I’m sure the decision to make the character with a highly stigmatized disorder (a disorder that’s used as a selling point, mind you) the “grittiest,” most “hardcore,” and the most “brutal” one in the MCU was a completely innocuous choice, NOT because the directors saw a group of severely traumatized people as evil creatures they could exploit for profit. Definitely not that.

the People have requested my book report on The Library at Mt. Char so this is now a Mt Char book club.

if you have not read The Library at Mt Char there is no reason to keep reading. I hope you're having a nice day, stay safe and don't do drugs.

So Mt Char has a couple of problems, but in my opinion only one grave problem.

Not a grave problem:

Erwin doesn't need to be in this book. An astonishing amount of ink is spilled on giving us Erwin's POV and I am at a loss in regards to what that's supposed to bring to the story. I mean, it's kind of neat to see Carolyn's "trick shot" from the POV of one of the people being manipulated, but that perspective could have just been provided by Steve. Everything Erwin does of any plot significance could have been done by Steve, a character who actually matters.

Please note that I don't hate Erwin, he's perfectly fine as characters go, he just contributes nothing, and it is baffling that he and Carolyn get the last scene in the book (instead of just ending on her reunion with Michael, a scene that was emotionally affecting and felt like a natural end point to her story). We are taking no questions, Erwin needed to be cut.

Also not a grave problem in my opinion, but I am sure others feel differently and I understand why they would:

Yo, the scope of what the catalogs cover is mad vague. I mean, I get that that's the point: when you have a character whose magic powers are "anything that has to do with death or murder," that's a broad license, and I'm fine with that. These are supposed to be demi-gods. I don't require a rigorously explicated magic system.

But then like...why can't Jennifer, the healer, also heal minds? That seems weird. Or like, it's implied that she kinda can, maybe, but none of the kids talk about their therapy sessions with Jennifer: they explicitly call out that she heals their bodies. But then she talks about how Margaret and David are sick (meaning mentally) in a way she can "no longer help?" Aren't you supposed to be the God Of Healing? Why can't you help anymore? And were you actually trying to help them before - or anyone else? That's never shown. You could have just said you only healed bodies, not minds, but then it's repeatedly implied that she CAN diagnose mental and emotional problems (and therefore should probably be able to do something about them).

So that's weird.

Or like, why is there Alicia, who "sees the future," and Rachel, who "sees possible futures?" That, uh, just sounds like the author was running out of ideas. Also, if Alicia could see the future, she probably shouldn't have been in that house when the SWAT team hit, yeah?

Stuff like that. The magic the kids can do is very "they have the powers the author needs them to have when the author needs them to have them, and they can't do anything the author would find inconvenient for them to do" but that's not a deal breaker for me because overall the vibe being put off by their various magical specialties works for me. Still, there were ways of getting us where we needed to go without begging quite so many questions.

Also not a grave problem, although more of a problem than the other stuff:

You know that anime trope where a super-genius character is having an entire conversation with another super-genius character through a screen, and it's revealed that the whole conversation was a distraction and pre-recorded so that Character 2 could Complete His Scheme against Character 1? And used his super-genius brain to predict every single thing Character 1 would say? And your suspension of disbelief staggers bloodied into the alleyway and collapses because you're really trying to hang in there, Code Geass, but that's fucking stupid, you're asking for me to believe that this character's intelligence is flat-out supernatural now and you've given me no reason why that should be?

That's how I feel about Carolyn, by the time she takes over the Library. Like, okay. The kids canonically have not even been at the Library long enough for any of them to master their catalogues except for Jennifer. None of them but Jennifer are masters of even their own subject.

Carolyn has been studying in secret from multiple catalogues - which is cool! I like how she slowly reveals over the course of the latter half of the book that she has powers from other people's specialties.

...But like...

She seems close to mastering her own catalogue. She is a competent healer and can raise the dead (Jennifer's catalogue). She can block attempts to read her mind, beats David in a fight, and understands how to kill Father (David's catalogue). She speaks lion and controls the dogs that surround the Library (Michael's catalogue). She could make the mathy "Denial That Rends" thing that kicks off the whole plot, and she can make a new sun and correct orbital rotations around it (Peter's catalogue). She can predict the future with such specificity that she knows how to cause Steve to drop a clip of bullets while he's being attacked by dogs exactly where Erwin will need to pick it up later (Rachel's catalogue, also this one is stupid, she could have just given Erwin an extra clip or something, but whatever).

That's half the catalogues. Carolyn doesn't seem prodigiously more intelligent than the other kids. She's smart, sure, but they're all weird demi-gods with a genius for their specialties. The rest of them haven't even mastered their own catalogue, and I'm supposed to swallow that Carolyn has attained 'competent or better' status in six? When she has to research five of them in secret? Without falling behind in her own studies?

It would be fine if they had all been masters of their own catalogues for years and years; that would mean they would begin to stagnate, while Carolyn kept learning. But that's not the case. By the end I wasn't impressed anymore at Carolyn's resourcefulness, it just felt like she could do anything and everything, shh, don't ask questions, she's the Chosen One so she just can.

The reason this isn't a grave problem to me is because Carolyn's journey isn't about becoming more powerful: it's about her emotional journey, which isn't affected by her being stupidly OP for no reason by the end of the book. She still sucked at the things that mattered, like "feelings" and "relationships" and "not being a shitty person." But I do think it hurt the story. I should be cheering on my protagonist when her wild schemes come together, not rolling my eyes.

Anyway. All that was the aperitif. Let's talk about

THE GRAVE AND GLARING PROBLEM AT THE CENTER OF MT CHAR.

So everything that happens in the book stems from Carolyn's thoroughly justified hatred of Father (and David, but David was made that way by Father). Father treated her, and all of the other kids, with extravagant cruelty. If you haven't read the book in a while, here's a sample of the kinds of things Father did to the kids, or, if David did them, that Father did nothing to prevent:

- Cooked David alive over 2 full days in a giant bronze bull (and made the rest of the kids bring the fuel)

- Put Michael's eyes out with a hot poker every night for 2 weeks (and made the rest of the kids watch)

- Murdered Margaret every few days, often in drawn-out and painful ways

- Made Rachel repeatedly give birth, raise the babies to about 9 months, then murder them with her own hands

- Allowed David to rape all 11 of the other kids (except Jennifer, probably because she was the healer and he wanted to stay on her good side)

- Allowed David to crucify, brutalize and rape Carolyn and Peter

- Gave Carolyn a loving new family for a year when she was nine years old (those two deer), then had David murder them in front of her and blame it on her for not remembering her homework well enough, then served the two deer at a feast to 'celebrate' her returning to the family

- Whippings, skinnings, and bone-breakings as standard disciplinary actions

Whoo-ee! Okay! We are talking about mythological cruelty. I am fine with this! The story takes place on a mythological scale. As outlandish as all of that is, the cruelty feels proportionate in a story about killing and replacing god. Father is cruel, indifferent, controlling, and alien. I have no questions, Carolyn please proceed with your revenge. We seemed on track for a tale in which Carolyn defeats Father, but in doing so she runs the risk of becoming him. Will she step back from the brink and retain her humanity after all of the trauma and brutality she's endured? Let's find out!

And then

and then.

Oh boy.

And then.

...It turns out, Father is a good guy after all.

And let me be clear: THIS IS NOT, IN AND OF ITSELF, A PROBLEM.

By the time you learn that Father is actually benevolent, and loved those kids, and cares about being a responsible steward to the world, and tried to leave the universe a better place than he found it, and genuinely regretted the suffering he inflicted on them when they were growing up, it feels kind of...natural? Like, I was surprised, but also not, because there were 90 pages of book left and Carolyn had already become god. This seemed like a thematically meaningful place to take the rest of the story.

It turns out Father was training Carolyn to replace him the entire time. He had to make her hate David because it was important that she "defeat a monster" on her path to becoming god. (It's not explained why she had to defeat a monster, but sure, okay; it's the kind of mythic feat that fits with the story we're in.)

Why did he choose Carolyn to be his successor? Well, originally he chose David, but David wasn't strong enough: every time Carolyn was the monster in David's story, she defeated him, and went on to rule the universe as an unspeakable tyrant. Since Carolyn always won, Father swapped their roles. He knew he had made the right choice when he put David into the bronze bull, and heard David begging for mercy: because when Carolyn had been the fated monster, she had never begged.

...Okay, so...hang on.

Hang on.

The only rule that we've established on "how to become god" is "you have to defeat a monster," right? I'll even grant you for free that it has to be a monster who is personally meaningful to you, although that part is never stated. Overcoming a great evil which has cast you down and abused you many times before, sure, okay.

...Why the FUCK did all that other awful shit have to happen??

I did not have this question when Father was just evil! That was a good enough explanation! But now that he's not evil, you HAVE TO EXPLAIN why he treated all of the kids so brutally!

Like dude you're GOD. If you need a monster for Carolyn, I'm sure you can make that happen without TORTURING CHILDREN FOR DECADES.

There didn't even need to be any other children! You could have two kids: the languages-kid, who is the chosen one (the chosen one has to be the languages-kid so they can read the Onyx Codex or whatever it was called at the end, the one written by Original God), and the war-and-murder kid, who is the monster. They could have just been forbidden to read the other codices, if it's important to you that your chosen one still prove her resourcefulness or whatever.

Why include all of the other kids??? It wasn't to give your chosen one a sense of family: Carolyn didn't feel close to any of them except for Michael (who I liked, but whose contribution to the plot was negligible).

Or keep the kids! But then why make them, and Carolyn, hate you?? You could just say, "Hey Carolyn, I am raising you to be my successor, you have to figure it out yourself because part of proving your worthiness is this kind of abstract, big-picture thinking, but I love you and whatever you end up deciding to do, just believe in yourself." And meanwhile you're off torturing the fated monster in order to get him piping hot and ready to be served.

Was the idea that Carolyn had to endure so much horror in order to prove she was 'tough enough' to be god?? Because that's not how trauma works! Kids who have been brutally traumatized are usually not made tougher by the experience! A fact that even the book understands, because 10 of the 12 kids are completely destroyed by their upbringing (I'm giving marginal exceptions to Michael and Carolyn herself).

And like

if Father doesn't have a good reason for having treated them so badly, the whole book falls apart!

Because getting revenge for that cruelty is Carolyn's whole motivation!

We are clearly supposed to feel okay about Father going to make a new universe at the end of the book: he's going with his cool tiger friend and that little girl with the connection to the elemental plane of joy who used to be the sun, he's happy to see Carolyn embracing compassion and kindness, which means he cares about compassion and kindness. He invented light and pleasure. Carolyn does nothing to try to stop him from going. He seems like a pretty good candidate for god. And I do feel okay with him leaving! I was convinced! Father is not evil after all!

But then you have! to explain! the abuse!!

It can be a throwaway line!! "Carolyn realized that everything she and her siblings went through had to happen the way it did, because [X]," embedded in the middle of a paragraph! That would have been enough! But I need an explanation!

"They were raised the way Father was raised himself" WHY? He was raised by the Emperor, an on-the-record awful fucking dude! Father proceeded to rule the universe in a far more benevolent way than the Emperor did, why would he feel like he had to raise his kids the way the Emperor raised him?

"Carolyn needed to overcome challenges on her path to godhood" how is TRAUMATIZING HER SO BADLY SHE ALMOST BECOMES INHUMAN - SOMETHING YOU WERE OSTENSIBLY TRYING TO PREVENT, see Steve being preserved as something that could give her hope, etc - A "CHALLENGE??"

Again, none of this is a problem if Father is just evil! YOU CHOSE to make him not evil! And that's fine!! I think it's a good choice for the story actually!! But then you have to, you have to, HAVE TO explain why all of that bad shit happened!

Because all of that bad shit is the reason Carolyn made there be a story.

And it turns out it doesn't make sense.

Ok I have got to know what happened with Oliver's character on that one show that makes you rage so hard every time you see him.

WELL NONNIE I'LL TELL YOU!

This is a warning for spoilers if anyone wants to watch this show because my rage cannot be contained.

OK SO...

This show is called Into the Badlands and Oliver's character is named Ryder. Basically the premise of this world is that it's kind of post apocalyptic/alternative universe where humanity got so caught up in trying to one up each other that it sort of imploded and now you have this society where either you're super wealthy (the Barrons), super poor (Cogs and Nomads), or somehow a ninja (The Clippers and whatever the hell MK was supposed to be). ANYWAYS....

Ryder is the son of Barron Quinn. Now the surviving land is either divided into like factions run by Barrons (who control a majority of major trade) or there's these lawless lands that are run dredges of society. You either become a Barron by killing another Barron (which is what Quinn did) or you are an heir apparent. Ryder is more an heir presumptive because Quinn won't outright name him his heir even though everyone just assumes it.

This is because Quinn is batshit crazy and thinks he can just live forever through sheer stubbornness and will alone. This is especially hard to do because he has a massive brain tumor that's dwindling down what little bit of sanity he has leading him to make questionable choices such as killing the only doctor they have in the lands who would've been useful pretty much for the rest of the series but go off Quinn. Ryder has a lot of resentment towards his father, which I will get into in a minute, and at the same time has gone out of his way to prove to Quinn that he's a worthy heir. Except Quinn keeps comparing Ryder to his second and regent, Sunny, and he's just all around a shitty person in general.

NOW HERE'S THE AMAZING BACKSTORY WITH RYDER:

So, when Ryder was a child, he was kidnapped by these nomads who were trying to blackmail Quinn. Ryder's mother begged Quinn to pay the ransom and save Ryder. Quinn... refused. So the nomads tortured Ryder and (Gross warning) like cut off part of his toes and disfigured his foot in the hopes of crippling him and scaring Quinn into giving to their demands.

Quinn, again, refused.

Eventually Quinn's regent at the time, Waldo, defies Quinn's orders and goes to rescue Ryder from these nomads. Waldo defying Quinn is a big deal because he's a clipper which is basically a soldier (often brought in from the slave faction called Cogs) and they take their oaths to their Barrons very seriously. Barrons trust no one but their regents because again you can become a Barron by killing them. But Waldo always had a soft spot for Ryder.

SO Ryder is saved and eventually nursed back to health but he always has a bit of a tragedy cloud hanging around him because from what we were told Ryder was a very sweet, bright child before he was kidnapped and was brought back as "a broken bird" and he's been doing everything he can to get rid of the broken bird image ever since.

Quinn resented Ryder for making him look weak and Ryder resented Quinn for... Well being a heartless dick.

But here's the crazy part... They both, in their own way, still kind of loved each other.

Now I won't bore you with my rant about how the best antagonists are often the tragic figures who have fallen from grace (Peter Hale, Draco Malfoy, Loki to name a few) BUT I will say Ryder had the PERFECT foundation of showing that fall. He was an asshole and hard and spoiled and super privilege but also soft and still a little broken. There's a whole other narrative involved too with his childhood love and how his dad planned on marrying her but we won't get into that.

ANYWAYS Ryder still had this desperate need to prove to his dad that he was a worthy heir but in his attempts to prove himself (and his dad's fall into madness) his dad started seeing him as competition. Competition and another objects (like Quinn saw with most other characters but especially Sunny). But Quinn has this weird kind of pride when it comes to things that he considers his and an attack on his property is an attack on him. There's a character named the Widow who lured Ryder out and tried to kill him slowly and personally as well as Sunny as an attack on Quinn and he went bananas (sorta).

Ryder was fine eventually but he realized that trying to prove himself to his dad was never going to work so he decides to try the other option: which is killing his dad. Partially because if he doesn't, Ryder is smart enough to know that Quinn's going to get him killed, but also because Quinn's descent into madness is spiraling faster and faster and Ryder wants to protect the legacy. Nothing to inherit if his dad burns the whole thing to the ground!

Long story short, Sunny turns on Quinn and stabs him and everyone thinks Quinn is dead and Ryder takes credit for it therefore succeeding his dad by becoming not only Barron of his father's lands but some other Barron that got murdered by another subplot that was pointless.

Now Ryder is determined to bring peace to the lands (not out of some noble obligation but because he just wants people to chill the fuck out). And for the most part... he's doing okay.

BUT THEN PLOT TWIST HIS DAD IS ALIVE AND CRAZIER THAN EVER.

Basically his dad storms Ryder's house, chases him down in the garden, and they fight. But Ryder's foot that was crippled when he was a child trips him up and the fight gets even messier. Ryder's sword breaks and Quinn points the sword to his own chest and tells Ryder to finish him.

Ryder hesitates and so Quinn takes the sword and stabs Ryder. You know like a rational father would do.

Quinn then asks Ryder why he hesitated and Ryder whispers "because you're my father" before he dies in Quinn's arms. Quinn is... horrified because he realizes that with the death of Ryder is the death of the last parts of his own humanity. He mourns Ryder but also like... takes no responsibility for killing him but neither did Ryder so he can't process it. Later on he's haunted by Ryder but again the man has a giant grapefruit sized tumor in his brain so it's all very reverse Hamlet if you will.

SO LOOK AT ALL THIS POTENTIAL!

THE REASON I RAGE:

Is because Ryder was set up to fail from the beginning. Which is great!....... If that had actually happened. The show worked so hard to tell us that Ryder was a failure and a coward but if you look at it from a story perspective... Ryder was the opposite of a failure. Every time someone told him he couldn't do something, he proved them wrong. Again and again and again. But that was never good enough for anyone. So that vicious cycle would've been amazing to see!

But instead of exploring any of that, we had to watch a storyline that was frankly ridiculous from the beginning that took up way more time than it should. There's a character named MK, who was supposed to be inspired by the myth The Monkey King, but if you don't know that story then you never would've figured that out. Hell, I knew the story and didn't figure it out until I had to google his name because I kept forgetting it. In comparison to everything else happening in the show, this magical mythical storyline just didn't fit and I'm not kidding when I say I watched a season and a half of this show and forgot about MK every time.

Now if you noticed my icon is Buck in a Box. That's an inside joke I have with a friend about this fucking show. The first scene starts off with Sunny stumbling onto a group of Nomads who go absolutely feral about this massive box they don't want him to look inside. Turns out MK was in this box for reasons that were too weak for me to even remember but again MK was entirely forgettable. My friend and I kept talking about how it would've been better if Ryder had been in the box because the Ryder and Sunny rivalry had so much unexplored potential that would've been incredible if we started from the very beginning instead of just being told over and over again that Ryder hates being compared to Sunny.

Sunny is the main character and Quinn, unlike with Ryder, was incredibly proud to have Sunny "in his possession" and Ryder hated him for it.

But did we get to explore that? NO! Did we get to explore the parallels of Sunny and Ryder chafing at being considered possessions by Quinn? NO! Did we get to explore the trauma Ryder was working so hard to shake off? NO!

Instead the show spent so much energy victim blaming Ryder essentially for being the son of a Villain and his Nonsensical Ambitious Mother who had the misfortune of being kidnapped by bandits as a child while telling the audience that Ryder was never going to succeed. That Ryder had no honor and was a coward and weak.

They spent way more time trying to tell us that we should hate Ryder and that he was a bad guy but didn't do ANY of the work to show the fall from grace to prove that. Ryder remained a tragic figure that didn't fall from grace but was rather pushed off by lazy writing because they wanted to focus again on this magical ninja boy with a penchant for getting in the way and ruining everything.

I rage because Antagonist and Villain are not the same thing. Ryder had the potential of becoming a villain and his death by the hands of his father would've cycled him back into the role of a tragic figure. But instead... it was just wasted.

THAT is why I rage. You had the material right there and yet you spent so long telling us that we, the audience, don't like Ryder instead of showing us anything that would make us not like him (besides the whiny white boy thing).

Instead I found myself rooting for Ryder. Like could you imagine if Ryder and Sunny went against Quinn together instead of having the weakest rivalry known to man? Could you imagine Ryder's fall from grace of wanting peace in the lands as it turned to greed? Could you imagine Sunny becoming actual competition for Ryder instead of being manipulated to do so?

WE GOT NONE OF IT.

THIS is why I rage.

if you ever wrote that rant about grrm making jon his chosen one deconstruction i'd be very happy to read it 👀

hello anon sorry for the lateness but here we go *deep breath*

sssooo, I had once ranted about it though not mentioning the thing I mentioned in those tags so lemme see if I can find the op and like... cp the main argument and amend it bc it was long, but okay so I found it, original anon asked me: why is Jon considered to be one of the most special characters grrm created? Why is he not the typical hero of fantasy books?, my original answer was here if anyone wants to go there but basically lemme just cp the first part making it shorter and then I'm adding:

first thing, the Typical Post-Tolkien Chosen One With A Shitty Life Before He Finds Out He Is Chosen™ character (I’m saying post-tolkien because every fantasy writer in existence who copies tolkien thinks that lotr went like that and instead it didn’t) usually goes through the following steps: his life sucks up until the beginning of the series, his family generally hates him/her or doesn’t appreciate them or abuses them or anyway doesn’t make their life easier and they’ve never known any different, but *something* never quite worked right and they always knew something was missing in their life, they just didn’t know why. suddenly someone who knows they were Chosen™ shows up and tells them that they’re actually Special because of this this and that and they have a quest to go on to save the world or something. our hero/heroine obviously is finally validated and while their quest is hard and full of hardships and maybe they lose a few friends along the way, finding out that they were Chosen gives their life meaning, they usually find love/friends/everything they didn’t have before until they fulfill the Prophecy™ and live more or less happily ever after, possibly after hooking up with the Person Of Their Dreams with whom they had UST up until the last twenty pages of the book. basically: being Chosen™ in regular fantasy novels is a good thing because suddenly you’re special and all the crap you suffered acquires a new meaning and in the end it made your life better.

jon snow is a complete overhaul of about everything in this sense because

instead of having a family who hates him he has a family who actually mostly loves him, and with ned it’s arguably so much that he risks royal treason by keeping him hidden from his *best friend* - sure, there’s cat and peripherally sansa, but his issues stem from the fact that he feels lesser because he’s a bastard (as far as he knows) and it’s a *class* issue, not a *my family hates me* issue not counting catelyn obv but that's what gives him freudian issues more on that in the emended part later

no one actually knows that he’s Chosen™ - like mel could get there and probably will and someone will put two and two together when his parentage comes out in the open, but he doesn’t have a gandalf or mentor who shows him The Way Towards His Quest

so instead of going from ‘my life sucks but I’m going on a quest which is gonna be a+’ he actively chooses to leave a fairly decent situation (a household he knows, siblings who love him - ned actually hoped he’d become robb’s counselor or right hand man or something from what we can gather) because he feels like he has to prove he’s better than his name and goes to the Crappiest Place In Westeros. like idk if people grasp it, but the wall is basically a prison and at the ripe age of fourteen he decides that it’s totally a good and honorable choice (his only choice actually) to go defend the realm in the freezing cold along with a bunch of criminals/derelicts/rejects of society

at which point he makes friends among said rejects and let’s remember that it’s the point where he actually has to do his first an only privilege when donal noye made him go like hey you were brought up with nobles these ppl are here because they stole bread, and that helps making him more into the person he is rn but like your tyopical fantasy hero who has had a shitty life doesn’t usually have to acknowledge that other people might have had it worse

then he goes on the Quest where he finds his first One True Love, and that’s where it turns even worse because usually the quest is where things start to go right for the Hero™, instead for jon they start to go wronger, because first he has to go undercover which pretty much tests most of his belief/code system, he falls in love with a girl he has to betray, half of his friends and his lord commander die along the way, while he’s off doing his thing winterfell gets taken/burned and robb dies when jon openly stated that he also was going to the wall to defend his family and keep them safe (yeaaah worked out real well), when he goes back to the wall he has to fight the people he lived with for months, the woman he loves dies in his arms and he can’t do anything about it and he’s aware it couldn’t have gone any other way, people put defending the wall on him and then put his loyalty in question, when stannis shows up with a legitimization (which is everything he ever wanted) he refuses because he doesn’t want to accidentally steal his siblings’s inheritance (which was what cat was so worried about hahaha) and actively chooses the crappy defending the realm life all over again. also in all this time his being Chosen™ hasn’t manifested or helped him in any way whatsoever - actually all his honor-moral code related baggage is what  moral dilemmas come from that. like, your usual chosen hero™ would always take the right decision and it all turns out good eventually, jon takes the morally right decision and it all turns SOUR eventually

at this point he finally gets elected LC, thanks to his friends also pitching in, which is about the one fantasy hero™ thing that’s happened for now. should be good, yes?

lol no, because he ends up with THAT hellish responsibility at sixteen, since he thinks that he has absolutely to be even better than that now and he has very specific notions about how you should lead and he knows he has to take unpopular decisions/decisions that he doesn’t necessarily like, he ends up either having to send his friends away forreal (sam) or detaching from them (pyp/grenn/the likes) and when as far as he knows he learns that his sister is married to ramsay he can’t do anything about it

never mind that it’s the same situation as when he had to pick the watch or robb in book one - he went there to defend his family and now being there actually prevents him from helping them in person. ops. meanwhile he’s trying to implement a new vision of things which is modern and smart and actually makes sense because why fighting the wildlings when you have ZOMBIES coming. your usual Chosen One™ would get people to approve just because he’s the Chosen One

instead jon gets stabbed to death - okay, that was also because he wanted to go get arya but it was the last straw, people were pissed over the wildlings plan first and foremost

so basically he’s gone through all the Chosen One™ steps but in reverse - he loses his family which did love him instead of finding another one that makes the first pale in comparison, he does find a new one who loves him but has to alienate most of its members for responsibility reasons as a consequence of what should have been the crowning achievement of his life choices (which eventually is NOT one), he falls in love and they don’t drag the UST forever but they never get a chance to be together without small print in between, he chooses the admittedly most masochistic life he could for his family as well and half of them die and he can’t do a thing for the other half, every other mentor-like figure he runs into after ned dies, instead of finding validation he ends up having to isolate himself and on top of everything HE STILL DOESN’T FUCKING KNOW HE’S THE CHOSEN ONE™

so instead of his life going better the more he learns stuff and matures as a person, he gets murdered. by the people he trusts and who were supposed to be his new family. haha?

never mind that when he finds out he’s the Chosen One™ it won’t bring him closure because all he ever wanted was being full stark like his father/siblings and then bam he’s going to find out his father’s actually targaryen and what does that even mean to him?

on top of that being AA will just be a pain because I don’t believe for a second he’s not going to get leftover ptsd and who the hell is gonna help him deal with it? or how is he ever getting over his *brothers* murdering him? and people are going to ask stuff of him all over again and he’s gonna have to go slay a mythical monster and if I know grrm it’s not gonna be fun, pretty or cathartic FOR HIM

on top of that, Chosen Hero™ fulfills the prophecy and gets a realm to rule and everyone lives happily ever after. money is that if jon does get that realm (and I think he is because he has the best claim if he's legitimate and most likely it'll turn out he was on the targ side but ROBB also legitimized him so he has double the legitimization), he’s going to hate every second of it and he’ll take it because a) duty, b) literally no one else is available, and like this guy didn’t want to rule a realm or be a king or anything he just wanted to be a stark, and instead he’s going to have to after all that shit thanks to Magical And Noble Heritage he hadn’t even known he had and probably didn’t even want up to that point because since when jon wanted to be a targ? yeah since never

obviously I hope he manages to be somewhat happy regardless because the alternative is too miserable, but basically being a Chosen Hero™ is what makes jon’s life worse rather than better and the fact that hew went through all the regular self-discovery journey for the fantasy hero list doesn’t mean he’s not flipping that over in his sl. the fact that he stayed a decent person more or less throughout it and that he hasn’t turned into a bitter asshole also doesn’t change the main point XD

tldr: jon snow is not a typical fantasy hero because he deconstructs that trope into tiny little bits same as robb deconstructed the arthurian flawless king hero trope

now ^^^^^ THAT was what I originally wrote for that meta but adding on to what I said in those tags

okay so... there is a certain tendency to also make the chosen one™ special in the sense that he's kind of goals - good looking, rich or set to inherit, gallant, takes the initiative, he's like.. social or anyway immediately makes friends etc and all that jazz which jon... doesn't really fit

like jon is an introvert who immediately makes friends just with outcasts and his siblings also bc he feels like one but he's hardly a social butterfly and charms everyone wherever he walks by

I mean ffs says all that the only person he charmed in that sense is stannis who is the literal only person in charge in the books who is more introvert than him and has worse communication issues and appreciates ppl going straight to the point

on top of that in the book he looks like ned.... and arya looks like ned and ned isn't described as being particularly handsome that was brandon so he's not even like... I mean kit h. is v. pretty and I think he was a good choice for the role and I'll die on the hill that he was born to play that character and he did it well but book!jon doesn't have that kinda pretty face so the concept that he's the HOT alternative to anyone to me is kind of iffy bc he's not

he's shit at social interactions and at PR which is why robb and him would have been a key winning ticket like he has a better idea of the larger picture but robb would have actually made sure ppl didn't turn against them bc he actually was good at that but like he doesn't go around rallying armies in his name does he

the one time he's been with a girl it was ygritte and like he courted her without realizing it and then she had to pursue him and he barely knew wtf to do on top of the fact that they slept with ghost in the middle of them like a sword which..... is.... I mean sleeping with the sword in the middle was a thing to make sure the maiden stayed a maiden and he's the one who is like i CAN'T HAVE SEX WITH HER EVEN IF I WANT TO BECAUSE I'M TECHNICALLY SPYING ON THEM like... he's not... gallant-knight coded

never mind that the moment they do the do she basically does everything until he decides to try the oral which I mean... isn't exactly alphadominatingmale out of jon which is not a given with the trope he's supposed to represent like he's not smooth he's not suave he's like WHAT THE FUCK when ygritte tells him he has a pretty face bc most likely no one else told him that and he like... doesn't pursue people like that in general which is also not exactly 100% what that trope usually goes for

we can add that he has a lot of passive-aggressive little shit sarcasm in him that they didn't let him go for in the show but like... usually chosen heroes™ don't think what he thinks about selyse in general

we can also add that he's not automatically above being better than his position like... he doesn't take winterfell bc ygritte is dead but he did think he'd have taken the deal sansa or not if stannis had said he could marry her and not val and if she wasn't dead, he basically went off the rails at the dude he was fighting with thinking about robb telling him that he couldn't be lord of wf because he was a bastard and he's absolutely not in the frame of mind of 'well I was born a bastard who cares it doesn't define me'

he's obsessed to the point of unhealthy with actually being defined by it which is why he was better off with the wildlings aka the only idiots in the realm who don't gaf about that

and that's like... I mean usually if chosen ones™ have parental issues it's like 'you were an orphan and raised by asses who weren't your parents but your parents loved you and you'll find out at some point and you'll be happier for it and make your own family', jon is like... he has the mommy freudian issues of the century bc of how cat treated him, on the other side he's obsessed with living up to ned's/his father's name and he hates that it makes him not-belonging or that he feels like he doesn't even if he does with his siblings, and at the same time when the truth about it comes out he's going to get the cold shower of the century bc like - he's spent all that time thinking BUT DID MY MOTHER WANT ME WHO WAS MY MOTHER and he's going to find out of who it was and how he was born and honestly considering that lyanna most likely did regret running with rhaegar the moment he finds that out and that she died birthing him how is he going to feel? - also he spends his life wanting to live up to his 'father's' name aka ned aka someone known to be honorable to a fault and then it turns out his bio father is... the dude who started that entire rebellion not doing a very honorable thing? - also if jon*erys is a thing idt that he'd take 'I fell in love with my aunt' so nonchalantly as he did in the show tldr: he's never gonna get over his parental issues in a short time and when that particular brick hits him in the face it won't be pretty

like the entire point of jon is that he goes through all the chosenone™ cursus honorum as we'd call it in high school when studying latin but each step that means smth good for the usual chosenone™ to him is something bad, being one is not going to make his life better and throughout the entire thing he does not fit that stereotype when it comes to look, personality, basic traits and familial history and like hell he's going to have the happy ending tied up with the bow - like I think he gets a bittersweet one and eventually goes off with the wildlings bc he belongs there after being jon snow first of his name (bc like hell he's not reclaiming his bastard background at the end of this entire mess I'm eating my hat if he doesn't) after splitting the seven realms and fixing things but that's hardly the neat happy ending the chosenone™ usually gets so that's my two cents

... christ this was long *raises hands*

Fixing Afterlives: the Shadowlands

This is my “fixing stories” for WoW’s latest expansion, Shadowlands. Due to overwhelming popular demand, by which I mean @shieldfoss and @bhikshu I’ll go into why this is dumb and how they could have done something instead of choosing to do nothing.

I will work under similar constraints to my Heart of the Swarm rework. I magically became Creative Director of WoW just for Shadowlands, so I cannot alter any of the plot of BFA or Legion or anything that came before. The concept art is done and asset creation is proceeding and I can’t change the overall structure or aesthetics of anything, just how the story is implemented. 

Minute one, what you need to do to make this expansion work is sit down and figure out what it’s About. Now, a MMO expansion doesn’t really need a driving central theme, though it can help, and it’s allowed to be “a bunch of stuff that happened” because it needs random-ass side plot bullshit going on. But the tagline is “Brave the Beyond”, this is the AFTERLIFE, this is where we go when we die and the world of the soul -- we need to be dealing with things bigger than us, bigger than the concept of us. Fundamental and About something because they are mythic incarnations of what kind of life you can live and what kind of world exists. 

We’ll still have an About in the traditional sense though. It doesn’t have to unify everything, but it’s good to have a bit of a through-line to define the main conflict. And also, there’s a certain point where characters need to stop saying “The Jailer… speaks true…” and fucking tell us what he says and WoW passed it long ago. Our About is a central question about the Jailer, and the broader notion of Hell represented by the Maw: “Is it possible for someone to do something so horrific that they deserve infinite punishment?”

And it’s funny, you know, you see JJ Abrams talk about the “mystery box”, and when he explains it, it makes perfect sense: a mystery that is central to the story but is never answered because it represents infinite possibility until it is revealed. And told in that way, that makes sense, that can be very good! Except Abrams never does that, he always ends up having to reveal the contents of the mystery box which by his own logic can never end in anything but disappointment. So I can’t say we will have a mystery box, but we will have a central mystery that we know will never be answered: what did the Jailer do to deserve the Maw? All we know is it is incomprehensibly horrible. Like our mortal minds would literally be unable to process it, even trying to understand it would harm us. So this isn’t “nah he’s bad trust us” we need characters who DO know to really, really sell it. Emotional reactions of anger and revulsion and helplessness, and absolutely nobody whether opposed or allied with the Jailer can deny his evil or say it wasn’t that bad. When you ask Devos about it, Devos shudders in fear and disgust, but says it doesn’t matter. If the question was “how bad was the Jailer’s crime” then we’d need to know what it is; if the question is “is it possible to have ANY crime bad enough to warrant his punishment” then we don’t.

Minute two, you need to know how the Shadowlands works. Because they made it just another continent and that doesn’t make any sense at all. What kind of candy-ass warrior afterlife gives you one life and then your soul is destroyed? How does it make sense for characters to call you “mortal” when they die just as hard and in fact you are superior because you haven’t used your extra life yet? Fuck how are necromancers a thing in Maldraxxus, if your soul is obliterated when you die in the Shadowlands WHAT ARE THEY CALLING BACK?

So none of that bullshit. You don’t die in the Shadowlands, at least not without a lot of work. Souls are anima, and the tide of dead souls flowing into the realms of the Shadowlands is a flow of anima, because everything is anima. Anima is the force of significance and permanence.  Anima is what makes up shadow and substance, things and ideas. Anima is the weight of being About something, anything. You don’t die in the Shadowlands by having your body stabbed to death. You will continue to exist, slightly weaker. You die in the Shadowlands when there is nothing left to the concept of “you”. When you are utterly forgotten and what you are is “nothing”. This is how we get those Unraveling Soul Fragments in Torghast: they are souls tortured so much there is no longer a self there, just a concept of misery. That’s extremely, extremely evil. Is it possible to commit a crime so heinous it deserves infinite punishment? If not, is there a crime so awful that it would be unimaginable to inflict it even on its perpetrator?

We also have three major antagonists we need to know.

One of them is Sire Denathrius, who is just fucking perfect the way he is, we love you Denny.

One of them is Sylvanas Windrunner. Sylvanas needs to stay in character: an absolutely remorseless piece of shit with no sense of right and wrong but who does productive things because they benefit her and who is extremely cunning to know how to work an angle to her ends. She’s too smart to get lied to by the Jailer and she’s too smart to go Full Evil but not only is anything less than that completely fair game, she doesn’t get why you have a problem with it. She has allied with the Jailer because there is one thing she absolutely wants to do and only she can do and she can only do with the Jailer: she wants to break him out because in doing so the hold of the Maw is shattered and now anyone can escape. The Maw stops being a prison once the Jailer escapes. And she wants that because she knows she’s got a one-way express ticket to the Maw when she finally runs out of extra lives. She knows she is a selfish, terrible, murderous, monstrous person. Does that warrant infinite punishment? In her heart she is convinced it does, so she’d prefer to make the question irrelevant before she has to find out. She is sympathetic to the pain she is inflicting on others, because it is like the pain she has felt. But she won’t stop. She knew she endured it, so you can take one for the team.

The Jailer is super super super super evil. If we remake him to be obviously in pain and lashing out in fear, he won’t WORK. He needs to be ominous and menacing and say “your soul is mine” and that kind of shit. We will be able to generate sympathy for Sylvanas, we shouldn’t try to do it to the Jailer. He is the victim of the ultimate injustice, but also perpetrator of the ultimate atrocity. He’s not sorry at all. The fact that he has raised a philosophical question about the nature of punishment is just a nice side effect of him saying things to people to get what he wants, which is to break out and inflict tyranny and suffering. Sylvanas is not tricked by him into thinking he only wants freedom, she has a plan that has his true motives in mind. What dimension do we give him so he won’t be flat while still being completely one-dimensionally evil? He resents you. He doesn’t lash out and scream his emotions and say it’s not fair that you have what he was denied freedom. But he resents you. A little ribbon of resentment threaded through his speech to you. He’s subtly insulted by the fact you exist. He doesn’t merely relish your suffering, he relishes your failure, your realization of weakness. He doesn’t pull an Azmodan and say “okay well NOW this trap is inescapable despite you escaping the last twenty!”, he knows you’re probably going to break free of things and escape. But he doesn’t care that this trap didn’t catch you, catching you would just be a bonus. He cares that he hurt you and made you feel inferior and the inevitable doom encroaches just a bit more on you. That is the source of his sinister satisfaction and confidence. He doesn’t announce an ambush and say “now you will never escape and your soul is mine,” he announces it by saying how weak and stupid you are to fall for it.

His victory is inevitable because Death is inevitable. He doesn’t care what temporary victories you earn; he doesn’t bother trying to convince you they are only a setback. He’s going to have you eventually and you’re going to suffer on the way. What a fucking dick.

hbo spn storylines, drabbles, ideas, thoughts, wishlist, whatever you may call it. it’s messy, nothing makes sense and pretty sure a lot of these contradict each other

more of sam at stanford with jessica/flashbacks. jessica potentially lives but is revealed to be a demon (but she developed actual feelings for sam and really did come to care for him because a demon falling in love with a human would be SO interesting) OR she lives but her memory gets wiped like dean did to lisa OR she dies like she did but she is a ghost that haunts sam (he welcomes it but eventually he lets her go -> character arc). he still dreams about her though and he has her keepsakes with him wherever he goes, her rings, her favourite book, anything that was left of her from the fire

you have to be extremely careful when making deals with demons because they are cunning and evil creatures. they will follow the rules of the deal but will find loopholes to put some sadistic twist on the terms. you want money? of course, too bad you’ll be arrested for fraud before you can use any of it and spend the next ten years in jail before i drag you to hell. you want a perfect husband? sure he’ll love you. in fact, he’ll love you so much he’ll keep you locked up in the basement to keep you safe etc etc. saving a person often becomes the person that causes or leads to your death.

the creation of jack: after s5, when lucifer is trapped in the cage again lucifer fuses his own soul with a human soul to create jack, who escapes to earth to find sam and castiel. i have a longer post about this saved in my drafts

lucifer is trapped for good in the cage after s5 but if he was to return again, dean would kill him while sam would kill michael - this would be nice parallels and a sort of fulfillment of the “one brother must kill the other” prophecy because one brother DO kill another brother, just not their own

more azazel and how he came to the plan of how to free lucifer; opening a hell gate earlier, more experimentations with the demon blood etc

mary was infected with the blood when she was a baby, sam is the first and only second generation special child (longer post about that here)

personally, i want to see more and know more about john and mary’s relationship. when mary died, john and mary had fulfilled their destiny (having sam and dean) so does that mean that his love and dedication to mary post her death was falsely fabricated by the angels to ensure sam and dean would grow up in ideal conditions to become hunters? or maybe, after mary’s death, john wakes up from the spell with two kids he doesn’t recognize and a wife he thinks he loved, but the memories of the past years of his life are like a fever dream; he never wanted to live in a town like this nor was he interested in having kids? but here the house is, and here are his kids, but now he’s alone and empty and with no answers. (idk i just find john and mary and their relationship very fascinating) if the latter, if john and mary see each other again it’s like the spell activates again and they become blindly in love with each other, but once gone, they return to their confused and hazey state of mind, like just woken up from a coma

i do like mary coming back but i love how in s5 when she wasn’t found in heaven it was hinted that she was just discarded because she had fulfilled her “purpose” and i think this adds to the whole notion of how heaven and angels can be really cruel AND how mary is this mythical, religious figure to both sam and dean and we only get to know her through their lenses, like religion and faith

ruby is present for a longer amount of time to make the reveal even more shocking. at one point or another, dean does actually trust her and they all work together on cases for a while. ruby’s backstory as a witch is more explored. i like her death in s4 because she’s in this total state of euphoria and has achieved a goal only she was entrusted with, and she is so convinced sam will understand, until sam holds her down while dean carves her heart out. so we either keep that or she serves lucifer for a while (until he kills her which she is happy about because of her blind loyalty to him, could again mirror dean and john/castiel and heaven) or she serves lucifer and like crowley she realizes lucifer will kill demons after humans (redemption arc, but i don’t really like that, let her be evil!!)

dean and sam helps bela out of her deal and she becomes their go-to person when they need a magic item or book. she doesn’t like it but she owes them. regularly hooks up with jo.

angels are really hollow soldiers - they only follow orders and don’t understand the concept free will or choice or individuality at all. they are extremely righteous and strike without warning often on a whim, often very bloody (explosions a la castiel in swan song). if something fall into what they consider justice they will kill it. no concept of love, attraction or gender. real form can’t be perceived by humans unless they want them to, which leads to eyes melting (pamela) or breaking a person’s mind (in 5.16 zachariah actually says that sam and dean sees him in his vessel bc they’re ‘limited’. so.)

castiel, anna, maybe uriel and some others are exceptions to this, but only becomes so after longer exposure to human’s world. even then, they don’t change their violent whims, just the reasoning and where their loyalty lies

hbo spn is s1-5 stretched out for 8-10 seasons with the aesthetics of s1-2. i’m cutting out demon dean, purgatory, the mark of cain, the men of letters, the alphas, leviathatan, god being the real villain all along and the other worlds because it was just too much and far remived from the roadtrip aesthetic. keeping kevin, charlie (she is introduced via ash bc they’re hacker friends), the trials, rowena, uuuh the angels falling is such an interesting concept but idk if it would fit. maybe metatron? but his motivations are different. soullessness + the concept of souls might be kept if it’s explained better. i’m torn on whether or not to include the campbells

hell, heaven and purgatory are explained but only seen in glimpses, keep these ideas ambiguous and up to interpretation outside of what we hear. remember the line ‘hell is...well, it’s like hell. even for demons’? leave it at that. the exception is 5.16 bc that episode fucks so hard

if we end on swan song and let the show be the tragedy it is, i want to keep the ambiguous ending. is that sam or lucifer? if it’s sam, will he contact dean or walk away? we will never know! there is also no ‘the world is ending’ more than once, it really lost its impact after the second or third time.

idk how i feel about the men of letters - it is logical that there would be organized hunting and an established network and system on how to do things, but for the sake of keeping it hbo-style and grounded, there are no networks beyond the roadhouse and singer’s salvage yard.

i want sam and dean not have a permanent home except the impala, motels and impala ONLY. the bunker had potential but it was just for the sake of convenience it was there with all the lore and answers they needed when it was necessary. maybe eventually they do stop travelling so much when it becomes more about the Big Stuff instead of the episodic cases that requires driving all the time but it will be like an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. i want sam and dean to never have a physical house as a home but they scrape together whatever they have make something similar to a show

as the show progresses, sam and dean become pretty hated by other hunters because they’ve started apocalypse and have an increasingly shitty reputation. and john was an infamous good hunter but also a dick. everybody knows that people who work with the winchesters often end up dead, that one brother will sacrifice anything and anyone to save the other and that they frequently work alongside demons. even the ones they DO work with (jo, ellen, bobby, rufus, bela) are hesitant to be involved with them

sam’s powers are strong but after killing lilith and the truth revealed to him, he represses the powers in shock and fear of how blinded he was by them and the rush of power they gave him. a little more about how sam fears what the lust for power and strength did to him. he continues to repress his powers, often to a dangerous point where he will be on death’s door as a result of not using them. when meeting jack and mentoring him in using his powers, jack asks him about sam’s powers after sensing them. sam eventually decides to lead by example and embraces his powers again, but remains extremely careful about using them (this also fulfills dean’s arc of having to let go of the holy-innocent-pure-ideal-not a person but an idealized version of sam-little brother sam he has put on a pedestal for so long)

bobby is viewed as a father figure by sam and dean but bobby makes it clear he doesn’t want that burden or relationship in his life after his wife died. he makes this clear to them too, but sam and dean have fucked up perceptions of parental figures so they don’t think bobby means it (they just latch on to whatever parental figures they can find)

we see more of sam’s relationship with the side characters; sam and jo hunt together on occasion, he hangs out with ash and talks hacking when visiting the roadhouse. he and ellen loves playing poker together. if anything, dean is the one who’s isolated - he only ever really cared about mary, john, sam and cassie, and never really had any friends. sam is way more well adjusted and sociable after spending time at stanford where he’s had conversations that didn’t only revolve around dead bodies and lore. 

this could also feed into dean’s extreme abandonment issues and isolation he feels and how this would affect his psyche

sam and dean are both unknowingly prepared to become the perfect vessels; sam loses his humanity by becoming more and more like lucifer (defying his father and his will) while dean becomes prepared by doing what michael did; casting his brother away in his time of need (blindly following his father and his will). very much like in s4 but even more intense and brutal (i love angst :))

we see different hybrids; demon/human (antichrist), human/(arch)angel (nephilim) and demon/angel (???), but none of them are all powerful bc narratively that’s really boring. they’re strong but have very specific powers that affects them and/or their surroundings in catastrophic ways (but no other worlds bs, we stick to the road trip aesthetic, keep it grounded). i want the only all powerful character to be god but he doesn’t show up at all, he’s the ultimate absent father. is it chuck? we never find out!

powers would for example include giving people diseases, force anyone close to them to tell the truth (not consciously, it’s just the air around them), read minds, create storms, light things on fire when they’re angry, make people hallucinate etc. like fucked up shit but not things that are too grande because again - that’s really boring

abbadon, the princes of hell and the four horsemen are more fleshed out villains instead of the one season reign the each had. 

being a prince of hell is a title that is inherited - after azazel dies, sam gets the title because he is the one with azazel’s blood in him OR meg does, but idk if that would be as interesting (if she actually was his daughter)

it remains a horror show throughout, lots of gore and blood

the moral code and ethics of the brothers are the opposite of the beginning; dean thinks in black and white, sam sees shades of grey and individuals instead of what they are. however, as the show progresses, their train of thought becomes opposites; dean becomes more open to how people are true evil and how monsters are often victims of their circumstance while sam becomes harsher and less forgiving after ruby’s betrayal along with finding out the truth of his existence and how there’s been demons around his entire life. eventually they’re on the same page and they see the circumstances. 

on the other hand; i also really fuck with the idea of dean maintaining his black and white morals on that all monsters=inherently evil, humans=inherently pure and good, but he is the only human on team free will. sam is half demon, castiel is an angel, jack is a nephilim, rowena is a witch, garth is a werewolf, mary is a zombie etc

demons become demons in hell by agreeing to become the torturer and thus giving up their humanity to be free of pain, does that mean they could become humans again by regaining some humanity? by doing good deeds? (potentially this is confirmed with jessica and how she came to love sam; genuine love and care for a human could reverse the demon process?) this also means dean was a demon in hell but was purified/turned back again when castiel raised him. this also plays into dean becoming like michael; in trying to absolve himself from what he did in hell he becomes ruthless, unforgiving and righteous to evil, much like the angels, regardless of his personal connection to a person and what he would consider “evil”

dean and pacifisim: after dean is cured from being a demon/the mark of cain/is made aware of his blind righteousness that he used as an excuse to kill, he becomes firmly determined to reign in his anger and violent tendencies by becoming a pacifist (like sam in s11) as a way to redeem all the blood he’s spilled. of course in his profession and true dean fashion he won’t be able to do it 100% so he decides to only act in self defense, and he only goes batshit violent on the offense when it’s about protecting sam

OR. dean’s self righteousness becomes his own downfall; the belief that all evil must be eradicated, refusal to see the circumstances and the shades of grey is what pushes him to lose his humanity and become a demon and therefore, in a potential ending the ruler of hell, because i think it would such an interesting journey from a to b, that dean starts out human, revels in his holiness, executes and kills in the name of his own holiness in the belief that he’s becoming the ultimate angel, the ultimate hero when it’s doing the opposite. if this happened then sam would take the opposite route; starts as a human, becomes more and more demonic, stops himself and returns to his hopeful and optimistic self, has faith and humility and that is what makes him ascend from abomination to purified and holy (trials). 

this could be a perfect 10 season structure as well: s1-5 are when sam and dean start off humans; dean becomes holy and as close to an angel a human can be, while sam drinks the demon blood and almost becomes one to gain the freedom and power he wants, but begins to turn it around to send lucifer back to hell. s6-10 is when dean becomes the unholy and sam becomes the holy even though neither realize because now there’s no grand master plan - this is who they are, who they choose themselves. don’t know how this ould end though; either as normal humans again (but there wouldn’t really be a ”normal” after everything) or they really go off the rails with sam like ruling heaven (not as god though, just as a good and just man) and dean ruling hell. castiel is human and stays on earth with jack.

the gothic americana aesthetic is kept throughout the entire show and is only shot on film

after s5 castiel returns to heaven to help restore order, and he takes charge for a little while, but eventually returns to earth after trying to introduce democracy to angels who didn’t get it. in his place, anna takes over and she rules heaven well (after trying to kill mary when going back in time she isn’t killed by michael, but narrowly escapes and remains in hiding to heal until castiel reaches out and finds her)

when finding out they are The Vessels and will be brought back regardless of what they try, sam and dean explore what this means more. dean throws himself into dangers and to protect others. he is burned, blown up, stabbed, electrocuted, beheaded and eaten, but wakes up the next morning in his bed without a scratch, without any pain and memories of his deaths. he revels in this untouchability. sam kills himself over and over only to be resurrected again and again by lucifer. he remembers the pain and blood.

that being said, while dean is like angel royalty, sam is demon royalty. the demons don’t go after him, they don’t hurt him. some even offer up themselves to be drained of blood, even after lilith’s death. it makes it really difficult to stay clean but he pulls through with dean and castiel actually supporting him. to help sam get through his addiction, dean stops drinking alcohol and they go through their withdrawal together

the angels almost worship dean as the michael sword and have an open disgust towards sam for being lucifer’s vessel - they always answer dean’s prayers and calls for help, they follow his orders if need be and don’t hesitate to heal him if he needs it. sam could pray until his vocal chords bleed or call out for help while holding his guts in his hands; none of the angels would come to his aid. the only one who answers sam’s prayers is lucifer as a voice in sam’s head or a hallucination. sam could call demons to help him out but he refuses

sam isn’t the first hunter to drink demon blood, to try to enhance his own abilities using the supernatural as a means to get there - there are hunters who have altered themselves with parts from werewolves and vampires to become better hunters, like the styne family (the guys from s10), blurring the lines again of what’s good and human vs what is evil and inhumane

if angels can’t find a vessel to volunteer, they will force them to say yes - the how is not important, only that the ‘yes’ is said, whether its meant or not, any verbal yes will do. the angels never sleep and they never eat, which is disturbing to sam and dean who are exhausted all the time and eat scraps whenever they can

castiel, like all other angels, is taught to despise and not care about sam winchester at all, but the more castiel gets to know sam, he becomes fascinated with him, how lucifer’s ultimate vessel, starter of the apocalypse and destroyer of god’s creation can be so kind and gentle, so full of faith, acceptance, optimism and hope. in dean castiel sees a good man, yes, but also a man who’s bloodthirsty, rages, revels in war, resorts all problems with violence, loves conditionally and expects unquestioned loyalty. sam too, has a darkness and bloodthirst in him, but it only comes out in glimpses. castiel thinks it’s funny, how sam turns out to be the opposite of lucifer while dean is so alike michael

2020 in One-Punch Man. Part 1: Manga

How shall I describe this succinctly?

It's like ONE and Murata looked around them, saw a raging pandemic, massive disruption to all walks of life, uncertainty of when, if, or how it might affect them, took a massive drag of their cigarettes and said: “Fuck being conservative.  Let's go wild. Fuck making our current arc a webcomic retread with fancier fights.  Let's introduce more lore, let's have more characters interact in ways one would never have imagined, let's have characters do things that hadn't previously been thought of and make this really exciting.“

If you were holding onto the webcomic as your guide to what next, 2020 was not a good year for you. 

723 pages in 24 updates (including revisions) changed the status quo ante in deliciously unanticipated ways!

Where we left off in 2019, we were following the webcomic pretty faithfully, with most manga-original elements being removed at a fast clip.  Phoenixman was dead, the mercenaries had died a brutal death, the ninjas had been resurrected but had run off buck naked, Orochi was dead, G5 was very much destroyed, Drive Knight had appeared but had obligingly limped off, taking Nyan with him.  The S-Class heroes were in trouble with the cadre exactly as expected and Saitama had met up with Flashy Flash.  Tatsumaki had finally found Psykos. Yup, no real changes here.

2020, HAHA! 

Awaken!

Throwing manga-specific elements away? As if!   They took the great opportunity that preparing chapters for publication to critically review and revise the story so as to first, make it move at a faster pace and second, to be enriched.   It’s meant that chapters for volume 22, 23, and 24 (to come) have been redrawn to accommodate the changes and we got the benefit of many of them between April and August of this year.

We started with Phoenixman’s fight with Child Emperor.  It started innocuously enough with Phoenixman resurrecting, but then we got a much more interesting chunk of knowledge -- the existence of a metaphysical world modelled on one’s on psyche where the assault on Child Emperor’s sense of self took a much more existential nature. 

From a purely physical battle (and some nifty cool info about the Subterraneans) to an otherworldy battle happening in parallel with the physical battle:

It ended up a very interesting examination of Child Emperor’s character and his relationships with other heroes, as well as telling us something else freaky about Saitama’s ability to be anywhere he damn well wants to be.

Ah, and Phoenixman lives. Albeit as a little chick (for now).  He’ll probably be back, but not just yet.

The mercenaries were next.  They didn’t die.  Not because Amai Mask had a change of heart, but because Iaian listened to the niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach and turned his team mates around to intervene just in time. 

As you’d expect, trying to guide the mercenaries back to the safety of the surface has been an incredibly challenging ordeal for the disciples. It’s revealed much more about the way the disciples trust each other and lean on one another, and yet, when there was no option to do so, Iaian stepped up wonderfully to fight to save the mercenaries.

We’ve also learned something interesting about why mercenaries exist at all in a world supposedly at peace.  I look forward to seeing where this plot might go next.

Elsewhere,  we got to learn a little less about Puri Puri’s dancing and swimming lessons, but we got some really awesome nods to the mythical in Bakuma (the baku is a long-nosed creature formed out of all the bits left over after creation that eats dreams) and Electric Catfish Man’s sudden sense of doom is both reference to the way catfish are supposed to detect earthquakes and just damn cool. 

A monsterised exploitative business man taking the form of a demonic dream-eating monster that consumes weaker monsters so as to exploit their abilities is so appropriate on many levels (and unreasonably hot!).

Yes, Waganma does make it to the surface, along with Saitama and Child Emperor.  Saitama gets chased away by a Sekingar outraged that there’s a clueless hero just wandering aimlessly around.  Child Emperor goes back underground and I loved to death Waganma being pierced with remorse as he realises that the hero is going to go risk his life anyway.   He’s spoiled, but his keeping quiet came from a place of being a scared human being desperate to be saved  (a surprising number of fans did not like that -- they preferred to think of him as a psychopathic monster incapable of remorse).

Orochi still has a date with a gloved fist, but he’s getting to live a little longer than he did before.

Overall the story is tighter and there’s a lot more interest as well as future plot hooks than there were.  I’m interested in seeing how it gets tied up in the next volume sometime in 2021.

Reddit did not take it well.  Summary of discourse:

sorry not sorry, I lost patience around the 500th whiny post

Advance!

What about the new chapters we got?  Also here, ho ho ho, that status quo has gotten a good kicking!

Orochi came back.  Not the most surprising surprise in the world, given how carelessly Saitama punched him. Also not surprising that he came back stronger; Phoenixman had wonderfully demonstrated that monsters can bounce back from near-death situations much stronger.  But his form... such a disgusting, slimy, ever-shifting mass of tentacles and dragons, consuming all in its way led to the third craziest development: his fusion with Psykos to launch a new monster.

I’ll spare you the disgusting intermediate stages but the end result has been the birth of Psykos-Orochi and with that, what had been a total sweep for Tatsumaki turned into a much more dangerous enterprise where every mistake of hers got punished brutally.

Why is that only number three?  Because Tatsumaki raised up the entire base to try to encompass the whole monster (and it turns out that she was thinking far too small -- the monster had actually eaten large sections of City Z) and Psykos-Orochi uses the space to launch a beam so powerful that it literally cuts off part of the Earth itself.  It was a real I see it, but I don’t believe it moment.

if you didn’t spend a few seconds just staring in disbelief, you’re not paying attention. OMG.  Boy is the Earth in trouble.

Why is that only the second craziest thing?  Because of why this fusion monster was able to do as it did. ‘God’ doesn’t just go round looking like a semi-tangible being giving random homeless men magic powers.  Yup, the Earth really in in trouble if some supernatural being is smushing monsters together to make a stronger one and then granting it extra powers.   Just like that, the struggle has turned cosmic.

Tatsumaki trying to figure out how to fight back and save City Z from being swept away by a tsunami, save the heroes, and save the planet from further damage by the beams all at the same time was one of the most spectacular fights to date. 

As I said earlier, this monster has presented Tatsumaki with a real fight where the slightest mistake on her part leads to severe punishment.  She wound up in trouble when she underestimated how extensive the monster actually was and let up on twisting it too early, only to have it come right back and skewer her hands. 

Thankfully, Genos came in and saved her from that pinch, then held the monster at bay long enough for Tatsumaki to finish saving the strike team so she could give the monster her undivided attention.

Which is a very tame way of saying that that was an incredible development in capability.   That some of the fandom had trouble accepting (they suck). Watching their protests has been an exercise in special pleading.  They have no trouble understanding how Murata uses scale...until it came to accepting the size of the explosion resulting from Genos smacking away Psyko-Orochi’s execution beam then it had to be a fisheye lens (visibly incorrect, but who’s talking facts here?).   Have had no trouble understanding how Murata portrays escalation... until it came to accepting that Genos is strong then no, somehow the monster had to be weaker.   Have had no trouble with the freeze frame language that Murata uses to portray things happening at great speed... until it came to accepting that Genos could move really, really fast.   For some people, the new is only welcome when it confirms and validates preconceptions.  Anyway, that’s my rant done!

the most unlikely of partnerships and they’re still going despite having taken a hell of a battering since this scene

Guess who’s back?

We’ve also been seeing more heroes come back to the fray.  The emergence of the Tower of Doom acted as a clarion call to every hero around and able to move.  Metal Bat sneaked out of hospital to come running back.  Tank Top Master hitched a ride with Mumen Rider to go to City Z.  He intended to stick around and save people, but seeing how much wider scale the fight was,  he literally threw himself into battle. 

Drive Knight decided he literally had to have a piece of the action,  took up a ton of power from the nearest substation and came flying in to intercept a desperately escaping Psyko-Jet... ah, I didn’t say?  Yes, the monster turned into a machine to run away once hard-pressed.

And we finally got to see what Blast actually looks like, courtesy of a flashback of Amai Mask’s.   He definitely looks the part of a caped superhero and it’s little wonder he’s stuck in the imaginations of so many.   But now I’m even more interested in seeing what his deal is and what is he’s like now

The one thing we know for sure will be happening is that Garou will not be denied his destiny.   He’s coming.  But what else is happening?  Ah, that’s all in the air.

Bring on 2021!

bran stark - shield that guards the realms of men (king of the gods, bringer of summer)

I ended up posting some things separately without editing them because, well, I’m bad at planning things and didn’t think I’d actually sit down and type all this out or work out in a somewhat coherent manner. These are just theories that I’ve had regarding the books and where they may end up and I’ve just jotted them down. I see, as the fandom sees, a lot of inspiration in asoiaf in Norse and Greek mythology, so it’s kind of fun to hold it up to the light and pick out what picture is on the other side. 

In a previous meta, I said I believe that Bran’s ending will be with him as a king, but I don’t believe it will necessarily be to the same throne we saw in the show. 

I think one way to interpret Bran’s journey might be one of an ascension to godhood - he’s going to be the deciding factor in this eternal conflict between R’hllor and the Great Other. Yet while I think magic is definitely going to be balanced, I don’t think it’s going to go away or die - but fire dragons and the Others are definitely what are causing this cosmic unbalance so they can’t just stay. I don’t believe we’re seeing magic itself being the cause, but manmade magic created for the purpose of destruction (and whatever the Children of the Forest did to create the Others since I doubt the showrunners of GOT were able to come up with that on their own) is what this imbalance is really about (coming full circle to grrm comparing the dragons to nukes and writing a series that shows us that war is hell and there are no good wars). 

The Great Other (probably the original Child of the Forest who came up with the Others, maybe still rules over them) and R’hllor are likely similar; a mortal, or someone who once walked the earth and became a god - maybe the Great Other/the COTF who became the Great Other is a god for the Others/their progenitor. Perhaps R’hllor is the polar opposite - maybe the original creator of fire breathing dragons.  Yet if both are ended, done away with - is that balance? Is eliminating fire (R’hllor) and ice (The Great Other) completely balanced? I’m personally not so sure; balance doesn’t just mean doing away with something imbalanced wholesale. It means compromise. (Bringing an end to the Others and fire dragons, their “nukes” sounds like it could be a way to find that balance though)

Anyway. They represent antithetical beings apparently warring over the world. R’hllor is presented as the god of light, fire, and life - all things associated with passion. The Great Other is ice, death, dispassion. Either way the gods present a great imbalance if one ‘rules’ over the realms of men. Bran, imo, could be being set up as the one who not only ushers in spring, or brings balance to the world, but must continue to do so in a way that doesn’t necessarily allow him to intervene in mortal affairs. (It could also account for the way Bran ended in the show, being a king yet removed from the process; I’ll explain down lower)

Bran is going to be a king - king of the gods, maybe, but certainly the king of summer, and the protector of the realm (of mankind). 

Parallels to Baldr: that rambling mess of a meta I mentioned previously takes this apart more, but the gist is: Baldr is a beloved god of the court, representing spring and renewal. His death brings about the cataclysmic downfall of the gods and the war (Bran’s ‘death’, similarly topples Westeros, is a beloved child, indirectly ushers in the beginning of the end of the current status quo). Yet he returns and brings with him life, renewal, change. 

To: Apollo

Apollo is the Greek god of light, truth and prophecy, healing, and knowledge. He, like Baldr, is seen as a beautiful god and the opposite of evil; actually seen as a protector from shadow and evil things. He is mostly recognized as an oracle god. 

Bran has some pretty obvious traits in common with Apollo. He’s going to be the one to figure out the truth behind the Others, the Great Other, R’hllor, Azor Ahai, the Wall, Bloodraven, etc - all these mystical, magical pieces of the world. If he is the Keeper of History, then this is likely part of his journey to (godhood) being a king. He has to be the one to remember on behalf of mankind because the Great Other and R’hllor do not care about balance; Bran will have to be the one who does. His character arc is about healing (of himself, realizing he is whole no matter what had happened to him and coming to terms with himself which will in turn set him free) and finding out the truth of magic, gods, and balance, history of mankind.  

Where Bloodraven, I believe, is playing the part of Loki masquerading in the disguise of an Odin-like figure (or at the very least sharing some of Odin’s traits and past), Bran is being developed not just as Baldr, a beloved god who represents renewal and resurrection, or Apollo, the god of prophecy and knowledge as well as the protector of mortals, but also of Heimdallr. 

Heimdallr is, as with Baldr and Apollo, a well liked god. He’s the Norse god of clairvoyance, having keen eyesight and hearing, and is considered a guardian of the realms and is associated with boundaries. He’s the owner of Gjallarhorn, a magical horn, which can be heard all across the Nine Realms. When Heimdallr blows this horn in warning, Ragnarok begins. In asoiaf, there’s a horn once owned by a King-Beyond-The-Wall, Horn of Joramun, that the free folk believe has the ability to bring down the Wall. 

“The Horn of Joramun? No. Call it the Horn of Darkness. If the Wall falls, night falls as well, the long night that never ends. It must not happen, will not happen!” - Melisandre, Jon III ADWD

But with Jon Snow being built up as the one who sounds the alarm about the Others/the Long Night to everyone south, it could be that Jon Snow will act, in a way, as Bran’s Gjallarhorn. It would also tie into the twist that Jon’s battleground won’t be found in the north, but in the south (and so may his endgame) - he won’t technically be the shield that guards the realm of men (Bran will be); but he will act as the horn that wakes the sleepers (re: he will indirectly be Bran’s mouthpiece in spreading the warning about winter and the Long Night in the south). 

Bran’s journey has always included boundaries - not the boundaries that Sansa, Arya, and Jon must navigate; his transcends that. He’s not stripped of his humanity, but I think he will be stripped of his mortality (in a sense). His boundaries are tied directly into the otherworldly, whereas all the Starks may have a magical ability they are tied directly to their direwolves. Bran’s abilities aren’t; they include Summer, but he himself is in another category from the other Starks.

While Bran’s journey to becoming king (of the gods and protector of mankind, and the bringer of summer) makes him tied to Baldr, I think he does have an enormous part to play in what’s to come - it just won’t be regulated to mortal affairs. Bran’s powers of prophecy, greenseeing, and eventual knowledge under the tutelage of BR are slowly building him as a mythical figure, the origin of how a god may come to be, even if they aren’t literally a god. There’s a possibility he isn’t going to be given a mortal crown, because in the scope of what he is capable of, surpassing even BR, that seems like an anticlimactic ending that throws away all of what he can do. He might literally be the king, protector of the realm (of all of mankind, king of the gods). 

The show’s ending showing him as the king of the 6 kingdoms, in an elective monarchy (which is just such an awful idea) with that godawful small council should’ve at least shown him as a well-loved king, or an anticipated one, but he’s shown to be dispassionate about mortal affairs. It could be, that with these really general brushstrokes and bullet points given by grrm to the show, that Bran is indeed meant to be king (but because the showrunners thought Bran was boring and hated magic were only left with one choice to make him king of) but not the one who presides over mortals directly. Kingship has to be more than just about who has a good story, who is charismatic, who won a throne, etc (we are shown that time and time again) it has to include not desiring power for power’s sake, compromise, realizing the value of the lives you may preside over, etc. Bran is the only one who could/would be able to navigate a compromise between the “warring” factions of the Great Other and R’hllor, of magic’s place in the world, and the COTF. Maybe his show ending is less literal and more in spirit; he is the king (of the gods), he is the deciding factor of fire and ice (he must compromise and preside over the Great Other, R’hllor), he doesn’t (cannot) care about the 6/5 kingdoms (because he can’t intervene in mortal affairs as the Great Other and R’hllor have/will try to and he has to protect mankind from those that have become more/transcended). 

Most importantly, he won’t be Bran the Broken are you fucking kidding me

Bran wanted to be a knight, a protector like in his songs and stories, but gave up on it because of his disability. He will be a protector and he will have songs and stories (maybe as the king of the gods, bringer of Summer, protector of mankind). 

I forgot I sent in the Selkie!MC thought! But thank you for reminding me and also thanks for the Nadia thought because now all that's in my head is this following idea of how she finds out about MC (if you have your own idea please share, I'm just chucking mine out because I'm a mess for these characters and the myth and folklore genres).

Also forgive the length of it, I started typing and the idea grew much, much further than intended. I should not be as invested in mythical and folklore creatures as I am, but once I start thinking it does. not. stop.

Anyway, here's the initial idea I had:

Nadia's not a fan of hypocritical behaviour because, fine, some people have moral codes but at least have the strength of character to stick to them. So she's annoyed about the Poppy having a pet seal, so maybe she decides to be petty about it and give them the metaphorical finger.

How does she decide to do this?

By kidnapping the seal and releasing it back into the wild of course!

She figures out quite quickly that the seal in question isn't always in the pool, but for the life of her she can't find out where they keep it indoors. Is there a hidden water tank inside she doesn't know about? If there is she can't find it, which leaves the pool as the only viable option to take the "poor, trapped animal" from.

And sure, MC loves being (as you perfectly put it) a menace in the pool when others are around, but sometimes she just likes to swim yk? So she goes swimming on her own sometimes.

And during one of Nadia's checkups on the spot, she sees the seal splashing around unsupervised and sees her chance.

MC does not expect the net.

She thrashes, of course, but at first thinks it's an ill-advissd, not very sensitive prank and is just like "I'm gonna kill them" until she realises exactly who has just pulled her out of the water.

The plan for Nadia had been to use a seal-carrier bag usually used by rescuers after getting the seal out of the net.

The plan absolutely had not included the thrashing seal to almost immediately shift into an infuriated MC because she recognises the bag Nadia's holding and it might not exactly be a cage but it's pretty close and she doesn't know what the hell Nadia wants with a seal so she's at least going to get into a form where she can defend herself.

Nadia's of course frozen in shock and barely avoids getting her nose broken again.

The Poppy hear MC shouting and come running, and Vivienne nearly kills Nadia the moment she sees the net, the bag and MC clinging to her sealskin. The rest of the Poppy are fully ready to throw down but it's Nadia's shock that saves her because she just blurts out "You're a SEAL?" And the Poppy pauses because they're like "...you aren't trying to take her coat?"

"Wtf would I do that? You think I need sealskin?"

And they really don't like this situation, they don’t want to be in a position where they have to trust Nadia because, yk, it's Nadia, but they can't kill her either (Vivienne does ask again if they can reconsider their no killing rule, but this time she's only half joking) so they don't really have a choice. They chuck her out as fast as possible because they are not explaining anything that could give her leverage and also they don't want her around MC, and Nadia's more than happy to book it out of there because she needs more information but her mind is still reeling (MC, seal, MC, seal, MC is the seal, what the-). The Poppy move to another penthouse and are gearing up to dispell any rumours that might "crop up" about MC in the Underworld, practicing scoffing in people's faces like "Selkies? You mean like magic? That doesn't exist!"

But Nadia doesn't spread any rumours, there's just total silence, nothing to indicate that anyone's heard anything about Selkies or seals.

And nobody's going to, because once Nadia's done her research and worked out that, yes, MC is an apparently not-so-mythical Selkie, she knows she isn't going to tell anyone (aside from looking insane if she did so, she also does want to win the Poppy over and stealing a pet seal is one thing but this is on an entirely different level).

Of course her research of Selkies inevitably raises the point of how important MC's sealskin coat actually is, and it clicks in her brain exactly what the Poppy thought she was doing by attempting to kidnap MC, and Nadia's a terrible human being, okay? Absolutely terrible, she would kill a man without hesitation, she would wreck someone's life in all kinds of ways, but she wouldn't do that. She gets the implications of what taking the coat would mean immediately, what it looked like to the Poppy by the pool before they realised she didn't know, hadn't worked it out.

And the Poppy don't hear anything, not for a while, as Nadia tries to work out how to approach the situation, until she gets wind of Vivienne punching a man who hadn't known that MC was a Selkie, but had thought that the sealskin coat looked very nice and tried to steal it.

He ends up dead in a couple days.

please never never apologise holy shit also please tell me you write??? please tell me you have fic somewhere that i can read because oh my gos your mind???? i’m about to go zombie weird on you and your beautiful brain lmaoooo this had me laughing out loud!! nadia ‘releasing the poor, captive seal back into the wild’ ajdjdjfkfkfk.

all i could imagine when i read that, though, was— you know that one scene in the parent trap? where the twins take meredith (??) camping, and as she’s sleeping they drag her blow up mattress out into the middle of the lake? like either THAT or the fucking aristocats, with MC waking up in the middle of the wilds hearing a toad croak directly beside her ear like ‘MAMA? D:’

but oh my GOSH!!!!! at nadia understanding the implications of her rescue attempt looking like she’s trying to steal MC’s coat. oh god. i can’t tell you how much of a sucker i am when it comes to ‘yes, i will do unquestionably evil acts, but i don’t fuck with kids/animals/vulnerable people’ villains. you sexy piece of shit. 😔👌

also can we just for a second appreciate after everything calms down nadia rocking up to mc with like a bucket of fish or smth equally awful because she is still, alas, a rat bastard. <3

How to mentally keep baneful spirits out - no tools required AKA How Not To Give A F*** About the Uninvited

You can find so much info on here and throughout the web about negative entities and protecting yourself from them. Just as there is so much info, there are all of these different perspectives on how our energies associate with them. In this post I hope to cover a lot of different perspectives, as well as some creative methods for dealing with baneful spirits and your own defense magic tool set.

Introduction

A lot of mythical creatures are based in energetic truth- the vampire is aligned with the energy vampire, the evil and feared witch (like in the Witch movie) is aligned with the early-Christian understanding of the Wise People. The word Witch came from Wic, which means ‘Wisdom’ in Germanic languages. Think of anything given malevolent or benevolent power in the media, and you can likely tie it to misconceptions about the witchcraft and pagan community.

In Shonda Rhimes’ “Grey’s Anatomy” there is an episode where Dr. Miranda Bailey talks about how her OCD creates negative, scary fears within the mind that feel so real that they become real, but she also says that if her mind can think up and believe in these terrible, scary things, she can also think up positive things that make her feel better about those fears- things that help create a buffer, to save her from being so afraid. I’m completely blanking on which episode this was, if you know please let me know and I’ll add it in. By bringing this up, I want to point to something that inspired me to write this post: that elasticity of our perception and of the power we hold within ourselves being dependent on our awareness of our power.

All of this to say that this is not a post created for someone experiencing demonic intrusion. I may or may not have experienced this kind of interaction and if I have, I was simply saved by calling on Jesus (holy freaking heck did not expect the Christian god to help me out but he did) and asking that he save my soul from the attack. If you are under demonic attack or believe that you are, please consult a shaman or a witch who knows how to deal with demonic power. My understanding of demons is that they were the very first spirits here, and so they are the oldest of the old and have a lot of power. That’s not to say your power stands no chance against them, but if you feel overwhelmed by the spirits you’re facing, a lot of the times it is helpful not just for our spiritual protection but also for our perception of how safe we are to call on someone outside of us for help- whether that be a deity or other type of spirit we revere as having badass protective strength or another human we believe can help protect us/banish whatever’s in your sphere.

Perception and Reality

What we believe is what we see. Another way to phrase this is, ‘Where the mind goes, your energy flows”, a very famous phrase within the spiritual community (I believe it has Buddhist origins but not sure of who said it first). This is why a lot of witches are recommended to meet with a therapist or psychologist regularly to ensure our mental health is strong. A lot of people within our community believe that mental health creates spiritual gaps wherein baneful spirits can creep in and target us, but others believe that the cause of mental problems is our spiritual health itself. I’m in the camp of believing mental health is important no matter how you see the correlation- taking care of your brain is just as important as keeping up with the rest of your practice. 

Another aspect of protection and magic is not just ‘what we see’ but how. To bring in a little cognitive function theory, someone with extroverted intuition (or Ne) would likely see a situation and the world from twenty or more different lenses. This is like viewing the world through a multi-faceted crystal and being able to look at all these different crystal-edges and see a different distortion. And that’s really what our view is mostly, because it is nearly impossible to go around living your life and be able to see everything EXACTLY as it is. It’s just not reasonable to think you’re going to be able to have a clear lens every time. If you do and if you’ve developed that, please share how you did and help me figure that out haha, but until then I’m going to work with my understanding that our perception is going to have some type of illusion to it.

And here comes what this post has been leading to- the thing I’m excited about. The Imagining, and the power in that imagining. This is mental craft.

The You-Shaped Perception

In focus meditation you’re told that attention to the breath or to one sensation is important, because you’re narrowing your cannon-sized attention to the size of a pinhole. In much the same way, mental magic is about not just changing your lens, but also how you use that lens.

You       can.         do.            Anything.

It’s true. I mean, within physical means, right? You’re only going to fly if you know how to build mechanical wings, so this isn’t some offhanded promise meant halfheartedly. Nope, I mean this with all of me.

The mind is our friend and our enemy. I’m not even a big fan of meditation and yet I know that. It’s that changeable lens we see things through and how we think of them.

Our mind, my friend, is our power.

In speaking of the mind, I am not just thinking about your brain matter, or your reason, or whatever. I’m talking intention (leading to manifestation) and conscious attention to changing our thoughts.

Think something long enough and you start to believe it. Don’t like your thoughts, or how you feel? What thought or visualization would help you feel better?

There are rabbit holes we fall into where we either can’t control our thoughts and feelings due to mental illness and other times when we just don’t want to control them. Sometimes it feels good to be swept away by our own ocean of emotion and madness. It’s part of being human. The former situation (with the rabbit holes) is likely to be helped by a mental health professional and possibly some anti-depressants. The latter can  a p p a r e n t l y  be helped by meditation. 

(Also, did you know that meditation helps grow the gray matter in your brain? Sitting down and just watching your thoughts pass like clouds, allowing your body to rest, opens you up to expanded compassion, self awareness, contemplation, and helps your memory. If anyone is interested in practicing this, I’m going to be working through this free online MBSR/Mindfulness course in the hopes of helping my depression and my powers of intention- it looks like a great resource especially during this time of political and global tension. I believe our souls are deeply connected to one another and also to the overall soul of the world. Everything that happens in it is something we collectively experience and all of the stress along with this social isolation that the majority of us are experiencing is incredibly traumatizing. I highly recommend checking this out and seeing how it affects you over a few weeks’ time: https://palousemindfulness.com/ )

The point I’m trying to make here is that 98 times out of 100 times, YOU control your perception. And that’s a very empowering and creative thing. Especially when you identify as a witch 😄

gif of Joaquin Phoenix as the joker with a smiling mask on, then pulling up the mask and grinning.

DAMN TABITHA JUST GET TO THE POINT ALREADY

Okay okay. Here’s my point.

You can use creativity in your craft. You know this already. But you don’t need a book of spells (they’re fun to read though) and you don’t need the latest books on psychic magic. You can seriously just use your magical brain.

Intention is everything. Your natural intuitive powers are where your strength lies- I’d say it’s the key to unlocking whatever the heck you want in life. 

Look at your life like it is a children’s story book or movie, alright? It sounds stupid but please stay with me if you made it this far, because I think this is where it gets good. You know how the main character faced this seemingly impossible task or challenge, and they didn’t know how they’d do it but they did it anyway? Things just worked out for them, either because they did some work to help meet their goal and they fought to believe in themselves, or because the writer(s) wanted to throw them some tools that would help them easily get their goal.

You’re the main character and you’re the author of your story. And not only are you the author, but you’ve got all these spirits helping you co-author what unfolds in your life. So it doesn’t matter if there’s a damn fire-breathing knife-throwing monster standing on top of you while you sleep because in your witch brain, all you need to do is say “I am stronger than you will ever be. I am the apex predator” and watch that nasty bugger fucking deflate.

What is the most empowering thing is realizing that you are worth fearing, yourself.

Now this isn’t an excuse to take on a bad-bitch persona and mess your life up. Don’t go around hexing people willy nilly, please. Don’t think you can conjure a demon and be able to control it.

Just know that you can control yourself and the space you’re in. Cause you a badass, bitch.

An actual example from my real life

I have a little known disorder called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Essentially it’s scary AF because I have dislocations on the daily and they’re painful and honestly, it’s the bane of my existence. 

That’s not even exaggerating haha.

So along with it comes a lot of second guessing self worth, because of how it’s perceived and how I’m perceived because I’m a lady with EDS. The questions I’ve fielded, the conversations I’ve had, the experiences I’ve had to deal with as a result of it are utterly ridiculous (sometimes, downright despicable). 

One day I was talking to my therapist about self-perception and not feeling strong enough to face life with my handicap, and she asked me to point out the strengths it’s encouraged in me. I was able to point to a few things and while I did, I could see Brigid beside me and this oak shield forming around my body, and I imagined that every word I spoke, every good quality I have grown from having my disorder, made that shield stronger.

There are the times when I rabbit hole and I forget what that armor means and looks like. I forget that it’s there. But inevitably, something happens that would normally feel like it was undermining me and instead, I remember that oak shield and Brigid’s protective, loving energy, and I remember how expansive it feels to see myself as being worth this life and as having valuable traits to offer to the world. That’s when I see that shield again.

As you can see this isn’t only for spirits, but it applies even in those situations too. I’ll detail my channeling session that ended with calling on Jesus another time haha as this is getting quite long. To wrap this up:

TL;DR: “How not to give a f*** about unwanted spirits”

- Decide not to give a f***

- Decide what you will give a f*** about

- Find a couple practices for protection that you like and stick with them

- Know what clairs you have that are strongest (and if none feel that strong right now, that’s perfectly normal. Don’t put pressure on yourself, just enjoy exploring how your intuition works and pay attention without obsessing (or try not to obsess anyways). You have time to experiment with intuition, I’ll try to find some good sources for this and write something for those of you frustrated with figuring out where your skills lie or how to use them.

- Know that they’re working, that you’re a freaking badass witch, and that nothing can come into your space without earning your wrath (which can just be a GTFO and a call on your fave deity if you like)

A lot of the time, spirits who show up don’t actually have any dominion to stay. You have the power. You own the space, you own YOUR space (the space of your body). So own that you own it and do it with certainty. Feel the POWAH haha.

Sources mentioned:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to-a-better-brain/

Updated Three Houses Top 10 Females List:

Just in time for International Women’s Day! I’ve been working on revising my list as much as possible in light of revisiting Three Houses, playing Ashen Wolves, and rethinking my love for each female character I put on my last list. I will this time do the my list from Tenth place to First place. Just a heads up my # 1 one spot has not changed so don’t expect some crazy surprise there.

Disclaimer: please don’t flame me or comment about how “WRONG” I am it’s just my personal opinion or preference. BE NICE! and maybe reblog or comment your favorite list if you’d like?

#10: Shamir:

My opinion Shamir literally has not changed. She is just a cool character, I love how despite her debt to Rhea she isn’t kissing Rhea’s ass like Catherine or Ciril. Did I mention I really don’t like them lol? She’s badass and she has an excellent character design. Perfect blend of sexy and badass.

#9. Bernadetta:

Bernie dropped another spot going from 8th to 9th. I still have an abundance of love for Bernie, and I want to protect her at all cost. I still hold the opinion that while she’s an absolutely hilarious character, she can still get repetitive and stale pretty fast upon replays. That being said when I was thinking of characters that might potentially drop to below my top ten I couldn’t reasonably see myself dropping her out of my top 10, as Bernie is still a genuinely enjoyable character, and I do have a soft spot for her.

#8. Sothis:

Unfortunately Sothis dropped down a bit no fault of her own, simply because I enjoy the ladies above her more. That being said I really do enjoy Sothis. Even though our time is brief with her, I really do love the snarky little goddess. It’s funny, last time I made this list I had gotten her Christmas altand expressed my excitement, but I didn’t have her Mythic version(aka original version). I just recently I finally got lucky, and pulled her Mythic version!

#7 Dorothea:

AHHH THE PITCH FORKS!! I’M SO SORRY!! I know! I know! WTF?! I honestly any think of a perfectly justifiable reason as to why Dorothea has dropped so low on my list. She went from 4th place to 7th place for those that don’t remember. I honestly feel disgusting for putting her so low....I absolutely adore her character, her design is absolutely stunning, and I still enjoy most of her supports, but honestly I can’t justify putting her any higher than the women above her on this list. Like many who have dropped lower in placement it’s of no fault of her own. I just happened to realize I love the women above her more. I still believe deserves all the happiness, love and care that she desires!

#6. Hapi:

Hapi is such a fucking gem, I don’t know if it’s just the dub but Hapi’s dialogue is just so ahead of its time period and I love it so much lol. She has some of the funniest quotes and her habit for nicknaming everyone is hilarious. I’m aware that it’s not a trait unique to her, but I’m of the opinion that her nicknames far surpasses Dorothea’s nicknames. Now if we we’re talking strictly design Hapi would place 4th out of entire female cast for me, and that’s impressive feat since Three Houses has an abundance of amazing designs. In fact if I was strictly talking design a lot of the placements on this list would actually change. For example Hapi would actually rank above Constance for me in terms of design, but is trumped by Constance in terms of character. I might do a separate list for “best” designs in the near future.

#5. Rhea:

I KNOW ITS BLASPHEMY I STILL have both Edelgard and Rhea in my top 5?!! As those who saw my last list can see Rhea’s placement has not changed. I love Rhea so much is because she’s the perfect foil to Edelgard. Rhea is an excellenty written character with a lot of emotional depth. She acts as a perfect foil for Edelgard’s character they are so similar yet so different. It also makes sense that she and Edelgard’s ideals would come to clash. I’m of the opinion that if Edelgard and Rhea just talked about their views it still would still not end well. Rhea sage guarded her fabricated history of Fódlan for a thousand years and would not just tell the truth because Edelgard called her out. She would’ve branded Edelgard a heretic and have her executed. That type of tranquil furry is honestly unsettling and I LOVE it. Btw the only reason she tells the truth in CS and VW is because in CS she doesn’t think she has much time left, and in VW she doesn’t have much time left and chaos is marching on Fódlan’s door. Likewise Edelgard would sympathize with Rhea’s past if she told the truth, but would insist that Rhea step down from power or tell the truth to the world which would still lead to conflict. I personally agree with Edelgard vision for Fodlan more, and personally think Rhea is unstable, and worst SOLE leader for Fodlan, but neither are evil people and I can empathize with their motives and reasons for doing the morally grey things they do. Neither of them “do nothing wrong” like people claim and in fact do a LOT wrong. It’s those wrong things they do that makes them intriguing characters, and more relatable. They also both have the potential to do so many good things for Fódlan depending on the route.

#4. Constance:

GOOD LORD Costance is truly a one of a kind. I was pro Constance since her design was first revealed in the Cindered Shadows DLC trailer. That being said never did I envision loving her THIS much! Her motivations are easily understandable, and her fall from grace makes even more sad when you realize that haughty attitude that she almost always has on display is due to her compensating for her lack of status. Constance is one of the funniest characters in the game to me and she came out AFTER the game lol. She’s an incredibly intelligent prodigy when it comes to all things magic yet she has this naivety that people are able to exploit like Yuri with the “bootlicking nobles” phrase. She takes it so literal that she tries it out for her self, and tries to make a way for the boots to taste better making it easier to lick their boots......I CANT EVEN!!... honestly Constance could top this list if it weren’t for her split personality..... don’t get me wrong her split personality when in sunlight can be funny every now and then, but honestly it does more harm to her character then helps it in my opinion. Her change in personality when in sunlight is implied that to be because of the trauma of the fall of House Nuevelle, but we never get any real explanation for it or anything implying she can overcome it. Its not expanded upon, and never treated seriously. In fact it’s played for laughs and it’s something people just accept as Constance just being Constance. I honestly felt Constance C rank support with Ferdinand was done so well. She calls him out for his usually insensitive comments about status and makes him regret his words immediately. I had so much respect for her in that moment, come the b-rank support she acts all submissive and praises the ground he walks on....which ruined the c-rank support for me tbh. That being said, as you can see based off her placement this trait of hers doesn’t ruin the character for me, just keeps her from being higher.

#3. Petra:

On a much lighter note, Petra is my 3rd favorite! If you notice she has dropped down from my second favorite spot. This is due to no fault of her own I, just happened to realize that I loved my number 2 spot more. With that being said Petra has still gotten the victory! Like I mentioned in my first list, Petra is just a delight. I love how she’s so dedicated, and always willing to learn. Funnily enough my initial expectation for Petra’s character pre-release was vastly different then what her actual character ended up being. She’s one of those character’s who’s design got revealed MUCH earlier than any details about her personality and her design gave me the impression that she was the aloof, intimidating, and serious type that doesn’t have time for making friends or fun. I don’t know if anyone else got this impression, but obviously I was wrong! Petra truly does remind me a lot of Starfire from the original 2003 Teen Titans tv show and kinda re-awakens that childhood cartoon crush in me lol. Petra is just awesome there’s not a single support I don’t like of her.

#2. Marianne

Now if you saw my old list you probably noticed that Marianne moved up a bit. Naturally I still love her design(I’m a sucker for light blue hair I think lol), but upon revisiting Three Houses I realized that leaving Marianne at 3rd place somehow didn’t feel adequate. Funnily enough she was technically the first person I S-ranked in Three Houses due to locking myself out of the Crimson Flower Route on accident. Honestly she has become my favorite character to S-rank in Three Houses even more so than my number one spot! Anyway my love for Marianne is very different for most character’s as she is one I feel can really relate to on very personal and emotional level. I’m gonna get real for a minute. I honestly I had been in bad place in my life recently. I had been feeling like the world has been crashing down on me. I have plenty of things to be happy for yet I often felt depressed. I’d often had “friends” call me out, saying I have no reason to be depressed, or that I have been blessed with so many things, and while I agree I’m very blessed, they couldn’t understand how I felt, as all they could provide was the view of an outsider looking in. While the action of suicide was something I never considered, I’d had been contemplating the value of my life or if it was really worth living. First want to clarify that I’m in MUCH better headspace than I was then. I definitely feel like I’m getting better. I have my ups and downs, but I’m currently making better friendships, I’m actively getting the help I need! I’ve always sympathized with Marianne, but now I can say that I really empathize with Marianne. When we take things at face value she seemingly had everything going for her, being brought up into the nobility, trained for success, and even having an extremely rare crest. By all means to an outsider looking in she had every reason to be happy. Of course while all these things sound nice especially in the context of the story they are in actuality a source for her depression. In her C-rank support with Ferdinand we see his confusion as to why Marianne dislikes being a part of the nobility. This support is one of the few times she expresses real anger, and is when expresses she never got to have what she saw as a normal life, she never wanted to be a part of the nobility and the weight and the expectations of being nobility was crushing her, as she had to adhere to standards of those around her. She was also taught to fear her crest as curse, so the blessing many commoners would be estatic to receive was thing she deemed as a curse. Over the course of the story and through her supports, Marianne begins to learn how to be more accepting of herself and gain more self-confidence. Naturally her timeskip appearance reflects this. She looks well-rested, expressive, and she genuinely seems more happy. I will never forget In her A-support with Byleth, that over the course of 5 years she had abandoned her depression and suicidal thoughts thanks to the genuine and long lasting friendship‘s she’s made and that she managed to uncover the truth of her heritage, and overcome the fear and hatred of her Crest. Her character arc is a very powerful thing to me, and is also example of what makes the 5 year timeskip so great. In addition to her character arc Marianne is just so cute, don’t get me stated on how adorable her habit of talking to animals is! Marianne is a fucking fantastic character and I love her so much.

EDIT: So I wanted to clarify that if I’m being honest Marianne and #1 spot are technically both tied as #1 me, and are so for very different reasons. For the sake of creating a Top 10 and to avoid a cop out list I chose to put her at second. To me Marianne is “BEST GIRL”. She’s my favorite female character to marry, she’s most endearing to me, she has like my third favorite female character design in all of Fire Emblem, and I relate to her on an emotional level. That being said this next character is “BEST CHARACTER” I like more for her role in the story, how her character is written, and how she was designed. Despite this I do not marry her NEARLY as often as Marianne. While I ship her with F! Byleth(OTP!) she’s not someone I personally would persue romantically. In other words Marianne is more my type and I tend to be biased with her while this next character is female character that I feel is the BEST WRITTEN and the female character I respect the most out of the cast.

#1. Edelgard:

Upon revisiting Fire Emblem Three Houses story as well as playing the Cindered Shadows DLC, nothing has changed, in fact my love and resolve for Edelgard has only been strengthened. I made a huge in depth posts for Edelgard a while back explaining her past, motives, and reasons for what she does. The posts had spanned multiple reblogs of details and clarification and I went over the typing limit in every single one. I won’t divulge further into all that. Like I mentioned last time I created my top ten list, aside from her being IN MY OPINION one of the best written female protagonists in Fire Emblem history, I absolutely love her design, its probably one of my favorite designs in all of Fire Emblem. That being said, If I had to say while she’s definitely close, she doesn’t have my all time number one favorite design, that spot goes to Azura from Fire Emblem Fates. Edelgard will always be my favorite Three Houses female character no matter what and I’m so happy she was brought into existence!

Well that’s my revised list, I had a lot of fun writing this list and I hope it was enjoyable for you guys to read as well! I would really love it if you guys comment or reblog with your own list of favorite Three House females! Y’know what?! Comment or reblog with your list of favorite females in the entire Fire Emblem franchise if you’d like! I’m very interested in seeing your lists Happy International Women’s Day!

Task #16 Jukebox Musical/TV or Movie Soundtrack: come up with a playlist of at least 10 songs, write a scene summary to go with each one. Disclaimer under the cut.

Disclaimer: I, once again, decided to abuse the system. Nowhere on the prompt does it say that the scenes have to be related to a character I have, that's why I present to you: "The prompt, but short stories done with characters Jean would love to write but doesn't have the time to actually have".

Also, weeb rights.

*King  (English cover) -Will Stetson John Kingsbury 

Watch your back no warning warning Taking all my stress there's only just one thing to do Brace yourself for all my love's attack now Left side right side Bear your fangs it's time to fight Pa - pa - pa parade in shame tonight Left side. Right side. Bear your fangs and come alive Pa- pa - pa, Hah! You are king!

Mother always did like Richard best. 

Screw that, everyone always did like Richard best, even John liked his brother more than he liked himself. Even so, when he had been declared MIA during a mission with The Order, John quickly became the first option (the only option) for everyone -he was on cloud nine.

His new comrades didn't quite like him, but John didn't quite mind since he'd make sure that by the end of that year they'd be kneeling to him. Just  like he'd make sure that Richard never, ever came back, even if that meant making allies with a certain policeman and some Magicks whose information he'd make sure to erase from The Order's databases.

Pa, pa- pa Hah! He was (finally) King!

*La mer - Julio Iglesias cover  Basil Rathbone 

Mrs. Judson would have never expected to hear Julio Iglesias, of all things, coming from the flat. It was a strangely cheerful song for someone like Basil to hear, being the snob (not only musical, but general snob) he'd always been.

She was unsure about whether she really wanted to open the door, suddenly afraid of what she might find on the other side. Sometimes Basil would be immersed reading files upon files upon files, sometimes he would be languishing on the sofa while staring blankly at the roof, sometimes he would be walking around while talking to himself in a very obvious bout of mania -he was a wild card, that Basil, and the fact that she simply couldn't guess what he'd do next always worried her.

Worried as she was, she opened the door.

She found Basil staring at the portrait that hung just above the chimney, just...watching it. 

"I have always quite admired Le Carré's works" Basil merely said, without even looking at Mrs. Judson and instead keeping his attention on his own personal Karla while the song went on and on, silently hurting in all of the right places.

*Everybody loves me - OneRepublic  Kuzco Apaza

Get down, Swaying to my own sound Flashes in my face now All I know is everybody loves me Everybody loves me

Kuzco was on a roll. 

He felt the stares as he made the street his personal catwalk and kept (very loudly) chatting with his lawyers on the other side of the phone. The sun was shining surprisingly strongly that day (surprisingly for that side of the world, that is), it's rays hit his jewelry and clothes and made him shine almost as strongly as the star itself.

There was no way anyone could ignore him. And he couldn't blame them -he was fabulous! A gift of the gods themselves, almost as brilliant as the sun and twice (no, thrice) as charming!

...and he was shouting his plans to build a waterpark on Atlantis Lake. And, sure, people didn't seem to love the idea quite yet, but...?

At least they were staring. And they'd eventually learn to love him.

*Dramaturgy (English cover) - Will Stetson Hans Westergård 

All alone now no one’s looking, act out in greed deceiving all their eyes But there’s no real me that You’ll find if you believe and I can’t find a single role that showed what’s really there to see

He caught the eyes of his reflection by accident.

Hans had tilted his head and his eyes had almost immediately found his own reflection against the showcases, making him forget about his date (what was her name again? He couldn't, for the life of him, remember that but he certainly did remember how much her net-worth was and which medicines she needed to take at what hours of the day, just like her previous beau had needed to do before the "accident" had happened) and focus instead on his own eyes.

The thing is...he couldn't find anything in there; The baby blue went on and on but there was nothing beyond- behind it-

-when he moved his gaze, however, he found that he was smiling even if he didn't felt like it. And that his carefully selected clothes looked as they had been designed just for him to wear (and they had), and that his globed hands were still holding his date's recent purchases inside the yellow bag even if he found every item utterly tacky and a ridiculous expense.

He was smiling and looking good and doing perfectly. So why did finding his own gaze him the same effect as placing a mirror in front of another, creating a ever going loop of emptiness?

Was he not playing his part correctly? What could possibly fill that void?

*My Neighbor Totoro/Azumi Inoue Music Box ver - R3 Music Box Totoro Seishin 

Totoro decided to take a nap under the sun while Chu and Chibi were busy playing with some squirrels. It was a sunny day and there was no place he'd rather be but outside, basking and feeling the grass under him.

At one point, however, he felt some extra weight on him. He didn't feel like moving or particularly offended by something deciding to lay on him, it was just amusing.

He couldn't be bothered to open both eyes, so he only opened one, finding a sleeping girl against his chest as if that was the most normal thing to do.

He smiled, closed his eye and decided that was quite fine by him.

*Delusion Girl - Oktavia Cover (TW Suicide and Mental Illness) Bernard Newhart

Every hero knows when they’re needed, so, that’s just what he’s born to be A man who manages throwing out his hand, Who doesn’t care if his own life is spared Such a feat like that, it’s a selfless act only completed in dreams And it stays like that for me With a crash I’m trapped back in reality

Bernard wanted to help, he really did. He just...didn't always know how. Nor did he know if it really matter.

His partner always seemed to be five steps ahead and the Australian she'd taken a fancy to was just like her, if not a couple of steps ahead of even her. And it made Bernard feel like a third wheel, to question if he was really doing something worthy, if he had done something, anything sufficiently good ever and-

-he caught the girl's cellphone before she ever noticed it had slid out of her hands. And soon enough he was getting hugged and receiving many 'thank you's and- and maybe that was enough?

*The Lost One's Weeping (English Cover) - Will Stetson (TW   Depression) Martin Ambrosius (Merlin)

And no matter how much time passes us by, We’re drunk on sweet and hypnotic lies. With all our sources of hardened pride We try to erase and hide now

Martin would always act indignant at the question, and would always reply with a 'I am under no obligation to use my magic to explain or prove anything to the likes of you'.

He was Merlin's blood, for fuck's sake! He didn't have anyone to prove anything to save for maybe the Once and Future King himself!

Oh how he hoped, deep, deep inside, that he would never wake, that he would never ask any questions, that he would never do anything but keep dreaming his mythical dream and let him live his unmagic life.

He was a showman, he loved smoke and light and mirrors, he could fool anyone, anytime -but he knew that wouldn't be enough if (when) the time came, that the Once and Future King would need an actual advisor, an actual wizard.

He prayed that day never came to pass.

*When you're evil - Aurelio Voltaire Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz

It gets so lonely being evil What I'd do to see a smile Even for a little while And no one loves you when you're evil I'm lying through my teeth! Your tears are all the company I need

"Ah, Perry the Platypus! Don't shake too much or you'll make the laser sharks angry and- no, hey! the insurance doesn't cover laser damage to the roo- yeah, that's better thank you. You might be wondering what this is all about- you see, noone has decided to play ME so far so- BEHOLD, THE HEINZ DOOFEN-INATOR! (patent pending) WITH THIS DEVICE I SHALL HIJACK ONE UNLUCKY ROLEPLAYER'S DRAFTS AND SLOWLY BUT SURELY CONSUME THE WHOLE THING THEN THE OTHER POSTS ON THE DASH, THEN THE WHOLE BEING DISNEY PAGE, THEN- HEY! HEY, DON'T DO THA- I'M NOT DONE WITH MY EVIL MONOLOGUE!"

*DEAD HAND - anakin ft. IA English (Ferry Cover)  (TW  Nuclear Warfare mention) Major Francis Monogram

Oh this is overwhelming, time for the iron curtain call The panic is seeping through the fractured border wall My livid heart powers this reactor core “Oh this is all wrong” but I don’t mind at all Turn up the volume, execute the protocol You know it’s M.A.D. and it’s all about to blow What an unfortunate way to end this show I shed a tear as you vanish in the snow

Francis had zero interest in dealing with anyone's shit (save for his own or his son's, that is) ever again; He'd done his time and the whole thing during the fucking Cold War had done a number on his nerves.

He still could remember how all seemed lost, an adequately mad situation (of Mutually Assured Destruction, that is) had come to pass and everyone in the HQ was losing his mind and running around like a bunch of headless chickens-

-until he very calmly pressed a couple of buttons and the thing was ok once more. Some people cried, some people laughed, some people shouted.

(Dramatic bitches, all of them. They didn't have to cause a scene just because of the fucking coffee machine)

That was one of many situations that made him love his retirement and not want to let go of it.

*Gasoline - Halsey (Captain) John Silver

You're part of a machine, you are not a human being With your face all made up, living on a screen Low on self esteem, so you run on gasoline

'Phantom limb pain' sounded way cooler than it actually was. Silver would rather call it 'a pain in the ass' any day, but that'd be a misnomer since what hurt was his stupid (lack of) arm and not his ass and he was not risking some smartass trying to make a joke about his butt, thank you very fucking much.

Like, fuck, 'phantom pain' could be a sick name for a metal (heh) band. And hiding things inside his prosthetic was one of the few perks the whole thing offered, just like the fact that he could smack people with the thing without having to bother about hurting himself or dealing with that pain.

However, during that cold night he couldn't think of any possitives about the damned thing and cursed his rotten luck, his (lack of) arm and the thoughts that came along with them.

The Longest Library #3: Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock (Or, Eidolon again talks way too much about previous relationships, also, pretty art!)

(This is a series in which I attempt to read and review all (or most of) my library of 297 books.)

Rundown: Postcard artist Griffin Moss gets a weird letter from a weird lady who can apparently see what he's drawing telepathically. They form an ill concieved bond over it. The story is told in colorful postcards and envelopes you can open and then read the mysterious things inside. 4.5/5 for calling me THE FUCK OUT and having some BOMB ASS ART.

I can't give it a full 5 because not everyone is going to have that experience when they read this. It's just going to look very strange and floaty and things won't make very much sense. This book hits close to home with me because it heavily echoes (more like yells about) my first long distance relationship. I'm not really able to see this book through any other lens, so that's what my commentary is mostly about.

So for the part that ISN'T about that stuff though: The art is amazing. Even though it's made by one person technically, both fictional artists have their own, distinct style. Let's be real: The art and the interactivity is the main draw of this book. There are envelopes inside with letters carrying a myriad of little details: Griffin uses a typewriter for his long-form letters, and bits where he's crossed out typos or added in letters with pen, or that Sabine's correspondence is something I now recognize as someone who uses quills or manual dip pens. The inconsistency in the color of her writings suggests she's using a homemade ink, brownish in color, slightly too watery. Maybe it's even watered down watercolor and not even ink at all. They've also made the background of her letters and cards a rich dark gray, while Griffin's is a clean, sterile white.

"Will you explain to me about those geometric paintings you did at Art college? I want to understand their hidden language of color and shape. It's so alien to me."

So this is about the fourth time I'm reading this book since I first got it, and now that I have to write about it, I'm noticing so many more details. Here the line "It's so alien to me."is written in smaller, slightly more rounded letters. The ink is much darker here too, suggesting she wrote this slowly, thoughtfully. What a detail!

Anyway that's it for the objective bits of the book, the rest is entirely subjective from here on out.

"The phenomenon that links us has taught me much about you, yet I am ignorant of your history."

My years and years of suffering emotional abuse set me up to be able to read and predict what was going on in your head perfectly, as well as respond in the most helpful ways with eerie precision, yet I am ignorant of your history, and who you really are (because you use such obtuse floaty language and metaphor. Who were you really? Suffering, but that's about all I could tell.)

"Why doesn't this alarm me as much as it should?"

Because we're already "in". And I "feel safe" to you because I've been trained to be the least offensive, most placating being in the universe. If I could build a business model on conversational comfort, if I could sell my goddamn empathy like the capitalist machine really wants me to, *I'd be so rich*. It would be like, a step down from therapist. Anybody want a virtual friend for like an hour? Gimme 20 and we can watch stupid videos or I can calmly talk you through bread making. It's okay, you can cry. GOD PLEASE LET ME JUST SELL MYSELF SAFELY, I WAS MADE FOR THIS GODDAMNIT.

"I want to hear everything. Write in detail. Tell me all about yourself. I demand to know - please."

This is like fucking CRACK to those with a suppressed self. An unwitnessed self. "Someone who's interested in ME, and won't yell at, ignore, or dismiss me for talking! Holy fuck I love you!"

"Finally I knew who you were. I counselled myself to be cautious and find out what you were like before revealing myself fully."

Sabine at this point is to the reader who I was to Him. A weird mythical creature, the non-human monster of your lonely adolescent imaginings, who is intimately aware of your secrets, "I've been watching you" it says before introducing you to a wondrous world free of the pains of living, where you actually feel loved and all is well forever and ever. Except I wasn't as inhuman as I wished to be.

"Occasionally I'd come home to a re-enactment of The Battle of Britain in the front room. [...] My entrance would make no difference to their dogfight, but when one of them accidentally (and inevitably) knocked over a pile of books, they'd stop instantly and unite to examine the extent of the damage."

The whole 'making light of a not-great home life because it was your normal for so long that you still haven't learned that you need to be horrified about it' thing. As well as passing it off as something funny. Thankfully this character's parents (SPOILER?) get literally run over by a truck and he gets sent to live with his mom's step sister who is really good and lets him ditch school to become a potter's apprentice and eventually go to art college. He never really deals with the grief when the step sister dies, OBVIOUSLY.

"And hearing that my existence eased your pain made my heart race. We have found one another, and I give thanks."

Hearing that my existence wasn't going to be punished but instead, made someone happy? Fucking HEROIN. Downplay it a little with grateful gentleness, I don't want to be punished for being presumptuous or for seeming like I like it too much. If I like things too much they get destroyed, hard.

"My kinsmen are responsive to me - but there is no one to reach my heart, and you who are so far away, have been closer to me than any man on the Islands."

This is something I remember. So far all they've done is shared eachother's life stories and gushed about how close they feel now. She (like my past self), has confused the feeling of 'finally, a witness! they're witnessing me! I've been Seen!' with the feeling of attachment. Of course she would feel infinitely more attached to this man. She's witnessed his most private moments as a creator for a good portion of her life. It's been a mainstay throughout her adolescence through adulthood, so of course an unwarranted sense of intimacy is going to be attached to this mysterious figure. The whole thing wrapped up in a dream like sense of mysticism.

"I remember your first erotic drawing; I was trembling from head to foot by the time you'd finished. Was that Sarah? No don't answer; I'm only teasing."

...Unless? (Man the implications hurt to think about. I REMEMBER THIS FEELING. This author has unintentionally called me out. I wonder how much of Sabine’s writing is actually calm, or if she’s reigning herself in almost constantly?)

"I was finding it hard to get over the idea of there being other men in your life when I reached the part in your letter about my erotic drawings. I stopped being jealous. We were lovers and I hadn't realized it. The drawings weren't of Sarah; they were of you."

ow ow ow ow ow ow JUST SAY IT ow ow ow ow, Also, I REALLY wanted her to be like 'bitch that looks nothing like me, what the fuck', but instead she's all like "So you've been making love to me ten thousand miles away - how tantalizing." URGH. TOO CLOSE, TOO FAST. DISENTANGLE YOURSELVES NOW. GRIFFIN GET HELP.

"I had failed to understand how unhappy you are. You cover up with jokes and a front of being self-contained. I'm worried for you."

EVEN SHE SEES IT, GET HELP.

"When you found me, I thought my loneliness had gone for good. I was kidding myself. I desperately desire your company. I haven't talked to anyone in three days. I was sure I was going to start seeing your pictures like you see mine. I've tried so hard. [...] How can I miss you this badly when we've never met?"

BECAUSE YOU MISS HUMAN CONTACT AND YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FAMILY LEFT YOU NERD, GET HELP. DON'T HANG IT ON ONE PERSON WHO IS TOO FAR AWAY TO HELP YOU IN THE WAY YOU NEED.

"Island magic works on island souls. You and I will heal eachother."

ANTIDEPRESSANTS MAYBE UUUUGGGGHHHHH

"I've started to hate this city, this country, all these stupid fucking people [...] I finally snapped. [...] I want to know what you look like."

*HEAVILY RECOILS*

"Why, my kindred spirit, are you prepared to settle for a postcard of my face? If you wish to see me, why not come here? What is there to stop you - you're clearly unhappy where you are. Come."

Yes. I offered and I offered and I offered. What's to stop you from just fucking TALKING TO ME instead of DISAPPEARING OVER AND OVER AGAIN. and then COMPLAINING THAT YOU'RE SO HURT AND LONELY. I'M LONELY TOO. WHEN I HAD THE MONEY YOU DIDN’T TAKE MY OFFER FOR ME TO COME SEE YOU, SO WHAT THE FUCK IS UP KYLE?

"Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened."

This kind of sentiment is what lead to the breakup. This feeling of being large, and dark, and slighted. Being real and supernatural. Make your choice. Say REAL words instead of just flagellating yourself. Do I exist to you?

"If you will not join me, then I will come to you."

Unfortunately, Sabine has what I definitely did not: Mobility, the ability to make things real. She had a job and money and her own life and the ability to travel. I had a shitty little shared room in my parent's house where I spent most of the time partially starved and dodging devils in one form or another. Many many times I wanted to spontaneously show up and give him the closeness that he needed. But I couldn't. And he wouldn't take my words. He wouldn’t take me.

3 down, 294 to go.

Favorite Reads of 2019

As seems to be my usual, I’m posting this at what feels like the last second.

Writing this year’s post was hard. I’ve been complaining offline all year that it feels like I read far fewer books I really, truly enjoyed. Even the books I did enjoy, they didn’t stick around long in my head for me to remember details. On the other hand, this list ended up being thirteen items long, so it can’t have been that bad. And having to go back to the books in order to write this list did make me remember how and why I loved them, so there is that.

Presented in chronological order of when I read them:

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

The first book I read in 2019, and I knew would end up on this list as soon as I finished. It’s also the first book of Guy Gavriel Kay’s where I finally understood what the fuss was about - when he commits to writing three-dimensional characters with compelling interpersonal and socio-political relationships, he commits. The cultural/social details of this secondary-world version of medieval Spain set at the beginning of the end of the Caliphate and the rise of the Reconquista are evocative, and the scope deftly alternates between being vast without tripping over itself and touchingly personal. Most importantly, this book gave me an OT3 I wasn’t even expecting in the form of Amman ibn Khairan, famed soldier, poet, and advisor now outcast from the city-state of Cartada, Rodrigo Belmonte, beloved cavalry captain with a complicated loyalty to the rulers he serves, and Jehane bet Ishak, an esteemed physician whose path intersects with them both. Together they represent the connections and tensions between their respective, secondary-world Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities, cities, and leaders in this secondary-world Spain and form a triangle of everything the country has, is, and can be. A year later I still love this book.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

This book is difficult to write about, because I remember loving it as I was reading it, but I can’t remember any of the essays very well several months after the fact (see above). What I do remember is that they were difficult, and complicated, and messy, and they did the thing I love when essays do where the fact that the things Alexander Chee was writing about are super-specific to him made them somehow feel all the more relatable. All the essays were nicely crafted stories and emotional journeys, withAlexander Chee tracing all the various aspects of his life through his writing, as an Asian man, a gay man, an aspiring writer, a professional writer, a resident of NYC, and a survivor of sexual assault, using prose that was both artistic and clear as water.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

Amal El-Mohtar wrote in her NYT review that this book was akin to “Hamlet”, “if [the play] were told from the point of view of Elsinore Castle addressing itself to a Horatio who mostly couldn’t hear it,” to which my response was “huh?” Then I read the book and it a) made so much more sense and b) ended up being an astute, apropos explanation of the kind of book The Raven Tower is. It’s the story of a soldier and companion to the heir of a country investigating the disappearance of its ruler and the ascendency of another in his place. It’s also the story of a calm, patient god in the form of a stone who predates all of history and narrates the changing existence of gods, their power, and their relationship to humans and their civilizations. It’s an understated yet powerful book, full of Ann Leckie’s brilliant and clever writing, world-building, storytelling, and otherworldliness. It’s Ann Leckie. She knows what she’s doing. And it fucking works.

Sal & Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez

This book - is bonkers. It is insane. It is one thousand percent over the top. I kept asking myself “why am I not irritated???” Instead I loved it. Sal is the new kid, a practicing magician with as showman’s flair for the dramatic and boundless energy, and he can open up portals into other universes. Gabi is the sharp-eyed, bossy class president and editor of the school newspaper who just knows something’s up with Sal and his shenanigans. Together, they become friends! And open up more portals into other universes. This book is warm and empathetic and funny and kind-hearted. It’s too-muchness quality somehow worked. The whole thing felt like the literary equivalent of a hug. 

The Parting Glass by Gina Marie Guadagnino

This wasn’t a Deep book, but I could not stop thinking about it, nor could I stop recommending it to people. It’s a zippy historical fiction novel set in 1830s NYC prior to the Potato Famine. Mary (or Maire) and her brother Seanin are Irish immigrants working in the same wealthy family’s house, she as lady’s maid to the marriageable daughter named Charlotte, he as a groomsman. Mary is half in love with her Charlotte; unfortunately so is Seanin, and the two of them are carrying on an affair, the aftermath of which leaves Mary in a bind about where her loyalties lie. I love that this book has a queer take on a love triangle that I’ve never seen before, and I loved Mary’s anger and resentment, her unashamed attitude towards her desire for Charlotte as well as other women, and her selfishness as well as her loyalty. I also loved the upstairs-downstairs nature of the book and the clash of Anglo-American and Irish immigrant ethnic and class mores and the larger social and political setting of the city and time period.

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

I don’t even know how to begin describing this book. It’s a story about maps and boundaries and borders. It’s an epic of daring escape and adventure about a mapmaker named Hassan with a magical gift and a concubine named Fatima, two friends fleeing the Inquisition after the surrender of Granada, in search of a mythical island ruled by the King of Birds. It’s a story of faith and trust and bonds forged from disparate people, and transformation, transformation of yourself and the world around you because you will it to be so. It’s a beautiful, beautifully written book.

(As a side note, I’m intrigued by the fact that two of my favorite books on here are set during the Reconquista.)

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

In some ways I liked this even better than The Hate U Give. I loved the complexity that arose out of Bri rapping about the injustices she’s experienced, with people drawing completely different meanings out of her words, people wanting her to use her rapping and her voice for differing reasons, and Bri herself working to figure out the power she has with her rapping and how she wants to use her talents, when it comes to financially supporting her family, standing up for herself, and being herself when so many around her are creating all these false images of her based solely off her words. I loved Bri’s anger, the way she kept speaking before thinking, her loving, sometimes complicated relationships with her family and friends...Angie Thomas’s writing and storytelling is phenomenal.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

I’m not even sure what to say about this book that hasn’t been said but, um, yeah, it’s Octavia Butler, it’s a classic, and really my favorite aspect of the book is how it so effectively bridges the gap between history and present and demonstrates how the two aren’t so far apart, and effectively blends them such that for Dana, the present becomes the past and the past is her present and suddenly she isn’t visiting history at a somewhat removed vantage point, she is part of history, her own history, her ancestors’ history, in all its horror, caught in a catch-22 of needing to repeatedly save the life of her white, slave-owning ancestor who over time grows more and more violent towards her, in order to ensure the chronological security of her own life.

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

This was a harrowing read. Set in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during the 1969 Malay-Chinese race riots, sixteen-year-old Melati has OCD, or what she understands as a djinn living inside her that forces her to obsessively count in order to keep her mom alive, a secret she tries to hide so people don’t think she’s possessed. When the race riots break out across the city, Melati has to make her way through the violence in the streets in order to find her mom, all while battling the djinn as its power increases in the chaos. I repeat, this book was brutal. The descriptions of Melati’s OCD alone make it a tense, taxing read - combine it with the violence and unpredictability of the race riots and all the threats to Melati’s safety and her ever-growing fear for her mom and it’s a lot. Even so (perhaps because) I could not put this book down. The recreation of this part of history (which I had no clue of before and knew nothing about) was both immersive and informative, the story was deftly plotted, and I loved how Melati’s characterization and her relationship/the depiction of her OCD and how it specifically affects her in her particular circumstances. 

Jade War by Fonda Lee

CLEAN BLADE CLEAN BLADE CLEAN BLADE

*ahem*

The second book of the Green Bone Saga was even better than the first. It took the story of the Kaul family and the No Peak clan and the worldbuilding of Jade City and turned everything up to eleven, expanding the story beyond Kekon into the global theater, particularly Espenia, bringing into the picture Kekonse immigration, diaspora, assimilation, and cultural heritage - what it means to be Kekonese, to be a Green Bone and carry jade and follow aisho outside of Kekon. The gang warfare between the No Peak clan and the Mountain clan spills over the domestic sphere into the international. Espenia grows more aggressive in its moves to gain control over jade at Kekon’s expense. It’s family loyalties and betrayals, it’s gang politics and warfare, it’s community, municipal, national, and international politics and culture clashes, and the changing world of being a Green Bone and wearing jade in a post-colonial world. Anyone who’s followed me this year because of Peaky Blinders - READ JADE CITY AND JADE WAR. YOU WILL LIKE THESE BOOKS I PROMISE.

Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee

With this short story collection, Yoon Ha Lee has not only successfully published fan fiction of his own work in the Hexarchate universe and is getting paid for it, he’s published good fanfiction. The cute Cheris and Jedao backstory pieces of flash fiction he first published on his website are drabbles. One of the original pieces in this collection is straight-up PWP. (How the hell Solaris agreed to it I have no idea, there is literally no plot.) The very last story (also original) is fix-it fic for Revenant Gun that left me kicking and screaming over the CLIFFHANGER that Yoon Ha Lee ended it on HOW DARE YOU I DEMAND TO KNOW WHAT CHERIS AND JEDAO ARE GOING TO DO NEXT YOU BETTER BE WRITING MORE STORIES SET IN THIS AU TIMELINE. In sum, Yoon Ha Lee is a delight, I love him, and I loved this collection.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

A novella about the weight of history, especially painful, traumatic history, and the necessity and yearning for it when you don’t have it. To be forced to bear the burden of history alone is to be crushed and subsumed by it. To lose or become detached from it is to lose connection to the people you’re from. Either way, it is difficult to impossible to maintain a people’s history alone. Rivers Solomon is such a poetic writer with her prose, painting beautiful images with just the right collection and arrangement of words, all while packing an astutely aimed punch in 160 pages.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

I had some issues with how convenient some of the magic/magical artifacts felt, and the various threads of the murder plot didn’t tie up as nicely as I wanted, but oh, Alex Stern is a marvel - a survivor in every sense of the word who embraces that part of herself over and over, even as what being a survivor means changes for Alex over the course of the book. A dark/contemporary urban fantasy set at Yale where the university’s elite student societies are also magical societies— Alex is a dropout who got into drugs as a teenager in order to shield herself from the ghosts she can’t stop seeing, recruited to act as overseer of the societies’ magical rituals, and who takes it upon herself to investigate the murder of a young woman not too different than herself. The centrality of power and its abuse in this book is delicious, the read is gripping, and Alex is worth the price of admission. Yes, I will be reading the second book when it comes out.

(Also, this is literally the second book I’ve ever read that makes any mention or inclusion of Ladino (both Alex and Leigh Bardugo are Sephardi.))

Honorable Mentions

Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

How Long ‘til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin

Our Year of Maybe by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 edited by N. K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

Amnesty by Lara Elena Donnelly

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

Let Me Hear a Rhyme by Tiffany D. Jackson

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

It’s also been my practice over the past few years when making these posts to crunch the numbers regarding the number of books I’ve read by PoC authors. This year I read a total of 30 books, which is the exact same number as last year, but since I read fewer books this year, they accounted for 47 percent of my reading, compared to last year’s 43 percent. My goal since I started has been to get to 50-50 parity between PoC and white authors, and this year’s the second-closest I got (I reached 48 percent in 2017.) The goal for next year is once again 50-50.

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Your name, please? Robyn. Are you heartbroken right now? No, my heart’s doing okay. If so, how long have you been heartbroken? Do you like the area you live in? I like that it’s a lot quieter than the metro, but we get everything we could also get in the city nonetheless. Right now it’s just a little unsettling since the Taal Volcano erupted and we have ashfall land all over our house, but otherwise where we live is pretty decent and uneventful for the most part. Do you ever get complimented on your eyes? What color are they? It’s not my strongest feature so no, not really. They’re dark brown/almost black.

What facial feature do you like the best on a person? Everyone has their different strong suits, so. Do you like to be called baby? Only by my parents and my girlfriend, because otherwise that would be creepy. What is your favorite flower? I like roses, sunflowers, and peonies. Idk, my answers to this question changes every time so it’s safe to say they’re only my favorites today. When did you last use the restroom? Five minutes ago. I went before starting this. How long is your hair? Pretty long. I haven’t had it cut since late in 2018; if I throw my head slightly back it already reaches my hips. I plan to keep it long until my graduation shoot, so I won’t be going to the salon for at least another month. Do you have braces? I used to. Do you have any freckles? Nope. What is your favorite Internet meme? There was a local meme going around last week and it involved people making hilarious puns out of celebrity names and pairing them with Photoshopped pictures of the celebrities to match the pun – for example, a local celeb named Rico Blanco was styled as Rico Blanket and a photo of him was shopped so that he’s in bed wrapped in a blanket :(((( OK IT DOESN’T SOUND FUNNY RN but all the entries were hilarioussssss I swear. Unfortunately everyone hopped on the meme train and it died in like a week. How many windows does your room have? Two big windows but each have four tiny window panes in them that can be opened. Do you have a rug in your room? What color is it? No. My dog likes peeing on rugs so we don’t like having them laying around. What is the weirdest animal you've ever held? I don’t think any animal is weird... but the coolest ones I’ve ever held are a snake, an eagle, a sea turtle, and a crocodile. The first three I got to meet in Bali, and the crocodile was from Palawan. Do you get extremely hyper when under the influence of sugar? No. I never really believed in that either. What about caffeine? I get pretty talkative, yes. I also talk like I have built-in exclamation points lol. Have you ever tried any drugs? If so, did you regret it? No, I haven’t. Do you have any pregnant friends? None of my friends are, but I can never be sure anymore when it comes to people I know. I always say no to this question, then sooner or later someone I know gives birth kfdgkdjfhd like a classmate from high school just had her third kid and no one even had any idea she was pregnant again. Guess I’ll just keep answering this question with a shrug. Have you seen anyone lately that you knew but didn't remember from where? Yeah, this was me for a few seconds when I arrived in my history class for our first day last Friday and I saw several people that I knew I know, but I had to recollect my thoughts. I eventually remembered who they were, but for a few seconds I was stumped. When was the last time you toilet papered or egged someones house? I’ve never done this, because you don’t do this in the Philippines. Do you usually dress up for Halloween? Some years I would. When ordering food, what do you usually get as a drink? I always get ala carte because I only drink water (I get full quicker if I have any other drink), and service water is always there. Put your favorite color and favorite animal. EX: Silver walrus Pink dog. When drawing something, do you try to be super precise or do you not care? I don’t care for drawing and am aware of just how bad I am at it, so I barely make any effort when I have to. When was the last time you snapped at someone? Sunday morning. My mom was playing a mobile game where the character will only be able to move if you scream, so she was screaming her ass off at 7 AM and I was worried it would wake the neighbors up. Does it bug you when people clap with their palms? HAHAHAHAHA like Nicole Kidman? Oh man. I’ve never actually seen someone clap the way she did in real life, so I don’t know if it would bug me. I know it’d send me laughing, though. Have you hugged anyone today? Just my dog. Classes have been suspended because of the Taal erupting, so I’m not seeing anyone else today. How many languages do you know how to say 'happy birthday' in? Filipino, English, Spanish, French, and Korean, so make that five. What language would you like to learn that you don't already know? Korean, just because I watch so many Korean shows as it is lmao. Are you able to take this language at your school? Yes, but it’s not required in my curriculum so I’ve never taken a Korean language elective. Have you ever been into a bar? Yes, I’ve always preferred bars to clubs so I’ve gone to a lot of them. What ethnicity are you? Broadly, Austronesian. But specifically, I’m Filipino, and even more specifically, Tagalog. How much makeup do you wear? None. I usually wear makeup only for special events, or if I absolutely had to, like for my graduation shoot. If you could fly, what kind of wings would you have? I’d like pink sparkly ones please hahahaha. Write some lyrics from the song stuck in your head right now. Nothing’s playing in my head at the moment. Do you like that song? Would you describe yourself as 'fiesty'? You mean feisty? I can bring out that side of me if I have to, but I’m not naturally it. How corny is High School Musical in your opinion? Pretty fucking corny. But I love the series and it’ll always be an important part of my childhood, so I’m never going to hate it. Have you actually read Twilight? Yes. I don’t know how I started getting into it though; I just remember it became insanely popular in the fourth grade and all of a sudden I wanted the Twilight boxed set for Christmas. What about Harry Potter? Yes, I read most of the books. My sister got into HP when she was aroundddd 10-11ish and my parents also got her a boxed set, so I borrowed each book after she finished them. Out of the two, which is better? Twilight.

Name a member of the Beatles! Ringo Starr. Who was the name of your first crush? My first real crush was Andi. How long ago was that? Eleven years ago. Do you still know that person? She migrated to New Zealand nine years ago, so we got disconnected for a long time and that’s when we got cut off. We’re Facebook friends now, but it’s never been the same. Happy for her, though. Can you handle your emotions very well? Usually I can, but when I’m at my breaking point then I’m at my breaking point. How often do you read books? Once every five years :(( JK uhhhhh I read loads, just not from books, and particularly not anything fictional. Are you the jealous type? I can be when there’s reason to, yep. Are you the type of person who gets jealous of people's pasts? No. And usually people regret their past, so I don’t feel jealous about that. Have you ever gotten an ear infection from riding an airplane? No. My ears were incredibly uncomfortable during my first plane ride though, and it didn’t help that I was already panicking long before the flight started. Anyway, my ears never fully ~popped and I was like 80% deaf for the entire plane ride. When was the last time you witnessed someone throw up? The last time someone threw up, it was me lol. But if we’re gonna be strict about the question, it wassssss last April I think. When was the last time YOU threw up? Sometime around May last year. Do you know anyone who faints at the sight of blood? ME. I’m anyone who faints at the sight of blood. Maybe not literally faint but I do feel super nauseous and weak and dizzy and I’d sometimes gag too. Hmm. I wonder how those girls have their period. Yeah well it’s not a very fun 3-4 days for me, my dude. Don't you just love the Cottonelle puppy? I don’t know what that is. Can you do any 'magic' tricks? No. Do you know how to play Checkers? I used to as a kid, because we used to have lots of board games. But since it was the game we barely ever played, I eventually forgot the rules. What clubs are you in at school? I’m in one of the two journalism organizations, and I also joined the graduation committee this year so that I get to contribute something for our batch :) What do you fear most in this world? Either falling from a very high place or drowning. And injections. What do your siblings fear most in this world? I know my sister is afraid of big crowds, chaotic situations, and small spaces. I don’t know what my brother fears, nor do I really care. What was the last sentence you heard anyone say? I’m listening to a mukbang ASMR right now and the last thing the girl said was her basically describing what she’s about to eat. Is Taylor more of a boy's name or a girl's name? I know we’re not supposed to care about this anymore, but if I really had to think about this question I see it as a boy’s name. But I also see that it works on girls just as nicely, so. What about Dylan? Boy’s name. But it sounds so badass on girls, and I prefer it as a girl’s name. What colors are the eyes of your family members? Dark brown/black. Filipinos all look the same, dude. Are you related to anyone with red hair? No. Do you know anyone with super super green eyes? Other than celebrities, no. What color was your hair when you were little? It has always been black. What color is it now? ^ Were you a chubby baby? I was a pretty chubby young kid especially from the ages of 3-5, but I was an okay-sized baby/toddler. I’d be surprised if I was chubby considering my mom and dad are both slim. What is your favorite mythical creature? Not a fan of those. Do you know anyone with a mullet? No, I don’t think so. Put down a random word here. Watermelon. What is your favorite fruit? Avocado. Now what is your favorite flavor of lollipop? Chocolate. If you combine your 2 above answers and make a perfume would it smell good? Probably not. They’re so different. Do you always feel like you have to be the best? Yes. That’s why I always take it hard when I end up not being that. Are you looking forward to summer? Yes, because I’ll get to rest. No, because it will be my last summer until I die. Are you wearing socks right now or are you barefoot? I’m barefoot. Socks always feels like they’re there, and I don’t like that feeling. What's on your favorite necklace? I’m not regularly wearing any necklace these days. How many hours of sleep did you get last night? Around seven, which is okay for me. Which is better: gingerbread or butterscotch? Caramel or peanut butter? Nutella or chocolate? Do you own an iPad? We own a family iPad, but no one’s used it in a while. I was the one who used it last as a means to work and communicate, back when I broke my phone and didn’t have a new laptop yet in my first year of college. I honestly hope that iPad never dies on us, since there’s a load of great memories there. Do you watch Glee? No and as someone who hates song covers, I think I’m better off not watching it skksjfdhgfg. How hard is it for you to get out of bed in the morning? When that day would require me to do something I dread, like attend a class I hate, it will be a lot harder for me to get up. But generally I’m pretty okay, as long as I set my alarm 30 minutes to an hour before I actually have to get up so that I have enough time to properly wake up. How many books are in the current room you're in? I’m in the dining room so there are zero books around. Have you ever witnessed an aircraft break the sound barrier? No. I also never really knew what that means, but I know I’ve never seen that. Do you keep a sketchpad in your room? I don’t draw, so I never needed one. Is there anything you do right before you go to sleep? Put water on my dog’s bowl – he likes drinking before we doze off. What color is your favorite purse? I only use one and it’s pink. How much money is currently in your wallet? ₱2,000. Do you get an allowance? Yes. How many songs are on your iPod? Don’t use an iPod these days. Do you usually have sweet dreams or nightmares? My dreams are either weird or nightmares. I never get any sweet ones. How has the weather been lately? It’s a little gloomy and cloudy. I don’t know if it’s an effect of the volcano eruption nearby, or if the weather is just like this. When was the last earthquake you felt? It was either August or September.

Gonna write my scatterbrained Spicy Hot Takes on Agartha before the news is stale and I delete this annoying and boring chapter from my mental landscape, so bear with me:

I think Agartha’s main issue was just straight up poor writing. The Japanese direct translations being as downright offensive as they were is one thing - but overall, the chapter is just one plot contrivance after another. It tries so, so hard to go for a certain tone but can’t seem to stick to any one thing or idea. Disregarding themes about sexuality probably would have been the very best way to go about this chapter, since I think the most interesting part was the theme about storytelling and in-authenticity - we all know that That Line was annoying af in a game like FGO, but it CAN work in a series like Fate as a whole. I had a helluva long day at work so allow me to explain in the least scatter-brained way I can manage right now:

Here’s what I’m thinking: Scheherazade, whose name I guarantee I will spell wrong/differently every time I write it even though I’ve been able to pronounce it properly since I was thirteen (I was in a speaking competition and told some of the Thousand and One Nights using her framework as the opening monologue, long story short ANYWAY -) is traumatized by her ordeal with the king. This is a really good and interesting thing to explore! Fitting it in with the theme of storytelling - Scheherazade is deeply afraid of dying and will do whatever it takes to live, so she makes a fantasy world and fills it with legends, and feeds their energy to a Holy Grail. With this, and the power of a Demon God at her side, she plans to reveal magic to the human world in the most destructive fashion possible, allowing the fantastic to become ordinary, and destroying the Throne of Heroes itself in the process. Fate is a series were stories have power - but Scheherazade survived basically by telling the most fantastical, interesting tales she could and never finishing them. She always would pause in the middle, and say, “That’s all for tonight.” I think this is the kind of thing we can run with in terms of setting.

Dahut is the weirdest example because it’s the one story in the chapter that I know next to nothing about. At one point it’s mentioned that Dahut is impossible to summon as a Servant, and so Drake was “forced” into the role of the Pirate Princess. Ys is probably the weakest part of the chapter for that, but I did like the idea of her being “Drake Alter,” where Drake vibrantly pursues her goals and desires but takes nothing for granted; Dahut gives into her every whim and takes absolutely everything for granted. The conflict between “Drake” and “Dahut” should have been emphasized more instead of having the player/Da Vinci dismiss her as “Oh, it’s not Drake, except when she conveniently comes back to delivery us the MacGuffins Ex Machina in the eleventh hour.” Dahut has little connection to Drake - it’s not her story, but a role she was forced into because Scheherazade was building a very specific kind of world. Therefore it is inauthentic. Perhaps that’s all it needs to be in this context. 

This can also work with the Amazons. Scheherazade never told stories of the Amazons, but she has access to basically all stories in the world through her Noble Phantasm - she learns that they are a society of warrior women who live without men, and so decides that they will be a society which oppresses men due to her fear/bitterness towards men after the ordeal she suffered through. The “oppressing men” plotline was honestly dumb all around but using the Amazons as a mechanism to explore Scheherazade's trauma would’ve been more interesting than just having them be the Big Bad before the Big Bad Columbus Reveal: Scheherazade doesn’t like fighting, but wishes that she had been strong enough to protect herself. Because she views herself as a coward and her ordeal with the king has complicated her view of sexuality - “I’m better suited to a bedchamber than a battlefield” - she uses the Amazons of Agartha as a mechanism to cope. 

This brings us to Wu, whose design I’m still not happy about even though I think the in-story justification is somewhat fair. (Let Helena and Wu be gray-haired grannies together or so help me!) Wu was absolutely an authoritarian ruler who did, in fact, invade and conquer several nations and institute a terrifying network of secret police. In her later life, she was given to decadence - but her tenure on the throne showed her to be a highly competent administrator. Notably, she ruled over an era of religious tension and balanced matters quite well, and though she was accused of undoing meritocracy to put her supporters into power, many of the men she appointed held positions in government long after she’d died because they were actually good at their jobs. Wu has been heavily mythologized over the years - later Tang emperors and Neo-Confucian scholars wrote her off (Wu founded her own dynasty under her own name, so they kind of had to legitimize it somehow), she became associated the nine-tailed fox spirit thanks to a few popular novels and poems, etc., etc., etc. The crazy thing is that Wu actually left very few records of herself behind, apart from some poems. Even the inscription on her tomb is blank! People can say whatever they want about her - it’s extremely difficult to know the full truth of the matter without any objective observers in the field (and without Wu’s own words to give context/another story), especially if you don’t read any Chinese. 

BTW - the first thing I learned history class is that when you’re dealing with primary sources, you must always remember that translators have agendas. Every word is a deliberate choice, and it changes the meaning from the original text. When dealing with historical documents, this is not always a good thing. 

Scheherazade reads some, but not all of these stories, and integrates Wu into her world as the sadist empress with an iron grip on her decadent mythical city. 

Do you see what I’m getting at here? It’s a lot, but I’m not done. Now we have to deal with Columbus - there’s “In Defense of Columbus” video is floating around in the Agartha tag, but I haven’t watched it in full and haven’t done like, any intensive research on Columbus in particular, so I’m going to apologize right now for any historical inaccuracies/misconceptions that I’m about to write. The point I want to make here mainly is that Columbus, like Wu, has been heavily, heavily mythologized for both good and evil at various points. The thing about Columbus that is also interesting is that the authenticity of his journals is or was apparently a subject of debate. The man who published most of them actually happened to be Bartolomew de las Casas - one of the founders/first vocal supporters of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The reason de la Casas supported this is because he believed that using African labor would be an improvement over enslaving the native populations of the New World. Soon after, he had a change of heart and devoted the rest of his life to fighting against slavery in all forms. De la Casas went on to be named a saint, and was possibly the first person in history to propose the idea of universal human rights - which is how I had heard of him until literally just this afternoon; I had no idea he’d ever supported the slave trade until I was looking up basic info about Columbus’s writings so I could write this long-ass post. History is full of complicated people. 

But as I mentioned in Wu’s bit, it’s very important to note that in many ways, Columbus is literally just whatever people decide he is. Like, he never even set foot in any land that would become the United States, and yet he’s a huge symbol here! Along these lines, his amnesia would fit the theme of inauthentic storytelling, choosing what to read and what to believe in. Columbus regaining his memories was an understated moment, which is actually fucking fantastic because it could be used to really emphasize the choice that is being made here. He’s a Heroic Spirit who can choose to be whatever he wants. He can choose to be the simple hero-explorer that schoolchildren sing about, or he can choose to be the Big Bad, the first and perhaps most infamous conquistador. And he chooses to be the bad guy. That is so fuckin’ fantastic, y’all! I honest to God love that not only did FGO portray Columbus as a villain of history but that the bad reputation is something he chooses to maintain! I can write a list of Servants who were less than stellar people and got a makeover for Fate. Nero is probably one of the worst examples but like - Ozymandias absolutely owned slaves in his life as a pharaoh. Hercules and Medea murdered their own children. Asterios literally ate humans as the Minotaur. Gilles de Rais exists as a playable character. Jack the Ripper is your daughter. Hell, Nobunaga burned temples with the monks still inside - but she feels bad about it now! Enough digressing but I a hundred percent get why Japanese fans found Columbus “refreshing” at his introduction. He owns his cruelty, his desire to exploit others - he challenges the narrative that everyone is redeemable because he doesn’t even want to be redeemed, he just wants to get rich and famous, and he doesn’t give a shit who he steps over in the process! Like, Columbus said, “I’m just doing what comes naturally,” at one point when he still had amnesia, so when he got his memory back and turned on the player, I really would’ve liked for him to say is something like, “You’ve already decided that I’m the bad guy, right? You know my story, and I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”

These kinds of questions/debates could have been used to emphasize the themes of Agartha. Legends are what people decide they are. People make choices and history decides whether they were good or evil or important retroactively. Can you know what someone is like by reading a translation of their poetry? Can you judge a king’s reign by the words of their successors or their rivals? Does the context of a story matter? This all could have been super interesting to explore!

Like I said, the main theme of Agartha being “inauthentic storytelling” could have been hella, hella good considering that this is a world created by Scheherazade’s fears and trauma feeding into her escapist desires. But Minase’s incompetence as a writer made everything so hamfisted and awkward that everything just suffered under his desire to insert his fetishes at every moment. It was so obvious that he didn’t read any material for old Fate characters - like Astolfo you poor sweet thing, you deserved so much better! - and even the new characters that he clearly did research on, like Columbus, fell flat because he couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say beyond mildly-to-extra offensive sex jokes.