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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 328: Pandora’s Box of Discourse

Previously on BnHA: DEKU TOOK A BATH.

Today on BnHA:

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Also Naomasa grew a beard. Goddamn.

please let this be a cool chapter that plays nice with my ADHD lol

(ETA: lol I feel guilty because a lot of people hated this chapter, but I’m just happy there was a lot of stuff to make fun of, and also that I have another week to work on my backlog of meta posts since the kids were MIA.)

around one month ago?? ah, okay, so we’re gonna find out what was in that Tartarus security file huh

I love that they just randomly set the place on fire

was it necessary to do this in order to escape? no. was it a good idea to set the island they were occupying on fire while they were in the midst of still occupying it? uh. was it cinematic as fuck? fuck yeah

wow it’s a pervert!!

that’s so great that the villains set loose this fine fellow who I’m sure is definitely not a serial rapist. truly the LoV is so noble and misunderstood. they’re just trying to free society from its chains people

oh my god??!

SHANKED!!! oh my god I cheered for Stain before I realized what I was doing. time to have an identity crisis I guess

so he’s all “hey what’s going on.” which, while a respectable question, is something I personally would have waited to ask until I had put a bit of distance between myself and the fiery murder island. but that’s just my personal preference

Stain you really are tenacious I’ll give you that

“what’s the point of escaping prison if you’re not gonna be smart about it” well shit. anyways yeah you’re dead right, society is in the process of collapsing and the outside world is in total chaos, good call there

oh shit

I mean it’s not like we really expecting anything otherwise, but still. fucking brutal. I feel like these guys’ fates were decided the minute that one guy called AFO “scum” back in chapter 94. AFO is unmatched at getting long-term revenge

ahh, was it the security footage??

fdsdfk he’s still alive??

and he’s immediately launching into an inappropriately theatrical monologue even as the darkness closes in on him fdlfksjdlk. you know, was it ever confirmed that the other guy back in chapter 297 was Seiji’s dad? I’m just saying

very impressed that he’s still coherent enough to weigh the pros and cons before making the decision to gamble on giving this info to Stain, who at the very least has his own moral code and isn’t allied with AFO. it was definitely still a risk, but as we now know it was also the right call

what a weird alliance. so Stain tells him that he’ll give it to a just person, and the guy is all,

okay for real though I’m gonna need someone to run a DNA test on this guy. maybe it was some kind of cuckold situation?? the other guy had the family resemblance, but this guy absolutely 100% raised Shishikura Seiji and you are not going to convince me otherwise

anyway, so Stain is all,

PRISON GUARD: “???? ??????? what the hell. what the fuck does that fucking mean. I’m dying here, jesus christ, whatever man fuck you”

(ETA: I kind of feel like this might have been Stain’s last appearance in the manga, given all the fanfare. there’s not really much else he can do for the story at this point, and he seems to have gotten all the character development Horikoshi was planning on giving him. so if this really is it, hasta la vista and good riddance I guess.)

DWLFDKSLDK MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE

(ETA: I feel like this is meant to be evocative of that Sermon on the Mount painting, but in a really fucked up way lol.)

if it were me stumbling upon this scene I would just shake my head and walk right back into the flaming building. not getting involved in that mess. sorry not sorry. I’ll take my chances with the fire, especially given that it’s half-assed neutered BnHA fire lol

blah blah blah and so he decided to pass the info on to All Might -- HOT DAMN, HOLY SHIT

NAOMASA HOLY SHIT. THE APOCALYPSE LOOKS GOOD ON YOU, BOY

“I really like that facial scruff thing Aizawa’s got going on, I think I’m gonna get in on that” yes sir. “also thinking of ditching the tie in favor of the bulletproof vest look. also thinking of getting totally fucking jacked.” good lord. except I’m pretty sure that’s just body armor, but also I don’t care. anyway I should probably stop staring and actually read the fucking speech bubbles here lol

“All Might first handed this information over to Nao, and then went to see Deku, and then came back to Nao” thanks for that tidy little summary Horikoshi. we are capable of piecing events together in sequential order, I just want you to know that. but thank you

“so has Deku finally gotten a bath? also, sucks that Stain saved the day, but what are you gonna do” Nao I missed you so fucking much and didn’t even realize. how am I just now realizing that you are the perfect man

for a second I was gonna ask why Tartarus’s security systems would be cut off from the outside world, and then I remembered that’s a basic security control, and then I actually got impressed by how sensible that is. like, it’s been a while since I could genuinely say that the good guys (excluding class 1-A) did something smart. not that it helped them much in the end, but still

anyway so they’re talking about how AFO was able to coordinate the attack by communicating between his horcrux self on the outside and his ugly peanut-faced self on the inside

huh

okay you have my attention. I am taking notes here lol please continue

ah okay so he says that prior to Jakku, the transfer of information between him and his Vestige self was only one-way. but post-Jakku when Deku was in the hospital, he was able to tell what was happening inside the OFA Radical Lisa Frank Dead People Book Club Realm when he touched him. I feel like we established that before, actually. but he didn’t talk about how it actually felt, though

boy we already know this lol. yes AFO can talk with his horcrux self. and he can also communicate with his little bro in OFA too, let’s talk about that sometime why don’t we. what exactly does that imply, based on the rules we’ve established here

my god I cannot get over Naomasa and his fucking facial hair

no wonder All Might was in such a hurry to leave Deku and get back here

like I have no idea what this radio waves nonsense is but my god, people

that jawline. also so it’s a quirk, I see. except last I checked Deku didn’t have a radio waves quirk, so that doesn’t really explain his connection to AFO. but whatever, hopefully we’re at least getting closer to some kind of reveal here

(ETA: since I sometimes forget that other people’s lives don’t revolve around my theory posts, here are the two relevant links if you by chance want to know my thoughts about this.

Hagakure is still The U.A. Traitor™ regardless of whether Deku is passing information on to AFO through his psychic link, which he almost certainly is.

speaking of said psychic link, Deku is a horcrux.

just posting these now, because whenever trippy OFA stuff happens I tend to get an influx of theory asks. so hopefully this will be a bit of a time saver lol.)

-- wait, what

THAT’S what the recording was??!? holy SHIT. I genuinely was not expecting that. y’all wiretapped his fucking telepathy. fucking quirks, man. wild

AND THEY USED THAT POWER TO DETERMINE WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW, HUZZAH. GOOD SHOW

-- oh shit wait lol, except I forgot we’re not talking about 38 days from the present, we’re talking about 38 days from the date the conversation was recorded. heh. um

yeah that’s the face I would make too if All Fucking Might just casually told me we had eight days left until the end times

oh, pardon me. three fucking days

r.i.p. anyone who thought we were going to have another band arc sob. I sure hope Deku is enjoying that nap

(ETA: I realize people were hoping for a longer rest period here, but given that the man warned us all the way back in chapter 306 that we were entering the final act, you can’t really blame him too much when that turns out to be true. anyway but I do recognize that we’ve reached the point in the story where this kind of discourse is going to become a weekly occurrence, simply because there’s no possible way for Horikoshi’s actual endgame to line up perfectly with the variable headcanons of millions of fans, all of whom have wildly differing and in many cases contradictory expectations which can’t possibly all be fulfilled. anyway, so I’m already bracing myself for that lol. this coming year is going to be a wild ride.)

damn, U.A. out here looking like the motherfucking United Nations

-- is this U.A.?? I actually just realized, U.A. is four interconnected buildings, not two. wait holy shit is this Shiketsu?

wait holy SHIT

based on the overwhelmingly powerful vibes of bureaucratic incompetence, I’m thinking this really is the (future) U.N., or whatever organization it is that deals with international hero stuff

“just let them handle it themselves I’m sure they’ll be fine” yeah okay, thanks guys. appreciate it

wait oh shit did he say that it’s not just Japan?

soooo, what you’re telling me is that AFO is this close to bringing about the end of not just Japan, but the entire world, and you guys don’t think it’s a good idea to help the Japanese heroes stop him? so, genuine follow-up question: are you guys already planning your rich people exodus into space a la Wall-E, and that’s why you don’t give a fuck?? like, what??

omg international heroes

these guys are from World Hoodie Mission, right? is this Horikoshi’s way of reminding me to buy tickets

(ETA: and it worked too lol.)

WHO??? WHAT???

don’t tell me you’re introducing yet another badass new female character for me to fall in love with only to watch as you dismember them and/or blow them up, Horikoshi. I’m getting tired of playing this game my dude. don’t lie and tell me this time will be different. we’re not doing this again goddammit

noooooooooooooooooooo

god fucking dammit lmao. [sighs and rips the previous paragraph into shreds]

on behalf of Americans I apologize for our superheroes always being Like This

I also apologize because I love her already and I’m gonna be shameless about it. so fucking shameless you guys

is her fucking hair red white and blue. it is, isn’t it

this is the volume cliffhanger, 100% lol. it will take every ounce of Horikoshi’s willpower not to put her on the volume cover. he’ll have to settle for the spine or the inner cover this time because Deku VS his class 1-a superpals takes precedence. but it will be a close thing let me tell you

tbh it’s that smile that does it for me. she’s definitely All Might’s protege. get out there and show them how it’s done girl. and maybe call Salaam and BRD and see if you can’t convince them to play hooky from their governments as well. why not. world’s ending in three days you guys. “sorry, I’m busy this weekend” ain’t gonna cut it lol

so while I am not fully caught up with Vigilantes, I have read far enough to know that there’s an American hero named Captain Celebrity whose superpower from what I recall is being a humongous douchebag. and while I haven’t read far enough to know what happens to this guy, I can’t say I’m very disappointed to learn that he’s no longer the number one hero in the U.S. (actually, didn’t they kick him out and that’s why he moved to Japan to begin with?). anyway, so my thanks to Horikoshi for having a marginally higher opinion of Americans than Furuhashi, even though we have definitely not done anything to warrant said opinion lately, and you may have inadvertently opened the door to a pandora’s box of discourse lmao

(ETA: lol I went into the tags and they don’t disappoint. “why is she dressed like a flag” because she’s an homage to Captain America and Major Victory and literally every other character on this list. again, I apologize for fictional American superheroes being Like This. “oh boy another thicc waifu to make the fanboys happy” look, tumblr fandom never seems to have a problem thirsting over Dabi or Tomura or Aizawa or Nao, lol, I’m just saying. “where is Captain Celebrity” idk, probably murdered by the exploding bee cartel, let’s just be grateful for our good fortune and try not to Beetlejuice the man.)

anyway, so let’s see if Horikoshi’s recent character development with regards to making Mineta not terrible anymore will apply to other aspects of his writing as well. I know I was making light of discourse just now, but I do think the complaints about him introducing yet another new character at the 11th hour to be cannon fodder in the final battle are absolutely valid. and again, it wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t keep maiming/killing off his female characters one by one instead of developing them and letting them kick ass long-term. but that said, I will never complain about Horikoshi adding another female character to the series, regardless of how clumsy the attempt may be. go ahead and pander away, just give us more girl power lol

anyway so we’ll see how it goes, but I think I’m gonna be optimistic and let myself hope once again, even though I’m probably gonna regret it lol. it is what it is. she is standing on an airplane just chilling for fuck’s sake. I’m only human. anyway fingers crossed

#bnha 328 #stain (bnha)#tsukauchi naomasa #all might #stars and stripes (bnha)#all for one #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #eta: how did I forget to type 'bnha' in the title sob

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fortunatelyfresco · 3 years

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A Holistic Integration of Type 1 Narcolepsy into the Reading of Moist von Lipwig

Literary Interpretation, Disability, and Finding Yourself Between the Lines

As it goes, "I wrote this for me, but you can read it if you want." It might be a fun ride for anyone who is very interested in Moist von Lipwig, or narcolepsy, or both, and/or anyone who enjoys collecting small details from within a body of work and arranging them into threads that are supportable by the text, without being actually suggested by it.

Personally, I find it very interesting to read the meta behind different headcanons, and see how creators can unintentionally write a character who fits certain criteria. There are only so many traits, after all, and some of them tend to travel in groups! Humans are pattern seekers, etc etc.

The first step of reading Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic is wanting to read Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic. Being narcoleptic myself and relating heavily to Moist, this step was very easy. I invite you to take my hand and come along, at least briefly, if you were interested enough to click the readmore.

Once you have taken that step, things start falling into place. At least they do if you're intimately familiar with narcolepsy, or if you first learn about it in detail through, for instance, a Tumblr post with an agenda :)

I'll break this down symptom by symptom, citing only the ones I both have personal experience with and see textual support for.

I'll be using OverDrive's search function to catalogue "evidence" in (the American editions of) Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, so I might miss passages that don't use certain keywords.

Please take any statements along the lines of "being narcoleptic means X" with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it's just more succinct. Narcolepsy can manifest in many different ways, and is still being actively studied. Don't base your entire understanding of it on a fandom essay I wrote to cope with the crushing pressures of capitalism. I have not even fully read the scientific studies linked here as sources.

Here we go! Spoilers abound.

I. Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) and sleep attacks.

Being narcoleptic means (salt now, please) that your brain does not get adequate rest while you sleep, no matter how much you sleep. This is because of a disturbance in the order and length of REM and NREM sleep phases. This leads to constant exhaustion. Some sources describe narcoleptic EDS as "comparable to [the sleepiness] experienced by a healthy individual who has been sleep-deprived continuously for 48–72 hours."

(Source.)

Sleep attacks can come on gradually or suddenly. In my case, I become irritable and easily overwhelmed, and nothing matters except finding a place to lie down. A more severe attack, under the right circumstances, can put me to sleep while I'm actively trying to stay awake and engaged.

Moist refers to 6:45 am as "still nighttime." He is "allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day" and is "not good at early mornings," and the narration even cites this as "one of the advantages of a life of crime; you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired."

In Going Postal, he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk. I can only find two instances, but the first one describes it as having happened "again," so it happens at least three times over the course of one week. Both of the times I found were after Mr. Pump cleared his apartment, giving him access to a bed, and I can't find any reference to the fire destroying it—just that his office is "missing the whole of one wall." His presumably wooden desk is still intact, even, just "charred."

There's also no build-up either time. No direct narration of the time right before he falls asleep, just retroactive accounting for it.

Which is primarily a function of stories not showing us every boring second, and secondarily one of the smaller ways we're shown Moist being overwhelmed and racing to keep up with himself, but tertiarily it's a great set dressing if you've already decided he's narcoleptic. Sometimes sleep is just a thing that happens, without any deliberate transition. Sometimes you sit down to catch your breath or get some paperwork done, and wake up several hours later.

I've found only one example in GP of Moist waking up in his actual bed at the post office: the morning after being possessed by all the undelivered letters. Presumably either they put him there, or Mr. Pump did.

There are two points in Making Money where Moist, in an effort to be a comforting and/or guiding hand, advises people to get some sleep. First Owlswick Jenkins, and then one of the clerks (Robert) who is worried about Mr. Bent.

I take the optimistic view that this is Moist genuinely caring about these people, not just trying to get them to do what he wants. He has always done some combination of those things (GP opens with him having befriended his jailers, after all), but there's definitely a thread of him learning to treat both himself and those around him more like real people. (See also.)

Looking at this thread through narcolepsy-colored lenses, you get Moist perhaps drawing from his own experiences in an effort to be helpful. In Owlswick or Robert's position, what is something he would want to hear from the man currently in charge of his fate, or at least his job? "Get some sleep."

If we accept this as a pattern, it culminates in Raising Steam, when Moist starts to worry about "Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers," fixating particularly on their lack of sleep.

What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going.

[...]

"People are going to die if we push them any further," he said to Dick. "You lot would rather work than sleep!"

[...]

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist's tone became gentle. "And I see now that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You've run out of steam, Dick. Look, we're well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it's daylight and we're out of the mountains it's going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We're all going to need our wits about us when we get near the pass. Surely you can take some rest?"

Simnel blinked as if he'd not seen Moist the first time, and said, "Yes, you're right."

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man's speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed, and noted that the engineer didn't so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it.

Moist then recruits Vimes to help him talk the rest of the engineers into getting some rest. The two of them briefly commiserate about people not realizing how important it is.

"I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night's rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can."

"Very good."

II. Insomnia.

This is a lesser-known but very common symptom of narcolepsy. Or a comorbidity, depending on how you look at it. It seems counterintuitive if narcolepsy has been presented to you as "sleeping all the time," but it makes sense once you know it's really a matter of disruption in the brain's ability to regulate sleep cycles.

The case for this symptom is flimsier, and I fully admit I'm just reading my own experience into it. But here are two excerpts from Going Postal that I find quite suitable for my sleepy agenda:

1. "A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away."

I latched hard onto this detail the first time I read GP.

At my worst, I could not get more than a couple hours of sleep in my bed. I kept taking naps in the bath because it was one of the few places I could sleep. It seemed to fulfill some of the criteria (isolation, temperature control, etc) that my brain demanded in exchange for playing nice.

We're told over and over again, throughout Moist's books, that he functions best under pressure.

(Brief aside: This is often cited as a reason to interpret Moist as having ADHD, which I'm also fully on board with. Not coincidentally, narcolepsy and ADHD share a few symptoms, have a notable comorbidity rate, and are treated with some of the same medications. Source.)

So again, if you're already inclined to read Moist as narcoleptic, the following is an easy jump:

"Moist thinks he's good at sleeping in strange places under strange circumstances. This is because A) his basis for comparison is a disordered attempt to sleep in normal places under normal circumstances, B) something about danger satisfies his brain into running more smoothly, and C) he's a resourceful person who is 'not given to introspection,' and so is less likely to wonder why his body demands sleep at strange times and more likely to focus on finding a place for that sleep to happen, and chalk this up later as a skill."

And returning briefly to EDS: Why would someone like Moist waste time finding a safe place to sleep while people are actively trying to kill him? At the beginning of GP, he leaves Vetinari's office and immediately goes on the run. In multiple books, when he feels threatened, his brain instinctively launches into complex escape plans. We see him successfully blend into an Ankh-Morpork crowd at least once after becoming a public figure.

So why bother? After all, a safe place to sleep is also a safe place to change clothes, or at least remove whatever distinguishing features he's given himself. Why wouldn't he just become someone else and leave town immediately?

The obvious answer is that sometimes things just happen, and an author doesn't need to know or explain every single detail of a character's past.

I would suggest, though, that one of those things might be Moist reaching a point where sleep is just not optional. A point where he not only doesn't, but can't, care about anything else. Where he is too tired to think straight, too tired to talk his way out of trouble, too tired to even contemplate the long journey from one town to the next.

2. "Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling."

Sometimes (especially in combination with underlying mental health issues) narcoleptic sleep deprivation can bypass everything I've described so far, and lead straight into a manic state. You won't necessarily find that on Google, but it's been my experience.

That's obviously not what the text is implying. "Alive and sparkling" is just a very relatable description. And we do often see Moist getting away from himself, speaking without thinking, making absurd promises that he justifies immediately afterwards as Just Part Of Being Him, always raising the stakes.

And here are a couple of excerpts from Raising Steam that could be interpreted as Moist being a light sleeper, AKA struggling to get deep sleep:

1. "And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea."

2. "All Moist's life he'd managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard's van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn't know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open."

Moist is exactly the kind of opportunist to see that as a useful tool, isn't he?

III. Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.

These are hallucinations that come on as you're falling asleep or waking up. They can also happen during REM intrusions while you're awake. My most memorable ones include piano notes, someone calling my name, being trapped in the waves of a large body of water, and a huge truck going over a guard rail and tumbling down a hill. These are often, but not always, accompanied by sleep paralysis (and sleep paralysis is often, but not always, accompanied by hallucinations).

In GP, Moist casually cites his own hallucinations as proof that what is happening at the post office is not one.

"They're all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt!"

Obviously that's not true for everyone, but it's true for Moist, and he has enough experience that he immediately recognizes the difference.

At one point while awake, Moist "[snaps] out of a dream of chandeliers" to realize someone has approached him to talk, while he was busy having visions of what the post office used to look like/could look like again.

Now, that's cheating, because we're probably supposed to assume it's a side effect of being possessed, but... I'm putting it here anyway.

There is also perhaps a case to be made for the tendency of Moist's internal monologue to lapse into extremely specific and prolonged hypotheticals. The lines between hallucinations, waking dreams, and "regular" daydreams have always been very blurry to me. I'm especially curious about the example at the end of Going Postal, which goes like this:

"Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads—"

"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.

Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn't seem to work anymore, the flair wasn't there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn't seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—

And an angel appeared.

"What just happened?" said Miss Dearheart.

Perhaps you do get two...

"Only a passing thought," said Moist.

In-universe... what is Adora reacting to? What did just happen? The fact that these incidents are not isolated to Going Postal is a point against it being some sort of literal timeline divergence caused by The Spirit Of The Post.

So maybe Moist visibly zoned out. Maybe he had some kind of minor but noticeable cataplexy attack (more on those later) as part of a REM intrusion, brought on by the intense emotions he's currently struggling with.

IV. Vivid Dreams.

Again, at least some of this is probably supposed to be part of the possession, but I've been professionally projecting myself onto the surreal dreams of magically afflicted characters for years. Do try this at home.

1. "Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best tradition of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be the voice of Mr. Pump, who was shaking him."

2. Moist is uneasy about the Smoking Gnu's plan, and then he has an extremely detailed dream about the Grand Trunk burning down.

This culminates in "Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head," followed by a paragraph of him thinking things through and starting to form his own alternative plan, followed immediately by "Moist awoke. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head."

So he fell asleep at his desk, woke up from a vivid nightmare, was awake just long enough for a coherent train of thought, and then passed back out. Which once again is not "proof" of anything, but fits the predetermined interpretation like a glove.

V. Cataplexy.

Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle control, usually triggered by strong emotions. This is thought to be a facet of REM intrusion—waking instances of the atonia that is meant to stop us from acting out our dreams.

The most well-known manifestation is laughter making your knees buckle, but it's not always that severe. My own attacks range from facial twitching, usually when I'm angry or otherwise extremely upset, to all-over weakness/immobilization and near-collapse when I laugh. My knees have fully buckled once or twice.

This is the biggest stretch. This is the one that is absolutely only there if you've already decided to read entire novels between the lines. It's also not even necessary for the broader headcanon; plenty of people have narcolepsy without cataplexy (or such mild cataplexy that it's never noticeable, or very delayed onset, etc).

However. I am doing this for fun. So I want him to have it. It's also become a major part of how I imagine Moist engaging with emotion, and I'd like to make a case for that.

There are a few scattered references to Moist's legs shaking, or being unsteady, or outright giving way, but there's usually an external physical reason, and/or enough psychological shock to justify it without a medical condition.

The most compelling example I've found so far comes from Moist and Adora's conversation about people expecting Moist to deliver letters to the gods.

"I never promised to—"

"You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"

Moist almost fell off his chair. She'd wielded the sentence like a fist.

"And it'll give them hope," she added, rather more quietly.

"False hope," said Moist, struggling upright.

"Almost fell off his chair" at first sounds like casual hyperbole, but then "struggling upright" implies it was a bit more literal. It's also an accurate description of me recovering from my more severe attacks, supporting myself on a wall or my spouse, or pushing myself up if I've fallen over in bed.

That happens to me multiple times per day, by the way. It doesn't bother me, and I didn't realize there was anything unusual about it for a long time. I barely think about it, except to fondly note that my spouse is good at making me laugh.

Which is to say, even severe cataplexy is not always noticeable or debilitating. Sometimes it absolutely is! It can be downright dangerous, depending on where you are, what you're doing, and whether you have any other conditions it might exacerbate. I don't want to undermine that.

I am just hell-bent on justifying the idea that this fictional character could have repeated attacks throughout the canonical narrative that are so routine they don't merit an explanation, or even a description. Especially for someone who is used to hiding his few distinguishing features behind false ones that are much more memorable. (See also.)

(That link goes to my own fanfic. Sorry.)

On the milder side, between Going Postal and Making Money, there are three instances of Moist's mouth "dropping open" when he's shocked, upset, confused, or some combination of the three. This is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in fiction, but rarely happens so literally in real life.

(There's technically a fourth instance, but I'm not counting it because it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to convey surprise.)

And then there's laughter. Or rather, there isn't. I could be missing something, but I've searched all three books for instances of laughter and various synonyms (not counting spoken "Ha!"s), and what I've come up with is:

Moist laughs once in Going Postal, when he receives the assignment for the race to Genua.

Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing.

There's also an instance earlier in the book where Moist nearly "burst[s] out laughing."

I find the specifics here interesting, and, for our purposes, fortuitous. Cataplexy is complicated and presents differently for everyone. In my case, when laughter triggers an attack, one of the effects (which is sometimes also a cause) is that I laugh very hard, with little or no control. "Burst out laughing" is quite apt.

Let's move on to Making Money, and start with a quick tangent:

Mr. Bent explains that he has no sense of humor due to a medical condition, and that he isn't upset about this and doesn't understand why people feel sorry for him.

Moist immediately starts in with "Have you tried—" before getting cut off by the frustrated Bent.

Out-of-universe, "Have you tried" is such a well-known refrain to anyone with an incurable condition, I'm not at all surprised to find it in a book written by someone who had at least begun the process that would lead to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. And Pratchett has certainly never shied away from portraying ignorance in his protagonists.

In-universe, it feels a little odd. Moist's tongue runs away from him all the time, but usually in the form of making ridiculous claims or impossible promises. Moist's entire stock-in-trade is People Skills, and it feels strange for him to make this kind of mistake immediately after being told Mr. Bent is not looking for solutions.

But if one were reading with, for instance, the idea in mind that Moist himself has an incurable condition related to laughter and is enthusiastic about, but still relatively new to, the practice of drawing on his own experiences to help people... it is easy to imagine the gears in his head turning the wrong way, superimposing those experiences over the tail end of Mr. Bent's explanation. Disabled people are not immune to these well-meaning pitfalls.

There is another Mr. Bent moment that I want to discuss, but we'll circle back around to it later.

I found two instances of Moist himself laughing in MM.

1. "He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little."

This is deliberate laughter, employed as a social tactic. A polite chuckle, probably. Not the sort of thing that generally triggers cataplexy.

2. "Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression."

The first and only involuntary laugh in MM. It doesn't always trigger attacks...

Which brings us to Raising Steam. Compared to the first two books, Moist laughs a lot here. I count nine instances. Two of them are "burst out laughing"s, a couple include him as part of a group, some of it comes off as deliberate, and some of it doesn't.

I've always seen a lot of... rage in Raising Steam. Combing through it for laughter, I realized Moist's emotions in general are much closer to the surface here, and he's much less concerned about letting people see them. He laughs with friends and acquaintances, he cries in front of strangers, he shouts at Harry King, he has that entire conversation with Dick that boils down to "I'm very worried about you," etc.

Opinions vary wildly and sharply on Raising Steam. I have my own hangups with it, as I do with most books in the series. (Every time I make a new Discworld post, Tumblr passive-aggressively suggests the tag "my kingdom for a discworld character who is normal about women and other species.")

But I like this particular change in Moist, and I choose to see it as character development. He's trading in the professional detachment of a conman for the ability to grow into himself as a person and make meaningful connections.

So, what does that have to do with cataplexy? A lot.

I don't want to get too maudlin, so I'll just say I have plenty of personal experience with emotional repression masking cataplexy symptoms. And so, I believe, does the version of Moist we've put together over the course of this post.

Which brings us back to Making Money, and Mr. Bent. He says something about Moist that I find very interesting: "I do not trust those who laugh too easily."

Unless I've missed something, at that point in the book, Moist has never actually laughed in front of him. And Mr. Bent is a man who pays very close attention to details.

So, what is the in-universe explanation for this? I'd like to propose that Moist is very skilled at seeming to laugh, without actually laughing. He smiles, he's friendly, and he makes other people laugh, which is another thing Bent dislikes about him. He gives the impression of being someone who laughs a lot. (He certainly left that impression on me; I was very surprised by the lack of examples in the first two books.)

Even staying strictly within the bounds of canon, it's easy to imagine why this might have become part of Moist's camouflage in his previous life. He wasn't looking to get attached to anyone, and he didn't want anyone getting inside his head. Engaging with people genuinely enough to laugh at their jokes would run counter to both of those things, but some of his personas still needed to come off as friendly and sociable.

Still working within the canon, it makes sense to assume he's similarly distanced himself from emotion in general. He sits in a cell for several weeks without truly believing he's going to die. He's bewildered when Mr. Pump points out that his schemes have hurt innocent people. He has no idea what to do with his feelings for Adora. Etc.

Interpreting Moist as having cataplexy adds an extra element of danger. Moist thrives on danger, but there's a difference between the thrill of a con and the threat of sudden, uncontrollable displays of vulnerability. And so it becomes even easier to see him stifling his own emotional capacity.*

We meet Moist at a moment of great upheaval. He is forcibly removed from his cocoon of false identities, and pushed out into the world as himself. And we are shown and told throughout Going Postal that he does not know how to be himself. (See also.)

He is repeatedly stymied by his own emotions. He gets tongue-tied and confused around Adora, he snaps at Mr. Pump, he lashes out at Mr. Groat, he gets lost in school flashbacks when he meets Miss Maccalariat. This thread continues in Making Money, where the sudden reappearance of Cribbins immediately rattles him into making an uncharacteristic mistake.

I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!

Later in the same book, Moist misses a crucial opportunity to run damage control on the bank's public image... because he's excited to see Adora.

The Moist of GP and MM is not used to feeling things so deeply. It throws him off his game. I'm not at all suggesting cataplexy is the only (or even primary) reason for that, but I do think there's room for it on both sides of the cause and effect equation.

With or without the cataplexy, I find Moist's relative emotional openness in Raising Steam... really nice. (It's a work in progress. He's still getting a handle on anger.)

Cataplexy just adds another dimension. A physical manifestation of emotional vulnerability, which would have been especially untenable for a teenager on the run. Just one more facet of the real, human, fallible Moist von Lipwig who spent years buried beneath Albert Spangler and all the rest.

Another piece of himself that Moist is growing to understand and accept, as he learns to more comfortably be himself.

The Moist of Going Postal runs into a burning building to save lives without fully understanding why he wants to, and justifies it on the fly as an essential part of the role he's trying to play.

The Moist of Raising Steam mindlessly throws himself under a train to save two children, and then blows up at Harry King about the lack of safety regulations. Freshly traumatized by the murder of several railway workers and his own violent, vengeful response to it, he still offers, in the face of Harry's own grief, to be the one to inform their families. On a long and dangerous journey with plenty of moving parts to think about, he worries about Dick Simnel and the other engineers, and pushes them to take better care of themselves.

He also meets a bunch of kids who nearly derailed a train as part of a childish scheme. His admonishment is startlingly vivid.

"Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people."

[...]

"I'll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I'd get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops."

Maybe what he is also saying, between the lines, is:

I left home at 14 and began a life of smoke and mirrors. I was empty inside, and I thought everyone else was, too. It was all fun and games, and then a man made of clay told me I was killing people. Nip it in the bud, child. Write books.

------------

*There are studies suggesting that in addition to deliberately employed "tricks," people with cataplexy may experience physiological reactions in the brain meant to inhibit laughter. (Source 1, Source 2.)

Most of the information here is way over my head, but that second link also says "one region of the brain called the zona incerta (meaning 'zone of uncertainty') was only activated during laughter in people with narcolepsy, not in controls. Research on the zona incerta in animals suggests that it also helps to control fear-associated behavior."

The linked article about that (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03581-6) is also over my head, but I would certainly describe Moist von Lipwig as having unusual fear responses.**

**Narcolepsy is a fun roller-coaster ride of constant scientific discoveries about exactly which parts of your brain are paying too much attention, not paying enough attention, or trying to eat each other.

#moist von lipwig #narcolepsy #discworld #disabled headcanons #oh my god this got so out of hand #earned itself a title AND a subtitle #mr. cybulskis i'm sorry i fell asleep in your class every day it was at the exact wrong time and temperature and lighting

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foryoumyheroes · 4 years

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I love the Otaku todoroki and Bakugou hc's! Maybe part 2 where they meet the characters voice actor and they look EXACTLY like the character and the bois are like 😳😳😳 HAVE I BEGGED GOD ENOUGH FOR HIM TO TURN MY ANIME CRUSH REAL and maybe the voice actor asks them out on a date sksksk— lol love your writing! (you don't have to do this btw, just a suggestion! 💕)

My first thought was the webtoon True Beauty 😳😳 I don't know if you guys know it, but it’s a great story (and free to read online!) and the author is kinda infamous for looking exactly like her MC!! Though Iida’s VA, Kaito Ishikawa, 👀 👀 looks exactly like his character IMO!!

A/N:

The headcanons in question are here, and since the character is already referred to as [Name], I’ll be referring to the voice actor as [V/A] only, but it’s still the reader 😊😊.

“Shitty Half-and-half.”

“Bakugou,” Todoroki replied, turning fully to face his former classmate. Several years had passed since they both confronted each other over Todoroki’s [Name] acrylic charm, and even now, both Pro-Heroes deep into their careers, their love for the anime character never waned.

The series had finished up during their last year at U.A., leaving both boys a mess while Aizawa could only wish that he was able to nurse his headache with half a bottle of ibuprofen. Todoroki mourned the fact that they were able to defeat the last arc’s antagonist at the cost of [Name]’s powers leading to their ultimate retirement and Bakugou raged from the ambiguous epilogue where [Name] was seen laying their head on the protagonist’s shoulder while looking out into the sunset.

“Don’t play dumb with me, you damned trust fund kid,” Bakugou spat, pushing himself off the spot where he leaned against the wall and striding over to the taller male. He had filled out in the past several years, nothing but toned biceps and broad shoulders. “You’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking.”

“What?” Todoroki asked innocently. His time with Uraraka had paid off, but the cutesy look would only let him get so far. Bakugou was eye-to-eye with his “eternal” rival. Todoroki had only gotten taller recently. Still slender and toned, he was nearly his father’s height and had already surpassed Natsuo.

“Might Con.” Bakugou really had grown from the way he didn’t rage from Todoroki’s feigned ignorance. “You’re going to be there aren’t you?”

Todoroki froze.

The blond smirked at his expression. “I know for a damned fact that your manager scheduled your panel at the exact same time my panel is held —”

“We’re hosting the panel together with Midoriya, Bakugou —” Todoroki tried to say.

“At the exact same time as [Name]’s fucking seiyuu’s autograph session, huh?”

At Bakugou’s words, both boys were at a standstill.

Due to the popularity of the anime, the voice actors were going to have their schedules jam-packed the entire con with panels, interviews, and meet-and-greets, but due to scheduling conflicts, every voice actor was allowed only one autograph session at a time. Bakugou didn’t care about any of those other shitty extras. He only wanted to meet [Name]’s seiyuu.

The voice actor was infamous for hiding their face during the anime’s run, only doing radio shows or paper interviews. They cited that since they were still a minor by the time the anime came out, they wanted to preserve their privacy, but now that they were of age, they were going to reveal their face at the con for the first time.

But they couldn’t make it. Their entire Pro-Hero career was stabbing itself in the back.

He held a hand out.

“If one of us can’t see [Name]’s voice actor the other can’t.”

It was otaku solidarity.

After a pause Todoroki reached out and shook it once. “Fine.” The two boys dropped their hands as fast as it came.

Yeah.

Not.

Todoroki Shoto:

Tries to go incognito, but he sucks at it.

He’s wearing shades indoors to hide his heterochromia and his scar, a bucket hat to hide his half-and-half hair, and he’s wearing regular, but not so inconspicuous clothes.

Once he gets to the front of the line, he nearly drops his gigantic load of [Name] merch. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s a Pro, he would’ve needed a wagon to carry the entire thing.

His face immediately flushes.

You’re wearing glasses and a large sweater while smiling and waving happily at the last fan that walked away. His mind is seeing every equation. You look exactly like the High School spin-off your mangaka made after the protagonist wished that everyone was able to live normal lives.

He stutters out, “C-Cosplay...?” softly the moment he gets to your table.

This dude is blushing so hard his face is as red as his hair.

Were you a secret love child, perhaps?

You brighten up and laugh. “Oh, wow — you have a lot of merch,” you laugh and he nearly swoons. “And oh, no! I just look like this normally.”

He mentally thanks his mom for giving birth to him.

You compliment him on his casual Idol!Shoto cosplay and he’s so embarrassed that he nearly lets go of the left side of his Quirk.

“Yeah! You make such a handsome Shoto!” You use your [Name] voice to say, “I love you, Shoto-kun!” and he nearly dies right there.

He uncharacteristically even puts his face into his hands ;; and just screams internally.

You hold up your pen and look at him with such wide eyes and ;;; YOU’RE SO FUCKING CUTE!!

None of the fanfictions have ever prepared him for this.

[“So who should I put these out to?”

He inhales once and quickly goes, “Todoroki, please. Written with the character for ‘a roaring fire.’ I have admired [Name] since their character introduction arc and felt a bond from [Name]’s tragic history and my own. I hated my father for the longest time and wanted to forage my own path similar to [Name] and they gave me strength —”]

You fight to keep the largest grin off your face, but then the door busts open and in walks Ground Zero. The security are all scrambling to stop him, but he barrels through them like dominoes.

[”HALF-AND-HALF!!”

“Oh, Bakugou —”

“I FUCKING KNEW THAT YOU WOULD BE HERE WHEN YOU DIDN’T SHOW UP TO YOUR OWN DAMNED PANEL!!”

Bakugou takes him by the collar and his shades and hat falls and everyone’s immediately fangirl shrieking as Bakugou forcefully drags him away.

“Wait, Bakugou — ! My dakimakura — !“

“Fuck that!”]

After his panel, he’s smugly going through all of the merch you were able to autograph with Bakugou sulking in the corner because he managed to go and Bakugou didn’t and he nearly drops his figurine when he realizes what you wrote in the corner of the box.

“You seem pretty cute, handsome stranger! ;) XXX-XXXX-XXXX”

He discharges his Quirk and Bakugou could be heard shouting, “WHAT THE HELL, HALF-AND-HALF!” in the background.

Bakugou Katsuki:

He doesn’t even bother hiding the fact that he’s there. Everyone’s so stunned by the fact that the Ground Zero is just storming through the autograph session that the autograph line splits like the Red Sea and he goes right up to you.

When he sees your face he just stops in his place and he does the face above for like five whole seconds.

Did he die and go to heaven?

WAS THAT NOT T H E [SURNAME] [NAME] SITTING IN FRONT OF HIM???

AND YOU LOOK SO SOFT!! Who gave you the motherfucking right to look so cute??? You look exactly like the panel in volume twenty-one, page 105 where [Name] were first seen wearing glasses. (Yes, ofc he remembers the exact page and volume. What was he, a fake fan?)

He didn’t have a thing for megane 😳😳😳 until [Name].

[“You...You fucking look exactly like [Name],” he manages to stutter out.

You blink out of your stupor at the Ground Zero at your autograph session because your manager just elbows you at your side and you nod quickly like an idiot.

“Y-Yeah!” You laugh nervously. “Hahaha, I guess that’s why they chose me to be the voice actor, you know because the voice matches the face — or-or is it the face matches the voice??” The two of you have matching red faces. “I-I even have a Quirk like their’s!” You hold up your hand and activate your Quirk slightly and he goes still.]

H-His wifu/husbando... in the flesh...

All those years of reading metas and watching analysis videos and calculating the compatibility of your Quirks are coming into fuCKING FRUITION!!

And he just grabs your hand out of nowhere, running on pure instinct, wrapping his hand around yours in a vice grip like a claw game and the both of you freeze.

”S-So what would you like me to sign??” you say quickly because he’s holding up the line, but everyone else is watching his go down like a soap opera.

He asks you to sign the manga. The first volume, the volume where you’re introduced, and the last volume.

[“They fucking did [Name] dirty in the series finale,” he says while you sign the manga for him. “They don’t belong with the pissy protagonist.”

“Yeah?” you ask, looking up at him. You gesture for him to lean closer and he does while you whisper in his ear. “Between you and me I don’t ship them either.” You lean back in your chair. “I don’t think the mangaka developed their relationship enough for me to root for them. Personally, I think that that they should just settle down with someone who’s going to make them happy and protect them — “

“I can do that.”

“What,” you blurt out.

“What,” he replies.]

He’s in such a daze that when Deku and Shoto barge into the autograph signing and drag him away he doesn’t even fight back.

HE WANTED SENPAI TO NOTICE HIM BUT NOT LIKE THIS!!

Even through his panel that he nearly missed btw he’s so confused. Equations are spinning around his head.

When he finally has free time and looks at the manga you signed, it read, “Ground Zero, you’re my favorite Hero! Glad you liked the anime! Wanna talk about it some more? XXX-XXXX-XXXX”

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dabi-drift · 3 years

Note

Could we have a shy s/o who asks geten out on a date + relationship headcanons please, sorry if this is too much you can pick one or the other if you want✨ btw I love your work, always looking forward to your posts!

Ahh, this was such a cute concept to me! It’s a little longer than usual, and I spent virtually all day on it, so I hope it’s good! And thank youuuu!! That’s awesome, and so appreciated! ^^

Geten’s Shy S/O Asking Him Out:

❈ Your timidity was all-consuming, and really impacted on your social relations. When in a conversation, you'd find yourself unable to look the person in the eyes. Your gaze would drift to the ground, like you didn’t feel worthy enough to even give the illusion of being on their level. A raised head would've sent out the wrong signals. You didn’t want anyone thinking you over-confident, or a narcissist.

❈ Instead, you were seen as a quiet, obedient MLA member, who preferred lone training, but worried incessantly about fighting. After all, that meant interacting with people - something you absolutely did not support.

❈ As such, you'd only spoken with Geten two or three times, in passing. Yet, he was always on your mind. You wanted to extinguish your feelings so, so badly! He was a million times better than you - way out of your league! It was a wonder why you'd ever fallen in the first place. What was the point, when all you'd get was heartbreak?

❈ You were convinced that's all you'd ever get.

❈ But your heart just couldn’t let go.

❈ 3/4 of your word count were probably apologies, so you wouldn’t be surprised if he found you strange.

❈ Surely he wouldn’t want such a shy, soft-spoken partner?

❈ …But you just couldn’t let him go. If you never even tried to court him, he'd find someone else, and it'd destroy you! He was always on your mind, even when he shouldn’t be - you fawned over him, like a desperate fan. He was so strong, so pretty…a violent little cutie. From your rose-tinted perspective, he had no faults.

❈ That fiery attitude might disenchant the average admirer, but at this point, you were a veteran, in way too deep. What you felt…it was infinitely stronger than a crush. It never wavered…never faded.

❈ You had journals full of phrases like "I wish, with the might of all the stars, that you would look at me the way I look at you.", and short pieces proclaiming your love for him. And to really cement this point, you had his name written in hearts. Many hearts. Spanning like,, an entire journal.

❈ You almost worshipped him, as though he were a god, or an entire religion.

❈ …It wasn’t easy, being in love. You were resolved to tell him, but you couldn’t do that in a public area. You'd have to drag him somewhere more private. The thought made you flush. What if he grew suspicious? Or assumed you wanted to hurt him?? Nothing could've been further from the truth. But since you had trouble speaking, and your face would definitely be on fire…he'd be cautious, maybe even angry?

❈ Oh god, you did not want him to be angry! If that happened, you'd chicken out immediately. He'd have you running for the hills, getting the hell out of Deika City and never, ever showing your face there again. And in the worst case, the embarrassment and fear might force you out of Japan. You'd have to change your name, get a new social security number, find a new job and apartment…

❈ Why was it so difficult to confess?? You wanted to be so naturally eloquent with your words, so confident and clever, that he'd be compelled to swoon. You commanded greater mastery over the written word, but you needed to tell him in person. You needed him to hear, to feel the emotion behind them. You had to be taken seriously. You had to try.

❈ So try you did. You managed to catch him as he walked toward one of Deika's many training grounds. You were alone, save for the birds that chirped overhead. The frosty weather bit at your cheeks, but you couldn’t be deterred. Not anymore. It was now or never.

❈ You had the stage, and his full attention. It was so nerve-wracking!

❈ "Geten…! Um, I-I've really admired - uh, liked!...Loved! Yeah…um, I've…for a while now, a-and…I wanted to tell you…! So, uh…if it i-isn't too much trouble, um…p-please go out with me!"

❈ You stood with a lowered head, uncomfortably basking in the silence that followed. You couldn’t meet his eyes, for fear of seeing an emotion you knew you wouldn’t be able to bear.

❈ "…Go out? Where would we go?"

❈ You looked up, mouth hanging open in shock. A light blush sat atop his cheeks…so he'd understood your feelings, at least.

❈ "U-Uh…it means…um…" Your voice got progressively quieter, as you realised that you had to teach him what a relationship actually was.

❈ "Speak up. You're hard to hear." He huffed, though he didn’t seem angry.

❈ Okay, so I don't have to move countries.

❈ "It's, um…d-d-dating…? It's m-more than friends, like uh…r-romantic…holding hands and k-k-kissing and stuff…!"

❈ He blushed harder, and despite his efforts to hide it under the fur of his Parka, you saw it. There was another round of silence, like he was considering the pros and cons of 'dating' you.

❈ Finally, he reached a decision.

❈ "I guess…I'll 'go out' with you."

& Relationship Headcanons:

❈ This boy doesn't know a ton about love, so you're gonna have to teach him what it means to: 1) have a partner, and 2) show affection toward said partner. He's never been in a position quite like this before, so he's definitely a slow-starter.

❈ Make no mistake, though - he does love you. And due to both his ideology and strength, he's fiercely loyal and protective. If you have a 'weak' Meta Ability, he'll be a little disappointed (for the future generation, y'know?), but it just means he has to shield you from any and all dangers. It's a responsibility he cherishes. He's never really had to look out for anyone but himself, so it's a nice change of pace.

❈ Initially, he isn't sure about the whole 'dating' and 'lovers' thing. You're still incredibly shy, and whenever he tries to hold your hand, you go bright red and shuffle your feet awkwardly. He'll take that the wrong way.

❈ It takes many, many weeks for you to gather up the courage to ask for a kiss. Geten obliges almost instantly, but hesitates when he sees you shaking.

❈ It's more from excitement than embarrassment, but he doesn't know that.

❈ Of course you're excited! You're finally, finally gonna kiss the boy you love. But you're also nervous. It's your first kiss, after all. You want it to be perfect, but you're scared you're gonna mess up. And if you do, you're worried he'll hate you. If you mess up, you ruin the experience for two people.

❈ So you make 10000% sure he's okay with it, and you make him swear on his life that he won't be mad at you.

❈ He's of the opinion that you can always try again, but in your mind, it's a life or death scenario.

❈ If you take too long, over-think (no doubt you will) or start to falter, he'll just crash your lips together, albeit sloppily. He doesn't care about gentle or rough, messy or clean…as long as you're connected. He'll place one hand on your waist, and pin you to the wall. For someone so inexperienced, his movements gradually get more professional.

❈ In reality, he's researching this for you

❈ You'll snuggle up to Geten during the summer months, because despite his inability to create ice, his body temperature is still quite low.

❈ You get to see him without the Parka. No-one gets to see him without the Parka. Consider yourself a lucky, lucky bastard.

❈ Your shyness won't disappear, but around Geten, you definitely become more composed. After a few months, or even a year, that is. In the beginning, you're nothing but a nervous, stuttering wreck, who can't stand beside him for more than ten seconds without melting.

❈ Oh, you might want those plane tickets after all, because he's gonna find your journals eventually (when he's absolutely head-over-heals in love with you). Don't worry though, he'll think they're cute, and a testament to how amazing you are as a partner.

❈ Honestly, your heart holds so much value to him. He'll never, ever let you give it to someone else. He's whipped - completely, totally…and he isn't afraid to admit it!

❈ Once the PLF is formed, he'll seek you out to join the Violet Regiment (but be in the same room as Dabi, and blood will be shed).

❈ Everyone headcanons him as Geten's biggest romantic rival, and I'm not here to argue with that

❈ He's bad with words, so he'll rely on actions! Just don't expect any PDA (unless he's jealous)!! <3

#bnha #geten #geten x reader #bnha geten #meta liberation army #dabi #is this good enough??#god i'm so insecure #i wanna scream lmao #my hero academia

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trickstercaptain · 3 years

Note

Lottie write a scars post challenge

re: this post / @lighthouseborn because hannah is a glutton for punishment apparently sdfksdfs ily

so i’ve written a lot about Jack’s scars over the nearly seven years i’ve been here, but not so much on the new blog ( i say new as if it’s not already a year old lmao ), so i’m gonna try and consolidate as much info as possible from old posts and my own notes into this post and make this my go-to scars meta, particularly as my headcanons on how he got a few of them have changed as my portrayal has grown and developed on this blog. i’m also only going to focus on Jack’s major scars ( so effectively the ones that appear in that gifset along with a couple of others ), because he has a lot and some of the ones he got as a younger man ( i’m thinking of the ones he sustains during TPOF ) would have mostly faded by the time we get to movie-era Jack ( plus i would be here all day if i was to talk about all of them lmao and not all of them have thematic significance to his character anyway )

the eyebrow scar

so starting at the beginning, Jack has a mark extending through his right eyebrow. it’s quite difficult to see at times because of his bandana ( it really kinda depends on the scene as to whether Jack’s bandana is high enough above his eyebrow for it to be visible, and when he has his hat on it’s even more difficult to spot ). while there are all sorts of ways in which he could have sustained that, i tie this specifically to the abuse Jack suffered as a child -- most notably from his grandmother, who he was forced to live with for a couple of years following his mother’s death. they’re kids books, believe it or not, but there is mention in the young Jack Sparrow series as well as the Legends of the Brethren Court series of Jack having lot of difficult memories associated with his grandmother, from her locking him in a brig because another family member had a premonition that Jack would set fire to her ship ( he was eight years old at the time ), to having nightmares about her red tooth, to casually mentioning how she would attack and throw things at him.

with mine and @thecodekeeper’s headcanons trying to stitch all of this together into an upbringing that makes sense for Jack, i find it difficult to believe that he would have gotten out of that situation without any marks to speak of, so he sustained it from her throwing something at him. the sad part is that Jack has blocked out a lot of those memories because of how unhappy he was, so he can’t recall precisely what she threw, only that she threw something and was inches away from blinding him in one eye.

burns on his left arm

the lightning burns that twist around his left arm actually have a canon explanation, and that’s from when he was trapped inside of his cabin on the Wicked Wench after it was set alight by Beckett ( he did climb on board while it was burning, so it is partially his fault but y’know lmao ). in Jack’s desperate attempts to save all his worldly goods, which he kept in a chest in his cabin, he was jolted up against the door and the flames from the weatherdeck leapt through and set his shirt sleeve on fire. Jack uses his right hand to try and stamp the flames out, which also happens to be not just his dominant hand, but the palm he covers up with a leather guard throughout all the movies, so therefore i imagine he has burns there too. the guard likely started as a way to stop him from aggravating the burns as they healed, and then after years passed it just stuck as an accessory and he continued wearing it. even though Jack is somewhat ambidextrous in that he can wield a sword in both hands and aim a pistol effectively in his left despite his right being his dominant, his left arm is his significantly weaker one and he does have lingering numbness in it from time to time.

the brand

we all know how Jack got the brand. i go into a lot more detail about the emotional and psychological effects of being branded in this meta here, but physically-speaking it’s something that causes him discomfort for years afterwards --- in DMC all it takes is for Elizabeth and Gibbs to mention Beckett for Jack to reach for his brand, so while it eventually stops causing him constant pain, the memory of having it inflicted on him and of those involved persists, and it’s probably the scar that bothers him most for the psychological reasons i detail in the other meta above. he has the most complicated relationship with his brand as opposed to the others, and i imagine that is because it is the only one that was deliberately inflicted on him with the intent to leave a mark

scar on his left palm

i don’t have much to say about this one except that, since Jack has to use his blood to help break the Aztec curse ( because he stole a piece of the treasure while fighting Barbossa ), he slices his left palm right before throwing his piece to Will. this is a matching scar that he has with Will and Elizabeth and idk i just like the symbolic significance of the trio having gained the same scar through a shared experience.

powder burns on the right-hand side of his chest

one day i’ll actually be able to tell you precisely what happened here, step by step, and how Jack got shot and who by and the circumstances around it, but it’s the one scar I’ve always kept vague -- i think because it’s the one i want to best demonstrate the point of that deleted scene with Elizabeth: that the truth of Jack’s life as a pirate does not live up to the stories. Jack will tell the story of how he got shot and make it sound daring and dramatic, but i don’t think the truth of it is nearly as exciting or worthy of the legend that surrounds him. i’ve debated the idea that he was shot by an angry husband ( based on a snippet of dialogue that was cut from AWE between Jack and Gibbs ), and i think that’s the closest to the truth that Jack will let me get to exactly what happened

but i can tell you a few other things i know about it for sure. he was shot twice in quick succession, given that both powder burns appear similar to one another and, while it’s his right-hand side of his chest which gives a decent enough distance from his heart ( so it wouldn’t have been fatal by 18th century standards ), it is still in a dangerous enough place that he would have needed medical attention immediately considering the limitations of the era. that’s where Jack’s ship surgeon comes in ( @valorsworn ), because John Watson is a canon part of this franchise idk what you mean when you say he isn’t. anyway it’s my canon that John’s actions saved Jack’s life, but it would have also led to a lengthy recovery period ( you don’t just recover from two gunshot wounds to your chest overnight, particularly not in a century where the risk of infection is arguably even more dangerous than the actual wounds themselves ). so we’re talking weeks of recovery and then probably weeks of rehabilitation as Jack gets his strength back to where it was before he’d gotten shot, and I’d say that this is easily the worst injury he’s probably ever suffered.

#lighthouseborn #&. don’t ever insult captain jack sparrow in front of me ( ooc. )#&. depths few had ever begun to glimpse ( meta tag. )#child abuse tw #here it is here's the manifesto #but honestly i think the best thing about this and jack for me #is that i don't get to invent these scars as purely headcanon #they're /right/ there in the text of the films. most in a deleted scene admittedly but the brand definitely isn't #and the brand is integral to the entire trilogy since they tie it in with beckett in dmc and awe #a lot of butchering was done to jack's character in the later potc instalments but at least they gave him this #and here i am to flesh it all out like the jack sparrow fanatic that i am

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nikkiwriteswords · 4 years

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Hi, I love the klave metas! I really needed more of them in my life :) Just wondered what your take is on the scene before the kiss, where Dave touches Klaus’s face? I have never quite managed to come up with anything myself. Thank you!

Ahh you’re too kind, anon! I’ve wondered about that scene myself to be honest, and oh boy do I have some analysis for you. Let’s just go over the context of this club scene real quick:

So here they are in the club. They’re having a bit of a laugh, a dance, and there’s a meet-cute narrative clearly happening. Klaus and Dave do some dork dancing, they share an equally dorky little moment, and Dave - Dave is already smitten, just try and tell me he’s not. The smile at Klaus’s fist-shake for throwing off his groove? Smitten. They decide to do shots, along with another guy and a girl, who then presumably ditch them. Then, there’s this nice split second of Dave’s feet walking purposely through the dancers.

Man’s on a mission. Look at this next shot. Dave sidles up to the bar where Klaus is leaning, is about to say something, and Klaus has a little grin because they’re both Know at this point. They’re both flirting around the issue and Dave is probably about to pull a Line. That is, until one girl literally inserts herself between Dave and the bar (even bashing into Klaus), and Klaus is approached by another.

I wonder what it is we’re meant to infer from this scene about the club scene in 60′s Vietnam. What’s the attitude towards GIs? What are the GIs attitude toward Vietnamese women? What’s the attitude towards homosexuality? If someone can shed some light on that context, I’d be really interested in hearing about it Anyway, cut to these two dorks giggling in the corner, probably hiding from the girls:

It’s such a meet-cute, because they’ve been dancing around the issue all night at this point, and here’s confirmation that they both aren’t into women - at least not as much as they’re into each other.

But then, this?

This vulnerable, ambiguous little sigh written all over Klaus’s face?? What’s that about? What do you think that emotion is? To me, Klaus looks a little bit lost here, a little bit puzzled and more than a little exhausted. But he also looks a little relieved, like Dave has just said something that resonates with whatever he’s feeling. Dave is clearly reassuring him, but that touch feels charged with attraction as well: I feel like they get caught a little bit by surprise by the intensity of their own feelings. Like Dave only meant to ruffle Klaus’s hair but suddenly he’s caressing his cheek and he just can’t help it - this weird, beautiful man has appeared out of nowhere and Dave wants to just pull him close and kiss him. And Klaus leans into it. See how he reaches for Dave a little bit? It’s like they just fall into the moment, and Dave feels that little thrill again, picks up the courage from before the girl interrupted him, and kisses Klaus.

But, see, here’s my real question: what are they talking about?

I’m really interested in what this whole flashback sequence tells us about Klaus’s arrival in Vietnam and the start of his relationship with Dave. Is Klaus fresh off the bus at this point? Or are they on leave after months in the brush, and this thing between them has been simmering for a while?

Putting aside headcanons and going on what this opening scene is telling us, it’s possible Klaus drops in on 173rd just as they’re heading back to base on leave. Sure, he arrives when they’re under fire, but the bus he’s travelling on in the next scene (still looking pretty green and shell-shocked, in the colloquial sense) is moving away from the fighting in the background:

The next shot places that bus in Saigon. For those of you who know Vietnamese history which clearly includes me after the twenty minutes I spent on wikipedia, the next few frames give us a specific location. The bus is parked outside the civilian terminal entrance at the Saigon Tan Son Nhut military airbase - these days Tan Son Nhat Int'l Airport in Ho Chi Minh City:

Based on that, I’d guess 173rd are probably being stationed here for the next few days whilst they wait to be dispatched up to the A Shau valley in the north.

Realistically, then, Klaus has only been in the country for like a day at this point in the bar. (It depends how far out the 173rd was from Saigon.) So having only just arrived in the frickin Vietnam War and been told his new company is about to be assigned recon deep in enemy territory, he’s probably feeling a little overwhelmed.

Plus, think about all the things he’s dealing with privately right now:

He’s totally alone in a foreign country, in a foreign decade. (At first maybe he thought the briefcase had killed him, and this is actually Not A Relief because Is This Hell?? But he’s not stupid, and his brain is horrifyingly clear for the first time in probably a decade. The fashion sense of Hazel and Cha Cha’s victims covered at least the last century, and the goons themselves were after his time-travelling older-little brother, so it doesn’t take a genius to realise he basically hotwired their Delorean.)

He probably also hasn’t had a chance to try the briefcase and return to 2019 immediately,** or if he has it didn’t work. Do they need recharging? I don’t remember, but he’s cleaned up so he may have had a moment alone to try it - and he’s still here, so.** If that’s even what he wants, maybe he’s hesitating - maybe that’s The Whole Point of Vietnam in Klaus’s character arc. It’s escapist fantasy. (You bet I’m revisiting that thought at some point.)

He’s probably still hurting from being tortured, and freshly sober - which, hold on, huge thing to consider: has he seen ghosts here already? Fanon consensus seems to be that alcohol helps dampen his powers, but doesn’t block out the ghosts completely. The Vietnam War was rife with drug use, but has he scored any drugs by this point? If he’s only 24 hours in, and only a few hours off the bus, it’s possible he’s still relatively sober. (Just think of the rural gothic potential. Oh man. Stephen King take the wheel. I’ll definitely be picking this up in another post.)

So the dancing and the alcohol have probably helped distract Klaus a good bit from the emotional shitstorm he’s probably experiencing right now, but at the end of the day, alcohol’s a depressant. He can’t share a lot of this with Dave, so I can’t blame the poor man for looking like he wants to just have a good cry. I can’t blame Dave for wanting to kiss that look right off his face, either.

#i have been wanting to break this scene down for so long #thank you for giving me the excuse to do it anon #nikkiwrites #scene analysis #headcanons #narrative analysis #meet cute #tua 1x06 #klaus hargreeves #dave katz #character dynamics #klave #the umbrella academy #ask #context #lgbt history #vietnam war #1960s #headcanon

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nosons · 3 years

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@formaen asked: botanical headcanons: acanthus, basil, gladiolus, parsley & tulip <3

━ ━ ━

acanthus: is your muse deceptive, or willing to lie or deceive to achieve certain means? why or why not?

He can be deceptive, and is more so when he gets older in his main adult verse, picking up pseudonyms for his ‘conman plans’ (conning the stupidly megarich, anyway, not like regular people). That said, it’s not his default to be deceptive, and if he think he can get what he wants through honest means (and really, he doesn’t ask for much anyway), then he will. Other forms of deception he might adopt are more benign -- a vague example being that he outright lies to someone when he’s trying to make or prepare a gift for them in secret: “nope, nothing to hide, nothing to see, I am just... chilling out”. Depending on the nature of his deception, he will be at his most convincing acting, or at his most consciously obvious (especially if he’s trying to entice someone into a sort of hide-and-seek).

basil: does your muse have a love-hate relationship with anyone or anything?

He love-hates Alex, his adoptive dad, in every single verse that he’s in, whether he was created (and raised in an isolated environment -- only him, Alex, nannybot, the skags, and his eventual robot daughters) and suffers from Oh No I’m A Clone Of The Most Evil Bastard In Recent History Syndrome, or whether he was kidnapped and raised in an isolated environment (him, Alex, and farm animals). Despite the complex feelings that arise once he finds out he’s a clone/been kidnapped as a newborn, he still loves his adoptive dad more than he hates him (... he thinks), but he doesn’t get to reconcile his feelings about the whole ordeal when Alex is killed a week after the revelation.

gladiolus: describe a moment from your muse’s life that they will never forget.

It was after one of Alex’s many trips to Overlook that Teddy was surprised with a pair of tacky pink heart-shaped sunglasses. He’d seen pictures before, yes, but the idea of actually owning or wanting a pair had never really clicked before then, and the kid was ecstatic over them -- bouncing in his seat and kicking his legs wildly, and he’d kissed his dad on the cheek and hugged him tightly. This was around the time that he was creating Adelaide.

parsley: describe a holiday your muse enjoys, and why they enjoy it.

In his Modern AU, he is a fan of Halloween, being a sweet tooth-haver -- he does prefer fruit, but he won’t turn down sweets, chocolate and candy. And he does enjoy dressing up as someone else, just so that he’s temporarily not himself.

tulip: how does your muse view people in general?

He does want to view people as generally good, and he believes it in a way, but he does usually regard others with some apprehension and/or suspicion. Depending on the verse, it’ll be tied into his being a clone of Jack and his fear of being seen as just the same as him, or solely his lack of being around other people before Alex’s death.

#ooc. → answer.#all you have is your fire and the place you need to reach. → headcanon & meta.#formaen #(mwah <3)#(man i don't think i made sense wrt the deception question lol)#long post cw #(... idk much about holiday in borderlands lol but if halloween IS a thing in it. then yes <3)#(doubly so wrt dressing up as someone else)

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

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Some Alec Ryder Meta

So since I couldn’t find the screenshots of Alec Ryder’s dying ‘thoughts’, I went and got them myself!* And I am uh way closer to crying than I thought I would be, Alec sort of surprised me here. Let’s go!

I was NOT prepared for his literal first thought to be of his children. And notice -- this is not his children being impressive or special or idk ordered/obedient. It’s them being happy and safe and playing and chaotic. I uh did not expect this, frankly.

I’m guessing this is where they used to live when the kids were small! (Would this be before or during their time on the Citadel? The timeline there is so hazy to me haha, I can never quite remember how that works)

Baby Scott on the swing ;______; I wonder if Alec is ‘there’ off screen in this scene, pushing him, since we start off with a shot looking over Scott’s shoulder like that

Can I just say how quietly charmed I am by the fact that in Alec’s memories Ellen isn’t captured when she was ~*young and beautiful*~ or whatever nonsense -- she’s a mature woman, the same age as himself. It feels like there is something sweet and telling in that, like they were partners/equals in his mind. (This also makes me very uncomfortable to think he didn’t ask her/didn’t get her consent at the last moment on her death bed to put her in stasis, after the twins left the room at least; he seems to have respected her so much, if he went against her wishes that’s... such a breach of everything she seems to have meant to him and really should have been addressed more because it would essentially be his big sin as a character. So I choose to believe for now that when the kids left he did one last ‘give it this one last shot and I promise that if I find nothing within a certain time I’ll let you go and grieve like a normal fucking person’ sales pitch, possibly with prepared Science to back him up because they were both kind of weird like that and I think that if anything could have worked that would. ‘But think of the scientific implications tho babe wouldn’t you want to be able to find out how worked?’ ‘...You’ve got me there’)

More confirmation that Ellen had probably come to terms with her death and Alec Really Hadn’t lol. (Ellen might have just been grateful she lost neither of her children to the eezo exposure, actually -- she would have understood intimately how phenomenally lucky they were that both the twins survived and were healthy to boot) If I were to hazard a guess I’d say that Alec probably was in pretty bad need of space therapy even before his wife got ill, she was just his emotional support and he was intelligent and driven enough to hide most of it until that stability came under threat

:( this is upsetting. It doesn’t come across as well without the movement but he’s bowing his head and putting his face in his hands. Either Ellen when she’s really sick or when she uh ‘died’

I’m fairly sure that’s Ellen’s eyes -- and crucially they’re opening again.

Mom and the twins :’) I think it’s pretty clear Alec did that thing some people (especially men) do where they sort of organize all their feelings through their partner -- “Your mother would have been proud of you, of both of you” JESUS CHRIST ALEC JUST TELL YOUR CHILDREN YOU’RE PROUD OF THEM LIKE YOU ACTUALLY MEANT TO SAY, THEY ALREADY KNOW THEIR MOM LOVED THEM FOR GOD’S SAKE YOU ARE THE UNCERTAIN ELEMENT HERE

ETA: actually this might also have something to do with how convinced he seems to be that the kids don’t need him -- that his love and attention and regard doesn’t matter or count, or would even be seen as an imposition (he consistently refers to himself pretty self-deprecatingly in connection to them, their ‘old man’ coming in and messing up their lives, like he considers his absence to probably be the best he can do for them? He certainly devalues his own impact massively, positive or negative). Meanwhile Ellen’s place in all their lives is a clear and uncontested positive so maybe that’s why he goes for her pride and her love like that. Again: who the fuck raised this weird dysfunctional man to be like this and how did he get away with it for so long haha

Alec and adult/at least teenaged twins! a) I suspect going to another galaxy with them to explore might honestly have been his idea of how bonding works, which... well and b) Sara is right behind him, leaning in like she’s listening and interested in what he’s saying and maybe even speaking too, and Scott looks to me like he’s sort of stranded on the side, looking in but not quite able to connect the same way. (This might be coloured by what I know about their respective relationships from the rest of the game, granted)

The same memory as before BUT interestingly --

the camera is turning around, like Alec is trying to get a look at his children’s faces and can’t :) this is fine and not at all illustrative of his entire deal *everything in my heart is on fire*

sOME observations:

- These flashes give you more emotional insight in him than all the unlockable memories put together, and you’ll literally never see most of them unless you’re a freak like me, painstakingly frame by framing your way through it. That... seems like a waste??

- Despite his numerous flaws and shortcomings as a parent and as a person, literally every single thought he has at the end is about his family -- and not only his wife, all of them. There’s no place for his work here at all. That doesn’t absolve him of anything, of course, but it makes me sad that he never found a better way to show it, or to emotionally connect with his children, which he seems to have a real wish to. (”Maybe six hundred years can change a man”) Bioware... Bioware sequel pls don’t leave it like this ;_________;

- He himself does not figure prominently in his memories, and when he does he is faceless and vague -- except for when he is completely alone with his grief and Ellen is gone. I think there is something to be said about the fact that he makes all these huge inspiring speeches about the unknown and exploration... and yet his actual motivation is so firmly rooted in this immense fear of the unknown and of himself, of not knowing who to be without his wife, of not knowing how to go on living, of being alone. I wonder to what degree he knows this himself. (From what I’ve read so far of Mass Effect Initiation he certainly isn’t as idealistic about the whole thing as even the game portrays him, where he’s show to be pretty clear-eyed about the Initiative already -- or maybe he sort of is an idealist, under the fear and the jaded exhaustion. Either he genuinely believes Andromeda will hold answers and that science can achieve the impossible or he’s just too scared to consider any other outcome. Oh Boy tm)

- Ellen’s illness is such a cataclysmic event for him that I really have to assume he was never that stable to begin with. And as we’ve seen: When a Ryder goes off the rails they do so in STYLE and drag thousands of people with them to an uncertain fate haha

- My personal headcanon is that Alec used to be a better dad before Ellen got ill and when the kids were still very young; when all they really needed was to be held and loved and made to feel safe, and then became more and more distant as his work with SAM progressed and the children’s emotional needs grew more complex and demanding. Sara remembers this part of their father better (or clings to it more desperately, depending on your point of view) and is also more like him in general, being driven, competitive and intensely intellectually engaged (no matter how you play her in-game, Sara is always presented as vastly more A Nerd than Scott is -- its own can of worms of course but it’s there in the text). Meanwhile Scott has reached a resigned sort of ‘It’s perfectly plausible my dad would not be able to pick me out from a crowd’ place about it and given up on expecting anything more a long time ago in self defense. I think they’ve both hit on different parts of the truth there lol

(Also Sara and Alec seem to have bonded over making fun of Scott a little bit and considering him the underachiever of the two and like Not Cool guys!!! :( )

- Anyway Alec Ryder is a very interesting and immensely flawed character and killing him off and never meaningfully engaging with him again seems like throwing away a golden opportunity. Sequel where ‘Ghost Riders’ takes on a new meaning when??? I just want the twins to be able to either yell at him or connect to him better, as appropriate to the feelings of the individual player (I totally get why people would want to give their Ryders a chance to straight up hate him)

I think where it really hurts for me is that he clearly has these feelings, the capacity for it. There’s a wealth of affection and... tenderness? reverence, nearly? in these memories. None of his outward hardass needs-everything-to-be-under-control persona. And yet he could find no way to express this or even really meaningfully stay with his own feelings and his children suffered for it. It’s just all so fucking sad

*Courtesy of DanaDuchy’s youtube channel, which is truly one of the marvels of the internet; please check it out if you have any interest at all in Bioware games or indeed RPGs/games in general, there’s SO much content and it’s all neatly organized! If like me you want to listen to all the banter of every game... this channel’s got you covered

#mass effect #mass effect andromeda #meta #alec ryder #is a real SOB but the more I learn about him the more grudging confused affection I have for him lol #this must be what it's like to be the ryder twins #today in the 'I know no one asked for this but my brain won't shut up about it' report lol

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clonelyboy · 4 years

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Teddy does have some issues regarding his own identity as his own, as opposed to Being A Clone Of Jack, and it does mess with his head, and he does sometimes feel guilty about what Jack did and worries if he’ll be the same as him, even if it’s not the same exact path, or even with the same amount of power or hold over people as Jack once had.

But Teddy does tell himself -- “I’m better than him, I’m a good person, or at least just better, and I’m nice, and I’m not-evil, and I would never shoot a baby in the face.” So yeah, he is determined to not become Jack -- at the same time, there is a little worry that that’s all he focuses on, being Not Jack, rather than being Teddy Who Is His Own Person.

#all you have is your fire and the place you need to reach. (headcanon & meta.)#(hope that 2nd paragraph makes sense lol)

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mymothershumility · 4 years

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anonymous asked: hey there! i came across your G.O.T verse drabbles last night and they are all so amazing! i just finished reading your last one. do you plan on writing any others? also do you put hints or clues in your writing or do you keep thing more secretive? i hope this doesn't come across as weird! i love how you RP laira :)

transmissions || { always accepting }

Hello, dear! Thank you so much for the message! I always enjoy reading others thoughts or messages. Feel free, at any time, to send your thoughts, questions, requests [ headcanons, metas, drabbles ], etc. I love getting them when I do.

Thank you so much for the kind words! I’m glad that you enjoyed reading them. I’m assuming the drabbles that you mentioned are the ones that go along with my [ v; fire cannot kill a dragon ] group verse. If not, please let me know which particular verse you’re referring to. I have several group verses for AS.OIAF / G.O.T.

As for the verse that I’ve mentioned, I do plan to continue on with the drabbles for it. I’m still working on Part 11 currently. I’m uncertain how many total parts I’ll do, but there will likely be several more still to come.

I have done some foreshadowing / hidden some Ea.ster eggs throughout the drabbles. Some of my favorites [ so far ] are below the cut.

Part 1

Should anything happen to her before Daenerys’ return, the Seven Kingdoms will be without a queen and without an heir to ascend to the throne. And, without a queen or an heir, open war is likely to erupt between the already fragile peace that exists between the kingdoms.

Part 2

Something might happen if he leaves her side. It’s what she hears whispered in her mind. She hears all the gruesome and terrifying things that may happen should he depart from her side.

“When have I ever doubted your word?” Hal asks her. The words are murmured to her, chin braced against her shoulder. His hand abandons its place in her hair, dropping so that his arm can join his other and link protectively across her middle. ‘Never,’ Laira thinks to tell him. Such a thought startles her in a way. Her husband has always held her word in high regard.”

“I will keep you safe,” he promises her. “Both of you. Nothing is going to harm you. Not while I am here with you.”

Part 3

She grows leery of the maids that frequent her apartments within the Holdfast… grows leery of the food they bring her to sate her hunger through the day. It is unlike her to be fearful of such things. She has never allowed such thoughts to plague her before… not even when in exile across the sea where the Harpies played their malicious shadow games.

“I do not want you to leave,” Laira admits suddenly. There is no discussion of her reaction in the Small Council chamber, no discussion of her fleeing and hiding within their apartments. There is no discussion of her uncharacteristic reactions to matters. It doesn’t seem to matter to her… or to him. What matters most is that he hears her now. What matters most is that he listens to her. “Please do not leave,” she begs him.

Part 4

The remainder of the afternoon is uneventful. Laira sips at her tea –lemon and mint– as afternoon fades to evening. Nymeria departs from her earlier than in previous evenings. Laira does not complain, fatigue beginning to weigh heavily upon her. When she retires for the evening, she drinks the last of the tea from her cup before slipping into bed. There is little more than a quarter of the original pot left that had been brought to her and, she finds, she has no desire to finish it.

‘There are no innocent dragons,’ the voice growls.

Part 5

Her voice falls short. Blood gathers in the back of her throat and as she chokes on it, she sees nothing except for a lone crow perched upon a branch of Winterfell’s weirwood heart tree, its three red eyes blinking back at her.

Out among the trees within the garden, Laira hears the call of a crow. All at once, her head feels as though it is going to split open. She fears she may turn herself ill the pain is so much. Viserion turns her head with an angry sounding growl, spitting flame into a nearby pear tree. The tree catches flame with ease. There is a final panicked crow’s call before everything goes quiet.

“This city is a sickness,” Viserion growls, her melodic voice clear. She returns her head to the balcony, molten eyes pools of gold in the bright moonlight overhead. “We should leave,” she tells her little golden dragoness. “I will keep us safe,” she vows. “I will take us somewhere out enemies will be unable to reach us.”

Part 6

‘A foul beast has been tormenting you,’ the soft voice whispers. ‘He continues even now. He has turned his attention to your husband now that you are beyond reach.’ Had she still been trapped within the walls of the Red Keep, such whispers would have seen her dissolving into tears. There is something different about them here. The voice is different… the very tone so entirely different from the one she has come to know over the last weeks. ‘Call him here,’ the voice urges. ‘He will be safe here. This is where he should be. You must stay until the Bleeding Star rises and the stones splinter open.’

Part 7

Daenys wonders if her mama is being truthful in her story. It’s hard to imagine Mama crying over anything. It’s even harder imagining Papa doing so. Then she remembers that Papa says Mama never tells stories… not even when things are hard to say. She remembers that Papa says that if there is no one else he can count on, he can count on Mama and trust her with anything that he might need. She wraps her arms tighter around Mama’s neck with the thought and lets her head rest against her shoulder… just for a minute. If Papa can count on Mama with everything, then Daenys can too.

Torrhen leaves his daughters to their chatter and their play, confident in their protection within the godswood. Few came into the woods and those who did often came early in the mornings.

‘Aegon only ever seeks anything from me if it is of benefit or if it is of convenience for him. It is how he has always been.’

It is her chosen bit of reading from the previous night that inspired her dream, she knows. The oddity of the dreams is not lost upon her, though it is not the first time that she has dreamt of the Conquering Queen and the King Who Knelt. Why her mind is dwelling upon them of late, Laira cannot say. It is a preferred dream, though, when compared to those that haunted her within the walls of the Red Keep.

For a few moments, Laira lies awake, eyes looking over into the soft flames still lapping at the remnants of wood burning within the hearth. As she begins to drift back into slumber, she watches the flames and shadows dance along the dark stone. Once, she nearly convinces herself that she sees the likeness of a dragon dancing within the flames and along the smooth expanse of the stones that hold it. The likeness is gone within the next moment and never appears again as the queen begins to drift back to sleep.

Part 8

As Daenys looks up at her aunt, small hand brushing softly against Fyrebloom’s crimson scales, she frowns. Daenys can’t see any of her mama in Aunt Rhaenys. Mama’s eyes are dark violet where Aunt Rhaenys’ are pale lilac. Mama is tall where Aunt Rhaenys is short. And, Mama’s skin is the same pretty olive color that Daenys’ is while Aunt Rhaenys’ skin is paler. Even her aunt’s hair is different from her mama’s. Aunt Rhaenys’ is more gold while her mama’s looks like threads of spun silver.

Aunt Rhaenys reaches to rest a hand against her head and, when she does, Fyrebloom turns on her with a vicious snarl and a snap of her jaws. Her aunt just barely avoids having her hand snapped up in the small dragoness’ jaws.

“I don’t want to be Queen! I don’t want to marry Aenys!” Daenys shouts it back and, immediately, Fyrebloom is hissing and snapping her jaws towards her aunt. Daenys wants Aunt Rhaenys to go away. She wants her to go away so, so bad.

Visenya laughs at that, the sound low and dark sounding. “Is that your attempt at a threat, sister?” she questions, dark amethyst eyes staring down at her youngest sibling. “What will Aegon do?” she challenges. “Take my titles from me? Fly to Winterfell with Balerion? I dare him to try.” “Visenya…” “Balerion is old,” the eldest Queen continues on, her voice overtaking her sister’s. “She is difficult to rouse. Or, so the dragonkeepers tell me. She is prone to laziness now. She is slow.” Visenya steps closer to Rhaenys then, “I dare our brother to try some underhanded attempt against my family,” she admits. “If he does, Vhagar and I will rip the Black Dread and her rider from the skies.” The threat is there, laid bare for Rhaenys to take as she wishes. Visenya cares not if she runs to Aegon to tell what has been spoken. She will hold true to her spoken words should the necessity arise.

Part 9

Taking the book from her husband, Visenya turns it to face her, eyes glancing across the words on the page and those detailed along the top of the page in onyx and golden lettering. “The Great Other,” she reads aloud, body shifting nearer to his when she feels the slip of his hands under the edges of her chemise and up along the backs of her thighs. “A Northern tale?” she questions. There is no true interest for her in the text or its origins. It keeps her game alive, though… no matter how short the time. “One from across the sea,” he tells her, fingers drifting along the backs of her bare thighs. “It was among my mother’s collection. She always claimed it was given to her by an Essosi trader at White Harbor,” Torrhen explains. As he speaks, his hands roam higher, sweeping in until he can press his fingers along the inner plains of her thighs. There is no denying the flutter of the muscles as his fingers drift along his wife’s skin. “It is, supposedly, a text from Asshai by the Shadow. Given its translation, though, I am doubtful of its origins.” For a flicker of time, Visenya focuses less on what Torrhen speaks in answer to her and more on the press of his fingers trailing along the backs of her thighs and then up between them. “I am unfamiliar with it,” Visenya tells him, eyes glancing briefly across the words scrawled upon the page. “A tale linked with the Red God of the Asshai’i,” the Queen murmurs. As she speaks, eyes still drifting across the page, several phrases seem to jump forward. Lord of Darkness. God of Night and Terror. Soul of Ice.

“I do not want something to happen to you,” Visenya tells him, voice little more than a whisper. “Something could happen,” she goes on. Aegon had grown selfish and petty in recent years… had always been so, yet the conquering of six kingdoms had only amplified his nature. It would not be above him to strike Visenya at the points where it would hurt her most. As it was, there were three of them: her children, her husband, and Vhagar. Her brother will not be so foolish as to make an attempt on her children… not after their most recent discussion. He will not strike against Vhagar, either. Not when the dragoness is producing clutches of healthy dragon hatchlings. Aegon will not be above striking at Torrhen, though. He would do so just to make a point… just to hurt her in some unimaginable way.

Nothing more is said regarding Viserion’s observations. The dragoness slips into a quiet slumber while Laira keeps her seat along her garden bench. Dragonkin lies forgotten in her lap, page still open to the very one that she had ceased reading when Viserion’s questioning had begun. Much the same, her copy of the Jade Compendium still lies alongside her, having never been opened during her tenure out among the gardens.

Part 10

Listening to his response, Laira keeps her fingers busy against his skin. She hears him say more, yet struggles to discern what he says. All at once, her attention is drawn across her and Hal’s apartments to the paned windows on the opposite side of the space. She catches sight of something out beyond the glass. It is dark, moving about along the outer windowsill. Covered in shadow, it seems to be animal-like as the Queen watches it in its movements. Suddenly, a shadowed head snatches to look through the glass in her direction, three points of red light shining bright in the darkness. And, just for a brief moment, it feels as though a blade has been shoved through her temples.

“How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have?” her voice mocks, fingers drumming along the arms of her chair. “A thousand eyes, and one, the answer goes. And yet, Lord Bloodraven, you have been blind.”

“Isn’t that how you dealt with Daemon?” she accuses. When he takes another threatening step towards her, her fingers reach to rest along the leathered grip of the sword resting along the top of her desk. A distraction. Nonetheless, Dark Sister is warm underneath her fingers. There is a comfort in that. “You have always been a coward. A coward and a kinslayer.”

The feel of Dark Sister being ripped from her flesh is far more painful than the initial strike. Shiera screams, crumbles into a mass of bloodied silver and pearl colored silks and shaking limbs. Blood has already started to gather in her throat. She feels herself choking on it, gasps for air. Above her, Bloodraven is now standing, the shaft of the broken arrow she’d used to attack him still protruding from his eye socket. His own face is a twisted and bloodied mess. “Did you truly believe that you could kill me so easily, Shiera?” He sheathes Dark Sister in her scabbard, the blade still bloody from her newest victim. “There is no place that you can go that I will not find you and put an end to you.”

#;anonymous #;transmissions #v; fire cannot kill a dragon #;outofjayd #tw: blood #tw: gore

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flamebearrel · 4 years

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What Puts the “Fun” in “Fun Dead”? Chapter Seven

Fandom: Eddsworld

Synopsis: What started out with a simple shopping trip on a snow day ends up with the latest zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately, Mark doesn’t realize until he’s right in the middle of it. Oh, well. Looks like no one else has noticed, either. He’ll just have to give them a few reminders.

Word Count: 980

Original Post Date: Early 2018

Characters: Mark, Fun Dead Kid (here named Charlie) (Minor unnamed characters that are intended to be Patryck, Paul and Yanov)

Ships: None

Trigger Warnings: Grief, Arguments, Zombies, Fighting, Guns, Blood, Biting (Will be added to a bit in later chapters)

Other Notes: Based off the events of the episodes “The Snogre” and “Fun Dead”; intended to take place within canon; discusses meta concepts; the neighbors and the main three are friendlier with each other now; each chapter has a picture to go along with it; headcanon names

Ao3 Link

Previous Chapter

Final Chapter

~~~

He didn’t know how long he was in there. In fact, Mark didn’t know how he got there at all. The only thing he knew was that he had somehow wormed his way into an unoccupied storage room, gotten down on the floor and was now lying in a puddle of his own utter grief.

All his anguish had drained away a while ago, leaving him with nothing but a melancholy acceptance of the truth. Apparently all his efforts weren’t enough. Now the last people he cared about were gone.

That was it. Mark stood up and limped toward the exit, thinking, Might as well stick my head into a zombie’s mouth and tell him, “Bon appétit.”

But before he could even reach the door's handle a voice sounded just outside. “Hey, Mister Marcus? That you in there?”

“Charlie?” Mark opened the door just enough to peep out. “How did you find me?”

“I could hear your sobbing loud and clear, sir.”

Face flushing a little, the blond allowed his young friend inside. Charlie continued, “Did you find your friends yet? I think I know a way out.”

Curiosity peaked in him for a moment, but Mark quickly lost it with the reminder of his neighbors. “No, I think-... I think you should go on without me,” he muttered.

“And why would I do that?”

“I... don’t really see a point, not anymore. They’re- they’re gone.”

Hesitation. Then Charlie responded, “I know it feels bad, but that can’t stop you. Stay in the present. You can still stay alive.”

Mark stared at him.

With an awkward cough, the young brunette questioned, “Why’re you giving me that look?”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” He turned abruptly, a sarcastic laugh filling his throat. “Saying all that? Trying to make me just shrug it off like losing the only people I know isn’t a big deal?”

“N-no, I-”

“That is not how it works, Charles! You can’t just- just expect me to be alright about this-”

“And YOU can’t just say that I don’t know how it feels! YOU don’t know about what happened in that arcade!”

The turtlenecked man stopped, slowly turning to face the younger boy. “What happened in-”

“My mom...”

“...Oh.”

There was silence, before Mark ventured, “I’m so sorry.”

Charlie looked away. “Nevermind. I just don’t... Do you want to come, or not?”

“...Okay.” With a slow nod, Mark grabbed his bags and his bat and followed Charlie out the door.

Immediately several zombies staggered towards them. Charlie shot them with perfect precision and Mark followed, swinging his bat to clear the remains. The two dashed into a clearing.

In swarms the mobs came, intent on reaching their prey. Mark could feel his heart pounding as he gripped his weapon. “Charlie,” he shouted, “wh- what’s your plan?”

“You know that dead guy from the arcade?” The brunette gunned down two more zombies and kicked the one behind him in the stomach.

“Yeah?”

“Well I’ve seen other people around in the same uniform. And that symbol on those uniforms? They’re from the Red Army.”

Mark went in for a full swing towards several more of the mobs. “The… what? I don’t believe I’ve heard of them.”

“The Red Army. My, uh, my dad works there.” More gunshots, more bat swings, more zombies felled. The two of them ran past a kids’ ride. “And from what I’ve seen, they’re probably gonna come back and scout for survivors.”

“So you’re saying… they could help us?”

“Yeah! All we need is-”

“To get them to notice us! Would getting some of those uniforms possibly do the trick?”

Charlie grinned. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

They immediately made way for the arcade. Once they got inside, the two young men stripped the bloodied cloak away from its owner Mark had seen before. There was another one, too, one with especially bold eyebrows that didn’t seem to care much when they stole his cloak and took off with it.

Buttoning one of the coats on himself, Mark quietly peered out the door. His smaller friend soon followed him.

“The rollercoasters,” the blond mouthed, “need to get somewhere they can see us…”

And to the rollercoasters they went. Charlie fired with perfect precision at the zombies as they weaved through the lines.

One mob, missing most of its nose, lurched toward them. It was killed with a swift shot to the head, but not before Charlie noticed his remaining ammo. “We’ve gotta hurry, Mark! Only got a few shots left-”

“That doesn’t matter now! I can hear the helicopter!”

Finally they stumbled the rollercoaster’s loading dock. It was to their luck for once that the chopper was just flying over. “HEY,” the two screamed, frantically waving their hands.

The chopper stopped, hovering in midair, until a man with slick black hair was lowered down on a ladder. “Wait a second,” he muttered as he neared, “I don’t recognize you two-”

“Just let us on!” Mark dropped his bat and rushed over, Charlie in hot pursuit. “If we have to join your army, so be it, just let. Us. On.”

Slowly the raven-haired man nodded, stepping to the side and helping Charlie on. Mark was about to follow when something in the back of his mind urged him to stop.

He was leaving his friends behind. For good. Without anything but a few moments of grievance. Would they want him to do that?

Of course they would, right?

It didn’t matter anyways, because he suddenly felt a sharp pain explode from his upper arm. Mark turned around, hope draining from him like blood from a fresh wound.

And sure enough, a zombie was hanging off his arm.

They were suddenly everywhere, piling on him for their feast, and he barely heard Charlie’s scream before he fell and everything faded to an inky, lifeless black.

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telesthisia · 4 years

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(No reblogs! Make a new post please!)

|| The Basics ||

Name: Zelda of Hyrule Nickname(s): Zel, Zellie, Elle, Ellie Age: 19 Species: Human or well Hylian

|| Personal ||

Religious Belief: The three golden goddess + Hylia but... she’s known as the forgotten goddess in her timeline since certain legends faded away from the public’s knowledge but not at all the royal family’s. Sins: Lust / Greed / Gluttony / Sloth / Pride / Envy / Wrath Virtues: Chastity / Charity / Diligence / Humility / Kindness / Patience /Justice Primary Goals In Life: To create a brighter future for her people for generations on end, leading to the eventually famed Golden Age before the Hero of Time’s downfall... though Hyrule has recovered once she’s born there are still remnants of ruin from that era as such she wants to protect her people as well as make Hyrule safer, while she doesn’t do it within her lifetime because limited lifespan her dream does still come true years later aka LOZ and LOZ 2 don’t be fooled by the plot, Hyrule was in its prime during those games! Languages Known: Hylian Secrets: Well... it’s no secret among her staff but outside the castle, she keeps her poor health (heart condition and undiagnosed rare anemia problem) and near lack of magical stamina a secret since that can put her at a pretty bad disadvantage. She has plenty of enemies, namely those who align themselves with Ganon and the resurrection of him is still possible provided the person is a powerful mage with knowledge of doing that sort of stuff in the first place. And then there’s also court drama she has to worry about but that’s for another long lengthy headcanon post I should have out... soon... ish. Also while obvious with partners and in a meta sense and if you’re super observant but her guise Elle is, in fact, her, the princess of Hyrule so... ye... Quirks: Her birthmark of the Triforce is... certainly unique. But if we’re talking mannerism rather than physical then allow me to just ramble because hoo boy! When nervous or worked up, she often tucks her stray hairs behind her ears, even when she’s not feeling those emotions she’s always fiddling around with it (in her royal wear) often flipping it out of her face or trying to make it look a little neater. She has the Pendant of Courage, a gift from Link and often clutches on it when she feels the need to summon her courage if she’s feeling not that brave, often trying to recall Link’s courage during his many adventures. When using any of her PSI powers she tends to have a nose bleed, as such, she often carries around a handkerchief and tries to cover it up before going off somewhere to stop the bleeding. When laughing, she likes to hold her smile behind her hand... and when yawning she tries to cover her mouth. SHE IS THE WORST COOK TO EVER EXIST holy crap but can make mean cookies. When flirting (more like embarrassed flirting pft) she looks away to the side and twirls her hair around her finger trying to hide her red cheeks. Her romantic out view on life stems from the fact that she was constantly surrounded by death and history and art so there’s morbid beauty in the melancholy... this girl gets excited over Friday the 13th and samhain ok like... there’s a lot to unpack with that. THERE’S MORE BUT I’VE RAMBLED FAR ENOUGH!!! Savvies: Well... she bakes pretty good cookies BUT UH!!! YEAH she’s pretty proficient with her light magic! While she can’t do the amazing things other Zeldas can do because of limitations she’s not someone you would want to mess around with. She’s learned to work around those limitations and has great control over her powers. On top of that, she somehow knows how to use a crossbow so :’) while not the light arrows (she’s too weak to wield a bow) and it was a lucky shot she at least knows enough about how it works to fire it in the first place. She reads a lot, even as a kid she’d sneak off to the library to read the history about Hyrule or read maps and well she’s pretty knowledgable about her nation as a whole! And thanks to sneaking out she knows how to sneak past the guards and knows all of the secret passages in her castle like the back of her hand! Can’t forget her amazing political insight and ability to think outside the box! She has pretty innovative ideas for her times esp when concerning the common folk, but sometimes they don’t always go through because well... nobles.

|| Physical ||

Height: 5′0″ Weight: you never ask a lady her weight! >:0 Scars/Birthmarks: Has a cat scratch scar on her right palm which is also where the triforce is located! Abilities/Powers: Light magic, as the descendant of the mortal goddess she has been blessed with the Light Force. On top of that she’s come from a line of sages and has the Triforce of Wisdom so as you expect she has so much magic. She can heal, bless your weapons, smite away darkness, sense darkness (As a matter of fact she’s pretty sensitive to it and it makes her lowkey sick if it’s too much) and then there’s her PSI abilities which includes clairvoyance and telepathy! And then... her connection to the spirit realm. Restrictions: AHAHAHA SO MUCH, she’s a glass cannon which is why she’s so, so, so easy to kidnap in the first place. She may put up a fight but not for long, as such her tactics are always to make a distraction and then escape. But she has poor stamina and just a poor heart, she can’t really overexert herself without a) causing pain and b) passing the hell out which was common in her younger days. Using magic takes up a lot of stamina as shown in ALTTP esp with the more powerful spells, you need an amazing reserve to cast all of that and sadly while she has good control she doesn’t have good reserves. SOOOOOOO to fix this she always has to take medicine of magic. Mana blockage is a thing that can happen, more often than she’d like to admit which causes pain once again and makes using magic pretty hard. Now onto her telepathy and clairvoyance. While they sound useful there are restrictions on those as well, for one with telepathy while she can contact anyone so long as she finds their signature subconscious she doesn’t have to worry about distance too much so long as they are within her range which is... maybe more than 200 meters? I need to think about the range more because there are certain places where she can reach you and cannot but there’s def a range limit. She tends to get nosebleeds and headaches from using telepathy. Her clairvoyance is where she can see bits of the future, but they are very vague and hard to decipher and there’s always a chance of the future changing or not changing. As for her connection to the spirit realm, pretty much she can see dead people... in her dreams and there’s no way of shutting this power off she’s gotta deal with the horrors that is this realm. Now seeing spirits isn’t anything new in LOZ but contact to the spirit realm is something that’s implied that only royal family members can do... as implied by Zelda’s words in BOTW where she said her mom (or grandma??) could hear the voices of the spirit realm.

|| Favorites ||

Favourite Drink: Rose tea Favourite Pizza Topping: Basil... Favourite Color: Blue! Favourite Music Genre: She pretty much likes slow and relaxing music, piano comes to mind but *kayne shrug* Favourite Book Genre: Romance aHEM as a princess she doesn’t have time to read cheesy romance novels and fantasize about the day where someone riding on a white horse will sweep her off her feet and they ride off into the sunset never having to bear the burden of her heritage and responsibilities hahaha..... but history and folklore. She likes tragic stories that have bittersweet endings. Favourite Movie Genre: Fantasy, tragic tales, suspense, romance flicks Favourite Season: Spring Favourite Butt Type:

Favourite Swear Word: "Goodness me!” Favourite Scent: Forest scent, the fields, that ancient scent you smell when visiting old places, the smell of book pages Favourite Quote: “Time has stopped for me long ago.”

|| Fun Stuff ||

Bottom or Top:

Sings In The Shower: Yes!!! Well... rose soaked bathwater because she’s spoiled stupid by her castle staff and Impa but she’ll hum a tune here and there! Likes Bad Puns: Of course! She has the playfully innocent attitude so puns is right up her alley! Morality: Lawful / Neutral / Chaotic / Good / Gray / Evil Build: Slender / Scrawny / Bony / Fit / Athletic / Herculean / Babyfat / Pudgy / Obese / Other. Favourite Food: APPLES!!! Namely baked apples and more importantly apple strudel! Her nation is famous for having delicious apples that can help cure fatigue and even rise up stamina a bit! She’s very much a follower of “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” esp if that doctor keeps giving her bitter medicines. “Boss” Theme Music : Excuse me for using a sad track... but... sAD MUSIC HONESTLY SHE’S DEPRESSION PERSONIFIED!! It reflects her hidden melancholy for like everything. I feel like if you have to fight her as a boss it’ll be more of a beautifully sad moment than something epic like that boss fight with puppet zelda which slaps honestly. Their Opinion On The Mun: “Does she thrive on my pain?”

Was tagged by: no one

Tag 15 People: wHO EVER WANTS TO DO THIS

#OK THIS TOOK LONGER THAN IT SHOULD HAVE #because i ramble so much listen i have a lot of headcanons #dash games.#about.

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syzygyzip · 5 years

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Solaire is the Sandworm and Other Apocrypha

What follows is an essay about Knight Solaire, a character from Dark Souls 1. The essay discusses his metatextual influence, his symbolic import, and a few theories about his supposed fate in Dark Souls 3.

On the Nature of Headcanon Canon as a concept adopts different rules when it comes to videogames. More concretely than in other artforms, the content of the game changes according to its witness. You can’t account for another person’s playthrough, so you are obligated to trust their story—within reason. A player can tell you that they beat a boss without taking a single hit. That’s reasonable. A player can say that they saw an enemy clip through a wall, placing it in an otherwise empty environment. Could be true, might want to see footage, but reasonable. Further out, a player can tell you that a completely unprecedented game-object appeared out of nowhere, started flying around and corrupting objects. This is unlikely, but, like some crytptozoological encounter, could be explained away by the witness’ misapprehension (maybe a hacker invades the game and thwarts the rules).

Just like witnessing the mothman or other spectral phenomena in real life, the person’s impression of the event is real. To borrow Jung’s term, it is a subjective fact of the psyche. Because it is “of the psyche,” it describes the psyche.

Physical is not the only criterion of truth: there are also psychic truths which can neither be explained nor proved nor contested in any physical way. If, for instance, a general belief existed that the river Rhine had at one time flowed backwards from its mouth to its source, then this belief would in itself be a fact even though such an assertion, physically understood, would be deemed utterly incredible. Beliefs of this kind are psychic facts which cannot be contested and need no proof.

[…] The psyche is an autonomous factor, and religious statements are psychic confessions which in the last resort are based on unconscious, i.e., on transcendental processes.” (Jung, Carl pars. 553-555).

Unusual things will happen in games, and still more unusual things will be perceived to happen. What happens “off-screen” in the game world has no true authority, not even from the developers, because every player acts as a co-author. Some fan theories are formed by mentally structuring objects and events. Other fan theories seem to spring forth fully formed from the inky off-screen unconscious; in this case, for the theorist it feels more like a discovery than a construction. But most headcanons are a composite. Theories and headcanons are also informed by the meta-culture—by what a game and its characters have become in the eyes of “the community.” Black Iron Tarkus, for instance, has no lines of dialogue in any game, but has developed a personality and prestige from his interpretation by the fandom. Such occurrences are almost a matter of course. Games, especially when they reach franchise-level popularity, spawn stories and memes. The game reveals content not programmed by its developers. It is doubtful that anyone at FromSoft foresaw Tarkus’ fandom. Nor would any on the staff have guessed that a few discrete game items (Giant’s Armor, Havel’s Ring, the Mask of the Father, etc) would cohere into a folk hero called Giant Dad. I say “folk hero,” though he is a scourge to many. This “character,” who is really just an exploitative blend of game mechanics, would be made, remade, imitated, elevated to memetic and then iconic status. Most other archetypes in Dark Souls are divided into their attributes: Helm of Artorias, Sword of Artorias, etc. Giant Dad is the reverse: he is constellated by his attributes; none of them alone hold his pneuma.

The Knight Solaire is more famous than either of these figures. Like Artorias, he is a character specifically designed to appeal and to exist in relation to; and yet like Giant Dad, he is a fan-fueled nexus of meme. Beyond both of these capacities is the degree to which he emanates himself beyond the franchise. His catchphrases “Praise the Sun!” and “jolly cooperation” have taken on a life outside of Dark Souls—a scope of renown unreached by Giant Dad. Especially noteworthy is his corresponding emoticon \[T]/ How many pop cultural icons can be summed up in 5 pieces of unicode? He has also been coagulated into an Amiibo, which is another ontologically ambiguous prestige, occupying a strange corner between meatspace, the virtual, and the symbolic apparatus of capitalism. But he is not quite so easily as commodified, as a Squid Kid or an Isabelle. He is not moe like they are. He does not have a face. But that is not say he is featureless: he has a personality and a mystique that coheres throughout his diegetic presence, his cross-cultural memetic tendrils, and his various costumes in headcanon. What force accounts for this coherence? No archetype can be summed up into a single definition or personality, but the style by which they draw attributes and myths around them allows us some understanding.

The Knight of the Sun When encountered in Dark Souls 1, the character of Solaire presents a rare locus of optimism. He is standing in the sunlight, staring into the sky in quiet appreciation. He is immediately friendly and encouraging to the player, and gives them the tool of “jolly cooperation.”

I want to emphasize how much Solaire’s demeanor stands out in the milieu. Though he is encountered at an early point, the game has already introduced the player to an extremely dismal and unforgiving world. They have likely met many overpowering obstacles and dejected NPCs, and begun to realize how scarce is the refuge of the bonfire. It doesn’t take much exposure to Lordran to take on its infectious loneliness. Solaire’s optimism cuts through this bleak fog like a lighthouse, and he literally gives the player the key to online collaboration. From another gameplay standpoint, consider how the player has become conditioned to dark corners, to ambushes, and fatal surprises; to visually scouring the environment like a rat, wary of predators and keen to spot a glowing treasure. For a moment, Solaire stops the desperate scavenging to direct your attention to the skybox. These contemplative silences have become a signature of the Souls series, but this is perhaps the first directed instance.

This is to say that Solaire is the first personification of goodwill that the player meets, so early into their journey, and is thus easily wrapped up into that symbolism. As the player’s relationship to the world takes on new dimensions (not simply new game areas, but entirely new spheres: online play, community discourse, lorekeeping), the symbol of Solaire follows them. In online play, he pops up as someone’s cosplay—and spectacularly, most of these sunbros, these independent actors, will reflect his behavior accurately! In Souls communities, Solaire is almost omnipresent, as people will post his slogan or his emoticon as a way of communicating affirmation, respect, or pure joy. There are other things to like about Solaire, like the fact that he is relatively powerful as an ally in boss fights, that he has the cool lightning move, or that it is revealed his armor is “average,” and that his strength comes from some inner source. Another element that should not be underestimated is the psychological potency of his implicit longing for a father. It goes without saying that the motif of the absent father has been especially compelling in the 21st century, ubiquitous in mass media, and often exploited by advertisers, etc. Beyond that, Solaire is searching “for his Sun,” an object which can be interpreted countless ways; suffice it to say it is a timeless and recognizable symbol of purpose and wholeness.

For all these reasons and more, Solaire is an easy point of projection for the player. He is an image both relatable and aspirational; he is average and exceptional. He is savvy, strong, and kind, and never in hyperbolic measure. He realistically represents a player’s best traits. The quality of his goodness is unspecific and broad; it becomes an anchor point for any virtue a player may value, as can be seen in the varied mutations he takes on in the subculture, becoming in turn funkier, wiser, more heroic. This trait of mutability, in itself, is generous! In a game that is by now famous for its therapeutic value in treating depression, Solaire’s influence should not be disregarded. Here is an illustrative example of the potential effect of Solaire on a player, posted to reddit by user unsuppressedYay:

Like most, when I was playing Dark Souls, I was in a very bad time of my life (which was incidentally only a couple months ago). I was at a college that I hated, with roommates who were not accepting of me, and many friends who had stopped hanging out with me. The only joy I would have is going home on the weekends, playing Dark Souls until I accomplished something and then going out to see my friends from back home. In this dark time i had isolated myself from most people during the week and was lonely and didn’t accomplished much, as such my grades also suffered. it was a bad time.

By playing dark souls, I felt accomplishment after getting through a particularly tough area or beating a boss. It gave me a reason to go on, that I would continue in the doomed world of lordran where i had to reach a fire with no good ending. It gave me encouragement to continue in my own life and applying to a different college and get my life back on track.

So to the point. I had accidentally spoiled what happened to Solaire. but I was still unable to stop it. I thought the chaos bugs were the big bugs in the lava after lost izalith. I felt so guilty and like I actually lost someone I cared about. I felt the obligation to wear his armor until the very end of the game. It made things significantly harder because of how weak it was compared to normal armor, but I stuck with it. The item description from the armor was something along the lines of saying that Solaire had no special power or magic, like we did. He made the armor himself, and was strong through his dedication and work ethic and never willing to give up to get his sun. So thanks Dark Souls and thanks Solaire for reminding me that optimism is the best way to go about things.

tl;dr cheesy story about dark souls helping me get through tough time, and feeling obligation to beat the game with solaires armor due to his wonderful optimism, and guilt over his death.

Even if a player doesn’t specifically don Solaire’s armor in tribute, they likely integrate some aspect of his character in other ways. It can be as simple as performing the Praise the Sun gesture before a boss or upon victory. Miraculously, the gesture conveys the attitude quite plainly. The phrase “what happened to Solaire” alludes to the tragic fate that befalls him if the player does not intervene: he goes hollow in Lost Izalith, loses his enthusiasm and direction, and apparently mistakes a Chaos Bug for the sun which he seeks. After this point he will be hostile to the player, and will be wearing the cursed thing upon his head. This piece of headgear, formed from the body of a chaos bug, emits a lighted orb resembling the sun. If the player follows an arcane route through the game, they can avoid this outcome, and bring Solaire as a helpful ally in the final fight against Lord Gwyn.

Solaire as Gwyn’s Son For a long time, the battle at the immemorial kiln seemed like a fitting resolution to Solaire’s arc, as Gwyn was assumed to be his estranged father. Complementing Solaire’s recognition of an affinity between the Sun and the Father, we are told that Gwyn had a long-lost firstborn son. While essentially disproved by the apparent revelation of Gwyn’s actual first-born in Dark Souls 3, this lore speculation continues to live on in the imagination of the Souls community. It remains as another fact of the psyche, and thereby further illuminates the nature of Solaire. To understand why this is significant, we have to go a little bit into the symbolism of the Sun. You may be surprised to hear that people have been aware of the Sun for a long time now, and it has accrued significations far too numerous to list in full. So we will just mention a few of its rays, those that coincide with Solaire’s virtues: generosity, joviality, light, warmth, and cooperation. It also symbolizes the gift of life, vitality, will, and essence. Then there is that important attribute: obviousness; there is simply no denying the Sun in the sky, as it illuminates everything around you, and your planet circles it incessantly. But this principle of “apparentness” follows the sun to its cultural correspondences, like the lion, who is known to be named Leo. Which chakra does the sun relate to? Why, the solar plexus. Guess which metal the Sun corresponds to. It’s gold. You don’t have to be an occultist or a psychologist to notice the sun’s dignitaries: they have a way of exuding themselves. So it is with the conspicuously named Knight Solaire and his undeniable presence. It is simply one of his attributes: the ability to beam out from the Souls world, through the metatext, and into broader strata of culture.

The solar principle is also a consciousness principle. To “shed light” upon something is to become conscious of it. Thus the Sun describes both the ego and the Self (the inner image of God). The ego can be thought of as a low-res isomorphism of the Self, or as an inner, inextinguishable “divine spark.” It seems that this spark is the source from which Solaire derives his boundless optimism. Solaire ambivalently identifies with the Sun, and marvels at it outside himself, terming it as a “magnificent father.” Though he is a source of light for the player, he humbles himself before the “gross incandescence” of some higher power. This ego-Self dynamic, so essential to human experience, triggers a (conscious or unconscious) question of reconciliation. So players may wonder, “Who is the father of Solaire? To whom does he defer?” and the natural affinities between Solaire and Gwyn present themselves. Aside from the fact that it is later contradicted, this genealogy is also simply too concrete and anthropocentric to satisfy the greater mystery. The Solaire-Gwyn interpretation remains as a psychological fact, but it is just the beginning. It is the exoteric story, revealed to players of DS1 not as deception, but as an inaugural step for constellating a much more complex archetype. Now that we have taken a good look about how well the figure of Solaire invites a player’s projections, we will move on to a few other lore theories, far stranger and more infamous.

Solaire Has Become a Worm Who was Knight Solaire and what became of him? Some say he is the great Carthus Sandworm, writhing around the Smoldering Lake in the ruins of Hell. While apparently originally suggested in earnest, the Sandworm story has come to be known as a meme theory. As we have discussed, a meme won’t exist if it’s not compelling on some level.

Here is the apocryphal myth as commonly understood. Canonically the player fails to save Solaire after he wanders into Lost Izalith in search of his Sun. He discovers the Chaos Bug (or slays it and discovers its corpse), and mistakes its gentle glow for his personal sun. Worn as headgear, it becomes the Sunlight Maggot, a “loathsome parasite” that is “completely immobile, yet still lives.” Solaire goes hollow, losing his identity and sense of purpose. He despairs. We don’t know whether the parasite produces this abject condition in Solaire, or whether it is symptomatic, or coincidental. Therefore speculation begins here. Assuming the player does not destroy the mad Solaire, he wanders around the underworld for a very long time. As the years go by the vast hellscape of what was once Izalith disintegrates. Its army of demons becomes hills of corpses. The land itself is now nothing more than a small maze of ruins, and a warm puddle—the so-called “Smouldering Lake.” During this time, the theory suggests, the parasite has completely consumed Solaire, turning him into the “Carthus Sandworm” an enormous, Dune-esque burrowing worm that spits lightning.

So because Solaire was overtaken by a Chaos Bug, it is assumed he never left Carthus and became the worm. The further justification(?) for this theory is as follows. The worm spits lightning as Solaire does. The worm drops Lightning Stake, a miracle that mentions lost dragon slayers, who are affiliated with Warriors of Sunlight and thus Solaire. The worm also has human appendages sticking out from its body, and drops an undead bone shard, which are seen as clues that the worm was once human. (It is also suggested by some that Solaire’s might and indefatigable nature are the reason that he was not consumed by the parasite, but instead transformed into an enormous creature. But this point is often glossed over in the meme-theory variant.)

We can see that the diegetic evidence upon which the case for Solaire-as-Worm rests is rather thin. So what accounts for its popularity? Why does it make some kind of intuitive sense? Why does it generate enough interest to be passed around, albeit ironically? Let’s examine the origin point of the story: Solaire venturing into Lost Izalith and losing his mind to a Chaos Bug. The story of a solar hero venturing into the underworld has—once again—existed for as long as people have been staring at the sun. Each day the Sun goes down, and comes up again reborn. Psychologically, the descent into the underworld symbolizes the journey of the ego into the unconscious. The principle risk of this journey is possession by the contents therein; re-absorption into a state of dependent unconsciousness. For this reason among others, it is associated with the great and destructive Mother in her negative aspect. The motifs of “the devouring mother” and the “belly of the whale” are likely familiar to most people. The loss of a sense of a separate self is a much-feared thing, and this story arises perennially and across cultures. Izalith too is full of (negative) Mother imagery, with the mother of pyromancy at the center, portrayed as a small bug, not dissimilar from the Sunlight Maggot which consumes Solaire. We should of course not reduce the Mother to some Freudian positivism. She is called the Mother because she represents the matrix of the world, which engenders, sustains, and decays all forms. In her fullness she is the divine feminine principle. Her fearsome aspects, such as the devouring mother, are constellated by the ego’s fears and rejections. The mother is the first being from which an infant must differentiate itself, and so there is this necessary period in which the mother becomes the abject, the locus of all that is disavowed and detested. When stories tell us about “slaying the dragon,” it is not about conquering the feminine, or defeating chaos; it is about overcoming a false view of the Divine Mother born of fear and prejudice. It is this view, cohered into a monster, that must be slain, as the Chosen Undead does in Izalith in Dark Souls 1. According to tradition, how is this accomplished? In psychological terms:

The slaying of the mother and identification with the father-god go together. If, through active incest, the hero penetrates into the dark, maternal, chthonic side, he can only do so by virtue of his kinship with “heaven,” his filiation to God. By hacking his way out of the darkness he is reborn as the hero in the image of God, but, at the same time as the son of […] the regenerative Good Mother. (Neumann 165)

The “father” in this case corresponds to the solar principles of Logos, order, and law. Swords and lightning-strikes, Solaire’s preferred tools, refer to the capacities of discernment and insight necessary for differentiation. This identification/alliance with the father in this task is only temporary, for the Father too must be destroyed: he is the old order, the ego deteriorating into an oppressive and petty tyrant. This is why Gwyn is underwhelming and ailing when we find him. So it appears that saving Solaire, and bringing him to defeat Gwyn, is a relatively psychologically healthy outcome. That is—if Solaire is the new ego!! But think about it: when playing a game, is it not the player-character who is most representative of the ego? It is out of the Chosen Undead’s eyes that we see, it is their actions we control, not Solaire’s. We have already established that for many players, Solaire is an ideal image, whose full potential is necessarily unknown. Does this mean that Solaire is meant to be abandoned here? Is he, like Gwyn, an outdated self-conception that must be discarded so that something new can be born? The moral judgment of this situation is more complicated than it first appears.

Let’s look at the steps one must take in order to save Solaire: one must join the Chaos Servant covenant and collect humanity for the “Fair Lady.” This witch of chaos is a pale and deteriorating spider-woman meshed into the wall of her lair. She speaks a language incomprehensible to the player, unless a special ring is worn, which reveals that she mistakes the player for her sister. If she is given a whopping 30 humanity, the Chosen Undead rises to a rank of prestige in her organization, and a special door opens which allows passage to the site of Solaire’s fall. This is the only way to arrive at the scene and destroy the bug before Solaire finds it. So the key, in essence, is offering your humanity to a mysterious dying witch over and over again. Or, as reddit user JotaBarra puts it:

To save Solaire of Astora you have to give 30 humanity to someone who you don't know, that doesn't understand you and the only thing you know is that she put herself in pain trying to fix something that she doesn't did. If you help her, the games give you the opportunity to save your friend. The only way to save Solaire is by being like him. Friendship is exactly like that. You help the only one that help you everytime he can. He will fight alongside with you against the final enemy. It represent what a relationship is. We don't build relationship with our direct actions but with what the actions mean. You dont help directly to your friend, but you do what he could've do for you.

This interpretation makes a good point about how it is necessary to become Solaire, to take on his attributes, in order to save him. Does this therefore mean that by the time the two of you get to Gwyn, you are the same person? Or were you the same person all along, and Solaire was just projected into the external environment, just as he both embodies the sun and seeks it outside himself? That light, whether the anglerfish lamp of the Sunlight Maggot or the Sun itself, compels the body forward, because that compulsion is the Sun.

Specifically, compulsion is the Sun in its chthonic state. It is synonymous with the ever-burning fuel of sulfur, replete throughout the realms of hell.

Lost Izalith, the Hell of Dark Souls, has been reduced to very little in Dark Souls 3. It appears quite plainly that the kingdom has deteriorated. What were once oceans of lava is now a knee-high lake of simmering water. However, among the ruins and heaps of demon corpses, there is indication that new life is growing. Roots of world trees coil around the stone and new forms of demons are singing living flames into being. Most significantly, there is also the presence of crabs, which are a timeless symbol of birth, and present at the other two places of world-regeneration in Dark Souls 3 (the forest and the painting). Beneath the desolate surface of Smouldering Lake, there is the beating heart of new life.

It is on the surface that the pseudo-Solaire worm confronts us. It could be that it is protective of this nest, or maybe it is a crude image of the unborn life in incubation within. The fact that it is coiled here, in a pool of water at the base of the world, suggests the kundalini serpent. In psychology and metaphysics, the kundalini is the libidinous upward force catalyzed by the primal energy (shakti) at the base of the spine. Alongside its physiological manifestation, the rising serpent/worm is one of the oldest mythological motifs:

The Gnostics related the serpent to the mysterious energy of the primordial waters symbolized in the waves of the undulating serpent as well as the stirrings within the serpentine spinal cord of man. The stirrings surface from the abyss of the unconscious, sometimes unexpectedly and with peremptory and terrible effects. (Valborg)

Its undulating path upwards is called “The Serpent’s Path” as it traces a parabolic shape as it climbs to ever-higher degrees of refinement (this is what the player does, you may recall). This journey of upward undulation, often felt by the individual as an electric current, is sometimes preceded by the “Lightning Flash,” the original impetus, which strikes downward from the crown to the lowest point, thus awakening the serpent, which makes its ascent. So these images come together quite conveniently in the figure of this lightning-spewing sandworm. You may remember that the worm drops “Lightning Stake”; not some other miracle, but the one that forces lightning down upon the earth. To see this electric serpent coiled up within a hot, subterranean chamber teeming with life—it is hard to imagine a more direct depiction of the kundalini.

We have talked about Solaire as a symbol of the Self, that was at one time appropriate but now needs to be refined, and it is therefore appropriate that he should find himself consumed in the flames of the underworld. The fiery hells of Buddhism are sites of purification; the fire that rages and torments the victim is their own unbridled affects, but they eventually exhaust themselves. What remains after is purified ash, synonymous with the “white foliated Earth” of the alchemists. It is this type of “environment” in which the “gold”—the personality—should be sown, in order to reach its potential. This is assumedly what has already happened to the Ashen One of Dark Souls 3, given their title and the fact that they have arisen from ash; it also seems to be descriptive of the process at hand for the kingdom of Lothric.

It’s easy to imagine that players might unconsciously project the image of Solaire’s rebirth onto this worm. For reasons related to Solaire’s story, as previously discussed, and for these perennial myths. At another point in the journey, the player is also confronted with Rosaria, the Mother of Rebirth, who “respecs” people—reallocates their stats and qualities. The only risk this refinement brings is that the person may become a worm! A few casualties of this process are seen or implied elsewhere in the game. These “mangrubs” are quite revolting, and yet at least a few are linked to the highest divinity. This should not surprise us:

Typical of the paradoxical imagery of the unconscious, the despicable worm can turn into the supreme value. Thus the messiah is equated with a worm in the messianic Psalm 22, verse 6: ‘But I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.’ (Edinger AoP 158)

For the full renewal of the image of the Self, it is necessary that the old king(/sun) dies. The body decays, and at its most revolting, it becomes the bed and the feast of maggots. Because Smouldering Lake is beneath the Catacombs, it can be said to be taking place within the body within the grave. The entire scene can be read as allegory of the processes within the body in the midst of its resurrection. The “messiah” here is invoked because Christ is another euphemism for the Self. And just as the dead king’s body is diffused into the bellies of the maggots, so too does Christ’s flesh become the object of consumption during the Eucharist. This takes us conveniently into our next bizarre fan theory.

Solaire Has Become Soup Slightly more arcane than the theory of Solaire’s transfiguration into a worm, is the notion of his transubstantiation into the Estus Soup, which is found in a few cauldrons throughout Lothric. The justification for this theory was handily summarized on a reddit by a now-deleted user:

Consider the room you get the sunbro badge in undead settlement. It also contains an estus soup bowl...

The sunbro badge is found on a device for dismembering corpses. We know this becasue we see the same device being used to cut up bodies later in the undead settlement just before the stairs down to the lower area with the ravine

The sunbro badge is simply a rag of cloth sitting on the device, which heavily implies that a sunbro was cut up on this device and his badge was left over as a part of the cutting up process

Underneath the cutting up device are an absolute ton of small bowls, receptacles to contain fluid. What fluid will the cutting up device produce? blood and human bodily fluid.

These same bowls can be seen all around the main estus soup pot....

The blood of the dismembered sunbros/other undead is extracted in the cutting process into the small bowls. These bowls are then take to the main pot and their essences poured into the main soup pot which is boiled and the estus fluid is extracted from the blood of the chopped up sunbros. This is what forms the radiant estus soup.

The player is in some sense conditioned to think this, because the entire Undead Settlement is oriented around the disposal of corpses. Moreover, Estus Soup is found at two more places, one of which holds Solaire’s talisman, and the other near paintings of Gwynevere (saint of the sunbros). Now, the more reasonable interpretation of the presence of these Sunlight artifacts near Estus Soup is that Siegward, who is later shown to be the one concocting the soup, leaves them behind in his absent-mindedness. Siegward’s attitude and behavior are very reflective of the “jolly cooperation” ethos, and thus we naturally assume that he is affiliated with the Warriors of Sunlight.

This, however, does not disprove that the Estus Soup is Solaire! Not to say that Solaire was butchered by Siegward, and bled into the soup via the grisly method described above; rather it is more likely that a faithful Warrior of Sunlight has consecrated this special drink in a manner similar to the Christian Eucharist. To understand the concept of the Eucharist, here is an excerpt from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

The cup of prayer contains wine and contains water, being established as a representation of the blood over which thanksgiving is offered. And it is full of the holy spirit, and belongs entirely to the perfect human being. Whenever we drink it we take unto ourselves the perfect human being. The living water is a body.” (Gnostic scriptures p347)

In other words, “the Eucharistic blood represented the Soul of Christ.” (Jung & von Franz 93). The fact that “the conception of blood as soul prevailed in the middle ages,”(ibid. 93) is visually quoted by Dark Souls periodically, and further prepares the player to respond to such symbolic signaling within this fantasy setting.

Now, Solaire as a Christ figure who becomes the subject of a Lothric Eucharist is probably not a theory that anyone would thread together without the specific intent of performing a Christian reading of Dark Souls. The reason that I discuss it now is because the existence of the Solaire-as-soup theory seems to have arrived at a similar situation unconsciously, and slightly rephrased into a secular materialist framework (more palatable to the conscious mind). We have examined how Solaire is an uncommonly strong draw for projections of the player’s better nature. It is also a fact of our world that certain Christian concepts—such as Christ representing a fully realized being to whom we should aspire, or the mysteries of the Eucharist—are present in the background of the unconscious. These stories and motifs were so ubiquitous for so long in the western world, that even if we live fully secular lives, this material continues to radiate its influence through the thinnest, unassuming little cracks in our speech, our aesthetics, and our stories.

So without any intention on the part of the player, their experience of the character Solaire receives some influence from the Christian world. This effect is aided by a few other elements. There is his resemblance to common depictions of knights from the Crusades, whose defining associations are Christianity and the fact that they were seeking something. Of course we also have the fact of his signature gesture which is similar to the pose of the crucified Christ. This essay has already described this gesture’s prominent contribution to the memetic potency of Solaire, but it bears mentioning that if the player joins this covenant, they perform the gesture automatically upon being summoned—any active sunbro is quite literally forced into imitating this pose! And of course, a third reason for this unconscious association of Christ and Solaire is the factor of the mysterious and divine parentage.

Which is Canon? So of these two fringe headcanons, which is the more valid? Is Solaire a worm or is he soup? Taking anthropology into account, we must recognize that the death and resurrection of the Sun-god naturally predates Christ, and Christian myths are often studied in that context. It is just as natural to see Solaire as a personification of the Sun, of goodwill, or of the Logos … although Christ also covers that ground. Whatever the case may be, the dismemberment and consumption of this embodied principle seems to be a common feature of these stories. Both the worms who feed on the king’s corpse, and the Eucharistic wine/blood, are images of this concept—and perhaps both images are necessary. The feast of the worms is the profane image, and the Eucharist is the sacred and civil version. After all, for the dissemination of this quality of consciousness to be complete, it must extend to every level. Edinger gives us another broad summary of the concept:

[The Golden Man] represents the microcosmos or monas, the initial matter, which also contains the goal of the work. His dismemberment signifies a new conscious ordering of his initial chaotic nature.

It is difficult to consider terms like “initial matter” and appreciate the fullness of the concept. In nitpicking over the details of the specific images, we may begin to lose sight of the importance and universality of the basic story. This is why it is so important that there are multiple histories, multiple headcanons. If Solaire was only the worm, or only the soup, he would be less complete and less adequate as a symbol. And there are many headcanons besides these, of course; they merely represent two aggregations with a mythologically fertile tension between them. By the incredible multivalence of the Sun’s many arms, he means something different and individual to each player.

And speaking of the “goal of the work.” The return of the Sun in the morning is not considered a triumph merely because it has survived. Withstanding the night in itself is hardly an achievement! It is a triumph because something has been earned in the descent, and the same is true of the story of Christ’s incarnation. When the Sun-god rises again, something has been purified, refined, or to use the preferred Christian term, redeemed. The personal stories of players also seem to follow this trajectory. Dark Souls doesn’t treat depression simply because players are enduring its difficulty, it’s because some special quality of attention is polished through their struggles. We ought also to remember that Solaire willingly became Undead so he could visit Lordran and find his own Sun. The descent into incarnation for the purpose of refinement is a journey that should only be made consciously, with optimism and good cheer, for that is the Sun’s native condition.

Edinger, Edward. Anatomy of the Psyche. Open Court Publishing Company, 1985. Jung, Carl. Psychology and Religion: East and West. Princeton University Press, 1969. Jung, Emma & Marie-Louise von Franz. The Grail Legend. Sigo Press, 1980. Layton, Bentley, ed. The Gnostic Scriptures. Yale University Press, 1995 Neumann, Eric. The Origins and History of Consciousness. Bollingen Foundation, 1954. Valborg, Helen. Great Symbols Series: the Serpent. Theosophy Trust, 2013.

Solaire is Pump-a-Rum Actually, you are this fledgling.

#dark souls #dark souls lore #solaire #knight solaire #dark souls 1 #dark souls 3 #solaire sandworm #carthus sandworm #gwyn's firstborn

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