#which drives his issues in the story a little bit that i will touch on but thats an isolated incident

[toxooz]

idk if you've been asked this question before, but if angels and demons exist in the wheelbitten universe, does that mean that if jesus was the son of god, does that mean that he was some kind of ultra-powerful nephili?

(also do nephilim even exist in wheelbitten?)

uuuh i'd honestly imagine he'd be about the same in the wheel bitten universe give or take or there would be more theories on what he looked like and if he was actually a monster and what monster he would be and all the division that would cause idk same with the bible it'd pretty much be the same with maybe some pages not existing and more pages existing and whatever changes in belief that would ensue 🤷‍♀️ same goes with all the religions basically

[thelordofgifs]

the fairest stars, continued

The "Beren and Lúthien steal two Silmarils" AU that has spiralled completely out of my control: time for a new post again! Parts 1-9 are here and Parts 10-15 here. Also now slowly being uploaded to AO3 here, though you still want tumblr for the latest version.

To recap:

Maedhros and Maglor are in Himring.

Maedhros has (somewhat, a bit, with caveats) recovered from his very bad unreality attack, and is now attempting to defend Himring from an army of orcs. Unfortunately 90% of his people aren't there.

Maglor has very much not recovered from being stabbed by Maedhros, and is not really in a great situation.

Fingon is busy trying to stop Curufin's war with Doriath. He's kind of managing to talk Thingol down from attacking Himring's assembled army.

Although his bright idea for accomplishing this was offering to execute Curufin.

Maedhros holds one Silmaril in Himring, Thingol has kept one in Menegroth, and the last one is still in Angband.

Dead characters who are nonetheless still in the story: Lúthien, Beren, Finrod, Celegorm.

When Maedhros' mother named him well-made, she was not picturing his prowess on a battlefield: but Maedhros was forged anew in the crucible of Angband, or perhaps more gently in his long months of healing by Mithrim's shores, and this is what he is good for, now.

And he is very good at war.

Under his command the defence of Himring rallies. Maedhros sets the few archers he has to rain down arrows on the arrows on the attacking orcs, and takes a small party out on horseback to drive them further back, and the fortress gains a little breathing space.

But there is only so much he can do with so few people – and people, at that, who are so strangely slow to respond to his command.

Not that they will disobey him openly, but he is far too aware of their suspicious eyes on his back, the wave of mutters that breaks every time he issues an order.

"And the way they look at me – as if I'm, as if I'm one of the Enemy's thralls – do you think—?"

"Nelyo," Maglor says instantly, "you are not a thrall."

Maedhros attempts to stop his frenetic pacing up and down Maglor's room. "Then why," he says. There is so much noise in his head. He cannot seem to finish the sentence.

"They're Curvo's people," says Maglor, and there is something hard and unfamiliar in his voice as he speaks their brother's name. "Who can say what poison he's fed them?"

That was the wrong thing to say. Maedhros blanches for a moment, draws in a sharp breath, and then says, "Curvo told me – he told me—"

"I know," Maglor says, reaching out a hand. "I know, and he lied. Come here."

Maedhros clutches at his hand. Maglor can feel his frantic, fluttering pulse beneath his fingers.

Maedhros can feel Maglor's, faint and irregular.

He tries to steady his breathing. Tries not to sort through the jumble of memories pressing against his skull (they're dead, they're both dead) and focuses on the present.

Maglor is here, alive, alive – although his pallor has worsened every time Maedhros can snatch a moment from the siege to visit him, and his grip on Maedhros' Silmaril is white-knuckled, and some nameless fear touches Maedhros as he looks at him.

"Should I send you away, dearest?" he asks.

Maglor's eyes widen. "What?"

"It isn't safe here," Maedhros explains, although he has little heart for his suggestion in the face of Maglor's obvious dismay. "If Himring does fall – I don't wish to put you through a hard retreat."

"Don't make me leave you," Maglor begs, his voice teetering on the edge of real distress. "I want – I want to stay here, and—"

"All right," Maedhros soothes. "All right. You can stay as long as I hold."

"You'll hold, Nelyo," Maglor says. "You always do."

In the face of this unwavering confidence Maedhros manages to summon a shaky smile.

When he is gone – and the sustaining warmth of the Silmaril with him – Maglor reviews his objectives, which are threefold.

One: stay alive. Not going very well tbh. He has not recovered from the blood loss. And more than that the world feels grey and cold to his eyes – he who has always loved sunrises – and he cannot stop remembering: the splintered haunted look in Maedhros' eyes, the way, before Maglor sang him to sleep, he was reaching for the knife to try again.

Two: make sure Himring doesn't fall. He cannot quite believe it will, while Maedhros is in command, but the news about the recalcitrance of the few soldiers they have is concerning. He should have realised that rumour would spread through the castle after Maedhros was found in a pool of Maglor's blood, should have blackmailed Curufin's lieutenant into keeping her mouth shut about it – but too late now. Hopefully Maedhros can rally them.

Three: keep Maedhros generally sane, and specifically unaware that he stabbed Maglor. Also not going too well. Maedhros is growing stressed and paranoid. He's noticed that Maglor is healing very slowly (or not at all, to be more accurate). And – as today's incident shows – he will remember, sooner or later.

A dire situation all round, Maglor concludes, and he is not sure how much longer he will have the energy to attempt to handle it.

Where's Fingon when you need him?

Exactly where he should be, actually!

Fingon is mostly succeeding in his objectives.

The Sindar have stood down.

(Thingol agreed to his terms. That’s what matters, right? Not the vague flash of disgust in his eyes.)

“Are we going back to Himring?” Curufin wants to know. “They’re in danger.”

I have to kill you, Fingon thinks, and says aloud, “Yes, we are. But if you’re lying to me again, Curufin…”

He lets the threat trail off.

Anyway. More pressing concerns for now.

He sets a hard pace back through Himlad, reasoning that even if Curufin is lying there won’t be any harm done in getting back to Himring quicker.

Curufin has been trying to make contact with Maglor again, but his brother’s mind is closed – worrying.

All he gathered from Maglor’s brief use of ósanwë was the scent of blood and panic, the sound of orc-horns in the distance and a terrible pain in his side.

Has Maglor been injured in battle? Surely not; his leg can’t be mended enough for him to fight yet. But then what’s wrong with him?

Curufin definitely isn’t going to try touching Maedhros’ mind, considering the state Maedhros was in when he left Himring.

This is such a mess. And it’s all his fault. And Celegorm is still dead.

Be better, Fingon told Curufin – but now he won’t even look at Curufin, and Curufin’s hand is still burned and he doesn’t think it will ever heal.

Does he even want it to?

Back at Himring, Maedhros watches as the orcs press closer. If they manage to surround the great hill completely—

[look I know nothing about military stuff. in lieu of any actual manoeuvres or strategies we are going to assume that the Bad Thing that needs to be prevented is the fortress being encircled. got it? cool.]

“Harass them from both flanks,” he orders. “Keep them contained, don’t let them spread out.”

His paltry force obeys, but with plenty of murmuring.

The patrols, Maedhros catches, and His own brother.

He doesn’t know what they mean. He doesn’t know how much longer he can possibly hold. He doesn’t know where Fingon is, or whether he’s succeeded at preventing a war with Doriath, or why Maglor isn’t getting better.

When there is nothing left but the clamour in his head and his racing pulse, there is still war, at least: still the swift brutal swing of his sword though orc-neck after orc-neck, the splatter of black blood against his breastplate and the deadly dance of the battle-field.

(Still the gentle light of the Silmaril in his pocket. Still Maglor, breathing. But those are harder to hold on to.)

Himring will not fall. Himring must not fall.

As the weary battle for the fortress continues, its chronicle is woven by steady, skilful hands in the House of Vairë.

Míriel Therindë’s grandson has little difficulty finding her tapestries in the Halls of Mandos.

He is staring at them in transfixed horror when he feels a presence behind him.

“Oh. It’s you. What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, I imagine,” says Finrod, coming to sit beside him (metaphorically. since spirits can’t really sit. you know the drill). “Looking at the tapestries.”

Celegorm snorts impatiently. In life he had a tendency, when frustrated, to slip into the language and mannerisms of whatever bird or beast he felt most appropriate to the situation – elves are simply too stupid to talk to being the clear implication.

Finrod is absurdly pleased to find out this is still the case.

Or maybe it isn’t absurd, he tells himself, maybe it’s natural to want to believe that this is still the cousin he grew up with, that a person can betray you and turn your kingdom against you and still have some parts worth saving.

“I meant,” Celegorm is saying derisively, “what are you doing in these Halls? I thought your dear cousin won you a special boon.”

“Impressive you can still speak of her, after what you did,” observes Finrod. “But yes, Mandos did tell me I was to be re-embodied. First of all the Exiles, you know.”

“And?” Celegorm presses, after he is silent for a time.

Finrod smiles at him. “I told him thanks, but no thanks,” he says.

Celegorm splutters for a bit. “What?” he manages at last. “Ingoldo, have you lost your mind? How – why – is this all out of some misguided form of pity? Or are you just flinging it in my face that you can choose to leave and I can’t?”

“Lúthien reminded me,” Finrod says seriously, “that we always have a choice.”

Back in Himring, Maedhros is being pressed hard.

They are so badly outnumbered, and the orcs keep coming and coming, a never-ending river.

If Himring falls, Maglor dies – for there is no chance of his surviving a hurried retreat, Maedhros can see that even without fully understanding what ails his brother, and he has refused to be sent away in advance.

Himring can’t fall, Maedhros tells himself.

(To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well – how those words echoed in his ears four hundred years ago, as he watched his high stone fortress built. He realises, now, that he always expected Himring to fall.)

The orcs have pushed them back to the south of the hill, almost closing off the circle, cutting off their last path of retreat.

Will he burn with the house, then – like Amrod, like his father? The prospect would not be so awful were it not for Maglor.

Nothing lasts forever; Maedhros understands that as few other elves do, and has done since Angband.

But Maglor – Maglor has to live forever – Maglor is dying—

To the south-west sounds a clear silver horn, the horn of Fingolfin.

(to be continued)

[femmeleatherface]

i know the accepted origin for monsieur mallah and the brain's epic gay romance is doom patrol V2 #34, and that's certainly the first time it was really explicit for sure, but has anyone else read the V2 swamp thing annual #3?

it was published in 1987, 3 years before #34, as a tribute to all the DC comics gorillas, so mallah gets a lot of attention in it and he is EXTREMELY gay coded. it ends up making his feelings toward the brain get presented in a very un-heterosexual way. and it's all tied in with the themes and structure of the annual's story so closely that it feels very, very deliberate.

[ ID: the cover to the swamp thing volume 2 annual #3. a golden gorilla sits menacingly in the center, looking directly at the reader. a torn white shirt is clutched in its fists and dangling from its fanged mouth. in the leaves and grass in front of it are the remains of the rest of a stereotypical safari outfit, including a rifle that lies propped on the gorilla's right arm. swamp thing's face is in the background, the red eyes glaring at the reader above the gorilla's head. end ID. ]

basically, the plot of the annual is that gorilla grodd has figured out a way to weaken the shackles of his mind prison in gorilla city, and he's using his telepathic powers to summon all the dc comics gorillas to free the rest of him and take down solovar through lightning magic. swamp thing... is also there. he doesn't do much. the annual is more preoccupied with the gorillas than its titular character, who's primarily busy having relationship drama with abby.

this drama is what the annual opens with. in the previous issue swamp thing apparently made a "merely human" comment toward constantine, which hurt abby's feelings since she is also human. this sets up the main ongoing theme of the story, about humans in relationships with non-humans.

this is very closely tied with the portrayal of gorillas in certain medias, particularly from the early the 20th century. the annual explores this very extensively, leaning heavily into the sexual implications...

[ ID: a series of three comic book panels featuring b'wana beast in his alter ego, mike maxwell, with his companion/girlfriend, djuba. maxwell is a blonde white man and djuba is a red-furred female gorilla.

panel 1: smiling, maxwell pushes an extremely phallic sticklike thing into djuba's mouth while she takes off his hat. their arms are around each other and their faces are very close. maxwell says, "don't have to play macho man with you... nooo. gimme a drink. gimme a drink..."

panel 2: maxwell and djuba's faces are touching now, their heads turned so they are cheek-to-cheek. djuba feeds maxwell a red bottle she has around her neck, and he sips from it. maxwell says, "just a tiny bit now... i have to drive our friend back... that's it..."

panel 3: a closeup of maxwell and djuba's mouths, basically touching. djuba's lips are parted and maxwell says, "ohhh yeah... that's it. i can feel it... i can feel it..."

end ID.]

[ID: a single panel of congorilla in his gorilla form. he has golden fur and is looking behind him to some bushes, where the heads of two black-furred gorillas are popping out. congorilla thinks, "i'm picking up the overpowering scent of females in the grove below and my blood's starting to boil. it feels good. too good." end ID.]

[ID: two comic book panels in gorilla city.

panel 1: sam simeon, a more anthropomorphized gorilla with human-style white skin, black hair, and visible chest hair, speaks to solovar, a non-anthropomorphized gorilla with blue fur.

sam says: "lemme tell ya... here i could do my best work! y'know, get into a little self-publishing, maybe put on a comic convention or two every year... i bet we could get thousands of atilla gorilla fans!"

solovar says: "umm, yes, of course. i see that your human friend is enjoying her stay here, too..."

panel 2: angel o'day, a thin white human woman in a strapless black bikini with her white hair pulled up, smiles at a crowd of four gorillas clustered around her. they all smile back at her, enamoured. one gorilla holds her hand and another writes something in a small notebook. solovar and sam watch on in the background. sam looks confused, maybe even hurt. he says, "angel...?"

end ID.]

this is primarily where the humor of the comic is supposed to come from. it's honestly a bit uncomfortable because most gorilla media--particularly ones with this sexual element--draws upon a lot of extremely racist and eugenist ideas when utilizing these tropes.

the annual mostly ignores this; except for a white savior-y joke with b'wana beast's introduction early on, race never really comes up and it's primarily just wacky horny shenanigans with white people and gorillas with zero interrogation or even acknowledgement of where those tropes come from and why they exist. since the comic isn't all that interested in acknowledging the questionable racial elements at play, i'll just leave the discussion at that so we can get moving along to the fun part of how mallah and the brain fit into all this, but i did want to point it out because uh. yikes.

anyway. moving on!

mallah and the brain are the first non-grodd gorilla-related team introduced, right after the relationship drama is set up with swamp thing and abby. while they are on their way to commit international terrorism and kidnappng, a lackey harasses mallah by asking him if he wants to have sex with lois lane. mallah spends the entire conversation looking completely dead inside.

[ID: a single comic book panel. roland, a white human man with orange hair holds a newspaper. he leers at monsieur mallah, an auburn-furred gorilla. mallah stares back at him blankly while smoking a cigarette. roland says, "whaddya say, mallah? how'd you like to get between the sheets with superman's girlfriend? y'think you're more her type? you got animal magnetism, don'tcha?" a speech bubble from the brain off-screen shoots back: "enough, roland!" end ID.]

so our entire introduction to mallah as a character is dependent upon him experiencing a microaggression deeply rooted in heteronormativity, and he is very clearly having none of it. interesting!

at this point, grodd's mind control beam reaches mallah. he kills all the lackeys who were picking on him, which the brain is really only mildly annoyed by, something that, sidebar, is absolutely hilarious. he could be more supportive of the whole microaggression thing, but ultimately he's just like: "why did you do it NOW? you should have waited until later!"

[ID: a single comic panel. cigarette still in his mouth, monsieur mallah kneels on the ground, holding the lifeless arm of a dead white man. the leg of another dead white man lies on the ground in front of him, and there are puddles of blood everywhere. standing in the corner and covered in blood, the brain says: "sacre bleu! mallah, what has come over you? why have you slaughtered them? couldn't you have waited until they had outlived their usefulness?" end ID.]

at this point, though, mallah turns on the brain and breaks his life support chamber. the brain is fine, but feels betrayed, and in his first line mallah explains his behavior simply by saying "c'est la vie!"

[ID: two comic book panels.

panel 1: the brain and monsieur mallah inside a tank. monsieur mallah sits at the controls with his cigarette, still a bit blank-faced but looking more relaxed. the brain stands in the corner, his dome broken and a burst of elecrosparks. he says, "y-you betray me, monsieur... crackle pop... i... i who created you... fitzz fitzzz. why, monsieur... cracklcrackpop... tell me, why??"

panel 2: an exterior shot of the tank zooming off through the desert, treads and billowing dust behind it. a speach bubble coming from the tank reads: "c'est la vie!

end ID.]

this ends up being a running gag in the annual, where the brain tries reaching out to mallah but the mind control is so strong that mallah just continues torturing him. it's poetic justice, since the brain's entire plan before the mind control happened was to kidnap a child and torture them, but it's also buildup to something at the end. we'll get to that.

first though, they pick up sam simeon and angel o'day from the angel and the ape comics. throughout the annual angel has been used as the designated "white woman all the male gorillas go bananas for," but i want to note that we never see mallah as one of those gorillas. we never see him interact with angel at all, in fact, except arguably once, where even under gorilla grodd mind control he is more polite than angel's friend sam:

[ID: a single comic panel of monsieur mallah, the brain, sam simeon, and angel o'day inside the tank. monsieur mallah is at the open tank hatch, lowering himself inside. next to him, the brain pops out of his life support chamber as a mess of wires and cerebral matter. sam simeon is at the tank controls, angrily clutching the wheel in one hand. angel grabs sam's shoulder, looking worried.

mallah says: "look! it is ze sign we have been waiting for! attack, mes amis!"

angel says: "sam?"

sam says: "shaddup!"

the brain says: "fzzt."

end ID.]

it's like the cracks the lackey made about mallah and lois lane earlier and how apathetic he was to the conversation. this mallah is shown to just be SO disinterested in human women compared to most of his male gorilla counterparts. he also doesn't show any interest in b'wana beast's gorilla companion/girlfriend, djuba, when she shows up, which one might expect considering the raging gorilla horniness and grodd's own brief flirty remark to her. but why? why is mallah so disinterested in all these women?

obviously it's because he's gay as fuck, but is that what the comic is actually trying to imply? i'd say yes! that is where the ending comes into play, and why i feel the gay coding in this comic is intentional.

after grodd is defeated by frying his own brain, we get one last scene between mallah and the brain. it's only a page, so i'm just going to paste it here, because all of it is... amazing...

[ID: a full comic page layout.

panel 1: a closeup of the brain lying in the grass. he is little more than a mess of cables and metal being stepped on by monsieur mallah's bare foot. a sound effect reads, "plltch!" the brain cries: "aakk!"

panel 2: monsieur mallah and the brain in the jungle at night. mallah picks the brain up from under his foot.

mallah says: "monsieur brain! what luck zat i have found you! come, we must move quickly! ze coup has failed and ze soldiers of solovar are after us. apparently he did not take kindly to my little uzi love taps."

the brain says: "m-mallah? ooooh-nooo..."

panel 3: monsieur mallah cradles the brain to his chest and runs through the foliage.

the brain says: "n-non! please, monsieur... leave me be... or better yet, kill me now! i can't take zis torture any longer!"

mallah says: "kill you? monsieur, you offend me! mallah owes you his own life, many times over! one of our old hideouts is nearby. i'll have you safe and snug in one of your spare life support modules very soon, wait and see!"

panel 4: monsieur mallah huddles under a large leafy plant, hidden by that and the grasses with the brain close to his chest. mallah looks out cautiously, watching as three shadowy gorillas walk by with flashlights and metal helmets. the outlines of mallah and the brain's dialogue boxes are dashed to indicate they're whispering.

the brain says: "y-you will? but i thought... i thought you wanted to destroy me?"

mallah says: "nuzzing could be furzer from the truth, monsieur. i am here to help you and care for you, to protect you and serve you in any way i can!"

panel 5: mallah races through the foliage, holding the brain tight. the gorilla soldiers are walking away behind them.

the brain says: "b-but... why?"

mallah says: "c'est l'amour!"

panel 6: abby arcane, a young white woman with white hair that has black streaks in it, lies on the ground. she is in a fetal position, her eyes shut. behind her, a lake stretches out in the great yellow moonlight, the great trees of the swamp further beyond that.

end ID.]

JUST. SO MUCH EVERYTHING GOING ON HERE.

the mind control is gone at this point, so this is the only point in the comic where we get to see monsieur mallah fully as himself and how this version of him would normally interact with the brain. and it's so... passionate and sweet? he just basically says that he's going to be always there for the brain because... because of love? whAt???? did he just straight up tell the brain that he loves him??????? oh my god.

and just... the way the comic has spent so much time sexualizing the relationships between humans and gorillas, and how the ending scene with abby and swamp thing after this is also so freaking horny, and here we get a human/non-human relationship where one of the parties doesn't have a body and they cannot be physical, and for them in this comic at least... it doesn't matter. because love. the way this explores and subverts the horny gorilla tropes in such a unique way. oh my god.

and it's treated as a joke, for sure. the entire punchline for the running gag of mallah treating the brain like shit for the entire story is "he loved him all along!" which. uh. questionable in so many ways. but the entire origin of the brain and monsieur mallah as a gay couple came from a joke in a one-off doom patrol comic, so really this is all in the exact same "mallah and the brain as a big gay joke" vein. it honestly makes me wonder if grant morrison read this annual and that's where it gave them the idea for #34. but idk.

ALSO. that closing panel with abby waiting for swamp thing? yes, that's setting up a transition to a new scene, but it's also a reminder of abby's previous scene. swamp thing temporarily got hit with the grodd mind control beam and actually went to go impact the plot of his own annual, and she had her own big speech about her feelings:

[ID: a full comic page layout.

panel 1: abby stops at the edge of a lake, looking down at it. she is in a swamp with tall trees and a ramshackle cabin behind her. she says: "i don't understand, alec... i just don't get it at all. something's wrong with you... something's terribly wrong."

panel 2: a closeup of abby's hand touching the surface of the lake. she says: "one minute you're perfectly fine, the next you're unraveling. it's almost as if your personality were coming apart piece by piece... you don't have alzheimer's disease, do you? no, i don't think a plant can get that..."

panel 3: abby sits sadly huddled on the ground. her knees are pressed to her chest and she's stacked her fists on them to support her chin. she says: "it was probably what i said, wasn't it? i shouldn't have acted like that towards you, i know... sometimes i'm such a spoiled brat."

panel 4: a closeup of abby looking sadly at the water. she says: "i just wanted you to know that my feelings were hurt, and that we should work on what we have, alec... but i'm a stranger to you now, and that hurts worse than all the stupid remarks either of us could ever make."

panel 5: a distant shot of abby sitting and holding her knees while she continues to look at the water. she says: "i don't pretend to understand it... but i--i know where i belong... right here, waiting for you to come back. even if it takes forever. you are coming back, aren't you, alec? i mean... what would i ever do without you?"

panel 6: swamp thing under the water. moodily, he sits squatting with his arms crossed over his knees. a tire is half-buried in the sand next to him.

end ID.]

THE PARALLELS. the being hurt and hurting someone you care about but being determined to stay by their side because you love them. what. the fuck. what the fuck. this has got to be intentional and more mallah/brain fans need to be aware of this comic and add it to their lexicon because what! GAY!!!!

[theknightofivanhoe]

Justice League: Question’s Hard Drive Ch 3: Rage Issues

Table of Contents

Helena sat with her long legs crossed, gazing out fondly at the view of the cityscape that illuminated the night sky, its lights like crystals in an underwater cavern. She silently sipped champagne from her delicate flute and turned to Question who sat at the opposite side of their table. Arms folded and facing the floor, Question had not said a word.

“Come on, Q,” It annoyed Helena how uninvolved he was being on this date. “At least open a flap in that stupid mask and have a drop.” she urged, gesturing to the full glass sitting in front of him, but the man in blue neither looked up, nor did he touch it. “I need my brain for putting the pieces of this case together, thank you.” he grunted. “Your conspiracy-addled, ersatz-Sherlock brain?” Helena asked sarcastically as ever. “I know you’re driving, but I’m sure a few drops won’t do any harm.” “I’ll just wait till you’ve eaten, seen your movie and we get back to the flat.” Question declared, only sparing Helena a glance before returning his gaze to the spotless floor tiles. “Nice. Now here’s *my* plan.” Helena countered simply with a granite-hard stare. “You have your meal when they serve us, you enjoy it, you enjoy the movie with me,” What she was about to say next made her smirk wickedly, her ruby lips stretching nearly ear-to-ear and her eyes glinting. “And we call it a night…” Her hints were growing somewhat less subtle, but judging by the shifting of Question’s posture in his seat, along with how he turned his head further from her, it appeared to be working. Yet he didn’t send another retort her way, the woman waiting for him to say something, anything from a grunt of half-hearted agreement to some laughable conspiracy theory that she’d brush off. Next thing, a lightbulb flicked on in her head.

“How about a little heart-to-heart while we wait for dinner?” Helena proposed, leaning back in her seat with a tender smile. Question could only wonder, why did she have to do this, sitting in that position, looking at him the way she was, her legs crossing tightly together, tipping back her glass so she submerged her red lips into the cool, bubbly champagne, her other hand gliding up her smooth, toned thigh? 

Question considered himself lucky Helena’s leotard was hidden under her dress, so he’d be spared the sight of that stomach window exposing abs that would ripple across her tummy, but the sensuality at which she took her drink made Question’s face moisten with sweat under his mask. “You got that my dad was a crime boss…” Helena reminded him in an attempt to get his mind off the mission. “I did…” Question replied, sounding as though he was being interrogated in court. “Well…” Helena smiled even wider, her stare latching on him with no intention of letting go. “I’m curious; what other closely-guarded secrets can you dig up on me?” So she was challenging his knowledge of her even further. Well, dishes would only be in a few minutes, so why not just kill a bit of time? 

“Dallas, Texas, the top floor of the Stillwell steakhouse…” Question started plainly, keeping his arms folded.

“Your father was discussing an overseas deal with a fellow mobster over steak and red, when another gang competing for power made their move.” Helena propped her chin on her hand, listening to Question’s voice like a child being told a bedtime story. Her dark eyes were half-closed in pure affection. “Bullets sprayed the restaurant, waiters and customers fleeing for their lives.” Question continued to narrate. “Your father’s men went down protecting him, but mobster or not, Franco Bertinelli wouldn’t shy away from a good fight. He held his own, taking on the hitmen tooth and nail with a submachine gun. Of course it only got tougher when his prospective business partner decided to change sides and scored a hit on him. It seemed all was up for Franco Bertinelli, and that was when he saw her…” Helena knew just who Question was referring to, excitement faintly sizzling through her. “María Casamento, a waitress who had watched him fight off those attackers, came charging to his rescue. Before your father’s former friend could deliver the shot that would have ended his life, this waitress put a steak knife through his heart.” Helena smiled with a certain amount of satisfaction at how someone who could possibly betray her father met his own end instead, and at the hands of her mother with such a mundane eating utensil no less. “Once he was back on his feet mopping up the last of his rivals and his former friend’s cronies, Franco Bertinelli took one look at María, his saviour…” Question resumed the account, his gaze locking onto Helena’s under his flesh-coloured mask, “He swept her up in his arms, hers weaved around his broad shoulders, his shirt in tatters, portions of her minidress ripped away, both of their eyes peering deep into one another’s souls. María had always dreamed of a chance to leave behind the job she found herself tethered to, and now she saw that chance in the handsome, battle-scarred crime boss who held her close, in her debt to the very end.” Remembering that it had indeed been ‘to the very end,’ Helena couldn’t help but feel the tragedy of her past stab at her heart. “After whisking her away in his limousine, then a jet back to Sicily, Franco Bertinelli and María Casamento gave their marriage vows before the altar in Syracuse cathedral, and as they luxuriated in affluence and the power they held over the criminal underworld, a hot-headed, stubborn, passionate, beautiful girl, Helena Rosa Bertinelli, came into their world…” 

Even with the tranquil piano tune drifting through the restaurant and the view of the city lights glinting outside, Helena gazed at the detective in blue, everywhere inside her brimming with adoration. “Beautiful…?” The word came out in a husky tone sweetened with honey, her ruby lips gently stretching into a soft grin that made Question freeze up. “Wha - what - ah - what?” “Don’t stop now…” Helena silkily encouraged, sipping her champagne languidly. “Don’t stop…what?” Question tried not to sound as though he was cornered, but the woman’s eyes were magnetised to the blankness that was his face. “C’mon, hot-headed, stubborn, beautiful…” she reminded him, waiting for more, her grin seeming to widen by mere millimetres. “Ah - did I ever tell you Glorious Gordon Godfrey was found in Area 51 one time?” A second passed before the grin evaporated from Helena’s face. “...I’m sorry?” she demanded. “I…” he uttered, but found himself unable to finish. He seemed to have realised what he had just blurted out and wondered if it had been a bad move. “Q…” Helena put a hand to her temples in sheer exasperation. “We’ve been through this, like, how many times?” she reminded her lover who just sat where he was, not once uncrossing his arms. “One more conspiracy fairy-tale from you and I swear…” Her words made some guests at a nearby table throw nervous looks their way. The atmosphere between the man in the blue hat and his dark-haired lover grew thick with unease, the sounds of the piano adding to the awkwardness. 

A waiter cleared his throat, cutting through the tension as he held up a dish in each hand. Question immediately lowered his head so his hat’s brim kept the waiter from seeing his face. “One turkey meatballs with puttanesca, one zucchini stuffed with chorizo.” the waiter announced, doing his best to hide his apprehension as he served the former to Helena and Question the latter. “Thank you, kind sir…” Helena’s previously foul mood softened to a gratified smile as she took in the rich, enticing dish placed in front of her. Another waiter poured some fine-looking red wine into glasses and set them on the table before disappearing with his colleague. Helena sniffed the mouth-watering scent of meaty sauce and herbs, but Question wouldn’t move a muscle, neither looking at the substantial slices of chorizo stuffed in three zucchinis, nor reaching for his fork.

“Saved by the dinner bell…” Helena snarked in slight amusement. She scooped a forkful of some of her puttanesca spaghetti, only to notice Question not touching his dish. “Q…” Her voice carried a certain amount of warning. “Go ahead.” Question murmured, facing away from his dish like a kid who wouldn’t eat his greens. “I’m not hungr - ” The fork was slammed onto the table at a volume that made some staff and guests jump. “Q, this is getting ridiculous!” Helena snapped, scowling at him. She could only take so much more of his stonewalling. “Just grow up!” “Anything can happen when you’re being served food.” Question responded, “And it just so happens we are carrying vital information that if -” “Q, you’re offending the staff and you’re embarrassing me!” Helena was only slightly raising her voice, but even the man at the piano grew nervous. “Well at least there’s another thing we’re agreed on…” Question started with a hint of slyness. “What other thing?” Helena demanded, feeling some witty comeback headed her way. “Hot-headed, stubborn, passionate, beautiful…” Question listed off, which got the young woman raising a suspicious eyebrow. “Possessed of rage issues.” This sent a twitch in Helena’s eye, her body going all stiff at two very specific words. The glare she made at Question was even more ferocious than the one she had made when she had snatched that hard drive off him, possibly enough to rival even the ones Batman made when striking terror into the hearts of criminals. A deathly silence pervaded the restaurant, like the buildup to a gun battle in a western saloon. 

“...I don’t have rage issues.” It came out as a dangerous whisper that promised fatal consequences for anyone in arm’s reach of Helena who still sat at her end of the table, but seemed quite ready to punch Question in his hidden face. “Well how many times have you been ready to kick me all the way to Eastern Zandia again?” the detective asked her rhetorically, looking away and putting a finger to his chin. “Oh, that’s right, hundreds of -” “I *don’t* have *rage issues!*” Helena’s anger caused some people to consider evacuating. “And now you’re scaring the guests.” Question countered calmly as if he wasn’t about to suffer the wrath of his girlfriend. After breathing in lightly and exhaling, Helena didn’t seem finished with him yet. “You know, I’ll be happy to let what you just said slide.” she offered somewhat cordially. Question turned to her. “You are?” “*If* you start enjoying our dinner date for once.” Helena stated, obviously leaving no room for debate. Question kept his focus on her, not sparing a glance at his chorizo-stuffed zucchini still waiting to be eaten. “You know zucchini may have been grown by the Illuminati for campaigns in eco-warfare on the world governme - ” “Alright…” Helena huffed, and slowly but surely rose from her chair. Question wanted to speak up in defence, but the way she strode around the table, simply bearing down upon him, left him unable to do anything but stare up at how the minidress accentuated her athletic figure. Certain sensations coursed through him at the amount of control Helena oozed, but part of him also grew afraid of how those ‘rage issues’ would be confirmed any second. Even out of her purple mask, her aloof expression only served to freeze him to his chair. Her eyes drilled deep into the ones underneath Question’s mask, deep enough to pierce his soul in the most painful way possible. Though they were too far away to get a proper look at Question’s face, staff and guests were frozen in terror at this woman standing above the secret agent, possibly about to beat him to a bloody pulp. Some wondered if they should just dive for cover under their tables. At last Helena smirked as an idea popped into her head. 

“Looks like we’re doing this the hard way.” 

Question could feel the cool night breeze nipping at his lightly tousled black hair. Despite the position he now found himself in, he kept his composure as calm and stoic as ever. It seemed his study of that stolen data depended on it.

“Alright…I promise.” he stated somewhat awkwardly. “You swear?” Helena’s voice demanded from up above. “I swear, on my life, my soul and my whole investigative career.” Question listed off, trying to conjure up any more words that could get him out of his current predicament. “I absolutely give you my word.” “You *will* enjoy our date?” Helena suspiciously asked the detective, who happened to be dangling upside-down, his fedora off and his coat flapping behind him. The vigilante herself was clutching Question’s ankles in each hand, standing on the restaurant’s balcony as horrified guests watched this rather elaborate form of torture.

Frowning down at him, Helena was quite literally keeping her date suspended a fair amount of metres above the street below as if he weighed the same as a feather. Would she really let go of his ankles and let him splatter on the road? Either way, Question went on with his vow even as the blood rushed to his head. “I will. I will commit tonight completely and utterly to our dinner date,” he continued to the woman hanging him from the balustrade. “I confess, I obsessed over my mission that I could always resume later, becoming too invested to spare a thought for our relationship, relax, and spend any time together,” Helena warily eyed Question’s dangling form, listening to what sounded like a rather urgently-spoken confession. “I therefore solemnly swear, with absolutely no crossed-fingers to show, that I will, compliantly, and without questi - I - I mean, hesitation, have dinner with you, I will enjoy it with you, then take you to the pictures, that I will let you pick whichever movie you wish,” By now, Question could feel his own brain go numb from the redness caused from being upside-down, but gathered as much breath as he could to finish his words. “...and that I will never let my investigations or conspiracy theories get in the way of our dating again.” Helena’s eyes darted to the side as she took in every word Question had said. There was no telling if he would be true to his word. Obsessions were all someone needed to go back on a promise, no matter how forthright it sounded. Then again, if Question did ever think about breaking this one, at least she could remind him that she might just find a higher building to dangle him from. Her sceptical gaze landed onto her helpless lover, her fingers curled around his ankles like iron cuffs. Seconds went by as she considered what to do next.

Chapter 2

Chapter 4

[bergeronprocess]

9/24/24

Today I just want to write my impressions after finishing the anime Narenare -Cheer for You-.

I started watching the summer 2024 new anime season with 4 shows. Then the Olympics happened and it took up literally all of my Watchin’ TV Time. The state of my Youtube watch later playlist at the end of the Games was a mess lol. That Olympics watching also caused me to decide to drop 2 of the shows I was following - Shy season 2 (it just didn’t really seem to grab me; I bounced off it right as they were starting to assemble their team for rescuing Tokyo) and Twilight Out of Focus (apparently I bounced right as they concluded their focus on the first couple and it was actually an anthology show focusing on different people throughout; it was fine but I just wasn’t loving it).

I kept on with the long-ass-named magical girl and evil lieutenant show (I haven’t watched its finale yet) as well as Narenare. I’ve just finished watching the finale of Narenare and overall I enjoyed it! The guy assigned to review it at Anime News Network hated it, to the point that he literally named it the worst anime of the summer season, which I think is a bit harsh. To be clear, he’s welcome to his opinion, and I’m welcome to disagree. Also, the reviewer of this series was not Nicholas Dupree, who died suddenly and tragically at the way-too-damn-young age of 31. The reviewer was Jairus Taylor.

I do think Narenare had a LOT of ideas and not a lot of real estate to put them into, but that’s basically an endemic issue in new seasonal anime these days, unfortunately. Only having 12 or MAYBE 13 twenty-three-minute episodes to work with is just not ideal for any story. I think Narenare would have been better served by having 24 or 25 episodes. This standard yet shortened episode run leads to compression. For example, the plot of Mari-senpai developing her own bout of the twisties, driving a wedge into Pompoms out of spite and then overcoming the twisties it felt a little rushed, but was still nice to see. She took responsibility for her mean comment (I truly thought it was Megumi who posted the comment at first, upset with being physically unable to do cheerleading stunts. I was wrong!) and worked to make amends for it.

It was good to see characters not only mention the yips but to see Kanata going to a therapist about it. Destigmatization of mental health issues and seeking help for them is huge and Japan is lagging behind the US when it comes to that, so any efforts made towards it are welcomed by me. The story emphasizes the importance of trust and care among cheerleading team members, which is crucial when you have someone else’s life in your hands as you do when you’re about to toss them in the air! 

I also liked noticing the small touches that were made to facilitate accessibility for Megumi, like how a wheelchair ramp and a handrail was built on an exterior staircase of the beautiful old temple house she lives in. The fact that she came to every single Pompoms event, in full cheer attire and in her chair, was something I liked to see too. I at first thought that she was going to be permanently using a chair based on the promo images, but she was just temporarily needing it while recovering from the effects of a surgery, and she’s using crutches in the very last scene. At some point, she’ll probably be able to fully participate in cheer with Kanata again!

Jairus took issue with an earlier episode showing Kanata suddenly being able to fly again at the end of a montage, as if somehow her yips magically got cured by the power of friendship or whatnot, but then later episodes showed her continuing to struggle and he didn’t seem to take note of that. (To be fair…I never read his reviews of episodes 11 or 12 lol. I just know they’re probably overly negative.) I think that’s more realistic, especially with mental health struggles. Sometimes you get better, sometimes you backslide. I’ve found that to be the case in my own life with my anxiety. I backslid a little bit a few months ago and it was not fun. 

He also took issue with the Anna and Stout Records plot line, saying oh wow how convenient is it that this record store guy happens to know a Grammy winner who can just come help. Well! Maybe he was so stuck in his “this shop is going to close and I am giving away my records” way of thinking that he couldn’t see any other way out, but Anna and the gang provided a fresh perspective. Sometimes in our lives, we need that. We just need someone else to help us think differently, try something new, and achieve our dreams. That’s another running theme of Narenare.

I do think Nodoka and Suzuha’s development suffered a little bit, which can be an issue with ensemble casts. I like Nodoka, I see some of myself in her with her desire to just be chill lol, and I LOVE that Suzuha decided to go be an idol in Tokyo. (I just hope she doesn’t end up like Ai in Kageki Shoujo, excommunicated from the idol world for having a flat affect and telling a weird fan that he was being weird. Although she’s found a second life in the world of Kouka. Anyway please go watch Kageki Shoujo, I hope they make a season 2 of the anime eventually, and read the manga too…which I am still waiting for volume 10 of - it’s been delayed since, like, April and now has an October ETA.)

Narenare also kind of wanted to be an idol anime too, I think. The music is good, and I especially enjoyed the song from when they performed at the neighborhood festival to help save Stout Records. It also made sense in-universe because of Shion and Anna both being into the art of making music. I feel like the music/idol aspect was executed better here than in Pride of Orange, where they just really wanted to make a straight-up idol anime but decided to also put in ice hockey elements too. I never got past episode 1 of that show - being asked to believe the Japan national team could beat Canada in any international competition (and then immediately change out from sweaty hockey jerseys and pads into sparkly idol outfits and sing a song at center ice) is just stretching the suspension of disbelief a liiiiittle too far for me as a hockey fan.

I also like Love Live, so I’m primed to enjoy idol elements when they come lol.

The Day-Glo funky color palette of Narenare was an interesting visual choice, but I actually enjoyed it. There were some great examples of photorealistic animation as well, like a closeup of Suzuha’s pompoms as she finishes her idol application form or the countryside when Mari runs back home. It was fun to watch such candy-colored joy during a hot hot summer.

In short, I enjoyed watching Narenare and I found it to be harshly criticized by its Anime News Network reviewer. Is it my anime of the year? Probably not, though at this point I don’t know if I necessarily have a single standout anime of the year. We’ve still got another 2024 season yet to go, after all. But I had fun!

[stormxpadme]

the fake fic ask game

Title: White Lightnin' bound to drive you wild

Tags: Mission Gone Wrong, Safe House, There's only one bed, Rivals to Lovers, Awkward Confessions, Touch Starved, First Kiss, Laughter and Humor, Sass and Snark, Mutual pining, Idiots in love

You can either do the same summary for both or two different story summaries. :D (And yes, the title is a song lyric from a song I LOVE.)

the fake fic ask game

Okay, this definitely screams for two stories :D.

a) old X-Men movie verse, set within my main X-Men verse

Title

White Lightnin' bound to drive you wild

Summary:

It's 20 years after the Battle of Liberty Island, and after the latest couple of almost apocalyptic crises and the odd near-death experience, deaths, and resurrections, Scott finally makes good on his promise regarding a holiday in the Maldives to his wife. Because it's Scott and holidays though, also known as opposite polarities, that planned beach hangout doesn't turn out as it was meant to, of course. The general global mood regarding mutants is once more not exactly shiny after Mystique just had the whole city of New York enslaved, emptied, and turned into a mutant paradise for a while. So when there's an unexpected tropical storm threatening the island group where Scott and Katja are residing and Katja reluctantly reveals herself to the rest of that beach resort in order to clear the sky with her powers and prevent damage and casualties in that little paradise, our heroes are faced with hostility instead of gratitude. Before the situation can get too ugly, our lovebirds are extracted with the Blackbird piloted by Remy and Marie, just having come back from a mission, who have been alerted by Jean telepathically that they need to make a little detour. Sensing how devastated their friends are by the spoiled holiday and the ongoing discrimination issues, Marie and Remy decide against flying back to Westchester but take the jet to Marie's former home state instead as she knows they'll not run into a lot of people there in the countryside. In a run-down country club with lots of karaoke fun, the two couples enjoy a surprisingly nice evening, coming to terms with the realization there are a lot of places even for mutants to enjoy the merits of normalcy and that it doesn't have to take luxury escapes and cocktails under palm trees for a little bit of true happiness.

*************************************************

b) current cartoon verse, taking place after episode 3.5

Tags

Mission Gone Wrong, Safe House, There's only one bed, Rivals to Lovers, Awkward Confessions, Touch Starved, First Kiss, Laughter and Humor, Sass and Snark, Mutual pining, Idiots in love

Summary:

After that whole drama with Maddie and Nathan, Scott and Jean have decided to divorce as they can no longer tell what is and was real in their relationship and can't stand even sleeping in the same bed anymore. After having earned a painful rejection by Jean himself, Logan has finally given up on that dream that was never meant to be and reluctantly comes to Scott's support in keeping the things in the mansion together while Scott is still shaken from having to give up on his newborn son and now his relationship. Challenging his old rival in regular Danger Room sessions to distract Scott and help him keep his mind and body sharp, Logan realizes that with those burdensome feelings and rivalry regarding Jean out of the way, Scott and he have a lot more in common than they'd used to think. Bit by bit, Logan even gets Scott to let go of his latest control issues a little and engage in team activities like cooking and sports for fun which almost ends with Scott burning down the kitchen, trying to make Canadian pancakes for them for breakfast though, and more than one awkward boner in public on Logan's side because Scott looks and moves just as ridiculous as hot in baseball shorts. Obviously, none of them makes a move though because they're firmly convinced, the other one still hates them. When the team receives a distress call by Forge regarding Ororo, Logan and Scott leave for Forge's home only to find it half in ruins and their ally gone, with Ororo nowhere to be seen. After combing the area in vain for hours, they're being attacked by the same mysterious enemy who has already taken their friends and need to return to the house for Logan to patch Scott up and for both of them to take an hour of rest. Which means having to share the only intact bed left while at home in the mansion, Jean telepathically tries to find a new lead for them to follow. Waiting for those news, Scott and Logan, to absolutely no one's surprise but their own, end up fucking their frustration and anxiety away.

[whetstonefires]

For the DVD Commentary post:

"I hate everything, he sobbed, and was surprised somehow when they did not draw back further, were not angry, even though it could not possibly be news by this point. I hate everything. I hate Shinra. I hate the world. I hate you. I hate Mother. I hate Sephiroth.

He made the name mean something entirely different than they had, trying to tame him. An image in fragments, bright silver yes and speed, the fit of uniform boots. The sound of people saying it, year in and year out—cold disdain and breathless admiration and writhing jealousy, and every repetition a new burden to carry. The crackle of flame and the stink of mako, laughter like Hojo’s laughter in his own throat, the taste of blood in your mouth. Jenova’s long-dead eyes staring with too much awareness for a corpse.

All the things the word Sephiroth meant that he felt consumed by, but also the mere thick, fungus-spreading concept of self.

He had failed so many times in so many ways. They told him he was perfect and yes everything was easy except anything that actually mattered, and he just wanted to do something right."

This one lives in my head hahaha i'd love to know the commentary behind it

Oh, this is a fun one! (That's for this post from this fic, the sixth and final Sephiroth-as-sibling AU.) Sorry for the delay in turnaround, I had to. Thanksgiving. It was a lot.

Well, we're already like three layers deep into Sephiroth's head during this bit, since it's a flashback to how he was feeling during an interaction within the Lifestream, so that part's a little redundant. He's about as self-aware as I can personally justify Sephiroth ever being.

This was an important bit for the fic, since it covers two essential elements--most obviously, it's the moment when Aerith's project of separating Sephiroth's consciousness from the greater Jenova gestalt decisively bore fruit.

Secondly, this is the passage where we find out why I've been tying myself into knots this entire time refusing to let the POV character call himself by name. (This would be even more important if I'd ever finished and posted the whole story; this is technically just the opening.)

Written carelessly, this bit would be just, the worst exposition-dump. So I leaned in hard on the sensory data, of Sephiroth's experience of brokenness and of his own fractured identity, and how that drives his relationship to the situation he's in now.

I ran through all the senses, some more than once--the physicality of memory was very important, since the physicality of the actual experience was illusory. Sight was first color, then a specific image; fire was a sound and mako was a smell. Taste was blood, which I remember wording carefully so it spanned the breadth from 'when you overwork until you start tasting blood' to 'blood in your mouth from serious injury' to 'having bitten,' because Sephiroth's cannibalism is all strictly metaphorical but it's also a big part of the narrative.

The game, I mean, but maybe also the fic.

Touch was the specific encasing sensation of standard-issue footwear and the internal sensation of your throat spasming on laughter, which bleeds into sound because Sephiroth's laughter during his breakdown is sometimes spelled like Hojo's and this makes me insane and I don't think he'd have been happy to notice it either.

And sound was also the symbolic item of the name, and the way it is held differently in each user's mouth, and how public-use Sephiroth's name was made by Shinra, when it was almost the only thing he had that was his own. The way his celebrity rendered him public property and so many people felt they knew him and had a right to his acknowledgement in return.

The way this makes trying to call him back to himself by calling his name, the way they do here, the way Zack tried at Nibelheim--difficult. There's no inherent intimacy in using his name to impose a specific personhood on him, and what there is has a lot of negative associations.

The nice thing about writing something happening in the Lifestream is you don't need to, and shouldn't, distinguish well between fact and metaphor. The name is the meaning you pack into it, much more than it is physical syllables. But the shape of those syllables is still attached, essential, in the same way the dead remember what they looked like, until they don't.

I don't think you can do a post-Jenovization Sephiroth without massive identity issues. He's technically been mindwhammied even more thoroughly than Cloud was at the Northern Crater, and like with Cloud, it was being in a position of doubting who and what he really was and whether that was worth anything that set him up to crack in the first place. So he doesn't have any stable sense of 'himself' to go back to.

There's no one alive who can do for Sephiroth what Tifa does for Cloud. But, I thought, there might be a few people dead who have a shot.

If you consider Sephiroth's lines in Cloud's version of the Nibelheim flashback to be canon--which I do because they're much more interesting than the alternative--then we also have strong indications Sephiroth adopted his omnicidal transhuman identity as a coping mechanism. He's very obviously not a happy person, but when Cloud/Zack/whoever says after the massacre that their sadness is the same he laughs and asks, what do I have to be sad about?

This new identity is his consolation, an escape. He has to have hated himself because most of 'himself' is a thing he threw away.

I think it's very significant to the themes of Final Fantasy VII that while our protagonist can be directly, physically puppeted by psychic projection when taken by surprise, ultimately it seems to be necessary to break Cloud's will at the root in order for Sephiroth to 'win' their conflict, a process probably achieved with the other more thoroughly overcome Copies via torture and isolation. (What this implies about the making of Genesis' Copies I'm not sure, but it's not good. The Compilation is very bad at preserving theme though, and I very much opted to side with the OG on any point of conflict here.)

Sephiroth may have been both deceived and influenced by psychic pressure, but he can't have been forced. He chose this. He rejected everything that he had ever been in life other than 'a killer' in exchange for a new identity that was straight-up fraudulent, and then when that bubble burst one with nothing in it but hunger and anger and pride, and didn't look back.

So, any Sephiroth you put back together post-Nibelheim to be a distinct living person and seek things other than domination and murder (a thing I've seen done quite a few times, it's a popular saw I'm kinda riffing on, though I've never seen it done in this timeframe) is going to be a wreck for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with guilt.

He has never had a strong and stable sense of self, raised within Shinra and subject to its demands. Sephiroth-of-SOLDIER was so easy to throw away because it was a self built up chiefly from without. He is not a nice or an accommodating person, but he's also not one who ever learned to make his own choices, something that's implied in the original game and leaned into heavily in Crisis Core.

When he unconsciously expects to be rejected for expressing his ragged, vulnerable hate in the section excerpted, that's part of this. Sephiroth is a character whose main vector of self-expression has always been violence, but who has never been permitted his own anger--before he breaks, his resentment of Hojo appears exclusively via passive aggression. (This is such a bad combination stg President dude wtf did you expect.)

This passage is the baring of all these facts, the breaking point where Aerith successfully deprives him of his coping mechanisms thoroughly enough that he's driven onto the shoals of honest agony. And he's already ditched the act-normal, stay-level coping behaviors that got him through most of his life. And he's straight-up lost chunks of his psyche that got particularly integrated with his Mother and left behind when Aerith did Big Slice, some of which had provided him with load-bearing emotional bulwarks against self-loathing. So what's left?

But even as this is getting to the heart of his unhappiness, he's at the same time conducting one more self-evasion maneuver here, trying to wrap Sephiroth up into a bundle that he can externalize his self-hatred onto, a thing that people (including Jenova) made of him (he, who is a made thing) rather than a person he continuously is.

If Aerith had set him adrift in the Lifestream in this state and somehow kept Jenova from promptly reincorporating him, he probably would have succumbed to the true death quite rapidly, since it's the hanging-on to one's own identity that holds that off, and Sephiroth's primary attachment points seem to have always been his hatred and his physical form, and he's here shown in a state of rejecting his attachment to both, for lack of any other effective shield against the hurt of being.

Instead she stuffed him back into his body, which was conveniently preserved in crystal at the Northern Crater (a significantly less bullshit way to resurrect the lad than anything else I've seen done imho lmao like it's already there in the text). Existing as a single person in a body is the foundation (though not a necessary prerequisite) of individual selfhood in this setting, so he's sort of being forced to patch a self together by virtue of having skin.

Which brings us out of this flashback and a day later to the main timeline of the fic--wherein it is hopefully now more obvious why he's acting this way.

And possibly why one of the first things he did (after stabbing Rufus on sight lol) was cut off his iconic hair.

The three ghosts (not actually appearing in the quoted passage but relevant) are being fairly honest, since 1) they're dead and made of feelings and that makes it harder to avoid and 2) what they're doing wouldn't work otherwise.

Aerith's primary motive really isn't revenge, though I think as we see with Tseng she is fully capable of balancing a sense of connection to someone and the opinion that they should die and spare everyone else the burden of their existence in the world; her primary motive isn't pity either.

This is strategic. Sephiroth makes Jenova much stronger and is doing a lot of her thinking as part of the gestalt; breaking them up is, if possible, the single most effective thing she can do from within the Lifestream. And since in this timeline she knows Sephiroth much better than in canon, she has an angle of attack available. And she does identify with him, and remember him as a very unhappy child, and when you come down to it no person who was a deeply unhappy child ever entirely stops being one, deep down.

(Another fact that is relevant to Cloud's canonical identity arc. He cannot start to fully heal until he integrates that resentful eight-year-old who internalized the blame for not protecting Tifa from herself.)

Zack is in this for her sake and Cloud's, and because his failure at Nibelheim is his greatest remaining regret, especially because of the way it replicates the trauma of Angeal's death. There's no way he could pass up the chance to resolve that. And even now, he really feels for Sephiroth--especially now, as Aerith's plan gets moving and how pitiful a creature Sephiroth is under all that gets exposed.

Angeal feels, with some justification, responsible for Sephiroth's mental breakdown. He didn't realize he had that kind of power or he would at the very least have made more effort to explicitly dip on Sephiroth personally and make clear that it wasn't personal, but he definitely helped fuck the guy up. Happily, if there's one thing Angeal is good at it's failing to let go of things he very clearly should not hold onto, so he makes a solid anchor for this maneuver.

The only reason he's able to verbalize this as usefully as he does is the squad basically ran drills for this before making their move. All three of them are violently allergic to most expressions of sincere emotion, especially negative, especially their own, especially conveyed in words rather than gestures and allusions, and having to listen to one another's practice monologues was significantly more unpleasant than getting killed in the first place. But they had to, so they could provide critique.

I don't think I have any puns for this one?

:} Do note that Aerith's chopping maneuver after luring Sephiroth's core consciousness away from the gestalt center via grudgebaiting should be visualized with that same overhead slam animation she uses in FFVII:1997 when you have her jump forward from the back row and deliver a physical blow with her staff.

[animehouse-moe]

Skip and Loafer Episode 10: Scrambling and Dripping

Well, with The Sound of Music as the background, we finally begin to explore Shima's character in proper. Flashbacks to childhood, repressed feelings and thoughts, and resolutions and progression that drives his current self forward. There's certainly a lot going on, and a lot to share!

We start the episode off with Chris himself laying into Shima for his issues, which I thought was a nice touch. Without his friend, Shima probably wouldn't have made the progress he did this episode, nor would he have opened up near as much to his friends.

But before that I just wanted to muse over this layout. I thought it was really fun and cute at expressing the differences between Shima and Chris. It does so through stuff like the ice cream vs drink, but also the differences in their posture, the style of their uniform, and even their bags. I just thought it was interesting and a fun little piece to add that gives Chris his own personality.

Anyways, the line in question from Chris. I particularly like how he phrases it in terms of acting, almost to rub a bit more salt in the wound of Shima in regards to the issue.

Following up their diner conversation though is one that happens outdoors, which I find far more interesting. I really like how they show Chris to not be some perfect friend that has all the right words for Shima, but rather that he stumbles around and has thoughts that exist from his own point of view, like this one. It's not so much as he's confusing Shima's experience as a child actor, but that he sees it from a different perspective. Shima was also so happy and excited to be able to put that smile on his mother's face, and Chris picks up on that enjoyment from a different angle than the chains that Shima imposes on himself.

And then there's whatever this was. Absolutely caught me off guard and got a laugh out of me. The perfect ending to a chat between blossoming high school boys for sure.

We swiftly move from Shima and Chris' conversation to a montage of the prep for the festival, and while it's pretty well typical with what you'd expect, I liked this one little moment. All the other groups featured are chatting or saying something when they're on screen, but the pair that are in charge of the budget are totally silent. Really simple piece, but I got a good little laugh of it.

The montage wraps up just as quick as it comes in, and we get whisked away to the world of The Sound of Music for an explanation of the plot. Not really anything to write home about, but I really liked the art style they used for it. It's still in tune with the overall color and character designs and stuff, but provides just the right amount of artistic edge to separate it.

Anyways, they explain the story, they do a little musical piece as an example for viewers, and then they press onwards. I really like how they follow the camaraderie and excitement shared by the rehearsal with Mitsumi's isolation behind the scenes. The other students are smiling and working together, while Mitsumi stands idly in the background. She herself even wishes to be a part of what her class is doing this year, which creates a bittersweet yearning for her inclusion.

Now, I did say this was an episode about Shima, but here I am talking about Mitsumi? Well, that's because it's important in regards to how Shima reflects on a flashback that follows Mitsumi's scene here. I think it's a really important flashback in how things are shown, because through it all, we only ever see the smiles on Shima and his mother's faces. Every other emotion from anybody in that scene is otherwise hidden, and tells viewers a different story than what it is exactly that Shima experiences and feels when reliving that moment.

The flashback comes and goes, and so does Mitsumi in a whirlwind of outside of school work. She ends up missing her morning meeting, which the people involved assure her they're not worried about in the slightest.

But this is high school, and these kids don't know better.

I think it's a really great piece for both ends. The important message of course being, you never know how hard someone's trying. These two girls who are only in charge of the play, have no idea of the weight that Mitsumi carries around for their sake. And rather than hash out their concern or challenges (or just be more accepting) they choose to talk about her after the fact.

It's not bullying, but it's one of those pieces of high school life where people that haven't given anything up don't understand what others have done. Sympathy runs dry with those types of characters, and it's plain to see how here. It's not that they're being terrible towards Mitsumi because she missed their meeting, but they're talking poorly of her because of things that they don't understand. It's a very naïve thought to have, and drives home the selfishness of characters like that in a very straightforward way.

We don't dwell on this moment for long though, as Shima once more uses Mitsumi as his crutch for introspection. Seeing himself in her reflection, in his perceived fragility of Mitsumi, he begins to explore himself more and more. And through the flashback this time, we begin to piece things together more and more.

Shima doesn't particularly like acting, we know that as a "truth" from present Shima. But his mother doesn't see it like that. The pair form a positive feedback loop, where Shima's acting is meant to make his mother happy, and his mother's smile and love is what spurs Shima on to continue with acting. This time, we see that they're not wearing those smiles on their faces, but Shima's not currently acting. Once he does though, that light returns to the pair of them.

In contrast to this happy memory of acting bringing Shima and his mother joy, he moves onto placing himself in the shoes of his role in The Sound of Music, the gardener Johan. While not anything new or really exceptional from Shima at this point in the series, I think it's an important piece in how he views himself and the world he exists in. That his happiness is not his own, and that the only pieces of himself that are truly him are the negative aspects.

Even though he buys Mitsumi a drink and chats with her to lighten her mood. Even if he dances with her to get a laugh out of her. Even if he chooses to be in the play because his friends ask him to. Shima is incredibly adept at ignoring those positive aspects of himself, and instead places them on Mitsumi, atop a pedestal that remains far away from his reach.

But I'll explain that in a bit, look at this incredibly cute clip.

Alright, cute song and dance finished, back to what I was saying. What a hugely important even to follow up this little sequence. Once more, we find ourselves in that pathway/outdoor hallway from an earlier episode, but with the roles reversed. This time, it's not Shima leaving Mitsumi behind, but it's Mitsumi leading the way for Shima. Such an important piece of symbolism and progression for him. He's not hiding a "secret" or being a shallow friend to Mitsumi. He's bearing his heart to this girl, and in turn Mitsumi is guiding Shima towards his happiness and the acceptance of himself and his past. That pedestal still exists, but even if it's only ever so slightly, Shima feels like he's gotten closer to reaching Mitsumi.

And then there's this piece as well, if that visual wasn't enough.

And this is where the episode leaves us, as the students work tirelessly to bring their ambitions towards reality. It's a really great piece that doesn't neglect the great world around Shima, but also doesn't try too hard to represent it. This is his episode, and they want us to know that. They want us to focus on the childhood memories and trauma that chains him within, of the guilt and repression and justification he uses to exist how he does currently.

But they also want to show us how far he's come. How much he cares for another person, how much he wants to be happy and have the life that he wants. That he wants to work towards standing alongside Mitsumi, rather than leaving her behind or forcing her to guide him. It's just really really well done, and delivers on the storyline we've had since day 1. It's not finished yet, not by a mile, but we're getting progress and getting to see Shima start to want to grow.

[skymaiden32]

Hi everyone! This isn't a very happy post, but it is very serious. Something happened yesterday and I just need somewhere to vent.

(No members of the Thunderfam are involved; it's about people I know IRL.)

I used to have this friend. My closest childhood friend. Our parents were also friends and had the two of us around the same time. I remember he used to have a lot of Thunderbirds toys. I guess that makes him the first friend I ever had in the fandom, even if we had no clue what fandom was back then. 

Something I should get out the way is that we grew up in a religious background, and we were in the same congregation as kids. Later on when we were teens, we had a trio with another boy, who beta-read my stories for me for a while. During COVID, all our religious activities moved online, and we drifted apart. I’ll call my former bff ‘Z’ and our other friend ‘J’. 

The longer the isolation went on, I started noticing that Z was no longer attending the online meetings, and whenever his parents were there they had these weird looks on their faces. Well, one day Z organised a Zoom call between the three of us and told us he’d moved out of his parent’s house and had converted to Islam. Me and J supported his decision, there were no hard feelings, and we promised to keep in touch.

Well, we did keep in touch for a little while. Z and I met up a couple of times, but that’s pretty much it. When the pandemic ended, me and J stayed in our congregation without him there. J got baptised and Z was there. J left for university, and my communication with him broke down as well, but that’s another story. At this point, I decided to change congregations for reasons unrelated to Z and J, which I’m not gonna get into here but let’s just say there were issues. I’m happy in my new congregation, but back to Z.

My mum and her husband are still in that old congregation to this day, and once I was there visiting them. That’s when I saw Z. He must’ve come with his dad. His mum wasn’t there for health reasons, which I’ll get into in a bit. That’s when he told me that he’d met someone at university. Mind you, he’d been at university for just about a year, and they were already engaged, talking about having kids, the works. He even told me they were planning on moving to another country. He showed me a picture of his fiance, and told me I’d be invited to the wedding. That was last April.

Now, I’m already annoyed at him because we’ve barely talked up until now, and any conversation we do have is by text, extremely short, and initiated by me. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen him in person, I doubt he would’ve told me he was engaged. I’m even more annoyed.

We get to his mum now. Z pretty much cut his parents off when he left, and his mother was understandably beside herself with worry. His mum is a lovely person. I adore her and when we were younger, she was like another mother to me. When I’d come round to his place she made me feel like part of that family. Hearing that Z’s hurt her so much really drives the wedge further.

Fast forward to yesterday. I wake up early because I had a congregation meeting at around ten. I open up TikTok. I see that Z has posted something, so I click on it. It’s a slideshow post with him and his fiancee goofing off. I look at the caption. It says, “marriage has changed me”.

…

She’s not his fiance anymore. She’s his wife. 

He said, to my face, that I would be invited. I wasn’t. I was heartbroken. I still am. Not because I was interested romantically, but because I’d realised I’d lost one of my best friends. I went to that meeting, because I needed to be around people I trusted after what I just saw. But I kept thinking about it over and over. Eventually, I decided that it was a lost cause, so I sent him a congratulations on TikTok, and blocked him. I made a vent post on TikTok too. It’s still up, but I may set it to private at some point. The bridge was already burnt; I just cut the rope because there was no way to repair it.

20 years down the drain. No one ever mentions how painful friendship break ups are. He was like a brother to me, but I can’t be friends with someone who treats me like that. Like those two decades didn’t happen. I honestly think I'll be upset over this for the rest of my life.

Z, if somehow you’ve found this post and are reading it, I want to thank you for the friendship we had while it lasted, and wish you and your wife the best. May you have many happy memories together...

[batsplat]

Oh rewatching Naruto to pick up languages sounds fun!

Naruto infuriates me so so much. I could go from 0 to 60 from a random Naruto post. There was a base a good foundation. Great character designs who could have grown and developed so well. We could have had so much nuance and issues addressed. Just slivers of brilliance and then trash. The whole students who faced war and pain go on to become teachers who do the same without empathy (there are days where Kakashi makes me scream in rage) My face when they introduced Kaguya as the big bad behind Madara. I won't even touch Naruto, Sasuke & Itachi.

But the akatsuki, oh loved every one of their stories.

You mentioned web novels and I flashed to the trenches of MTL. I do think the Chinese ones provide such delicious angst though. They don't hesitate. At all. To take the dark turns. The enemies to lovers trope in those are TRULY enemies. The pain is PAIN. but the redemption is worth it too. Yuwu by meatbun was the last one I read and that was heavy.

yeah, it is!! unfortunately the studio responsible for the dubbing... massively had to scale back production for war-related reasons, so the naruto dub does tail off shortly before shippuden. but well, they did dub a hell of a lot of detective conan episodes because apparently that's a major hit (rightly so!!)

and yeah character development in naruto was... well, look, it was never good, but eventually it REALLY became a mess. what you can say in defence of the pre-shippuden stuff is that it has some fairly clear themes and coming-of-age plot threads of like,, naruto gradually being accepted by the village, finding his own place within this community, making friends... I mean it was always a little bit threadbare because you don't really get the sense there's all that much naruto has to develop, except maybe 'accepting himself and calming down a bit', because from the framing of the show it's really just the world around him that has to change. (alternatively it's framed as basically fine that he needs to actively fight the village to be accepted which!! no!!) but that's getting in the weeds. it's fine. they don't have to reinvent the wheel, the basic character premise is all right

but then by the time to get to shippuden, the arc is... naruto learning about the horrors of hard choices? or something. I guess. also not giving up on sasuke, which really is his major driving motivation in shippuden beyond 'not getting his monster sucked out of his body', but the narrative never really takes a stance on the sasuke question, which?? it's your central conflict, you've got to take a stance on it!! like, is him never giving up on sasuke good because it shows his pure soul and power of friendship and how he knows this traumatised child soldier isn't beyond redemption, or is it bad because he's delusional and not paying enough attention to all of sasuke's victims and it keeps distracting him from this existential threat? we don't know!! it's not resolved! it's kind of resolved in that sasuke did come back to the good side, which you'd think would mean the narrative feels naruto was right, but then on the other hand naruto was really only very tenuously involved in this 'redemptive' process. they got to the point where literally everyone was telling him to finally drop the sasuke quest and then the narrative just... moves on. never resolves it!! so as a result of the whole plot becoming such a. mess. leading up to the final war arc, kishimoto kinda forgot to give his main emotional and thematic and character tension of the series a satisfying ending

the whole point of the sasuke character was... going through a lot of trauma when you are young and losing stuff you remember having can kinda fuck you up and send you down an ultimately self-destructive path of hatred and bitterness and close you down to forming new attachments. so sasuke functions as one of naruto's many shadow selves in the series (the other major ones being gaara and pain) about how naruto just escaped that path, but it's always a fairly thin line and naruto could also be consumed by bitterness if he isn't careful. and also naruto's got a saviour complex because he feels like the only one who can get all the bad boys and he empathises to a painful extent with them, so saving sasuke is also about like. confronting the monster within and needing to believe there's hope for sasuke still because that also means there's hope for naruto. which is all FINE, ignoring execution I do think that's a perfectly solid premise for your shounen protagonist arc. but then the itachi twist is... well, it's a lot!! it steamrolls a lot of this arc if you think about it for two seconds too long! like it's interesting and I don't HATE hate it but it does also just Fundamentally Change the moral logic of the naruto universe in a way the narrative never reckons with! because if itachi was following his village's orders in slaughtering their entire clan, then... well, sasuke is right! his revolutionary cause is broadly justified, even if it comes from a place of loss and trauma! the uchiha WERE right to think konoha couldn't be trusted! it's an unjustifiable crime! suddenly the entire calculus of sasuke being consumed by revenge changes, because unless your stance is that 'all revenge is bad' (clearly not true in ninja world), that is pretty much as justifiable a revenge quest as you can get!

at which point. you just get to this weird place where the politics of naruto-verse become kinda fucked, because the only reason why konoha is 'good' is for some vibes-based 'well, the status quo is fundamentally preferable' argument. chaos reigned before the villages, so The Village needs to be preserved at all costs! and it's kinda... look, I don't want to over-examine the politics of the naruto-verse, but I do think it's a bit of an issue if your 'it's wrong to judge outsiders and especially innocent children for stuff outside of their control' story becomes a 'well the institutions of power have a few Bad Actors but the real villains will always be those traumatised by the institutions of the state who attempt to change the status quo' story. when I was a teen reading shippuden the first time, I was introduced to the 'uchiha's are doomed to a curse of hatred where unless they're super careful they're genetically locked into becoming the baddies' stuff and was like 'oh yeah what this is leading to is a big lesson about how this kind of thinking that demonises an entire population is exactly as misguided as the villagers being mean to naruto' because apparently I was an idiot who thought this story was going in a thematically coherent direction. in the end, the stance of the whole narrative is basically 'yeah the curse of hatred is a thing, the uchiha ARE all kinda genetically predisposed to losing themselves to hatred', which? please stop? think about what your story is saying!! this is a bad bad message!!

basically, kishimoto needed to ignore all this ninja war stuff - you needed some kind of vaguely satisfying conclusion to THAT story and all the other stuff can sort itself out. I don't even massively care what stance you end up taking on sasuke as long as you take one!! I mean ultimately I suppose I'd prefer naruto being able to save sasuke, but also y'know convince me on whatever you want, just do SOMETHING with it rather than like. the endless war arc. that simply would not end. it just became too convoluted!! super easy and common flaw for long running series to fall prey to, but still! fix it! obviously there's a few other glaring issues here like 'clearly if you've got a trio then you need your third main character to also play a role in this central conflict', where they just. extremely fluffed it with sakura. I have zero problem with a lot of her early characterisation like her being mean to naruto or having a crush on sasuke, she's a young girl it's FINE. but obviously the power-scaling of this series ends up being like,, inherently sexist, and they progressively ruin all of naruto's underdog charm by not only making the monster inside him a clear upside (given using the nine tailed fox came with diminishing costs and he got control over it... way too easily) but also ensuring he too has a deeply significant bloodline lineage with the uzumaki's. his dad minato has underdog appeal because he didn't come from a significant family!! not naruto! and I'm fond enough of minato and kushina that even though I hate this retcon for thematic reasons, I can't hate hate them, I think they're cute, but!! at a certain stage you need to figure out how you're going to somehow remain true to the starting point of your story

and figure out what to do with sakura - on paper you'd think she'd be the mediator between naruto and sasuke in their extreme stances, but you don't actually need a mediator because naruto is already completely pro-sasuke!! and had a more significant relationship with him than sakura did from basically the start, like there is nothing about sasuke that sakura knows and naruto doesn't. (there are very obvious implications for which of these characters should have been given a romantic ending, but let's not even get into that.) and obviously they were never going to do this in their shounen power fantasy, but it should have been sakura to embody the ultimate underdog power fantasy - because narratively she's actually the only underdog left. she's konoha's will of fire personified, she's the one who can function as a narrative stand-in for the village with all its fighting spirit and nominal egalitarianism and prejudices and flaws. it's fine if shippuden is mostly operating on different thematic ground than the first bit of the series, though you do still need to take a stance on the sasuke question... which means it should obviously have been sakura, as practically the first character in the series to judge both naruto and sasuke and make up her mind on both of them, to be symbolically granted the power to Give Them A Chance and ensure they're both not doomed to the monsters within by bringing about change to the structures that demonised and isolated them in the first place. I'm not asking for socialist utopias in my ninja worldbuilding, but if you're going to introduce 'the state ordered the deuteragonist's brother to do a genocide on his entire family' as a major plot point, you do have to find SOME kind of resolution to it idk. and the fact sakura was like?? knocked out during the naruto and sasuke fight at the end?? genuine insanity. zero interest in the third most important character in the whole story. what was the plan. I have thought for many years about what is wrong with that series and what I would fix and I will spend many more doing so

[wheeboo]

new ask from : dizzy anon ! xe says...

(so glad you loved the sin x virtue gyu idea hehehe ^^ i love sharing stories, and these ideas are ones that could be standalone tales if i had the drive and time. thank you for your viewing ^^)

i come to you with a new thing to share! i call it 'patience and grace'. this is,,, one piece of work amongst a pile of them, a compilation, you could say. for this one (and it's VERY long, warning early on), i'll talk more about vernon's bit which is the second half of this story ^^ the reader's has a few touchy topics.

but! for some context, both have issues. yn's are tackled in the first half, and the patience and grace referenced in the title is vernon's own here. he's helping them heal and learn to love comfortably again, and the first half of the story ends after they decide to have a relationship that has no labels. they are whatever they (yn) want to be, basically.

the second half will be all about vernon from yn's perspective. (majority of the stories in this compilation do this, hehe. help one first before the other.)

and sure, he's chill, but then at-home study sessions turn into normal hangouts, and end with a movie they both fall asleep to. they studied for ten minutes before he suggested doing something else.

and sure, it's cute when he gets shy over a few kisses they pepper around his face, but they catch him staring minutes after it happens. the look in his eyes is there; he wants more of those. "they feel nice," he once claimed.

and sure, it's nice when a kiss lasts a little longer than usual. then hansol is the one to pull away, and they assume that it's for their own sake, which is fine. they're not ready yet either, but... it's something when they're both staring at each other's lips. the feeling in their stomach and heart is akin to fluttering, but that butterly gets caught in a net of 'not yet'.

the cherry on top is when some other girl comes to bother them, claiming that vernon is her boyfriend. and he actually looks like he knows her, and is uncomfortable around her. yn and the girl get into some petty dispute, and once she's gone, it kind of makes sense after an explanation; yn wasn't hansol's first relationship, and that it might be another reason as to why he said he didn't mind having a label on theirs. it wasn't only for them, but also for him.

it was, of course, alright to be a scared of commitment. but considering that (1) they were the closest to each other, (2) he literally looks at them like they hung the stars in the sky for him, (3) he's always been so patient and so kind and so close to them, and that (4) they were the exact same way with him... the two could get serious about this relationship anytime.

but seeing as this was a relationship that was so healthy, so balanced, so... pure, it was likely that he didn't want to 'ruin' it by taking it to a more official level. so now it was their turn to have some patience and grace, and his turn to get over some shitty exes that don't want to leave him alone.

i have zero idea if that flowed well or if it was even portrayed well, but??? i hope it was something, at least ^^

; 💫

sorry for the late reply lovely :(

omg this sounds so ??? i love all of this so so much. even with the whole no-labels thing, i could feel the intimacy there, like in the most mundane moments between them. it's so touching how patient hansol is, helping y/n deal with their problems and helping them heal, and he is def the type of person to stare at his s/o like they've hung the stars like you've stated omfg!!! i love your little metaphor of the butterfly getting caught in a net of 'not yet' :(((

the whole fear of commitment thing is so real goodbye lmao. it's just beautiful how two human beings can look at one another like they're each other's worlds, how they can create such a universe of being together like a safe haven, how it's just so beautiful seeing love so quiet and unspoken, yet knowing that last anticipated step has to be conquered in order for something to truly blossom, despite all the fears that hold them back

also fuck that shitty ex!!! but can't have a story without some conflict 😔

you're rrrrealllllyy making me tempted to write something like this goodbye KDSFSDKFL. but this was so beautiful po, thank you for sharing your ideas w me!!! i think i've mentioned this before but you have such a beautiful mind 🫶 pls share with me more!!

also i hope you've been doing good :)

[sailing-through-hawkins]

tagged by @xenon-demon @rogueddie and @a-little-unsteddie (≧∇≦)ﾉ

this took me SO LONG to compile because not only did i change my username to be like three times longer but i also added a challenge for myself to use songs i associate with steve (and tumblr deleted my drafts. three times.)

i've also added why i associate them with steve because some of these options may seem odd and also because i love going off about my steve thoughts (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

edit: FORGOT TO ADD THE RULES -

put a song for each letter in your url! either in a reblog or new post!

S: Solar Powered by Fulton Lee, Jacob Sigman

(i imagine a very light-hearted rollerskating session with Steve and Max during summer time, both pulling fancy moves while the rest of the UD gang cheer them on)

A: A Little Bit Happy by TALK

(this gives me Steve talking about how Robin sees him, major self-esteem issues, etc etc)

I: I Was Made For Lovin' You by KISS

(this is the one KISS song i put on loop, and like to me, steve feeling like he was made to love just hits different)

L: Lovely (cover) by Lauren Babic

(i ADORE this artist and this particular cover makes me think about separated stobin in the russian bunker, major angst, 5k with a happy ending -)

I: I'm on Fire by Bruce Springsteen

(i started listening to springsteen after reading this fic that i highly recommend, and this song just got me, it felt so appropriate for steve)

N: Not Alright by Pink Sweat$

(very big steve coping all alone after he deals with the latest UD incident vibe)

G: Golden Hour by JVKE

(i will always promote sun-and-gold-coded steve, always)

T: The One That Got Away by Katy Perry

(okay this one's a little tricky, but after i started this blog i listened to this song and was struck by a steve-centric animatic concept that would take way too long to explain but the Story is There)

H: Her Song by Kaylee Federmann

(same situation as above but this animatic would be a college au ft. Steve's serial dating)

R: Rot by DBMK

(SUCH A STEVE SONG IF YOU LIKE STEVE BEING GUILTY/INSECURE OVER HIS OLD REPUTATION THIS IS THE THEME YOU NEED)

O: On and On by Djo

(i'll be honest this one is purely because it's by Djo but it's a good vibe!!)

U: Untouched by The Veronicas

(OKAY THIS ONE this one gets me it gives me pining and touch-starved friends-with-benefits steddie, the chorus goes so hard for me)

G: Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen

(it's by queen, it's called lover boy, need i say much more?)

H: Holding Out for a Hero by Adam Lambert

(i was struggling and went through charlie's wonderful playlist and was like oh OF COURSE how did i miss that?? but i went for this version because it really does remind me of steve back in the junkyard)

H: Here's to Being Single by Lost Stars

(ooooh this one!!! it makes me think of stobin lamenting over not being able to get their romantic relationships just right together)

A: Ashes (cover) by Lauren Babic

(again UGH this artist sings so beautifully and this cover really makes me think of the desolation spreading after season 4 and the whole UD gang doing their best to push it back)

W: When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going by Billy Ocean

(i imagine steve thinking about leaving hawkins often and listening to this song while he drops Dustin off just so he can daydream about it)

K: Kids In America by Kim Wilde

(more of a general UD gang vibe, like the camera cuts to each of them prepping for battle and then fighting against every UD creature that comes their way together)

I: (I Just) Died in Your Arms by Cutting Crew

(once again provided by charlie's playlist after i was struggling to find a good match, like hello self-sacrificial steve anyone)

N: Night Vision by Drives the Common Man

(i loooove the chorus in this, and it also makes me think of monster!steve which we know is what i'm all about)

S: Stranger Things by Survival Kit, IAMCOUCHSURF

(yeah this one was purely for the title, also more monster vibes ( •̀ ω •́ )✧)

i'm too tired to tag anyone so if you see this and wanna try it out yourself, consider this me tagging you!!

[saturnsorbits]

Man I can totally relate to everything you said about deku, like it’s not weird for the mc not to be everyone’s fave character but I think that deku is a disappointment for an mc the same as mha is a disappointment for a social critic

The story makes a lot of effort of adding dimension to its villains but I am still waiting for them to actually address that the the mha society has created its villain, that all these villains were just push down one too many times for not fitting in and deku has to come to that realisation in full text bc he’s the mc. Uraraka is closer to that with toga but the mc has to drive that message for it to work.

And yeah deku doesn’t want to kill shigaraki but it’s like you said, he’s just been to one dimensional for him to arrive at the real reason why he shouldn’t kill him or any other villain.

I think the main issue is AFO, like he’s just ~evil~, he’s boring, he has no real motivation, no sauce, no spice. He just wants to destroy society and become the ultimate boss but like… why????

Yes! This!

Deku is... Stale, for lack of a better term. It feels as though he's been stripped of everything personal, which makes him a husk for a badly constructed plot and, as you pointed out, often awkward and underdeveloped social commentary.

(Side Note: That would have worked really well, having him have to lose his identity in order to become the new symbol of peace, but he didn't really have an identity to lose? So, that would have been lost on him too).

The plot tries it's hardest with its villains, I think. But, you're so right when you say they seem to refuse to take that extra step and actually examine them under the light of their context in the world. Dabi is a spectacular character, but he's wasted - and I'll agree wholeheartedly that AFO is just a bit... Meh.

Idk, the whole thing leaves a lot to be desired; which is kind of disappointing - and that's still not even touching the female characters and their mismanagement, the plot threads that are left loose and the dancing around the harsher realities it's so fond of doing.

I love MHA, I do. It's given me Bakugo, Kaminari, Sero and Kirishima - of course, I love it; but it's because I love it that I wish it would try a little harder sometimes.

[scottxlogan]

Hiiiii

😅😈📈 for a game

😅 What's a story or scene you've created that you're a smidge embarrassed exists? Hmm...I mean everything I've written is a stepping stone to where I am today, but I mean in terms of stories that make me cringe a little in knowing I've penned them there are a few where I question what I was thinking at the moment of inspiration. I have a vaampire/soulmates/BDSM WIP that I penned a few years back where I was all like, "Hey I can write this story in less than a month no problem." lol I don't know what possessed me to write it, but I did and midway through (and we're talking a lot of pages into it) I was kind of like wow this is just...too much. There's one scene in there that kind of made me take a step back and return to what is more my comfort zone. I don't have any issues with any of the tropes I mentioned, but it felt like it was a touch darker than most of my work and I wasn't sure I was feeling the ship I was writing anymore in it with the darkness it was pulling out. I like exploring a character's psyche and the depth of darkness they can carry with it, but my two main characters were both pretty dark where I stepped back. So yeah, that's probably something I'm a smidge bit embarrassed that I penned, but it was good for knowing my limitations and strengths as an author and working on what I can improve. Maybe one day I'll revisit it, but for now it's sitting quietly on my hard drive hoping for an eventual return lol. 😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers? There's been a couple of instances where I've done something 'playfully mean' to the readers just because sometimes it's a fun way to bring people along on a ride and offer up a tease or some drama. In Damaged I have a sequence (spoilers here) where Scott wakes up and discovers all his worst nightmares are coming true. That he's too far gone to find redemption and he's lost Logan and he's married to someone else in this new world. There's a lot of drama there going on and that was a bit of a tease as there was a play on the flirtation between Scott and Tony. Speaking of which in Better Together I have a chapter titled The Death of Cyclops after Scott and Tony are finally at a point where it looks like they can enjoy being together. Very angsty dramatic, which the more I share these the less playful they sound lol. I guess my biggest 'playfully mean' moment as of late was in Blindsided where Bucky has a daydream/fantasy about Tony that feels entirely real until Bucky snaps out of it and we learn it is not the case. I don't often toss in the fantasy sequence trope into fics but every now and then it can be a fun way to throw people off for a second :) 📈 How many fics do you have? I currently have 171 on AO3, but if I'm honest through the years and other fandoms I've been a part of and with original things I would say it's probably more than double that. I wrote my first 'novel' when I was like 8 by hand and was hyped that it was 100 pages. Writing is just a huge part of my daily life I guess. Keeps me grounded in a lot of ways.

Thanks so much for the asks! They were a lot of fun anon! I really appreciate you asking!

[marjaystuff]

Interview with Mary Alford

Ambush in the Mountains

Mary Alford

Love Inspired Pub

July 23rd, 2024

Ambush in the Mountains by Mary Alford a story of second chances, forgiveness, self-healing, compassion, unbridled trust, friendship, love, and redemption. As with most of her books she uses the weather as a character.  Like the previous book, this book dealt with the dark subject of human trafficking in a compassionate and informative way.

The opening scene in the story has Elizabeth Wyse remembering her Amish roots when she enjoyed the snow. At 18 and during the last of her rumspringa, she let an English man, Ray, persuade her to leave her home, her family and everything she’d ever known, to be with him. Instead of having a happily ever after she was forced into human trafficking by threats to her family and physical abuse.

They changed her name to Summer and now eight years later, she aged out as being too old yet was allowed to “help” with the new girls and became Ray’s personal woman. After becoming pregnant with Ray’s child, he decided the baby could bring him big bucks. Although Summer had been and was still petrified at what Ray would do to her, to save herself and her baby she decided to escape. She also knew she had to try to bring Ray down to bring justice to the girls who were killed, save those still in bondage, and prevent any girls in the future falling victim to this monster. She’d save incriminating evidence from his computer onto a thumb drive. Fearful of him discovering the thumb drive, she hid it in the walls of the house they were living in. 

It was during a moment of bravery and now 8 months pregnant she escapes. After running through the woods in the Tobacco Root Mountains during a heavy snowstorm, she ran into the path of a vehicle. Axel Sterling was with his dog Camo, driving home on an isolated road, barely missed hitting her. When he stopped to check on her and to find out why she was out walking in this storm they were fired upon. Survival mode kicked in, which meant getting this terrified, very pregnant woman, himself, and Camo to some place safe. Axel’s heroic dog Camo consistently throws himself into danger to protect those around him. 

Now it’s up to the ex-soldier, Axel, and his dog, Camo, to keep Summer and her unborn baby safe from the abductors she’s finally escaped. But between the icy wilderness and the armed gunmen following them at every turn, one wrong move could cost Axel and Summer their lives.

This is an edgy, intense, and fast paced story with plenty of action. Readers will root for the characters and will fall in love with Camo.

Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?

Mary Alford: There is a human trafficking aspect to the story just like the previous book. When I read about it and saw survivor’s stories it touched my heart. I wanted to write in this book how the main character escapes human trafficking, to shine a little light on it. My forte is to include the weather and have the characters on the run from the bad guys. The weather is almost another villain in the story by giving a sense of urgency. 

EC: How would you describe the female heroine, Summer?

MA:  She was Amish and met this Englisher man during her Rumspringa. He said all the right things and convinced her to run away with him. Through her I touched on what those victims of human trafficking had to endure. She is strong-willed, fearful, has trust issues, vulnerable, damaged, guarded, terrified, and courageous. She tries to put being a mother-first because she is pregnant.  She feels guilty about leaving her Amish family. She aged out but was kept around by Ray. 

EC:  How would you describe Axel, the hero?

MA:  He feels he is on a mission, protective, patient, caring, and kind. Being a former soldier he is a bit of a wounded soul after he lost his best friend who was also a soldier. After he left the military he went to Montana, found a little cabin on top of a mountain.  He enjoyed being isolated.

EC:  How would you describe the bad guy, Ray?

MA:  A predator who had Summer in this sex trafficking nightmare for eight years. He has killed before. Evil, manipulative, berating, and mean. 

EC:  What about the relationship between Summer and Axel?

MA:  It takes her a long time to trust him. He helped her to overcome how she experienced darkness and to feel safe. Axel broke down Summer’s wall that she has up for self-preservation. As they try to escape the enemy they form a bond. Axel sees her courage and strength. He wants her to be happy.

EC: What was the role of the dog Camo?

MA:  He was like the dog that helped those with PTSD: very comforting, loyal, former military dog, a Belgian Malinois, and protective.

EC:  Abram and Lainey were in the previous book and are in this book also.  Why?

MA: In the last book they just met.  In this book, they are married.  She is embracing the Amish lifestyle. They are both good friends to Axel. 

EC:  Next book?

MA:  It comes out in April 2025. It is titled Amish Country Killer. The setting will be in an Amish community in Kentucky. The hero is now in law enforcement but is former Amish. The heroine is the new Chief of Police. The plot has several girls disappearing. The killer is targeting Amish women. 

THANK YOU!!

[the-good-projxct]

Feb 28th, 2024

10:11 pm. I am upstairs in Karen. Listening to Mapa’s Mother Africa. This song is fire. 

I am obsessed. I found it to post on my stories and it's just…chef’s kiss. It’s an instrumental btw. I had such a nice, wholesome, chill and vibey day. Like this is what I hoped for when I said I was coming home to lounge and chill. I was up mad early today, 7am I was up and at it. I video chatted with Zaneta, called Munene, and texted with my mom. I posted on IG. I went downstairs around noon and ate some rice with pili pili. I had some tea. Then I went and got my book and my agenda. I organized my agenda because I hadn’t touched it since a few days before I left PEI. I sat with the elders Karimi and Moka wa Mwiti. We chatted, vibed, and laughed. I played with baby Jason Mwenda. It started raining heavily which made the day get cooler, so we bundled up and went inside. Amirah and Chanel called me to catch up but also because weuh. Being Black in America is a wild box to be in. Like anyone and everyone is tryna stake their claim on Blackness without actually experiencing Blackness. I am so glad I am away from alladat. My phone battery died so I left my phone upstairs and the power went out. I got a blanket and laid on the couch and everyone was in the living room with a fire going. We just chilled like that for hours. It was sooooo nice. We were joking, laughing, jabs, history, present, dreams and just relationship building via time. I had such a lovely time just being with my people. I kept thinking that this is what I wanted. This is what I hoped for. And here I am. At supper time, we had cowpeas. It was pretty Good. With cabbage and potatoes. I didn’t know that cow peas make me bloated so my belly is pretty swollen and sore right now. It is what it is. SweSwe came home a bit later than I expected and when she got here I was upstairs in the shower. I went down with a shiny oiled up face to say hi to her and we had a laugh at how freshly showered I looked. She was upset today, I felt sad for her. Like she is quite old and experiencing really unusual behavior from her own family. I would say most people around her are leeches, just waiting for what they can take, rarely offering her something. Anyway, she was stranded at the physio clinic today and the people responsible to get her home were not answering the phone. I dunno fam, if I had a car and could drive, I would take her and wait right there in the clinic. I did it in Canada. But all these “family” members are blood family but they just leech off of her dawg. And it breaks my heart because she deserves better. At the end of the day, many of the ones leeching are her own children and grandchildren so I cannot get involved. All I want from her and for her is time with me. And I want this really cool photo of her that hangs in the hallways. That is all I ever want. The rest is time. Just time to be together. On this journey of sobriety and seeking Gøod. I know God and the Universe are with me and for me so I will never lack. I can and will continue to build myself up, I don’t need to leech off of an 86 year old woman. All in all, I really enjoyed today. I am going to finish this daily writing then do my meditation and talk to Munene for a little bit. I am learning to let go and let God.  I struggle with romantic love. Platonic and familial I am so confident in. Romantic, I have trust issues dawg. But we healing. So here, I trust & dive in.  I deserve all the Love. Love is Gøod. Life is Gøod. Ase. Ase.