#the idea is not mine however I cannot find the person who mentioned it originally đ
Text
if ke huy quan played peter parker..
[id in alt]
#the idea is not mine however I cannot find the person who mentioned it originally đ#not mcu#marvel#spiderman#ke huy quan#asian peter parker belovedâŠ#nibeul art
3K notes
·
View notes
Note
That poll is so hard to vote for cause on one hand, it feels like Tiff would fit the best because of her incredibly unreliable narration matching Ted's while it would still be a subversion of the original because of the reason why she's unreliable(rose tinted glasses and extreme devotion to BE as opposed to the stuff Ted's got going on) and her pov on and relationship with BE would just be so fun to see explored and the horror of the situation being a subtle thing thats swept under the rug could be so cool.
But on the other, Evan would also kinda match with the original due to his open emotional distance and disconnect from the girls, AND it would bring a lot of fun, fresh stuff! Seems like Evan is the one who pays most attention to AM, and seeing what's happening there from his pov would be so interesting! He, just like Ellen if she would've narrated could bring up how things like being the only one of the opposite sex and gender in the group and (from what we know from the short story at least) only dark skinned person would like.. idk change perspectives on things?? I'd also love to find out more about him!
Oh, not to mention Naomi!! Having narration that is pretty damn reliable would make worldbuilding and exploration much easier and she's also got that disconnect due to her age and crystal clear memory, being able to see things as they are and were could be really refreshing in a ihnmaims universe and i really want to know what her whole deal is! Being born toward the end of the war must've made quite a difference to how a person would process everything, Ted's whole "I'm youngest so my experience is different because i barely had time to live as an adult before the nukes" wouldn't have shit on someone who wasn't even like... done w puberty.
Ooooh they'd all make for such fun narrators đ It's really too bad that writing takes so much time and effort or it would've been amazing to see all three's povs! I still don't know what to vote for or how the results are looking so far but im really looking forward to seeing what the results will lead to!
Maybe you have a character you have the most ideas for or would like to write most? Cause if so, that'd def help me choose what to vote.
Sorry for the wall of text(would you believe me if i said i wanted to write more? This is me trying to show restraint, didn't even write about the potential AM could have as a narrator), and i hope you have a good day!
Okay so first off, I love-love-love this response. You have such fun perspectives on these silly little au characters of mine and it makes me a little sad that you didnât write anymore cause I definitely would have read it, especially what you were thinking about what an interesting narrator AM could be.
As to which character I have the most ideas for, is such a difficult thing to answer cause well I have so-so many. But I do want to put them out there for you so here they are:
Tiffany: narration wise, I imagine the stuff she says can and does come across as nonsensical and border line trigger happy, however sometimes she occasionally lets something slip that clues into her true feelings and that a part of her may indeed be aware of the gravity of the groups situation, however she shuts it down as she has severe attachment issues and cannot fathom how she could possibly survive without BE. Another thing I pictured is that she very often quotes the bible and other religious texts, as BE doesnât present herself as machine and genuinely as a divine entity. I also have been toying with a scene similar to the one in the radio drama, where AM is talking to Ted about bumblebees and getting high r something. Where it is set up as the reverse. BE showing Tiff the horrors of what the radiation and world has come to (in a way that is seriously deceptive) and claiming that all she has to do is snap her fingers for it to return. It would definitely read as a story where there is total tonal whiplash from one scene to the next, so that is something to consider.
Evan: I have come up with so many pasts for all these survivors before they were ârescuedâ by BE, however one thing to note is that I donât really think of these characters as just âgenderbent versions of the originalsâ. Evan is one of the key examples of this, as in this au he is technically the original Ellenâs older brother, however he left home when she was around 12-13ish, as he didnât like the life, college and job his family set out and tried to push him into. Unlike Ellen who was a successful engineer, who may have been a hopeless romantic based on the original text. Evan was and very much still is kind of a massive party animal. I picture him very punk but like the old kind of punk. Like he was the kind of guy to go motorcycling around the country (even into war-devastated bits, cause it was a thrill), he went to underground clubs and concerts, and sure as heck slept around and had no shame in it (both women and men if you are curious). He doesnât want to get sentimental, he wants to live his life on the edge and BE doesnât allow that. He constantly tries to upset her, get some kind of intense reaction from her. He tries to escape, he kicks and tries to tear open parts of her internal network. This man has tried to kill Gloria (Gloria kind of deserves it thou) and the only reactions he gets from BE is her finding him cute, amusing, or as if he just needs to be put in a corner to calm down for a bit. Truthfully he is someone who just wants to go back and experience life again, recognising that BEâs utopia isnât living and refusing to buy into it.
Naomi: I wonât lie, Nimdok is so boring in the og story, and they definitely tried to do âsomethingâ with him in the game. I donât like it, again different ramble. So like Evan, she is a different person. Like you said she has barely started puberty and because of BE neither her body or even her mind has really aged in anyway and she is horribly aware of this. Due to the war she has had her childhood taken from her, but now because of BE she shall never experience adulthood or growing up. Her memory hardly anything particularly helpful. She remembers exactly what BE did to the others when they first got brought to the compound, she has seen what goes down in the labs, she knows what pills are and arenât sleeping pills, developing a habit where she will pretend to take one and spit it out if she is able to. As stated in the survivors master post, she knows BEâs blind spots and will often go there on her own. Not really to do anything, just kind of sit around. Further more, she and Evan have a way of communicating, number of blinks, which fingers moved when you spoke to them, that kind of stuff. Still she doesnât want to escape, she knows sheâll die if she does, generally she acts more like a mediator in the group. As a narrator, I did have this idea for a few odd habits she has learned over the years. Example is that she constantly counting, time and routine is import to her, as she notices when something is wrong and that freaks her out. She also has this habit of just staring at the others for very long periods of time, especially Gloria. She clearly remembers seeing her on tv during her old life, and also remembers how she attacked her when Naomi attempted to mention it to Gloria.
Writing does take so much effort, especially for me, cause truthfully Iâm always jumping back and forth on what Iâm working on. On top of this au and the fic, Iâm also in the process of finishing the final script and sketches for a different web comic Iâve been planning for a while, as well as a completely unrelated world building project that Iâve been at for two years now. Anyhow!! Tell me more please
#i have no mouth and i must scream#ihnmaims#am ihnmaims#ted ihnmaims#ihnmaimsloveau#alternate reality#harlan ellison#ellen ihnmaims#ihnmaims am#allied mastercomputer#small artist#horror#fanfiction#ao3 writer
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hawks Astrology Headcanons II
featuring: Hawks/Keigo Takami
warning: this is purely entertainment purposes. You may have a different opinion but this is mine, thank you. Each placements description might not also be 100% accurate so take everything I say with a grain of salt lol.
Rated: 16+ (brief mentions of sex and relationships although not explicit)
A/N: Hopefully you will notice and appreciate how organized this one is compared to the previous lol.
pt. I | pt. III
Tropical
Mercury in Sagittarius:
Sagittarius-ruled by Mercury people constantly learn new things in life. They are interested in life's meaning and think there must be more to it than what the naked eye can perceive. Keigo has a strong desire to travel because there is so much to learn and experience. Like no one else, he is greatly inspired by adventures, both physical and cerebral.
Mercury is thought to be vivacious, energetic, inquisitive, and intellectual in this aspect. He is warm and energetic, which frequently accounts for his popularity.
Aries Degree: keen intellect, quick-witted, inventive, acute, ironic, sarcastic, observant, intelligent, alert, argumentative, rash, afflictive, restless, exaggerated
Venus in Scorpio:
Scorpio is a particularly intense sign for Venus. This Venus sign desires love and union with the person they are dating. They are extremely devoted and loving, but they have trouble dealing with loss. They could be too possessive for their spouse to manage depending on their level of maturity.
Keigo is skilled at determining the genuine intentions of others since he has strong emotional intelligence and a wide range of emotions. Keigo is a person who is difficult to fool and cannot be easily outsmarted.
He is highly selective about who he confides in because it is difficult to win his trust. Given his upbringing, it is understandable that he struggles with trust and has a deep-seated fear of betrayal. He seeks emotional and romantic self-control. To decide whether someone is a deserving of member of his inner circle, he thoroughly evaluates them.
Taurus Degree: steadfast, romantic, attached, kind, pleasant, faithful, good manners and etiquette, respectful, jealous, possessive, spendthrift, sometimes lazy, generous, protective
Mars in Aquarius:
Those with Mars in Aquarius are intellectual individuals who value independence above anything else. Since they have an original and creative way of thinking, Mars Aquarians can come to the rescue when others are at a loss for ideas.
Keigo is unpredictable and flexible. He actually believes that there is always space for improvement and that nothing lasts forever. Because he is the most successful, he places a high value on the people in his life.
Being with others who share his viewpoints gives him more influence and self-confidence. He is happier and more content when his ideas are accepted and put into action. Keigo finds it challenging to relate to people who don't live their lives in the same way that he does.
Aries Degree: energetic, willpower, courageous, dauntless, positive, enthusiastic, non-conformist, restless, impatient, choleric, violent, adventurous, imprudent
Sidereal
Mercury in Scorpio:
People born with Mercury in Scorpio are surrounded by mystery. Scorpio is a fixed water sign, full of emotions, passion and ambition. I believe Keigo is very mysterious by nature. We see he can play his role as a spy and detective extrodinarily well. He has a curious, inquisitive mind that questions everything around him.
Mercury in Scorpio gives personality and rhetoric that can sometimes seem harsh, honest and aggressive. But Mercury also gives Keigo logical thinking, and while Moon in Scorpio gives unbridled passion, Mercury in Scorpio gives reason and rationality, allowing Keigoâs decisions to be driven by logic rather than by emotion. However, he can oftentimes act impulsively, which he later regrets. Keigo has a burning desire to discover the hidden truths and mysteries of life. Everything he says or writes has a deeper meaning and is often insightful. He tends to use sharp language to express his thoughts. He is very determined when it comes to making intellectual connections and he has a high opinion of himself.
29th Degree: talks too much yet too little, workaholic, strains over every little decision
Venus in Scorpio:
The fixed water sign of Scorpio is ruled by Mars and has a neutral relationship with Venus. Scorpio is a sign of passion and sensuality, and Venus, the planet of love, rules this sign. Venus increases the inhabitants' desire for sex, romance, sensuality, and love when she is in Scorpio. Mars also exhibits violence in romantic relationships, and Keigo is sure he can get what he wants. He is capable of enduring love and loyalty, but when insulted, he stings like a scorpion and feels no remorse for those who betrayed him.
Keigo is typically seen as being very direct and decisive. He has a good sense of what he wants from life. Yet, he tends to be very private about his feelings for the people he loves. He is amorous, yet he can also be very possessive and jealous at times. He is not someone to play around with; he demands genuine commitment from his partners. He has a tendency to be overly domineering and demanding. He can occasionally come out as argumentative.
Aries Degree: warm, sympathetic, exaggerated, extreme, impulsive, hasty, passionate, prodigal, whimsical, adventurous, romantic, striking zeal for romance, romantically energetic and impatient, upfront, honest, enthusiastic, sensual, excessive sexual feelings and attraction, attractive
Mars in Capricorn:
Mars is exalted in Capricorn, a sign that Mars opposes and that is ruled by Saturn. Mars has unrestrained vitality, and Saturn creates challenges. Therefore, those who have Mars in Capricorn struggle to focus their energies in the right directions. Keigo has a sturdy, passive, and hostile personality. He typically maintains a public façade and is reticent, especially in public.
His intellect and physical strength is pretty impressive, yet he lacks the emotions necessary to create relationships and spark life. His perseverance and tenacity won't yield results right now. Despite his difficulties with emotional connection and expression, he excels in his professional life. He is frequently motivated by those in authority above him and prefers to assist others over starting his own companies. Unfortunately, the crucial virtue of emotional satisfaction is completely denied by this placement.
29th Degree: worries too much over possible plans of action and alternative paths to take. Then proceeds to take spontaneous actions against those decisions.
Planets in The Houses
Mercury in First House:
Mercury in the First House brings a person's communication skills into the world, enhancing them artistically, elevating their philosophy, and allowing them to think on a higher level. It inspires others to get out and try new things.
Mercury endows Keigo with an artistic spirit, making him a philosopher and oriented towards a higher level of thinking. Mercury can help anyone understand themselves better. However, despite his intelligence, he can become restless and jump from one thing to another. He can sometimes struggle to focus on one goal at a time.
Venus in Twelfth House:
The Twelfth House is the house of the subconscious mind, dreams, intuition, instinct, expenditure, and secrets. Venus in the twelfth house gives the native boundless creative ability and also makes them very frivolous. Venus in this house enacts charisma, great desires and the control to make those desires come true and live a life of luxury.
Venus within the Twelfth House gives Keigo great artistic energy, which he uses to gain his popularity within the art of heroism. He has tremendous wants and aspirations that push him past the limits. This position will moreover grant him to fantasize of his sexuality; he has a vivid picture of what he wants in a partner and will have endless desires. However, his reality doesn't always match his fantasy, so he may struggle to find fulfillment in a relationship. He can be neglectful and questionable in matters of love and companionship.
On the other hand, Venus gifts Keigo with a tender and compassionate heart. Venus in the Twelfth House gives the greatest pleasure and satisfaction in bed through intimacy and sex. His partner will be kindhearted and supportive, which will bring him jubilation and good fortune.
However extroverted, Keigo relishes in his alone time and solitary work. Through putting in the hard work and taking risks, this position will grant him with many advantages during adulthood. He enjoys fine wine and women, and appreciates fun parties, travel, lavish spending, and a royalty life.
Venus in the Twelfth House is also the most ideal position for accumulating wealth because he will maintain a balance between expenses and income. Keigo's diligence and wisdom will enable him to defend his rights and repel his enemies. The Twelfth House, where Venus' natural and vicariously rules, is where she is most content and happiest. His success in his profession and business increases dramatically as a result of this placement.
Mars in Third House:
Mars in the third house makes natives aggressive, gives a ton of energy to study a variety of topics and multitask, compel a person to engage in romantic relationships, and requires them to spend a lot of time and energy engaging in sexual activities. These indviduals enjoy travel and adventure because of the positive Mars in their third house.
The ability to work hard and earn money is given to Keigo by his attitudes, but communication allows him to express himself in a sharp and startling way that is beneficial to any cause or vocation.
The third house is concerned with a person's unconscious thought patterns, mind, ability to learn and plan, short journeys, writing, and study. Mars encourages inner vulnerability and wildness when it is in this house, which leads to internal turbulence and disruption of his thoughts and happiness. Because Mars is a fast-moving planet, it can cause rash decisions that can cause issues.
It is also the home of sexual desire, and having Mars in this house can make Keigo act in ways that are not considered acceptable by society. Despite his occupation, he would spend a lot of time and effort engaging in sexual activity and developing romatic relationships. He doesn't mind violating the rules and going above and beyond to fulfill his ambitions because the Third House infuses his belief system with a high level of drive.
Because Mars is strong, Keigo is lucky, strong, and attractive. Mars will have mechanical knowledge and courage, help him vanquish his adversaries, and make him an expert in any field if it aligns with the Sun and the Moon. However, it can also leave him feeling ashamed and guilty.
#hawks#hawks bnha#hawks mha#mha#bnha#my hero academia hawks#boku no hero academia#my hero academia#keigo takami#keigo#keigo bnha#keigo mha#keigo takami bnha#keigo takami mha#takami keigo#takami keigo mha#takami keigo bnha#mha headcanons#bnha headcannons#hawks headcanons#keigo headcanons#keigo takami headcanons#boku no hero academia hawks
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
This is a letter submitted to me by the previous anon. I was left nothing short of appalled by it. In a few paragraphs this person managed to take everything I ever said on this blog about art, literature, gender, ethics, or even myself as a person, twist it to their own biased and, quite frankly, worrying perspective and use it to accuse me of being, at best, a Nazism and antisemitism apologist.
Iâm very open minded, Iâm able to understand most point of views even without sharing them, but this is another matter entirely. This is being unable to read reality correctly anymore. This is dangerously and hurtfully spinning things out of proportion. This is being unable to form a pure critical thought in a reality that is already mad and confusing enough.
I read extensively in the past few years about the plummeting of comprehension of the written word among all demographics, but that an educated peer of mine, mirror and parrot of too many others, could genuinely reason like this will always be beyond me.
Anon, you are right. I wouldnât normally publish or entertain such profound drivel, but the things you just accused me of are not only absurd, but beyond serious and grave. You cannot throw such ideas and words so lightly at another human being, especially not inventing yourself every single reason for doing it.
So Iâm going to answer, word to word, in the hopes to make you, or at least someone else, wake up from the horrors of a brainwasing this society is, at this point, irremediably affected by. Â
âi do not think that your response to me displays âgood dispositionâ, so i will be sure to match you in tone. you do not have to answer this, or even read it; i hope that you will read it though, if only to momentarily consider someone elseâs perspective. quoting you verbatim from a previous ask/answer, âI absolutely hate to contradict the canonâ. youâre right, the original books donât glorify nazism, mostly the new content does. however, you say voldemort is the true hero. he is driven to exterminate specific groups of people for his personal gain. whatever depth you want to give him, that is still canon. you donât deny it. you might not find it the most interesting part of him, but it is still there, and you still call him hero.
i and many others will never know most of our families because of a man and his followers who worked exactly like that. so donât think of this as me trying to cancel you. i will not be reaching out to your friends or trying to get you banned from anywhere, thatâs not what iâve come directly to you for. iâd like to know what it is about two blood supremacists that you see not only so much inspiring complexity in, but yourself in as well.â
Honestly anon, considering what you are accusing me of, the hinting of which I had already perceived in your previous ask, my disposition towards you was and still is way better than it should be. Iâm taking pity of your way of thinking and still hoping to somehow help you understand how wrong this is on every possible level.
Iâm very glad you seem to agree the Harry Potter books are no Nazi hymn, but I unfortunately have to contradict you right away. I never, ever, glorified Voldemortâs figure or called him âthe true hero of the storyâ. If you had taken the time to actually read the things the person you are accusing of terrible and very real things has always written about that fictional character, you would have noticed the whole point of my metas is, on the contrary, to underline his twistedness, his monstrous and yet very present humanity, his unfillable voids, his abysses in negative with still a wisp of something else enduring nonetheless.
You would also have noticed that Iâm utterly uninterested in and rarely mention the blood-purity movement, not because I think thereâs something literary wrong in constructing fictional evil after Nazism (nor, again, do I think thereâs anything wrong in finding Nazism intriguing as an historical event and as a study of human nature), but because, as I previously tried to make you understand, I find it psychologically uninteresting in regard to him and not what his character is fundamentally about.
You also just took an ask in which I said Iâd have liked to rewrite Harry Potter with Voldemort as the real protagonist (protagonist, not hero, the difference is huge - I linked it for you), and twisted it to construct this huge delusion about my preaching the bloodthirsty ideology of an evil wizard from a fairy tale. Voldemort went around even repeatedly trying to kill a child, why not accusing me of seconding infanticide too, since you are at it? Or seeing antisemitism everywhere is your main fixation since it touches you closely?
I would never call Voldemort a hero, and you know why? Because it would be incredibly dull. Voldemort is a villain. I appreciate him precisely as such. Iâm not interested in finding his actions (at least not his monstruosities) correct or admirable, it wouldnât be riveting. What makes villains compelling is their darkness. And this is because, most importantly, unlike all the people you are mentioning, Voldemort is the bad guy in a children book. Voldemort is not real. His darkness has no consequence whatsoever.
As for why I find Voldemort and Bellatrix compelling, if you had bothered to read my writings before accusing me of absurdities, youâd already have your answer. Youâd know that itâs their character as people and mutual relationship that I find intriguing, not their ideology.
As to why I said I see myself in them, those are personal reasons I would never disclose to someone who cannot seem to count to ten, let alone understand utter complexity of certain childhood circumstances or unusual personalities, but (even if itâs obvious, even if I stated it multiple times for the thick idiots in the back) itâs obviously not their fictional murderous/blood-purist/unicorn-blood-licking tendencies I see myself, a real person, in.
I equally see myself in Dorian Gray, Heathcliff and Catherine, Frankensteinâs monster. I trust no sane person would believe Iâm inciting the masses to make deals with the devil, traumatize children or set the world on fire out of spite towards human nature (even if the latter is tempting and people like you are making it even more so, I would admit).
âi am not always just an anon on the internet. i am a real person with a real family, real experience with antisemitism and racism in my everyday life. real books i like to read, real foods i like to enjoy, real fears and angers and excitements about the changes iâm seeing in politics and in the public these days. i am, in real life, affected by the ease with which some of my own friends can tell me âjews control the mediaâ just because theyâve heard it on tv enough, from movies or talking heads or whoever.â
As it so happens, Iâm a real person just as well. You donât know anything about me. You for example donât know that my grandmother spent World War II with real Nazis invading her very home, robbing her of everything and using her farm as a militar base. You donât know the story of my family, you donât know that I share many, too many, concerns and fears about the world we are currently living in too and Iâm genuinely sorry about what you have to go through, because even without being Jewish I know something about it first hand. But this doesnât give you the right to behave how you are behaving. You are in fact being just part of the big cultural problem you are denouncing. You are going after innocent people, judging them out of invented nothing. Even if you are surrounded by ignorant and racist people for real (I wonder to what extent, since you seem to highly exaggerate things), this doesnât mean you have to blindly assume the whole world conforms to it by default, twisting everything you see to make it about you and your current, perhaps justified, fixations.
âconsider also that you are a woman. youâve said you donât feel very strongly about any part of your visible identity, which is fine. but others around you likely perceive you as a woman. you will be treated differently by different people based on how they perceive you. you have to exist in the context of the world around you whether you want to or not. do you call it activism or wokeness to tell someone off for treating you poorly because youâre a woman, or do you call it standing up for yourself? now what if that person is andrew tate or jordan peterson, whose sexism reaches and influences many, many people around you? telling them or their parrots to think before they speak is not being woke. thatâs recognizing a lack of respect and responding to it appropriately to shut it down before it gets worse.â
Again, you took something I said and completely failed to understand its meaning. I never said âI donât feel very strongly about any part of my visible identityâ. I actually feel my womanhood deeply, to extents you couldnât imagine. What I said is that I donât care to conform to this, in my opinion quite pathological, trend of labeling everything you are and put it on display for the world to see and use, in the hopes of creating an ever-more vacillating sense of identity, belonging and validation. I firmly believe everyone has the absolute right to be true to themselves and I have no problem embracing anyone who wants to intruduce themselves with a ten minutes-long list of pronouns, gender, sexuality, heath-status, ethnicity and religious beliefs, but this is not something Iâll be ever taking part of, nor the kind of circus Iâd like the world to turn into, merely because for some reason I feel like this is more a show (a dangerous one, too) than a real quest towards inner truth.
Calling out idiocy is not being woke, anon. I confirm. Not agreeing with powerful people spreading dangerous ideas is one thing, making up the 99% of those terrible crimes in order to have a scapegoat for your witch hunts is another thing entirely.
âso why canât i criticize your purposeful decision to deify a character who can all too easily become a model for others who want to take their hero worship of people like him further than tumblr?â
Because you are making this âdeificationâ entirely up, anon. And the fact that you cannot seem to understand this simple fact is very concerning. If I preached Voldemortâs blood-purity ideology, you would have every right to criticize me. You are even totally entitled to have opinion about others tastes. You are not entitled though to make things up to further your own ideologies and worldviews and you should actually be capable, fairly educated as you are, to understand what you read.
âi guess i am not judging you for the art you enjoy, but the way in which you talk about it. people who are actually affected by these views have to be most wary when decent, intelligent people begin to repeat and think them. unfortunately, for my family, this was indeed the way real life worked in the 30s/40s. their kind, smart, beloved neighbors could still turn on them after being exposed to enough nazi propaganda, to films and papers and gossip. and now i have to feel like this in the present day because it is media like this, which âminoritiesâ like us have always, always made our worries clear about (you canât tell me discussion of cho changâs name or the subtext of sex-aware staircases is new, because i was around to see when it began), which seeps into good peopleâs brains and creates opportunities for them to turn on us. this is why white supremacists and fascists use dogwhistles, why they wonât speak the quiet part out loud and will use whatever media they can to further their message under the radar.â
âThe way I talk about itâ is not at all what you are describing lol If you had actually taken the time to read what I wrote you would have (I hope) noticed.
Oh, yes. Calling a character âCho Changâ is a terrible crime against humanity. Entire generations of children are traumatized. Also, oh my! Sex-aware staircases! Call the police!
No, anon. Good people donât let anything seep into their brains and âturn on youâ. Good people are good people. People that out of the blue, only because society validates them, turn against fellow human beings, for whatever reason, werenât good people in the first place. Ideologies give permission for the real self to show, they donât create anything from scratch.
âanalyzing media is about opening your eyes to the context in which it sits. iâm afraid, and i think youâll agree, that critical analysis skills are degrading on a mass scale these days.â
Yes lol I deeply and absolutely agree.
âiâm afraid that these books have always contained subtle problems, but those of us who were affected by them did not have such a free internet to express ourselves and were otherwise shouted down by fans at the time. iâm afraid that these books have always existed in a context in which antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia have only been on the rise. iâm afraid that someone like you, who is writing a novel, who has some reach now and who may gain even more of a following in the future, who touts herself as not only intelligent but a lover of ethics, may end up contributing, whether you intend to or not, to the mass of people who will turn around to hurt people like me.
i can understand the notion that voldemort simply used a preexisting Other that he despised anyway to further his own drive for power. lots of scholars would say hitler did the exact same thing. my question for you is not even why you see yourself in that, because i suppose it is understandable as a strategy to get yourself support for something by finding like minds already headed the same direction. but the key point there is like minds. no, my question is, why do you call him the hero?
not protagonist. not something akin to humbert humbert per nabokovâs original purpose.
hero.
a: a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability
b: an illustrious warrior
c: a person admired for achievements and noble qualities
d: one who shows great courage
at this point, it isnât the harry potter books that praise nazi ideology and strategy. it is you. even if you donât see it that way, iâm here to tell you that i can interpret your words this way, and if i can, then others can too.â
Apart from telling you, again, you are completely making up this way of mine of praising Voldemort as a hero and that you should probably read other peopleâs writings before judging them, allow me to âtout myself as intelligentâ once again, and enlighten you with a banal fact.
Media, fiction, art is for the most part a mirror of who is consuming it. The fact that you can interpret, as you are doing, my words completely wildly, incorrectly, insultingly, tells a lot more about you than about me. If a person isnât able to apply critical skills to what they are reading, again as you are doing, they are going to find exactly what they want to find in anything. Mind creates reality and you are a marvelous example of it.
Itâs the same old debate about morality and amorality in art. Not very intelligent people keep bringing it up again and again through the eras, but the truth about it doesnât change. I can use a knife to surgically save a life, cut bread or kill a person. None is inherent fault or merit of the knife, but of the hand who wields it.
I remember distinctly when Hannibal came out, the woke police wanted it cancelled because it romanticized murder and cannibalism. Everyone was afraid people would have gone out eating each other. What happened instead is that no raise in cannibalism was detected. Cannibals became cannibals regardless, perhaps feeling a little more represented in media. Decent people remained decent people. I hope you get my hint. Nazism didnât become Nazism when writings of the Golden Dawn came out, talking about the superior race. Nazism became Nazism when a government used those writing as the mass excuse to unleash the most basic and terrible instincts of humanity to further its own political and economical ends.
I guess your vision of the world, in which the big evil blogger on Tumblr is going to write a new novel without perpetually denouncing every other word everything problematic anyone could possibly read in it and the good people around you will suddenly turn to eat you against their will because brainwashed by my subtle suggestions, could be a quite childish way to justify somehow a world that terrifies you, in which evil isnât banal and everywhere, but has a tangible and therefore preventable reason.
Iâm sorry, but the roots of persecution are as old as human nature, and you actually could even find something really akin to them in your own behaviour if you look very closely.
âin your response to me, you have strung together many lengthy ways of telling me what a brainless lemming i must be for having concerns about how people analyze media, but you couldnât manage even the simplest âi do not support nazismâ after saying you find the history interesting. itâs not your interest that concerns me, but your inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to just confirm that interest is where it ends. unless you deliberately, explicitly, and vehemently deny this, others will continue to misinterpret you. you might be tempted to say that this will only be an issue with people who arenât as smart or literary as you. let me inform you now that i am at least âa normally intelligent and educated personâ, as you put it. weâve read all the same books. i enjoy a lot of the same media you do. yet i am still not confident you will clearly denounce nazism even now that you have been asked. now imagine that you have even one follower who cannot be described with your above quote. it only takes one misguided person to be the next john hinckley jr., or robert gregory bowers, or dylann roof, or so on. you care not about morality, but about ethics. consider the ethical ramifications of this kind of public hero worship of a character who so easily maps onto a real life perpetrator of genocide without some sort of discussion about him ultimately being wrong. do i think we should all have to disclaim that we donât condone what villains do? no. do i think you should have to say it every single time you talk about the subject? no, of course not. but if i cannot find it anywhere on your blog, then it has to be said somewhere.â
Iâm sorry anon, but after everything you just said I cannot help but conclude those same books on you had very little effect. Maybe try to read them again. I dread what you might have made out of them.
#lord voldemort#anon#asks/replies#villains#bellamort#jkr discourse#this is appalling from start to finish#hp
21 notes
·
View notes
Note
zee iâm BEGGING for your dark and mysterious backstory
*sigh*
Alright. I had to ask my girlfriend's advice, but alright.
Everyone settle in. Get some popcorn. This shit is long, and it is batshit. There are five people that know the entire story. Me, the other person it involves, my girlfriend, Dani, and my other best friend who we lovingly refer to on this blog as "the golden retriever." My therapist also knows, but we don't really count that. But that is it. That is everyone who has ever gotten to know.
There should probably be trigger warnings on this, but I don't even know what it could possibly be for. So like TW for mentions of suicide, inappropriate minor-adult relationships, death threats and probably a few other things.
I used to be very involved in the Harry Potter fandom. And some of the fandom still brings me comfort, and I do love a lot of the fan-made content that JK Trolling has nothing to do with. I, however, cannot consume Harry Potter content in the same way I used to after this story, and I'm sure you'll see why.
Now, if y'all were involved in the Harry Potter community on TikTok in 2020, you probably heard about Golden Boy. It was a Fred Weasley fanfiction, for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about. It was... explicit, to say the least.
It was a Fred Weasley sex novel. I'm not even going to try to sugarcoat it. It was a very explicit sex novel.
I heard about it through TikTok, like most people did. The author was named Samine, and she had a pretty decent following on TikTok (150K when I found her I think) and she had a very large reading (about 2 million people when I found it). It was kind of a trend on Harry Potter TikTok to read GB and record your reactions, so I did that. She liked the video and commented on it and that was the first time I interacted with Samine.
I was 16. She was 21.
It was during quarantine, so I didn't have much to do, so I started working on an art piece. I drew one of the original characters from her story. I sent it to her and said "hey I made this. You probably won't see this but thank you for the inspiration" and the whole thing, you know?
Well, she did see it, and that began my very long relationship with the author of Golden Boy.
She asked if she could post it on her Instagram, and add it to the beginning of her new chapter, and of course I said yes. She had almost 200k followers on TikTok and 40k on Instagram and 3 and a half million readers and I was sitting there with my 2000 followers, so of course I said yes. I did not expect the reaction I got. I gained a shit ton of followers overnight and people wanted more art, so I started making more.
Now, here's where it gets a little shady. Samine was 21. She asked me to lie about my age because of the nature of her story. Being the naĂŻve little 16-almost-17-year-old that I was, I, of course, said yes. I told people I was 17 almost 18 for over a year.
I started getting some hate. People kept saying it looked like I was making my headshots on ArtBreeder, but we cleared it up quickly by posting a video of my process and it mostly went to rest. I still got some mean messages, but it wasn't too bad and Samine told me not to worry about it because she "got way worse."
It should have been a red flag, but alas.
After like 5 headshots (unpaid, even though they took 15 hours each, of course) she asked if I would be her official artist. And, again, I said yes without a second thought. We started an Official Golden Boy Art Instagram account, and we started getting followers on there. Her following grew on all platforms, her readership getting to about 14 million reads at some point, and mine was steadily growing as well. I was really excited.
At this point, "Zee" was born. I was going by my actual name, and it just wasn't working anymore. People were finding me, and my friends, and my family. It was uncomfortable. It was scary. I started going by Zee so fewer people would find that shit out about me, but it still happened and if you look back far enough on any of my social medias, you'll find my real name. People found my school. My High School. Someone called my school and pretended to be my mom.
Samine started talking to me about some really personal things. Her mental health, her issues with her family, her sex life. (again, I was underage the entire time I worked under Samine) We had a friendship, as well as a work relationship. Which, I suppose, is why I did thousands of hours of work for her unpaid. Each headshot could take anywhere from 15 to 30 hours and I normally charged for them, but I didn't with her, and they took up way too much of my time, so I couldn't really do commissions anymore. I didn't care. I had a following, and I was getting brand deals and it was super cool.
Then things started to take a turn. There were people who had found details in GB that were... less than politically correct. There were some racist undertones, some mlm fetishization, and some blurred lines of consent. Some of it could be explained away with author ignorance and at that point I was convinced I knew Samine enough to let her explain it all away.
That did not stop death threats to both of us and she got doxxed, but oh well.
She took the story down at 20M and started rewriting it. The whole time she was telling me about her mental health, her family drama, her sex life and romantic relationships. I would like to put here that she had a gf and was telling me every detail about how they sexted and shit. It wasn't uncomfortable at the time, but looking back, I want to smack myself across the face.
She reposted the fic after a rewrite, and it was met with mixed reviews. Some people were happy to have it back. Some people were still upset with Samine (FOR OBVIOUS AND VALID REASONS) and some people were just finding out about everything for the first time. And, once again, people found problems in Samine's writing. This time it couldn't be boiled down to ignorance. Because she had been told at this point. It wasn't ignorance anymore.
She was doxxed again. Hacked. Someone was like dead set on making sure she didn't have a platform (and honestly she probably shouldn't have had one). There were like "fandom wars" and stuff. People were defending Samine and people were ripping her to shreds. People were in my DMs every day saying shit and at one point I had to post something saying that I wouldn't be answering or reading any more of them because I was getting too many threats.
I was called... awful things. Things I cannot repeat here. I didn't have anything to do with the fic except the art and the "marketing" for the rewrite but I was friends with Samine, and that was close enough for them. It was really bad. My mental health suffered. But I was more focused on Samine's mental health because she had told me before that she was suicidal.
When Samine went offline for a few days at a time without notice, I was looking up obituaries for her hometown. That's how scared she made me for her. Every time something went wrong, or we disagreed, or I told her she did something ignorant, she brought up the fact that she was suicidal.
Please keep in mind I WAS SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD.
So, one day, when I was with Dani and Golden Retriever, I got a text that say "{her real name} died. She killed herself last night." And I believed it. Because I didn't have any reason not to.
It became a really big thing. I had like 5,000 unanswered DMs when I opened Instagram (it had been a few hours because me, Dani and Golden Retriever were on a day-road-trip), the GB account was blowing up, someone was posting on Samine's account. I got in contact with a few of our other GB "team members" and let them know what was going on. Because I was the Official Artist, they believed what I told them.
THEN Samine's ex-gf texted me and was like "hey, the bitch isn't dead."
When I tell you Dani, Golden Retriever and I were baffled.
But, sure enough, she was posting on twitter all merry and shit. So I texted her on her actual phone instead of Instagram and she answered. I'd spent like 12 hours crying into Dani's shoulder about this bitch being dead and she literally wasn't. She was alive. She was fine.
Samine pretended she didn't know what was going on. She said she got hacked (by a stalker she had conveniently never told me about before). She had me post her statements to the Official Account while she "worked on getting her account back."
Samine eventually "got her accounts back" but decided the drama surrounding GB wasn't worth it and she abandoned the fic. She abandoned her account. She abandoned me.
Turns out: BITCH NEVER HAD A HACKER OR A STALKER. SHE FAKED HER OWN DEATH. FAKED HER RESURRECTION TOO.
She left me alone to deal with the fallout of it all. I still get hundreds of DMs a week asking about if GB is coming back. I have abandoned the GB account, mostly abandoned my original account from before GB and cut ties with all things Harry Potter.
I literally cannot watch Harry Potter anymore. It sends me into a panic. It hurts me. I also don't make art anymore. It feels wrong. For a very long time, I also didn't write because Samine had convinced me that I would never write as good as she did.
I know I didn't do anything, really. I was a kid, and I was being manipulated, just like all of her followers were. I still feel extremely guilty for being part of something that hurt so many people.
I don't know how the fuck I managed to get through it. I was seventeen and receiving death threats for drawing pretty pictures. I was seventeen and reading explicit private messages from a 21/22 year old. I was seventeen and lying about my age so people wouldn't call her out about her inappropriate relationship with me.
I made a few good friends from it. I met my gf because of it. I am literally bonded for life with Dani and Golden Retriever because they are equally traumatized from the day that we all thought Samine had "died."
I find the good in it because it's all I have.
At the height of GB I had about 15k followers on Instagram (more on tik tok and other platforms). I'm down to about 2k now on the Instagram I use, and I am more than happy with that.
So, when someone said earlier that I was "famous" and I said no it is because I know what it's like to be an "influencer" in a fandom, and this is not it. When asked if I would start drama for fun, and I said no, it is because I've dealt with that shit before against my will and it is not fun.
That is my dark fandom past. I feel guilty for it, even though I shouldn't. I'm fucking traumatized from some of the dms I got over the year and a half I was working on that fic.
Overall, YR is better. My 1000 unhinged tumblr followers are better. I am very content to never do a brand deal again.
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
Lucien Vanserra + The Villain Theory & Why the Mating Bond Is Not Fake
I've been thinking about this for a while and I've decided I want to debunk this because of all the *insert character that is definitely not the villain becoming a secret villain*, Lucien is most definitely not it.
The theory, according to tiktok, is that Lucien is a secret schemer who has tricked everyone, including Elain, into believing they are mates for undefined, suspicious reasons likely related to Koschei. I find this unlikely considering his "father" is ALSO scheming with Koschei and Lucien likely has some awareness of this considering how often Eris is suddenly hanging around.
This is so long. Everything is under the cut.
However, lets pretend he doesn't. There is consistent, contextual proof that Lucien a) could not make up a mating bond even if he wanted to and b) everyone would know if he had.
Starting in ACOTAR, Tamlin tells Feyre the story of Lucien. On page 160, Tamlin says:
"Lucien said he didn't care she wasn't one of the High Fae, that he was certain the mating bond would snap soon and that he was going to marry her and leave his father's court to his scheming brothers."
Followed up on page 161, Tamlin adds:
"...his father has never apologized and his brothers are too frightened of me to risk harming him. But he has never forgotten what they did to her...even if he pretends he has."
That's ACOTAR. I know SJM likes to change things on a whim, but foundationally, this is Lucien's character and across all five books, it never changes. Lucien is still haunted by Jesminda and the mating bond he lost. He firmly believes, if we believe Tamlin to be a reliable narrator (and we should, as Lucien backs Tamlin's opinion up in his private thoughts. It is also worth noting that if Lucien has a villain origin story, it begins right here, the moment his father beheads Jesminda. To assume he's the villain, we ought to believe that he's been scheming non-stop for at least 200 years (since he's like, 300ish?) and to what end? To kill Beron? He'd have been scheming far longer than Elain was alive.
Moving right along to ACOMAF, on page 619, Amren says:
"And the bond," Amren breathed, Cassian's blood shining on her hands as she slowed its dribbling.
Mor said, "She asked the king to break the bond. He obliged."
I thought I might be dying- thought my chest might actually be cleaved in two.
"Thats impossible," Amren said. "That sort of bond cannot be broken."
"The kind said he could do it."
"The king is a fool," Amren barked. "That sort of bond cannot be broken."
"No, it can't," I said.
This is from Rhys' perspective. A mating bond can't be broken with magic- it's forever. Even rejected or in death (we'll get there), the mating bond is for life. Assuming Lucien's mate was Jesminda, even if it hadn't snapped in death, she would STILL be his mate and death would not have changed that. Neither would any magic Lucien, a spell-cleaver, might possess.
Let's also consider Elain, who has no reason to lie and every reason to call Lucien out regarding the bond. In ACOMAF, page 608, we see this:
"...Elain was staring over Nesta's shoulder. At Lucien-whose face she had finally taken in. Dark brown eyes met one of russet and one of metal. Nesta was still weeping, still raging, still inspecting Elain-
Lucien's hands slackened at his sides. His voice broke as he whispered to Elain, "You're my mate."
It's Elain who sees him first, who feels the mating bond mere seconds before Lucien. Why choose Elain, if you're going to pick a fake mate for your scheme? The argument is generally that she has the least amount of knowledge about Faeries and no interest in that education but how would Lucien know that? Feyre told Lucien nothing about her sisters (she told Ianthe instead), which means he would have had to guess. Given that Elain fights being put in the Cauldron, there's nothing contextually in that moment that suggests that Lucien somehow knew she was the easier sister to fool.
It's also worth noting that Lucien, up until that moment, still genuinely believes Jesminda was his mate. If he's the villain, having a fake mate makes no sense to the story or his plans.
Feyre has been inside Lucien's mind twice. Once in ACOMAF (pg. 95):
"Thoughts slammed into me, images and memories, a pattern of thinking and feeling that was old, and clever, and sad, so endlessly sad and guilt-ridden, hopeless-"
And again in ACOWAR when Lucien meets Elain for the first time. On page 249, we get the best description of what Lucien is feeling regarding the mating bond, all through Feyre's perspective:
"Too thin. She must not be eating at all. How can she even stand?
The thoughts flowed through his head, one after another. His heart was a raging, thunderous beat, and he didn't dare move from his position a mere five feet away. She hadn't yet turned toward him, but the ravages of her fasting were evident enough.
Touch her, smell her, taste her-
The instincts were running a river. he fisted his hands at his sides."
"But there she was. His mate. She was nothing like Jesminda."
"Elain had been...thrown at him."
"That circle of people who now claimed to be Feyre's new family...It was what, long ago, he'd once thought life at Tamlin's court would be. An ache like a blow to the chest went through him, but he crossed the rug."
"But he couldn't breathe as she faced him fully. She was the most beautiful female he'd ever seen. Betrayal, queasy and oily, slid through his veins. He'd said the same to Jesminda once. But even as shame washed through him, the words, the senses chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours."
"She looked away- towards the windows. 'I can hear your heart,' she said quietly. He wasn't sure how to respond, so he said nothing and drained his tea even as it burned his mouth.
'When I sleep,' she murmured, 'I can hear your heart beating through the stone.' She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer. 'Can you hear mine?'
He wasn't sure if she truly meant to address him, but he said, 'No, lady. I cannot.'"
These are Lucien's thoughts from Feyre's perspective. He has no idea she's in his head, so why is he thinking all those things? Why feel guilt that he finds her beautiful or that he'd once said all the same things to Jesminda that he thinks about Elain? Why care about her well-being? We know mates are driven to protect and Lucien's very first thoughts about Elain are ones of concern. She's not eating, she's too thin, how can she possibly stand? Not, hahaah my evil planned worked and I totally have an in with the Night Court (which, why would he need considering Tamlin is currently allied with Hybern and Lucien could have taken full advantage of that?).
Additionally, assuming Lucien is faking the mating bond for some poorly defined, evil plot, why keep such distance? Why not force himself on her? That's the claim, right? That he's forcing her to be with him which is amusing because in ACOFAS, Lucien has some thoughts on page 162"
"'How is she?'
'Better. She makes no mention of her abilities. If they remain.'
'Good. But is she still...' A muscle flickered in his jaw. 'Does she still mourn him?'"
First question he asks. "How is she?" Followed by if she's still in love with her ex-fiance. And I can hear the screaming now, "HE ASKED BECAUSE HE WANTS TO OWN HER" but like, on page 165 of ACOFAS, we get:
"I can't stand to be in the same room as her for more than two minutes."
Truly a stupid plan to fake a mating bond with a person that is causing you to be eaten alive with guilt and longing. We know the second he's around her, Lucien's is overwhelmed with the mating instincts and feels guilt over Jesminda, which is why he spends little time around Elain. He also tells Feyre, on that same page, he doesn't want his life to be financed by Rhysand. Feyre practically begs Lucien to move back to Velaris, to work for her full time, to let her set him up somewhere nicer and Lucien declines it all. If his plan hinged on getting closer to the IC, to using Rhys' resources, why tell her no? Why not take her up on it? Why not make him part of her life in a much more tangible way?
And finally, the dreaded scent of the mating bond. Feyre doesn't risk talking to Rhys when she's in Spring for fear of alerting everyone to the scent of the bond. Azriel, too, cannot stand the smell of it to the point he stands in the doorway during solstice rather than come in.
Ladies, Gentleman, and Non-binary pals of the jury, examine the evidence. For Lucien to be a villain, he has to KNOW that Feyre is a daemati before she does and both leave his thoughts unguarded while constantly assuming she MIGHT be picking through them. He also has to be able to control large amounts of people at the same time via the smell of the bond and Elain being able to feel it. When he tugs, she responds.
It would require everyone around them to be incredibly dumb. Feyre and Rhys basically share a mind and while they don't necessarily trust Lucien (unfairly imo), I firmly believe one of them would have picked up on a fake bond or Lucien's scheming.
Lucien wanted Jesminda, not Elain. If he decided to punish the world around him for the consistent pain he was enduring, he doesn't need Elain to achieve this. He's friends with Feyre. He has contacts all over Prythian. He didn't need to fake a mating bond, nor does it make any sense to do so. What they have is REAL.
And lastly, the bond can't be broken. Rejected, yes, broken no. Regardless if you think they'll keep it or not, they ARE mates and Lucien is NOT the villain who will be heroically slaughtered. They're awkward, they're uncomfortable, they have shit to work out but they ARE mates, and Lucien has proven over and over that all he wants is a home and goddamn peace and quiet.
#lucien vanserra#lucien vanserra meta#anti e*riel#antiv*ssien#anti el/riel#anti v/ssien#theories that are just not based in reality#but are probably interesting twists in a fanfic i wouldn't read
190 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Orpheum Theory
This little essay is inspired by my own post and the additions made by sunsetnerve and norakeinwitz. Thanks for your additions to my little theory I loved reading them.
Now, I understand that at the end of the day, this is a kids show. Itâs made for kids. However, the demographic didnât really end up what they thought it was going to be. So this is just a theory I came up with because I think like a college student, so I analyze like a college student. At the end of the day, itâs a theory. Could be a reach for a kids show, but itâs a thematically sound theory when analyzed like a regular piece of art.
Julie and the Phantoms is full of hidden symbolism and many different motifs. The motif we will be discussing today is: The Orpheum Theater.
As we know, the Orpheum is a huge component of the show and the big climax revolves around the Phantoms being able to play âthe show they never got to play.â At first glance, itâs just a theater where musicians play. Well, your friendly neighborhood creative writing major is here to show you otherwise.
First, letâs talk about motifs and symbols for those who are unaware of the difference.
Symbols - signify an idea or emotion e.g. red stands for blood
Motifs - a recurring element or idea that repeats throughout a piece of work e.g. stairs in Bong Joon Hoâs Parasite.
A motif is a symbol, but a symbol is not necessarily a motif.
The biggest motif present in JATP is the use of butterflies but thatâs a different discussion for a different post.
Another motif that may go unnoticed is the Orpheum Theater.
This venue is mentioned multiple times throughout the season and is the climax of the show. Letâs talk symbolism.
If it were any other theater, I wouldâve just went âNah they just want to play the show of course, itâs their dream.â However, what stuck with me was how the Orpheum is presented in JATP. (It looks nothing like the actual Orpheum Theater in LA by the way).
The theater is tiny. It looks like it could have a capacity of 50 people. 75 if weâre being generous. This begs the question, why this Orpheum? Why not the Roxy? The Dolby Theater? The Greek? Why specifically this tiny venue? Why not aim for a larger theater?
Next, we have to look at its name. Orpheum. Does it look familiar?
Orpheum means âHouse of Orpheus.â As in the Orpheus of Orpheus and Eurydice. For those of you who are not into Greek mythology and stories or if you just havenât heard of the musical, Hadestown, let me give you a (very) brief rundown of the story.
Orpheus is a musician who is in love with Eurydice. Eurydice dies a tragic death and finds her way to the Underworld to be with Hades, god of the dead. Orpheus, understandably, is heartbroken by this. So he finds a way to travel to find Eurydice and Hades. He strikes a deal with Hades. If he could lead Eurydice out of the Underworld, sheâll live again. The catch? Orpheus cannot turn around. He just has to trust that sheâs following him. In the end, Orpheus doubts himself at the last second (like literally âmaybe a few feet away from the exitâ last second) and turns around. Eurydice was actually following him the whole time, but he failed. She stays dead.
Now letâs discuss parallels.
Julie = Orpheus
talented musician
in love with a person who died tragically
desperate to save them
Luke = Eurydice
dead
trapped by a person who controls the dead
Caleb = Hades
controls the dead
Caleb owns the souls of the people in the Hollywood Ghost Club
Hades is the god of the dead
therefore, Hollywood Ghost Club = Underworld
Now this is where I explain how this parallel and motif play into the show with my own original theory and the modified theories due to the additions of sunsetnerve and norakeinwitz. Again, thanks for reblogging with them!
Theory 1
Weâre aware of the parallels. Weâre aware of the original story and how season 1 played out. Originally, I felt as if this motif would play out further into the show. I felt as if this were the foundation of a bigger fight between JATP and Caleb. Eventually, Julie would have to try and save Luke from the HGC and Caleb and ultimately fail (because I love angst but I will throw in some âkids showâ magic and say that Luke is fine in the end). But letâs go with a happier ending.
Theory 2
This was brought to my attention by sunsetnerve. In her reblog, the Orpheum theory made its run through the first season only. This also makes sense, taking into account the scene with You Got Nothing to Lose. This is when Caleb takes hold of Luke and the other Phantoms. Julie brings them back (somehow) for Stand Tall. Here is where JATP will diverge from the original Greek story. Orpheus fails. Julie succeeds. If youâre an Harry Potter fan, think of it like that old Tumblr post that describes how Harry and his friends were parallels of James and his friends, only they were better and they learned from the past. Julie is Orpheus, the difference is that she knows better. Now we introduce the lyrical genius of the songwriters.
Letâs take another look at the Orpheus and Eurydice summary. In order to save Eurydice, Orpheus cannot turn around.
With that in mind, letâs take a look at the lyrics to Stand Tall.
âCause everything is rushing in fast
Keep on going, never look back.â
Julie sings a line about not turning around. Once again, Julie is Orpheus, she just knows better.
She thinks she can help free them from Caleb. Julie already thinks that sheâs lost the Phantoms. Orpheus thinks he can help free Eurydice from Hades. He refuses to believe heâs lost her. Julie is at peace, Orpheus is not.
Julie performs at the Orpheum even though she thinks itâs too late. She doesnât hesitate. And when she was tested and she doubted, she did not let it overtake her. Orpheus was tested and he was consumed by the paranoia.
Julie kept going. She didnât turn around.
Orpheus stopped. He turned around.
The result? Julie saves the Phantoms from Caleb. Orpheus loses Eurydice to Hades.
Julie wins.
Theory 3
This was presented to me by norakeinwitz who noticed the Orpheus connection too. They added on to both mine and sunsetnerveâs points. Except they played more towards the idea that despite the fact Julie knows better, Julie is still Orpheus. She canât help it.
Julie performs. She doesnât stop. She erases her doubt. The Phantoms perform at the Orpheum.
Julie doesnât turn around then. She turns around later.
At the end of the day, Julie is still Orpheus.
She goes back to the studio anyway. She turns around to look at them one more time.
Now here are my thoughts about this.
Julie turns around, but not for the same reasons as Orpheus.
Orpheus let doubt into his mind. All he had to do was trust that Eurydice was following him. He was tested, he panicked, he looked back. He turned around before the tunnel ended because he was afraid that she was gone.
Julie erased her doubt. She didnât let it in. She pressed forward even with the idea that sheâs never seeing them again. She was tested, she panicked, she didnât look backâŠyet. She looked back after she left the Orpheum and went straight to the studio instead of going straight to bed. She turned around after the tunnel ended because she made peace with the fact that they were gone.
Orpheus turned around because he was clinging to fear. Julie turned around because she let go of fear.
She made peace with death. As a result, she saved the Phantoms.
Orpheus was angered by death. As a result, he lost Eurydice.
Julie is Orpheus, but Orpheus is not Julie.
They follow the same path, but Julie made it to the end.
#julie and the phantoms#jatp#julie molina#luke patterson#caleb covington#julie and the himbos#charlie gillespie#madison reyes#orpheus#eurydice#hades#julie jatp#luke jatp#reggie jatp#alex jatp
672 notes
·
View notes
Text
okay yeah actually, iâll bite. iâve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and iâm gonna make a post about them now, i guess. iâll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.
i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and iâm grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.
that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; itâs great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and itâs great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. itâs an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think thatâs a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.
iâm not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tucâs presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i donât feel like itâs 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since itâs a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i donât yet know how things wrap up. secondly, iâm not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think itâs worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesnât automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i donât think itâs my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.
what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. iâm jewish; iâve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. iâm not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since itâs home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; thatâs not everybodyâs new york, but thatâs my new york, and thats plenty of other peopleâs new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.
now, iâm not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and iâm fine with that. sheâs not my character. itâs possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i canât be sure about this, iâm willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didnât want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i donât know if any of the cast members are jewish, but iâm assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; thereâs not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either âunlikeable overly conservative hassidic jewâ or âjokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,â which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.
but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isnât polish, yet sheâs playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we canât have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, iâm jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and itâs great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as âappropriativeâ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but iâm like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i canât personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, iâm not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, iâd be really interested in hearing them.
but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know weâre only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and itâs definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nycâs jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a âpavement golemâ always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped theyâd learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a âcorn golemâ which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.
and yet...he doesnât show up that much? sure, in s1, heâs very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didnât know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isnât human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.
there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...hereâs where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so itâs not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldnât even fault you for not thinking âsondheimâ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isnât jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, iâm not going to sit here and be like âbrennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!â because, like, heâs a real human being and itâs fucking weird to portray him in a way that isnât as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i donât know, this is what i mean by itâs inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheimâs jewish, even if you wouldnât know it; not exactly a representation win.
and then thereâs bob moses. you might be able to guess that heâs jewish from canon, actually. thereâs the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight thereâs a one-off line asking if he has green skin; itâs never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and itâs stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the seasonâs bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.
i know this isnât all brennanâs fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. iâm not saying that jewish characters canât be evil, and iâm not saying brennan should have tried to be like âthis is my NPC robert christian heâs just like bob moses but instead heâs a goy so itâs okayâ because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. iâm not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. iâm not even saying that he shouldnât have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesnât 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one youâd most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.
listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; thatâs a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and theyâll still fuck up from time to time, thatâs okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not itâs still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and iâm gonna continue watching it. but itâs still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. itâs an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet itâs also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. iâm definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also donât think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and thereâs a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.
#sasha reviews#sasha speaks#the unsleeping city#unsleeping city#long post#dimension 20#gd i stayed up way too late to write this#tuc#the unsleeping city chapter 2#the unsleeping city 2#tuc2#antisemitism
155 notes
·
View notes
Text
I was going to actually post this before asks closed (didnât get the chance), but Teddy Bear Anon, you are one of my favorite people and a magnificent creature. You get my vibe.Â
About Bad canonically being Sapnapâs dad I feel like that has so much extra angst potential when we consider the rest of the found family. Like. Sapnap, Tommy, and Fundy all have dads who started with the best of intentions but for one reason or another ended up slowly becoming a danger to them. I imagine Tommy and Fundy one day showing up with a cake and telling Sapnap âWe regretfully welcome you to the shit dad clubâ and Sapnap is torn between being upset still and laughing over the absurdity of the situation.
Bonus points if Tommy made the cake using a recipe book that Niki gave him, the last gift Niki ever gave to Tommy. Tommy was originally a really bad cook/baker but after the egg really started to take over he went full survivalist. Leaning to cook was necessary but learning to bake was something he did as a way to raise everyoneâs spirits. Heâs never gotten the flavor quite to match with Nikiâs perfectly but everyone agrees heâs gotten pretty decent in terms of skills. He and Fundy in particular will sometimes just spend an entire day in silence baking and then quietly eat their creations while reflecting on the friends theyâve made and lost over the course of L'manbergâs lifetime. When the group got back to the past and Niki made cookies for Tommy and Fundy the pair very nearly started crying.
Tommy is in an interesting position as a character since he did commit a lot of minor crimes and acted as a general nuisance but he was also still a child. (A very traumatized one considering I canonize SMP Earth with its unlimited lives but even more wars. Including against God. Tommy fought God just let me have this.) He acknowledges the moments when he went over the line and has tried to apologize. In particular at some point before the egg fully takes over he pulls aside Jack and tells him that heâs sorry for the way he acted when he was still in exile, taking one of Jackâs lives and all. Jack and Niki in particular are an interesting subject to address and a painful one for immune!Tommy to think about when he sees younger Niki because the three never fully tossed out the hatchet but it was obvious in the eyes of someone like Sam that both of them were growing more and more hesitant to hurt Tommy. It was made worse by the fact neither were even marginally immune, and it didnât take long for the egg to get to them.
He never stopped being chaotic. Tommy at his core is just that kind of person. He did, however, grow up enough to act in a more mature manner. Started to recognize whatâs too much. In particular he became a lot less violent and willing to lash out after Sam Nook in essence reparented him. Heâs still an absolute wild card of a person, which in the eyes of Sam and Sapnap is a good thing. For this au I think we should actually address Tommy having severe ptsd and during the building of his hotel/the early days of the egg before it becomes a noticeable threat it shows. Heâs a lot more subdued. Shows of aggression all carry a kind of desperation and his typical jokes feel flat. Lashing out at people slowly becomes more of a defense mechanism to see if someoneâs going to leave or betray him, to test the limits of how nice theyâre willing to be. After all, nice people have only ever been nice to Tommy when they wanted something from him. His eyes, especially after L'manberg is blow sky high, are well and truly gray. The first time Tommy genuinely laughs after filling Sapnapâs room with chickens is considered celebration worthy to them. His pranks take on a more hermitcraft-esque feel to them which honestly makes them more funny.
By the time they get to the past Tommy has recovered, but he still carries the kind of maturity that like Teddy Bear mentioned is reminiscent of age swap Tommy. When he gets especially stressed though, Immune!Tommy will slip into moments where he acts as tired and done with the world as age swap Tommy. With that said, most of the time he just acts like a more mature Tommy. Nothing could ever completely erase his unique vibe which Ranboo has gone on record as describing âWilling to fight God deaf, blind, and backwards just to prove a point."Â
Immune Fundy and Tommy get on really well once Fundy manages to catch up with the rest of the group. It gets to the point where everyone from the past is kinda shocked since smp Fundy and Tommy do not get along. At all. Literally the first night Fundyâs back someone goes to wake them up and they find Fundy asleep on top of Tommy which is a wild experience since this Tommy is a goliath who often refuses to take off his full Netherite max enchant armor. He really becomes a "looks like he could kill you but is actually a cinnamon rollâ kinda mans.
Also, yeah, this is Dreamâs retirement arc. He is literally just sitting in the corner watching Tommy dote on his younger self and Tubbo before completely pile driving two of the most powerful people on the server straight into the dirt. At some point Tommy sits down with past Punz. He tells this Punz that their Punz died protecting him and Tubbo and that Tommy never got to properly thank their Punz so heâs going to thank this Punz. Tommy then gives Punz an entire stack of Netherite. If weâre gonna go ahead and agree on Phoenix Tommy then Tommy is fire proof, meaning he probably spent a large amount of time in the nether to avoid the egg crew and get rare supplies. Meaning he also probably did a lot of mining just to distract himself and it resulted in him being loaded. Tommy used to have a fear of tnt and explosives but he seems like the type of mad lad to say âexposure therapyâ and make a massive cavern in the underbelly of the nether.
I think it would also be really interesting to dedicate like, a couple of chapters to other peopleâs perspectives. I kind of want to set the time they arrive in the past partway through the Pogtopia arc since I like mildly unhinged but not completely gone Wilbur. Plus then it also makes more sense for Techno to be there. Just prefer the aesthetic really. I want to have Wilbur see this version of Tommy and come to a sudden âohâ moment. I want to have a moment where Tubbo looks between his Tommy and this new Tommy, seeing himself nowhere to be found, and has enough what the fuck moments to become aggressively protective of his own Tommy. Especially if immune!Tommy ever admits to the past Tubbo why he is the way he is, what he faced under the thumb of the people he trusted. Which, out of everyone on the server, Tubbo would be the first one from the past to actively learn.Â
I am fully on board with Tommy knowing how to sew. That should just automatically be canon in literally ever AU. Tommy for all intents and purposes is still Philâs child for me. Survival runs in the family the same way that chaos does, so heâs got a ton of basic survival skills that he just doesnât show off because itâs still Tommy. He would have been completely fine in exile if it wasnât for Dream. Whenever someone ruins their clothes in the Immune group they automatically go to Tommy and at first the past versions are very confused (except for past Tommy and Tubbo obviously) and then Tommyâs just âSapnap this is beyond ruined it canât be saved, let me make you something newâ and within a couple days he makes Sapnap a completely new outfit. Like maybe Sapnap fell into a lava pool because Blaze Sapnap Supremacy and his clothes are beyond saving and everyone is beyond baffled when Tommy just acts like this is a weekly occurrence. Heâs memorized Sapnapâs measurements and style tastes and already had a new outfit in the works for him that Sapnap immediately adores upon it being presented to him. It takes about a week for past Eret to learn that Tommy stress sews new clothing and he cannot think of a better model. Eret has never had such a full closet. Eret has everything from three piece suits to ball gowns now. Eret lives in terror of the days where Tommy disappears god knows where with Fundy and the two reappear with a new wardrobe for the entire god damn server.Â
Speaking of disappearing I really like the idea of part phoenix and part tanuki Tommy for a couple reasons. Being a Tanuki heâd have access to enough magic to hide his hybrid traits, which if theyâve been present for long enough would be a necessity to him. Additionally think about Fundy and Tommy building a den under Church Prime that slowly turns into a maze. Think about it. It starts off simple and then they both start digging more and it gets deeper and deeper and more complicate and the two just refer to it as their den and the only ones who are fully aware of the connotations of that word are Sam, Sapnap, and Ranboo who remember the absolute hell that was trying to navigate the original. Just Fundy and Tommy bonding over the fact they are literally the only creatures on this server that have this catacomb memorized and at the end of the catacomb is their saferoom which connects to rail way that the two spent a month straight on. It goes at least 25k blocks from spawn and itâs a final emergency resort in case they canât stop the egg and the Immunes needs to regroup and essentially try again (if they keep bringing their younger selves with them then hopefully theyâll finally get an army large enough to stop this, but everyone really hopes it doesnât come to that.)
Iâm working on the first chapter of my fic right now actually if Iâm gonna be honest and phoenix Tommy is absolutely without question canon to it but Iâve still been going back and forth on if I want him to be part tanuki as well or just blessed/favored by one like Teddy Bear mentioned. Iâm also tucking away the whole thing about the magma blood for later use. Phoenix Tommy just makes sense. They used to call him Zombie Kid for a reason back on SMP Earth, he just literally does not die ever unless he decides he does.
~Snapdragon & Firefly
#dream smp#dream smp au#immune au#tommyinnit#fundy#sapnap#eret#the eret#awesamdude#dream#dreamwastaken#wilbur soot#submission#snapdragon & firefly#long post
138 notes
·
View notes
Note
HI! I'm new to the MDZS fandom and I fell in love with Suibian, but you don't see it that much. I seen somewhere that it would burn out a weaker core and I cried cause I wanted to see that, and as far as I know it doesn't happen anywhere. I'm wondering if you could tell me anything and everything you know about Suibian. I'm starving for anything about it
hi anon! ahahah, itâs always a dangerous thing to ask me about âanything and everythingâ on a topic because I usually have too many thoughts, most of which are unorganized. but! if youâre interested in that, then here we go!
First, re: your comment about Suibian burning out a weaker core: I am not aware of this theory (or is it something from an interview?? if someone knows, please say so!), but if it brings you joy, then itâs certainly an interesting one to consider! Unfortunately, I donât have much more to say on it because Iâm unfamiliar with it, but I do have quite a lot to say on some other Suibian concepts!
ask and ye shall receive (a very jumbled heap of thoughts as i spiral further and further out of control):
[all rough translations are mine, and thus all mistakes are mine. I am using the version of the novel that is available on luoxia because I canât be bothered to go flipping through my print edition ahaha.]
the questions about Suibian that interest me the most are why it sealed, when it sealed, when Wei Wuxian began to wield it again, and what that might all mean. Iâm going to be talking about novel, CQL, and audio drama canon all together, because I think looking at each canon alone and in combination can raise a lot of very different points!! (I have not watched the donghua or read the manhua yet, so forgive me, I have nothing to say about them. /o\)
So! the one piece of information that weâre given consistently throughout all three of the canons is that Suibian was sealed after Wei Wuxianâs death and that no one but Wei Wuxian himself (and Jiang Cheng, by proxy) could draw it from its sheathe. Thus, Wei Wuxianâs identity is revealed and the golden core swap comes to light. Wei Wuxian is surprised by this, and asks Lan Wangji, âDid it really seal itself?â (novel, chapter 63; CQL, ep 42; audio drama, S2E15).
The novel and audio drama both include a line from Wei Wuxian that emphasizes Wei Wuxianâs surprise, implying that sword-sealing is very uncommon:
äžäžæ äžçć€§ć„œäșç«ç¶èź©æç»æäžäș
Something incredible that happens less than once per ten thousand times, and I actually encountered it.
the irony, of course, is that this incredible thing is what ended up blowing his cover. rip Wei Wuxian.
but what I think gets really interesting is comparing different points at which Suibian sealed itself and what that might imply in conjunction with other information. Jin Guangyao says âshortly afterâ his death, but CQL includes a scene in episode 19 that implies that Suibian actually sealed itself much earlier.
[ID: Gif from episode 19 of the untamed drama. Lan Wangji attempts to draw Suibian after he and Jiang Cheng storm the Nightless City and retrieve their swords. He cannot pull it from the sheathe. /end ID]
(in case anyone is curious, itâs about 30 minutes in. I spent the effort to make the gif, so I might as well give you the timestamp lol)
this scene takes place during the period of time when Wei Wuxian is in the Mass Graves (aka the Burial Mounds) after Wen Chao cast him down and left him for dead, right near the beginning of Sunshot. Iâm fairly certain itâs not mentioned in either the novel or the audio drama, so this is a CQL-only detail. (please correct me if Iâm wrong; I get my canons muddled all the time //hides face)
CQL basically does nothing narratively with this scene other than giving us some sad shots of Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng (honestly, valid ;A;) but!! if we decide to accept this scene as our jumping off point, we can get to some interpretations about Wei Wuxian using information from the other canons!
take this exchange from chapter 57 of the novel (immediately prior to the massacre at lotus cove):
æ±æŸéïŒâèżäžæŻćäžșć±ä»Źçćçäșć»æž©ćź¶äșăäžæłć°æçäžæŻç°ćšèŻŽäžćźèą«ćȘćȘæž©çæĄćšæéïŒçæŻâŠâŠâ
ä»éąéČć«æ¶äčèČïŒéæ çŸĄéïŒâćŻæć±ä»Źçćèżäžć€ç”ïŒèŠæŻèœèȘćšć°ćïŒéŁć°±è°äčć«æłçšäșăâ
æ±æŸéïŒâäœ ćäżźçŒäžȘć
«ććčŽïŒèŻŽäžćźćŻä»„ăâ
Jiang Cheng said, âHeâs gone to the Wen sect regarding our swords again, hasnât he. Whenever I think that my Sandu might even now be in some Wen-dogâs hands, ughâŠâ
His face filled with loathing, Wei Wuxian said, âWhat a pity our swords donât have enough spirit. If they could seal themselves, then no one could even think about using them.â
Jiang Cheng said, âIf you kept cultivating for another eighty years, maybe.â
from the novel, it seems clear that sword-sealing is something that only happens when a personâs cultivation level is exceptionally high. if this is true, and we go with the CQL timeline of Suibian sealing itself long before Wei Wuxianâs death, it means that Wei Wuxianâs cultivation level wasnât just high, it was leagues above pretty much anyone else when he was still a teenager. (In fact, Suibian had most likely already sealed by the time this conversation takes place.)
If we donât go with CQLâs timeline, however, I think we could make a very different argument. Itâs a bit of a reach, but I think itâs a lot of fun, if youâre willing to come with me on this journey!
Jin Guangyao says Suibian sealed itself âshortly afterâ Wei Wuxianâs death, but we donât really have external confirmation of that. For all we know, someone only bothered to test it sometime after his death, and Suibian had been sealed for some indefinite amount of time. All we can say for sure is that by some point shortly after Wei Wuxianâs death, Suibian was already sealed and resisted being drawn by anyone who tried it.
Weâre told over and over that one can only wield a spiritual sword effectively if you have a golden core/the spiritual energy to match it. Wei Wuxian stops carrying/using Suibian because he knows that in his hands, it will act as nothing more than an ordinary sword. His method of cultivation is no longer suitable for the sword. Suibian is tied to both Wei Wuxianâs soul and his golden core.
If sword-sealing only happens when the cultivatorâs level is unbelievably high, then I think we can make the argument here that by the time of his death, Wei Wuxianâs core was likewise unbelievably strong â but Wei Wuxian is no longer the one developing his core. Jiang Cheng is.
I know itâs a ridiculous reach. To be clear, I donât think the text actually intends this or supports this in any meaningful way, but I do think that it gives us some very tasty potential!! If Suibian sealed itself sometime after the core transfer (which, honestly, we wouldnât know â after all, whoâs been trying to draw Wei Wuxianâs sword?), but just if, I think we can plausibly make the argument that Jiang Chengâs cultivation is truly extraordinary.
:DDDDDDDD
Itâs fun right?? Itâs a fun concept!!! Even if itâs nonsense, even if itâs not that deep, even if this was an unintentional coincidence, I think it would be interesting to look at this as being some kind of measure of Jiang Chengâs accomplishments. On the flip side, I also think itâs very important thematically that Jiang Chengâs value as a person has nothing to do with his cultivation, that he is, in fact, always second-best, but that doesnât make him any less worthwhile or deserving of love. Maybe Iâm just projecting lmao. Of course, being extraordinary doesnât preclude him from still lagging behind Wei WuxianâWei Wuxian might have just been more extraordinary ahahah. We can have both!!
Now for a totally different thing! Interestingly, this conversation about cultivation levels and sword-sealing (the one with Jiang Cheng) also happens in the audio drama, S2E12 (about 15 minutes in, since I just checked), but Wei Wuxian adds an additional comment:
(donât have the transcription of the original chinese, Iâm just going to translate it as I hear it)
âBut maybe you donât need to cultivate to a certain level to have your sword seal itself. What if there were some other way?â
these two versions of the conversation actually imply pretty different things, I think! this addition opens the possibility to the audience that sword-sealing is possible even without an extraordinary level of cultivation, and I think lends credence to the idea that Suibian is just an unusually loyal sword, regardless of Wei Wuxianâs cultivation level. Whether thatâs something inherent to Suibianâs âpersonalityâ, or whether this says something about how Wei Wuxian inspires loyalty wherever he goes, or whether it just speaks to the strength of their bond remains to be seen.
(obviously, this could imply any number of other things as well, but I find this to be the interpretation that makes me happiest.)
If we go with âSuibian seals itself after Wei Wuxianâs deathâ in this canon, I think this emphasizes the loyalty aspect with a touch of grief.
If we combine this with CQL and have âSuibian has been loyal since he was a teenagerâ, that also emphasizes the loyalty aspect â just in a different way.
Of course, doing meta combining unique details from different canons is largely pointless in terms of crafting any real âanalysisâ, so Iâm mostly saying all of this because I enjoy the process of building the supercanon in my head that brings me the most joy! To summarize the varied interpretations Iâve brought up in this post:
CQL-only: Suibian sealed itself when Wei Wuxian was a teenager, at latest, by the time he was thrown into the Mass Graves.
Novel-only: Sword-sealing is very rare and achievable only through extraordinarily high cultivation. Shortly after Wei Wuxianâs death, Suibian is discovered to have sealed itself, so Wei Wuxianâs core, by the time of his death, was extraordinarily powerful.
Audio drama-only: Sword-sealing is considered very rare and achievable only through extraordinarily high cultivation, but might also be accomplished by other methods. Shortly after Wei Wuxianâs death, Suibian is discovered to have sealed itself. If Wei Wuxianâs core is not wildly and improbably powerful, this implies that Suibian has become an exceptionally loyal sword by the time of his death.
CQL/novel: Wei Wuxian was already incredibly powerful by the time he was a teenager.
CQL/audio drama: Suibian has been exceptionally loyal to Wei Wuxian since at least his teenage years.
Novel and audio drama-only have a much wider range of when Suibian could have sealed itself, as mentioned, so there are further variances within those interpretations.
thereâs a lot of potential here!! with my personal feelings regarding the story, I like novel-only with Suibian sealing post-core transfer, audio drama-only with Suibian sealing post-Wei Wuxianâs death, or CQL/audio drama with Suibian sealing as a teenager pretty much all equally. I think the CQL/novel interpretation gets too close to casting Wei Wuxian as a hyper-special and innately noble individual in a way that undercuts the strength of his character arc, but thatâs my opinion. (As an aside, this is actually one of my major complaints about CQL in general, independent from what Iâm talking about here. But that is a topic for another day ahahaha. To be clear, I still love CQL very much, despite my many frustrations!)
As for what I think is the most âlikelyâ to be the ârightâ interpretation (whatever thatâs worth), I would probably say the one that emphasizes Suibianâs loyalty with Suibian sealing post-death, because I think itâs the most thematically cohesive and has the textual support to back it. (I think itâs a valid interpretation even using novel-only text; itâs just slightly less explicit without the additional comment from Wei Wuxian.)
A final detail:
We donât get anything from either CQL or the novel that explicitly addresses when/if Wei Wuxian is able to wield Suibian again, but the audio dramaâs rendition of the âYunmengâ extra very subtly indicates that by the time that extra takes place, Wei Wuxian has cultivated a golden core and is carrying his sword once more. You only get it at a couple of moments, but Suibian sometimes clinks when Wei Wuxian moves or when he bumps into something. The two instances I can remember specifically are when Lan Wangji tosses the ring onto him (the ring hits Suibian), and when heâs rowing the little boat onto the lotus pond and the motion makes a sound. Itâs!!! Extremely good!!! It makes my heart very full!!!!!
ANYWAYS, if all of my scattered rambling didnât fill the Suibian-shaped hole in your heart, I would also like to recommend @zeldacwâs wonderful WangQingSuiChen series of comics, featuring anthropomorphized versions of Wangji guqin, Chenqing, Suibian, and Bichen. I believe the most recent comic is here, and there are links to the rest of the comics in the post. If you just want her general tag for the AU (which is more than just the comics), itâs here!
If you have interest in listening to the audio drama yourself, you can purchase it through the MissEvan app (Maoâer FM). There are buying instructions linked in this post! If you need English subtitles, @suibiansubs is the group that does them. :)
I really canât recommend the audio drama enough, tbh, itâs really really dear to my heart, and the team clearly worked so hard and cared so deeply for the story they were trying to tell. Consider this my regularly scheduled plug for the audio drama ahaha.
As always, my meta is my meta and if you donât vibe with it, thatâs chill! I change my opinions constantly (I think I changed them like three times in the course of writing this ahahaha), and I know some of my older meta has been making the rounds and every time I see it I think about all the ways my views have shifted since I wrote it rip. For this post moreso than usual, I want to emphasize that pretty much all of the meta included in this is meant to explore intriguing what-if possibilities, not for serious literary analysis purposes. I am aware that a lot of this is reaching/overinterpreting into implications that probably arenât there. I just think theyâre fun to consider!
so this was a mess, but I hope you or someone out there enjoyed it anon!!
(ko-fi, if youâre so moved)
#mdzs#the untamed#the untamed meta#mdzs meta#suibian#mo dao zu shi#mine#mymeta#asks and replies#Anonymous#oh dear GOD i did it again#past me: why this will be easy! I already know what i'll talk about! probably this will take an hour#present me: *stares into the camera like i'm on the office*#this post is a MESS#running my mouth at 100mph with zero coherent structure? more likely than you think#cyan gets too deep in the weeds#:/#meta#lmao idk if that matters#a window into my 24/7 stream of consciousness#filtered by tag: suibian#cries in a corner#im so tired whatever im punting this into the void#the structure in this is nonexistent and the language is weak please forgive me
936 notes
·
View notes
Text
To Be Continued - Part 8
Summary: As an author, you had created Brian Kang for your current trilogy series to represent the ultimate man that everyone would love, along with Charli Evers - your female protagonist. What you hadnât expected was for him to find a way out of the story and begin shaping up your world instead
Pairing: Brian Kang x female writer (ft. Park Sungjin)
Genre: writer au / romance / fantasy
Warnings: fictional characters coming to life / a bit of angst here and there / Sungjin as a cop (or does that only affect me?) >_>
The angst has made itâs way into the station, everyone. Buckle up for the pain thatâs going to come.
A/N: this story idea was created from receiving two prompts for Brian in the YouxIdol drabble game I was completing this year. In this part, you can find prompt #194, âI donât want to live in a world where Iâm not with you.â
Word count: 2397
Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Epilogue
You were anxious whilst waiting for Lilyâs arrival. At first, she laughed hysterically after your announcement.
However, she stopped suddenly, peering at Brian, who waved gently in response. You worried she might collapse from the reactions that seemed to rock her back and forth when in a calm voice, she told you she was on her way over and then ended the call.
You had been pacing in the hallway in front of your door ever since.
âItâs going to be fine,â Brian assured, and you nodded distantly.
âFine. Yes. Of course.â
âI mean, I convinced you of my existence. It wonât be much for me to do the same to Lily.â
âExcept part of that was you came out of the laptop in front of me.â Glancing up at him, you shoved Brian down the hallway to your office and over to the laptop. âDo it again.â
He rolled his eyes. âIâm not a circus monkey.â
âNo, but you did come in and out of the story multiple times,â you reminded, and Brian folded his arms across his chest.
âOnly because you called me out.â
âSo go back in and Iâll call you out when sheâs here.â
Brian snorted. âAnd send your editor into a mess or make her faint as you did?!â
âWell, that way she wonât be able to say weâre making this up!â
âExcept weâre not making this up and weâll get through it without any stunts, okay?â he told you, rubbing your shoulders and attempting to loosen the tension within them. You slumped, hoping Brian was right.
There was a frantic knock at the door then, and Brian nodded gently before going to answer it. Peering around the corner of your living area, you watched as he greeted Lily. The woman stepped inside, circled around him and then shook her head. âWell, Iâll be damned.â
âI know it seems a little implausible but-â
âBrian Kang truly exists,â Lily cut off your attempt to start the conversation, and you shared a surprised glance with Brian before stepping closer to your friend. She stared up at Brian. âAny chance Park Jinyoung exists too?â
âIâve tried,â you mentioned in a small voice when Brianâs face grew moody and let out a little laugh. âI think weâre best off just having one literary character in our existence, right?â
You were surprised by how easily Lily accepted all this. Of course, Brian gave her a similar speech as he had to you when you came around after meeting him the first time, and answered any of her questions. But unlike you, Lily didnât have many. Instead, she marvelled his existence up close â and rather a little too personally â before you cleared your throat and gestured for some tea.
Taking your editor into your office and shutting the door, you then sat down on the small couch across the room together.
âI cannot believe you didnât tell me right away!â
âIf it makes you any happier, you are the first person Iâve explained his actual existence to.â
âBrian mentioned he had met your doctor and that handsome cop you told me about,â Lily replied, and you cringed.
âBoth of them donât know the full story. In fact, I made things worse with Brianâs existence in front of Sungjin.â Lily perked at this, and you waved her off. âItâs a long story.â
âYou know what isnât, though? Eternity.â Placing down her mug of tea, Lily turned in her seat and shook your forearm gently. âYouâre sitting on a gold mine here!â
âHardly. I can write, Lily. Just not about Brian.â
âWhy not?ïżœïżœ
âItâs as you said, itâs as if Iâve sucked the life out of Brian in my story now. Because heâs out here and not in there.â
Lily grew thoughtful. âHave you asked Brian to help you write the story?â
âWell, no. Iâm the writer, and heâs the character.â
âPerhaps he can assist you by making his role more organic again. After all, he knows himself best, doesnât he?â
She had a point. âMaybe it could work.â
âI donât blame you for being distracted lately, though. After seeing him, I donât know how effective Iâd be in person either,â she gushed, and you bit your lip as your mouth curved into a delighted smile.
âHeâs magical.â
âHeâs divine!â Lily enthused with you, and you both giggled.
âAnd he can hear you,â a voice called out from the other side of the door, and you both gripped onto the other in fright before busting out into laughter once more.
It was good having someone you could talk to fully about the man now in your life.
Lily, after calming down and draining off the rest of her tea, stood from the couch and smiled. âI trust youâll both get the story started the way itâs meant to go, Y/N.â
âI hope so. I donât want to be like this with my work. This series has meant a lot to me.â
âDo you need me to stay or will I get in the way of your rendezvous?â she teased, and you swatted a hand out at her. âWhat?! If I had a chance with someone like Brian, Iâd not be able to hold back!â
âIâm decently approaching him, and thatâs all there is to it!â
âMaybe you need to get more intimate then. It might help with this final part of the story.â
âLily!â you cried as she smirked at you. âThatâs not whatâs in the plans for this world, and you know it!â
âWell, I didnât expect to meet a character come to life in this world of ours, but itâs happened. Things can easily be adapted, Y/N.â
âOkay! Out with you now!â you demanded with a laugh, pushing your friend to the door of your office.
She hesitated, shooting a wicked look over your shoulder. âYouâre sure youâve done everything when it comes to seeing if Jinyoung-â
âOut!â you repeated, shoving the now laughing woman out of the room. She turned to hug you and then winked at Brian before heading for the front door.
âI expect a proper submission by next week. Thatâs all the extra time Iâm giving you. Have fun in love, the pair of you.â
Once the door shut, Brian smiled warmly at you, capturing your cheek in the palm of his hand. âI quite like her.â
âSheâs trouble,â you mentioned with a grin, nuzzling into his hand and pecking it with your lips briefly. âBut sheâs the right kind of trouble.â
âSounds just how I would describe you right now,â Brian mentioned, his eyes swirling with a growing need. You knew that look all too well. It had been what had you pinned against a wall first thing this morning.
Maybe Lily was right. Your kissing sessions were only growing longer, more laboured and filling you with a desire you wanted to keep exploring.
Tugging on Brianâs hand, you made your way down to your bedroom with what you hoped to be an alluring smile.
He stopped, but only to scoop you up in his arms. âOh, youâre definitely the right kind of trouble to have, Miss Writer.â
Despite all your efforts, the story still sat at a standpoint. You had encouraged Brian for input, and once again, you were both seated at your desk, pouring over options for the start of the story.
âItâs not working,â you complained, dropping your head to your tabletop in despair.
âWeâll find a way,â Brian said, though he looked concerned. With your realisation of this, he cleared his throat and ruffled your hair. âHonestly, how hard can this be? Iâm the character, so I should know what I want to do next.â
âDo you?â
Brian slumped in his chair and shook his head. âNot a clue.â
âYou, much like everyone else in this world, rely on me to write the script,â you stated, sadly and Brian rubbed at his face.
âYouâre right. Itâs what gave me direction, and it was the words you had started to write that helped me change the scene towards my benefit here and there.â
âSo I need to write it. And you need to somehow appear whole again within the world.â
You each fell silent then, neither wanting to speak of what you had thought.
Over the past few days, you had fallen further for Brian. The love you felt for him was never-ending, and it worried you with how attached you had become to him so far. The idea of Brian ever returning to the world he came from made you sick to your stomach.
However, logic also made you realise that was where he needed to go for you to write Eternity. If he was missing from his leading role, how would you be able to pen the world in the way it was meant to be? Being at your side only delighted you, fulfilling your every need and desire.
But it wouldnât make the story that heâd originally come from work.
You knew he was aware of this too.
Stepping out of the office without more than one line written, you both retired to the couch, sighing at separate intervals.
And then Brian turned to you. âY/N, can we talk?â
âAlways.â
âItâs not working, is it?â he murmured, and you nodded, feeling the rise of your emotions behind the backs of your eyes. You blinked, and he reached out to catch the first tear as it fell. âWeâre working too well together here.â
âBut the story isnât at all,â you whispered, and Brian sighed again. âWith you here, Charli and everyone else is suspended in air, waiting for your return. You exist in that world just as much as you exist here.â
âAnd I canât be in both at the same time,â Brian admitted, and you dropped your head, tears spilling into your lap. âI have to go back, donât I?â
âMaybe I donât need to write this story. I have plenty of other ideas, and breaking out of the contract isnât so bad, right? I mean, Iâll take a loss but I can afford to pay the publishing house-â
âY/N,â he said, and you shook your head adamantly.
âI donât want you to go.â
âDo you think I want to either? Iâm happier here than there. I want to be with you, not Charli, not in a world where I have a past that haunts me and people who want me dead. Here I can be just me. The guy who loves you.â
âYou love me?â you asked, and stared up into Brianâs now glossy eyes. He smiled weakly. âDo you really love me, Brian Kang?â
âI love you,â he told you earnestly, and you leaned in to kiss him, desperation rolling between you both. It was rushed and messy, yet your hearts collided together in the middle, confirming the feelings you both had for one another. It made you want more, yearn for every part of the man you had come to love so easily in the flesh. You had loved him a whole lot longer than this, but now you could truly confirm that love came from his actions, and not how you wrote them.
Shifting back, as the tears somehow managed to still fall, your bottom lip wobbled. âI love you too.â
âWhich is why you plan to send me away again, right?â Brian asked, choking on his own emotions. âI have to go so you can finish this world.â
âCanât we just leave it?â you pleaded, and Brian shook his head. You mirrored the action, knowing you wouldnât be satisfied either. This was a world you had created, and you couldnât just leave it without answers to the questions you had raised so far.
âWill you come back to me?â
âAs soon as youâve written the very last word,â Brian promised, kissing your temples as you both began to cry.
Clinging onto him, Brian attempted to soothe your wild sobs, rubbing at your back whilst burying into you himself. It was heartbreaking, like any typical angst scene. You knew it had to happen for character growth, and yet this was a pinnacle moment for sheer pain. Your whole body ached at the mere concept of parting from him.
âItâs not as if Iâll leave you for good, Y/N,â Brian mentioned, as if he read your thoughts. âIâll always be right here with you. Through the screen. Youâll see me, during moments where I go along with your story plans, and at the times I test them. Youâll know Iâll be there supporting you, and your choices in writing Eternity to the very end.â
âI know, but you wonât be here, holding me like this anymore either,â you told him, and Brian grew silent, knowing whatever he could think of to calm you now, wouldnât. âWe donât know what will happen if you go back. Will you be able to leave me notes like last time? Or will the story suck you back in and keep you there, at Charliâs side and not mine?â
âIâll find my way back to you, Y/N. You know I will,â Brian urged, and you held onto that hope, leaning in to kiss him once more. âI donât want to live in a world where Iâm not with you.â
âI know,â you agreed, nodding into him. Words seemed pointless now, both of you overwhelmed by the decision.
Eventually, Brian helped you up, taking you down the hallway to your bedroom, and laying with you as he had started to do recently. Somehow, you fell into dreams, of you and Brian together, married, with children and living out your domestically and homely life together. He was right. You didnât aspire to be in the front limelight of anything apart from your simple goals in life.
With him at your side.
Yet, when the morning shone through, and you opened your eyes, you were alone in bed.
And there laid a note on the pillow Brian had once rested his head upon.
I love you, Y/N. I will come back to you as soon as I can.
As the tears formed in your eyes, you got up from your bed and went into the office, staring at the open screen of your laptop. Waking it up, there was the document for Eternity waiting for you to continue.
The words finally came.
_________________
Part 9
All rights reserved © prettywordsyouleft
[DAY6 Masterlist] | [Main Masterlist] | [Request Guidelines]
#kwritersworldnet#young k#young k fiction#young k fluff#young k romance#young k angst#young k au#day6#day6 fiction#day6 fanfic#day6 fluff#day6 romance#day6 angst#day6 au#pwyl; to be continued#kpop fiction#kpop fanfic#kpop fluff#kpop romance#kpop angst
70 notes
·
View notes
Text
re: (not so) small rant about Theo, Liam and season six of Teen Wolf
(original post by @livingbythewords, you can find it linked here. i originally wanted to reply to the post, but replies are turned off. iâd reblog it, but itâs pretty long, so i wanted people to get to choose whether or not they wanted to read it...)
i saw this post in the liam tag when i woke up yesterday, and i kept sporadically thinking about it and discussing it with people (and in my own head), and i definitely have some thoughts about it, not gonna lie... still, as i said, absolutely feel free to ignore this if this ainât your cup of tea at all, but if you wanna hear my thoughts about 1. livingforthewordsâ post and 2. theo, liam and season six of teen wolf, feel free to look under the line break :)
(iâll be posting some of the lines from the original post for context to what iâm saying, but if you do wanna read my answer, i recommend reading the original post as well! let me also preface this by saying this is in no way meant as hate towards the creator, sceo as a ship, or scott mccall as a character. i found some parts of this post had traces of what iâd consider to be a harmful way of thinking about fandom and shipping, and i wanted to adress it.)
the post mentions early one that liam brings theo back to use him, and that as soon as he finds out theo no longer has josh and tracyâs abilites, he wants to send him back. that the only reason he doesnât is because theo remembers stiles. with this, you say that you see thiam shippers claim that liam does it from the goodness of his heart.
personally, iâve never seen claims that that was the reason liam did it. i have, however, seen (and personally think this myself) that theo coming back from the hell heâs been put in by the hands of liam, might make theo quick to develop a bond or feeling of gratitude towards liam. thereâs no doubt in my mind that theo understands why liam did it â but even then, it still got him out of there. in canon, no other pack member but liam even entertained the idea of getting theo back â i think theo is very aware of this, as well â which in itself automatically makes liam the safest pack member for theo to latch onto, from the get go.
Liam distrusts and despises Theo â and it never changes throughout the course of the show.
again, with the basis of liam and theoâs developing aquaintance in season six (heavily conveyed through non verbal communication - both in the form of touches/glances/body language and the things written between the lines; the things not specifically worded, but definitely said through their dialogue), thereâs a lot that can be up for interpretation.
when i watched the show, i saw two characters who, yes, clearly had a shared hatred towards each other, learn how to work together and develop a tentative trust (that only grew throughout the season). i saw two characters that shouldnât work together, work together insanely well, to the point where no verbal communication was strictly necessary.
my point is, thiam as a ship is heavily influenced by interpretation of what you see in their dynamic, and i find it troublesome that you look at other peopleâs interpretation and publicly say;
However, shipping someone and having fun with it is not the same as twisting into knots to try to prove that canon supports something, when it doesnât.
especially when you follow this up by saying;
Yes, there is a person who acknowledges that Theo has changed. Who trusts and supports him even when they have no reason to. Who is always there for him and tries to treat him fairly even after being incredibly hurt and betrayed.
But that person isnât Liam.
because you and i watched the same show, and we clearly have majorly different interpretations of season six; of theoâs relationship with people post-hell; of liam dunbar as a character.
however, i am not gonna claim that youâre wrong, and iâm right. your interpretation is entirely different from mine â and yes, based on what i saw, i do personally think youâre wrong, but hereâs the thing; i understand that interpretation of this is just that; interpretation. theo isnât canonically linked with anyone, therefore i cannot say that thiam is right and sceo is wrong â even as thatâs my personal view of it.
back to the theo and liam and thiam shippers adressed in this post;
i want to preface my response to this with the fact that i myself have been/are in healthy BDSM dynamics. i have also jokingly said that theo âprobably enjoyed itâ. i have online friends who have joked about theo enjoying it. and hereâs the thing; none of the people i know seriously think theo, in that exact setting, enjoyed it.
a great thing about fandom and shipping is the exploration and discovery of oneâs own sexuality. we often talk about it openly; we discuss it with people, weâre âhorny on mainâ, we learn from fellow shippers, we read fanfiction. we joke around with stuff.
thereâs no doubt in my mind that people do not think theo raeken got pulled back from hell, chained up and forced to follow liam and hayden around, and actually enjoyed it at that moment. however, can i personally see theo as a character that would enjoy being chained up in other situations? yes. a lot of us do. and so we joke about it.
joking about certain aspects of a BDSM relationship when youâre looking at/reblogging things from canon does not undermine how important a proper and healthy BDSM dynamic is.
the post also touches on theo being a traumatized kid with unhealthy coping mechanisms. this is, without a doubt, the core of theo as a character. however, by putting it in the context of why itâs wrong to joke about him being a sub/rope bunny, feels so misplaced to me. a lot of kinks develop from the trauma we have (talking from experience). a lot of kinks develop at â seemingly â random (talking from experience). being traumatized doesnât automatically mean we develop kinks, sure, but it also doesnât mean we do not develop kinks.
without a doubt - chaining him up and dragging him behind them was not a kind thing to do; i donât think anyone disagrees with that. but at the end of the day, these are characters. theo is a character weâve barely gotten to know, especially post-hell theo, so he develops in our mind, we have headcanons, we think of personality traits that werenât shown in canon. some of those pertain to his sexuality, and thatâs okay.
this also pertains to your gripe with people looking at canonical depictions of thiam and seeing it as love. again, even in the thiam shipping part of fandom, we have majorly different interpretations of certain scenes, and thatâs okay. iâve touched upon the importance of acknowledging that thiam as a canonically hinted at couple is all up for personal interpretation of their canonical depiction; this also means that people will see things very differently.
the original post was mainly aimed at theo and liam as a ship, so i wonât get into the comments about liam as a character that much, but i will say this;
even you yourself mention that liam absolutely has reason to resent theo. but, you go on to claim that liam doesnât have as much reason for resentment as other characters.
liam might not have been personally wronged by theo in season five as much as other characters, i will agree with that. but, he did watch theoâs actions and influence in the things done to mason, to hayden, to scott. all people he loved. this, in itself, is reason enough to build resentment towards a person.
itâs also important to remember that theo lessened liam in his mind to the beta with anger issues, stripped away every complex part of liam and simplified him into this one trait that liam himself has struggled with and tried to distance himself away from.
liam struggling with being depicted as a monster â pre supernatural; because of IED, supernatural; as a werewolf â has been canonically shown so many times. itâs gotten us the line of «youâre not a monster. youâre a werewolf, like me.». weâve been showed, time and time again, that liam has a complexity within him that is constantly undermined â by brett, by stiles, and yes; by season 5 theo.
sadly, i also see liam simplified and put into the box of beta with anger issues by the fandom. this also, from what iâve read on your blog and from statements about liam in this post, includes you.
how does that change in season six? letâs get back to the claim at the start of this post; of thism shippers claiming liam is the only one who trusts and supports theo, and look at it this way; theo â previous homicidal maniac out to ruin the pack (put simply; weâre both theo apologists, we know thereâs more to him than that) â is one of the first people to look at liamâs anger and not let it be his only character trait.
the post mentions glances in the truck scene; this is what the truck scene (in my mind) is really about. theo acknowledges â even if not explicitly stated â that the anuk-iteâs ability to raise fear in people, raises anger in liam. he sees that liamâs anger is a direct consequence of the anuk-ite; he sees that the fear instilled in liam translates into anger; because of IED. this lets liam be a character that has IED, instead of just liam - the angry character.
this, again, is my interpretation of this scene. you might not have seen it that way. once again proving that this is a ship based on interpretation.
claiming that interpreting scenes is twisting canon until it fits your idea of it, is such a harmful way of looking at shipping. i have never interpreted anything romantic between scott and theo in canon, and could, in turn, claim that you twist canon until it fits what you want. but iâm not going to, because your interpretation of things doesnât have to fit mine.
you canât write a rant about thiam as a ship, state that you donât want to tell anyone who to ship and that certain ships are wrong, and then undermine every interpretation anyone has had about liam and theo as a ship.
weâve all seen the same season of teen wolf, weâve all seen the exact same scenes (there are no version of the show you watched); but weâre all very different people. we interpret things very differently.
AND THAT IS OKAY.
do not undermine peopleâs ship. if you hate thiam, just stay away from it. donât expose yourself to it. ignore it for all itâs worth.
itâs that easy.
18 notes
·
View notes
Note
I mean I want to respect people's religions but tbh as a greek I don't think I can ever take hellenic polytheists on tumblr seriously. I'm sorry but it just feels so foreign to me, like they have just read a bunch of books of the subject. They might be "fans" of ancient greece but what they supposedly worship lacks the soul of what our ancestors religion has. There is just nothing "greek" about it. (I hope I don't sound too much like an nationalist there, I hate nationalism)
No, look, I understand. Obviously you and I are for freedom of religion and expression. But not all religions have to make sense to you in order to support them or the people in them. Also, this particular religion is part of our heritage so I believe we can speak on it a little bit. Itâs understandable to see a part of your heritage being used by foreigners in ways you donât recognize. And itâs a strange feeling indeed because the religion originated and sculpted by the Greeks (with influences of course!).Â
I suppose that you, as I, agree that anyone can have any religion. Nothing stops me from becoming a Buddhist and nothing stops a person from the US to become a Hellenic Polytheist. However, I cannot just declare I am a Buddhist and have a prayers and a statue and be done with it. It goes deeper than that. Itâs a new philosophy and a way of life I must accept, a way of recognizing the divine differently than before. I have to study and I have to study how Buddhism came to be and what cultures shaped it and follow on their footsteps. Maybe I should also learn a little bit of their language to understand the deeper meaning of hymns and worship.Â
I see of the worshipers studying a lot to immitate that sense of Greek culture but also keep their own culture (which is good!). Many of the modern worshipers call themselves reconstructionists because they donât practise the ancient religion (because we donât have enough info and because itâs the 21st century) but they try to get close to it by studying.Â
I can say itâs a personal pet peeve of mine as a Greek that they focus only on the ancient Greece and therefore they âmissâ the last 1.500-2.000 years of our cultural development. I understand they cannot study everything about Greece. A person cannot know everything. However, personally, I am a little bothered that there are Hellenic Polytheists who can recite classic texts and analyze them for hours but if you ask them ANYTHING about Greek culture after 100 AD they wonât know a single thing about it. There are worshipers who know every single minor Greek deity yet they have never seen a picture of Greek people and they have no idea about our cultural identity, how we view life and how we have evolved the language and the customs of our ancestors.Â
No wonder you feel the modern practices foreign, even when you are a Greek. Itâs because even the most well-read Hellenic Polytheists base their religion solely on a veeeery distant part of our culture. And, in the meantime, the Greek spirit of the ancient faith is kinda lost.
Even Greek Hellenic Polytheists will never fully worship the way their ancestors did. Itâs because we are in a different point in history and our society raises us with certain values, which differ from those of our ancients.
But I can get behind Hellenic Polytheists who put in the work to actually study a foreign religion and try to bring it back to life as accuratelly as possible. I may have pet peeves but that doesnât mean I condemn the way they worship. Plus even in the Hellenic Polytheism community different worshipers have different opinions on the matter of worship. I understand that those people do the best for their faith.
On the other hand, on Tumblr many people are not in a good cultural level yet. They take the religion very superficially. I have seen some Hellenic Polytheist blogs where the owners call some gods EVIL and bash Zeus, the FATHER of the gods!! There is probably lots of reading that needs to be done on their part to understand the basic concepts. Some even try to shape the religion (!!!) after 1.500 years after its âdeathâ (aka its super dramatic decline) by making posts about âsecretâ myths that predate the Greek ones and try to pass them as canon. Can we forget the time Tumblr created a Greek goddess (Mesperyan)?? Of course you wonât find the smallest mention of Greek customs in these blogs.Â
Thankfully, I have seen a few blogs that at least talk about the customs of our antiquity and help Hellenic Polytheists learn new customs. I hope the community on this site takes examples from them and continues to mature.
____________________________________________________________Â
Itâs a huge answer because I felt the subject needed analysis. Let me repeat, we donât gatekeep anyone from the faith and we donât accuse the Hellenic Polytheist community of anything! We just discuss how an important part of our ancient culture is revived and what it means to us. How we feel connected and not connected to it. I am sorry if that was hurtful to anyone but, as Greeks, we need to talk about these issues. If we donât discuss them who will?
Feel free to discuss and add opinions. Please read the whole post before commenting!
776 notes
·
View notes
Text
Big TW: mental health, si/sh, suicide mentions/discussion
Mod: Compiling all the anon responses to one post from last week into this one, so anyone who is sensitive to this topic can scroll happily by.
This might be particularly intense reading for the Anon itâs in reply to, so only open the post if you feel like it Anon. They replied/updated on the original confession also (I think itâs the same Anon), and imo they were just venting in their original post and it was not made with bad intentions.
Thank you Anons for submitting your varied perspectives and insight on this topic. â€ïž
are you fucking kidding me? if your cope is a bjd that's fine, but here's the thing, buy a cheap legit!!! Or buy your fucking recast and enjoy it in silence instead of trying to legitimize it! Having a mental illness does NOT give you a free pass to be a asshole nor absolve you of the consequences of your own actions. Signed, someone who actually acted out on their suicidal ideation but thankfully didn't succeed.
~Anonymous
Mod: Iâm glad youâre ok now Anon â€ïž
"Don't be mean to anti artists because they might unalive themselves?" Ok. Now make the post saying "don't spit in the face of the artists who make this hobby possible and support the theft of their work because crushing their spirit and breaking their heart might make them unalive themselves." Or maybe you're just playing favorites in your suicide narrative?
~Anonymous
https://true-bjd-confessions.tumblr.com/post/649109294780907520/tw-suicidal-ideation-before-you-bash-someone-or
I hope you realize that you are committing actual gaslighting with that. And just to be sure that people donât think Iâm just claiming this to deflect.
In this specific case, Iâd say itâs the: Gasligthing of someone spreading information, in an attempt to make someone doubt their own judgement (of a situation, or their own morals).
There are other additions to the definition, like, over time gaslighting, or questioning ones own sanity, and memories, but I was just going to point out this one, or one part of gaslighting. Since it really sounds like it wants the reader to doubt their own morale judgement, about a situation, by inserting a very emotional, and serious topic, and pushing the idea of the persons opinion is going to cause someoneâs death.
Basically: What you are doing is gaslighting people into questioning their own judgments, and deliberately pushing them into the idea they might cause someoneâs self harm, and subsequent death, if they dare, openly, hold a bad opinion, about recasters, and recast buyers.
I would also like to just openly say that I find it incredibly gross to use topics of suicide, to guilt trip people, and it really sounds like a way to play the oppression game.
You could just have mentioned how bullying people is wrong for owning recasts, something that is known of, and even frowned on by many, but instead, you used suicide as a tool, and even clearly use it, with no actual situation backing it, just to guilt trip, and make sure to try and make the person into being a bad person, just for holding an anti-recast stance, just because someone owning a recast might be suicidal.
With this point: â Your words might be that one drop that⊠â you are literally shifting the blame to the anti-recaster, or a much larger issue a person suffer. Which isnât only ridiculous, but also incredibly damaging to people who might suffer this mental state.
Honestly, Iâll just say it again, using serious stuff, ranging from abuse, verbal-physical-sexual, to self harm, and in this case: suicide, just to make people feel bad, because they disapprove of your fake doll, is incredibly manipulative, and disgusting, because youâre using the specific topic of suicide, to just further a personal agenda.
Iâm not really sure what else to say. Using suicide to push this agenda, is incredibly disgusting, and even if you suffer from thoughts of self harm, itâs not the way to go, to pull strangers into this, and basically blame them for these actions. You also clearly didnât seem to think, what implying blame to another person, or group of people, might do to their mental state.
If you suffer from thoughts of self-harm, please call the suicide hotline, or try contacting, or receiving help.
This links has a FEW numbers for suicide hotlines, and if you ever think you might need it, one call can help you find help.
https://ibpf.org/resource/list-of-international-suicide-hotlines/
~Anonymous
I want to rebound on the confession with a suicide ideation. As others pointed out, it's not because you are unwell (as in clinically depressed) that you cannot be called out for your bad behavior. However, Â bullying is never acceptable in my book. Never. Being called out isn't harassment. Cyber bullying and threats, however, are harassment and are more illegal as, let's say, owning a counterfeit. Two wrongs doesn't make a right and some people must remember this. I've seen it too much.
~Anonymous
It's SO nice to see that Shit-posts and Vic3mage are pro-suicide. Yes recasts are theft but that should NEVER be an excuse to verbally abuse someone to the point of wanting to commit suicide or self-harm. "That's on YOU." So what you're saying it that this type of behavior is okay? It's disgusting.
~Anonymous
Ok, so, Iâll just say it straight, or gay for those who need that. If you use suicide to guilt trip people about disliking recasts, youâre an asshole, like, goatse levels of asshole size. What is it with people, and using the most extreme examples, to try and make others the villains? It sounds really fucky, to put recasts, and the dislike of them, in the same situation suicide blaming.
If someone said that for the opposite side of things, would you, or other recasters agree with the sentiment of: âYou as recasters, and pro recasters, are to blame, for sculptors, and artists not being able to feed themselves, and considering suicide. Your actions, might be the last drop for them to do it.â This is just an example to show how fucked up it is to say that by the way, if it was the other way around as well.
Would you agree with this? Would you think itâs fair? Would you accept the blame if that happened? Would you say that recasters, and pro recasters, are the reason someone is âat the brinkâ?
Oh you do mention that people should get help, sure, but it in no ways justifies the absolutely 1 guy, 1 jar level of butthurt you show, when pushing the idea that anti recast people might cause someone to end it, just because theyâre vocally against recasts.
~Anonymous
Anon from the depressed recast confession from earlier. Thanks to the mod for the kind words and support. And thank you for the comments. I understand your point. But you don't seem to understand mine. I've owned this recast for a few years. I bought it second hand from a friend that got me into the hobby and didn't really understand the whole recast legit thing back then. I just really loved her collection and wanted to be part of her hobby, so I was more than happy when she offered me one of her dolls. I have changed her face-up and built a story around the doll. I put a lot of own effort in.
It wasn't like "Oops, I feel depressed. Guess I'm gonna buy a recast on the internet to piss people off and harm artists. My depression justifies this action", no. I just think telling someone they ain't worth shit, telling them "kys" and witch hunting them aren't the right way to go. You don't know anything about that person except "they own recast. bad person". For exactly that reason I think it might be good to just block them, or explain to them without any hard feelings if they don't know anything about recasts. They're still human beings worth of life. Maybe talk to them on a respectful level to understand each other better. Sorry for the long confession or if it upsets anyone, that's not my intention.
~Anonymous
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Dragonâs Tutor - First Impression
My thanks to @kemvee for letting me use her character, the incomparable Amie from her story âEducating the Commander.â We were talking about a meeting between our characters, and IDEAS occurred. I have other ideas of them two to write in the future, so Iâm crossing my fingers that Kemvee actually likes this...
Note: This was meant to be short but I kept on going!
Another Note: ACK! Sorry it got so long!
- - - - -
âLady Montilyet, beyond the concerns of our responsible allocation of funds, I do not believe this... woman to be a suitable instructor for our young Inquisitor.â Cullen frowned, glaring at the Ambassador, who easily understood that Cullen was unwilling to say the word he was thinking in the presence of the boy in question.
Josephine coldly raised an eyebrow. âHow fortunate, Commander, that the decision does not lay entirely within your hands. Else our young Inquisitor would be kept in the dark about the dangers he will face when dealing with the Game.â
âPolitics, geography, etiquette, languages - all these things are vital to the Heraldâs safety in the Game.â Leliana tutted. âAnd what with his instruction in magic, history, tactics, and his journeys throughout Thedas, we simply cannot prevail upon Josie, Benny, Madame de Fer and Master Tethras much longer - each has their own duties - Madame de Fer and Josie also take their time to teach Henry -â
âLord Cousland has expressed that he doesnât mind-â Cullen started, glancing at Henry, who had stepped back from the War Table, hoping not to be involved.
âLord Cousland cannot always be available.â Leliana snapped. âHe has valuable contacts and skills that Josie and I require and like it or not, Cullen, the Inquisitor needs a dedicated tutor.â
âThe Inquisitor,â Tashâs voice was soft, and yet it rang throughout the War Table room. âwould prefer if you stopped talking about him like he wasnât in the room.â
âApologies, Tash.â Cullen said softly, suitably chastened.Â
Tash nodded. âI like learning. And I know itâs necessary, and that it is a burden. I, er... I donât exactly have the best experience with teachers.â He frowned.
 Cullenâs mind briefly flashed to the memory of watching Madame de Fer verbally eject Commander Helaine from Skyhold after learning that she was most disapproving of Tashâs status as an apostate and hedge mage, as well as his Qunari heritage, enough that she had called him a useless ox-boy. That had been the straw needed for Vivienne to take over Tashâs instruction in magic. Though it had been amusing to watch Vivienne tear the woman to shreds, Cullen quickly frowned again when Tash continued talking.
âBack in Markham, the Chantry sisters didnât like it when I came for lessons. They would kick me out.â Tash shuddered in a way that made Cullen certain the boy was being quite literal. âOn the bright side, that meant I got to learn from my Papa. The baker one, not the Tal-Vashoth. So that was fun. Still... is this person nice?â
Josie smiled softly. âOf course. Lady Amie is as gracious a woman as you could ever hope to meet. And as a Courtesan, she has much practical experience in the subjects we wish her to instruct you in. And her presence will attract support to Skyhold, acting as a beacon that the Inquisition is able to engage with the upper echelons of polite society.â
âWhatâs a Courtesan?â Tash asked suddenly. âIs it like a courtier? Thereâs âcourtâ in it. But then what would âsanâ-ing be? âSan...â Does that mean something in Orlesian? Or is it Antivan? It sounds like Antivan.â
Cullen had blushed bright red and shrugged as if to say See?
Josephine barely resisted the urge to scrunch up her nose at the man. âA Courtesan is a lady - or, generally a lady - who assists nobles in... ensuring they find enjoyment. Men woo her as they would someone they wish to court, and in exchange, she will assist them in their every need.â
âSo... sort of like a concierge?â Tash tilted his head. From his position somewhere in the corner of the room, Henry gave a loud, high-pitched snort. His face was red and he appeared to be somewhere between laughing and crying. âBut a mobile one.â
âThat is... an interesting way of putting it.â Josephine smiled. Cullen scoffed.
Tashâs gaze snapped to him, his lips suddenly tight in a frown. âThereâs something none of you are telling me, and Iâm going to find out what it is. You know, itâs pretty annoying that youâre all perfectly happy with me walking around dangerous places until my feet feel like theyâll fall off, but you wonât tell me what some silly little word means -â
The doors opened (much to Cullen and Henryâs relief, interrupting the young Inquisitor), and in walked Madam de Fer, accompanied by a most extravagantly dressed woman. Her long traveling gown was of a rich red velvet, cinched at the waist and elegantly flowing downwards, a black fur trim at the hem brushing the floor and matching the trim of the flared sleeves, long black silk gloves covering her arms. She wore a black silken brocade vest over the gown, disguising her corset among the intricate raised silver design. A shimmering opal rested among the folds of lace crisscrossing her dĂ©colletage, but even this was all outshone by the vivid silver locks she sported, the wavy hair lustrous and thick as it cascaded across her shoulders.
âMay I present the Lady Amie, our dear Inquisitorâs new instructor.â Madam de Fer said softly, before standing off to the side and allowing Amie to move forward to embrace the approaching Josephine.
âLovely to see you, Amie.â Josephine smiled at her. âI do hope you had a safe journey.â
âOf course, Lady Montilyet,â Amie responded, with a subtle curtsy and a shake of her wavy silver locks. âThe carriage you sent was more than satisfactory.â
âA carriage?â Cullen practically snarled at the mention of extravagance.
Amieâs eyes flicked about the room, taking in whom she knew and whom she had only been informed of. Madam de Fer, of course, she knew well, and Josephine. Leliana, of course, was the Divineâs Left Hand, and they had a mutual friend in the Lady Montilyet.Â
The men in the room were of a decidedly more unknown bent. The famous Benezio Cousland was absent, as was the mysterious giant Avvar elf that was supposedly the Inquisitorâs bodyguard. But that left the Commander, Cullen, his face etched with disapproval, practically shaking his head at her, eyelids narrowed over amber irises. A slender young man stood in the back of the room away from the table, all messy brown hair and wide eyes as he took in her ensemble - confusing, he had no noble bearing and yet his physique and general air did not suggest common origins. And finally, the Child of Andraste himself. His Worship, the Lord Inquisitor.Â
As befitting the stations of all present, Amie gave a deep straight-backed curtsy to the young Inquisitor, gazing through the silver strands of hair to take in his brown hair, pulled into a messy knot; both of his lustrous dark horns, swept high and back like a dragonâs, covered in what appeared to be a blue knit covering embroidered with little flowers; and most of all his eyes, a bright, shining gold like a sunrise, similarly examining her, meeting her eyes boldly. âYour Worship. It is an honor.â
âThe pleasure is all mine.â the boy replied easily, smiling at her, although suspicion still lurked in his sunrise eyes. âIâm told you will be my new instructor?â
Amie straightened, marveling for a moment at one so young and so short having such power. Her eyes flicked to his left hand, which gently pulsed with green light before she fixed her gaze on his face. âThat is correct, Your Worship.â
âTash.â the boy corrected. âWell, technically Ataashi, but I like Tash better.â
âNow, Lady Amieâs duties will not all consist of your instruction, Inquisitor.â Leliana cleared her throat.
Amie smiled easily. âI shall be performing my customary duties as well as taking charge of your education in the Game.â Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the Commander shaking his head in annoyance.
âI havenât been doing that badly, have I?â Tash winced - though Amie could tell he had noticed the silent outburst as well.
âBy no means,â Amie smiled gently. âYou have performed admirably thus far, if what Iâve heard in Orlais is to be believed. But you are entering a new tier of the Game, and extra preparation is not at all inappropriate.â
Cullen scoffed, and Amie only deigned to step back, not even raising an eyebrow. Tash, however, tilted his head. âSomething wrong, Cullen?â
âOnly that I still wonder if this is the best use of Inquisition resources.â Cullen frowned, clearly holding back. Amie assumed a lazy smile, showing her lack of concern in his protest. He clearly was in the minority here. âWith her... fee, we could easily train another troop of soldiers!â
Tash nodded. âTrue... but Iâm certain that with our new friendâs help, thereâll be plenty of soldiers coming in. Itâs...â Tash looked around as if he could pluck a word from thin air. In any event, it seemed to work, as the boy beamed. âAn investment! Itâs like having a party. Sure it costs a lot, but it makes the nobles and the soldiers happy, and then they tell others and we end up getting more than we spent. Right?â
Cullen looked torn for a moment but then grumbled out a âYes, I suppose you are correct.â
âGreat! So weâre all on the same page.â
Amie smiled. âIf it pleases you, Your Wor- Tash, then our lessons will begin tomorrow. I shall prepare as well as I can. I understand that you already know how to read and to write?â
Tash nodded proudly. âMy Papa taught me. And how to do sums and figures. And I know a little bit of Antivan.â
âI can attest, Lady Amie, that dear Tash is a natural at the ways of the Game. Even among the children of nobles, you could not ask for a more able student.â Vivienne said softly, and Tashâs cheeks darkened as he smiled.
âI will look forward to our time together, then.â Amie smiled at him, warmly this time. And it was true. She hadnât known what to expect, but she was pleasantly surprised to find that the Inquisitor truly was just a child. An intelligent one at that, but certainly a child. Already she felt a protective stirring over him, seeing him grinning at praise.
âThank you. I... Iâll look forward to it as well.â Tash said, flashing her a grin.
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
The World Is Not Enough: Isekai and the Hope for More
When it comes to anime and light novels, you canât swing a dead cat without hitting an isekai series or six. Countless stories spanning many genres have used the person-travels-to-another-world premise. To borrow language from the infamous TV Tropes, the isekai concept has been played straight, played with, inverted, subverted, parodied, deconstructed, reconstructed, and more.
People must like isekai stories (I know I do!), otherwise there wouldnât be approximately 47 million of them, with new ones coming out all the time. Regarding this topic, I recently actually-a-while-ago-but-it-took-me-a-long-time-to-write-this happened to see a post by Twitter user Sashimi Princess Maddie which was retweeted by J-Novel Club:
This post struck a chord with me because Iâm fascinated by the connection between fantasy and faith. J.R.R. Tolkienâs essay âOn Fairy-Storiesâ is of course required reading on this topic, as is Chapter IV â âThe Ethics of Elflandâ â in G.K. Chestertonâs book Orthodoxy. They discussed fantasy generally, and logically what is true of all fantasy is also true of the specific subset of fantasy we call isekai. Now, the tweet is obviously partly humorous, so it would be unjust to respond to or critique it as if it were a serious essay. However, I do want to highlight one point of possible disagreement that I believe is relevant to my own thoughts. (I say âpossibleâ because without a full-fledged essay from  Maddie, I may be overlooking or misunderstanding points that a more complete argument would resolve.)
Japan is ground zero for isekai. The isekai stories we consume overwhelmingly originate in Japan, and are written by Japanese people for Japanese people. And Japan is a place where Christianityâs influence has been meager, at best, since the Tokugawa period. Meanwhile, the religions with any sizeable footprint in Japan, namely Shinto and Buddhism, donât contain a concept of heaven comparable to that found in the teachings of, say, Christianity or Islam. Christians make up 1% to 2% of Japanâs population (depending on which estimate you read), which means many Japanese people have probably never even met a Christian! Thus the appeal of isekai in Japan cannot be explained in terms of filling in a gap left behind by the decline of traditional religious hope for heaven.
The OPâs argument would work better if the vast majority of isekai came from, say, western Europe or the United States. Throughout much of the west, Christianity formerly held immense cultural influence. However, Christianityâs influence in these places has declined greatly in the past century or three. If such places produced most isekai stories, we could make a more plausible case that isekai draws upon lingering notions of heavenly reward, relics of a discarded traditional religion whose notions permeated society, in order to fill the hope-deficit created by that religionâs decline.
I believe while Maddie is correct to find conceptual connections between isekai and religion, I just find the specific relationship posited by the OP inadequate, especially with regard to Japanese people. Thus I invite you, dear reader, to consider other Bible teachings that do more to explain the appeal of isekai even in a culture where Christianity (including its notions of heaven) never held much sway. The picture of our world and human nature painted in the Old Testament provides a partial explanation for why we like isekai, an explanation that is not contingent on lingering cultural debris left behind by Christianity.
Letâs look âIn the beginningâ â yes, the one where âGod created the heavens and the earth.â As God completes his creative work in Genesis 1, we read âAnd God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.â *That* is the world in which God intended us to live. And all this âvery goodâ stuff includes humans, too, who the text says God created in his own image. Alas, we humans ruined things. To put it another way, long ago God and man lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation sin attacked.
Yeah, after God created all this good stuff (including we humans!), Genesis 3 introduces a slew of bad things that werenât supposed to be part of this world: sin, death, the curse. Of course, God knew this would happen, and already had a plan in place. That plan reached its climax in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but in some respects it is (at least from our point of view) not yet completed. For now, we still live in a cursed and corrupted post-Genesis 3 world, a place where sin and death run rampant. We ourselves are broken by sin, and we must endure in a world unlike the one God originally created for humans.
The entire Bible is stories of humans sinning, which goes a long way toward showing what mess this world is, but the Bible also contains an entire treatise specifically exploring how awful our post-Genesis 3 world really is. Speaking of our world as âunder the sun,â Ecclesiastes incessantly hammers home the âvanityâ of this life. âUnder the sunâ is an unreasonable, unjust, and oppressive place that we canât understand or fix. âUnder the sunâ is a place where bad things *will* happen to us no matter how hard we try to avoid them. âUnder the sun,â all our labors will accomplish nothing of lasting value. âUnder the sun,â weâre all gonna die just like dumb animals, no matter how we lived. And then the cherry on top is that after we die, no one âunder the sunâ will even remember us, and any stuff we had will be misused by people who donât deserve to have it.
Our own experiences validate this picture of pointlessness. I had an abusive childhood; Iâve faced a slew of physical and mental health issues; Iâm presently almost 35 and Iâve never so much as gone on a date, let alone gotten married or had a family; Iâm unemployed and living with my parents because Iâm failing so hard at adulting. Iâm not hopelessly miserableâGod has abundantly blessed me in certain respectsâbut that doesnât negate the reality that in some meaningful ways, my life is a big huge disappointment. You, O reader mine, will have different points of sadness and frustration and failure than I do, but I suspect most of us, if weâre honest, would have to concede that our lives are painfully disappointing, or at the very least have not followed the tracks we dreamed they would.
This image of the incomparable Kanami from the isekai series Log Horizon serves no purpose except to break up my wall of text and make me (you?) laugh.
Creation and the Fall provide the starting point for the appeal of isekai. God wanted us to be good and to live in a good world, but thanks to our sin, both we and this world are in far worse shape than he originally intended. Since we werenât made for a cursed world, it is entirely natural that on some level we long for a place that is somehow more, or better, than the one we inhabit. Likewise, since we werenât created so sin and death could dominate our lives, it is entirely natural that on some level we long to be somehow more, or better, than who we are. Even if we donât have a clear idea of what exactly we really want, we still long for a vague something beyond our present existence.
We intuitively sense that something is off about both ourselves and our world, and this leaves us wanting a world and selves that are different from the world and selves we know. In the beginning, we were made for more, and now our existence isnât quite right. Isekai appeals to this nebulous desire for something better that stems from our latent awareness of the Fall. Isekai stories give more concrete form to the desire to be different than who and what we are, and to live in a reality that isnât entirely like ours. We may not want to live in the setting of every isekai story, but even grimdark isekai is still isekai, and thus shares the inherent appeal of the idea of other worlds.
Ecclesiastes is again relevant at this point. Perhaps the most hopeful part the bookâs message is unstated. As noted above, Ecclesiastes keeps emphasizing how everything âunder the sunâ is terrible. This raises a question: Is âunder the sunâ all there is? And here we find the implicit note of hope: the one thing mentioned in Ecclesiastes that isnât âunder the sunâ is God. Throughout the Bible, God is consistently depicted as up above. So when Ecclesiastes mentions God, this gloomy book is hinting that there is more to reality than just our world âunder the sun.â There might be a chance to escape the utter vanity of this life, if we seek somewhereâand more importantly, Someoneâoutside and beyond the world we know.
âNow let me be clear,â God is an almighty spirit unbound by the constraints of space and time. Thus, the Bibleâs references to God dwelling in the heavens are obviously metaphorical and do not affirm some sort of literal spatial relationship between God and any celestial bodies or astronomical coordinates. That said, the Bible regularly pictures God as being in heaven, and if we follow the logic of that metaphor, then God is not âunder the sun.â This is supported by one of the titles repeatedly ascribed to God throughout the scriptures (most often in the Psalms and the book of Daniel): âthe Most High.â Again, this superlative is metaphorical, Â not a literal claim about physical altitude, but to be âthe Most High,â God is, in a conceptual sense, above everything else â the sun included.
The core premise of isekai stories is the idea that other worlds exist and that itâs possible to pass between them. Since we already desire something more, better, different than our present existence, isekai has a natural appeal. What distinguishes isekai from other fantasy / sci-fi stories is how directly it addresses this innate post-Fall desire for a different world. Non-isekai stories offer the possibility implicitly, not unlike Ecclesiastes: They ask us to imagine a reality different from our lived experience, but donât necessarily give any indication that we can do more than imagine. Contrariwise, isekai takes as its explicit premise the idea that a person just like us, from the very world in which you and I live, can somehow go to a different world, and there experience significant personal changes of some kind.
All fantasy / sci-fi stories at least touch on the notion of a world unlike ours. Even if their setting is very much based on our world, by their very nature they include phenomena never seen here. Arthur C. Clarke famously captured the overlap between sorcery and science: âAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.â All fantasy / sci-fi stories occur in a world where mechanical or supernatural forces beyond our experience or comprehension offer new possibilities. Isekai stories not only show us such worlds, they depict these worlds as existing in addition to (rather than instead of) our own, and as being possible for us to visit.
All of this ultimately brings us to the New Testamentâs teachings about hope and resurrection and heaven. I think the OP was correct to see a connection between the appeal of isekai and the Christian hope of heaven. But heaven is only the fulfillment of our longing, not the origin of it. The Bibleâs depiction of the Fall and its consequences explains better why we would find the idea of heaven, and isekai, appealing in the first place. We wouldnât need heavenâor isekaiâif we were perfectly satisfied with this world. But we arenât satisfied, and the Bibleâs account of the Fall and its effects explains why we find our present state dissatisfying. And so, reading isekai stories is really about hope for something beyond the reality we know. We feel rightly disappointed with our lives and with this world. We desire something else, and isekai supplies our imagination with more concrete ideas about other worlds.
For now, heaven is an incomprehensible wonderfulness. We know almost nothing about heaven, after all. Given how light on specifics the Bible is, even the most devout Christian is still limited to an amorphous notion of hope. But isekai stories are something I can wrap my mind around. The heroism, the adventure, the romance, the supernatural creaturesâall of it speaks to my desire to be more, to experience more. The worlds I can imagine through isekai help strengthen my longing for the even better world I canât yet imagine. Isekai stories help bridge the gap between the unsatisfactory reality I live with and the heavenly realm so glorious that human language canât describe it. While we canât really imagine heaven, isekai at least helps us envision something beyond our lives under the sun. Isekai cannot truly satiate our desire our desire to go somewhere different and be something different (thatâs what heaven is for), but it does help us explore and understand our sense of longing.
People can enjoy isekai stories regardless of how much they accept or know anything about Christianity, which makes sense if our desire for an existence that is more, better, different than what we know far predates even Christianity. Isekai has not âtaken the place of traditional religion as a promise that our suffering will be worthwhileâ in a chronological or causal sense (e.g., religion held sway, and it declined, and that decline contributed to the popularity of isekai as a substitute). I believe it is more accurate to see isekai and the Bibleâs teaching on heaven as parallel responses to the Fall. We can choose either or both, but they arenât in competition. Isekai can be an expression of hope and longing both for those who believe in heaven as a religious doctrine, and also for people in places (e.g., Japan) where Christianityâs impact is minimal.
âIn the beginning,â God intended for us to be better and to live in a better world, but sin broke the world and broke us, and now weâre all coping with this disappointing life under the sun and desiring something more. Thankfully, God promises that this world and our present condition are not final. He encourages us to hope for a world and a self that is perfect. We donât know what that will be like, but isekai grants our imaginations a glimpse of possibilities beyond this world. Depending on isekai alone for hope, apart from Jesus, is not unlike eating a ton of junk food before supper and being unable to enjoy the real meal, but isekai can also be an hors dâoeuvre that whets our appetite for the heavenly banquet to come. To me, reading and watching isekai stories is an act of hope, helping me endure this present world by reminding me that I really do have hope of living in another world as a perfected version of myself.
#Anime#Manga#Light Novels#Christianity#Isekai#Religion#Japan#Heaven#Hope#Articles#Author: JeskaiAngel
105 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
lendoapy-blog
Untitled
thriftyorganicgal-blog
The Thrifty Organic Gal
mi-tsu-ki
Mitsuki RIBREAU-NISHIKI
zmoodiac-boards
ZoBoards
fwalteprotocolo
PROTOCOLO SIMPLEMENTE por Francisca Walte