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anemonet · 4 months

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oh my god thats so sweet of you!!!! thank you :DD also super sorry for deleting your ask btw

To get down to business well uh iterators huh, so I can tell you have read some of my ramblings before (very fun) and I will say in general I stand by those ideas - model differences and stuff - with some smaller changes here and there, for instance I made pebbles antennas stupidly long cause I think it looks funny - plus tons of tiny refinements, but generally I dont have too much to add unless theres something specific your wondering about - so I wont focus to much on that. Instead I'm gonna chat a bit about the other stuff you mentioned (NSH and wire headwear) ^-^ so heres the guys! (I'm gonna expand a bit on their design designs)

Ok so you have actully managed to point out something I really hoped no one would notice, which is that I never draw No Significant Harrasment (NSH) - who I hope you meant when you asked about sig, if not then dont look at me - and that is because I despise him with my whole heart. Or well, his design, the character is fine but I cannot draw this guy, I hate his colour scheme and his stupid little cape and why is his head symbols green on green - who allowed this - and in general we are not friends, which is a pity because I have alot of headcanons about him. But as you can see above I have semi settled on a design for him (note the semi, I am not super happy about it) and I do have some toughts and explanations.

So first of, I put NSH as being from the same model generation as suns - so predecessing moon and pebs by a bit - with older designs that have a larger focus on "religious stuff" combined with the anchients overall bonkers fashion sense - more is more - if you wanna read more about that its in this post about suns.

- I would also, this is a side note btw, like to mention I think having them being older models gives room to have some key differences between the oldies (NSH and suns) and the youngsters-ish (moon and pebs) in that one, they have older machinery and also early machinery which means both rougher quality and more wear and tear - which I like to think give them both the idea of slugcats as messangers earlier than most, as they knew their easily damaged functions (broadcast masts for example) would not last forever, which gives them a reason to want to solve it (by breeding scugs I guess) and added onto that I - and this is pure headcanon and speculation - like to imagine a lot of the "taboos" that pebbles and moon have - or well that I speculate they have, the no killing yourself or harming citizens taboo is confirmed canon, but I dont think its farfetched to asume they have other restrictions programmed - something that would most likely be added in later modles, but would be absent in the earlier ones like suns and NSH (not the earliest models but early) which theoreticly would give them a bit more leeway and "creative freedom", which ok why am I talking about this back to why NSH looks like that. -

Back to that, so suns and NSH will share design similarities: lack of face (to represent a lack of ego), lots of robes and layers, which leads us into the slightly more relevant sidenote of iterator clotheing:

So fashion comes and goes in cycles, your mom rebeled against her grandmothers clothing choises and is horrified when that fashion comes back via her daughter who think it looks cool again (20 year old rule or whatever) and that also applies to iterator design (look at that old suns ask for more info on this). So while I have talked about general trends a little, now I wanna talk about waistlines - in robes, because I have wanted an exscuse to talk about it, I be brief promise!

: so like you probably havent noticed all my iterators have different waistlines, or at least the ones from different generations - ignore moon, I'm a no robe for moon beliver, I like to draw joints and wires to much to give her robes - and I will sadly report I have not looked to closely at actual anchient fashion for the choises I made, but well cant have everything. So the most notable is probably pebbles, where I, ok Imostly fell for temptation of a modern highwaist cut, which while moslty being about my own tatse, also is an atempt to convey some form of "modernity" because while its a bright orange robe on a robot, it has a similar cut to highwaisted jeans. Which gives the silhoute from a couple years ago with a big bulky upper body and stick legs. But pebbles isnt intresting in that way, no its because every other design is a resistence against that.

And this again leads into the cycles of fashion. Because we know iterators were built under many cycles - however long those are - so we can asume it will be kinda like how fashion has changed from the 11th centrury to now. Which gives to reason that iterators have been dressed differently too. This added with that - from what I understood - different iterator cities (colonies) had different cultures (boradcast, red, in sky islands) all this then makes me kinda figure that the iterators should have different robes. Yes that was a long winded way to say that characters look different.

So back to waistlines and how their all anti pebbles robes - the most notable difference is of course suns, who has no waistline. They are not only without to create a bigger difference between them and pebbles, but to also lean a bit on - and this might not be the same for every culture - but on the general idea that older clothes were more "modest" or in this case, there are more layers and any hints of there being a body under there is desperatly covered. and that "modern clothes" have less layers and have show more skin - not that pebble is showing skin, but hes wearing one robe instead of seven. So with that the idea that suns is older is conveyed a little bit at least, and the same then applies to NSH. NSH while also having lots of layers, is different from suns by having an empire waistline, mostly because I think their cute and need them to look different, but also to give a hint that they have different city fashion cultures and also because when I see empire waists i think old paintins and old paintings=old.

-also while I'm on the subject of cultural differences between iterator facilities. Can we talk about how we only really get to see anchient society as its presented in moon and pebbles (shared?) facility. So really its very possible the whole aestetic is complelty different like five local groups away. Food for thought. -

So faceless and robe-rich is a similarity between suns and NSH, and I could mention many more, but I'm gonna restrain myself and only talk about headphones. As you can tell I - and most fanartist here - like to draw their antennas differently for all of them! which is also canon, but I also ignored canon so were gonna talk about it. Mostly the antennas give room for some fun mini details, like how moons look like wings or fins while suns are just sunbeams.

Anyhow so most people make NSH bald, me included, mostly because the super cool official art of him gives him no antennas (sad). I asume that means he works via bluetooth.

(I was about to start speculating about their headphones but that got to boring even for me so sorry if your super intrested in why iterators probably have headphones)

But I had a ulterior motive with bringing up the headphones - and not only to be able to point out moons antenna, which I delight in drawing - but also so that I can transition into the second part of this way to long response! itertors hairdos... wire-dos? basicly this \/

(im reusing my wip because these are a pain to draw so we use what we have - I coloured them in a bit for better oversight.)

(also I was gonna start talking about if iterators would actully do personalisations like this - as we can argue about if they concepulize themself as their puppets and see a meaning to decorating them - I would argue yes but also its complicated- and also explain how iterators have different prefernces, which I realised most people probably already asume so I didnt need to explain that - anyhow so that got to long so I'm not gonna get into it. Instead were gonna go into this section with the assumptions that they do fun things with their wires. and also that the wires connect to their nape and backhead instead of their back or spine.)

So to me th biggest thing to remember when we talk about potetial wire headwear is that:

- iterators live 24/7 without gravity and because of that cannot be bothered by to heavy headwear, therefore theres rooms for them and anchients (and me) to get funky with it without having to concider gravity.

-anchients wore absurdly many decorations - and while giving iterators flashy decorations does take away from my earlier statement that they were based on more humble monk stuff, we are going to asume they used the fancy headwear for cermonies and festivals (which we also know anchients did) and that it was used for showcasing and fun. If some iterators preffered to keep them afterwards is another query.

So with that in mind lets break these headwear thingies down!! :D

so as you can (hopefully) tell there three components in the headwear. The headphones that are different depending on iterator and are not removable (or as unremovable a computer part can be). Then theres the actual headpieces that keeps the wires togheter. These can be switched out and changed depending on whats preffered - also I drew them in gold but any material works, if were being closer to canon they would probably be made of some purposed organism and maybe be neon pink - theres also pearls dangling from them because its a perfect opertunity. Third theres probably the part I think is the most fun which is the actual wires. They obviously go through the headpieces and then are set free via wiretassles (that also comes in different forms) and after that is where my own speculations about wires comes in. Which is really simple in that iterators can most probably move the wires at will - they can control their arm thing, pearls and other objects in their chambers, reasonably they can move the wires - and I think its fun if different iterators move them differently. Like suns keeps them straight and neat, or pebbles moves them in syncronized formations or moon who just lets them hang, so many oppertunities ok ( you can see the general idea in the drawing). The wires then connect to their movement arms and connect to the mainframe.

And thats kinda about it? I dont have like anything super intresting to say about just the hairdos other than that I think its very fun and also that everyone is sleeping on wire customizations I am obbsessed with the idea send help.

Ok I think I'm done chatting!! Hope your still here and that this wasnt insufferable to read. Uh, thanks for the ask :D

(NSH for your enjoyment)

#asks #rain world #no significant harassment #also sorry this took a bit to answer i got distracted reading moon and pebbles dialouge trees #i suddenly have so many toughts about how iterators see themself and how they work #anyhwo also HI IF UH someone sent me two really long asks on anon about my reverze iterator au and if your reading this PLEASE dm so i can #gush about it its such a delight but im so bad at answering asks that i forgot to answer #so like if your seeing this hit me up please #also this applies to anyone i am a way better chatter in chatrooms #ahem yes sorry actual anon i just had to say that!!#anyhw aughjdofje your so sweet for sending this!!! hope this was close to what you wanted :)#ok ok we are listening to guys on every corner by the mountain goats

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in-a-slanted-outhouse · 2 years

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Ok so I’ve been thinking about Five and Delores recently and I honestly find the whole concept of Delores absolutely fascinating. I wanted to post this before season three in case I get contradicted and all of this work was for nothing

So today I present to you:

Why I think that Number Five can still be aroace and have loved Delores

An essay on comphet by me, a bisexual who is procrastinating the work he actually has to do and stayed up way too late for this

So I’m going to be talking about Five’s sexuality, a very controversial topic of which I could end up pissing off at least one person whilst discussing. So a little disclaimer: y’all don’t have to listen to a word I say. We can all have different headcanons. I just request that you please read the entirety of this before you reply

Anyways

Five does not have a canon sexuality as of when I’m writing this so it is therefore entirely up to interpretation

Here’s mine

A lot of people who argue Five can’t be aroace often point out that he had a romantic relationship with Delores or feel that saying Five is aroace undermines the relationship that he had with her. I’m here to say that that isn’t necessarily true. In fact, in my opinion, it could make their relationship more faceted and interesting if it wasn’t a romantic relationship

To me at least

Firstly, I don’t think Five ever explicitly states what his relationship to Delores was other than saying they were ‘together for over thirty years’ when Klaus has a brief discussion with him about romantic and sexual relationships. Now, this does heavily imply that they were in some sort of romantic relationship however, it could also be taken as them being partners in a more platonic sense because Five mentioning it seems more prompted by Klaus claiming him to have been alone (and Five feeling semi comfortable enough to take that as an opportunity to open up to him) more than anything else.

Secondly, (and here’s my main argument) their entire relationship will always be based off Five’s perception of how certain relationships work. If Five believes that him and Delores were in a romantic relationship then that can only be based on the way he perceives romantic relationships or more accurately, the way a sheltered thirteen year old perceives romantic relationships. And as Delores is an extension of Five himself, she will always have the same subconscious values and feelings that he has, as well as with him being trapped in The Apocalypse, he couldn’t have been told differently by anyone else.

All of how he sees romantic relationships is going to be based off the limited knowledge of what he saw around him. Majority of this would have been from late-nineties/early-2000s media as well as (and mostly) older literature that he was taught in class or burnt up books, magazines and newspapers in the wreckage of The Apocalypse.

Five didn’t have a very good model of what a healthy, loving, romantic relationship looked like, growing up. And he didn’t really have anyone that he could have fallen in love with other than his siblings (eek.) His two real life references for what a romantic relationship could look like would have been his father and robot mother; and his brother and sister unhealthily projecting their repressed puberty feelings onto each other due to their isolation from the rest of the world

Robot Grace was essentially a maid to Reginald and not a real romantic interest so I highly doubt that he ever saw them as being in a romantic relationship despite them both being his ‘parents’. This is backed up by the way that Diego reacts to finding out that real Grace and Reginald were dating in the 60s

Reginald (although I doubt that he would have wanted the Hargreeves to fall in love and distract from saving the world) seems like the kind of man to have very old-fashioned values that a man and a woman fall in love and then they get married. And all of the Hargreeves would have been influenced by that somewhat by what media he let them consume. As well as this, we have a very heteronormative society and back in 2002 the access to information wasn’t void but it wasn’t excessive either

Five, having a curious mind and always striving to understand everything, probably did have some idea on different relationships and sexualities but he still would have had limited access to those resources. He could very easily be aroace (or any other sexuality for that matter) but during his years at The Academy, had such little eduction on the matter that he couldn’t truly figure himself out. I doubt he would have known about sexualities other than being straight, gay or bi and could have had the thought process of ‘I’m not attracted to men, so I must be straight,’ or ‘I’m not attracted to women so I must be gay,’ or even ‘I’m attracted to both equally (equally not attracted) so I must be bi.’ He could have also had such little interest in romantic relationships that he just didn’t put that amount of thought into it/thought that everyone had the same internal nonchalance about it but that some people were just more externally excited about the prospect than others

His access to this kind of information would have decreased when he landed The Apocalypse, partly because there was no one else there to give him the information and partly because a lot of books containing said information would have been destroyed. That’s not to say they would have all been destroyed because obviously Viktor’s autobiography survived, but a large amount of them would have been destroyed.

Now, Five, as we’ve seen, is often described by the fandom as being a magpie in the way that he mimics the behaviour of those around him as a survival mechanism. Five, obviously knows what love is, and I have no doubt that what he felt for Delores was love, but for someone who, was separated from society at a young age and has a tedious reference for what romantic love looks like, it could be quite difficult for him to distinguish between romantic and platonic/familial love. Delores was very much created by Five as a coping mechanism to slow his impending insanity. It wouldn’t be far fetched for him to have created Delores and as he slowly slipped into believing she was real, he ended up developing a love for her -which could have been platonic/familial love- but based off of his knowledge of ‘when a man and a woman are in love they must be in a romantic relationship’ he analysed his own feelings of love and went ‘hey, this must be what romantic love is!’

And Delores wouldn’t be able to say any different because she wouldn’t know any different because she lives inside Five’s headspace

Essentially what I’m saying is that Five spending his teens (and entire life) in isolation with his only companion being a person who he made up, would realistically hinder his own sexual exploration and due to limited resources, could cause him to misinterpret his own feelings of platonic/familial love for romantic love. Meaning that with Delores he could have ended up subconsciously or maybe even intentionally mimicking the traditional heterosexual romantic relationship with his own interpretation of what he’s been taught is what happens when man and woman love each other, as a way of experience some semblance of the life he was missing/be able to live semi-in-denial of his suffering on occasion. Therefore, Five (and Delores by extension) could still be aroace and have been in a relationship

Five clearly loved Delores (and we know that he does love people in a platonic/familial way because his entire character/motivation is based off his love for family) and he clearly needed her but it’s never specified what their love entailed, and therefore their relationship could have been based off of a child’s misunderstanding of how romantic relationships work. They could have still been life long partners without loving each other romantically. Five could still love her deeply and strongly and in a meaningful way without loving her romantically. They could have still technically been in a romantic relationship if both parties (singular party technically) believed that they were.

Five could still not experience romantic or sexual attraction and still have loved Delores. He does it with his family every single day

And obviously this logic of Five not being able to explore his sexuality and having limited resources for that could also apply to him having any sexuality. I’m not denying that. I’m just using it as a way to show that him and Delores could still have loved each other and had a relationship that was just as important as a romantic one without it actually being romantic

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk

#reminder that yall dont have to agree with me on this #i just wanted to share my opinion and analysis #there arent any s3 spoilers in this btw #tua #the umbrella academy #five #delores #number five #five meta #louie says shit #aroace five #long post

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outofangband · 1 year

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very informal thoughts on the more mundane villains I write (Avranc, Brodda and Lorgan)

mentions of bad stuff from canon ahead

anon who wanted to see this, I hope you do! I’m also going to go back to it tomorrow and finish any edits and additions as I can’t from mobile right now...

third and last time I’m reposting this. apparently Tumblr is once again doing the thing where it doesn’t let you edit things under a cut on mobile

Avranc

mundane evil at its finest. Bureaucratic, petty, and callous. Depraved indifference is the term I used in my recent meta about The Wanderings of Húrin and it’s the most accurate thing I can say about him. He’s well aware that he’s living in a nigh apocalyptic world and he’ll mistreat or even kill anyone he thinks has earned it.

His cruelty towards completely traumatized Húrin and callousness about Morwen’s death was surprisingly disturbing to me when I first read The Wanderings and it’s stuck with me ever since

Brodda:

I really hate this man! I’m not normal about it, either. If you’ve ever mentioned disliking him even in tags or comments you might have dealt with my overexcited responses. Sorry in advance/in retrospect. It will probably happen again.

Technically in my published stories he’s only in a few but he features heavily in unpublished stories of mine too. The scene where Morwen scares him away by looking is simultaneously one of the scariest and most amusing scenes in the entire book for me.

In one of those published stories Aerin says that his best quality is his long periods of absence and the kindest thing he does is ignoring her. That’s the highest character endorsement you’ll get from a reliable source. The previous batch of Aerin headcanons and the next one has some less than fun facts about him.

What to say about him? He’s a mid level commander and violent sadist who accuses women of witchcraft. He often ignores Aerin because he gets bored of being cruel to the same people, hence her glowing character endorsement (my sarcasm as well as hers). He’s way too obsessed with his own dagger (hence the title of the story) He’s mostly fun to write when he’s getting stabbed by Morwen with it and the art I have of it is the best thing ever. Earlier last year I thought my dark!Finarfin was the worst character I’d write but I think even he isn’t as bad, if only because dark Arafinwë has more self awareness. The BoLT version is interesting too because it puts his actions in an even more disturbing light when he’s acting against his own people. I tend to use a combination that has him originally from Hithlum but having left a couple decades before the start of the Narn. I have...thoughts about this including one of the most disturbing things I think I have ever come up with regarding Dagor Bragollach.

Anyways he’s an awful person and needs to stay away from Aerin and Morwen and just about everyone else on the planet. Currently I’m playing with an idea for a wip where Morwen does convince Aerin to flee to Hareth in Brethil and then finds herself accused of causing her vanishment by sinister means.

But I had to work out his character so much for Cut Your Hand As Willingly (semi published, it has its own tag which I’ll put on this post) that I’m not sure I could face writing him again.

Lorgan: Any visuals I have of him are based on the description of the governor from The Magnus Archives episode Foundations. He’s notable to me mainly for being the guy who Húrin yells at in The Wanderings. Well, one of them. I guess that story does have more than one instance of Húrin yelling at people. He also apparently considered abducting Niënor. I don’t know exactly what version this was in, I actually thought I invented that in my brain but then two people completely unrelated posted about it so it’s somewhere in HoME. I have a post about it here. It’s kind of pathetic that he failed in this despite the family being actually cursed. Always a possibility for further exploration in dark aus He doesn’t appear in many of my stories except as a background character.

I don’t like him much either but it’s also interesting to imagine versions where he was originally of Húrin’s people too.

#the silmarillion #the children of húrin #the wanderings of Húrin #morwen #aerin #musing and meta #word ran among them #cw abuse #cut your hand as willingly

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shostakobitchh · 9 months

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what are your thoughts/feelings on the marauders? I particularly love reading marauders stories as much as I love reading Snape-centric ones, but unfortunately there’s so much annoying bashing from both sides (don’t get me wrong, I love seeing them fight but you can see which one the author loves and who they despise).

ps.: I have to say though, I’m really enjoying how you’re inserting Lupin on your story so far! I like when authors don’t shy away from making the characters flawed, yet they’re still likable to me. same goes to Snape. lol I’m asking because I know the fandom can be divided by Marauders vs Snape defenders, but their intersection and its nuance is my fav part of it all.

pps.: just saw you updated! I haven’t even received the email yet lol that’ll be my friday night treat, thank you!! ❤️❤️

thank you for the kind words about lupin in the story, he’s my favorite character of all so that means a lot ❤️

okay so, hot take here, but it is so stupid to me because both sides did awful things and both sides pretend like either did nothing wrong. I am a BIG fan of both sides, but I get can't into Marauder's era content because it's very OOC now and it's quite clear it's only to essentially rewrite Harry Potter prequels that cater to specific headcanons, but I also can't completely get behind Snape defenders because many claim he did nothing wrong at all which turns him into some pussywhipped bore and I can’t grapple with the dismantling of such a FASCINATING character. the Snape fandom is almost too defensive which makes Snape's character less interesting to me. I think its AWESOME that this little shithead kid, who loved dark magic and craved validation and power, essentially fucked himself over and intertwined his fate with the son of his worst enemy and best friend. and then he was BITTER about it and was objectively awful until harry sees his memories, where Snape is still awful but like… it explains everything. doesn’t excuse it, but it explains it!

I really loved Sirius and Remus, I think they're deeply flawed characters (even as flawed as Snape!) that are severely fucked up but mask it better. They're good guys that are good at being the good guys, but sometimes, they are human! they make mistakes! Sirius is unhinged, impulsive, selfish. Remus is a straight up coward who doesn't take accountability - it makes me so upset that he didn't reach out to Harry in canon, how did he not mention he was best friends with James?!

I even really like James - we don't know a lot about James/Lily, but we know a lot about Harry, and there are several remarks that Harry is a lot like his mother, and Harry is a very good person, the kind of person who tried to get Voldemort to see his wrongdoings in his final moments. I'd like to believe Lily wouldn't have married a Gigachad and married someone who would be a good husband/father.

I know most of the hatred spawns from SWM, but I’m going to say something controversial here and mention that it’s SWM because it’s when Lily ended the friendship, not entirely because James attacked him. I’m not excusing James’ behavior in this scene, but I am a firm believer that both sides attacked one another on a semi regular basis. there’s also the werewolf incident which is like, inexcusable, but this is where marauders fans are bad, lol. just because sirius almost got snape killed doesn’t mean he’s like, an evil person. some of them cannot fathom sirius did something bad which sucks a lot of the interest out of mauraders era stories for me. if your characters don’t have flaws, what the fuck is the point?

in short, nonnie, we’re on the same page. the bashing from both sides is annoying and I think really uninteresting. why people choose to only see the bad in both sides is beyond me.

#sam speaks #snape vibes #sirius vibes #remus vibes #ask #anon

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mister13eyond · 1 year

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Do you have a tag for your one shots and/or more writing pieces about Diavolo & Doppio? :"-) I really have to say I appreciate the way you portray them both & how their weird quirks match together. It's more then just the typical big mean top and little twink boy stereotype.

Also if you ever resume roleplaying, please mention it 🙏

Ahhhh thank you so so much!! That's an honor to hear? I definitely think these two have such a rich possibility to be such delightfully weird little men, and to enable each other in some ways- they've spent their whole lives covering up for each other, and it's a mutually protective relationship, so I don't think either of them has ever felt the need to hide their weird quirks when it comes to each other, you know? Who can love you better and more unconditionally than the person who's lived inside your heart your whole life?

I don't have a set tag yet- I should probably change that!! I'll have to go back and add it to my previous drabbles/headcanons, but for now here's links to the ones I remember/can find:

Domestic DiaDop ft cooking

Slightly Better Dads Pink Family

Doppio Infodumps About Insects

Caring For Each Other While Sick

As well!! I also have some work on my AO3- i will bashfully admit a lot of it is NSFW, but I'll mark which is NSFW and SFW here:

He'll Find Him Waiting Like A Lonesome King- future NSFW, but SFW if full of Sexual Tension right now. Diavolo begins scheming a way to see Doppio, if only for a little while.

i'm gonna kiss you (like the sun browns you)- NSFW, explicit; fluffy, transmasc diavolo & doppio; stone top diavolo & lots of gender euphoria & body feelings & loving yourself via loving your trans partner t4t magic

double. - semi-NSFW; non-explicit, but delves into sexual awakening & exploration during their mutual puberty & will eventually contain some non-explicit Donatella/Solido. A study on how Solido Naso became Doppio & Diavolo; warnings for religious trauma, dissociation and all the gnarly canon-compliant contents of Diavolo & Doppio's backstory

they fit together like two hands- SFW! A quiet, peaceful little study about a post-separation Diavolo and Doppio making their way through their daily life, knowing that they'll never really stop dealing with paranoia, dissociation or mental health crises- but helping each other through them, because it's still better when not carried alone.

that's the kind of love (i've been dreaming of)- NSFW; explicit! tooth-rotting fluff and kink all rolled into one. post-separation, diavolo struggles to sleep because he can't keep his hands off Doppio. Doppio comes up with a simple solution: diavolo can do whatever he wants to him while he sleeps.

Also BONUS! If you like my work, check out the gothic horror AU tag, where I leave my art and thoughts about my DiaDop Gothic Horror AU. And if you REALLY liked it, all the works are arranged into a pay-what-you-want PDF on itch.io!

WHEEZE and that's all the DiaDop I have properly written out!! Thank you SO so much for the kind words anon- I love these two a lot! It's fun just taking them at face value as a babyfaced twink and a big mean goth, sure, but the reason I'm so drawn to them is how much depth you can read into them, the ways they have much more possibility beneath their surface... I just love them a lot a lot! ;0; and if I ever start another RP blog up, I'll 100% share here so y'all will know!! Thank you again!!!

#i passed out last night before I could properly answer this and now i have to get to work #so i will return to the other ask in my inbox once i've got a pomodoro break #but THANK YOU! and i'll work on coming up with a tag for my diadop headcanons & drabbles #my writing #diadop #bosudopi #headcanons #bosudopi fic #diadop fic #jjba #vento aureo #also i'd love to make a fic rec list soon #since i have read like. uhhh Most of the tag on ao3. and i would love to highlight some faves #so that's a future project!

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substituted-shinigami · 10 months

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“Quick” Blog/Writing/Art Update: May/June 2023

Hello everyone! Thank you for your patience! Sorry, it’s been awhile, but I do hope to be back soon! I’ve had a good long rest from the stresses of social media (I wish I could also say life as well, but I’ve learned it does what it wants!), and I hope to be at least semi active again by the time Bleach is back in early July! Thanks again for your patience! 🥰

Now unfortunately when I say semi-active, I really do mean semi-active. I won’t go into detail about my real life stuff, but it causes me enough stress that I’ve realized I can’t deal with it and social media stress at the same time. So I probably won’t be on here as often, and will be posting even less, but I want you all to know that I still love all y’alls stuff and will look at it when I can! I took a peek just recently to try and get back into the groove (the app has really changed in the last few months, huh?) and saw you all were talking about Soul Society Trains awhile back, and I’m so sorry I missed it because OMIGOSH DO I WANT IT TO BE CANON! Like can you imagine if Squad 12 designed one?! It would be a horror show, with a bunch of little feet and eyes and horns and UGH! Or maybe, due to how Soul Society is layed out, it’s a subway instead! Maybe it's an immortal mole creature that travels underground on some well known migratory route, and if you’re knowledgeable and crazy enough, you can just grab its fur and hold on tight to get where you need to go faster! Where was I going with this? Oh, right! You all are great, and I hope to read more of your ideas, and headcanons, and other stuff whenever I’m able!

What else…oh yes, posting content. So you know how I was talking about social media stress? Yeah, posting causes a lot of that. Creating though, causes less of that though, sometimes even decreases it. Like I literally sleep better if I write fanfiction before bed (sad, I know, but hear me out). So what’s the solution? Well, I could just never post, but I like sharing with others too! So what I’ve decided to do instead is post in seasons kind of like a tv show! I’ll work on fanfiction/fanart throughout the year, and then once October hits, I’ll post whatever I finish on a sort of schedule, like every Saturday or something. That way, I won’t feel stressed to get something out every month and I can work on multiple stories at the same time (which is my preferred way to write)! That said, since I won’t be online as much, I may be pretty slow in answering messages/questions/comments/etc, so I want to apologize in advance. Know that I still love and appreciate all of you, and will get back when I can!

Hmmm…Any last details? Oh yes, fanart and Bloodlines. I’m gonna be honest, y’all, fanart has been slow coming. I wanted to do more fan comics, but I haven’t had a lot of inspiration or motivation lately. I unfortunately might have to save that idea for next year, but if I do, I do have a back up plan that I think you all will like, so hopefully that works out. But for now, we’ll just have to wait and see!

Bloodlines…will be out…this year…or so help me, I’ll- *cough* Anyway, work on it has been going steadily, which should make me happy, but for some reason has got me extremely nervous. Like, is it going steadily because it’s close to finishing? Or is it going steadily because I missed a major flaw? Like will I be about to post it and realize I need to REWRITE THE ENTIRE THING! These thoughts plague me. Current improvements! I’ve learned what chapter hooks are and have implemented them to make the beginnings more interesting! Also, while I think Bloodlines is still a good “series” title, it is no longer a good title for the piece. The new working title is “Learning to Breathe”. I think that better encapsulates the story I’m trying to tell! Current worries! Is the climax “climaxy” enough? Does the build up pay off in the end? Do the dramatic moments make sense? DO I NEED TO REWRITE THE ENTIRE THING???

Anyway, I think that is finally, actually it! If you made it to the end, that’s pretty amazing of you! One day, I’ll learn to summarize my thoughts better, but today is not that day! See you all in July when Bleach comes back! I’m so hyped!

#blog update #writing update #art update #june 2023

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army-of-mai-lovers · 3 years

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in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough.

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.”

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role.

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all.

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.”

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.”

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~”

y’all WHAT.

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back.

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai.

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too.

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!”

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse.

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.)

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out.

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show.

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.”

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring.

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what?

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her.

Conclusion

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked.

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here.

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice.

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us.

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autisticandroids · 3 years

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anyway i really dislike the “dean thinks cas doesn’t have feelings because he’s an angel” headcanon because i just don’t think it’s...... believable?

like, my first thought is it doesn’t make a ton of sense if only because like, cas is such an overemotional character. like his motivations are intensely impulsive, irrational, emotional. but like, you could also argue that dean doesn’t understand that about him, that dean doesn’t see him very clearly, and that’s believable to me.

but there’s a lot of other evidence against this headcanon. like, first of all, dean has seen him human or de-angeled a couple of times, and he clearly doesn’t change that much. second of all, like, yes, in the early seasons dean sees cas as an Angel but by the late seasons he very much sees him as like..... just a guy? like he very much just sees cas as a guy in later seasons. i don’t know if i could pinpoint where this transition happens but it does happen. third of all, we see dean attempting to tug on cas’ heartstrings a good few times? 6x20 “i’m not gonna logic you,” 6x22 “we were family once,” 8x17 “i need you,” and those are the ones that come to me off the top of my head. and in 8x17 it even works! so like when push comes to shove and it’s a life or death situation, dean is aware that cas has heartstrings to be tugged on. like dean knows cas has emotions.

but the biggest reason is like. that line that people use to support it. the one from reading is fundamental.

Oh, I don't know, man. What can I say? You've been chosen. And it sucks. Believe me. There's no use asking "why me?" 'Cause the angels – they don't care. I think maybe they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just... breaks them apart.

like, that line is..... okay we’re all agreed that dean is like. he is nothing if not a miserable little pile of lies. he is always saying the opposite of what he means and masking one feeling under another. it’s his defense mechanism. things he says, things like this, they’re him trying to convince himself/other people of one thing, while he believes another.

the first thing he’s doing here is blaming himself. he is taking responsibility for both cas’ previous actions and his current state on his own shoulders.

now, remember, this is an edlund episode. and given *waves hands* supernatural, i think one of the more coherent methods of analysis one can take wrt. the show is to view individual writers’ bodies of work as coherent canons within themselves, only semi connected with the show as a whole, because individual writers often have strong and conflicting portrayals of the characters.

anyway ben edlund’s dean very much feels responsible for cas. like, obviously edlund wrote “the end,” and we have collectively made a delicious meal of the fact that the horror of that future for dean is that he’s ruined cas - that endverse cas is very much (if i may weave the text together for a moment) “fallen in every way imaginable,” and that it’s dean’s fault. but the end is not the only place this dynamic shows up. look at the man who would be king - “you're a friggin' child, you know that? just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want!” dean is very much taking it as his responsibility to educate cas here, to teach him right from wrong. ben edlund's dean very much views cas primarily as a child he is responsible for. hell, the whole drama of the man who would be king is basically that cas did something without dean’s permission, which doesn’t make a ton of sense unless you think dean feels responsible for all of cas’ actions. like, this is the flip side of dean’s control complex - if it is dean’s moral duty to control everything going on around him, then everything that happens is his fault. if everything that happens is his fault, then it is his moral duty to control everything around him. they’re the same.

this line is dean blaming himself for cas’ “brokenness,” since he’s the one who got cas to try to care. and certainly, the text is encouraging him to blame himself:

DEAN It's Sam's thing, isn't it? You taking on his, uh, cage-match scars. I'm guessing that's what broke your bank, right?

CASTIEL Well, it took... everything to get me here.

like, i don’t think cas is trying to fuck with dean’s head here? i don’t think even at the best of times cas is emotionally aware enough to hit on the perfect way to ruin dean’s entire month like this on purpose, and this is not the best of times. and cas i don’t think sees things as dean’s fault, he just sees himself as fallen, he doesn’t think dean pushed him. and a lot of things have happened to cas in the last four years, only some of them to do with dean. to cas, “everything” here means just that - everything. dean is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. hell, cas when cas says “everything” he is probably referencing like, his whole “god’s plan” thing here: quite literally the entire predestined machinations of the world. it’s very little to do with dean.

on the other hand, i’m always just on the edge of reading cas in reading is fundamental, specifically, as bitterly passive aggressive - “always happy to bleed for the winchesters” is such a vicious line it’s hard to believe he’s being sincere. sometimes in stories i can sort of... feel the narrative/author possessing a character and saying what they want to express, rather than what that character would actually say. sometimes i feel like “well, it took... everything to get me here” and “always happy to bleed for the winchesters” were less “authentic cas characterization” and more “ben edlund being a bitter casgirl.”

but i digress. regardless of whether that exchange was in-character for cas, and whether it was sincere, the effect on dean it has is in-character: dean blames himself.

and the whole “they don’t have the equipment to care” thing is on the one hand, dean blaming himself - he’s the one who tried to get cas to care in the first place. and on the other, dean trying (and failing) to convince himself that there’s nothing he could have done, that it isn’t his fault - cas’ brokenness is inherent to his angelic nature, that can’t be dean’s fault.

the other thing he’s trying to do here is dehumanize cas.

he has a couple of reasons for doing this. the first is simply that he's angry. dehumanizing cas is an act of cruelty, and dean is being cruel because he's angry.

it makes sense that dean is angry. like, on one level, cas has done a bunch of fucked shit that dean has every right to be mad about. but that stuff is not imo the primary reason dean is angry. dean is angry because of his self-blame. dean is angry because he blames himself for both cas' actions and his current state, and he's mad at cas for making him hate himself. i know that's like five dimensional blame refraction, but welcome to the twisted mind of dean winchester.

so dean is angry, and he's dehumanizing cas as an act of cruelty because he's angry. but he's also dehumanizing cas because he doesn't want to be angry at cas anymore. he can't forgive cas (because he can't forgive himself and he blames himself for cas' actions), but he loves cas and doesn't want to be angry with him, so he dehumanizes him and strips him of agency in order to absolve him of responsibility.

that's what's happening in this line. and also, all that aside, the line doesn't even say cas doesn't have feelings! it says he does, and they've ruined him!

#spn #love to do a like thousand word exegesis of one line of dialogue

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imo-chan-imagines · 3 years

Text

『 As your boyfriend | BNHA Headcanons 』

From the good, to the bad, to the downright adorable.

Characters: female!reader, Aizawa Shouta

Tags/warnings: Boku No Hero Academia (anime), 18+, explicit descriptions of sex, smut, fluff, soft dom Aizawa, relationship, headcanons

⚠️ 18+ CONTENT! MINORS: PLEASE DO NOT INTERACT ⚠️

A/N: Right, so I'm simping for this man biG TIME, but I'm only on season 3, so no spoilers or anything, please. This is my first BNHA post (and it turned out way longer than I was intending 😅) Please let me know if you want more in the future!

Also, I have a repetitive strain injury, so typing stuff is taking a while at the moment. Sorry about that. Thanks for reading! Please enjoy ♡ ~Imo

☆ Aizawa Shouta ☆

I'm not going to lie. Shouta can be a big ol' grouchy pants sometimes, and it's basically impossible to win an argument against him makes you want to tear your hair out, sometimes

But most of the time, he's just tired and in pain, and he doesn't mean to be so crotchety

He's not the type to make excuses, though. That's childish. He means his apologies, even if they're simple

He'll normally initiate an apology by gently wrapping his arms around you from behind and resting his forehead on your shoulder 🥺

Physical contact is incredibly personal and intimate for him. He doesn't just touch anyone, or allow them to touch him

You're special 💞💫

Soft, gentle touches, like his fingers interlacing with yours, or his leg brushing up against you, are basically his way of saying 'I love you'

Catch me crying in the corner, a'ight? 😔

He rarely ever raises his voice. Like, ever he doesn't need to, and is aware that it can be scary

He's definitely the kind of guy to forget to tell people that you're dating, simply because he doesn't see how it's relevant or anyone else's business 🤦‍♀️

I mean, he ain't wrong, but–

And his mood switches between 'antisocial' and 'clingy' like a mechanical metronome did someone say 'cat'?

Sometimes, you'll be lucky if he speaks more than three words to you together in a whole day nothing personal 🤷‍♀️

But on other days, he literally won't let you out of his arms for the world he's complicated, okay?

You have missed many a parcel delivery because he wouldn't let you get up from his lap to answer the door 🙄😂

Boundaries and responsibilities are key and highly respected by Shouta, and he would NEVER erase your quirk without your permission, unless he literally had no other choice like someone's going to get hurt, or something

Is generally quite serious so what's new? but you're one of the few people he can relax around when he feels like it

9/10 of his jokes are dad jokes 😎 hell yeah

Takes a hard stance in financial debates, but is constantly broke af 😶 says he'll buy you dinner and presents you with some instant noodles with a 'Reduced To Clear' sticker on them

Will take a bite of your food/steal some off your plate without asking, and literally say nothing to defend himself #gremlin

Is incredibly shy and uncomfortable about being ~le horny~ until you've been together for literally forever

Even then, he's still shy about it when he has to bring it up and it's pretty cute, let me tell ya

It took him forever to admit to you that he gets turned on when you eat ice lollies

Guess what you do whenever you want to mess with him like a little brat 😛

But if he's in the mood, he will 100% whisper something dirty in your ear, even if you're completely alone and probably well past third base

He does it because he knows your pussy will clamp around him at the sound of his voice 😳🥵

*fans self profusely*

Genuine, unadulterated smiles are rare with Aizawa, but when he does 🙌 Heaven hath opened its gates and allowed an angel walk amongst mere mortals 🥺🤧

If he lays his head on your chest, he will fall asleep like that *snaps fingers*

Surprise nose and forehead kisses to show he loves you ❤

Calls you 'Kitten' this is basically already canon at this point

And he's all about those deep talks with you at 3 am when he can't sleep

Speaking of insomnia!

It's cheesy, but you're like a soothing balm. The warmth of your body makes him feel safe, your touch helps him relax, and your voice soothes him to sleep

He's never slept as well as when you're beside him 😭🤧

When cuddling, he likes to be the big spoon but will accept being the little spoon if you if you press your boobs against his back and ask really nicely 🤭

And he loves you stroking his hair and running your fingers through it 🥺

Netlix nights and pillow/blanket forts!!

Rainy days are a godsend. Staying inside all day under the blankets, with the soft sound of the rain falling outside and no-one to interrupt you – literal paradise

He makes mean hot cocoas and Irish coffees 😋 I feel like this man lives off Irish coffees 😂🤣

Wears a lot of black and grey sweatpants at home 😗 which highlight the outline of his dick just right, if ya know what I'm sayin' 👀

Doesn't like going out for dates and prefers staying inside and doing stuff together same, honeyy

But if you really like going out, he will somewhat begrudgingly agree to it and get all dressed up for you, just so long as he gets his fair share of home-dates, too 🤗

But if you also don't like going out... the two of you will basically never leave the house, except to get groceries in your pyjamas from the 24-hour convenience store down the road at one in the morning oddly specific, I know, but you get me

And sorry, but I don't make the rules

Well, actually, I do. But shush

We all know that Shouta cleans up *chef's kiss* So when you go somewhere ~fancy~ he always looks so damn fine 😩

But he has very little idea that he's hot he sees himself as a tired, walking dumpster fire🚶‍♂️🔥

Shouta will 100% turn into a crazy cat dude with 15+ cats if you don't stop him I never said you should, though 🙃

And is a 'minimalist texter' – basically, if he can't answer a text with 'yes', 'no,' 'maybe', or 'OK', then he probably won't answer it at all 😭😂

Especially if you try and sext him or send him your nudes while he's at work. He'll probably lecture you when he gets home and depending on just how much you turned him on, he might proceed to teach you a lesson...

But wear his shirt, and just his shirt or his hoodie and he's yours

Heart eyes, motherfucker 😍

And, depending on how you two are feeling that day, you may or may not end up getting dicked down on the nearest semi-flat surface right then and there 👀

But don't misunderstand. This is an incredibly tired man you have here, and his libido actually isn't through the roof sorry, ladies so this kind of thing isn't an everyday occurrence

But when he dicks you down, he dicks you down goooood

Shouta's not big on PDA, but makes up for it in private. We're talking hands and kisses all over your body he leaves nothing unloved 😏

And while he's not big on PDA, he is big on sneaky displays of affection or 'SDA', as I like to call it

Like subtly grabbing your butt for a second, or his hand on your thigh under the table at a dinner etc. especially around other people

But what really gets him going is slowly removing your clothes and taking you fully naked, spreading your legs wide and holding them open he likes the view 😍

He lowkey highkey worships your body 🙏 and will literally not shut up about how fucking pretty you are, and how fucking good it feels inside you his words, not mine 😳

Groans and growls a little when he's getting close/cumming especially when he's being a little rough and likes to cum together, but knows it's not always practical

He tends to be a gentle dom, but can get just a teensy bit 🤏 rough if he's too into it – but nothing outrageous

We're talking rough thrusts and a brutal pace, maybe holding onto you a little too hard and, waaahh, he gets so embarrassed if he leaves bruises

Is also into a little bondage, but again, only light stuff – restraining your wrists with his hands or his tie or his Capturing Weapon 👀 maybe blinding-folding you if you're okay with it

If you're not blindfolded, then I'm afraid he's all about that eye contact

Eating out your pussy? Eye contact. Pounding you into the mattress? Blazing eye contact. Rearranging your guts in front of the mirror? Fucking eye contact

And CONSENT, BABY. THAT'S WHAT HE'S FUCKING INTO 😌🙌💞

But all jokes aside – he's too used to taking without consent with his quirk, that he's kind of paranoid about it comes to sex but it's adorable and sweet, and honestly, still kind of hot

And speaking of eating pussy – goddamn does he like to please you. Like cream to a kitty 😛

Oh, and he just loves it when you suck on his fingers as he's pounding into you 🤤

And he likes to leave love bites in personal, inconspicuous places and sometimes on your neck

He's marking his woman 😌

When he gets suuuper horny, he likes to fuck you from behind, standing upright in front of the mirror. It's a specific kink he has of watching himself stretch you out as the length of his cock disappears inside you...

I can get behind that, lemme tell yaaa

I said he tends to be dominant, but female doms – fear not!

Shouta is quite flexible when it comes down to it and is kind of lazy, lmfao so he definitely has time for laying back, having the control taken away, and having his dick ridden

For him, it's really all about communication and what you're both comfortable with

I will say this, though: sometimes, his cat watches you while you're banging 😅😂

The first time it happened, you freaked out and refused to continue because – how could you??? But eventually, you just kind of got used to it 🤷‍♀️

The same way you've got used to it following you to the bathroom every time you go to take a shit 😭

So now, you just kind of laugh about it, which helps keep things a little lighter 🤗

After sex, he does like to snuggle, but you'll be lucky if he stays awake for more than 30 seconds it's one of the few times he actually can sleep well

If you're ever out and about, or even inside, and cold, he'll wrap you up in his clothes/scarf/blanket like a sushi roll like Eren wrapping up Mikasa in his scarf, all deadpan and everything 😐

It's not that often, but when he gets drunk, he gets all soft and emotional, and starts babbling about how he can't believe he got so lucky to be dating you, and that he's sure he hasn't done anything to deserve it mah heart

He's pretty sure he wants kids, but he doesn't feel like now is the right time, and is lowkey afraid that it's never going to feel like the right time

He also constantly doubts himself, wondering if he'd actually able to look after them and protect them the way a father should class 1-A got him second-guessing himself 🥺

Besides, it's not all about him. You clearly have a say in it too, and he doesn't want to force you into anything

Again: communication and comfort zones

Dating Aizawa definitely has its ups and downs, and it's not smooth sailing, but he's prepared to work for a life with you because he's found a connection with you that he hasn't feel with anyone else

He knows that you're both far from perfect, but hopes that, for once, you might just make something good, and make it last 🥰😇

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youneedasoultraveller · 3 years

Note

Is the popular headcanon that Nicky was illiterate, stupid and barbaric fitting in the stereotypes about Southern Europeans / Mediterraneans ? I’m guessing it’s from the American part of the fandom that’s choosing to not respectfully write Nicky since he is white while being virulent towards anybody that doesn’t perfected and accurately write Joe because he is MENA.

Hello!

Mind you, I am neither a psychologist, a sociologist nor a historian, so of course be aware these are my own views on the whole drama.

But to answer your question, yes, I personally think so. It definitely comes from the American side, but I have seen Northern Europeans do that too, often just parroting the same type of discourse that Anglos whip out every other day.

There is an abysmal ignorance of Medieval history – even more so when it concerns countries that are not England: there is this common misconception that Europe in the Middle Ages was this cultural backwater full of semi-barbaric people that stems unfortunately not only from trying to (correctly) reframe colonialist approaches to the historiographies of non-European populations (that is, showing the Golden Age of Islamic culture, for instance, as opposed to what were indeed less culturally advanced neighbours), but also from distortions operated by European themselves from the Renaissance onwards, culminating in the 18th century Enlightenment philosophes categorising the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages.

Now this approach has been time and time again proven to be a made-up myth. I will not go into detail to disprove each and every single one misconception about the Medieval era because entire books have been written, but just to give you an example: there was no such a thing as a ius primae noctis/droit du seigneur; people were aware that the Earth was not flat (emperors, kings, saints, etc, they were depicted holding a globe in their hands); people were taking care of their hygiene, either through the Roman baths, or natural springs, or private tubs that the wealthier strata of the population (and especially the aristocracy) owned. The Church was not super happy about them not because it wanted people to remain dirty, but because often these baths were for both men and women, and it was not that in favour of them showing off their bodies to one another. Which, you know, we also don’t do now unless you go to nudist spas. It was only during the Black Death in the 14th century that baths were slowly abandoned because they became a place of contagion, and they went into disuse (or better, they changed purpose and became something like bordellos). And, lastly, there was certainly a big chunk of the population that was illiterate, but certainly it was not the clergy, which was THE erudite class of the time. It was in monasteries and abbeys that knowledge was passed and preserved (as well as lost unfortunately often, such as the case for the largest part of classical literature).

So what does this mean? According to canon, Nicolò was an ex priest who fought in the First Crusade. This arguably means that at the very least he was a cadet son of a minor noble family (or a wealthy merchant one) who was part of the clergy. As such, historically he could have been neither illiterate nor a dirty garbage cat in his daily life.

Let’s then talk geography. Southern Europe (and France) was far, far more advanced than the North at the time and Italy remained the cultural powerhouse of the continent until the mid-17th century. Al Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian States, the Byzantine Empire (which called itself simply Roman Empire, whose population defined itself as Roman and cultural heirs of the Latin and Greek civilisations): these places have nothing to do with popular depictions of Medieval Europe that you mainly see from the Anglos. Like @lucyclairedelune rightfully pointed out: not everyone was England during the plague.

Also the Middle Ages lasted one thousand years. As a historical age, it’s way longer than anything we had after that. So of course habits varied, there was a clear collapse right after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but then things develop, you know?

Anyway, back to the point in question. Everything I whipped up is not arcane knowledge: it’s simply having studied history at school and spending a few hours reading scientific articles on the internet which are not “random post written by random Anglo on Tumblr who can hardly find Genoa on a map”.

Nicolò stems from that culture. The most advanced area in Europe, possibly a high social class, certainly educated, from Genoa, THE maritime superpower of the age (with…Venice). It makes absolutely no sense that he would not be able to speak anything past Ligurian: certainly Latin (the ecclesiastical one), maybe the koine Greek spoken in Constantinople, or Sabir, or even the several Arabic languages from the Med basin stretching from al Andalus to the Levant. Because Genoa was a port, and people travel, bring languages with them, use languages to barter.

And now I am back to your question. Does this obstinacy in writing him as an illiterate beast (basically) feed into stereotypes of Mediterranean people (either from the northern or the southern shore)? It does.

It is a typically Anglo-Germanic perspective that of describing Southern (Catholic) Europeans are hot-headed, illiterate bumpinks mindlessly driven by blind anger, lusts and passions, as opposed to the rational, law-abiding smart Northern Protestants. You see it on media. I see it in my own personal life, as a Southern Italian living in Northern Europe for 10 years.

Does it sound familiar? Yes, it’s the same harmful stereotype of Yusuf as the Angry Brown Man. But done to Nicolò as the Angry Italian Man (not to mention the fact that, depending on the time of day and the daily agenda of the Anglo SJW Tumblrite, Italians can be considered either white or non-white).

Now, the times where Nicolò is shown as feral are basically when he is fighting (either in a bloody war or against Merrick’s men) or when Yusuf is in danger. Because, guess what, the man he loves is being hurt. What a fucking surprise.

Nicolò is simply being reduced to a one dimensional stereotype of the dirty dumb angry Italian, and people are simply doing this because they do not seem to accept the fact that both he and Yusuf are two wonderfully complex, flawed, fully-fledged multidimensional characters.

So I am mainly concentrating on Nicolò here because as an Italian I feel more entitled to speak about the way I see the Anglo fandom treating him and using stereotypes on him that have been consistently applied to us by the Protestant Northerners. I keep adding the religious aspect because, although I am an atheist who got debaptised from the Catholic Church, a big part of the historical treatment towards Southern has to do with religion and the contempt towards Catholic rituals and traditions (considered, once again, a sign of cultural backwardness by the enlightened North).

I do not want to impose my view of Yusuf because there are wonderful Tumblr users from MENA countries who have already written wonderful metas of the way Yusuf is being depicted by non-MENA people (in particular Americans), especially (again) @lucyclairedelune and @nizarnizarblr.

However, I just want to underline that, by only ever writing Yusuf as essentially a monodimensional character without a single flaw, this takes away Yusuf’s canon multidimensionality, the right he has to feel both positive but also negative feelings (he was hurt and angry at Booker’s betrayal, allegedly his best friend, AND HE HAD EVERY RIGHT TO BE – and I say this as a Booker fan as well).

I have not been the first to say these things, it is nothing revolutionary, and it exactly complements what the MENA tumblr users in the TOG fandom have also been trying to say. Both of us as own voices people who finally have the chance to have two characters that are fully formed and honest representations of our own cultures, without stereotypes or Anglogermanic distortions.

And the frustration mounting among all of us comes from the fact that the Anglos are, once again, not listening to us, even telling us we are wrong about our own cultures (see what has happened to Lucy and Nazir).

What is even more frustrating is that everything in this cursed fandom – unless it was in the film or comics – is just a bloody headcanon. But these people are imposing their HCs as if it were the Word of God, and attacking others – including own voices MENA and Italians – for daring to think otherwise.

I honestly don’t expect this post will make any difference because this is just a small reflection of what Americans do in real life on grander scale, which is thinking they are the centre of the world and ignoring that the rest of the world even exists regardless of their own opinions on it.

But still, sorry for the length, hope I answered your question.

#i am also expecting to receive lots of shit for this but can't say i care #the old guard #tog discourse #nicolo di genova #the old guard meta

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twig-rambles · 3 years

Text

*sighs*

Okay, I know it's been over a week since the Red Banquet, but it's been a little less than that since BBH's semi-lore stream where he was really cryptic when asked about if Sapnap, his son, (who was explicitly shown to have recieved not one, but three invites to the banquet), had a canon, important-to-the-lore reason for not being there.

For reference, here's the transcript:

Dono: For the Red Banquet, was Sapnap absent on purpose for the sake of the story? Or was he just not able to make the stream?

Bad: *gasp* Ohh, you're stumbling upon something canon. Some lore.... That very few people picked up on. Think about it, guys. I kept seeing people saying 'Gasp! Bad was gonna sacrifice his son! He invited him to the, uh, the Banquet and he was gonna sacrifice his canonical son!' *stares into camera* ...Was he? Did Sapnap show up? *small gasp* Did Sapnap not show up because he forgot? Or was there another reason why Sapnap didn't show up?

Something that's interesting to me, but probably not important for anything other than dramatic effect, is: cc!Bad changed the perspective for this so that he was facing the camera (I'll embed the clip once I figure out how to. Forgive me I am bad with tech.)

Now, I think we all know that infamous screenshot of Bad liking a tweet where someone talked about c!Bad being willing to sacrifice his own son to the Egg. But I rewatched the transcribed clip from the semi-lore stream just now and a few theories sprang into my mind. The first two are rather sad, but the last one is sweet and puts the father-son relationship on sloghtly better terms.

Theory Numero Uno: What if Bad... Has already sacrificed his son to the Egg?

Being dead is an excellent excuse not to come to a party, after all, and even though he still has all three canon lives (as far as we know), we've seen that those sacrificed to the Egg can take some time to respawn. As for motivation, I could imagine the Egg might have promised to give Bad Skeppy back at the price of Sapnap.

In Bad's current state... I wouldn't put him above this.

Especially since it seems he really is prepared to sacrifice his own son to the Egg (judging by the tweet).

The "Did Sapnap show up?" prompts me to think Sapnap might have been there for the Banquet. If he'd arrived just a half-hour beforehand (aka an entire irl hour before the stream began) that probably would've been time enough to successfully sacrifice him.

TL; DR: He was there that day, only not when we were.

Or, even worse: He was there, but not where we were.

And thus we arrive at my second theory: Sapnap was sacrificed to the Egg, but in a vastly different way than we've previously assumed

He could've been there at the same time as us, and we never noticed.

Maybe it's a Ranboo "blink and you'll miss them walk right by"-kinda thing. Maybe he was lurking about and we just didn't see him, because he was crouched and hiding really well. Maybe he's stuck in/under the Egg, or within the surroundng walls, or the "maze" down there. Maybe he's alone with the Egg's whispers, missing his father, his fiancés, his friends, and wondering why everyone's abandoning him.

He is probably an ideal target for the Eggpire, feeling abandoned and alone. The Eggpire would promise him community and a close-knit family connection.

And Bad, or maybe even just Ponk or Ant, sees an ideal target first and Bad's son second, thanks to the Egg's fiendish whispers.

This theory is supported not only by cc!Bad's cryptic "Was he [going to sacrifice his own son]?" and the whole "Did Sapnap show up?"-thing, but also by the amount of plot-twists in the Red Banquet stream. This twist would fit right in.

Of course, Egged!Sapnap would've been one just waiting in the wings, but I think they purposefully kept him away. - If the Eggpire had Sapnap, one of the best fighters, on their side, they would've wanted to keep him hidden, maybe even unaware of his own "egginess", as a sort of hidden weapon or sleeper agent for dire times, right? Maybe they sent him to assassinate someone. They most probably would've kept him hidden or even sent him away.

Of course, it was a stupid move because they were defenseless when Quackity showed up (imagine the Karlnapity angst if Sapnap were to be egged!), but having Sapnap waiting in your arsenal for your hostile takeover later as a "secret weapon" is a pretty good idea.

And egged!Sapnap doesn't change that the Eggpire would've felt broken and defeated after the Banquet.

But it would open the option of Sapnap granting his father refuge in Kinoko Kingdom.

Which opens up a whole host of other problems.

Side-note: If you are looking for a good fic with Egged!Sapnap (and Sapnap pre-Bad backstory feat. demon!Sapnap - RIP that headcanon, but it'll probably thrive anyways a la the decanonised SBI family dynamic and thank God for that), go read "The Prince clothed in Blood Vines" by RavenFire2908 and the consequent sequels.

Now, for the nice, family-friendly theory: Bad told his son not to come

You might be thinking: "Wait, what? Wouldn't Karl do that? He's seen the Egg's evils first hand at the Masquerade!"

To that I say: You are correct.

BUT: Karl has amnesia and might have been off time travelling to God-knows-when and -where at the time of the banquet. The last lore stream he was on was George's dream post-banquet. (The same goes for Sapnap, btw.) And Karl's not the only person Sapnap's close to who knows the dangers of the Egg.

You see, some of cc!Bad's wording (The slow, ominous "...Was he [going to sacrifice his own son]?" and "Or was there another reason why Sapnap didn't show up?") has led me to believe that there is a possibility c!Bad might have actually warned Sapnap to stay away.

Karl obviously would've supported this venture, but we can only say that for sure when we know how his memory's doing and where c!Karl actually is right now - in his current state, it might just be that Karl doesn't remember the dangers of the Egg and is thusly unable to warn Sapnap.

But Bad still can.

Bad, who maybe, just maybe, doesn't want to lose another loved one to the Egg. Sweet, kind, paternal Bad, who absolutely adores his son.

Maybe he just couldn't sacrifice his son *that* way. He might even have thought death a better fate than being egged, which is why he was willing to sacrifice his son to the Egg by killing him.

(Less-friendly theory: Depending on when Sapnap's segment of the invite stream is set in proportion to the "The Egg is a homewrecker"-stream, it also leaves open the possibility of Sapnap being amongst the referenced things Bad has sacrificed for the sake of Skeppy/the Egg. Ow.)

#dream smp #dsmp #dsmp theory #the red banquet #the egg #badboyhalo #sapnap #eggpire #dadboyhalo #do i have to tag karl?

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eirichele · 4 years

Text

a VERY in depth look at fire emblem: three houses and its grooming problem

OR: how this game managed to make an accurate portrayal of grooming and exactly how it made it palatable

(warning: really long. though to be fair, the length is mostly screenshots. you can also read this in google docs)

***

SO i’ve been wanting to write something Formal and In Depth for a while, because this game’s reception has been a nightmare for me and other csa victims and quarantine hit, so i finally had time. i just really wanted to get all my thoughts in one place before i move on from 3h. i’m basically done talking about this after this one because... idk what else i could say that hasn’t been said here, really. fe has history with this, and the in-game excuses ring hollow when we know the fe devs disregard csa victims at every turn while pandering to male gamers who love sexualised teenage girls.

long, long analysis under the cut:

Some previous context: Fire Emblem games have a history of normalising harmful romances

It’s understandable for many to not know the history of the series since 3H was insanely successful and it brought a lot of new fans. Fire Emblem has always been a character driven game where making your units bond was encouraged both for gameplay and story reasons. Some end in special romantic epilogues, and some of those relationships were concerning to say the least: Sylvia, 14 years old, can marry every eligible man in Genealogy of the Holy War, Jill from Radiant Dawn, 18, can marry her father’s protegé who is 34. This is not a new phenomenon for the series, it just became more noticeable and malicious post-Awakening, because it became first person fanservice.

FE decided to rehaul the series sometime in 2011 by including dating sim elements, which made it explode in popularity. Avatars were introduced to represent the player in-game, allowing them to marry whoever they wanted. The first game to include a pseudo-dating sim was Awakening, released in 2012. The player can marry every named playable character, on top of the usual FE shipping mechanics . Donnel, Nowi and Ricken, all children, are part of your party. Nowi is a thousand year old dragon that looks like a child of 11-15. She loves playing, and throws tantrums, and overall acts very childishly, but the narrative insists that she’s really an adult feigning childishness.

In Fire Emblem lore, dragons are veeeery slow ageing people with the power to transform into dragons, which means they can be biologically still children even when they’re hundreds or thousands of years old. Tiki, another similar character, is considered a child in Shadow Dragon by her adult dragon family while explicitly being around Nowi’s age. Despite evidence to the contrary, Awakening treats Nowi like an adult who can marry. Fire Emblem had previously included many dragon child characters in the past, but none were romantic options for anyone, and they were considered a younger sibling of sorts. Nowi was a first in the series, and after her inclusion these romances became common with characters like Nyx in Fates and Flayn and Sothis in Three Houses. Worth noting is her design, which is incredibly sexualised. A (not so) fun fact is that the outfit designer of Awakening and Fates was none other than Three Houses’ future director, Toshiyuki Kusakihara:

Ricken and Donnel are just regular 13-15 year old boys. No magic. Other adult characters and your avatar just marry them, and it’s stated they will have children in the future. The next game, Fates, actually managed to outdo this somehow: Your pedophilic romance options are now five, and unlike Awakening’s avatar Robin, whose age was unknown and could potentially be portrayed in their mid-teens, Corrin canonically is in the 18-21 age range, making this unambiguous pedophilia. Fates is a very standout game when it comes to Fire Emblem’s worst parts: There’s no “children from the future” excuse for the avatar having children like in Awakening. The avatar impregnates all spouses (or gets pregnant) and has the child after an in-game time skip, which means you can canonically impregnate your approximately 15 year old sister in a Fire Emblem game. You really do not want to stan these devs.

pictured: definitely not 18, even if the english localization really tried to pull that.

Which is yet another thing in this game: Incest with adopted siblings is possible and even encouraged. Incest is constantly fetishized through the character of Camilla, who is an attractive and sexualized older sister obsessed with the main character. Another (not so) fun fact is that most characters will continue to call you ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ in the story even if you’re married because Fire Emblem rarely changes the story to fit with your marriage options. The most insidious thing about the incest and pedophilic couples in Fates is that they’re completely normalized. It’s not shown as abusive, and they look like normal couples that could even look cute out of context. They confess their love, tease each other, blush and have cutesy epilogues.

pictured: marrying your sibling and a literal child

All of this is to end with the conclusion that this is a constant pattern with Fire Emblem, especially the ones with marriage. Any potentially awful relationships portrayed are not outwardly abusive. You won’t catch Xander gaslighting Corrin, or anything. They’re a “cute” relationship that just happens to be incest. Their interactions are not outwardly unhealthy, and it’s tailor made for ‘’’harmless’’’ shipping, but in the end, it’s incest and pedophilia portrayed as a valid pairing that’s “healthy” by all means. It’s normalization of something that’s objectively horrifying to live through. As a CSA victim, Fates literally made me quit the franchise for all the years it was popular.

When Three Houses announced that it would take place in a school while you play a teacher, after seeing all of this play out all FE fans could feel was dread. When 3H announced even later that all romance would take place post-time skip everyone forgot about their reservations instantly— ignoring the fact that everyone being over 18 when marriage happens doesn’t absolve all potential problems with predatory writing. How you write a couple with an age gap is critical. Moving on with Actual Three Houses:

Byleth has a canon age unlike Corrin and Robin, but the game tries to hide it

Corrin and Robin were both avatars meant to be somewhat customized. Byleth cannot be customized. They have a set appearance and age. You can choose Byleth’s name, gender and birthday when you start up the game, but Byleth canonically cannot be born anywhere after September 20th 1159, their “canon” birthday, since their father states in his diary that they’re already alive. 3H starts in the year 1180, which makes Byleth 20 or already 21 depending on their chosen birthday.

All other Three Houses characters have their ages shown clearly in their unit menu, and all bios update accordingly when you learn new information, including yours. Byleth’s age is revealed in a cutscene, but despite this, the game tries to “hide” their age. This is all Byleth has in their bio even well into the endgame:

It’s presumably so the player can “headcanon” their age, as the player avatar, but they still have a canon age, because they’re not a customizable one. It’s a very odd design choice that makes no sense until you consider that the game is romantically pushing teenagers at you. Romanceable students range from 14 to 22 years old before the time skip, but the great majority are in the 15-18 range. Early on, when you introduce yourself to your students, they seem taken aback by how young you are and comment how you seem like you’re “their age.” This is your only dialogue option in response:

No sixteen year old has ever told a twenty/-one year old that they’re the same age, but this is anime high school dating sim logic. An addendum is that this game has incredibly shallow dialogue options to hide how linear it really is, and this is the first glaring instance. This comes up later on with the romance options—you have little to no options to reject a student’s advances. Boundaries as both a player and RPG protagonist are non-existent in this game.

pictured: “yes” and “sure why not” dialogue options to agreeing to meet with a student alone. linhardt just turned 17 last month

Byleth can flirt pre-time skip

Most of your units are students, thus all romance should in theory, stay in the war phase…. Which doesn’t happen at all. All the narrative framing of characters’ “closeness” and foreshadowing of romance are definitely a part of the school phase. The worst offender by far is an in-game event called the Goddess Tower, the school’s local romantic spot. It’s said in universe that a man and a woman who make a vow there on a specific night will stay together forever, and this is a prelude to the marriage scenes five years later, which will take place in that Tower. You can even pick who to bring with you to the Tower, and this is what Byleth says to themselves before the drop down menu shows up:

this is one of those lines that’s like semi-innocuous, since byleth is addressing the player here, but what the fuck is a teacher doing thinking about a student “that way”???? my girl doesn’t know there will be a 5 year time skip where they’re going to be legal she’s just saying this about a bunch of sixteen year olds.

The Goddess Tower itself is a mess of bungled flirting and unnatural romantic scenes, made all the worse by the fact that you can only trigger this scene with a student. Older characters like Seteth, Catherine and Shamir are locked out of the Goddess Tower. They can’t be picked from the menu, and if they’re your highest support, the game will default to the next highest supported student. Here’s some lines from Ingrid’s scene:

ingrid is 17 when this takes place. the youngest byleth possible is well over 21 and the oldest is turning 22 next month

Check out this post for more examples of the Goddess Tower. Byleth’s dialogue options here are right out of a god damn PSA about child safety. They genuinely come off as a huge creep here, especially “Just the two of us….” My dude.

Thankfully one of the few instances where you can turn the student down, but notable anyway. Dorothea’s C support, where you have the option of following her flirty lead, and her response will be the same regardless of your choice:

Another infamous bit of inappropriate flirting is Edelgard’s Japanese C1 support, which you’re likely to unlock before her 18th birthday in June because it’s her very first support:

This was thankfully removed in the English version (Though she still has the same flustered reaction), but the intentions are there. Curiously, I’ve seen many supporters of the Byleth/Edelgard ship say they were upset this was removed, while simultaneously denying the ship has any grooming connotations whatsoever— when an authority figure making ha ha, unless? 😳 sexual jokes in front of underage/barely legal kids to see their reaction is textbook grooming:

Once a trusting or special relationship is created, the offender may carefully test the victim’s reaction to sex. (x)

Not helping is the fact that Edelgard falling in love with Byleth during the school phase is practically canon judging by dialogue in CF of her missing you “more” than the others. Which leads to:

Some interactions pre-time skip resemble grooming tactics

In fans’ minds the lack of boundaries are somewhat mitigated by Byleth’s supposed good intentions, and it’s common to hear fans say Byleth obviously didn’t go to Garreg Mach intending to marry one of the kids they’re teaching because grooming must be malicious from the start. However, it’s well known that unlike premeditated abuse of younger kids, sexual abuse of older teens often happens by “accident”

In contrast, educators who teach at the late middle and high school level target victims in this age range. They might be outstanding teachers, although they may also be mediocre (Shakeshaft, 2003). Sexual abuse at this level may be less premeditated and planned and more often a result of bad judgment (Shakeshaft, 2004). (x)

In other words, by putting zero boundaries between teacher and students and enabling weird situations, which is 3H to a T. Many students flirt, but Byleth doesn’t say anything, or even flirts back.

Secondly, Byleth is like… barely a character, so this isn’t meant to be a callout post accusing them of being a manipulative abuser or whatever, because this is about the dev team putting teenagers in these flirty positions to satisfy the player that Byleth is meant to represent. Byleth is just the plot device they use to do so. People often say this flirting isn’t grooming because Byleth has “good intentions,” but they’re a self-insert, and a self-insert doesn’t have to have any in-universe intentions because the outside writing drives their actions— the thing is we KNOW these writers are not above writing pedophilia as harmless romance. People project good intentions on Byleth, because that’s the avatar. You’re supposed to project on them. This of course includes their “good intentions,” and when I play 3H I headcanon that too, but canonically speaking, these intentions are 100% ambiguous. They never voice attraction to another student, or disgust at the thought of dating them because they speak in small, limited dialogue options and thought bubbles. We don’t have a real, canon indication that they would oppose dating a student before the time skip nor that they would actually do it.

What we do have are the canonical interactions that make people uncomfortable, however. Byleth can think of students in “that way” when the Gatekeeper describes a romantic getaway on the Goddess Tower. If we take them at face value, then their dialogue options clearly establish that they’re okay with flirting with students as young as fifteen, at the very least. They “die” before potentially starting to date any of them for real, but the beginnings of an uncomfortable romance are there and the game fully embraces this as okay .

This is all a result of the writing. Fates never condemned you for picking your sister over any of the other thirty (?) romanceable characters, just like Three Houses doesn’t condemn you for picking Lysithea over any older women in the teaching staff. It’s just another S support option, and it even gets some sweet extra content. She’s touched that you care for her, and you do everything in your power to take care of her frail health, and you guys get happily married. No one ever mentions that you were her high school teacher when she was fifteen and you met at said high school, and she was your favourite student— and this is, you know, something of an important detail in any relationship. Just like Fates, it’s sweet and shippable out of context, which just encourages normalization. How dare you say this is unhealthy? It’s tender! Look how much he loves her!

The thing is that 3H initially presents your students as your charges in school. You’re unambiguously in charge of them as both tactician and instructor, even if you treat each other in a familiar way. Even if most students technically outrank you as nobles, Garreg Mach as politically neutral ground implicitly puts you above them as their teacher. The younger ones are vulnerable teenagers, away from home in a boarding school. Most have some sort of underlying emotional problem that they come to you for. They come to you for advice, and sometimes just venting. You can give them gifts, and have tea every week with them if you so wish in an off-screen conversation. Tea also serves as the “skinship” of this game where you get to see the anime boy/girl of your dreams from up-close, which is a pretty creepy thing to do with a fifteen year old anime girl even out of universe, but I digress.

Looking at this chart in the essay I linked earlier gave me a little bit of a stroke, because the “Strategies” aspects are all things you do in 3H prior to the time-skip:

This is obviously accidental, but still concerning because we know these devs have a twisted idea of what romance is, and that culminated in what I sincerely hope is an unintended but still eerily accurate portrayal of grooming.

Emotional confidence, teatime and gifts, flirting, making a vow together at the Goddess Tower, sex jokes, are all things you do pre-timeskip, and some student’s personal arcs make this even worse. Marianne, Dimitri and Bernadetta have mental illnesses, and they heavily rely on you for support. Edelgard and Sylvain express attraction towards you. You meet Felix’s father and he puts his full trust in you. Ignatz, Bernadetta and Marianne have very low self-esteem. Characters like Ashe and Annette have major parental issues that they discuss with you. In short, you see them at their most vulnerable as kids, and then get together as adults.

About the only thing you don’t do pre-time skip in that list is “Isolate,” but some character arcs post time skip have this distinct vibe nonetheless. Many students leave their homes in the war phase explicitly because of you and no other reason. CF Ingrid in particular outright betrays Faerghus and everything she knew for you, as she says she doesn’t really believe in Edelgard’s war. Knowing you as a teacher can string her along in her Goddess Tower scene while she’s underage puts this in an awkward perspective.

This is what makes the five year time skip hold little weight. Everyone is an adult when the relationship is consummated, yes, but it starts pre-time skip.

Emotionally vulnerable teenagers having a strong relationship and frequent alone time with their older teacher, who is a confidant and someone that makes them feel special is already looking bad, but the absolute loyalty, idolisation and close relationship when they’re adults only makes it worse, even if it’s probably just a result of poorly thought out game design and player pandering gone wrong.

It’s not just player pandering, however. The devs just clearly think these relationships are okay. Other non-Byleth student/teacher romances deserve a mention, too—Manuela is forty something and thinks of her romantic potential with some 19 year-old:

Thankfully, this support ends at B, but others don’t. She has romantic endings with Lorenz, Ferdinand and Dorothea, who she even canonically met before Garreg Mach as a child and who idolises her as an opera star. The game doesn’t stop at the normalisation of grooming with Byleth, they’re just the most noticeable example, especially since it’s a power fantasy for the player who can romance all of them, not just a few.

The time skip had the opportunity to fix some of the creepy implications, but it didn’t

People like to look at the time-skip as a justification of romance. That 15 year old kid is 20 now, after all, and your students are adults, who have matured and grown outside of your influence.... Except your interactions with them remain virtually the same. They still call you Professor and hold you in some extremely high esteem as an authority figure.

Three Houses has an avatar worship problem like all newer Fire Emblem games and this definitely contributes to the uncomfortable implications in the narrative, because literally everyone respects you and adores you to an uncomfortable degree. Even as grown ass adults, the avatar worship just makes it seem like your students still idolize you like when they were kids awe struck by how cool you are.

They don’t show the change from “mentor” to “peer” satisfactorily, like they intended for the romance elements to work. Byleth’s name is customizable, making a first name basis difficult, but they easily could have changed your war phase title to something that would make it seem like your students’ view of you changed, like a military title such as Commander, or even just Eisner, your canonical last name. All students still call you “Professor,” in the war phase, though. Some students even call you Professor when you’re about to propose to them in the S support, like Lysithea. Leonie, one of the oldest students who is actually your age, has this to say about calling you by your name… you know, like a normal peer and friend would:

White Clouds is also a whole year while VW, AM, and SS take place during six to seven months, CF during five. You spend more time as their teacher and mentor than as “peers,” so Leonie’s position is pretty understandable despite being like, barely a year younger than you.

To rewind, this game lets you pick a “special” student pre-time skip, who you’re encouraged to build bonds with through tea, gifts and the Goddess Tower. You’re their favourite teacher, as said by many other characters. They grow up and join you in your war regardless of who they have to fight, some even just to be with you. They still affectionately call you Professor, and look up to you. You can then marry them. This is unironically seen as both acceptable and even romantic.

Many of these interactions like tea are gameplay elements and thus come off as the devs not thinking too hard about it. Except, again, we know they have no problem in writing outright pedophilia, but Fates in particular had heavy backlash over this, which explains the need to tone it down a little. Grooming was their “compromise” between not turning off the casual audience while still cheekily pandering to that crowd. Everyone is technically over eighteen in Three Houses, even if they act extremely similar to their teenage selves. The “technically 1000 year old” romances like Flayn and Sothis were also left intact.

This is an important distinction, because a bit of a popular “it’s not grooming” argument when dealing with the war phase is Byleth’s weird dragon powers slowing their aging. Unlike the kids, all adult non-students in Three Houses undergo no portrait changes during the time skip, including Byleth. The thing is that in Chapter 10, they receive dragon powers as part of some plot nonsense, so it has different implications than just anime hating everyone over 25. There’s implications in the game that this definitely affected their ability to age normally, such as the Flayn ending:

However, we don’t know how their aging was affected and to what extent. Three Houses’ lore didn’t specify much about the way dragons age. Rhea undergoes dragon madness, so we can thus tentatively assume Fódlan’s dragons are similar to Archanea and Valentia’s dragons, which would mean there’s a chance Byleth even aged normally for a few years before slowing down significantly like Nah from Awakening did. It’s entirely possible they’re biologically 25-26 like they’re meant to be, because they didn’t physically die. They were just asleep.

Even if they really did not age a day over 21/22, it still makes the pre-time skip hold weight, however. Byleth can flirt with them as teens prior to any fantastical excuse, and they’re still a mentor figure in the students’ eyes, which goes on to colour every interaction with you in the war phase. Post-time skip everyone is legal, but they still have that history with you, and the game makes no real effort to change that whatsoever. It still fulfills the student/teacher fantasy despite the many, many technicalities it tries to pull out of its ass.

Intsys is self aware and knows that this upsets people

To say these devs probably didn’t mean it that way is not entirely impossible, but they don’t exactly inspire confidence. They even “acknowledge” their flippant way of treating teacher/student relationships in a DLC quest during school phase:

Of course, this is a silly complaint because a teacher being friendly with students is a good thing! Students learn better in a positive environment! The problem here is that it’s obviously referencing and mocking the people upset that this becomes romantic later on. I think anyone would have been able to forgive the overly friendly nature of Byleth and the students’ relationships if no line had been crossed regarding romance. This is Fire Emblem after all, and it wouldn’t be Fire Emblem without supports and relationships values.

But also, Intsys is very good at jokingly acknowledging when they’re being creepy rather than striving to do better. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. A really bold faced example is when the Fire Emblem mobile game widely known for fanservice released a ten year old child (no magic or dragons, either, just a child) dressed as a bride and had her say: “This outfit is just for the [bride] festival, don’t get any weird ideas!” when they were the ones who made a child bride for fanservice purposes.

this one was pretty fucked up even by their standards. comment sums it up

The devs also once called Camilla from Fates a “cow” in an interview for having huge breasts and a little tiara that looks like horns. They designed her that way, but then mocked her for looking like an oversexualized caricature. Any way you look at it, they’re well aware they’re being off-putting and cheekily being like, tee hee, I sure made a dating sim set in a high school! Which ultimately leads to the final point:

Though canon definitely has its problems, it’s less about canon and more about the devs’ bad intentions and the fans’ general lack of empathy for CSA victims:

This is not to diminish canon’s impact at all, because it’s outright malicious to portray an unhealthy relationship as cute and harmless. In short, they just pull technicality after technicality out of their ass to make student/teacher okay somehow instead of just..... not having student/teacher at all. After Fates having fucking incest, 3H and teacher grooming seems outright tame and that definitely contributed to the wide acceptance in the fanbase, because it’s less outrageously pandery. I can’t believe I have to say this in 2020, but…... that’s still not good, lads.

I will also admit there’s some nuance here regarding some of the students, especially those 20+ year olds who aren’t easy to manipulate teenagers like Mercedes. We can sit here and argue all day about whether or not this game legitimately 100% can be considered grooming because of those 20+ students, and all of those in-universe technicalities since there’s no real life academic journal on grooming who will talk about the offender being a dragon, but the end of the matter is that the devs chose to portray their pseudo-dating sim franchise in a school, while your MC is a teacher and most of the students are teens. These relationships are also 100% normalised and okay in-game. They did it with incest and with teacher/student, both topics that are majorly upsetting to CSA victims, and that alone is worth calling out. They even mocked people who were upset about it with a little DLC quest, just to rub it in.

This whole post was a critique of 3H and Intsys, but it’s impossible to critique the game without critiquing the fan culture around it, because the devs definitely had a fanbase in mind. We know they take feedback, since they toned it down after complaints about Fates, but the reason why they didn’t just get rid of pandering aspects, is because they’re popular. There’s a huge demand for this, and that’s exactly why they keep doing it, and it’s the simple reason that online anime spaces full of adults have always placed a particular interest in teens and sexualising and shipping them. A Fire Emblem game set in a school with a calendar and a lot of romantic and social elements that started development in 2017 just screams Persona 5 inspired. Fans obviously noticed.

”edelgard is soooo thirsty�� jokes are a lot less funny if you know going for the thirsty kid is a legit strategy

Now, I don’t know shit about Atlus, and after seeing all these memes regarding Persona 5 and the fans’ positive reaction to them, I have zero intentions to play it, but I’ve unfortunately played every single FE game and watched the transition to classic FE to 3DS FE to 3H. I have my criticisms about modern FE’s writing quality for sure, and while I obviously can’t say it used to be perfect because it was still a fairly mediocre (but fun) game about teenagers beating up dragons, it’s now become one of the single most unfriendly fanbases if you’ve gone through any kind of sexual trauma. Incest shipping, pedophilic shipping, and sexualizing teenagers was always there to some extent, but it’s blown up now that the devs have emboldened those fans by doing it in canon itself. It’s rampant, especially on “waifu” circles, and now grooming ships are mainstream and everywhere. Even LGBT friendly “safe spaces” are unbrowsable. F!Edeleth in particular is commonly seen as the holy grail of wlw representation. Linhardt is the most popular M/M option despite the other two being adults. Doromanuela was given a shout-out by Dorothea’s English voice actress.

Old FE games had background things like that all the time, (Roy/Cecilia is Literally gender swapped Petra/Byleth) but the keyword here is background. Not like... 80% of the ships involving the MC in game, which means you weren’t bombarded with this every day. Worse, the discussion about this topic has been non-existent. Reddit has not touched this at all despite the community there being well known for meticulous criticism, Twitter and Tumblr have seen its fair share of discourse, but it’s quickly dismissed. Just click here to watch people dismiss the concerns of every single grooming and CSA victim, or even call them stupid like we can’t recognize this shit in every single fandom. Of note are the fans who dismiss grooming concerns by saying all flirting occurs post time skip (which is false, as we just said) and the characters are only 3-6 years apart anyway……………….. and then gleefully consume/produce pre-time skip content:

miscellaneous tags on a pre-time skip linleth comic (20/21/22 and 16/17 if you’re not keeping count) not posting the comic itself cause i don’t want anon hate lol

While there’s an argument to be made for romance with anyone who was 20+ pre-time skip, there is NONE for the underage kids. None. And like, even if you somehow still want to argue that 3H itself isn’t grooming because of the time skip, a huge chunk of the fanworks objectively are, and this is a huge problem that needs to be called out and nobody does so whatsoever. That comic has 2500+ notes.

This isn’t even a call to tell people to throw out their copies and riot, just to be aware of this and try to make fan spaces a little more bearable for CSA victims. A lot of people call this ‘toxic cancel culture’ and whatnot, but I personally can’t defend a dev team who I KNOW has done heinous things in the past, and continue to support the pedophilic mentality in online anime fan spaces but like, in a cheeky subtle way. They easily could have made Byleth a student who tutors the others because of their experienced mercenary background with Jeralt, or just not let them romance the kids at all. They could have pleased both the dating sim and high school camps by letting you choose to be either a 21+ teacher or a 17 year old student with the appropriate romance options, too. They didn’t do any of this, and their questionable past begs me to ask why, and none of the answers I can come up with are very encouraging. They also even blatantly gave you extra content when romancing students.

I hope contextualizing the 3H grooming at least makes some people understand why it’s so upsetting to see it everywhere. It’s just the decent thing to do to tag your posts, and to not dismiss any of these things. It’s just the decent thing to do to listen to people who are sharing their experiences and respecting their boundaries if they simply do not want to interact with you if you decide to continue supporting Intsys.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. Stan Claude von Riegan.

#t #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #grooming mention #csa ment

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dreamcrow · 3 years

Text

here's a zesty and extremely belated wizards take: i simply think the arcane order is vastly more interesting if their opposition to the toa protagonists comes from a place of deep love and sense of duty to the world rather than simply 4 teh evulz. if it derives not from the fact that they hate the world (or humans), or want to see it gone, but from caring about balance so deeply they're willing to do something terrible, something that might hurt them for the rest of their immortal lives.

this idea has been possessing me for at least a month by now so i'm exorcizing it by making it the internet's problem. this is half semi-serious meta, half an outgrowth of my rambling character notes. aside from the proposal bolded above i'm going to consciously try to keep this analysis to canon, on-screen evidence only; i know there's quite a lot of behind-the-scenes lore dropping these days, but it's not universally accessible, and frankly i don't jive with most of what i've seen of it. which is fine! we get so little textual characterization for the order you can (as i do) invent quite a lot in the space of headcanon and conjecture. that's a feature of storytelling, not a bug.

but for the purposes of this exercise, i want to see what i can do with text. looking into its recesses, into all the stuff it does or doesn't explicitly define, lets us imagine new possibilities. sometimes in ways i think that text might actually suggest! and based on the text, i think not only that love is a tenable motivation for the order, it's also one that makes (for me) a much more compelling reading of characters that are otherwise only briefly defined.

(long post mostly abt merlin under the cut; i'll edit in a link to pt. 2 once i post it!)

so. okay. first off: why do i care about picking over the order's motivations? they're obviously the Bad Guys, they want to Destroy The World. we're told as much on screen. my first answer is: well, i'm not five. my slightly more generous first answer is: this is a show produced by guillermo del toro. even if it's "just" a cartoon, i expect better of its treatment of monsters and villains than "they're evil, just roll with it." (just as i expect better of its treatment of authority figures than "he's old and important, just trust him," but...more on that in a moment.) morgana's kind-of-redemption tries to do exactly this: she was the big bad of trollhunters, and imo she still ends up evil in wizards, but the addition of context and backstory casts her as a now potentially sympathetic character. same with kubritz in 3below (iirc? i've only watched it twice). even in trollhunters, we got glimpses of villains (bular and strickler) doing horrible things (being bular, using the inferna copula) for...if not truly sympathetic then at least understandable purposes (getting back to his father, protecting changelings). earlier installments of toa establish this precedent; so, coming into wizards i'm already primed to expect it.

but my second answer is: that's not quite right. we don't actually know what the order wants to do! mainly because: we never actually hear from the order themselves what their ultimate goal is. nari only says that bellroc and skrael have lost faith in humanity, and that "they wish to end it all." nari's one of the order (or was), and has worked with bellroc and skrael at least until killahead, so i think her judgment of their attitudes is probably trustworthy. but what little she actually says of their plan is vague, and i think incomplete. she never actually explains anything of what "ending it all" actually looks like. ending what? human hostility towards/isolation from the magical world? (arguably good.) the restriction of "magic" to a secret art with only few users? (also, imo, arguably good.) all life on earth? okay, obviously bad, but—if that's their plan, why not just say so? and if the stakes are that high, shouldn't we go through the trouble of fact-checking her?

but the thing i keep coming back to is—nari never actually explains what the order's plan consists of. instead: the one who tells us that means unleashing "raw," "uncontrolled" magic on the world, "wiping it like a flood," is merlin.

"magic" is not inherently destructive in the toa universe so i'm not entirely clear on how this would happen. but let's suppose it's an accurate assessment. merlin is the only one to offer a rundown of what the order's plan entails. i can understand that this might have been a necessary narrative shorthand, especially since so much of wizards' original content was cut. still: merlin might be a compelling character, but i don't believe him when he says "i'm the good guy." definitely not after what he did to jim at the end of trollhunters, but also especially on the basis of most of his on-screen characterization in wizards:

he sealed nimue (a powerful magical authority, as oracle/dispenser of excalibur, not to mention a sentient/intelligent creature) in a cave "without hope," from which she could not independently escape.

he makes the trollhunter amulet specifically as a weapon for arthur, who repeatedly indicates his goal is to eliminate (human and nonhuman) magic users.

he creates that amulet using a former student's SEVERED HAND (even joking about it with douxie).

i'm not going to talk about the amulet oath... i'm NOT going to talk about agency and the position of the trollhunter... i'm NOT going to TALK about it

he vocally opposes "dark" magic (when he is clearly positioned as "light"—ad lucem gloria mea!) without articulating any convincing reason for why. "light good, dark bad" is a lazy dichotomy anyway, but even in-text: claire proves you can do shadowmancy without being "evil!"

you could argue the way he treats douxie is "justified" in that it ultimately makes douxie a stronger wizard but imo there is not really a justification for an adult treating 1.) his student 2.) who he supposedly views as a son the way merlin treats douxie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tldr: merlin as he is presented in wizards is not necessarily as altruistic as he (or the narrative) claims he is. instead, this narrative gives us a merlin that is:

a figure of tremendous authority and power (royal advisor/master wizard), who

has a demonstrated interest in removing rivals/alternate authorities (nimue/bellroc and skrael), and

has a corollary interest in positioning himself as the side of good ("light"), especially to the exclusion of all other sides.

this merlin presents himself as an authority, as someone people should look up to and certainly heed. conveniently, this nets him multiple powerful (but often young and impressionable) supporters (like douxie and jim) to assist in carrying out his plans. the cost to those supporters of doing so are stated, on-screen—being human, 900 years of thankless toil for a distant father figure—but excused as a necessary loss. if those supporters oppose him, he doesn't hesitate to either coerce them (jim) or turn against them (morgana). this is not a person i trust to tell me who to trust.

now...i've been going on for a while about merlin, which is. pretty much the exact opposite of what i wanted to do with this post, lmao. but one of the things i really missed in wizards was a deconstruction of authority, and especially of merlin's. not that there wasn't any—i guess he at least admits he was wrong to douxie, immediately before expiring—but i'd expected something much stronger, especially after watching a show like trollhunters. and because merlin is the only character to give a complete definition of what the order's plans are, it matters that he might have ulterior motives in presenting that definition! (if jim had gone through all of trollhunters without questioning how blinky had introduced him to changelings, where would that have gotten him?)

i'm willing to concede that maybe not all of merlin's qualities are—intrinsically bad. i also realize that a lot of my mistrust of him, specifically as the arbiter of good/evil, is based on my general mistrust of his character archetype. more importantly: i understand that this is a cartoon. 😂 much as i would like a more complex resolution for the order than i dare to hope for in rott, i'm...trying to keep my expectations reasonable. (and, more to the point: doing the wrong things for the right reasons is exactly what i think the order is doing!) but i simply don't think we should take merlin as the authority he (and the narrative) presents himself to be. and i think interrogating that authority opens up some really interesting possibilities, especially about monsters—the same possibilities that first enchanted me in trollhunters. which...i'll start laying out for real in the next post lol

next time: why nari is still part of the order, and...getting closer to "motivations."

#trollhunters #tales of arcadia #toa wizards #mine #...ANYWAY. nails me gay little thesis to the fandom door!!#maybe bellroc IS powered by love and there's NOTHING you can do about it #i know this is gonna get jossed but i want to get it out there before rott #and more importantly: i Want To Believe #unfortunately the first 2/3 of this essay isn't about them but stay tuned friends sTAY TUNED #(next time: NARI TIME)

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thelovelyghostwriter · 3 years

Text

My HxH ships

Disclaimer: These are my thoughts on my ships to share with my Tumblr friends. If you’re some stranger who disagrees with it and it evokes negative emotions on you, kindly exit. I know the internet has a bunch of trolls/idiots that has a habit of harassing people because the ship is “wrong” or it doesn’t suit them. Well, honestly, I don’t really care if you agree with them because I don’t know you personally? And this is fictional so it’s not something to be taken personally or even seriously. Don’t confuse my personal values with what I like with the ships.

I can’t believe I even need to make a disclaimer on this because a bunch of people don’t know how to be civilized once they are anonymous on a social media platform. I will just block lol; BYEEE.

HxH I love:

Defintion - Actively ships them, willing to make fanfics of them if possible

1. Kurapika x Neon

This ship is so underrated it hurts. They may not be similar in terms of personality and views of the dead: Neon focuses more on the living and the present (that’s why she doesn’t have sympathy for the dead and tells Chrollo her fortunes are for the living), while Kurapika focuses on the past and mourns for the dead (his mourning for his clan). But I think both of them are very similar in terms of loneliness. Neon doesn’t have friends and lacks affections from her father; Kurapika is lonely because all of his clan members are dead.

I know the common barrier is Neon’s hobby for flesh collecting, but I think this difference is what makes it more complicated and interesting for me. Especially when Kurapika has been in many seasons under the Nostrade Family... it makes me wonder what kind of interactions they had since it was all Killua and Gon on-screen.

2. Hisoka x Machi

I actually had always liked Hisoka with Machi together. Hisoka seems to really like her and enjoys her company. Machi may seem irritated by him but I think she’s more of a tsundere? She still decides to patch him after the fight against Chrollo, and their relationship got a bit more complicated after the Hisoka vs Chrollo fight.

3. Tserreidnich x Theta

Okay, I LOVE this ship. This is right out love-hate kind of relationship. It lowkey reminds me of Clarice/Hannibal and I find this ship so fascinating? I don’t see a lot of fanfics of them unfortunately. So Legacy by Alltagsabenteuer is a blessing from heaven because it’s the only TsexTheta tag in AO3.

So far I haven’t found anyone else who loves this ship, so please identify yourself if you do.

I’m starting to think I like those complicated love-hate dynamics....

HxH ships I like:

Definition of like - Actively ships them, may make fanfics of them or not. But doesn’t think of them 24/7.

1. Pokkle x Ponzu

This was like, a ship that never really sailed because Togashi decided to kill them both. I think this ship had potential and I’m hoping they find happiness in the afterlife.

2. Chrollo x Neon

I actually really liked how they vibe together during this one scene (although Chrollo targetted to meet her for her fortune-telling abilities). I am a KuraNeon shipper but I like the idea of Chrollo being a 3rd party because I think it fits so well? Chrollo and Kurapika are enemies and I had always found it fascinating how both of them got entangled with the same woman. Also, people be like “Neon is 16″ uhhh... Hunterpedia states she’s born in 1982, along with Kurapika and Milluki. She’s the same age as Kurapika and Milluki; and Kurapika is widely accepted as 19 now; and it does tally if you see the Hunter x Hunter timeline (although there has been several discrepancies and dubious canonity when it comes to the Official Hunter x Hunter database and the HxH manga timeline). I’m not sure why people falsely remember Neon as a year younger than Kurapika and use it as a common argument to not support Chrollo/Neon when people have no problems (except for some) when it comes to shipping Kurapika with Chrollo.

So... Chrollo be that Mr. Steal Yo Girl and Kurapika’s posessive reaction to it will be astronomical.

I am also hella gonna support the upcoming #kuroneoweek2021 in May! @kuroneoweek

So you bet there will be more fanfics of KuroNeo from me!

HxH ships I support:

Definition of support: Does not actively ship them, but definitely likes the idea of them

1. Killua x Canary

I love how Canary tries her best for Killua and she does care about him. I realised that Killua seems to have an issue with older women (e.g. Bisky, Elevator girl), but I think for girls who are about his age, he’s okay with them. There is a misconception that he can’t communicate with women well (probably because he has issues with his mother), but I think that’s just for old ladies - Canary is cool with him.

2. Hisoka x Illumi

It drives me nuts how these two have matching outfits. I know that they have a more of a give-and-take transactional relationships rather than purely friends, but this is fab best friendship goals. My friend loves this ship and I absolutely support it.

3. Retz (with either Gon or Killua)

The unreasonable hate on Retz is insane because “she’s ruining KilluGon”. I think it’s really refreshing to see Killua and Gon hang out with another girl their age. You can see that Gon is really sweet towards her. Killua is more suspicious of her for a good reason but he never hated her. Remember that Killua is not used to interacting with people due to his family background. In fact, as @u-named mentioned, Killua and Retz shares similarities in terms of wanting to be free from their family.

4. Alluka x Gon

I would love to see a fanfic where Gon starts to woo Alluka and Killua will be that overprotective brother, knowing that his best friend is a player. Alluka/Nanika healed Gon anyway, so she’s technically his saving angel.

5. Ging x Gon’s unnamed mom

Okay, this is a bit weird cause we don’t know who Gon’s mom is... (and screw that Pregnancy Stone theory, I just think it’s weird how Ging mentioned Gon’s mom in the tape if he never had a mom lmao; is he gonna say “which you don’t have” like ???).

I actually like fanfics that explores Ging’s life before Gon and various interpretations of who Gon’s mom is.

What Lies Beyond by Thatsoneperson is one of the best fanfics I’ve read when it comes to Ging’s life before Gon. The ending was really heartbreaking and I had always loved the “Gon’s mom was from the DC” theory because Yusuke’s ancestral father came from the Demon World and there were hints of Gon’s dark aura throughout CA and Election arc.

Somehow in my headcanon, I had always envisioned Gon’s mom to resemble Usagi from Sailor Moon but with Gon’s hair colour. Gon also has certain personality traits that are very different from Ging and I believe that came from his mother.

6. Meruem x Komugi

One of the most unexpected, beautiful, saddest, semi-canon pairings in the entire series. It highkey reminds me of Beauty and the Beast. It was beautiful how Meruem, a Chimera Ant that was supposed to be destined to rule the world above humans, became gradually attached to a blind human girl.

7. Killua x Machi

This is fucking weird; because of the age gap but I like to think Killua meets her again one day when he grows up, and they had some sort of flirtation because he needs to be on par with Gon when it comes to dating women.

There was actually a cute fic about that called A Series of Pick Up Lines by Yandere Shoujo where Killua was trying to use pick up lines on a woman because he wanted to try it out after knowing that Gon dated women prior and just so happens to bump into Machi.

#kuraneo #kuraneon #kuroneon #kuroneo #tserreidnichxtheta #tsextheta #hisomachi #hisoillu #killunary #killuaxcanary #retzxkillua #retzxgon #retz #allugon #meruem x komugi #meruemxkomugi #killumachi #tserreidnichtheta #ponzukkle

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