#she did once say ''i will never be the woman i want to be'' iirc and
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what are the dates for each of the first songs taylor wrote for each album? (aka which date did she write the first song for debut, fearless, etc etc?)
debut:
first song: a perfectly good heart, written sometime in 2003
last song: should’ve said no, written on august 10, 2006
fearless
first song on taylor’s version: you all over me, written summer 2005
first song on the platinum edition: either superstar, written sometime in 2006, or come in with the rain, written in september 2006
first song on the standard edition: white horse, written in december 2006
last song: forever and always, written september 22 2008
EDIT: totally completely forgot about mr perfectly fine, written sometime in 2009 (i’m pretty sure on march 11, 2009, but that’s a whole other rant)
speak now
first song: sparks fly, written fall 2006
the first song written purely for the album will probably be one of the vault tracks, but if this was a movie (~april 2009) is the first one we’ve heard, or maybe haunted/never grow up, which were written sometime in 2009
last song: the story of us, written and recorded between june 9-16 2010
red
first song: stay stay stay, written sometime in summer 2010
first song written purely for the album: all too well, written between december 2010-march 2011
last song (kinda): i knew you were trouble (the chorus was written as a piano ballad ~january 2012, but the verses and bridge and general sound wasn’t put together until june 2-7, 2012)
1989
first song: this love, written october 17 2012
last song: style, written february 19, 2014
reputation
first song: gorgeous, written september 2-19 2016
last song: so it goes, written september 2017 (both lwymmd AND ready for it were already released as singles this woman is INSANE)
lover (this is the one i’m shakiest on)
first song: daylight, written summer 2018
last song: i think death by a thousand cuts, which had to have been written after april 20, 2019 (for context, 6 days before me! was set to release), but i’ve seen some people say london boy, since the sample at the beginning wasn’t approved until very late (sometime in july iirc)
folklore
first song: my tears ricochet, likely written fall 2019 (taylor has said it’s the first song she wrote for folklore, we just don’t know when)
last song: hoax, written sometime in july 2020, days before the album was released
evermore
first song: dorthea, written “around folklore”, likely sometime in july 2020
last song: happiness, written in the first week of december 2020, once again days before the album was released
midnights
i straight up don’t know, but it was mostly written and recorded in november 2021
if you want to listen to the albums in order, check out my playlist!
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confession but i have an inkling arthur and abigail were exes, bbuuut please bear with me as i explain (and honestly feel free to fact-check anything i say here)
but first of all, let me be clear that i hate the whole “who’s jack’s father?” discourse. imo it’s pointless and frankly a boring topic, considering many characters have already affirmingly said john is jacks father. so i’m not here to make a case that arthur is jack’s father actually.
what i wanna draw attention to is the period where john left the gang for a year (which is after jack had already been born), because something roger clark said in this panel (the question starts at 41:43 and roger answers a bit later) caught my interest. basically he said there were cut dialogue that alluded to arthur and abigail’s romance, and by rhetorically asking “who knows what happened [during the 1 year john left]?” it’s hard for me not to think it’s his way of suggesting that’s when the relationship happened.
youtube
granted, roger also explicitly said those lines/content were cut, but he seemed to also say rockstar conveyed to the two actors that they (rockstar themselves) weren’t doing away with the “attraction undertone”. and that is very much felt, given how they never actually walk back on the things they let arthur write in his journal when it comes to abigail: conflicted thoughts of wanting to marry her, thinking how she’s “the finest woman” he’s known, saving john from prison “for abigail, of course”.
there’s just this really strangely intimate and possessive undercurrent in many things he’s written about her, in a way that would feel very creepy and ooc if she weren’t his at some point.
and it makes me think perhaps when rockstar decided to cut their content, they only did so out of a desire to avoid being overt and unbecoming (probably bc they figured it could be off-putting for fans and subtlety/ambiguity can be more palatable here?), but this shared past about arthur and abigail wasn’t meant to be erased. basically rockstar themselves actually never fully committed to ditching the idea, just decided to be coy about it, handling it in a way so that there’s room for deniability.
and from a story stand point, i think it does make sense? as a bereaved dad (and let’s face it, somewhat of a deadbeat one, too), arthur would definitely take pity on abigail and jack’s situation. if anything, i think arthur’s attempt (be it a conscious or unwitting one) to integrate with them was initially driven by guilt, then probably morphed into actual appreciation/attraction for abigail. for abigail’s side, well, she was abandoned by her true love who (iirc?) denied paternity to their son, that’s gotta enrage her to no end, but also hurt a whole lot. she would definitely appreciate arthur for stepping up and come to care deeply for him in return, but i don’t think she quite shares his level of appreciation.
though by stating this, i’m not in any way trying to frame her as an “ungrateful bitch” who didn’t properly return arthur’s favor— she doesn’t owe arthur love, and i don’t think arthur showed kindness to her with the expectation of winning her over anyway— it’s fair to say arthur did all this simply because he is, well, a good man. so once john eventually returned to the gang and abigail parted ways with arthur, she would be well within her rights to do so, and imo arthur would never in any way berate him or her about this, bc he would know what he had signed up for. that being said, i also don’t think arthur and abigail’s situation was all or nothing. they might never have progressed into true love, but it’s also not unrealistic to think they started being intimate at some point, if only to cope with their problems or try to move on from their pasts (this is assuming abigail gave up hope of john coming back.)
as a bottom line, i guess i wanna say i wrote all of this to sort out my cognitive dissonance. the idea of arthur/abigail is alienating to me and i used to try to pretend it didn’t exist, but the intent is so undeniably there that i kind of started getting frustrated whenever i see people tiptoe around it, coming up with multiple unsatisfactory explanations and never getting into the meat of it, to the point i think it’s just more sincere and liberating? to just confront it lmao. now i’ve come to regard it as an interesting aspect about arthur.
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Thinking about it LoI's cutscene with Mathias kind of clarifies why Dracula keeps being evil even after Alucard told him of Lisa's last wish and he himself even apologizing to her for his actions.
When Leon calls him out on his bullshit claiming that Elisabetha would never approve of his actions Mathias....just ignores the question
He simply states that she was a kind woman and that's why he's pissed at God and then proceeds to ask Leon "Hey you would've done the same don't judge me"
But inadvertently he kind of answers Leon's question by claiming that Elisabetha was kind which means that, on some level, he knows that what he's doing would disgust her yet he represses that truth so that he can keep walloing in hatred.
Dracula knows that Lisa would hate him for his actions yet he keeps doing them because he can't let go of hatred. When he apologizes to her it's probably not just for what he's done already but for not being able to meet her wish in general
Similarily, in DoS, Soma knows full well that giving up to his dark self would be awful yet he tries to go along with Celia's plan anyway upon thinking Mina died, even apologizing to her for what he's about to do
Yep! Dracula is a selfish bastard. He claims to love his wives, and yes he certainly saw something in them and was fond of them... but he didn't actually care enough to put their wishes above his own.
That scene with Mathias himself is also very telling. My man just finished confessing to having ruined Leon's life, to having used him and Sara for the sake of his plan, and then he offers Leon to join him in immortality and pulls a surprisedpikachuface.jpg when Leon understandably tells him to go fuck himself. He's been swallowed by his rage against God for "taking Elisabetha away from him", he appeals to Leon's grief by saying "after what you've been through, you should know" probably expecting him to renounce God as well, but didn't expect that he would feel the same towards Mathias for pretty much doing the same thing. The lack of empathy is astounding.
"Elisabetha was a kind, honorable woman. She was concerned only for me to the very end… That is why I hate Him! Am I wrong?!" You can nearly see Mathias starting to think "huh, yeah, my wife was a good woman, she'd probably be concerned for me for what I'm doing"... until he retreats in his anger again and chooses to blame God once again. I mean, he just ruined so many people's lives and absorbed Walter's soul to become a vampire, a little too late to accept that he fucked up.
And this is baby Dracula. It's easy to imagine that, by the time of SoTN, sunk cost fallacy more than applies. He died and got resurrected so many times, he killed so many people, he spread so much misery... and for what? For him to realize that his loved women would hate him? No, he can't go back now.
As for DoS, the line "If it means getting Mina's revenge, I'll do it. Make me the dark lord" really hurt the first time I played :( all this time spent rejecting his fate, and he's aware that he'll lose himself and become the sworn enemy of his friends... but he just has enough of seeing his loved ones die. celia is so fucking dumb
Needless to say, NFCV barely touches this point, despite the whole "appeal" of N!Dracula being that it expands upon his grief. S2, through Godbrand and Carmilla, insists on the point that Dracula's plan was stupid, that he won't think about how vampires will feed, that he only wants to die, and why didn't he just turn Lisa into a vampire, but IIRC no one among the heroes (and yes I'm talking about Alucard in particular) points out his sheer hypocrisy and lack of respect towards the woman he's supposed to love.
(although, to be fair, I love the line "Kill for the endless lifetime of hate before me". He also knew that he would never recover from his rage. until he did but shhh)
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Do you have ideas on sharing body positivity with older family members? Last night I tried to encourage my mum that she didn't need to worry about her weight, and my nanna shut me down with "you're skinny so you've never had to worry about that". I wanted to be able to express: its okay to be fat - but I think because it's so beyond what get were taught my nanna and mum wouldn't get it from that angle.
I think if it were a deeper conversation maybe I could get somewhere but I was hoping you might have ideas on immediate things I could say in response to this kind of comment.
This is really hard! So many older generations are very set in the specific diet culture notions of their time. If you've been following me for a while, you might know that I come from a family that is like this, and that my mother is still actively embedded in diet culture.
I might try to have separate conversations with your mom and your nanna. If they were able to be in the same room without all of their own food-related issues bouncing violently off of one another, it would be more time-efficient to introduce body positivity to both of them at once, but I think you may actually get better results having in-depth conversations with them separately, and you might have an easier time having a heart-to-heart with your mom if your nanna didn't have the opportunity to shut you down. You could try and talk to her about how you worry that her constant self-hatred is doing her more harm than good, and how you hate to see her beating herself up over her body. Come at it from an empathetic perspective - tell her that, as it seems you are smaller than she is, you can see that it is really hard for her to accept living in a body that is constantly shamed and looked down upon, that people judge her for, that it is easy to judge herself for. But then ask her, is it really sustainable for her to live that way, mentally? Hating her body and being down on herself because of it? Let her know that you know things are not easy for her and that you're always going to love her for the person she is - that her value does not change for you at ANY size, and that you hope one day she feels that way about herself.
I can't remember where I saw it, but I once read a thinkpiece by a new mom who stopped body-shaming herself after she gained weight during her pregnancy when her daughter was a toddler. IIRC she was playing on the beach with her baby and her child wanted her to play in the water with her. She had to let go of a lot of insecurities in order to wear a swimsuit and play in the water with her daughter, but her baby - not yet old enough to understand diet culture - had a blast with her, and she realized then that her daughter didn't see her the way that everybody else did. She wasn't coming at it from a perspective of judging a woman for being fat in her swimsuit, she was just happy to have a mom who got in the water and made memories with her. One of the most beautiful lines from that piece of writing, one that stuck with me, was about how her hips, which had permanently widened after childbirth, now knew the perfect motion to soothe her baby to sleep every night as she walked with her on her hip. The point is, many people are particularly judgmental to fat women, and that's the first thing they see about her - that she's a fat woman. So I think your mom, who seems very stuck and mired in diet culture, might find the ideas of body positivity easier to embrace if you meet her where she's at. Explain to her that no matter what size her body is, to you, she is Mom. What do you love most about her? Does she love to laugh? Is she a devoted gardener, is she stylish, is she the kind of person who goes the extra mile for the people she loves? (I'm spitballing here - you can fill in the blanks on the qualities that make her who she is.) Explain to her that the people in her life who matter most will likewise see her in terms of her best qualities, rather than just a body. Many people who can't comprehend body positivity just yet find an easier time starting with body neutrality, or the idea that their body is just a body doing body things, no more or less deserving than the next body, and that they, as the person living in it, are so much more than just that body. Maybe at some point your mom may have an easier time embracing her body exactly how it is, but it might be easier to help her get there if you introduce the idea in baby steps.
With your nanna, I think you might try to explain to her flat out that you care about your mom's mental health. You might just flat-out tell her - if it is mentally healthier for your mom to believe, as you stated, that it is okay to be fat, then you do in fact want her to believe that. Say that in blunt, easy to understand terms. Perhaps you could then add that, as a thin person, your nanna is right that you do not understand the specific pressures faced by fat women. But what you do understand is that you don't want to see your mom live a life ruled by those pressures, and you want to see her happy NOW, not just in some hypothetical, skinnier future.
This was a really great ask! I hope this helps, and please let me know if there are any other conversational ideas I might be able to help with. Also, don't be discouraged if it takes a while for one or both of them to come around to body positivity. So many fat people are actively discouraged from embracing their bodies, and from allowing themselves to feel happy in the moment. It's seen as "giving up" or "letting themselves go" when they could "keep pushing" to attain that ideal. So your mom and your nanna may both feel that they just can't allow themselves to feel completely satisfied in their bodies until they have reached a specific body goal, regardless of whether or not that goal is truly healthy or attainable. Remember that healing does not take place overnight, and don't get too discouraged if you find yourself having to be a support long term in this regard. And please take care of yourself as well!
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I think moving to the Illyrian camps will be a huge hurdle in Rhysand and Feyre’s relationship. Their way of life is so different than the people who live in that place. Feyre and the other woman in Velaris are free, can interact with the opposite sex without worry and can have careers outside of home making. In Illyria, they face a never ending torrent of sexism and misogyny. They are also tightly controlled by their male relatives. They must look at the ground in the presence of males (which is something I think Feyre would forget to do), they must contribute to the camp (which will conflict with Feyre’s duties as High Lady) and they must listen to the commands of the men around them. I think this will be something that Feyre struggles to do and she will not know how to cope with all these new rules. How do you think moving to the camps will affect their relationship?
Hi, @thepinkdove ! Sorry for answering this so late. I'd been meaning to answer it, but I forgot about it until I checked my inbox today lol.
As far as I know, Rhysand and Feyre aren't moving to the camps anytime soon. I don't know if this is news you heard somewhere or if you mean it as a what-if, but I'll be answering this as the latter.
TL;DR: I don't think the treatment Feyre would face at the camps would be a hurdle for them, in and of itself, since Rhysand shares similar sentiments of disdain towards the Illyrians. I do, however, believe that Feyre would want to take action in helping the Illyrian females once she sees for herself how they’re treated. I also think that, maybe, she’d be quite critical of Rhysand’s lack of action in the camps over the centuries.
If and when Feysand were to ever move to the Illyrian camps, I am honestly conflicted on how it would affect their relationship. For one, though Feyre would severely disagree with their way of life, Rhysand does as well and iirc he either hates the Illyrians or doesn't care all that much about them, though he claims to, considering how little he's done to help them and how much he's done that's gotten them abused and slaughtered.
With that, I do think that any struggles Feyre might face there would be an anger and disgust they'd bond over since that seems to be common with them.
Still, I don't see Feyre as the type (at least in the OG trilogy) to sit back while innocents suffer. Though she tends to believe everything Rhysand says, living in the camps will give her an upfront, constant view of how females in Illyria are treated and what they go through. There's a chance she'd end up blaming it on the camp leaders who are the ones directly doing the oppressing, especially since she's not all that keen on criticizing Rhysand anymore, but I do think that she'd waver in her ultimate loyalty to her mate since it'd show a blatant lack of care for the camps on his part.
I'm not Feyre's biggest fan (understatement lol), but she's taken action in the past when directly faced with struggling faeries. I'll admit that this has commonly been used as a plot device to vilify other characters, but it’s still a part of her character, and I think she’d struggle to justify Rhysand’s lack of action in helping the Illyrian females because of this.
There is some parts I’m unsure about, personally, because while Feyre would probably be critical, she also might not be because she’s justified Rhysand’s actions in the past. I’m currently reading the second book in the ACOTAR series, and Feyre did criticize Rhysand for not acting against Amarantha, but that was treated more as a trauma response than anything legitimate so it’d honestly depend.
Rhysand is really good at gaslighting and manipulating her so, even if she does have concerns, he’d probably manage to assuage them quickly. If there’s other people involved, like maybe Nesta or friends she makes in the camps, she might have a mind of her own for once and stand up to him. It really all depends because Feyre’s characterization is very iffy depending on how the author wants Rhysand to look.
All in all, I do think that going to the Illyrian camps would be a hurdle in their relationship, but there’s a lot of complication in how I feel it’d be dealt with as Rhysand has been able to assuage her in the past, even if her concerns are legitimate. That, or they’re outright dismissed by the narrative.
#anti rhysand#anti sjm#this isn't really anti feyre#since i speak more positively abt her here than i usually do#astrababyy#astrababyy asks
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A Clash of Kings - 63 DAENERYS V (pages 786-799)
Dany loses one ally, but gains two more while out boat shopping.
-
-when Irri brought her a Qartheen gown, an airy confection of ivory samite patterned with seed pearls. "Take it away," Dany said.
... I have a comment on ivory dresses, but I'm too lazy to track down the other mention I think I remember, but if I am remembering correctly, that's an interesting connection between who gave it, who received it, what happened to the two dresses, and how that reflects on symbolism in her and Dany's story arcs.
Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, -
… I hope she has something for the chafing. But also good for her, embracing the identity of those who first embraced her instead of trying to fit in with people who will never think of her as at least an equal.
Jhiqui had braided her hair in the Dothraki fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of her braid. “I have won no victories,” she tried tried telling her handmaiden when the bell tinkled softly.
Jhiqui disagreed. “You burned the maegi in their house of dust and sent their souls to hell.”
…
She chimed as she mounted her silver mare, and again with every stride, but neither Ser Jorah nor her bloodriders made mention of it.
She deserves that bell.
But also, it's interesting that that's something D&D chose to exclude from the show, given their Girl Boss!Dany narrative intentions, because it's like... the Dothraki already accepted Dany as Khaleesi, as mother of dragons, as pretty much their god, but giving her a bell feels like a different form of acceptance, something more of worn in trust than just married in power or authority earned by amazing and impossible feats. She's not just a mother who leads them, but a leader who can defend them, a warrior in her own right (even if her weapons of choice are dragons, it still counts), it feels very much like a point of culmination for the journey through the wastes.
“And so it was, then. But now? I am less certain. It is said that the glass candles are burning in the house of Urrathon Night-Walker, that have not burned in a hundred years. Ghost grass grows in the Garden of Gehane, phantom tortoises have been seen carrying messages between windowless houses on Warlocks Way, and all the rats in the city have been chewing off their own tails. -”
Phantom tortoises!? I need six hundred. Also iirc, ghost grass features pretty heavily in the apocalypse story of the Dothraki. !! an omen!
“- Sail with me around the Jade Sea, and we can yet make it so! It is not to late. Give me a son, my sweet song of joy!”
Give you a dragon, you mean. “I will not wed you, Xaro.”
His face had grown cold at that. “Then go.”
Pft, Dany knows what's up. Also? Xaro? Totally that charming, charismatic guy at the bar who calls a woman a slut the second she denies his advances and thinks women owe him for being a decent human being. (Not that he really is.)
"I am trying to set a price on one of the three living dragons in the world." Dany smiled at him sweetly. "It seems to me that one-third of all the ships in the world would be fair."
Xaro's tears ran down his cheeks on either side of his jewel-encrusted nose. "Did I not warn you not to enter the Palace of Dust? This is the very thing I feared. the whispers of the warlocks have made you as mad as Mallarawan's wife. A third of all the ships in the world? Pah. Pah, I say. Pah."
tch. Yeah, goodness forbid a young woman reject your advances and demand "fair" things you can't afford for things she doesn't want to give up, absolute madness there. (angry sarcasm.)
Every word from his mouth brings me closer and closer to smacking him with the steel chair.
The warlocks whispered of three treasons... once for blood and once for gold and once for love. the first traitor was surely Mirri Maz Duur, who had murdered Khal Drogo and their unborn son to avenge her people.
mmm. Pressing F to doubt.
Partly because Mirri didn't kill Drogo. His complete rejection of medical care killed him, and I'm still not convinced Rhaego's death was intentional.
But also because of some of their other wordings during the prophecy bit, made it sound like it was a thing yet to come, not something that might have already happened.
... boat shopping is not going well.
"A most excellent brass, great lady," the merchant excaimed. "bright as the sun! And for the Mother of Dragons, only thirty honors."
The platter was worth no more than three. "Where are my guards?" Dany declared, " this man is trying to rob me!"
Ha! I'd almost say Dany and Jorah had fun with this little bit of espionage if it weren't so serious.
... Wait. Hold on. old white-haired guy? Not... It's not Barristan Selmy already, is it? I almost forgot he existed, it's been ages.
... no. "Arstan." or is he? ... I'm probably just going to assume that's Barristan in disguise until evidence otherwise. Just saying, Arstan sound's a little like Barristan.
Also, can we talk about the fact manitcores come in freaking pocket sized? I need some. just a dozen or so, I'd get them a terrarium and everything.
... Dany was not kidding about the repeating threes in her plot at the moment. Even three ships to carry her ho- wait a minute. That's not the plot! Ooohhhh, something's going to go terribly wrong with the boats, isn't it?
"- But the ships that bring me home must bear different names."
"As you wish," said Arstan. "What names would you prefer?"
"Vhagar," Daenerys told him. "Meraxes. And Balerion. Paint the names on their hulls in golden letters three feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the dragons are returned."
I do like the symbolism in the name choices, but speaking of name choices, I notice GRRM switched from "Dany" to "Daenerys" for this line.
I remember in a previous chapter, GoT, I think, I mentioned Dany's narrative voice changed her name to Daenerys when she was intentionally trying mental shuffle herself into a more cold hearted persona, so it's just interesting to see that name change crop up again when she's channeling her "conquering Khaleesi" persona.
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I finally posted something on my main socials in vocal support of Palestine, outlining the history and violence of the Nakba, listing various sources including many anti-zionist Jewish voices.
I got one comment, from a woman I went to college with, who is Jewish, and who moved to Israel after Trump was elected.
Her response was pretty much what I expected. She said it seems like my only point is that the Israelis deserve the violence and had it coming, that I'm spewing revisionist history, asking where my essays about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and so on are, and that I'm writing all of this from the safety of America, which is a country that is "worse than Israel by every metric" and she ends with telling me to fuck off.
So yeah, pretty much what I expected, if not a little weak sauce?
Like, it is not revisionist to tell the history of the Nakba. 750,000 people displaced, 15k killed, 500 villages destroyed. It's not revisionist to talk about the massacre of Kafr Qasim where Israeli police killed 48 unarmed civilians, 23 of which were children and the youngest was 8 years old, and then an officer responsible for the murders was put in charge of "Arab Affairs" in a nearby city. It's not revisionist to say Israel funded and supported Hamas to crush secular progressive movements in Gaza. Those things happened. It is well documented. They happened. They did. You can Google it and it will be the first result you see. And these things have continued to happen ever since.
I've been vocal for years about how it's fucked that America killed a quarter of a million Afghans, how Obama bombed the middle east so much that children in these countries grew to fear says with a clear sky, because the drones could fly on those days. I've talked about Yemen and Syria, I've talked about how AMERICAN influence made all of these situations worse. I've talked about Saudi Arabia and how they murdered an American journalist and nothing was done about it, but the reason THIS gets an essay right now is because it feels like we are witnessing genocide in real time, and most of the people in this country seem fine with it.
And like. "You're sitting there safely in a country worse than Israel."
Ma'am, idk what to tell you, you chose to move from America to Israel. Dunno what to tell you there. Otherwise, I HAVE BEEN VOCALLY CRITICAL OF THE USA FOR YEARS. I've openly said that the CIA, the industrial war complex, and American capitalism, has been the single greatest source of evil and suffering on the globe in the modern era. Like, I hate American government, politics, and the influence we have on the globe. We ARE the evil empire! WE'RE the baddies! I've been saying this for AGESSSSS.
IDK guys. I just gotta spew my feelings out here so I don't pop off to her. I have my sympathies for her, because she moved to flee from Trump and to ensure her mother had the healthcare she needs to live. She's married and now has a baby, she lives in Haifa. I understand why she's angry and defensive, I fully sympathize with how scary it must be for her.
But like. That doesn't change history. It doesn't change the fact that zionist military forces violently forced people out of the city of Haifa and cleared it for new Israelis. I've wondered, how old is the building she lives in? Did Palestinians live there once before her? I've never said the Israeli civilians "had this coming" but this situation IS a ticking time bomb, which is what leftist voices have been saying for ages.
She also said "we've offered peace and they never take it!" Iirc Israel hasn't actually met to negotiate with Palestinians for like a decade?? And like. WHAT HAVE YOU OFFERED?! "Hey guys, stop resisting us and we promise to stop taking your land and bulldozing your homes. I know we already did that like 70 years ago and completely ignored the borders we, Israel, agreed to, but believe us! We'll for sure hold up our end of the bargain this time! Also no we still want to have an ethnostate and we still want to treat you as second class citizens." WHAT PEACE OFFERINGS???
She said "you haven't offered any solutions!" I'm not here to offer the perfect solution for peace in the middle east, I'm here to say genocide is wrong, I'm here to elevate the voices of Palestinians and anti-zionist Jews. You already had the bones of a "two state solution" when the UN carved up the land, and Israel didn't respect that (not that it was great to begin with). And honestly, if you say "I kinda think a single secular state where everyone gets equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity" you will get crucified??
Anyway. I'm just ranting at this point. I knew I'd get blow back for speaking out, but it honestly wasn't as bad as I expected.
I just hearted her comment and will reply later, though idk if she'll see it, since she promptly unfriended me. Also unsurprising.
Anyway, free Palestine
#personal#free Palestine#I've had positive reactions to the post but hers in the only comment#i just can't support militant zionism and i won't#i do think it's hilarious that she actually went the route of “what about” everything else#when I've literally been fighting friends family and strangers about these exact things for like a decade#me sitting here with my Jewish partner#who also vocally supports Palestine#but yeah#we're just hating to hate
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more liveblogging YIPPEE!! this time it’s the first half of ch1′s daily life.
-”monokuma will never directly commit a murder” bro don’t you threaten to kill all of them like two days from now??
-himiko’s vibrating sprite 😭 she is my spirit animal truly
-oh, shuichi and rantaro’s dynamic is GREAT. shuichi pulls kaede aside to ask if she thinks an ultimate talent is “really something you can forget” and iirc rantaro says he thinks shuichi is the most suspicious person in his FTEs - they both clearly suspect the other of being the ringleader and it’s fantastic. especially since their shared fondness for kaede makes them interact more than they’d probably like.
-we meet again, manhole gonta cg, we meet again. you have not gotten any prettier.
-kokichi’s first instinct when faced with a big hollow place is to yodel, and honestly same. echos r fun okay!!
-rantaro gets so much snarkier upon rewatch - you realize how much of his dialogue is just taking the piss. him saying “oh, how considerate” when they find the exit sign still makes me giggle.
-kaito thinking kaede is the COOLEST WOMAN ON EARTH and kaede thinking he’s sooo lame is such an underrated dynamic. “gimme a hug!” “no 💖” lives in my head rent free.
-kokichi’s speech after the death road of despair is what made me sit up and take interest in him and in kaede as characters and it still holds up so good hpsuhag,,,,i don’t have a ton of bigbrain thoughts about it but please know i am thinking about high empathy/low compassion kokichi and low empathy/high compassion kaede every single day. autistic queens.
-kokichi literally just says they need to find another way out and rantaro’s immediately like “murder?? you want to do a murder, you little gremlin????” then tenko freaks out, kokichi tells her to chill, and she threatens to smash his head into the ground!? it seems to me that the writers had a set dynamic between kokichi and the rest of the group, but forgot that by this point in the story they haven’t written anything to justify it - even with rantaro’s paranoia and tenko’s anger issues, this is excessive. HILARIOUSLY, this makes the scene read as his fucking jonker origin story. tenko, you fool, you should’ve taken the bubblegum...! look what you’ve gotten us all into...!
-the dorm rooms are INSANELY swanky. i’d want to live there, if not for the...everything else......
-them having tons of copies of the same outfit is so funny. tsumugi put her heart and soul into those costumes and you WILL wear them.
-that’s the end of day one! i’ll be keeping track of them, just so you all can understand how RIDICULOUS v3′s timeline is.
-i once saw someone point out that there was zero reason for maki not to take the first blood perk, and now that HAUNTS me. she would only be responsible for one death since there’s no class trial, and we know that ever after five chapters of ✨bonding✨ she’s still willing to murder all her “friends” in a petty revenge plot, and she’s supposed to be willing to do ANYTHING to keep her orphanage from going under. completely irrelevantly, did you know maki being an assassin was actually added later in development than kaede being the first killer?
-despite him definitely knowing that monokuma isn’t really dead, kokichi insists wholeheartedly that the killing game is “cancelled” - it’s one of his more obvious ploys imo. even if it can only delay deaths for a day or so, he’s willing to throw all his acting chops behind it.
-you know that meme that goes “god made me mentally ill to nerf me”? that’s shuichi. he’s a side character that becomes the protagonist. he has a plan to catch the mastermind in CHAPTER ONE. he is breaking the danganronpa formula so bad. tsumugi had to pump him full of depression or else he would have crushed her show like a nut on day one. the detective. he destroyed his narrative. yes. YES. the detective is out.
-KAEDE TOLD MIU TO SHUT THE HELL UP...u know it’s serious when u get *kaede* to curse omg
-”hey,do you think this door is connected to monokuma somehow?” “i think it might.” and here we get our first reminder that v3 was translated by character, not by scene. the translators mostly stuck to their individual character’s dialogue without much communication, and it leaves lots of little blips like this.
-and so day two ends!
-the way they just...take the wind right out of monokuma’s sails is so funny. he’s so excited for this yokai gimmick!! and then miu tells him to get hit by a second car, tsumugi complains that his outfit is bad, and korekiyo starts explaining the difference between ghosts and yokai in excruciating detail. monokuma’s one weakness: pretentious teenage nerds...!
-the additional time-limit motive doesn’t make sense to me when it’s been ONE DAY since he introduced the first one!? it feels like a last resort, something to be used after they refused to take the bait. fits much better with a more stretched-out timeline, where they were in the school for a month or so with no murder before monokuma snapped and told them to kill or else.
-rantaro questions if he can even trust himself because of his missing memories. of course WE know he’s not gonna get hajime’d, but it’s a reasonable fear!
-”that’s why i didn’t want to talk about this in front of everyone...if we told them now, they might all try to find the mastermind, and be led to murder. that’s why...i could only tell you, kaede.” oh, shuichi......(┬┬﹏┬┬) kaede just goes dead silent after this too, before changing the subject. she doesn’t have a murder plan yet - she can’t have one, not before they’ve gone to the warehouse - but she’s certainly Considering Options.
-there’s part one of daily life! like and subscribe, i’ll be posting the second half momentarily :]
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maybe this happens later, altho i hope it doesn’t, is that one thing jiuchen/lin mo has over ye hua/bai qian is.... jiuchen never punishes lin mo for not being ling xi? like. ye hua absolutely is salty about about bai qian not being su su, idc what he says, he’s absolutely passive aggressive about the fact that bai qian doesn’t have the personality that he wanted. he sees susu’s mannerisms and appearance in bai qian, but he does not like her character at all.
i mean granted, you could say that jiuchen/lin mo is potentially creepier, bc jiuchen occasionally dropped by to see lin mo, and she’s still a child, even tho he never had a proper conversation with her until she was 18 again, in mortal terms. but i think time passes differently in immortal realms and mortal realms anyway, iirc?
but again, if being ‘a mortal’ is like ‘being in a dream’, and they know it’s not the ‘real’ self, then.... idk, the oddness of it isn’t necessarily neutralized, but. idk. i think it feels different, bc jiuchen knows that if lin mo survives this, and dies, he will get ling xi back. her trial might change her, but ling xi will be ling xi, and that’s who he loves. i do think jiuchen cares for lin mo, bc she’s ling xi, but i’m still... maybe a bit murky on whether lin mo would have captured jiuchen’s heart anyway, altho i did like when jiuchen notes her kind-heartedness. but i still kind of wonder if lin mo is a means to an end, y’know, rather than jiuchen liking lin mo for her own person, rather than being... idk, a facet of ling xi.
ye hua is never getting su su back. the ideal docile woman for him. is dead and gone forever, because that’s not bai qian in a million years.
like in some ways i would be curious to see another xianxia show where the immortal meets the mortal incarnation first, and then tries to come to terms with that difference once they meet again and the mortal died and now become an immortal again? but. again. TMOPB wasn’t it.
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john abused both dean AND sam, just differently. in this essay i will
prove that the abuse manifested in different ways for each of them because that’s how abuse works in real life. this is based on the fact that john saw dean as mary’s surrogate but once he found out about the deal and sam having demon blood he blamed sam for her death. ok let’s fucking go
dean as mary’s surrogate
there are loads of parallels made between dean and mary in early season spn and late season spn. in season 12 dean directly calls himself sam’s mother, but even earlier than that we see him doing the cooking and child rearing. compare that to all the parallels made between sam and john (both of them losing their blonde woman significant others in a ceiling fire) and it’s clear that dean was meant to more resemble mary. it’s not a stretch to say that if we can see it as viewers this is how john saw it in his actual life. i do think john loves dean for being dean but he loves him more for being mary.
sam as the reason behind mary’s death
i think once john learned that sam had demon blood, some part of him must have always been waiting for the other shoe to drop with sam, not ever fully believing this kid was human, and maybe not even knowing if this kid was HIS. a popular theory back in the day was that YED fathered sam (something they had to actually address in season 4 to stop the speculation), and if WE speculated that hard, surely john must have too. i’m sure he loves sam as an extension of mary, and keeps and raises and protects him BECAUSE he’s mary’s, but similarly (or maybe inverse) to dean, i don’t know if he ever fully gave himself permission to love sam for being sam. in fact, i imagine john harbors a lot of self-loathing for failing to save mary. if we directly parallel john and sam, that means by some extent he would also hate sam.
john trusted dean with far too much, and sam with far too little
dean knew about monsters; sam didn’t. dean had memories of their mother and the night she died, and shared that trauma of watching her die with john; sam didn’t. dean knew when john was supposed to be home and who to call if he wasn’t; sam didn’t. dean was given the money and the guns and the CAR ITSELF; sam wasn’t. dean was taught to drive; SAM WASN’T.
dean was expected to do everything john was supposed to have been doing in his absence - he was to be a mother and father to sam, he was supposed to protect sam from evil, he was supposed to see to sam’s meals and homework and getting to school on time. and he was put under an EXTRAORDINARY amount of pressure not to screw this up even a little bit, despite the fact that he was only a kid. sam on the other hand was kept on a strict need-to-know basis for his entire life, right up until season 1 when they reunite at last. john didn’t trust sam with ANYTHING, and sam knew it. this contributed to his lifelong anger issues because he didn’t DO anything to warrant that kind of mistrust and probably got gaslit about it a lot of times either by john himself or dean (unknowingly, by parroting/believing the things john said). even in the pilot sam says very casually of his mother “she’s gone,” because her memory doesn’t hold the same place of reverence for him - best guess is that john didn’t talk about her much to sam because he didn’t trust sam with emotional stuff either. in s14 we learn that dean was the one who told sam stories about mary, including her terrible casserole - and their attempt at recreating it infuriated john to the point of him throwing the entire concoction in the trash.
john relied on dean for everything, and refused to rely on sam for anything
canonically dean was the one who comforted john after a bad hunt, looked after and fed his brother when john wasn’t around. dean knew how to use a shotgun; sam didn’t. dean knew who to call in an emergency; sam didn’t. dean knew about monsters; sam didn’t. this was done under the guise of “protection for sammy” but turn it around and it’s also protection FROM sammy. think of how angry john gets when he learns sam has been having psychic visions. he’s not just angry that dean didn’t report it to him, he’s angry that the demon’s plans for sam are coming to pass, and that sam is becoming less human. again, he can’t TRUST sam if sam’s not human, and it proves to john that he was right all along to keep sam in the dark as much as possible.
john gave dean too much freedom, and sam no freedom at all
“watch out for sammy.” sam was under constant supervision by either dean or john; john made sure of it. again, it’s protection FOR sam but also protection FROM him, in case he did something inhuman or evil. dean on the other hand was left alone without any supervision at all for days or even weeks at a time - he resorts to stealing bread and peanut butter and (according to jackles) turning tricks for money. he had to make it work and got up to whatever the fuck he wanted when john wasn’t looking. sam had to LITERALLY run away from home before he got the simple pleasure of eating pizza and having a dog by himself, independently. dean was given too much independence and freedom but sam was kept on such a short leash he had none at all.
john made dean feel unworthy, and he made sam feel unclean
when dean fails to protect sam from the shtriga in the season 1 flashbacks, he says his dad looked at him differently after. he also implies that john physically beat him when sam ran away in flagstaff. whether he meant to or not, john made it abundantly clear that his love for dean was not unconditional; it depended very much on how well dean performed the multitude of tasks john assigned him. dean grew up believing that his only worth was in what he could do for other people. he demonstrates this an an adult over and over and over, from letting his possessed family members beat him up to refusing to take care of his own needs, emotional and otherwise, and snapping at people who try to talk to him about his own feelings.
on the other hand, sam talks in season 8 about how even at a very young age he felt impure and unclean, even before he knew that he had demon blood, even before he knew that there was any such thing as monsters. kids aren’t stupid, and sam picked up on the vibes john was putting off - that john didn’t trust him, might not have loved him, and might not have considered him human or even his own child. without even knowing why, he spent his entire life feeling unclean and inhuman, not worth of being loved by his own family. even dean, who we all know loves sam unconditionally, admits in season 14 that he often took dad’s side on arguments because he had “his own stuff,” further leading to the alienation that was sam’s constant companion growing up.
AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY:
JOHN’S ABUSE PITTED SAM AND DEAN AGAINST EACH OTHER
john saved dean after their shared trauma of mary’s death. dean says in season 1 that the reason he stopped talking was that he was scared. iirc john’s journal implies he was mute for over a year, and dean in season 2 says that when he was 6 or 7 his dad took him shooting for the first time. if mary died just before dean’s fifth birthday, the timeline works out to dean talking again because john took him shooting. i believe that dean hero worships his father because after mary’s death, and dealing with the terror that something like that could come in and take his family away by killing them horribly at any time without any warning, john learning to fight back against the darkness - and teaching dean to do the same - is what gave dean his voice again. BOTH of them saw and carried the memory of mary burning on the ceiling for the rest of their lives. “watch out for sammy” and “get the thing that killed mom” were dean’s reasons to get up in the morning, because they were john’s reasons to get up in the morning. these things were LITERALLY his reasons for living. john gave dean a way to fight back against fear and gave him a cause to keep him going. abuse or not, dean never stopped being grateful for that, and he was the only other person in the whole world who understood the unique horror of what john went through that night. even all the way into season 10, he tells other people that john did right by him. it’s borderline brainwashing. part of dean’s self-worth will always be based on how good of a son he was to john.
on the other hand, knowingly or not, john did everything possible to alienate sam. he kept him on a short leash while also keeping him at arm’s distance. he didn’t trust sam with emotional things like the memory of mary, he didn’t trust sam with the truth about monsters and what they did for a living, he didn’t trust sam with his plans, he didn’t trust sam with the truth about demon blood. canon STRONGLY suggests john knew YED bled in sam’s mouth as a baby, but instead of telling sam or even dean about that, sam had to learn about it in a horrible flashback recreated by YED himself. when sam wanted to go to school, john told him no, and when he left anyway, john told him not to come back.
this is an equal but opposite kind of abuse. john totally fucked up BOTH his kids in complete inversions to each other.
which means that, no matter what john did, it caused sam and dean to fight. this isn’t an interpretation. this is straight up canon.
again, dean says in s14 that he frequently took dad’s side in arguments because he had his own stuff to deal with, and he was trying to keep the peace. dean, a victim of emotional (and implied sometimes physical) abuse himself, was not able to shield sam from all of john’s bullshit. he could stop sam from getting hit and having to see john during the worst of his drunken rages, but he couldn’t trick sam into thinking john loved him unconditionally, because john didn’t love either of his kids unconditionally.
when john acted in a way that was not befitting of a parent, sam rightfully took exception, which forced dean (who was ALSO BEING ABUSED, almost brainwashed) to jump to his defense. that led to john getting to do whatever the hell he wanted and sam and dean arguing about the effects. when sam ran away in flagstaff, DEAN was punished, leading dean to resenting sam for that incursion, even though sam was perfectly right to want to get away from an abusive household. when sam did a normal thing wanting to leave for college at age 18, he left, and dean resented him for that because that meant he was alone to bear the brunt of john’s anger.
sam repeatedly made logical, emotionally healthy choices in attempting to break the family dynamic, but because of JOHN’S BEHAVIOR, not sam’s, those choices wound up causing dean harm. JOHN HIMSELF was the ultimate wedge between sam and dean growing up and beyond.
and let’s not forget the biggest sin - john spent 22 years impressing upon dean that taking care of sammy was EVERYTHING, and then without any explanation at all, he asked dean to kill him, and then he DIED, which meant dean had to carry that weight by himself (because again, he’s been trained not to trust sam with things). like of COURSE sam got angry when he found out - that’s fucking fucked up! once again sam is being treated like a ticking time bomb for absolutely no reason - he didn’t ask to have demon blood or psychic visions or a dead mom or an abusive father. nor did dean ask to be saddled with the upbringing of an entire human at four years old who he then might have to kill. because dean will always feel gratitude towards john, and sam will always feel resentment, and because based on john’s treatment of them BOTH OF THESE FEELINGS ARE JUSTIFIED, john continues to cause fights between sam and dean long after he’s dead and gone, and that will never change.
on a final note: i’d like to bring this around to season 13.
after cas, mary, kelly, and crowley all die (or are presumed dead in mary’s case) in the season 12 finale, season 13 opens with nobody but sam and dean and jack. dean directly blames jack for these deaths. he says so multiple times. he says where jack can hear him that he knows jack is evil and impure and cannot be saved and calls jack a freak. when jack tries repeatedly to kill himself dean says to jack’s face not to bother, because WHEN jack does go bad, dean will be the one to kill him. dean does NOT see jack as castiel’s child - he sees jack as someone who brainwashed cas and kelly both and got them killed. dean does not even see jack as a human person worthy of life. from the get-go, all he wants is to put jack down. jack is born into a world shaped by pain and grief and anger, where people hate him simply for what he is and who died to get him here.
and again, sam identifies hard with jack. he justifiably protests dean’s treatment of him. jack is a kid and didn’t ask for any of this. jack is terrified of dean. sam reminds dean that john said all these things about sam that dean is saying about jack. john is still causing a rift between his sons over a decade after his death.
eventually, after jack uses his powers and brings back cas from the empty, dean pulls his head out of his ass and admits that he was wrong. he calls jack his kid more than once, and jack refers to dean as one of his dads. but the damage has already been done. jack struggles multiple times with his powers, accidentally hurting people and then wishing himself dead after. he also struggles without them; even when using his powers means using up pieces of his soul, he does it, because dean taught him that he’s only worthy of being loved and trusted if he’s “good.” even when he has NO SOUL, when jack does something bad he panics about it and seeks to undo it at any cost. that’s how deep the damage runs.
i see a lot of people remarking that in the arc of 13.01-13.05, dean became john, and i agree that he did. but dean didn’t do to jack what john did to him. dean did to jack what john did to SAM.
[spn masterpost]
#supernatural#dean winchester#sam winchester#john winchester#jack kline#liz watches spn#liz's meta#liz's spn stuff#YES YOU CAN REBLOG THIS PLS DO I WORKED HARD ON IT.#WHEW. glad i got that off my chest#this is why u can't call it the widow arc#sam revisited a WHOLE childhood of trauma here#the arc is about all of them!!!!!#backtagging to add#broken road#brcu
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Okay, I think I found what I really wanted to root out with Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu and the physicality of their book relationship.
Because I will argue for days that Wen Kexing is terribly touch-starved, especially at the beginning of the book. For eight years, as the Valley Master, he’s only allowed Gu Xiang within a meter of him. They have a fairly casual relationship, but they straddle an awkward line between family and master/servant, and as the Ghost Valley Master? Everyone in Ghost Valley, including Gu Xiang, is at least a little frightened of him. He’s affection-starved as much as he is touch-starved, and having one person who cares more than she’s frightened isn’t really enough to overcome that degree of isolation. When a servant woman is combing his hair and accidentally hits a snag, she begs for her life, and his first reaction is to ask if someone forced her to wait on him. He’s been the Valley Master since he was a very young adult, and he’s been in Ghost Valley since he was a child.
And it’s so interesting to me that a lot of cnovels really emphasize that when the leads are in a relationship, it’s their first relationship, and they never wanted anyone else, but Wen Kexing (and jing beiyuan in lord seventh, which is an interesting parallel) really directly subvert that. Gu Xiang almost immediately remarks that Wen Kexing spends plenty of nights with male courtesans, and partway through the book, Wen Kexing uses a handkerchief from a famous courtesan to treat Zhou Zishu’s injury. He left the valley and entered the human world, and immediately threw himself into the arms of other men.
And Zhou Zishu, I would say, is also touch starved and affection starved, but is coping differently from Wen Kexing. No matter how strained and/or political his relationships with the Emperor and the government are, and even though he took charge of the Four Seasons Manor at... fifteen, iirc, he did have at least one close, affectionate (for a zhou zishu value of affectionate), trusting relationship, with Liang Jiuxiao. And where Wen Kexing starts the book with a comfortable relationship with Gu Xiang, Zhou Zishu starts the book knowing that his shidi is dead, and in Lord Seventh, we see the ways that he failed and/or “failed” Liang Jiuxiao, with Jiang Xue, and with staying at his post during the final battle instead of rushing off and trying to find his shidi, and it working out... not well. And I think it’s fascinating that unlike Wen Kexing, when he leaves Tian Chuang to reenter the human world, he’s content to be almost completely solitary, and focuses his attention on seeing the sights and drinking good wine.
A really interesting parallel to me is in the Ye Baiyi extra, where he mentions that it’s only human nature to crave food and sex, and he’s too old to care about sex, so food it is. Because that’s not a thought he ever shares with the other characters, but it’s very interesting to me that in the novel, in that first burst of enjoying their freedom, Wen Kexing is so focused on physical intimacy, first with courtesans, and then with Zhou Zishu, while Zhou Zishu is much more focused on physical pleasure must less dependent on other humans, like sightseeing and wine.
But once Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are in action together, and once Wen Kexing definitively gets invested in Zhou Zishu, the physical progression of the relationship is really interesting to me. Wen Kexing gets very handsy and very forward, very quickly. Zhou Zishu tends to either endure or push him away, depending on the situation, but compared to something like, say, svsss, there’s much less ‘but i’m not gay though’ and much more generalized irritation until he (much more slowly) gets invested in return.
And I probably would have brushed it away except for that one scene where they were about to do it, and get interrupted by the Scorpion King. First, this line, which makes it absolutely clear that as much as Zhou Zishu had given up on living a long, normal human life, Wen Kexing was in exactly the same position. Now, seeing Zhou Zishu potentially get a new lease on life, he’s forced to reckon with the idea that it might be possible for him to live on in the same way, which casts a whole new light on how casually he slept around with courtesans and propositioned Zhou Zishu earlier in the story, versus where he stands now.
They were both lone wolves who had been caught in hunters’ traps, struggling with all of their strength to free themselves to no avail, and thus, were willing to gnaw their own legs off without mercy.
[Wen Kexing] hadn’t been able to help following him, from watching him. Then a revelation had dawned— He’d realized, for the first time, that if Zhou Zishu could live like this, was it also a possible for him to live like this?
And then when Wen Kexing starts to catch a fresh round of feelings, Zhou Zishu’s response says volumes about his prior reactions whenever Wen Kexing got forward with him.
“A-Xu, sleep with me once. This way, we’ll keep each other in our hearts. You won’t die so easily then, and neither will I. What do you think?”
He said it jokingly, yet Zhou Zishu did not reply, only looked at him oddly. A while later, he finally asked, “Are you truly sincere about this?”
Wen Kexing laughed, his body tilting towards Zhou Zishu. He spoke, nearly against Zhou Zishu’s lips, “Can’t you tell if I’m sincere or not?”
Stunned, Zhou Zishu paused, then said in a low voice, “I… truly can’t tell. I haven’t experienced many instances of sincerity over the course of my life, and can’t identify it. Are you?”
Wen Kexing's fingers drifted up his shoulder, and tugged his hair loose. Dark hair cascaded down, making the tough man before his eyes look a few degrees more fragile in an instant. He dropped his cheeky grin, and in a soft voice, filled with momentous certainty, said, "I am."
Wen Kexing is most starved for touch, while Zhou Zishu is most starved for sincerity. Zhou Zishu was up to his neck in court politics in Lord Seventh, where a major focus of the story is about how sure, the Crown Prince may be deeply in love, but he’s the future Emperor, and ultimately, his feelings land way down the priority list. Up until this point in the story, with Wen Kexing waxing eloquent about how pretty Zhou Zishu must be, and calling it ‘mariticide’ when Zhou Zishu hits him, and being like ‘no no let’s hear the man out’ when the Scorpion King wants them to put on a sexy show for him, Zhou Zishu hasn’t been able to tell whether Wen Kexing means it.
I love me a story where the leads are terrible communicators and it causes them much Suffering, but this is a really tasty variant that I don’t feel like I see that often. Their hungers are so similar, but just disjoint enough that they can’t understand each other’s reservations. For a soulmates story like this, it’s just the right kind of tension to make the relationship work extra well for me. They’re in sync about this, as they are about so many things, with just enough of an offset that they’re both left ever so slightly uncertain, and it isn’t until they trust each other enough to ask a question as plain as ‘are you truly sincere about this?’ that they’re finally able to close the gap and reach that understanding with each other.
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Lancelot had a (b)romance with the half-giant king, Galehaut. Some fun stories about them
Galehaut's forces were laying siege to king Arthur's and looked as though they may prevail but before clinching victory, Galehaut offered surrender on the condition that the mighty black knight who fought so valiantly (Lancelot) become his friend. Arthur accepted the terms then Lancelot and Galehaut adventured together.
Galehaut helped cover for Lancelot and Guinevere, allowing them to use his castle for secret meetings.
He later encouraged Lancelot to move somewhere else where he could be with her even though it meant they'd never see each other again (his giant blood and own kingdom meant he couldn't leave).
Upon (false) news that Lancelot had died, Galehaut is said to have died of either loneliness or heartbreak (Lancelot had been kidnapped then driven mad so it wasn't completely implausible).
When Lancelot died, instead of being buried next to any of his three-ish wives, he chose to be laid to rest in the grave Galehaut set aside for the two of them so that they could be side by side for the rest of time
Gilgamesh is an architect nerd
Heracles madness and invulnerability isn't just due to his labours and being too strong to control
He had an actual moment of pure madness due to his invulnerability, his wife gifted him an undershirt that had been soaked in the blood of a centaur that tried to rape her, Heracles killed the centaur with an arrow coated in hydra blood, the hydras blood was deadly to all living things except those of divinity, the centaur knowing why it was dying told her if she felt her husband was cheating on her all she had to do was make him wear the cloth and he would fall completely in love with her and she gave him it as a gift
The hydra blood poisoned him but due to his inability to die he was stuck in perpetual pain and death with no cure he was eventually driven mad, during his madness he hit one of his friends so hard he sent them hurtling into the ocean, during his madness he commanded the building of an enormous pyre which once completed he threw himself on top of and set it on fire, hoping to burn his body into nothingness before it could heal and release him from the poison
I've never heard of a telling of Atalanta's story that has her die in that incident. Every version I've seen that includes that incident says that the two of them were transformed into lions.
As has been mentioned in other comments, FGO did address the existence of Chrysaor in Gorgon's Bond CE, and Mordred proposing to Guinevere, IIRC, is brought up in Fate/Apocrypha.
As for others...
While only addressed in the FGO Materials (and said materials note that it's unclear if this applies in the Nasuverse), some tales say that Medea and Achilles were once married.
There's one tale that happens before Heracles' labours, where he is tasked to hunt a supernatural lion (not the Nemean one). One version has him be rewarded for his success by being allowed to sleep with all 50 of the local king's daughters - Heracles beds and impregnates 49 in one night, and the only reason he didn't go for a full 50 is because one of the daughters wasn't DTF like the other 49. The other version has the hunt take 50 days, and each night Heracles is permitted to sleep with the king's eldest daughter... except they've plotted such that in the darkness, each night a different sister would crawl into bed with him, resulting in all of the sisters getting pregnant.
Heracles spent a couple of years as a lover to a snake-woman (who may or may not have been Echidna) during one of his labours (she was keeping Heracles' horses captive, and wouldn't let them free until she'd had three kids from him). One of their sons, Scythes, became the serpent-woman's heir, and is said to be the king for whom the Scythians were named. The other two sons either joined or founded other neighbouring tribes.
Going by Le Morte d'Arthur, Gareth gets really violent with cock-blockers (or, I suppose in the Nasuverse, clam-jammers). The first time, the intruder got their head cut off, but Gareth ended up being stabbed in the thigh and that ruined sexy-times. The second time, Gareth cut the intruder's head off, broke the skull into itty-bitty pieces, and threw them all into a moat... but sexy-times got ruined again because the fight re-opened the previous thigh-wound and the blood-loss nearly killed Gareth.
solomon and sheba
It varies depending on which version of Arthurian legend it is, but in Thomas Malory’s version, upon learning that mordred is an incest bastard, and Merlins prophecy that mordred will destroy Arthur and his kingdom, Arthur puts every baby born on the same day as mordred on boats and sends them away in hopes they all die, which obviously doesn’t work. I enjoy it because it makes mordreds hatred of his father a bit more understandable, and while he’s still a pretty bad dude, I feel for him a bit. Although in fate, mordred is my favorite character so I’m a little biased towards both her, and her actual counterpart
Arjuna
- "Endowed Hero" is a bullshit title. Arjuna and his brothers, due to being son of Pandu, was forced to be exiled and live in poverty for 14 years.
- Among Drona's student, he is the bravest among them. Even Karna's reason to study more under Parasurama was due to his jealousness toward Arjuna.
- Yudhistira is strong in using chariot and spear, Bhima in using mace, Arjuna in archery, Nakula and Sahadev in using sword. Despite all of that, Arjuna is better in technique than all of them in their respective forte.
- He got his astras by doing wrestle with Mahadev himself
- Among the youngling during Kurukshetra war (it means excluding Drona, Parasurama, and such. Oh, excluding Krishna as well), only Arjuna have fought non-human enemies and won.
Karna
- He's always the one with the obsession to beat Arjuna, not otherwise. Always want to be acknowledged.
- It's true that his armor is immune to everything thrown by Gandiva and even Chakra Sudharsana itself, but doesn't mean Karna is unbeatable. What impossible is to kill Karna, not beat him. Karna already loses 2 times against Arjuna before Kurukshetra war, either fainting or fled.
- Once Karna fought against Bhima. This battle happened years after Karna trade his armor with Vasavi Shakti. Both participants fought with normal weapon. No astras. No gods interference. No blessings. Bhima beat him so hard that Ashvattama needs to carry him.
In Greek mythology, Heracles was given another trial for some reason and he was given to a queen for said trial. The queen tried to humiliate him by making him dress up in women’s clothing and do knitting while she would dress up in his Nemean lion pelt and go into battle, essentially reversing gender roles. Well it turned out that the plan backfired on the queen as Heracles actually came to enjoy knitting. He said it was a calming exercise for him, so he actually found a new hobby out of this trial instead of humiliation. Needless to say that I would find it hilarious if we found berserker Heracles knitting a sweater for one of the children and ritsuka and mash catch him in the act. Just imagining a hulking behemoth like that knitting would be a hilarious image.
#fgo#fate grand order#fate/grand order#queen medb#fate medb#fgo medb#medb#edmond dantes#fgo edmond dantes#fate lancelot#fgo lancelot#lancelot#saber lancelot#astolfo#fate astolfo#fgo astolfo#fate heracles#heracles#heracles fgo#fgo heracles#fate achilles#fgo achilles#fate medea#fgo medea#medea#achilles#fgo solomon#solomon#fgo sheba#fgo queen of sheba
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Hey I imagine you might want to move on from that whole thing now, but just want to add on how weird it was the person overlooked the fact that, IIRC neither Megan or Dinah (or any of the women Wally hit on) ever *objected* or seemed bothered by his comments, as fratbroy as they might be, yet we also saw Artemis hit on Superboy, who DID express discomfort, and when called on making him uncomfortable she brushed it off and continued to do it. Not to attack Artemis, she was my favourite YJ character, and I actually disliked how much YJ played up Wally's wannabe ladies man thing (TBH I disliked how YJ handled him in general, but I digress), but we can't call Wally gross and take offence to his actions when none of the people he 'hurt' were ever actually bothered, especially when overlooking how Artemis was just as guilty of that 'unwanted flirting'. They also overlook the context of the time period; S1 was over a decade ago now (fuck), and it was only around 2017 we as a society decided 'sexual harassment isn't funny'; sitcoms were still pushing characters who were literal sex offenders as 'lol funny guys' and being presented as inoffensive 'standard comedy', and the comic relief character being an annoying flirt was standard practice; just look at Beast Boy, comics!Superboy, Tony Stark, Star-Lord, etc. From what I remember, YJ!Wally was playing up a persona he thought made him look cool (ostensibly so he could grow out of it), and what we saw of his life outside of being Kid Flash he was a nerdy kid without many non-hero friends, so him being a flirt was definitely a part of him trying to pass himself off as a capable ladies man despite his lack of experience dating (similar to Artemis' own flirting as a way of playing herself as a 'cool bad girl' type), and he was likely taking it from the sort of 'heroes' young boys would have idealised in those days. The OP seems to forget Wally was literally a child in the first season.
Yep, totally agree. They had a lot of logical fallacies in their argument, it wasn't even coherent half the time lol.
They were real mad that I didn't make posts like this about Kaldur, even going on to say that I was racist for not doing so, and it's like??? I have literally never seen Kaldur hate in my life, idk wtf they're on about. And if I did??? I wouldn't be okay with that! Because Kaldur is great! But guess what?? I'd use the exact same arguments I used to defend Wally to defend Kaldur in this fictional scenario because they were literal teenagers and literally all of them made mistakes.
That's what the character growth is for 🙄
But yeah, I agree with what you are saying here. Artemis made lewd comments about Conner, Dick was nonstop flirty with Zatanna, M'gann shapeshifted into Black Canary to make out with Conner (without his knowledge), Kaldur held a torch for a woman who didn't love him and never had, ect. They all acted like teenagers because they were.
Also, yeah, M'gann literally never told him to stop. Wally wasn't the best at picking up social cues, so he didn't know she was into SB. And then when he knew they were dating? He stopped. (Cept for the nicknames but that wasn't flirting, that was Wally trying to help her self esteem)
Also Dinah? He hit on her once, she made it abundantly clear that she didn't like that and he stopped.
But anyway there was no use trying to reason with them. Their blog is full of racist bs and general ableism. The second they told me to commit suicide was the second I knew it was a lost cause even talking to them.
#young justice#wally west#kid flash#kaldur'ahm#aqualad#aquaman#artemis crock#tigress#mgann morzz#miss martian#dick grayson#nightwing#robin#Zatanna
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Hey! Idk if this is too much t9 ask, but could you rec me 2, 19, 20, 45, 55, 63, 69, 71, 72, 75, 86, 104, 111, 116, 131? sorry if it’s a lot but thanks in advance if u can rec me some! :)
Hi, you're in luck! I have an essay to procrastinate on and this ask is just the right thing to distract me! Here you go, I hope you'll find something that you like:
2. a book with a blue cover
Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. When i read it for the first time I was just on the brink of going to uni, still figuring out what I even wanted to study and this book just wrapped me in a warm blanket and said "it's going to be okay". I love the main characters Frances and Aled, their arcs and especially the really nice and quiet queer rep in this book.
19. a book that put you in a reading slump
The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. When I start a book I generally have the feeling that I can't put it away until I have finished it. With The Knife Of Never Letting Go my problem was that I did want to read it but it didn't fit my mood, so I couldn't bring myself to read it but also beat myself up about not reading it until I put it back onto my shelf. So, I basically pushed myself into a reading slump over this book.
21. a book with a red cover
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers. I enjoyed this book so much but probably not for the reasons most people would think I enjoyed it? The wlw romance was definitely nice and I really liked them being dramatic but also kind of mundane? What really got me though was the strong theme of found family of young adults and queer friendships, that really yanked the yearning hours wide fucking open for me. (I also liked that in the end the book wasn't as much about romance as it was about finding yourself after surrendering yourself to academia for ages and working through your issues.)
45. a book featuring the friends to lovers trope
The Priory Of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. I adore this book. It's so long and there's so much incredible world building and history in it that it made reading an untter delight! Coming in it was a bit hard to acclimate to the slow paste but after a while I just settled in and enjoyed the ride. It's a breathtaking story in a breathtaking universe and afaik there's a second part coming!
55. a book with a satisfying ending
Yolk by Mary H. K. Choi. Yolk doesn't really have an ending in the sense of a "happily ever after" but I really loved where the author chose to leave the characters and how she did it. The book is quite different from what I usually read, tonewise, but especially that ending made me leave the book with a warm feeling. (also the cover is yellow and really really gorgeous)
63. a book that actually made you laugh out loud
I would've reccd Red White and Royal Blue but judging by your url you've read that already...sooooo, it's Snapdragon by Kat Leyh! Super cute graphic novel, with a weird and adorable storyline and such lovable characters!
69. your favorite mythological retelling
I haven't read a mythological retelling in ages, so basic Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan will have to do.
71. your favorite LGBTQ+ fiction
now that's just rude how am I supposed to choose?? I'll say it's Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire and Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Loveless by Alice Oseman. I feel very strongly and very distinctly about all of them, if you can get your hands on them my only comment is READ. (and maybe make sure you're okay with gothic sci-fi horror for Gideon The Ninth)
72. a book with a gorgeous cover
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. It's her adult gothic horror debut after The Miseducation of Cameron Post and not only is the hardcover just stunning in black and red, it also got illustrations inside!! (And all teh women are queer and it's deliciously fucked up!)
75 a book featuring the I'm not like other girls trope
I think the closest I can come to that is The Lady's Guide To Piracy and Petticoats by Mackenzi Lee. The main character has to unlearn a bunch of stuff really fast if she wants to get along with the only other people that will help her. We have road trips in the 16th century, kidnapping and asshole husbands to be, piracy of course and friendship!
86. a book with an insane plot twist
Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand. Sawkill Girls was my first touch with horror and I have to say I have no idea whether there was heavy foreshadowing. I think I remember thinking that there was something else to come but when the shit hit the fan I just sat there with big questionmarks over my head because I had read the book in a frenzy in one evening and truly did NOT anticipate it. As someone who did not read horror or thriller before this I have to say I was already insanely confused and disgusted by a bunch of stuff that went down. But then...uh. the thing happened and I was just lost. (In a good way though.)
104. a fluffy sweet read
Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann. It's been a while ever since I read it but it's essentially a cute summer story about Alice who's a disaster bisexual when she sees people she finds cute. Which is a little inconvenient because the new guy at her job is really, really, really extremely cute and she ceases to function around him. There's best friend drama, eating pizza iirc and figuring shit out!
111. a book writing a book
I assume it's either "a book about writing a book" or I am literally supposed to rec a book that is writing a book...I'm going to rec a book that is about books! (because I can.) It's The Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Féret-Fleury and it follows a young woman called Juliette wo gets sucked into an old bookseller's world of life saving, life changing books. A really quiet, really cute book.
116. a book with multiple povs
the Reckless books by Cornelia Funke! Simply divine stroytelling, a vibrant world and amazing characters! I have to say that I only know the German original so I don't know what the English translation might be like.
131. recommend any book you like
um. so knife gang members and people who follow my main, you'll once again be subjected to me being a mess because of lesbian necromancers in space! I've mentioned it before, it lives in my head rent free, it is the one, the only Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir! It's an insane sci-fi horror fantasy blend where Gideon has to play cavalier to Reverend Daughter Harrowhark I-love-being- an-absolute-pain-in-the-ass-to-Gideon Nonagesimus to help her become an uber-necromancer (like Harrow needs motivation to become even more of a nerd and shockingly good at necromancy) for the Necrolord Prime/Undying Emperor. There's BEAUTIFUL WRITING sprinkled with MEMES when you least expect it. There is incredible toxic codependency and repression. There's MURDER. There's fancy necromancy theorems and DUELS. There's enemies to begrudging allies to ??? Staple your socks to your feet or this book will blow them clean off!
#book rec asks#mo answers#thanks for asking!#idk when you sent this ask but it popped up in my inbox just today so here you go!
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my "Crowley isn't attracted to women" take
for @spnprideweek - day 2 - mlm
cw: dicussion of homophobia & transphobia
all in all I wanted to highlight how canon gay Crowley is bc I love him 💕 thank u spn for Crowley even tho he deserved better
in the last weeks I've realized there's a huuge consensus in the fandom for pansexual Crowley. if you're pan or not and wanna hc Crowley as pan, power to you! but what's bothering me is the non-discussion of it all. the way it seems obvious for everyone. whereas, to me, Crowley has been canonically gay all this time.....
disclaimer:
I'm aware Mark Sheppard alledgely said he saw Crowley as pansexual, however I can't even take these words for canon without context.
Especially not when a year later he'd say Crowley's sexuality didn't matter. The way Mark Sheppard talks about characters' sexuality is more a "why are people making a big deal let them be" than "the character doesn't care."
Moreover, actors pov can't be taken as canon imo. Jensen Ackles thought Dean straight for so long when Dean's been bi all this time as well.
Sometimes actors are biased by their own experiences & stereotypes!
disclaimer #2:
on god I don't wanna start discourse lmao. I just wanna share my silly thoughts about a tv show & question the way Crowley's sexuality is written in this silly homophobic tv show. don't @ me about what's making you think Crowley is indisputably pansexual bc I assure you I already know your points
That being said, here's why I think Crowley is a bear, a gay man, a trans gay man actually, a homosexual, who isn't attracted to women & some food for thoughts about why the unquestioned consensus towards pan Crowley could have roots in both homophobia & panphobia.
I don't think we can think of Crowley as your usual demon. We know too much about Crowley's life as a human, and the numerous ways in which he acts un-demony, almost humanly after. Considering him simply like a demon with no concept of gender preference who would be pan “by default” wouldn’t be right with his character. But we also can't question his sexuality in the exact same way we would a human's.
It also can't be thought in the same way as angels': as once-humans demons do have a concept of gender. Crowley especially cares a lot about his gender presentation and the way he's addressed. Not only does he literally sell his soul for a bigger d*ck as a human ; as a demon he uses the same vessel where other demons are shown to move once they had to leave one ; and for the few hours Crowley's possessing a woman, he clearly states he should still be referred to as king.
This will all be used for homophobic & transphobic jokes in the show, but I'll get back to that later on. Gender does matter to Crowley's identity, and I think it could be extended to his sexuality.
I've seen numerous descriptions of it all saying Crowley's sexuality was "ambiguous" and I guess it is, as he never explicitly used any label. However "ambiguous" doesn't mean bi or pan. It doesn't mean anything besides the fact we can't draw a clear-cut conclusion of his sexuality.
Imo we can actually draw a clear-cut conclusion of Crowley's sexuality but yeh, I'm getting there.
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Let's take a look at canon events around Crowley & sexuality!
His character introduction is him enjoying making a homophobe man kiss him for a deal
It is rumoured that he was a demon's lover (Lilith's)
He heavily flirts with Bobby
He french kisses Bobby for a deal and takes a pic
He never kisses a woman on screen (tell me if I forgot anyone!)
He flirts with every single man he sees, and even more strongly when it's making the other uncomfortable
The other parent of Crowley's son is never mentioned nor even brought up
He has two orgies that we know of
He has sex with a demon who's possessing a woman (Lola) when he was addicted to human blood
He dates, has sex with, and asks Dean to rule Hell with him. He's in love with Dean
On late spn he drinks fruity drinks
He flirts with and implies he had sex with an angel (Naomi)
He flirts with Death (Billie)
He's into BDSM
I'm not gonna go into details with all the sexual stuff he says bc there's a lot.... But it's always about gay sex. (once again, if I'm forgetting smth pls tell me nicely)
Now, with all that I'd like to question specifically the elements people use to say Crowley is canonically attracted to women.
He has two orgies that we know of
There’s the one Crowley has while he’s himself possessing a woman ; iirc it’s a foursome with two other men and one woman. Crowley still counts as a King, as the show makes sure we know, admitedly this dialogue implies we should still think of him as a not-very-manly-man.
Honestly, if one is convinced Crowley is attracted to women based on this scene.. okay. Personally I don’t see it because the orgy is unplanned, it’s an opportunity Crowley takes. Is he even attracted to the two other men?? Who knows. We don’t even know if Crowley even touches the other woman, there’re so many ways to have group sex. Even if he did, having sex with one woman doesn’t make it impossible for him to be homosexual.
The second orgy is with Dean. Crowley describes it then: “We've done extraordinary things to triplets.” It’s interesting how before I went to check, I thought it was clear the triplets were women. But not at all! I’ve been tricked by heteronormativity myself. So this is up to interpretation. Even though the way the show doesn’t make sure we know the triplets were women is pretty telling (as I’ll talk about later).
It is rumoured that he was Lilith's lover
Well, this is a rumour. In this relationship Crowley would know Lilith as a demon possessing a woman, and Lilith would know Crowley as a demon possessing a man as well. Who's even to say they met in their vessels to sleep together. That's the kind of cases in which the ambiguity of Crowley human/demon situation makes it impossible to draw any kind of conclusion towards Crowley's attraction to women. Also if anything Lilith is clearly a lesbian lmao.
He has sex with Lola when he was addicted to human blood
Same thing here, the relationship is one of demon/demon. Though we do now they do meet in their vessels to sleep together. Besides that, the sex happens while Crowley is at a low point. She's the one bringing him human blood, which makes the sex more of a transaction than anything. It does fit a very grey area of consent which would be fair to question.
We can't know for sure whether the demon possessing the woman was a woman as well, but let's say she was: 1/ Crowley having sex once or twice with a woman doesn't prevent him from being homosexual. 2/ What is he seeing if not a demon's true form? 3/ Wasn't he in a self-destructive mental state?
It's a stretch, imo, to assume Crowley was attracted to her.
He flirts with and had sex with Naomi / flirts with Billie
This one is so ridiculous to me bc Naomi is an angel and as a demon, Crowley sees her true form. We don't even know who was her vessel when they had sex.
The flirt thing is interesting however, bc iirc Naomi and Billie are the only "women" we see Crowley actually flirt with. During the orgies or the demon sex there's no flirt involved. It's interesting bc, as Cas would say: "Naomi's vessel is a woman. Naomi is an angel."
Same case for Billie who's a reaper then Death. Spn is pretty unclear about how the whole thing works but we know reapers are kind of angels. In any case, I won't go as far as saying Billie has any connection to gender.
Moreover, the way Crowley flirts with them is pretty light next to everything else Crowley says to men. It's pretty personal, I'm aware, but I do relate a lot with the way Crowley flirts with them VS how I flirt with men just because (and I'm a lesbian).
Anyway! Both Naomi and Billie are supernatural creatures, which brings the count of women Crowley flirts with to... zero.
-> What I take from all that is that Crowley is attracted to men for sure ; to angels and demons ; and doesn't care about the genitalia involved in the sex he has. We have nothing about the kind of relationships he had as a human. His gender presentation matters a lot to him. The only long-term commitment he has is with Dean. I wouldn't even say he had a committed relationship with Gavin's other parent bc we don't know anything about them.
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But what's my deal with homosexual Crowley? One can wonder, if Crowley doesn't care about bodies, doesn't that mean he can still be written as pan?
No! First because sexual attraction isn't about genitalia (even if transphobes would argue the contrary but they're transphobic so...). And second, well....
I would refer to this point as "how do I know Crowley isn't attracted to women? bc Dean is"
I'm convinced that if the show wanted to write Crowley as anything other than a gay man, it would have been way more obvious.
This is a show who wrote Dean catcalling a faceless woman on the street, for no other reason than to remind the viewers Dean was attracted to women & to balance it with the following homoerotic scene.
One could say spn doesn't have lots of women characters to begin with, but that's my point exactly: when spn wants to show attraction towards women, they do find women for people to be attracted to. Hell, they even give Gavin some girlfriend but never ever bring up the topic of Gavin's other parent. Even though an entire episode is dedicated to learning about Crowley's past.
What's important to understand Crowley's sexuality isn't the people he slept with ; it's the people he doesn't show interest in.
The absence of something is the presence of the thing, blablabla. It's a way to look at homosexuality that heteronormativity makes hard to see because, unconciously, we don't tend to question attraction towards the expected gender. One would ask for a 10 pages essay on why a character is gay, but one would need only a 2 sec kiss to assure a character's heterosexuality or attraction towards the expected gender.
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In Crowley's case, his attraction to men is a huge part of his character right from the beginning (thanks god, at least no one's questioning that). Spn as a show that hears what the fans are saying and twists writing accordingly, is perfectly aware of that. Yet rather than pushing women at him along the course of the show to remind everyone how Not Gay Crowley is - the opposite happens.
Yeh, Lola, Naomi, Billie, they all happen in the later seasons. But even then, the show somehow can't write Crowley as attracted to a human woman.
What happens then is: not only does Crowley fall for Dean ; he engages in some BDSM play with Lucifer : and he switches from drinking only the finest Scotch to fruity cocktails.
The BDSM thing as well as the drink thing are choices rooted in stereotypes, that's how spn is! But it does canonize Crowley's homosexuality. They're depriving him of his "masculinity" as the show goes on, because they purposely write him as homosexual. I don't think spn would have ever written a bi or pan character that way.
We learned a few days ago that Crowley died in a gutter. He died in a gutter for a bigger d*ck. I'm just gonna refer to Oscar Wilde & Mika on this : "some of us in the gutter are looking up at the stars."
The "referred to as king" scene isn't about Crowley being a demon and so not caring about gender - it's the opposite. Other demons are the ones poiting out Crowley's vessel. This is a transphobic joke. It's the demon edition of the "gay boy in a dress" transmisogynistic trope.
Viewers aren't supposed to be on Crowley's side ; we're supposed to be giggling with the other demons while Crowley is being emasculated. Crowley gets a woman vessel because he's a not-very-manly-man, because he's a trans man, because he's homosexual.
And I know that bc Dean is written as bi, and all they're doing is reaffirming the way he does like women while being extra subtle with his love for men.
Meanwhile Crowley is losing influence and power, loses his authority as he loses his throne in Hell, gets humiliated by Lucifer, until all his character revolves around is his love for Dean.
The way Crowley is then protrayed as some lovesick ex who can't move on is, imo, a straight man fantasy. Crowley's love is both used as predatory and as a tool to validate Dean's Peak Masculinity.
Spn has been burying their gays all along, and Crowley was right there being punished for not only being in love with Dean but for not being attracted to women. For never being able to be a "normal" guy. For never being able to be seen as a "normal" guy. For checking every homophobic stereotypes in the books. Crowley as a human dies because he's a trans man. Crowley as a demon dies because he's homosexual.
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That's what leads me to be uncomfortable with the way the fandom seems to have a consensus towards pansexual Crowley. (Once again: idc about people's personal hc of Crowley as pan, I just want to think critically about the way no one thinks twice about it & accepts it as canon so easily. Hell, just bc I dared to ask what started the pan Crowley confirmation I got accused of erasing his pansexuality. All I did was ask a question.)
To me, it feels like erasing everything his character went through because he was gay. And it seems to be taken from a reasoning which is going to assume Crowley is attracted to women.
I mean: the reasoning would go "oh, Crowley clearly has a non-straight sexuality -> he's attracted to men -> he's pan" His attraction to women being accepted by default, without needing any backup. And when I look at the canon I see nothing implying he'd be attracted to women. Taking Crowley's attraction to women for granted is following an heteronormative thinking.
Being into people isn't all about who one sleeps with. It's about love. And when we look at what spn shows about Crowley's close relationships, the only meaningful one he got is with Dean. When Rowena wants payback for Crowley making her kill Oskar, she goes for his son.
And it's SO interesting to me because if angels can't be in love because they don't have a soul - can demons? as they're beings with a destroyed soul? And if so, how powerful of Crowley to still fall in love with Dean Winchester.... the power of gay love :) (Crowley 🤝 Cas)
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To conclude all this with some more stuff to think about if, like me, you love questioning everything:
While it's not wrong per se to hc Crowley as pan, it can be worth questioning what's making us so sure we collectively just vibe with it? To me there's a few things:
- As I was saying: heteronormative bias
- Crowley being a non-fully-human character
- Crowley being masculine (despite the show's attempts to erase that)
- Crowley being into BDSM
- Crowley flirting and making sexual remarks in every context
These, unconsciously, gives a vibe of a character who's "outside" of the gender norm, not making big deal of their sexuality, not even questioning it. This creates this idea of "ambiguity" around Crowley's sexuality. The way Crowley particularly seems to be really chill about sex, is a demon (so what does he know about gender?), and heavily flirty, ... is what most people will link to pansexuality. That doesn't mean thinking of Crowley as pan is being problematic™ ; this means in western medias that's what fills the "pansexual character" imagery (like basically: the Jack Harkness type).
However, when we look at it like that, none of these elements are defining of pansexuality. None of them are excluding him from homosexuality. If not stereotypes.
That's where it gets personal ; but it does make me feel like the huge consensus towards a pansexual Crowley (when there is no clear-cut evidence of it) is erasing the complexity of homosexual experiences. As I said at the begining: I'm happy if pansexual people can relate to Crowley ; everone's free to headcanon. But saying Crowley is canonically pansexual is a stretch - and a take rooted in homophobic stereotypes.
Imo Crowley may have been created with all these traits pushing towards a pan reading of his character. However, as the show went, he was clearly written as a homosexual man. The changes in his portrayal took a turn to be specifically homophobic. He gets imagery that only strictly homosexual characters got (such as drinking fruity cocktails like Aaron. Meanwhile Dean, on the same scene, is allowed beer & whiskey.)
We're used to taking spn's homophobic rep and jokes to make it our own. Yet it seems, when it comes to Crowley, the fandom doesn't see it.
Sometimes people aren't attracted to the gender heteronormativity expects them to be attracted to.......... sometimes people are gay and it's not an umbrella term.
#crowley spn#spn crowley#crowley#trans crowley#spn meta#supernatural#spn#so..... i went off once again#homophobia#transphobia#i just kept adding stuff to it lmao and i would STILL have stuff to say but this is enough#long post#spnprideweek
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Dragon Age Library Edition Volume 1 annotations & additional pages/art compilation
Dragon Age Library Edition Volume 1 is a hardcover collection of some pre-existing Dragon Age comics that was released in 2014. It comprises of all issues of The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep. In places, it includes additional annotations/commentaries by the illustrators and authors, as well as a few additional pages with additional art. iirc these additional annotations and pages/art aren’t featured or available anywhere else (in the franchise I mean; other people have probably put them online at some point I’m sure).
From what I can see at least, Library Edition Volume 1 is no longer in print, and as such listings for it on resale sites etc are.. price-inflated & prohibitively expensive (~£100+, which I’m sure we can all agree is just not reasonable or accessible to most people). Due to this, I’ve compiled the additional annotations and pages here in this post. Thank you and credit to @artevalentinapaz, who kindly shared the material with me. This post has been made with their permission. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.
These commentaries are in the context of The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep. If you notice any errors or annotations missing, or need anything clarified, just let me know. I think the annotations are in chronological order. In places I elaborated in square brackets to help explain which part of the comics an annotation is referring to. A note before you proceed further: some of the topics referenced in the annotations/additional pages are heavy or uncomfortable. The quotes here are word-for-word transcriptions of dev/creator commentaries, not my personal opinions or phrasings.
(Also, I do recommend always supporting comic creators by purchasing their comics legitimately. I own each issue of these comics having bought other editions of them all legitimately. The reason I put this post together is because this specific Library Edition volume has been discontinued and the consequently-inflated cost is so high, rendering the additional material inaccessible to most.)
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The Silent Grove annotations
Illustrator Chad Hardin: “I used to be an environmental artist for video games, so I built a 3-D model of Antiva City using the program Silo. Many of the buildings are simple cubes, but a few are more detailed. Overall, I spent the better part of a day building it, but I used it again and again throughout The Silent Grove to maintain continuity in the backgrounds.”
Script Writer Alexander Freed: “Even working with David Gaider, it took me several drafts to find Alistair’s voice. His narrative had to convey his humor and self-doubt from Dragon Age: Origins while suggesting a newfound weariness earned during his years on the throne. For readers familiar with the character, he needed to seem like a changed Alistair - but Alistair nonetheless.”
Chad Hardin: “If you read a lot of comics, you might wonder why the majority of the heroes wear skin-tight suits. Well, I can tell you: they are easy and quick to draw. In video games, you build the model once and then animate it, so details don’t slow you down. In comics, everything has to be rendered by hand. Varric and Alistair’s outfits were quite detailed. It took me a long time to get used to them, and even longer to memorize the designs until drawing them was second nature - Varric’s knee armor in particular! Oy vey!”
David Gaider: “One of my favorite scenes in the entire series [when Varric and Isabela are disarming traps and picking locks together while Alistair looks on]. Isabela and Varric, doing what rogues do. I had a suggestion for how to put it together, but Alex managed to make it fit and did a great job with it.”
Chad Hardin: “I never used to keep any of the artwork I created for comics. I would just hand the pages over to my agent to sell. This page [when Alistair, Varric and Isabela are in a tavern together, with hookah in the foreground] I kept for myself. I love the hookah-smoking elves in the second panel and Isabela’s face in the last panel. I rendered the first four chapters of The Silent Grove in grayscale using ink washes, gouache and Copie markers.”
David Gaider: “For a little while, Varric [in these comic stories] was supposed to be Zevran from Dragon Age: Origins, which would have made sense, Zevran being Antivan and all. I know that some fans would have loved to see him, but the dynamics of the group just didn’t work as well. Then a planned cameo later had to be cut for space. Ah well, Zev, another time.”
Alexander Freed: “Isabela at her most dangerous [climbing up the side of the cliff]. This scene - featuring a scantily clad, dripping-wet woman who tends to flaunt her sexuality - could easily have come across as exploitative, but Chad did a lovely drop portraying Isabela as purely focused and deadly.”
Chad Hardin: “Isabela rising out of the water and scaling the cliff with the knife in her mouth is one of my favorite parts of The Silent Grove. It is one of those moments where the writing really inspired the art. Hats off to Alex and David. This is another page I kept for myself.”
Colorist Michael Atiyeh: “This is one of my favorite Dragon Age pages. Chad is such an amazing artist; I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with him.”
Chad Hardin: “I love that this page [when a guard spots Varric and shouts ‘Intruder!’] made it in uncensored. So many times in comics, I draw something and some stuffy lawyers come out of the woodwork and tell me to tone it down. Dark Horse and BioWare always let me have fun, and this turned out to be one of my favorite pages with Varric and Bianca. Any guesses to which word he is mouthing in the second panel?”
Alexander Freed: “Note the simple decency of Alistair as he gives his cloak, without comment, to Isabela. For all his flaws, he’s genuinely kind at heart - a rare enough trait in Isabela’s world that I think it’s much of what she values in him.”
Chad Hardin: “I love the opening panel to this chapter [the opening panels to Chapter 3, when the team are on a ship at sea]. It’s the image I use on the homepage of my website. This page was a gift to my cousin Wendy, who loves pirates. Seascapes with sailing ships might be clichéd in fine art, but for me it was a first.”
David Gaider: “I wanted to have this story center on the group travelling to a Witch of the Wilds other than Flemeth, and originally I had set it somewhere else - until I remembered a Codex entry from Dragon: Age Origins that offhandedly mentioned a witch in the Tellari Swamps. Brilliant! It’d look like I planned it all along. I didn’t.”
Michael Atiyeh: “I love opportunities where I can show a change in the time of day as you move from panel to panel [when the ship heads towards and the team arrive in the Tellari Swamps]. I feel the palette of each panel is very distinct and beautiful.”
Alexander Freed: “Why did Alistair choose two people he barely knows to be his companions on this quest? We never make this explicit, but of course Varric is on the right track. Alistair wants to surround himself with people who don’t know him and won’t judge him, yet it’s Alistair’s idealism that Isabela and Varric work to preserve.”
Chad Hardin: “Another page where the writing inspired the art [when the group suddenly encounter a dragon]. I love the dragon bursting onto the scene and Isabela’s stare. Some writers will try to cram six or seven panels on a page like this and the pacing just doesn’t allow the artist to give each moment the right punch. Can you imagine if the first panel was crammed into a single square inch?”
Chad Hardin: “Yavana was one of the only characters that we did no preliminary sketches for. I don’t know how that happened, but thankfully it worked out.”
David Gaider: “I love how Yavana looks like a cross between Flemeth and Morrigan. Flemmigan? She’s totally Chad’s design, and it’s great. Typical for these witches, she never says things straight. In my mind, this Alistair is the one who did the Dark Ritual in Dragon Age: Origins - and I was half-tempted to have him lose his cool in this first scene [opening panels of Chapter 4] with her. Too early, though.”
Alexander Freed: “Through this whole sequence [the page when Varric aims Bianca at Yavana], Yavana is dropping cryptic hints and Alistair is refusing to play along. He’s met Flemeth and Morrigan - he knows Yavana won’t give him a straight answer, and he won’t give her the satisfaction of asking needlessly.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Sometimes it’s the little things on a page that spark my interest. Here [when the team navigate vines and mud to get to the temple], the sunset panel came out great and the mud looks really thick and gooey. It’s fun to focus on these details and make them stand out.”
Chad Hardin: “I hated drawing this scene [when Isabela gets kicked] where Isabela gets the boot to the face. Call me old fashioned, but I was raised to believe that only a coward would ever hit a woman (even a battle-hardened pirate adventurer). I draw at home, and my girls often watch me work in my studio. This was a page I didn’t want them watching me draw. I do like, though, that Isabela gets up, yanks the arrow out, and then soldiers on (and later extracts brutal revenge).”
Michael Atiyeh: “Poor Isabela. It seems I gave her more bruises and black eyes than any of the other characters. [when Isabela is yanking the arrow out]”
Chad Hardin: “It’s always interesting to go back and look at artwork because it reminds me of what was going on in my life at the time. I inked this page [opening panels of Chapter 5] at a ‘draw night’ session at an anime convention in St. George, Utah. I was one of the special guests, but I missed the first day because I was at my grandfather’s funeral in Las Vegas, Nevada. Seeing this page brought back those memories.”
David Gaider: “‘Bianca says hello.’ [quoting the panels being referenced] I adore Varric. I was tempted to have him narrate the entire series [in reference to these three comics], but then again I liked the idea of having each series center on one of the trio’s viewpoints. This book belongs to Alistair, but that doesn’t stop Varric from getting all the best lines.”
Alexander Freed: “Claudio, of course, is not a terribly sympathetic figure. But I wanted to emphasize that he takes this fight as personally as Isabela - he sincerely loved Luis and blames Isabela for the man’s death. I think it’s important to give every character, even the most loathsome, some dignity. [when Isabela and Claudio are fighting]”
Chad Hardin: “Payback! Here is where Isabela extracts her revenge on Claudio [when Isabela stabs Claudio]. I never enjoyed killing off a character so much. I particularly enjoyed putting the look of shock in his eyes. He had it coming. There is something satisfying about killing a ‘made man’.”
Chad Hardin: “Every now and then when drawing comics, I wish I could animate some panels and watch them as a cartoon. It would be great to see this sequence [when Yavana catches Claudio’s soul] in full motion as Yavana snatches Claudio’s soul, makes it reenter his corpse and then extracts information from him until he bursts into flame. It was a very Hellboy-ish moment. I enjoyed the movie that played in my mind while drawing this scene. Hope everyone liked the result.”
Chad Hardin: “As I mentioned on page 17, I rendered the first four chapters in grayscale, which made the black-and-white art look great, but had a neutralizing effect when it came to colors. By the time I drew chapter 4, I had seen the effect it was having and decided to stop using the grayscale so the colors would pop. When I saw this page [when Alistair says to Yavana ‘And we helped you find it’] in print, it confirmed to me that I made the right decision. I honestly feel this art was the best of The Silent Grove.”
Chad Hardin: “I practically painted these pages [when Yavana says ‘It is permitted. Tonight and only tonight’] in thumbnails hoping it would help me choose how to render them in ink. It is so hard trying to figure out how to get a full range of value out of just black and white. There are some artists and inkers that make this look easy. Mark Schultz comes to mind. Michael saved my bacon. Colorists really do so much work when it comes to rendering; this page came out awesome because of him.”
David Gaider: “Here we reveal the existence of Great Dragons (as opposed to High Dragons), and also that Yavana was the source of the return of dragons to Thedas after their departure for so many centuries. But why? There’s the rub, and not even Alistair can trust that she’s telling him the truth.”
David Gaider: “Here’s the controversial scene [Alistair killing Yavana]. I think some fans don’t like that Alistair did this, and have said they consider it out of character. I don’t. From his perspective, Flemeth and her daughters have been toying with the world for reasons that can’t be trusted. They dragged Maric away from his family, from him. One might think his judgement foolish, but considering what Alistair was capable of deciding even back in Dragon Age: Origins, it’s certainly not out of character.”
Chad Hardin: “[same scene as above] This was a controversial page, and there were a lot of people who thought it was out of character for Alistair to kill Yavana (I didn’t see it coming - I mean, you just don’t kill a Witch of the Wild), but here is the thing: this page is Alistair acting as a king. Yavana has been manipulating him, trying to play him like a pawn, and he just can’t allow that. There’s too much at stake, for himself and for his subjects.”
Alexander Freed: “The end? An end, at least [the trio walking off into the distance]. The series needed a note of closure while leading into Those Who Speak (which wouldn’t arrive until many months later). David tweaked the ending in the outline several times, and I did my best to balance resolving Alistair’s emotional journey without resolving the quest. It’s not as clean as I’d have liked, but fortunately, now it’s all in one volume...”
Those Who Speak annotations
Alexander Freed: “Capturing Isabela’s narrative voice was much easier for me than capturing Alistair’s - partly because I’d already written The Silent Grove, and partly because of my own writing proclivities. Rereading now, I wonder if I laid on the (mild) profanity a bit too thick. I’ll leave you to judge.”
David Gaider: “I like the additional detail Alex and Chad put in, letting us see more of Qarinus and more of Isabela’s crew. Alex wanted to give her crew more of a presence, and let her first mate have some face time, so they weren’t just parts of the scenery. Good call on his part.”
David Gaider: “I’m really fond of the formal getups Chad made for the party. Isabela’s actually comes from a concept we didn’t use from the cancelled Dragon Age 2 expansion, if I remember right. And Maevaris came from me asking for ‘someone who looks like Mae West’ - with the wonderful outfit all Chad’s doing.
Chad Hardin: “Maevaris. I love Mae. When David and Dragon Age art director Matthew Goldman spoke to me about designing Mae, they wanted her to be fully female with the exception of her biology. They told me to think ‘Mae West’. Well, when I think of Mae West, I think of her... womanly shape. So, drawing Maevaris was always walking a fine line between portraying Mae’s identity and her biology. The process endeared her to me.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Just like in The Silent Grove, we are introduced to another gentleman from Isabela’s past [when the team meet Lord Devon and Isabela threatens him]. As was the case with Claudio, he will meet his fate at her hands.”
Chad Hardin: “When I was drawing Titus, my kids asked me why I was drawing ‘angry Jesus’ or ‘evil Jesus’. I can’t remember which term they used exactly, but it made me chuckle. I was going for a mix of Rapustin and Joe Stalin, but ‘evil Jesus’ would do.”
David Gaider: “I’m not sure it’s apparent here [when Alistair says ‘I’d really rather not’], but Alistair was supposed to be using one of his Templar powers on Titus (that’s why Titus recognizes what he is on the next page) and disrupting his magic.”
Alexander Freed: “Isabela is witty and charming enough that it can be easy to forget that she’s not, in fact, a nice person. Even after finishing the outline, David was concerned about making her too unsympathetic - but I loved his approach in this series. The dark deeds Isabela commits - this murder included [Isabela killing Lord Devon] - are what make her guilt tangible and no easy matter to overcome.”
Alexander Freed: “I thought the notions of Isabela’s pride in her captaincy and dedication to her crew were some of the most interesting aspects of her character in David’s story. In scenes here [when Isabela is on her ship saying ‘Keep them focused and keep them sober’] and elsewhere, I did my best to emphasize their place at the core of Isabela’s world.”
Chad Hardin: “Most of the time I draw from imagination, but because of the complexity of this page [Qunari trying to board Isabela’s ship] I decided it would work better if I had photo reference. On this page are my nephews Jared (Varric) and Adam, my niece Melissa, my kids Erica, Tasey Michaela (Isabela) and Chad (Alistair), my friend’s daughter Amy, my wife Joy, and the neighborhood kids as Isabela’s pirate crew. (The crew member mooning the Qunari is out of my ol’ noodle.) I paid their modelling fee in pizza and root beer. Also, I had originally drawn cannons on Isabela’s ship, so if there are parts of it that look slightly wonky, chances are there was a cannon there.”
David Gaider: “Ever since the BioWare artists finally did a concept for female Qunari, I’ve been itching to include one in the game. It’s always slipped through my fingers, so I was going to be damned if I’d have a Qunari plot in a comic - without the same technical limitations - and not have one present.
Chad Hardin: “I had no idea this was the first time anyone outside of BioWare had seen a female Qunari.”
Michael Atiyeh: “I really like the lighting in this sequence [Isabela in her cell thinking ‘I haven’t eaten in days’], especially the strong white light and the characters in shadow.”
David Gaider: “The entire sequence of Rasaan interrogating Isabela was something I plotted out in detail when this series began. Here they discuss names - something treated in a manner peculiar to the Qunari, considering how much importance they apply to what things are called (and not called), because it forms the core of their identity. Isabela brushes it off, but as we find out later it’s also at the core of her identity. I liked that parallel.”
Alexander Freed: “To balance out the relatively static talking pages elsewhere in the issue, I hoped to make the interrogation and flashback sequences beautiful and full of information. I proposed an approach to Chad, and he wisely reshaped it into what you see here [the page with the scene where Isabela says ‘I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes’]. Anything that succeeds on these pages should be credited to him; anything that fails is my fault.”
Chad Hardin: “Probably the most challenging spread I have ever done. My friend Stacie Pitt was the model for Isabela on this page, and my wife Joy was Rasaan. I saved these pages [around the scene when Rasaan says ‘Mistakes can be corrected’] for myself.”
David Gaider: “Sten from Dragon Age: Origins becoming the new Arishok of the Qunari was something we'd planned even during Dragon Age 2. This was a great opportunity to show that, and also to show that Sten didn’t acquire horns even despite the makeover the Qunari received in DA2. Hornless Qunari are considered special, and Sten is no exception.”
Michael Atiyeh: “I think that David, Alex and Chad handled Isabela’s flashback [to when she was sold by her mother] in an interesting way, and it created a nice flow to the story.”
David Gaider: “This was a controversial scene [what happened to the slaves Isabela was transporting], the end result of a lot of discussions between me and Isabela’s original writer on the team, and it went through a lot of revisions over that time. It needed to fit with the story Isabela told the player in DA2, but fill in the blanks of what she didn’t tell. We didn’t want Isabela to be someone who became who she is because she was ‘broken’ but instead as a result of her own actions - yet also not be completely beyond redemption.”
Chad Hardin: “These were hard pages [as above] to draw. It was difficult knowing that events such as this are part of human history, such as the Zong massacre in 1781, where the British courts ordered the insurers to reimburse the crew of the Zong for financial losses caused by throwing slaves overboard when faced with a lack of water. Horrifying beyond words.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Here, Isabela visits here crew, and I wanted to play up that she was in the light and they were in a dark cell. The light streaming through the bars gave me the opportunity to highlight Brand, who also had dialogue in the scene.”
Alexander Freed: “I struggled to find a way for Varric to contribute to victory without distracting from Alistair and Sten’s big fight. I’m happy with the solution: a brazen lie seemed appropriate to the character without taking away from the main show.”
David Gaider: “I believe my original plan had Isabela’s and Alistair’s fight scenes happening separately, but I like how Alex intertwined them in the script and I especially like how this ends up highlighting the differences between their characters when their fights are resolved. Isabela is defiant, revealing her name not because Rasaan demands it but because it’s her choice. In both cases, mercy is strength.”
Michael Atiyeh: “The brush I created for the clouds really gave them a nice watercolor effect here [on the deck of the ship, Sten calling Alistair ‘kadan’]. That brush has become a staple in my toolbox.”
Alexander Freed: “With the strong theme of names running through these issues, I liked the notion that Isabela had outgrown being, well, ‘Isabela’. When her name comes up in Until We Sleep, it’s largely played with ambiguity.”
Until We Sleep annotations
Alexander Freed: “The story of ‘Arthur’ is one of my favorite minor sequences [Varric infiltrating and fighting his way into the fortress]. It tells us something about Varric and it delivers plot information - and it’s also a reminder that our heroes kill an awful lot of people during these series and cope with it in their own ways. In general, writing Varric let me skirt the edge of metacommentary, which I greatly enjoyed.”
David Gaider: “Varric, as always, is my ‘voice of the narrator’. Here he’s expressing some of my own amusement at Alistair’s growing list of peculiarities [‘Your majesty is quite the special snowflake’]. To think, back at the beginning of Dragon Age: Origins he was just the player’s goofy sidekick who grew up in a barn.”
Michael Atiyeh: “By the third series, Until We Sleep, I really started to have a complete feel for what I wanted the final art to look like. As an artist, it’s important to continue to evolve and grow. The close-up of Sten’s face [same page as above] is a perfect example of how I wanted the rendering on the characters to look.”
Alexander Freed: “David’s outline called for a short, somber reveal of the Calenhad story by Sten. Fueled by my desire to avoid ‘talking heads’ sequences, I scripted it as a full-on storytelling flashback. David made sure the history worked (at least from the Qunari point of view), and Chad did a beautiful job handling it in a mere two pages.”
David Gaider: “Blood is important in Dragon Age, as a theme. Here we tie in the dragon blood that was mentioned all the way back in The Silent Grove and explain what it means at last. I was a bit hesitant to tarnish the legend of Calenhad the Great in this way, but I comfort myself with the knowledge this tale is but a viewpoint and not necessarily the entire truth.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Titus melting the attacker is a great example of classic comicbook storytelling and exactly what made me fall in love with the medium.”
David Gaider: “I was really happy with how Chad handled the reveal of Mae as transgender [the scene with Mae in the cell]. My worry was that Varric finding her disrobed might be potentially titillating, but I think he handled it nicely. I only wish there was more time to have Mae properly respond to being exposed in this manner, even to a friend.”
Chad Hardin: “I originally drew Mae as female [same scene as above], then changed her anatomy, so the psychological violation and humiliation she felt would be the focus. Hope that came across.”
Chad Hardin: “When in doubt, have Bianca shoot it [Varric shooting the artifact].”
David Gaider: “This scene [Varric and Bianca the dwarf] with Varric was one I wanted to do for a very long time. We’ve hinted that Varric’s crossbow was named after a real person, someone he never wants to talk about. Now I finally had the chance to show why.”
Chad Hardin: “Of all my Dragon Age pages, this scene was hands down my favorite, because Varric is my favorite. It was awesome to get to draw Bianca in her dwarven form. These scenes give you a glimpse of the love Varric and Bianca shared. It doesn’t tell you the whole story, but you can assume plenty from what is shown. You get to see Varric mostly naked (you’re welcome), but most of all you witness Varric’s heartbreak. I felt privileged to draw it. I got so obsessed with drawing this page I did an entire watercolor painting based on the last panel [Varric gets up to leave, ‘This isn’t right’ - ? or perhaps the scene where he opens the door to leave].”
Alexander Freed: “Unreliable narrators are always tricky - done wrong, they can just confuse the reader. But I’m fairly happy with Varric’s lies throughout this series, most of which are used to downplay the emotional cost of events rather than whitewash the events themselves.”
Michael Atiyeh: “This palette worked perfectly [Varric standing in front of the doorway/portal in the Fade proper], but I can’t take all the credit because BioWare provided reference for the Fade. I added the hot orange energy for the doorway, which looks great with the sickly green sky.”
David Gaider: “This scene [Isabela’s Fade nightmare] was actually inspired by a fan named Allegra who did a cosplay as a Qunari version of Isabela. I knew I wanted something like this for Isabela’s Fade section of the comic, but it didn’t really solidify until I saw the cosplay.”
Chad Hardin: “Isabela is more affected by her encounter with Rasaan than we were led to believe. A portent of things to come?”
Michael Atiyeh: “I love this shot of Mae in the fourth panel [on the page where Isabela is affected by vines]. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention what a great character she is in the series, and Chad captures her beautifully in this shot.”
Alexander Freed: “I saw this issue as a sort of downbeat victory lap. Over the course of the previous series, our protagonists largely came to terms with the inner demons the Fade confronts them with here. The fact they’ve come so far lets them win this last battle... but they still have scars that will never completely disappear.”
David Gaider: “Maric was in the first two novels I wrote for Dragon Age. Seeing Chad’s rendering of him as a regal, grown-up version of Alistair made me incredibly nostalgic. Some characters you just never let go of.”
Alexander Freed: “I feel Varric’s lines (‘tell yourself the stories you need to tell’ but ‘never live your own lies’) are the natural endpoint of all the exchanges he’s had with Alistair, starting from the end of Chapter 1 of The Silent Grove. And of course it plays off the story of ‘Arthur’, as well.’’
Chad Hardin: “I’m happy with the way Titus came off in these pages [Titus attacking and saying ‘The last magisters of Tevinter were so close’]. He looks threatening and powerful when fighting Alistair, Isabela and Varric, but genuinely confused by his inability to defeat Maric. Bye-bye, evil Jesus.”
Alexander Freed: “I can’t help but feel for Titus. He was unthinkably corrupt, but I see him as genuinely motivated by Tevinter’s glory. (The fact Alistair reads zealous ideology as a lust for power says a lot about both characters.)”
Michael Atiyeh: “I love the seamless transition of color from Titus’ magic to the dragon breath and then back into the orange remnants of his magic in the smoke. This was a really fun panel to color [Titus saying ‘Die by what wrought you’].”
David Gaider: “‘You are not the dreamer here. I am.’ I always have a scene or a line that’s in my head when I begin a tale, and this line of Maric’s was one I wanted all the way back when I started working on The Silent Grove.”
Chad Hardin: “I love this page [Maric and Alistair clasping hands]; Mike’s colors are spot on. We get to see all our heroes in an ideal state for the last time. This is the last Dragon Age page I saved for myself.”
David Gaider: “This scene kills me [Alistair destroying the Magrallen]. I knew it needed to happen; I knew I wanted it to happen even back when I began the story. Alistair lets Maric remain in the Fade rather than dragging him back to a world which has moved on. Alistair’s ready to move on, but forcing him to give up that hope... it makes me feel like a bad person.”
Chad Hardin: “Heartbreak for Alistair as he realizes that once again, as a king, he must kill: this time, his own father (granted, the Magrallen did most of the work). I really like how Maric crumbles away in the end. This was my last page, and the emotions on the page and in my studio were very final. Altogether, this was a year of my life in the making. On my last page, I wrote a thank you to everyone involved, the crew at Dark Horse and the crew at BioWare. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them again. It was a thrill. Finally, a huge thank-you to the Dragon Age fan community, whose support was overwhelmingly awesome.”
Michael Atiyeh: “As the story came to an end, I knew I was going to miss these characters. Writing these annotations reinforces the fact that I hope to work with this great creative team again one day. Many thanks to Dark Horse and BioWare for the opportunity to work on Dragon Age.”
Alexander Freed: “The tension between the art and the narration on this page [the one with Alistair sitting on his throne while nobles argue] is something you can only pull off in comics. Neither tells the full, bittersweet story alone. Similarly, these issues wouldn’t have been possible without everyone on the team; thanks to David, Chad, Michael, and everyone I lack space to list!”
Additional pages / art
Library Edition Volume 1 also came with some additional pages, with additional art and commentary. These are as follows (I’m including them for the sake of completion, click the links to see):
1. Alistair and dragon concepts
2. Rasaan and Maevaris concepts
3. Sten, Titus and Yavana concepts
4. A series of cover pages 1
5. A series of cover pages 2
In case anyone has trouble reading the notes that accompany these images, I’ve transcribed them below:
1. Dragon Age Sketch Book
Alistair Concept
Dragon Age / Dark Horse
Chad Hardin: “The headshot of Alistair is from a finished sketch with a rejected armor design. In order to save time, the redrawing was completed on the computer, where tweaks and changes are quick and easy, if somewhat less glorious.”
[Dragon] Head #1 / Head #2
Chad Hardin: “Everyone liked this dragon sketch so much that Dark Horse printed it for signings at conventions. You can see I did multiple proposals for the dragon’s head. It was more effective than drawing the body over and over.”
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2. [arrow pointing to Mae’s sleeve] concealed [I think that’s what it says anyway] daggers / shurikens?
Chad Hardin: “When designing Rasaan and Maevaris, I wasn’t exactly sure how their roles would play out in the series. Maevaris’ outfit was inspired by brothel madams of the Wild West. I thought it would be cool to have some weapons concealed in the formal wear. These never came into play in the series, but they were there in my mind.”
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3. Chad Hardin: “Although we only see Titus in his battle garb in one issue, I really liked the design of his armor. The sketch of Yavana was done on the fly and served as both a rough preliminary sketch and as a panel layout. You have to work hard and smart in comics to keep up with the deadlines.”
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4. Cover Artist Anthony Palumbo: “This was my first assignment for Dark Horse, and I was both excited and nervous. I drew pencil sketches of the main characters, scanned them and played with different arrangements, poses and color schemes in Photoshop.”
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5. Anthony Palumbo: “Fellow illustrator Winona Nelson helped me by sitting for photo reference. I created the mock-jewelry with gold-painted Sculpey. That’s a quick photo of my own gaping maw, to help with the image of Varric.”
#dragon age#bioware#video games#artevalentinapaz#alistair theirin#fav warden#morrigan#queen of my heart#long post#longpost
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