep edge of sleep in his truck every night, quiet and so very alone but for the galloping cadence of his mind and his sister’s heart.
This was jumping into frigid water and feeling everything freeze. Limbs, muscles, blood, bone, and sinew, all these things transmuted into ice while Theo waited . . . Waited to adjust. Waited to breathe again.
He wondered if being born felt like this; a cataclysm of too-bright light that made him want to slam his eyes shut and hide in cool darkness, and an excess of sensory input the brain struggled to assimilate and make sense of.
He inhaled through his nose, hard.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five   Mississippi, he chanted in his head, so he wouldn’t fling Liam’s hand away from him; so he wouldn’t flip over his arm and clutch Liam’s hand like it tethered him to the world.
Freak. Pull yourself together. It doesn’t mean anything.
Followed by this damning thought:  But I want it to.
Inside the solitary confinement of his own mind, where no one but Theo could hear them, his wolf and his coyote howled and bayed, low, mournful sounds issuing from their fanged maws.
If those fingers stroked the pale, vulnerable inside of his wrist again, it would be over.
Don’t do it. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
Do it. Please. Please. Please. Keep touching me. Please. Please. Please. I need this.   This could break him if he allowed it to, Theo acknowledged to himself in a keen-edged moment of clarity. Liam could break him if he allowed him to, and he wouldn’t need to use even a fraction of his considerable bitten-werewolf strength to do it. “Awww . . . Liam, if you wanted to hold my hand, you could have just said so,” Theo said in a near purr and watched Liam’s fingers fly from his wrist like he’d been burned. He’d reacted precisely as Theo’d expected him to; he found it a cold, Pyrrhic victory.  
Despite the mocking grin Theo forced his lips to form, a terrible emptiness lay over the place where Liam had touched him. It smarted like a fresh brand. He wished— He wished Liam had never touched him; he wished Liam would touch him again. Two contradictory impulses warred inside him, and if someone put a gun to his temple right then and forced him to choose, Theo couldn’t say which one would win out. Theo flexed his hand, then laced his fingers together in his lap and cracked his knuckles.
How was he supposed to forget what he’d just remembered—how it felt to be touched by another person?
“If I . . .” Liam yanked at the collar of his shirt, his movements graceless and jerky. A finger scratched at the corner of his mouth before he settled for folding his arms tightly over his chest, fingers jumping against his shoulder in an irregular beat. It made Theo’s fingers twitch where they rested against his knees. Liam cleared his throat before he continued speaking. “If I wanted to hold your hand, I would’ve just held it.” Slashes of pink angled high across Liam’s cheekbones, but his gaze met Theo’s without flinching. “Why? Do you want me to hold your hand?” Something like the hint of a challenge sparked in the depths of Liam’s eyes.
Theo searched Liam’s face for signs of mockery but found none. The question settled in the space between them. It gathered weight and seemed to grow larger the longer it sat unanswered. Theo caught his lip between his teeth. His throat clicked as he swallowed against the desert dryness there. Though he scrambled for a snappy retort, aware of the awkwardness that fizzed and bubbled and grew with each passing second of silence, any words he might have spoken died in his mouth in the face of Liam’s steadfast, unblinking scrutiny. Theo hadn’t anticipated this sort of reaction from him.
Theo looked away first.
He’d underestimated Liam.
When he dared to peek at Liam again, he found him staring back at him, a determined set to his jaw. “It won’t work,” he said, and there was a discordant note (of disappointment, maybe?) in his voice. It made heat flash at the back of Theo’s neck. When had he started to care if he disappointed Liam? “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Oh, and what’s that?” Theo asked, careful to keep his tone cool and light, even though his thoughts were anything but that. “Maybe you’d like to enlighten the rest of the class.” With narrowed eyes, Theo pushed his chair back from the table and folded his arms behind his head, aiming for casual.
“You’re trying to hide something from me.”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“Really?” That one word carried a wealth of skepticism. “Yes, really.” Theo shrugged, letting his eyebrows echo the movement of his shoulders. “I’m an open book.”
“Yeah, of course you are.” Liam huffed a laugh edged in something bitter. “Fine. What kind of place are you staying at that doesn’t have a shower?”
“Be careful what you ask. You sure you actually want to hear the answer?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Tell. Me.” Liam shifted, angling his chair toward Theo. He rolled his hand in a get on with it motion.
Theo’s hands dropped to his thighs with a clap. “My truck.”
“Your truck.” Liam’s mouth dropped open, and Theo couldn’t help the small flicker of satisfaction that shimmered at this evidence of Liam’s surprise. Theo watched Liam puzzle it out. He could pinpoint the moment Liam put it all together; the moment when questions, half-truths, and speculation finally coalesced into understanding. His brow smoothed out, but his hands shook as they rose to scrub over his mouth and then his cheeks. “You’ve been living out of your truck,” he said quietly, enunciating each word with great care. “You’ve been living out of your truck,” Liam repeated, louder this time, his shoulders held stiff.
“That’s what I said.”
“How long?”
“Since you brought me back.” The words plinked like pebbles skittering off a high cliff, falling and falling until they hit the ground with a distant, barely perceptible ping.
“Fuck!”
Theo flinched at the explosion of sound and looked past Liam, calculating how fast he’d have to move to get around him and out the front door.
“Kira’s mom told me you were my responsibility. And you were.” Liam’s hands clenched in his hair as his voice started to climb. “You are. My responsibility and I fucked up and I’m an idiot and why didn’t you fucking tell me, Theo?” The last words came out in a shout.
“I didn’t come here for this, Liam. I didn’t come here for your self-righteous anger or whatever this is—”
“Self-righteous anger?” Chest heaving, Liam blinked rapidly. “Oh my god, I’m an idiot for sure”—he jabbed a finger at his own chest before pointing it in Theo’s direction—“but you, you’re a fucking moron. You think I’m mad at you?” Liam roared.
Liam was stronger, but Theo was quicker. He could probably make an exit before Liam was on him. As he prepared to move, Theo’s muscles tensed. Some part of his thoughts must have shown on his face, however, because Liam’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click a moment before he placed a hand on Theo’s sleeve, stilling him when every instinct he had screamed at him to get out.
“Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t do it.” While Liam’s pulse hammered, the pace far too rapid for calm, his words were quiet, even gentle. Control still didn’t come easily for Liam, but the fact that he was still fighting, still trying, and often succeeding, made a twinge of pride rise in Theo’s chest before he cursed himself for being the worst kind of fool and suppressed it. “I’m not... mad at you. I mean, I am, but mostly I’m pissed at myself.” A harsh breath pushed out through Liam’s mouth, ruffling the hair that fell over his forehead. Theo wanted to brush it back, wanted to discover if the strands were as soft as they looked in the sunlit kitchen. If he’d been a different person; if he’d made better choices; if he’d deserved someone like Liam, then he might have reached across the chasm between them. “But you’re right, you didn’t come here for this. You came here to take a shower.”
Theo’s stomach growled, louder than the endless torrent of thoughts churning in his head—loud enough that supernatural senses weren’t required to hear it, and Liam released his light grip on Theo’s sleeve. “You came to my house to shower”—Liam pointed at Theo’s traitorous stomach—“and you’re obviously hungry. You’ve been noshing on salt and vinegar chips, which, ew, disgusting.” And just like that, some of the tension that sizzled and snapped in the air eased.
“What? I like them. They’re good. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Yeah, I think I do. Dude, your breath reeks.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Shoving his chair back, Liam stood and motioned for him to follow. “Come on. I’ll get you some stuff. You can shower now.”
“Then what?”
Liam shot him a backward glance over his shoulder. “Then you can eat something besides stinky chips and may— Maybe we can talk some more.”
“Talk.” It fell somewhere between a question and a statement.
“Yes, talk. Don’t sound so suspicious,” Liam replied, and stopped walking. “Your mouth moves; some words come out. Most of them pretty stupid.”
“Haha. Hilarious, Liam. Really.”
Liam turned until he faced Theo head-on. “Not everything’s a battle, Theo,” he said, his voice pitched just shy of a whisper, driving a shiver up Theo’s spine. His crystalline gaze flickered from Theo’s eyes to somewhere lower on his face, then back up to his eyes again.
Theo fiddled with his duffel straps and studiously ignored how his stomach swooped at having Liam's attention focused on his features that way. “Most things are,” he replied, his voice equally quiet, and compelled himself to look straight into those stupidly blue eyes.
Liam reeled back like he’d been hit, eyes wide and mouth a shaky, downturned arc. His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed. For a few heartbeats, Theo was certain Liam would say something else, but he simply shook his head, watching Theo with something immeasurably sad in his eyes before he turned and led the way out of the kitchen.
A/N: Thank you for reading this chapter. What do you think? If you have the time to share your thoughts with me, I would certainly love to hear them. As a writer, you never know how your words are affecting, or NOT affecting readers unless they tell you. Constructive criticism is always welcome, so even if something didn't work for you, feel free to tell me that. 
Regardless, be well. :) 
*The chapter titles are borrowed from Richard Siken's "Anyway."
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mildredjizquierdo · 4 years ago
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Five pandemic predictions five months later. Was I right?
Looking back
In April, with the pandemic raging, lockdowns underway in the Northeast and West, and widespread panic about what the immediate future would bring, I tried to look over the horizon to see where we were heading. My 4 predictions for the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and Prediction 5: The end of immigration, distilled what I was seeing in Boston plus what I was hearing from healthcare and life sciences clients and physician and scientist friends in US hotspots and around the world. I didn’t put a timeframe on when this “next phase” would be, but with the summer behind us and a new school year getting going, now seems like a good time to take stock.
Judge for yourself, but overall I think I did well. Let’s review:
#1: Treatment, not testing will be key to reopening the economy Grade: B
I was right that testing wouldn’t be our savior, but also overestimated how quickly treatment would improve.
In April, everyone was talking about the need for millions of rapid turnaround tests to get things moving again. Other countries, like Germany and Singapore had deployed testing on a massive scale. But when I looked at what was going on in the US I was unimpressed. There were lots of announcements about capacity but little follow through.
Sadly, we’re still doing poorly. Recent estimates suggest the need for 193 million tests per day; we’re only doing 21 million. In Massachusetts (one of the leaders in testing) it’s still hard to get a test if you’re not symptomatic. Test results elsewhere can take a week or even longer, if you can get tested at all. Bill Gates recently criticized the current state of US testing: too few, too slow to return results, wrong swabs.
The absence of rapid turnaround testing at scale and weak contact tracking has hampered the ability of scientists to inform policy makers and the public about what works and what doesn’t. This failure contributed to the rapid spread of disease in early hot spots. It also fed public confusion and undermined support for guidelines, which seemed vague, random and contradictory.
Remdesivir was already showing promise in April, and non-drug adjustments such as optimization of mechanical ventilation and turning patients on their sides were being tried. Intriguing stories of cardiovascular impacts and cytokine storms were emerging. I expected we’d have a bunch of drugs and other innovations that would make COVID-19 a manageable disease by now. The death rate is down, but treatment improvements have been incremental and some early hopes fizzled. Dexamethasone, an old steroid is the only drug beyond remdesivir with widespread evidence of effectiveness.
There are new possibilities ahead. Olumiant (baricitinib) appears to help patients on remdesivir recover faster and may gain emergency approval by the time you read this. And researchers are looking at new mechanisms, such as bradykinin storms to understand how COVID-19 does its damage and how to stop it. There are several other treatments under evaluation, too.
Bottom line: fatigue, denial and surrender were bigger factors in reopening decisions than I expected. The economy still isn’t fully reopened and we may need to wait for a vaccine to move back toward normalcy.
#2: Hybridization (virtual/in-person mix) will be the new reality Grade: A+
I’m proud of this prediction. At the time I made it, the consensus was that everyone would return to the office by summer and get back to school in September. That hasn’t happened. Instead, as spaces reopen, hybrid models are emerging everywhere to reduce density and decrease risk. You see it with schools, businesses, physician offices and clinical trials. Remote work and school are still happening, but work from home is no panacea.
I expect hybridization to outlive the pandemic as individuals and organizations learn that a mix of in-person and remote is best for most activities. But patients may have to assert themselves to receive the full benefits of hybrid care, because healthcare organizations have a tendency to revert to what works for them rather than what’s most convenient and affordable for patients. Telehealth was used for almost 70 percent of total visits in April before dropping to around 20 percent in the summer. Some patient-centric leaders, such as Boston Children’s Hospital have maintained rates at close to 50 percent.
#3: Public health post-COVID-19 will be like security post-9/11 Grade: B
When I started traveling again soon after 9/11, the sudden jump in security at airports, office buildings and public spaces was staggering. In the following months and years, security became a huge industry and an obsession.
In April, I wrote:
“Now that COVID-19 has struck, we can expect public health to be similarly elevated. It will become a pervasive part of our economy and society. Expect temperature –and maybe face mask and hand washing– checks at the office, school, and any public venue.  Contact tracers may call or visit our homes or scrutinize our cellphone records. Event managers and employers will need to hire a health team and devise a health/safety plan to prevent outbreaks and provide confidence.”
I’ve certainly seen this in the private sector. For example, many private schools require daily health attestations, temperature checks, masks, outdoor eating, etc. Stores announce, “no mask, no service” policies in their windows. Some states and counties have good contact tracing programs, but unlike 9/11 there is no nationwide approach, and no Homeland Security equivalent.
As more venues reopen I expect that this trend will continue. What’s not yet clear is whether public health will receive additional funding and just how central it will be to our future. Much depends on how quickly and completely the current pandemic is brought under control, whether new health threats emerge soon, and who occupies the White House in 2021.
#4: Federal government will grow even more powerful relative to everything else Grade: A-
This prediction was paradoxical. Those I reviewed it with at the time found it novel and counter-intuitive. After all, the feds failed to prepare for the pandemic and threw everything onto the states. The CDC embarrassed itself with its testing approach and then was sidelined.
But the federal government has essentially unlimited spending power, which it used to prop up the economy with the $2+ Trillion CARES Act, and the stock market (via the Federal Reserve). Meanwhile, states had to come begging –quite literally—to the president for help, and our world-leading universities and colleges found themselves in desperate straits and unable to reopen.
In short, the federal government’s failures have weakened the rest of US society much more than the federal government itself has been weakened.
The reason I give myself an A- instead of an A is that I didn’t address what would happen relative to the rest of the world. The US federal government has lost international standing during the pandemic with its poor response. The country was rated as the most prepared for a pandemic –but botched things anyway. The withdrawal from the WHO weakened our hand, and our slow economic recovery means we’re losing ground on China and others.
#5: The end of immigration Grade: A
Crises present major opportunities for governments to enact policies they wouldn’t be able to get away with in normal times. The current Administration has made no secret of its disdain for immigration.  It had taken some dramatic steps before the pandemic, such as curtailing the H1-B program for highly skilled workers and attempting to build a wall along the Mexican border.
In April, the president tweeted his intention to suspend all immigration. That’s about as dramatic as it gets and would have drawn much more fire even a month or two earlier. But with lockdowns and travel bans throughout the world, and a virus floating in the air, it was harder to argue against. Consider some of the additional actions taken against immigration during the pandemic, including bans on asylum seekers and refugee resettlement, a ban on international students coming to the US if their classes were not in person (rescinded after pushback), and more restrictions on H-1B lottery winners.
The pandemic has also made the US a less attractive destination for would-be immigrants, even without all of the explicit actions. That won’t be reversed quickly.
What’s next?
There are big questions for the next few months and years, including:
When will vaccination make a decisive difference? This includes when vaccines are approved, how quickly and rationally they are distributed, how well they work and for how long, and what the uptake is.
What will the economy of the early 2020s look like? Will travel and leisure return? Education at all levels? Office work? What new industries will emerge?
What will be the US’s role in the world? Much of this hinges on the results of the 2020 election and its aftermath.
I’ll offer my commentary on these topics as the situation continues to unfold. Check the Health Business Blog and HealthBiz podcast for updates.
In recent months, my strategy consulting firm, Health Business Group has helped our healthcare and life sciences clients factor the implications of the pandemic into their growth and M&A strategies. Would you like to discuss your own organization’s plans and how Health Business Group can help? If so, please email me: [email protected].
The post Five pandemic predictions five months later. Was I right? appeared first on Health Business Group.
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lordofsunshadowandsailor · 8 years ago
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replies (long)
These include some replies from months ago, the last one added just before I left on my vacations. Sorry for having taken so long to answer.
Also, four attentive friends have alerted me in PMs about Apollo Tim/Jim being a probable misspelling mistake -- I’ve already explained them, and make it now public, that it is his professional name and he alternates between both -- we still don’t know his real name yet.
For the new followers, I do try to reply at least every end of the month, or after each update, and offer the most thorough answers I can -- so please to ask and comment!
declarations-of-drama replied to your photo “Tobio’s rude command slapped Alvar, his spitted words like sharp...”
Oh my god! I knew this would be how it would end for that day :/ I love how you made Alvar the proud shameful one here who regretted it all after being such a forceful partner earlier ^^
Alvar, pretty much like Tobio, got carried away by the heat of the moment -- and they are both now reflecting about what has just happened, what has been done -- and mostly, how, and where. To Alvar it seems properly bestial, and he deeply regrets it. For Alvar, it would have been fine if it were in the privacy of one of their bedrooms -- but then, Tobio, who wants no commitments, who can’t bear the idea of being homosexual, wouldn’t have been talked into making it in a love nest... They are a complicated pair, going opposite directions in their longings and desires.
simblu replied to your photo “Tobio’s rude command slapped Alvar, his spitted words like sharp...”
I love how eloquently you capture their internal conflicts.
Thank you! Because this is mostly what the story is about -- and all of my stories, I should say. Though I’m planning to have a whole bit more of action in LoSSS, with crimes and mysteries to be solved, it is always the characters’ inner lives and internal conflicts I write mostly about. My stories happen inside, and not outside, more in thoughts than in actions (that are often contradictory), and relying a lot on flashbacks. 
declarations-of-drama replied to your photo “In that parting moment it seemed prophetic enough, though – the...”
I would say "Poor Alvar!" but then I would be reminded how he acted like a virgin all innocent and unknowing which in itself sort of felt like a trap for Tobi. 
Maybe that is Alvar’s way of seducing guys? 
He doesn’t do it consciously, though, I guess. It’s like -- after sex, during which he really opens up and wide, but once it is through he closes himself again, not just his legs but his sexuality. It’s always a somewhat long way back into sex for him each time, as if he truly were a virgin every occasion he has to get into doing it again...
declarations-of-drama replied to your photo “In that parting moment it seemed prophetic enough, though – the...”
Also - I love the description here - makes me want to tell Alvar to go and bathe :D lol
I hope it is not too graphic or shocking, but it sounds true and probable to me, a few nasty details thrown in that add verisimilitude to the scene.
declarations-of-drama replied to your post “story replies”
Looking forward to more from your story - enjoy your holiday! X
Thank you, dear. And after wonderful vacations in which I wrote just one paragraph of a different story, we are back at LoSSS!
simblu replied to your photo “Still, though Tobio turned his head to look in Alvar’s direction, he...”
Good questions...
I am pretty much asking these myself, and sharing them with he reader, since it took so long between updates...
tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “Tobio!” He exhaled the name more than called it, and finally seemed...”
How much I love these icarus scenes! Interesting how you play with the two levels of storytelling : Victorian and greek fantasy
Thank you dear! I started planning this to be a steampunk story, having that as the fantastic element of the story -- but in the end it’s a style I know very little of, and before I realized it I had included Greek elements in it, or the idealized -- and often kitsch -- Victorian ways of regarding classical Greece. It is of course an even stronger tendency once I’ve again vacationed in Greece. :) I’m glad you enjoy it, and be prepared for more!
tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “Perusing the room, Alvar did notice a shelf full of flasks, and...”
Classy decor!!!! Adorable style
Thanks! I admit it is not a style I am familiar with, so it involves a lot of references to make it appropriately dated... So thankful, really, to all the wonderful CC creators who enable it!
tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “The portrait, though having captured both her unique beauty and spirit...”
Recently you wrote your own writing skill's development surprised you: As no native speaker I am always fascinated. Don't think I could write that fantastic in English. Praise to you!!!!
Thank you for you kindness and support! It really comes as a surprise each time I read my own text. How did those words come together, I ask myself? But it is as if they have a need of their own, and I just obey it and write as they like.
And yet, there you are, writing your own beautiful version of Romeo and Juliet! Praise to you too! :)
willky12 replied to your photo “Perusing the room, Alvar did notice a shelf full of flasks, and...”
What man indeed.
This is my perception from what I’ve read and watched about the period following the end of WWI. It damaged irreparably an entire generation of men -- and women! I believe the stats say that only one in ten women did marry after the war, the rest having remained singletons, and widowers. This is actually one of the themes of LoSSS.
willky12 replied to your photo “The portrait, though having captured both her unique beauty and spirit...”
I agree entirely, you write like an Englishman! The second paragraph in post #11 was really well done I thought.
Thank you dear! I am indeed trying to give a British accent to this story, but how could I really differentiate? Of course I had to reread the paragraph you mentioned to try to understand what you perceived... Your feedback is beyond important to me, and I am so thankful really!
willky12 replied to your photo “I hadn’t seen him until this morning.” Alvar sounded out of breath,...”
This is a surprise!
It is! 
I was going to hold it for later, but decided the story needed some shaking. Thing is, now I recall why I was going to introduce it only later, and shall have to modify some future scenes I had planned having now shared this information. My problem to solve only, though. :)
jepensedoncjesims replied to your photo “With a sharp sting across his chest, Alvar deposed Apollo Jim on the...”
The second paragraph very wonderfully expressed. Such vivid images of the warm colors of Autumn with the anxiety or death lurking about. Beautiful work.
Thank you, dear. I oscillate between letting the image speak for itself or describing it and pointing at specific details... I tend to think not many people have seen Death hanging there on the other side of the window, right behind Alvar. Thanks for having noticed it!
simblu replied to your photo “With a sharp sting across his chest, Alvar deposed Apollo Jim on the...”
You do write so beautifully.
Thank you for your kindness, dear. I do try my best to honor a language that is not mine and that therefore I respect even more.
simblu replied to your photo “Tobio could tell why, but he wanted to listen it from Alvar. Lost Boys...”
So well told, really.
Thank you! Since it is a long post, I did pay special attention to the flow between sentences and paragraphs, and it seems to have turned out well.
simblu replied to your photo “You are taking him to your ancestral lands? To live under the same...”
Wow, Tobio is rather harsh in his assessment of that Lost Boy, isn't he?
According to the post you mentioned just above, he seems to be well versed in Lost Boys, having frequented parties where they were the main attraction -- and maybe even having hunted them in Pennington Park. He must know better -- certainly better than Alvar!
tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “Tobio could tell why, but he wanted to listen it from Alvar. Lost Boys...”
It's always fascinating how deep you go into character building and how developed yours settings/backstories are. That's pure realism with every nasty detail included. It interests me, how much of research you do and how?
Thank you for asking.
This passage, specifically, demanded some research, yes.
I Google a lot, I read lot, and I even try to watch movies or documentaries on the themes I am writing about -- so that it is not just fun, but entertainingly learning at the same time. I do have many boards of references of images and links to texts on Pinterest, and not just a few file collections in my own laptop. 
What I don’t want with this story, though, is to be specific about dates and places, otherwise I’ll have to be specific about facts and events -- and that is beyond this project.
danjaley replied to your photo “The boy stood clearly not for a sailor, though the hat could have been...”
I wonder if Alvar has the remotest idea how his attempts to be distant and reserved make Tobio imagine the most colourful scenarios.
I really don’t think so, since they don’t communicate a lot, do they? There are entire paragraphs for their thoughts and perceptions, that they keep to themselves though sharing it with the reader, while only a few lines with dialogue. They each live in their own world, and see things from very different perspectives and through diverse experiences and backgrounds.
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knightofbalance-13 · 8 years ago
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https://thefairywzard.tumblr.com/post/163494894168/rwde-circus-drama-with-kob-part-1-the-first-shade
Now I could go through this whole thing and explain in detail why this is wrong but this is an example of the Gish Gallup fallacy so let me run through this quick and show you why it’s so stupid:
People of the rwde tag! You might have noticed a post recently, written by yours truly, about the lack of body diversity in our all-time favourite show RWBY: The Life and Times of Jaune Arc.
Playing to RWDE tag bias.
Predictably, our esteemed rwde troll and official laughing stock of the entire tag, KoB, decided to reply to my post and I think we’ve all had enough experience dealing with him by now to know where this led. I read over KoB’s… words and after bleaching my eyes with silt, I sat down to think about what I should do in response, if anything at all.
Ad Homenin
The Responsible™ and Adult™ thing would be to simply ignore his incomprehensible drivel and move on, possibly block him and maybe set up some salt circles for good measure. After all, usually the best thing to do when dealing with trolls is to keep them at arm’s length and try to not provoke them too much. That is the smart and sensible thing to do. That is how you avoid conflict with assholes online.
Refering to me as a demon
Ah, another day another troll on my posts. You know kob, I knew that eventually you’d pull something like this. I knew that after I was done eating my strips of rotten boar meat while sipping a 1945 La Pinot Noir that I would log on to tumblr dot com and see your small, sad little avatar in my notifications tab. And I would sigh and roll my tired eyes in contempt of pretty much your entire internet presence as far as rwby is concerned, before moving on to reading your long-winded, contradictory and dumb dumb arguments, all lined up in this neat little pile of poo that the FNDM calls “kob’s post history”. And then I would sigh again, questioning the meaning of life while enjoying a bowl of branflake cereal with chocolate chips and cinnamon.
Pseudo intellectualism
Believe it or not kob, it took some time to decide whether or not I should reply to the inane, animalistic screeches that you call counterarguments, but ultimately I decided this was too good an opportunity to miss on dragging yo ass. Obviously a confrontation is exactly what a slimy troll like you wants and technically I am enabling you and your ~predispositions~ by writing this, though I think the feeling of self-satisfaction I’ll get by talking shit to your face will be more than worth it. I should think most of the rwde tag has an extended knowledge of you and your interactions with the FNDM and most of us probably agree that you’re a trolling asshole, a ding dong and potentially Literally Satan™.
Ad Homien on par with early Catholic Church.
I will admit that volume 4 did shave off some muscle from our beloved lotus boy of suppressed emotions, but they have by no means added those to Ms Valkyrie.
Outright defeating own point and contradiction (Jaune and Nora have similarly sized arms. Look for yourself.)
Now I’m not gonna get into the teachers yet, because I’m genuinely curious as to what you meant when you commented on yang’s beefiness. I should like to think that these images make it pretty clear, even to someone as stubborn and as opinionated as you kob. Yang has no muscle. Never did. That sound you just heard was everyone in the rwde tag simultaneously whispering the words “oh snap”.
More outright contradictions and Ad Homenin. (yang’s official art shows the same arm type as Nora and jaune as oppose to Ren or Weiss)
Next up is the FNDMs favourite faunus of the hour, Blake Belladona. You will, once again, note the absence of muscles in her extremities. Gee it’s almost as if these characters all have the same body types, what a surprise. But by all means, keep insisting that Weiss is the slender one.
Not understanding what Atheletic means (Looks at Olympic swimmers: Ain’t no muscles there.)
What you don’t seem to understand kob is that not everyone sees the world under your fucked up, weird, distorted lens. Honestly what to begin with here? The unrelated comparisons? The blatant way you contradict yourself with the opening sentence? “Oh look at me I’m the infamous kob and I spend my days hating on people for making valid, critical points on shows I watch. RWBY doesn’t have a body problem because I say so, these characters are totally muscly and RT doesn’t want muscly women in their shows anyway so that’s why there are none after all, this doesn’t matter and no one cares”. Really now kob, if you’re going to try and delegitimize the issues I cite, you could at least do a better job at it.
In any case, I don’t especially remember CRWBY making public statements explaining in lengthy details why body diversity is their personal kryptonite and that’s why there’s none of it in the show. But then again I’m not as dedicated a fan as you have proven yourself to be, so maybe I missed that enlightening interview with the crew. I also don’t understand what made you bring Kill La Kill into this -as I would charitably call it- discussion, when that show is a clear deconstruction of rampant objectification in anime. It’s satire kob. It’s making fun of the dumb sexist tropes people see in shows so very often.
To be perfectly fucking candid kob, your determination to undermine my arguments by claiming that representation is “not a serious concern at all” is actually rather cute. Like a bigoted puppy furiously chewing on a couch. Indeed this vehement passion of yours is so strong that I’m beginning to suspect you get an intense hateboner whenever the rwde tag updates and this is your only method of release. 
Not addressing the point. Also: unrelated comparisons. Monty Oum stated that Gurren Lagann was an inspiration on RWBY and watched Kill La Kill. So in fact, I am comparing anime that have influenced RWBY.
As well: Not saying WHY body diversity would be an improvement.
Third; Misrepresntinga show (Kill La Kill outright says you shouldn’t care about what other people think. Remmeber Satsuki’s speech in Episode 3? Yeah, apparently you forgot to watch the other 23 episodes of the show.)
Fourth: Misrepresenting my argument (they don’t want to do it because they haven’t already done it, not through an interview.)
Fifith: projection.
Gosh what an interesting peephole we have here of kob’s mental inner workings. I never would have associated plus-sized people with Santa Claus, but I suppose that’s what happens if the content you consume is constantly deprived of diversity. Don’t worry kob, it’s not your fault that most media is monochromatic in more ways than one (but feverishly defending those that are kind of is). If you want to know why it’s important to have representation of all sorts in shows and other media, then I suggest you google that and find out for yourself.
Inserting words into my mouth.
Oh yes, beware the SJWs. They creep in your homes and hide in your cupboards. They’ll wait until you’re not paying attention and then pounce on you with anger and fury and a slight hint of sexual arousal. And as they suck your warm, viscous blood, they’ll start babbling about wanting fair representation in the media for marginalized groups of people and how the way to achieve that is to hold popular shows to a higher standard of diversity. I haven’t even gotten to the bit where they talk about queerness in media, THAT’S when shit get’s blood-curdlingly scary.
More projection.
See, this final “damming” ending statement brings me some discomfort; because I have to, for once, agree with kob. Having more diversity of body types (or any types for that matter) be present in a successful show will encourage other shows to follow suit. It’s like this thing, oh what’s it called, oh yeah progress. So you’re right on that at least. Now if you think diversity will add “nothing to the show” I would suggest that you a) educate yourself on the benefits of diversity and representation in media because that’s clearly an area you are sorely lacking in and b) go fuck yourself.
More Aad Hominin and misrepresenting what I said (I was referring to the fact that you would shoehorn in fat characters for the sake of brownie points instead of, you know, having well written fat people) and projection (thinking I’m skinny.)
I honestly don’t know how to explain to you that not everyone is like you and not everyone can binge the TV channels and see someone exactly like them represented in a randomly-selected show.
Assumptions (i didn’t know there was fat, balding, autistic 19 year olds with no dads. yeah, I’m fat too so most of your argument in that part is invalid, blading people are treated as a joke and the number of intentional written Autistic characters can be counted with only hands. And the number of WELL WRITTEN Autistic characters can be count on my hand if I chopped off seven fingers.)
Someone who isn’t constantly treated as a joke, or insulted within the show, or is nothing but a stereotype, or is pushed aside so that other characters can take the stage. If you can’t fit that concept into that head of yours because the slimy, fanged eel of hate inside is taking too much space, then the only thing for me left to do is to sincerely, wholeheartedly tell you to go fuck yourself with as much virility as you can muster.
you mean like how fat people are portrayed as lazy, balding men are treated as aging ad desperate and ugly, how writers cannot diffiate between “Autism” and “brain damage”, how men are always seen in the wrong in arguments and seen as being dumb, animalistic, lazy and wimpy whereas the women are treated as can do no wrong, wise, perfect people? because I do: But that;s the artist’s descision and they deserve to do what they want with their works: there is nothing wrong with that.
And now you can see why I didn’t go through and go in depth as to why this person is wrong: It’s blatant and obvious. But don’t take my word for it: see the train wreck for yourself.
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