no offense to the general public but when people say catelyn knowing about R+L=J would’ve changed her and jon’s relationship i know they don’t get catelyn’s character.

if ned had told catelyn the truth about jon it would not have made their marriage stronger it would have ruined it. telling his wife he puts jon’s safety above her children’s (which is exactly what he was doing) would put an end to the love in their marriage she would hate him. catelyn would’ve hated jon even more if she knew who he was because he was an even greater danger to her children. ned made traitors of all the starks without even telling them, if anyone ever found out they would have all been executed. she would’ve slit jon’s throat herself and maybe ned’s too

Hmm, speaking of musical interests- I remember seeing TS as Annie in SNL skit about musical theatre. I’m sure that genre has influenced her (childhood MT training & audition- Les Miserables). It has also been sampled- Jay-Z Hard Knock life (in a genre she listened & collaborated with- Like B.o.B.). I remember thinking of the ‘82 Annie film when I listened through Rep album. Also in folklore or evermore- another song tune made me think of that movie again. TS tours are like MT staged.

this is another thing a couple of friends and i have discussed a LOT, and a firm belief i have that being a kid who loved musical theatre had a massive formative influence on her writing and the fact that she's so adept at storytelling. (this is why one of the very first things i'd ask her about, in the make believe universe where i could ask her questions!, would be regarding stephen sondheim and whether or not she's familiar with some specific pieces of his work). there's no doubt in my mind that she has natural skill in regards to theatrical composition, i've long wished she would try her hand at writing one (and she still could someday!), because it would be such a natural fit. her time with ALW through cats underscored that too, he made it clear how admirable he found her talent and her ability to write to the form. i get so excited about the prospect of this because it's a crossover of my favorite things lol

I remember thinking of the ‘82 Annie film when I listened through Rep album. i know that film by heart from childhood. this is amazing and SO intriguing to me, i'd love for you to elaborate if you want to!

my mom and i have had conversations about how much taylor uses theatrical staging in her tours, and she has from the very start! look at the speak now tour, it's full of set pieces and story vignettes. she does costume changes. the rep tour with the dancers, the snakes, the various set design, tells a very specific story, and i remember she said once that was her intention, and that's why the album clicked much more for people when they saw it fully staged. she doesn't just go out and put on a concert by singing (which there is nothing wrong with at all!), she puts on a SHOW. she has pure musical theatre sensibilities in the presentation of her art (even her music videos have this).

#2: Golden fleece

what are your hcs/theories about chuuya's past? feel free to go wild with your thoughts 😽

I have a few. .. A lot actually but i felt like making some art so here's what i have the stamina for right now.

Mom Nakahara

So i've been thinking about her a lot considering she's the parent he would have spent the most time with. We know basically one line about her but we can learn that she and her husband have a lot of political sway in town, she's of samurai descent, and has a lot of decorum "like those of the upper class". That didn't really translate into the design I made for her bc for some reason i was very fixated on her being a farmer lady but I imagine she has a very polite and respectful personality. I think her past involving some form of samurai heritage could indicate she's a socialite of some kind and rather wealthy and well known in the village, which could attract a lot of disrespect when the Dad is at war and she's raising Chuuya on her own.

Apart from the mostly baseless farmer vibes i DID want her to seem very soft, and very tired. She's effectively a single mother, her husband's at war, her child is "unruly" and gets into fights and she's might be getting shit from the people she knows around her. It's stressful.

2. Gender

So here this might be diverging from canon, but this is very very important to me. i headcanon Chuuya as FtM transgender, like this is just super ingrained in my mind. Projection mostly. (Also why whenever I draw genderbender art of him, Girl Chuuya's body isn't particularly feminine, maybe she hasn't gotten her tits yet. I want the trans/nb reading to be very available.)

So anyways when i was thinking about his past, i was wondering if he even started considering gender that way. Maybe, maybe not. I think he might have gone for a more "tomboy" type attitude when he was a kid, begging his mom to let him wear "non-girly clothes" instead. Maybe she lets him to that because wearing shorts instead of a skirt isn't something that really matters in her eyes, cutting her kid's hair short isn't a big deal. So i think mom would be accepting of the idea that her son's trans, but maybe other townspeople aren't. And they spread rumors about Chuuya's mother "for raising him wrong."

Cue some kindergarten Chuuya out to bat for his mom's honor.

3. Professor N.

This is a really obvious one to me, but I believe that Chuuya knew N before the lab. Two versions I bounce between: N being a friend of his father's during the war. If N really does stand for "Nakahara" maybe N is his uncle on his mom's side. Either way I think some kind of accident or risk was involved with Chuuya's ability manifestation, and contact N who they know is involved with some secret ability research and they trust him enough to send Chuuya to the lab with him to "get him fixed"

If chuuya's original ability was the self contradicting power enhancement ability, maybe an accident involving him over powering something and it like. exploding or something. Or maybe he used it on himself and some kind of singularity opened up (black holes maybe??) Either way something really dramatic bc Chuuya's ability is dramatic.

Anyways. theres something very insidious to me about N knowing Chuuya as a kid. As soon as he was given the chance to, he not only faked his death, experimented on him, but systematically abused him in order to make him lose his sense of self/sense of humanity. essentially forcing him into an object/weapon. Not a person anymore. It's sick, N is honestly one of (if not THE) most genuinely evil characters in all of bsd.

Overall I'm hesitant on the idea of Chuuya's parents being awful but it is possible. I've got several different fluctuating versions of his pre-lab backstory honestly.

in your most recent tyson post, you said something about leo being distinctly autistic-coded and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that? it sounds really interesting (sorry if you've already posted something on this, I couldn't find anything though)

Of course! I do have a specific tag for talking about Leo's autistic-coding/traits - [here], and [one for Nico as well].

The main aspects with Leo being autistic-coded actually have a lot to do with Nico being autistic-coded, because it's the comparisons between the two that most clearly indicate Leo is autistic-coded rather than it just being his ADHD or etc.

So with Nico being autistic-coded, it's very clear in the Titan's Curse that he's intended to be autistic. First, the first series has a repeating pattern of secondary characters being very distinctly neurodivergent-coded in different ways (Annabeth's adhd/dyslexia, Tyson's down syndrome-coding, Nico's autism-coding). With Nico's introduction, he's pretty stereotypically autistic and we're given a lot of descriptors about him that are notably not attributed to him being ADHD, like it would be for other demigod characters. He doesn't register social cues such as people getting annoyed at him, he's asking/making inappropriate or impolite questions/comments, he gets particularly upset about change (such as Bianca joining the Hunt) and generally gets emotional, and one of his most notable traits he's introduced with is the fact that he has a special interest (MythoMagic) - and we're shown that this special interest particularly colors how Nico navigates the world. While ADHD has hyperfixations, we don't really get much acknowledgement of hyperfixations with demigods usually - Annabeth gets a little, but most others don't and it's not nearly as focused-in on as Nico's is.

Then as the series continues we see these traits stick with him and him start to show or voice more traits that similarly indicate he's autistic: He regularly mentions how he doesn't understand living people and prefers the company of the dead (social issues). He has more notable stims than other demigods (twisting his ring, fiddling with bones, etc). He's indicated to have strong sensory preferences (usually wearing mostly black/aversion to bright colors, usually wearing layers/his coat, multiple times he's described as wearing loose/baggy clothing or clothes too big for him). He has specific comfort items (his ring, likely his jacket(s) as well). We later get even more information about his special interests (Mythomagic/mythology/history and an older interest in pirates - the latter he specifically notes likely heavily influenced his feelings towards Percy). He struggles with emotions and facial expressions and tone. He struggles particularly with ostracism and feeling like he doesn't fit in and has something distinctly different about him from the people around him (who notably, all have ADHD, which indicates it isn't the ADHD that's making him feel that way), and other characters regularly describe him as being off-putting because of his strange behaviors - again, different from specific ADHD traits they recognize. And that last point is kind of notable because we have Hazel and Bianca for comparison - we know people are off-put by both Nico and Hazel because of being children of Hades/Pluto and their powers/aura, but other characters get past that general feeling of discomfort way faster with Hazel. And even after characters get past the death stuff with Nico, there's a second thing that they aren't moving past that isn't a factor with Hazel (Nico's autism).

So that brings us to Leo - Leo is paralleled to Nico a lot. And there's some very specific traits about him that we know are autistic-coding because of how they're used with Nico: He similarly struggles with social cues/etc, and in a very similar parallel to Nico describes how he prefers the company of machines to people because machines make more sense to him. He has similar types of clothing/sensory preferences (again some stuff with layers but also - pockets! He likes having pockets and things to put stuff in! He's even introduced as having a jacket with lots of pockets), and he has a distinct special interest (machinery) that we specifically know heavily influences how he views and navigates the world (constantly comparing things to machinery, describing things with machinery metaphors/terminology, etc etc). He even describes his entire general worldview to Hazel and it's a machine metaphor. He also similarly struggles with ostracization like Nico does, the only difference being that Leo specifically puts on a persona to compensate for areas he knows he's lacking in and very explicitly describes it as a means to make people like him, because without it he normally struggles to fit in (He's masking!). We also see notes of characters describing that similar discomfort with Leo's behaviors that they do with Nico, except without the aura of death this time. And when we're in Leo's POVs we see a very stark difference between his masking and his actual personality/behaviors such as his internal dialogues or how he behaves when he's alone. Also, like Nico, he stims more than other demigods, though for Leo it's more attributed to his ADHD. Leo also, more often than most, similarly struggles with tone and reading the room, such as making misplaced jokes/comments or etc.

But yeah! It's really interesting. Also it's just a fun thing that ADHD/dyslexia and autism have comorbidity, so it makes sense that we see demigods who are also autistic. It's also really fun to look at how other characters are coded in the series, what coding looks like in the riordanverse specifically (usually it's tied into the mythological stuff - like Chiron being in a wheelchair but he's actually a centaur, Grover being introduced as having a muscular disease but he's actually a satyr, demigods having adhd/dyslexia, Tyson being coded as having down syndrome but he's a cyclops, etc etc - it's a lot of specific metaphor stuff that I've talked about a bit before), and to look at how characters are compared to one another.

i have hired this yellow mage to rip your limbs off

Idk if this is a hot take or anything but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Jon didn’t have any friends (besides Martin) basically the entire series.

Sasha was nice enough but she was strictly professional. Tim was reasonable in the beginning and I like to believe they were friends but honestly he’s pretty wary of Jon s1. Melanie hated Jon the whole way through. Georgie was there for a bit before things got too messy, but the way she treats him s5 is like a time bomb. Basira treated Jon like a stove with a broken gas release, and Daisy, my god Daisy. I could go on and on about their relationship but it was really clear after the trauma she inflicted on Jon he could never truly trust her.

They all feed into the theme of Jon’s inhumanity, but I remember listening and being confused because I always saw ppl treating this like a found family when they never were.

Maya, Travis & Vic | Station 19 - 7x07

So exciting to think that sunny disposition will be passed on to another human.... He said, totally joking.

How does touhou Kanako show her spirit animals notable Snake traits? Suwako represents the frog. How do I look at her as the Snake as in aesthetic speaking?

Funnily enough, this is actually a common misconception with the canon. The snakes technically have nothing to do with Kanako, those belong to Suwako.

The snakes are called "Mishaguji". They're curse gods that Suwako tamed during her time as the only goddess of the Moriya Shrine. When Kanako took over, she still needed Suwako's assistance since she could not control the Mishaguji. If Kanako didn't ask for help, she would likely be constantly fighting the Mishaguji to prevent them from cursing the land and destroying harvest. Not an easy task. I'm sure Kanako would love to have all her followers believe she is controlling the Mishaguji, but the credit all goes to Suwako.

The Mishaguji are probably a lot weaker than they were in the past, but they're still around. Suwako still uses them in her spellcards. (Notably, Kanako has never used them.).

So you might be wondering, if Suwako is the powerful frog that tamed the snakes, why the heck is Kanako the "Snake"? Why is there so much art depicting Kanako with snakes?

Don't worry, you're not being pranked by fanon this time.

ZUN said in an interview that Kanako is based on two gods: Takeminakata and Yasakatome. These two gods are housed in the real life Grand Suwa Shrine.

Takeminakata is worshipped as a god of wind, water, war, and agriculture. This is very similar to Kanako. As for Yasakatome, her folklore is a bit all over the place so it's hard to pin her down. She's mostly associated with water. Kanako's first name; Yasaka, is derived from Yasakatome.

What's important is that both of these gods have been depicted as snakes in folklore. (sometimes specifically a water serpent). This is where Kanako's symbolism with snakes come from. When Takeminakata is depicted in other japanese media, it's a bit common to use snakes to symbolize him. (Dragons are also an association with him, but we're talking about snakes here).

Kanako and Suwako's backstory heavily resemble a specific piece of Takeminakata's folklore. He conquered the Suwa region by defeating the local gods of the area. The most famous battle was against Moreya, whose iron weapons were defeated by Takeminakata's wisteria vine. (wisteria is a plant. A flowering vine.)

Sound familiar?

Moreya still has his own shrine called the Moriya Shrine. Yup, that's right it's a real place and not something ZUN made up. However, if you look into it, Moreya isn't depicted as a frog. Where the heck did that come from?

Well, Takeminakata has another piece of folklore with a frog involved. He calmed the waves of the raging seas by defeating a frog god. This story commonly depicts him as a snake as well. (Snakes eat frogs in real life!) The frog in this story is sometimes interpreted as one of the local gods, which could be the Mishaguji or Moreya.

"The Mishaguji"??? Aren't they the snakes in Touhou? Well...yes! It's just that they're local gods just like Moreya was and...and....we're in too deep!

Folklore is commonly spread through word of mouth! It's a mythological game of telephone! The details can change based on who is telling the story! I haven't even told you the many other names Takeminataka goes by. If I went over all the nuance with the folklore and its connections to Touhou this would be a gargantuan post!

Ignoring that, what's important is that this is where Kanako's symbolism with snakes come from. Even if she doesn't control the snakes of the Moriya shrine, Kanako IS the snake that defeated the powerful frog and conquered its land.

so i’m watching a court of fey & flowers (i know i’m long overdue) and it is SO funny to watch brennan at the table in a regency campaign while nOt being a spellcaster

aabria says “you are all at the beach having a tea party. every table at this event has a smattering of potions on them. the purple one is a potion of detect thoughts”

the person who accidentally drank it decides NOT to push farther into another player’s mind and you can SEE the vein in brennan’s forehead bulge before he narrates his character IMMEDIATELY downing one himself and walking DIRECTLY to that player while thinking “tell me your secrets right now” as hard as he possibly can

i mean props to @quiddie for shutting down the attempt to bypass the detect thoughts roll but come on girl. you put detect thoughts potions in front of brennan lee mulligan in a regency politics campaign what did we expect to happen there 😭

Morro design I finally got finished! I will give info on him soon

cute clothes ✨

i literally cant stop thinking abt lambdabern in ep 5. imagine you write a love letter to your crush invoking the interest you shared begging him to see you through all the obscurity you’ve shrouded yourself in and two lesbians read it decide thats boring and not only scribble all over it in crayon but also cut it up dada style and rearrange it into self insert fanfiction

i love exit pursued by a bruised ego bc the way its set up makes you go "oh are they trying to establish hosea as the other hunter of the group" and instead he just goes and gets attacked by a bear like a loser. and its even funnier when you unlock bison hunting with charles a few missions later. this cringefail old man sucks at hunting and almost got his ass mauled by a bear bc hes convinced he knows what hes doing. go hunting with charles he knows what hes doing for real