#wow this post is ancient as fuck too

[hoozukis]

it also shouldn’t be thrown into the void that even within the ollivander’s brand, there are many generations and individuals of ollivander wandmakers each with their own rules, methods, materials, designs, trademarks, and sheer variations of everything.

garrick ollivander proclaimed himself to have “revolutionised” wand-making when he limited himself to only 3 types of cores he deemed “most supreme”, while in his notes, he mentioned that his father, grandfather, and presumably also many previous ollivanders had been more lax with using whatever materials came their way. when garrick took over the family business, there’s every possibility that he kept selling all the old wands that were already there alongside his own creations, instead of throwing them all into the trash just because they don’t fit his personal image of what a “proper wand” should be. he doesn’t strike me as someone who would disrespect his ancestors’ hard work like that, although he probably does have a strict rule of only selling and recommending wands made by an ollivander, with the heaviest recommendations going to the wands he made himself.

point is: it’s perfectly reasonable to find wands of any wood and core imaginable in any ollivander’s shop, because past ollivanders did in fact exist and create many wands of any wood and core imaginable, which might not have all sold out before garrick’s succession.

for example: albus & aberforth dumbledore most likely would’ve gotten their wands around 1891–1893 during gervaise ollivander’s run of the wand shop, since garrick couldn’t have been born before albus & aberforth (the only hint we get of his age is: according to the movie fantastic beasts and where to find them, garrick was an established wandmaker by 1926). thus, anyone looking to headcanon albus, aberforth, percival, kendra, honoria, their ancestors, or even the hogwarts founders, should feel free to explore the vast world of woody plants & magical animals to their heart’s content and then choose literally whatever on earth they think best suit (their interpretations of) the characterisations of these mystical geriatrics of the past.

additionally, older resold wands (e.g. through lost-and-found, trades, theft and robbery, fraud, deals and bets, mages selling their used wands for whatever reason, deceased mages who wrote in their will to not bury their wands with them, antique and heirloom wands being worth a fortune and someone needing the money more than the sentiment, etc.) is a very realistic concept that canon sadly didn’t show us much of, but did somewhat hint at in the form of many characters snatching and looting others’ wands left and right in harry potter and the deathly hallows. wand resellers, used-wands marketplaces, and wand adverts in brochures and newspapers logically should exist in the hpverse.

the submitter here had a valid point to make, albeit a bit narrow-minded. it’s important to be consistent with the in-universe logics of your fictional works, of course, but the fact is, the wand business in the uk isn’t as simple and black-&-white as “ollivander vs non-ollivander”. if you’re creative enough, you’ll find leeways to make any idea work.

keep honing that creativity, folks! cheers! 🥂

i'd just like to note (for anyone who wants to use what you say for a fic or rp character or something) that the wand cores you're suggesting would only be found in non-ollivander wands, so a hogwarts student would probably need a story reason to have a wand like that.

No, I do suggest Ollivander wand cores sometimes - check through, I’ve already recommended each of the Ollivander three. Sometimes I recommend other ones though. If you want a wand for a Hogwarts RP, go through Pottermore, but if you want something which provides you with more options, I should be more than able to provide.

It’s also worth noting that in Britain alone there are wandmakers more than Ollivander, there’s Jimmy Kiddell who has a shop in Diagon Alley, and there’s a Wand Showroom in Diagon Alley too. What’s more the Hogsmeade branch of Ollivander’s offers woods not on Ollivander’s list - Reed for example - so it’s not a stretch to believe that whichever wix runs that shop might stock other cores - maybe they broke their wand at school and needed a new one immediately, or maybe they simply went to Kiddell’s instead of Ollivander’s, just as people might go to Twilfit & Tattings, rather than Madam Malkins.

[weebsinstash]

Hello! I don’t know if you do this but I was wondering what your thoughts were for a Yandere Lucifer Morningstar from Hazbin Hotel? I’m having trouble writing a good representation of him and would like some advice.

Honestly I'm gonna humble myself and say that it took reading someone else's post to make me like, REALLY notice the nuances of Lucifer's character

This post right here literally made me rewatch his scenes and go "oh wow he IS like DANGEROUSLY DEPRESSED"

He doesn't remember Charlie told him where she is, or what she's doing, and he can barely follow a conversation despite clearly trying to pay attention. He also just seems kind of scattered, and um, HE LITERALLY MAKES A JOKE ABOUT DYING FROM FALLING OFF THE HOTEL BALCONY like dude is making jokes about death in front of his fucking daughter, like my dudes, I think this guy is BARELY holding himself together

He clearly loves loves LOVES Charlie but he doesn't really know how to properly articulate himself and I have a feeling there's a lot he's concealing from her, and another big question is, is his depression from being cast out of Heaven, or from something to do with his missing wife, or a combination of both? Either way this man is clearly dealing with like, really bad issues. And Charlie also mentioned he wasn't around a whole lot when she was younger, so... did he have depression back then too?

So, that all said, I feel like a yandere Lucifer would almost be, potentially invigorated by his darling? Given a new lease on life? He may not be 100% his old self again but, you get him to like, 65, maybe 70% on a good day. You give him another reason to get out of bed in the morning, or afternoon, or evening or, whenever he can drag his depressed ass out of bed

Given what we currently know, I feel like a romantic yandere Lucifer would pretend to only be platonic and do his best to poorly conceal his feelings because of his whole... "can't ask his missing wife if it's ok for you to be their third" ordeal, the man still wears his wedding ring, and a platonic yandere Lucifer basically adopts you like another kid, because uh, I mean for one he apparently canonically missed a lot of Charlie's childhood, and he's also an ancient fallen angel, so he's got that age advantage on you no matter how old you are. I mean what are a few decades when he's literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands--you get the idea

Yandere Lucifer would want to stay close to you, helping watch over you, maaaaaybe being overly paranoid about you randomly disappearing and going missing For Very Obvious Reasons, and in the process he winds up being unintentionally overbearing. I mean, he did it in irritation, but he basically showed up at Charlie's hotel immediately saying it was a dump and all of HER FRIENDS were 'a bunch of losers'. He never completely pulls his punches when there's something he's displeased with, even if it has something to do with someone he loves, so his darling would get much of the same treatment. "Ohhhhh, you uh, you wanted to move across the city? That's, um, definitely a fun idea! BuuuuuUuuut, what IF, instead of doing that--", like, he tries to playfully tug you in 'the right direction' until you make him put his foot down

Hmmm... what would him losing his cool look like... well, we've already seen that he doesn't mind throwing hands and WILL KILL, but will stop if he's asked to or there's a good reason. With you, though, you're not typically going to be there to stop him from offing any rivals or bad influences, so I imagine he'd be kinda casual about it, actually! He already thinks pretty lowly of Sinners, so say he finds out you've been ditching him and Charlie to go out drinking with strangers, making new friends, maybe having a few one night stands? Yeah, some of those people definitely aren't calling you back, and Lucifer doesn't really see a problem with it. These people are kind of the worst and really don't deserve you, anyways! If anything he's helping clean up Hell for you and his daughter and keeping you safe :)

Losing his cool with YOU... I think would involve him using his powers to finally confine you, maybe even going demon mode to intimidate you into submission in a very dad-esque "now you listen HERE" kind of way. We don't really know the scope and scale of his powers but I can picture him at least being, obviously much stronger than he looks, and transforming to fly you "back home" where he puts you in your room where no one can reach you without his explicit permission (and you also can't leave~)

One second you're just drunk and jokingly defying him, teasing him, maybe even picking him up and swinging him around because you're bigger than him, to you he's just a silly little guy! Meanwhile this Grown Ass Man Who Is Also The Actual Devil is getting more than just a little frustrated you basically view him as a wacky little cartoon more than a grown man, one who has had sex and has had two wives and sired a child. You're just teasing him and stumbling around drunk when he's trying to get you to your hotel room to get to bed to sleep, like you're clearly not taking him seriously, maybe even playfully putting your hands on him (TOTALLY not riling him up in 'fun' ways) and he finally just huffs and snaps his fingers and, you're suddenly magic'd to bed! You're laying there blinking confused and he's tucking you in and chuckling that "you're such a handful!" before leaving you to sleep and somehow INSTANTLY knowing when you're up.

You ARE in his house, after all...

Not to be gross but uh..... I'm not saying "yandere Lucifer who has the power to still get a Sinner pregnant if he wanted to and you wind up fooling around with him and you're waking up with his little apple symbol on your lower tummy as one of those like hentai womb tattoos to show you're pregnant" but uhhhhhhhhhhyeah that's what I'm saying, and whether it was accidentally or intentionally, he's keeping it, and thus, keeping YOU

I just feel like he'd be very goofy and awkward and bad at hiding his feelings and being very clearly overprotective and jealous in ways everyone else but you manages to pick up on (god Alastor would have some MATERIAL) and, in a romantic/sexual setting he eventually just loses his patience with you not seeing him as a man and just gets... progressively more forward. You pop back into the Hotel after a night out and Lucifer's already hammered at the bar with Husk, stumbling up to you, hanging off of you, slurring and embarrassing himself, "You'reeeee SO pretty... like SO pretty.... do you wanna have *BELCH* you wanna fuck? Cause I LOVE to fuck, like when I FUCKED my wife to make my DAUGHTER, my wife and daughter that I have, 'cuz im a DAD, 'cuz I'm a MAN!" and you're just giggling and ruffling his hair, "You're so weird, dude ^^" and walking away while Lucifer internally screams, wondering just how DIRECT with you he's going to have to be

meanwhile Charlie is totally cool with all of this and sees this as a weird double whammy of Curing Dad's Depression + new family member and friend hurray! and she's totally actively either shipping you with her dad or aiding and abetting him in his weird attempts to absorb you into the Morningstar family

[platoapproved]

Two things from continuing to read TVA, bitterness and Marius hating ahead, if you don't wanna see that honestly why are you even on my blog:

Honestly I don't care at all about authorial intent but the way this is written, how Armand narrates his early days as a fledgling, is fucking haunting to me. It's so utterly casual and passive, with just that one little interjection of "this was put to the test". Oh? Who was doing the putting? What was the test? Was the test perhaps Marius starving you to see how many days it would take for you to be too weak to get up, Armand? Was that maybe it? Oh but Marius did it to help him, of course. To teach him his exact limits, for the future! How benevolent. Someone get him a World's Best Maker mug.

____

Idc maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see but the "What I mean is, I didn't have contempt for him" reads as protesting too much. Like... it's giving "it's not that I found Marius tedious, just ancient Roman law and his obsession with it and also literally all the things he said and believed".

MORE IMPORTANTLY, though, the ideas in question here are Marius droning on about how the world is getting more just and how wonderful the contemporary world is. Love him telling all that to an enslaved child - WHO HE OWNS - and bought legally from a brothel! Wow, I wonder why Armand might not have a lot of faith in the law or in government institutions! It's almost like those institutions failed him in a profound way!

But no, Armand probably feels that contempt because he was 'born in a dark and savage land'. Y I K E S. Listen... to anyone reading this overlong post who isn't reading the books I can't emphasize to you how much this is Marius's whole thing. He talks about the ~civilization of the West so often. It's honestly nonstop. He's RADIOACTIVELY Eurocentric and if they stay true to the character it's going to be 100x worse in the show because of Armand's changed background.

[henrysglock]

High Existence and ZeroSpace: The First Shadow and NINA May Be Massive, Immersive Drug Trips

The blurb in last Friday's video from TFS sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. I found a lot of sites quoting The Alchemist about the universe conspiring to give you what you truly want (which is similar and it's probably what I was thinking of when this blurb registered as familiar), but I couldn't find this exact quote:

Well...not at first, anyway. I decided to stick every word I could make out here ^ into my search bar...and I found where the blurb comes from:

This blog post is quite literally the only source I could find for it, and the whole damn thing is directly lifted.

Right off the bat, the site fucking jump-scared me:

And it doesn't end there. Let's dive in, because this rabbit hole is a trip unto itself...no MDMA​ ​required.

1. The Fucking Website...#1 (HighExistence.com)

High Existence is a sort of drug-induced-spiritual-trip centered self-help site.

It's got blog posts and podcasts and all that jazz. Here are some of the highlights:

Wow! That was...a lot. A lot of words from the word show, too:

Wholeness, heroes, ancient aliens, prisons of politeness, and the fucking Shire, too, I guess. Why not?

(An Aside: I've included the VR in here too because of the sheer similarities between Henry's experience with the Shadow in VR, El's experience in NINA, and The First Shadow in general.)

Like fuck it, why not keep going, these posts date back to at least 2017:

And don't let me start in on that Creel boy and Faust...

[Jason voice] "[Eddie] made a deal with the devil and now he has his powers!" (Also we get it, one of them is neurotic and the other is psychotic. I've been saying this since like...forever)

Of course, all that insanity aside, the Russian base arc has just...an insane amount of ST4 and TFS stuff packed into it in general:

(And this isn't even all of it. I know others [cough] Stav Heroesbyler [cough] have covered it even more...but bro it is THERE)

But most importantly for the NINA arc:

Three things: Dialogue doubling (there's the one I showed, plus a) Robin yelling "Wipeout!" at Steve which has the pipeline -> "Wipeout!" at Rink-O-Mania -> 002-005 bullying El in a very similar manner and b) Steve's "that's amazing" line about the water fountain -> "This is amazing!" not only from Alice irt the Creel house but also from Mike irt Will's painting on their way to save El from NINA. Again, these are just a few of MANY instances), makeup doubling with the bloodshot eyes, and my beloved: set/prop doubling.

I love that beautiful framing on the nearly-identical square clocks. I have so much to say about that clock, but specifically:

The clocks being set 9 minutes apart, which happens to be the exact length of time from the end of Vecna's voiceover in 4.07 to the start of the fight sequence in 4.07 (aka the length of One's frozen-clock monologue).

Not only that, but the clock isn't even right. It says it's 3:55, but it's definitely not 3:55 AM (see: movie theater scene) but it's also not 3:55 PM:

(And why do we have a clock in an elevator anyway? That's the real question. That thang only exists to deliver subtext, baby! It exists to connect the two scenes further!)

Anyway, as you all likely noticed, this site mostly deals in psychedelics, stimulants, and empathogens.

link

Hell, you could even pull One's bit on the ecosystem into it, since he's describing connections between beings that are being disturbed/destroyed by humanity.

Anyway, the site tends to center specifically on DMT and MDMA...so let's talk about those:

MDMA & DMT An aside: Interesting to me that psychosis here can be counteracted with sedatives. Makes me wonder if whatever happened in 1979 could have been halted if they'd just tranq'd One. Hm.

First off: Did I read that right? Piggy-backing? Damn, son. 4.09, The Piggyback, is pictured in that paragraph. So is Brenner's candy bit with the children -> "candy flipping" vs LSD use in Brenner's lab.

Second: Ah, how nice. Intravenous/injectable. Just like how El is constantly being shot up with...something...to enter NINA.

Now, nearly all psychedelics can induce psychosis, but especially so if they're combined with other psychoactive substances and/or if the user has a history of psychosis (either themselves or in their family).

However, MDMA specifically has been posited as a treatment for PTSD and retrograde/traumagenic amnesia:

link Like...wow. Okay, I guess!

tl;dr: One seems to have been tripping fucking balls during the monologue. Literally every fucking version of him. El likely is as well. Funny how that works. Was any of that real? [smash cut to the way blood pours down the walls and the dead children dance around in the VR version of NINA] And either way, Henry in TFS isn't far behind with his hallucinogenic moments.

The connection? Whatever the hell is going on in Hawkins Labs...and symptoms of drug use.

I was not expecting to get this much out of a single rabbit hole. But...that's life with this show, isn't it? And this is only Part 1.

2. The Fucking Website...#2 (Futurism.com)

The guy who made that original post that TFS lifted the blurb from (Jordan Lejuwaan) runs a couple different websites. The most interesting one is Futurism, which is basically an online version of the Weekly Watcher:

It won't let me filter by date, but it seems to have been founded in 2017, stemming from an infographic subreddit. (Now, it says it's a trustworthy news source, and maybe it is, but... Do your own assessment of that. I'm not your mother, yknow?)

Jordan Lejuwaan was also involved in something far more interesting irt Stranger Things...

3. Zero Space

Jordan co-founded an immersive, interactive theater experience called ZeroSpace back in 2018. As we all know, TFS was just in the beginning phase of its creation around this time.

So...This was like a brick to the skull:

"Alice in Wonderland" (don't get me started: rabbit fuckery, DRUGS!!!!!, clocks/being later, Alice Creel, Fringe connections (Through The Looking Glass and What Walter Found There being the episode about the pocket universe where 20 years passed in 5 days...and also wherein we find out about him hiding away an Observer child that he will later time travel with to save the world from the Observer takeover...erasing himself from time/the timeline by doing so...there is SO much) not to mention the "one pill makes you larger/smaller" vs teen El and baby El...it's too much to try and fit in this post), "ALIENS AND LASERS", "stretch the perceived reality of the sense", "art, actors and your own mind converge to prompt MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS" (which was a common complaint about TFS: it leaves people with more questions than answers).

("See you on the other side" being an in-show line from Henry in the lab to Patty in the void, but this image is ripped directly from the same promo video that the High Existence blurb appears in.)

Here's a little taste of what ZeroSpace is like, but I suggest going to the actual page to see it in action:

It's heavily heavily reminiscent of TFS, even just in the content warnings...

Not to mention the actual show content SFX:

However, the goal of TFS isn't to stretch our senses. We're just watching. We are not the volunteer seeing the other side.

For most of the show, that person is Henry (except the first 5 mins, when it's Cptn. Brenner and his crew literally experiencing the other side). Henry is doing the experiencing. He's the one breaking the fourth wall by picking at/breaking the sets, the one running through the audience and leaving out the theater doors (only to end up right back on stage just like El in the Rainbow Room in 4.05).

With each bit of info I find out adjacent to the play, the more convinced I am that this is some secret third boy's experience in a NINA-like simulation.

Overall—

a) TFS most likely isn't wholly real, and it seems very likely that it's the same kind of simulation as NINA.

b) El was probably drugged up with some kind of empathogenic psychedelic going into NINA, likely with the goal of setting her up to form emotional connections quickly and deeply only to rip that deep connection away in order to bolster her abilities.

c) NINA is not, then, wholly based in truth. Parts of NINA (staring at the bullying from 002-005) may have been generated from El's memories of the outside world.

d) With NINA and TFS seeming so similar, I wouldn't be shocked if parts of it are just one massive empathogen trip (staring at how quickly Henry and Patty bond, similarly to how quickly Henry and El bond in NINA).

e) Whoever is in NINA with teen El is also tripping balls, most likely, and may have gone off the rails in that regard. However, that's in a simulation...hard to assign guilt or blame for things done in a fictional/unreal world.

f) Whoever was with baby El in 1979 may have been in a similar situation "moving chess pieces"-style instead. Read: drugged in order to put him in a situation where he would bolster El's latent abilities...and it went wrong (see also: Walter Bishop's orchestrated/fake massacre meant to bolster Olivia's latent abilities.)

g) Richard Brenner having been the head of narcotics makes me question which Brenner we're seeing at any given time: Martin, or Richard?

[yloiseconeillants]

me: i am so fucking normal about sidequest npcs with 6 lines of dialogue

also me:

so there's this 6 lines of dialogue sidequest npc in Amh Araeng that's like, a Traveling Historian who is investigating the Church of the First Light and he is so fucking cute and I love him and immediately was like 'i need to make this guy an alt or smth'

so I did that but I also decided that he was somehow related to some incarnation of Ariadne's on the first since we started talking about like, both Ronkan shards and shards around the time of the Flood of Light so I unilaterally decided that his great grandparents were 1. that Lugarhoo fate enemy but Blorbo-ified (it is literally just the Traveling Historian with a different hair color and cut)

and 2. the last heir of the king of the Laxan elves (??????) because I accidentally made pastel Medusa while fucking around in character creator with a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT shard concept

and decided that 'actually yeah I do need a pastel elf-' and then three seconds later 'and why shouldn't she be a princess that is actively seduced by the Shadowkeeper-'

with some vague aspirations of making her Forgiven Rebellion because have you seen that thing

*points* Clown Daughter. BUT I had ALREADY decided that the Current Ariadne Shards on the First were the Eulmoran Jongleurs because why not so said Princess could not possibly be Forgiven Rebellion without some major fuckery and I needed to stop stealing Fate bosses for Blorbos anyway so instead she was given plot armor to survive the Flood, which she needed to do anyway since she was, as conceived, the great-grandmother of my 6 line npc alt who I STILL HAVEN'T NAMED

I was content to leave it at "girl who fucks up big time and falls way too easily for Ascian plot in order to get laid and spends the rest of her life defending a village in Kholusia from sin eaters as penance' but the power of Yes-Anding and Friendship lead to Princess (now named Nimue) having

UNBREAKABLE BONDS OF CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP WITH KNIGHT ASPIRANTS AND A DREAM ALCHEMIST AND AN ANCIENT RONKAN WIZARD AND HIS TROUBLED APPRENTICE ALL WHILE DEALING WITH HER AWKWARD COUSIN

that like. her inevitable betrayal in falling for the Ascian plot in order to get laid actually HURT now??? like wow way to be the worst version of yourself and for what- like how to Justify the Plot and a Genuine Redemption Arc where before I was just sort of Handwaving Her Survival rather than actually developing a character

WELL glad no one asked-

but Nimue is under TREMENDOUS amounts of pressure from childhood to be the Last Heir of a crumbling dynasty (her father is a bit eccentric) that is facing threats from other countries, other noble families, and the growing so-called Elven rebellion AND she may or may not be haunted by the influence of a captured trickster god who whispers secrets to her it's fine it's chill. Said pressure has made her temper quick and sudden and she makes many, many mistakes she immediately regrets, but learns to recover from with the help of her friends, and her friends would also help her with the child that resulted from her foolishness with the blorbo-ified Lugarhoo that would be raised in a post-Flood world

and she ends up perfectly fine! Her daughter, Eglantine (Egg to literally everyone), is perfectly fine!

She's a bartender! Her knight friends visit often and help raise Egg who becomes the village's staunchest defender!

She's got a revolving door of traveling suitors but has a long-time partner who is dealing with the sudden redundancy of the shipwright business in a world without tides and other continents.

I STILL HAVEN'T NAMED THE FUCKING NPC ALT

[nukeyyy]

finished interview with the vampire season 2 last night and wow what an amazing show 😭 i cried at least once per episode lmao. thoughts BELOW (warning: long post + major spoilers for the show -obvs-)

the actors are phenomenal and i'm always blown away by sam and jacob's chemistry on-screen. i also can't get over how eric bogosian and luke brandon field not only look so much alike but also manage to act very similarly (like the mannerisms, speech patterns etc.)??? like i know it's their jobs as actors but every time i saw young daniel i was just so impressed lol. amazing casting, amazing talent, amazing actors

i had been spoiled for so many things for s2 (i never read the books), like claudia dying, lestat being alive, armand having erased louis's memory and daniel becoming a vampire. yeah that's a lot... i didn't know how it'd be executed in the show at all but i just knew those facts because i wasn't careful enough online whoops 🥲 i was still gagged seeing all those moments on-screen though so i don't mind haha

also i relate to louis character so much it's actually ridiculous. i'm him and he's me. ME AND HIM, HIM AND ME (ok i'll stop)

i could relate to lestat a lot too (i'm somewhat of an expert at loneliness/depression/fear of abandonment and self-sabotage, rip i need help 😎).

armand was fascinating (and intimidating) to me just knowing how he's an ancient vampire who can just fuck you up if he wants to.

daniel's sarcastic comments were probably the funniest thing for me lolll and his facial expressions at certain things being told. like he's lowkey done with this gay vampire drama and it cracks me up. i still think about the "are you a schizophrenic, louis? 🤨" line because it's such a valid question lol and i always wonder why characters in shows/movies don't freak out whenever i see that trope of a character seeing a dead person qsdqs i'd be contacting a doctor asap. real talk i usually don't like that trope much (it usually feels like fanservice more than anything and like the writers are too scared to let the dead character go) but with lestat i actually liked it. probably because i knew he was actually alive. but still i'd feel so emotional when his "ghost" would be around because i knew it was louis imagining what would lestat do or say if he was here (or at least that's how i interpreted it). which... that's how you know you miss someone BAD 'cause the last/only time i felt that way about someone....... yeah.......

now, claudia... sigh. i feel bad for saying that but i really had a hard time liking her character. i WANTED to like her. i did at some points (loooved her at the beginning, in s1), and i always understood her motives and why she felt the way she did. at the same time, i'd feel annoyed with the way she'd always interject into louis and lestat's conversations/arguments, trying to sway louis in the direction she wanted whenever lestat was showing kindness or hints of remorse. she was never willing to give lestat a chance no matter what he did or said and it irked me a bit. it bothered me most at the trial actually, because lestat was apologizing to LOUIS, and claudia was in louis's ear telling him "it's too little too late" like girl pleaseee respectfully, the apology isn't for you to accept or reject. let louis make up his own mind.

louis is a grown man and it's his relationship, so i felt like claudia should've stayed out of it (at least in the moment, i don't mind if she expresses her opinion to louis later). i felt bad for louis because he made so many sacrifices for her but she never really seemed to reciprocate much (or maybe armand erased my memory). i hated how she called louis "dead weight" in her journal in 2x01. again i understand why she was angry at him, but after everything he's done for her, and considering the fact he was grieving the "death" of lestat (which was brutal), his lover of 30+ years iirc, and he basically couldn't talk about it with her (or anyone for that matter), it just felt unfair to him.

idk maybe i'm being way too harsh on her character, i know she's a character that the fandom likes, so really i feel like i'm missing something? i want to like her i really do but i don't vibe with her character. maybe i'll like her more after rewatching the show (not that it matters anymore since she's dead 😬 but still). i did feel for her though when louis didn't believe her about armand threatening her 'cause that was such bullshit lol like as if claudia would make that up... anyway i did enjoy her relationship with madeleine, too bad it ended the way it did. felt bad for madeleine but when claudia came back to her i kinda knew that madeleine would get murdered by the coven eventually 😅 i actually had a theory that the coven would use madeleine as one of their human sacrifices for the théâtre to punish claudia for having a "forbidden friend", and i wasn't too far off!

when lestat saved louis from getting the death sentence ... i remember thinking in the moment of the trial "is it armand or lestat doing that?" then when it "showed" it was armand, i accepted that but i was confused since lestat claims to love louis. then when it was revealed that it was LESTAT that saved louis but armand took credit for it all and lestat let him??? DUDE!

like i had the same reaction as present louis 'cause ... DANIEL? YOUR QUESTIONS MAKE TOO MUCH SENSE. lol. speaking of louis and daniel, i absolutely loved the way louis comforted him in 1973 after all the trauma they'd both gone through. louis has this empathetic side to him that shines through at times and i love it (kinda reminds me of will graham)

i absolutely LIVED for louis burning down the théâtre des vampires, it was absolutely badass and deserved. santiago's death made me go "now THAT'S a vampire show!!!". i enjoyed santiago as a villain, very entertaining to watch he was. also i love that those two fans of the théâtre (the guy and girl with the black and white makeup always sitting in the front row) attended EVERY show lol

something that's more of season 1, but, i love lestat's french. if you don't know, i'm french myself, but i watched the show its original language with english subtitles (as i like to do with every game/show/movie). so when lestat spoke french i loved it i mean. lestat's my favorite and i love the actor who plays him so not gonna lie it'd make me fangirl a bit everytime LMAO like ooo he's speaking MY language!!!

(i'm still a teenage girl at heart i guess sometimes lol)

that argument that lestat and louis had in french in season 1 over claudia (when claudia was in louis' coffin writing in her journal) ... will always make me laugh... just the conclusion of lestat going "putain de merde, bonne nuit" and shutting his coffin and then louis saying bonne nuit back XD it just feels so real you know. when you argue with someone but you still love them enough to say the nice little things.

speaking of arguments, i was so surprised at lestat's recollection of things during the trial, and how it differed from louis' retelling of events to daniel. many times i was like "is lestat lying? orrr" 'cause it's wild how different the versions are. particularly that massive fight in season 1 when lestat dropped him from the sky (if anyone who hasn't watched the show is reading this post, they're probably like "wtf" lmao). if lestat was saying the truth about how it went down, then damn, i feel bad for lestat :/ JUSTICE FOR LESTAT (i feel so toxic for saying that lol). like louis was NASTY in that scene, downright cruel. they both love each other so much yet they both hurt each other just as much it seems. i just want them to be happy 🥲 if that's even possible.

oh and TW: suicide for this section because i want to talk about THAT louis scene in 1973. hell that whole fight he had with armand. first of all, i felt so sad for armand that he was being called boring and dull etc. by louis, even though louis had drugs in his system and was clearly having a mental breakdown. if i'd been armand i would've cried on the spot ngl 😭 i'm surprised armand stayed with louis after that, probably to just spite lestat? but then when louis went on the roof to try to kill himself by burning under the sun ... i was sobbing and even just thinking about it now it makes me want to cry, as someone who's considered suicide many times since i'm like 19, it hit close to home. i wouldn't wish that shit on anybody and it hurts so much seeing a character i love go through that even though it's all just fictional. and when armand contacted lestat and lestat was asking louis (through armand) "why are you ill? what's happened to you?" and later "i love you, louis" and he said it so softly like ... DAMN MY FEELINGS.

i ALMOST forgot to talk about lestat and louis' reunion in new orleans in the last episode (bruh how could i). i CRIED. i loved seeing them take accountability for their past mistakes and just seeing how far the both of them have come, seeing them ACTUALLY be vulnerable and talk to each other and both of them listening to each other and be there for each other. it was such a touching scene. and lestat's voice cracking when he asked louis if he hurt himself back in 1973? it wasn't just his voice that cracked in that moment it was also my HEART wtf

and how sweet and heartfelt that hug was. i was kinda glad they didn't kiss/get back together in that moment. it made the moment more meaningful, and i think it's good for them to be on good terms yet still be apart for some time to process things (not forever of course hehe). i'm just glad they're not against each other anymore and that they seemed to have made peace.

of course at the end louis is basically ready to fight any vampire who wants to kill him over the publishing of the book. i'm not too worried. lestat will probably show up to help louis kick their asses or escape (don't spoil me). i do wonder what happened with armand and where he is now!

oh and i gotta say, about the show overall but again mainly season 1, i absolutely LOVE how they portrayed lestat and louis's relationship in general. i'm so glad they seemed like just a "normal" couple and they weren't written as a GAY couple ... idk if that makes sense. they ARE a gay couple but it's not the defining trait of their relationship, it's a part of it of course, but the writers didn't make it all about their sexuality and they didn't make it a stereotype like some shows & movies treat their gay characters/couples, and it was so refreshing. like i'm not even a dude and i felt SEEN. and then i thought to myself "shit, is this how straight people feel when they see a m/f relationship on-screen???" 'cause 99% of the time i feel nothing when watching m/f relationships, but i get really emotionally invested and i feel a connection with m/m and f/f relationships. kinda sucks to realize though 'cause it just reminds me of how little high quality gay content we get in the media but thankfully times are changing. i mean just thinking of how it was like 10 years ago? back then i always had gay ships that never ended up canon lol it was rough. i'm happy i get to have interesting gay ships that ARE canon these days. hope it keeps going that way 🥹 i don't even bother with anything that involves queerbaiting these days, i only go for stuff with CANON gay/lesbian ships & main characters or i'll pass (with some exceptions), i no longer have the patience i had as a teenager, fuck that. it's 2024 we can have more now >:)

well, that went into a tangent. i'll keep it in though 'cause it's a discussion i'd love to have if anyone wants to talk about that further!

one thing i wonder about is what was up with those feral vampires (that's what i call them) early in season 2? claudia ripped the eyes off from one in the forest. these vampires looked ... uh ... i don't even how to describe it lol. but was it because they kept drinking the blood of people traumatized by the war? or was it something else?

anyway. conclusion is i enjoyed the show so so much and i can't wait for season 3!!! i've heard lestat will be in a rock band in season 3 and i'm hyped haha

i probably missed stuff to talk about but the post is already so long. feel free to send me a message/ask if you want my thoughts on certain plot points/characters or just to discuss them! i'd love to :D as long as you're nice ('cause trust me i'm aware of how hypocritical i am by disliking claudia and yet loving louis and lestat's characters dqdsq i'm sorry for that)

now i can freely check out the fandom weee 💃

[crystalelemental]

We have finished the Dungeon Meshi anime. I'll type out thoughts, but I feel like I can easily summarize as "It's really good, you should watch it." I was also asked to talk about favorite characters so like. Get ready for that one.

As a whole, Dungeon Meshi is excellent. My wife has an anecdote she likes to tell about it, where before we even watched it, I told her about the general premise and that people were talking about it and it sounded neat and I wanted to pick it up if she'd like to watch. And as happens sometimes, I get the response of "I'll probably look at my phone and just watch it in the background," which is usually "I'm not too interested but put on what you want to put on." And after the first episode she was completely invested. The show is really charming really fast.

Thing is, for as fun adventure as it starts, it does a lot seriously that lands spectacularly well. The first instance of "oh wow, this show is for real" is the well-documented living armor bit. The biology that goes into these monsters is amazing. My personal favorite is still the treasure bugs and mimics interaction, which is just incredible to me, but every time they talk about monster biology and their function it's a treat.

Exploration stuff is also really cool. There's another great post that went around talking about how this party really is more of an old-school dungeon crawler party, where skills for survival like Chilchuck's are essentially the most valuable, rather than combat ability. It does really have that feel, and it's great. I also just love how some of the magic works. Things like mana sickness are cool, but resurrection is my personal favorite. They make a big deal about the black magic kind being forbidden, but watching it in action, it functions just like the stuff that's on the level; blood pools and congeals back in the body, the black magic just involved reconstructing flesh. Marcille's point about black magic not being inherently bad is fair; it doesn't seem all that different. But perceptions are really different regarding it.

They haven't delved too far into it yet, but there are tensions between the fantasy races, and plenty of biases going around. Some are a bit more obvious, like Marcille really not trusting the orcs, while others are more like Shuro's one party member who just refers to the dwarves as just "dwarf," even as she's praising Senshi's cooking. Kabru's got his own hangups regarding how the elves handle things with the dungeons, and openly admits to the imbalance in power between races and how that negatively impacts everyone. I imagine this starts to be more prominent in the second half now that all the establishing stuff is done.

As for cast...they're really strong. Laios' group is all great, I loved them all. Marcille is my favorite, personally, because of course she is. From silly magic elf girl, to oh she's actually super smart, to oh she's super smart in ancient criminal magic fuck yeah girl. Marcille's a delight. Chilchuck was the easy least favorite of the group starting out, but he's really grown on me. Izutsumi is peak cat. Laios is really interesting as a protagonist, I like him a lot. I think the conflicts he gets into are...very real, in a way. Like, he has amazing strengths that make him great at what he's doing, but the flaws in his character inform what struggles they encounter in a really believable way. I like him a lot. Senshi is cool. Falin needs more time, and you have no idea how bummed I am that the season ended with a little snapshot that Chimera Falin and Thistle are having hijinks off-screen, I need that spinoff.

The other groups are less developed, but I'm sure Aera will be happy to hear this: god damn do I love Kabru. This dude rules. I saw people talk about him on Tumblr so I recognized him the instant he showed up, but his first "proper" introduction is stupendous, showing his general people-reading and ability to gather information, and his adherence to a sense of justice that's just as much about meting out punishment as anything else. Him killing those dudes was great, loved that. And the barely concealed excitement over black magic is hilarious. Then he gets to show off that he's basically an assassin class, knowing where to strike for instant kills, has a whole chat with Shuro about recognizing the racial discrepancy in the world at large, and tries to play an entire room full of elves. I dunno, like the guy a lot. He's shrewd, and he's got moxie. I do admit that, while I get the fandom is really attached to Laios and Kabru as a ship, I...have no strong feelings about it. I do, oddly, like him and Rin. Their dynamic in the show was fairly cute, and admittedly some supplemental material I saw posted really got me invested in her. The rest of his party...I have no particular feelings about. It's just him and Rin to me for now.

Shuro's party is even less interesting. I do like Shuro, I think he's a really neat character. But his group hasn't done anything all that interesting to me yet. They kinda showed up to get bodied by Chimera Falin and drive tension as the group that first knows about black magic.

Similar deal with Namari's group? If anything I think the old gnome dude is in the running for general least favorite character. I don't hate the guy, but he's done nothing to endear himself. I have no strong perspectives yet.

For characters that need more time in the oven, there is the question of the Canaries. I've seen a tidbit about them, but my general assumption of them is the whole "Canary in the coalmine," they're the frontliners for dungeons that are sent in and risk death to assess the threat level. Which is neat, would like to know what that deal is. But #1 most invested in learning more about is Thistle. Love that design, love the general vibe he puts out, but also the reveal that he was hired as the court jester who happened to also become the most powerful mage of the kingdom is really, really good. That's both hilarious and awesome. I don't even know this guy and I think he's the shit.

I am wildly invested in season 2, and if it weren't for me working for a school and going through summer months unpaid, I'd probably be buying the entire manga like right now. As it stands I'll have to wait a bit for that, but it's probably happening. I've seen plenty of commentary about things the anime couldn't fit in that are hilarious or interesting, and it feels like one I'd like to read as well, even if I plan to fully go through the anime. Huge fan, glad we got an immediate announcement of season 2, really looking forward to more.

[comicaurora]

there's a tl;dr at the end if you're a coward who's too scared to read my glorious essay

wassup my name is destruktow i got in an argument with tumblr user flishthedragon (over discord) on the topic of aurora being an isekai (we were watching anime (they made me watch serial experiment lain (it was decent but i am too stupid for it)) and i brought up isekai) and i am convinced you bastards in the notes of when they posted my ramblings have no clue what an isekai is because an isekai is not defined by said isekai guy previously existing in the "real" world (despite that making up the majority of isekai stories) and let me tell you that i Have Not read past like the big robot thing (despite tumblr user flishthedragon being very adamant that i do so) so i have no clue if this still holds up to canon but as of right now we have no confirmation as to where jeffrey (canon name kendal i think but i call him jeffrey due to him looking like a jeffrey) originated from outside of "yeah jeffrey is like. this dude's empty body becoming sentient" which is bullshit so even by the bad definition everyone in the notes was pushing it's still not confirmed to not be an isekai and

*i pause to take a breath. as i breathe, you glance at my shirt. it has an image of popular comic strip character Garfield along with his adopted sibling/punching bag Odie and sugar daddy Jon Arbuckle. you appreciate said shirt*

also is space jam an isekai? it's absolutely an isekai dude lmao i love space jam that movie's great

okay back on topic so isekai originates from ancient japanese literature such as the story of Urashima Tarō, fisherman guy who saved a turtle and got to go to fishland for a week (my apologies to the urashima tarō fans out there my only exposure to this man is that they put him in battle cats and that was pretty cool, he's a decent black/angel tank that manages to not be outclassed by ramen and nono) and holy shit look at that you don't have to die to be isekai (no one was saying this but at least two of you were thinking it don't lie) and while reincarnation stories are not inherently isekai they can be viewed as isekai stories in certain contexts and those stay in the same world that's crazy

omniscient reader is also an isekai btw (if you finish it it's actually not but if you don't read like 500 chapters you can't prove me wrong and if you do i get someone to talk to about omniscient reader)

so obviously jeffrey exists (was summoned (technically)) for the purposes of getting vaush (that's not his name but it sounds like vaush and i used to be a vaush fan so we're going with it)'s soul back (has a goal given to him by a god) and he gets a companion (whether she is hot or not may depend on your taste and/or sexuality. me personally she is not hot) and he has big fucked up powers (real) BUT he keeps the memories of the previous host! wow! but screw you that's also an isekai thing i'm reading trash of the count's family and it does that (you suck stop typing stop trying to disprove me it won't work) and his existence prior, as i have mentioned, is disputable (he may or may not have existed. retaining your memories from previous life is not necessary) and his journey is fucking identical to various other isekai franchises you learn how shit works alongside him that's how isekai works you doubters in the notes

tl;dr: you can't prove it's not an isekai (author please do not confirm/deny it becomes much less funny if you do so) and it's infinitely easier to think of it as a typical isekai with all the isekai tropes so gg ez i win

[specialagentartemis]

#wait is there something wrong with the history hates lovers song? I read the linked post and now I'm worried D: (via @gardenofarson)

I thought I explained pretty straightforwardly in the linked post why I hate the "History Hates Lovers" song: It takes the explicit stance that you, ordinary citizen of the world with no special training, are actually smarter than the experts by virtue of being gay.  It assumes that historians are all old ivory-tower eggheads and homophobic clueless idiots and only they, youtube user Oublaire, know the REAL truth. It's smugly anti-intellectual in a meme way, rather than historically curious in any serious way. "Too afraid to call it what it is / It doesn't take a scholar to understand this" like oh Come On.

Other reasons I hate it:

"Who's gonna tell us the stories, that our textbooks don't?" Gosh I don't know, maybe Actual Historians? Believe it or not, "writing high school history textbooks" is not the sum total of what historians do. There are so many books about queer history written by queer historians out there. Aside from narratives about Stonewall, AIDS, and various worldwide rights movements in the 20th century, of which there are Lots, how about any of these books or these ones or these or this book about Sappho or these biographies of Oscar Wilde or this study of homosexuality in Ancient Greece - by a historian from the 1970s! Wow!!! Maybe historians have been thinking about this for a While! - and all the various articles written by academic historians about homosexuality in history. Untangling histories that were either treated as derogatory, hidden in shame, or ignored is important... and people are doing it. This is such a dismissal of the work that a lot of historians - especially queer historians - are doing these days!

Have you (Oublaire) ever read a biography. Even once. Historians and biographers LOVE to speculate about historical figures' sexualities. You can't get away from it. Especially when someone never married, biographers and writers looooove to speculate about the love affairs and heartbreaks they must have been having. Gay or straight. History loves lovers to the point where it's hard to find a discussion of a perpetual-bachelor-or-spinster figure that doesn't dip into trying to imagine them as Being A Lover. Yes I'm vaguing at American Bloomsbury's treatment of Thoreau (and Margaret Fuller, who she soooo wanted to be having torrid romances with both Hawthorne and Emerson) and The Fossil Hunter's insistence on imagining Mary Anning as secretly being in love with her male friend despite no evidence of this.

The haughty amatonormativity. "'Just friends' don't live like that / They don't look at each other / With love in their eyes" Deeply sorry to all Oublaire's supposed friends for learning via this song that Oublaire doesn't care about their friends, I Guess. The assumption that anyone who cares about each other has to be In Love. Fuck off.

"How many decades of hiding? Twenty-one centuries of hate Some things may not've been okay back then But it's sure all right today" This is what proves that Oublaire doesn't actually care about history. Back when? Are they implying that homophobia was invented with the birth of Christ? Was history just the same for 2,100 years, until a switch flipped in the 21st cenntury and now everyone is chill with gay people? What a narrow-sighted reduction! "It's a rhetorical flourish" well I hate it anyway. Get better rhetorical flourishes.

People who really like the song keep applying it to Achilles and Patroclus, who are, notably, fictional characters, and not historical figures.

The scansion and rhymes are terrible.

[haljathefangirlcat]

My dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “Beowulf” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit.

literal years later, when I least expected it: dude I swear I just saw Cain's spawn lurking in the fens

My buddy the narrator pacing: Hrothulf is plotting against his uncle

The thing about Beowulf is... I never quite got the hype about it. (Yes, we're not Supposed to use words like "hype" about world literature Classics, especially from ancient times, or to make light of them in general. Shut up and contemplate the fact that social media posts expressing nothing more than personal opinions and feelings aren't generally meant to be the same thing as academic work to be shared between academians in an academic context.) Ofc, I understood its historical value, including in terms of linguistics and philology. But in terms of "would I pick this as reading material to obsess and fall into a research hole over"? Despite trying a few times, I never quite got past ALL the references to God every other line. ("Snorri was an Evil Zealot who set out to knowingly and purposefully Christianize Norse mythology For The Evulz" crowd, I will tattoo each and every single one of those all over your body so you can't look into a mirror without accidentally reading one ever again.) The apparently disjointed "Beowulf fights Grendel and then Grendel's mother in Denmark. Years later, after going back to Sweden and becoming king, he also fights a dragon but this time he dies" narrative didn't really appeal to me, either. Nor did the presence of (afaik) exactly one (1) named female character. (Wealhtheow, babe, in hindsight I'm so sorry.)

I'm not sure what changed, exactly. It's just that, some time ago, I finally got around to reading Grendel by John Gardner, and I loved it and thought "wow, this would have made me either bawl my eyes out or stare off into space for like five-to-ten minutes after finishing it, had I read it as a teen." And after that, I found myself thinking "well, now I should probably get to know know the original story," and finally picking up my copy of Tolkien's translation of Beowulf, and realzing there actually was a lot going on in the story, and getting way too engaged in the looming "Hrothulf kills Hrothgar's kids" subplot that doesn't even really resurface in any later material about Hrolf Kraki (though those aren't exactly free from fucked-up family dynamics, either...), and going "!!! Volsungar mention!!!!" at the bit about Sigemund and Fitela despite already knowing about the Sigemund and Fitela bit and the whole "who actually killed the dragon first/in which tradition" question, and losing my mind at the bit about Hama and the "necklace of the Brosings" and "Eormanaric's hate" because, yeah, I already knew about that one, too, kind of, but recently I've gone into a little bit of a Brisingamen deep-dive, and a while ago I read a really interesting commentary and translation of the Hildebrandslied that had quite a lot to say not just about the specific hatred/enmity of a powerful king for an adventurous hero but also about the shift from Odoacher to Ermanric as Dietrich' von Bern's enemy, which ofc (?) got me thinking about Eormanaric/Ermanric/Jormunrek's apparent widespread reputation for being an asshole, something there probably has to be some accessible paper in English about somewhere out there...

Ahem. Anyway, I also found myself alternating reading Tolkien's translation with watching Grendel Grendel Grendel, the weird and very simplified and toned down but still somehow very enjoyable and sad kids' movie adaptation of Gardner's Grendel. And Beowulf & Grendel, the one without any magic where Grendel's a traumatized Neanderthal on a quest of vengeance that's somehow also quite a good watch despite the wonky editing, the cast and crew being possibly cursed by the Norse gods, and ofc, the time-displaced Neanderthals. And Animated Epics: Beowulf, which I might have actually watched once as a child, thinking about it. And Simon Roper and Jackson Crawford's read-along, featuring interesting linguistic, literary, and historical notes as well as Australian!Hrothgar, Beowulf making it exceedingly clear that "some of my best friends are Danes!", and some unforgettable exchanges such as "I used to tell my students the story about that time I almost drove off a cliff when they were worried about their exams to make them undestand that I, too, had experienced the fear of death :|" "I'm glad you didn't perish :)" "Thanks. :|" (I'm on the Fits 8-11 video, btw. Even if, when it comes to Tolkien's translation, I'm already at the part where Beowulf says goodbye to Hrothgar and sails back to the land of the Geats. Look, I remebered thos videos existed somewhat belatedly.)

I think eventually I might also end up rewatching The 13th Warrior (which I'm gonna go out on a limb and say might be the true origin of the ahistorical Neanderthals in Beowulf & Gredenl, but I remember liking that one, too). And Outlander (my beloved "aliens crash-land in Viking Age Scandinavia and fight each other while being Sad & Tragic in their own ways" one, not the Scottish one) but specifically as a Beowulf reimagining this time around (rather than as "the movie that could have totally had the Brooding Hero, Fiery But Sweet Warrior Woman, and Hotheaded Rival-Turned-Friend invent modern polyamory, because that wouldn't have been weirder than having a character called Boromir" like every other time). Maybe that weird post-apocalyptic Beowulf that was the first to do the "Grendel's mom's got it goin' on" thing, too, at least if I can find that snarky review of it on Youtube again. Probably not the Uncanny CGI Desperately Trying To Be Live-Action 20O5 Beowulf where the titular hero keeps screaming "BEOWULF!!" and "I'M BEOWULF!!!" just in case the audience's intelligence levels can't be considered to be above the average rock's, and that also decided to add a foot fetish/body paint kink note to its cover of Grendel's Mom, though, unless I can find any snarky review of it. (I remember reading somewhere that the director actually hated Beowulf, as in the poem itself, and accepting the bit of info without question. The high heels-shaped feet are just one of the reasons why I wonder if anyone ever asked him if perhaps he hated women, too. At least his work supposedly contributed to the writers of Outlander being told "there's already too many Beowulf movies coming out!" and going "whatever, we're gong to do our own thing! With blackjack and hookers aliens and shieldmaidens", so I should probably thank him for that.)

Unfortunately, while I'm pretty sure I'll be able to avoid writing down a list of Adaptations I Absolutely Need To Check Out One Day Or I'll Die (i.e. Every Single I've Ever Heard About) like I did for The Nibelungs In Their Every Possible Form, all of this had the unforeseen side effect of reminding me that, even when I didn't have much if any interest in Beowulf, I used to have a bit of soft spot for Unferth. I mean, how could I not, when I imprinted on Hagen von Tronje when I was eleven-years-old? Give me a guy who knows all of The Hero's heroic deeds and still doesn't find him all that impressive from their very first meeting, and I'll just "👀" at him. Though from what I knew, this guy in particular seemed to go against his character type by becoming more friendly with the hero and lending him his ancestral sword, which seemed pretty interesting. Especially because he was apparently a fratricide, too? And you wouldn't expect a guy who killed his own brothers and got a "... and that's why you'll go to Hell!" by The Hero over it to have any kind of redemption arc/sudden reveal of hidden depths in any positive sense. And there was also that paper (which, ofc, I didn't bookmark at the time, and now I want to kick myself for that until I remember the title or at least the author...) arguing that maybe him telling off Beowulf about the swimming race was less about him as a person and more about him having a specifc role among the thanes in Heorot that included testing strangers requesting to speak with Hrothgar to figure out if they really were who they claimed to be or if they could actually live up to their reputation...

Again, I blame John Gardner, at least in part. He has a really crunchy Unferth, who definitely reawakened my interest in the character. The on in Grendel Grendel Grendel wasn't half-bad, either, though very different in some respects. But the original, too, ended up being actually so much more fun (meaning, so much more to chew on/rotate in my mind) than I could have imagined from my vague memories.

First you've got the iconic "didn't you look like a total loser against Breca, and isn't that literally all there is to know about you?" "shut up, you're drunk, a kinslayer, someone I have never heard anyone tell heroic tales about, and also, maybe if you were braver Grendel wouldn't keep eating you guys" banter, and I'm starting to realize that might be already more juicy, in terms of both Beowulf's and Unferth's characterizations and their interactions together, than I ever thought it was. Then you've got a line that sounds an awful lot like "everyone could see Grendel's severed arm hanging from the ceiling and that shut Unferth up" and seems to imply some sort of lingering bitterness on Unferth's side when Heorot is in the middle of the celebrations for Grendel's death. But then Unferth actually starts being described in much more favorable terms, almost as if the narrator were pointing out that, despite what the audience might think after his first appearance, there's a reason he's close to Hrothgar and has a good place in his hall... even if at the same time Unferth's praised for his "mighty heart" (something quite different from cowardice), wisdom, and the trust everyone in Heorot apparently has in his mind, there's actually another reference to him having had no mercy for his relatives "in the play of swords" in the past. (Fun little detail: that line comes right after one to the effect of "Hrothgar and Hrothulf were there and no betrayal had yet happened between them"...)

Until, finally, you get Beowulf preparing to go fight Grendel's mother and Unferth giving him his family's swords, Hrunting. And all kinds of entertaining things happen in relation to Hrunting.

You've got Unferth not remembering his first words to Beowulf because he was just really, really, really drunk when he said them, which seems to go well with Beowulf himself calling out his speech as a drunken boast but not with the "that shut him up" line I mentioned before. (Which leads me to wonder: was he actually too drunk to know what he was saying? Or did Beowulf give him an easy out in case he regretted it, which Unferth eventually chose to take to try and smooth things over?) You've got Unferth being "mighty of valour" yet not daring to go after Grendel's mother himself and "forfeiting glory" while giving his weapon to a "worthier" warrior, but his sword getting some lengthy praise nonetheless, to the point of being basically deemed infallible, and Beowulf not only not making any more comments on Unferth's supposed lack of bravery but calling him a man of "wide renown", praising his sword some more, vowing to succeed in his heroic feat with Hrunting or die trying, and telling Hrothgar that no matter what happens, Unferth must get it back when it's all over. And after that... you've got Hrunting utterly failing to kill or even harm Grendel's mother.

Except, that's literally the first time it ever fails at anything? And Beowulf can only kill Grendel's mother when, with the help of God, he finds a magical sword forged by giants, which implies there was no problem with it (and, by extension, with Unferth?) as the whole situation simply needed a little something extra to be dealt with?

Then, you've got Beowulf actually bringing Hrunting back, even if it wasn't much use to him when it really mattered. And praising it again, making sure to publicly clarify, while addressing Hrothgar himself, that no, it really is an excellent sword. And, after some more "the monster is dead!" celebration, Unferth himself (unambiguously "bold", now) having the sword brought over again not just to lend it Beowulf, but to gift it to him.... a weapon that is both nothing to sneeze at and, as Beowulf himself has acknowledged while praising it, a family heirloom. (From a guy who probably already has enough complicated feelings about his family without running around giving that kind of stuff away, to boot!) One Beowulf accepts once more, and gladly, already figuring it will be "a good friend in war, a power in battle" and saying absolutely nothing bad about it (the narrator goes "oh he's so gallant!" at him after that bit, which is admittedly kind of hilarious in itself, but still, imho, not really much to go on if you want to think he's not being sincere) right before he announces his intentions to sail back home.

I'm gonna be honest: I had already read most fics tagged Beowulf/Unferth on AO3 before this Beowulf binge. And now, I've gone and reread them. I've actually read the ones I'd missed the first time around, too. Not that it took me much time at all, but still. WildandWhirling has two really lovely ones. This innuendo-heavy one is a delight to read, too.

I think I might end up writing at least one more. Maybe canon!verse, if I manage not to spiral into researching Old English attitudes to homosexuality, or maybe Modern!AU, if I manage to find a good way to transliterate "sailing off to another country to slay monsters" in this century in a convincing way. Even just to have more than six works in the tag itself. But we'll see...

I suppose, in the end, the whole point of this random, almost stream-of-consciousness post (besides freeing up my head from at least some of my recent Beowulf thoughts) might have turned out to be just that, no matter who they are, fangirls will, indeed, always make them gay. (... I say, as if this was a surprise and I didn't already ship a number Nibelungenlied-and-adjacent gay ships I got into way before any of this.) It wasn't its original purpose but *shrug* I'll take it.

Then again... come on. All that talking about swords. *grin*

[practically-an-x-man]

Vestalia (Rick Flag x Eris)

Summary: After two years with June, things finally crumble for the last time. Rick finds solace in an unlikely source.

Word Count: 3000 exactly (wow)

Tags: Referenced Rick Flag x June Moone, post-breakup, pre-relationship with Eris, emotional hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, mentions of alcohol

Crossposted on AO3

____

“You know what your problem is, Flag?”

“What the fuck are you doing here.” It was too sullen to really be a question. He was hunched over the kitchen table, and in the dim half-light Eris could see the shine of tears on his cheeks. It was rare to see him cry, more than rare, and it almost made them pause. 

“She left her key. Under the doormat.” they responded, setting it down on the kitchen counter as they passed, “Stupid place to hide a key, I think. Especially if it unlocks something valuable.”

“Tch. Yeah. My shit apartment’s so worth robbing.” he muttered, shaking his head without looking up.

“I don’t mean the apartment.”

That brought his eyes to her, finally, and they flicked across her face as he pieced together what she’d said. Eris felt a shiver of… something, maybe linked to the admission itself and maybe linked to the look in Rick’s eyes. As much as he hated the sight of tears in them, the strange sort of hope that flickered at the words was even worse. 

Then he shrugged it off, and ran a hand over his face to swipe away the rest of his tears. Eris found himself relaxing, with that little reminder gone. The emotion still filled the room like a New England fog, but it was easier without the physical reminder written across his face. They couldn’t remember the last time they’d seen so much candid emotion from him. 

Perhaps it was the death of one of his military comrades. A squadmate. A close friend. Three years back. Eris didn’t remember his name, but she remembered how it had torn Rick apart. She remembered how he’d retreated, how he’d fled to bars and drunk himself stupid, and she remembered finding him there and coaxing him back. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought to reach out, to comfort him of all things, but it was enough for Rick to bounce back. 

And now here he was again. A lesser loss, a loss without true death, but it still struck him just as hard.

“So you’re here.”

“I am.” Eris agreed, still hovering vaguely by the door. She hadn’t expected this. She’d come for a celebration, a memory of an old midsummer festival, not for a brokenhearted man in an empty apartment. 

“Did you see her?”

“On the way out.”

“Did she look angry? Or upset?”

“Maybe. She’s always sort of scowling. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“Hm.” He didn’t believe them, and he was right not to. It wasn’t quite the truth. Eris paid a lot of attention, always did, and they had indeed noticed June on her way out of the building. She’d been red-faced, clearly crying but clearly trying to restrain herself, and she’d glared at Eris as they crossed paths. 

But she figured Rick didn’t want to hear that.

“Something happened?”

“Yeah.” The word was almost a laugh, sharp and self-derisive. Eris suppressed a shiver, that ancient beast in the depths of their heart just beginning to stir. They battled it down. Not now. Not for Rick, and especially not when he was so vulnerable. He scoffed. “Something happened.”

“You have a problem, you know.”

“As she made very clear.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Fine. So what’s my problem, then? Enlighten me.”

“Your problem is…” Eris sighed, and slid into the seat beside him, “You never expect to be blindsided. You give too much of your heart away. You let someone wrap you around their little finger, and you let them use you up when they decide they’re done with you. You make friends out of your enemies but never expect the tables to turn the other way. And it gets you into trouble.”

“Look, I’m really not in the mood for this right now.” Rick huffed, “I already feel like shit, I don’t need you to-”

“But it’s one of the things I respect about you. You’ve got a hell of a conscience for someone who’s spent half his life with a gun in his hands. That’s… rare, in this world.”

He paused for a moment, then reached out and set his hand on Rick’s forearm. He couldn’t pretend he was good at this, not in the slightest. But she knew Rick would do the same for her, if he’d found her in the same position. Reciprocity wasn’t a motto Eris often lived by. They couldn’t explain it. 

“She’s just lost one of the good ones. Perhaps one of the only good ones left. She’ll never find another one like you.”

“You sound like a greeting card.” Rick muttered, clearly brushing his words aside. 

“Do they make greeting cards for things like that?”

“Maybe. I dunno.” he said, “Thanks for trying, I guess.”

Eris scoffed. 

“Goddamn it, Rick, do you really think I’m the type to just sit here coddling you for the hell of it? Why do you think I’m here?”

“Couldn’t even begin to guess. But you’re doing a fantastic job of it so far.” Sarcasm dripped off the words, and Eris could have laughed. He restrained himself.

“Fine. Want a drink?” she asked, lifting a bottle onto the table. Rick reached out to turn it, inspecting the label for a moment or two. Then he sighed. 

“Too torn up to appreciate it, I think. Waste of good whiskey.”

“I have more. It didn’t used to be so expensive,” Eris pointed out, but reached down and lifted a second item up onto the table - a six-pack of beer. “But I figured you’d say that. Pick your poison, then. My good vintage whiskey, or Budweiser.”

He reached for one of the beers, cracked it open, and took a hefty swallow. Eris, in turn, opened the whiskey and swigged it straight from the bottle. It wouldn’t do much of anything for him - the last time he’d been anywhere near drunk was back on Themyscira, with a good strong Amazonian wine - but it was a damn fine whiskey either way.

The room was silent until Rick finished his first beer. He didn’t even pause before reaching for a second one. Eris just waited there beside him. They didn’t know what they could say - the booze had really been their only play - and they worried whatever crossed their lips could end up twisting into something vicious. For once, he tried to keep the murmur of conflict quiet within him. That wouldn’t do here.

“Came outta the blue, too.” Rick muttered, as if finally voicing the thoughts that had been running through his head for a while, “Thought we were doing okay. Not… great, but okay. And that’s a lot of what relationships are, I think. Or just… how life is. You get through the okay times and the good ones come along again eventually. But I guess not. Not with her, at least.”

They’d expected him to be angry. They’d seen him angry, time after time out in the field, and they thought they’d see the same thing here. But instead he just seemed resigned to it, melancholy but resolved, so much quieter than she ever would have expected.

Maybe he’d known this was coming. Maybe he’d known for a while. There was no surprise in it, and therefore no real anger. 

Maybe that was for the best. This was the calmest Eris could possibly be, the closest he’d ever come to a comforting presence.

“She just…” Rick continued, now with low flickers of bitterness underneath the words. It still wasn’t true anger, but it was sharper than the quiet sadness from before. “She just shows up, says she’s going off to Argentina. Some… I dunno, some ancient ruins she wants to investigate. She just got back from Mexico last week, doing the same thing. And I said that, and I guess that was the wrong thing to say, because…”

He let out another deep sigh, and paused to take another long swig of beer. Eris glanced over at him, and found him brushing a hand across his eyes. She frowned. This one had hit him hard. She could see that. It needled unpleasantly at her heart.

“Because then she started talking about how I’m always gone, wrangling the Squad and all,” he finally continued, “And how ‘at least her work doesn’t put her in the literal crossfires of the world’s most dangerous people’, and how ‘you’re going to get yourself killed out there someday’, and wouldn’t that just ruin her, and before I knew it she’s saying she can’t do it anymore.”

Another pause. He finished off his second beer and nearly reached for a third. Then he paused, just long enough for Eris to offer the bottle of whiskey to him instead. Rick shook his head. His fingers drummed incessantly on the tabletop.

“And I think maybe we would’ve been alright, y’know, if I’d just left it at that. She’d go off to Argentina, study some artifacts, and then she’d come back and I’d take her out to dinner and we’d get back to making it work.” he said, “She was upset, but not… awful upset. Maybe we’da worked things out.”

“And then?”

“And then I mentioned the fucking Enchantress.” Those words tore out of him quickly, with a fresh bubble of anger - anger at himself, Eris realized, and bit her cheek to keep this new conflict from twisting within her. She couldn’t fire back. Not now. 

Rick shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose with a deep scowl.

“I reminded ‘er that that was how we met, and that she was the one out in the crossfires and nearly gettin’ killed out there, and if I hadn’t been with the Squad she’d probably be dead herself, and that… that was the wrong thing to say. True, yeah, but… the wrong thing. So she’s all, ‘it wasn’t my fault, you know it wasn’t my fault, how can you even bring her up when you know how much she hurt me?’ and I’m going ‘yeah, but why’d you break the fuckin’ totem in the first place, you shoulda been careful and maybe that wouldn’t’ve happened at all’ and then she’s really pissed-off and saying it all was a mistake, we were a mistake, and to go back to that-”

He snapped his mouth abruptly and dropped his head. Eris turned his words over in his mind. He had a feeling he knew what came next. 

“Go ahead.” they said, with a calm that shocked even themself, “Keep going. I’ve heard it before.”

Rick looked over, something strange swimming in his eyes. Eris couldn’t make sense of it, but they met his gaze without blinking. Finally he nodded, though his jaw was set tight.

“She said… go back to that sadistic nightmare you spend so much time with, if you really want to fight like this.”

“Well. She’s got an awfully high opinion of me, doesn’t she?” Eris remarked, rather dryly, and tossed back another swallow of whiskey. It burned the whole way down, but it was a comfortable warmth. Rick chuckled humorlessly from beside her.

“Yeah. Apparently.” he muttered, then spared them another brief glance, “But I’m glad you’re here.”

Eris thought on that one for a long time. He knew Rick appreciated his presence out on the battlefield, even if out of nothing more than pure survivalist logic. They were a good fighter, physically and mentally resilient, and he could rely on them. And she knew Rick had a bad habit of giving away his heart. He cared too much. There were only two ways to survive on a team with supervillains, they thought - Rick’s method, to care so much that you made those alliances anyway and damned the consequences, until you had more allies than you had enemies… or not to care at all, to make no connections. And somehow Rick and his risks had survived much longer than the ones that hardened their hearts. 

But moments like these? Outside the battlefield, the alliances? Put in a place where Eris faltered and failed, where he needed comfort and all she could give him was booze and too-sharp banter, where she couldn’t be what he needed? He was still grateful for her presence?

She couldn’t say that was new. In a way, it was the opposite. This was old, by decades or centuries or millennia. It always started with words like these.

But they were here. And that was… something.

“It’s a bad day for this, you know.”

“Tell me about it.” This time Rick took the bottle when Eris passed it over to him, and took a long swig before he handed it back. Eris traced his fingers along the rim of it, trying not to think of how his lips had just occupied the same space. It must have been two hundred years since the last time they’d felt these odd little flutters. 

The last one had died in battle, of course. His body was so ruined, torn by bayonets and stamped by warhorses, that Eris could only identify him by the scraps of his many tattoos still visible on the battered flesh. He’d gotten one of them, a great sea serpent winding from his hips to his collarbone, as a means to impress her. Pain tolerance, he’d said, his willingness to be pierced by needles in the name of love. 

Love. Was that what it was? 

Either way, Eris had found the head of the sea serpent six feet away from the rest of him. Gone too early. Like all the others. And that was that.

Were they so sure they wanted to start that again? To risk devoting their heart, knowing it would all end too soon?

Eris shook her head, as if tossing away the thoughts.

“No, really. It’s… unlucky. Today marks Vestalia, the celebration of Vesta and the home. That was why I brought the whiskey. Figured we might celebrate, until I saw her leave. It’s an unlucky day for a home to break.”

“It’s been breaking for a while now.”

“I know.” 

Eris took another drag from the bottle, swishing the liquor around in his mouth before swallowing it. There was something he liked about all this, treating this rare and so-called “vintage” whiskey the way he would simple moonshine or mead. She didn’t believe in hoarding away the good times. Any time was a good enough time, they figured, and waiting for that “rainy day” to show up usually meant the rain just came and went. Rick didn’t speak.

“You pushed me aside for her, you know.” Eris found himself muttering, “You met her, and you let her wrap you around her little finger like you did with all the rest, and soon she was all you talked about. You told me I was your number one, and yet you closed me out of your home the moment she asked you to. I’d have expected that from someone else, but… I thought you were better than that.”

Rick stared at the empty beer bottles, laid out on the table in front of him. His fingers traced through beads of condensation, scattered across the scuffed wood. His lips opened and closed, finding words, but it was a while before he spoke again. 

“I didn’t realize it bothered you. I thought you didn’t care about people. Figured you’d just move on to the next war, or the next guy, or whatever it is that you do.”

To his credit, she nearly had. She’d been shocked at the weight of her own betrayal, and it had almost been enough to spur her onwards. It had been a good few years, following him by his battles and meeting up after the sun had set, sometimes drinks and sometimes more, but everything had to end. And he’d thought it might have ended with June. The emotions were too heavy, at first. 

But he liked Rick. That was the crux of it. He liked Rick, on some level or another (what level that was, he still wasn’t fully sure), and he wanted to keep him around. June or not, cast aside or not, there was only one Rick Flag in the world, and nothing to bring him back once he was gone.

“I didn’t.” Eris whispered, their voice far more rough than they expected, “I’ve always been here.”

He looked over at her, with an expression like it was the first time he’d ever really seen her. There was an intensity there, the sort of intensity they’d usually only seen while under fire, and it made something shiver deep within them.

Somehow they weren’t surprised when Rick reached out, clasped the back of their neck with one large hand and drew them closer. Eris let him. Maybe that was wrong, maybe a better person would have waited until he was in a better state of mind, sans-booze and sans-emotion, but they let him. 

He held her too tight and tasted of whiskey and beer. It was a long kiss, somehow both impassioned and strangely hollow, and Eris couldn’t help thinking of June’s lips on his in place of their own. When was the last time he’d kissed her? How fresh were those wounds?

But it was a nice kiss regardless. Eris couldn’t bring himself to care about the details. 

Except one.

“I won’t be your rebound.” he muttered, “It can be something or it can be nothing, heart or just sex, but I won’t be your rebound from June. If you want me, I need to know you want me. Not just a body in your bed.”

Rick pressed his lips together. His eyes flicked back and forth across their face, visibly sorting through his thoughts. Finally he drew back with a sigh. 

“Then I can’t. Not yet.” he decided, albeit with palpable pain, “I just… I don’t know yet. It’s still too fresh.”

“Alright. Then I’ll wait. However long I must.” they said, and stood up from their seat, “Call me when you’re ready.”

[littlesparklight]

While it's like... impossible to miss entirely otherwise in Greek myth relating things like the tragedies, reading this commentary on the Alexandros, especially in this latter part of it, being exposed to the Ancient Greek attitudes about slaves is like...

Wow this is reprehensible! :D

"They have no moderation, and are all focused on getting to eat, and will do anything to get to do that and then they will OVEREAT, too!! They're all base and prone to behaving badly (in general, and/or to get food) because they are poor."

(These attitudes expressed in fragments probably attached to Deiphobos' arguments in his agon with Hektor.)

Like man.

It's their fault they are enslaved and thus poor, and that their ability to get enough food relies on their masters? Theirs? Not their masters???

They are morally base and shitty people as a kind of people, despite that, uh, basically anyone can be enslaved (thanks to what happens to the losers in war)? They're completely different (in a negative way) from free people, who are just "better" as an inborn quality?

And then we add all the stuff you see in post-sack Trojan war relating tragedies, about how these newly enslaved women need to bear their misfortune (being slaves!!! in a society with this attitude towards slaves!!) gracefully and not make trouble, not complain too much.

Awful. Absolutely fucking reprehensible.

[luthorao3]

“Are we really doing this? Are we really slow-dancing?” - Emma Swan and Regina Mills (I know it's 2023 and this is Swanqueen but you're the one who posted Regina on your main and reawaking ancient and disgusting *feelings* so now I'm making you suffer too)

oh you fucker (respectfully). it's been so long since i've seen any actual episodes of ouat, we’re just going to take the timeline like a sheet of paper and scrunch it up into a little ball and it will make about as much sense as canon if you don’t ask any questions. <3

The mayoral manor is a quiet house.

At three storeys tall and wider still, it’s too large for its sole two occupants, although Emma likes to think she makes a difference.

More so, on those nights when she lingers too late in the afternoon helping Henry with his homework, that Regina feels the need to extend an invitation to dinner. (A world away, a whole new dimension, and Regina still can’t seem to escape the trappings of that good old storybook hospitality?) Further still, after Henry’s bedtime passes and Emma finds herself spirited away to Regina’s study, three sips into her second glass of apple cider and something old and folksy strumming from the sound system.

The first time it had happened, she’d accepted the invitation for a drink with obvious and awkward surprise.

The second, she’d been determined to take it in her stride, and even cracked a joke.

(That just about destroyed their ability to form civil conversation for a good half hour after.)

By now, she’s learned to roll with it and keep her mouth shut until Regina offers a tentative, no, placating topic of conversation – usually Henry, often the town, rarely either of their pasts, thank every well-intentioned fairytale wizard for that – to keep their silence from turning awkward. Until, of course, those topics begin to wear dangerously thin, and Regina looks at her with this kind of— longing, but that can’t be the word? Like she wouldn’t mind so much if Emma did open her big mouth and say something embarrassing, some unfunny joke, a crass quip for Regina to turn her nose up at, but then again why would she?

What could they possibly have in common, besides the absolute shit-fuckery that is their respective trauma?

So, quiet, then. With her cider in one hand and music filling in the lulls in their conversation.

Until—

“Oh, man, I love this song.”

It’s instinct, like reflex. Verbal diarrhoea. By the time Emma catches up to the words, she’s already spoken them out loud.

Regina’s surprise is expected, but not the smile that follows.

Bright like a spark from a live wire, and just as heart-stopping.

Emma watches as she stands, sets her glass down, heals clipping as she nears the stereo. A heartbeat later, the volume increases. Not by much – Henry is still sleeping above their heads, or at least roundabout up there somewhere – and Regina does not sit down again. She turns in place and observes Emma – observes her, not just looking, not a casual thing; Emma feels that glance right down to her marrow – and then steps closer.

She offers out a hand.

“Dance with me.”

Emma thinks it’s meant to be a question, but it didn’t sound like one. An offer, even. Invitation. Does she have a choice to say thank you but, holy fuck, no way, haha, not even a little bit, are you for real?

“Um,” instead, but Regina does not cower.

(Well, Emma doesn’t expect her to. She’s too many lifetimes under her belt, already, and none of them have been gentle.)

“I thought you loved this song?”

Questioning? Challenging. Emma swallows and feels her throat so dry it almost sticks itself closed. Awkward.

“Um.”

Yeah, nailed it.

Before her transformation into caveman can complete, Emma shakes herself.

“I mean,” she clears her throat, wry smirk, “why?”

Regina considers her again. “You’re not unattractive.”

“Wow,” Emma sputters, and she’s grinning like an idiot, because damn if that isn’t the worst compliment she’s ever received in her life (and, yeah, there’s some competition), but the amusement drains from her like a hole in the bottom of a bucket when Regina does not laugh back, and Emma gets the strangest suspicion, the most ridiculous gut feeling that Regina might actually be—

But, no.

Because that would be absurd.

Like something straight out of a— oh, go ahead, laugh. This is her life now, isn’t it?

Except Regina is still offering her hand, and faced with taking it or refusing, Emma’s self-preservation decides against doing anything that might piss off the woman who once earned the moniker, Evil Queen. She’s not actually expecting to make contact – skin on skin – even as her hand slides into Regina’s, but she’s warm. And soft, actually. Emma’s mind runs through her imagined ten-step skincare routine even as it’s derailing.

Regina leads her into the centre of the room.

Regina places her hands where they’re meant to be.

Regina moves the way that people move, two people, together, when they want to get much, much closer. And she smells good. Jesus, fuck, she smells amazing. Emma could have told herself that, but knowing it and experiencing it, experiencing Regina, are two very different things. One exists within the confines of her mind, where it absolutely should have stayed, and the other is a gentle cheek pressed fleetingly against her own, moving away again, returning (now with confidence, for it does not leave again), and now that she can define the two, Emma thinks she’ll lose it.

That’s what happens when people learn too much, those big and secret truths that make up the very existence of the cosmos, they lose their goddamn minds.

When she’s worked up enough courage, before the song has ran its course, Emma wets her lips and drags her thoughts from the press of Regina’s belly against her own.

(Soft. Fucking, warm. Solid.)

“Are we really doing this?” she whispers. “Are we really slow dancing?”

Amusement like a rumble in Regina’s chest, a satisfied hum of affirmation. Car’s motor, cat’s purr. Emma feels it vibrate out of her, where their bodies are connected.

“You’re certainly trying, Ms. Swan.” The familiar title might just be what does her in. That, or the obvious amusement in Regina’s voice. The heaviness of it. The assuredness of her joy. The way she doesn’t sound like this isn’t the most unlikely event to ever happen in all of Storybrooke, and— well, gestures to all of Storybrooke. “If you loosen up a little, you might even enjoy it.”

“Huh,” Emma says.

Which is better than um.

The song ends. Another begins. Sure, the music fits, so Emma supposes it’s kind of okay that they don’t stop dancing. Because that’s what they’re doing, still, and if she told anybody that this was happening they’d laugh and tell her she was lying. Or, hm, no actually they probably wouldn’t, would they, but following that line of thought is sure to ruin the moment, so Emma plugs two metaphorical fingers in her ears and lalalas herself away from it before the idea of how obvious her crush – infatuation? – is can take root.

(It’s not like Regina’s not the mother of her son, or anything. How is she supposed to defend herself against how goddamn fucking sexy it is to know that Regina would, and quite literally, tear several worlds to shreds for the tiny, delicate, infinitely precious human life that Emma brought into existence? So, yeah, maybe they have more things in common, after all.)

When Regina takes a breath – and it’s a large breath, a larger than necessary breath – Emma cringes in preparation for what’s to come.

It’s not what she’s expecting.

“You’re careful around me,” Regina says, quiet-like, earth-shattering.

“Yeah.”

Emma knows exactly what she means.

The eggshells she steps on, the peace she keeps, the distance she puts between them lest she ruin it simply with her presence (done that enough times, thank you, she’d rather not take the chance). She’d assumed Regina would appreciate it, given— everything. But now Regina’s looking at her like she’s lost, lost something, lost something special.

“I wouldn’t mind it if you weren’t.”

And, well.

Shit, okay.

Maybe it’s not so much for Henry’s sake that Regina invites her to all those dinners. Maybe it’s not for Henry that Regina lets her stay, well past she really should, late into the night, long after Henry has counted his last sheep goodnight, cider in her belly and music in her chest. Maybe— and just maybe, okay, hear her out— maybe Regina has actually come to enjoy her company.

The same way Emma has come to enjoy hers.

Which would be kind of—

“Perfect.”

“What?”

“I mean, okay. I won’t be.”

Regina is the first to pull back, and that’s when Emma realises they’re no longer dancing – might not have been for, well, who even knows how long, she hasn’t exactly been keeping track. Regina looks— trepidatious, now. Uncertain, now, but she does not back away. Her determination is as obvious as the lip scar that Emma tries so hard not to hyperfocus on, and so rarely succeeds.

(Have they ever been this close before? Emma thinks, maybe, and yet, how? When? Why? And, more importantly, why not sooner?)

“Really?” Regina asks, searching Emma’s face. “You do know what I’m asking, don’t you?”

Emma does not even consider taking the out, big and red and glaring and obvious as it is that Regina’s just given it to her. She does not even acknowledge it.

“I have an idea. A pretty good one, actually, yeah.”

And, pleased, Regina nods her head. “I’d love to hear it.”

So, closing the distance, Emma lets her know.

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

and now it's time to play that ancient game of mine -- moments in my fanfic scribblings that wound up kinda mirroring canon!!

(this is totally just for my own amusement. don't mind me!)

ofmd 204 & 205 spoilers!

this was my fix-it fic that i wrote in a deranged haze the day after 1.09 & 1.10 aired, and then never posted because there were a few small transition scenes in between all the meaty emotional stuff that i was just too lazy to ever finish up. upon rereading, i actually kinda like it and wish i'd finished it though!!! maybe i will one day, and just post it as a historical relic from march '22.

*****

(Ed and Stede meet at last!)

“What’ve you been up to?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“I’ve heard a bit. But I’d rather hear it from you.”

“Oh, you know. Plundering, pillaging, being the punishment this sorry world deserves. That sort of thing.”

“Very neat. And what’s with the–” Stede gestures awkwardly to his own chin.

Ed touches his kohl-painted face. “Wasn’t going to wait for it to grow back in before I got back out there. I’d wasted enough time.”

“Right, yes.” Stede lets out a wistful, slight laugh. “I was starting to get used to your bare face.”

“Really? That’s not what scared you away?”

“I wasn’t scared away.”

“Oh, so you just decided to abandon me for some other reason. That’s great. It feels great, knowing that. Life’s so much better now than it was ten seconds ago. Wait. Fuck.” Ed stands abruptly, shaking the table. “I swore I wasn’t going to do this. I’m fucking Blackbeard, I’m the kraken, I’m hell on waves, I eat babies for breakfast.”

“Oh, Edward.” Stede stares up at him, aghast. “Please tell me you haven’t had a breakfast baby.”

“Obviously I didn’t really,” Ed says impatiently. “It’s just an alliteration thing. It’s the vibes.”

Stede puts a hand to his heart and exhales. “Thank God.”

(okay, with this one i mostly just wanted the breakfast baby joke to finally see the light of day. but there's a slight overlap!)

*****

(Ed and Stede make up very quickly, and then try to make the crew feel cool about that!)

“Hey, Blackbeard.”

“Hey, Black Pete.”

“Oh, it’s just Pete now.”

“Cool, cool. I guess it’s just Ed now, too.”

“Welcome back, Ed. If I could just, uh, say one thing?”

“Sure, mate, what’s up?”

“VENGEANCE!!!” Pete screams, and pushes Ed overboard.

The crew bursts into cheers.

Stede can’t really fault them, all things considered.

“That was just a bit of vengeance for you, babe,” Pete tells Lucius.

“Thanks, babe.”

*****

Once a sopping-wet Ed’s been recovered, there’s the general consensus from all non-Stede crew members that he’s going in the brig.

“We’re really happy for you, Captain,” says Frenchie, “but he’s been a menace.”

“Obviously acting out of deep-rooted pain and some unprocessed childhood trauma,” says Lucius magnanimously. “But all the same, he’s been a massive bitch.”

“I think everyone should get a turn punching him in the face,” says Jim.

“Nobody’s punching anybody!” Stede says, in his clipped captain’s orders! tone. “But you’re right. I’m sorry, Ed; the people have spoken, and the brig it is.”

“No, I get it.” Ed holds up his hands in surrender. “Super fair. And hey, Jim, you can go ahead and punch me if you like.”

“They won’t punch you, they’ve just got hurt feelings–”

Stede is cut off by Jim punching Ed right in the stomach.

Wow. They really don’t waste any time.

“Sucker punch,” breathes Ed through what must be a dizzying amount of pain. “See, I was expecting the face, ‘cause you said the face–”

“Surprise,” says Jim.

****

and this is from a fic i actually posted! [x]

Stede decides to risk getting shot, and puts a hand on his arm. They stand still together. “I wish I’d gotten it right the first time. But this, right now, it’s the next best thing we’ve got. I’ll keep fighting if you want to fight, and I’m pretty sure my crew and I will win our ship back from you and your sorry lot within the week–”

“Pfft.”

“--but while we’re fighting, Ed, just know that I lo–”

But before he can say the words, Ed interrupts. “Nope. Don’t.”

“But I–”

“No.” Ed meets his eyes. “I mean it, mate.”

Stede listens. He lifts his hand from Ed’s arm. “That’s all right. You must know what I mean, if you don’t want me to say it that badly.”

“Of course I want you to say it,” Ed mutters. “That’s the problem.”

“Ah, right. Terrible.”

[iwoszareba]

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies? For Knave and Aqil.

Oh boy! Does Aqil have hobbies, he is endlessly curious so he sometimes tries things out or learns about something new even without the intention of maintaining it, just because he was in the mood. Wikipedia rabbit hole kind of guy.

But the things he does maintain:

he loves stories, both reading/listening and creating, big proponent of oral storytelling

he knows a couple of languages and would gladly learn more if he had the time

relating to above, while he does not write his own poetry he sometimes translates poems as an exercise, says it makes his word usage sharper (definitely translated some love poems for Sosiel :3c)

he plays simsimiyya which is a type of lyre. he was in a band while studying in Absalom and he would love to be in a band again

history!! his expertise is in Ancient Osirion but he is interested in general. ending up in Mendev was very: wow!! so much new stuff to dive into!!

he is a devout Nethysian but he is interested in other religions too. they had so much impact on history and culture of course he needs to know what they are about

he likes to cook! especially if there is someone else he can cook for, even better if they are interested in keeping him company and chatting while he is preparing food

as explained in this ask he does draw in a very symbol based way

idk if i should say magic in the hobbies section when it's the main thing he does, but not mentioning it wouldn't feel right either heh

Knave is trickier because he does so much aimless fucking around does even have time for real hobbies haha but here we go:

he likes stories too! but he does not care for complex ideas, he just likes the entertainment, bonus points for a fun plot twist and/or morbid elements

he collects oddities, like ugly art or bizarre objects, keeps them in a bag of holding like his own portable, admittedly trashy dragon hoard

he does genuinely enjoy magic, i don't think he has the attention span or inclination to properly study it but he thinks it's cool, likes using it and learns new things in fuck around and find out fashion

he did not retain skill with the instrument but he has a section of his brain dedicated to melodies, starts out as humming absentmindedly but eventually he gets more conscious about it and even learns to sing, but he does it just to do it, won't be joining anyone's band asfghh

games, preferably more chance than skill, or maybe skill games with chance as an important element. surprisingly he does not cheat at cards

he likes to watch people but unlike Arue he is here for the drama and people being nasty little shits to each other rather than anything wholesome

after he gets better mobility post full trickster he learns how to juggle and do sleight of hand tricks like a proper little clown, he is also quick on his feet and gets strength from abyssal bloodline so he enjoys brawling

is vandalism a hobby?? lmao

[eggman91]

ok so I haven’t been posting a lot sorry and work on the Mordecai voodoo au is slow because work and me getting back into asoiaf and getting on that Jamie pill(God best arc fight me) so here helluva my random opinions and ideas on boss/ hazbin hotel

helluva boss

so yeah the pilot was good and the show was a mix of man I like the ideas and characters /man I’m very disappointed and not laughing

Like there some direction they took they made it to quickly into serious stuff a should keep comedy for like 2 seasons or something like my biggest things was

Stolas like i don’t if I get crucified now but keep more evil looking or like he was In the pilot this castist aristocratic, bird prick who didn’t really care for biltzo but over time fell for him and stuff. (Or just make him a fallen I would like that ) but the funny good dad Stolas is nice too

Stella ok,I mean I understand it fine to have a villain who doesn’t need a reason to be evil they just like hell I do that and they definitely exist in but I like Stella design and form the second episode it was more interesting to me if Stella and Stolas wasn’t in a good marriage but like they didn’t hate eachother like arranged and stuff but they both love Octavia like when I first watch the episode i thought (all in my head and I know it was canon) like she was promise to Stolas arranged marriage so imagine getting married to this ancient demon one of the fallen… but im actully ok how she is in the show right now

Ok random take but Beelzebub I really like that episode (all the hellhounds 😊) and her design but really that Beelzebub ? The sin of gluttony the fly really? Like yeah the embodiment of gluttony doesn’t need to fat and stuff but like ok but why make her into sparkledog but like the idea I had like that just a front (oh no she doing dogface )like to get people to party and indulge and bee was better then a fly but I didn’t think she was a villain she didn’t really care for hellhounds and stuff but she trying to do better because she genuinely love vortex there art by drunk ferret that I really like

(Also I wish there was more overweight hellhounds at the party i admit that )

as for the imps meh they fine as they are moxxie x Mille is best ship

so that was my helluva boss opinions (wow so original I bet he a Stella Stan) and now the hazbin hotel

I actually like it more helluva boss and stuff like I thought I dislike Alsator but no I like him like there was so many opinions, and what people thought it was going to happen in the show and I did have that too I meant and I finally watch it and well yeah meh but I was pleasantly surprised at times

(said for the whole val thing what the fuck viz I know hell and shit but fuck) yeah but Charlie and vaggie best ship fight me and nifty is best little gremlin and I like Lucifer but yeah he too goofy for the prince of darkness but I like him too and more then anything was a very emotional and etc but there one thing

god if he show up I hope they won’t make Jesus a bad guy or a hypocrite like Adam and stuff like dude Jesus died for our sins and etc but like I hope he give Charlie hope not everybody deserves to be in hell but a lot do but like,Jesus did descend into hell to save the righteous and Adam and Eve 1 Peter:4:6 acts 2:27-37 and revelation 1:7 but yeah I’m a degenerate but I still stand by Jesus (also I hope they don’t make him dress like the rest of heaven like you get and see what they all wearing and you see this dark skinned dirty white robe and red Jesus)

Yeah this was a random post I made when I woke up randomly